Sleepypete's Pillow

Someone’s hit that light bulb switch again and it’s made the sun come out 🙂

It’s about time too cos this “summer”, a lot of records have been broken on rainfall. It says something for climate change being far more subtle than just “it’s getting hotter” because what we’ve seen this summer is more a change in pattern. Britain is at similar latitudes to Canada, which is considerably colder than Britain. What makes Britain warmer is the Gulfstream, a band of warm air that circles the Atlantic. It’s part of a pattern called the Trade Winds, which is a naturally occurring phenomenon which happens as a result of the Earth spinning.

But when that natural current of air shifts … that’s when strange things start happening with the weather.

Right now, it’s shifted back to how late July should be – 28 degrees C heat and scorchy bum in the car.

About the car – climate control is awesome 🙂 I’ll step into a hot car after finishing up at work. I’ll turn the car on and a few seconds later the climate control will do its best to get the internal temperature down to something manageable. It’s sooooo good having a fully working air conditioning system again, it’s one of the things I needed to spend money on with my Focus. In fact, it worked so well that when I got home and opened the car door, the first thought was “bloody hell it’s warm out here”.

However, one comment about the air con is that I need to find out how to redirect airflow when I have pizza. Let’s just say – hot air going to the footwell is far better than icey cold air going to the footwell. (That’s where I put the pizza box on the way home – pizza on white seats = bad idea).

Another comment – the perforated leather seats work really well. I’ve had one previous car with full leather seats and they really didn’t work well in hot conditions. Definite scorchy bum syndrome. Dotty perforated leather helps the seat breathe, making it much cooler.

Last car comment – one thing the Lexus afficionados think should be in every Lexus is a heated steering wheel. (We’re used to lots of toys). I respectfully disagree. In cold conditions, I’ll put my leather driving gloves on to keep my fingers working. Sorted. However, in hot conditions, I don’t want to be wearing Volcano Gauntlets to be able to touch the steering wheel. I’d much prefer a steering wheel with a chiller to one with a heater.

What am I doing now ?

Oh – right now it’s watching Sussex gives a huge bashing to Gloucestershire bowlers in the Twenty20 quarter finals. The average score this season has been 140 off 20 overs, Sussex have 204 already with 9 balls to go. Erm – make that 210. SIX RUNS !

Gloucestershire are my most local team but you could call me an Anti-Supporter because of how they treated our work side. We did net practice there one season but when we tried to go back, all calls were unanswered, all messages were ignored. So I support the other guy.

Music wise – I’m getting near to having listened to all the stuff in the library again. Of the soundtracks, Beyond Good & Evil has some awesome stuff in there alongside incidental music. Trine 2 is “interesting” while the Deus Ex and Machinarium soundtracks can only be described as awesome.

Off work next week, which I’m heavily looking forward to. Been feeling very stretched lately, which is understandable because I’ve effectively been doing 2 separate jobs for the past few weeks. That takes its toll eventually but I’m happier now than I was then. I’ve scoped out the major task for next few months in my head and have a mental plan. Now I just need to put that plan on paper to keep my bosses happy.

I will miss a few people in that week off for sure. I’m enjoying working in the new team. The old team didn’t have a great atmosphere, with some elements of it actively working against other elements of it. That’s not a recipe for getting things done. It’s pretty silly. I’m not catching that in the new team, in fact I’ve had a hell of a lot of help from the finance, commercial and business management people.

But who will I really miss :
Finance Angels E, K and L (yep – new finance angel)
Miss Meerkat
The Apprentice who actually works downstairs (trying to pass on as much as possible in as short a time as possible!)
The Boss (who’s just moved teams – must grab a coffee opportunity)
And the new Business Management people who seem highly amused (bemused?) by my antics

And there’s a bunch more in the new team who I need to get inspiration for codenames. Despite not knowing what we were being parachuted into, I think our team reshuffle has worked pretty well. We’re cracking on with work as a together group of people.

And that’s always worth smiling about. Especially when you get smiles from people walking by your desk spotting you do the Meerkat “who dat?” thing 🙂

Right – half time in the cricket, Sussex reached a massive 230 and it’s time to put the popcorn on before the second half. Enjoy your evenings !

Ok. I’ve talked a lot about games and gaming lately. I’ve probably spent more time talking about games & gaming than actually gaming.

Last one for a while (No promises!). Steam sale is over, so it’s back to peeking at daily deals. Oh and getting some value out of the games I picked up on the Steam sale. But … I did spot a story in The Register that begs a response … “Ten… PC games you may have missed”. Right from the start, it’s waving the red flag around because Jagged Alliance 2 Back In Action was not something deserving of any credit …

But there are some good suggestions in there. Actually no … there’s not. There’s a lot of trash. The only ones I’d seriously consider are Vessel and the Sins of a Solar Empire expansion. But even then – I’ve not picked them up despite being tempted on the Steam Sale.

What’s my list ?

From the Steam library first … and not restricting myself to stuff coming out in the last 12 months. If it’s a classic, it’s timeless ? Right ?

Beyond Good & Evil. I seriously need to go back into the game and do more of it. This one had me grinning from ear to ear for the whole 3 hour long initial session. And had me grabbing the awesome soundtrack too. It’s backed up by reasonable mechanics too. Seriously good game. Must finish it.

Capsized. This one I bought ages ago. It’s a pretty sound platformer, with the modern thing going where your character interacts with the environment to solve puzzles. Oh and there’s some nasty aliens trying to eat you as well. Worth a look.

DEFCON. Do Not Buy This Game If Prone To Depression !!!! The best games rely on simple rules. The best computer games hide insanely complex mechanics behind those simple rules. This is DEFCON. It’s global thermonuclear war a la that ancient movie.

Deus Ex. Either the original (which I need to do a playthrough of) or the se-pre-quel Deus Ex Human Revolution (DXHR). I’ve played DXHR through a bunch of times so far. It’s so good that I’ve devoted my very sparse gaming time to that game alone. And there’s some insanely cheap deals been going through on it. The only reason I haven’t done a playthrough on the original is because it looks archaic. (However … avoid Deus Ex: Invisible War)

Jagged Alliance 2. Avoid the trash which is the “Back In Action” rip off game. This one is another of those rare games where they got so much so right with very few bugs. It’s a living breathing country where you’re asked to go in and liberate it from its Evil Dictator Queen. There’s so much to see here and it’s another with those simple rules, complex hidden mechanics. The rules align with what you’d expect your people to be able to do, the mechanics make them happen.

Machinarium. Oh so charming. I’ll do a proper review of this at some point. You control the central character, which is an outwardly harmless but incredibly stoical robot. He’s had a hard life this fella, with his story being played out in very sad (but disarmingly charming) cutscenes. Great soundtrack too. MUST HAVE !

Civilisation. Any of them. But I’d have to say aim for Civ 4 because I know that’s good, plus it should be available cheap. Strategy games need to be over a very long time in my opinion. A war isn’t won by a single battle (like in Real Time Tactical games like Starcraft), it’s won over a series of them. And a strategy game is of no value unless you can choose the strategy to employ over a war, not just a single battle. The Civilisation series has always been the apex for historical strategy. I’d also recommend Moo2 from Good Old Games for space strategy.

Civ 4 and not Civ 5 ? I own Civ 5 now but I’ve not played it yet … plus it’ll cost more. I can’t honestly give an opinion on a game I’ve not played or seen played. So I point you towards Civ 4 🙂

Solar 2. This game is just plain Weird. You play as an asteroid, grow into a planet, absorb asteroids (as moons) to grow into a sun and eventually absorb enough mass to become a black hole. You’ll play nothing like this game. I didn’t play it much but it was good fun while I did.

X-Com. Oh yes. Talking strategy ? This one has a strategy layer on top of the tactical battle layer. If your soldiers survive one battle, they’ll learn and improve for the next one. If they die (which happens a LOT in XCom – it’s brutal) then the next battle is harder with fresh green troops.

(I only mentioned XCom because there’s a new one coming and I really do hope they don’t mess it up)

Ok. That’s 9. As my 10th, I’ll say Neverwinter Nights. It’s old yes. However it’s another where they got so much, so right. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons ruleset game but they didn’t include all of what you can do in D&D. They kept it to what would make a playable game. That’s very important – some games start with great concepts but then throw it all away by being far too ambitious with what they try and include. And the ambition can break the game.

Others well worthy of a mention from what I’ve seen but I can’t include them above because I haven’t actually played them yet : Botanicula (bought, not played yet), Minecraft (great potential, £17 is not value), Trine 2, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.

I’ve deliberately excluded some of the big names up there … To be honest, DXHR is a better game than Skyrim. It’s more focused with far better storytelling. And despite the massive content in Skyrim, you’d only play that through once if you finish it at all. In terms of value for money, games like Machinarium, Beyond Good & Evil, Botanicula and heavily discounted A list games like Borderlands and Deus Ex HR will give far more enjoyment for less money. Skyrim’s content blends together into a seamless mush. 5 or 6 indie games for the same price give more enjoyment through better variation.

Now I just gotta find time to play the new stuff.

PS That would be “find time to play them before Guild Wars 2 comes out …”
PS2 One way to check these games out is Let’s Plays on Youtube. Anything by Yogscast, Omfgcata and the first impressions videos by Totalbiscuit will tell you whether a game is something you will find worth playing. They’re worth checking out before you allow cash out of your wallet.

Oh gosh – there’s a lot that can be said about writing.

First of all – why write ? Writing is the core of most communication in the 21st century. People are texting more, email and instant messaging are mandatory, twitter and Facebook are letting people put soundbites on the web and blogs like this let people throw Walls Of Text out there.

At work, we use written communication a huge amount as well. It forms a permanent record of decisions, actions, instructions, declarations, assumptions and all that stuff. If you don’t write things like assumptions or actions down, it’s open to “screenshot or it didn’t happen” later. Not writing down so called “gentleman’s agreements” leads to wasted time later as you try to prove or disprove the agreement. People are also happier with a piece of paper that says “Yes, you can turn that on, it’s safe”.

But … it takes a certain type of style for the different writing we do. I have several that I switch between at will. I didn’t study English language to A level but did get an A grade (A* didn’t exist then – this was before GCSE was dumbed down) at the level below. One of the reasons for this blog is that it lets me practice writing and refine the skills.

It’s not just splurging words on to a page. It’s getting a message across.

And to make a point, a plan always helps. (Not that I’m following a plan here !) Being able to write in multiple different styles is a key skill. I prefer to use a jokey, casual style in most communication at work. I’ll write in language that defies sentence construction. The objective behind most of that is to put me on a similar level to the people I’m talking to. I try and be their friend, I try and be on their side. Cos we’re all trying to work together to the same goal most of the time.

However. There’s also a need for several formal styles. Technical writing demands concise precision. There should be nothing open to interpretation when writing a technical description or defining a requirement. Any room for interpretation leads to you not getting what you want. At the same time, you want to capture everything.

The other formal writing is where you’re defending a position. The same thing applies there with the precision, except the precision is directed more towards building an impenetrable wall around your argument.

With my new role at work, I found myself doing the position defence writing thing last week because we needed to ask for extra money because a contractor got it wrong with their requirement definition (it’s the new project, not the old one – please don’t thump me Ms Warpath! – lol). So that’s like writing “we need this money” justification while hiding behind a wall you need as strong as you can make it. Otherwise, your justification gets knocked down, you don’t get the necessary work done and your project falls behind.

Next week – I’ll be doing the technical writing thing, where we write down all of our assumptions in a single document. Assumptions are pretty important. They either let you simplify your choice, or give justification for why you’re ignoring something cheaper. With my latest PC, the assumptions included :

Intel cpu – because AMD lost their performance equality
nVidia graphics – because AMD/ATi had bad software

If I’d applied a similar assumption set with my laptop, it may have been able to still play video above 360p. The AMD cpu has the theoretical grunt but in real life, it isn’t up to the job because it has to drive itself too hard.

All that said though. It’s a different writing style again to what I put on this blog.

I think I balance the styles fairly well here. There’s no real need for the ultra formal Build A Wall style, unless I’m on dodgy ground with an argument. The ultra casual style works well most of the time but I do like to try and appear intelligent and literate ;-). Technical writing style is handy for certain posts but I have the room to add in a bit more flowery descriptive language that I wouldn’t put in a technical description.

Have I Wall Of Texted too much yet ? That’s another thing with the writing for work. If your document is too thick, people just :

Read the start.
Read the end.
Look at the pictures.

I know I do. We sometimes don’t have time to do more than focus on key points. If a work document is too long and that length isn’t due to recording fact, then the length wastes the time of the author and the reader.

I hope my Wall of Text tendency here doesn’t waste people’s time. I do it mainly because, due to living on my own, I don’t have the chance to talk through things with people. So in my own way, this is my way of talking through thoughts that would otherwise rattle around in my head until silly hours in the morning.

I can work my way through a lot of the random thoughts like that but not all. There’s some stuff that’s too private for on here, although I’ll talk to a very small group of people about them. And that’s a very small group because I don’t trust many people with the really deep stuff.

And I’ll close on this point – written communication is all very well. It lets you record what you think and also lets you put those thoughts in some sort of order. However … it’s very impersonal. You don’t know if the reader is empathising or sniggering. That sort of stuff, you can only find out face to face.

I like to think I’m pretty good at figuring out what people are thinking or feeling, at least unconsciously due to empathy. But you can’t tell on text-only whether people are just stringing you along.

I trust most of my closer friends implicitly. But there’s some old friends where that trust level is slipping. There’s just stuff been going on in the background that I’ve been picking up on which can be originating with just a few people. I think I know who it is – and I just don’t get it. Actually I do – and that’s because I know more than people think I do.

And I think it’s really time to end this one before it gets well and truly derailed ! Think before you write, don’t assume you know everything, consider the impact on others.

Randoms again !

Lots of sport to see this weekend. And other entertainmenty type stuff. I was hoping for a really chilled out weekend this weekend. I still have a bit of the hyperactivity tendency active but it’s being dragged down as my batteries run low. Also noticing that I can’t stretch it out as much as I used to – maybe that’s a side effect of being lighter, less fat reserve to draw upon.

The weather was clear on Thursday so one of my teams got a game in (dunno who won). I didn’t play because they already had enough but I’m kinda glad I didn’t play. Random injury of the day on Thursday and Friday was a dodgy hip (left side! dunno where that came from) that was slowing me down while walking. It’s rare that I let signs of injury show but was actively limping for this one. On Thursday at least – by Friday lunchtime I was able to race ahead of people again :-). I need to get active again. Too long without running around leads to me stiffening up too much.

I’d have had trouble breathing as well on Thursday – I either had major dust attack or a reaction to something else. I hope it’s a mystery reaction because the alternative would be me developing something anti-bread … That’s bad news. How else do you get your hot dogs ?

Just kidding there. Not had a hot dog for months. Honest.

Been testing out my network lately. Because my laptop can’t really cope with video better than 360p, I’m currently watching the Eve Alliance Tournament on the desktop while tapping this post in on my laptop. I’m also listening to music streamed over the wifi. So right at the moment :

iTunes sending 1.1Mbits/s over wifi to my hifi
Eve Alliance tournament sucking in about 1Mbit/s of streaming
Add in the various sundry stuff like multiple chat apps (MSN & Steam) and the other internet type apps.

And later I’ll switch the Eve tournament for GuildWars 2 beta streaming if the Totalbiscuit or Jesse Cox streams come online. (Maybe). The Eve tournament stream has actually done ok today after its disastrous number of dropouts last weekend. The fights aren’t so great today because there’s a lot of meaningless matches. However – finals day tomorrow could be exciting.

Curiosity point there – the Eve tournament stream in HD is coming down the pipe at 1Mbit/s to 2.5Mbit/s (bandwidth goes up as things get busy) while the iTunes audio stream goes out at 1.1Mbits/s max. When the video stream goes down to talking heads, the audio is actually using more bandwidth. Apple’s Airplay is a pretty good protocol. CD audio quality is 16 bits, times 2 for stereo, times 441000 per second for a potential 1.68Mbits/s. Airplay compresses down a little but not very much when you look at it. I’d be hard pressed to tell a difference between Airplay going over the wireless network and a wire stretched across the floor.

Actually I would, the first time I went for a “brb 1 min” and tripped up on the wire sending everything flying.

What’s surprising (unless you go cynical) is that the audio & hifi magazines when they review audio streamers, ignore tech like Apple’s Airport Express. It’s £79 yeah … but that tends to be cheaper than the other dedicated audio streamers that they will review. I dunno about you but I’d rather get an audio streamer without speakers than wasting £500 (JEEZ!!!!) on something like the B&W Zeppelin speakers. That’s £421 wasted when you already have a hifi that you’re happy with.

So yeah – I’m still really happy with the Airport Express solution. It ticks all sorts of boxes. Not to mention being really portable and adaptable. If I go somewhere, I can chuck it in with my laptop stuff and plug it in where I end up. I’ve used it on proper hifis, portable speakers and even plugged it into a telly to get music. Oh and it’ll also allow you to add a USB printer or hard disc to a network.

Been watching the cricket and F1 as well today. I’ll do the same tomorrow as well. I rarely watch stuff live these days (V+ record while you watch box). Not such a great day in the cricket today. Lots of grindy stuff from the South Africans while the most damage England did was to their own equipment. Watch this – you won’t believe it til you see it. The advantage to watching “as-live” is that you can fast forward through all the adverts and filler. So tomorrow, I’ll watch the cricket until lunch at 1pm and then start the F1 coverage off and fast forward the filler to get to the race.

But tonight though – chill out mode has turned to music. I’ve bought a lot of soundtracks in the Steam sale and I’m steadily working my way through them. Grabbed a bit more too :

Beyond Good & Evil soundtrack – this started it. The music in the rhino garage had me just standing there tapping my feet.
Machinarium – played an hour of it yesterday – puzzler. Haunting soundtrack. Very sad, very cute. Must finish.
Deus Ex – must play this one more too.
Trine 2 – another excellent soundtrack. Not played game yet.
Civilisation V – think I’ll be attacking this game later …
Mass Effect 3 (part) – got this a few weeks ago.

Great games tend to get backed up by fantastic soundtracks that assist the game by setting the mood. That goes for a lot of media actually. The signature of Star Wars is the music. You recognise themes like Star Trek, Stargate, Hitch Hikers and Ennio Morricone instantly. The Star Wars music got included in the games with an innovative system that matched what was happening to the music being played. Shooty bits were matched with more uptempo music.

Skyrim has a bit of the music theme too. Like the Dovahkin hymn that makes the opening menu far more dramatic. Or visiting an inn and sticking around long enough for one of the voice acted bards to either charm you or terrify (some of them are Bad) you with their renditions.

And I’ll leave it there. Hopefully my breathing won’t go bad again tonight like it did Wednesday night. Although if it does, I’ll have learned something I need to avoid eating …

PS Must watch Hitch Hikers Guide again. Will add that to list of stuff to watch when telly goes quiet … which will be in at least 3 weeks when the Olympics has been and gone.

Must actually play what I buy.

Steam summer sale is still going on and while I haven’t gone as mad with it as I might have … I’ve not played that much of what I have bought. A lot of that is down to me being in the work type schedule. After a day’s staring at a VDU and using my brain to think through the issues, I’m often not actually wanting to cook more brain cells on a game that’s going to want me to think quickly.

So I’ve been watching the gaming instead through youtube channels including Totalbiscuit (as Totalhalibut), Jesse Cos (as Omfgcata), Dodger’s coffeh and PressHeart videos and the Yogscast series (too prolific to link). They never forget something absolutely key – games are supposed to be FUN. And they have a lot of fun with making their videos. I laugh a lot when watching them.

Oh and it also lets me check games out to see if :

They’re worth spending money on;
They’re my type of game;

And other stuff like that. I’ve watched some of the videos and recognised that while it may well be an excellent game of its type, it’s not one I’d be interested in or spend much time on.

In that case, I wonder why I’m reinstalling League of Legends as I type … And that’s instead of getting more into what I have bought on the Steam sale so far :

Beyond Good & Evil – from Sweet SteamGirl
Borderlands – post apocalyptic shooter with radical graphics style
Trine 2 – bought for soundtrack really, sideways scrolling puzzler
Civilisation V – empire building evolved
Civ 4 Colonisation – conquer the New World and then tell the people back home to poke off

But at least I’ve managed to resist things like Anno 2070 & HOMM6 (bad DRM), Sins of a Solar Empire (not enough discount, think it’d send me back to Moo2), Warlord-Master of the Arcane (unfinished) and a few others. Things like the Total War series – the developers of these have a very long history of pushing out games that are only 90% complete. There’s only so much of that behaviour which can be tolerated. Or should be tolerated.

That’s one massive problem with the gaming world at the moment. Hype wins over good common sense. It’s quite well known that the Total War games and a few others have issues. Most of the top selling games have issues. The Skyrim UI is unusable compared to modded versions of it. Pretty much anything by Bethesda is unstable and everything Ubisoft do is shackled by obsessive and unstable DRM. Yet hype combined with inaccurate and Advertising Biased reviews in magazines leads to these games being bestsellers.

It’s a pity really. And it affects other areas of the media like what we see on Telly.

We don’t get fed Good Stuff. We get fed stuff that is expected to sell. Revolutionary, “interesting” programmes and games get abandoned in favour of what seems a good bet. We lose good series like A Town Called Eureka, Sanctuary, Firefly, Terra Nova and Defying Gravity and keep stuff like True Blood, Game of Thrones (not seen) and Spartacus. I’m pretty much addicted to vampire stuff, so for me to abandon True Blood after 1 series due to its writing being more boring than watching paint dry suggests something had gone horribly wrong there.

Quick music aside – if we got forcefed the mainstream rubbish all the time in music, we’d be missing out on amazing voices singing about Clowns (Alison Goldfrapp – I could listen to that voice all day).

Sadly it’s part of majority rule … We’re a huge collection of minorities. Each minority has its own taste, which while unique overlaps the taste of the other minorities. My sister and I both love Bat For Lashes but we have opposite tastes for Alisha’s Attic (love ’em) and Muse (dislike – all sounds the same).

When it comes to getting pushed stuff in the gaming world, companies steer towards what’s likely to be popular. Which means :

Lots of first person shooters
Third person shooters
Cutscenes that interfere with the action
On rails games that have skyscraper sized plot hammers
Civ clones and Total War clones
Sequelitis

And other stuff like that. It means I’ve not really got into the modern games (Mass Effect maybe?) like I did classics like Neverwinter Nights, Moo2, Tie Fighter and MoM. Mentioning Tie Fighter – where’s the space sims these days ? Those died out because they apparently didn’t sell. Well … the original X Wing kickstarted the sale of many 80486 PCs. (Last century)

And I’ll rest on a horrible thought I just had that makes me feel old – one or two readers may not have been born when X Wing and Moo were released … Lol 🙂 And they definitely weren’t here when I was addicted to BBC classics like Elite & Revs !

PS I wonder how much of that reluctance to game is down to me deep down really wanting to be out somewhere with someone attractive and intelligent enjoying stuff like dinner, movies, shows together ? Playing with yourself can pass the time but playing with others is where the real fun is.

When they start appearing in the hire car fleet … then it'll have been raining …

DUKs all round I think…. [lol]

We actually haven’t had rain for some of this week !

Don’t be alarmed. Torrential rain was back today. For a while. We got lulled into thinking Summer was happening over the last couple of days but reality beckoned again today. Guess what – cricket was due tonight.

I don’t really like to believe in coincidence (if you do, then it can be an unhealthy belief that the world revolves around you – the world doesn’t care that much) but …

No cricket on Monday & Tuesday – rain relatively clear.
Cricket on Wednesday – oars needed to get to work. (Not quite)
Cricket called off – 30 minutes later the sun comes out.

Sun’s still out too but there was so much rain this morning, the ground would have been mud. There’s another game on tomorrow night, to be played on an artificial pitch. Bit more chance of that game happening but I have my doubts.

Loving my car still – can’t quite believe I’ve almost had it a year now. But … I think one of these would have been more appropriate for our English summer :

That’s from the Wiki page and it’s for a World War 2 vehicle – the DUKW. It’s a six wheeled amphibious truck. The letters stand for :
D – designed in 1942
U – Utility
K – driven front wheels
W – two powered rear axles
What that doesn’t say is that it had a watertight hull and propeller and could go 5.5 knots in water as well as 50mph on land.

What say to a modern version of one of them ? Might need it if this Global Warming thing continues ! Let’s see :

Make it smaller. Say use a Juke chassis or other small SUV.
Keep the hull watertight, lighten it for buoyancy.
Use a powertrain with a “Power Take Off”*
And hook up a steerable propeller or propulsor.

Yeah. Mad Scientist Hat is calling … I reckon that without needing to take guns and a buncha squaddies, you could get 80mph+ and 10knts+.

*(Power Take Off – is something that lets you hook up the engine to something other than the wheels. Seen on tractors mostly, used to be on 4×4 vehicles. Not seen so much these days)

More all sorts today …

There’s a few things lately that have set off the That’s Silly alarm.

Olympics are coming ! My summer leave period is spookily going to coincide with the first week. I’ll watch as much Olympics as I can fit in. Or I’ll try to. I’d like to head off for one of the events too but looking at the tickets page, the options are all deeply Meh :

Artistic Gymnastics, Football, Weightlifting, Beach Volleyball, Volleyball, Boxing, Diving.

Hockey’s on the list – hockey’s ok. Unless it’s Mixed Hockey, which is a bloodbath not for the faint hearted. Put a hockey stick in the hands of a woman and there’s only one thing to do : RUN LIKE HELL. Or be in goal where you’re covered head to toe in armour.

So I don’t think I’ll go to any events, looking at the tickets available but I’ll watch it until my brain melts. And then I’ll switch over to the 2nd England vs S Africa Test Match which starts on Thursday 2nd.

House of Lords “reform” …

You have to seriously wonder at what’s in the heads of the people supposedly leading our country. House of Lords isn’t about privilege, although there are members of it that seriously abuse privilege. (If you’re a Lord, you should occasionally attend the house). Being in the House of Lords isn’t a privilege, it’s a responsibility. It’s an unelected body who’s aim it is to keep the elected monkeys in check. They don’t make law, they stop bad ones. And the people we vote in are a bunch of morons.

Democracy is a great system of government when you have viable people to vote for. And we’re sorely lacking in those at the moment. It would be handy to have a mechanism of De-Lording a Lord but they’re really there to keep the MPs from doing really stupid things like …

Setting the speed limits to 40mph on rural roads.

Who came up with this one ? And did they really expect it to be followed ? The speeds they set for GB roads tend to be seen as a minimum speed, not a maximum. Not many people keep to the 40 limits around here and you get the occasional psycho doing 60 in the 30s. So if the limits were set back to 40, you’d get 80mph muppet coming round blind bends and whacking the 40mph people. It’s not Actual Speed that’s dangerous, it’s Speed Differential. When there’s a big difference in speed, that’s when things get very dangerous.

There’s too much sense of immortallity coming from driving our tougher modern cars. People are doing daft things like Speed Limit + 30 or using mobiles while driving.

That’s enough ranty mode for now though.
Abolishing the Lords – bad. It’ll let the politicians run riot and do stupid things.
Reducing the speed limit – bad. It’ll make the roads far more dangerous.

Been running at Ultra Hyper today. Not sure completely why – there’s a few possibilities :

Nattering to various people and trying to make some of them smile
Shaking my head at one fella who we’re hoping won’t damage himself through overwork
(hey ! that could be me too ! too late – already messed up my shoulder – lol)
Thinking my eyes have made an improvement
Being insanely busy at work
Realising that I may need to buy yet another belt
(it’s regularly going on another tighter hole now)
Maybe something I’ve eaten too (there’s something to that “need fish” thing)
Getting bought stuff on Steam 🙂 🙂 🙂
(someone must like me !)

Sporty stuff – this weekend’s going to be busy too … After the disaster which was the Eve Alliance Tournament stream yesterday, I’ll not bother with the finals next weekend. I’ll be busy enough with shoehorning in Cricket and Formula 1 (unless it rains and takes the cricket off the field).

Talking of rain … Having a silly amount of rain this summer June/July. I have a strong feeling that the pink bat grip I got a month ago (it really is a month ago – I checked!) isn’t going to see service on a cricket field this year. Yeah – I reckon it’s a good chance we’ll get an almost completely washed out summer season.

That’s quite sad. And another reason why I’m glad I didn’t go through with making a massive thing of the Pink Hat Project. To be ruthlessly honest there, I don’t think my fragile ego would have coped well with what I anticipate would have been a general response of “that’s nice, now what were you doing again ?” to me hunting sponsorship.

Hunting for charity cash is a really thankless task at the moment. Money’s tight. I’d feel bad if someone I got cash off for a fairly anonymous charity later had to stop doing something they enjoy because they couldn’t afford it. Too many charity people guilt you into giving with variations of “It’s for charity … mate” with the inference of the “mate” factor diminishing if you don’t give. I hate that. And it’s partly down to a colleague from >10 years ago who was everyone’s friend when collecting but didn’t want to know at other times.

I’ll happily give cash to charities that I trust but my psyche isn’t set up for the collecting aspect.

So yeah – Pink Hat Project, if I’d gone ahead with it fully, would have been a damp squib. But on the bright side … No more hose pipe bans !

Games to the left, games to the right, games to the centre this weekend.

On the telly we’ve had cricket, with one shortened game yesterday and another game today which looks like it’ll go the distance.
On the laptop and later desktop we’ve had the Eve Alliance tournament.
And over Steam we’ve had the sales continuing …

I’ve bought stuff ! And had stuff bought for me too, which was a very pleasant surprise in the middle of thumping dragons in Skyrim. The game which was bought for me is Beyond Good And Evil, which I’d have bought in this Steam sale anyway (just waiting for more discount). What can I say about this one ? It’s about the most adorable game I’ve played. And I very rarely pull words like that out for games.

It has a style I’ve not seen much in games, although I have tended to avoid the adventure style game before I came across Deus Ex HR. You play Jade, pictured above and below. Jade is a photo journalist who is looking to get to the bottom of conspiracies. It’s a scifi setting, very colourful with cuteness dialled up to max.

Did I mention conspiracy ? No conspiracy would be complete without a dodgy geezer with strange tache and suit.

I’ve not got too far into it but I’m looking forward to going back in.

Cricket on the telly’s been good. Yesterday’s game saw Worcestershire set a pretty decent target, with Leicestershire chasing. It was Will-They-Won’t-They all the way to the end. With every ball, the likely winner was changing. Very tense, very exciting. And today’s game is looking quite close too.

The Eve Alliance tournament has been happening this weekend too (finale next weekend) and to be honest – if previous Eve tournaments drew me back into the game, this is chasing me away from it. And it’s not even CCP’s fault either, it’s the reliability of their chosen streamer that’s letting them down. It’s been down a lot today. Very embarassing for CCP.

As well as Beyond Good & Evil, I’ve sent a copy of Trine 2 back to a very good friend on Steam which I hope she enjoys a lot :-). And I’ve picked up another copy of Borderlands (with all DLC for £5), Civ V (£7.50) and Civ 4 Colonisation (£2.50). Civ V is mostly in the hope of finding a cheap copy of its expansion but I’ll check out Civ V at some point.

Lots of games – not enough time to play them.

I didn’t finish Borderlands the last time around but remember it being pretty good. I didn’t finish because it drove me back into World of Warcraft. I doubt that will happen this time because I think WoW has pretty much had its day with me. GuildWars 2 might just be the Next WoW though.