Year: 2011

Girls definitely make life far more interesting (and fun) than it could be or would be (heaven forbid!) without them…..

Met a nice one last night, funny and a Star Trek/BSG geek!

There’s a quote by the late Robert Heinlein (and by lots of others too) :

“What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it”

I’m struggling at the moment, through the after effects of things like new shoes, the cold and the various long term niggles that I carry around with me. I try to keep my shoes going as long as I can, because I know that when I do change, there will be a few weeks where they will dig holes in the back of my feet (achilles area). Gets a bit sore and distracting. I have other niggles too, like the continuing saga of the audio blips on the amp … (they’re still happening but I have progress and an idea).

So – struggling on the whole but surviving with a little help. Where’s the help coming from ? Well, I wanted to give a special mention to the online people, which brings me back to that quote …

When I’m in Warcraft, there’s often calls of “Ice – come on Mumble”. “Ice” is my nickname to the Warcraft people, short for Iceangel. Mumble is the voice chat software we use when people in the guild are doing things together. Usually that’s instanced dungeons where 5 of us will team up to spank the bad guys. Or there’s just generally kicking back and having a natter.

I’ve been very lucky in that when the guild on The Maelstrom server broke up, I was welcomed into the Violence Reborn guild as they moved to a different server. The core of VR is Swedish although, as is the norm for online game guilds, it has turned truly multinational. We’re all Horde out for a good time. We also stick by each other, which can be tough when you start getting involved with the wider WoW community (think toys escaping from prams). We have fun with our mistakes, whereas people picked up at random just leg it or get an “it’s not my fault, must be your’s” attitude which isn’t helpful.

The blokes in the guild tend to be fairly quiet (although if you start talking WoW Theory, they turn Juggernaut), it’s the ladies who make the guild what it is. It starts with the Swedish accents. But it’s mainly the free spirited, uninhibited Wanna Have Fun attitude they bring in. They don’t take things too seriously, never forgetting that it’s a game and games are supposed to be Fun.

They’ll quite happily drag the boys along with them too. There’s two cases recently where I had the privilege to be included :

Instance run with Shidra and Alex. Alex was being a bit quiet, this was the Shidra show. There was me, trying to learn the place we were in and the rest of the group were nattering away as if they were wanting to get the words out before rationing came in. And it was insane too. I started grinning early and by the end of the activities, I couldn’t help myself, the Cheshire Cat Grin and laughter was threatening to turn my noggin into a Flip Top Head.

The other one is just the other night, which starts with an “Alex is singing on Mumble” in guild chat. Gotta check that out, so I join the voice comms server. Within minutes, I’m grinning from ear to ear again and laughing along with the rest of ’em. And that “drag the boys along with them” thing ? Yep. Couldn’t help myself, I joined in late with the singing too. And my mic headset is so dusty from disuse, I have to get Rentokil out to fight off the Dust Bunnies before I let it near my head.

A little laughter is good for the soul, so you can probably imagine the boost that comes from being involved in this select group of people.

The Mercs had one or two ladies around too, although they tended not to stay too long. I suspect they didn’t want to stay around because of some of the drama the guild had (some of which was centred around me !). Caira was pretty special though, would love to know how Caira & Auraka are doing now.

It’s not just in game though. It’s the people on Facebook and the people at work. I still seem to be a favourite of the Canteen Girls (although that has implications on my waistline). I’ve been lucky with work as well as with the VR people, it’s a pressure project but we all pull together to get through the work and solve the problems. There’s one of us who’s trying to give up smoking at the moment … I’m passing on tubes of mints (I keep ’em to moderate excess stomach acid) to help her beat the cravings. She’s probably through half my supply by now but if it helps liberate her from smoking, it’ll be so Worth It.

Wait … Why am I still writing this blog post when I could be in game seeing what the VR Girls are up to ? Cya !

PS English is the second language for a lot of the VR people, they tend to talk in Swedish in places like Facebook. Which is where Google Translate comes in … It doesn’t translate everything but it does a great job. Oh – and even though it’s a second language, their English is far better than some of what I read and hear from people born and raised in this country …

Ahh – what's the difference though between reading a book again and watching a movie or a TV series again ?

Movie = 2 hours

Book = 5 days

Also, I tend to have *many* more books stacked up to be read than movies to be watched…

Ahh – what's the difference though between reading a book again and watching a movie or a TV series again ?

Saying that though, the little touches that do setting up for later are usually harder to see in a movie unless they hit you over the head with it.

I hardly ever re-read anything. I like the thrill of the new too much. If you know what's coming next where's the suspense?

I think I have a new trend starting – abandoning books …

But that’s happened twice now over the last couple of months. I think my fixation with David Weber has been broken by a certain Jack Campbell. On the one hand, you have David Weber who is occasionally brilliant with well structured and decently paced books. However, there’s also the David Weber who buries the good stuff in his books in a mire of non-interesting, non-important filler. I gave up on Shadow of Saganami after 300 pages out of a 1000 and I don’t think I’ll go back to it.

That’s one danger of spoilers actually. The giving up with it was born partly out of looking at the sneak preview chapter at the back which is taken from the next book and then me looking up some of that in wiki. Because of that, I have a synopsis of this book and the next, without having to wade through the filler. After 300 pages, nothing had really happened.

On the other hand, there’s the Jack Campbell set of 6 books which I raced my way through. They’re about 350 pages in each, all structured around Big Fleet action happening in a star system as the Lost Fleet is making its way through. And by Big Fleet, there’s several hundred warships in this Lost Fleet. These books keep it simple and the filler is kept to an absolute minimum. Combined with the star system based action, that means the pacing is excellent. Hopefully there will be more to come from this one.

Hey ! How about this Red Mars book ?

It’s part of a trilogy of about 5 parts (where’ve we heard that before ?) by Kim Stanley Robinson. You can tell there’s a huge amount of research gone into this trilogy in the engineering and planetology detail that forms its core. There’s a lot of good stuff here and it hangs together well with the “could this work ?” feeling always being positive. However … a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Occasionally a bit of the middle gets shunted to the start to kick start the beginning.

What KSR forgets is that End thing. Red Mars ends with an excellent cliff hanger and from what I remember of Green Mars, that ends well too. The last book is a major disappointment though, as it’s a collection of travelogues inside the KSR Mars solar system. There’s no real End here, although you could say that’s the point in a Life Goes On kind of way. However, it feels like the trilogy could have finished after 2.5 books as the last is mostly filler with the Actual Story Detector reading negative all the way.

Anyway, I’ve given up on this one because :
a) I’ve read it before (and enjoyed it)
b) There’s better Mars books (will read the Ben Bova one again sometime)
c) I could see the travelogue signs creeping into Red Mars

There’s the conflict between wanting to know what happens in it and not particularly wanting the tedium of finding out. That’s one reason I read a few books in between attempting a Turtledove WorldWar book. I’ll put this one in the A to Z but it may well get replaced by something like Return To Mars or something else beginning with R.

Next book is Titanicus by Dan Abnett, where the God Machines walk on Orestes. It’ll be the second book I’ve read by Dan Abnett but whereas the first was centred around the humble Imperial Guard, this one tackles the opposite end of the scale where you have huge war engines 100m tall striding across the battlefield.

I started it last night and am already well over a hundred pages in.

Right – I have a job to do and it’ll involve raiding a village under attack to recover supplies.
Will Raid For :
Food
Mini Eggs
Pizza
Or to listen to the Hot Swedish Girls.

Heh heh heh – last car I got, I didn't actually test drive. Which probably told Carcraft that I really needed to get rid of the last one … The Honda looks interesting. The Mazda RX-8 would have been good too, if it hadn't failed the Cricket Bag Test.

It's a shame the high street lost Zavvi/Virgin. HMV were always more expensive and now they've lost the competition, they've got no incentive to give proper prices. Most of my recent stuff has come from Amazon because High St shops don't seem interested in stocking what I want to buy.

Everyone I know that owns a Honda would buy Honda again adn loves their car. Same for Mazda owners I have found. You have to take a test drive to see what a car is really like though (as I ma sure you are aware!).

I like buying music and films online and don't miss browsing in shops at all really. Just as well seeing as HMV are such a useless shop with no customer service ethos unless they are taking money off you (and sometimes not much then). I'm definitley and Amazon/Play/CD Wow/ The Hut/Zavvi person these days, which is just as well as I buy quite a bit of media and everytime something is a quid or more cheaper – it soon adds up over a year! I was quite shocked when I worked it out!

Busyish evening tonight.

I’ve known since last Thursday that I had a duff headlight, thanks to the only Brizzle driver to let me know with a flash of his lights. But I’ve not really had a good opportunity to get it fixed until tonight. So the plan is hatched :

Nip over to the Mall.
Have a peek in Bristol Honda at their CR-Z car
Acquire a headlight bulb from Halfords
Have a rummage in the shops

The snow around here has turned into lots of dampness (I could hear the rain over Suzanne Vega’s 99.9 degrees F album) so another Cunning Plan ™ gets hatched.

And yes – the person who just went “OH NO !” and hid at the mention of a Sleepypete Cunning Plan, I heard you and I have my eye on you.

Not that cunning actually. More a means of getting a headlight bulb changed where there’s decent light and something over my head. That’s right, the downstairs car park at the Mall. Sheltered from the wind too, as close to garage conditions as I’m likely to get. Headlight changing is boring so I’m not going to say much about it, let’s just say that many of the swear words in common use today were invented during jobs like this.

Modern car engineering can be summed up as :
1 – Everything is crammed in to save space
2 – Things are designed to stay put
3 – Things are not supposed to be removed
4 – Owners should not question “£10 for part, £50 to fit” bills

2 and 3 combined to make changing simple stuff an exercise in frustration as you’re putting it back together. Add in number 1 in that list and you have a recipe for bruises. Still, the Focus is much easier to work on than the Puma. I’m very glad none of the bulbs blew on the Puma as I didn’t have a clue how to get in to where it kept its bulbs.

Next car ? I have the nagging feeling that the Focus is at the top of its Long Slippery Downhill. You know, the time when something mechanical has been running perfectly until … And then the problems start piling up. The signal this time has been the inlet manifold last year, which took the car off the road for about 3 weeks before it was fixed. It’s done about 62k miles so I should have at least another couple of years out of it. Definitely another few months because there’s still a loan outstanding on it.

Meh – rambling again. The Honda CR-Z is looking like the favourite at the moment … My favoured cars tend to be those that fit around the driver like a glove. They’ll subtly let the driver know what’s going to happen before it does and will obey their every command with the minimum of fuss. The Puma was great for this, a taut, light chassis and responsive engine made for a leather glove of a car. The Focus has more power but is also heavier … Think boxing glove … (Nah – that’s unfair, think batting glove)

The Honda looks fairly promising and would definitely satisfy the geekiness being a hybrid. The nagging drawbacks though are :

Underpowered – 0 to 60 is quoted as 10 secs. I’m used to better.
(Puma was 9 secs, my Focus is 8)
Chunky – good for that “glove” feeling but …
Cramped – I didn’t get the chance to look in the boot but I reckon it’ll fail the golf club test*
Would entail that “just driven off the forecourt” 50% loss of value

*Golf Club Test : Can you fit a golf bag in without having the back seats down. I’ve not had my golf clubs out for years but I still think it’s a good test. When I was looking at the Mazda RX-8, it got vetoed because it would have been downright evil to get a cricket bag out of … (Let alone shopping or tellies)

Oh – any trip to the Mall usually ends up as an excuse to wander around there for a while hunting bargains. (And shoes, although I ended up disappointed there AGAIN). It does cost less to buy things like blu-rays and music online but there’s something about hunting through looking to see what’s on offer. I much prefer scanning shelves to clicking “next” a hundred times on A N Other online shop.

Iron Man 1 and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr version) escaped from a shop today. Iron Man’s a blu-ray upgrade, as I know someone who’s wanting to pick it up on dvd …

So – headlight fixed, potential next car checked out (jury’s out). Now chilling out to music, listening to a few randoms before Queen’s A Night At The Opera (the album where Bohemian Rhapsody is not the best track …) comes on 🙂 Since zeroing the play counts, iTunes seems to be turning into a fan of :

Iron Maiden, Little Boots, Chris Rea, Gloria Estefan, Murray Gold … Must weave some Kate Bush, Alisha’s Attic and Goldfrapp into that mix.

It's not as good as the mad muppets that made Farscape into a classic. It was better than what we got from the Star Trek people 🙂

I always thought the first Commander did ok. Watching it again, I seem to be detecting a fair bit of "wrong step here, I'll lose my command" last chance-ism in there …

PS Wanting to watch the 4 series of Andromeda again.