Sleepypete's Pillow

Had the next phase of my Lexus experience this morning – interim service day for my CT.

It’s actually a little late, as I should have got it done about 2 months and 2000 miles ago. I just wasn’t feeling like getting it done at the time and then cricket season came along, making it awkward for thoughts of getting to Cheltenham in the evening.

Where was I ? It’s definitely a different ownership experience having a Lexus. They treat you like a valued customer instead of pointing and laughing at the latest person to go through the sheep dip. Anyway. First service day today so it’s off up the road to Cheltenham. I could go local … but the nearest Toyota garage is another that tried to screw me over with “Yes you need your 1 year old brake discs replaced”.

Lexus make some really good cars. They’re not the fastest, the biggest or most economical (not cheap either) but they are Different by going their own way and have huge amounts of quality included. And they make some quite pretty cars too : IS-C convertible.

Very shiny. I suspect that’s the car my sister would quite like to have now. She got forced into replacing her MR-2 a little earlier this year before the MR-2 fell to bits underneath her. The Saab 9-3 TDI convertible she got ticks all the boxes for company car type benefits :

Extra seats
Turbo Diesel for all the extra miles
Speed (it has a Proper turbo instead of one that just cleans up the exhaust)
And it’s been around long enough to get cheap enough

But – it’s not an MR-2 so the honeymoon period of the 9-3 was short. Incidentally, my CT is still well and truly in its honeymoon period. Awesome car. I caught another victim of the Trademark Sleepypete Grin, as I had a little peek at an IS-C in the showroom before passing on the “Sister shoulda got one of these” to a blonde lady pretty enough for me to have to say it twice due to tripping up on the words on the first attempt. Sadly the IS-C is a little too new to be in price range plus the running costs (CO2 and mpg) are much higher than the Saab.

Was away from the garage early enough to be able to listen to cricket commentary (Tune In Radio on Android is a cracking app) and back home early enough to catch the start of the Le Mans 24 hour race.

Enter the Batmobile :

(Nissan pic nabbed from a Wired.com article)

Gorgeous innit ? Bit different to your average F1 car or Sportscar Prototype. Sadly though it might not get much more running in during this Le Mans due to having been eaten by a Toyota.

If you catch any Le Mans coverage this year, you’ll definitely catch the big incident involving one of the Toyotas … There’s going to be far too much said about that so I’ll : moving swiftly on …

Sky taking over some of the F1 coverage has made me look a bit more at the commentators. Now there’s a choice, which one do you listen to ? It’s like the cricket where you have :

Sky commentary – by the numbers, good quality but take themselves seriously
Test Match Special – they accurately portray the game without the benefit of pictures but have a ball doing so. If I could, I’d listen to TMS commentary with Sky pictures. That doesn’t work though because of delays that mean the commentary would be before or after the pictures.

Motorsports is similar, except that both F1 commentator groups take things very seriously. They forget to pass on that they’re enjoying the racing, if they are actually enjoying the racing.

Eurosport on the other hand … They seem like the Test Match Special of motorsport commentary. I’ve been happily chortling away to them all day, especially now I have it on the big telly (cricket was hogging it earlier). It helps that they know what they’re talking about too, as they are current or ex racing drivers who also have the gift of being able to pass on what they’re seeing to the viewer.

They’re being hugely entertaining. They’re not at the race track to get stamps on their passport and a sun tan, their job is to keep the viewers in the picture and to make them smile. And the Eurosport commentators are doing a cracking job on both points.

I hear there’s football on as well today.

PS Charity links : there’s a Race For Life that needs your support and a Pink Haired Thumper who I owe £5 of Pink Hat bounty to.

Thanks Dianne 🙂

When I spotted it on Facebook I knew there was only one thing I could do – grab & re post 🙂

first of all, I love that dog and that caption

you really make me smile when you're being funny and cute

You can have fun with old cliche settings.

When people hear them, it’s guaranteed a groan. But if you say them slightly wrong 😉

Had the excuse to do one of those on Wednesday (or was it Tuesday – da days are blurring). Running into someone, again, getting a big smile (as always) before rushing off in our different directions led to me sending the message across :

“We mustn’t stop meeting like this”

Didja see what I did there ? And then I promptly ruined it with something about not wanting to fix the typo. Nooo ! Make that “we must keep meeting like this” :-). I come out with as many Shoot Self In Foot daft comments as I do daft comments that make people grin.

Anyway – there’s a few people who the phrase “We mustn’t stop meeting like this” definitely applies to. They always remember my grin and answer with one of their own when I spot them first at work (if they spot me first, I see a blur as they hide – I know it’s true!) :

BK and Craziequeen 🙂
Badminton Girl who enjoyed it when I was there but quit badminton at work for the same reason as me – some of the other players were jerks
The Finance Angels (who we’ve inherited from the old team – yey!)
The Pretty Contractor Ladies (there’s a bunch of ’em)
Always the Snow Queen
And many more
But there’s another one today who asked a question which brings me to today’s picture :

The question followed me saying that my side was still sore : “Why do I still play cricket ?”

The answer is fairly simple – it lets me run. I have several speeds – Walk, Fast Walk, Run, Run Fast and RUN LIKE HELL. It’s only at Run Like Hell where I get to play with the full potential of the power in my legs. It’s a full pelt, head back, feel the wind ruffle the hair and whistle past the ears type of speed.

And I am pretty darn fast with it too. I’ll do other people’s fielding because I’ve run that much faster than them.

Cricket is about the only chance I get to do it too. You can move quick around most places given the excuse but to RUN LIKE HELL needs a lot of space. A cricket field is about the only place with the space to kick into that gear. Partly cos of the ground you cover at a full sprint, partly because of the distance needed to stop. I can slow down and dodge better this year than before I lost the weight but 13 stone of me moving at over 20mph is going to make a dent.

I enjoyed the bowling a lot, it was like outwitting the batsmen. I was pretty good with the bowling too before the shoulder tightened up. I don’t enjoy the batting much these days. I know I can produce better innings than I do, which is where I put a pressure of expectation on myself. Fielding is a good laugh though. I can use my running speed and now my regained agility to full advantage to scare the crap out of batsmen attempting to pinch singles to me.

Ok, that’s enough about cricket – where did that other typoed cliche come in ?

It’s not just cricket where rain stops play – I’m half watching the football where the Ukraine vs France game got delayed 55 minutes for rain. Crikey. England game on later and I’ll probably watch that properly. Have to actually because I haven’t had dinner yet and have run out of other stuff to watch.

The cricket quote is actually “It’s just not cricket”, which for foreign readers is an English saying that’s basically “They don’t cheat like that in proper games”. Let’s just say football is just not cricket and leave it at that shall we ! There’s a reason I only rarely follow football, despite otherwise being a sport nut.

One day later – still ow.

What’s actually the damage ? My actual shoulder seems ok. My arm and fingers are fine. Not saying it would support bowling or throwing but it’s not the bit that’s causing pain at the moment.

No – it’s more higher ribs area, intercostal muscles near the back. I think it’s actually a second injury that joined the shoulder injury when I bought my last telly. Humping a 28″ CRT (the old big type) from its box on to its stand, on my own, was probably not a good idea :-). There’s also damage at my front where the pecs link to arm.

I’m wondering if it’s one reason I’m having issues with my breathing at the moment. I have full running power available, which is a burst that draws off anaerobic respiration*. However, it’s taking a while to get the breath back after one of those bursts.

*Anaerobic respiration – muscles do work without oxygen. Makes a byproduct called Lactic acid, which is where a “heavy legged” feeling comes from. It’s a (weak) natural poison that’s telling us to take a breath.
Aerobic respiration – muscles do work with oxygen. If you get enough oxygen in, the muscle can work for longer.

It’s the reason why a sprinter can cover 200 metres in 20 seconds but it takes 100 seconds to do 800 metres and 2 hours+ to do a marathon. (Marathon = 42km, 2 hours = 7200 secs, so that’s about 5.8 metres per second). We can do a burst of high energy output but the cost is that lactic acid that tells us to slow down, plus we need to replace the oxygen in our cells with the oxygen from the air.

I’ve always been better at the burst of energy thing than the running for miles thing.

Tonight’s game got cancelled early as the rains rolled back in again at about 3.00pm. I’ve got mixed feelings about that – the selfish side goes “phew! easy night, no more cricket damage -> chill out” but the team side is sad that 22 guys won’t get to have some fun on the cricket field.

That’s something – always be true to how you’re feeling. If you’re having bad thoughts like the selfish one above, recognise it, own it, accept it. It’s ok to admit that you’re in two minds about something. Doubts are part of all of us. The important thing is to act and not be owned by the doubts.

You never know the answer unless you ask the question !

Oh my – I must be feeling lightheaded for all this deep thought to be coming out 🙂 I must have bumped my head when I fell backwards yesterday.

Back to the cricket – the getting older thing is creeping up on me with it being harder now to bounce back when I get hurt. I can still run Very Fast, including having the sprinter change up (which is awesome). My eyes when they’re not streaming are still good (when I trust them). My heart & mind are in the best shape they’ve been in for years, now that I’ve laid to rest a few ghosts.

So yeah – it’s feeling harder to bounce back after I do damage. That’s where I’m having the hardest job of adjusting. I’ve done things in the past like twist my ankle before a game so badly I could barely walk for the next week. Yet I played a full part in that game including bowling my 10 overs. I bent some fingers into a Vulcan salute (missed a catch) and then bowled faster …

I’ve done a few things like that – take damage, ignore it, bounce back quickly. That’s always been my way. Accept the pain, don’t let anyone else see it.

HOWEVER !

With all that mopey stuff about how I’m feeling old, what really makes up for it is two things :

Getting smiles from Pretty Ladies (visited the old team today)
And getting indulged in my favourite amusement of “Guess Pete’s age”

Yep – someone else today thought I was under 30. Can’t be bad 🙂

PS Charity links – they need your support ! CQ’s Race For Life and Thumper’s Avon Foundation walk.

4th game of the season tonight, despite the weather predictions :

That’s one from Facebook that just had to get Yoinked 🙂

Today’s been the first dry day for a little while and despite a certain doomsayer (I know too much) saying : “It’s sunny now but come 5pm ? Apocalypse Rain”, we got the game on tonight.

We didn’t do too well tonight. We batted first and lost wickets steadily. An early comedy moment involved our star batsman (not me) getting the strike stolen from him for several overs and when he finally got to face, his first ball ended up being hit on to a roof. 6 runs !

We scratched out 90 painful runs eventually. I didn’t help, I think I only managed to get a couple due to not actually being on strike much when I was there, before falling lbw to a very straight one I tried to do too much with. That’s the story of my batting at the moment – trying to do too much with the ball, not keeping it simple.

Defending 90 runs in the field is very tough in our cricket. It’s feasible but only if you get early wickets backed up by good fielding.

I did earn another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty fund 🙂 As well as getting the Comedy moment for the game. (We’ll ignore someone’s bowling as that gets the Tortured Soul award)

Bowler comes in, batsman hits it around the corner. Straight … at … me …

Cue the world going into slow motion as I’m peering through the gathering gloom, struggling to pick up the ball against the background. (I need new glasses as I’ve lost all confidence in my depth perception.) The ball hits my hands and I push it upwards. As I’m falling backwards, I grab the ball as it comes back down.

He’s OUT !

Yep – comedy moment right there, at least I pushed the drop catch straight up so it was still in reach for the second attempt. Just one problem – I landed on the weakened right shoulder again and it’s hurting a lot more than it should have done. Think I have real damage there and I’ll have to break a habit and actually get it checked out.

There’s another game tomorrow which I’m down to play in. I’ll turn out if they need me, plus I’ll be at the ground anyway because I have the team kit in my car.

Given up on me dinner (Chinese is very good for after cricket but there’s a lot of it). Shower time after another Transvision Vamp track.

That catch earns another £5 for the Pink Hat bounty, which I’ll add to a contribution to Thumper’s next walk. Here’s a link to her training blog. Thumper’s next walk is going to be in San Francisco on 7-8 July (donations link) and I’ll add my normal £5 contribution for things like this to anything more that comes from Pink Hat bounty before the 7th and 8th.

PS Not forgetting the Race For Life – click ! donate ! save lives !

Think I need to test hayfever tablets again.

I’m sensitive to a few kinds of pollen, although it seemed to be the types that came early and late in the season. I tended to be ok in the middle of summer. Not now though. Eyes have been streaming and the nose has been running … Lungs have been fairly ok but still not brilliant.

The eye streaming thing has a knock on effect – I think the hayfever tears spark off a depression like : Sad -> tears, Tears -> sad. Anyway, that’s been getting to me lately in a Brainzzzz kind of way :

Why don’t I take hayfever pills I hear you ask ? Side effects …

One of the side effects I realised I was getting was a type of chemically induced depression. I’d take a hayfever tablet to give me 24 hours relief from streaming eyes and I’d then be grumpy for the next 36 hours. I’d take an anti-histamine to open my lungs up for cricket and find that my legs went utterly unresponsive for fielding. I could still run but when I looked for something extra for sprinting, it felt like there was no gas in the tank.

(And by gas, I mean energy – not the type that makes fielders fall about laughing when a bowler makes a series of raspberries when running in to bowl – and I’ve done that a couple of times !)

Thinking of cricket, one thing I realised from watching the old highlights while it was raining is that umpiring standards have improved no end recently. It used to be that you could instantly say whether you’d see a stream of errors from the umpires in an international as soon as you heard who would be officiating in a game. Some of the umpires changed the results of games through their appalling decisions.

You don’t see the likes of Darryl Hair, Billy Bowden or Daryl Harper standing in games at the moment. Darryl Hair was blind (although kudos to him for calling certain bowlers for throwing) and Bowden and Harper thought the game was to show them off, instead of the umpires being there to support the players.

What’s really improved standards has been the Umpire Decision Referral System. In a Test Match, each side has 2 chances per innings to refer an umpire’s decision to TV evidence. What that means is :

The umpire makes his decision,
The players get a chance to say “we think you’re wrong”
The TV umpire checks lots of evidence
And the correct decision is given

I think it’s given umpires the confidence to go with their gut. Before, the benefit of the doubt would be given a lot more in a “yeah I think it’s hitting the stumps but I have doubts – not out”. Those get given out nowadays, with the onus on the batsman to refer it.

What we’ve been seeing is a lot of referred decisions staying with what the umpire on the pitch said. The benefit of the doubt is given to the umpire. It’s turned into something very good for the game. It supports the umpires and doesn’t hold up play very much. And most important, it’s fair to both sides and game changing decisions are given correctly.

Will other sports go the same way ? Rugby already does. Football is refusing to.

PS Watched Snow White & the Huntsman tonight. If you buy one Snow White film from this year, IGNORE this one ! Buy Mirror, Mirror instead. SN&tH is another of those admittedly well made films that just doesn’t have the storyline. Mirror, Mirror was far more entertaining.

I think I said ages ago that there was another different Pocket Dwagon avatar coming soon …

I changed at the weekend (just felt like it!) but I’m looking to switch to another one as a symbolic thingy. I like my symbols. But I think that might be the OCD tendency talking …

Anyway – the next avatar’s going to be one of this pair :

With “Feed Me” being the symbol. I’ve used the little fella before as an avatar but just as a jokey Feed Me Mini Eggs thing. Nah – the symbol this time will be weight loss :

I’ve been seeing the needle go below the 13 stone mark 🙂

Not sure how many years it’s been since I was last under 13 stone. I think I hit that at uni due to working too hard and exercising less. (Yeah right). But the weight definitely climbed on when I started working because I could indulge in far too much unhealthy food. Lunchtime Heaven would be finding out that a placement had a place I could get chips for lunch every day.

Effectively having 2 dinners per day is bad news for the waistline, especially if you’re not expending enough energy to cover that intake. It’s sandwiches for lunch now and they just happen to be the sandwiches with fewest kcals :-).

Yeah – been seeing the needle of the scales go lighter lately, although I’m not going to jinx it by switching to that Feed Me avatar until it stays under that target weight. I need to lose more still to be honest. I’m back to 34″ waist trousers but they’re a stretchy 34″. I won’t go below 34″ (hips are too wide for 32″). But it’s definitely getting there :

I have my speed back
Some underlying health issues have faded
(I’m not saying what those were cos people would get worried)
And I feel much better for it

I need to keep the exercise going – I’m fine if I keep myself moving. However, a couple of weeks away from cricket and my back is wanting to freeze up on me (rubbish chairs at work too). I suspect that doing gardening would help me out (weather permitting).

I’m going to keep the discipline going for now with the weight. The leg infection helped me out there – the “diet” pills told me that I could handle going for a while without grazing on junk. The “diet” pills were antibiotics that needed 2 hours without food before and 1 hour without food after. 4 times a day. So that’s a 6 hour cycle with 3 hours of no munchies. It can be done ! Even by a serial snacker.

So that’s just over a stone lost so far with more to come. Just gotta keep the discipline going and not eat stuff for the sake of munching. Did ok there today, avoided an afternoon cookie 🙂 This was just after giving a big grin and wave to the Snow Queen (hello Snow Queen!) who just happened to be nipping through the canteen area at the same time I was.

Happy days.

Wonder if I can use a different description to “a little extra” soon ? I don’t honestly consider myself to be “trim” or “athletic” yet. More like “normal disappear into crowd” type average build.

Last thought – if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re going the heavy exercise route, don’t be discouraged if your weight goes Up after exercise. I gained half a stone through the first two games of this season. A lot of that was in my legs, which felt very heavy and stiff after those games. The reason was lactic acid build up, after that went away over the next couple of days I was back down to the weight from before the games.

Exercise may make you gain weight as well as lose it – the lesson is to understand why and balance energy incoming with energy outgoing. So on match days, I’ll eat more. At other times, I’ll attempt to avoid temptation when not actually hungry.

Too much ramble ! Not enough pictures !

PS The CQ Race For Life link needs more clicking and definitely more support.

Back to work again tomorrow. I’m not quite sure where this holiday has gone to be honest.

I don’t think I’ve been gaming that much, I definitely have managed to resist some of the “wake at noon, play until daybreak” silliness of previous years. (I’m not gaming as much these days). I need to read more stuff to be honest. I’ve been stuck in Stark’s Command for months now, having just not gone back to it.

What have I been doing ?

Lots of music been listened to – since breaking up from work on 31st May, I’ve listened to 811 different songs lasting 2.2 days (iTunes is great for picking out stats like that) including 20 different albums. Of the new stuff, the opinion is :

Alanis Morrissette – still pretty good, if a little samey.
Transvision Vamp – fun 80s tunes. Me like.
Kings of Leon – dunno here. Youth and Young Manhood isn’t that great to be honest, although I’ve not yet listened to it as an album. Just not as much my type of music as girlie vocals are.
Air – Premiers Symptomes – I like this too. It’s good occasional listen chill out music. Can’t sing along to it though cos it’s instrumental and I do like croaking along to my music.

The weather has turned into something utterly appalling … I should really have checked out repairing the fence in the back yard but I don’t fancy drowning. Still, it’s looking a lot better out there now than it has done.

Talking about weather – it held off long enough today to let CrazieQueen & The Fairy do their bit for Race For Life, raising money for Cancer Research UK (link to fundraising site + it’ll go on the link list soon). I’ll get the credit card out for that soon and the £10 bounty from the Pink Hat fund for the run out I pulled off will go there too. They’ve earned it today. If you click on one link from here today, make it be that one.

Back at home, I’ve been watching a lot of recorded stuff, plus there was a decent amount of cricket on the telly to enjoy. That 811 different songs is actually a little light for what I can listen to over a week off because I was having to keep up with the recorded stuff as well as watching the cricket.

Been recovering from that attack of house cleaning still too – either it’s dust in the house or pollen from outside but my lungs have been full of rubbish (it affected me in the Thurs 31 game too) and my eyes have been almost constantly streaming.

One thing about all this weather – it’s made me glad I bought something called “Supaguard” with my car. It’s a protective coating that’s supposed to keep showroom shine on the car. It seems to work too – all this rain has been quite happily washing the accumulated dust and road grime off the car, leaving it super shiny. Awesome. The last time I took it to a car wash was around Xmas and to be honest, I dislike using car washes because of the chance for it to scrape the paint off. Rain + Supaguard do a great job.

It’s going to be strange heading back in tomorrow.

Usually after a break, I’d be looking to find out how everyone had gotten on. If they’re ok, how they’re feeling, whether any good gossip happened while people were away. I can usually tell the “are they ok?” from just a look. I’m like that – when I look at someone, I’ll see more than they’d like me to. Most of the time at least. There’s times when that perception gets jammed or blocked by a brave face being put on.

Tomorrow will be different though – the people I’d usually look to first are in the old office and unless I let Autopilot have it’s way, I’ll be heading straight up to the new office. Wonder if I’ll get an excuse to go down there and say hello. I hope so, communicator and email are ok for messages but if you want to really know how someone is, there’s no substitute for saying hello and grinning at them.

I do keep thinking of them, although I know there’s a couple of them that know I keep this blog going and occasionally talk about them. Miss F made me promise not to talk about her, will have to ‘fess up to breaking that promise due to saying something nice in the Moving Day post.

Reading that one again shows I occasionally follow my own advice – I ran into someone this time last year who’s kept me laughing occasionally with insane chatting over Steam Chat. We’re both gamers who happen to be interested in the same games … She’s talked me into getting Guild Wars 2 (and I’m not convinced now that was a good idea) and I’ve done a total of maybe 2 hours testing on that this weekend. The GW2 people would have been Expecting people in the beta to be putting far more hours in than that. Well ? I just don’t feel like doing what they’d Expected me to do ! Far too much cricket and motor racing (and football being ignored) on to be gaming too much this weekend.

For now – it’s a choice of either Moo2 (I keep opening that relic back up again for some reason) or continuing the Deus Ex HR run. Not convinced I’ll do that much more Skyrim to be honest. It’s a great game and I feel I’ve got my value out of it but it’s let down by not being able to break out of certain quest lines. You should be able to choose to not be a cannibal or not crash the merchant ship.

It’ll be Deus Ex shooty stuff I think – my neck and wrist have decided to dislike me, which means the static mouse gameplay of Moo2 is a Bad Idea.

Enjoying another chilled out Saturday again after Prometheus last night.

First up – Prometheus. It’s another in the series of Alien & Predator universe films. To be totally honest :

It’s a well made film, as you’d expect from Ridley Scott. If it was standalone or if the AvP films never happened, the script would make sense. It’s a prequel to the iconic film Alien and does a decent job of setting that film up. Bit like Return of the Sith sets up a lot for the older films and XMen First Class set up the other XMen films.

Prequels are usually very tightly bound by what they need to follow. The interest isn’t so much in how things will end (cos you already know that from the older film), it’s how they get there. Prometheus gets there very well, although there are a few liberties taken with Things That Should Not Be Left As They Are. Saying that though, the faults are mostly with the poor (but still watchable) AvP films than with this one.

But that’s enough about Prometheus. I’ll watch it again when it comes to Sky Movies, not sure if I’ll buy it on bluray though. I said that about Avatar as well and ended up buying it after a second watch. The key difference is that Avatar was something new, Prometheus is scraping the bottom of an already well cleaned barrel.

On getting out to movies – I made an offer ages ago to someone that she could gladly come along to one of the cinema outings as a “forget your troubles” relax type evening with neutral people – that offer still stands 🙂 Haven’t mentioned it much though cos I didn’t want to put too much pressure on.

Testy, sporty, Test ?

Lots of sport, this weekend and next. The England v West Indies test match finally got underway this morning and the play today has been : Interesting. Despite losing a couple of days, there could still be a result. Hopefully now the sun’s out today, it’ll stay with us.

But it’s not just cricket, I’ll be half watching the football later via my laptop (or I’ll hide behind the sofa and use my desktop’s bigger screen) and I’ll be watching the GP qualifying via SkyF1 after the cricket. I already have it set to record. Same tomorrow with the race. And similar next week :

Still Euro2012 football reminding me why I rarely watch football,
England cricket on the Saturday
Le Mans 24 hours

It’s Fathers Day too next weekend but we’ve already (conveniently!) agreed to delay that for a weekend. Tuesday 19th will see the InterServices 20-20 tournament, which will see a great chance to get to Lords for the day in support of true heroes.

However, all that clashing sport does mean that I’m missing out on one opportunity – I have access to the Guild Wars 2 beta testing that’s happening this weekend. I had a look for a couple of hours last night and it lives up to its hype so far. I’m not totally convinced though. The questing system is more freeform but it’s still very much “Kill 10 mobs” type questing. We’ll see how it develops. It seems to be a more freeform type game than previous MMOs, depending on movement to avoid damage. I need to work on that because my WoW play tended to be Damage, Damage, Damage, zzzzzz, Damage, stop, Damage, Damage, zzzzzzz etc ad nauseum.

Hopefully they’ll pull off the promise with Guild Wars 2 and turn it into a truly excellent game. I guess I should really tell them about the issues I had in creating my first character – it claimed firewall issues which I fixed by one of these 3 methods :

Restarting my cable modem (doubt it was that)
Giving it “run as admin” (could be)
Deleting the previous firewall settings (highly likely)

If it’s the firewall settings, I’ve seen that kind of issue with the iTunes updater interfering with my Airplay streaming. Annoying because it is not something an end user should have to deal with. Beta is Beta.

What I also have beta access to and am quite looking forward to is something called Planetside 2 – it’s a Massive Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. Technobabble aside – it’s a scifi shooter with thousands of players taking place over a continent wide map. Or that’s the plan. It’s not quite at Beta stage yet so we’ve just been looking at early testing which honestly looks more complete than what some companies will unleash as final product.

It looks pretty awesome and it should get around the biggest problems in multiplayer pvp – Persistence and Rush Play. The best PvP I had in Warcraft was the old Alterac Valley, where you had 40 vs 40 players fighting it out on a North-South map. Horde (me!) would go north, Alliance (evil) would go south. Along the way there are towers to capture and destroy and generals that help out. Alterac Valley battles used to last for hours and you’d see the collecting subquests finish to bring out superunits for your side. 5 players could hold off 20. Something changed though and it turned into Rush Play, where the opening sequence of the battle would see 40 players riding past the other 40 players crossing over in the middle of the map. Battles became a 10 minute race instead of an epic 100 marathon.

Persistence is the other artificiality in most PvP, you can win the battle but at the start of the next round everything is reset. I’ve never much seen the point in that. At least in WoW’s later open world PvP, if you won the battle you would control a block of territory for a while getting bonuses from that.

Planetside 2 will hopefully bring Persistence where you hold what you take, plus allow defence to make Rush Play less effective. It also has tanks and most important – fighter aircraft. The earliest games I enjoyed were flight sims and space sims and it’s been way too long since I had a go at a decent flight game.

So if you’re in Planetside 2 and get shot down by an Iceangel or “Iceangel624″*, then that could well be me.

*(624 will be if, as is likely, I don’t get Iceangel quickly enough – the 6 24 are from my best bowling figures)

For now though – too much on at the moment to do the gaming thing, so it’s back to the cricket with F1 to follow and muted football on laptop/desktop.