I’ve travelled quite a bit on business in the last two years and as a consequence, I’ve had the opportunity to dine out at a number of different restaurants.  Every night I think to myself “I’m going to write up a quick review” and every night I get busy with work and forget to post.  Tonight, I’m going to post and then get down to some work, so without further ado, here’s a quick review of the place that is possibly my favourite restaurant… The Barking Dog, Malone Road, Belfast.

Everytime I come out to Belfast, I normally stay at the Wellington Park Hotel which is just up the road from The Barking Dog.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve eaten there and I guess that should give you an indication of how nice the food is there.  I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad meal there (no, I’m not on commission and I’m not getting a free meal out of it).

Tonight, I had a couple of tipples… a pint of their own Barking Brew which is brewed by The Whitewater Brewery in Kilkeel.  This was followed by a bottle of Whitewater’s finest… Belfast Black, a nice dry stout.  Both are really nice drinks, Belfast Black is possibly my favourite… the only beer that comes close is Black Cullen (a beverage I sampled around this time last year in the snow in Inverness at a little pub who’s name escapes me at the moment).

Food wise, I tucked in to flaked crab on toasted sour dough, roasted barbary duck with green beans and pumpkin gnocchi and I broke with my normal starter and main meal plan and had a treat in the form of banana tarte tatin with homemade fudge and clotted cream ice cream.  It was an excellent meal, everything I’ve come to expect from possibly the finest restaurant it’s been my pleasure to dine in.

So, good food, nice beer and to top the evening off, the first fall of snow for this winter… OK, it didn’t stick around, but it was definitely snowing and it just kind of finished off the atmosphere.  That’s another thing I should mention about The Barking Dog… the atmosphere… there’s always nice music playing, the place is lit by candlelight and the staff are attentive but not overbearing and unlike a lot of restaurants, they don’t seem to come along with the question “Is everything OK for you madam?” when I’ve just put a fork full of food in my mouth.

As I say, this is perhaps my favourite restaurant so because I’ve always had a good meal there and the service has always been excellent, I’m going to give it a 10 out of 10.

I was going to write a review, but for things like Redmine, I find reviews aren’t necessarily the right outlet for useful information. The same could be said of any review, but for software development tools there are a lot more variables than say… if you like platformers, give this game a go. So instead of a review, this is just a collection of my initial thoughts about Redmine, my first real brush with Ruby and Rails.

For the uninitiated, Redmine is “a flexible project management web application. Written using Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database”. Nice summary I think. So what does it provide…

Access to a number of version control repositories (Mercurial, Git and Subversion to name three) as well as scanning of commit messages to extract time spent and issues addressed by the commit
Issue tracking (each project can utilise a number of different trackers for things like bugs and features, each with it’s own configuration)
File and Document stores
Activity reporting
Gantt charts
Multiple project support

The list of features is quite extensive so I would recommend reading the Redmine website for full details.

Installation was fairly easy. I installed my instance on a Linux server running Fedora 8, MySQL 4.1 (for development, MySQL 5 is required but more on that later), Apache 2 and Subversion 1.5.something. All of which were already setup. Setting up Ruby was a snap, as were the base requirements for Redmine, largely due to the ease of using Ruby’s Gems. The one thing I had a problem with was setting up Passenger (which was one of the recommended routes in one of the how-to’s on the Redmine site). However, once that was sorted, it was up and running in a very short space of time.

The user interface on Redmine is pretty neat. Not bogged down in flashy garbage that serves no purpose. The standard templates are clean and crisp and the layouts of the pages are all pretty good. There one or two quirks, like the fact that files ask for a description when you add them to the store but it’s only displayed as a hint when you mouse over the filename (actually easily fixed with a minor tweak). Overall though, it’s one of the nicest interfaces on an application of this nature that I’ve seen.

One of the nice features about Redmine is the plugin system. There are numerous plugins out there, so far I’ve stuck to the ones that are listed officially on the Redmine site. Once I got my system up and running I went hunting for a whiteboard style plugin. I elected to use the Backlogs plugin, I don’t really recall why, but so far I’ve not been disappointed (my only complaints at this point are the fact that when you enter a new story from the backlog you only provide it’s title and not an accompanying description, it only works 100% on Chrome). This was where I had problems setting up… it requires the rmagick gem which in turn has a dependency on ImageMagick or GraphicsMagick (IIRC). Getting this side of things setup was a nightmare. My recommendation would be install ImageMagick from source and use that as that actually worked first time (I spent an age hunting RPMs and trying to resolve dependencies). Once that hurdle was out of the way however, it took no time at all to enable it and hook it up to a project.

I’ve been using Mantis for ages and I would, until I got Redmine running, have picked it over anything else for issue tracking. But thats all it really does… yes it has roadmaps and change logs and you can integrate it with Dokuwiki (nightmare – the integration, not Dokuwiki) and Subversion (IIRC this requires the use of Subversion hooks). Redmine does all of that out of the box, ok, so the wiki isn’t expandable like Dokuwiki which is IMHO one of, if not the, best wiki packages around, but everything else is just there, integrated into a single neat solution.

So far it’s all positive, so lets add a little bit of negative to the mix for some balance. My gripes… firstly once an issue is created you can’t edit the title or description… actually, I’ve just looked again to make sure I didn’t embarrass myself by missing something and sure enough… I found it, although it’s not obvious… update the issue and there is a ‘(more)’ link on the ‘Change Properties’ section of the page… click it and the description etc. are displayed for editing… a bit more positivity then… negatives… off the top, apart from the issue I mentioned above with the file store list, I can’t really find anything to criticise. Clearly if I was writing a review then we’re in the running for a good score, but it’s largely meaningless as I’m raving about Redmine because right now, it fits my needs remarkably well, your mileage may vary so my advice would be to setup your own test instances of the products you’re thinking of using and actually use them in anger. Possibly in parallel so you can compare how each one fares against the others. I decided I would setup Redmine and use it in anger to get a real feel for how it works and what it can do and it was a good decision as I’ve found it so much easier to get along with than say Mantis.

Now lets get down to the nitty gritty… if you’re a software engineer, there’s a good chance you’ll want to tweak Redmine to make it fit. There are a lot of configuration options built in but if they don’t cut it, then you’ll have to dive into the code and sort it yourself or use one of the many plugins that are already out there. I was a bit apprehensive when I dived into the code. Ruby and Rails scared me a little when I looked at them a while back, but having seen what’s possible with a relatively small amount of code it’s easy to understand why it’s a nice tool to use. If you want to tinker with the Redmine codebase just make sure you’re proficient with Ruby and Rails before you start. That said, I was able to add a new field to one of the core tables, collect data for it and have it used within another area of he application without too many hitches but it did take me a long time (mostly due to on-the-fly research about Ruby and Rails). For anyone thats interested, the patch I submitted add’s a flag to the project repository settings that allow you to include a repository in a scheduled fetch (I have a local repos which is scanned every 5 minutes and I use a remote repos which is too big to scan every 5 minutes). The patch can be found here.

So what about all the other project management toys I’ve tinkered with over the years? Well, they are all pretty good in their own way and for the people who originally created them, but for me they’ve just never seemed… well… right. I’m not saying Redmine is perfect, because it’s not and I’m not saying everyone should use it, because they shouldn’t, but it is pretty dammed good at what it does and if you’re looking for a software project management solution, I’d definitely recommend you have a look at it and give it a real live try out.

Time for another review… this time, the Kindle from Amazon. The management summary for this review would probably read something like this… “If you’ve not got one, get one and enjoy.”. Nice and compact… just like the Kindle.

So where to begin… well, since their initial release, I’ve wanted one but always coughed at the price, but with the release of the 3d generation and the updated pricing… well, I could resist no longer and I can honestly say it’s one of the best things I’ve purchased in a long time.

I have a bunch of books which I’ve been trying to read for an age… a lot of them are PDFs (most of my Pragmatic Programmers titles) or big chunky paperbacks (most of my Microsoft best practices titles). So, reading them is not always convenient… the PDFs you have to have your laptop running and the paperbacks don’t travel well because of their bulkiness and weight. Now, they are all in my Kindle and I can take them anywhere.

As a consequence of this enhanced portability and ease of access I’ve read about 8 books since January… now I’m sure for a lot of people this is quite a low number, but if I tell you I didn’t manage to read a single book last year, that should put things in perspective. It’s not that I’ve found more time for reading, it’s just a lot more accessible. I’ve been travelling quite a bit for work again so sat in the airport… break out the Kindle… sat in the hotel restaurant waiting for my breakfast or evening meal… break out the Kindle. There is one obvious glitch to this though… that part of a flight where the Captain switches on the seatbelt sign and all electronic equipment has to be turned off. With a paper book you can carry on reading but with a Kindle… it has to be turned off. Still, most airlines have their in-flight magazines and of course there are the windows to look out of.

To 3G or not to 3G that was the question…

Well, I elected to go for the 3G version because I’m travelling a lot. Having the ability to sit in the airport and buy a book and get it delivered to my Kindle in seconds is very appealing. Couple that with the ability (albeit limited) to surf the web using the same connection and well… it’s really a no brainer… an extra 40 quid or so for that freedom.

The battery life is pretty good too. Generally I only turn wireless on when I need it, but I can’t give an accurate assessment of how the life compares with the specified life because I have on of the covers which includes the LED lamp… very handy when I crash out in my hotel room for the night… snuggle up in bed and read… but overall, I’m not disappointed by the performance of the battery… I think I’ve only charged it up three times which given I’ve had it since January isn’t bad.

Reading the Kindle is very easy on the eyes. I’ve not really experienced any glare from the screen and the overall legibility of the text is great. PDFs are a bit of a pain as they generally require you to zoom in and then navigating the page requires the use of the cursor pad, but I don’t read a lot of PDFs on there so no problem there. The tools you get are also pretty good, likes attaching notes and bookmarks. My only complaint, I was able to somehow reset the ‘last read’ position of a book I was reading. I couldn’t remember positions/page numbers so had to page through to where I was which was a bit of a pain, but apart from that, I’ve had no real problems operating the unit.

My biggest gripe is the cost of the books. Firstly VAT… buy a paper book and it’s exempt from VAT… buy a digital book and it’s not exempt from VAT (which, given the rate at the moment is 20% can be a significant amount). That said, there sometimes doesn’t seem to be a big enough difference between the paper and Kindle versions of a title.

Overall, the Kindle is fantastic and for the simple fact that I’ve read more since I had mine than I have for a long time, I’d recommend them to anyone. Couple that with the sheer numbers of books you can stick in your bag and well, you’re onto a winner.

I can’t remember what triggered my first encounter with what I can only describe as the cult phenomenon of Minecraft but I do remember it was the video on the Minecraft Website. That was it… I was hooked. Here you’ll find a rough review of the game and some screenies of my most adventurous crafting, mixing redstone with minecarts to create a fairly funky (in my humble opinion) minecart station system on our multiplayer server (no, it’s not a public server), so read on for my thoughts about this excellent life stealer.

So, lets begin with that last statement. Minecraft is without doubt one of the best life stealing games I have ever experienced. Thankfully I was never into Everquest, but I did read lots about it and I know a thing or two about losing my life to games having spent days playing Ultima Online and Quake III (to name two), but Minecraft… a more accurate moniker might be Minecrack… like the old Evercrack lines that did the rounds many years ago. It’s seriously addictive… just a little bit more… and a little bit more… and a little bit here… tinker with that… “Oh crap… it’s 2am… do I really need sleep… surely more redstone will help me avoid that”.

Just in case you’re not familiar with Minecraft, let me set the scene… the graphics are blocky (the closest I can get to an accurate description is a souped up rendition of Dungeon Master… the GUI elements are simple, the icons are clean, crisp bitmap graphics all rendered over a blocky, I think the technical term is voxel, 3D scene, … the landscape is blocky… you break stuff up with your hands or tools and you make stuff. And that is the essence of the game… mine stuff and craft stuff. But, you’re doing this in a completely free way, there are no rules (other than the basic laws of physics, like falling down a big hole will kill you, lava is hot so don’t swim in it and you can’t breathe underwater in your bath tub so why should you be able to make like a fish in game?), no real quests… just mine stuff and craft stuff.

And I hate it… I hate it because it is so fantastically addictive I’m thinking of starting a local chapter of Minecrafters Anonymous… “Hello, my name is Athena and I am a micecrafter… I’ve not crafted anything for 6 days, 4 hours, 27 minutes… I’ve mined 657 iron, 245 redstone, been to the Nether and harvested 384 Netherak, killed 25 creepers, 47 zombies, 34 skeletons, 18 spiders… am I still on the wagon if I’ve not crafted anything????”

It is quite simply a masterpiece and one that has undoubtedly made it’s creator rich… especially as over 1.6mil people have purchased a copy of this as yet, unfinished game (yes, thats right… it’s still in beta and people, including me, are paying money for it). For my rating… it has to get top marks, but because it’s beta and because of how it’s developed, I’m knocking a point off for some serious performance issues.

This is the only downside… it’s written in Java so it’s not the speediest of engines, but under normal circumstances, performance is acceptable. It can however get bogged down and become a little laggy, which is somewhat unexpected given the simplicity of the graphics. My laptop handles Ultima Online and some other older games without too many problems, but it can sometimes struggle with Minecraft. My desktop machine has no such problems. Stability is another issue… overall it runs without hitches, but can sometimes blackscreen and crash, but for a product that is still officially in beta, it’s pretty good.

Here’s a few screenies of my single player world ‘Randomonia’…

One of the funkiest things in game is redstone. Using it you can craft a number of ‘electrical’ items such as redstone torches and powered rails. Input can come from buttons, pressure pads, levers and detector rails and you can control doors and minecart rails (and soon, pistons) to create complex systems (I have seen a 16 bit, IIRC, adder developed with redstone).

To give you an idea of whats possible with ‘a little’ redstone logic and some minecart track (and I’m not saying this is the greatest of all stations or redstone logic or anything like that), these screenies show one of the two minecart stations I’ve just built. These sit at two different levels and provide minecart transit up, down and into the mine. The cart rider can elect to go up, down, into the mine or get off at this level. Carts without riders pass through and go straight upstairs to a storage area to be unloaded. The first screenie shows some of the track elements of the station, the second shows a view across a large room full of redstone logic that controls the various tracks to send the cart in the desired direction. As I said, I’m not saying this is the greatest but it is my first major undertaking.

So, to conclude… Notch, you are a genius. Minecraft is quite simply amazing. It’s simple. And there in lies the key I think. It’s simplicity. You don’t get bogged down in the complexities of plot lines and lots of controls. You mine stuff and you make stuff as you desire. I guess it could be considered as Lego for the internet generation. Play it at your peril

I mentioned in my review of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune that it was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves that got me in the mood to play the original game. I wanted to follow the story, so I’m playing the first one, but I’ve also had the chance to play some parts of Uncharted 2, so here’s a quick review of the second instalment of the Uncharted story.

To be clear, I haven’t played Uncharted 2 (UC2) to completion. I’ve played a number of chapters looking for Treasures and I’ve had to face the various foes that have been thrown my way in the process, so I have a pretty good idea of the game play etc.

UC2 builds on the excellent foundation of UC. The graphics are amazing, the sound is great and the game play continues where UC left off. There are some new moves and a slight emphasis on being stealthy (the crunch of your targets neck is oh so satisfying ) which just add to an already impressive array of moves and options.

I can’t say too much more without feeling like a broken record as I’ve just written a review of Uncharted… suffice to say, it is just like UC, but better in every way.

For example, the treasure hunt… like UC, hidden throughout the levels are a collection of treasures. These unlock bonus material and of course contribute quite substantially to the trophy collection. Unlike UC however, they can be hidden in high up places, only accessible after being shot down. And of course, many of them are secreted away in the most difficult to reach places in the levels. Doesn’t sound like a big change, but it does make it more fun when you get around to the treasure hunt.

Fighting… as I’ve mentioned, there is a stealthy element to the game, with some nice new moves to accommodate it. There are also new weapons, such as the riot shield… grab it, hide behind it and face your enemies head on, peeping out from the thing to pop them in the head. You can also aim grenades without peeking from your cover like you had to in the original. Again, minor tweak but it does add to the already great game play.

In conclusion, I gave Uncharted a maximum score of 10. To really do UC2 justice in comparison to UC, I should really give it a maximum of 11 as it really does take the Uncharted world to the next level. A fantastic next step in what I can only hope is a long series of games.

I know this is an ‘old’ game, but I’m sure there will be people who have just dropped onto the PS3 scene who haven’t played it, so here’s one of my characteristically short reviews.

When the original Playstation was around, there was only one game to play if you wanted to run around in deserted places solving ancient puzzles… that was of course Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, I’m guessing because of publisher pressure, the game lost what made it great after number 4 was released. 5 was just a bit too short if I recall correctly, and it’s outings on the PS2… best not to mention them (with one notable exception… Anniversary, which is of course a major rework of the original Tomb Raider). Why shouldn’t we mention them… simply because they lacked what made the game great on the Playstation. The control schema changed to accomodate more moves… the puzzles didn’t seem as tough… the games weren’t as long… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but they just didn’t cut it. So for many years now, we’ve been waiting for a game to take up the mantle and fill the void, and well… in my opinion at least, that game (or series of games) is here.

Welcome Uncharted: Drakes Fortune.

For those of you who are long time Playstation gamers, you will no doubt remember such classics as Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter, produced by Naughty Dog. Well, they are the team responsible for Uncharted… a bit of a departure from Crash and Jak, but what a departure

I’ve owned this game for ages, but I’ve never played it. It took watching a friend play through Uncharted 2 to get me in the mood, and well… was I in the mood! I’ve just finished playing through for the first time on the Hard difficulty (if you play through on hard, you will earn the first 3 difficulty trophies and unlock the Crushing difficulty level, which I’m now playing through). It is hard. Your enemies take a while to kill, at times ammo is almost extinct and you yourself… a few shots and your on your way to an early grave.

So, what makes me think Uncharted can fill the enormous boots of the original Tomb Raider games… well, lets see…

First up the environment… the gaming environment is huge and the detail is amazing. The vegetation sways in the wind, you can almost swim in the rivers and waterfalls, and you can hear everything from the birds in the trees to the roar of the ocean waves. Now this is nothing new I know, but it just makes the game that bit more engaging and believable. And best of all, it doesn’t appear to be as constrained by an arbitrary grid as Tomb Raider does, meaning the surfaces and faces you walk and climb on can be curved, like real cliffs for example.

The Story… you play the part of Nathan Drake, a distant relative of Sir. Francis Drake, on his quest to uncover El Dorado using clues left by Sir. Francis. The plot starts on a boat as Nathan recovers Sir. Francis’ coffin from the ocean floor only to find it contains his journal, and our adventure begins.

The puzzles… whilst there aren’t that many puzzles, this doesn’t detract from the game play as you’ll very often be looking for routes through the environment and the best way to despatch those that stand between you and the ultimate prize. The puzzles that are there rely on you decoding the information in Sir. Francis’ journal to get the solution. Once you have it, you’ll probably have to battle the environment to reach a successful conclusion. In short, one of the things that made Tomb Raider great is back in abundance in Uncharted.

The graphics and sound… as I’ve stated above, the sound is superb. Have one of your enemies throw a grenade near you… you’ll have ringing in your speakers just like it exploded a few feet from you. And well, the graphics… whilst they aren’t photorealistic (who needs that anyway), they are certainly filled with the atmosphere of the area you’re in. From misty mountain slopes in the forest to the dark dank depths of an old bunker, you certainly get the feel of being there.

Difficulty… I played through on Hard difficulty (it has Easy, Normal and Hard out of the box, with Crushing being unlocked when you complete the game on Hard). I played to complete it, not hunt for all the trophies and treasures, but in doing so I’ve scored about 60% of the trophies and two thirds of the treasures. It was hard. I had some major fights and died many times, but thanks to the checkpoints in game, I never lost too much progress. But, if you die in the middle of a big fight and you’re doing well… don’t expect it to go the same way when you are resurrected at the start of it… after a while I found some of the enemies changed their tactics, and in some cases you won’t restart where you thought you were, so be prepared. As I said, I’m currently playing through on Crushing difficulty and it is a major step above Hard in terms of how difficult it is. In hard, you can take quite a few shots before being close to death… in Crushing… one or two and you’re nearly in the resus room of the local hospital. The enemies are tougher and appear to be a better aim, so it promises to be a much tougher gaming experience the second time through.

There’s not too much more I can say. If you liked Tomb Raider and have been looking for a replacement, or if you’re new to the PS3 and fancy a game that has you thinking about puzzles, strategies (you’ll need them for some of the fights you’ll have) and whether to take the AK-47 with 26 bullets or the M-4 with 27 bullets, then give it a go. I can honestly say I’ve not enjoyed a Tomb Raider style game as much as this since I last played Tomb Raiders I, II and III many years ago. Truly an excellent game which is why I’m giving it full marks.

Being a big fan of LittleBigPlanet on the PS3, I was over the moon when I heard it would make it onto the PSP. And having been playing it since release, I can say I’ve not been disappointed.

I pre-ordered my copy of LBP for the PSP from Amazon. It arrived on the day of release and that was it, I was set Prior to release I had read that they’d had to seriously chop the game down in order to squeeze it onto the PSP. The chops were apparently, a reduction in the number of depth levels from 3 to 1 and a lack of multiplayer facilities in game (understandable really when you consider there is only one set of controls and a comparatively slow processor in comparison to the PS3), so I was, to say the least, a little concerned about the game and how it would play out when compared to the PS3 version which I love so much.

But, I’m glad to say, I’ve not been disappointed.

I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve been playing. Playing through levels, then going back and replaying them to get all the prizes and ace them and I still have a whole bunch to do. I’ve not tried creating anything yet, but I can say this…

The lack of multiplayer facilities hasn’t damaged the game, it’s still a great fun game to play, on your own (I play it in my downtime at work – I’m using the Pomodoro Technique so I play a while during the post-focus cooldown period) and the supposed reduction from 3 levels of depth to 1 hasn’t materialised… yes, the number of levels has been reduced… to 2. But to be honest, I haven’t really noticed it.

The levels themselves are pretty challenging, organised in the same way as the original game (as groups of levels created by various story characters), I’ve played my way through 31 (20 main and 11 mini) levels and I believe I still have one or two to go.

Graphically, it’s obviously not going to be up to PS3 standard, but it still looks great. Customising your character is a little more limited than the PS3, and creating levels is a little different since there is the concept of static and dynamic objects. Static objects stay where they are placed and cannot move during game play (a bit like stick something with a blob of dark matter) while dynamic objects can move (this is simply a mechanism to reduce the physics processing required to manage the level). There are no global options to control lighting (or at least if there are, I couldn’t find them) and sound effects are organised as individual items instead of being grouped into different speakers as they are in LBP.

Despite these changes though (which were to be expected given the massive gaping void that exists in terms of pure processing power between the PS3 and the PSP), it is a great game. So, if like me, you’d like to get a dose of LBP on the move, it’s well worth the investment.

Well, time for a quick review… this time, it’s the Pirates of the Carribean downloadable content pack for LittleBigPlanet.

Released on the 22nd December 2009, this is the first themed creators pack since the excellent Metal Gear Solid pack which of course provided the most excellent paint ball gun. This time around the theme is water.

Yes, thats right… Sackboy can swim

The pack contains some new creators tools in the form of new global options to control the water in the level, a global water object (similar to the global lighting object), a water switch and a scuba backpack allowing Sackboy to breath indefinitely underwater.

And to show off these new toys, a collection of 6 excellent levels based on Pirates of the Carribean.

All in all, an excellent addition to LBP. The new creator tools are great, and the themed levels are great fun, providing some new engaging game play and some good examples of what you can do.

My only complaint, I should point out that I’m not sure when these came in, is that some of the creators tools are now a pain in the butt. For example, setting the length of pistons etc. These used to be done using steps of 0.5. Now, they are done in steps of 1.0. You can still fine adjust things, but if, like me you work on logic using the medium grid, 2.5 and 7.5 are pretty common values and now setting them up takes a while longer than it used to.

But, minor gripe aside, this new content pack is well worth the small investment.

If you like puzzle games then get on over to robozzle.com and check out this fantastic puzzler.

Check out the screenshot… the essence of solving the puzzles is the ‘programming’ panel in the bottom right corner of the screen. You build functions (which can recurse, call each other and contain conditional elements), telling the cursor to move forward, turn left, turn right or paint the square to solve the puzzle by collecting all the stars.

And there you have it. A really great little game, and I’ve not even mentioned the fact that you can create and submit levels. Go and play it today

Oh, and for the record… at the time of writing, I’m in the top 10 ‘most levels solved today’ with 60

Since network play is an important part of the PS3 experience, having a keyboard to chat with is almost essential, but who wants a hulking great USB keyboard sat by the side of them when gaming just to chat quickly… not to mention the USB cables dragging around the place. Enter the official PS3 wireless keypad.

Now, I’m not the chattiest of people when I’m gaming, but I am developing various levels for LBP and so I want to be able to name stuff and provide descriptions… using the on-screen keypad is, to put it mildly, like pulling teeth. It’s slow, cumbersome and just downright annoying and for the reasons I mentioned, a fullsize USB keyboard is just not an option so I was mightily pleased when I saw these little babies on the PS3 website.

The CECHZX1GB (UK Model) as it’s known is a small, lightweight Bluetooth keypad that clips onto official PS3 controllers. It provides quick access buttons to get at your messages, and also doubles as a pointing device by way of a touch sensitive area on the keypad. Whilst it’s small and the buttons seem tiny, operating it isn’t as bad as you might first imagine. I’ve made only a few typos courtesy of my sausage fingers, and well, compared to the on-screen keyboard it is infinitely better.

So are there any downsides? Well, I’ve only been using it a few days. Being rechargeable there is obviously the issue of battery life, but it does go into standby to conserve power. The only downside to this is of course it has to reconnect to the PS3 when you want to type some more, but that doesn’t take too long (a few seconds, if that). The unit itself was charged when it arrived last week and has yet to require a refill. It obviously goes without saying that the more you type, the shorter the recharge interval will be, and I suspect using the pointer mode will drain the juice substantially quicker. The upside however is that, like the controllers themselves, it can be used whilst charging by simply connect it using a USB cable.

One of the questions I had when I purchased them (notice plural) was how they connected to the PS3 and whether you could use multiple units at the same time. The answer is they have their own Bluetooth capabilities (which incidentally you can use with other Bluetooth capable devices – I can state that they work with the O2 XDA Orbit) so they connect to the PS3 with no regard for which controller they are attached to. So whilst you can use multiple units at the same time, they will all type into whichever message box has focus. It would have been better, IMHO, if they worked like the controllers… first on is number 1 etc. and were then paired with the corresponding controller number.

So in conclusion, these are a great little addition to anyone’s PS3 setup, but because they don’t pair like the controllers, I’m only going to give them a rating of 9.