Rossignol

German killer evokes mystery:

Most galling of all for the investigators, her DNA signature has continued to turn up at new crime sites since Heilbronn - most bizarrely, perhaps, a few months ago when the corpses of three Georgian car dealers were trawled from a river near Heppenheim, south of Frankfurt. Two men were jailed for the killing, an Iraqi and a Somali. In the Iraqi suspect’s battered old Ford, forensic officers found traces of the same DNA found in the police car in Heilbronn. But how did it get there? Who is the woman whose genetic calling card has been found at more than 20 scenes of theft, assault and murder hundreds of miles and more than a dozen years apart? If their Iraqi suspect can help, police say, he’s not telling.

Via Clayton Cubbitt. Original here.

So my my game audio feature was translated into French:

Le maître de conférences Tom Betts est plutôt découragé par le comportement de ses étudiants vis-à-vis de la musique de jeux vidéo. « Je fais des cours magistraux sur le sujet mais la plupart du temps, cela se résume au fait que l’on peut jouer avec le son coupé mais pas avec l’écran éteint. Si vous étudiez les choses qui font qu’un jeu vidéo marchera, l’aspect sonore n’arrive pas en haut de la liste. » Pourquoi les étudiants de Tom Betts devraient s’intéresser à ce qu’il a à dire au sujet de la musique de jeu alors qu’il y a tellement d’autres choses à considérer comme les graphismes, la conception des niveaux ou des énigmes ? « C’est le parent pauvre depuis des années » déplore Betts.

We’re all getting biometric identity cards. It’s a fun time.

The cards will be available for all from 2012 but she said: “I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don’t want to wait that long.” (Home Secretary Jacqui Smith)

and…

The Home Office is talking to retailers and the Post Office about setting up booths to gather biometric data.

Sure. We’re all just clamouring to fill out forms and get tagged and bagged by a bored Post Office clerk. This mandatory identity tracking system is gonna be awesome!

Full story here.

September 2008.

Current web output:

- Daily posts on PC gaming at rockpapershotgun.com. Mostly news with mild comment, but some feature stuff steadily emerging too. RPS was a side-project that is fast becoming the only project. It seems to have a life of its own. Frankenblog, all we had to do was come up with the body-parts.

- Fortnightly Gamer Tick columns at Giant Realm. I’m embracing my parasitic nature.

- Monthly Eve Online correspondence at Eurogamer MMO.

Print:

- Regular reviews and features for PC Gamer UK.

- Irregular feature work for Wired. My hands-on with LittleBigPlanet is in the latest issue.

- This Gaming Life. My first real book. An eloquent-as-possible brain-dump of notions gathered during a decade of games journalism. The first edition of the exquisitely-bound hardcover is running out. The finest compliment for the book so far came from Quintin Smith: “It’s so rich! Like Chuck Palahniuk rich. The ideas and factoids and anecdotes come so thick and fast.”

It’s a beautiful day here in South West England. I’ve been watching hoverflies pull off miniature stunt routines in my secluded garden.

Set off in 1961 in the Kazakh desert, this is the largest man-made atmospheric explosion in history. 57 megatons.