Month: March 2010

Made one of those fatal mistakes tonight.

I walked past the Cookie Shop without fortifying myself with food beforehand. This is a very dangerous thing.

So after staring at an Easter Egg for most of the evening, I now have a box of Millies Cookies sitting beside me. I’ve survived the temptation of Easter Egg but those Cookies whiff a bit. Would be a shame to waste ’em by letting them go stale.

Quote of the day : “Chocolate is Life”

So, so true.

Still, resisting the temptation of Egg will mean the Egg Supply lasts another day and as I wasn’t really hungry (I may have slipped into slow metabolism with the coming week and a bit off work) I haven’t really missed munching one tonight.

Oh ! I have boots. Been spending cash again, although I’ve resisted the itchy fingers that want me to buy an Xbox. £250 for the Final Fantasy XIII edition from Game looks the best bundle at the moment but I’m keeping the credit card under control due to a £1100 credit card bill last month.

The boots are for Snowdon, which the Eve guys will be hitting next month. It’s one of Britain’s mountains, although that’s not really saying much cos it has a railway line to the summit. We won’t be using that. It’s a toss up between my work shoes and my trainers as to what’s best to walk in, so I invested in a pair of proper boots. Will have to see how long they take to bed in.

I think my “Ramble” detector is going off as well as the tiredness that comes from anticipating tomorrow being my last day at work for a week and a bit. Been on the second wind over the past week or so, which has meant I’ve been fine during the day at work but have struggled in the evenings. Hence no real gaming during the week nights. (sometime soon I’ll put in a few XCom posts!)

I’ll be recovering over the next week and I bet by then I’ll be raring to go again 🙂 Although that might be due to me feeling the need to go hunting the Teacakes again …

You could always ruin your voting slip on purpose…..

I hope the 3D trend doesn't become too wide spread…at least my eyes hope this. I cannot see 3D due to exotropia. My eyes have problems with some HD as it is.

They are all awful, so I will just vote for Greens I expect so whoever wins knows people care about the environment.

This post has been coming for a while and it’s born out of frustration at the political scene over here.

For those unitiated in GB politics, we effectively have a 2 party state with the main competition being between Labour and Conservative. It wasn’t always that way, before the First World War the Liberals had a chance too. There’s a few hangers on too, like the Liberals and the SNP. But it’s mostly down to a fight between Tory and Labour. Or should that be Red Tory and Blue Tory, the lines are that blurred.

In a system where the candidates who become MPs are required to vote the way they are told, there’s not much leeway in the system. You could even say it’s a democratic dictatorship, with the 2 Houses providing a rubber stamp for the wishes of the PM. With that kind of setup, it becomes all about the personalities. We saw this in the 2 elections that Labour lost in 1987 and 1992, where Labour were expected to win but the country couldn’t bring itself to vote for Neil Kinnock.

So what have we got to choose from ?

There’s Gordon Brown and his cronies in Labour. After all the half truths, broken promises and blatant lies from them over the past decade or so, can’t trust ’em. Then we have Cameron and the Tories. These guys are preparing for government, with the polls favouring them over Labour. Trouble is, he’s no Obama. A political party stands or falls by the fortunes of its leader and Cameron is making the scales close instead of landslide. Not really sure what the Blue Tory policies are, which could be a symptom of how many of their policies have been stolen by the Red Tory’s over the years.

Cameron could be another Kinnock …

Then there’s the Liberals in third. These guys were promising when Charles Kennedy was in charge, he was one of the few politicians I’ve had any respect for. Since they put the knife in there, they’ve reverted to some of the worst behaviour possible from a political party. Not much evidence of policy here either, apart from soundbites which they won’t have a chance of standing by.

We’re also blighted by the BNP, who have a leader who does himself no favours by always being seen with his escorting Heavy Mob. People don’t like being threatened and that Heavy Mob is a definite “Don’t argue with us” threat. Doesn’t work in GB politics.

The political system in the UK is also supposed to be about MPs representing the views of their constituents. You see precious little evidence of this, I’ve certainly seen nothing through my door asking my view on important upcoming Parliament votes. The MPs are required to vote the way the whips tell them. Is that democracy ?

So – we’re facing an election knowing that whatever we choose won’t change much in the way the country is run. What will happen over the next 5 years ? We shall see. Not much hope for improvement.

And I’ve not even mentioned expenses !

Oh yeah, I’m trying to avoid saying who I’m likely to vote for, although I have given an opinion or two. We’ll see whether one or the other parties earn my vote over the next month or so. Shame there isn’t a “None of the Above” option !

The gaming world is seeing another case of Big Aggro at the moment, centred around the atrocity being inflicted on paying customers by copy protection …

In particular, it’s a game called Assassins Creed 2, which raises the bar just a little bit more.

There’s always been a certain amount of copy protection involved with software, the problem has been coming with the publishers increasingly treating their paying customers like criminals. The measures put in to allow protection of intellectual property used to be fairly simple, being limited to typing in codes from manuals or just making it difficult to copy stuff.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to publishers attempting to protect their intellectual property, I just object to the ways they’ve been going about it. I think I’ve written a few things about this before too … (faint feelings of deja vu !) The crime that first really got me irritated with copy protection just so happens to be from the same publisher as the latest atrocity, so I think it’s time to give an example or two :

Starforce copy protection. Ubisoft used this a fair bit and it worked by sitting between Windows and the cd drives. It would intercept the data passing between to allow it to authenticate the disc correctly. Fairy nuff. Except when it disabled the copy protection employed by other publishers games. Oh, it also disabled my USB hub for some strange reason.

Copy protection measures are fair enough, except when they adversely affect the overall running of a PC. And as PCs tend to be a festering cesspool of mismatched software, it’s an insanely difficult thing to prevent unanticipated interaction between all the garbage that gets left behind in a PC.

That’s a fairly minor irritant though compared to what’s been put on Assassins Creed 2. What’s happened here is that when the game is running, it’ll phone home every 20 seconds or so to see if everything’s ok. If your internet happens to sneeze, the copy protect will pull the trigger on a gun that’ll unceremoniously dump you back to Windows.

However, having to be online permanently is not the biggest beef people have with this system. It’s no problem at all to me as my internet is always on and typically always active (I stay logged in to Messenger all the time). No, the issue is “what happens when the authentication servers go inactive ?” Well, you’ve paid £30 for a game that you can no longer play. This is a big deal, as shown by me still playing games written and released 15 years ago. Will these authentication servers be around in 15 years ? Somehow I doubt it.

What’s the alternative ? Well, there are two. The first is to wait for the crackers who have almost certainly broken through or bypassed this system by now. They then put the game data online (torrent sites) where people then illegally download it without the protection. No protection, no problem.

The second alternative is the one I’ve chosen ever since I realised the Starforce protection was causing me problems. I’ve basically boycotted Ubisoft and avoided all their games. Vote with your feet, it’s the only language the money people understand. (Although that won’t get through to the Union people determined to bring down British Airways, which will take jobs away from their members)

Either way, the people behind the copy protection don’t get any money.

There’s all sorts of other arguments around copy protection. One reason people copy is because the games are more expensive now. That’s certainly why I’ve avoided getting Modern Warfare 2, £40 for a PC game is a rip off in my mind. If the crackers weren’t so good at getting around copy protection, we may have seen games stay around the £15-£20 mark. Dunno about that argument, because console games still cost more than PC games.

So what’s the way forward ? Ubisoft’s method with AC 2 is a bit too draconian, just have a look at the review scores people are giving it on Amazon. USB sticks as dongles ? Could be and it wouldn’t add much to the cost to make per unit. The crackers will get through that as well though eventually.

Me – I’ve been thinking Console … Although when I look at them, I’m not seeing enough interesting games to warrant the starter cost of a £250 purchase of an Xbox. I definitely know what I don’t appreciate, which is being treated like a criminal by the people who want my money. I’ll keep the cash in my pocket ta very much.

The games market is struggling enough at the moment, I suspect PC gaming will be just MMOs in a few years. It’ll be curious to see how things go.

Looking forward to Easter at the moment and No ! Not for the chocolate !

I know what you were thinking …

Ok, ok, I am a chocolate fiend but I’m more looking forward to the week I’ll be taking off work. (And there’s only so much chocolate one can take before you get sick of it and that’s a waste of chocolate.) Feeling a bit burned out again, although it’s not been stopping me from getting on with things. Maybe makes me a bit more reactive instead of thinking things through, which maybe isn’t a bad thing for someone who tends to overthink.

I believe they call it procrastination 🙂

Been up to mum’s and dad’s this weekend for one of those “Be there or don’t get fed next time” events 🙂 Kidding, they’re not like that really even for days like Mother’s Day. I’m reasonably into traditions, especially the ones that make people happy. So every Mother’s Day, I’ll call in the People Who Know (aka Flowergram!) to send a little package to two special people. The other one is Craziequeen, who helps keep me sane by letting me talk through stuff. We keep an eye on each other 🙂

Needing to get a mini-rant out about technology again, it’ll be a mini rant because I’ll need to go into stuff that’s better placed on the techie blog. I did the technology thing again this weekend, not a raging success this time around but hopefully the Widget that turned up today will sort things out to satisfaction.

Telly type kit has been the latest thing the Family has upgraded, first it was my nan getting a new telly. Then my sister got forced into buying one because her old telly went splat. I got one at Xmas and we were checking out mum’s and dad’s new one this weekend. It’s a Panasonic telly and they got a HDD dvd recorder as well. They don’t have an aerial accessible where the telly is, so they’re using a satellite tuner in the telly itself. Comments …

Comet people get away with a lot when they persuade people to buy stuff that doesn’t fit the need. Although part of that is knowing that the “need” is … The dvd recorder wasn’t really necessary. It does do a job, it’s just a different (and cheaper) bit of kit would do the job much better.

Panasonic telly quality = Very high. The quality when we were watching the Grand Prix was like watching HD, except on a SD signal. Impressive.
Telly + DVD recorder integration. Good stuff, the telly was able to tell the dvd recorder what and when to record, without doing anything to the dvd recorder.

Manuals and ease of use. This is where the BUT comes in.

As a device for watching stuff, it’s very good. Sharp picture, respectable sound, doesn’t fall over when you force a Scart lead into the socket. As for setting it up, it required two engineers to get it connected enough to get the integration working and even then, the widget that sends pictures to the next room doesn’t work. Don’t get me started about the badly translated manual that’s gone nowhere near Readability gurus or Proofreaders.

Terrible manual. Interface can only be described as Gopping. (a derogatory slang term of which the meaning is hopefully obvious)

Ok – you probably get the picture … There’s a box arrived today that’s hopefully gotten them a Sky+ replacement that they won’t have to pay a monthly fee for.

It’s not quite working “to satisfaction” yet, as they use a widget to send pictures from the living room to the dining room. Couldn’t get that working over the weekend, signal must have been getting jammed. Think I’ll be poking that again next time I’m up there.

But for now, all the technology appears to be working, I haven’t had a “this doesn’t work” call with the Freesat box so I’ll get back to listening to the music while researching AV sender Gizmos.

See ! Lots of stuff being poked at, despite feeling the smoky edges of a case of impending burn out 🙂 I think it helps having good people around me. You know the saying “stay in one place and everyone you know will walk past” ? That place was the canteen today. Joined the queue for teacakes behind Evil Ex, Contractor Tim was behind me in the sarnie queue and also heading for the canteen was the wonderful Miss A who used to work in the team next door before we moved. You know the saying “Girl Next Door” ? More like “Girl in team Next Door”. They were blessed with pretty ladies and Miss A was and still is no exception. One of the things I miss about our old location was the occasional “Hello Pete, how are you doing ?” from Miss A on her way past my desk.

Good to see a friendly face and it made me grin to have a chance to say hello too 🙂

PS The iPod Sock thread on Facebook has reached 22 comments … Need a suitably strange reply to make it 23.

I really loved Alice, too! Saw it twice during the opening weekend and will see it again soon at the local IMAX theater!

Horror – nah, wouldn't have thought so. Although there is one great big head chopping off moment.

Kiddie safe 🙂