Month: September 2008

Heard the news today – the music world has lost Richard Wright, keyboard player for Pink Floyd.

Among the various musicians and groups I listen to, Pink Floyd are one of the oldest and most returned to influences. Richard Wright didn’t front the group like David Gilmour and Roger Waters did but it’s not just the frontman who does all the work, it’s the people playing the keyboards, setting up the synths, banging the drums, writing the songs.

So here’s to remembering Richard Wright, with a song from what was the biggest selling album of all time. May he always be dragged back for encores and never hit a bum note in that Great Gig In The Sky.

That would mean passing up an opportunity to have pizza !

you are so devoted to pizza, I love that!

have you tried the Pizza Hut pasta?

Firstly – Earthshattering events happened on this day, 7 years ago. The world changed and not for the better. A small group of individuals decided that their way required that several thousand people die in an atrocity.

We must never forget. We must always remember the people who had their lives taken from them.

Now – on with the main post : It’s not often I’ll come out with an endorsement of a company’s service or product but I’m making an exception tonight.

I’m a pizza lover 🙂 As it says on my profile thingummyjig. I’m not too keen on home oven cooked pizza cos it rarely works too well due to part of the cooking being done while the pizza is still chilly from being in the pizza. I never used to go for pizza from a restuarant either. So my pizza fix would usually come from picking one up on the way home from work or from getting one ordered in.

Take away or delivery pizza is the only way to go – fresh ingredients, no freezer influence and with the careful eye of the cooks on it.

What’s my current favourite pizza place ? Pizza hut 🙂 I think their Bonjourno advert is pretty corny but I’m willing to forgive that if the product is good. Even more willing to forgive it if they give me my pizza for half price 🙂

Yum.

They’re the best place to eat at our local Mall too, no backtalk from the staff, quick service and they smile. Which is far rarer than it should be in British restuarants. That’s one thing I remember most about my short fortnight over in the States, even the really cheap places to eat really did focus hard on getting their customer service right.

If the customer goes away happy, then they’ll go back again and again.

Right – pizza’s now gone, time to get the popcorn snapping ready for the rest of Star Wars Attack Of The Clones – currently watching the Star Wars films again. I’ve been very tired lately, with not much bounce in the batteries. Hence the pizza to try and get a little spark back 🙂

PS Another endorsement I’d make is Hewlett Packard – the laptop I’m being using at the moment is good enough to make me look at HP laptops first when I eventually go for a replacement. And I’m probably pickier on my PC hardware than I am with my pizzas.

I think the “better with someone else” applies to a lot of things … I like going to the cinema but rarely go on my own – it’s just not as good when you don’t have someone to compare the instant after-film reaction with …

Carmi – aye, things have changed a lot over the last 10 years or so … There was a multiplayer aspect built into Moo2, which is a game I love, but it wasn’t developed to nearly the same degree as multiplayer games are now.

Warcraft is pretty tame at 40 people per side in a battleground, Eve has had fleets of 500+ Per Side! throwing all sorts of nasty at each other. Eve’s a little ahead of its time there though, it’s let down by servers that can’t cope.

I remember a time when ALL games were single-player, non-networked. I remember when the first online games took hold, how magical we all thought that we could reach out and share the experience with someone far away.

My first online “game” was flying side-by-side with a friend in Flight Simulator. We used the software’s built-in modem feature, and to this day I remember how neat it felt to be able to fly around his plane and interact with it, in real-time 3D. Freaky.

Today, we yawn at such stuff!

Thanks for your visit Sleepypete…And your very kind and encourging words!

I am unfamiliar with Heinlein, odd as that may seem to be….Sci Fi is not on my radar, I’m afraid…It’s never been something I was drawn to…But, I sure do like those two quotes, a lot! (lol)
Not a “game player” either…..But, I’m happy you came by and liked what you saw today.

I’ve been reading a lot of Heinlein lately and one of the most striking things about Heinlein’s writing are the off the wall sayings that make total sense. One of them and you’ll have to bear with me here is :

Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing — and you don’t have to go home in the cold. But it’s lonely.

Wow – that’s a little out in left field. But it was reasonably fresh in my mind when I was pondering why I wasn’t particularly interested in playing a couple of classics on the weekend. I’ve sunk a lot of time into World of Warcraft lately but needed a bit of variation, so I had a peek at Settlers IV and Civ 4. Only a quick peek because I really couldn’t be bothered with them. I have a few other games too that I’ve not got my money’s worth out of. And then the quote above sprung up in my mind. Hmm – let’s take it to bits and have a look.

Cheap – single player games don’t have a monthly fee like Eve & WoW do.
Clean – there’s no chance of having a fight with someone in the guild. It happens. There’s also no idiots infesting your single player game.
Convenient – pause button, able to save the state without leaving other people in the lurch.
Free from wrongdoing – can’t upset people when there isn’t enough room for them in your gang.
Going home in cold – probably more appropriate to cricket or Re-enactment people, a single player game means you’re safe from the rain.

The pause button thing is not to be underestimated. It’s actually kinda dangerous leaving a character out in the wilds in an online game, although it’s a bit safer on the server I’m on now because it’s a “Normal” one. Means there’s a general state of peace instead of the Kill Or Be Killed state that makes a “Player Vs Player” server rather tense. Eve is even worse, because the pattern of play tends to have you alert at the keyboard for ages waiting for something to happen. Having a pause button is rather nice, it lets you break at your convenience or if you get called away. You can put the game to one side knowing it’ll be in the same state when you get back.

So, single player games are cheaper, cleaner, far more convenient cos of that pause button, you can’t annoy someone by leaving them off the team and you don’t get drenched when the heavens open with 5 overs to go.

But they’re lonely.

Lol – there you go, that’s me comparing computer games to masturbation and sex.

I don’t think I really noticed this before because World of Warcraft is pretty much the first big multiplayer game I’ve played, plus I’d always had the cricket to keep me in social gaming. I’ve always lived in fairly social housing too, ever since university when I was 18. That’s 15 years ago now. When I moved out of the social housing, I was living with someone. So there was a little voice on the other side of the sofa telling me to keep the noise down. Plus other whinging 🙂 (You’d have to have known her 😉

Pretty much since the WoW became the main game, I’ve been single, although the timing there is totally coincidental. After the breakup, WoW became a surrogate for the relationship I’d had. Which probably kept me sane in the months after, I had a group of Mercs to keep an eye on. That couldn’t last though – issues with some of the personalities (being ignored for a couple of months does this to you) meant I couldn’t continue torturing myself with the guild leadership thing and the relationships with Guildlink in particular, so I gave the job up to the best candidate we had at the time.

Bah ! I be digressing again. Closing note – Playing with Other People is far better than Playing With Yourself. I think that’s something that everybody can agree on 🙂 Oh – time for another Heinlein quote before I really close this entry :

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of — but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

I must assure you that this entry was composed totally in private (ok, I had Dexter and Stargate Atlantis on in the background) and I promise that I’ll be washing my hands in the very near future.

PS More classic Heinlein quotes here : WikiQuote. G’wan – have a peek 🙂

Everyone seems to have a god …

It might not quite be the god that everyone expects them to have but gods seem to run all the way through our societies. There’s the famous ones, like Allah, the Christian God, Hindu gods and all of the other major faiths (names given in alphabetical order!). We’ll try and keep those big gods happy but the ones that seem to really matter are based on superstition …

Things like the grand prix people offering up a prayer to the Weather Gods in hope that the region of very wet weather going past the Spa-Francorchamps circuit at the moment will miss the circuit. There’s also sporting gods which people make observances to. Things like putting the right cricket glove on before the left, even though the padding makes that the more difficult way. There’s the Luck Gods that people look to when they breathe on the dice before offering a private prayer of “double six!”

All those little superstitious routines, why do we do them ? It’s a belief that some higher (supernatural) power is keeping an eye on what’s going on and will push events one way or the other depending on their whim. One of the Ten Commandments specifically prohibits Christians from recognising other gods but they’ll still use phrases like “Sporting God” or “Weather God”. Very curious 🙂

As for me, I follow a code that’s very similar to the major code of ethics that the Christians and Moslems are supposed to follow. I just don’t believe in the deity at the top. I do believe very heavily in luck and fate though – the phrase “Don’t Tempt Fate” seems to ring the truest of any uttering that deals with Faith.

What does that mean though ? I’ve been on a few Karting events, where I know I’m quick. However, in the banter leading up to it I’ve always been very cagey on what I’m likely to do. Boasting of thrashing everyone else is just setting yourself up for a fall. Confidence is healthy but overconfidence stops you thinking clearly about actually getting up and performing. Plus if you abuse Karma and Luck, then you’re probably going to set yourself up for some extraordinary event that will set you backwards.

It’s things like building up a return to the cricketing action and then seeing it rain solid for three days. Before turning into bright sunshine on the afternoon before the game. Or saying we’re going to lap everyone in the karting race and then getting a poorly kart in the random pick. Fate is a very fickle Lady, sometimes I think that we’re all here as a plaything for the gods that look after luck. After all, what were the chances of us evolving into what we are now ? It’s an extraordinary chain of luck to get all those genes in the right place but I think it’s worked out ok.

Hmm – I think that’s enough philosophy for one day. Time to climb back out of the hole I just dug 🙂 And to get back to the Grand Prix where most of the team bosses are praying to the Rain Gods to help things equalise with the front runners.

PS Lewis Hamilton yesterday : “not planning on letting anyone past today”
Lewis Hamilton today – gets over taken at the start of the second lap due to an inexplicable mistake. That’s Karma biting …

Just finished reading the above book, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A Heinlein.

This is a cracking book, it’s actually the first one of Heinlein’s books I read and it got me comprehensively hooked. It’s written from the point of view of one Manuel O’Kelly Davis (Manny for short), who is a humble computerman looking after the Lunar Authority’s main computer. A computer that’s had so much hooked into it that it has woken up and become sentient.

It’s name is Mike, short for Mycroft, a name that extends from its model type : HOLMES. Holmes being short for High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor. What Mike has trouble understanding is jokes and the opening sequences of the book have him getting a bit of attention from Manny due to playing one of those jokes. It then breaks into 3 phases :

Setting up the revolution
Calm before the storm
Interplanetary war

It’s not a long book at 288 pages but packs a decent amount into those 288 pages. Even reading it now, at 42 years after it was written, this is one book that is most certainly Not Dated. Ok, it’s maybe a little behind the times when it comes to the effort needed for Mike to put a moving picture on a screen for him talking but that’s about the only place where the age of the book shows.

It’s a standalone book, although the sequel (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) hooks into the Lazarus Long universe. The sequel is The Next Book. It’s not all about revolution on the moon, there’s bits in here about living up there plus Heinlein’s usual intelligent observations on society.

Excellent book, very well worth a read. The central character, Manny, keeps a level head running through it with the tone always being one of good humour. It keeps a good pace up and the ending chapter or two will definitely have you remembering this book.