Deep in the Caribbean...

If you can't believe what you're seeing, then you're not alone. I couldn't either. But it's true! It's Monkey Island on a mobile phone. On my mobile phone! I can actually walk around with this classic in my pocket and play it any time I want. It might take some time getting used to, but I think this giddy feeling of euphoria might help me tide it over.

The porting of ScummVM to EPOC/Symbian has been in the works for a while now. I've known about it since the first EPOC patch was applied to the ScummVM CVS, but I never dared hope that they'd actually target the S60 platform. Surely, it had to be impossible?

Apparently, not so. The crazy genius who ported this made it work on my phone, and today the executables were released to the public. Well technically, it was yesterday, but time flies when you're having fun.

Now, this is ScummVM we're talking about, so suddenly I can play all sorts of games on my phone, not just LucasArts classics.

The screen is smaller than 320x200, so everything is scaled down to fit. Surprisingly, that's not at all noticeable for the graphics, but it quickly becomes painfully obvious that legibility is adversely affected. Basically, this means I can't read what anyone's saying in Beneath a Steel Sky. The font is rather narrow, and a lot of the outlines on the letters are missing. The strange love of ALL CAPS that the Revolution team exhibits in this game doesn't help matters; caps aren't exactly known for their readability.

LucasArts had a better font to start with. Their big blocky font has a nice and wide kerning. Apparently they weren't scrimping on screen estate, so their font doesn't suffer that much when it's scaled down. There's still the odd unreadable letter, but you can understand every word from context, especially if you've played the game before. On the other hand, that kind of goes for Beneath a Steel Sky too. I understood the intro dialog in BASS, since playing it again jogged memories of my three or four runs through it on the PC.

Unfortunately, the sound only has one volume setting as of yet: ear-piercingly loud. I'm hoping they'll fix this, because now I have to connect my headphones and use them as loudspeakers, which is not a great solution. On the plus side, it's sound! I can hear Michael Land's brilliant iMUSE music on my phone! I'm running out of exclamation marks!

Minor issues aside, the games work flawlessly. I can't understand how much processing power and memory my phone actually has. That these games even fit on my memory card is fantastic, and that they run without a hitch is amazing. It's ScummVM, for crying out loud! These guys know what they're doing, and it works so well you'd think the games were written for them, not reverse engineered by them.

Well... I guess it's simply a miracle.

Cat again

Here she is again, by popular demand, now in video! It was recorded with my mobile phone, so please excuse the rather low resolution.

Sabotage

"I can't stand it, I know ya planned it, I'ma set it straight, this Watergate." - Sabotage, Beastie Boys

Autumn visit

Although I'm not particularly fond of the cold Swedish winter, I do love the season that ushers it in. I like everything about autumn, from the colours of the trees, and the fresh moist in the air, to the dark and misty evenings. It's a season that can be both relaxing and exhilirating. 'Tis the season to sit in your favourite chair, put on a Soundgarden album and read a good book.

It's also the season when small furry animals start running around in your backyard.

Can you see the squirrel? If these were mobile phone photos, this would probably have marked the end of today's squirrel hunt. Luckily I happened to be outside with our best digital camera, with optical zoom and everything.

Peekaboo! There were actually two squirrels, jumping from tree to tree, playfully hunting and chattering. This one was the more curious of the two, and actually had to come down and look at me.

After a while, it decided to observe me from a safe vantage point halfway up the tree. I guess I have the inventor of the telescope to thank for getting this shot.

It ended up calmly sitting there for quite a while, posing for a couple of more photos before it scurried back up the tree to play with its friend.

@work

I've mentioned my job several times now without actually showing it to you. Feels like things are out of order in my blog now, but I guess it can't be helped. Things don't happen in an orderly fashion in reality, and everyone has to deal with that.

Here's the main building of my job. That's where my boss has her office, and where my boss's boss has his office. It's also where the make-up girls, the TV students and the 3D artist students go to class. Not the game programmers though. Nope, we're the only ones who are banished to another building, or blessed with our very own building, depending on how you look at it.

This is the building in question. It's kind of a weird building, because it's connected to a bus repair shop. That's the yellow thing sticking out of the left side. Sometimes I hear weird noises coming from over there, or maybe I'm just imagining it.

I'm sure keen readers have by now noticed all the trees, but if you haven't, let me point out that I basically work in the middle of the forest. That's Sweden for you. The trees are everywhere. I sometimes feel like telling them, "Hey, tree! Back off! You're encroaching on my personal space!" but I don't think they'd understand me. Eh, who am I kidding, I love trees.

So, this is the entrance of the building I work in. Not a very exciting picture, but it's good for reference in case you want to visit me. If it's lunch time, you need to go left through the blue doorway to Valle's Coffee. I'll be the one eating a texmex pie and drinking yoghurt. Any other time of the day, take a right.

This is the hallway where you can sometimes find tired programmers shuffling around looking for coffee. There are two classes here, one who's been around for a year (let's call them seniors) and a new class (juniors). At the very end of the hallway you'll find the senior classroom. They are broken men, shadows of their former selves, with all their hopes and dreams crushed by the sheer amount of stuff they need to learn.

Directly to your right is the junior classroom. This is where I work right now, since I'm teaching them C++ and Windows programming. We switch around now and then; I taught the senior class 3D math earlier. Look, you can see my briefcase again, and the laptop that the school has lended me.

The students! They're a lively bunch. Three of them are from southern Sweden and like to joke around a lot. Those three are so full of crap, it's wonderfully amusing. One day during lunch they were playing a pretend game, making up rules as they went. One of them would say a word (often meaningless compound words), and the next had to counter it with a new word, sometimes thinking long and hard and commending the others for playing so well. Then they actually pretended to win and lose. They nearly fooled some other students into thinking it was a real game.

The very next day, two of them seemed very happy to see me after lunch. They claimed that they had been looking everywhere, even got my boss involved in their search. Eventually, they had called the police and gone searching the woods. Apparently they had had a question for me, but now they'd forgotten what it was.

You can tell from this photo what kind of mood we have in our classrooms. People feel right at home, leaving out their cups, cutlery and... chopsticks? OK... sure, why not?