Monday, August 18, 2008
Further geeking
Have recently acquired some educational DVDs. The first cost £2 from a charity shop and was supposed to guide one through one's body. From the Dorking Kindersly stable. Looked like a snip until we found some small print which said Windows 95 only. And it resolutely refused to load in Windows XP - which I thought odd. My theory being that one can usually move up on the platform software but not usually down. We did manage to browse around the DVD and found various pictures and video clips of body parts - the standard of which, although moving and in colour, did not seem to be an advance on a tatty old nurse training paperback which happened to be at hand. So lots of gloss but not so much content. We also found 30 audio clips containing an enthusiastic male voice from the US congratulating one on getting a score from 1 to 30 in the quiz. In fact, the whole system seemed to be very fragmented, with lots and lots of files containing small bit maps of small bits of screen - presumably all to be assembled by the program which we could not run.
The second was rather dearer at £9.99 from a shop in Exeter called 'The Works'. Brain Training on three DVDs: starter edition, advanced edition and deluxe edition. Now these did work on Windows XP - although not out of the box. Loading up the CD resulted in a message about some component being missing. We then inspected the CD and found a readme file which said that one could load the missing component - the .NET framework - by hand, without being connected to the Internet. Which we then proceeded to do. But how many people would bother with that? I thought educational DVDs were supposed to be plug and play. And, in this case, the intended audience would not have had a clue. I was also reminded of my concern that it is getting harder for the amateur to run a PC which is not connected to the Internet. So much of the out of the box stuff assumes that one is. At worst things do not work and at best one gets irritating messages which one does not know how to disable.
Despite the full glory of the .NET framework, the product itself was surprisingly un-glossy. Quite backward looking really, often falling through to raw Windows message boxes. Very little attention paid to fonts and dialog box design (something that Microsoft, to their credit, take a good deal of trouble with). And, to my annoyance, find that BH has more brain power than myself - at least as measured by one of the ten or so tests offered. The three editions all looked much the same so it was hard to see where the value in buying all three was (if they didn't come as a collection, as our's did) - the only differance I could spot being the glossiness of the Soduku offered. This last having the advantage that one could turn the difficuly up and down so that one could feel good doing a puzzle a good deal easier than the moderate one on the back page of the DT. There is also the advantage that I can now abandon the stray thoughts I have had over the months of knocking up a Soduku game on Excel myself. Game support seemed manageable - if tedious to code - but, irritatingly, I had not managed to think up a way of generating puzzles.
The Works also offered a splendid book - down to £6.99 or so from £30 - about the horse guards by the appropriately named Barney White-Spunner. A very heavy book for its size with lots of good pictures and lots of odd factlets. So, for example, there was a passing fashion in the early 18th century to have black Life Guard trumpeters in yellow uniforms and mounted on grey horses. And that the Princess Royal was the second colonel of the guard to be portrayed in woman's dress. The first was some transvestite colonel, also from the early 18th century.
And then we find another shop in the same chain at Taunton, where I am able to pick up a recently published modern history of India, also, I think, favourably reviewed in the TLS, for £3.99 for getting on for three inches of book. As it happens, both books come from Macmillan - so where is the connection with the works? Or are Macmillan in trouble?
Talking of enthusiastic male voices, why is it that British television documentaries have to be delivered by bearded gentlemen from the north of Britain, manically shouting at the camera in some regional accent? Why is it thought inappropriate to talk in a more natural way? Why do we need such heavily accented mood music? Presumably the producers of these things know what they are doing, but as far as this viewer is concerned, the shouting is a complete turn off. I never watch the things.
The second was rather dearer at £9.99 from a shop in Exeter called 'The Works'. Brain Training on three DVDs: starter edition, advanced edition and deluxe edition. Now these did work on Windows XP - although not out of the box. Loading up the CD resulted in a message about some component being missing. We then inspected the CD and found a readme file which said that one could load the missing component - the .NET framework - by hand, without being connected to the Internet. Which we then proceeded to do. But how many people would bother with that? I thought educational DVDs were supposed to be plug and play. And, in this case, the intended audience would not have had a clue. I was also reminded of my concern that it is getting harder for the amateur to run a PC which is not connected to the Internet. So much of the out of the box stuff assumes that one is. At worst things do not work and at best one gets irritating messages which one does not know how to disable.
Despite the full glory of the .NET framework, the product itself was surprisingly un-glossy. Quite backward looking really, often falling through to raw Windows message boxes. Very little attention paid to fonts and dialog box design (something that Microsoft, to their credit, take a good deal of trouble with). And, to my annoyance, find that BH has more brain power than myself - at least as measured by one of the ten or so tests offered. The three editions all looked much the same so it was hard to see where the value in buying all three was (if they didn't come as a collection, as our's did) - the only differance I could spot being the glossiness of the Soduku offered. This last having the advantage that one could turn the difficuly up and down so that one could feel good doing a puzzle a good deal easier than the moderate one on the back page of the DT. There is also the advantage that I can now abandon the stray thoughts I have had over the months of knocking up a Soduku game on Excel myself. Game support seemed manageable - if tedious to code - but, irritatingly, I had not managed to think up a way of generating puzzles.
The Works also offered a splendid book - down to £6.99 or so from £30 - about the horse guards by the appropriately named Barney White-Spunner. A very heavy book for its size with lots of good pictures and lots of odd factlets. So, for example, there was a passing fashion in the early 18th century to have black Life Guard trumpeters in yellow uniforms and mounted on grey horses. And that the Princess Royal was the second colonel of the guard to be portrayed in woman's dress. The first was some transvestite colonel, also from the early 18th century.
And then we find another shop in the same chain at Taunton, where I am able to pick up a recently published modern history of India, also, I think, favourably reviewed in the TLS, for £3.99 for getting on for three inches of book. As it happens, both books come from Macmillan - so where is the connection with the works? Or are Macmillan in trouble?
Talking of enthusiastic male voices, why is it that British television documentaries have to be delivered by bearded gentlemen from the north of Britain, manically shouting at the camera in some regional accent? Why is it thought inappropriate to talk in a more natural way? Why do we need such heavily accented mood music? Presumably the producers of these things know what they are doing, but as far as this viewer is concerned, the shouting is a complete turn off. I never watch the things.
# posted by Jim @ 9:03 AM 
