Thursday 3 December 2009

a day off? blimey!

Day off tomorrow! Hurrah!

I'm hoping to square away some Chrimbo shopping activity. I do most of it online of course, but you always need cards and wrapping paper and stuff like that so I'll hopefully get as many of those boxes ticked as I can.

I'm also hoping I'll get some rest and recuperation time. I've been bloody knackered just recently, and it doesn't help with all the bits of me that are going wrong.

Toe still hurts, although it's better than it was. Also my front tooth starting hurting. The tooth was really sensitive when I was eating and drinking cold stuff, so I think it's just my usual sensitive teeth issues, rather than any sort of new problem. It does mean it feels like I'm falling apart!

I saw some interesting news on the Anno front the other day. They've announced an expansion pack. This adds multiplayer, which I don't really care about, but it also adds loads of other new stuff. It's due for release in February, so I guess I'm kinda doomed to play the game more than I should for a while yet.

And speaking of which, rather ashamedly I started on a new world last night. I know I really shouldn't have done that until I'd gotten further with my other world, but I kinda realised I'd made that original world too easy.

I mean, the whole idea was to play an easy world and build up a massive, well developed population, but I'd done stuff like disable the computer AI players and the Corsairs and it made it kinda dull if I'm honest. It certainly meant I didn't have some options and possibilities for doing stuff.

So I started a new game with more of that stuff turned on. Hopefully I'll stick with it.

I'm also planning on e-baying a load of stuff this weekend. I'm mainly hoping it represents good timing as far as Christmas is concerned. Oh, and I'm also hoping that e-bay wont rape me senseless, but that's kinda a non-starter as I know there's no way they won't.

I'm also hoping that this months' megami finally gets shipped over the weekend. Rather ominously the last issue is still saying "Not yet shipped" even though normally it's sent on or before the release date. In this case that was the 30th of November, which was Monday, so things aren't looking good to be frank.

Wednesday 2 December 2009

clarkson duel

There was no rental DVD this week.

On my plan I actually only get 3 rentals a month, so that means I often end up with one weekend a month with no rental disk. Ideally I'd upgrade to one of the unlimited packages, but they're a lot more expensive and I've heard they're not quite as "unlimited" as they purport to be. Also I'd end up watching them instead of my bought stuff, which wouldn't be very helpful.

Anyway, I did watch something else that's mini review worthy - the new Jeremy Clarkson DVD, which is called "Duel".

It's called duel because that's basically what it's about - competing things against each other. The competitions included:

- What's the best drifting car?
- Who's the fastest off-road celebrity?
- Which is fastest - a man or a car?
- Which will hit the ground first - a penny or a Ford Scorpio?
- Which is the best TV motoring show - Top Gear or Fifth Gear?

There were other bits too, but those were the main ones.

I should also point out that this is the first Jeremy Clarkson DVD I've actually watched. He's been putting them out for years now, but I've never really felt inclined to buy one. However, recently I've been watching a lot of Top Gear on Dave (don't ask) and this DVD seemed quite Top Gear-ish in nature, so I thought I'd pick it up.

Overall, I found it a bit hit and miss if I'm honest, both in terms of the actual entertainment value and in terms of really being about 'duels'.

One of the big problems is that the first bit on drifting doesn't really seem to have much focus. It's like they took half a dozen cars with them in Spain and then decided what to do with them when they got there. I mean, Clarkson spends half the bit driving around in a 4-wheel drive Lamborghini in which he makes it clear it's impossible to drift.

The idea was he was demonstrating the type of car that wasn't good for drifting and why, but it feels a bit loose - a bit "well, we've also got this Lambo, how can we include it in a bit about drifting?"

And that slightly unfocused problem crops up in several other places too. For example, the Ford Scorpio versus the penny bit just comes across as a random. A bit, let's drop a car from a great height because... er... we can race it against... something. No, wait, I know - a penny!

A penny?

Yes, a penny. It'll be brilliant.

Well, actually, it's okay from a wanton destruction point of view, but it's hardly the world's greatest duel. I mean, you can't really even see a penny falling :/.

And there's also a bit on the end involving a catapult that I didn't really get at all. I mean, if the penny/Scorpio thing is an odd duel then the catapult bit doesn't make any sense as a duel at all.

However, the DVD also has some really good bits too. The actual apple-crushing car drifting part is amusing, for example. And both the fastest off-road celebrity and top gear versus fifth gear bits are genuinely brilliant. In a way, I'd much rather have seen more of them than some of the other bits.

So yeah - hit and miss.

Which means it's actually very much like Top Gear - some stuff is really good, some bits really funny, other bits feel a bit shoe-horned in or don't quite make sense.

On balance, I'd say it's an entertaining watch if you really like the Top Gear stunts and races, but some bits you could skip through and not really miss anything.

Tuesday 1 December 2009

toe-tal agony

I've done something to the big toe on my right foot.

I don't know what it is that I've done - I don't remember stubbing it or bending it weirdly, but it's causing me quite a lot of discomfort. Basically, you know when you walk your toes bend as you move your foot? Well all of that movement of my big toe is painful.

It doesn't hurt as I just sit here typing and it's okay if I'm just standing up, but any kind of upward or downward movement (especially if it's taking any weight) is painful.

It actually started some time last week, but was a lot less painful. What I think caused it to become as bad as it is was driving down to Bristol. I tend to hold my foot a little weird on the accelerator - it's kinda difficult to explain, but let's just say I think that doing that for the best part of five hours caused it to get worse.

I think also all the walking about cleaning the car at the weekend didn't really help.

I'm trying to rest it as much as I can, but it's pretty difficult to avoid walking. I think I'll just crawl up in the evenings and avoid going out or anything - that's about as good as it's probably going to get as far as staying off it is concerned.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had a bit of a problem with the old car washing. One of the reasons I was doing it was that my windscreen was horribly filthy. It was getting so bad it was difficult to see out of.

Unfortunately, however, when I was cleaning my car I discovered I'd run out of the real good glass polish I use. It's expensive, but it's good because it cuts through all the grease and road-grime that's difficult for normal cleaners to deal with. But also it doesn't leave any streaks, which can be a real pain when you're driving.

I'll obviously buy some more of the good stuff, but the problem of course is will there be an opportunity to use it? I did clean the screen with more normal stuff, so it's way better than it was, but the streaks where already obvious yesterday as I was driving in to work.

Monday 30 November 2009

linen overload

So the bed linen turned up on Friday.

Slightly annoyingly it was all in one huge box... which was actually half empty :/. It had been stuffed with packing paper to fill it up. Why they didn't put it in a box half that size or multiple boxes, I don't know, but there you go.

I have a weird thing where I can't wear clothes or use towels or sheets or anything without first giving them a wash. I'm not entirely sure what the root of it is, but I think it's something I developed because (in my mind at least) they put stuff on the clothes to help them fold better for the shops.

Starch on shirts maybe? I dunno, I'm also perfectly happy to think it's just a weird paranoia/phobia type thing on my part, but either way, it means I've overloaded my washing basket.

I don't have a washing machine at my place, so I have to use a laundrette and they're going to have a bit of a windfall over the next couple of weeks. The march of winter and the chilly weather means I'm wearing loads more clothes to wrap up warm, and all this linen will have to be washed before I'll use it.

I'm less worried about the duvet and the pillow, as they won't come in direct contact with my skin, so I've already started using them. The duvet is 13.5 tog apparently. I've no idea how the tog scale works, but basically bigger numbers mean warmer and 13.5 is right at the top end.

It's really warm and snugly, in other words. While I'm pretty sure that means I'll have to by another thinner one for summer, right now with the temperatures having dipped drastically I'm loving it.

I got two new pillows, partly because they were on offer, but also because I like a lot of pillow support. However, these new ones are a bit too big, even for me. I've got an existing pillow that's still in reasonable knick, and with the other two it's too high for me to actually sleep with. It's good for when I'm sitting in bed watching telly, though.

I actually cleaned my car on Saturday. I kinda took myself by surprise actually, as I hadn't particularly planned to do it. However, the atrocious weather we've been having recently doesn't really seem like it's going to end for a while, so I thought it best to take advantage of a lull we had on Saturday.

Also, with my trip to Bristol last week it was very apparent to me just how filthy my car was and I really wanted to hoover it out at the least. My car is variety of quite grey colours. It's not dull, in my opinion, and it all matches quite nicely. The difficulty with it, though, is that inside it really shows up the dirt. It's odd actually, because the outside is the opposite - it can be incredibly filthy, but it looks okay.

However, inside, the slightest bit of dust really stands out. I think it's cos inside the grey is approaching black, which is notorious for showing up dirt, whereas outside it's a much lighter grey which is actually kinda similar to the usual dusty grime you get on cars.

I'm paying for my car washing antics today, though. My hamstrings are really aching. Both washing and hovering the car involves a lot of bending over, and that really strains my hamstrings. I'm almost tempted to do warm-up exercises before I wash the car, but then I'd look a bit of a tit.

Otherwise the weekend involved a heck of a lot of Anno. So much so that my arm was aching a little by Sunday evening. I'm really enjoying it though and have managed to keep going with the same map for yonks now. I'm even on the verge of managing to have all of the possible resources and products in use.

Well, I say nearly on the verge. Actually I need to completely restructure a good chunk of the world so that I can get more people in there, but the real point is that such a major tweak hasn't put me off at all. I have a plan and I'm going for it.