Month: January 2013

Another yoink from Facebook but … words !

Here we go :
” Had an interesting experience tonight.

I’m an airline pilot, and like many airline pilots I live in a different city than I’m based in. This means that more or less once a week I commute across the country in the back of an airplane. When you spend 30+ hours a month in the coach section of an airplane you either go insane or come up with ways of entertaining yourself. For the last couple of weeks KSP has been my source of entertainment…until tonight. Tonight I decided to try making a space plane. As you can probably guess, my first few attempts didn’t go well. Neither did the next few. Or the ones after those. In fact, the whole exercise was pretty much a dismal failure. Fireballs, mid flight structural failures, and events that could be described as “high velocity unintentional landings” claimed the lives of hundreds of brave kerbals.

Midway home the woman in the seat next to me broke the social communication barrier:

: Excuse me young man, are you a pilot?
: Yes mam, I am.
: Oh dear…

I had failed to realize that for over an hour the passengers around me watched as a pilot, in full uniform, crashed what looks to the untrained eye like a flight simulator, hundreds and hundreds of times. I think I’ll stick to civ V when I’m commuting. “

The KSP he’s referring to is the Kerbal Space Programme, which I think I’ve mentioned before …

It’s an insanely deep rocketry simulator, which is growing beyond the initial steps of just bunging together a few engines, fuel tanks, coffin for the Kerbals (aka command module) and straps and struts and seeing what would happen when you hit the blue touch paper. It’s turned more into a sandbox now, with players doing things like setting up bases on the Mun or having space stations around the planet.

But there’s always that potential for massive disaster and huge fireballs. And that’s why we like games :-). What adds something here is that the disaster and fireballs happen in a totally fair way, there’s always an understandable reason for why it happened and you can learn valid rocketry design tips from it. Everything in the game is based on sound astronomic physics, behind a fairly friendly interface.

Sounds like fun 🙂 Gotta admit, it’s another game where I’ve thought it’s shinier to watch others play than play myself but when I saw that story appear in the Facebook feed, made me chuckle 🙂

Had a peek at the latest Good Old Games weekend sale earlier …

It’s quite tempting this weekend for old games I remember being hooked on, for old games I missed out on the first time and not so old games I avoided when they were new.

What have they got and why am I tempted ?

First up – a link

Empire Earth – this is a hybrid of real time strategy (which tends to be quite limited in scope actually) and grand empire strategy. Kinda like mashing together Age of Empires and Civilisation. This one hails from an age where game developers tended to try things out with mashing genres together, trouble is the developers didn’t tend to do that great a job of it. The game was either broken, or too ambitious.

I’m very tempted by this one, I was hooked on quite a few versions of Civilisation and this one gives a bit more scope. But I’ll only go for the first Empire Earth as it looks like the sequels actually took features away from the original.

Talking about taking stuff away …

Lords of the Realm 2 is another one I sunk a lot of time into. It’s another hybrid of real time strategy and empire strategy. It’s pretty simple to play but hides its depth well. I really enjoyed this one, it’s just a shame the AI opponents couldn’t play to win. They tended to waste their people in making peasant armies, which your archers would cut down like wheat. All you needed to do was build castles with a moat, fill it with archers and the AI couldn’t beat you from there. On the other hand, you’d be able to build armies of armoured swordsmen and macemen to break into the castles.

I missed the first Lords of the Realm and avoided the third. The second is definitely an all time classic, just a shame the AI wasn’t good enough. The third got avoided because they took away the strengths of the second and didn’t leave much of a game behind (bit like Moo3 after Moo2)

Lords of the Realm spawned a sister game too called Lords of Magic. Whereas Lords of the Realm was based in Medieval times with archers, crossbowmen, castles, sieges, swordsmen and knights, Lords of Magic was a magic fantasy setting. I was very curious about this one when it first came out. I don’t think I got it because it took far too long to go budget.

(Bit like a lot of Blizzard games – they stay expensive for far too long and therefore I refuse to buy them)

Evil Genius – played the demo, didn’t get the game. It’s one where you are the Evil Genius, plotting world domination from the hidden mountain lair. This seemed like one where the developers got over ambitious and ran out of time and skill to program in all they wanted. Curious about this one though, it’s less of a loss on a $4 game than the original price of £30.

What’s next ?

Ground Control 1 and 2. I played the original when Gamespy gave it away for free but didn’t get too far in it. It was a ground breaker for real time strategy in its day because instead of having you build up a complicated base from bare bones units, the units you started a battle with were the only units you’d have. I have a mate who was addicted to Ground Control 2 for a very long time and that only comes with strong games with lots of depth.

There’s a few more in the offer but I wouldn’t look at them seriously : Judge Dredd : Dredd vs Death, Pinball Gold and Sniper Elite Berlin 1945.

I might well spend a bit of cash on the offer this weekend – on either or both of Empire Earth and Lords of Magic. I still need to get value out of similar recent acquisitions like Heroes of Might & Magic 3.

Oh and there’s another limited Steam sale starting today too – my wallet is doomed ! Which reminds me … it’s time to pay off the credit card … uhoh ! 🙂

May the Force be With you (always)…..

[lol]

🙂

That’s that polite question that you always hear. Facebook has taken it on too, with lots of people giving literal answers to the “How’s it going ?” that it puts in the status update entry box.

I say “polite” question because people always expect an answer along the lines of “I’m doing great, thanks, how are you ?”. I’ve been breaking the mould on that lately by giving a standard answer of delaying slightly (to consider the answer!) and saying “improving”.

I don’t think people have been entirely prepared for that answer. It’s a little too honest :-).

Or perhaps their mind is working through “He’s improving, I didn’t realise there was anything wrong, what did I miss ?” I like that “what did I miss ?” thought as it suggests that I’ve been able to hide this skin problem since it exploded late last summer.

I am genuinely improving too, although painfully (literally!) slowly and not really helped by me too. The damage is steadily declining, where I don’t do the self inflicted wounds thing. Because things are taking a long time to heal, if I disrupt that healing by giving into temptation and scratching the damaged bits it sets back the healing more than you might think. Work can be a bit awkward because moving around more means the healing can be disrupted by what I’m wearing. And I’ve not said what the most awkward thing is yet 😉

No need to go back to the doctor’s place though just yet. Just more self discipline to erase a life long tendency to attack the bits of me that aren’t right yet.

It is genuinely improving though (I can wear a helmet again!) and I think I’ve identified a few things that were making my skin go wrong :

Work. I might be allergic to work. LOL 🙂 Nah. It’s the buildings, they have a very dry atmosphere which I think is a very minor contributor to what’s gone wrong. It’s something to live with, I’m not about to insist on any special conditions for it although working from home may be something I have to talk to management about.
White bread – not so sure about this one now, although I’ve not had the unpleasantness of being unable to breathe since I ditched the white bread.
Stress – always causes problems. But the reasons for that stress are not something I’m going to put here. Although what Ms Warpath suggested earlier today rings very true.

Orange juice/citrus. This is huge. If you’re continually getting mouth ulcers without the explanation of “I bit my mouth” then that’s a major signal that you’re eating/drinking something you shouldn’t. What I didn’t realise is that a citrus allergy might extend to lemon muffins too :-).

You know what that means ? I will be forced to consume only chocolate muffins.

(I promise to eat other stuff as well which might be vaguely healthy – says he knowing that after I finish this post, the first thing I’ll do is fetch an apple from the kitchen)

The last thing I know that’s causing me problems is water … Yep. It appears to be a little boy problem. And you know what little boys hate ? Bathing ! Looks like having a shower is causing two problems – the towel is damaging the skin and the water is leaching out the bits I need for healing. But I know how to get around that (it involves being gentle and using lots of moisturiser).

I know – awkward. But – by understanding why it’s bad in one way, you can make an adjustment, do things differently and deal with the inconvenience.

Lesson – there’s a way around every problem. You just need to believe that there is an answer there, even if it’s not obvious.

Sometimes you need to ask for help, sometimes you need to find a strength from within. Sometimes you need Rubber Mallet assistance to get inspiration. Hopefully not too often though because concussion is a Bad Thing.

I’m hopeful that I’ll make the cricket season, although I’m definitely not ready yet. Too much damage and too much time needed for repairs. What is helping is knowing there’s good friends out there who are genuinely concerned when they find out when I’m not healthy. I’ve been lucky to have been involved in an awesome project for longer than I should have. That’s one reason why it’s been tough to let go, although I know that in the new one there is potential for me to have the autonomy I never had (and could have done with to get things done!) in the old project.

Ok Ok ! That’s enough self indulgence for tonight, where’s those apples 🙂

PS One thing about the people on the project is that if proves true the old saying about when genuine friends meet up for the first time in a while, they’ll pick up from old conversations. And that’s proved true about 2 very lovely ladies from the old project who I had the chance to have conversations with over the past week after meeting them at random 🙂

Snow’s hit today.

It’s actually worse than I can remember for a while, there’s more come down than there has been for years and I think it’s actually worse than the period a few years ago when barely anyone got into work.

Here’s the BBC take on it … (link)

Lots of cancellations – schools, buses, trains and the airports. For me, Plan A was to come in on the bus today because I didn’t know how the car would handle the uncertain grip. I’d have been ok with walking the 3.6 miles home but not to do that both ways (We’re expected to walk up to 3 miles). One problem – buses are cancelled. I can understand that too because the roads were somewhat treacherous this morning.

(It’s not that bad, I’ve experienced worse)

After a little bit of um and arr, I headed in anyway in the car. I’d not driven the hybrid on ice before … It behaves a bit differently to a conventional car :

It is driven by motor and/or engine, so it doesn’t need a clutch
Therefore there’s no matching of engine speed to road speed which is one source of wheelspin on ice
But, the motor is very powerful when it’s at low speeds.

In my car, the motor and engine are all brought together in the one axle, without the driver needing to worry about matching them up. But, there’s a very active traction control system looking after it all. The traction control is where the concern comes, as reports say that it can totally stop the car from moving if you attempt to start on ice.

Ok, what did that actually mean for the drive in today ?

Car actually handled it quite well. The traction control was only obvious with flashing its light twice and one of those saw the car slipping sideways. I’ll allow traction control interference there :-). The automatic gearbox helps out a lot as you can start off more gently and more controlled than trying to match engine speed to low road speed with a clutch.

The traction control behaves differently with the motor. When it fired a second time, I could hear lots of ticking from the front. With an engine, traction control works through either applying the brakes on the slipping wheel or by making the engine give less power. I think I was getting that power limiting happening as well today, although the car wasn’t letting. Could have been my boots 🙂

Roads actually weren’t too bad and they’d cleared up by lunchtime too. What happens is that the grit that’s laid down will clear little pockets which then refreeze but the road won’t clear until cars drive over it. This morning, the roads were a mix of ice and slush, with them clearing to wet tarmac in the afternoon.

What was surprising was the amount of respect the drivers were showing the conditions. At 35 on a 40mph limit, I was one of the faster cars on the road. I suspect the idiots had stayed at home.

I wasn’t really surprised that I was one of the few who made it in. And I made the trip partly cos I wanted to experience the conditions. Yep, I’m one of those people who when given a “do not travel, it isn’t safe”, I’ll think about heading out anyway just to see what it’s like. And seeing as I didn’t know how that car would handle the ice ? 😉

Oh – I’ve also picked up a laptop and a few documents as well in case I get stuck at home on Monday. If the snow does continue and the buses don’t run on Monday, I will not be taken the car. I’m banned from the car park except for on Fridays …

So yeah – conditions = quite poor. We’ve only had about 3 inches of snow but it’s enough to shut down a lot of the infrastructure and to keep many people at home.

PS Next time I take the car out when covered in snow, I’ll clear the parking sensors 😉

Of course. Shops can never compete with on-line retailers for either price or variety. I probably get 2/3 of my books on-line but still pick up random books in shops or supermarkets. Often they're books I would never have planned to buy and more often than not turn out to be at least reasonable.

Yeah – it depends where you can get them. The retail bookshops have two problems :

Not having the books I'm interested in on their shelves
Not keeping up with the online offers

Online is better at getting us the books for the prices we're willing to pay 🙂

I actually think books are really cheap. £5 for a book is pretty reasonable and most of mine are significantly less than that.

News over here is all about another retail giant getting into trouble …

Couldn’t really let that bit of news pass as HMV is probably the shop I spend most time in up at the Mall. What can I say, I find browsing in there to be quite relaxing.

Yes. I’m strange.

Why would that be I wonder ? I touched on one possible reason earlier. Bargains. There’s a Waterstones bookshop up at the Mall too but despite reading the occasional book, I don’t tend to spend much time in there. Why ? Books cost too much these days (I can remember books costing £2-£3 new in shops – I’m old) and the stock isn’t that great.

That’s a big reason why the high street shops are struggling now. It costs money to hold stock and takes lots of space to put that stock on the shelves. So when I go looking for that Edie Brickell album I don’t have yet or the Rachel Sermanni album I’m very curious about, I don’t find it in the shop.

Prices tend to be cheaper online too and you avoid being inflicted with customer disservice too. Just one problem with actual media coming from online places, you tend to have to deal with the post office. That’s why I don’t order much online, because getting to the post office (especially with the car park ban) is a bit of a pain.

I’m not a big fan of HMV though. There used to be 2 record/movie shops at the Mall, with a Virgin (later Zavvi) store there too. They kept each other honest with the pricing and the offers. I’d tend to browse HMV and then buy downstairs in Virgin where the same item would usually be cheaper. Zavvi was another casualty of Woolworths collapsing. After Zavvi disappeared, there was noone to keep HMV honest. Prices went up.

I have been buying more stuff as download, however while I’m happy to do that with games and music I don’t do that with movies. Movies take a lot of storage space and it’s far more difficult to pipe movies to the good AV kit than it is to just pop a dvd in the Xbox, a blu-ray in the player and just watch stuff. Computers can do it but not as easily or as high quality as it should be.

So I still browse the record shops. Or I do at the moment.

There’s some hope, as there’s still a couple of independents in town. One is ok, although they pass off ex-rental blu-rays as new (thought that was illegal ?). The other are a bunch of crooks.

With the car park ban, I can see myself going into the city centre more than the Mall. There’s more shops there and I already have the go anywhere bus ticket.

I’ll be a little sad to see HMV go, although that’s coloured by two things :

1 – I kinda wished they’d gone earlier instead of Virgin/Zavvi. I always preferred the other shop.
2 – Multimedia shopping going from high street to online seems inevitable.

I like having that browse ! I don’t often buy much in there but I seem to do more movie/music shopping on impulse than it being a calculated online buy.

And Amazon cheat on their taxes so I try and avoid them for that.

PS I have a second copy of Resident Evil Afterlife on bluray after the last trip. I know I know ! The Resident Evil films are a bit naff. But I enjoy watching them (spot the Milla Jovovich fan) and I thought it was the newer one. Anyone (local!) want it ?