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	<title>PulseBox Articles &#187; 2008 &#187; May</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles</link>
	<description>The goings on at PulseBox, reviews and reports in technology, developing and gaming.</description>
	<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:24:06 +0000</pubDate>
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		<itunes:summary>The goings on at PulseBox, reviews and reports in technology, developing and gaming.</itunes:summary>
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		<itunes:category text="Society &amp; Culture"/>
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			<itunes:email>anthony.pd@gmail.com</itunes:email>
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			<title>PulseBox Articles</title>
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		<title>Spore creature creator</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/23/spore-creature-creator/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/23/spore-creature-creator/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 May 2008 15:06:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Game Development]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Maxis]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Spore]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=39</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[..you will be able to create creatures in the creature creator from june 17th untill then here are a few videos now available of the creature creator.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Spore is a game I have been avidly looking forward to, mainly for its extreme freedom, but also because Maxis have been developing it. After many delays Maxis have decided on a release date of September 5th. Untill then you will be able to create creatures in the creature creator from june 17th, and have them available  when spore ships.</p>
<p>These are a few videos now available of the creature creator.</p>
<p><img class="right alignright" style="float: right;" src="http://crave.cnet.com/i/bto/20080425/Spore1_540x405.jpg" alt="" width="218" height="162" /></p>
<p><span style="float: left;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Euroga</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">mer<span style="font-style: italic;">:</span></span><br style="font-style: italic;" /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=9l02Ker0il0">http://youtube.com/watch?v=9l02Ker0il0</a><br style="font-style: italic;" /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=GAHjDUlwEyk">http://youtube.com/watch?v=GAHjDUlwEyk</a><br style="font-style: italic;" /><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=7xJXpbjqahQ">http://youtube.com/watch?v=7xJXpbjqahQ</a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;">IGN</span>: (with commentary<span style="font-style: italic;">)<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKYEmnElxY8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKYEmnElxY8</a><br style="font-style: italic;" /></span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLg3VHFkGtc&amp;eurl">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLg3VHFkGtc&amp;eurl</a></p>
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		<title>Clive Barker&#8217;s Jericho (Demo)</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/21/clive-barkers-jericho-demo/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/21/clive-barkers-jericho-demo/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 May 2008 19:43:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Possum Man</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[AIDS]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Atrocious]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Clive Barker]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Jericho]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=37</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Clive Barker's Jericho: Return to Brown Castle.
Oh dear God. This game really doesn't deserve it's own article..]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Oh dear God. This game really doesn&#8217;t deserve it&#8217;s own article, but I decided that the review would be large enough to give it one anyway.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s really not much more to add to Yahtzee&#8217;s thorough raping of this game in his <a title="Zero Punctuation" href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2633-Zero-Punctuation-Clive-Barker-s-Jericho">review of Clive Barker’s Jericho</a>.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll give you a quick run down of the basics though, just so I have something to talk about.</p>
<p>You basically control a team of 7 retarded and obnoxious twats who are members of, and I quote: &#8220;An elite military team who specialises in the paranormal.&#8221; So they&#8217;re a bit like the F.E.A.R. team only less under-funded and without a guy who can slow down time and nail enemies to walls.</p>
<p>The story is apparently atrocious but fortunately I couldn&#8217;t experience any of it because the demo instantly thrust me into brown castle number one and gave me no explanation as to why I was fighting un-dead gladiators. 0.o</p>
<p>In this particular section of the game I was only controlling three members of the team, thank God. For some reason you have the ability to switch between your team members, which takes more time than I&#8217;d like it to and when you&#8217;re finally seeing through their eyes all they were looking at was a wall. The first character I started as was a female with a reasonable sized&#8230;gun. &#8220;Ok&#8221;, I thought, &#8220;I&#8217;ve got some kind of assault rifle here.&#8221; Oh how wrong I was. It turned out I was armed with a sniper rifle that had an under-slung grenade launcher.</p>
<p>&#8220;Wait a minute, we&#8217;re inside a building, a sniper rifle will be totally useless&#8221; I thought to myself. It was. I could have got more use out of a soggy ice-cream cone. Anyway, after figuring out the controls to switch characters, I chose the guy with the mini-gun. Memories of Team Fortress 2 flooded my mind as I walked through brown corridors hosing the un-dead with hundreds of round a minute. That is until I was inexplicably killed by a fire-ball that was apparently hurled by a set of stairs.</p>
<p>The first person camera is terrible, it&#8217;s constant bobbing means that half your shots go wide and the other half hit your team-mates who seem to always be two feet away from the enemies. Also, when you get hurt your screen gets covered with blood, dust, muck and fire for no apparent reason. It&#8217;s just an infuriating distraction that will most likely get you killed faster as you run blindly about looking for cover. The lack of any kind of health indicator doesn&#8217;t help this situation at all, it just makes it all the more frustrating.</p>
<p>Overall, this was an atrocious game. I can&#8217;t recommend it, I can&#8217;t even give it a score (for what little that means anyway). My advice, stay away from it. It has AIDs.</p>
<p>P.M.</p>
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		<title>Google webmaster tools</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/19/google-webmaster-tools/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/19/google-webmaster-tools/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 May 2008 08:00:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Reports]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[social]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[webmaster]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=34</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Every day Google continues to amaze me. It sometimes seems that they are a treasure chest rather than a multinational corporation. The number of free tools they have increaces almost week by week, just last Monday they announced Google Friend Connect. This is a new service that allows site owners to include OpenSocial apps, these [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every day Google continues to amaze me. It sometimes seems that they are a treasure chest rather than a multinational corporation. The number of free tools they have increaces almost week by week, just last Monday they announced <a title="google friend connect" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/friend-connected-web.html" target="_blank">Google Friend Connect</a>. This is a new service that allows site owners to include OpenSocial apps, these are gadgets that use user&#8217;s accounts from sites such as AOL, OpenID to do social things on your website. The number of things possible is only limited by developers, As we know from the number of wordpress plugins, this could possibly be a great source of gadgets that could be added to any site.</p>
<p>This is just another great and <strong>free</strong> tool for webmasters to use. And while I wont be using it in its current form, its invaluable for someone without coding experiance to add &#8217;social&#8217; to their website. However I wonder sometimes when its going to come back to haunt us, perhaps if Google gets bought up and and everyones tools become pay to use. But I prefer to be optimistic, so I cant wait for Google to bring out more tools. The way things are going we&#8217;ll soon have every website interconnected and able to share friends from each one of them. I&#8217;m not sure this is something I&#8217;m particularity looking forward to, as I prefer to keep my real-life friends separate to my Internet friends.</p>
<p>I use a range of tools from google, all of which have helped me improve the website. These are some of the webmaster tools I use.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/home/?hl=en"><img src="https://www.google.com/accounts/analytics20x20.gif" border="0" alt="Analytics" vspace="1" width="20" height="20" /></a> <span><strong> <a href="http://www.google.com/analytics" target="_blank">Analytics </a><br />
</strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools"><img src="https://www.google.com/accounts/sitemaps20x20.gif" border="0" alt="Webmaster Tools" vspace="1" width="20" height="20" /></a> <span><strong> <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools">Webmaster Tools</a></strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/?et=reset"><img src="https://www.google.com/accounts/default20x20.gif" border="0" alt="Website Optimizer" vspace="1" width="20" height="20" /></a> <span><strong> <a href="http://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/?et=reset">Website Optimizer</a></strong></span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com/cse/"><img src="https://www.google.com/accounts/cse20x20.gif" border="0" alt="Custom Search" vspace="1" width="20" height="20" /></a> <span><strong> <a href="http://www.google.com/cse/">Custom Search</a></strong></span></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Iron Man</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/iron-man/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/iron-man/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2008 19:22:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Possum Man</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Excellent]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Iron Man]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Marvel]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Robert Downey Jnr.]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Stan Lee]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Tony Stark]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=31</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It's amazingly hard to not like this film, it's excellent.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright" style="float: right;" src="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjU2MDYyMzE2MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwMDkyNzA3._V1._SY400_SX600.jpg" alt="Iron Man" width="270" height="400" /></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>Iron Man</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">It&#8217;s amazingly hard to not like this film, it&#8217;s excellent.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">I could stop there and let it lie but I wouldn&#8217;t be a very good reviewer if I did so I&#8217;ll have to soldier on. It&#8217;s really hard to critisize a film which has almost no faults. As this is also my first film review it&#8217;s probably going to meander a bit anyway and should be pretty short, thankfully.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Robert Downey Jnr. plays an excellent Tony Stark, his line are delivered with great timing and he really fits the part well. Man, this all sounds corny but seriously, he&#8217;s a great actor and does complete justice to the Tony Stark character. The visual effects are brilliant, Stark&#8217;s suit gets chipped, dented and broken which makes the film feel alot better because in the end Stark is just a man. A cool, rich, wisecracking man but a man none the less.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">I&#8217;ve always been a fan of Iron Man ever since I watched the cartoon series, he&#8217;s a really awesome character because, despite not having super powers he can still has super strength, super speed and the ability to fly aswell as having some really cool gadgets in his suit. Seriously, what other superhero has a cell-phone in his suit?</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Anyway, back to the review. I went into Iron Man hoping it wouldn&#8217;t be another terrible Marvel film (see. Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spiderman 3) and I came out knowing that it was one of the best Marvel films to date. This is probably because it was produced independently by Marvel and that&#8217;s great. The only thing that niggled me was the cameo by Stan Lee (he appears as Hugh Hefner of Playboy). That&#8217;s the one thing I don&#8217;t like about Marvel films, the Stan Lee cameos. Yes, we know you helped create all the Marvel characters but I don&#8217;t want to see you in every damn film, it was cool in Spiderman, now it&#8217;s just annoying.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">So should you go see it? Well, I can&#8217;t tell you whether to go see it or not, that&#8217;s your decision. What I can do is say that I thought it was an excellent film that&#8217;s really enjoyable. I also think you should go see it ;)</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">I just hope that &#8220;The Incredible Hulk&#8221; is just as good.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>P.M.</strong></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Exams</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/exams/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/exams/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2008 15:29:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Anthony]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[exams]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[uni]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=28</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Exams begin this week and carry on until the 6th of June, I have a total of 6 exams consisting of 12 hours of writing. While i think I should pass them all, I'm a little worried about one of them..]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Exams begin this week and carry on until the 6th of June, I have a total of 6 exams consisting of 12 hours of writing. While i think I should pass them all, I&#8217;m a little worried about one of them, since I have to get a minimum of 66% otherwise I fail the module.. I guess I should of completed more of the coursework.</p>
<p>I blame my low marks on the fact that it is a physics module, as I hate physics. A lot. While I like the subject, I hate how education teaches it, as all it entails is remembering formula and lots of facts. I wish they would explain whats going on, rather than have you blindly following what they say.<br />
In other news I have a <a rel="me" href="http://technorati.com/claim/sqyrb5wwqf">Technorati Profile</a>.</p>
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		<title>Wordpress as a CMS (Content management system)</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/wordpress-as-a-cms/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/15/wordpress-as-a-cms/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 May 2008 01:22:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Reports]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[cms]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[featured]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[plugins]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/?p=17</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As I move closer to using wordpress as a CMS. I look into the possibilities available for using wordpress as a flexible CMS, and the plugins needed for a successful conversion.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>As I move closer to using wordpress as a CMS. I look into the possibilities available for using wordpress as a flexible CMS, and the plugins needed for a successful conversion.</p>
<p><span id="more-17"></span><br />
While Wordpress is designed as a blogging tool, it can be used as a reliable back-end CMS. With the basic install of wordpress, plus a straight forward couple of edits to templates and a plugin or two and you have a content management system. A good CMS needs multi-user page editing, wordpress provides this in spades with its user management and its post and page creation system. It also makes it simple for non web savvy users to edit pages and post blogs.</p>
<p><strong>Plugins</strong></p>
<p>While wordpress could be used as a CMS out of the box a few plugins make the process much simpler. These are recommended as the basic install will buckle later on.</p>
<p>Firstly it needs to use the <a href="http://www.semiologic.com/software/static-front">Static Front Page</a> plugin, this brings whatever page is called &#8216;Home&#8217; to the front page. This is where you then have an introduction rather than recent posts.</p>
<p>All sites should have a sitemap for getting on the search engines, and a plugin can automate this process. The <a href="http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress">Sitemap Generator for Wordpress</a> does all the listing for everything posted within the system.</p>
<p>The possibilities of creating a fully dynamic site opens up with the plug-in <a href="http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/phpexec/">PHP Exec plugin</a>. This plug-in enables php within the contents of user&#8217;s posts, which with wordpress&#8217;s pages system produces instantly dynamic pages. However you need to trust your users or have strong limits on user levels.</p>
<p>Dont forget that there is a wealth of other plugins and unlimited help available at a touch of a button. I&#8217;ve found that many issues I have already have an answer through google, which makes troubleshooting an instant fix.</p>
<p>So why use wordpress as a content management system? If you want ease of use and flexibilty through plugins then wordpress beats other systems hands down. Remember for an almost limitless plugin directory visit the <a href="http://wiki.wordpress.org/Plugin">Wordpress Plugins</a> site. Also check out <a href="http://blueprintds.com/2008/03/13/top-10-wordpress-cms-plugins">Top 10 WordPress CMS Plugins</a> for more plugins.</p>
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		<title>Weather minus revision</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/10/weather-minus-revision/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/10/weather-minus-revision/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2008 19:02:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Blog]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Anthony]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[exams]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[revision]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[sun]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Weather]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/wordpress/?p=16</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Around here in the UK the weather is brilliant, its been pure sun for 4 or 5 days straight. However, I&#8217;ve got absolutely no work done, but I&#8217;ve got a bit of a tan! Thankfully I am finally starting to enjoy university life, so next year should be great. I&#8217;m a little worried about my [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Around here in the UK the weather is brilliant, its been pure sun for 4 or 5 days straight. However, I&#8217;ve got absolutely no work done, but I&#8217;ve got a bit of a tan! Thankfully I am finally starting to enjoy university life, so next year should be great. I&#8217;m a little worried about my exams as for a couple of them I&#8217;ve struggled with the work, I didn&#8217;t sign up to do frigging physics. Ive enjoyed the computer science side of the course, which should mean i enjoy the rest of the degree.</p>
<p>Gonna make some revision notes tonight, so i can get some work done while I&#8217;m by the lake.</p>
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		<title>Website redesign</title>
		<link>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/05/website-redesign/</link>
		<comments>http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/articles/2008/05/05/website-redesign/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 May 2008 23:27:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>PulseBox</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Site News]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.pulsebox.co.uk/wordpress/?p=15</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I'm currently working an complete redesign of the whole site, minus the forums at this time however, that may change. I'm going for a blue feel and a more coordinated design in CSS, which also means it should load faster. However its a few weeks off as I've got quite a complicated website with many hacks which need sorting.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m currently working an complete redesign of the whole site, minus the forums at this time however, that may change. I&#8217;m going for a blue feel and a more coordinated design in CSS, which also means it should load faster. However its a few weeks off as I&#8217;ve got quite a complicated website with many hacks which need sorting.</p>
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