Month: September 2012

Yep.

Gotta spend some money this week. But what on ?

The post before last I talked about networking bits and pieces … I still have that in mind as a shift to do with my network but it’s on the Geeky Interest level, not a “must do now” level. So it’s not going to be spending cash on the network because :

Since stealthing my wireless network, I’ve had no interference. (Could be coincidence)
The offers aren’t good enough yet.

They’re just shifting the technology they’re using at the moment for Powerline networking. That means the new stuff is pricey but the old stuff is still getting bought because people don’t trust the new stuff yet. If you’re not bothered about performance then it’s pointless spending huge cash on fancier kit. Powerline networking performance from older kit is plenty good for my needs, even when it struggles it’s doing 40-50Mbit/s on 200Mbit/s rated kit which is 5x better than my internet download and on a par with how quick data can be squeezed out of my hard discs.

So – I’m still looking at Powerline networking bits and pieces but because there is no pressing need to change, I can wait for better offers.

Next up – had a curious phone call yesterday from Lexus Cheltenham 🙂

Because I own a CT from them, I’m on the list of people who could get a brand new CT. It would be essentially identical to mine (colour, trim) but the 2013 model has a few spec changes. Some are good (cruise control added), some are bad (can’t remember list).

It would cost me an extra £30 per month and lock me in for another year. It’s a very interesting and intriguing offer. However … the only reasons I’d seriously consider it are :

1 – If the newer car was quicker – the one criticism I have of the CT is that it’s Potential Performance isn’t as good as the cars I’ve had since the ’82 Astra. It feels quick, because when you floor the throttle you get 100% potential performance. In manual gearbox cars, you very rarely get Potential Performance unless you’re willing to redline the engine and abuse the clutch.

But … it’s a 10 second 0 to 60 car, my last two were quicker. The compensation for that is mpgs approaching 50 and a very relaxing cruise. I can do 180 miles 3 hours from here to my parents’ place, no problem.

2 – If there were problems with this car. There are no problems … Except for the passenger door handle which was replaced and a sensitive alarm (went off again the other day). However, if there were problems with the car, I’d be looking to serve out the 3 year loan and switch to a different make.

It’s a testament to the very high quality of the car that leads me to turn down the offer. Oh, it also lets me avoid another running in period 🙂 A hidden benefit to me going for a 6 month old ex demo is that the garage got the running in period out of the way before I got the car.

A new car would be shiny but to be honest, my 12 month old CT still feels new and has no problems or niggles whatsoever. I’d be losing out if I changed.

So – I’m not going to spend money on a car, or on networking bits.

What’s that leave ? I’ve been after a new vacuum cleaner for a while because my current one overheats quickly. What do I see before watching Total Recall on Thursday ? Nipping around PCWorld/Currys had me looking at Powerline networking (and not seeing good offers). On the way out – vacuum cleaners with %%% off for Dysons …

I’m still avoiding spending money in PCWorld/Currys/Comet because they don’t respect Sales of Goods Act so sometime this week there will be a trip to John Lewis to pick up a Dyson and drop off my current vacuum.

I know right ? You were expecting something more shiny ?

Me too !!!!

I’ll make up for it by dropping some cash later this week on FTL – Faster Than Light. It’s a new game coming soon which is essentially a starship simulator. And what does that make ? Only just about my ideal game ! Looking forward to this one. It could be a great one to dip in and out of. Here’s a bit more about it from TotalBiscuit and I challenge anyone not remotely interested in simple space games to not try looking up pre-orders.

It looks awesome, in a simple yet deep and extremely playable way. Some games are very predictable. Other game will surprise you and not in a scripted Enemies Jumping Out Of Walls way. This one looks like it’ll give surprises of the fashion that make you think, plan and react with strategy rather than just reflex.

Yep. Looking forward to that one.

Think I’ve learned a few things tonight :

Certain films need more warnings on before unsuspecting people watch them …

Fast food is bad for you …

Think before you eat stuff …

And you can both improve on and lessen the quality of something remade from the original.

The film tonight was Total Recall. It should really have a health warning on because the opening sequence has so many flashy lights that even a borderline epileptic should Not See This Film. Sequences that bad should really have warnings given in the trailers, not just in a flash screen before the movie starts. Better yet, keep it out of the film, it had no business being there and added nothing to the film.

So – Total Recall. Worthy remake or modern cash in ?

I have to honestly say cash in. But it’s tough to say that because they put a lot into this movie and tried reasonably hard. The original, being an Arnie movie, suffered the Arnie curse where so much effort goes into making Arnie look good and not enough goes into making it a good movie. The story and basic plotlines are fairly identical between the original and the new one, the massive difference is in the setting.

I’m a sci-fi person. I loved the original setting, which pitted Earth against Mars. This setting is … different. It works in the sense needed by the altered endgame but not in a scifi point of view. In scifi, rockets going to different planets Make Sense. What doesn’t make sense is going through the planet core, Phantom Menace style.

Will I get the dvd/bluray ? Probably not. And that’s a shame because the action sequences were fairly reasonable. It’s just a not so good translation of what was to be honest, a B movie.

Ok – other stuff … I appear to be allergic to fast food ! Oh the irony – lol.

Had a KFC before the game, which is pretty much : Fillet Burger in a Bun. And that would be a bun made out of white bread. Uhoh. Didn’t think much of that at the time but my breathing now is not as free as it was earlier on today. It’s not full on not gonna sleep tonight wheezing but it’s not 100%.

Or I could just be imagining it.

I kinda hope I do have a white bread allergy actually, as one of the alternative allergy causes is Jaffa Cakes. Not had any of those for a few weeks now but the bad breathing has hit a couple of times, shortly after I’ve been exposed to white bread. I should probably take an allergy panel test to confirm but … I think I could confirm by observation.

What’s next ? Crossing fingers that the new Dredd film is available in 2D as well as 3D. Although I should really watch something in cinema 3D sometime, just because I’ve avoided it so far. My objection there is to certain films being 3d only. I tend to avoid those out of principle.

Anyone who knows me will know that I listen to a huge amount of music.

All of my music is stored on and played through my laptop in iTunes. There’s a system called Airplay, which lets you send music over a network to a widget that then sends it to your hifi. Awesome system in that it just … works, trouble is that it’s subject to interference.

The Airplay protocol works by sending its information over wireless networks. I have older widgets, which only talk to older networks. And … those older networks are crowded :

That’s how a program called InSSIDer sees the airwaves around here. The trapezoids show how much of those airwaves are being taken up by each network and the strength of the signals. Mine is the olive green section on the right hand side. I’ve actually disabled the broadcast now in the hope of avoiding the interference.

What happens, is that your music will be playing through quite happily but then suddenly breaks up. If you’re lucky, the streaming comes back on quite quickly. Unlucky ? It’s time to reset all the bits and pieces. I’ve been dealing with it by changing the channel (where your network is, left or right of that graph) to hopefully avoid interference.

However … I think there’s a joker in the pack :

That graph has an anomaly in the middle, where someone else’s wireless is transmitting at extraordinary power. You can see mine transmitting away at about -40 deciBels (dB). My neighbours’ wifi are around the -80 to -90 dB level. That’s normal for transmitters that are a distance away, plus walls reduce the signal too.

But there’s a signal coming in at around -5 dB ? Through walls ? That’s a broken bit of kit and I hate to think what it’s doing to the people around that device. It must be like having an unshielded microwave on the loose. Transmitted power is on a logarithmic scale, which means that for every +10 dB, that’s 10 times the power. So my kit at -40dB is 10,000 the power of the neighbours’ by the time their signal gets through my walls. For the jammer to be 1,000 times the power of my kit after it gets through the walls ? That’s pretty crazy.

What I’ve done for now is make my wireless stealthy again. The SSID I use is called Artemis (felt cool at the time). If I tell my devices to connect to Artemis, they will. But Artemis doesn’t broadcast its presence. The idea is that it keeps the jammers away. Seemed to work too (hopefully stealthing it won’t break the printer!).

But what I may have to do is spend money …

The idea is that because wireless is the problem, eliminate it from the system. I’ll do that by investing in Powerline networking gear to avoid going over the airwaves. It lets me hook up my Xbox and bluray player too without wires going across the floor. So each device would be :

Desktop -> router -> internet : has to be this way or you get lag (which is bad) hurting your gaming.
Router -> Powerline kit to the house.
Powerline kit to other side of room for the AV kit
Airplay widget hooking in to the Powerline kit

Laptop will be a bit different and has a couple of options. I can either use a wire to hook it up, or I can have it talk to the Airplay widget. That would be :

Laptop -> Airplay -> Powerline -> Router -> Internet

Should work. But I’ll give it a bit more time before I buy kit. That’ll let me :

Test whether stealthing the network again will work;
Research what’s on the market;
Hope for cheap stuff in the sales !!!

PS There is of course yet another way. The old fashioned way. The boring way. The stretching a lead across the floor way. But … not going to happen, it’s not techie enough 🙂

Got those nebulous thoughts running around in my head again.

Been playing just the one game again, which can be quite rare for me unless it’s something with a storyline that I’d fixate on like Mass Effect or Deus Ex HR. (Curiously though, Mass Effect 3 broke that compulsion)

The latest game is Guild Wars 2, which is strangely compelling for a number of reasons … Some of those are immediately apparent, although I wouldn’t describe them as compelling. No – the shinies in this one are under the skin, not out front. (Yep – that includes when I’m talking about my elementalist)

Superficial pluses – the big ones here are game play and graphics. The gameplay is simplified compared to the obvious competition (Warcraft!), although I understand that the latest Warcraft updates have dumbed that game down even more.

Graphics shinies are always awesome … except when they’re so elaborate they get in the way (GW2 was criticised for this) or slow the game down. I used to have to turn the graphics shininess down real low in WoW when tanking because my machine couldn’t keep up. No – graphics shininess is nice but gameplay is always far more important.

Historical point – I tried Guild Wars 1 in one of my early WoW breaks, it was a very pretty game even then (hey ! I’m talkin’ environment, not characters), prettier than Warcraft’s cartoony look. But I went back to WoW eventually because the gameplay was superior. Plus my guild needed me 🙂

Nah – what’s the real things that make it compelling ?

The big selling point of Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) was the storyline. That game was utterly dependent on cutscenes. But I just stopped caring very quickly about that storyline, perhaps because I thought it should have been a standalone 3rd installment of another series with the MMO aspects being a horrendous cash in. No – I think it was more challenge … and lack of it. SWTOR had sub-par gameplay attached to environments that just didn’t shine. It looked dated. And the storyline couldn’t drag it out of that mire.

But then again, I’m finding the 2 storylines I’ve seen so far in Guild Wars 2 to be rather compelling. I’m amused, I want to know what’s going to happen with my characters. The game is making me care, in the same way I’d care what happens to my Commander Shepards and crew or my Adam Jensen and friends.

I was quite sad when I had to let Faridah die in order to get an achievement ! Dr Mordin’s ascent of the tower was a tearjerker. And I have the feeling that there’s a bit of storyline like that coming my way in GW2 too.

Gameplay makes a big difference too and GW2 has innovated in 3 key ways :

Dynamic levelling is genius. A problem with most online games is that only a small segment of the content is relevant for your level. If you’re too low, you don’t survive. If you’re too high, it’s way too easy. My WoW warrior can happily solo the 40 man entry instance from the original WoW. 1 character, 40 person instance. That’s not right …

What dynamic levelling does is adjust you to the content. So when my level 20 (ish!) elementalist runs through the starting area, she’s effectively a level 5. It paces you back according to where you are. In pvp, it matches everyone up to maximum level. It puts the game on a level playing field. And that’s way more fun. If you go back to starter zones in WoW, it’s a snoozefest. In GW2, you experience it the way it was supposed to be experienced.

It’s subtle … and it works. It makes all content at your level or below relevant, not just a fraction of what’s available. It means you can level at your own pace (which to me is gold dust).

Second – World vs World : Me like. It’s a truly epic player vs player battle. I spent a few nights in here, fighting away. I’ve not been in for a while though because I’m looking for a “Most experience without dying” achievement. In pvp you die a lot.

Third – the whole ethos in the game is different. Most MMOs are competitive. The first person to hit the mob gets the credit. People don’t help each other. GW2 manages to turn that on its head, I’ve never seen so much cooperation in beating the events. It makes it possible to play the game at the appropriate level, as a single player. Groups happen because the game encourages cooperation.

Unfortunately, it also encourages my shoulder to bitterly complain at me if I spend too long in it.

Lol 🙂 Warcraft got me like that too, I suspect it’s the playing position which is a bit different to shooter games and strategy games. But most of what causes the pain is the lack of a pause button. It’s difficult to switch off for a minute or so to go elsewhere, as a mob may creep up behind you and tap you on the shoulder if you go afk behind the woodshed.

Apart from that though, I think I’m healing again. The legs have improved, my eyes have improved a bit. Hopefully I’m on to something with that assumption that White Bread = Bad.

Closing time – Guild Wars 2 ? Or restart that epic which was the Mass Effect trilogy run … That would sort out my onrunning game time for a couple of months :-).

Still figuring out what I’m needing to avoid or stick with as I shift my diet around.

I think I’ve gained some valuable data over the last few days. Friday’s sleep broke the mould as it was fairly unaffected by the breathing issues. Saturday’s sleep wasn’t great (but not nearly as bad as it had been!).

Hell, my breathing had improved to the point where I was very happily singing along to the iTunes bits and pieces and not missing any words out due to not breathing at the right times.

What’s the data ? What made Saturday night’s sleep bad ?

All this week, I’d been having cooked dinners. But I occasionally have a massive sandwich instead. Because I’d got myself caught in doing “just … one … more … quest …” in Guild Wars 2, I’d broken off quite late yesterday for Doctor Who and didn’t really want to be pausing halfway through to pull something out of the over. Answer ? Make one of those massive sandwiches on my lap in front of the telly.

Yeah I know right – domestic god ? Lol. There’s that thing again where I have different standards for what I do for me to the standards I’d expect to give to others.

I’m digressing – what’s the data again ? There’s two big potential triggers from the bread (white bread – I’d gone back to something familiar) : Gluten and wheat. Gluten is the current fashion for something to be allergic to. Let’s have a look at that one first :

From wiki – “Symptoms of gluten sensitivity include bloating, abdominal discomfort, pain or diarrhea, or it may present with a variety of extraintestinal symptoms including headaches and migraines, lethargy and tiredness, attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity, schizophrenia, muscular disturbances as well as bone and joint pain”

Yeah, I recognise a few of those but I don’t think gluten sensitivity is the cause of bone and joint pain, that comes from being a nutter on the cricket field. I don’t get migraines and luckily it’s rare that I get a headache and that can sometimes be put down to caffeine withdrawal. Some of the others … yeah. Meh. But again, don’t think it’s the gluten.

You could look at that list of symptoms and apply them to a huge number of people but then, as with all internet based research, always apply that sanity check to ask “is this really the problem ?”. And I don’t believe that it’s the gluten in the bread that’s causing me the problems.

How about what bread’s made of ? Wheat allergy (from wiki again) symptoms :

Wheat allergies are not altogether different from other food allergies or respiratory allergies. However two conditions, exercise/aspirin induced anaphylaxis and urticaria occur more frequently with wheat allergies.

Common symptoms of a wheat allergy include sacroiliitis, eczema (atopic dermatitis), hives (urticaria), asthma, “Hay fever” (allergic rhinitis), angioedema (tissue swelling due to fluid leakage from blood vessels), abdominal cramps, nausea, and vomiting.[15] Rarer symptoms include[citation needed] anaphylactic shock, arthritis, bloated stomach, chest pains, depression or mood swings, diarrhea, dizziness, headache, joint and muscle aches and pains (may be associated with progressive arthritis), palpitations, psoriasis, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), swollen throat or tongue, tiredness and lethargy, and unexplained cough. Reactions may become more severe with repeated exposure.

Oh how many of those do I recognise. Easier to say what I haven’t experienced of what’s above (even to minor degrees). I was about to say “sacroiliitis” because I didn’t recognise but on reading where the problem is with that, yep. Add that to the list.

Sanity check again though – the sacroiliitis, joint & muscle aches would be from the various cricket booboos. What is sacroiliitis ? It’s problems where the spine meets the pelvis, yeah – I have that but it’s a legacy of me hurting my lumbar area when I was 17.

So the symptoms point me towards wheat allergies. However, it’s not as simple as that as I’ve been ok on brown bread. Must be something in white bread that’s activating the allergy. It makes a fair bit of sense too, as I’ve been historically unable to drink more than 4 pints of bitter before having to throw up. That’s not been from the alcohol either (I think!)

I think it fits with the growing season too. I’ve always suffered from hayfever but I got it especially bad in early spring and late summer with a gap in the middle. Perhaps that’s lining up with the growing season. Could be. Or I’m just allergic to what’s outside the window. (The eyes have improved since the wilderness outside the back got removed)

So – where to from there ?

Avoid white bread for a while. If I can – what may have triggered it last week was munchies at a contractor’s office on the Thursday, I could feel my lungs closing up on the way to the car.

Not really sure apart from that – so much of the stuff that’s on sale doesn’t account for the more uncommon allergies. And even for the more common allergies, there’s things like “may contain nuts” on the most unlikely things.

Looking at it a bit more though – I’ve still been a biscuit fiend and one of the most common ingredients in those is “wheat flour”. Must be something specific in the white bread that’s activating the allergy. Like the bacon buns at work which have lots of flour on the bun.

We shall see ! And I may get a little more information later too when I see what the reaction is to me downing a milkshake 🙂

PS Pizza reaction too – could well be that it’s not the cheese I react to but the pizza base itself …