Fight Night Round 4 is a very realistic boxing game that is somehow both a simulation and a gritty fighting game. You can literally feel the blows as your fighter takes on the best of the best the sport has to offer.

The game has also done something interesting where it has decided to not use a heads up display (H.U.D.) at all. So rather than having a health bar you have to instead rely on the subtle vibration in the controller and the look of exhaustion on your fighter’s face. The career mode is also interesting, allowing you to train up your various skills using classical boxing training techniques and equipment like a punching bag or speed bag. Flight Night also has a unique way of controlling the game. Instead of mashing buttons, you use both of the controller’s sticks: one for movement and one for punching.

Ouch!

I’m not even a huge fan of boxing and I found this game quite entertaining. Not only that but it is in a class of its own graphically. Good looking, fun and with a rather in-depth career mode it’s easy to see why Fight Night is so popular.

My review: Surprisingly Good
Pick it up for: Cheap
GameRankings.com score: 87.25%
Metacritic score: 87 / 100
Wikipedia Link

See more games I’ve written about here.

Violent? Check. Gory? Check. Full of superheroes? You bet. What happens when you crash the super violent world of Mortal Kombat into the long legacy of DC’s most popular superheroes and villians? Well, you actually end up with a pretty fun game.

This game is essentially just a Mortal Kombat game with some DC characters thrown in for fun. That doesn’t mean that it’s a joke though, it is actually quite entertaining and full of all the usual combos and super moves that you’d expect in any modern fighter. Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is also a blast to play multiplayer style, taking on someone that you can trash talk right next to you.

One of the many violent gameplay moments

Although it may seem a little goofy, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is actually a lot of fun to play. Just don’t try and follow the “plot” (quotes intended) because it doesn’t make much sense.

My review: Surprisingly Good
Pick it up for: Cheap
GameRankings.com score: 75.28%
Metacritic score: 72 / 100
Wikipedia Link

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TimeShift is a normally mediocre first-person shooter that makes itself unique by allowing you to control time. Sure it may have a standard sci-fi plot and only decent graphics (good, not great) but the time control aspect of the game is actually pretty fun. Essentially the game allows you to stop, slow down or rewind time at a whim.

This in turn allows you to do some pretty interesting things within the game. Encountered a group of baddies? No problem, just stop time, steal one of their weapons and fire a bunch of rounds at the rest before starting up time again and watching the havoc ensue. Even multiplayer lets you play with time, albeit it in a somewhat restricted ‘time sphere’ way.

TimeShift is certainly not the best game I have ever played, but for the little bit of money that I spent on it, it was actually pretty fun.

My review: Mediocre
Pick it up for: Cheap
GameRankings.com score: 70.59%
Metacritic score: 70 / 100
Wikipedia Link

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I really liked Red Faction: Guerrilla. It’s sort of a cross between a straightforward third-person shooter (Gears of War, Lost Planet, etc.) and a sandbox game (Grand Theft Auto III). You play the role of what I would call a terrorist revolutionary, fighting to rid Mars (your new home) of the evil Empire. This basically has you running around and removing evil ‘influence’ from various areas of the world by blowing stuff up. It’s like if the guys from Star Wars solved all of their problems by not just blowing up the Death Star but also by blowing up anything vaguely related to the Empire.

What you blow up is more or less up to you. There are both low and high priority targets that you can take out at your leisure as well as loads of missions to further the story. Red Faction comes equipped with what they call the Geo Mod engine which basically means damn near anything in the entire game can be destroyed. This is an awesome feature that I think many more games should adopt. It also makes for some ridiculous and satisfactory explosions. Want to bring down that skyscraper with a hammer? Yeah you can do that, but it might not be as quick as using, say, your rocket launcher.

My review: Great
Pick it up for: Any Price
GameRankings.com score: 85.33%
Metacritic score: 85 / 100
Wikipedia Link

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Virtua Tennis 3 brings fun pseudo-realistic (but really more arcade style) tennis game play to the Xbox. It has all of the usual features including playing as the various tennis stars, picking different courts and a custom character career builder. The bulk of the game exists within this custom character career where you’ll need to balance a training / tournament / resting life balance in order to succeed. Some of the training levels are quite funny and completely unrealistic. Whether it is the tennis bowling or the tennis bingo there is quite a bit of variety to be had.

Multiplayer is also a lot of fun. Up to four players can play simultaneously in a 2 vs. 2 partners match or compete in the various training modes. And that’s about it. There really isn’t much more to this game. And that’s really my only complaint. Once you play a couple of matches and mess around in the training modes there isn’t much left. Not that I expected there to be but it still somehow feels… lacking.

The ball will return in the direction of the arrow

My review: Surprisingly Good
Pick it up for: Cheap
GameRankings.com score: 80.19%
Metacritic score: 80 / 100
Wikipedia Link

See more games I’ve written about here.

Half real-time strategy (RTS) and half hands on naval/air-combat, Battlestations: Midway straddles the line between a wartime simulation and a flight to the death action game.

Throughout the course of the game you’ll get to command and control everything from destroyers and aircraft carriers to submarines and airplanes all while re-enacting famous historical battles. And while it is really neat to be able to control all of these different vehicles, the combat sadly just becomes so routine that after a couple of missions I ended up playing the game almost exclusively from the tactical map screen (i.e. RTS mode). Battlestations: Midway also has you micromanaging fleet formations and ship repairs. If you are like me and forget to keep checking on your ships, you may find that they are sinking very quickly because you simply forgot to issue them repair commands. That kind of sucks. The game’s campaign is also very cookie cutter with the only difference between the various missions being the starting intro movie and the locale.

Battlestations: Midway isn’t a bad game… it just isn’t a great one either. If you’re looking for something a little different or something to fill the Xbox 360 simulation/strategy void than this might be it. Otherwise, maybe not so much.

You sunk my battleship!

My review: Mediocre
Pick it up for: Cheap
GameRankings.com score: 73.74%
Metacritic score: 73 / 100
Wikipedia Link

See more games I’ve written about here.

Mafia II is a cinematic take on the traditional mobster video game that I found extremely fun to play. One part Grand Theft Auto and one part Goodfellas this game really did feel like you were playing through a movie.

Great music, surprising twists, awesome action and plot so well done that I never wanted the game to end. Sure it has some faults here and there but nothing that bothered me too much.

The game looks pretty nice too

My review: Great
Pick it up for: Any Price
GameRankings.com score: 75.61%
Metacritic score: 74 / 100
Wikipedia Link

See more games I’ve written about here.

The process to marshal or serialize an object to XML can differ greatly from language to language and implementation to implementation. Even within a single language, like Java, there are multiple ways to go about it. I happened to stumble upon this one the other day and thought it was pretty straight forward.

This example contains two classes XMLExample.java and Example.java. We will use the functions in XMLExample.java to convert Example.java to and from XML.

Note: the source files are available for download below.

// File Example.java

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Example {

    @XmlElement
    private int someInternalValue = 0;

    private int anotherInternalValue = 123;

    private int _age = 0;

    public Map<Integer, String> myMap = new HashMap<Integer, String>();

    public void setInternalValue(int value)
    {
        someInternalValue = value;
    }

    public int getAge()
    {
        return _age;
    }

    public void setAge(int age)
    {
        _age = age;
    }
}

As you can see Example.java just contains a couple of random getter and setters as well as some internal variables and a public Map.

// File XMLExample.java

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBContext;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;
import javax.xml.bind.Unmarshaller;

public class XMLExample
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        try
        {
            Example exmp = new Example();
            exmp.setInternalValue(4);
            exmp.setAge(10);
            exmp.myMap.put(5, "The value for key 5");

            String xml = marshallToXML(exmp);
            System.out.println(xml);

            // Null the variable so we can actualy see if we unmarshalled it correctly
            exmp = null;

            exmp = (Example)unmarshallFromXML(Example.class, xml);
            System.out.println("Age = " + exmp.getAge());
            System.out.println("Map value for key '5' = '" + exmp.myMap.get(5) + "'");

        }
        catch (JAXBException ex)
        {
            Logger.getLogger(XMLExample.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Converts an object to its XML representation
     * @param fromObject the object to create the XML based on
     * @return the XML string
     * @throws JAXBException
     */
    public static String marshallToXML(Object fromObject) throws JAXBException
    {
        JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(fromObject.getClass());
        Marshaller marshaller = context.createMarshaller();

        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        marshaller.marshal(fromObject, baos);

        return baos.toString();
    }

    /**
     * Converts XML representation to an object
     * @param toClass the class to create from the XML
     * @param XML the XML containing the object data
     * @return the object
     * @throws JAXBException
     */
    public static Object unmarshallFromXML(Class toClass, String XML) throws JAXBException
    {
        JAXBContext context = JAXBContext.newInstance(toClass);
        Unmarshaller unmarshaller = context.createUnmarshaller();

        ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(XML.getBytes());

        return unmarshaller.unmarshal(bais);
    }
}

The magic happens in the two functions marshallToXML and unmarshallFromXML. These take annotated variables and functions as well as anything conforming to Java bean conventions (get/set and public) and convert them to XML. So what is the output of the above program?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><example><someInternalValue>4</someInternalValue><myMap><entry><key>5</key><value>The value for key 5</value></entry></myMap><age>10</age></example>
Age = 10
Map value for key '5' = 'The value for key 5'

You’ll notice that it skipped the private variable anotherInternalValue. It did this because it is private in scope and because we did not annotate it.

For a full explanation of how to use this I would highly recommend the excellent JAXB Users Guide over at Java.net. You can download the above source files here.

Say you are travelling, or are at a neighbourhood coffee shop, using whatever unsecured WiFi network they make available. You could either:

1. trust that no one is sniffing your web traffic, capturing passwords, e-mails, IMs, etc.
2. trust that no one is using more sophisticated methods to trick you into thinking that you are secure (i.e. man in the middle attack)
3. route your Internet traffic through a secure tunnel to your home PC before going out onto the web, protecting you from everyone at your current location

which would you choose?

VPNs and SSH tunnels are actually a relatively easy means for you to be more secure while browsing the Internet from potentially dangerous locations. There are many, many different ways for you to do this but I find using a Linux PC that is running on your home network to be the easiest.

1. Configure your home Linux PC. Install ssh (and sshd if it is separate). If you are using Ubuntu this is as easy as running the following command: sudo apt-get install ssh
2. Sign up for a free DNS service like DynDNS so that you know of a web address that always points to your home Internet connection. To do this follow the instructions at the service you choose.
3. On your laptop (that you have taken with you to the hotel or coffee shop) connect to your home PC’s ssh server. If you are on Windows you will need to get a program like PuTTY. See their documentation on how to forward ports. On Linux you can simply use the ssh command. The goal is to forward a dynamic port to the remote ssh server. For instance if you are using a Linux laptop and ssh then the command would look something like: ssh -D [dynamic port] [user]@[home server] -p [external port number - if not 22]. An example of one would be ssh -D 4096 user@example.com -p 4000
   
4. In your browser open the networking options window. This will allow you to tell the browser to forward all of its traffic to a proxy, which in this case, will be our dynamic port that we set up in step 3. Here is an example of my configuration for the example above.
5. Browse normally.

You are now browsing the Internet by routing all of your traffic (in Firefox) securely through your home PC. Note that this doesn’t actually make web browsing any more secure beyond protecting you from people in your immediate vicinity (i.e. connected to the same insecure WiFi network).

I logged onto my desktop the other day, for the first time in a couple of weeks – I’ve been away travelling, and was surprised to notice that my PGP key was set to expire. Long story short I have generated a brand new key.

OpenPGP Key

Name: Tyler Burton
Key ID: 0x1CD3E3D8
Key Fingerprint: 96ED 6B13 10B1 69C1 8299 693C 2921 6D80 1CD3 E3D8
Keyserver: pgp.mit.edu
Key Algorithm: RSA
Preferred Cipher: AES256
Preferred Digest: SHA512
Direct Download: Download Here