Sleepypete's Pillow

Don’t worry – I’m not going to dive into Twitter.

It offends my Wall Of Text tendency with its namby pamby 140 character limit. I’m just getting started at 140 characters !!!!!

Just 3 days to go until Winter Break … I seriously need it. Although part of that need comes from knowing that the break is coming. That’s the way I tick (unconsciously). I’ll get bugs as well at the end of this week as I shut down more. Nah – I’ll be ok there. The hole in my tongue is almost fixed (gotta learn to talk proper again !) and my skin is actually, finally, normalising. When I give it the chance that is.

Semi Random Thoughts today.

I’m currently listening to the Yogscast livestream. It’s ladies night with my two favourite Yogscasters, Hannah and Kim. Hannah came in late and Kim had Duncan and Simon helping out. It’s been hilarious so far (although you kinda need the insider knowledge to really appreciate it – I guess like with most comedy). They broke the server, good and proper.

It started with a fishing trip, where they take their Minecraft characters off to an island. They build a cave into a fishing hut and out come the rods. (The fishing rods). And then out comes the rum. This is followed by Simon summoning in more Naga than you can count (Beefy mobs that eat the world).

Mayhem ensues, closely followed by hilarity as they try and fix something that could easily eat the server. Duncan brings out the nukes, which is when the server hamster cries “Enough!” and falls out of the wheel. This is after the same Simon probably broke another long running Yogscast series in a livestream from Sunday by crashing into the moon.

I was going to natter about security … Had the annual threat brief today. Everybody should get these, wherever they work. Even if you’re not employed, you should have some awareness of cyber security (it scares me witless sometimes when I get the call from the dad).

I’m seen by others as some sort of God when it comes to knowing about IT stuff. The reality is that I carefully pick and choose which questions I answer. I stay quiet when there’s something I have no clue about (MS Access anyone ?) and can usually blag something and make it up as I go along with other problems. My light touch of autism probably helps there as it means I can think as literally as a computer. I can understand what’s going on in there.

Security ?

Yeah. Even though I know lots, I’ve been caught out on the security a few times. Everybody, whatever the protection they use, gets caught out on cybersecurity. Unless they ditch Microsoft, Adobe and other stupidly vulnerable products that is.

Be careful online. I shake my head in despair when I see someone post the “If you don’t sort out your seciruty I’ll unfreind you” (the typos are from the copy/paste) on Facebook and they’re posting that with the “visible to the world” setting enabled. I facepalm when I see anyone posting on Facebook with the “visible to the world” enabled.

How have I been caught out ?
Playstation emulators that aren’t emulators, they’re trojan horse viruses that disable your antivirus (Norton at the time) and do other nasty things
An Eve Online account hack – either the keylogger came on a brand new laptop (I don’t think so, other things would have been compromised) or it came in the Eve client download (which is horrendous)
An MS Blaster infection on a machine I built for my dad – it was connected to the internet for literally just 15 minutes before a “Do you want this to connect to the internet ?” popup appeared. That’s right – no user interaction required and the machine was found, seen to be vulnerable and infected, within 15 minutes. (That vulnerability got closed – but the machine was infected before the fix could be downloaded)
Economic damage via faulty nVidia drivers – they made the graphics card hot, which made it crash, which made me think it was broken, which made me buy a new card.

The graphics thing wasn’t technically a virus but it’s an example of where bad software causes you problems. Like putting Windows 8 on a machine and finding it’s made permanent changes that stops you putting something more usable on there, like Windows ME or Windows 3.11.

Anyway – the real message I have with the security is :
Be aware – the nasties are out there but you can protect yourself by doing things like using Ad Blockers, using a Flash Blocker, ditching Internet Explorer, not giving any private information to Google, Adobe (in particular), Facebook or the other organisations that want your info. Facebook doesn’t know who I work for, it’s bad enough that they know where I live.
Be safe – use antivirus (I really should put some on my Macbook ! although technically it doesn’t need it)
Know how to react – DON’T PANIC !!!

If you see your machine working strangely, well, even stranger than the average Windows machine, then don’t panic. First, do not rush off and change your passwords like I did when I got hacked in Eve. If you have a keylogger, it’ll harvest all your new passwords (including the ones it didn’t already know about) and send them off to the Naughty People. Nope – run a full virus scan and then run a scan from Malware Bytes Anti Malware‘s software. Don’t run them both at the same time, it’ll take much longer as they both fight for time on the machine.

After the Nastie is caught and deleted by the virus scan or MBAM, then change all your passwords. But don’t panic and change them before you know the machine is clean.

Hope that makes sense !

Doh ! This was supposed to be randoms but it’s turned into something mega on security …

Back to the livestream. Hannah and Kim are currently berating Simon for not burning the house down in Beyond 2 Souls. Let’s see how he does on the next bit …

Post sparked by another thing spotted on the Facebook feed today :

“Sobering thoughts as we enter the holiday season…It is important to remember that not everyone is surrounded by large wonderful families. Some of us have problems during the holidays and sometimes are overcome with great sadness when we remember the loved ones who are not with us. And, many people have no one to spend these times with and are besieged by loneliness. We all need caring, loving thoughts right now. If I don’t see your name, I’ll understand. May I ask my friends wherever you might be, to kindly copy, paste, and share this status for one hour to give a moment of support to all those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just need to know that someone cares. Do it for all of us, for nobody is immune. I hope to see this on the walls of all my friends just for moral support. I know some will! I did it for a friend and you can too!“

I very rarely pass on the chain stuff that appears on Facebook (there’s a lot of it and it often has the “if you no share, bad thing happen …” garbage) but I do make exceptions.

Ok, maybe I wanted to talk about what I’d be doing around Xmas and needed an excuse to prompt me !

I’m threadbare ragged at the moment. I badly need the break to get some energy back again. The healing has been going as well as I allow it (translation – on the whole, it’s getting better) but being away from work and the conditions in the office will speed the recovery. It’s unseasonably warm here and that’s translating into the office being close to summer temperatures. Means I can’t cool down quickly after the walk in from the bus.

So I’m looking forward to some chilling out time over the holidays. Some of that time will be with others, a lot will be on my own.

I’ll spend a bit with the mum & dad & sister (and a few more people). I’ll be with the Crazies a couple of times too. We’re looking to go Hobbit Watching before Xmas and we usually have a Pizza + Movies meet up after too.

Presents ? I don’t really do those any more. There’s an upside and a downside to presents :
Upside – Free Stuff ! usually cool stuff.
Downside – the stress involved in getting something suitable. What to choose ? How do I get it in time ?
And there is that, not to be underestimated factor, of seeing that smile on the face of the person you got the gift fot that comes from you getting just the right thing.

Although that level of concern you’d only really save for someone really special. That sounds bad. All presents should be awesome for the person getting them. But there’s a difference in the level of concern you give to different people’s opinions. If I had a wife, I’d be more concerned about how they felt than how a colleague felt. I’d still be concerned but that concern would be on a whole different level.

There’s still no prospective Mrs Sleepy’s around. I’ve been waiting for the skin to normalise before even thinking about seeing if anyone is interested. However, I did spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about one particular person I was talking to after the team Xmas meal 😉

And that brings me back to the quote that started the post off. I still have a few family members I can spend the holiday with. I have a small but highly valued circle of friends that occasionally grows a little as I meet more special people.

I’ll have time on my own this Xmas – but that’s partly to indulge the loner side of my personality. I have a lot of dichotomy in my head. I like my space but I also badly miss having someone else around. However, I have that choice. Others don’t. I caught the person I mentioned above talking a bit about what she’d be doing. It sounded like work, work work. (Not good). Not much time for chilling out.

Besides, the best present anyone can have is knowing that someone will continue to be a valued friend for at least another year. Hugs are good too.

Yeah – I’ll be on my own for a decent amount of this Xmas. I’ll be recharging the batteries with a combination of sleep (I hope !), gaming, watching stuff and listening to music. However … I’ll get cabin fever at some point and will need to escape the house.

Soooo … if there’s anyone who sees themself in the quote above (and I do a little) and they’re local and in need of a little company ? I’ll listen ;-).

It’s in the game.

That’s actually a slogan from one of the bigger games publishers (who I won’t name because I’m boycotting them at the moment). Ok I will, It’s from EA and it’s a slogan they used a few years ago and it was one of the bigger lies in game publishing. It was supposed to mean that for their sport games, if you could do something in the real life sport then they’d replicate a means to do it in the game.

Did they ? No. Are they money grubbing bar stewards who continue to charge over the odds for inadequate software ? Yes – I was interested in Spore but … it’s a game that was released in Dec 2008 and even then it was rushed out by the publisher before it was ready. And they’re still charging full price (£30) for it. That’s daylight robbery and is just the worst example.

And there’s other crimes like Battlefield 3 and the newest Sim City (even Yogscast can’t make Sim City look interesting to play). No … EA and the other big publishers seem bent on squeezing as much money out of the gamer as they can while only producing minor amendments to their existing franchise (FIFA2014 was literally just a data and names update). Oh and discounting the core Mass Effect 2 game on Steam but not the expansion packs which you can only get through EA. That’s about a quarter of the game … Things like including a minor story arc on the Mass Effect 3 disc and charging extra for access to it.

As an avid games collector, I’ve noticed a trend in the industry – the publishers will force developers to release their games before they’re ready. Sometimes even years (Sports Interactive caved with Championship Manager 3, which never worked even with updates coming over several years). That’s evolved into another problem – games are being released dependent on online architecture which simply can’t cope with the demand. Most massive multiplayer online games see this problem and it’s a problem even infesting single player games (Sim City).

Enough of that though – what am I playing at the moment ?

In a way, that’s partly – what am I avoiding playing at the moment ?

There’s been a shift in games releases … Instead of games being pushed out in an unfinished state, they’re being sold as “it’s not ready yet, we’ll finish it later”. And you can get these through the usual online download routes. That’s another shift, pretty soon the high street retail places won’t sell PC games any more because it won’t be a valid resale channel. Online may survive due to collectors editions bringing goodies.

I have to be honest, the games playing is partly due to avoiding watching England on the telly failing at the Ashes. The games (and youtube videos) are a good distraction.

World of Warcraft is still the addiction at the moment, although not as much as it used to be. A lot of the challenge has disappeared out of the game. It’s too easy to crash through the zones as a single player. The only difficulty is hanging in there while you level (some of the zones are awesome, some are a tough, boring slog) and in having the professions keep up with you. The speed of levelling has increased a little too much. I’ve needed support from the guild to get me enough Stuff to keep those professions relevant (it’s been appreciated and has taken a lot of nausea out of the game).

However, for its flaws (and dodgy endgame) it’s still the best massive multiplayer online game out there and hopefully one or two features from the rest will enhance it. I’m comparing to :

Star Wars Old Republic – should have been a single player game but … EA … turn it into a subpar online subscription game.
Guild Wars 1 and 2 – interesting quest system in GW2, very poor combat system, curse by stupid jumping puzzles.
Terraria – very meh
And I’m sure there’s a bunch more that I’ve blocked from memory now.

But … there’s some times when I log into WoW, do a couple of quests and get hit by a feeling of wanting to throw myself off a building … I have to be in the right mood for it. Although if I am in the right mood, I’ll do more in a few hours than some players do in a week …

XCom Enemy Within (the expansion) is the current Not-Warcraft. It’s an aliens invade strategy game. That strategy bit is part of the appeal, it’s turn based so if you are wanting a slower pace the game will wait for you. It is however … insanely, brutally hard. I played one of the new scripted missions last night and it was so stressful I was merrily digging a new hole in my arm to join the other ones.

Settlers IV is another one, it has a slow relaxed pace. Not opened that for a while though.

Tomb Raider is one that’s waiting for me, I will probably have a go at this after the Enemy Within campaign comes to a conclusion (I suspect that may not be long judging by current horrible-ness!)

There is a new trend though – early access. This is where the developer is up front and honest about their game not being done yet and sends it out into the world with a promise of “Give cash, will finish”. It’s a nice philosophy but it’s dependent on the developer. Some are honest and will pile the time in, some dump and run. Looking at my Steam wishlist (and one that used to be on it) :

Star Lords – a space strategy (something I’ve always been dominated by)
Dungeon of the Endless – a sci fi randomly generated action game
Darkout and Maia – scifi base building colony games
Starpoint Gemini 2 – a starship command and role play game
Don’t Starve – is still in my wish list – I think this actually got quietly released
Project Zomboid – zombie horror survival

All those look quite interesting, although I don’t know why I haven’t removed Don’t Starve from the list. The YogscastSips playthrough was amusing but I don’t know how much amusement I’d get out of it.

You have to be extremely careful though with these early access and Kickstarter things. Some, like Don’t Starve, are commercial standard games. Better, because some are totally stable and have no bugs. (Battlefield 3 was unplayable on my new system due to bugs). Others, like Stardrive are a disastrous, unplayable buggy mess and are an example of a developer dumping his poo and running with the cash. If you see “Kalypso” anywhere, beware for similar reasons.

Youtube is pretty good as a way of checking these things out. If the game is a buggy mess, the youtuber will tell you. If it looks boring (Sim City), not even the most entertaining commentator can get you interested. If it looks amazing, then there tends to be a lot of excitement about it.

The one I’m very curious about right now is Rimworld. It’s a colony building game again and it looks rather interesting. It’s pre Alpha (barely playable and without many features) but looks solid.

I’ll close there with a :
Years ago – all we had to go on was what was written in gaming magazines, which were often blatant lies built on advertising revenue. These were the people who made me buy Championship Manager 3, which was ridiculously poor. They also said it’s next version was stable. It wasn’t.
Now – youtube is a much more reliable source of information.

If you’re looking at games and wondering whether to part with the hard earned cash ? Have a peek on youtube, see what people think of it.

You know me,

I can never stay away from music posts for too long. (He says chuckling away to himself)

It’s been almost 2 months now since the Macbook Air arrived (time flies doesn’t it ?) and how much of the library have I managed to get through ? Hmm. I’ve managed to listen to all but 1 of the A albums in that library so far … Wow. That’s either a lot of A albums or lots of random tracks piled in there in between.

Ok. It’s a bit of both actually. I started being a bit more systematic in what I choose to play through, mostly because I like listening to albums as albums. Some like most of the earlier Kate Bush albums are made like that. They tell a story as they go through, they carry a mood through the album (Madonna’s are like that). If it’s Cardigans or All About Eve, there’s amazing track after amazing track (listener preferences may differ – lol).

And there just happens to be a lot of A albums in the library (37 not counting the odd tracks).

That’s actually far too many to mention them all. What’s my highlights ?

Alisha’s Attic have 2 entries. There’s their first album (Alisha Rules The World) which established them as something rather different. 2 sisters with complementary and a little voices. Attitude. A touch of the weird. Huge dollops of Cool coming in for free. There’s a reason I went by the pseudonym Alisha’s Addict for a while.

(And it did feel a little strange when we had an Aleesha turn up at work one day to join the team – we’ll miss her input when she moves on, smart girl).

The second Alisha’s Attic is their Attic Vaults 1 album. AA didn’t last very long, just 3 albums before they packed it in. They didn’t get the recognition they deserved. Classy artists tend to get left behind while manufactured GirlBand and Boyband garbage gets the attention. The Attic Vaults album was going to be the first of a few which had their unreleased stuff but sadly only one came out. A pity because most Alisha’s Attic B sides are far superior to the average output of your Boyband and Girlband trash.

(I’m leaving the youtube links out of this one – although I’d love to link you Wonderful U or On The B Side. Very happy songs).

Lily Allen’s making a comeback (we hope) ! She gets in here with her first album Alright Now. If AA had attitude, Lily Allen/Cooper has even more. It’s fun to listen to as well, although … swear words … makes you choosy about where you play it – lol – silly people getting offended.

Oldest one – All About Eve’s self titled debut. What can I say. They had the gorgeous Julianne Regan as lead, who in her glamour-goth style with long dark hair and the voice of a siren had me utterly entranced. No one at school could compare (yep – long time ago, last century even) although Miss Rachel came close. It’s 20 years old but it’s still one of my favourite albums.

Gloria Estefan is in here too with Anything For You. It’s a good album and Gloria Estefan is possibly even more gorgeous than Julianne Regan but … I dunno. The songs were more consistently better from All About Eve.

There’s the usual staples of most people’s libraries in here too. There’s the essentials like Lenny Kravitz Are You Gonna Go My Way, Guns n Roses with Appetite For Destruction and R.E.M. with Automatic For The People. However, I prefer listening to the female voice. Male vocals don’t grab my attention in the same way (there’s a reason why the Bitchin’ Betty warnings in aircraft are in a female voice, we’re wired to respond to it on an instinctive level).

What’s different ? What won’t you recognise ? What’ll be new for you ?

Lene Marlin is another singer who I’ve followed for years. She’s Norwegian, singing in English with that Scandinavian accent. They’re mostly ballads although she’ll go for the boppy, rocky songs too. Her voice is another amazing voice. Well worth a listen. I’m looking forward to when the rest of her albums come up in the queue, it’s just been Another Day so far.

Talking about the angels … Craziequeen introduced me to Mindy Gledhill with the Anchor album. If you’re feeling down, listen to this or her newer album Pocketful of Poetry. I wasn’t going to link anything but … I dare ya. Listen to this one (Crazy Love) and try to avoid smiling.

This is getting near Wall of Text territory so … more in there, which are decent but not true favourites :

Tori Amos – Abnormally Attracted To Sin
Tori Amos (again!) – American Doll Posse
Abba’s third hits album
Kate Bush with Aerial – her last “good” album
Smash Mouth – All Star Greatest Hits (they gave some music to Shrek)
Paramore with All We Know Is Falling (decent debut album and they’ve improved since)
Mark Knopfler and Emmy Lou Harris – All The Roadrunning
(been tempted to try an Emmy Lou Harris album – dunno why I haven’t yet)
Arctic Monkeys – AM (recommended)
Everything But The Girl – Amplified Heart (much better than Baby… which is trash)
Clannad with Anam
Pink Floyd with Animals (Weird, has lines about sheep rising up and fighting dogs by learning karate)
Rita Coolidge – Anytime Anywhere – this lady knew how to sing
Mansun – Attack of the Grey Lantern – these guys made a lot of great music

And I’ve not even mentioned the soundtracks … Ok. Only one. There was a Beatles tribute film that came out a few years ago called Across The Universe. Unlike the abomination which was the Mamma Mia film, the actors and actresses in Across The Universe could sing and sing extremely well.

I’ll close off with a highlight – “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play ?” If you haven’t seen Across The Universe, I’d highly recommend it. Oh and here’s another link, just Because.

PS The world remembered a Titan today. RIP Nelson Mandela, we won’t see someone as great as you for some time.

….and it's not only the newspapers that do it. The Government should be protecting its people from unwarranted intrusion into their lives – not enabling and sanctioning it!

Actually that's another group that I didn't mention above – the newspapers who will spy on us for the juicy stuff because they think they can get away with it …

Oh, I think that there's a world of difference using legitimate spying to protect us from the bad guys out there and spying on everyone on the off chance that something juicy might turn up at some point – which is far from legitimate. I would love to hear a coherent explanation from someone in power how spying on *me* makes me safer from terrorism!

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…..