Daniel // Mason

Hey all! As blog readers, I assume you all think the internet, and particularly the ability to speak your mind on it is fairly important. Please grit your teeth and bare with me through this ranty post.

The government, along with 29 other countries are trying to pass a law to reduce piracy and control the sale of illegal and fake items on the internet, called the Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement.

Now I'm not specifically against this. I do understand that piracy isn't fair when people use it to get things for free (though I also think that copyright holders need to catch up to 21st century distribution methods or die, but thats a seperate issue). I also know how it easy it is to get hold of illegal items and how easy it is to pick up fakes (even accidentally) and there should be a way of protecting against this. So in it's raw form I'm not against the basic idea of the law.

However! If you give governments the ability to see everything you do online, look at every file you send, read everything you post or email, they will abuse it. Think I'm over thinking it? While this act was being drafted, a representative of the Motion Pictures Association of America, was caught telling ACTA government negotiators "Bring in a censoring firewall to block piracy and you can use it to shut off sites that embarrass your government, like Wikileaks".

What does this have to do with the piracy of films?

If we allow them to pass this act, it will be like putting a government camera permanently on your life. You won't be able to do anything with out the government knowing about it. You might think, well if you've got nothing to hide, there's no problem, but let me remind you that the guy in charge is not a nice person. He would (and I think is still trying to) sell your medical details to private companies for cash. Without asking you.

Please, please sign this petition.

If you can, it would also be worth trying to meet with our elected representatives to explain why this is a bad idea. Just remind them that the government will be able to see all the porn they look at, that should give them a good kick.

Thank you everyone who read this, it means a lot to me that you went to the effort. Please share this and spread the word.

Thanks

So I think everyone's heard about the governments controversial plans to build a new High Speed Rail 2 link, but what you may not know is that there was an alternative. In 2007 UK Ultraspeed, based on Mag Lev tech, was rejected in favour of HS2.

Now initially I assumed it was just too expensive, but then I started to look into it, and that's not the case. So I'm trying to put together all the facts, bellow is what I've found so far.

Expect this post to get updated with more details as I find them.

I've added finally swapped over my gallery code to the more advanced stuff (sub galleries ftw!). I've still got to add the "Latest" section to it, I have some ideas of what I want to do with it, but not 100% sure on how it will look, so need to put some time aside to play with that.

I'm also planning on adding some custom error pages at some point in the near future as the one's provided by Site Ground don't really fit in with the aesthetics of this site... "aesthetics" I can almost here my front end colleagues sniggering. :)

Oh which reminds me, I got a new job. I started working at Loft Digital in Shoreditch, East London, a little over a month ago, and it's fantastic. Everything I want from a job. Good people. Good work. Open environment. I've already decided I'll probably never work for a 'big company' again. (Let's hope I can stick to that).

Finally, I've submitted Pure Bricks to the iTunes App Store. In the unlikely even that it passes it should be available in the next few weeks. Exciting! Probably going to start getting back on with development of Pure Gravity soon.

I've been started expanding my maths engine to include matrices, something I've always sort of dreaded doing. It seems to be going quite well though, so I think once I've finished this I might package it up and distribute it somehow.

Here's a sneak peek at the header for the matrix4 class...

struct matrix4 {
    float _00, _01, _02, _03;
    float _10, _11, _12, _13;
    float _20, _21, _22, _23;
    float _30, _31, _32, _33;
    // Constructors
    matrix4();
    matrix4(matrix4 *m);
    // Operators
    friend matrix4 operator*(const matrix4&, const float&);
    friend matrix4 operator*(const matrix4&, const matrix4&);
    friend matrix4 operator+(const matrix4&, const vector3&); // Cheeky translation
    friend matrix4 operator*(const matrix4&, const vector3&); // Cheeky scale
    // Make new matrix
    void makeIdentityMatrix();
    void makeTranslationMatrix(vector3 position);
    void makeScaleMatrix(vector3 scale);
    void makeRotationMatrixX(float radians);
    void makeRotationMatrixY(float radians);
    void makeRotationMatrixZ(float radians);
    // Apply transform
    void invert();
    void translate(vector3 position);
    void scale(vector3 scale);
    void rotateX(float radians);
    void rotateY(float radians);
    void rotateZ(float radians);
};

In advance of submitting my game to the App Store, I've set up my own company. Trinary Limited. The company wasn't really designed to make money, however the more I talk to people and the more I think about it, the more I realise that there is a lot that I can do with it.

Pure Bricks will still be released for free. I think I have all the kinks out of it, so the only thing it's waiting on is a website, which shouldn't take too long to put together. I've already started thinking about my next game, and in fact the one after that, and the ont after that!

Add to that that I could rent my flat through my business, or contract to other companies with it, and what I have is a tax efficient way of storing money. If I'm earning more than I need, I can leave it in the business and don't have to pay tax on it. Then I can use it to either expand the business or pay myself when I do need it.

All in all, I'm feeling this was a great decision.