Month: January 2012

I’m hoping that I’ll be in a fit state to play cricket again this year, after the past 2 suffering heavily from injury related setbacks.

2010 – during the first few games, I was slowed down by a groin strain affecting my right hip. I could still Run Real Fast in a straight line but the groin strain affecting turning and accelerating. It also hit my brakes but that’s not a problem usually. Just takes longer to get back in position.

I enjoy close fielding more than outfielding, there’s more chance to make a difference when you’re fielding close in. I aim to scare the batsmen off running by swooping quickly on the ball. I’ve not made a runout for a while but I keep the score down by discouraging the batsmen from running. The response to the groin strain was to field even closer.

But … this was also the season of the possibly fractured leg. I never got that diagnosed (intentionally) but this one slowed me down for most of that season. I could run fairly ok on the soft earth of a cricket outfield but had real trouble on roads. And over the top of all that was the poorly shoulder which prevents me from bowling. No diagnosis ? All they’d have done would be to immobilise the leg by putting in a cast, which would have wrecked the muscle and been highly awkward. I could still put weight on the limb, so the pain was a helpful “take care” message. Painkillers would have blocked that message and maybe made me cause more damage.

2011 was a different matter … I played (badly!) in two games and then had to drop out due to crippling back pain. I’m blaming the chairs in some of the new meeting rooms. And then I developed a skin problem on my legs which is taking ages to go away. The skin thing killed chances of cricket because I couldn’t put a knee pad over it.

So 2011 was just two games and had me wondering if my legs would be in shape to allow me to take to the cricket field again.

I’m hoping for better from 2012 cricket but it’s a good idea to take stock before the season to know whether it’s a good idea. Hell, I don’t really care whether it’s a good idea, I just miss that feeling of the wind whipping past my ears when I Run Real Fast.

Shoulder – is still there. Hasn’t fallen off. Hasn’t gotten any better either to the point where it often feels like there’s a cluster of strong fingers digging into it. But … as long as I stay away from the outfield and hold my temper if I drop a catch (I lose it and do hard throws) then I should be ok. Just not a good idea for me to try to bowl.

Weight – mixed news here. I’m consistently down half a stone (my weight goes up or down a couple of lbs each day – tis normal) but I’ve kinda stalled there. I’m refusing to get downhearted about that, as the weight loss effort is more about being disciplined about what I eat. And I think I’m managing that. I’m comfort eating much less than I used to and I can’t remember when I last had pizza.

Less weight will mean Run Very Fast instead of just Real Fast. What I have to watch out for is keeping the right kind of balance in my body, as being out of balance leads to damage from cramps.

Back – been suffering from this over the past week. I think it’s more a motivational thing. Minor low level (albeit continuous) pain I can ignore if my head’s in the right place. I just have to unlock the right motivation to see me through the pain.

Legs – are improving. Although like the weight, there’s Good and Bad days here. It’s hugely improved from what it was a few months ago and today, it’s happy enough to allow a knee brace to be put on it. Knee pads are essential for me in the field as I make up for lack of skill & practice with enthusiasm. That can involve me stopping cricket balls with my knee so a knee pad gives them a fighting chance to stay usable.

However, this is a good day for the legs as tomorrow they may get angry red on me again. We shall see. At least the skin is fully intact again now.

General fitness – Even though I am at least 1 stone heavier than I should be for my height & build, I’m blessed with what could be called Natural Fitness. Without any preparation work, I’ll be able to hit that first game running. Sure, I’ll hurt like hell for about 3 days after but recovery time should let me be ready for the next game. And I recover the fitness very quickly. I just need to carry around less weight so there’s less strain on the rest of me. Hell, I went up Snowdon without much prep work although my legs were trying to cramp up and explode. That was 26 miles walking added to the up and down the mountain combined with doing all the driving for the weekend. And that’s just 20 months ago.

What else … I got given a weird mouse for work because I got spotted having trouble with an RSI affected wrist. This is more of a cold thing though and is one of those things I can ignore if the motivation is there.

Apart from all that, things seem rosy. The kicker will be if those legs keep recovering to the point where I can put a knee pad on over the bad skin. Fingers crossed I can still remember some technique :-).

Motivation is another make or break. I struggled last week in work, which probably had a lot to do with the early start on Tuesday. The struggle manifests in not noticing having done stuff. I like/need to feel I’m being effective and struggle if I’m not. Trouble is in the “noticing” … I look back on last week and realise I did get a fair bit of stuff done, I just wasn’t noticing at the time. I managed to be one of the last people out every day too so when it comes to sticking in there to finish things off, I was doing ok.

But that’s enough about work. Still lots to do there and last Tuesday’s trip was well worth it. I got to see what I’ve helped build, which is awesome. It let me see the people down there too, which always helps for being on the same page with what you want to be doing.

How to close … At age 37, I don’t have that many seasons left for cricket but I hopefully have at least one more in me. The type of cricket I play, evening cricket, works well for that because it’s made up of short games and easier competition.

Will I manage to persuade someone into being my motivation (hopefully she has strong fingers and patience!) ? Hopefully 🙂 Be even better if she’s prepared to get some fresh air every once in a while ignoring the muppets on the cricket field :-). I tried to get Evil Ex to come along to a game or two as the fresh air would have done her good. And it would have been perfectly acceptable for the cricket to be ignored in favour of a good book and occasional “yes dear”.

I haven’t done a Thursday Thirteen for ages … And I figured I’d step back in with a few random thoughts. I’m fairly active on Facebook, more active than I am in looking around the blogging world. FB looks for shorter, sharper posts and most of the time I try and make people grin with what I post.

Here’s a selection of the recent FB insanity :

1 – Sharing ICanHazCheezburger’s National Popcorn Day. Having to postpone this because I’m too drained right now to demolish a bucket of popcorn.

2 – “Was going to get ‘healthy’ stuff earlier but now has something infinitely better”. I have cookies !

3 – “hmph. You’da thought that with all the hot water I’ve just had on me from a long and much needed shower (sore back), the heating would have come on to make the t-shirts on the radiator warm ! :-)” That was a really good shower. Back definitely felt better for a while. It’s not that bad, I’m just noticing it more than usual at the moment due to being drained.

4 – “think I learned something at Costa earlier … I might not be as anti-cheese as I thought I was 🙂 Think it was actually their hot chocolate which was setting me off …” I have a sensitive belly. It definitely reacts to cheese but what I didn’t realise was that it was also reacting to hot chocolate. I guess it’s coffee from now on. MUAHAHAHA

5 – “Internet = broke -> sad face”. And there was another pointing to Virginmedia’s status page. Lost connectivity to the net on Tuesday. It’s only when you lose something that you’re used to being 100% available that you notice it’s gone. And my ISP has been almost 100% reliable since I’ve been with them with only occasional quibbles.

6 – “That’s a quarter of the month’s data allocation for the mobile used this morning. Back to the ipod for this pm :-)”. That’s from listening to cricket commentary on Tuesday morning 🙂 Great result for Geek Squad Testing, awful result for England’s cricket.

7 – “Definitely easier to travel at silly o’clock”. I managed to get my butt on the road at 5.30am on Tuesday, half an hour earlier than intended. I suspect that if I’d tried to get 30 more minutes of Head In Pillow, I’d have set off at 6.30 or later. I know what I’m like. Anyway – roads were pretty good and the sun was coming up by the time I was getting close to the destination.

8 – “brainzzzzz”. Sent at 05.23 Tuesday morning. I probably looked like a zombie too.

9 – “why am I still chatting to people online when I need to be on the road in 6 hours ? Rubber Mallet time :-)” This was someone on Steamchat who I met at random in a games shop last year. I was still chatting cos I think I was making someone laugh :-).

10 – “I fueled-up my Lexus CT200h, 43.5 UK MPG“. This is an automatic thing that pops up when I tell Fuelly that I’ve filled up the car. It was only half a tank but with 240 miles to go the next day, I wanted fuel in the car because I didn’t know where the cheap petrol stations would be on the route.

11 – “Daft question – why would a work machine email browser need to support internet banking ? And who would be prepared to submit their login credentials to something with potential keylogging …” We had a bulletin come round saying that the IE6 browser which we’re forced to use at work would be updated to IE8. And they stated specifically that it would now support internet banking. I would never, EVER, trust my personal login credentials to a work machine. I just don’t know how much key logging, data logging, packet monitoring is done. Just that monitoring does take place on the work internet connection. Besides, it’s work. Internet banking is for home.

12 – “just spotted – Best Gaming CPUs with comment “only upgrade if there’s 3 tiers now and new”. My old cpu only just gets on the list ! (Athlon 64 X2-3800+ up to i5-2500k)”. I’ve updated the link there as Tomshardware have updated their chart. Still a big leap from my old PC to the new one and the old one could still do a reasonable job on newer games like SWTOR, Mass Effect 2 and DXHR.

Last one : 13 – “some forum moderators should be shot for being dangerous …” Oh yes. The public folders at work got shut down partly because some of the moderators allowed things to explode to a point where the Bosses took notice. This comment came up because one of the moderators on CT200hforum was putting on instructions that could lead to irreparable (expensive) damage to people’s cars … He put the “how to break it ?” instruction on and didn’t include the “This WILL break the car” warnings.

I managed to resist putting a comment in about certain women being rated on : Number Of Cheezburgers Required To Look Healthy. I like curves ! This was from a Mall trip earlier where there were more than a few fashion victims limping around who had that hollow look and stilted walk that comes from extreme dieting. I wish women wouldn’t do that to themselves.

I like to leave my main PC on all day. Or at least, on overnight so I can quickly check my emails on the way out the door to work without having to wait for it to boot up. (see the PS …)

But … The “who’s paying the electric bill?” part of me thinks that might be a little wasteful. So … I remembered back a few years to when the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was popular. That’s now evolved into an application called BOINC, which can manage multiple projects that will use your spare cpu time for something better than just keeping the house warm.

So I have a series of projects that use the spare cpu cycles on my desktop PC to do sums for research projects. If you look on Task Manager on a work PC, check the “System Idle Time”. After a full day, that System Idle Time could be around 7 hours per cpu core. And that’s with you in for 8 hours. Yep, most of the time your work PC is on, it’s actually doing nothing but waiting for the disc, network or you to tap the keys.

BOINC puts that spare cpu power to good use.

Think of the number of PCs in the average organisation and then multiply it by that 90% idle time. It’s close to Supercomputer power that’s just not being used. The Met Office keep asking for new supercomputers, they probably have enough spare cpu cycles in their offices to not need them (they actually use BOINC too).

There’s a wide range of applications that BOINC runs :

Medical research
Cosmology
Physics
Alien Hunting
Climate research
Cryptography (I don’t support this)
And the list goes on, including apps which I think are a waste like chess analysis and prime number analysis. I’ll also not support the Cryptography apps (I don’t think it’s in my best interest) and a good few years ago I sacked one because it switched from honest medical research to bioweapon research in a misguided response to the Anthrax scare that followed 9/11. I understand what they were thinking but I think it was really bad ethics …

So what makes me choose one ? And what makes me sack ’em ?

Basically, if I think the app is going to be productive and useful I’ll see if can use the machine. I currently run SETI, Rosetta (medical), World Community Grid (medical), Milkyway (cosmology), Spinhenge (dunno!), Einstein (physics/cosmology) and Climate Prediction (gief snow!). Of those, Einstein is being fired but I’ll let it go through the work first.

What makes me ditch a project ?

If it doesn’t play fair with the rest of them then I’ll show what I think of that by not giving it any cpu cycles. There’s a few that have fallen foul of that :

Einstein – floods the machine with work to such a degree that other projects weren’t being allowed a chance.
World Community Grid – some of the projects inside this have been fired because their deadlines are too short.

The way BOINC works is that it divides up calculations into Work Units, small bites that a home machine can cope with. These can take anything between 5 minutes to 400 hours on my Intel i5-2500k powered machine. Each work unit has a deadline by which the results have to come back, these deadlines are usually sensible. However …

WCG – some of the individual projects ask for their results to come back inside a few days, instead of the customary 10 days for a 5 hour work unit.
LHC – set deadlines of less than a week.
GRID – 5 days for the only work unit I’ll do for them.

BOINC will then choose which project it runs based on deadline and time left. If time is tight, it’ll assign a high priority to work that might not be ready in time. GRID’s forced its one app to go immediately High Priority and when LHC@home actually had work, it set the deadlines so short that the same thing happened.

There’s other meanie apps too. They’ll effectively Game the queue system to get priority for their science. I don’t think that’s on and I respond by giving up the spare cpu time to science that plays fair.

What can run it ? Any PC and I think the Linux & Mac powered ones too. I wouldn’t recommend it for laptops because they’re not designed to be running calculations 100% of the time all the time. They get hot because the cpu is doing Stuff. Does it affect things like gaming ? Not necessarily and definitely not for me. I have BOINC set to only do calcs if the machine is idle for 3 minutes which gives Full Steam Ahead to Deus Ex HR or whichever game I’m on.

So that’s BOINC – how I justify having my machine on all day 🙂

PS Time for bootup is no longer an issue … The SSD boot drive in my desktop makes power on happen faster than some conventional machines will come off standby …

One of the few flaws of my latest car is that it doesn’t pick up Long Wave on the radio. That’s not a big flaw but it could have stopped me listening to cricket commentary. And anyone knows me knows that if it were anatomically possible, I’d gnaw my ears off to get to England test match cricket commentary.

But … an away trip with work provided the ideal excuse to test out a new bit of playing with toys. Test Match starts 0600. Trip was scheduled to start at 0600. Spooky coincidence ? Maybe 🙂 To be honest, it was pure coincidence because I budget for a 60mph average, which makes the 120 mile trip roughly 2 hours. And then I add an hour of leeway because of traffic and because it’s always better to arrive fresh and relaxed for a meeting than flustered due to being late. So a 0900 start (set up time needed before 0930 meeting start) meant getting on the road by 0600. I actually managed to get on the road a bit earlier which allowed a chance for a wake up coffee 🙂

Hey – I’m getting away from the purpose of this post 🙂

What apps am I using on the Android phone right now ? When I first got my latest phone, I didn’t think I’d use the smartphone aspects half as much as I do. What makes it better is that I can send the audio from the phone to the car via Bluetooth.

Bluetooth integration – this comes with the phone and car and allows them to do things like handsfree carphoning. The Lexus kit works really well, it’s like having a spiderphone in the car. Impressive.

Tune In Radio –

Lack of LongWave for Radio 4 LW made me go “oops” as I realised it would put a severe cramp into being able to listen to cricket commentary. Enter this app, which allows you to easily get to internet radio stations (that you could get to via their sites anyway!) through its own custom menus. It worked pretty well and its buffering meant that silent moments due to bad signal weren’t plentiful enough to get annoying.

I’d heartily recommend this app, although I’d put a warning down that it will munch through your internet data allocation if you use it too much. Bluetooth integration worked well and sound quality matched or bettered that of the car’s AM radio.

Radardroid –

This is a speed camera database app that runs on an Android phone. It’ll use the phone’s GPS to tell it where you are and lets you know if there’s danger of speeding fines … Bluetooth integration didn’t seem to work though and the database was either patchy or being quiet due to me not speeding. Still, having a “Speed Camera Soon” voice coming from the centre console is better than no warnings at all 🙂

Will have to give it another shot when I’m not using the phone for cricket commentary. I also need to recruit a friend to keep an eye on the speed display while I hit a steady speed like 60 on normal roads or 70 on motorway. Purpose – see exactly how much my speedo overreads, I think it’s a +5% overread which I’m ok with. I’ll need help for that because I don’t want to be holding the phone up to read it while doing 60-70.

Marinetraffic – Lets you see where ships are in the world because there’s loads of people out there who collect reports from the AIS (Automatic Identification System) boxes they have on board. I don’t use this that much but it’s a nice to have if you’re interested.

ECBCricket – Essential for the cricket fan. Gives up to date score info where available.

Game authenticators – After having my Eve account info stolen, I take authentication a bit more seriously. I have both the Blizzard authenticator and the SWTOR authenticator. If you’re involved in either game, it’s worth having the authenticator. It’s free. They give you a number with lots of digits that changes every minute, you put the number in with the login. Hackers could get your password but not the authenticator code.

Facebook – Hey. I’m an info junkie 🙂 Facebook = info. That reminds me … done. (That was me switching Firefox tabs to poke Craziequeen)

Maps – This one came with the Google phone but is handier than you’d think … The traffic overlay lets you quickly check how insane it would be to hit particular roads. Now I just need to remember to check it before venturing out the door …

Notes – Another built in app. I use it to take postcodes to the car for satnav and used it today for logging my journey info. (Miles & Time for expenses and flexi)

TrackID – ever wondered what that great song is that’s playing in the shop ? TrackID might tell you. If you get a signal, which I struggle to get in HMV these days.

Finally, IMDB – the mobile version of the Internet Movie Data Base which occasionally gets used.

I could say I use other apps like the calendar but I’m not that organised 🙂

Cheers Dianne 🙂

If this was Facebook I'd be hitting the like button right now 😉

I wanted to thank you for the hug for me and the kitties
it was appreciated 🙂

Just finished a play through of Deus Ex Human Revolution (DXHR)

I got this one last year but after a short look, I decided to shelve it until I did the PC upgrade planned for the Halloween week. My ageing dinosaur wasn’t really up to the job of running a game as detailed as this.

Glad I waited, the DXHR experience was well worth the wait. Gamers expect different things nowadays from our A List titles. We look for story, gorgeous graphics and the ability to do exactly what we want in the game. That’s pretty rare, even in new games. We also look for voice acting to replace the text only stuff we had before dvd’s came along to hold all the data.

In short (okok it’s me), we’re looking for an immersive experience where we escape into another world. Whether that be fantasy, Earth fiction or other world fiction.

DXHR is what I’d call Earth fiction, based in the near future where augmentation technology is becoming part of everyday life. That’s where amputees get their limbs back by technology providing artificial replacements. You are launched into a world with conspiracy, prejudice and urban decay utterly rife. You feel as if the rule of law is being set aside in favour of companies operating above that law ignoring the corrupt governments that get in their way.

And they pull it off very successfully too. I’ve happily been jumping into the DXHR world over the past few evenings, finishing it off tonight. I’ll try and avoid spoilers.

The game engine plays a lot like a normal First Person Shooter with role play aspects built in. You steadily build up your character over the course of the game, adding more and more bionic capabilities to your character. Those include a radar, eyes that see through walls, hacking (big part of the game), limbs, lungs, everything.

Stealth is a massive aspect to the game. The ideal way to play through is to take down one or two bad guys at a time. The game is set up so that if you try to take on 3-4 armed men at the same time by storming in all guns blazing, you die fast. That difficulty just adds to the immersion. The cover system is very well realised. And you have a valid choice between lethal and non-lethal. My 3rd play through will go for the “Pacifist” achievement now I’m practiced in the stealthiness. (Want to play with the big guns in the next run)

It starts to blur the line between Game & Virtual Realm in a way that MMOs can’t touch and games like Mass Effect are only just getting close to. It’s far in advance of the older FPS’s.

I’m kinda in danger of going too geeky here so I’ll try and avoid getting too deep into techy nerd-dom. Suffice to say this game is about as close to letting the gamer do precisely what they want when it comes to dynamic combat situations.

However … there’s a catch. For all the stuff it lets you do while in combat, it’s still severely limited while in story mode. A criticism of a lot of FPS style games is that they are on rails and this game is no exception. Outside of side quests, you’re driven down a specific path with not much chance for straying. That said, it’s a very good story. If it were a book, I’d give it a good few reads.

Right – I can no longer ignore the dinner bell coming from the microwave.

DXHR – Pro’s : immersive, extensive, excellent story and great stealth combat system. Looks great too.
Con’s : it’s on rails. And that’s about all I can think of.

PS Note I didn’t include “free of bugs” in my list of what gamers look for. Sadly, we still buy games from companies that have terrible records with keeping their games bug free. I’ve just added DICE (Battlefield 3) to my Do Not Buy list, which also includes Bethesda. Too many bugs in their previous games for me to consider buying Skyrim.

Just over a year ago, I thought the iTunes library had gotten a little too old. One way I decide what I listen to is what I’ve listened to least … And because some stuff had got into the library donkeys year ago, it was getting to be a while between listening to some of the best tracks in there.

I get bored of some stuff really easily … That’s a drawback of having the kind of memory I have. So I vary what I listen to by queueing up albums from the Longest Since Played list and the Least Played list. The next two albums I listen to will be a Simon & Garfunkel collection followed by Whatever by Aimee Mann. Apart from a pair of new Doctor Who soundtrack cd’s, I’ve listened to everything in the library at least twice since resetting all the play counts last year.

What’s got the most repeat listens so far ? One rule here – only one track per artist or group. And I’m picking my favourites. Cos I can 🙂 Youtube links where I can find ’em like usual :

1 – Cardigans with In The Round. Absolutely, totally, utterly love this track. This one is in the lead with 18 plays and a few more of their’s are in the Most Played list too. 03.45am No Sleep is particularly special. This is the best though and will always get me joining in, no matter who’s around to hear (before the run away screaming part).

2 – All About Eve with Apple Tree Man (strange video…). This one somehow hasn’t managed to get in the Most Played (needs 13 and has 12) but it’s better than the one that did (Devil Woman cover).

3 – Dire Straits with Expresso Love. It’s the guitar intro (Knopfler is a god) combining with the piano that makes this track special. 17 plays for this one.

4 – Bunnies ! The video to What’s A Girl To Do by Bat For Lashes has about 800,000 views on YT. At least 1% of those will be from me & my sister, we are firmly under the spell of Natasha Khan.

5 – Goldfrapp’s Eat Yourself is in there with 15 plays but I actually prefer the Live Lounge cover of It’s Not Over Yet. But I don’t think that’s written by Goldfrapp so I’ll link Utopia instead. That voice is incredible (too good for laptop speakers he says adding it to the iTunes DJ queue) and to show it off so well live is making me want to check if they have any local tour dates coming soon.

6 – Has Edie Brickell for One Last Time but the YT of that doesn’t work. I’ve linked No Dinero far too many times so here’s another one off the excellent Stranger Things album : Buffalo Ghost.

7 – Always had a soft spot for Kate Bush, although that’s for the early stuff. Not so keen on the new stuff. But when Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake came on iTunesDJ, I just had to follow it with Oh England My Lionheart too. And it’s one I can sing along to as well ! (When my voice is happier than it is at the moment)

8 – Oh yes. From one incredible lady singer to an incredible lady artist : KT Tunstall with That live version of Black Horse & The Cherry Tree.

9 – Michelle Shocked is in the library at 9 with Memories Of East Texas but I’m linking something more Bloggy : Anchorage.

And last one for today (gotta leave some !) :

10 – Has Norah Jones with Man Of The Hour but I’ve linked that a few times too. Don’t Know Why it can’t be something that’s a little … different … this time. Magic with added puppets.

10 songs is enough for one post. Saving some for later. Songs like Set The Fire To The Third Bar, The Incidentals but All I Need right now with the weather gone chilly is a little California Dreamin’ (Buffy’s on).

PS The iTunes library doesn’t know about the late night karaoke sessions where I dial up the favourite songs on Youtube for a bit of singing along to. That kind of thing is a “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”. Muahaha.

The gameplay is outstanding as well – really enjoying the stealthy play 🙂

Aye, the view looks amazing!! It is incredible what they can do now! hugs Sandra