Sights and Sounds of Multimedia
By George Harding
SWUG conference …
The Southwest Users Group conference is held annually in San Diego in August (though the 2008 meeting will be in May) at the Town and Country Resort. Attendance is limited to User Group officers and members.
Traveling from Tucson to San Diego involves a last minute climate change which is nothing short of a miracle! The temperature on leaving Tucson was about 100º, increasing to 108º in Yuma and continuing very hot until some 40 miles west of San Diego. At this point, the Interstate begins a gradual descent of some 3,500 feet at the end of which the temperature has dropped to about 80º! San Diego is very comfortable, compared to Tucson in August.
The conference is modeled after the APCUG meeting which precedes CES in Las Vegas in early January. Meals are sponsored by participating companies such as Corel, AMD, Smart Computing and Microsoft and include a presentation of the company’s products.
Between mealtimes, SWUG offers a selection of workshops in which you can learn something new and share information with others like you. Here were some of the workshops:
How to create a Power Point that wows
Getting ready for Vista
All about storage
Using your flash drive for mobile computing
Latest info about viruses, spam, etc.
Hackers: Changing the face of ID theft
Podcasting
And many others
Saturday evening included the Vendor reception. Each of the sponsoring vendors has a table in a large room, to display their products and answer questions. Each vendor also had a number of products to give away in a raffle. There were many valuable items that participants took home, along with lots of information.
The digital photography contest offered all the opportunity to contribute their best photos. The winners were chosen by popular votes. It’s amazing how dramatically photography has changed since the advent of digital cameras!
The Town and Country resort is a pleasing venue for such a meeting. They have some of the most beautiful rose gardens I’ve seen anywhere!
Make your plans now for next year’s conference: May 30-June 1, 2008.
SWUG conference http://www.swugconf.org
Murder On The Orient
Express …
This game by The Adventure Company is an adaptation of the Agatha Christie story about the fancy train that travels from Istanbul to Paris. It features the best in accommodations and superb food and service. Unfortunately, this trip is stopped by an avalanche in the mountains. While the train is immobilized, a murder occurs.
The victim, one of the elite passengers, is stabbed twelve times, but no one heard anything or knows anything! Fortunately, the famed detective Hercule Poirot is on board.
While the game takes a few liberties in telling the fascinating story, it is more or less faithful to the concepts set forth by Christie.
The central character is Mlle. Marceau, a representative of the train company, who works with Poirot to gather clues and draw conclusions.
Much of the game involves talking to passengers, each of whom has secrets and may lie. Marceau’s task is to gather enough information from interviews and objects obtained from luggage train compartments to be able, with Poirot’s help, to determine what are the possibilities.
It’s hard to believe that there is anyone who has not already read the book, but for any that have not, and intend to, SPOILER alert! At the end, Poirot outlines three possible solutions, only one of which is correct, that all twelve passengers were involved in the murder.
As is usual for Adventure Company games, the scenes are beautifully decorated, with intense colors and elaborate designs. Movement of your character is done with the mouse. The mouse cursor changes shape to reflect where you can walk, when there is something to pick up, what to inspect more thoroughly and where a doorway leads.
Movement of your character is rather slow, although you can double-click to cause faster movement. There is a shortcut to move from one train car to another, which helps a lot. Walking from one cat to another is tedious!
The state of computer graphics is improving measurably. This game takes advantage of the latest in graphics capability, showing facial movements, body language and other real-life features we take for granted. What is not yet possible is realistic facial movements coordinated with speech. But it’s getting better!
During the game you collect objects of various sorts and store them in an inventory. You sometimes have to use one of these items to interact with something in the scene, or combine two or more objects to produce another. You have a repository for documents and other paraphernalia that is useful for review.
This is a good game, but if you’ve read Christie’s book, you know how it will turn out. A small paperback of the book is included for those who have not read it, or want to reread it.
I played the game on a 1.6GHz machine, which was quite slow. The minimum is 1.4GHz, but I would hate to try that! A 2GHz computer is recommended. The game comes on two CD-ROMs and takes 1.5 GBs of hard disk space.
Murder On The Orient Express by The Adventure Company
Recommended equipment: XP with 2 GHz CPU and 512 MB memory, 1.5 GB disk space, CD-ROM, 128 MB video card, mouse
