Sleepypete's Pillow

I’ve always been a competitive person, right from my early days at school. I’ve always been pretty smart, in the D&D “Intelligence” sense if not the “Wisdom” sense.

So that early competitiveness got directed at getting the absolute highest marks in class. And for the Northern Ireland school, I was right up there. The only real competition I had was a girl called Barbara, which was my equal in brains and ahead in everything else. And because the Northern Ireland schools were ahead of the English schools academically, that gave me a head start when we moved back over here.

I was only ever able to apply that competitiveness to sport when I discovered cricket, although I was also really good at badminton. (Badminton being what killed my shoulder.) While cricket’s a team game, it’s focused very tightly on individual battles where that competitiveness can really bite.

But over all that time, there’s been the gaming. I’d always want to do the game better. Get a bigger high score. Complete it quicker. Be the highest dps person in WoW. Get all the achievements. And all that stuff, mostly competing against myself. Thing is though – I’m not actually gaming that much lately. When I get back in from work, my brain isn’t wanting to go into that higher gear the game demands. I’ve been watching gaming a lot lately instead.

It started with a youtuber called Totalbiscuit, who is a Very dangerous man if you’re interested in games.

TB does a little of everything. There’s a regular mailbox, plus he gives tasters of games through his “WTF is …” series. Those are incredibly useful for giving an impression of whether a game is worth getting. I’ve bought a few due to WTF is and abandoned thoughts of getting many more. He does a Starcraft 2 series as well, which almost got me buying that game and is another ex WoW player.

The next is Jesse Cox of the OMFGCata channel. He’s nuts.

He’s more a “Let’s Play” person, where he’s got a few games on the go at once presenting bites of up to an hour at a time. It’s the commentary that make these. They’re hilarious, especially when things don’t go to plan. The TB + JC Terraria series are amazing and are why I own Terraria. His Skyrim series is why I bought that game and he enjoyed Deus Ex HR as much as I did.

I’ve also been watching Yogscast and Yogscast2. I have mixed feelings here, their coverage is dominated by Minecraft which I absolutely refuse to watch. They’re very silly boys and play to the nerdy, geeky boy gamer stereotype (except for Hannah, who is Gamer Chick). However … they feel every moment of their gaming and when a spider creeps up on Simon, it’s hilarious.

But the highlight found so far is Dodger of two channels :

PressHeartToContinue (aka P<32c) – is a gaming blog where she’ll talk through gaming news and views.
Dexterity Bonus – COFFEH Time ! which is a video blog.

If I did this blog via video, it would be a lot like Coffeh time. Except we’d have the sound of cracking monitor screens. Dodger is way more photogenic and comes over as so relaxed on screen. I’m hooked.

They all share a few things in common :
Love of gaming,
Lots of opinion – The Game Station podcast featuring TB, JesseCox and P<32c holds the interest even through 3 hours.
Rare intelligence
Getting as much fun as possible out of their gaming.

It’s a credit to all of them that I’m more interested in watching their shows than in gaming myself. They’re highly amusing to watch. They enjoy their gaming and include you the viewer in that.

I’ll keep watching all 5 of these channels and non gamers would be most interested in Coffeh Time. Thinking of that one with my “Time’s valuable” post, she’s donating so much of her own time to produce that show to make things a bit brighter for us the viewers.

It’s a privilege to watch – and I may well be doing so quite soon if I can pry myself away from Moo2 …

🙂 I suspect reading is something that eludes them … Could explain why they don't appear to have any training on "How not to upset people you are trying to sell things to"

Those people are why I have a "No Soliciting" sign on my front door. A few people ignore it, but fr the most part they head for my door, see it, and then turn around and walk away. The ones who ignore it–if they're not kids–I sometimes ask if they can read or not, and if they can, do they need a dictionary…?

Oh dear. Door to door people on patrol again.

This time, it’s a case of the arrogant kid who’s just got out of school going into a job where he’s been forced to knock on people’s doors and demand “just a moment of your time”. This one really rubbed me up the wrong way.

Attitude – arrogant and entitled yoof bully
Appearance – reminded me of the Popular Set kids at school

And that’s just the first impression. I cut him off early with a “not interested – sorry”, as I was busy doing other stuff (the grand prix coverage was running in the background). At that, I’d expect them to have the humility to walk away. I don’t expect them to demand why I’d told them to go away before finding out who they were. And I definitely don’t expect them to hang around on the street looking into people’s houses.

The attitude was very much : Give me the world, I’m entitled to it. And the response is – earn it and while you’re at it, work on the humility.

But it’s really about time. Door to door people inflict themselves on you. It could be something important happening like a car alarm going off or a parcel. But if it’s some random person turning up and demanding money, I will not allow them to waste any more of my time than is necessary. I don’t see that as me being rude, I just see it as sending them on their way without wasting either my time or their’s.

If I’m going to spend money on something, I’ll research it first. (And then usually buy the wrong thing like with my Onkyo amp.). Unless it’s something I was intending to do anyway (like Npower Girl), there is zero chance I will give anything to a door to door person.

Time is an incredibly valuable thing.

If I send someone a message, I’m borrowing their time. If I ask someone to look at something, I’m borrowing even more of their time. So I only tend to do it when I have something I think they’ll appreciate or if it’s something I think they need to know. If the messages get ignored or a “busy now but I’ll check later” gets forgotten, then that’s Sad Face.

When I see the hits come in for this message later, that will tell me that you’ve donated some of your valuable time to read this message. And I think that’s awesome. When I see repeat hits coming in from those of you who know I do Walls of Text … but keep coming back … I find that incredible.

What will I be doing with the rest of my time today ?

Errrmmm … Wasting much of it trying to take over the galaxy in Moo2 while chilling out to music. Not feeling the urge to do a city centre wander as I’d been buying stuff at the Mall on Tuesday. But if I had someone call me up or message me and tell me they’d like to spend some time with me ? I’d be out there like a shot.

PS I’ve been ranting a lot lately – which suggests there’s some anger/frustration bubbling away in my mind … Need to address that. Cross fingers for some good cricket 🙂

Oh where to start …

I know some stuff I can’t talk about. Cos I can’t. It’s all over the news but I’m way too close to it. Just remember when you see stories on the news, there’s usually real people caught right in the middle of those stories. If it was a car crash, you’d call them innocent bystanders. Ok, it is a car crash and they’re still caught up in it. But that’s enough about that story.

(I’m actually prevented about talking about it without asking permission due to work rules)

Olympic Flame goes out – lol. Oops. Superstition will run riot with that.

I’m in love with a gamer from the PressHeartToContinue channel. I’m watching videos of gaming more than I’m gaming lately. Spotted Dodger through The Game Station podcast with two very dangerous (to a gamer’s wallet) individuals called TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox of the OMFGCata channel. They have a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm towards gaming and their enjoyment of what they play has persuaded me to buy more than one game this year … Anyway, P<32c is giving me flashbacks to when Bits graced our screens. She’s smart and she talks good sense. Funny too.

The cap is still there. It hasn’t been crispy fried yet. It wouldn’t burn anyway, the fire would get put out by the heaviness of the rain.

Been buying more music – the latest is Little Broken Hearts by Norah Jones, which is excellent. Morcheeba’s Blood Like Lemonade is pretty good too. I have my eye on Katie Melua’s latest but to be honest, Katie Melua and The Ting Tings are groups where I’ll wait for the album to come out at 2 for £10 or £5. Like Air and Maroon 5, their Pocket Symphony and “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” albums arrived on Tuesday before I disappeared off to watch Avengers.

Headache has faded today ! Although today was one of those insane can’t draw breath “that was nice, what was it, what’s next?” kind of days. Not had time to get a headache. I got a big grin from a couple of our people in our Portsmouth office as well. Grin + Productive Work = awesome.

Work’s being a little challenging at the moment. We’re moving from a place where we’re accepting stuff to a requirement set that was agreed years ago and towards needing to keep track of things we’re changing with those requirements. The pace of change these days is relentless and one of the facets of my current job is keeping up with the question “What do we actually want ?” Anyway, had good progress there today without the glacial pace that some of this can go at.

That’s how it feels sometimes – long periods of routine punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Terror ? I think that’s actually from a movie or a game. Switch “sheer terror” for “mega fast activity”. I don’t say much about what I work on or for who but let’s just say the stakes can be very high.

Gaming ? Not doing much of that at the moment. Not reading much either, outside of websites and watching gamer videos.

Weather ? It’s still raining. If tonight’s cricket hadn’t been cancelled yesterday then it would have been a classic : Sunshine all day. 6pm – match start. 6.05pm – deluge begins.

Amusement or “Where not to be if you’re supposed to be on leave” – one of our people is on leave all this week. But … the PCS and Unite unions were on strike today. Where did I happen to see this person this morning ? She was on the picket line that was causing traffic chaos in the local area, handing leaflets to cars coming in. Oops. If you’re striking, taking leave is Bad Behaviour. Definitely shouldn’t be in such a prominent place …

I’m not in any of the unions. I don’t see their goals aligning with who they claim to represent. They chase the wrong fights. They should be targeting discrimination in the workplace (we are discriminated against by post code as policy) and other strangeness instead of attempting to get conditions that will make their own members unaffordable to the organisation. They’re actually campaigning for job losses.
I’m not socialist, conservative, right, left, centrist. Ok, maybe I’m a little Nationalist (but not extreme). I’m pragmatist realist and refuse to be blinkered by any particular political point of view. I see the blinkers on people every day – it’s not a way to convince people. And I have zero faith in the current political system. Democracy is a fine idea, when you have credible people to vote for.

And I think that’s enough for now before I dig myself a massive hole !

Last thought from that – be careful what you do online. I read that a collection of people have been fired by a Sheriff in the USA for “liking” a political opponent on Facebook. When they sued, their case got thrown out. That click can have consequences …

And on that note – been lucky where I work, our project has had some long screwdriver interference but we’ve managed to avoid most of it. It’s let a bunch of amazing people get on with delivering something fantastic. We’ve been luckier than most. We’re definitely in a better position all round than the people I referred to on opening this post !

I think my cap is cursed.

We’ve had extraordinary climate conditions over here in GB since the start of the year. Winter saw endless sunshine. And that’s sunshine to the point where we were getting threatened with hosepipe bans and with having the mains water shut off and replaced by standpipes in the street.

Since the cricket season started, we’ve seen rain. Rain. More rain. And puddles. Worcestershire can’t play at their home ground because it’s waterlogged. (Worcestershire County Cricket Club link with picture). We’ve seen 4 games out of 4 called off due to the weather. (Ok, one was because a team doesn’t play in that league – but it chucked it down anyway)

An aside here – I’ve been suffering from a headache for all this afternoon and evening. Brain feels like it’s trying to crawl out through my eye sockets.

Weather – here’s a more spectacular view of New Road (Worcestershire’s ground) … although 3 days later the match was back on at New Road, although sadly only a third of a day’s play was possible.

I have a feeling the weather may be a factor with that headache. I can be sensitive to subtle changes in atmospheric pressure and humidity that can act like a weather sense. On one of my work placements, I had terrible headaches because I was working much of the time in a positive pressure environment (don’t ask where – lol). I.e. the air inside was a few millibars above normal, to blow out all the nasties from welding equipment, solvents and glues.

Trouble with where I work now is that the air in the building is so dry, it really messes up that weather sense. That could be contributing to the headache as well.

Where does the cap fit in all this ?

It’s the first season that I’d have been back in a cap regularly. I normally field in a sun hat and I now bat in a helmet. However … if I’m also to be doing fielding in a helmet (the wicket keeping when standing up), then the hat won’t do because I need to hide the headgear when I have the helmet on. And a cap is easier to hide down the back of your trousers (yes, really !) than a sun hat.

But, with continuous heavy rain since the start of the season ? Is the cap cursed ?

Does it need to be ritually sacrificed (Fire Good) in order to summon the Sun Gods back ?

We shall see.

I kinda like my Pink Cap. It’ll be a silly thing to wear on a cricket field and that’s half the point. Bit like a statement that says : “I’m not scared of the comments I’ll get when I wear this”. Well, it’s going to be worn in honour of a fallen colleague who used to smile at me when she caught me looking up and grinning as she walked through the office. And that’s the image that will be in my head when I get a daft comment about the Pink Cap.

Cap stays – superstition be damned ! 🙂

LOL ! 🙂

Cut's almost healed now and my head (and appetite) seem healthy again 🙂

Watched Avengers Assemble tonight – this movie is awesome. (Add expletives of your choice for emphasis)

Definitely one for the pre order. And I suspect a lot of people will agree, judging by it breaking all sorts of box office records. Hell, I watched it on my own tonight but I would gladly go back to see it again if someone wanted me to drag them along to it.

(And I promise to not stare at the Black Widow’s bum … too much)

And going from one brand of awesome to something deeply, incredibly, amazingly special : Paralysed woman completes London Marathon after 16 days. Can anything top that ? Seriously ! She’s using robot/bionic prosthetics to move her legs, as a spinal injury means she can’t move them on her own. There’s all kinds of WOW here :

We have the technology now to do this
And key – what a spirit this lady has. Inspirational. Truly inspirational.

That’s the story that greeted me as I got in from Avengers and turned on Skynews.

Google have licenced their autonomous cars. Not sure whether to find this scary or not. Hopefully it’ll go some way to making the roads safer by removing the Moron element. Trouble is, the remaining Morons will be the ones driving around without MoT (roadworthiness test in the UK) or insurance. We shall see. Oh, the car they’re using is very similar to mine …

Japan closes their last nuclear power station. Meh. Very meh. I’m pro nuclear power. It’s clean energy, despite what the scaremongerers would say. Those same green fanatics would see us using coal or gas power which pumps CO2 into the atmosphere. Nuclear does produce its waste but that waste is controllable and containable. CO2 is not. Nuclear is also safe, despite what the green loonies will tell you about :

Fukushima – closed down safely. Will cause no deaths (the few who died at Fukushima fell from heights) and the lessons learned will prevent similar accidents from escalating out of control
Chernobyl – was self inflicted sabotage where the plant was effectively deliberately blown up.

Yep – I see the way the greenies would like to take us and think they’re crazy. Don’t get me started about wind turbines ! 🙂

LED lightbulbs to last for ages. 23 years ! That’s longer than you’d expect to live in one house. Although my parents have lived in their current place for 26 and I’ve lived here for 10. I’m kinda a convert to energy saving bulbs, although not for them being cheaper. The ones I use in my living room light definitely last longer before they pop. So there might be something in this LED last ages thing.

Especially as it isn’t a thin tungsten filament that’s designed to take enough current that it glows and sets off gas in the bulb. I dunno, when people look back in 50 years on what we use now, they will not believe it. Just as we seldom believe that 30 years ago, ATMs were unheard of and mobile phones were in their infancy. Tech marches on.

Star Wars subscribers fall. Not surprised here and I doubt whether this game will last past 1 expansion. Having played it briefly, it’s a subpar WoW clone with its only distinctive feature being cutscenes. Games are supposed to be about gameplay, not cutscenes that get in the way. Mass Effect 3 had me going “Enough with the cutscene, WANNA SHOOT SOMETHING”.

I’m hopeful for better from Guildwars 2, although I think the MMO set up on Grind Lots for Little Fun may have had its day. People want fun from their games, 99% of MMOs are eternal grind for 30 minutes fun. Online shooters and games like League Of Legends show us the Grind is not necessary for Fun.

And that’s it for today – no game tonight. The other team didn’t just turn up, they’re not even in the league ! I suspect we’d have got half a game played (maybe) and then we’d have got rained on. Hopeful for something tomorrow, it’s another artificial wicket so we could get away with it. I’d like to be wearing spikes for the soggy ground but – keeping ? Nah. Spikes will be banned for me.

Good night !

PS One last one : Mechwarrior online looks awesome. I grew up on Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries taking a lot of my early PC gaming time and later played Mech Commander 2 to death. If they catch the MW2M gameplay again, this could be special.

so I don't have to tell you to wear a helmet
good

I have a feeling that saying will rapidly gain legendary Deja Vu status :

It’s the eve of the cricket season (for me at least). Oh, it was also the eve of the season on Wednesday last week too but that game was rained off. I suspect the three games this week haven’t got much chance of happening too, due to all the rain that drought hit Britain is seeing at the moment.

(I had half an intention to head into Bristol centre to not buy anything again which I cancelled due to : huge threat of rain & not knowing if Globe Sports would be open – I’ll go in on Friday pm if things work out)

But hey, if all things went well, I’d have three games of cricket this week to follow the cancelled game last week. I suspect the only one which has a chance of happening is the one tomorrow where we’d play on an artificial pitch. (“interesting” pitch, in a “wear a helmet or die” kind of way)

How am I set up for it ?

Well – A few weeks ago, a depression “inspired” post led to me abandoning the Pink Hat Project that I’d been talking about. And for good reasons too. I have a lot of my old speed and agility back but I don’t know how long that’s going to last. I have worsening RSI in my wrists that will affect fielding. I can’t bowl any more. My leg, while 90% healed is not perfect yet. So I didn’t want to lump so much pressure on me that I’d play no matter what (I would) and turn light damage into heavy damage by playing through injuries.

How am I doing really ?
Legs – duff hamstring but full power available. I don’t talk about the infected leg thing from last year any more because while it hasn’t completely healed yet, there’s good tough skin there now and I think it could withstand me diving around.
Back – yeah, this will be what slows me down. However ! It also likes me to be moving around, such that running around a cricket field will actually keep it limber.
Shoulder – is knackered. Can’t bowl any more. But that’s not likely to be a huge problem if I keep to the infield, stay behind the stumps and Not Get Angry (If I make a mistake, I get very angry with myself and forget to keep throws to safe limits)
Hip – yeah, this still feels slightly torn but is another one I’ll happily live with.

That’s the thing about cricket – players will very often play with minor injuries. Sometimes they play on through fairly major injuries. Like players who are due for a hernia op on a Friday but play through the game Tuesday to Thursday. We’ll play with broken fingers. I think I played through half a season with a cracked tibia.

Feeling quite good about this season actually. Because my old team didn’t do pre season practice, I’d usually go into games with no clue as to how I’d get on in games. The new team had two limited sessions (not many people took advantage of them) where I learned :

To wear a helmet when standing up to the stumps as a wicket keeper (duh!)*
That my batting seems to have gone aggressive this year 🙂
That I can keep standing up to the stumps to medium pacers 🙂
Can’t bowl (confirmation)

*(the cut has nearly completely healed now and the ‘tache’s days are numbered)

Hopefully we’ll get a game on this week but I suspect the rain has already beaten them. I’ll be shopping later in the week as I still want a couple of things :

Perhaps some wicket keeping gloves (the New Team gloves are maybe too big)
To feel out some inner gloves (never worn them, need to know + or -)
Seeing what facemask/grills are like
Grabbing some pink rubbers
(whoever raised an eyebrow there is a deviant – lol, perfectly innocent explanation)
And perhaps, perhaps … a new bat.

Pink Hat Project is still a go by the way. But not in a Pay Per Game. That’s just rewarding mediocrity, which I abhor. I’m also not too comfortable with collecting money off people, which is another Big Thing about why I’ve not gone ahead with setting up a Justgiving.com page. What I will do is set a bounty on the exceptional stuff :

25 runs = £2 donation
50 runs = £10 donation
Stumpings and run outs = £5 donation
Catches = £1 donation
(those may go up)

That might collect a decent amount from me. Anyone want to join me ? Send an email or leave a comment and I may well set up that Justgiving page anyway. The chosen charity will be the same one that the girls at work choose for a cake sale that’s due this month.