Sleepypete's Pillow

I *really* need to stop going to see movies like this…. [shudder]

Had a rapid change of plan yesterday …

Monday night is usually gaming night. However, of late the “yep, we’re gaming” or “no gaming tonight” messages have been coming through extremely late. Which has gotten me annoyed as it usually comes through while I’m at work on the Monday, via messages over Facebook. I can’t actually get to Facebook at work (wouldn’t even if I could, it would expose a password to the admins, not to mention the “work” thing) so I don’t know whether or not gaming is on until I get home.

That has started to grate …

Belligerance hit yesterday, with an impromptu trip over to see the new Robin Hood film. I think I’d have gone anyway, even if gaming had been on as :
Tuesday – one of our number isn’t in the country, plus another is in a birthday celebration
Wednesday – business trip guy again, me watching football
(yes, you read that right … more on that late tomorrow !)
Thursday – cricket

So Monday was the only option for this week, even before irritation at an inability to plan properly crept in. I suspect this irritation has come about partly due to my latest job being more involved in planning. I’m finding myself making Backup Plans upon Backup Plans, with the aim of being able to react instantly to changing circumstances and information.

Meh – that’s enough about irritation about not knowing what I’m doing on the Monday evening until typically 30 minutes before I head out, what about the film ?

I have to admit (grudgingly) that I actually enjoyed the latest Robin Hood attempt. That is, I found it entertaining in a guilty hidden secret kind of way. You know the way people say “that was awful!” while hiding a smile they can’t help show ? That’s it.

It has its Hollywood Atrocities, as all blockbusters these days do, it has actors who can’t decide if they’re English, Welsh, Scottish or dare I say it Australian and it’s another in a long line of Re Imaginings. But for all that, it’s mildly entertaining.

Hollywood Atrocities ? It has an extended scene where there’s a bunch of guys in boats heading to the shore. Ok, fair enough. We saw that done well in Troy. The issue is the boats they were in … The people behind this movie were obviously impressed with the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, as the boats bore a huge resemblance to WW2 landing craft made of wood. Would they have floated ? Nope. Would they have made it across the Channel ? Definitely not.

Almost as bad as the HERETICAL Ship On Ground scene in Star Trek. But not nearly as bad as what anyone who has seen an Uwe Boll film has been exposed to.

There’s a narrative leading bit with a map too. Some old towns appear there, including Peterborough. Have to admit, I was a bit wrong on this one as I thought Peterborough was a New Town made this century. It did exist back then though (brief but decent article) but after seeing Peterborough listed, I did start expecting to see Milton Keynes up on that map too.

I thought that in Robin Hood’s time, the Normans were firmly in charge. This jars with one of the central themes of the movie, which I will not reveal here even though it becomes obvious very early. Hollywood stuff has always included a fair bit of artistic licence …

Yeah, mildly entertaining. William Hurt and the bit part players add some much needed character to this film. Plus, as they ignore the typical Robin Hood legend backstory, it’s a fresh take on the myth.

Worth seeing ? Yes. But only if you haven’t seen Iron Man 2 yet.

I love being too knackered to lift the bat
made me laugh

rest up
get yourself some linament

Really !

Don’t believe what the fitness nuts tell you. They lie !

I’m currently trying to persuade my legs to work properly after last night’s game. How did it go ? Here’s the status update from Facebook last night :

” first game of season, enjoyed it – found the motormouth tendency again while fielding, too knackered to lift bat properly. Didn’t get zero. Team hammered, don’t care – enjoyed the running around too much.”

Pretty much sums it up 🙂 I can get quite vocal when on a cricket field. I don’t sledge, I really dislike that sledging has become part of the game. I try to keep the noise to encouraging the teams I play for. A little bit of encouragement can go a long way and I like to think that by giving a little I’ll get a little back when I need it. It gives a good feeling too when you say the right few words to a tiring bowler and get rewarded with them taking a wicket.

We fielded first, which was good cos it let me feel my way back into playing. I can’t remember when I last played a match, so it must be a good few years ago. The main reason for not playing was the shoulder and back but there were some pretty major personality issues at work too. The shoulder and back issues haven’t gone away, I’ve just decided to ignore them. The personality issues seem to have resolved though, as there is a different person picking the teams now. The Small World Syndrome hit there, as someone I know unconnected with cricket also knew the fella with the problem and she thought he was an ass too.

But it looks like he’s not involved with the cricket now, so it’s well past time to move on.

The team seems to have evolved a fair bit as well. Another minor reason for me giving the cricket a rest was that the standard and, as a consequence, the expectation had gone through the roof. I’ve always been a reasonable player but not an excellent one, so I was feeling like a spare part in the team, especially as my bowling was no longer viable. Things go in cycles with the work team as people join and move on. Yep, things had gotten a bit too serious and I have a feeling it’s stepped back to being Fun.

As it should be !

“Too knackered to lift bat” ? Yep. I don’t have the strongest arms out there. Definitely not a PopEye. I’ve always had reasonable technique, except when I try to hit the cover off the ball which is when the technique disappears. I was fairly pleased with how I batted yesterday, I remembered some good technique, scoring 9 in our lowish total. I’d have liked to bat through but got bowled by a straight one that I missed because it bounced lower than I expected. That “try to hit cover off ball” thing striking …

Yep – got hammered but I enjoyed it. Yesterday I was glad I came out of retirement to play. Now, I’m not too sure … The catalogue is :

Screaming leg muscles that have had a concrete infusion
Bruised left leg (dunno how)
Bruised knuckles (from muppet catching)
Groin strain

Not worried about the first three, hopefully the groin strain I picked up while batting will settle down quickly. I don’t think anything in there is torn but it feels more strain-ish.

And there we come back to the title : Exercise is unhealthy.

If I hadn’t played last night, my legs would be fine and I wouldn’t have the groin strain. So there.

And it’s not just me ! There’s a bloke in the office who goes to the gym most lunchtimes. And he ALWAYS comes back with a limp. I’m telling you : Exercise equals pain. If we didn’t put ourselves through this torture, we’d have a lot more time for fun stuff like gaming.

Mind you, that’s when you come to the last part of that Facebook update : “Team hammered, don’t care – enjoyed the running around too much.”

Yes it hurts now but it was worth it. And getting a confidence boost all last week when thinking “last weekend, I climbed a mountain” is just part of what makes the exercise worth it.

Well, big election day was last week and we still don’t really know who will be running the country for the next few months.

Bit of an anti-climax but to be honest, heavily expected. It’s been a bit of a turn off for me really, I can’t see that much difference between the parties. They’ll all pick and choose which policies they want to actually try to implement out of what they promised. The way I try and go is to attempt to ignore them as much as possible and get on with what I want to do. I’ll try not to upset the lawmakers too much though as they then get in the way of having fun.

That’s not why it’s a turn off though, although a loss of faith in the whole political scene is a big contributor. No. It’s the people.

It’s been curious watching how various people have been behaving over the past week or so. Most people keep their politics to themselves. It’s a personal decision and they leave it to the parties to convince others as to how they should vote. Not so with these people, they’ll really go for the irrational bigot way of telling people they shouldn’t vote for this person or that. It can get rather vicious as well.

That’s so negative.

You can’t have a sensible conversation with such people (like with Mac Evangelists !) because their preconceived ideas and ironclad prejudices get in the way of anything resembling sanity. They’ll vote the way they always do, without questioning whether what they’re voting for fits what they believe. And they’ll also make up excuses as to why they shouldn’t vote for the other guys. I know why I voted the way I did, it was based on the track records of how the various parties have misbehaved themselves. And the comment on Negativity probably gives away who I chose.

I guess I prefer election periods to be over and done with quickly so they’re out of the way and we can manage our political bosses until the next period. We’ll be lucky to get 6 months though before the next election and then the prejudices will come out again.

(CK, if you read the stuff above and thought I meant you with the stuff above, definitely not ! But there are one or two other people in the close friend group who do fit the politics bigot tag)

On to better things – summer is coming and that means CRICKET 🙂

I enjoyed watching a very strong England side beat New Zealand earlier. It’s weird to see an England side currently dominate the rest of the world in cricket. It doesn’t happen often. We’ve got thumping batsmen, good fielding and smart bowling and we’re currently leading the way.

It’s good to see.

I’m back in cricket as well now, having given up on my shoulder recovering fully. It’s about the same now as it was a couple of years ago. That is it’s 95% capable but that 5% stops my bowling from being usable. There’s a hitch in there that destroys my ability to control the length I bowl and when you mainly bowl inswingers, it means No Match Bowling. When it goes wrong, the ball goes flat at head height with the inswing making it follow a batsman who is attempting to duck out of the way.

That’s insanely dangerous, even with helmets.

I think I prefer not bowling anyway. In my best days I was a genuine allrounder, able to open the batting and the bowling, I always enjoyed batting more. When batting, you can give an honest shrug when being gotten out by a good ball. With bowling, I felt the pressure much more as if it was up to me to make something happen to get the wicket. And at the same time, I’d need to concentrate on consistency to avoid mistakes. So, less pressure when batting as I could usually score at an acceptable rate.

So for tomorrow, I’ll be attempting to impersonate a batsman and depending on who we have, I’ll be keeping wicket or fielding. Should be fun, although I’ve had no practice for years. Hope the muscle memory remembers what to do. I’m in reasonable shape, albeit a stone or two overweight. I seem to have gotten lucky with a certain amount of natural fitness and an ability to recover quickly that makes cricket my ideal game. Most of my niggles are actually due to muscles not being used enough.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow, although the weather prediction says rain. Heh heh heh, it said rain today and we had bright sunshine all day.

Meanwhile, Evanescence is on iTunes and I have books to read and gear to pack 🙂 And relief that my cricket whites are still white.

Shirt felt rather less tight around my neck today …

Wonder if that was the walk or the shirt 🙂

Think the avatar might be around for a while. I like the Snowdon Dwagon.

Well done. Two peaks to do now….. [grin]

I love the new avatar
cuddly in a bloody sort of way 😉

enjoy the bank holiday kid

Had another Volition Cult meet up this weekend, objective : Climb Mt Snowdon.

Not many of us this time around, just me, Luth Curmal and Agent Stone making the trip up from Bristol and Bath, to join up with an old Eve player. We travelled up to Manchester on Friday, hitting typical Bank Holiday Friday traffic – translation : 2.5 hour trip took 4.5. Wasn’t too bad, could have been a lot worse 🙂

Snowdon was Saturday. We started off at about 7.30, reaching Snowdon car park at 10.30. We took the Rhydd Ddu track, which had us approaching the summit from the south. Through the miracles of modern technology, I can publish the route of the way up (linky). Clicking on the “terrain” option will show some fairly daunting contour lines showing the elevations we were going up.

There were 8 of us doing the climb, we took a total of 2 hours 51 minutes. I miscalculated a bit by guzzling all my water on the way up, expecting to be able to refill before starting down. I didn’t fancy taking water from the toilets though, so I was dry on the way down. We all survived 🙂

I have a new avatar 🙂

We got to the top and because I was feeling an impending injury*, were checking out the train option for getting back down the mountain. I spotted the little fella in the gift shop and thought : “ME WANT”

Yes, Snowdon has a gift shop and a train station at the top …

Injuries ? I can keep going most times but I’d really hate it to lumber the people I’m around with a person who isn’t going to be able to walk … I felt my left calf muscle start to violently protest on the last little stretch (crags needing climbing), which is the usual sign that it’s going to go bang. If that happens, it’s at least 15 minutes until it stops tending to cramp, plus a few days for the muscle tears to repair. Comical if you’re at ground level, not so if you’re going to need help off a mountain.

We came back down the mountain using the Snowdon Ranger trail (see Rhydd Ddu link above), following the Android track linked here. The initial plan was to get to the bottom a little way around the mountain and then take a train back to where we parked. We modified that by going for a “short cut” ;-). It took us 3 hours to get back, which included a bit more adventure than the way up (translation – one or two of us got wet !)

For me, it worked pretty well, the way down was initially a lot gentler which allowed me to mostly walk off that unhappy calf muscle. I think it would have popped if we’d gone the scarier way down. We all ended up very sore though, I’d forgotten about the calf by the end cos everything else was complaining !

Gear :

When you’re trail walking, gear is very important. Not just having the gear but knowing what to bring along. Weather reports were suggesting it would be clear, so I didn’t get a waterproof top. Even though it did start chucking it down, I don’t regret skipping that. Boots were very important, you don’t want to go up a mountain in trainers because you’ll be carried off with broken ankles.

I went up in running trousers, t shirt and sun hat, with a fleecy top and my normal leather jacket being put in the bag very quickly. Top marks for the Karrimor boots, Luth and I were sporting these and neither of us came away with blisters. They kept our grip on the loose path stones pretty well too.

Sun hat ? Keeps the rain off ! I kick out a lot of heat when I’m moving, so I’d overheat badly if wearing full waterproofs. There is such a thing as being overprepared, although I’d have wanted those waterproofs if I was camping overnight. Anyway, sun hat kept the rain off (no drips on glasses at all) and the trousers and boots kept my legs dry. The rain on my arms helped keep me cool.

Result ! But the same thing doesn’t work for everyone, one of our people needed to borrow my gloves due to circulation problems in fingers (she was ok by halfway down). It was pretty darn cold up the top of that mountain. If I was fitter, I wouldn’t kick out so much heat so I’d have needed subtly different gear.

Don’t underestimate the challenge ! It’s better to have gear and not need it than need gear and not have it.

Back home now, chilling out in front of cricket (although Aussie are winning) and looking forward to a very quiet bank holiday monday.

I defected to the Dark Side …

I’ve been a long time PC gaming nut, with my first one being a 486 based machine bought in 1994. That’s back when system memory on a PC was smaller than the mp3 tune I’m listening to right now.

I’ve been disenchanted with the PC gaming world for a little while now. Rampant piracy has led to the best games migrating over to console. There’s also the huge variety of hardware out there that gets in the way of what games PCs do get being stable. Stable is being able to run it for half an hour without it dying on you, or just even being able to complete the game. There’s a game called Vampire Bloodlines which couldn’t be completed out of the box due to bugs. Don’t get me started on the Championship Manager/Football Manager series, a lot of those should not have been put on the market in the state they were released in. So many bugs it was ridiculous. Getting through a month of game time was an achievement.

Gone for the Xbox 360 with bundled Forza motorsport plus Final Fantasy XIII 🙂 Procrastination has helped, is cost me £20 less than if I’d gone for it last week.

Result !

First impressions. Hmm, glad I went for the shop nearer the car park. Thing weighs a tonne. Was having grave concerns that the plastic bag wouldn’t survive the distance to the car.

Box contents : Xbox 360 Elite (250GB hard disc). Yellow/White/Red link up lead, power pack, 2 controllers with AA batteries, headset wot plugs into controller, FF XIII front that I have to figure out how to put on, SCART adaptor, network cable. No HDMI lead as expected but I’ve used my spare to act as hookup. No sense not going for max quality if it’s available 🙂

Games : Forza 3 and FF XIII. This is the reason I went Xbox in the end, dismissing Playstation 3. Good bundle of games that I’d play. The PS3 had game bundles but costing £60+ more for games I wasn’t bothered about. Same goes for the Wii – nice console, shame about the games.

Set up is pretty easy. I looked at the book but there’s really no need. You just hook it up and let it go. You could be playing games quite quickly, although a little imagination is needed for the Gamertag, your unique identifier. Emphasis being on “unique”.

Not been on it that much yet. I tried Forza first – takes a little getting used to the control system, although it does make sense. Triggers for brake and throttle and a mini-joystick for steering. It’s a bit savage and imprecise compared to a car but I don’t think I’ll be spending £££ on a separate wheel. Don’t think I have to 🙂 I was winning races by the end of the session.

I used hunger as a motivation again … Friday is bacon sarnie day, plus meetings meant I ate lunch in town at about 3pm. Which meant I wanted to leave dinner until after 8pm as a decent gap from lunch. Which got me just about enough Forza to get me hooked before my tummy attempted to leap up and strangle me. Driving games have definitely improved out of sight since Need For Speed 3 on my early PCs.

Heh heh heh – I feel the tug of Xbox again.

Few things I’ll be looking to get for it :

Play & Charge pack. The wireless controllers come with 2x AA batteries (Duracell!). They won’t last forever, hence the Play & Charge pack.
Improved network bits. There’s currently a long lead hidden away that I’ll use to connect up the Xbox. It’s not good to have trailing leads across the floor, so I’ll be looking into Ethernet Powerplug adaptors (a tip from a mate). Should be cheaper than the wireless Xbox adaptor and without the latency that wireless introduces.
Better sound. I have a widget I’ll be picking up tomorrow morning that will hopefully give me a surround sound link.

I feel the Need. The Need. For Speed.

Back to Forza ! Or mebbe the Anime Girls of Final Fantasy.