Year: 2013

We seem to be living in an ever increasingly overt world of surveillance these days …

Everybody is watching everybody else but most of all, they’re watching us.

It’s scary isn’t it ? If you believe the hype and scaremongering, there’s computers out there going through everything we send, store or comment on over the internet looking for … I dunno what. Lots of stuff. There’s even spying happening on the data that wings its way between all those places where The Cloud and its data centres live.

We have the NSA and GCHQ getting caught doing their job (looking for terrorists) and we have other assorted people trying to get as much information as they can about us so they can sell us either advertising or actual products.

(And yes, I’m betting that this post will be one of those that gets a “Hey ! Buy My Stuff ! Read My Review !” – yep, they do capitalise like that – that you don’t see because I delete and report them as the spam that they are).

They’re all at it. The only difference between them is how honest they are about it and how they can justify it. While I can agree with the security people (heard of a bomb go off in the UK lately ? no, didn’t think so) spying on us, it’s a whole different story with the gang of 8 that’s bleating at the moment.

Here’s a Register story about it (link). The alliance of 8 includes :

AOL – don’t know much about them
Apple – who have just enabled spyware on iPhones that bleats an advert if you go past something in the shop
Facebook – trust these guys with your info ? hell no !
Google – see Facebook. And they’re not honest about the Googlebot.com that will be spying on this blog without admitting to it on the Google hit counter. Or the Next-Blog button which I disabled a while ago, which still apparently works.
LinkedIn – assume they’re looking for advertising
Microsoft – Kinect + always on. Nuff said, although there’s much more from Microsh$ft.
Twitter – I avoid this like the plague. Cos it is. A plague of illiterate offensive idiots that is.
Yahoo – see Google.

Oh and most of the above don’t pay their taxes like the rest of us. I’m kinda surprised Amazon haven’t made it a gang of 9.

(I appear to be working my way into a rant – muahahahaha)

Yes. State sponsored surveillance is a Bad Thing in our modern liberal world. So are bombs and terrorists and people who get away with fraud that breaks banks and wrecks the lives of thousands. It’s a Bad Thing but the alternative is much worse.

You can’t justify surveillance in the name of advertising or commercialism like that. I can guarantee that everything I’ve posted online is stored and analysed by people like Amazon so they can target their ads and attempt to sell me stuff.

The offensive thing is that both groups are spying on everyone. They’re doing it as part of their core business, however one group is honest about it whereas the other group says “Hey ! No fair !” when they’re not allowed to have their own way. It just happens that the group that’s bleating is the group that owns the news.

Do you get the feeling I hate advertising and everything associated with it ?

The answer is to limit your online exposure. This blog is written under a pseudonym and there’s only one post here that says directly what I work on. The sitemeter counter is private because it would give clues for who I work for. I don’t declare who I work for on Facebook, although it’s guessable.

Be careful what you put online, it may be incredibly difficult to remove it when it hits the internet.

And …. a shift to the left !

I’ve been struggling over the past few days. Part of that is being desperate for the Xmas break (I’m shattered and running on fumes). Most of it is putting a hole in my tongue … Think of a big tongue ulcer. And then think it’s bigger than that.

Ouch !

I didn’t eat much over the weekend, which isn’t as bad as it sounds because I’ve put enough weight back on that I can miss a few meals and get away with it. Not for long though. It’s improving now though. I’ve been ok with eating again, although it’s been very difficult to talk at work today. Hopefully it’ll be easier tomorrow.

On the other hand … skin’s improving ! Despite me “helping” it …

I think it has to count as one of those secret guilty pleasures …

Not much Minecraft either on the Hannah and Kim channels. Avoid Totalbiscuit though, he has a habit of making me buy games I never play.

Been watching some of Hannah's yogcasts. Hilarious! She might just have a new fan…..

There’s a few interesting developments in the space world at the moment.

Waitaminute – are those two words (space and world) that should be used together seeing as one is ground and the other is void ?

I’ve been watching the news reports on the Indian space probe lately. There’s two probes going to Mars at the moment, one from India, one from the USA. The Indian one made its people nervous because one of its several “Trans-Mars Injection” burns didn’t go to plan.

I’ve written things about Kerbal Space program before (and I feel I have unfinished business with that game but it’s far more amusing to watch the Scott Manley videos). It’s simplified at the moment but it’s still an incredibly good rocketry and orbital physics simulator. Definitely one where you have to think a bit with the navigation.

Anyway – it teaches you all sorts of things, me being one of those people who learns best by doing. It teaches things like :

Why the Indian probe needed several burns to get to Mars
Why it would split up the burns
Why they send probes to other planets at certain times/dates
Why it didn’t really matter if it missed one

Firstly – the certain times and dates … Everything in space has a path that it goes through. Everything around it influences that path, which makes everything go in slightly wonky ellipses. It’s why we have tides, because the gravity of the moon pulls the water towards the moon. It takes time too for the planets to go around their orbits. You wouldn’t want to launch your probe when Mars is on the opposite side of the sun. Or maybe you would …

Things up there happen slowly. If you pointed a rocket towards Mars and hit the Go button, it would miss because in the time taken for it to get there, Mars will have moved around the sky quite significantly. Instead, you aim it towards where Mars will be when you think it’ll get there and you factor in how much its path will be curved by the gravity of everything else up there.

There’s a phenomenon called the Oberth Effect, which says that if you fire the rocket in orbit, it’ll most affect the opposite side of the orbit. Hold up. 2 important terms : Periapse – closest approach, Apoapsis – furthest approach. Oberth means that to escape orbit, it’s best to fire the rocket at Periapse because that’s the best way of increasing that Apoapsis. And once the rocket is going fast enough, it achieves “Escape Velocity” and will be on its way to Mars.

So why split up the burns, why not go American Style and just do one ? Well – the American one had what all American transport has (lol – I’d love a V8 monster), a whopping big engine, while the Indian one was a bit more modest.

So the Indian one couldn’t get all of the acceleration it needed out of the way in the short times it had at Periapse. It doesn’t matter that it splits them up, as long as it can do it enough times to get to Mars while it still had fuel to get there.

I think that’s enough orbital mechanics for now don’t you ?

Yep. Brain. Fizzing. Cooking. Exploding.

Especially when you think of the insane calculations that go on to get the most efficient course to go. They’ll factor in every bit of gravity they can to get their rocket in the right place at the right time, without bumping into any planets. If they’re really clever, they’ll make it fly by lots of different planets. Probes like Cassini-Huygens visited 3 planets (Earth, Venus, Jupiter) before reaching its final destination (Saturn) and when it got to Saturn, it checked out 9 moons. Most of that is set up by the rockets that fling it out there and the math to do it is absolutely insane. Kerbal Space Program is much simpler and orbital maneouvres in that tend to be rather more brute force.

One last bit – why do they bother being so efficient ? Cos it lets them squeeze as many instruments on to the probe as possible. More instruments means more weight, means more fuel needed to get them to the destination.

Ok – that’s definitely enough for the nerdy stuff for tonight.

I was going to say something about gaming too. I have that unfinished business with Kerbal Space Programme, where I’d like to make rockets that check out the other planets. My main gaming time at the moment is with that old staple (9 years old … cor) World of Warcraft. I’m playing on Silvermoon with ally characters. I’m missing the guys and the Hot Swedish Girls of the awesome Draenor guild but I’m enjoying playing through the story as an ally for the first time.

I have to say, since I started playing WoW it’s got considerably easier. I thought I’d check this out by sending my character into Outland (where the first expansion is set) completely naked. Ok. Not completely, I let her keep the tabard for modesty. Did I have a problem ? Only with the pet battle. I don’t think it’ll be as easy when I get to the second expansion but a lot of the challenge has been removed from the game. And that’s a big shame. Challenge makes it fun and the challenge as the game used to be was never too much.

I’ve been very tired lately though. I started playing on Monday evening and lasted a couple of quests before giving up due to tiredness. At the moment, I’m enjoying watching (actually listening) the Yogscast annual Xmas livestreams. I won’t be watching all of those (their output varies, they have awesome people and annoying people) but I thought last night’s with Hannah, Simon and Kim-Mandrew was hilarious. The videos by Hannah and Kim tend to be pretty special.

Thoroughly enjoyed that. It’s gamers enjoying games and bringing you with them when they do. Quite restful too, except when they’re playing horror games and unexpected sounds happen.

Right – over to the livestream 🙂 But … random piccy !

Definitely.

Yeah – it didn't really feel that long after they got the prologue out of the way.

Thought the 2 1/2 hours flew by. To be honest I never really noticed the time passing.

I had a feeling it would be as well produced as the first movie. It was long but it didn't actually feel overlong this time …

Well worth picking up early. Must read the book.

I enjoyed HG2 more than I thought I would. It was a little samey in places but different enough to keep me interested. Much darker than the first film and full of menace. It'll be interesting to see how much of the off-screen stuff is actually in the book.

There’s a blockbuster out there at the moment … you may have heard of it.

Yep – Hunger Games 2 – it’s being hyped mercilessly (although not with the arrogance that is the intro to the Hobbit 2 trailer).

While I’m on Hobbit … Pronunciation is weird here. English has a lot of inconsistencies in its language but it has its consistencies. Things like :
Caught, taught, haughty, naughty – pronounced with that “au” coming out like “or”

I can’t think of any “au” sounds that come out differently. Until now. In their lacking wisdom, the Hobbit 2 people have decided that Smaug sounds like Smowg. I’d hesitate to even consider finding an alternate saying of Smaug that doesn’t sound like smorgasbord. The way the Hobbit 2 people have done is it just plain Wrong.

I’ll go see Hobbit 2 anyway, although it’s tarnished by :
Arrogance of the producers (you will like our film, you will see it in 3d – no I won’t)
Being overlong (that’s a Peter Jackson thing)
And that pronunciation which will be annoying for eternity.

Oh – Hunger Games 2 – if you saw the first one and appreciated it in any way, this one is better in almost every way. The first was produced extremely well and made for one hell of a movie. It’s very faithful to the book, although it removes some of the brutality that makes up the backstory. Be warned with HG2, that brutality is all there this time around and it’s heavy stuff. Executions, torture, whippings, implied torture. Lots of stuff, some of which is shown. Be warned.

Hunger Games is set in a relatively distant future earth where a calamity has occurred that’s redrawn the map and concentrated the population into a capital and districts. The rich/poor divide has extended to the point where the capital denizens are ridiculously pampered while the district populations are severely downtrodden. The districts are kept in line by the Hunger Games, which happens annually. Each district contributes 2 tributes, 1 girl, 1 boy, who join a fight to the death with the other tributes. The tributes are picked at random (mostly), with the odds being dependent on how much food the candidate requisitions. More food, more likely to be picked.

That’s the basics at least, there’s more in the books and the film. The upshot is that the capital is expressing their power by enforcing these games upon the populace.

There’s a lot going on here too. The first introduces two characters, Hamitch and Effie. Hamitch is a veteran of a Hunger Games, Effie is the flowery fluffy person who picks the names. Their characters are very much drawn up by their experience. Effie is distant, Hamitch is a drunk suffering PTSD. They’ve both seen years upon years of kids being picked, trained and condemned to die. The first movie sees their first time where their kids have survived.

And you can see how it all affects them through the movie.

I’ve probably said too much already and given too many spoilers !

Go see it, it’s worth it. Although it’s highly recommended that you see the first one or read the book.

There’s been some pretty good films out there, although if it’s a choice between HG2, Ender’s Game and Iron Man 3 (all big highlights of this year), I’d actually choose Pacific Rim. It’s very silly but it’s a lot of fun.

How have I been doing ?

Tired and sore pretty much sums it up. I’m drawing on reserves at the moment, as is usual for this time of year. I’m sore on the inside as well as resisting the urge to tear at the bits of skin that are still bad. However !

The skin is in the best shape it’s been for over a year. It’s mending. I just have to give it the chance to repair itself. I’m still not free of the need to occasionally hit the bad bits with gunk though. My insides have got better too – tummy bug – gone.

So – things are looking up, although I’d like that skin condition all gone instead of just doing the steps forward, steps back as always.

Not long left until Xmas and then the best time of the year comes around again. Yep. Mini Eggs will be back on sale soon. Hurrah !

PS This was supposed to have a little about gaming in. Doh ! I forgot and the post grew too long anyway. I shall save the Naked Outland story for another day …

Ok, that title’s a bit dramatic.

I was just thinking that I’ve not posted anything since saying I’d picked up a tummy bug. Bugs down there are rare for me. If I do get them, they only last a day or so until the Nasties are out of my system.

I have two theories right now :

It’s something I ate (definitely !) – chief subject is a flapjack
It’s something I cook with (it fits cos I tend to cook with the same implements)

The Nasties should have been out of my system by now – they’re not. Oh well. It’s not too bad – you can probably guess the symptoms so I won’t describe them here. (Someone at work today asked and he was definitely getting that “Too Much Information !!” look). They’re not getting in the way of what I want to do.

I’m testing that second theory by having take out as much as I can this week and seeing what happens. If I recover, I’ll bin the cooking implements and get some new ones.

Lesson – work the problem to get your answer. The plan will actually work out a little – chippie tonight. Chinese tomorrow (they have a day off on Monday’s). KFC possibly Wednesday – I’m expecting to have to go to that Post Office pick up place again which will put me in the vicinity of the Mall. Something Different on Thursday (thinking about watching Hunger Games 2 – anyone join me ?)

We’ll see how that goes.

Skin’s giving mixed signals. I think the infection has pretty much gone but my arms haven’t recovered as much as my legs have. The legs are doing pretty well actually but the arms are a bit too much in range when my guard’s down when trying to get to sleep. But … it’s coming …

Ok. Change of subject.

Watched the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special on Saturday. They’ve been hyping this mercilessly, so much that it was a relief when the show actually came around. Hype is a strange thing. It can give all sorts of expectations. The fans get all sorts of expectations. Star Wars had this in spades with the prequel sequels and a lot of the fans think they were failed by those prequel sequels. (I think they’re decent action movies but crippled by Lucas’s hamfisted treatment of his own universe)

Doctor Who ? Awesome. After just 5 minutes I’d navigated to the Amazon page to check out the bluray and I almost preordered it.

It was a pretty special show. It had everything, humour, drama, emotion, mystery, silliness. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the only reason I haven’t preordered it is because BBC have a habit of not giving you bluray quality on blurays (Sherlock didn’t have bluray quality sound, so I can’t watch it without risking the sound skip problem). I’ll get it when I can be assured of no frustration with the sound (picture doesn’t mean much to me but sound ? crucial).

Matt Smith has been a very worthy Doctor. I’ve been watching Doctor Who since a babe and he’s one of the best. That’s always going to be the utterly mad Tom Baker but Matt Smith is right up there too. He can snap from one aspect of the Doctor’s personality to another in a split second in a way that instantly grabs the attention.

He was supported by a couple of the better companions too in Rory Pond and Clara. Amy Pond started well but just ran out of good writing.

You’re probably guessing that I’m a huge Doctor Who fan. You’d be right. It’s consistently been good quality scifi (ok, the Sylvester McCoy times were cursed by awful writing) and it’s always been entertaining. That’s the key for me, stories on telly have to be entertaining. Things like Stargate Universe forgot that. The new Battlestar Galactica got lost in thinking it had a clever plan (it didn’t, they started making it up as they went along).

I hope I keep things entertaining here. That’s enough for tonight ! I’m going to watch the first episode of Britain By The Sea (oh look ! Pendennis Castle, home of Mr Cuddles !) and then it’s back to Azeroth for my latest mage. She’s searing the Searing Gorge tonight.

PS If there’s any rumours that the 50th special almost did a Bolt on me and drew tears near the end, I’ll utterly deny them. However, I will confirm there was an Oh My God during the epilogue.