Month: September 2009

Cars have personalities … They really do.

One element of that is their feelings, you can hurt a car’s feelings and they do sulk. Honest ! This is a certified (hey ! who said “certifiable” ?) MEng Electronic Engineer talking.

Do Not Upset The Ghost In The Machine !

Ok ok, enough ramble, time for the “what is an Orange Light Of Impending Doom ?” answer. Since they kicked out the old mechanical solution for keeping an engine working right, there’s been a light that tells you when the Engine Management Unit isn’t happy. There can be any number of explanations for that, from loose connections to broken bits to sensors that are lying.

The Orange Light Of Impending Doom started coming on (when it shouldn’t) on Tuesday. No discernable difference in the car’s performance and all the dials are in the midline, looked and sounded ok under the bonnet too. So I let it go for a day or so to see if it would go away on its own. No such luck Wednesday, no such luck Thursday. Which, with my driving profile (about 10 miles a day), isn’t too much of a risk with a possibly failing engine.

Thursday evening was when I got off my backside to start getting active on sorting out warranty stuff, although I started ringing a bit too late cos the warranty people had gone home. Probably a good thing because Orange Light Of Impending Doom was a no-show today.

Huzzah !

How about this Car Personality thing then ?

I’ve been getting bored with this car for a while now. After the Puma, it’s bigger, heavier and about the same power to weight. Which means the Go Power is about the same but bigger and heavier means it’s not so good at going round corners. Ho hum. Probably a bad choice to go for another performance car after the original one, maybe there’s a good reason why I always go Cushy – Fast – Cushy – Fast.

My mistake this time was to mention the boredom while in the car … Car’s have ears, if they feel unloved they’ll let you know.

How did I fix it ? There’s the olde philosophical superstition argument here too 🙂 I was checking out how much it would cost me to change car last night. The Prius I’d go for is the T4 model, about £20,000 new. Toyota’s site says their finance stuff would be looking for a £7,000 deposit and £200 a month over 3 years. Guaranteed Future Value thing would mean a further payment of £9,000 after the 3 years (or you start again on another new one).

Very curious 🙂 Although with 20 months left on my car loan, it would cost a couple of hundred pounds more to pay off the loan than I’d get in part exchange. And it would also throw away the guaranteed servicing deal and warranty I have. So I keep my current car for another year and a half, which gets me more time to get more Green Stuff and more time for Prius Mk3’s new now to get older and cheaper.

Hopefully the Orange Light Of Impending Doom (OLOID ?) will stay away for the 8 months to the next service.

PS I reckon it was Speed Bumps upsetting something. Cos the schools are back, I’ve been forced to divert to Plan B route to get to work, which in infested with speed bumps.

Not sure there with motorway cat – if I remember right, he'd have had to roam a bit to get on to the motorway …

Could have been another white-furred (or white due to headlights) feline looking creature, it was after something that had been whacked earlier …

Yikes Pete!

Glad you and the cat are both okay, not to mention an intact set of bumpers lol.

We've had a few of those kind of near misses and they always freak me out!

Though it does intrigue me … what was the cat doing on the motorway in the first place??

Aye – between the Puppeteers manipulating everyone, the hyperaggressive Kzin, the technology and the persistence and ingenuity of the humans, there's a huge amount of scope in the Known Space novels.

For the uninitiated, it's definitely worth checking out Ringworld and any of the Man-Kzin Wars novel collections. Neutron Star is a pretty darn good collection of short stories too.

Niven's "Known Space" series rocks big time. I've read most of them.

The Kzin are one of my favourite alien species. I'd like to meet one – but maybe only *after* they'd already had lunch!

If they say that watching telly gives you square eyes, what kind of shape eyes do you get from reading lots ?

That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing lately. Listening to lots of great music (check out The XX) and reading lots of book 🙂 Oh and wondering what drugs the Mercury Prize people are taking to have not given the prize to Bat For Lashes.

I’m currently occupied with not one but actually 3 series of book :
Harry Turtledove’s WorldWar series,
Larry Niven’s Ringworld series,
Jack Campbell’s The Lost Fleet series.

I’ve mentioned the WorldWar series before, it’s set in the middle of World War Two but with a twist. Space Aliens invade and try to take over the world. I’m not quite sure what to make of this series, I’m three books in but it’s a bit of a struggle. I want to know what happens and how it ends (I’m a little OCD like that) but it’s rather long and drawn out. 3 down, 5 to go.

The Ringworld series is one I’ve had an eye on for quite some time now. It’s penned by Larry Niven and is set within the amazing Known Space future. You have weird and wonderful alien races, who actually feel alien. These go from the cowardly Pierson’s Puppeteers with heads for hands and extreme high technology to the fierce Kzin. For a Kzin, think 8 foot tall, feline, furry, claws and would probably eat anyone who attempted to call them “cute”. But they do like being scratched behind their ears.

Ringworld is mostly set on an immense artifact, a circular ribbon 100 thousand miles across with a radius just under 100 million miles. And that’s orbiting a sun. It makes the Orbitals of the Culture look small. The first book has our central protagonist Louis Wu discovering the Ringworld as part of an expedition including a puppeteer, a Kzin and another human. On their travels they encounter many species of Near-Human, the artifact has been around for hundreds of thousands of years so the inhabitants have gradually evolved from Human into many different Near-Human species.

The question of “why were there human-like beings on here ?” is a question that’s answered throughout the four books : Ringworld, Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne and Ringworld’s Children. They’re all well worth a read, although Larry Niven writes better when he collaborates on books. Almost like he struggles to get his ideas on paper, with the collaborations clarifying his vision.

Lastly, I’ve just finished enjoying the first book in a series of 6 penned by Jack Campbell. It’s called Dauntless : The Lost Fleet and begins the telling of the tale of a fleet of Alliance warships that is deep behind enemy lines having just failed in an attack launched on the homeworld of their bitter enemy, the Syndicated Worlds.

Whereas the Honor Harrington books by David Weber can get themselves badly bogged down in politics, the politics is firmly in the backseat in Dauntless. It’s still there but not nearly so prominent. Instead, you have battleships and battlecruisers pounding at each other with grapeshot (from railguns), missiles, Big Frickin’ Lasers (I’ve been reading too much Register) and disintegrators.

I’ve only read one of them so far and ended up enjoying it enough that after about 100 pages, I ordered the second in the series from Abebooks … I’d quite happily recommend the people I bought it from, just under £5, sent over from the States in pristine condition and quite quickly too. Abebooks can put you in touch with a lot of independent bookstores, the one I’ve been ordering from is the Paperbackshop Ltd in Fairford (in Abebooks as Books 2 Anywhere).

I’ve not just been reading the books though – England surprised everyone by winning the Ashes back. There’s a strange contrast here to 2005, the last time we got the Ashes. 4 years ago, there was total hysteria over it. The 2005 series was a slugging match between 2 very well matched sides at the top of their games, utterly captivating because both teams were putting everything into it. This series was something different. The Aussies had lost several of their Great players and hadn’t really adequately replaced them. England are currently in one of their inconsistent phases.

So we won the Ashes but no-one’s really all that excited about it, maybe because it doesn’t feel as if we earned them … Which is a feeling reinforced by the rubbish we’re seeing from England in the one day series. The players seem extremely scared right now. Scared of playing, scared of wearing the shirt, scared of playing to their potential and it shows in how they approach the game.

Grand Prix has finished now – time to get to the next book (Ringworld Throne), game and music 🙂

PS Lol at the GP coverage, Ross Brawn just got hauled bodily over to the BBC interviewers by Eddie Irvine. Makes you laugh at the audacity of them to do that but what makes it more funny is the size difference between the big Ross Brawn and the little Eddie Irvine.

It's not a bad game is Eve … but I gotta admit I tend to reactivate, have a look, do a few missions and then get bored and not log on for a while …

Cancelled my Eve sub again this week – you really need to be interested in PvP to stay in Eve and that's never really been my thing. I like to game on my own terms 🙂 (tis easier to fit in dinner times that way!)

I bet I'll be back in for another look at the fireworks in a few months but for now it'll be keeping an eye on the boys through the newsletter and the forums 🙂

PS It's also exchange rate – The Eve people charge in Euros and the exchange rate is currently not too favourable. £11.50 a month is way too much for an online game.

It might be because I'm a woamn but I really really don't see the appeal of Eve. Going online to do mining???? I know there are all these alliances, and pirates and such, but still it's just not for me. Glad you enjoy putting your newsletter together though 🙂

I get a buzz once a month (ok, I get The Buzz more than that but work with me here 🙂

It’s when we’re coming up to putting out a new version of the Volition Cult newsletter. VC is the group that I’ve been involved with in Eve over the years I’ve been on and off in that particular online game. They’re a good bunch. Even though I bounce in and out of the game fairly regularly due to getting bored with it, I still try and keep up with what the boys are getting up to.

And what better way than to do a sub-editor job on their newsletter 🙂 We get contributions mainly from Agent Stone and Schelik Hill (in game names). They’ll put the original stories in and then I’ll come along afterwards and tidy up their language. I’ll usually try and tailor it for effect too. It’s a newsletter For Gamers By Gamers, so the objective for me is to do the proof reading without diluting out the Fun aspect.

It’s a job I like doing, I have a craving for information and the sub-ed job gives me a sneak peek. All the positive feedback we get also helps 🙂

Ok – that’s enough saying how much of a buzz we get from sending out the newsletter. How about I give all you readers a chance for a peek too ? It’s here, at Agent Stone’s blog. Bit long though this time around 🙂

I even get a writing credit in there this month, I usually just proof read but I added one or two bits in there as well this time around. I’m a Power Gamer who tends to dig into the mechanics of what I’m getting involved in. I’ll try and take things apart (metaphorically) to see how they work, so I can play better or work better. So even though I don’t have as much in game experience as others, I pick things up along the way on how to play better.

Lol – that’s enough Eve for now, an apt statement as my sub just ran out today. The reason for the break this time is that at £11ish per month, that’s way too much now for something I’m not getting any value out of.

Found a new group to listen to 🙂 The XX had their track Crystallised put up as iTunes tune of the week a couple of weeks ago. Grabbed it, listened to it, thought these people have a really promising sound. Ended up buying the album a couple of days later 🙂 Here’s a link to Crystallised – check it out, they’re worth a listen.

Talking of music, had a trip to London and back today with work. Which means iPodFM in the car all the way there and back 🙂

Not as clean a drive as usual. It’s 125 miles there, which should be about 2 hours at motorway speeds. Took just over 3 hours each way this time, due to traffic although I did do leg stretches there and back. It got me thinking a bit more, the various segments of the trip where I was at standstill or crawling forwards would be where a hybrid car like Toyota’s Prius would come into its own. The new Prius has a 1.8 litre engine plus an electric motor. The motor can roll the car along at up to 30mph. Just think about that for motorway queues or urban when you’re at the mercy of traffic lights. The engine would be off and you’d be rolling along on stored charge. Free energy !

Hybrids are the future 🙂 They really appeal to my Inner Geek, which appreciates efficiency in all its forms. Whether that be in the way certain people move, in seeing a gadget that just works with no fuss or seeing technology applied in clever ways that makes things Easier.

Any more ? Watched the latest Tarantino film (would name it but kiddies may read 🙂 and while it was good, couldn’t help feeling that it could have been better. I dunno, maybe the excellence of Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction have spoiled us 🙂 Good day for another reason, I got two hugs off RCA.

After my last post cleared my head somewhat and got me back to Positive Mental Attitude, I’ve had a rough few days due to my tongue swelling up on me (eeooo – saying no more !). It’s almost better, which means I will now be terrorizing neighbours and nearby cats by singing along to iTunes. I’m currently chilling out to The XX from above after thinking that it really helps to have the iPod picking out the soft tracks for in car music 🙂

This post has kinda jumped around a bit :
Eve Alliance Newsletter
New Music
Traffic
Hybrid cars
Films
More music

Check out the newsletter 🙂 It’s hopefully a good example of something written By Gamers For Gamers showing how they enjoy the game they’ve taken to their hearts.

Oh last thing – another thing I sneaked into the newsletter was an oldie :

Something close to that has been my Eve signature over the years 🙂 Bit of an Eve in joke 🙂