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Puncs

Sometimes you hear a snatch of a song, and you just know you love it. While we were out in town this afternoon, we were making our way out of the Gardens onto Princes Street, and from above us came the sound of a screaming fiddle. Not a folk fiddle: a wild jazz fiddle. As we climbed further, the bassline became more pronounced, and the funky drums tickled the rhythm centres of my brain. It was a band called Puncs (pronounced poontsch–they’re Hungarian), who had set up their kit out of the back of a van on Castle Street.

Puncs on Castle Street

That’s the drummer in the back of the van.

We stood around and listened to the rest of the song, and man, it just grooved. They had a guy selling their CD “Your Idea Since 15”, and I bought one straight away. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet. It’s possible that the pleasantness of the day, and the Festival atmosphere gave their performance a buzz that won’t shine through in the recorded material, but I hope not. If I like it enough, I might see if I can grab tickets for one of their shows. They’re playing at Studio 24 on Calton Road until next Friday. Their flyer reads:

“fruitpunch from Hungary, balkan ice cream. mixed world music in rock cream. fast and slow, swirl of jazz, rhythms like crushed cookies. as prokected through an impressive jazz violinist, crazy vox, a dinosaur on bass, and an imp on drums.

Puncs: Your Idea Since 15 on Castle Street

Very cool. Coming across bands like this is one of the reasons I love the Festival.

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Alex in a kilt

We got Alex measured up for a kilt today. My cousin Cameron is getting married at the end of September, and of course all the Sutherland men have to be dressed appropriately for the event.

Alex getting fitted for a kilt

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MCSD.NET

Achieved.

I passed 70-316 this morning, the last one in the series for my MCSD (.NET) certification. Woo! With a certain amount of Yay!

I didn’t find 70-316 a difficult exam, but then I’ve been coding Windows Forms since Visual Basic 4 back in 1997. It may be a C# exam, but forms are forms, and a familiarity with the “Microsoft way of doing things” works wonders. ADO.NET was the other big part of this exam–probably about 25% of the questions related to data access in some for or other. So really, if you know your C#, WinForms, and ADO.NET, this ought to be a breeze.

Of course, then along comes Scott Hanselman with a bubble-bursting set of ASP.NET interview questions that show that MCSD.NET is only the beginning of professional expertise….

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Halo

I finished playing Halo last week: wow. Despite some annoyingly repetitive sections about three-quarters of the way through, it was an enormously satisfying game. The climactic ending was the best I’ve come across since Ico. It wasn’t as emotional (I didn’t cry), but it was adrenaline-filled, rousing, and pleasingly cinematic. (I had been half expecting an Alien-style final encounter with a Flood creature on board the escape ship.)

By rights, Halo should have been the game that made me go out an buy an XBox. The best multiplayer fun I’ve ever had was playing 8-way split-screen Halo on two XBoxes and two big LCD wall projectors. I had enjoyed playing through some of the early single-player missions on friends’ boxes, both alone and in co-op mode. The choral opening music still gives me goosebumps.

For a long time, I had an XBox + Halo on my wish list, in case anyone was looking for ideas for a Christmas or birthday present. But for an equally long time, Halo was the only XBox exclusive game that held any real interest for me. I already had a PS2 and a GameCube, so I had multiformat games covered, £150 is a lot of cash to lay down for just a single game. I had thought I might get it on the PC when it came out last year, but performance issues convinced me otherwise.

In the end it was Rainbow Six 3 that was the tipping point for me to buy an XBox. Or, more specifically, the XBox Live multiplayer aspect of the game. Tactical squad-based shooters don’t light my candle, but co-operative team-based play does. And when you can slip on a headset and enjoy a lively shared experience in the comfort of your own home, well, that’s a whole new ball game.

So would Halo alone have been worth the price of an XBox? Good though it was, I don’t think so–especially as I already had plenty of games hardware. If I hadn’t had a PS2 or a GameCube, it might have been different. Having said that, I have Halo 2 on pre-order, and I’m planning to take the release date off work to put in some quality time with the Master Chief. Oh yeah.