Yeah, I know I haven’t written the review of The Incredibles yet. I’ve been working on other projects and promise that it will be soon.

Since I moved this site to a WordPress system I’ve been on something of a web design kick, taking my messy but functional HTML into the realms of XHTML, CSS, and standards compliance. Things like the CSS Zen Garden have become more than just a quick curiosity – I’ll actually take the pages apart and look at how they work. I’m also in the process of taking a WordPress install for someone and integrating it with Walrus to make it into a webcomic system. There have been a few bugs to squash along the way but it’s progressing well, and doing this inspired me to take the leap and begin learning PHP.

Tinkering with WordPress has given me an idea of how PHP works, but I’ve never actually learned a proper programming language. Markup languages like HTML are comparative pieces of piss, but I’ve tried and failed at C and (don’t laugh) JavaScript alongside short-lived dabbling in others. For some reason PHP seems easier to learn, and seeing what can be done with it in making dynamic web pages makes me think that the possibilities for what I could do on future sites are huge. I suppose that web applications just hold more appeal to me than making some computer program which needs months of work to be able to create something even approaching elaborate.

I’m working through the PHP Wikibook (I wrote the section on running PHP under OS X, incidentally) to get a grasp of the basics and then I’m going to check out what Borders have and will probably pick up the PHP and MySQL Bible if it contains my level of information.

Notice how I avoided the obvious and already overdone pun?

Anyway, The Incredibles was released on DVD here today and I somehow managed to miss another Pixar movie at the cinema (so far I’ve only managed to catch the Toy Story movies), so I’ve just seen it for the first time. I really enjoyed it and was further convinced that it’s impossible for Pixar to do any wrong. I’d probably say that only the original Toy Story and Monsters Inc are better.

It’s a great example of how something can be designed to appeal to everyone with slapstick and visual humour that appeals to everyone, especially kids, and satire and clever humour that they might miss but adults are going to enjoy (the fact that people are suing superheros for compensation), without falling into the trap of talking down to or alienating anyone. Hopefully I’ll be able to do a full review over the weekend.

I just saw this story referenced on the Edge website about how Full Spectrum Warrior, a game originally conceived as a training tool for soldiers in the US military who are about to enter an urban warfare environment which was also adapted as a commercial game, is being used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers coming back from Iraq. I’m not that big on war games or strategy games, but FSW took the best parts of both into a game that I really enjoyed. The US military didn’t, but I couldn’t give two shits about them (the military itself, not the soldiers; put your angry emails away).

It’s very ironic that a game designed to prepare personnel for the kind of combat that they face in Iraq failed spectacularly in that respect but turned out to be a reasonably successful commercial game, which is in turn being used as a therapeutic tool to treat soldiers who have been traumatised by Iraq. “Not accurate enough” to train them, but apparently realistic enough to trigger painful repressed memories. The most constructive $5 million they’ll ever spend.

It’s just been made official that the PSP has been delayed in Europe for “several months”, thus proving the theory that Sony just doesn’t like us very much.

I’ve been hearing rumours about this for a while now, ever since my friend’s shop (which has been doing a booming trade in import PSPs) received a flurry of orders from people who had heard from an unidentified source that it wouldn’t be reaching our shores until Christmas, but this is the first real confirmation that a delay was going to happen. To be honest, I doubt it’s going to affect the PSP that much as it’s still going to be the must-have at Christmas, but it could give the DS more of a foothold than Sony would like.

The DS launch last week was fairly successful by most accounts and the best part of a year to establish yourself is a big advantage. Sega didn’t manage it with the Dreamcast but from what I’ve seen the hype for the PSP isn’t nearly as immense as it was with the PS2 and when you’re getting testers on Radio 1 putting the DS and even the Gizmondo ahead of the PSP (I know it’s not exactly scientific, but it’s very prominent), this handheld war could get more interesting.

One of the key parts of my course is to learn Teeline shorthand, with hitting 120wpm after three years being the planned outcome. We shot through the theory in the textbook within a term and now it looks like we’re going to spend the next two-and-a-bit years drilling – repeating sentences over and over again until we get fast enough. I’m sure that it might have been useful a few years ago, but I just can’t see the relevance now.

I’ve sat in on a fair number of interviews and press conferences in my (limited) time in the field, and I’ve yet to see anyone actually using shorthand. I suppose that anyone involved in games is going to have some kind of affinity for technology and therefore might find shorthand irrelevant in the face of dictaphones and MP3 players with recording capabilities, but I still can’t imagine even the most grizzled veteran of the provincial press actually choosing to scrawl a transcription in favour of a little MiniDisc recorder.

I just can’t see why people conducting an interview would prefer to stick their face in a notebook while someone talks to the top of their head instead of talking into a little microphone. If you’re interviewing someone important it just seems rude and someone who wants their or their product’s name in print enough to call a press conference isn’t going to care either way. Maybe the point of it will come to me with time, but it certainly isn’t here yet.

The great new trailers just keep on piling up. First that incredible Zelda one, now the new Revenge of the Sith trailer.

The quality of the Star Wars prequels so far have made me more than slightly pessimistic about getting hyped over the trailers (let’s face it – TPM and AOTC had amazing trailers if nothing else) but this one seriously looks like it could be awesome.