Thursday 22 May 2008

Dude, you suck at this

I first realised I was rubbish at games way back when I was a kid.

We used to have an Amstrad cpc 6128 computer. Back then, a huge amount of memory was defined in the kb range, not the gb range. This tended to mean that the games we used to play were different to what they are nowadays. The sheer graphical demand of FPS's, for example, meant nobody had even dreamt of doing them - not even in the arcades.

Anyway, a game we used to play a lot of back then was this winter Olympics sports kinda thing, and the sub-game me and my sister were obsessed with was the Bob-sleigh. That's the one were 4 blokes jump into the sleigh at the beginning and then in careens down a narrow open-tunnel sort of thing at around 100mph.

You the player basically used to have to do the steering down the course, trying to go that little bit faster each time. My realisation came that I was rubbish at gaming when I could not for the life of me beat the pre-set fastest time on the score board. I think I got up to third position as my best ever time.

Since then, every single game I've ever played has been played on the easiest setting, and I'm pleased as punch if I beat it. Normally I can't, so I end up cheating (if available). Though tbh, I do that mainly so I get maximum benefit out of the game, which has probably cost quite a bit of money - not at least seeing all of the levels seems a bit of a rip-off to me.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Wibbety wobbety

I've been working on the company website today. Surprisingly, it actually feels like I might actually be getting somewhere.

The company site has always been a bone of contention with me. Initially when I joined it was a pug ugly lump of arse that just was not fit for purpose. That was created a very long time ago and since then many things have changed.

Several years ago I attempted to overhaul the site myself. Now I'm no web programmer and I've not got the greatest visual flare, but my main aim wasn't really to change that side of it, it was to update the contents.

However, what I really wanted to do was refocus the site on a much simpler message.

It did not go well.

See, the problem is my boss has a tendency not to want to make the site too focused. Instead, she'd prefer to make it all things to all comers. But the trouble with that is it ends up being no-use to no-one.

In the end I just ended up adding more stuff than removing it.

A few years later and my other boss is wanting to improve the site. This time I'm not really involved, other than to suggest a few things. In the end the work ends up beign done by outside contractors.

One of the key changes is to remake the site in asp and to make it so that we can edit the contents easily on-line. These aims were achieved, and so that's what I'm doing.

The problem is we still have this awful, clunky structure that needs hacking and slashing and trimming down and refocusing like I wanted to do all those years ago. I therefore wasn't looking forward to the task when I was told the boss is thinking of an update.

However, I bit the bullet and basically went through what I think si wrong with it. And, happily the boss seems to agree. I think she's been on the site and seen it looks pretty now, but was herself overwhelmed with the sheer volumes of, well, stuff on there.

And so I may be getting to actually make proper changes to the structure rather than just cramming in yet more stuff.

Like a part of me

On Saturday I popped down to my opticians to pick up my new pair of glasses.

My prescription hadn't changed much, but I'd been getting a few headaches and that's normally a sign it's time for a change.

I hate getting new glasses. The thing about my eyes is that I'm really short sighted. I mean really short sighted - I almost can't see past the end of my nose. As such, I wear my glasses basically constantly from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.

Well, when you wear something so constantly and they perform such an intrinsic function to your every day life, they basically become a part of you. For me, wearing glasses is part of who I am, and the specific glasses I'm wearing are like my arm or my leg - you kinda forget they're there, but if something changes about them then it's the only thing you can think about.

My new glasses are a heck of a lot heavier than my old ones, which were extremely light. So now it feels like I've got a half-pound weight perched on the end of my conk (even though it's only a matter of a few grammes).

There's also always a period of me adjusting and fiddling with the things that keep them on your face (the arms and the supports that sit on the bridge of your nose). This is the worst bit - it always feels like they totally don't fit and I'll never get it right, even though I've been through the same process dozens of times before.

Monday 19 May 2008

Obsessive gaming

This last couple of weekends I've been struggling with something of a gaming addiction/obsession.

What makes the obsession worse is that it's not for some hyper-cool, modern, totally immersive FPS like Call of Duty 4. It's for Civilization 3.

That's not even the latest version of Civ, it's the previous one in the series and must be getting on for 5 or six years old.

I've even started building custom maps and scenarios... I think I need to get some help.