week of whinging (or not)

So I've basically not blogged in about 3 weeks.

There are a number of reasons for this and I thought I'd come back with a week of whinging about some or all of these, but I'd also thought I'd write them over the weekend and I didn't do that.  Instead I basically spent all weekend playing SimCity, so I'm not sure I'm quite going to be doing the whinge week.

I discovered some people on YouTube who have been posting some hints and tips that are actually helpful and I've started to understand the mechanics of the game a bit better.  This means it's much more playable, but it also starts to make me think that it's misnamed.  It doesn't simulate any sort of city I've ever seen.

I'll give you a very basic example - education and jobs.  So you can place a grade school when the game starts and later unlock a high school.  Now the names are obviously American, but given those names would you not expect that a grade school educates your Sims to one level and then a high school to another.  And the grade school is for young Sims and the high school for older Sims.  There's also a university and a community college - these must be for even older / working age Sims, right?

That's not how it works.

The grade school and high school are identical in their function - they take in uneducated "kid" agents and turn them into educated agents.  They then take this education back to their homes and cause the homes to become educated, which eventually causes them to have less garbage and more recycling and have solar panels for less power use, etc.  So the high school is basically just an upgraded grade school and having both in your city is counter-productive.

Every day at 6AM the kids flop from being educated to uneducated.  Throughout the day they will leave their houses and be transported to the school by buses (this is for schools) - there's no need for them to all arrive at the start of the day.  This can perpetuate for eternity - there's no sense in them growing up or becoming workers.

The community college and university do the same job with a slight tweak - the kids (now called students) have to make their own way there.  This may be via car or whatever public transport.  But again, having education facilities of different types is actually counter-productive - your schools rob students from the college/uni.

This has a particular danger in that colleges and unis also have an additional function.  As your students attend they generate "tech level".  This is a sort of weird fluid that flows out from your college/uni (like water or power) and feeds the buildings that use it.  A college gives you tech level 2 and uni tech level 3.

The problem therefore is that fi your students aren't getting to uni/college then your buildings that need tech level will be starved.  This may make them, for example, stop working (high tech industry), become inefficient (electronics buildings) or cause a meltdown (nuclear power) - hence the danger.

And of course this isn't how you would expect it all to work; but what makes it confusing and annoying in the game is that the messaging reflects how you might expect it to work (your universities turn your kids into workers or your workers into educated workers, perhaps?).  So you'll get a message to the effect of "not enough educated workers", but what it actually means is that not enough students are going to uni and your tech level "fluence" is not enough to fill up all the buildings, like your water might not be enough to fill up all the buildings.

bank holiday error

I mentioned yesterday that I made a bit of a mess of timings, etc over the Bank Holiday weekend.

The main error came from SimCity.  Having been blogging about how I was thinking of leaving it for a while I thought I'd have a quick go at trying to adjust some settings to see fi that made any difference to the freezing.

My guess was that the freezing was either due to some game save problem (it saves to the cloud so there's no real way for me to tell what's going on) or if it was graphics related.  The only pattern I've noticed for the freezing is that it happens when I do something that involves the graphics - scrolling or editing a building or putting a data layer on, for example.  Now that's a bit tenuous as the whole game involves graphics, obviously, and it doesn't consistently freeze when I do any particular one thing, but I figured I could easily lower the graphical settings and see if it helped the stability of the game.

And, after fiddling for a while (I now have no filter on, some of the settings are at low or medium where my card should be powerful enough for it to handle the top settings and I run the game in a windowed mode at a lower resolution) I seemed to end up with the game basically playable.

The other thing was that they released update 4.0 and this included a new region so I started playing that... and I kept playing until I'd basically absorbed all of Saturday and half of Sunday.

This was where I forced myself to stop - I had the Monaco Grand Prix to watch and there was all this stuff I'd put on e-bay but that I hadn't watched.  I therefore switched track, but the reality was that I should have watched all that stuff first.  I had woefully underestimated how many extras there were, for example, so I then basically watched anime and films constantly from Sunday afternoon to Monday night and I still had hours of stuff left, hence why I've been getting up early and going to bed late to try to get it all done.

It's hardly an ideal situation and I need to get a bit of a grip - I need to keep watching stuff so that I'm then e-baying things that I've finished, rather than thinking I can watch them last minute and failing.  And I still need to keep selling stuff, so there's no respite on the horizon - I'm going to have a tough couple of months with money until my current ban on spending lets my finances catch up.

bad day

It's not even lunchtime and already I'm having a bad day.

I had to get up very early, having gone to bed pretty late.  This is because I made a bit of a mess of my time over the Bank Holiday weekend, which I'll talk about tomorrow, but I've basically left myself in a situation where I have some stuff I need to post for e-bay auctions that I've not watched.  But of course the only time I can watch it is before or after work, so I had to get up stupidly early to watch some stuff.

Having done that I discovered that the plug where I plug my kettle in appears to have stopped working.  Certainly the kettle is fine, but I get no power out of that plug.

I actually checked how much power I have in case I'd run out of juice or the circuit breakers had blown and therefore discovered that I have about £2.50 worth of electricity.  In theory this is enough to last me about 2 days, so long as I don't use the oven... except that I have basically run out of food and the only things I've got left need cooking in the oven.  That means I will have to buy some elecy tonight, but I have £20 to my name and I need to post some of those e-bay parcels I just mentioned.

I checked my account and obviously discovered I still haven't been paid.  I'm betting I won't get the money until Friday, which puts me in a real bind.

Having watched some stuff and parcelled it off I was a bit later than usual leaving for work, but it is half-term here, so I was hoping the roads would be quiet.  They were, but unfortunately when I got out to the car I discovered some workman was dropping off one of these mini-digger things, so I had to wait for him to finish before I could go.  Add on to that the fact they've now started some roadworks at the end of the road and I hit every red light possible on the journey and I was not as early as I normally am for work.

This then meant that my morning walk was rather hurried and when I got back to the car I discovered I had forgotten my shoes (I wear trainers for that first walk and to drive to work).  I'm therefore wearing my trainers at work, which are, thankfully, black so it's not too noticeable.

I then logged on and opened a couple of e-mails that were also bad news.  I then went to listen to my MP3 player and discovered one of the ear bud things (I use in-ear headphones) has fallen off again.  This happens fairly often - it will most likely be in my bag in the car, but if not I do have spares.  However, it does mean I have had to switch to my other set of earphones I use for my MP3 player I use when walking and those aren't really very work friendly.

And it's only mid-morning.

monaco

Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

The BBC is only showing highlights on the TV, but I'll probably listen on the radio.  I'm sure I'll do other stuff while I listen, as Monaco is not traditionally the most exciting to watch on TV.

It was the race I went to a few years ago with my family and I really enjoyed it while I was there, but it can produce some dull races on TV.  The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to overtake and of course fi you can't overtake then it's just everyone following each other around or you have to rely on clever tyre and pit stop strategies, which are okay but not very exciting to watch.

This year the tyres seemed to be very short lived so that could mean it will be more interesting or it could make it pretty chaotic.

It's also the bank holiday weekend.  As I posted the other day I'm pretty much skint until I get paid, which won't be until next week proper, so I'll not be doing much.  Indeed I have lots of anime on Blu Ray I need to watch, because it's all on e-bay about to be bought by people, so that's my weekend sorted.

In other news I've not heard anything from Customs about the parcel charges.  I've a horrible feeling I will have to pay the full fines once I've gotten paid and then have to try again to claim it back.  That won't help my finances any!  But then it'll be even more expensive if it gets sent back to Japan and I have to pay for it to be imported again.

animu

I've been watching some anime.

I know - shock revelation, what with it supposedly being one of my hobbies and all, but it’s been a long time since I really watched any anime.

I therefore thought I might revive my mini reviews:


attack on titan

I've read several volumes of the manga and basically enjoyed it.  The artwork is a bit rough around the edges and the story is all over the places, but I quite like it despite those.

It kind of goes without saying that the artwork in the anime is much better, but it is actually of quite a high standard.  They've also done a lot to smooth out the story - it's less 'high energy' because of that, but it also makes it easier to follow.

My only real criticism would be that the gore has been toned down - a lot happens off camera - and really it's this that's one of the key aspects of the manga: when the characters are whining about how scared you are, in the manga you've seen their friends be eaten alive, but in the anime you know it happened but didn't actually see how horrible it was, so you don't quite feel the same way.

But that's a fairly minor gripe - it's still worth watching.


flowers of evil

I've only actually watched 3 episodes of this.

It's drawn quite a bit of flack as it's actually rotoscoped.  I've never really been a fan of rotoscoping.  I think it's okay here, but I think much of what it brings could have been achieved with traditional animation.  Indeed, I think a lot of what people have been complimenting that they think the rotoscoping is the reason for is actually more to do with the sound design.  The sound is really creepy - there's a lot of bits that really ramp up the tension and atmosphere.

But the reason I've not really watched more than 3 episodes is I find he characters a bit annoying.  It also seems very unrealistic - and I think this is actually made worse by the rotoscoping.  You know it's been acted out in real life, so it's like a drama someone has drawn on, but it's therefore a very unrealistic drama.


gargantia on the verduos planet

I think this might actually be my favourite of the season.  It's certainly the most proper science fiction of the shows I've watched.  I like the premise, the plot and the characters and I think it looks great and has been done really well (it is a Production I.G. series, after all).

If I was pushed to make one criticism it's that it could have moved a bit swifter - there were some bits that could have been chopped out to move things along a lot quicker.  But even during those bits the show is entertaining enough.  Oh, and I suppose the fan service it has is a bit unnecessary too; given the overall SF nature of the show it can feel a little out of place.


majestic prince

I have to say my interest in this one has waned a bit over the course of watching it.  I think a part of this is that it's been quite samey.  I am actually a bit puzzled that this was listed as having 24 episodes where Gargantia was listed as having 13 as I'd have said the longevity of the two series feels the other way around (but not sure where I saw these listings so I don't know if they're true).

Another problem I had was that in the first few episodes I had the feeling that the show was actually a bit of a parody, or at least that it was making a few knowing winks at the story itself, but as the episodes have gone on I've felt this much less.

I did actually think it bore a resemblance to shows like GaoGaiGar - certainly the bad guys are the same sort of bonkers OTT bunch.  However, GGG had the advantage of a proper giant robot and a real sense of fun.  This tries to be a bit more serious than it needs to be to work properly.

Although saying that it could have worked if it had gone the other way.  I mean, I think the main characters are meant to be kids who have had their memories wiped so they don't remember their families or anything, but it doesn't really examine how dark this is.


yuyushiki

It's difficult to hate shows like this.

Yuyushiki is one of those girls in clubs shows like K-ON, only in K-ON the girls are meant to be in a music club but actually spend their time doing nothing, where in yuyu their club is basically searching the internet.

I dunno, as an example of the genre it's perfectly fine and I enjoy it, but it's hardly ground-breaking stuff.


This isn't all the stuff from this season; but it's the ones I liked the look of.  I might try sampling the other series from this season across the Bank Holiday weekend to see if they're worth watching.

I've also watched some stuff I bought (I was kind of forced to, because it's on Blu-Ray and, as my post earlier in the week said) I need the cash from selling them on e-bay.  I'll talk about those in another post.

skint

I am skint.

And I mean skint.  I can't currently afford to buy petrol for my car, which will need filling up on Friday.  I have exactly £11 worth of electricity on the meter and this won't last long enough if I have to turn the heating on, which seems likely given the way the weather is just now.  I'm even wondering what I will have to buy grocery-wise (food and toiletries, etc) and what I can put off until I get my next pay cheque.

That next pay cheque will turn up next week, but it will be kinda critical when it turns up.  I have a Direct Debit coming out on Wednesday for £110.  I don't currently have £110.  I should be getting about £100 for stuff I currently have on e-bay, but as with my pay cheque, there's no guarantee people will pay straight away.

If not I will have to use my other overdraft (my HSBC one is already maxed out).  I certainly don't have anything in my savings account I could transfer over.

I've even been toying with the idea of taking out one of these short-term cash loans.  I kinda know that would be lethal, though.

I have been taking steps to correct the holes in my finance, but the problem again has been the whole stag-do, wedding and Dad's PC combo, which has proven to be quite the

Indeed, I was making quite good progress and was getting to the stage where I wasn't having to use as much of my overdraft and the credit cards were starting to come down.  However, these recent events have wiped out that "breathing room" I had built up.

What I need to do is get more stuff on e-bay, but I've kinda reached a point where I have to watch/play/read the things I have in order to sell them.  In particular the stuff I could rip and flog has pretty much run out.

Well, that's not quite true - I've a lot of stuff I could sell, but I've a feeling most of it will fall into the "more expensive to sell than I will get back" category.  The few things I think might be worth a significant amount are kinda crossing a line - like selling your car to buy petrol :/.

Of course what I really need is a job that pays me a wage that's appropriate for my skill and value.  But then that's a whole other story.

eurovision

It was Eurovision this weekend.

As per usual it took me somewhat by surprise.  For some reason I have it in my head that it is held later in the year.  I think this might be because the Eurovision's I mainly remember watching were either as a kid or as a Student and in both my memories are largely of it being warm and late light (the student ones often involved drinking).  Therefore in my head Eurovision is associated with summer.

Anyway, this year was okay.  It was held in Sweden and was much more "traditional" in the sense that they hadn't gone mega bonkers with the whole thing.  A lot of the Russian satellite states (who had quite a string of wins when they all joined and only voted for each other) seemed to get into a bit of a staging war, with ever bigger productions.

Sweden just put it on in a reasonably-sized hall with a single presenter on a fairly basic stage with a basic presentation.  Really it's about the songs, after all.

The songs were genuinely of an okay standard this year.  There were only a couple that stood out with Eurovision-weirdness, and this was mainly in the staging, rather than the songs themselves.

I thought the winner was okay.  I got a bit mixed up with what was meant to be the favourite, but I think a perfectly okay pop song won in the end.  Although I would have liked something like Greece to have won, as there's was more fun and definitely more memorable.

The UK did poorly, as has become the norm in recent years.  There is obviously the Balkan effect nowadays, but to be totally frank it was another largely forgettable and uninteresting song.

Just recently they seem to have decided the best tactic is to have a 'star' name sing the song, but a star name from the ancient past.  Last year it was Bacharach and this year Bonnie Tyler.  I'm puzzled by this approach - isn't it mostly youngsters (or at least families) that watch Eurovision?  So what youngster knows Bonnie Tyler from Adam?

simcity 3.0

The saga of SimCity continues.

They’ve now issued patch 3.0.  I was hoping that 2.0 represented a significant fix, but it was still pretty messed up after that.  And 3.0 now seems to have actually broken the game - it freezes my entire system.

I really don’t understand what’s going on with the patches, tbh, because the stuff they patch generally hasn’t been an issue for me until they patch it.

I’ll give you a very good example - disasters.  Before patch 2.0 I don’t think I’d seen a disaster, yet everyone else was complaining about disasters happening every two minutes.  So they patched it and suddenly I’m getting disaster after disaster.

It’s like I somehow got the final version of the game and every time they patch it I step back a version.

It’s incredibly frustrating, because if the game would just work better I think I’d probably enjoy it, but then they patched it again and when I played it, it froze my entire machine 4 times in a row and I've started to wonder why I bought the game in the first place.

It’s particularly frustrating because it’s not freezing for the same reason - I was doing completely different things and the game was at a different stage (several hours in and only about 15 minutes in).  It’s also annoying that it’s freezing the entire machine so I have to use the reset button, I can’t just hit ctrl+alt+del and kill it via the task manager.

What’ weird with it is that when I then reload I’ve only lost a minute or two of play.  I’m actually wondering if it’s the game saves that are killing it, but because of how it does it I have no idea if it’s saving related or not.

I actually remember there was big problem with Anno1404, which had a horrible that would cause saves to corrupt so you'd play for hours and lose all of it because the saves had no information in them.  It also had a memory inflation issue that meant you couldn't really play giant maps.  Those took them months to resolve so I’m starting to wonder whether I shouldn’t just put the game on hold and pick it up again in 6 months when hopefully it will be properly patched.

I understand yet another patch has been issued recently, so perhaps that will solve it?

how much?

I appear to have been the victim of a massive cock-up.

I buy figures directly from Japan. They are expensive things, but the site I use sells them at good value and I’m happy to take the VAT charges on the chin for importing them.

Two figures were recently dispatched to me.  Because they have had to be put in a big box (both are together, where I was originally expecting each individually) they’ve had to upgrade the postage to EMS, which is a tracked service and is quicker, but a lot more expensive.

I mention this because the figures are only about £50 each and the new postage cost is about £30.  I’m obviously converting from yen, but the upshot is that the total cost is about £130.  At worst case we’re talking £150.

This is important because customs charges only kick in for items that cost above £135.  Below that you only pay VAT and even above it they waive it if the charge is less than £9.  I’ve never paid customs charges, only VAT.

VAT is at 20% so I was expecting a charge of around £26 and then the (extortionate) parcel force handling fees would take it up to about £40.

The bill arrived yesterday - it is for £273.68

Thy want to charge me £57.39 for customs and £202.79 for VAT.

Those numbers are bigger than the original value of the items + postage!

I have absolutely no clue how that has happened, but I figure one of a few things might be the source of the problem - the original forms were not filled out properly, so they’ve done the calculations based on wrong numbers, or perhaps they’ve fucked up the yen to pounds conversion, but what is definitely the case is someone's made a huge mistake somewhere.

Unfortunately, this now gives me the horrible problem of having to work out who’s make the mistake, how I get it corrected, who I have to deal with to do that and all sorts.

There’s a form you can download on the customs site, but they want me to send the bits of paper you get with the parcel.  Well, I can’t send those until I’ve got the parcel, and I can’t get the parcel without paying and I’m not paying £275 for a parcel whose contents cost me £130.

Particularly since I can’t afford £275.

Of course there’s an added problem - parcel force say they will only hold onto the parcel for 20 days (and that was about 4 days ago).  Can I get this sorted in 20 days?  Do I think HMRC will even look at the form in 20 days?

Marvellous.

holiday - dad pc

So after the wedding I had two basic tasks for the rest of my holiday.

Firstly, I had to clear down my PVR a bit.  The PVR had basically gotten to 90% full, and given the last part of the holiday was going to be away from home I needed to clear it down or it would run out of space.

I did okay with this - I cleared off about 40% off, taking it down to 50% full.  If I’d been off the whole week I’d have taken it down further.  And if I hadn’t had the other task to do I would have made more progress too I think.

The other task was my Dad’s PC.

As mentioned before the holiday I made some poor decisions with the money he’d paid for it so I ended up having to split the purchases across multiple cards.  This was particularly annoying since I therefore had to pay multiple postage for everything that was then delivered at exactly the same time in the same van!

In the end I bought the full spec stuff I’d said I would (I could have gone cheaper) with two exceptions: I didn’t buy a separate CPU cooler and I only bought 16gb of the 32gb of RAM.

Both of these would be virtually undetectable to him, though I did own up, although I didn’t give the proper reason that I’d fucked up.  Instead I said I’d forgotten about the cooler and would get it later and that the RAM had been faulty so I’d had to return it.

I will get both of these, but it will be later when I have some money - probably for when I next see him, which will likely by in October or so.

Building the PC took me about a day all told.

I then went down to my Dad’s on Thursday, getting there in the early evening.  I therefore started the installation process on the Friday.  Well, there was a bit of an issue we had to fix first.

See, I was hoping we could re-use his DVD drive, which isn’t that old.  I’d expected the motherboard would have both connection types (SATA and I forget what the older one is called).  Unfortunately, the board only had SATA and it turned out his drive only had the older one.  We therefore popped to PC World and got a new drive (it was about £30 - probably the same as buying online, taking postage into account).  However, we also had to get a new keyboard, as it turned out the keyboard he had was PS/2 only - I’d guessed/assumed it was USB with an adapter, but it was just PS/2.

There was a bit of a cock up there as he actually had a USB mouse, but kinda forgot - I’d assumed it was part of the same thing (it’s wireless and the receiver was both and it used to be, but apparently he’d gotten a new mouse that was USB, but it was the same make - all very complicated).

Anyway, that afternoon I started and basically installed Windows7 plus all the millions of updates.

The Saturday I installed all the separate applications and the hardware, etc.  My dad was a bit of a pain on this day - it was weird actually, as if he wasn’t expecting it to take so long and was making a fuss to get my attention like a child whose parents are too busy so they start misbehaving to get attention.  He kept getting in the way and of course, ironically, that meant it took longer.

Anyway, Sunday we put the desk and all the bits back away and I gave him a quick tour of the machine.  He seemed pleased, particularly with the speed.  With the old machine he used to turn it on then take the dog for a walk and it would just be ready to log on when he got back.  Then he’d make a pot of tea while it logged on and was ready for him to actually do anything.

The new one you press power on and 10 seconds later (5 of which are the POST checks) it’s ready for you to log on.

holiday - wedding

I didn't blog last week as it was all a bit hectic.

I had a lot to catch up on having been away for a good chunk of my leave, and having not really paid much attention to things while I was here.

The holiday started with a friend’s wedding (I went to the reception only).  This was the friend whose stag do I went on a few months back.

I was determined not to spend as much money on the wedding as I did on the stag.  This meant booking into a cheap Travelodge that was further away than some of the more expensive hotels.  My intention was to get a taxi there but walk back.  This didn’t quite work.

The problems started with the journey up.  I live in Farnham, which is near Guildford and the wedding was in Chelmsford in Essex.  This meant I had to go around the M25.

I could have gone north.  This would be a lot further and would mean risking the M3 & M4 junctions.  I also know that that stretch is riddled with road works and bits where the speed is always limited.  And as I say, I wanted to save money so going the long way round isn’t a good idea given the cost of petrol.

I therefore went the south way.  This took me through the Dartford crossing.  I wasn’t aware that the cost of the toll had gone up so much - it’s now £2 for a car so any petrol money saved was probably cancelled out.

But the real issue was the time - I set off at 2:00PM.  I had to get some petrol, but the reception was due to start at 7:00PM - that gave me 5 hours and the journey was only 90miles.  Surely even with the tunnel I’d be ahead of rush hour so I’d be okay, right?  I mean 1.5 hours for 90 miles is a reasonable journey time, so double it to 3 hours just in case and that still gave me a 2 hour margin, right?  I could have a leisurely shower and shave and still be there early.

Er, no - it took me 6.5 hours to get there!

The A3 was really busy, the M25 was solid and then the road to Chelmsford (I forget the number) was rammed too.  I took me 5 hours to do 90 miles!  So I had to rush to have a shower and shave and get a taxi there.

The next thing that happened was that the taxi dropped me at the wrong place!  The problem was there are two venues with basically the same name.  When I got there the other issue was that there was another wedding going on, so the taxi driver said “is that them?” and I said “I guess” and got out and paid.

But of course they were just distant figures in wedding gear so it was only as I wandered up that I realised they weren’t my friends!  The actual venue was over a mile away up the road, and of course both were in the middle of nowhere so I had to walk!

When I did get there all the stress and lateness meant I bolted my drinks and got far drunker than I intended.

So then I had my plan of walking home.  This would have worked except for a few things: I’d already walked a mile and a bit.  I was drunker than I should have been.  It was absolutely freezing - having had lots of nice weather it had suddenly turned cold and it was a miserable walk after a while.

I therefore ended up hailing a taxi who took the main roads, so even though we were only about 2 miles from the hotel it cost me £10 (the journey there, which was obviously too short, cost £15) so I think overall I hardly saved anything at all.

I’ll continue with the holiday details later in the week.

spanish grand prix

It was the Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.

It’s not traditionally a very good race - the circuit isn’t very good for overtaking, but also it’s where they do all the testing so they know it inside out.  The race this weekend was okay - I’ve seen worse, but then I’ve also seen better.

One of the most bizarre things was that the two Mercedes qualified on the front row, but then during the race it was like they’d put the cars in reverse.  They just lost place after place, lap after lap.

Lewis started 2nd and ended up 12th.  It’s bizarre - how does that happen that you can pound in a lap that’s way faster than everybody else on Saturday and then the next day it’s like you have the handbrake on?

There were quite a lot of comments about the tyres.  I’m not sure what I think about this - Pirelli coming in certainly made the racing more interesting, but it’s not good when they’re all making 3 or 4 pit stops per race. It’s confusing and too much, really.  I'm also left wondering how many pit stops there will be in Canada where the surface is such that it usually eats tyres.

Anyway, Alonso’s performance was excellent - he had a really great early race, overtaking everybody left and right (you could actually hear the spectators cheering), but after that early phase the race was quite quiet.

If Ferrari can avoid more races lost through unreliability then it could be an interesting championship - the Lotus's are very reliable and consistent and the Red Bulls are there or thereabouts.

holiday

I'm off on holiday from tomorrow.

I'm actually going to a wedding reception on the Friday (I'm not attending the wedding itself, just the reception afterwards).  They're having it in the middle of nowhere, and the Travelodge I'm staying at is a fair distance away, so I've a horrible feeling it could cost me a fortune in taxi fares, as well as being heavy on the wallet for the more obvious reasons.

Then the week after I'm building the PC, as mentioned yesterday.  I'm also hoping to get some stuff watched, both in terms of recorded programs so that I've a bit more of a cushion of free space and I'm not constantly watching stuff in a panic so that I don't run out of room, but also in terms of Blu Rays.

I've stacked up quite a pile of Blu Rays to watch and I don't have any means of ripping them so I can't sell them on until I've seen them.  There's a handful I think may be keepers, but mostly they're not things I'll want to hang on, but as I say, I can't sell them until I've watched them.

It's then my birthday and I'll be off down to my Dads to install the PC and also to see him as it's been ages since I have.  Not sure how long I'll stay, but I expect I'll come back on the Sunday or Monday - the Monday is the bank holiday, so I'll be back to work (and blogging) on the Tuesday.

dad PC

I've made a bit of a potential minor catastrophic blunder.

Well, actually I've made a series of relatively small blunder that have combined and could give me some fairly serious problems.

I should start at the beginning.

My dad currently uses my sister's old desktop PC.  It's very old - I built it for her more than a decade ago, and it was only mid-spec when it was built.  It's therefore getting quite creaky - particularly as my dad is a bit of a one for installing random bits of software and doesn't know how to optimise the system.

So, for example, his penchant for saying yes to installs he doesn't actually want/need/know what they are means he has to have the virus checker doing constant scan and that of course uses up a good chunk of the available resources (virus software seems to be quite prone to becoming bloat-ware under the assumption that everyone is running the latest-spec equipment), slowing it down further.

He's also been getting into digital photography and so wants a system that could handle processing and manipulating big digital photographs.  He therefore asked me a while back about getting a new machine and I recommended either buying one from PC world (or similar) if he wanted a cheap route to upgrade or me building one if he had a bit more cash as I could build one with specs that would help him, rather than lots of rubbish he didn't need that you get if you spend a lot of money in such places.

He agreed and went with a budget of £1,000.  I then put together some suggestions and we refined it and it came in at about the right budget.  It was a bit of a beast of a system in terms of processor, ram and hard-drive, but nothing special for the graphics, case and other bits (he's already using a bigger monitor, so he's keeping that, and we're also re-using his DVD burner - both are recent additions to the old machine so aren't that old, but also he doesn't need anything more).

Anyway, that was all fine and good, but I had a bit of an issue with timing, but also with finances, so he transferred the money, but I didn't have the time to buy stuff, plus some of it wasn't in stock at the time.  However, I did something particularly dumb with the money too.

I prefer to use credit cards online for the additional protection they give, but instead of putting all the money onto one card and therefore freeing up an appropriate slot, I spread it across multiple cards.  Why the hell I did this looking back I don't know - it means multiple orders and therefore multiple postage, so will cost me more.

Also, rather annoyingly, I've now come to buy the bits and the price of every single bit has gone up slightly.  Not a lot - a few pounds, or tens of pounds- but enough to give me some additional issues.

It also doesn't help that I didn't really think sensibly about my car tax and insurance: I should have done 6 months instead of 12 for the car tax and split the insurance into monthly payments - both would have cost more in the long term, but wouldn't have taken big chunks out of my cash reserves.  The stag do also cost a lot more money than I thought it would - I haven't added it up, but it was at least £500, all of which had to be paid in cash as it was all paid for by the best man and then re-paid by us: I couldn't book anything individually, which I could have put on a card and therefore given myself some free-space for my Dad's PC.

The upshot of all this is that I now have an annoying situation where I am going to have to pay more for my Dad's PC than he has paid me, but I can't go back to him with the above problems because he's under the impression I've already bought it all.  What I might do is make a substitution - there are one or two bits that I picked as slightly better than he needs (the GFX card in particular) in order to make the budget up so I may go cheaper so it cancels out the additional cost.  Not 100% honest, but he will never play a game on it so he doesn't need anything with any grunt.

version two point oh

So yesterday they launched the version 2.0 patch for SimCity.

I haven't tried it out yet - they took the servers down for quite a while to do it - but also I try not to play during the week too much.  Plus I figure that a lot of people will have played in order to see if the new patch has really helped to fix things or not, so I'm guessing it would have been quite busy.

I don't think it will fix everything that needs fixing.  Indeed, I don't think some of the things that should be fixed ever will be.  Or at least, in order to be fixed, they would need some serious redesigning of the game engine/mechanics.

Having played a fair bit and sat down and studied what's going on in places I think traffic in particular is quite badly broken.

There are two big problems - the rules they've set for how vehicles drive on the roads and the "behaviour" of the Sims that driving is a function of.  The first would require a total change of the engine.  The second would also require some major changes but I think they may be able to "tune" the game around it or the bits that need changing might be changeable.

In the first the problem is that vehicles are very much "on rails".  When you drive a car on a normal road there is nothing that stops you from changing lanes (going into the side of the road oncoming traffic uses).  Well, I mean apart from the oncoming traffic itself and solid white lines - what I mean is, if someone stops in the road you can move into the oncoming lane in order to overtake them.  This doesn't happen in SimCity - all vehicles are on rails.

But in SimCity they do not do this - if a fire engine stops to put out a fire then all vehicles stop behind it, causing a huge traffic blockage.  And conversely, if an emergency vehicle gets stuck behind something it won't go in the oncoming lane to overtake.  Now also there are (unrealistically, given the permitted density of roads and types of junctions allowed) so many vehicles on the roads in SimCity there wouldn't be that much opportunity to overtake, but that's not the point - it's unrealistic behaviour that leads to clogged streets.

There's other stuff as well, but that's the best example.  There is a solution - you can upgrade the roads to multi-lane jobs and vehicles will overtake, but building density is linked to road density, so you then get buildings upgrading (there's no way to stop this) and so there are more cars, leading to clogged streets again!

The other issue is behaviour - no Sim has a fixed abode or fixed job, they all just go to the nearest free house/free factory/empty school/etc.  This is simple to code and I'm sure minimises memory requirements, but it means that all Sims head off to the same destinations all the time - they all try to go to the nearest job, leading to huge jams.

And only once they reach the warehouse and the jobs fill up do they all suddenly then decide to go to the next job.  This basically applies to everything they do, which is why you get huge lines of buses all following each other about and why vehicles perform a staggering number of U-turns (which is also another reflection of the previous issue - they can only perform a U-turn at a proper junction, rather than randomly, which also clogs up the roads!).

Now as I say, this second one is the sort of issue that I think they may be able to tweak the algorithms to give a bit more realistic behaviour, or even perhaps replace the algorithm for that sort of behaviour without needing to fundamentally rebuild everything.  So I'm hoping this is what v2.0 helps to fix.

If it doesn't then I've been playing about with some workarounds.  One in particular that seems to help is to construct your entire city as one big loop.  It can be quite fun working this out, but boy does it lead to some unrealistic cities.

Another thing that helps traffic is to think of things as mini cities, so each small bit of residential has easy/close access to commercial and industrial, so they don't do too much long-distance driving (they don't care what the commercial/industrial is, remember, so they don't need go further than their nearest job).  Again, horribly unrealistic cities, but at least your entire city doesn't grind to a halt!

bahrain

Well, how wrong was I?

Bahrain turned out to be a really interesting race.  It was virtually non-stop, with lots of overtaking and good on-circuit action (and a bit of not so good action).

I think a big part of it is the DRS, which really works here - it enables them to get into a position for overtaking but doesn't make it a simple drive-past like it does at some other circuits.  That's why it actually made China a worse race - if it's a circuit where there are already a few chances to overtake then it either makes those areas too easy or shifts the overtaking from that area to the main straight (why battle it out in a corner when you can just wait and drive past on the straight).

It wasn't all clean battling in Bahrain.  Perez trying to overtake Button was a bit close to the mark (he even hit him a couple of times).  For team-mates it's good that they were keen to fight and not ordered not to at all, but it needs to be totally clean - taking out your own team-mate (and, worse, yourself as well) is an absolute no-no as it basically ruins the work of the team and could cost valuable points.

However, that wasn't the only action - there were good fights between plenty of other cars too and some interesting results - the Force India of Paul Di Resta, for example, got up to 4th.  The Lotus is looking extremely consistent - Vettel won, but Kimi and Grosjean were in 2nd and 3rd.  The Red Bull therefore looks less comprehensively dominant than in previous years and we know there are circuits it doesn't suit as well given the design philosophy.  However, the Lotus looks like it may be a good performer whatever the circuit.

Ferrari also look strong, but Alonso and Massa were horribly unlucky.  Alonso's DRS failed quite early, which meant he couldn't use it, effectively tying one hand behind his back.  This was having had the issue with the front wing last time, so he's dropped a lot of potential points.  Massa had two punctures, which is almost unheard of - both it sounded like came from cuts in the tyres and there were a few smashes that would have left debris on the circuit, but very unlucky to get two.

There's a bit of a gap now until the next race, which is Spain, I believe.  I think we also go into a stretch of alternate week races, rather than double-headers, which is better, I feel.  The odd double-header is okay, but when they happen a lot I find it quite disruptive to my routines and plans.

bahrain grand prix

Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend.

I'm not expecting it to be a particularly good one, as it's not a circuit that generally produces much overtaking.  Saying that I have a weird memory that it did produce a good race last year (one of these Arab races did, but I forget which).

I've grown increasingly behind with my recorded TV.  I would usually listen to the practice, qualifying and race when they're not showing it live, but that eats up quite a lot of time.  As such I made not do that this weekend in order to spend some of that time catching up (or working out if I can delete a few things - I found a few duplicates the other day).

Most of the stuff recorded are dramas.  I've gotten into a bit of a habit of recording all the episodes for dramas and then marathoning them.  The stuff I tend to watch live (or as close to live as I tend to get) are one off things and documentaries.

Part of my logic for that is that dramas you need to follow the plot so if I watch the first few and then can't watch the last few until weeks/months later, it spoils the fun a bit.  For the things I do watch they're obviously self-contained as a program and while there may be multiple episodes it doesn't matter if I watch the next one weeks later.

I've actually got some leave coming up and I'll use some of that time to plough through some of these dramas.  I'm only really going away for a couple of the days (the wedding for the guy whose stag I went to and down to my Dad's - more on that next week) so I should have a chunk of time available, though I wanted to watch some of the Blu Rays I've been building up.  Unlike with DVDs I don't have a mechanism for copying Blu-Rays so I can't really e-bay them until I've watched them so they're starting to take up a huge amount of room that I don't have.

sherlock holmes: game of shadows

This wasn't a rental but a film I got for Christmas (which shows how long I take to watch things and then write a review!).

I've actually recently been listening to the Sherlock Holmes stories on audio book while I do my walking.  Only a handful of them are novel length, which I haven't been listening to, and the vast majority are short stories.  As such you can kinda see why they tend to stick them together or come up with original stories when they make films.

In the case of these Downey Junior films in some way they're more of the "inspired by" the originals than adaptations.  The Moffat BBC series is similar in this sense - the stories are inspired by Holmes and just take bits of the original plots and weave them together.  One of the big differences is that the BBC series is set in the modern day where the Downey Jr ones are set in the correct time period - turn of the century England.  This gives them both a distinct feel, but also makes you think the Downey Jr ones are somehow "closer" even though really they're more divergent.

However, one thing that has struck me about the originals is how inconsistent they are with each other.  In the stories themselves the chronology of events is confused (cases are referred to in the wrong order of occurrence on multiple occasions - to the degree that it's really noticeable), but also the character of Homes is all over the place.

One thing I particularly noticed is that early on he's referred to as going round solving mysteries that relate to royal houses in Europe - something that would surely bring him a degree of fame - but in later he is shunning fame, going so far as to get Lastrade to pretend he'd solved cases, and later still he's so famous in the fictional world that everyone knows who he is.

A particularly frustrating thing for anyone creating an adaptation must be the inconsistency and short-lived nature of key characters.  So Moriarty, the apparent arch-criminal and rival is basically only referred to in one story (Reichenbach Falls) in an active sense and then referenced as the ultimate bad guy in subsequent stories - yet he never appeared before that.  Irene Adler, who is inflated to a love interest in a lot of stories, is in just one story.  There are also the Baker Street Irregulars who pop up in a vague handful of stories but are inconsistently used and then basically forgotten about and then in later stories he acquires a page, an assistant and all sorts, even though many of these stories are apparently set during others where they're not mentioned.

I appear to have gotten very side-tracked.  The point I was trying to make is that when you really read the stories you can kinda see where they're getting a lot of the stuff from in these films.  In particular, the plot of this second film is grown out of short story that appears quite late on and dabbles with political intrigue.  It blends this with Moriarty to form what is a quite satisfying story.

On that front, and in others, this film is actually much better than the first.  By using Moriarty and tying it to a meaty plot it feels firmer and is more enjoyable than the first.  There's also quite a bit more humour than in the first, some of which is surprisingly surreal, and the action is just that bit more satisfying.

One thing the first did well was that the action was often quite grounded and physical - people beating each other up, rather than flying through the air on wires - and this continues, but it's also tied with a more clever take in some scenes.  There's also a part in a forest I won't spoil that is probably one of the best action sequences I've ever seen.

The only thing I was disappointed by was the treatment of the aforementioned Addler - the way that part ends is very unsatisfying.  Again, I won't spoiler, but I thought it undermined the first film quite badly, though when you think about it, it wasn't definitive, so it could be developed further, but if it's taken as face value (and little hints otherwise) then I found it quite disappointing.

the ides of march

The 15th of March.

Technically that's what the title means.  The romans used to count dates in a bit of a weird way and the ides was (basically) the middle of the month.

However, what the title is really referring to is the assassination of Julius Caesar, which happened on the ides of March.  I have to confess the title is a little esoteric in relation to the plot - nobody actually gets assassinated, as such, though there is a bit of metaphorical assassination, and perhaps a bit of "death of faith".

Ides is a political film.  It's surprising how few big political films there are.  I guess a big part of the reason for that is that if you come down on one political side you're essentially alienating half (or more) of your audience.  I don't mean films with politics in them, btw, I mean serious films about politics - set in the world of politics and exploring it.

It's like The West Wing is one of only a handful of political TV shows.  Comedies are more common, I think, particularly as satire is generally focused on politics.

Ides of March is quite complex, but there's not a lot I can say that won't give the good stuff away.  It's not too complex that you won't understand it, though.

I've kinda already mentioned the crucial bits - the meat of the plot is about ideology hitting reality and faith in a person hitting the reality of people.  What is quite clever, though, is the way that actually two plots are inter-linked and intertwined in such a way that they are together, but can also be compared and contrasted.

The differences between them are intriguing, but the similarities more so.  In particular the way in which the main character treats the plotline that affects him directly and that affects him more incidentally is very revealing.  When you think about it the film then boils down to hypocrisy, both willing and forced.

And when you start to look at it in that way it's clever how the film sets up all sorts of mirrors at different levels to make the same point.  I mean, it's not really judgemental about it, it's just presenting a reality.

I mean many people will say they hate politicians; that the way they flip-flop and compromise is terrible, yet that is the heart of politics - you compromise on things to achieve consensus.  It is the essence of us as social animals.

I've gotten quite deep there, and a clever thing about the film is that you can enjoy it without having to delve too deeply into that side, although in some ways that is also its flaw.  Because you can enjoy it in this way it could seem relatively flippant - the depth needs a bit of teasing at to really be apparent.

Also, it's not really saying anything you probably didn't already know, unless you were relatively new to this sort of thing.

china

The Chinese grand prix was quite a good one.

I have to say I think the DRS actually doesn't help in China.  The problem with it is it makes overtaking too easy and on the straight, rather than proper battling overtakes into the corner.  This is particularly the case on the long straight that then goes into the big horseshoe corner.

This has always been a place where overtaking has been possible, but with the DRS it means they overtake on the straight before the corner, rather than going into it.  Now I don't think it means there's more overtaking than there would otherwise be, but it does mean the overtakes aren't quite as interesting.

There was also plenty that happened in the race.  When it turned out one of the tyres behaved more like a qualifying tyre than a race tyre I was a bit worried it would be fairly predictable - if the tyres are closer or there's more of an advantage revealed during the race then it can throw strategy into disarray, which makes things more interesting.

However, as it happened it didn't seem to be a problem.  Indeed, the end was made quite exciting because Vettel changed onto the soft tyre and was hunting Hamilton and Kimi down at the end.

The BBC coverage was also quite extensive.  It's weird - they seem to have ramped up the coverage on the races they do in full, despite supposedly scaling it back previously to save money.  The practices were even shown live on BBC 2 where usually they would be on the red button, so they had to ramp up what they did.  Usually when it's just red button they just commentate on the broadcast - no extra bits.

I'm increasingly convinced that a big part of their decision was the Olympics - both in terms of airtime available and the expense of having to give them full coverage sucking cash away from other sports.

Anyway, it's a double header next weekend with Bahrain.  Bahrain is usually a pretty dull race, and it's one the BBC is just doing highlights of.

chinese grand prix

Chinese Grand Prix this weekend.

I haven't really blogged much about the Grand Prix season so far.  This has primarily been due to time issues - by which I mean I've not really had time to pay a lot of attention to the Grand Prix, rather than not having time to do blog posts.  Well actually, truth be told, both have been a little difficult to devote the time to.

Indeed, if I'm totally honest, I haven't really watched either of the two Grand Prix.  I've had the coverage on, but I haven't actually watched it in the sense of sitting down and giving it my full attention.

Now I used to do this to some extent last year, in that the practice and the radio coverage I would have on as background, but then I'd watch the qualifying and race coverage (be that highlights or live) properly.  However, this year I've backgrounded those too.

Part of the problem has been that the first Grand Prix was when I had the stag do.  Although even then I could have watched it, but the other problem has been SimCity.  Even though I've been posting about how I've found it frustrating that hasn't stopped entire days disappearing to it.

For example, in my post about Cheetah speed on Monday the thing I didn't say was that, having finished cleaning the bedsit, I sat down at 11:45AM to have a quick go to check if a post I'd read about Cheetah speed being back was true and to install the Nissan Leaf thing and didn't stop playing until 11:45PM.

Which isn't to say I played solid for 12 hours - I had my lunch, put stuff back in the kitchen once the floor was dry and re-arranged the bedroom bits, had my dinner, etc, but basically I did nothing else with the rest of the time other than play SimCity.  So I didn't watch recorded TV programs or DVDs/Blu-Rays or read any manga/books.

So I've struggled to find the time to properly watch the GPs.  However, China is usually a good race as the circuit offers some good opportunities to overtake.  It's also on in the early morning, though not so early as to be stupid, and the BBC is doing live coverage, so I will hopefully watch this one!

shave update

I thought I'd do a quick update of the shaving today.

Last time I posted I think I was basically at the stage of using the DE blade, doing the prescribed 3 passes for each shave.

Well I'm not currently doing that.  Unfortunately the results were not all I'd hoped for and the time issue became a real pain.

I mean, the results were okay - I could get a reasonable shave doing the 3 passes (with, across and against the grain) - the problem was that it was giving me a lot of razor burn.  I'm not sure of the root cause of this - when I did with and across I was getting little burn, but then I wasn't getting a particularly close shave.  As soon as I added against the grain I got lots of burn (a lot more than with my Mach3), though the shave was acceptably closer.

It could of course be technique, but I was rather unsure how to really improve the technique.  It worked okay with 2 passes, but not with the third one.  Also I found that adding the third pass seemed to eat through the blades - if I used them for 3 shaves I would get nicks.  Now, to be fair, this is not a new phenomenon, as my beard is so tough it basically kills any blade.  However, it did mean that the cost wasn't quite as much of an improvement as it could have been.

The other issue was time - it was taking ages to do 3 passes.  2 took long enough, but adding in the third meant it seemed to take a small ice age.  I actually tried switching so that I just did across and against, but this gave poor results (yet still with burn!).

As such, I have basically switched back to my Mach3.  I still do a 3-pass DE shave on Sunday mornings when I have plenty of time and can take a very long shower to help soften the beard further.

I may still have another go at the DE blade, but for now I'm happy with the Mach 3.

What I think the DE shaving experiment has done is improve my technique.  The additional beard prep and just generally how I hold and manipulate the blade and the way in which I shave my face has been considerably improved, I think.

transformers - dark of the moon

I seem to have missed something with these new transformer films.

In the original comic book series the Ark crashes on the earth millions of years ago.  It crashes in a volcano, from memory, and the robots on the ark are from both sides - autobots and decepticons.  I seem to recall that the ark is revived by the volcano re-activating and proceeds to repair all the robots utilising modern man's technology as the template for their rebuilding.

Reading the Wikipedia entry this isn't quite what happened in the first film - there's a crash landing on earth, but it's only Megatron.  It's also not millions of years ago, but probably hundreds.

I mean, I'd twigged that it was not millions of years (no Dinobots ever :() but I dunno - for some reason I'd thought the film was closer to the original, and not just Megatron.  The problem for me is this makes the stories in the films even more confusing.  I mean, I'd found them a bit confusing and non-sensical the first time, but having missed that it wasn't the ark that crash landed, I was very confused to find that in this third film the ark crash lands at the beginning :/.

I mean, why do the autobots and decepticons look like human cars and planes, etc, if they've not been remade in the image of our machines?  It gives them a stealth quality while here, but surely that would have been ridiculous on their home world?  But also does that mean they can change what they transform into?

Anyway, point is I hadn't realised the films were quite so divergent.  When I did realise this, at the start of this third film, I think it kinda made me see this third one in a slightly different light.  I mean, I don't think it's a good film in the sense of having a deep plot and well written characters, just that the fact that it was different to the comics/cartoons didn't bother me as much - I judged more on its own merits.

I think this film is the best of the three, though as I say, I may be judging it slightly differently.  The plot is certainly more coherent in my opinion.  Also, rather than try to be a direct sequel, it seems to simply be "later on" so you don't get so much in the way of those rubbish bits in the second one where they try to fudge things to get Megatron back to life.

And I think that's its main strength - it's not really carrying any baggage.  The first film you had all the issues over what they'd changed (which clearly I missed some of!), the second they were trying to make it a 'proper' sequel, but this third one they don't care so much and just spend the time blowing as much stuff up as possible (well, it's still a Michael Bay film after all).

I guess it's more playful is the point, so I found it a bit more enjoyable.

i could be cruel

Margaret Thatcher died yesterday.

I could be cruel and give a link to the sequence in the Wizard of Oz where the munchkins (are they munchkins?  I forget) sing the song celebrating the fact that Dorothy has killed the wicked witch.  Suffice to say I'm not a fan.

She's a bit of a puzzle Thatcher - the conservatives seem to hold her up as some sort of beacon of conservatism, but in reality she was actually the opposite.  Thatcher was a Libertarianist, which is she believed in individual freedom, freedom of the market (basically unrestrained capitalism) and small government.  She had more in common with the Tea Party in the US than she did the conservatives.  Yet she was also the leader that took us into Europe, which is essentially about the opposite.

Conservatism is about the maintaining of the traditional social structures - in our case that particularly emphasises a royalist structure, though tempered nowadays towards a democratic version.  Conservatism is about the old guard, lords and ladies, the idea of 'social betters', that rank has meaning and that there are elites.

Thatcher was, in essence, more opposed to these ideas that with them.  She often railed against experts and "old boy's networks", though I think with a desire to maintain the basic ranks - she would never have done away with them, but would prefer they had no actual influence.

Of course neither of these are in synch with my own political beliefs.

I'm more left leaning, probably ending up most squarely in the "democratic socialist" camp, due to an acknowledgement that communism is unlikely to work until technology progresses to such a degree that it renders much of what we squabble over mute.  Imagine if you could buy a machine that would be able to manufacture anything you need (think Star Trek replicator) - what use would money, gold and jewels be if your machine could simply make them?  These new 3D printers are a step in that direction.

The worst thing that Maggie did was deregulate the markets.  That, in essence, is the root cause of the huge pickle we have now found ourselves in.

She didn't invent the idea of a deregulated market, but began the implementation of it in this country during the 1980s, with a similar process going on in the US (the so called "Reagenomics").  The up-side is that very clever people get to find extremely inventive ways to make money.  The down-side is that the market wrap themselves in such knots that one failure causes a massive cascade of failures and also, those clever people who are making money are also then not constrained by things like morals and ethics.

The fundamental flaw in the system is also the central belief - that deregulated markets will not act in such a way as to be self-destructive.  I don't see how this could ever have seemed like a sensible or logical thought process.  It's like saying that people who drive cars will never be reckless enough to have an accident.  Firstly it ignores that external forces may cause an accident, but it also ignores the fact that the market is underpinned by people, and people can be just as moronic as you imagine - indeed, more so.

Of course it's not entirely her fault - others did the same thing and successive governments had ample opportunities to reverse the policy or otherwise rein it in - but the implementation all traces back to Maggie.

cheat-ah

So cheetah speed returned to SimCity just recently.

It makes the game infinitely more playable.  You can now slam it into cheetah speed and it eats up the time like nobody's business.  You may still have to sit and wait of course (for that budget payment to come in or for your buildings to finish upgrading, for example) but now the wait is a fraction of the time.

Indeed, cheetah speed often means you can spend the time pondering where is best to place your new water treatment plant and by the time you've decided you've got the money to place it.  Which is how it should always have been, but it's remarkable how much it helps the game play.

Of course it brings problems as well - bad stuff can happen and be in full swing by the time you even realise there's a problem when it's in cheetah, but that's to be expected.

Not that it totally fixes the game.  There's still a whole load of bugs and stupidity in the game.  While the bugs will be fixed in time I'm not sure the stupidity will be without them completely overhauling the underlying mechanics.  So they've already tweaked the behaviours of agents like garbage trucks and buses so they don't all drive round in a single train, but they now drive around in several mini-trains and often are actually simply taking different routes to the same destination.

But to fix that will take significantly different game logic.  They're all heading to the same place because they're all operating on the same list of priorities that's in the same order.  To have them behave differently you would presumably either need different logic sets for each agent or for the agents to be assigned differently to the priority list or for the list to be worked up differently.  I mean, there are a number of options, but my guess is that to do many of them they would need to rely much more on storing stuff in memory.  And storing stuff in memory means having using of memory if there are lots of them and then you're into system restrictions and presumably they want the game to work on as many systems as possible.

It's a bit of a catch 22.

The real shame is that these things kinda force you to do certain things in the game that are either illogical or make things less flexible.  So, for example, with the incredibly simplistic way that traffic junctions operate (so traffic lights simply rotate around the junction switching to green depending on the type of road, rather than factoring in traffic conditions like real lights) cross-roads become a no go.  If you have a cross road - particularly if all the roads are at the same density level - it virtually guarantees a grid lock.

As such you have to ensure you use T-junctions.  Now if you're clever with it you can still get about the same number of buildings in the space, but the point is why should you have to be clever?  Why are you being forced to avoid cross roads?  Particularly for a game that's essentially recreating the US where the grid is king.

So despite the return of cheetah I'm still hanging on for the 2.0 patch that's hopefully going to iron out a lot of this stuff before I really play it 'seriously'.

They also released the first new DLC for the game.  This was a Nissan Leaf charging station.  So it's basically an advert.

Obviously this has caused some umbrage in certain circles, but I'm really not fussed by it.  The station has a benefit for the game and isn't massively in your face.  Also it's optional - you don't have to install it or use it.  About the only downside is it takes up space in your tiny cities.

wait, did i miss something?

Did I miss summer this year?

We seem to have skipped straight from winter into autumn... again.  I'm really getting bored of this, tbh.

I've never been a fan of hot summers as, being a fat person, I get overheated very quickly and tend to just sweat constantly.  However, spring and autumn are usually good - temperatures sufficient that you might only need a jumper or a light coat when you're out, but occasionally nice enough for a t-shirt.

I mean, I like winter as a season, overall, but you have to have the other seasons in order to appreciate it.  It's the contrast thing, otherwise, when it's cold all the time it just becomes grinding and miserable.

Not to mention the heating bills - about this time of year I should only be putting my heating on when you get the odd chilly evening or morning, but I'm actually having it a lot and it's costing me a fortune.

What's particularly dispiriting is that, bar a few meagre blips, there doesn't appear to be much prospect of the thermometer rising in the next few weeks and possibly even beyond that into next month.

well that's a shitter

I wasn't going to post today.

I didn't pre-write any posts over the Easter weekend and I have to confess I'm struggling a bit with motivation (in a general sense, as well as in terms of writing a blog post), plus I'm way behind on reviewing rental DVDs so I couldn't just slap one of those up either.

However, browsing the BBC site I've just encountered some rather crappy news - Ian Banks has final stage cancer and is not expected to live for more than a year or so.  Here it is on the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175 ; and on the Guardian website - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-gall-bladder-cancer

I'm a big fan of Banks - his Culture novels are some of the best SF I've ever read, and I enjoy his mainstream stuff too - so this is particularly crappy.  He'd actually just started writing new Culture novels having not done any in a while, but it seems that the most recent (Hydrogen Sonata) will be the last.  A great shame.

I don't think I've ever blogged about it here, but my mother died from Cancer.  This was some time ago, but when hers was diagnosed it was "late stage" as well.  Cancer is a complicated (and odd) disease, but late stage is basically where the original cancer has spread to the degree that it's uncurable - and I mean that in a definitive sense.

My mum's original cancer was breast cancer, but by the time it was diagnosed it had spread to a quite catastrophic degree - it was in her bones, lymph nodes and liver.  It was actually the liver that delivered the final blow as it was essentially total liver failure that she died of.

Interestingly with my mum it was actually several years between the point she was diagnosed and the point she finally passed away and you get to late stage by having it for a long time without detection.  She didn't have chemo (there's little point when it's like that - it may add a few months but you feel awful for ages, so it's just not worth it), but I seem to recall she had a bit of radio-therapy, though nothing major.  I think they just wanted to knock a bit of it out to help extend life a bit and so she was in less discomfort.  She also had some other experimental treatment, though I don't recall what this was - whether it helped or not I have no idea.

One thing about this period that was different to what you'd expect was that she wasn't really in pain as such - she was fully active until the very last week and without being told you wouldn't even have known.  That's part of the problem with this sort of cancer - like Banks it's something that is discovered by a symptom that isn't directly related.

So my mum had breast cancer, but there was no big lump in her breast (it was a load of tiny cancers and she wasn't quite old enough to be having regular screening anyway) and it was actually a fractured bone in her spine that was the point of discovery.  She'd been riding with my sister while on holiday and been thrown off.  It wasn't a big fall particularly, but because the cancer had weakened the bone it fracture so she was in a lot of pain and went home on the train (I recall this day vividly) to see our GP.  That triggered a battery of tests to try to ascertain why the bone was so weak, eventually leading to the discovery of cancer.

tired

I always really struggle when the clocks change.

I have quite fixed routines and am very much a creature of habit.  I mean, I can do things as I need to - get up really early on stay up really late, it's just that I can't do these regularly and consistently without paying the consequences.  Heck, nowadays I pay some sort of consequence even if I just do these things once or twice.

Anyway, the point is that the change of going an hour forwards is pretty disruptive for me and I'll likely be really tired all week.

Easter was okay.

I'd obviously put together a to do list, though remarkably for me it was relatively light.  I'd therefore basically achieved everything on the list by Sunday morning, and that was without trying.

Actually, it turned out I'd made a bit of a cock-up and should actually have cleaned the flat over Easter (Grand Prix season is now in full swing and has gone for lots of double-headers again, so it buggers about with my usual pattern of cleaning very fortnight).  However, this cock up was actually that I shouldn't have cleaned wen the Malaysian Grand Prix was on and did, so it didn't matter.

Anyway, point was that Monday I did nothing except watch TV and a few Blu Rays.  I needed to catch up a bit with TV as my PVR was filling up quite badly so this isn't as decadent as it sounds.  It's now at about 50% full, down from about 80% full (I deleted a few bits as well since it turned out they were a bit rubbish).

One of the things I got quite far with was the George Orwell season that Radio 4 did a little while ago.  I'd recorded all of it and listened to about half of the programs (not half of the stuff - I mostly focused on the stuff they put out in small chunks).  It was quite interesting, though clearly of its era, so it had historical interest as well as political interest.

easter

Easter this weekend so this is the last post of the week.

I’ve no particular plans for this weekend other than to relax, given how busy these last couple of weeks have been.  I think the main challenge will be to stop myself from playing SimCity constantly.  Really it’s the perfect opportunity to catch-up on a lot of recorded TV and watch and read some other stuff - particularly since the weather is forecast to me more of this cold stuff.

One thing I didn’t mention from the last few weeks that I thought I should record in the blog was how I locked myself out of my car before the stag do.

Basically I went to the driving range (I haven’t played golf in 4 years and wanted to “warm up” and there’s a course with a range just up the road from work) and managed to lock the car with the keys on the dashboard.

I’ve done the same basic thing loads before - I sit in the driver’s seat with the door open to change my shoes, dumping the keys on the dashboard.  Once changed, I then close the door, obviously, walk around and get in the driver’s side.

Well I guess on this occasion I hit the lock button as I took the key out of my pocket (it was in my trouser pocket, where I usually put them in my jacket/coat pocket).  So when I closed the door that meant the car was locked and when I went round to the driver’s side I couldn’t get in.

Luckily I’d kept my phone in my jacket pocket, which I was wearing, so I was able to call work and explain and then call for help.  Basically I called the RAC and the guy came out fairly quickly.  The big problem was that the keys were clearly visible on the dashboard, so I couldn’t leave the car, which, even though he was still quick, it was a couple of hours before it was all sorted.

The RAC guy had the car open in about 10 minutes.  Basically he slotted some airbags into the car and slowly inflated them to create a wedge where he could slot a long pole with a hook on the end in and fished the keys off the dashboard.

It really did take him just 10 minutes.  Of course, it’s not something you could do without attracting attention, but it just goes to show you - it he’d used a stiffer rod he could have used it to pull the handle, which would unlock the door.

simcity thoughts

So I've been playing SimCity quite a lot and enjoying it a great deal, but also mentioned before finding it a bit frustrating.

My main frustrations have centred on how I'm meant to achieve stuff.  I've basically focused on two city types, trying to use and unlock all the bits relating to the mining and drilling specialisations.  I've done this in several different maps but I've found it all a bit confusing.

If this were another type of game people would complain about the difficulty of the learning curve.  However, "learning curve" implies that you have a path to learn that they've created.  For the new SimCity it's more like a learning orienteering adventure.

By that I mean there's probably a basic set of points that you have to find in order to learn, but you're simply given end-points and kinda expected to find your own way there.  I mean, there's in-game information stuff and challenges that I think are meant to push you in the right direction but the information is often generic and therefore often unhelpful.  The challenges get you pointed in the right direction, but often without any clues how you're supposed to get there.  And your advisors just bleat on about the same stuff.

So, for example, it will challenge you to unlock the next level of the mining HQ (you're merrily drilling for ore and coal) and you're told you need to make so much in daily profit.  It will then shade this bar in as a percentage of how far you are away.

Well that's all well and good, but how do I increase the profit?  Open more pits?  What if I'm already mining all my coal and ore seams with the maximum number of pits?  Is there a way to make things more efficient?  I generally add in the maximum number of delivery trucks so stuff doesn't build up at the trade depot.  But is this the best way to maximise profit?

I've actually found the mining one not too bad - it doesn't seem to take too many pits to make the required amount.  However, drilling is a different matter.  You seem to have to open up at least 3 (and usually 4) oil extraction places in order to make the required amount of money.  This makes it much harder to achieve your goals.  And it's not clear to me if you should open a single field with lots of derricks or lots of separate fields.  It will tell me a field is producing x barrels a day, but I've no idea how this works or what it really means.

However, I'm also doing all this with the game partially disabled.  All the global market stuff seems to still be disabled and I've no idea whether there will be a tendency for the price to go above the level it currently is or below.  If it will tend to be much higher than that will make these elements easier to achieve, but if it goes lower I can imagine it would make the game rather frustrating.

The game also lacks cheetah speed still, which again makes it rather frustrating.  SimCity has always been one of those games where you have to sit and wait a bit for your new budget to arrive so you can buy that extra thing you need.  Yes you can take out bonds, but only so many at low value and of course you have to pay them back with interest.

Also you might want to whack it in cheetah speed to wait until your city develops - until all those big apartment blocks have finished building and your revenue settles down.  Or just to watch things unfold, but not take all day about it.

My other real frustration is that the game is still very buggy.  I won't go into all the details as you can search online (YouTube in particular) and I personally haven't had too many annoying issues (I think partly because what I've been trying to achieve doesn't rely too much on the areas where the worst bugs are) but I find some stuff in my cities bizarre.

In particular the guy winging on about zoning is quite tedious and the whole RCI system is either broken by accident or they've designed it such that you can never achieve perfect balance.  If it is intended, then presumably it's so the game is "never finished", but with such tiny cities you can easily fill them and it's still moaning about you to provide RCI for everything (how can there be huge demand for all residential types, all commercial types and industrial - it makes no sense).

It's also quite frustrating when the police advisor is moaning about "crime having the upper hand" and people are protesting city hall about all the crime, but when you go to edit the police coverage you see there's actually only 1 criminal in your entire city.  1 criminal = crime has the upper hand?  What?

But then it's difficult to know what things are bugs, what is simply down to poor tuning or bad design and what is deliberate.

Roads in particular are very frustrating.  You lay down all these roads and they just seem to fill up for no apparent reason.  The whole logic system seems horribly simple.  I think this is because it's simulating Sims in an incredibly simple way and everything rushes about going to the next "event", irrespective of it that makes sense or not.  And if that changes while they're on route then they all decide to go to the next most important event at the same time.

You can really see this with the buses.  You lay down buses and set stops for them, trying to get the best coverage (it shows green).  You instinctively think this means lots of stops with stops on both sides of the road and lots of buses to service them all.

In reality what happens is all the buses set off at exactly the same time and go to the exact same stops in the exact same order.  And because they're going in some sort of priority about number of people waiting they wander all over the map in a great chain of buses, making ridiculous U-turns and going up and down the same street over and over, clogging up the traffic.

I mean, why can't I just set the bus routes?  If the AI is going to be dumb, let me control it.  Bus stops can simply be waypoints - something that's been in games for donkey's years.  I can buy a new bus route and it lets me put down 10 stops and the AI simply path finds to them in the order I put them down.  If I've done something dumb then it's my fault.

The solution to bus spam is therefore contradictory - you need fewer buses with stops a good distance apart and that are all on the same side of the street if they're on the same road.  Of course your public transport claims to carry less people, but that way at least your buildings don't all die because all your Sims are sat in their cars while 50 buses undertake millions of U-turns.

The region stuff is even worse - all the buses from all other regions turn up at the exact same time and try to go to the exact same stops in the exact stuff.  Then add in the police cars, ambulance, fire trucks, garbage and recycling trucks and it's like your neighbours are trying to cripple your city, even though they point is they're meant to be helping.

Wow - longest blog post ever!

a course of course

I mentioned yesterday that I spent Sunday and Monday basically playing SimCity and this wasn’t a particularly great idea.

The problem was that SimCity's the sort of game where you sink hours on end into it, and I had a lot of stuff to catch up on, plus I stayed up incredibly late to play.  Unfortunately I also picked up a cold - where from I’m not sure.  No-one on the stag had one that I could remember but then they could have been carrying it.  But also my landlord had a cold and when I got back to work some people there did too so it could have been caught any time.

It turned out to be a wimpy cold - I’m basically already over it - but as I say, I’d not really slept after a heavy weekend, so Tuesday I was like some sort of sniffling zombie.  Of course, rather than just go to bed when I got home I played more SimCity... (More on the game tomorrow probably.)

Wednesday and Thursday I went on a course for work.  It was really good and I learned a lot, but it was also very frustrating.  It pretty much confirmed a lot of the stuff I’ve been worried about at work.  However, there’s some stuff I think I can implement without too much fuss.

Friday I was back in the office.  It was a very bity day, but I also discussed the course with a few people at work.  It was interesting and also confirmed many of my frustrations.

This last weekend was really weird.  I had a bunch of domestics to do but I also had to clean up all the clubs and stuff from the stag.  And I woke on Saturday to find it snowing...

It wasn’t forecast for here and it wasn’t deep, and on Sunday it pretty much cleared up, but I mean seriously - it’s nearly April, how comes it’s snowing and settling at all?  It’s Easter next weekend!

It feels like summer hasn't really happened for about 4 years and I have to confess it's getting a bit boring.  I'm not much of a one for hot weather, but a bit of it is good each year - it makes me appreciate the times when it's more to my liking.  Plus if you have a hot summer then it tends to mean autumn is more pleasant and to my liking too.

long time no see

Feels like months since I last blogged.

It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks.

So the first thing that happened was the stag do.  I enjoyed this more than I thought I would.  I was a little worried that there would be some uncomfortable stuff - you hear all sorts about stag dos, but there wasn't anything like that.

I mean, they gave the stag something of a hard time - they stole his clothes and he had to wear a skirt they bought him, for example - but nothings spectacularly bad or that made me feel uncomfortable.  The planned events were also good.

The stag was in Bristol and on the Friday we played golf.  This harked back to when we were kids (I’ve known him since school) and was a good idea, except for one thing - the Great British weather.  As I arrived at the course it started raining and got steadily worse.  Not only was it raining hard but it was windy and cold too so it was truly horrible to be out playing golf.

We ended up only actually playing 9 holes and calling it a day. We then ate at the clubhouse and found the house.  This was a mess - no-one knew where the house was and only some people had directions/sat nav.  I tried to follow someone and it worked okay for a while, but he was rubbish at it - he dashed through a red light and that was t, I was lost.

However, after a dozen phone calls for directions I eventually found the place.  And it was a weird place.

I mean, the building was a bit unusual - a huge mansion - but also it was oddly furnished in that it looked like some students lived there.  As in still lived there and they’d been murdered and buried in the back garden.  It was weird.

So we then got drunk - and I drank much more than was probably sensible for the first day.  On the second day we went clay pigeon shooting.  This in particular I was rather unsure about, but as I said, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I dunno - it’s difficult to explain, but I was rather nervous around the gun. I mean, that’s understandable - it’s a 12-guage shotgun, after all - but I dunno, I was really worried about doing something stupid.  And it didn’t help I was tired and it was cold and drizzling again.  But as I say, it was more enjoyable than I expected.

We then went out on the town.  As it happened it was the last game of the six nations (he decider between Wales and England - England deserved to loose) so we watched that and then went for a curry.  Then it was back to the house for more beers.

This second evening was a bit weird.  We got back fairly late and I started drinking, but suddenly it was 1AM and we had to be out of the house by 10AM so I went to bed.  I think quite a few sloped off to bed early - certainly I didn’t see as many people about as in the first night.

I drove back on the Sunday and it was the journey from hell.  I wouldn’t say I was hung over particularly, but I was extremely tired.  So I was shattered and when the weather played up - driving snow and all sorts.

I'd taken the Monday off to recover and should have used that stuff to do stuff like watch the Grand Prix and tidy the flat.  Unfortunately I basically just played SimCity solid.

I’ll continue with more about the intervening time tomorrow.

never bloody here!

Well, as mentioned earlier this week I am away tomorrow and next Monday.

Next week I am also attending a training course on Wednesday and Thursday.  I'm not sure if I will blog on the Tuesday and Friday.  I expect I will have stuff for a post or two, but whether I sit down and write that up next week or the week after I'm not sure.

The timing of this stag isn't the best if I'm honest.

Friday is actually comic relief.  I have no idea if we'll encounter it or not, but it could be a bit of a pain.  The Saturday there's a big rugby match on (it's the 6 nations, but I don't care so I haven't a clue what match it is).

It's also the first race of the new Grand Prix season.  Now that's sort of okay in that I'll be coming back on the Sunday so should be back in time to watch it on the BBC, except the race is in Australia so will actually be run very early on Sunday morning.  Normally I might therefore be able to avoid it (or record the Radio commentary and listen to that as soon as I get up) but I'm guessing I will be told or hear it on the radio or something.

Anyway, point is this is the last post of the week and I'm not sure I will post at all next week.  The week after is the one leading up to Easter so is only 4 days as well - it's a really weird month for me actually.

SimCity turned up on Tuesday and I've lost two evenings to it already, so I must be enjoying it.  However, I'm also finding it a bit frustrating.

I think I'll blog about it later - I'm actually kinda wondering if the stuff they've disabled due to the server issues (no cheetah speed and a lot of region stuff is essentially disabled) isn't part of the issue.  I suspect it's magnifying some of the bugs or making some things that are meant to cover the "asynchronous" region play seem like bugs.

future employment

This is going to be a particularly difficult post.

My problem is that what I want to talk about is technically confidential information.  I mean, I've not signed anything but the information was relayed in confidence.

Basically last Friday they outlined the future of the company.  Well... ish.  It wasn't really done that specifically.  I mean, I've been told some stuff and that didn't feature in the thing in Friday directly, but the meeting focused on that area.

See - it's difficult to say without saying.

I guess the thing I wanted to post about was that it wasn't quite as I expected.  In some ways that's good, but in other ways it's bad.

A particular bad point was the length of time.  Apparently this thing they've set up could take 10 years to come to fruition.  I found this a particular punch in the gut - there's no way I want to be hanging around here for 10 years.  To be honest I don't really feel like I want to be here next year.

However, a good thing is that it won't cost me anything.  In effect it's a free gift and there's a degree to which the expression "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" has to apply.  Better to have the gift horse, even if it's a bit dodgy, than no horse at all.  Of course, the problem is that said horse may be a poison chalice - looks like a good thing, but actually isn't.

I had a chat with my dad about it over the weekend.  He was more positive about it than me.  His main point was that it's something for nothing and I felt a bit more positive about it looking at it from this point of view.  The problem of course is that he doesn't really know how stupid some of the stuff here is and when I explain some bits of it he's always a bit stunned, because a lot of it is really dumb.

Anyway, we'll actually be getting individual info packs across this week where some of the more specific details are provided, but if I'm honest I'm not expecting this to really answer all of the questions I have.

I'm sure it will answer some but I don't think it will address the key ones - the ones that I need answers to in order to consider staying here.  They have said we can ask questions and I will but I don't I think the key ones will be ones they'll be willing to answer.

piss poor timing

So SimCity didn't turn up at all over the weekend.

I'd taken Monday off and was hoping that the game would have arrived, but no sign of it.  This was a little mystifying I have to admit, since it was posted last Thursday and something that was posted last Friday did turn up on Monday.

To be totally fair their free delivery thing is within a 5 day window so it's not late or anything, just a bit puzzling that something sent afterwards has arrived first.  And I wouldn't want you to think I took the day off just to play the game - I was owed the day as time in lieu and I wanted to take it as soon as practical.  The alignment with SimCity's release was just a coincidence.

It would be nice if I was able to say that I'd "done loads" with my extra day off, but it didn't really work like that.  I mean, I did some stuff, but I wouldn't really say it was massively productive.  Most of the time was spent doing nothing in particular - I did a lot of lazing about with a bit of telly watching thrown in for good measure.

One thing I did do was go to the Sports Direct in Farnborough and buy some golf-related stuff.  I used to play Golf quite a bit but since starting my current job (where no-one has ever been a golfer) it has kinda withered on the vine.  Part of the problem was that the only cheap public course nearby has terrible drainage problems and I once played a bit of a round that basically destroyed half my gear.

I wasn't going to buy quite as much stuff as I did but they had a sale on that was really good value - everything I bought was 50% off so I got loads of bits including new golf shoes and a bag and it was less than £80!

So why am I buying this stuff now?

Well, obviously because I'm going to be playing golf next week.  The game is part of a stag weekend for an old friend of mine.  The golf game is on Friday (weather forecast up until now was that it would be bone-chillingly cold, but now is that it will piss down - hurrah!).  I'm sure there will be drinking that evening, and then we're going clay pigeon shooting on Saturday and more drinking that evening before heading home on Sunday.

As per usual I'm a bit trepidatious - I'm nervous and quiet around new people and there will be a lot of new people there (loads of his other friends I've never met before).  Hopefully it will be okay and at worst it's two days.

I'm not sure how I will be on Sunday but I've taken Monday off as well, just in case.