Month: April 2015

Those aren’t things that usually go together are they ?

I’ll come to the link in a little while.

Some games can be really brutal on your ability to escape from the keyboard. Whether it’s 2 hours of continuous action in Warcraft, where a step away from the keyboard can lead to disaster. Or the indeterminate time of a roaming patrol in the space game Eve, where leaving the keyboard can lead to you being left behind. And you have to roam in packs in Eve as stragglers often get picked off.

Online games are especially brutal on your opportunities to get away. They rarely have a pause button and even the games based on repeating rounds can lead to quite some time without a break. Dota can last up to an hour and League Of Legends took a while too.

Need to loo ? Better have a bottle to hand. (Yuk)

At least in the Warcraft, you could pick your moments when your absence wasn’t critical. And to avoid being left behind, you could /follow the raid leader* (or other person) so you could keep up.

*It was a privilege I had for quite a while to be on Guildlink’s officer chat. Where our revered raid leader, the lovely Overqueen Sarai, would run herd on us apes. This was in the day of 40 person raids and you can imagine how difficult it could be to coordinate all of those people and have breaks suitable for all. And you do need those breaks. Anyway … officer chat would occasionally have Sarai giving “follower count”. It got as high as 5 (hazy memory!) at some times. We never /followed Sarai. We could see her chuckling comments in the hidden chat where she was attempting to tow her follower chain through the lava pools.

Beware the chuckling raid leader.

I jest. Guildlink, while it lasted (up until the Burning Crusade beta) and was having Good Times, was a genuine pleasure to be involved with. I’ve not had better times in an online game since then, although the Eve crowd were always awesome out of game.

So about this housework ?

I’ve been playing Elite Dangerous a fair bit over the holiday. As you can see, it can be quite a pretty game … There’s not that much variation in the cosmos presented but what’s there, is gert lush. From boiling suns, to eclipsed planets, to the variation in the space stations you dock with :

That’s a Coriolis station, a design harking back to the days that the first Elite game hit the BBC (and those other pretender platforms that were never as good as the BBC*)

*Yes – I was a BBC boy back in the day, the Spectrum was too unreliable and the Commodore 64 was … I dunno. Not a BBC. This was the equivalent of today’s Xbox vs Playstation console wars. People would pick a favourite and defend it to the death.

I must have been in my second freighter, a Lakon Type 6 (ugly boxy thing) called “May Carry Cookies”, when I took that. I’m now in a Very Shiny Asp explorer ship which has been upgraded considerably. I’m quite enjoying piloting that and blowing away any pirate foolhardy enough to knock me out of the high speed supercruise*.

* Elite Dangerous has a slow speed dogfighting and docking mode but for travel inside a system, Supercruise is used. This is a warp drive (in the Star Trek term) which folds space. So far I’ve seen the speed reach Warp 9, or 729 times the speed of light (speed times light = the warp number cubed). It does help to keep the mind awake, calculating the warp number while travelling in system.

Elite is an online game, although you can play it in a solo mode. You’re still always connected, with the reason being that the economy in game is driven by all of the players interacting with the server. 1000 players buy Copper in a system, there won’t be much Copper left there and it’ll drive the prices up. I like that idea, it’s what assuaged my concerns where I thought it should have an offline mode. The solo mode stops other players trying to pirate you. There’s been players in this game for a very long time now, so they have some Very Shiny Ships which would quickly deal with my upgraded Asp …

So how does the housework fit in ?

I’ve been running the rares routes. There is a 71 stop trading route taking in every station that sells rare goods that you can only get in one place. (The 70 stop salesman route is better – it’s more efficient in jump distance and more even in cargo space needed). The further you go between seller and buyer, the higher profit you get for your rares. I’d typically get 600-1000 profit per tonne with normal goods, the rares can get 15000-25000 profit per tonne.

It’s a get rich quick scheme. Definitely more satisfying to play than the place to place hauling I’d been doing before in the game. That didn’t seem to be getting me anywhere so I was getting frustrated and bored. The rares route is far more gratifying.

But … and this is where the housework link comes in …

You only get a small amount of your quota of rares when you first arrive at the station selling them. To get lots, you have to wait for the game economy to tick over. This takes 10 minutes … Of replying to a Cupid’s Gift text message (the highlight of these for sure!), sorting out the playlist on iTunes, looking at all the new messages on Twitter and Facebook, to …

Doing the housework.

Honest.

Here’s another screenie :

Did I mention it’s a pretty game ?

Ok, so the A to Z’s series is all done now.

To be honest, I think that’s a series that more than outlived its welcome. It turned into a bit of a “oh look what a ridiculous amount of music he has in his library”. Boastful perhaps instead of highlighting the really good stuff.

So what do I consider to be the really good stuff ? First of all. There has to be a rule. Only one album per artist or group, including people like Nina Persson who, so far, I have 10 albums that she’s been involved with. And they’re all amazing albums, although she has improved as she’s made more albums.

(I was looking to modify one of my dragon pics for headphones, asked Google and up popped this fella. Credit to Spreadshirts, there’s definitely some stuff there I Want).

Music ? I just mentioned the Cardigans and Nina Persson. The last album to play through was A Camp’s second album, Colonia. But that’s not my best pick. To be honest, all of the Cardigans, A Camp and solo Nina albums are packed with incredible songs but in the end, it’s a close one between Super Extra Gravity and Long Gone Before Daylight. I pick Long Gone. It’s possibly the best full album in my collection. And one of many brilliant tracks is Feathers And Down. A little sad maybe but so much emotion coming through those words, that playing and that voice.

Another emotional album is Illumina by Alisha’s Attic. Those girls must have been going through the rollercoaster with this one. My favourite is the ultra happy The Incidentals. My shyness stopped me doing car karaoke with Cupid’s Gift on the way to Comic Con but this track nearly got the voice coming out.

(To be honest, I had a really dry throat which is never good for sing/croaking and we were chatting so much there was no time for car karaoke)

I do listen to bloke voices occasionally … And I listen to a lot of what Mark Knopfler comes out with. His best will always be seen as Brothers In Arms but to be honest, there’s a few duds there I dislike. Nah – my pick is Making Movies with crackers like Expresso Love and my track of choice, Romeo And Juliet for that signature guitar, drum, voice, keyboard interplay.

Keeping on with the blokes … and I’m looking forward to this one because it’ll come up in the queue really soon. It’s Snow Patrol with their highlight album, Eyes Open. These guys continue to improve, with tracks like another raw one, You Could Be Happy.

But it’s not all about the voices. I’ll happily listen to the odd classical album too. Last Night Of The Proms is a definite favourite and I’ll drum the fingers along to Mars too. But my pick is Carnival Of The Animals by Saint-Saen. You’ll recognise Aquarium but that’s just one highlight of this suite of music.

A series of books I really enjoyed (until it outlived the stories it could sensibly tell) was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. The book Dragonsong introduced a character called Menolly, who had an unhappy life being denied the music which was her gift. Excellence with both instrument and voice, matched to a gift for catchy song writing. The voice of Menolly for me has always been Julianne Regan of All About Eve, due mostly to me listening to their best album (the self titled one) on repeat while reading it. My highlight there is Apple Tree Man but youtube isn’t good for that. Go have a listen to Martha’s Harbour instead. Gorgeous song.

Kate Bush is another massive favourite and my pick of her albums is Hounds Of Love. This is an album of two parts, the commercialised songs are in the first half but the second half just flows together as its own story. Kate Bush always made fantastic albums, not just excellent singles and this is a classic example. My favourite here will be Mother Stands For Comfort. I think we can all identify with that can’t we ?

Back to the boys – Arctic Monkeys started out really well. They’ve not been inspired lately as they were with their first albums but what an album Whatever People Say … was. And it leaves a lasting final impression with the sublime A Certain Romance.

How could I leave off Garbage ? They’ve carried on, albeit with a huge gap before Not Your Kind Of People came out. All their albums are pretty good but I prefer Beautiful the most for tracks like Androgyny and my favourite, Cherry Lips.

Movies … I have a fair few movie soundtracks and the thing to consider here – do you remember the film, the soundtrack or how they accompany each other ? Pacific Rim and Iron Man vie for my favourite here but it has to be Fifth Element for that Diva Dance scene.

More recent is Bat For Lashes. She keeps on getting better and better and her Haunted Man album is another stunning piece of music. Highlight for me is definitely Laura. So much emotion here too. Perhaps that’s why I go for certain tracks ? They may touch a part of me that’s hidden behind walls of armour.

Fancy a stage show ? We nearly went to see the new War Of The Worlds but … very pricy and the new stars didn’t appeal as much as the old stars. People like Justin Hayward singing Thunderchild.

Ok, this one’s getting a bit long now and I know I’ve missed a heap of people out. Time for a couple more …

Game soundtracks don’t really stand out much, unless it’s Adagio for Strings which nearly had me in tears when it started up in That Scene early in Homeworld. But that’s music from outside that was grabbed for the game. No, my highlights for game soundtracks are Darren Korb’s Transistor and Tomas Dvorak’s Machinarium. Here’s a haunting one from Transistor. One thing about Transistor, if you sit still and do nothing in the game, the main character will hum along to the soundtrack. Oh, here’s a bonus from his other game soundtrack, Bastion.

And to echo a theme from yesterday, here’s Fleetwood Mac’s legendary album Rumours with You Can Go Your Own Way. This is another album born out of raw emotions.

Perhaps the other side of raw and heading into manufactured. But still with a soul come Gorillaz. They make great collections as albums. I think their best so far is Plastic Beach with songs like Empire Ants which starts slowly before exploding in your ears.

Hannah Peel is a little bit different … Her signature is the tiny music box that often sets a counterpoint to her lovely voice. She’s only given us one album so far and a couple of EPs but The Broken Wave shows massive promise with songs like The Almond Tree.

But I’ll close off with another personal favourite, this one is Goldfrapp’s Road To Somewhere album. They’ve written a lot of good singles in their other albums but this album comes together amazingly well. It’s a great one to chill out to from start to finish. Here’s Some People.

And I better close it there or I’ll be here all night indulging in listening to some of my favourite songs via the youtubes ! There are tonnes more that should be here :

Edie Brickell, Madonna, Lucy Spraggan, Lisa Miskovsky, Mindy Gledhill, Norah Jones, Seal, Sleeper, The Staves, Suzanne Vega, the Ting Tings with We Started Nothing, Tori Amos.

Yep. Too much good music. Why limit yourself to listening to one band’s music over and over when there is so much rich diversity of excellent music out there ?

Crikey.

It’s only … so many days since Parliament broke up and it’s been wall to wall politics ever since.

I try and avoid politics and politicians as much as possible. Decoding what they say and judging whether or not it’s trustworthy is massive effort.

We have a pretty bankrupt political system over here. The two main parties are entrenched, not in ideals, but in the search for your vote. And they’ll do anything, say anything to get that vote.

No – I don’t trust them. But I also judge them by their outputs :

Conservative – have steadied the ship after the economic chaos of the last decade but … I’m a civil servant (see below) and I haven’t had a worthwhile pay rise (1% each year only, which is effectively a pay cut) since they’ve been in while the MPs have (don’t mention expenses).
Labour – are why the country was in such bad shape. Leaving notes like “there is no more money” on the desk for your successor to find is … irresponsible, idiotic and a sign of your own incompetence.
Liberal – ruined themselves with this coalition. Both from the broken promises and the reality that some of them are raving lunatics.
UKIP – just as I was talking about the raving lunatics.
And that’s just the big ones, there’s also the SNP who will have an influence on the next parliament. There are the Greens and Plaid Cymru (the Welsh nationalists) as well.

Note – those are all my personal opinions. I said above that I’m a civil servant, which puts certain limits on me at these times because we’re supposed to be impartial at work. That’s true, whichever group gets in, I’ll ignore them all the same as the last mob. I’m at a certain level that lets me get away with that. It’s rare that the politicians get involved with us although I’ll dig up info for questions and their decisions affect whether we get to buy the stuff we want to get.

So I’ll not tell you which way to vote, I’ll not even say anywhere which way I’m intending to vote. But I will advise :

Make up your own mind.
If your vote is affected by prejudice (including location), examine that prejudice.
Listen to what they say …
… ignore the spin the media put on it …
… decode whether or not to believe it.
And most of all, don’t think the way other people want you to think.

(This path leads to sheepishly voting in people who are not your preference, they’re the preference of who you listened to).

Yep. After this post, I’ll hopefully ignore election type stuff here. You’ll be sick of that from the main media … hmm … already probably !

But there’s better things to think about today (and I needed a pic for the thumbnail) :

Happy Easter everyone !

Oh ! Before I go … I have a couple of amazing songs for you. Both Bunny themed.

First – Bat For Lashes with “What’s A Girl To Do”
Second – The Cardigans with “For What It’s Worth”
Both are amongst the best in my library.

Hurrah ! Easter break.

It seems like it’s been a long time coming. Oh and yesterday’s post ? It was a brilliant (to me at least – lol) idea for an April Fool which I simply couldn’t pass up.

Being in a band would actually be pretty awesome but … you didn’t hear the practice recording I did for my potential 1000th post. That got deleted as soon as I listened to it back. Putting my voice on Youtube … crime against humanity. Honest.

Oh – here’s the pic, courtesy of robbing it from a Facebook person earlier 🙂 :

I’m off work now until after Easter which means :

Lots of relaxing.
Lots of music listening.
Making a dent in what’s recorded.
Seeing if I can get enough moulah in Elite to finish fitting out my Asp Explorer ship …

… and setting off around the galaxy.
But it’s not all about play :

Got a lot of tidying up to do as well to make this place fit for visitors again. Cos it would be nice to have someone around. Especially if it’s someone just over 5 foot tall, highly cute, with a great taste in music and is one of very few people I can take my emotional armour off when I talk to her. I think I know someone like that.

Lots of work to do before then though and I’ve been too tired/unhealthy to even think of doing it before now. I’ve been improving, so I need to kick my butt into gear and stop being so lazy.

I hope people enjoyed yesterday’s April Fool Band post as much as I enjoyed writing it. All the codenames in there refer to real people I’ve mentioned before. If you didn’t see yourself in there, I’m so sorry ! I tried to fit in as many people as I thought I could get away with, without making it a megamonster post.

I hope people enjoy whatever time off they get over Easter, it’s tough for some because places like retail demand people to be in over a really busy period. So if you go Egg Hunting or sales sharking, have a thought for the poor harried people behind the tills. They want time off too !

Give ’em a smile instead.

I’m really excited.

I have news. An announcement. A seismic shift in what I’ll be doing. Beating a new path even.

Yep. With a very special group of friends, I’ve decided to give up that day job and form a band. It’s going to be called Dragon Dreamers, or The Dragons for short. What else could it be ? Perhaps the Another Mondays :

Actually, I quite like Another Mondays now that I think of it.

I’m going to be on the drums.

Yep. That’s me. Oh and there’d be a mic there too. You know me, a catchy tune, a good rhythm, great atmosphere, I’ll be joining in the singing for sure, rumbling away in the background.

On guitar, we’ll have my very good friends Cyberkitten and the Bionicdwarf :

There’s CK as a youngster, practicing that lead guitar which will knock your socks off. Bionicdwarf is all about that bass. Great tunes. You’ll love it.

On keyboards and another of our main vocalists is the Pixie. She suffers terribly from joint pains, so can’t stand up for long (you must understand when we take our bows at the end of the set) but she’s a wizardess behind the ivories. Great voice too.

Lead vocals … now who could that be. We tried to call in Hannah from the Yogscast but she’s way too busy. Besides, we really don’t know her that well. Not well enough to pull her away from the videos. What a voice though. Any band would be well blessed to be playing along with her.

Nah. It’ll be the lovely Alex from the Warcraft people. I heard this lady singing on the guild voice chat server and it was so good, it got me joining in too. And I’m very shy about exposing people to my singing voice. And I can guarantee that it’ll have you joining in too.

That’s the main band. But there’s always room for more. How about that saxophone ? I bet Cupid’s Gift would be perfect. Not so much the blues, more a sheer joy that she’ll bring into your heart.

You can’t keep those backing singers out of the picture either. They support us in soo many ways.

First up has to be Crazie Queen. She keeps us on the right track. She’s our manager. The person who’ll protect us from the machinations of the industry. A legend amongst women.
Next is the original finance Angel. Great with the figures, fantastic with the high notes.
And our last performing member is the indomitable Snow Queen. She’ll also be the one who makes sure all our kit gets set up just so and with a practiced ear, tuned from listening to great music. We’d never keep her off the stage. Those heels she wears are not heels. They are shoes with spears. Not arguing with those !

There’s more too. I’ve known Bobkat* for years now. Decades even. She used to be involved in professional theatre, setting up the stage and making sure all the behind the scenes stuff ran smoothly. So while Snow Queen will have got the electronics set up perfect, BK will get everything else sorted and will be the one fussing over the bits and pieces to make sure they stay good during the show.

* (Bobkat took her online name from her much missed black and white cat. She lost him to old age a few years ago and he’s still missed but fondly remembered. So if you see the odd random picture of a lovely little kitty around the stage, that’ll be us remembering Bobkat by touching the picture for good luck on our way on stage.)

You need people to get your bits and pieces to where they need to be – I just happen to know a lady who is an absolute expert in logistics. And we have an expert marketing coordinator in Dianne, the Fork Lady, who will be sure to have us front page news in the USA when we tour there.

Can you tell yet that I’m excited ?

We could even try and get Real Musgrave (creator of the Pocket Dragons) out of retirement to make us some new dwagons !

Who are our influences ? Sleeper for sure. A little bit of Alisha’s Attic. Definitely the Cardigans. Alex brings in those Abba roots.

We won’t have anything for you to listen to just yet. But wait precisely 1 year from today (exactly this date in 2016) and we’ll have an album out and we’ll be embarking on that first tour.

Keep a look out for us ! We will rock you.