Year: 2009

A RSS Feed! Yes! o/

just testing comments …

Been tinkering with the blog layout a bit …

The most significant change is that the olde HTML based layout has been retired and replaced with one of Blogger’s newer XML based layout.

Huh ? What dat mean ?

Kicking the geekspeak capitals to one side, it’ll hopefully mean the blog’s compatible with RSS readers and other things that can interrogate a site’s content without actually visiting it. There’s a few kinks in there too that I’ll try and iron out while falling asleep in front of the cricket 🙂

We shall see how it ends up.

Watching the cricket at the moment, England are doing rather better than their “Get-Out-Of-Jail” performance last weekend 🙂 Long may it continue. I’ve been at a bit of a loose end with my gaming, where the old ones I have don’t really seem to keep my interest going. Tried out Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) Stormreach yesterday and while it’s not bad, it’s a bit of a pale imitation of Warcraft. World of Warcraft does it better, prettier, easier, simpler. D&D is a great game for tabletop gaming with friends but it’s a little too complicated for what I’m looking for in a twitch game.

Been a bit bored with Eve lately too – decent game, good people but interest wandering away again. Massive Multiplayer Online games tend to depend on a Play-Reward system, where a player will see a reward shortly after a period of play. With Eve, the Play-Reward happens on a much longer timescale and in a rather different pattern. Character improvement is tied to the ship you fly and the guns you can fit and when you get past a certain point it can literally take months for the character to learn different ships and guns. Plus, with my pattern of play I don’t tend to change ships much so I’ve not had the “Hey – that looks cool” thing of a shiny new spaceship lately.

So I have that state of wanting to get deep into a game, without knowing which game to dive into.

Oh – back to the blog, I’ve enabled anonymous comments for all those people who I mention this blog to but don’t have accounts somewhere that would let them leave comments. Will see how long that lasts 🙂 If there’s spam I’ll kick it back to what it was.

One of my quirks is that I like cute things 🙂

Hence the Pocket Dragon avatar. They’re instantly recognisable, fairly unique (not spotted anyone else using one for an avatar :-), lots of variation and there’s almost always a joke with them.

I’m likely to be changing my avatars quite a bit, just wondering which is the best choice 🙂 I have a few available to me at the moment :

Pizza Dwagon is the latest one. Not a great picture at the moment, my sister still has this one so I’ll get a better pic when I can point my camera at it.

Feed Me and Zoom Zoom – on a telly that I thought I’d dusted before taking the picture. Flashes uncover all sorts of sins 😉

System Crash – which points to one reason why I’m considering a Macbook … think I’ve got a little tired of all the quirks that crop up with Windows PCs.

Ahh – the old favourite, Zombie Dwagon 🙂

I also have an I Smell Chocolate (Pocket Dwagon with nose in the air having caught the Chocolate Scent) and my sister’s MSN avatar is now a Stalking the Coffee Jar :

So I’m likely to be changing avatars a fair bit for a while 🙂

Not going too far … I have the next week off work and I intend to spend as much of it as possible asleep on the sofa in front of the cricket 🙂

Or Torchwood. I’m watching the first of series 3 off iPlayer while I wait for dinner to burn.

Been getting more and more tired lately and I’ve really been needing this time away. I tend to drive myself on until I burn myself out and then I keep on going. The burnout’s been manifesting itself this time by me having trouble thinking through things. Hoping to get a chance for my back to heal itself up a bit too 🙂

Yesterday was a good day.

Well – kinda starting from Wednesday when the WYWS Girl asked what my name was. While I don’t actively seek the limelight, I love getting attention. I like to know that I’m the kind of person that other people might be interested in or want to be around. So when it comes to about 3pm and I’m eager for a bit of Muffin Therapy (tis good for sore backs, honest :-), I get the big surprise of Little Miss Cantina wanting to know more about me.

So that’s Wednesday – how about Thursday ?

Hmm. There would be a proper name to attach to the WYWS and Little Miss Cantina (she is a bit little) and that set me off towards a rather good evening 🙂 As per my tradition, I’m keeping the name quiet … but KT is a good label 🙂 The K for the proper name, the T for “Trouble” (one of her friends said “you don’t need her name, just use ‘Trouble’ – we all do :-)”. And the KT fits with the “Love Is In The Air” incident from a couple of months ago 🙂

Anyway – I now have the pleasure of knowing Miss K’s name. I promise I won’t abuse the privilege – much 🙂

Also had the pleasure of an evening yesterday with Craziequeen, BionicDwarf and Cyberkitten, as we raided Bella Pasta for dinner followed by Public Enemies at the cinema. The combination of the company, the munchies (not had pasta for too long) and excellent film, plus me knowing a new secret, got me turning from a downer into a hyper again 🙂 Which always helps me fight off the bugs and the bruises.

So – halfway through Torchwood first episode, dinner bell is getting more insistent and my tummy is growling … A full week without getting my lunch from the canteen girls ! I’ll fade away 🙂 (not a bad thing …)

Currently watching Return of the Jedi again, which has got me thinking about books 🙂

The book I’m reading at the moment is Striking the Balance by Harry Turtledove. It’s the third in a series of 8 that has at its theme an alien invasion of Earth, commencing a couple of years into World War Two. I want to read these mainly cos I have all 8 🙂 but also because I want to know what happens in them. Trouble is, the author’s style makes it very hard work.

Curious …

The books I’ve read most recently are the Orion series by Ben Bova (see blog post a few down from this one !) and David Weber’s Ashes of Empire series. The Ashes of Empire series is a trilogy that I devoured within a couple of weeks, both the first time I read it and the last time. I picked up Larry Niven’s Ringworld yesterday and almost read the whole thing. Yet I’ve been struggling for weeks with Striking The Balance.

All three series are science fiction and some of the personalities at work in Ashes of Empire can only be described as disturbed and disturbing. The violence level is very high, mainly due to the weapons technology at work. Yet that hyperviolence is diluted by the sense of “fun” running through the books, such that it nevers crosses the boundary into “sickening”.

It’s similar for Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, which has a highly interesting character called Louis Wu as its central protagonist. There’s a huge sense of adventure running through the 4 books in this series, as Louis Wu jumps out of one frying pan into another fire. After reading snippets out of Ringworld, it’s quite possible I’ll dive through these 4 books (Ringworld, … Engineers, … Throne, … Children) when I’m done with Striking the Balance.

If you’ve not read anything by Larry Niven, he’s well worth checking out. Recommended books are Footfall, Ringworld and Lucifer’s Hammer. An unforgettable passage in Lucifer’s Hammer has a group of surfers trying to outrun a Mega-Tsunami by attempting to ride the wave.

Hey ! Where’s the Star Wars link ?

The Star Wars films have spawned a huge number of books, that mostly take on after the films. They’re a mix between outstanding and very poor. The X-Wing books written by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allstom are amazing, for their intelligent writing and the no holds barred aspect of the story. However, the books I’ll probably be reading next are the ones by Timothy Zahn. They take place about 5 years after Return of the Jedi and take the reader through a campaign masterminded by the brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn. It’s intelligent scifi written by a gifted author.

Which is a lot more than I can say for some of the Star Wars books, I groaned (and growled) when I heard that some of the Dune sequels would be co-authored by Kevin J Anderson. He was responsible for some of the more painful Star Wars books I won’t be reading again. I mentioned something about intelligent scifi above, can’t say that about anything I’ve read from Kevin J Anderson. A pity …

There’s also the New Jedi Order series – I devoured most Star Wars books as soon as they came out but this later series killed my enthusiasm for the genre. Our main heroes are up against some real nasty pieces of work in the Yuuzhan Vong, aliens from outside the galaxy. Some books good, some books bad.

But I’ll be looking forward to reading the Timothy Zahn books again 🙂

Back to the film ! The Ewoks are now kicking Stormtrooper butt and I have a sneaky feeling that my next books to read will be the Timothy Zahn Heirs to the Empire series 🙂

Heh heh heh – that's what my big sis said 🙂 I of course plead innocence.

Yep – lots more habitable today, although I think I may have overdone the cool-me-down shower last night – my back has been complaining today !

I know what you mean. It's been too hot and sticky to even move lately! It's a little cooler today though 🙂

Couple of weather piccys today 🙂 Inspired by the temperatures we’re having here and by seeing that a certain Spaghetti Western movie is on Five at the moment.

(I’m not watching it, I have NCIS on 🙂

The Good :

Ice cubes good ! Although the heat means they’re melting even before I get to drink the coke I have with them.

The Bad :

Hmm – 37 degrees C. And that’s from a fridge magnet in a house that’s been unoccupied all day at about half 9pm. With all the electronics (exc fridge) in the house turned off too. I usually keep my desktop PC turned on, running a couple of bits of research for the Rosetta@home and Climateprediction projects in BOINC, so it helps out with the heating in the winter. That will be coming to a close though as when the current Climate model it’s running is complete, I’ll be doing lots of Reinstally type things to my main PC :-).

PC off during the day at the moment cos the heat has been making it complain loudly (literally – with klaxons!)

Doh – sidetracked …

The Ugly :

Erm – that’d be the person behind the ZombieDwagon, so I’ll spare people that one so their monitors survive uncracked.