This is made even more exciting for me as I’m using new slide show software that I have designed and written myself. For the last few years I’ve been using an open source solution called Gallery to display my artwork. Despite being an impressive piece of software, some time ago I came to the realisation that it’s not the best fit for my needs. It’s very feature rich, and with that comes a level of complexity that isn’t justified by the number and type of images that I want to display. It also uses a lot of hacks to maintain compatibility with older browsers, and despite my best efforts I haven’t managed to set it up so that it produces standards compliant HTML, something that is very important to me.

Some months ago I had the seed of an idea for creating a very simple, lightweight browser image viewer that can be configured just by editing very clean, simple, standards compliant HTML (or XHTML). This seed has grown to become Image Engine 4.0, and sees me returning to a home grown solution for displaying my images after nearly 5 years using Gallery.

I’m very pleased with the results; I think it looks nice, and it has made adding more than 100 images very simple indeed (it only took me a couple of hours to add all the images, including typing all the descriptions). I’m so pleased that I’ve decided to make the Image Engine available as free to use software. It’s still in the early stages of development, and there are a number of features I’d like to add as time goes by, but at the moment it works, and works well. I will be adding content to the Project Page over the next few weeks, so if you would like to use this software on your own site, please check back soon, or contact me.

Amy Wildman character artwork on Gamblog.fr

Max Söderström character artwork on Gamblog.fr

• A selection of concept sketches on the German Nintendo Power site.

Luckily I am not responsible for the awful box art or the terrible, lazy logo that Sega chose to use.

However, the end of November saw the release of the first Wii game I’ve worked on: Jambo! Safari Ranger Adventure, published by Sega. It is based (loosely) on the Naomi based Jambo! Safari arcade game that became a cult classic after it’s release in 1999. The game has received some surprisingly favourable reviews, despite the Wii version being aimed squarely at younger players, and despite it suffering from a number of crucial flaws (more on that in another post).

I’m excited to see a game that I had a significant role in on the shelves, even if that game isn’t all that I had hoped it would be when the project started more than 12 months ago.

Few things make a website seem more unloved and abandoned than a blog that hasn’t been updated for weeks, or in this case, months. So it’s time to rectify the situation; I’ve updated my favourite blogging software, reviewed my Markdown syntax cheat sheet, and have a few ideas for posts swirling round.

Time to get typing!

Bobbin has priced it at a very reasonable £2.99, and it’s available now on the iTunes App Store. For more details visit the Air Cadets web site.

I’ve been deluged with it of late. The scumbags that masquerade as SOEs have been using my contact form to send me useless links to useless sites. I’ve been slowly tightening the restrictions on what could be sent via that form; first I banned BBCode, then I was forced to ban web site addresses altogether to try and reduce the deluge. Even that didn’t deter the scripters, and I’ve recently had dozens of emails that are variations of this depressingly idiotic theme:

Hi! Very Good Site! Keep Doing That!
Would you please also visit my homepage?
<a href=  ></a>

or

Hi there! Just couldn't resist your guestbook!
Please also visit my site:
<a href=  ></a>

Seriously, what is the point in sending these sort of messages? What possible value do they have, even to the morons that send them? Apart from their obvious uselessness (there is, after all, no actual link in them), they only come to me. They don’t get forwarded anywhere; the only function they serve is to jam up my inbox, and piss me off.

So, as of today, I have introduced a major change in the way my contact form works. It now uses email authentication, meaning that anyone using it must supply a valid email address, and then click a link that is sent to that address to deliver their message. I realise this is an added inconvenience to legitimate visitors, and I’ve resisted implementing it for as long as possible. But I have to do something to rebalance the signal-to-noise ratio.

It does mean that I’ve been able to relax the restrictions on message content a little (URLs are back in, BBCode is still out), as hopefully anyone who takes the time to verify their email actually has something useful to send me.

Fingers crossed that I’ve managed to slow the spam down a bit, even if it’s just for a while, and my apologies to the genuine visitors who have to go through an extra couple of steps because of the actions of unethical morons who, to quote Google

have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you for a second time.

I have been really busy lately, and have generated a lot of new illustrations that I am pretty pleased with. I’ve added samples of some of this new work to my portfolio. There is still a fair bit of new stuff to be added, but I’m waiting for clearance from the client before I publish it.

I am very pleased to say that I have been invited to attend the award ceremony with the members of the BBC production team who worked on the site. This is the first time I have been to a Black Tie event, so I have had to hire a dinner jacket. It should be an interesting night, and hopefully the site will scoop the eLearning award too.