Year: 2011

I’m getting closer to actually 100% owning my car now.

I got it 3 years ago in a bit of an emergency buy. My previous car (a Ford Puma) had given me quite a few years of excellent service but it hit its wall at about 70,000 miles. Before that, hardly anything needing attention at the annual service. After that, all sorts of mechanical mayhem started happening. Power steering pump was the start but by the end, the braking system was totally shot with something weird happening with the anti-lock system and a complete failure of the handbrake. Not good if you park on a hill at work (other car park to the one I use now).

So, a couple of years after it started to collect faults, I switched to what I have now. My Focus isn’t a bad car, it’s actually been pretty good. However. It’s bigger than I like a car to be, so the 2 litre 170bhp engine doesn’t actually turn into much Go. At the same time, those 2 litres gobble petrol. The little things are starting to go too, like a rear wheel that leaks air. That’s not so bad, I have a compressor to pump the tyre up when it goes flat. I may also be allergic to the car. Weird as that sounds, weird is a total fit for me.

The big thing that shattered my confidence in my Focus was the inlet manifold failure last year. You don’t expect car stopping failures in modern cars, although you probably should because of the increase in built in complication. What was the response from the garage ? I bought a supposedly all in warranty with the Focus and still had to pay the £550 for the fix. I’ll put this in Big Letters :

Buy a CARCRAFT extended warranty and it will mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Everything that breaks will be classified under “fair use”, which translates to “You Pay”.

Very disappointed, I will not be returning to Carcraft after the last paid for service.

So – what’s next ? I’m keeping an eye on the Green Car Site. The people who run that collect as much information as they can about electric cars, biofuel cars, green cars and most interesting for me, hybrid cars. It’s a decent mine of information, with just enough in there to let you know what’s around. I’ve pretty much decided that my next car will be a hybrid. I’m very much interested in being as efficient as possible and the energy storage thing that comes with hybrid cars.

There’s just one problem. Hybrids are currently coming in 2 categories. Slow and highly efficient is the first, that’s where Toyota’s hybrid flag bearer (Prius) fits in. The other category is Hot Muscle Roadburner. That’s cars like the upcoming Infiniti M35h, looking on Greencarsite they’re claiming 0 to 60 in 5.5secs while still doing more miles to the gallon than my Focus and also kicking out less nasty CO2.

I’d love a car like that ! Or the Lexus G450h (link to Lexus site) which is on the market now. Just one problem, I’m not going to spend £46,000 on a car. I’m very wary about spending up to £20,000 on a Honda CR-Z.

That’s what I will probably end up with – Honda’s CR-Z (Honda site). The raw numbers suggest it’s not as fast as I would like, plus the reviews are mixed. Some are stellar, some are poor. I’ll treat them with the respect I usually give to reviews, I’ll make my own mind up judged on what I think of the reviewer. I miss my Puma, it was an excellent little grownup go-kart. The CR-Z promises to be something similar.

We shall see ! I have 2 more months now until the loan finishes and then I’m free to move from Speculation to being more free about checking stuff out.

Sandra – the pvp has improved too … Dunno if you did Wintergrasp but there's also Tol Barad now for what's effectively world pvp. Few more battlegrounds too joining AB and WSG, although I've not been in those too much.

Tol Barad gives a good rush from its general total Mayhem 🙂

CK – yeah, I'd been checking it out from watching the videos done by Totalbiscuit. Looks a fairly even game but I have a feeling it would go the same way as most other RTS games I play. As in, "Ooo ! Shiny !" straight to "meh"

Starcraft 2 is disapointing. We got bored with it fairly quickly….

Oh, i miss wow. And i also enjoyed pvp in wow before i left. I wish the days had more hours in them! Then i could return. 🙂
Have fun playing Ice!

Been busy in the evenings lately but probably busy at all the wrong things 🙂

I’ve been gaming a lot lately and also trying to keep up with all the recorded stuff lately. Babylon5 off dvd has taken a back seat while I try and stay ahead. After a little flurry of book reading, I’ve stalled after starting Inversions by Iain M Banks. It’s not the author’s fault, I’ve just gone SQUIRREL and got distracted by other things.

Like ?

I’ve been back in Warcraft now for the last few months and have been enjoying it far more than my various spells in Eve. The spacer MMO (Eve) tends to be a long tedious grind to support Player V Player (PvP) action. The trouble with Eve’s PvP is that you have to go looking for it. Unless there’s territorial stuff going on (which happens more in the alliance we’re in now), looking for PvP means joining a gang that then goes looking for trouble. Problem there is, trouble either gets caught in the open and annihilated or trouble runs away. The “Rush” that comes in an even fight is quite rare. I don’t find 20 vs 1 fights challenging or interesting.

Warcraft’s PvP is structured differently, at least on the server I play on. It’s based primarily on battlegrounds, which have strict limits on how many can take part. Warsong Gulch is 10 a side and you have to capture the enemy’s flag from their base and take it back to your’s 3 times to win. Arathi Basin is 15 a side and is based on dominating 5 control points. It’s well designed and makes for a dynamic and engaging sequence of play where the “Who’s going to win?” can change very quickly.

It’s the kind of gaming that gets me drawn in and checking when the next Tol Barad (another domination type battleground with 40 a side Total Mayhem) is going to be. It gets the blood flowing.

Oh – it probably feeds the addiction prone tendencies due to the buzz from winning through Burning Stuff. My character plays with Fire and has talents like Firestarter and Pyromaniac. The people who know me personally will have just hidden in concrete flameproof bunkers.

There’s just one problem with Warcraft now – I think I’ve taken my main character as far as it’ll go from what I can do on my own. (1 more upgrade to come) I could hit the dungeon queues to get more Stuff but that tends to lead to frustration due to having the wider Warcraft player base inflicted on you. Most of the players of Warcraft are under the age of 20 and like to act like they’re younger than 10. That “Rush” does funny things to the mind.

That’s why I like to stick to just doing things with the guild, it’s a collection of people who play the game a lot like I do. They play hard but are also prepared to have a laugh. Always have to remember that you’re playing a game, taking things too seriously can put a definite dampener on things. That’s a good attitude to take to everything, always be prepared to laugh at the work in full knowledge that the world will not hesitate to laugh at you if you let it. The Warcraft people are better than the Eve people. Eve people like to think they’re a better class of player but it doesn’t show when playing with them. Except for the Volition Cult corp, they break the mould by being good to be around.

Laughing at our mistakes helps us pick ourselves up when we’re down. Plus it helps reinforce a bit of “yeah, I’m whinging but I’m not whinging at you”. A few of our people at work are getting a lot of stick right now because we’ve just introduced a new information management system which wasn’t ready. Not their fault but they’re the closest people to us so they’re the ones who get their ears bent over it.

Need a game ?

I’ve hit that point again where I’ve got a bit bored with the games I have and need something new. I have my Formula that beats Settlers IV. My Krogans are unbeatable in Moo2 if the start is good, my Sectoids are even better despite the start they get. Civ 4 is too big scale a game to play casually. Just finished another Mass Effect run. Warcraft is good but too much of a good thing makes the good thing go stale.

Starcraft II is looking like a contender, I’ve gone big into real time strategy games in the past. Plus there is also a case for letting the brain cool down a bit by reading a book instead of having to keep up with twitchgaming.

Ha – it’ll cool down even more in the summer when cricket comes round again 🙂 I’m smart but when I start running around something happens in my head that means I have trouble counting even to 6 (balls in an over). Or I let the random thoughts spill out of my head like in a blog post like this one 🙂

One thing I will hope to do is have fewer late evenings getting home. That’s not just work, it’s things like heading off to the Mall for emergencies. But it would be good to have 6 hours to myself in the evening instead of just 4 plus what I sneak in after midnight.

How long until the next Tol’Barad ? Must go check 🙂

Yeah – if it's a boring task that can be got out of the way quickly, that's great. Do 'em, forget about 'em, on to the next thing 🙂

Priority is a tricky question when it comes to work. The only rule i have for myself is to start with the most boring tasks, since if i start with the fun ones (that one can get lost in for ages) the dull ones kind of keep knocking on the shoulder and hangs there like the darkest cloud forever and ever!

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Just how do you work out what to do next ?

Thinking about work here and how we get through all that work that we need to get done. I work in a post with a work profile that can be best described as having a baseline of work that we need to get done so the project moves forward. On top of that, we get questions coming in that are usually on a very tight timescale and require some techie/engineering braincells to figure out :

Where to look to get the information
What information is needed
When info is “Too Much” and clouds the issue
Figuring out what the question actually means …

People can ask one question but they’re really meaning to ask a different one. However, they can’t ask the question they’re really intending to because they will either dictate the answer or it will be an answer that no one wants to hear. Or they’re not really sure what the question should have been in the first place.

Anyway, back to the original thought. Priorities. With a heavy workload, what do we decide to crack on with first ?

I dunno how I look from the outside but my inner scheduling tends to reflect my thought processes. That would be thought processes that rebound between utter chaos and absolute order. I’m capable of thinking in the absolutes of computer logic but can also come out with the off the wall longitudinal thinking (longitudinal thinking = even more obscure than lateral) directions that no one in their right mind would go to, usually because the radical thought has been trained out of them.

(I just wish the chaos could be a bit more controlled and spontaneous, I’ll often think the inspiration thought quite some time after the moment has gone)

What kind of jobs do we tend to do ?
Baseline repetitive tasks we can do without thinking
Deep Thought investigations
Quick 5 minute jobs
Jobs that if we sit and stare at them, they will never get done
Things that need an Idea Foundation before you can start

There’s more to it than that but you get the basic idea. Those 5 minute jobs are usually things where people say “no need to do it now”. I like to get these out of the way asap. If I don’t, in 5 minutes I’ll have gonSQUIRREL (name that film) when the pretty blonde lady* walks past and completely forgotten what they’d asked me to do. And in an hour or so, the fella who’s asked for the 5 minute job gets as embarassed about reminding you as you do about forgetting.
*(we are blessed with pretty dark haired ladies who work for us too)

Yep – get ’em out the way quick.

The difference between the Deep Thought stuff and the baseline stuff is curious. I enjoy the Deep Thought stuff as it lets me harness my brain some more. It’s new and interesting and tends to be open ended. Your result depends on how smart you are at digging out information. And I get a kick out of finding stuff out. But the baseline stuff still needs to get done or we miss dates and people give our bosses a hard time (which then gets passed on). It’s much easier to say “Yep, all done on my end” than “Ummm, will get to that soon”.

That last one is a thorny one. It’s those tasks where a lot of inspiration is needed to get something made. Inspiration isn’t something you can force, it has to come naturally. I used to produce certificates for people who leave the project and I’m doing one again as a bit of an emergency job. They’re custom made for the leavers and pick up highlights and lowlights of their stay with us. If you sit and stare at them, the inspiration to fill the template doesn’t happen. But if it’s sitting minimised behind the word document you’re reviewing, those random thoughts have a habit of tapping you on the shoulder.

That job’s almost done now after just a day of incidental thought on it. And it’s got some things in there that are sure to provoke the guffaws. Muahahaha.

Everyone will have their own way of prioritising their workload. I think mine works reasonably well as a fit for how my brain works. I fall back on the baseline load when there’s no fastball investigations to do, or when baseline starts to pile up. I get the quick & easy tasks out of the way before my Goldfish memory makes me forget. The inspiration tasks benefit from the chaotic part of my brain ticking away in the background.

I also like to get the preparations out of the way the evening before. I’m not a quick starter in the morning, so doing that prep the day before allows it all to get done efficiently. Doing it in the morning only leads to PANIC and huge potential for distractions (like Pretty Lady with task only You can help with – yes, I’m a sucker for that) meaning your prep is rushed and flawed.

I’ve not mentioned training yet. We have to do a certain amount of training each year. It’s a necessary evil that helps us be more efficient. And with a flexible working hours system, less hours needed for a task means more chance to disappear on the Friday afternoon. Why spend hours doing something the hard way if a training thing would have shown you the quick and easy way ?

Being more efficient doesn’t make training interesting though …

Right – time to wrap up and see what the Next Game will be after finishing the Mass Effect series again. Tomorrow (after Teacake Raid!) will be more baseline task, this time with a difference as I’m checking the evidence behind what we’re accepting, which means learning how to interpret that evidence. I can do that because today I got the fast task done which was promised complete by the end of the week.

LOOK ! SQUIRREL !

It’s another of the Warhammer 40k Space Marine battles books …

Happy to say it continues the standard set down by Rynn’s World. Actually, it’s a better book because it paces its action well but most important, it doesn’t lose its action focus. You know when you’re reading something or watching something and you suddenly go “How the hell did that happen ?” You feel as if you’ve missed something critical, you’ve blinked and you’ve missed something important. That’s what I mean by Action Focus, when a narrative loses that the reader/watcher starts thinking “what did I miss ?” instead of “what’s coming next ?”

Helsreach is set on the Hive World known as Armageddon in a Hive City called Helsreach. In the Warhammer 40k world, the Hive Worlds are those where the population has grown so much and the world has become so polluted due to industry that they have to collect together in cities with numbers in the upper millions. That said, conditions on Helsreach seem better than the Orestes Forge World of Titanicus.

Anyway – the Orks are coming again (just like Rynn’s World) and a contingent of Space Marines from the Black Templars are going to save the day. Or at least allow the defenders to hang on grimly until the bitter end. The Titans are also in play here, which is one of the subplots running through the book. When you have the elite superhuman warriors of the Space Marines and the Princeps of a 80 meter tall Titan, who’s in charge ?

The character at the centre of the book is Grimaldus, a Space Marine Chaplain recently elevated to effectively being the right hand man of the Chapter leader. Let’s just say he’s having a confidence crisis. Matrix quote : “Don’t think you can, Know you can”. Grimaldus doesn’t even think he can justify himself being in the Reclusiarch (religious leader of the Chapter) position and firmly believes he won’t survive the assault on Helsreach. A confidence deficit like that can be highly infectious …

We have our supporting cast for Grimaldus, which includes crazy Andrej, the Major and the Adjutant, the Crone, the priest and the various members of the Guard and Grimaldus’ squad. The author (Aaron Dembski-Howden) does a good job here. The Space Marines are a little more Human too. In other books, look at a Space Marine the wrong way and they’ll kill you. And these are the troops charged with being the first and last line of defence of humanity. The Black Templars want a good fight but they know what they’re fighting for. A common fault with a lot of books is that the characters are all the same. Not so much here, there’s a good selection of disparate characters struggling for survival.

And that’s what this book is. The definite message coming through here is that in war, there are no winners. There’s just the survivors and the dead. And the survivors may not have much to look forward to after the war ends. With that kind of message, it’s all the more important for the author to keep the reader interested in a way that Turtledove’s WorldWar series fails to do. There’s only so much depression a reader can take …

Bah – I’m rambling again …

This is another book I raced through quite quickly. It’s paced well, it’s not too predictable. As is usual for WH40K books, the body count is catastrophic … The epic scale of the campaign is dealt with admirably, with the Action Focus being retained all the way through. I’ll be looking out for more from this author 🙂