Author: Sleepypete

Yep.

Confirmed.

And I know what people will be doing when it comes too :

My main phone camera has a crack in it. Which just means … I shall have to turn the phone around, use the selfie camera and … selfie the apocalypse !

Sorted.

It is unseasonably warm isn’t it ? We’re having what you could only call “Mixed” weather at the moment. Yesterday, we had a pretty apocalyptic level thunderstorm. No high winds, just torrential rain and thunder that was shaking the buildings. Today ? Warmest September day for many years.

I was walking around in it too, with a teambuilding event in the afternoon. I was worried for my shredded ankles but they seem to have come through ok. Not unscathed … but overall I think I’m a little better than yesterday.

That’s all you can ever hope for really, to be a little better than yesterday. With the skin condition I’ve been managing, it’s all small steps towards improvement. I’ll get there, it may take a little time but … I’ll get there.

No. The real sign of the apocalypse is not the weather. Although global warming is adding not so much heat I think but energy to the air. It is making the thunder louder, the winds more spectacular. We are damaging our planet, hopefully the rocket and space programmes will reach a point where we can establish a lifeboat Out There before the damage becomes terminal.

And on that note … The end of civilisation is coming !!!

Yep. This is probably the last year of the Bake Off.

Those who do not understand the significance of this, do not understand the importance of cake. Cake is love, cake is life, cake is definitely not a lie. Ask the dwagons.

And me after I saw these lovelies last year :

Gertlush.

Bake Off is a light bit of fun with a bit of understated naughtiness in there too with the innuendo. The production company have sold the programme to the rival broadcaster, Channel 4 and the presenters have walked away. Too much money was being asked for and pretty much all that is left now is a tent and a concept. Hopefully the show gets a second wind with a different name on BBC again. After all, any production company could make the programme but what makes it special are the presenters and the competitors, with the presenters bringing out the characters of those who take part.

I’ll enjoy watching the rest of this series. Dunno who’s going to win. I was very pleased about Nadiya winning last year. She emerged from a shell to be a very fun lady to watch.

I better get back to watching it (and Chrissa’s stream too !).

One thing to warn of though. If you see the combination below, I’d just like to say that it was nice knowing you all. All of you who visit, all of you who come back. Especially those of you who pass on feedback !

And don’t be like these guys :

Mark my words. End of Bake Off is End of Civilisation As We Know It, is End of days.

PS Another sign is that yesterday, a young lady came up to me and demanded, DEMANDED, my telephone number. That’s not something that happens often. Very rare indeed. A portent even that the natural order of the universe is breaking down.

I feel like I’ve been hit by that truck again !

I am improving in general though. My outsides are gradually being reclaimed from the condition that’s afflicted me these past years. There are still awkward bits and I have to manage the condition but … it’s getting there.

Hopefully when it finally fixes, I’ll get some of the old energy back. It does help to have a good sleeping pattern with that though and I’m still losing the sleep. And I’ll probably grab another week of leave from work at the end of October. That’s not fixed yet and it depends on what’s happening.

Picture for thumbnail ?

I actually kinda wanted to do another music post. Haven’t done one for a while. What have I been acquiring and listening to lately ?

I pick up on music from various sources. I’m always on the lookout for new stuff to listen to, whether it be from tips from friends or what I hear around me. The HeyChrissa streams have been pointing me towards some great songs too lately.

Candyland by Tobu is one of those … It’s a wonderfully tappy, bouncy, happy tune, as catchy as it is likely to send you into wiggly chair dance boppiness. HeyChrissa uses it or other tracks on the NCS Infinity non-copyright music collection as startup songs for her streams. It’s a little bit of awesome.

The album I have on currently is Moon Safari by Air and I’ve linked songs from it before but 2 are so good they always bear relinking. Here is All I Need. A wonderful song, chilled out with lyrics and a tune that you melt into.

The latest album I bought was Every Open Eye by Chvrches. I haven’t listened to all of it yet but my favourite so far is Down Side of Me. This group is promising. I can see me collecting all their albums …

There are 3 albums that I have my eye on for getting soon … Norah Jones has a new one coming, KT Tunstall has one out today. And then there’s Lisa Hannigan with that fragile but oh so sweet voice. I haven’t picked them up … just yet.

I just remembered back to a song that gripped me by the throat and didn’t let go until I looked firmly lipsmacked. It’s The Veronicas with Untouched.

And yes. I am singing along to Untouched at the moment. Or rather I am singing along to Song For The Leftovers which is a classic from A Camp, the project Nina Persson started up after The Cardigans. Another excellent live song was Laura by Bat For Lashes.

What else have I acquired lately ?

Angus and Julia Stone provided music for the Life is Strange game ? This album got played as warm up music too and I kinda liked the jinglyjangly soft guitar music. Especially liked Hold On.

I got a soundtrack sampler with the new Deus Ex game too … must play that soon when I have the mental energy to give it a good crack.

A fairly old soundtrack I picked up is Ghostbusters. Yep, the original. It’s still a classic but I haven’t wanted to pay much for it. £3 was a bargain. I have a synthesizer version of the theme tune somewhere from When Computers Were Old and it was actually pretty good.

Reaching back a little :

Sia – 1000 Forms Of Fear – great voice, so so songs.
Bat For Lashes – The Bride – incredible voice, inspired songs.
Garbage are still kicking it with Strange Little Birds. Here’s Magnetized.
Massive Attack are capable of extreme beauty in their songs. Here’s Teardrop (I actually bought Blue Lines but … Teardrop !)
Passenger – All The Little Lights. Not my usual music but you need variation to keep things interesting.
Sia again with This Is Acting – same comment, great voice, so so songs.

One last one and then I’m done for tonight. After all this illness and bad outsides, I want to kick start my life again. And what better song to represent that than … Goldfrapp I Wanna Life from the Head First album.

Cya ! And be healthy, be happy.

If there’s one thing that seems to be ever present in our lives, it’s advertising.

Someone out there, many people … want your time, your money, your attention.

Me too ! Although I’m not nearly as persistent or intrusive about it as the advertisers are.

The advertising people are a bit too intrusive though. I don’t like advertising people for many reasons :

They get in the way of what I want to do. BBC are actually really bad at this, they will be running late yet they still have time to put a few trailers on for their stuff before starting your programme late. This is really bad when the programme overruns past what your recording box is set for.

They’re intrusive. Sport watching over here is cursed at the moment by the betting ads. They’re loud and designed to grab your attention. They portray gambling as a glamour thing, they portray it as something everyone does. I want to be chilling out to the cricket ! I don’t want to be shaken rudely out of half dozing (need all the sleep I can get) by a gambling ad that’s twice as loud as the programme I was watching.

They’re offensive. One gambling ad with the cat in particular. Thought that advert had been banned but … apparently not.

They’re dangerous, at least on computers they are. I run an adblocker on most websites due to the very real chance that a site has third party advertising that is pushing malware to your machine. The malware people can do this legitimately too by buying advertising space and feeding poisoned pictures and videos to it. Our only defence is an adblocker and anti-virus and anti-malware scans.

They have double standards too.

This post is mainly inspired by a story I was seeing hit the Twitters over the last week. Turns out some youtubers are being hit by the execution of a change in the Terms and Conditions that happened a few months ago. YT is just now doing something about it.

Some people make money off Youtube, via the adsense advertising. The change is that the advertisers can now pull their goods from videos due to them not liking the content of the video. Too much swearing and the advertising will get pulled from the video. Disturbing content will get the ads pulled.

There’s a few key things there :
1 – the advertising we see tends to be targeted according to the sites we visit. So we should only be seeing the adverts that are appropriate to us. People who like mature content should see mature adverts.
2 – we don’t get a choice over the adverts we see. So there is a double standard between ad people saying where their ads will appear and us being able to choose what ads we think are appropriate.

And probably a few more things too. Brain is a bit fuzzed.

I hope you see my point there though. The advertising hierarchy are picking and choosing where they want their ads to appear, yet we do not get a choice as to what adverts we see (mostly). For me, I’ll tolerate the adverts that are useful to me and the others, the gambling, the moneylending, the offensive get :

Fingers in the ears for I’m Not Listening. And I can do this too on the Twitters by blocking the gambling sites and reporting them for spam. Because spam it is. In effect, by drawing my attention to them by advertising, I act and they don’t reach me any more.

If only you could do that for the other sources of advertising. Like … right click on that banner ad, choose “This is nasty”, never see anything from that company again. Or even a “This company tells rotten lies” and have them blacklisted from the advertiser.

I’m not intending to change how I tackle advertising here :

No adsense for the blog template;
(And there was much rejoicing)
Only pushing the “I’ve posted something!”‘s to Facebook and Twitter;
And the occasional “I’ve written nice things about you” to select people.

That last doesn’t seem to get any response though or views. Perhaps it’s something I said. Maybe. I like to say Nice Things about people. I think Bad Things about some people but … it’s not for here. It’s a bit like a : I like you, I don’t like them. I’ll draw attention to the people I like but effectively ignore those I dislike. With the youtubers, they’re trying to make a living from the videos, it’s not my place to try and demolish their livelihood by saying Bad Things about them.

But I will quite happily talk about the good ones.

So … there is actually a little bit of advertising here. But it’s me talking about things I enjoy, things I think you might enjoy. There’s no monetary consideration there.

It’s curious where the line gets drawn isn’t it ?

My brain is fuzzed so I’ll leave it there. My ankles have been improving ! Hopefully they’ll survive the week without getting shredded which means they will be well on the road to recovery. The ankle protector is working …

Early night tonight. The Chrissa Streamer I would be watching isn’t feeling too well so no late night stream watching for me. I could do with that early night though. Just hopefully it’ll translate into good sleep !

Nite all.

I had a post idea today.

It was kinda following up the April Fools post from … ahem … April, where I got duplicated and sent off into space to fight for aliens.

It’s an idea actually – I’ve thought for ages that there’s a novel or a few in my head, looking to get out into the world. And one tenuous idea follows from the set up in that April Fools post. It also owes a lot to The Martian but … different. Let’s see :

A human, uplifted from 21st Century Earth, plunged into the world, nay galaxy of wondrous technology.
A human marooned on a mysterious planet, with only their own ingenuity (and a lot of alien toys) to help them survive.

Not quite sure where it would go from there as the escape we see in the Martian would need to be much different. As in, you would need to be rescued by the alien peeps as I think building your own space ship would be a bit farfetched.

I think I might have some fun writing it though. The reason the Martian worked well for me is because Mark Watney, central character, was writing his diaries. It felt as if he was writing to you, the reader, directly. A narrative needs explanation, or it will leave the reader behind. For my marooned human, the narrative needs to be explaining to the reader as it is leading the human through what they need to do to survive.

That’s such a key narrative trick that so many authors I know use. They’ll explain the intricacies of their universe, their tech, through an uninformed character with an expert explaining it to them.

But yeah – I can see there being things in there like :

3d printed parts. Although a bit more complicated than the 3d printers we have now. I believe our 3d printers are essentially laser cutters which slice a shape out of a moulded plastic. Good for some things, not so much for complex items.
Food … this is a tough one. Our food is made up out of complex proteins, carbohydrates and all sorts of other things that plants are so much better at making than the machines we have. Our marooned human would need a steady, sustaining supply of food. Tough to get that into an escape capsule.

And then there’s the narrative key too – having someone for our person to talk to. This would be an AI/VI who would guide our person into the basics of survival after crash landing.

Oh and there would need to be a certain amount of Magic in there too. You can’t really get away from that in fiction.

Oh and NaNoWriMo is coming up too … It’s in November and it involves a challenge to write a full length novel inside a month. It’s something I want to do at some point. There’s also the other idea of the survivors of an apocalypse-to-be-determined who help rebuild society as scouts who explore to bring back materials for the colony … Some of you reading this may recognise yourselves as characters if I write that one. Cos you’re good characters, good people and I think you’d be awesome as part of a post apocalypse rebuilding crew.

And apocalypse novels can be good for atmosphere.

My head isn’t quite in there yet though for that kind of hard thinking.

Not so much like that. But the concentration isn’t back properly yet as my body constantly distracts me away.

I am healing up … slowly. I’m seeing genuine progress with some of the healing. Patches that were pretty bad last week have healed up properly. I still think I’m steadily reclaiming my outsides.

But there are a few patches where constant irritation is leading to the damage not repairing. I have plans for these bits (ankles and a couple of other areas mainly) but there are limits to those plans. The tubigrip helped a bit for the ankles but there is that inevitable rubbing of ankle on shoe.

Oh – I think I’m sleeping better too … Perhaps this is being a bit better at not attacking those really bad bits. Nah. I’m still having a go at them when I shouldn’t be. We’ll see how it goes over this week to come. I’ve been using a healing gel thing too (not proper medicine like the Fucibet but something I can use pretty liberally) and it seems to be helping. Ankle is definitely more pale-unhappy than the red-unhappy it has been.

Yep. It’s taking ages to repair but very slowly, very steadily, I’m getting my outsides back again.

And from there, I should get back some of the health I had before.

Oh – I’ve been on the games again too. I think this is a sign of two things :

Some games – I can dive into and lose hours into. The concentration is there to support that.
They distract away from me doing more damage !

I haven’t gone back into the Deus Ex Mankind Divided shooter game yet (it crashes and is a bit too hands on for what my head wants to do at the moment) but …

I do enjoy Planetbase. It’s a very simple game for one that can be played effectively by remote control. That’s from a challenge :

Make lots of ore in an automated facility. You can’t have any new people, so you need to look after those you have (malnutrition aka Fork Disease is bad). The mining is done through robots and you can’t turn base materials into better materials because you don’t have the people to do it.

The next challenge is to turn an ailing spaceport into an economic one. Without some of the base materials again. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been enjoying the Hearts of Iron too, although that’s kinda a balance between frustration (there are quirky mechanics in its details) and I Won Dat feelings. My latest game is with Russia and after a tense build up on the border, we rolled over the Reich. Next target – Venezuela (to finish the war) and then the Allies.

One thing about Hearts of Iron is that it feels like a game you should win every time, if you learn the mechanics. The AI doesn’t really know how to coordinate an overwhelming attack. Maybe it’ll improve with patching.

Planetbase is better because even though it is again, another game you should win every time knowing the mechanics … I suppose it’s because it’s competing against yourself instead of an AI which isn’t up to the job.

It’s just kinda satisfying leading those poor marooned colonists through into becoming a burgeoning, expanding colony.

I better leave it there for a bit !

Still here, despite not posting very much at the moment. I’m gradually improving on my outsides, although my concentration is highly distracted away by dealing with those outsides. But … I look back to a few years ago and it is so much unbelievably better than it has been.

Always look to improve. Cya !

Ask not who the tick ticks for, it ticks for thee.

Ok. Perhaps not the quote you were looking for. I think that’s “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

We’ve lost another couple of great people today ! You’ve probably heard about the most prominent, well known of the two. That’s Gene Wilder, who was responsible for bringing in so much magic, mirth, merriment into my childhood with his brilliant performances on film and the small screen. He’ll definitely be missed but we’ll remember him for his work.

People’s work is what defines them. It’s what they leave behind.

The other fella gone today is a fella called Darrell Ward. He was a rough, tough, Alabama trucker who put so much colour into the Ice Road Truckers programme over the last few years. I usually wait a few weeks before watching series and then watch a few episodes in a go. But he’s one reason why I usually watch programmes like Ice Road Truckers immediately. (Or the day after – it’s only the Bake Off that I watch on the day – and Robot Wars because of spoilers).

Oh wait – I need a thumbnail pic and I just conveniently mentioned the Bake Off :

They were back last week and on form again. Definitely great entertainment for midweek.

Oh and not a good thing to watch before shopping or things may escape. Wonder if me worsening over the weekend is due to grabbing a box of Jaffa Cakes ? I blame Bake Off. (I believe I’m sensitive to the orange layer).

Yep. It’ll be bittersweet when Ice Road Truckers starts up again in just over a week. It’ll be starring Darrell Ward and it’s a shame that it’ll be his last series.

Tick of Doom ?

I emerged from the pit of sleep over the weekend to find an occasional tick coming from my PC. I heard it but didn’t realise the significance until later. You should keep an ear open for odd sounds from PCs, it tends to be the precursor of things that may melt the machine, like fans getting in trouble.

In this case, it’s coming from an old hard disc that came from my last PC. I’ll transfer the drive over from old machine to new one when I do a new build. It’s just so much easier that way to copy all of the data over. It was slightly different for this machine though, as a shortage of hard discs had made the price sky rocket. After a while, prices stabilised (helped by BestBuy’s failure leading to savage discounts which I took advantage of) and I moved over to a new big hard disc.

This time it’s … RIP old hard disc but no real bother to me as I’d mostly stopped using that drive a while ago. It does have some data on that I’ll miss … but not enough to get the data recovered.

How about me ?

I was hoping for some good healing over the long weekend. That hasn’t really happened. Perhaps due to those Jaffa Cakes. I’m a little more torn up than I was but … not crippling. That’s the frustration with my outsides, they will improve and then suddenly get worse again.

I will go back to the Doctors about this at some point. Just not yet. What I do need to do is find that balance between keeping it clean (because the damage likes that) and not aggravating it when I’m getting it clean.

I’ve been quiet lately haven’t I ? I guess I haven’t had that much to talk about, plus I’ve been putting my mental energy into work. Oh and a game called Hearts of Iron … It’s a World War 2 grand strategy game and while it has its faults, flaws and annoying bugs, I’ve been enjoying it. Definitely enjoying it enough to finish a session at 5.30am this morning. Oops. But it did lead to my chosen country, USA, winning WW2.

It’s not a game that really ends though. Whereas in the real world, we stopped when the Axis powers were defeated and the Allies were staring at the Russians in a Cold War that lasted over 50 years. In the game, wars keep popping up from the same old events again. It’s a criticism but it’s one of those things where you have to remember that it’s a game and one thing the game needs to do is to encourage the wars so the player has something to do and something to keep them on their toes. Something to keep them interested.

I’d like to say that the new Deus Ex game I mentioned had been completed over the weekend but … it’s another modern game that isn’t finished enough to be stable on your average PC. Mine’s a pretty well running PC (somehow) but it’s having trouble where the game crashes. That kinda kills the desire to keep on playing. So I haven’t been back in since the second attempt. A shame, because the last one was amazing. It did what it did perfectly, it didn’t try to do everything which was part of why it succeeded. I think this one is trying to do too much and it is tripping up over those visuals.

Still, it isn’t another No Mans Sky. I was so hyped about that game but it looks like they have mucked up just about everything they could have got wrong in that game while still producing something playable. That’s kind of an achievement in itself.

And I’m rambling again …

Still here, still got the issues with my outsides. It’s hard to remember that it’s so much better than it used to be, it just doesn’t want to finish the job of healing.

Frustrated with some of the gaming, although enjoying other games. It’s a credit to how good the Paradox games are that you’re prepared to tolerate the bugs and work around them. Sometimes they aren’t even bugs, just things you didn’t realise were a thing*. If a game keeps you going until 5.30am, it’s doing something right.

*(like planning a naval invasion, wondering why they wouldn’t GO and then realising that your landing craft weren’t up to it yet – the game didn’t tell you this).

Sad at losing a few people too. It doesn’t matter how well they are known. People matter, even if only a small number of people miss them. Everyone matters. And that’s where I’ll leave you today.

Keep … mattering !

It’s also quite dark, grim and uncertain too.

According to the world of the Deus Ex that is. I’ve written about this a while before but the latest iteration of the games in that dystopian future is out and I’m quite looking forward to seeing where the story leads.

Pretty ?

As always, click for bigger.

They’re doing more and more these days in the games. There is a bit of a trick to it, the prettiest part of that picture is the city in the background. It’s Dubai in the near future and our hero, Adam Jensen, has been sent in to sort out some terrorists. And I won’t say any more because it’ll be spoilers.

Oh – tricks ! Yep. There are two main parts to the image above. The background and the foreground. You could say that the background is an inactive part of the picture, the foreground is the active part. The player cannot go into the background or interact with it. They call things like this “skyboxes” where a complicated texture is painted on to a flat wall that is very far away. Except there’s a bit more to it than that in this case because the texture moves a bit.

The foreground is where the player moves around. It’s a complete 3d environment with walls, fake walls, doors, things that move, bad guys that need thumping. You’ll notice that the detail on the railings isn’t as good as what is out there in the background.

Still looks awesome though.

Here’s what things were like in the first of this reboot, in the game from 5 years ago :

Haha, yep. Another pretty skybox in the background with a less complicated accessible environment.

It still looks pretty stunning though and the last game (Deus Ex Human Revolution) was a very pretty game in itself. I played that game to death. It didn’t try to do everything but what it did do, it did extremely well.

Wait – I’m being confusing with the sequel / prequel / whatisitquel. There are 4 main games in the Deus Ex world so far, although we don’t talk about one of them. We don’t even register that there was one called The Fallen.

Chronologically, Deus Ex Human Revolution comes first. That’s the game from 5 years ago. This one is set 2 years after that and I’m looking forward to exploring its world.

The very first one was Deus Ex from way back in 2000. How did that look ?

Hmm. A bit crude. And that was even with the improved textures pack. This one was maybe 20-30 years after Human Revolution and the one I have now.

I’ve stopped playing for tonight though and I’ve switched over to watching the Chrissa stream.

The Chrissa streams (link on the right !) are always highly enjoyable to watch and chill out to. At the moment, she’s playing through Alien Isolation, a game from a couple of years ago that works on the nerves and the suspense. The expression there is one of knowing that Susan* is waiting just around the corner with a Very Pointy Tail.

*(we named the Alien Xenomorph Susan. Yep.)

It’s a much darker game but also has an incredibly detailed environment to play in and hide from the alien in. I don’t actually own Alien Isolation, the stealth sneaking appeals but the other mechanics definitely don’t. But I did enjoy watching the Hannah and Kim playthrough and I’m enjoying watching HeyChrissa’s playthrough now.

I’m veering off topic too …

Games look better now ! But that’s not really the point …

No Man’s Sky looked really pretty in a comic kind of way. But it didn’t seem to be that much of a game. I’ve taken that one off the Wishlist now as a game I would get frustrated and bored with very quickly. I would look seriously at Alien Isolation for the hide from the alien gameplay and the ability to wander through Giger and Ridley Scott’s world.

I think I’ll be enjoying playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided a lot. They have a compelling world to play in there. But not tonight, I had a crash to desktop earlier which was the perfect point to put it away and have a break.

That’s one thing about watching the streamers and the video people. They let you enjoy the gaming even when you’re too tired to do the gaming yourself. That’s me after a day’s work. I’ll put so much into the day’s work that I don’t really have the mental energy to play when I get home.

Chrissa is perhaps the best streamer I know too. Always entertaining, always chuckling along to what us in chat are bantering on about and an excellent player of the games too. It’s great when you draw out the chuckles with what goes into chat too.

And I’m missing too much while posting !

Cya – and I’ll hopefully find some other topics to talk about soon that aren’t games !

Gosh,

It’s been a good fortnight for British sport hasn’t it ?

I’ve been quite enjoying it. Between the Olympics on BBC (excellent coverage, except perhaps the results which were better from the official site) and the cricket via the Skys, there’s been a lot on and for most of it, it has been sport where it’s had that magic combination to hold the interest :

Unpredictable results – cricket definitely. But so much of the Olympic sport could have gone multiple other ways.
Heroic performances – in yesterday’s cricket, David Willey got a broken hand. And continued to play. Same with “Dre Russ”, hamstring difficulties, still played and nearly contributed heavily to a win. In the hockey in London, one of our ladies got a broken jaw … and was back for the next game.

And that’s just the extreme cases.

Lots of variation. I’ve enjoyed watching all sorts of the sports on show. Be it the equestrian sport that pulled out the surprise with Nick Skelton winning, whether it’s the hockey with our Scary Brit Ladies going for and winning the gold. The Rugby Sevens making a sparkling entry to the tournament. Even the more power in a straight line sports like the rowing, swimming, athletics. And the gymnastics too.

It does help having so many British winners. If you have a personal investment in what you’re seeing, you care about it so much more. It’s incredible seeing GB as number 2 on that medal table. Inspiring even.

(Don’t worry – even if I do repair, I’m far too old to do any running around competitive stuff now).

It has been a fabulous fortnight of sport though. Far better than I thought it might be, although I suspect that the Paralympics may suffer in comparison. Lack of money etc. We haven’t seen many of the crime events that I thought we would see. Brazil (or Sao Paulo) is notorious in the Formula 1 season for being really bad on the crime. Or is that because Formula 1 is a rich sport so they stand out as targets …

Hopefully the close out of the event will be as successful as the event itself.

Hopefully the Olympics comes to a place I can go to soon ! I still have a little bit of the Sad for missing out on the London Olympics. I was in a far worse place when the London Olympics were on and barely strayed away from the house and from work.

How have I been doing ?

Not healed properly yet but it’s like my body is really trying hard now to heal up. There are still hold out areas (like my elbows) which aren’t happy but even where I redamage myself quite badly (think – gashes 2 inches and 4 inches long), the damage is repairing even quicker. The 2 inch and 4 inch gashes I did with my nails on Friday morning are nearly healed now.

Yep – you read that right. It’s that easy to cause reasonably bad damage to myself. Hell, even too much pressure (in the way that my sleeveless cricket jumper would cause) would cause damage.

Hopefully not too long now though with the healing, although … with the current rates – maybe Christmas ? That would be a good present. Finally an end to all these troubles so I can move on and put it behind me. It feels like I have missed out on far too much.

We shall see.

Uhoh – I’ve been hearing that microwave beeper go off for what’s in the oven (my microwave is my cooking timer) for a few minutes now … I better go rescue the remains of my dinner !

Cya !

PS I picked up some Chicken Kievs from the supermarket on Thursday. How did I go so long without these ? Lush.

You’d think after getting shinies in the form of the monitor, speakers and mouse that I’d be happy for a while wouldn’t you ?

NOOOO !!!!

This is technology.

More is better. Always.

First up – the tech I have is great. No complaints. Maybe the computer’s processor is getting a little old (it’s an i5-2500k from a few generations and almost 5 years ago) but it’s still handling what it gets thrown in the shape of the games. How about the new stuff ?

The monitor is great. It’s a breath of fresh air. New monitors will be like that but if you’re in the market for tech, get the best out of what’s on offer. Why buy second best if a little research can point you towards the best stuff ? Oh – it’s an AOC 25″ QHD monitor (1440p – more pixels, more detail) with an IPS screen. It does the trick. Pretty pictures look Pretty.

There’s a thought ! My camera has a higher resolution than even this new shiny monitor. I haven’t looked at the latest pics (Comic Con) on it yet.
(a few minutes later)
Oh that was so worth it.

I’ve been loving the speakers too but … the mouse ? It may have started double bouncing already. Curious. (Double bouncing is where too many clicks happen).

The tech I’m curious about at the moment is :

Telly. Nah. Won’t happen. The fairly old 32″ telly still does me pretty well and I’m not sure that the newer panels are actually mature yet technologically.

Graphics card. One thing about getting a monitor with twice as many pixels as before, it puts a lot more strain on the thing that is painting all those pixels. And the AMD R9 380 I bought in Feb was struggling a bit in Elite. Will I replace it ? Nah. Whatever is out there now is not a significant upgrade on the R9 380 for an affordable price. I’ll just turn down the number of pixels it is being asked to make.

But it’s not just tech. Tech is more fun though.

Glasses … oh wow these glasses have done me really well. They’re like 14 years old now and I still have good depth perception from them. Speed perception is a little out of whack but I can adjust for that.

Actually – how do you measure depth accurately but not speed ? Speed is rate of change of depth after all. Strange but true.

Things to help you spy things better ? Perhaps.

What else – At the Mall earlier, I picked up something for my ankle to hopefully help it repair. Although it might well be odd going to work tomorrow with one foot in an ankle protector (and a shoe) and the other in a sock (and a shoe). My general condition is improving but there are areas (like my ankle) where the skin isn’t being allowed to repair due to wear and tear of daily life.

But ankle protectors are boring. Thorntons fudge isn’t and some may have escaped with me earlier. Oops.

Rogue One should be awesome.

The last bit of tech I’ve started looking into is a new phone. My iPhone 5 is still doing ok. But it has its flaws … like Apple gradually moving away from giving customers what they want. My iPhone is still stuck on iOS 6 so that it can talk to the iTunes on my laptop. (I refuse to allow the newer versions of iTunes on because they are garbage). This is bad. It has also lost 3GB of its 13.5GB capacity to “Other Data” which I can’t get back at the moment. The worst bit is the Lightning connector, it’s getting harder and harder to make the connector work.

It still does its job as a phone but I am starting to look at other options. It has to do a few things :

Talk to iTunes.
Talk to the car. Send my music to the car.
Do the usual smartphoney type stuff.
Have all you can eat data.
Mobile tethering so I can have the iPad get to the internet through it.
Be as secure as Android can be.

I’m looking at the Samsung Galaxy phones at the moment. But I’ll procrastinate a bunch before I actually get one. Because it’s not something I actually need to do yet and I should do a little research with my old Android phone to see if the Talk to Itunes method I have in mind will work. (an app called Doubletwist).

Oh and away from tech – back to games ! I’ve been looking at the No Man’s Sky situation over the weekend. I was quite looking forward to that game. It promised to combine the Elite aspects of flying round the galaxy with exploring planets. It looked like it could be quite compelling. It has recovered from a problematic launch where people had problems running it … but that doesn’t change the underlying gameplay.

I won’t be getting this one until it significantly improves. Big problems at the moment (apparently ! I’m going from second hand reports …) – a broken flight model and a lack of variation.

It’s like throwing a dice 1000 times. Sure, you can throw it that 1000 times and get 1000 results but if that dice has only 6 sides, you only get 6 different results. The variation and therefore the interest in seeing something different dies quite quickly.

I’ll be waiting for the next Deus Ex game and perhaps … having another look at the Elite Internet Spaceships :-).

Another meme doing the rounds at the moment is around the number 7.

There are actually two of these, one is First Seven Jobs, the other is 7 Fave Games. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t do the First Seven Jobs, cos most of them are jobs I won’t say anything about here. They’re all engineering, which is about as much as I can tell you here !

Actually – let’s see : Paper round, data entry person, dishwashing person, civil servant engineer. And there’s a bunch of jobs in that civil servant engineer bit.

Although repairman is more technician, not engineer. An engineer is the one who takes it apart, puts it back together again and hides the leftover parts that you didn’t need anyway. The best engineers make death dealing robots out of the leftover parts.

Games ?

I’ll actually do a couple of these lists because … differences. There’s a bit of a difference between “Games I have sunk most time into” and “Games I would come back to now”.

First list – what’s got the most hours on my Steam list and other places …
1 – World of Warcraft. I think it was 14 days playtime to get my first level 60 and WoW was with me for so many years as I built and enjoyed the Mercenaries guild, helped out with the Guildlink stuff and then ran away to the Hot Swedish Girls* of Violence Reborn. You need a good group though for WoW, it’s not a game you can enjoy solo.
*(the HSGs are the running joke but I only saw the pictures of a few of them. Pretty yes but the important thing was people like Swedish Sandra who was a massively good friend helping me out at a rough time for me emotionally)

There were some good times in that game but it has changed soooo much.

2 – Elite Dangerous has about 3 weeks worth of playtime. A beautiful game in its perfect representation kind of way. No Mans Sky has potential to be similarly beautiful in a more cartoonish style but I don’t think No Mans Sky has the variation to support weeks of playtime.

3 – Defence Grid – a tower defence game which was a good one to sink a few relaxing hours into as your carefully arranged towers annihilate waves on waves of enemies. I didn’t think the sequel was quite as good.

4 – Deus Ex Human Revolution – pretty much perfection in what it does. It’s a stealth oriented first person shooter with strong role play elements, set in a dystopian future where cybernetic augments are becoming the norm. Loved this game, looking forward to the sequel due out in a couple of weeks.

5 – Stellaris … and Hearts of Iron IV is coming in there too – these are strategy games by Paradox who I have to say, do a remarkable job of making ultra playable grand strategy games. I’ve enjoyed playing these since discovering them and … I’m checking out their other strategy games too.

6 – Planetbase. 112 hours on record. It’s a colony builder game set in space. It has great gameplay built on a few simple rules with the resources. There are a few more posts about it here 🙂

7 – Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. This is an odd one. The combat system really sucks. A role play game should depend on how well the character skills are developed … but this is all about the player skill. This one has a massive world which … doesn’t change very much at all. It does not seem to progress as you go through the story. I sunk 89 hours into this one but … did not get even maybe 30% of the way through the story. Good game but … it outstayed its welcome for me.

Not all of those will be in the next list, which are the games that really made an impression on me at the time :

Best games … evah !!! In no particular order :-).

1 – Elite, Frontier and Elite Dangerous. The possibility of leaving the Earthly bonds behind really appealed and I love this game series (although Elite Dangerous is perhaps a little dead to me now, may go back now that the No Mans Sky hype is dissipating). You could fly where you want, the Frontier games let you fly all the way into the capital cities of Earth etc. Elite Dangerous is an absolutely gorgeous game.

2 – Deus Ex Human Revolution. It hit the spot and is the best shooter game I’ve played.

3 – Neverwinter Nights (NWN) – the original, not the newer massively multiplayer game. This one was based around Dungeons and Dragons 3rd ed rules, which are probably the best iteration of that game that I’ve played. it had a decent story and the gameplay was balanced for parties of up to 3 (2?) people. The earlier Baldur’s Gate was balanced for parties of 6, which made it too unwieldy for me. Anyway, I enjoyed completing NWN and its expansion many, many times with multiple different character classes.

4 – Master of Orion 2 – a grand space strategy which was the best at that for me until Stellaris came along. Old ones can be awesome.

5 – Star Wars Pod Racer – best racing game for me. Hopefully it will come back to being viable to play on PC soon. It would still install and play on Windows 7 but you needed to play it all the way through as it couldn’t find the save games.

6 – Tie Fighter – best story based space shooter for me. This cost me a First at uni ! Oops. Yep. Great story missions, that Star Wars soundtrack (in simplified midi format) and excellent gameplay. I bought X COM Interceptor too, which was also a space based shooter … but they got the gameplay wrong in that despite cloning most of it from XWing and Tie Fighter. Tie Fighter was the pinnacle of this series.

7 – the Mass Effect trilogy. This story saw you racing around the galaxy as a futuristic space marine, attempting to save the galaxy from the impending apocalyptic invasion of genocidal machines. This series had the lot, gameplay, graphics, space, characters and feels from the interaction of those characters. I’m enjoying the Chrissa streams as she replays them.

There we go. There will be a few that I forgot to put on the list but these are the big ones. Honourable mentions go to games like Star Fleet Command and Star Trek Armada. Jagged Alliance 2 for squad level combat, the XCom for more tactical combat. Falcon 4 for hitting buttons as a flight sim, although it was unforgivingly unstable. World of Warcraft was an excellent adventure but at some point, you hit maximum level and run out of content unless you do group work.

Games often do one bit well but fall down on other things. Sometimes they try and do too much and the failings take the gloss off the rest. The Civilisation games were great … until they got to end game micromanagement. This is where Stellaris really scores over Master of Orion 2, because it takes that micromanagement away from you.

Time to get back to that Mass Effect stream though :-).

G’nite !

I’ve been spotting the word memes appear again … I have two for you today (if I can find the second !)

Don’t worry. That’s the only meme pic I’ll post today. Maybe.

The rule on this one is that every answer must start with the last letter of the previous answer.

Name – Sleepypete
Animal – Elephant
Boys name – Trevor
Colour – Red
Movie – Divergent
Something you wear – T shirt
Drink – Tea !
Food – Anchovies
Item in the bathroom – Sink
Place – Knightsbridge

Ok. Some of those were a bit more weird than I thought. It could have been weirder but I couldn’t think of a drink to go with tea towel and a movie to go with maroon.

More meme ! Bigger one this time :

1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth? A strawberry bonbon. Lush.
2. Where was your profile picture taken? Erm …. should have been at home because I have this pocket dragon but … I was lazy and stole it from the Googles and then modified it for shades.

3. Do you play Pokemon Go? Nope. Never got this craze
4. Name someone who made you laugh today: LTK
5. How late did you stay up last night and why? About 1.30am to watch the finish of a stream. And then I think I yawned my head off in bed until quite possibly 4am or later. Still got up in time for work.
6. If you could move somewhere else, where would you go? Gloucester and Sharpness canal is the most likely suspect at the moment. Or the Moon.
7. Ever been kissed under fireworks? Nope.
8. Which of your friends lives closest? I have a neighbour friend who will almost certainly read this soon !
9. Do you believe ex’s can be friends? Absolutely. Hate is too strong and costly an emotion to allow to drive you. Part on good terms, stay friends, remember why you went out with them in the first place. That must have been a good reason !
10. How do you feel about Dr Pepper? What is this Dr Pepper ? Do they do appointments ?
11. When was the last time you cried? It almost got me in the streams over the weekend. Heart Mordin. Heart Thane. Hopefully Tali survives.
12. Who took your profile picture? Erm – see question higher up about me stealing it from the googles.
13. Who was the last person you took a picture of? Cupid’s Gift.
14. Was yesterday better than today? Hmm – was back at work today but excepting that Lazy > Work, today was better. My outsides are better today than yesterday.
15. Can you live a day without TV? Hides in a corner and cries.
16. Are you upset about anything? My outsides not fixing yet, likelihood that I won’t see Ben the Staffy again.
17. Do you think relationships are ever really worth it? Always ! Whether that be the unconditional love of a dog for its master, the benevolent overlordship of a cat for its servant or the sharing of a partnership. Things are better shared.
18. Are you a bad influence? Depends – do you like strawberry bonbons – muahaha.
19. Night out or night in? Each has potential for chill out and enjoying. The key thing is to enjoy.
20. What items could you not go without during the day? Coffee and the water the coffee goes in.
21. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital? My dad, he escaped not many days after.
22. What does the last text message in your inbox say? it’s actually a thumbs up. I never quite know how to respond to those.
23. How do you feel about your life right now? It’s in an inbetween stage for where I live, where I work, who I share things with.
24. Do you hate anyone? No, see above about hate being a worthless emotion. I can get spectacularly angry but I’ll also recognise how destructive anger can be. Better to turn the emotions to better emotions.
25. If we were to look in your inbox what would you find? Lots of email, lots of spam, occasional email worth a read.
26. Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass? Yep, not even had alcohol for I dunno how many months.
27. Has anyone ever called you perfect? Hmm. I dunno there – possibly the mum.
28. Someone knocks on your window at 2:00 a.m, who do you want it to be? The emergency services with something really important. Anyone else should be expecting to be ignored and if they persist, Dire Consequences. Or it’s someone wanting me to turn the music down but they don’t count as someone I’d want knocking on the window.
29. Name something you have to do tomorrow? There’s a few work things. Other than that, there are things I will be doing but I don’t have to do them.
30. Do you think too much or too little? I suspect thinking too much is why I’m having trouble sleeping at the moment.
31. Do you laugh a lot? Always confront problems with laughter.
32. Do you have any fears? Oh yes. Many. My biggest fear is being ignored, of reaching out and getting absolutely no response. I would say that I steer clear of such people now but I steer the emotion towards amusement again. Like one of those internet video people who occasionally proclaims how lonely she is, yet who spurned all the approaches. I gave up that way a long time ago but still send the tweets over … and I’m amused when they get ignored as per usual.

That’s probably a bit unkind there on number 32. I call those efforts to be something well and truly in the past. What I’m doing now is to try and bring amusement to random people, which sums up most of my efforts on twitter and in the Heychrissa streams. And it warms the heart to see the chuckles the messages bring out.

That’s what I’ll close with. Don’t dwell on the bad emotions, like the being ignored by someone you think you might have gotten on well with. Turn the emotions to better ones. It’s better to make that effort, reach out and be ignored, than to stay in your shell.

Indeed. Chase your dreams !