Year: 2012

Ok, by now you’ll all be throwing things when you hear the jingling bells of Christmas music ?

I don’t blame you. A lot of Xmas music starts well but gets corrupted by the latest person to try making a fast buck out of old classics.

However … I do have some Xmas music in the library … And those albums are awesome in their own ways. Hmm. This wasn’t supposed to be an Xmas music post but I can’t resist doing the old Youtube linky thing to :

Hey Santa ! By Hannah Peel. Sadly Youtube don’t seem to have this one but it’s on Last.fm and Spotify.

Abba’s Happy New Year. I heard someone in HMV tonight trying to sing along to this one. Hopefully I’m doing a better job at the moment 😉

Think I’ve run out of the choice Xmas music there though. I have Xmas albums from Joan Baez and Elaine Paige which are both excellent to listen to. The Joan Baez album is very pure choral style, the Elaine Paige is more show style.

What else have I been listening to lately that has stuck in my head all day ?

Well – today it was the turn of Tracy Chapman’s Material World. She’s a great singer in her own way. She’s different from the crowd, so she’s not really mainstream like all the female singers who clone others. But – different is good. I only have her first album and Crossroads … may have to pick up some more. Great voice, used very well.

At the moment, it’s the Songs For Polarbears album by Snow Patrol. It’s from their earlier days when they were still Indie/Alternative with interesting rough edges in their music. They’ve gone a mainstream (and boring) now though. My pick of this album is Fifteen Minutes Old. Not their best album, bit of quantity over quality.

Next album up (after a bunch of semi-random tracks) is the soundtrack to Indie Game The Movie. I’ve been picking up a lot of soundtracks lately. Some of them, like the FTL soundtrack, work really well as music to listen to. Others, like the Retro City Rampage soundtrack, are good as individual tracks but have you reaching for the Skip Track button when you have them coming through as an album. Hopefully Indie Game the Movie will work well as a soundtrack.

I listen to a bit of classical music too, last album/collection to go through was the Planets Suite by Holst. This one has been borrowed from hugely to donate music to pieces like the Rugby World Cup (World In Union is Jupiter with words I believe). There’s also the unmistakeable Mars. Curious how the dead planet Mars got tagged as War, whereas the absolute hell which is Venus got tagged as Peace.

Talking of classical – what makes Christmas if not the annual Star Wars movie ? The soundtrack to Return of the Jedi got listened to earlier this week. Classic tunes.

But it tends to stay in the background. Unlike the enchanting Norah Jones, who’s Feels Like Home got listened to at the weekend. Here’s In The Morning, it’s a track where I’m not sure I want to sing along to or if I should just listen to that voice. She’s one of very few artists who I’ll pay full price for getting albums more quickly (still not got the latest Garbage)

And there’s more too. I loved River City People when I was at school but something turned me away from Texas (perhaps I thought that voice was being enhanced …). Which is a shame, as I found out when I picked up their greatest hits album. I’m hoping for snow but I’ve been so cold lately that I’d welcome a bit of Summer Sun.

I think it’s time to close up now. And after hearing Rythian and Zoey do a rendition of Baby It’s Cold Outside, I feel the need to listen to the Tom Jones & Cerys Matthews version to banish it from memory …

I hope you don’t get inflicted with too much horrific music over the next month !

It’s effectively just 2 more working days until I start a fairly lengthy Xmas break 🙂

Gosh – I need it. I’ve been hanging lately. It’s been a rough year this year :

Lots of emotional turmoil (I pick up on what other people are feeling)
Stress upon stress at work (the prime reason for which is gone now)
This damn infection (so many “it’s gone !!!” “and it’s back”)
A change of diet which went critically wrong
And lots more (getting older)

It’s the infection that’s really hit hard this year. While it subsided enough for it to be a bad idea for me to play cricket this summer (which I did anyway), it never really went away. Instead, it came back and very quickly became much worse than just dodgy skin on my legs. Couple that with confidence at an (almost!) all time low and you’ve got rough times.

I am a hell of a lot better than I was just a couple of months ago but … it’s draining. And it’s having other effects associated with that Getting Older thing.

At this point, I should say – this has been a fairly (I’ve done longer) long day – up at 6.30am, driving 250 miles in the day in testing (ice and fog) conditions. Yes, I’ve done longer days and longer drives (Scotland trips started earlier and finished later) but – there’s that Getting Older thing again.

Things have been improving :

Emotional turmoil – I’ve made my peace with this. And the reasons for it are not going to appear here 😉
Stress at work – the main reason’s gone 🙂 Still lots to do though and more responsibility over the next few months. Gonna be crazy when we come back in the New Year.
Infection – I think the infection has gone but it’s taking a while to fix the damage
Diet – since I dropped the orange juice, I’ve noticed a bunch of symptoms go away. I need to kick the biscuit habit though or I’ll not have my speed available come summer.
Getting older – my legs hate me. Cramps, twinges, bits that don’t want to stay where they should be
(stop sniggering! – lol)

Instead of being over a fairly significant portion of me, the infection seems to be gone and the leftover damage is limited to only a few patches now. And those are getting smaller. I just need to keep up the discipline of not tearing at stuff that’s itchy. Leaving it alone = healing. Tearing at it = sets the healing back.

No need to go back to the doctor’s place right now, at least for the infection thing. Shoulder and hip might need attention though. One problem at a time. Hopefully over the Xmas break, the chilling out at home and other places will see some more of those leftover patches disappear.

Yeah – really looking forward to a few weeks of chilling out, punctuated by a few Xmas visits to family and friends that are now just like family.

2 more working days to go though. Tomorrow is half a day cos of work Xmas party (I don’t think I’ll blog that though) in the afternoon. Thursday will be a full day. Friday will be me escaping whenever I’ve cleared away all that needs to be done before I disappear.

However ! Today had definite compensations and boosts.

There’s a stunningly beautiful woman who works at one of our other offices. Intelligent too. To have someone that beautiful favour you with a winning smile as soon as she spots you ? Makes me grin 🙂 Definitely. She’s disappearing off to the USA for 3 years though to become a housewife (hubby gets a job but it’s a waste of the brain she has)

Anyway – she let me know today :
a) surprise at hearing that I’d not been well this past year. I’ve been hiding the symptoms under sleeves and nervous hyperactivity while on duty visits. And the “Pete’s the herald of the Zombie Apocalypse” thing erupted very quickly and the signs of it on my face disappeared fairly quickly too.
b) that I knew my stuff. That pulled out a “wow” from me, cos since jumping across into the new project I’ve been trying to keep up with all the stuff that’s going on. It’s quite a complicated project. It’s not just “Deliver Something Big in a few years”, it’s “Deliver lots of stuff over X years”. It’s quite a long running project.

Always good when people who you barely know express confidence in your abilities. Funny – I think I have a better reputation with those who don’t know me much than those who come into contact with me more.

Perhaps some of that propaganda I put out about myself is getting believed … Most of the time when I give the impression of being Typical Geek-Around-House, I’m kidding to get chuckles. Or people are believing in a false impressions caused by when I’m kidding about stuff or it’s junk being spread by other people.

It was pretty awesome though to have that confidence shown earlier. Gives me a big lift. Lots of people seem to think I do Stuff the Right Way. And that’s very important to me.

It’s been a rough year. But it’s almost behind me now. 2013 will be a better one 🙂

I’ve been noticing something very alarming over the past couple of weeks.

To start with – have a peek at this bit of comedy gold from the one and only Jasper Carrott.

I’ve been getting that too. Although with me, it’s when the bus is at that half full stage where all the rows of seats have 1 person in them. Nobody sits next to strangers on the bus if they can help it – all those elbows and things. What seems to be happening is that when there’s no more empty rows, when the next young(ish) lady gets on the bus and looks for a seat she’ll see the empty one next to me and make a beeline for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining !

I’m just not used to it. Most of the women who know me seem to start running as soon as they see me nowadays. In the opposite direction. /sob. (lol)

I think they’re seeing me as some kind of Anti Nutter. Like the logic is “let’s sit by the smart looking guy in the suit instead of the hobo with the music blasting out of his ears”.

Thankfully I get on the bus reasonably early so I can usually get a seat to my own, avoiding the nutters that we do get. There doesn’t seem to be many of those, although there was Noisy Kiddie yesterday and Bad Taste Girls the day before.

I kinda like being the Anti Nutter, it’s another sign that I’m looking better than just over a month ago when people would have pointed and shouted : “ZOMBIE”. (Still not healed yet, still needing a bit of help from the gunk)

Here’s more Carrott.

What am I up to at the moment ? Currently waiting for the Yogscast charity stream to start up again. The Yogscast are a group now (they’ve grown) of gamers who put out well made and quite entertaining content on Youtube. It’s mostly Minecraft but they put in other games too. My favourite is Hannah aka Yogscast2 who was doing the stream last night.

What can I say ? At the moment I’m enjoying watching a slightly nutty but rather amusing bunch of people playing games more than I’m enjoying playing the games myself.

Oh and it’s also a good excuse to keep trying to reduce the amount of unlistened to music I have in the library by errrrr …. listening to lots of music. Down to 489 tracks now (been adding a lot lately). Currently playing : soundtrack to the latest XCom game. Must play that one more …

I caught myself today actively thinking of playing cricket again.

Now then. That’s a sign of a step forward …

Yes, I am getting to that age when “I’m getting too old for this” is definitely in mind when it comes to running around like a mad thing but – I like running round like a mad thing !

True – I’m not fixed yet but it definitely feels like it’s getting closer. I’ll be shivering away doing the full treatment thing tomorrow night but I’ve gotten away with only limited gunkings. I’m not quite there yet but my body seems to be closing in on being able to do its own healing now.

That tells me a few things :

The infection must be gone and it’s down to repairs now
Discipline is good – half the reason it’s taking so long to heal is that self inflicted wounds thing
Healthy eating is bad – or at least drinking healthy with the orange juice
You sleep heavier when you don’t have to think of posture while asleep

Yep. Not fixed yet but instead of, to borrow a science fiction term, being at say 70% hull integrity I’m now up to 95% or better. Not 100% yet but the healed parts of my skin feel very smooth and it’s been at least a month since I’ve felt that sandpaper texture on my hands at work.

At the moment, cricket is out of the question. Any little damage that happens isn’t repairing too quick, although in general I’m heading back to that pasty white geek normal texture. With the commitment (translation – all enthusiasm, little skill) I put in on the cricket field, I wouldn’t repair the damage I’d do to myself and would put the healing backwards.

But by the time summer comes along ? Hopefully I’ll be back to full health by then with no more setbacks.

What will help me out considerably with the fitness is this car parking fiasco thing …

Not taking the car in to work is irritating, sure. It means a lack of flexibility. Shopping is either heavily rationed (to fit in my bag) at the start of the week or it waits until Thursday when I have the boot of the car. It’ll be Thursday this week, there’s enough apples to last until then. That’s weird innit ? Me having “No Apples Left = Shopping is Urgent” as a flag.

However. Taking the bus gets me using my legs a lot more. On the cricket field, my legs are my biggest asset (and possibly worst enemy too!). If I get my weight down again (it’s gone up half a stone, which is still a stone less than when I started the diet) then those legs give me huge amounts of power and speed. I got used to being the quickest person on the team, which is why losing that speed due to being overweight got to me.

Where all the walking does me good is conditioning. Muscles like to do work. They get used to repetitions. More reps lead to being able to do even more reps. It makes for sturdiness and resistance to injury. One way my legs work against me is that small damage like a minicramp will hamper the whole leg. Conditioning is aimed at increasing the resistance to that damage.

The way I got the leg power I have was by doing a paper round. It was a free paper going to every house, so taking a bike would have been silly. I carried a big bag of newspapers around and walked as fast as possible. And I can walk darn quick. Those legs used to let me push start a car on my own (with someone in the driver’s seat to do the necessary)

Hopefully the walks to the bus will get those legs back in shape. And maybe … After a few weeks perhaps I should up the ante by putting weights into that bag ?

Picture Luke Skywalker with Yoda on his back.

Hey ! A mentor or someone to make getting into better shape worth it would be awesome too. Although they’ll hopefully not be wrinkled, green or on a planet devoid of technology.

Cos I like my toys.

Yeah – it definitely had the production quality behind it and had a lot more going for it than Next Gen. I think it suffered though due to the scripts – there wasn't enough filler to keep it going between the big arcy storyline episodes.

Space: Above & Beyond had a lot of potential. It's a real shame that they canned it so early on. That could've run for quite some time i think if it had been given a chance.

Oh, and I agree with you on the need to get off this rock – though the pessimist in me thinks that its already too late.

What do those have in common ? Space !

I’ve always dreamed of being an astronaut. I’ve probably been born maybe 20-30 years too early, although we should really have been having colonies on the Moon or even Mars by now if we’d followed the essential dream instead of being held back by election chasing politicians.

Why do I say “essential” dream ?

We have an awesome planet to live on. But we have to recognise that it’s limited. Sooner or later, the resources will run out. One of those idiot politicians will press the wrong button and unleash something. An asteroid could come our way. All doom & gloom stuff like that.

The answer to the first point is – there’s huge amounts of resources out in space. We just have to go out and get them. A single asteroid can have more minerals than the average continent plus it’s easier to extract them. And colonies out there remove the “All Our Eggs In One Basket” factor where we could survive as a species even if that global killer asteroid came along.

But it’s not just that which fed my astronaut dream. It was the potential to get out there and do something new. Go places no one else had been. Be part of something bigger. Escape the surly existence on Earth.

So I’ve always been interested in space and everything associated with it.

I’ve indulged that twice over the last couple of days. Firstly by checking out a game called Endless Space. I was addicted to the space strategy game Master Of Orion 2 (Moo2) for years (still am) but it’s very dated now.

I’ve been hoping for a modern equivalent for donkeys years now and being consistently frustrated by what comes out on sale. They’re either too fixed in scope (Imperium Galactica 1 and 2), too rigid in what they offer or just plain broken (Moo3). The latest off the line is called Endless Space, which has a lot going for it. There seems to be some decent mechanics in there. It’s got decent depth. I get the feeling it’s a game I could get very interested in. However …

The documentation is appalling. There are game concepts which are barely touched on in the tutorials and the appalling excuse for a manual. With Moo2, there was a full description of the technology tree in the manual and in game. You find out how to exploit game concepts purely by accident here.
Combat happens too quickly and there’s that finding things out by accident factor again. In the early days, you need time to evaluate your options, even just to figure out what they are. Endless Space doesn’t allow that, which is a sin compounded by that awful documentation.

Combat doesn’t need to be on an insanely fast timer, especially when the rest of the game is at chilled out “wait til I’m done” turn based.

There’s lack of variation here. I was bored after just a few hours of essentially watching the game play itself.

Yeah. I guess I’m still looking for that Moo2 replacement. Pax Imperia got close but that game was an incredible grind …

What was tonight’s entertainment ? One of those series that was way too shortlived for what it deserved was a bit of magic called Space Above And Beyond.

This was space scifi set in a near future Earth where we’d just started going out to the stars to colonise the planets. Just as a powerful and very hostile alien race figured out we were there … The series is centred around the US Marine Corps 58th squadron aka the Wild Cards and the pilots which make up that squadron. The series was blessed with characters that worked very well with each other. The characters made it interesting.

The effects were pretty decent too. It was made in the era of models and cheap effects but it looked great. It easily beat the expensive effects on show in Star Trek Next Generation and didn’t have the canned repetition of the original Battlestar Galactica. I think the space sequences were probably better than the CGI effects in the newest Battlestar series. I’ll get back to you on that one.

I watched the pilot again tonight (after waiting a decade for a Region 2 dvd release) and it instantly reminded me of why I’d been eagerly waiting to watch this one again. It was originally shown late on a Friday night on BBC2 and I can remember trying to get home from uni or whichever work placement I was on to watch it. It definitely had me caught and this was when sci fi was in its telly Golden Age where it was up against shows like the Star Treks, Babylon 5, Farscape with Stargate coming too.

One funny thing though. I thought the battle at the end of the pilot was much longer …

Must be some weird time dilation thing.

Anyway – Endless Space = bit pants. Space Above And Beyond = timeless classic (although it suffered from bad scripts).

Just finished watching one of the more characterful and charming movies of last year :

I reckon this was one of the more underrated movies of last year. It was a bit lacking in plot and you could see the twist coming from a mile off but …

It never forgot something that’s absolutely critical :

It entertained. Oh yes. It definitely entertained.

It didn’t have that much but it definitely had fun coming out of every second of its set piece sequences, led by the main two characters :

Soundtrack’s good too. It’s mainly by Graham Hancock but there’s a couple of tracks in there by Rodrigo y Gabriela which have caught my attention. Here’s a link to one of those called Hanuman. Think I might be going collecting …

Oh, here’s a memory coming back – I think my toes were tapping all the way through this one when the Crazies saw it in the cinema.

If you haven’t seen it yet, buy it !!!!! And then save it for when you’re feeling low, it’s guaranteed to cheer you up.

And … how could I go without :

ooooooooOOOOOOO ??

🙂

I’ve had my attention well and truly caught by something on Kickstarter. But a little history first.

When I was little, there was one game that I played above all others. It was called Elite and was a truly groundbreaking achievement. Here’s a wiki link to more about it but the short summary is :

Free roaming space combat game
A game engine which was a thing of beauty
Not just 1 big galaxy to play in but 8
Unparalleled depth (for the time)
And a far off goal to head for – be one of the Elite

I have to admit, I wasn’t so addicted that I got a pilot to Elite status which shows how much grinding you would need to do to get that. Elite status was determined by a hidden kill count score, which went from Harmless and Mostly Harmless all the way up to the final 3 ratings : Dangerous, Deadly and Elite. I gave up the grind typically at Deadly. To get Elite, you’d need to get 25 x 256 combat kills. (Lots!) A certain other game called Revs was getting my attention instead.

For the time, it was a truly awesome game that’s never really been matched to this day. There’s been efforts but nothing as engaging as that early stellar achievement.

From the same stable came the two Frontier games. This translated the original game into our known galaxy. We could take off from London and fly to the base on the Moon or Mars. It had a wholly Newtonian physics engine – This Is Not A Good Thing. The best thing about the original was the combat, the worst thing about the sequels is that the combat was either jousting at silly speeds or restricted to space around starbases.

The sequels were also infested by bugs. Many bugs. To be honest, they were unplayable garbage. But they did have lots of potential and when they worked, they were gorgeous (for the time!).

We’ve also seen the Freelancer game come to PC. This was a game I played through a few times. It’s another fairly open world space combat game and had a pretty decent storyline backing it up. But – it wasn’t a truly open world game, due to the hefty Plot Hammers that chased you around the systems it was set in.

The one hope for space combat games lately has been the X Beyond The Frontier series.

These did pretty well but … they seemed to be missing something. I could recognise how good the game was but I knew that to progress in it, I’d need to become industrialist as well as space cowboy. I’d need to set up and babysit a network of space stations to build what I needed to beat the games.

I didn’t want to be space industrialist. I wanted to be space captain, cowboy, pirate.

What’s next ?

Well – the thing that caught my eye the other night was something called Elite : Dangerous on Kickstarter. It’s by the same fella responsible for the first Elite games and it seems quite promising in contrast to my impression of Star Citizen, also on Kickstarter. I don’t know why but the hype alarm dinged for Star Citizen, possibly due to the Freelancer “open world promised, didn’t happen” effect.

If you have a look at that Kickstarter link, you’ll see tiers of rewards for pledges made. I’m looking at the £45 tier which would give me :
£5 – get a decal : meh.
£10 – get newsletter and updates : meh
£15 – reserve your commander name : meh
£20 – get a digital copy in March 2014 (ish) : yey ! finally something of value
£30 – get digital copy : oops, one for when the early pledger £20 tier runs out
£35 – get digital copy of the sequel to the Dark Wheel novella : interesting …
£40 – have your name included in the NPC random name database
£45 – get the digital soundtrack

The really interesting stuff starts at £40. I’d put my actual surname in there for that in expectation of seeing a Non Player Character agent with my surname. That’s like Bounty Agent Pete Sleepy (sub actual name) wants you to do stuff. How cool is that ? And my surname is unusual enough to enhance that coolness factor.

And I like having soundtracks which would make me put in that extra £5. Tempted by another £5 for beta access but I’ve always found beta access underwhelming and spoiling for the release game.

Any higher than that is where it starts getting silly.

Yeah – very curious about this particular kickstarter campaign. I’m not going to sink cash into it tonight but I’ll keep an eye on it. It’s currently at almost £600k pledged out of a target of £1.25m with 38 days to go.

I wrote something yesterday about being forced out of the car and on to the buses …

To be honest, I didn’t like yesterday’s post. Too much whinging.

And to be honest again, this isn’t the first time I’ve been forced out of the car for an extended period. There was a period a couple of years ago where broken bits on my last car led to 3 weeks on the bus. Oh – if you’re in the market for another car, don’t go to Carcraft. As well as insanely high interest rates, I got suckered into buying one of those warranties that doesn’t actually cover anything. That 3 weeks was due to Carcraft incompetence at fixing the poorly car.

So – bus this morning saw me getting out of the house a little earlier (10 minutes or so) than usual, although I’d like to be a little earlier than that still. After a little wait for the bus, I was in work at about usual time (my pattern is 9 to 5, although I can vary that as need be). So I didn’t actually lose much time.

I object to the cost though, £4 for an all day ticket, which works out to just over 50p a mile (3.6miles door to office by the bus route). That’s only slightly less than my current car costs to run all in and that car is almost new. It’s a ridiculous amount of money and that’s before you think of the lack of freedom and convenience that comes with being tied to the bus.

The affordability question goes further with public transport in general. Not only does that bus trip cost 4x per mile than my (admittedly economical) car does on petrol alone, other public transport is also excessive on cost. The last time I took the train for a London work trip, it cost the organisation £200. We have to get clearance from team leaders for that level of travel expense. In my car, it costs the organisation £60 on 25p a mile. Incidentally, we’ve been on 25p a mile for the past 15 years with no consideration for exponentially rising petrol/diesel cost but that’s another point entirely.

So yeah – my main objection to public transport is the excessive cost.

The convenience for me isn’t too bad. I live very close to one of the bus routes which has 3 buses I can use. And they come reasonably often.

I thought on the way back that a Kindle or similar device could be handy, although the trip isn’t actually that long. That thought came from seeing someone else use a Kindle for the entire 5 minutes he was on the bus. (There was worse, another couple were on the bus for precisely 2 stops – why not walk ?)

Home time trip was good – After clocking out from work at just about 5.05, I was home just before 6pm. And that’s with a Sainsburys and chippie run on the way back.

Just in time to have the “will I, won’t I ?” temptation again for the Total War games !

Steam Sale at the moment. Which means lots of games with lots of insane discounts.

I’ve been reasonably reserved so far. I’ve not bought as many games as I could have done. The latest games are :

Endless Space – space grand strategy. Early look = promising but big learning curve
Star Wars KOTOR 2 – loved KOTOR 1, avoided KOTOR 2 due to bugs. But those have been sorted out by fans.
Transformers War For Cybertron – curious about this one, courtesy of Totalbiscuit videos. I was also a Transformers nut before the Michael Bay abominations came out.
Trine – which I’m a little annoyed about because it advertised a soundtrack with it. It does have the soundtrack … but it’s awkward to get to.
F1 2012 arrived before the sale. I had a look last night and … my joystick isn’t really suited to it. The stiffness around the centre point is a bit too high and the flightstick configuration doesn’t have the precision of a wheel.

I have been fairly restrained 🙂 Other games on the list were : Borderlands 2, Total War series (I’m wary due to the developer not really finishing any of their games), Torchlight 2 and a couple of others.

But – I’m not playing games nearly as much as I used to, so getting them on speculation or because they have a reputation for being an awesome game is a bit of a waste.

Closing time ! Spotted this story on BBC : “Seeing someone scratch an itch makes you itchy too”. That puts me in trouble if I see anyone scratching !

PS The bus will have hidden benefits. I benefit from natural fitness which sees me get away with not much preparation for cricket. But the walking to and from the bus will have great benefit in getting my legs conditioned again.