Month: July 2012

More Olympics 🙂

(And incidentally – first post to be written on my desktop – well, I’m sitting at it so why not !)

One of the sports I grew up with was badminton, which I was pretty talented at. Note – that’s not the same as saying I was “good” at it. You see, as the shuttlecock was coming towards me I’d have 3 or 4 possible shots in my head. The talent for shotmaking that I had always recognised the safe shots that would keep me in the rally but the show off element (yes, it’s there) of my personality always, Always, chose the most spectacular.

So I’d get a reputation for being a good player because of the nutty shots I’d attempt and often pull off but wouldn’t win the games that I should have because I wasn’t boring enough to play percentages.

That’s one element of sport – taking chances is good but sometimes it’s better to stay low risk in order to survive long enough to pull out the spectacular. That’s boring though.

Cricket brings that out – my batting can best be described as boring. Technique flaws with my feet and left arm mean I’m not often whacking the ball back over the bowler’s head but hanging in there to nudge singles around and thump boundaries square of the wicket with timing. Teams need that, the more boring players will survive to hold the innings together against bowlers who could demolish a side full of spectacular but unlucky batsmen.

Anyway. Badminton.

I just finished enjoying watching Brit Girl Susan Egelstaff take on the Japanese Sayaka Sato. I’m getting better these days at watching technique deliberately with a view to learning from it. (I always watched technique but wasn’t so good at learning from it). Notes from watching the girls :

The badminton technique I had would have stood up pretty well. I had all the shots they were playing plus a couple more that they didn’t. I reckon with practice to eliminate the errors, groove technique and promote fitness, I could have been competing at a pretty high level. I’d have had to control the urge to play the silly spectacular shots but I did have the technique and agility to keep up.

It’s as fast a game as I remember.

Fitness really tells. Our Brit girl is just coming back after surgery and the lack of conditioning (can’t blame her) told in increasing errors towards the end of the game. Well fought but the errors cost the game. Badminton is a game of very small margins …

I have 2 shots that I didn’t see in the game :

Pirouette shot. Love this one. It’s where instead of arching your back to forehand overhead something behind you, you start to turn and backhand it back over the net. With supple wrists, you can still do pretty much what you want with it, hitting to any of the 4 corners. However, it’s not a percentage shot because it sends all your momentum into a turn which is difficult to recover from. Unless, you do a full 360 degree pirouette to face the right way again 🙂 Looks great when it works and doesn’t cost much time.

Tennis forehand. Tennis shots don’t tend to work well in badminton because the net is pretty high. However … Consider that a shuttlecock is designed to slow down drastically after being hit. If you can get it over the net quickly before it slows, it’ll effectively drop straight down. So my flat forehand was designed as a quick reaction rally killer, to get the shuttle back over the net quickly and into a place that would be difficult to get back.

So how come I’ve never really competed with the badminton ? There’s a few reasons :

I injured my back when I was 17 (cricket – same injury as now), which cut into the flexibility I had available.
Badminton is how I dismantled my shoulder – and that injury cuts badly into the range of badminton shots I had available.
I found it to be “good fun”.

That last reason sounds strange … Unless you consider that I was preferring to put my time into practicing for Cricket as my serious sport. Cricket and Badminton share some technique elements … but not enough. But it’s really that I preferred to think of badminton as relaxing fun with cricket being the one I’d try and excel at.

Possibly the wrong choice ? Nah. I don’t regret it at all. Taking something too seriously can take all the fun out of it.

Just watching the end of the 3 day eventing – the Brits got silver in the team but it’s looking grim in the individual. Equestrianism is another where I touched the sport early on but didn’t take it too far : Cricket had priority (I could see how much of my sister’s time the horses took) and I preferred motor racing. Mind you, there is a kind of thrill in standing beside or sitting on top of an animal with as much power as a horse.

Horses have personality too. And personality goes a long way.

The 3 day event just finished, with the result changing with the last fence putting the Swedish rider into second. I have to say, it’s AWESOME to watch a sport where men and women compete on completely even level terms.

And I’ll leave it there 🙂 Big grats to all the medallists today, still hoping we get the first Brit gold soon.

And of course, the women in question are definitely not weighty, dunno if they’ve been on the beans jet propulsion diet but they’re most certainly as fit as they come.

In reverse order !

Just finished watching the women’s road cycling race, which was pretty awesome. After yesterday’s men’s race was a case of the Brits saying they’d won the race before the start and then all the other teams leaving it to the Brits to chase down the getaways, the women’s race today was far more exciting.

The attitude of the field yesterday was pretty disappointing. There’d been an early getaway of a reasonable group of riders. Usually, the field would chase them down before the gap became decisive. However … due to the form being shown by the Brit men and their declared aim of pushing Mark Cavendish to the win, everyone left it to the Brits to chase down the breakaway. That’s like saying : “We’re more interested in you NOT getting a medal than we are in getting a medal ourselves”. Self inflicted wounds and it made for a not particularly exciting race where most of the field was there just to make up the numbers.

The women’s race today was completely different. We were seeing attempts at breakaway attacks all the way through, where small groups attempted to get away from the pack. Each time it was “can they keep the gap, will they stay away?” and that kept on going right until the last climb of Box Hill where a group of 4 managed to make a decisive escape.

Including a Brit girl – Lizzie Armitstead. Go Lizzie !

And you can probably guess that the excitement level here was ramping up considerably at the prospect of us getting our first medal of the games. The gap kept on stretching gradually, even after the group of 4 diminished to just 3. Would they keep the gap ? What order would they finish in ? Would our girl get a gold medal ?

I won’t put the result here but I will say – the group of 3 kept their advantage all the way to the finish and Brits have their first medal of the games. Great stuff.

Fit ?

The stiffness and damage from Wednesday are wearing off 🙂 Legs are still a bit stiff but I’d consider them ready for action again. The back needs a few more days though. Because of the way my body is set up, I’m suited for explosive stuff instead of endurance. My endurance is actually not that great, except when the stubbornness kicks in to let me block all pain and Not Give Up. Anyway – that explosiveness setup means my muscles produce a lot of lactic acid, which is where the stiffness comes from.

If I’ve not been running around for a while (I blame British Summer!), it can take around 3 days for my legs to get ready for action again. I’m not 100% yet but they’re pretty close. At this rate, if the cricket skipper phones me up on Thursday, I’ll be able to play :-). Depends on my back and the impact damage on my thumb.

So yeah – damage that meant I was in lots of pain on Thursday and Friday is diminishing to the point where the rational “you’re too broken” is struggling to contain the hyperactive “I WANNA RUN” 🙂

Weighty ?

One comment from Wednesday’s game was that with the heat, I should have lost another stone from being under the helmet all the way through our fielding. Yeah – it was hot and I sweated buckets, so much it was getting into my eyes (ugh). There’s a team picture out there with me under the Pink Hat, no way I was getting photographed without a hat having sweated that much !

But – if you’re on an exercise based diet and you get on the scales after exercise to find that you’ve put weight on, Don’t Get Discouraged. Instead of losing that 1 stone over the game, I actually gained about 5 lbs. And (I think!) it comes from that lactic acid I mentioned up above. It took a few days for that to get metabolised but now that it has, I’m back down to 12.5st.

Exercise and sweat does not necessarily mean loss of weight. For me, I’m much more careful now with my pre and post match intake so that sweat thing isn’t a factor. I’ve injured my legs a huge amount over the years with cramp, so I make sure my water intake balances the sweating to reduce the potential of damaging cramp.

So – you’re trying to lose weight, you do the “right thing” of exercising, you get on the scales to find out you’ve gained weight. Don’t Be Discouraged !!!!! Our bodies work by very rational methods, there will be a good reason why the weight has gone on. With me, it’s because the lactic acid gets in my muscles and makes them heavy.

Weight loss is not a battle, it’s a long war. If you’re exercising, you’re helping yourself out in that long war. Keep it going. It’ll be worth it. And you’ll feel better for the exercise too.

Windy ?

I’ve switched over to the sailing – at the moment it’s a Star race. That’s with a 2 man boat, big sail still because they have a keel and the guys appear to be hanging more off the boat than on. I’ve always been interested in sailing, since reading Anne McCaffrey writing about it in Dragonsong (Julianne Regan is my voice of Menolly). Sailing is a battle of finding best advantage out of something invisible and barely predictable – the wind. Which ever sailor picks the best place to be to gain the most out of unpredictable air currents will win the race.

Always been interested but not had the chance to give it a go. I’m looking forward to the next Vendee Globe single handed non stop round the world race too, that was fascinating last time round.

Must be the first time for a very long time I haven’t listened to any music on a Saturday.

Reason ? Wall to wall Olympics 🙂

Come on ! You couldn’t have expected anything else from a sport nut 🙂

BBC are doing us proud with the coverage that they’re offering us. There’s 24 HD channels available, alongside them using their normal channels for Olympics coverage. Yes, it’s cutting into the normal schedules a bit but … it’s a once in 4 years event.

The opening ceremony was pretty good last night. (I’d read a review cos my words wouldn’t do it justice.) It kept me interested all the way through, with quintessential British quirkiness throughout. It’s a little bit sad though how it ended, I can see why Macca had his microphone turned off in one of his recent concerts, his hamfisted performance took some of the gloss off. Gis Dr Who instead of has-been.

Today, I’ve been keeping an event up on the main telly plus I’ve been swapping between events on my desktop monitor. It works far better than depending on what the TV directors decide to show you. On something like the cycling road race, you get the full story of the race not just the soundbites. The internet based coverage has been working pretty well too (glitches forgiven).

So far I’ve watched :

Cycling road race – where Britain were expected to push Mark Cavendish to a gold medal. Dead cert. Nah … didn’t happen that way, all the best plans have a tendency to fall apart at the first sight of the enemy and this was no exception. They had no answer to an early breakaway that although wasn’t decisive, laid the groundwork for a later breakaway that was.

Judo – this was pretty awesome (at least half of it). Take pint sized women of 48kg (7.5st) or below. That’s just over half my weight from before the diet started. (I’m now 12.5 to 12.75st). These ladies could tie me in a knot and throw me around like a ball, without breaking a sweat. I wanted the Romanian Alina Dimitru to win, just for seeing how happy she would be. When her semi final finished, she couldn’t contain the thrill, she was bouncing around and yelping like a mad thing. It would have been awesome to see that repeated after the final.

Also been watching – archery, which had drama all the way to the finish. And I wanted the Italians to win for wearing funny hats too.

I had a little bite of shooting, turning over just in time to see the last few shots.

I’m now on Tennis, with Andy & Jamie Murray on the big telly and Anne Keovathong on the monitor. Both games could go either way.

And that’s just scratching the surface of what’s on. It’s not just Olympics either, the “big” (only 32″) telly had the F1 qualifying on earlier and I’ll have the race on tomorrow.

Swimming later but before that, I hear the ticking of the clock that will set off the dinner bell … enjoy your evenings !

(this isn’t all about Olympics)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, it will have been impossible to notice that there’s a big sporting event about to take off in London …

I’ve taken a week off work, partly because I need to recharge the batteries a bit but I’ve picked next week for two reasons : it lets me watch Olympics until I get bored of it … plus there’s not much on next week at work that demands my attention.

(The worst thing you can do is believe that you are indispensible, it’s a big kick to the ego when you find out that you’re not – I know I’m the only one in the team that can do the stats work as quickly as I do … but it wouldn’t take long for someone else to learn that)

I’m quite looking forward to the Olympics. I sense that it will be a typically British affair. A lot will go like clockwork, with military precision (especially the security stuff – lol) but there will also be gaffs and oopsies along the way. And we’ll quickly gather up the pieces, sweep up the dust and make a new plan to get things back on rails – like coping with the security firm not delivering on their promises. Brits are like that, we don’t waste time making recriminations (ok, the politicians do but that’s all they know), we get on with coping with the emergency and making it right.

I bet there will be a lot of British character in there too. We won’t win all the medals, my country is a bit too small for that. There’s a much reduced pool of athletes and sportspeople to choose from. And they will all be trying their hardest 🙂 (Except maybe the footballers)

I have the opening ceremony preamble on at the moment. I have the volume turned down low as listening to them will make my brain bleed out of my ears before too long. Opening ceremony starts properly at 9pm and I’ll be listening to iTunes semi-random picks until then.

Ok – that’s you all bored of Olympics by now and looking to click elsewhere.

I still feel on the ropes from Wednesday’s game. Second day after first game for a while tends to be the worst. The injury inventory is :

Bruised thumb – thought I’d broken or dislocated it when it got whacked but the quick “can I move it ?” check showed not even a broken nail. Still sore and very stiff but ignorable.
Other bruises – yeah, these will fade. I have one in a place I cannot show off to anyone too. Wink-wink…
Legs … hmm. These are sore and hurt like hell but there’s a reason for that – unaccustomed exercise. This is why the second day is the worst, because it takes a bit of time for the stiffness to settle in.
Bad back. Ouchies …

The back is what will slow me down. What I’ve damaged is the soft tissue on the left side, in the lumbar (lower) area. I have full range of movement but because it’s swelled up a bit, it impinges on the sciatic nerves that control my left leg. That passes on pain etc to my legs and generally make it difficult to move around. Stairs have been literally a pain today.

Painkillers I hear someone suggest ? Nah. I avoid them. I’m the kind of person where if I think I’m ok, I’ll go full speed ahead. If painkillers took the “be careful” signal away, I’d be running up the stairs and making it longer to recover. In games, I’ll do the painblocking thing naturally, such that I was still diving around behind the stumps after injuring my back but after the game and the adrenaline wore off, I was having to bend over to cough because coughing while stood up was too painful.

I still get the “Let’s Go Bristol!” “Yeah ! Fresh air will do you good and will let you walk off the stiffness”.

Was seriously thinking about a Bristol wander but escaping work at 4pm made that not an option (again). Maybe later in the week when my legs are interested in stairs again. However if someone had said “Yeah, let’s do that” – all pain would have been forgotten for a while :-).

Week’s leave – here we come 🙂 But I can’t close without mentioning a few people who made me smile today :

The new team people who asked if I was ok after seeing me limping around;
Miss F – who I spotted last night coming out of work in the car behind me and again today when I did a “oops – forgot lunch … again” chocolate machine raid;
Contractor girls for not laughing too much when I was going OW at them;
And the Snow Queen for chuckling at my fate (to be honest, I was making jokes about it)

Hour to go until the opening ceremony 🙂

Yep – more cricket last night.

After the English summer turning into the Rainy Season, nature relented for the games this week and decided to let us play. To show how bad it’s been, the team I played for last night has only managed to get on the field for 4 games … I’ve played in 2 of those.

Our work actually has two teams playing, with last night’s game being the second attempt this season at getting a game on between us. I played for the new side last night, mainly because it’s my first season with them and I was looking to face some of the bowlers in the old side after fielding to them for years. It worked out too because it put both teams at 10 men each, just one short. That’s not bad actually, for 2 teams playing out of the same site and in the middle of summer leave silly season.

Ok ! Enough with the preamble !

Our team batted first, which was awesome. Really hot days at the moment … I prepared by drinking heaps of water through the day. Weather like this, you’re gonna sweat buckets whoever you are. So we got the chance to sit in the shade while the old team sweated in the field. It was a little bit cooler later 🙂

Our team batted pretty well, keeping the scoreboard ticking over nicely. A few lusty blows near the end from the skipper boosted us towards a handy total. Although it was a little sad that we got boosted even more by the fella bowling the second last over which lasted 13 balls.

I don’t think I wasted too much time, although my poor run of batting form continued. I hit a sweet tap-pull round the corner for 4, plus a sprinted single. I then got out trying to whack another pull shot, the ball didn’t bounce as much as I expected and hit the top of middle. It woulda flown for six runs – honest. Ok, maybe not cos that was an awful long way out to the boundary that side. I managed to bring out the switch hit too, although I didn’t get much leverage on it and it went straight to a fielder.

We scored 141 (although that scorebook needed some severe checking !)

Over to us in the field and it’s OMG I’M KEEPING WICKET.

I’ve not done that for 9 years and the game where I got my nose broken. That wasn’t from keeping … honest, it was from the batting afterwards. Ahhh – keeping. For the uninitiated, the wicket keeper in cricket is the one that stands behind the stumps looking to catch whatever goes past the batsman. It’s the only job in cricket where wearing armour is accepted (as well as batting!).

You wear a pair of short pads plus a solid pair of armoured gloves. But it’s still not quite enough … In the game where I got hit on the head for the second time (helmet = no damage!), the opposition keeper had his fingers rearranged by the same bowler that tagged me. Even if you take the ball perfectly, it can still leave its mark.

I think I did just “ok”, by my own opinion. I was taking the ball reasonably well, when I remembered to allow it to come into my hands on its own instead of snatching at it. Snatching means hard hands, means the ball bounces out. Allowing it to gather naturally with soft hands lets you absorb all the momentum of the ball. I let 5 byes through (1 single and a 4 to the boundary) which is better than I’ve seen some regular keepers do.

I grabbed one catch down the legside too 🙂 Really pleased with that, because if the ball goes legside it’s going behind the batsman. You can’t see it there … So for the 1 second between the bowler letting it go and it hitting the gloves, there’s a fraction where the keeper completely loses sight of it. I was in complete and utter disbelief 🙂 So much so the appeal went something like “HOW…” (did I really catch that?) “HOWZAT!”.

Yep. Putting my stutter into the game 🙂

Kinda disappointed I didn’t get a stumping. One or two of the batsmen were looking likely that it might happen but I didn’t get a chance to get ’em. People seemed to think I did a pretty good job behind the stumps and I think I’d be asked to field there again by either team.

New team ended up winning by about 20 runs 🙂

But for me, it’s come at a cost … An early bit of fielding saw me run after the ball and do a one move pick up and throw (actually held it cos there was no point in doing the throw but I got in the position). All that was done on the turn … which is bad news with my back. I could feel something squishy let go in the lumbar area, which is an old injury that comes back to haunt me. I’ve had trouble even going up stairs today …

I’m out of next week’s game with that as I doubt it’ll settle down before then.

That’s not all the damage – there were a lot of wild throws coming in, one of which tagged me on the end of the thumb. Even with the armoured glove, there’s a lot of momentum in a hard flung cricket ball. When it hit, the instant thought was “Ow – that’s broke or dislocated” but I’ve gotten away with that one again. Just a case of bruising and hyperextension. I have fairly mobile joints, which is how my fingers have survived inept fielding over the years …

At the moment, I have the legs-in-concrete feeling where they’re complaining at me for doing unaccustomed exercise. That’ll fade though. Hopefully the back injury will go back to sleep soon too, although it’s times like this that I wish there were someone around to give me a little TLC!

Or at least someone to show the bruises off to 🙂

PS At least half of this soreness is down to me focusing so much on the catching that I fell back into instincts that date back 20 years. My chase after the ball ground fielding was pretty darn good. Shouldn’t have been doing that mind (my job was to let the fielders do the running around) but I couldn’t fight those instincts. But – lol. The instincts still work after 20 years but they’re kinda expecting to be wired into a body that’s had 20
years less damage 🙂
PS2 I wore the helmet for all but one over of keeping. In really hot weather. Glad I didn’t have a game tonight – it might still be wet !
PS3 The catch means another £5 for Pink Hat Bounty, which this time will go to a colleague’s sponsored Skydive.

We wos wobbed !

(Also cricket tonight – we won ! but I’m gonna hurt like hell tomorrow due to – wrenching my back and damaging my oh so valuable opposable thumb)

Someone’s hit that light bulb switch again and it’s made the sun come out 🙂

It’s about time too cos this “summer”, a lot of records have been broken on rainfall. It says something for climate change being far more subtle than just “it’s getting hotter” because what we’ve seen this summer is more a change in pattern. Britain is at similar latitudes to Canada, which is considerably colder than Britain. What makes Britain warmer is the Gulfstream, a band of warm air that circles the Atlantic. It’s part of a pattern called the Trade Winds, which is a naturally occurring phenomenon which happens as a result of the Earth spinning.

But when that natural current of air shifts … that’s when strange things start happening with the weather.

Right now, it’s shifted back to how late July should be – 28 degrees C heat and scorchy bum in the car.

About the car – climate control is awesome 🙂 I’ll step into a hot car after finishing up at work. I’ll turn the car on and a few seconds later the climate control will do its best to get the internal temperature down to something manageable. It’s sooooo good having a fully working air conditioning system again, it’s one of the things I needed to spend money on with my Focus. In fact, it worked so well that when I got home and opened the car door, the first thought was “bloody hell it’s warm out here”.

However, one comment about the air con is that I need to find out how to redirect airflow when I have pizza. Let’s just say – hot air going to the footwell is far better than icey cold air going to the footwell. (That’s where I put the pizza box on the way home – pizza on white seats = bad idea).

Another comment – the perforated leather seats work really well. I’ve had one previous car with full leather seats and they really didn’t work well in hot conditions. Definite scorchy bum syndrome. Dotty perforated leather helps the seat breathe, making it much cooler.

Last car comment – one thing the Lexus afficionados think should be in every Lexus is a heated steering wheel. (We’re used to lots of toys). I respectfully disagree. In cold conditions, I’ll put my leather driving gloves on to keep my fingers working. Sorted. However, in hot conditions, I don’t want to be wearing Volcano Gauntlets to be able to touch the steering wheel. I’d much prefer a steering wheel with a chiller to one with a heater.

What am I doing now ?

Oh – right now it’s watching Sussex gives a huge bashing to Gloucestershire bowlers in the Twenty20 quarter finals. The average score this season has been 140 off 20 overs, Sussex have 204 already with 9 balls to go. Erm – make that 210. SIX RUNS !

Gloucestershire are my most local team but you could call me an Anti-Supporter because of how they treated our work side. We did net practice there one season but when we tried to go back, all calls were unanswered, all messages were ignored. So I support the other guy.

Music wise – I’m getting near to having listened to all the stuff in the library again. Of the soundtracks, Beyond Good & Evil has some awesome stuff in there alongside incidental music. Trine 2 is “interesting” while the Deus Ex and Machinarium soundtracks can only be described as awesome.

Off work next week, which I’m heavily looking forward to. Been feeling very stretched lately, which is understandable because I’ve effectively been doing 2 separate jobs for the past few weeks. That takes its toll eventually but I’m happier now than I was then. I’ve scoped out the major task for next few months in my head and have a mental plan. Now I just need to put that plan on paper to keep my bosses happy.

I will miss a few people in that week off for sure. I’m enjoying working in the new team. The old team didn’t have a great atmosphere, with some elements of it actively working against other elements of it. That’s not a recipe for getting things done. It’s pretty silly. I’m not catching that in the new team, in fact I’ve had a hell of a lot of help from the finance, commercial and business management people.

But who will I really miss :
Finance Angels E, K and L (yep – new finance angel)
Miss Meerkat
The Apprentice who actually works downstairs (trying to pass on as much as possible in as short a time as possible!)
The Boss (who’s just moved teams – must grab a coffee opportunity)
And the new Business Management people who seem highly amused (bemused?) by my antics

And there’s a bunch more in the new team who I need to get inspiration for codenames. Despite not knowing what we were being parachuted into, I think our team reshuffle has worked pretty well. We’re cracking on with work as a together group of people.

And that’s always worth smiling about. Especially when you get smiles from people walking by your desk spotting you do the Meerkat “who dat?” thing 🙂

Right – half time in the cricket, Sussex reached a massive 230 and it’s time to put the popcorn on before the second half. Enjoy your evenings !

Ok. I’ve talked a lot about games and gaming lately. I’ve probably spent more time talking about games & gaming than actually gaming.

Last one for a while (No promises!). Steam sale is over, so it’s back to peeking at daily deals. Oh and getting some value out of the games I picked up on the Steam sale. But … I did spot a story in The Register that begs a response … “Ten… PC games you may have missed”. Right from the start, it’s waving the red flag around because Jagged Alliance 2 Back In Action was not something deserving of any credit …

But there are some good suggestions in there. Actually no … there’s not. There’s a lot of trash. The only ones I’d seriously consider are Vessel and the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion. But even then – I’ve not picked them up despite being tempted on the Steam Sale.

What’s my list ?

From the Steam library first … and not restricting myself to stuff coming out in the last 12 months. If it’s a classic, it’s timeless ? Right ?

Beyond Good & Evil. I seriously need to go back into the game and do more of it. This one had me grinning from ear to ear for the whole 3 hour long initial session. And had me grabbing the awesome soundtrack too. It’s backed up by reasonable mechanics too. Seriously good game. Must finish it.

Capsized. This one I bought ages ago. It’s a pretty sound platformer, with the modern thing going where your character interacts with the environment to solve puzzles. Oh and there’s some nasty aliens trying to eat you as well. Worth a look.

DEFCON. Do Not Buy This Game If Prone To Depression !!!! The best games rely on simple rules. The best computer games hide insanely complex mechanics behind those simple rules. This is DEFCON. It’s global thermonuclear war a la that ancient movie.

Deus Ex. Either the original (which I need to do a playthrough of) or the se-pre-quel Deus Ex Human Revolution (DXHR). I’ve played DXHR through a bunch of times so far. It’s so good that I’ve devoted my very sparse gaming time to that game alone. And there’s some insanely cheap deals been going through on it. The only reason I haven’t done a playthrough on the original is because it looks archaic. (However … avoid Deus Ex: Invisible War)

Jagged Alliance 2. Avoid the trash which is the “Back In Action” rip off game. This one is another of those rare games where they got so much so right with very few bugs. It’s a living breathing country where you’re asked to go in and liberate it from its Evil Dictator Queen. There’s so much to see here and it’s another with those simple rules, complex hidden mechanics. The rules align with what you’d expect your people to be able to do, the mechanics make them happen.

Machinarium. Oh so charming. I’ll do a proper review of this at some point. You control the central character, which is an outwardly harmless but incredibly stoical robot. He’s had a hard life this fella, with his story being played out in very sad (but disarmingly charming) cutscenes. Great soundtrack too. MUST HAVE !

Civilisation. Any of them. But I’d have to say aim for Civ 4 because I know that’s good, plus it should be available cheap. Strategy games need to be over a very long time in my opinion. A war isn’t won by a single battle (like in Real Time Tactical games like Starcraft), it’s won over a series of them. And a strategy game is of no value unless you can choose the strategy to employ over a war, not just a single battle. The Civilisation series has always been the apex for historical strategy. I’d also recommend Moo2 from Good Old Games for space strategy.

Civ 4 and not Civ 5 ? I own Civ 5 now but I’ve not played it yet … plus it’ll cost more. I can’t honestly give an opinion on a game I’ve not played or seen played. So I point you towards Civ 4 🙂

Solar 2. This game is just plain Weird. You play as an asteroid, grow into a planet, absorb asteroids (as moons) to grow into a sun and eventually absorb enough mass to become a black hole. You’ll play nothing like this game. I didn’t play it much but it was good fun while I did.

X-Com. Oh yes. Talking strategy ? This one has a strategy layer on top of the tactical battle layer. If your soldiers survive one battle, they’ll learn and improve for the next one. If they die (which happens a LOT in XCom – it’s brutal) then the next battle is harder with fresh green troops.

(I only mentioned XCom because there’s a new one coming and I really do hope they don’t mess it up)

Ok. That’s 9. As my 10th, I’ll say Neverwinter Nights. It’s old yes. However it’s another where they got so much, so right. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons ruleset game but they didn’t include all of what you can do in D&D. They kept it to what would make a playable game. That’s very important – some games start with great concepts but then throw it all away by being far too ambitious with what they try and include. And the ambition can break the game.

Others well worthy of a mention from what I’ve seen but I can’t include them above because I haven’t actually played them yet : Botanicula (bought, not played yet), Minecraft (great potential, £17 is not value), Trine 2, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

I’ve deliberately excluded some of the big names up there … To be honest, DXHR is a better game than Skyrim. It’s more focused with far better storytelling. And despite the massive content in Skyrim, you’d only play that through once if you finish it at all. In terms of value for money, games like Machinarium, Beyond Good & Evil, Botanicula and heavily discounted A list games like Borderlands and Deus Ex HR will give far more enjoyment for less money. Skyrim’s content blends together into a seamless mush. 5 or 6 indie games for the same price give more enjoyment through better variation.

Now I just gotta find time to play the new stuff.

PS That would be “find time to play them before Guild Wars 2 comes out …”
PS2 One way to check these games out is Let’s Plays on Youtube. Anything by Yogscast, Omfgcata and the first impressions videos by Totalbiscuit will tell you whether a game is something you will find worth playing. They’re worth checking out before you allow cash out of your wallet.

Oh gosh – there’s a lot that can be said about writing.

First of all – why write ? Writing is the core of most communication in the 21st century. People are texting more, email and instant messaging are mandatory, twitter and Facebook are letting people put soundbites on the web and blogs like this let people throw Walls Of Text out there.

At work, we use written communication a huge amount as well. It forms a permanent record of decisions, actions, instructions, declarations, assumptions and all that stuff. If you don’t write things like assumptions or actions down, it’s open to “screenshot or it didn’t happen” later. Not writing down so called “gentleman’s agreements” leads to wasted time later as you try to prove or disprove the agreement. People are also happier with a piece of paper that says “Yes, you can turn that on, it’s safe”.

But … it takes a certain type of style for the different writing we do. I have several that I switch between at will. I didn’t study English language to A level but did get an A grade (A* didn’t exist then – this was before GCSE was dumbed down) at the level below. One of the reasons for this blog is that it lets me practice writing and refine the skills.

It’s not just splurging words on to a page. It’s getting a message across.

And to make a point, a plan always helps. (Not that I’m following a plan here !) Being able to write in multiple different styles is a key skill. I prefer to use a jokey, casual style in most communication at work. I’ll write in language that defies sentence construction. The objective behind most of that is to put me on a similar level to the people I’m talking to. I try and be their friend, I try and be on their side. Cos we’re all trying to work together to the same goal most of the time.

However. There’s also a need for several formal styles. Technical writing demands concise precision. There should be nothing open to interpretation when writing a technical description or defining a requirement. Any room for interpretation leads to you not getting what you want. At the same time, you want to capture everything.

The other formal writing is where you’re defending a position. The same thing applies there with the precision, except the precision is directed more towards building an impenetrable wall around your argument.

With my new role at work, I found myself doing the position defence writing thing last week because we needed to ask for extra money because a contractor got it wrong with their requirement definition (it’s the new project, not the old one – please don’t thump me Ms Warpath! – lol). So that’s like writing “we need this money” justification while hiding behind a wall you need as strong as you can make it. Otherwise, your justification gets knocked down, you don’t get the necessary work done and your project falls behind.

Next week – I’ll be doing the technical writing thing, where we write down all of our assumptions in a single document. Assumptions are pretty important. They either let you simplify your choice, or give justification for why you’re ignoring something cheaper. With my latest PC, the assumptions included :

Intel cpu – because AMD lost their performance equality
nVidia graphics – because AMD/ATi had bad software

If I’d applied a similar assumption set with my laptop, it may have been able to still play video above 360p. The AMD cpu has the theoretical grunt but in real life, it isn’t up to the job because it has to drive itself too hard.

All that said though. It’s a different writing style again to what I put on this blog.

I think I balance the styles fairly well here. There’s no real need for the ultra formal Build A Wall style, unless I’m on dodgy ground with an argument. The ultra casual style works well most of the time but I do like to try and appear intelligent and literate ;-). Technical writing style is handy for certain posts but I have the room to add in a bit more flowery descriptive language that I wouldn’t put in a technical description.

Have I Wall Of Texted too much yet ? That’s another thing with the writing for work. If your document is too thick, people just :

Read the start.
Read the end.
Look at the pictures.

I know I do. We sometimes don’t have time to do more than focus on key points. If a work document is too long and that length isn’t due to recording fact, then the length wastes the time of the author and the reader.

I hope my Wall of Text tendency here doesn’t waste people’s time. I do it mainly because, due to living on my own, I don’t have the chance to talk through things with people. So in my own way, this is my way of talking through thoughts that would otherwise rattle around in my head until silly hours in the morning.

I can work my way through a lot of the random thoughts like that but not all. There’s some stuff that’s too private for on here, although I’ll talk to a very small group of people about them. And that’s a very small group because I don’t trust many people with the really deep stuff.

And I’ll close on this point – written communication is all very well. It lets you record what you think and also lets you put those thoughts in some sort of order. However … it’s very impersonal. You don’t know if the reader is empathising or sniggering. That sort of stuff, you can only find out face to face.

I like to think I’m pretty good at figuring out what people are thinking or feeling, at least unconsciously due to empathy. But you can’t tell on text-only whether people are just stringing you along.

I trust most of my closer friends implicitly. But there’s some old friends where that trust level is slipping. There’s just stuff been going on in the background that I’ve been picking up on which can be originating with just a few people. I think I know who it is – and I just don’t get it. Actually I do – and that’s because I know more than people think I do.

And I think it’s really time to end this one before it gets well and truly derailed ! Think before you write, don’t assume you know everything, consider the impact on others.

Randoms again !

Lots of sport to see this weekend. And other entertainmenty type stuff. I was hoping for a really chilled out weekend this weekend. I still have a bit of the hyperactivity tendency active but it’s being dragged down as my batteries run low. Also noticing that I can’t stretch it out as much as I used to – maybe that’s a side effect of being lighter, less fat reserve to draw upon.

The weather was clear on Thursday so one of my teams got a game in (dunno who won). I didn’t play because they already had enough but I’m kinda glad I didn’t play. Random injury of the day on Thursday and Friday was a dodgy hip (left side! dunno where that came from) that was slowing me down while walking. It’s rare that I let signs of injury show but was actively limping for this one. On Thursday at least – by Friday lunchtime I was able to race ahead of people again :-). I need to get active again. Too long without running around leads to me stiffening up too much.

I’d have had trouble breathing as well on Thursday – I either had major dust attack or a reaction to something else. I hope it’s a mystery reaction because the alternative would be me developing something anti-bread … That’s bad news. How else do you get your hot dogs ?

Just kidding there. Not had a hot dog for months. Honest.

Been testing out my network lately. Because my laptop can’t really cope with video better than 360p, I’m currently watching the Eve Alliance Tournament on the desktop while tapping this post in on my laptop. I’m also listening to music streamed over the wifi. So right at the moment :

iTunes sending 1.1Mbits/s over wifi to my hifi
Eve Alliance tournament sucking in about 1Mbit/s of streaming
Add in the various sundry stuff like multiple chat apps (MSN & Steam) and the other internet type apps.

And later I’ll switch the Eve tournament for GuildWars 2 beta streaming if the Totalbiscuit or Jesse Cox streams come online. (Maybe). The Eve tournament stream has actually done ok today after its disastrous number of dropouts last weekend. The fights aren’t so great today because there’s a lot of meaningless matches. However – finals day tomorrow could be exciting.

Curiosity point there – the Eve tournament stream in HD is coming down the pipe at 1Mbit/s to 2.5Mbit/s (bandwidth goes up as things get busy) while the iTunes audio stream goes out at 1.1Mbits/s max. When the video stream goes down to talking heads, the audio is actually using more bandwidth. Apple’s Airplay is a pretty good protocol. CD audio quality is 16 bits, times 2 for stereo, times 441000 per second for a potential 1.68Mbits/s. Airplay compresses down a little but not very much when you look at it. I’d be hard pressed to tell a difference between Airplay going over the wireless network and a wire stretched across the floor.

Actually I would, the first time I went for a “brb 1 min” and tripped up on the wire sending everything flying.

What’s surprising (unless you go cynical) is that the audio & hifi magazines when they review audio streamers, ignore tech like Apple’s Airport Express. It’s £79 yeah … but that tends to be cheaper than the other dedicated audio streamers that they will review. I dunno about you but I’d rather get an audio streamer without speakers than wasting £500 (JEEZ!!!!) on something like the B&W Zeppelin speakers. That’s £421 wasted when you already have a hifi that you’re happy with.

So yeah – I’m still really happy with the Airport Express solution. It ticks all sorts of boxes. Not to mention being really portable and adaptable. If I go somewhere, I can chuck it in with my laptop stuff and plug it in where I end up. I’ve used it on proper hifis, portable speakers and even plugged it into a telly to get music. Oh and it’ll also allow you to add a USB printer or hard disc to a network.

Been watching the cricket and F1 as well today. I’ll do the same tomorrow as well. I rarely watch stuff live these days (V+ record while you watch box). Not such a great day in the cricket today. Lots of grindy stuff from the South Africans while the most damage England did was to their own equipment. Watch this – you won’t believe it til you see it. The advantage to watching “as-live” is that you can fast forward through all the adverts and filler. So tomorrow, I’ll watch the cricket until lunch at 1pm and then start the F1 coverage off and fast forward the filler to get to the race.

But tonight though – chill out mode has turned to music. I’ve bought a lot of soundtracks in the Steam sale and I’m steadily working my way through them. Grabbed a bit more too :

Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack – this started it. The music in the rhino garage had me just standing there tapping my feet.
Machinarium – played an hour of it yesterday – puzzler. Haunting soundtrack. Very sad, very cute. Must finish.
Deus Ex – must play this one more too.
Trine 2 – another excellent soundtrack. Not played game yet.
Civilisation V – think I’ll be attacking this game later …
Mass Effect 3 (part) – got this a few weeks ago.

Great games tend to get backed up by fantastic soundtracks that assist the game by setting the mood. That goes for a lot of media actually. The signature of Star Wars is the music. You recognise themes like Star Trek, Stargate, Hitch Hikers and Ennio Morricone instantly. The Star Wars music got included in the games with an innovative system that matched what was happening to the music being played. Shooty bits were matched with more uptempo music.

Skyrim has a bit of the music theme too. Like the Dovahkin hymn that makes the opening menu far more dramatic. Or visiting an inn and sticking around long enough for one of the voice acted bards to either charm you or terrify (some of them are Bad) you with their renditions.

And I’ll leave it there. Hopefully my breathing won’t go bad again tonight like it did Wednesday night. Although if it does, I’ll have learned something I need to avoid eating …

PS Must watch Hitch Hikers Guide again. Will add that to list of stuff to watch when telly goes quiet … which will be in at least 3 weeks when the Olympics has been and gone.