Sleepypete's Pillow

In a little bit of rebellion against playing the same game all the time, I started off another Deus Ex Human Revolution (DXHR) run today with the promise that I’d not reload every time I made the slightest mistake. Skyrim’s an awesome world to play in but the gameplay itself has its flaws.

(today was not a day for stepping outside)

DXHR is set in a future Earth, actually not too far away. The tech isn’t that different to what we have today but one area it has advanced is in the field of prosthetics. The game itself continually asks questions around :

Lethal or non-lethal approaches
Just who is running the world
And whether it’s right to augment people

And there’s other questions too. The game steers you towards non-lethal resolutions of situations, through hefty experience bonuses for being unseen and less hefty ones for keeping bad guys alive. The biggest moral question though are those augmentations.

The augments are extensions of what we’re aiming to achieve at the moment. They start as limbs grafted on to replace limbs lost by soldiers. We’re getting towards fulfilling that aim, slowly … It’ll be great when it happens although it would be better if those limbs hadn’t been lost in the first place.

But where the moral question comes in is the logical extension of those limb replacement prosthetics. The DXHR world includes augments for pretty much everything : radar, rebreathers for toxic gasses, personality modification, hacking, built in phone and deeper into the murky world of military grade augmentations. And by military grade they mean gatling guns or swords built into arms, super strength, stealth and even a personal suicide bomber jacket …

So we’re going past the soldier being able to use 4 limbs again into a domain where we have bionic supersoldiers. And further than that, we have people willingly having limbs amputated in order to fit prosthetic augmentations. That’s where it hits very dodgy ground morally. One of the side missions highlights it by having you rescue a prostitude who has been kidnapped in order to have augmentation surgery to make her a better prostitute.

The central character is heavily injured during the game prologue, leading to him being fitted with augments. But they go too far. Good limbs are hacked away to make him a better attack dog. One character is almost totally “shifted”, where almost all of him has been replaced by cybernetic.

That’s the key tenet of the game – Augments are good but what is far enough ?

In my own case, my shoulder is too far gone now to allow me to bowl. A very good friend has knees that cause her continual pain. Another friend with an amazing spirit has struggled with extreme heart problems since birth.

Should we replace those troublesome bits and pieces with artificial replacements ? I don’t think so. Leaving aside thoughts of “It’s a machine, how long’s it gonna last anyway ?”, I don’t think I’d trust an artificial arm. It’s not Me. It would be some Thing bolted on to me. My friend with the heart has so much spirit and fight that she has already lived far longer than the doctors expected (may she live far longer!).

Yes – I’d be able to throw again. I’d be able to bowl again. But I would never know whether any success or otherwise was down to my own ability or raw software. Furthermore, there’d be the need for maintenance on the artificial device. Our own bodies do that themselves. We each already own one of the most remarkable machines on the planet, our own bodies. They’re self maintaining, self repairing and although they’re not perfect, I’d far rather trust biological than cybernetic.

I guess what I’m trying to say is :

It’d be wonderful to be able to run faster, throw further, think better but what’s the cost. Artificial replacements of limbs lost would be an incredible technology to have available to us, hopefully it will come soon. But to replace good (or slightly damaged like my shoulder) limbs with an artificial replacement ? No thanks.

Currently sitting here (11pm) listening for randomly falling objects coming from the kitchen …

(yes – this is going to be a horribly domestic post …)

When you can’t get the ice cube trays into the freezer, there’s kinda a message there … Like defrost the darn freezer. The fridge freezer is another thing (inc oven, boiler) that I’ve had since moving into this house. The previous owner left a fair bit here as she was moving abroad (I still get BT attempting to get her to sign up – check your facts people!). It’s done pretty well actually.

Thought I might have to replace it actually because a drain from the fridge part at the top seemed blocked. Think I’ve figured that one out in a “ok, it’s a drain, where does it go ?” kind of way. Looks like it drains into the freezer (go figure) and the freezer part was blocked by ice.

I was hoping for one of the really hot days like last week but we’ve been cursed with Bank Holiday weather over the last few days. As in – continuous drenching rain. But … I have a cunning plan now for defrosting – pans of boiling water placed in the freezer to heat things up. Dunno if that actually achieves anything but it satisfies the Mad Scientist in me.

Anyway – that was today. It’s still defrosting actually. It should be clear enough to last a while but when I eventually decide to go to bed, it’ll be ok. Just need to avoid jumping into the kitchen every time a loose block of ice falls. Fingers crossed the freezer starts up again ok or I’ll be needing to get a new one. My milk was still cold when I took it out an hour ago – good sign that the seal is ok.

Been enjoying some really chilled out days here in the house.

Lots of music is getting listened to and there’s been a decent amount of cricket on the telly. Phil “Colonel” Mustard of Durham must be wondering what he needs to do to be considered for England cricket again, watched him get another 100 yesterday in the only county cricket that happened on Sunday. He had been in the England side but got dropped after breaking his nose in practice and has never been considered since. That’s rough.

I’m also catching up on recorded stuff, having recorded a little too much lately … Deciding to watch Stargate SG-1 again from the start may have been a bad idea considering it’s cricket season.

How am I physically ?

The shoulder has settled down well. It must have been just light jarring because I’d say it’d be good for the game on Wednesday if that happens (bit short on people). My legs have been improving, the bruising on my right leg is fading and the left leg got through the game on Thursday with no issues. The outward signs at last year’s infection sites are fading.

My back is another matter though. I suspect that’ll be the recurring injury for this year. It started in the first net session as a reawakening of the area that I hurt decades ago (lower lumbar, left side, sciatic nerve). It’s ok, it just feels like there’s cord or stuff in there that doesn’t want to stretch as much as it should do.

I’ll give it something to do over the next day or so – part of the prep for defrosting the freezer was to run my food stocks down real low. I need to raid the local supermarket for bits n pieces or I’ll have no munchies.

Like it said on last night’s Facebook update :

“jaffa cake supply : exhausted 🙁 cookie supply : plentiful ! :-)”

Must … have … jaffa … cakes … Jaffa cakes are life.

6 months after comments :

Thermaltake case – I wouldn't get another. The feet fall off if you try to slide the case along the ground.
SSD – is an essential item, it increases smoothness no end.
Bluray drive – don't bother. Copyprotect paranoia means you can't take screenshots and I doubt bluray data will become a big thing for PCs.

It's been 99% stable, with only a couple of "grr-crash" dropouts. Battlefield 3 wouldn't run but that's either overclocked graphics or incompatibility with sound. If just one game has stability problems, I'm included to blame bad software.

I haven't overclocked the machine but with max temps of 52degrees C for cpu on load in the summer and 62degrees C for the graphics, I reckon it could go past 4GHz easy. But as I don't intend to burn the machine out any time soon … Overclocking is not something I'm going to do.

This one’s about the PC I built just over 6 months ago now. What lessons have I learned from it and what advice would I give to people looking to build their own PC ?

Firstly – if you’re not bothered about gaming, then there’s no reason to be building or buying a desktop PC. Laptops do videos, browsing, messenger’ing, iTunes playback and the rest just as well as a desktop. The only advantage a desktop PC has it that you can fit a proper graphics card plus you’d be using a proper keyboard and mouse. I use my laptop ahead of the desktop for everything but gaming and checking the emails in the morning.

So – you’re going to be gaming so you want a desktop anyway … Why go custom built ?

Easy – you select every component, you can prioritise where the money gets spent. And it’s not the obvious places where I’d advise extra money to be spent or money to be saved. Let’s start by picking on something to compare against, or rather – butcher its spec. Novatech’s Destroyer V3 is about the right price level.

The most important thing to PC buying is not spec or bundled software (which is often annoying). It’s reliability. That’s where the main focus should be in picking the components and it’s worth spending a bit extra here to get a better foundation.

Case – nothing wrong with the Novatech case here. It’s probably quite a decent case. If you’re selecting a case make sure – the feet are rubber (to absorb vibration and make it quieter) and that they won’t fall off (they often don’t go back on right if they do). Removable motherboard trays are for enthusiasts and add no value for most people. I’m not intending to take my desktop to bits again, so a removable motherboard tray would be gold plating.

Power supply – Novatech supply their own here. I’d argue with that. If a power supply breaks, it will damage every component in the machine. Spend extra on a quality one. You also get more reliability out of it. Saying that though, the 600W Novatech psu is only £2 saving on a quality assured Corsair unit.

Cooling – bigger is always best here. A bigger cooler means its fan doesn’t have to spin so fast. Fast fans = noise, lots of it. Spending a bit extra on a cooler also means the machine will be happy in hot conditions. That said, my desktop is quite happy at the moment and I should look to reduce its fan speed a bit …

So – grab a £40 cooler instead of a hard disc that’s the next size up. It’ll improve reliability plus it’ll keep the noise down. Dunno what the cooler is in the Novatech machine, it could well be the stock cooler …

Hard drives – when I bought my bits, hard disc prices had gone through the roof and then some. So I was forced to go Plan B and borrow the hard disc from my old machine. Plan B involved getting a small Solid State Device drive to run Windows on, combined with the 250GB drive from my old one. It’s one of the best building decisions I’ve ever made. Seriously. The machine will reboot in under a minute and never experiences hard disc slowdowns. It still does the same amount of hard disc chatter as any Windows machine but because the drive is so much faster, you don’t notice.

Here’s another plus a bit, minus a bit … A 60GB SSD (no smaller, Windows eats 41GB of my 60GB drive) costs £65 for the Crucial m4 that I have. It transforms the performance of the machine. It’s an essential component. The Destroyer machine comes with an Intel i7-3770 cpu costing £230. A step down to the i5-3570k cpu costs £180. It’s better to have the cheaper cpu plus an SSD than to have the marginal performance benefit of the more expensive cpu. All that said though, the Destroyer also has an SSD, it’s just bigger than is needed (i.e. +£50)

I have my fingers crossed that the upgraded work machines that are supposedly on the way have SSDs instead of normal drives. All our data lives on the network, so there’s no point in us having big conventional drives. The SSDs are also cheaper. Will we get SSDs ? I doubt it. I have too little faith in the people providing our machines to expect good sense.

Duh – what that mean ? Outside of technobabble, my home desktop can start up and open the emails quicker than I can put my tie or shoes on in the morning. At work, I could make a coffee in less time than it takes the machine to start up. Same with the laptop at home. And after the non-SSD machines are in Windows, it still takes ages for them to sort themselves out.

All that said – what spec would I recommend for a decent game machine capable of running Skyrim well at 1080p and max detail ? Here we go, right now it’s :

Intel i5-3570k processor – above that and you don’t get any gain worth the money
8GB Ram – memory is incredibly cheap. 4GB is the minimum now but at £44 for 8GB ? Get more.
Drives – get a SSD as the boot drive, you won’t regret it.
Graphics – nVidia 560Ti. AMD/ATI graphics have poor software these days. But watch out – nVidia have a new chip design coming out called Kepler which will change things again.
Optical drive ? I wouldn’t honestly bother with blu-ray on a PC, you can’t take screenshots because people are too paranoid about copying. Plus download is taking over from optical discs as a delivery mechanism.
Cooler – get the biggest that will fit but don’t bother with water cooling. Water + electronics = bad news.

Think that’s enough for now. Remember – PCs are so powerful these days that spec is fairly irrelevant. What’s most important is usability, reliability and quietness.

Usability – get an SSD, they improve smoothness more than any other component
Reliability – comes from making sure the power supply is up to the job
Quietness – big cooler being run slowly

PS If anyone reading this in the Bristol area wants a PC built, lemme know. Will Build PCs For Food (as long as you’re buying the bits).

Been meaning to do a mini (okok, I read back before posting as always and it’s a Mountain of Text) review of Skyrim for a little while now but I’m going to have to keep comparing it to a few other games as I go.

Skyrim – is the latest in the legendary Elder Scrolls series of games. You’re a lone wolf warrior / rogue / mage trying to find your way in the fantasy setting of the Skyrim continent. When you enter the story, Skyrim has unrest bubbling up into a potential civil war (not got there yet). And you’re about to get executed for We Dunno What (possibly being in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Mass Effect – is a scifi epic done by Bioware, where you play the central role of Commander Shepard come to save the galaxy from ancient alien machines.

Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) – is a very disappointing MMO where you’re forced to run through scripted areas which are hamstrung by hamfisted instancing. Oh and you have to subscribe to play it too.

Skyrim – it’s a potential classic but … Yeah. It’s got a hell of a lot going for it but the combat system and other elements are still somewhat frustrating. Let’s talk about what makes it awesome :

Completely open world.

This is a very rare thing in gaming. It’s where you can walk from one end of the world to the other without a loading screen. Mass Effect 1 had a fairly open world, albeit broken up into separate maps linked by elevators. In Skyrim and World Of Warcraft, you can literally do that long walk without a loading screen. Sure, the loading screen will come up when you enter a city or dungeon but – it means you’ll be running from place to place and suddenly you’ll come across something unexpected.

If you autorun in Skyrim, you may well end up in autofall courtesy of a giant’s club or in autobelly courtesy of a randomly spawned dragon. The Skyrim world feels alive.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 locked down their open world considerably. SWTOR doesn’t really have an open world. It has small zones but they’re all bunches of mobs. To get from one city to another, you have to go through a bunch of transit locations. Yawn. There’s no dynamism in the SWTOR environment. No surprise at seeing the unexpected. It’s all part of a story that you’re railroaded through.

Storyline …

Massive Multiplayer Online games are all about the end game. They shouldn’t be … World of Warcraft used to be a very different game. The levelling to get you to end game was much slower. You could play through the storyline connecting the zones without racing past the difficulty level. Now, you’re like level 30 playing a level 22 zone because that’s how quickly you level. There’s no challenge. It’s boring. The dungeon instances used to finish off a zone’s story, now you race through the zone so quick you don’t bother with the instance. The only challenge comes when you skip between expansions and then the difficulty becomes a frustrating cliff.

But that’s not the reason I gave up WoW and SWTOR – it’s the end game. I really don’t want to be playing the same content over and over again. It’s boring. And such a waste of all the content available on the way there. It’s also dependent on the people you play with. VR, Mercs and Guildlink had a lot of awesome players but all 3 also tolerated and encouraged idiots who repeatedly made us fail.

Mass Effect and Deus Ex HR have excellent storylines that sheperd you through the game. However … you feel somewhat railroaded by that storyline. I’ll still play those games over and over though because I like the storyline.

Skyrim handles it somewhat differently. Most RPGs, you get railroaded through the story. In Skyrim, the story is just some incidental thing that’s going on in the background. You can ignore it as much as you like. I need to go see the Hrothgar monks of the main story some time cos I didn’t get their horn but they can wait a bit cos I have to sort out the Markarth conspiracy first. The Whiterun people want me to hunt a dragon but it’s the other side of the continent from me.

The important thing in Skyrim is that it’s the player character’s story first and the civil war story second. It’s more immersive and keeps you going in the game but …

Questing system issues …

While there’s a huge amount to do in the game, I have issues with how some of it’s done. Better games have branching questlines. 2 Skyrim examples – 1st there’s the group of cannibals who try to get you to entice a priest over for dinner. What I’d like as an option is where you realise “They’re going to do something horrible here!” and you’d be able to save the priest. But you’re railroaded into dragging him along for his untimely demise. 2nd is the group of pirates who want you to put a lighthouse lamp out so a ship will run aground. You then loot the shipwreck. What I’d like to be able to do there is rat ’em out to the city guards and then you’d chase them down. Ship survives. Nah – can’t do that, the flex isn’t in the quest scripting.

But – compared to the weight of stuff to do in Skyrim, that’s a comparatively minor issue. I’m currently at 63 hours playtime, which is split halfways across my two characters. There will be much more.

I’m investing more quality control in my gaming time these days. I give up on them very quickly if they’re not for me. Battlefield 3 didn’t get 5 hours, mainly due to stability (also the gameplay was not for me). I will never buy from DICE again. SWTOR didn’t get long, because I could see the signs of bad endgame from the earlier levels. SWTOR really should have been a single player game. SWTOR + Mass Effect 3 means I’m thinking carefully as to whether I get anything else from Bioware.

Conclusion – Skyrim is potentially a classic. It’s ridiculously open, which is a + and a -. Gamers these days like to be spoonfed their content. So a game that lets you do your own thing can lead to a lack of “where do I go now ?”

Spec wise – I don’t have a problem on my main machine … but it’s a good one. It’s an Intel i5-2500K with 8GB Ram, an SSD boot drive and a 560Ti graphics card. (Translation – high spec for today, it’s quick but not ridiculous)

Should gamers get Skyrim ? Hell yeah. But wait for sales. There’s no reason to buy things at full price when patience means you could get enough money off to let you buy a pizza. I got Skyrim for 33% off.

And I think that pizza reference means I’m starting to get hungry – pizzahut’s online system let me down yesterday – it went ultra slow at about the time I needed food and didn’t let me order. Meh. Pizza had to wait.

PS Other stuff – I have a Planetside 2 beta key, this is a massive multiplayer first person shooter. Like Battlefield 3 but in a persistent world. Wondering if I can specialise in piloting aircraft for this. I also preordered Guildwars 2 …

Definitely :

Excellent sentiment. Arrived home late after the cricket yesterday, which meant a visit to the Chinese (really quick way to get a big dinner here) had me finishing up dinner at like 10.30pm. Actually, I think I was still eating at 11pm.

Not good if you’re already feeling sleepy but know that dinner will take time to settle. I ended up disappearing at I think 2am and was out like a light. And then slept until I ended up starving (actually 9am, much earlier than I thought I’d be emerging)

Pretty sore now today after the game yesterday but :

Currently thinking a bit “yeah right” as a response to that.

I have the usual soreness (legs, back, hip) but I expect that. It’s all part of my body setting itself up again for running around. The shoulder is not too bad. Now the adrenaline and endorphins have worn off I can feel the damage. It’s usable but a little numb. I must have pushed it forward and maybe a little out when I landed on it. I’m lighter than last year but that’s still a little too much weight landing on a weakened shoulder joint.

It’s nothing serious – I can still use the arm properly. I wouldn’t be able to bowl and it feels a bit loose but apart from that, arm’s fine. It’s not cold, which is the usual sign that it’s not in the right place. But it would appreciate a bit of TLC from some strong fingers. Mind you, it’s also been too long since I gave someone else a neck rub or a back rub.

It’ll have time to recover – I’m off work for the next week, starting today. Back on Monday 11th. We had a few freebie days off but I’ve been feeling run down, so I decided to take the chance for a cheap week away from work to chill out and de-stress. Some of the interactions can get a little … tense. (We push ourselves hard)

Yeah – today was a bit of a write off due to soreness but I’ll be up and about more over the next few days. And I know I’ve earned that soreness due to the amount I throw myself around on the cricket field 🙂

Had game 3 of the season tonight, here’s the Twitter style match

“twitter style match report – dark sky, no rain, ages before batted, bashed quick 9, silly dismissal. Comedy fielding, got a run out, fell badly – shoulder’s gonna hate me. WE WON !”

That’s a quote from a Facebook update. Wonder if it would fit inside the Twitter character limit ? I don’t use Twitter. I suspect with my Wall Of Text tendency, I would get irritated with the character limit very quickly. Or it might make me structure my thoughts better.

Wasn’t sure if the game tonight would happen – the hot weather has broken, with cloudy and overcast dominating today. The conditions were much better today, although :

Work – better if it’s cooler (and therefore cloudy)
Cricket – better if the sun’s out (so you can see the ball)

The light can be a real problem for evening games, in the last few overs it can be very difficult to see the ball. Plus the sun gets very low before the light goes completely. It’s one reason I wear a hat or cap, with the main reason being that it keeps my hair under control.

Yeah – actually worked out as good conditions to play in. I didn’t notice any swing from their bowlers (the ball will go sideways through the air cos of “cricket strangeness”) but it was nice and cool. I batted at number 3, which is a position I don’t usually favour (trouble getting my mind switched on) but I think I did ok today. Bashed a 4 that could easily have been a 6 (gotta trust what the fielder says) and didn’t waste too much time out there. I’m having trouble making anything from quicker bowling though. Need Deep Thought on that as my approach to scoring off them isn’t working.

I helped our team along before trying to run a single to the keeper to get our better batsman back on strike. (I got run out). I think our team scored 154 off our allotted overs.

Fielding next 🙂

Captain understands now that my shoulder has pretty much had it. Not sure if the team understands and it frustrates me too. Now that I have SPEED, I want to use it. I have about 90% movement from my shoulder, it’s just the throwing and bowling action that’s a problem. That’s much better than when I got the original injury. For a few months after that, I could not pick up anything with my right arm because of ouchies when it felt like the arm was being pulled out of its socket.

That’s in the past though. Now it just hurts when I throw the ball too hard or if it just feels like bitching at me. Or … Anyway – sad thing is that while I now have SPEED, I can’t throw the ball when I catch up to it. I only have maybe 1 good throw left per game and that’ll hurt. So I field where I don’t need to power throw. It works out, it’s just frustrating.

Comedy fielding. I did better tonight but I’m still rushing the fielding somewhat. You can take too long to do something by trying to do it quicker. Run out attempt 1 saw me get the ball in the ends of my fingers, where I couldn’t get a good throw away. Run out attempt 2 was better :

Batsman dabs the ball down
Sleepy sprints in and pounces
Easy one handed gather, underarm throw to wicket keeper
Perfect placement to the side of the stumps,
Keeper takes the bales off
Run out !

Sweet.

Getting run outs for the team make my day as a cricketer. It’s not just that wicket, it saves more runs because it makes the other batsmen more tentative about taking you on. Oh and it also means that the Sleepy’s Pink Hat Bounty fund is now at £5, which I may double to £10 per run out because they are so rare. Just gotta find out which charity the BM Girls used for the cake sale and then I’ll send the Pink Hat Bounty to that after the end of the season.

Shoulder … Ooops.

Late on in the game, I went for one that was just outside my comfortable range. So I dived … And a dive that led with my right arm stretched out to grab the ball. I didn’t quite get there and the dive saw me fall awkwardly on my right side – the side with the bad shoulder. Yeah – that hurt a bit. But I kept going with the fielding. I’ve only left the field through injury twice in 23 years :

Once to put knee pads on after taking 3-4 blows to the knees in quick succession
(knees felt like they were exploding)
When my nose got bashed the first time

Great fielding plus better bowling saw us to a comfortable win by about 40 runs (I didn’t see the final score).

I’m on leave now so I’ll be taking it easy with that shoulder. I won’t know what shape it’s in until tomorrow morning because the adrenaline and natural endorphin painkillers mean that unless the damage goes above a threshold, I just won’t feel it.

I think I’ve recruited another future cricketer. One of the player’s wives came along, with a 3-4 year old in tow. He got very curious about my batting gear. I think his tiny fingers managed to get to the finger part of the gloves … just :-). My helmet almost fit him too (little big). My batting pads would have gone up to his shoulder.

ACK ! 2 minutes to midnight ! Hits “post”. MWAH !

PS Another bit of amusement – one of our teammates (not playing tonight) took his dog to the ground for its walk. Friendly pooch, very curious about us. Sniffed my fingers a few times but was a bit too hyperactive to stay still long enough for a good stroking. Poor Kam though – one look at Kam and it’s GROWL BARKBARKBARKBARK … We don’t know what he did ! Although it could be that he was the only one of us holding a bat.

It’s still hot over here.

It’s not Greece or tropical type heat, the car tells me it was 28 degrees C yesterday. But combined with the conditions in our offices, it’s uncomfortable. We don’t have air con, more like air recirculation. And it doesn’t work particularly well. If all it’s achieving is moving warm air from one place to another place, it doesn’t make for good conditions to work in.

Our contractor’s place is better. I take a jumper with me when I go over there. I get funny looks 🙂

But I get funny looks anyway. Latest today was a Cunning Plan I was especially proud of (it worked). We move our documents around in plastic packing crates and you really don’t want to be lugging those without something with wheels to push them around on. Anyway. Things With Wheels are in short supply. So I went scrounging. And found the most contrary computer desk on our site.

Seriously. It was more interested in going in circles than straight lines. But it did the job. Both of getting my crate upstairs without killing my back and in starting off the idea with the new team : “Pete’s Mad”.

I like to encourage that idea as much as possible. The mad spontaneous unorthodox side of me offsets the slow boring orthodox.

Hey – moving day wasn’t supposed to be the theme of this post.

Yeah – it’s gone warm out at the moment. Warm inside too, although it’s actually quite comfortable in the house at the moment. I’ve turned off the main PC so it’s not contributing its own heat to the house. There’s decent airflow through the house, the absence of which is why work is uncomfortable.

This is a plea really – look after yourselves ! And that’s coming partly from watching the latest Dodger Coffeh Time vid.

Plenty of fluids. Eat properly. Keep aware of when you need to take it easy. Sunstroke is nasty …

I have a game tomorrow and need to take care through the day to avoid how bad I got during/after the first game. I never mentioned that did I ? While we were fielding, I was suffering from a lot of acid tummy. I put that down to first game nerves at the time but it was quite possibly : hunger. Anyway. Not pleasant controlling that when you’re trying to run full pelt around the field.

After the game – I was having trouble getting my muscles moving. I nearly blacked out a few times before bed (the fading vision like what Dodger had). But. I may be frail but I’m tough when I need to be. I wouldn’t let a team down. I shut down into a kind of survival mode where I will just … keep … going. I will pay attention to the lessons though so tomorrow :

Eat properly !!!!
One side effect of the diet is that having lost weight, I don’t have as much reserves to call upon (a small price to pay for having SPEED!). What caught me in that first game is that, having been training all day, I’d been unable to control what I ate. I didn’t get enough food and ran out of energy later.

Drink lots
Key when it’s hot. Especially when you sweat too much like I do. I really haven’t been drinking enough over the past few days, so I’ve been suffering more than I ought.

Loosen the tie …
Ok. This is something I need to do. My tie at work is my flag of professionalism. A home time ritual is to undo top button and loosen it. Rituals are important to me – do the ritual, start to relax. (Spot OCD). But because it’s so hot and uncomfortable, I should really be going tie-less at work too.

But yeah – look after yourselves. Be sensible with what you try and do. Being active gets you warm. Try to relax. Wear a Big Floppy Hat to shade the sun. If your body tells you to get shade, have food or drink something – listen !

Chill out dude !

PS I have a few posts stacked up for things I’ll natter about – Skyrim review, Lexus CT +6months review, brainzzzzz (not Zombies, that’s just my brain melting), BuildtheEnterprise project. But not now. Saving my Deep Thought for work hours at the moment.

Oh they deserve it – they have so much patience to cope with us manic crazy people 🙂

Nice post, Pete – and cool nod to your H&S friend 😉
I know the girls always appreciate a thank you 🙂