Sleepypete's Pillow

Faint heart never won fair lady right? Try the e-Harmony route. Nothing ventured, nothing gained 🙂

Hope the car is all better soon!

Most people will have one or two days of the year that are kinda like set aside as “Bad Days”. 14th Feb is one of mine, it’s a more jabbing reminder of missing having the excuse to pamper a special someone.

While I’m not the kind of person who will go out every night and I definitely avoid night clubs like the plague, I do enjoy heading out for a meal or a movie. Could be part of cabin fever, there will also be a hefty bit of wanting a better meal than I typically provide myself :-). I could cook much better if I put my mind to it but I’d rather be watching something or doing something while my meal is quietly cooking (burning?) away in the kitchen.

I’m kinda addicted to Input, I don’t do well when nothing’s happening, I’ll get bored and look for something to perk up my interest. Like at the moment, I’m listening to iTunes while tapping this entry and I’ve just attempted to lip-read the lovely Isobel Lang doing the weather on Sky News. Or at work where I’m always very curious as to what the BM girls are getting up to. (There’s less of them now because 2 have moved on)

I think that’s why I miss being in a partnership. Whereas the outside world and PC games can be very predictable, ladies are definitely not. They keep you guessing as to how they’ll react to what you do and keep you on your toes for not forgetting the important things. I also get a huge kick out of subterfuge, the art of surprising people. I’m pretty good at that too, I can usually hide the setups for surprises that I pull on people like the leaving certificates tailored to people who leave our part of the team at work.

But I do miss being able to chat for ages to someone special, to help them out or be helped back in return. Someone to steal the popcorn before I get my mitts on it. A person who’ll be able to keep up when my Geek Sense takes over what I’m talking about. (This was the biggest problem with Evil Ex, I hadn’t realised how much I was holding myself back). It’d help if she was a cricket nut too 🙂

So that’s why today’s not one I tend to look forward to – I’d like to treat someone to a meal+movie, there’s just not the opportunity presenting itself. Thought I was on to something with the Little Canteen Girl, she’s a very likeable pintsized package of fun and attitude. I bet she definitely makes life interesting for the lad who comes into our canteen with a Huge Wide Smile when he arrives to take her home.

To take the edge off the loneliness a bit I’ll be heading back into Eve online later. The Wordless Wednesday post had the “Surrender The Booty” t-shirt, especially for a little fleet we had on Wednesday evening running around our local space. It was fun, I learned a bit more about handling a little ship in the Player v Player stuff. I’ve been around Eve for years and have read around the theory a huge amount but I’ve got little or no experience in fleet situations. The Eve people are a good mob but maybe a little quiet, it can take a couple of noisy people like me and Luth to get them going.

Yep – fun but we ended up getting our collective butts kicked by a much superior fleet at the end of the night. I’ll be naming one of my future ships “Brave Sir Robin”, after my contribution seemed to add up to RUN AWAY :-). I got shot at three times and bravely legged it each time 🙂

I’ve also been distracted away by the Mass Effect 2 game that just came out, which is an absolute cracker. I like the way they’ve tied in what happened in the first game as well as the contents of the two Mass Effect books published so far. It’s a different game to the first in a number of ways but what’s come out this time is some truly demonic humour. They’ve handled “passage of time” extremely well too, by showing that the universe it’s set in has moved on.

So, been keeping myself distracted but it would have been better if I’d have had someone shouting along with me today while watching England make hard work of Italy in the rugby. Or even someone giving me a strange “Don’t be silly” look.

Got a bit more stress at the moment too – on Tuesday night the car started making Whizz-whizzy-SLAP noises from inside the engine bay, as if a motor or belt is trying to spin up before getting unexpectedly stopped. It kicked off as I was pulling up to a roundabout and kept on going as I made my way to Tescos. It got me home and it’s going in for warranty stuff on Tuesday. Hopefully it’ll get there ok, although I’ll be nervously taking it very slow.

Been on the bus all week, which has got me thinking a bit as to “do I really need to take the car in?” For bus – more walking = more exercise = hopefully reduction in girth. Against bus – dependent on bus times, less flexibility in taking that after work trip to window shop the Mall. I’d also need a bag so I could take work stuff to and from work (not something I need to do much). Cost isn’t really an issue, my car is greedy and petrol has come up so much that £14/week for an all week bus ticket is actually closer to petrol cost than you might think.

Arrrg – I’ve rabbited on again and it’s getting dark enough that I’m having to retype stuff due to not seeing which key is which.

Time to close again and think of another year going by without having the excuse to make 14th Feb special for someone. E-Harmony ads are looking more tempting ! Although I do wonder if there’s a Princess waiting for me from a bit closer …

I think the interview went ok, although I think the bloke interviewing me didn't do so well on his side.

Hmm – a little while until the Baseball starts up too. ESPN over here are currently showing NBA instead of NHL, never been that impressed by NBA but NHL is usually highly entertaining 🙂

priceless!!

hope your interview went well

you did miss a good Super Bowl but hey, football (our kind) is only 7 months away – a whole new season!! 😉

YARR ! One for the Eve guys 🙂

PS Creases. Meh.

One thing about better kit at home, it does tend to detract from the cinema experience.

The screens at Vue seem a bit clapped out, especially comparing to what you see from LCD tv and a newer dvd/blu-ray player. The player makes a big difference, it improves dvds to nearly blu-ray quality …

I won't be replacing many of my dvd's with blu-ray though, it improves dvd enough that it's not really worth it. Think it'll make my movie buying a bit cheaper though 🙂 Only buying blurays now so I'm getting fewer than I used to cos they cost more …

Blu-ray quality – I was wrong with one thought, they play back at 24fps instead of putting in extra frames. Difference is probably that it has the time to show every bit of those 24fps instead of blurring between them …

Wouldn't bother with older films in blu-ray though. If it's too old to have been shot in hi-def, why spend the extra to get detail that isn't going to be there.

Hype aside (and I never listen to hype but don't let myself be put off by it either), it does make a helluva difference. I would say for once, the hype is earned (though be careful which discs you buy if you do ever go Blu-ray as some of the prints just aren't up to it).

Yeah – HD genuinely looks better but I've always wondered if it's worth it enough to give in to all the hype about it …

Fallen in on a bit of a "if not broke, don't fix". That said, my dvd's look great on the new kit 🙂 The LCD telly makes them a lot sharper in a way CRTs can't manage. Had the new stuff for just over a month, wouldn't want to go back 🙂

Looks great, I just put off by all the hype …

LoL! Only being there is actually like being there! 😉

I am a total HD convert I'm afraid. I'v had a PS3 and HD TV for awhile now and I notice the difference very much when things aren't in HD. It looks a bit fuzzy and less well defined all round. Some films I have watched in HD are like watching them again for the first time but as with all things, it's only worth it if it's something that matters to you 🙂

Been enjoying HD again, well – maybe not as much as the HD Evangelists would have you think but what I’ve been watching in HD this weekend has been well worth it.

I’ve been quiet lately, which usually means I’ve been gaming again 🙂 Yep. Definitely gaming again, watching a bit too much telly too. I dunno about other people but I’m not sure how interesting it is to read when people are talking about gaming, which is why I don’t post that much nowadays about it.

That said though, the latest one is worth writing things about. It’s called Mass Effect 2, second in what’s likely to be a trilogy (with more after that probably) where you are Commander Shephard, tasked with saving the galaxy yet again. (There are games out there that aren’t centered around that cliche, honest!) It’s a very strong step forward on from the first game. Different can be Very Very Good. One of the All Time Greats in strategy is XCOM1 – Ufo : Enemy Unknown. On the heels of UFO came Terror From The Deep, which was XCOM1 under the sea, same game different graphics. Mass Effect 2 is definitely not Mass Effect 1 with different graphics. They’ve done a great job of evolving the game. It’s a much better game but the good but flawed Dragon Age.

Heh heh heh – that’s enough about the game, there will be plenty of reviews out there which will go orgasmic over this one.

YARR ! Six Nations championship started again this weekend. I don’t watch club rugby on the telly like I do county cricket but I’m always glued to the international rugby. It’s very rare that you find sport where the result is genuinely in doubt all the way to the end.

It definitely increases the excitement of watching when you don’t have a clue who’s going to win.

The Six Nations brings with it 4 teams who always have the potential to win it all, with a couple more who give it their best. And because it’s Six Nations, they all up their game considerably. We had one fairly comfortable win for Ireland yesterday, although Italy pushed them hard. England v Wales was one of the great games, not so much for the play but definitely for the “who’s going to win”. One of the best things about rugby is that there’s plenty of scoring opportunities, it only takes a split second for that clever break to happen to turn a game around.

And this weekend it’s in HD, courtesy of BBC’s coverage. I’m currently watching a bit of trench warfare with Scotland digging in against the French. Only 5 minutes in it as I type.

Ahh – HD. It is better picture quality. They’re paying proper attention to giving the signal the bandwidth it needs, so the little details aren’t being lost in the mush of data compression. I can see the pattern of the grass much better and I think I can see the matrix of the advertising boards. However, I’m not convinced it gives you that much more compared to normal telly definition. Certainly not enough to make me think about doing all the necessary to get Sky stuff in HD.

Besides, who cares about seeing the grass better or the ads clearer, I’m wanting to watch the game !

So – is it about possibly having more dots to the inch or is it about giving standard definition telly the bandwidth it needs ? It’s like those serials where the backgrounds are all pixellated because they’re not sending all of the information. I’ll quite happily recognise that HD looks better but it’s not “it’s like you’re there !” That much better.

Uhoh – it’s now 15-6 to France and it’s looking like the tipping point is coming … Time to get back to the game and hope a headache disappears before a suitability interview tomorrow. Think I may be taking advantage of the half time break to get fresh milk for the Coffee IV 🙂