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.

launch day

I've made a bit of an error when it comes to my plan to play SimCity all weekend.

I ordered it through amazon, but I always use the free delivery by default and I've forgotten to change it to first class for the SimCity order.  Since I almost always order a bunch of stuff all at the same time I would have had to order SimCity separately and didn't.

Bit of a blow, but then given a lot of people still seem to be having huge problems with accessing and playing the game, perhaps it's not too bad if I have to wait a while before I start.  I understand there's a bunch of patches being applied to the servers so hopefully that will help.

The game also seems quite buggy.

The slightly odd thing about some of the bugs is that they were identified back in the first beta over a month ago.  Terrain and roads seems to have quite a few issues and you'd think that, even if they couldn't change the game code for launch (production and shipping issues) then that would be one of the first things it patches.

Games of course are generally like all forms of entertainment for me in that I have huge stacks of them sat waiting for me to play.  Occasionally I do of course and I remember one time I launched a game that had been quite big and popular at release and the first thing it did was download a gigantic patch that was bigger than the game code itself.

This of course was months after it had been released so it was a combination of all the patches most people had gotten over a long period of time, but it shocked me just how much had clearly been broken in the game when it was shipped.  Apparently this is quite a normal thing nowadays.  Games cost so much to make they want to get them out as quickly as they can so things like proper, in-depth play-testing and bug fixing fall by the wayside.

You can kinda see the logic and it's actually a consequence of the ever-improving complexity and capability of computers and technology.  A good few years ago if you did an FPS people didn't expect it to be utterly gorgeous to look at, but now they do and that sort of thing is quite costly to do, even though it doesn't impact he game itself.

Of course there are potential shortcuts in that you can use some else's game engine, but that's never really going to be possible with a game like SimCity, so I image a lot of the money had to go on making the fundamental engine (glassbox) work right, rather than fix some visual clipping bugs to do with terrain and roads.

There might be a side-advantage of not getting the game until next week.  Since I've got the Monday off I might be able to use that time to clear up some other stuff I need to do.  This is going to be a horribly busy month for me (I'll write a blog about it next week hopefully) and it might be useful to tick a few of the more tedious boxes this Monday.

well that's just great

So I blogged on Monday about how I had been hit by someone while driving a courtesy car, well I went out to my car yesterday lunchtime to find that someone has hit my proper car.

We're not talking major damage - it's a scratch on the rear bumper - but that's not the point.  Actually it kinda is - it's a small scratch so they've obviously just fucked off so that I don't demand they pay to repair it.

It's actually the second time it's been scratched on the bumper in that exact place.  I therefore suspect that it's the same idiot that's done it.  Indeed I actually suspect it's not happened at work at all, but it's the fucktard neighbours where I live.

I know they've already driven into my landlord's garage a couple of times.  Part of the problem is they're builders and both the houses next to us have had a lot of building work recently as well and builders are the exact archetype that is the wine van man - or "cunt in a van" as I like to call them.

Of course it could be at work it's happening - that's certainly where I notice it, but then that's where I see the car in proper full light and when I'm not tired.  If it is work my guess is it's people who go to the dump and don't find the right turn.  We're near the dump/recycling place and although clearly signed a lot of people miss it and end up having to turn around.

I'm surprised there aren't more accidents actually as the roads of the industrial estate have become chocked with parked cars.  It started last year after the big snow - I think a lot of people decided not to try parking in the proper car parks when it was snowy and then decided they liked parking on the road.  Certainly the proper car parks don't seem full yet there's all these cars.

Although saying that I think also they've been moved over from a neighbouring industrial park that has very little parking.  There certainly used to be a lot more cars parked on the proper roads than there is nowadays.

I seem to have really been in the wars with the car recently.

I don't think I blogged about it but a couple of weeks ago I was following a large articulated lorry (it's from a delivery company from the industrial estate and I've seen it a few times).  It was going down totally inappropriate roads, because it's shorter/quicker than using the main roads.

But for a big artic that also means he's slow so I was quite close behind.  Well, he went through a bit where there's some low-hanging trees (well, for an artic or a bus - they're not low for normal cars!) and he broke off a big chunk of tree that fell off and bounced off my bonnet.

In some ways I was lucky - it was a big piece and wood is quite dense so it would have been heavy and could easily have smashed my entire windscreen.  And of course in other ways I was unlucky, because it hit me and could easily have simply hit the road or whatever.  It's left a really noticeable dent in the bonnet but again, nothing that requires repairs, it just makes the car look beat-up.

Of course I considered an insurance claim, but unlike the hire car accident it wouldn't have been too difficult for them to say I was too close.  Plus it's not really his fault - the road doesn't ban wide/tall vehicles, so could they even argue it was the council's or the homeowners fault for not properly trimming the trees?

And speaking of windscreens, not long after the bonnet I got a stone chip on my windscreen.  This of course was just a couple of weeks before the MOT (chips above a certain size in certain zones of the screen are failures) so I didn't have a chance to get it looked at.  Small chips can often grow but this one seems stable.

As I say, my car is quite dinged up.  A lot of it comes from people in supermarket car parks hitting you with doors or bumping you as they manoeuvre (badly).  I always try to park out of the way in empty bits but that isn't always possible and doesn't seem to have helped.

oh dear

So SimCity launched in the US yesterday... and appears to have been a bit of a disaster.

The problem, as feared, is that thousands (or hundreds of thousands? millions?) of gamers have all obviously been trying to download and play it all at the same time.  Now if there'd been some way to stagger them (they've staggered countries) or otherwise spread the load in a sensible way they might have had a chance, but as I understand it the game is the best part of 20gb.

Even if 1,000 people are trying at the same time that's 20 terabytes of data to download so you can image the amounts of data if there's more like 100,000 people.  Apparently there have been huge wait times to even get to the start of downloading, let alone downloading or even playing it.

I'm also guessing that a lot of people had to install origin as well so that will also have added to the load.

I recall personally experiencing a very similar issue with Half Life 2 - I tried to install on day one and basically failed as there were just too many people trying to do the same thing.  However when I tried the next morning it was as easy as pie.

You can kinda see the issue - the only times the loads are going to be this sever are at launch.  So if you put in loads of capacity then when you're into the steady-state phase you're probably way over-supplied with capacity so you either need to strip some of it away later, which in itself will likely cause some problems, or planning for the steady-state and simply taking the initial problems on the chin.

Of course that doesn't stop it being any less frustrating for the individuals who, rightly, feel they have bought something they can't actually use.  And that's a particular issue for something like SimCity where it's always been a single-player, off-line game and a game that could still, even in this iteration, work that way.

For me personally I'm obviously just going to have to suck-it-and see.  I should have the game for the weekend and I have the Monday off so hopefully if I'm persistent and I pick my times well I should be able to get it working.  But it's a very popular series in Europe and they've lumped all of us in together, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are similar problems to the US.

a minor prang

So yesterday I didn't post, and it was basically because the day was very chaotic.

My car was in for a service and MOT and I'd decided to get a courtesy car.  I don't usually do this as the garage and where I work are close enough for the train to be a sensible (if bizarrely costly) option.  However, this time I'd thought I would.

So I dropped my car off and signed all the paperwork for the car, which was a Nissan Note, but when I got in the fuel warning was going - there was just 30miles worth of fuel in it.  However, I wasn't sure if it was diesel or not (I suspected it was) so I had to dash back in to check.

This and the time it took me to fill up (I had to stop at the Tesco garage as it's the only one I knew I could get to and they had some weird thing on the pump where you have to press if you want to pay at the kiosk or at the pump and I didn't work this out for a while) meant I was late getting to work - not by much, but still late and of course I was wanting to go early in order to pick up my car.

And then the fun really started.  I'd figured I would use the courtesy car as a bit of a test drive as I've never driven a note before, but as part of this I checked out the boot and the seats and all the things like that.  This made me slightly later setting off than usual and unfortunately it also meant that I was leaving at the same time as someone who works in the office next to ours.

And she hit me.

I was driving along the bit that leads out to the main part of the industrial estate and she basically reversed straight out and hit the car.  The damage was pretty minor - scuffed bumper sort of territory - and if it had been my own car I'd have been keen to help her out and let her pay for the repairs direct.

However, it was a courtesy car.  Not my car.  The damage was also way too obvious that I could have tried to pretend it hadn't happened.  If they'd have taken even a cursory look at the vehicle it would have been obvious and if I'd not said anything then that wouldn't be a good situation to be in.

I swapped what details we had (difficult for me as obviously it was the garage's coverage, not mine and she didn't have hers to hand) and then called the garage.  Which was when I got my next shock - unless she admitted liability I would have to pay them a £500 excess.  Obviously I'd then have to try to recover this from her insurer (or also the garage if it was less than £500).

But of course my car was in for a service and MOT, and of course it was the level 3 (most expensive) service which meant, all together with a few parts that needed doing, it was already going to cost me £390.  That could have meant I would have to pay £890!

I therefore decided to dash back home and get my own policy to see if it covered me for driving other vehicles, and the answer was sort of - I was covered for 3rd party when driving other vehicles.

Luckily she did admit liability and the garage therefore said they wouldn't take the excess (although noted that if there was a problem they may need to).

Anyway, that also meant I had to go extra early and of course had to make lots of personal calls in the afternoon and, to be frank, I was rather flustered, so I didn't get any chance to even think about a blog, let alone do all my work.

a week until simcity

About the only up-side of the horrendous work-load I've had to take on this last month is that I've asked for a day in lieu and I'm taking that day on Monday the 11th.

Monday the 11th is significant because it's the Monday after simcity comes out.  Well, comes out in the UK.  I'm not quite sure why we in the UK are getting the game 3 days after the US.  Well, I say I don't understand.  Given the online nature of the game I'm guessing it would increase the chances of it crashing if everyone got it at the same time.

Saying that, though, there are apparently going to be multiple servers so you should think the load could be shared, but then I've no idea how those play servers mesh in the Origin.  Origin is EA's version of steam and that's where you download the game from - perhaps the issue is more to do with the load on origin.

To be fair, to some extent it's a good thing we get it on the 8th because then I won't get sucked into playing it on the first few weeknights.  Or trying to play it - if there are horrible delays in downloads or anything then there's always the risk that I spend a weeknight trying to download it and failing, which I've had before and it's not conducive to a good night's sleep.

I'm so looking forward to the new game - it looks great.  They've been doing lots of preview stuff and really giving it the hard sell.  In particular this week they've been running a website http://letsallbemayor.com where they've been streaming 4 hour sessions each day where they work on cities with different themes and stuff.

The commentators can grate a bit - they were a bit annoying on the first day in particular - but last night was great as they had a senior guy on and asked him lots of questions about the game and how it works.

Of course the downside of this month has been how horribly tired I am.  There were 20 working days in February, and I've recorded 24.25 hours' worth of working days.  I'm getting 1 day in lieu and today I've worked a bit less than a normal day, but I've still basically worked 3 days.

And that's 3 days for nothing - no overtime, no double time, we don't do flexi.  It stinks, to be frank.  Particularly when you factor in a big reason for me having to do that has been because of pathetic levels of support from others in the office.

I might write a rant about it over the weekend to post next week.

everywhere words, but not a blog to post

So I worked over the weekend as I'd said I would.

It wasn't as bad as I'd feared, though - I did about 6 hours on Saturday and 3 or 4 on Sunday.  When I was driving home on Sunday I was reflecting on how screwed my thought process was: I'd gotten the Sunday afternoon off: bonus!  Oh no, wait, I'm not being paid for working Saturday and Sunday at all, so I shouldn't be doing any work at all, let alone celebrating getting an afternoon off that I'm already entitled too.

However, I didn't pre-write any posts.  Obviously I could have done it on the Sunday afternoon but while I did spend most of that time on the computer I had lots of other stuff to do so didn't write any posts.

This is actually particularly annoying as I've run out of pre-written review posts as well, so expect the blogging to be pretty thin on the ground this week.

less burn

So I've been using the DE razor to shave all this week.

I'm still going with the grain so the shave is not close, but I think I'm starting to get used to it.  I've not really had any particular problems with nicking myself.

I've also noticed that I am having less razor burn, although if I do get razor burn it's a lot fiercer than when I get it with the Mach 3.  The problem area for burn is my chin.  I'm not massively surprised with this as the chin is obviously the area where there's more in the way of extreme contours and bumps and wiggles.

However, saying that, obviously I'm not get a smooth shave either so razor burn is less likely anyway.  What I mean is that I'm using the same shaving pattern and getting less burn so that suggests I'm getting used to the razor.

I've also found the blades I'm currently using last the same amount of time as my Mach3s, so I get about 3 shaves out of them and then they're noticeably duller.  Those were the blades that came free with the razor and there weren't too many of them.  I've actually bought some more and they're a different make.

Apparently different makes of blades are quite different to shave with.  Once you have your technique down you're actually supposed to try out a bunch of blades to find one that works best for your razor/skin/beard.

I have to confess I'm not fully sold on the DE - the poorness of the shave is such that the fact it's gives slightly less razor burn hasn't really sold me.  When I get to going against the grain is when it will be a true test, though, so we'll have to see.

In other news I'm shattered from the amount of work I've had to do recently and I'm going to be in this weekend.

There's been some developments on that front and I'll hopefully find a bit of time to write some blog posts when I'm not working this weekend, but otherwise it could be a bit quite on the blogging front next week.

horse burgers

I've been taking quite an interest in the horse meat in burgers thing.

Not because it in any sense worries me, but because I've found the behaviour of the media really fascinating - and not in a good way.

I'm sufficiently old to remember a significant number of these health scares.  One of the first I remember was Salmonella in eggs, but there's been things like BSE too.  Now some of the (BSE) are genuinely of significant concern, but others (Salmonella and this horse meat one) are not far beyond a whole heap of fuss over nothing.

In this case I really think the media has taken things too far - they seem absolutely determined to whip everything up in a massive storm when it's really not that big of a deal.  Yes, fraud has been committed and it's not ideal.  Yes it does say a lot about our eating habits that aren't necessarily good.  But there is no danger to human health from eating horsemeat.

Indeed, horse meat is actually quite good for you, it's just that culturally, for whatever reason, we have not traditionally eaten it in the UK.  In France, and I'm sure many other places, they do.  It is an edible meat.

But if you take the media's reaction on face value you'd think this was some Soylent Green esque nightmare where they're grinding up small babies and spoon-feeding them to invalids and the poor.

What I found particularly galling was the way they desperately hunted around for anything that might make it a health issue.  They eventually found one of course - a drug called "Bute" is given to horses but is now banned for humans.  This was apparently found in some of the horse carcasses, but the doses were so low you'd have had to eaten nothing but horse meat from now until the middle of next year to even get close to a human-scale dose.

And even then there are only some vague risks of side effects - this isn't some cyanide-like killer drug, it's just something some people get a side-effect from.

The whole thing is just ridiculously over-blown and the media does itself no favours when it behaves like this.

I have a bit of a theory about this sort of thing.  It's actually closely related to the whole "gate" thing the media does.  The Watergate scandal was the high-water mark for journalists.  It's the one thing they can point to as something that never would have been known about if it wasn't for journalists.  But now every journalist thinks that therefore legitimises them - it's why they stick the non-sensical "gate" at the end of stuff: "Look," they're saying.  "This is us being all amazing again." even though it's normally nothing of the sort.

anchorman - the legend of ron burgundy

I have to confess I wasn't expecting to enjoy Anchorman.

I'm not sure why, exactly, I just wasn't sure it would be my cup of tea.  However, actually I found it rather funny.

It's basically a silly movie.  That's not meant to be any sort of insult, it's just the type of comedy it is.  In fact, actually, it felt very similar to the type of humour you get in Python or, in fact probably more the old Steve Martin films (The Jerk or the Man with Two Brains).  There's a lot of being silly.

A very good example of this is the relationship between the various news crews, which comes to a head with a gang-rumble style fight where they all pile into each other with knives and chains.  As I say - silly, but in a good way.

There was one aspect of the film I wasn't entirely keen on, though - the animals.  Burgundy has a dog (Baxter) and I think they went a bit over the top with the idea that the dog is cleverer than him.  I dunno, that element of it just didn't really work for me.  Also there's a scene towards the end involving lots of bears and it again it didn't really do anything for me.

Comedy is about as subjective as things get, so I wouldn't really say these parts were bad, I just didn't really find them all that funny.  On the other hand the voice over, which I believe uses a famous American newsreader (this is one of the difficulties I was expecting - I'm sure there were probably lots of references in the film, but I don't have the knowledge to have spotted them, but in the end it didn't really seem to matter) was very funny - it was pitched just right.

I watched the Blu Ray version and there were actually two versions on there - the theatrical version and an "uncut" version.  There didn't seem to be a massive amount of difference, just a few jokes that were a bit grosser or involved foul language.  However, the extras did include a huge set of extended and alternate scenes - there appear to have been several different endings.

The Blu Ray also had commentaries for both versions (they sort of overlap - it's a bit weird) and I have to confess I didn't really like these.  I couldn't work out if they were pre-scripted or improvised (I think probably a bit of both - improvised, but with "then this happens" elements) but I found they kinda went on a bit with the themes.  It's a bit like when they improve shows they do loads of stuff (alternative versions in particular) and then filter down in the edit, well this didn't have any edit so in parts they seemed to bang on and on, thrashing the same basic gag into the ground.

But then commentaries are extra, so it didn't impact on my enjoyment of the film itself.

asteroid

So last Friday a great big hunk of rock with the un-interesting name of 2012-DA14 flew close to the Earth.

Of course "close" is still a pretty long way away on human scale, but on the scale of the solar system it grazed past us Matrix-bullet-time-stylee.  Indeed, unless I'm a bit off, it actually came well within the orbit of many satellites, so it really was close.

Oddly I heard a lot of reports in the media that it was a record close encounter for an asteroid of this size.  This of course is wrong - the closest encounters are when asteroids actually hit us - then the encounter is 0m!

What they mean of course is it was a recorded for the closest recorded.  There could have been plenty that have zipped by us but these things are not really big enough to be seen with the naked eye so you need things like telescopes which we've not had for very long and of course you need to be looking in the right direction.

This one was 46m across which is pretty big.  Apparently it's of a similar size to the meteor that exploded over Tunguska and flattened a huge swathe of trees.  Although big a lot of an asteroid generally gets burned up in the atmosphere (angles depending) so it wouldn't be big enough to cause us to go extinct if it hit, but it would make a hell of a mess if it hit a city or landed in the ocean and caused a big tsunami.

I watched a bit of the NASA live webcast feed.  I did pop my head out to see if it might be possible to see anything but it had unfortunately clouded over so I couldn't have seen anything.

The weirdest bit of the story was that a smaller meteor hit Russia on the same day.  It was nothing more than a coincidence but this was a lot smaller but caused a lot of injuries as it hit a fairly built up area as I understand it.  It just shows you how much damage, particularly if there was little warning, and there are a lot of hunks of rock up there.

It should be a bit of an interesting time in the heavens this year as there's a comet due later in the year that may give something of a spectacular display... or maybe not, they're not quite sure if it will produce a tail or not.

return of the beta

Well I got a beta code for SimCity so my weekend was fairly predictable.

I actually got two, both coming from amazon.  The reason for two was that I ordered the game way back when it was first announced but then amazon cancelled the order (I don't know why but they usually only do that if they've made some huge cock-up with the price or the thing is cancelled).  As such I promptly re-ordered it and hence the two codes.

The intended purpose of this beta was to test the server loads.  Somewhat controversially the game requires an always on connection; indeed the game itself runs on the server as I understand it, so it's not just a DRM thing, they've really got you by the short and curlies.

I believe the beta actually was intended to ran from 00:00hr Saturday to 00:00hr Sunday in America (not sure which time zone) but here in the UK it actually ran from 14:00 Saturday to 14:00 Sunday.  I pretty much cleared my schedule and actually sat down to install and play at about 16:00 on the Saturday.

It took a while to download and install, but once up and running I was straight in - I played the tutorial and then started up the first town.

I have to confess my initial reaction was one of slight disappointment as it seemed to be identical to the previous beta.  I mean, I wasn't going to let that stop me having some games, but I was hoping there's be some differences, but as far as I could tell the same content was enabled in the game.

Except then I made a discovery - the region play was enabled.  Previously it was single city and that was it, but this time there were 3 cities and 1 special project thingy.  Now in the previous beta there were 2 cities and a special project area but you could only do anything with the one city.  This time one of the cities was slightly weirdly blanked off (I wasn't sure if it was meant to represent another player or not - certainly it wasn't that fully fledged, but you could interact with it a bit) and the special project you could see what the options might be, although not actually do them and the third city was also playable.

This second city would clearly have been a good site for an ore mine as it had a big deposit, but unfortunately this content was disabled.  However, it was interesting to try to work how multi-city play might work.

I enjoyed it, but I have to say it looks like it will be a difficult thing to really master.  I mean, sure you can build another city that is itself balanced, but the tricky part was trying to balance multiple cities.

This has always been something of a challenge - you zone for residential, industrial and commercial and getting the right amounts of each of these so you don't end up with jobless people or not enough shops or whatever has always been a difficult thing.  However in multi-city play it's even more of a brain ache - you're now trying to ensure there's enough jobs between cities, if that's what you're trying to do.

One thing I did learn is that when you work on one city the other city is totally paused.  That makes sense but it also makes things a little tricky to manage.  So, for example, if I plop down a fire station in one town and then immediately switch to the region view and share my fire trucks it will let me do it.  However, if I then switch to the other city and keep going and a fire breaks out it's not guaranteed that the fire trucks will turn up.

Why?  Because in my other, paused city, the fire station hadn't had time to recruit any firemen so there's no-one to drive those fire trucks.  In other words you have to wait until your fire station is properly up and running before that element will be properly shared.

I had this with a few things actually - On one occasion I had to wait for people to drive over from one city to get the job of working in the power plant before I could then buy power back.

It's also a little weird how the whole sharing and buying thing works - it seemed to be that I could buy power but I couldn't sell power but I could only sell fire trucks and not buy them, if you see what I mean - the decisions were one way.

This isn't to say any of it was bad, just that it could be a whole new level of complexity.

new beta

There's a second beta for SimCity this weekend.

I think I'm getting a little obsessed with the game actually as I've been checking the website and searching for news just about every day.  I guess part of it is that it's been donkey's years since I last played SimCity (even longer if you set aside the abomination that was societies), but also I finished (well, ish) Anno 1404, which is to say I built a world with both cathedral and mosque and the maximum number of citizens.  I then started Anno 2070 and I have to say it put me off a little.

There was no big reason for that, it was a combination of tiny things, but where I first played Anno 1404 and loved it I played 2070 and felt a bit lost somehow.  I dunno, I only really played it for a little while and haven't been back to it yet so I may like it more when I play it properly.

Anyway, the new SimCity beta is apparently designed to test the servers.  I'm guessing they want to avoid something like the Diablo III fiasco as much as they can.  They've said that the game actually runs on the EA servers and you're almost just logging into it when you play.  I've no idea quite how true this is but it suggests that in the first few weeks of play there's going to be a lot of demand on the servers as everyone starts new games all at the same time.

I believe the launch date is actually staggered around the world so I'm guessing they're hoping that will alleviate it a bit, but also they're intending this beta to be a stress test.

As such I'm guessing lots of people will get passes and the beta is compressed into 24 hours to ensure everyone is playing at the same time.  No idea if I'll get one, though - I was surprised I got in the last time and have certainly seen that some people didn't get in so it wasn't quite just a big demo.

It will, apparently, be a different build of the game.  I moaned quite a bit last time that some of the stuff wasn't intuitive on nice to use.  Roads and zoning were a bit frustrating in particular.  What was most weird about those was actually that they've posted a couple of "how to play" videos on YouTube and it looked far better to use zoning and road layouts on that video.

I'm hoping that the beta was actually a very early version of the game and that they'd actually worked on it quite a lot since that version and used the newer version for the video.  Whether this new beta will be the final version or what I'm not sure, but I hope it's closer - and I get on it, obviously!

All that remains now is to decide what version to buy.  There's a digital deluxe version which is download only and has several European building sets, but I've always steered clear of digital-only versions as I prefer to have the DVD.  There's also going to be an in-game store system.  This seems to have caused much ire, but I don't know why - I don't mind that sort of thing at all, so I guess there's the possibility you may be able to buy the European building sets online anyway.

washing

I've been using my new system of doing the washing in the evening for a few weeks now and I've decided I have mixed feelings on it.

When I have just the one bag it works really well.  I can use one of the smaller machines, which are a bit quicker.  IF I'm one bagging then generally its' clothes only so I can also use the wash and wear setting, which is the quickest.  The small machines on this setting only take about 20 minutes.

The wash and wear setting does require more drying as it leaves the clothes a bit damper, but not spectacularly so.  However, because it's a single bag it's quicker to dry anyway, so this then only takes about 30minutes of drying.

Add in a bit of time for moving stuff about, loading machines, etc, and it therefore takes about 1 hour, which is perfect for me to buy a copy of the Radio Times and my dinner and eat it while it's washing & drying.

If it's a double bagger it's less good.

Generally if I'm double bagging that means I'm washing bed sheets and towels as well as clothes.  That means I have to use the full wash setting, which takes about 40 minutes.  There's also more washing so the drying takes longer - about 40 minutes.  There's also more stuff so the loading, etc, takes longer and the whole thing takes at least 1.5 hours, but more like 1.75 hours.

It's then more difficult at home too - a single bag is foldable and put-awayable in about 20 minutes.  A double bagger takes twice that.

I still think overall I'm happier doing it in the evenings.  There's nothing quite as annoying as your washing doing its final spin with 1 minute to go when someone walks in the door and sticks it in the last of the tumble driers.  Particularly when you've gotten up at 6AM to try to avoid that sort of thing!

I actually tried extending the philosophy to other chores and doing my cleaning in the evening.  This basically fell at the first hurdle because the routine I have for cleaning my bedsit basically requires me to fold my bed up (it's complicated), clean that space and then use it to temporarily store stuff from the bathroom & kitchen.

Well given it takes several hours for the kitchen and bathroom floors to dry it means I can't go to bed until it's done, so that's a non-starter.  I mean, perhaps it would be possible in the summer when it's warm enough to dry quickly, but not now.

However, I think there are things I could move - trimming my hair, for example.  I don't see why I couldn't do that in the evening.

four lions

I tend to have a bit of a marmite relationship with the Chris Morris's stuff.

Some things I've adored (the Day Today, Brass Eye) and others I've really not liked at all (Jam, Nathan Barley).  And yes, I appreciate he wasn't the sole person involved with all of those, but he's the main force behind Four Lions.

Well, in this case I have to confess to being somewhere in between - there was a lot I liked about Four Lions, and it has some very funny stuff in it, but I also found it a little frustrating in some regards and other bits didn't seem to work at all.

One thing I definitely wouldn't say is that it has a pop at Muslims - it's not anti-Islam in any sense.  It is anti-suicide bombing and it does parody terrorism in quite a twisted way, but I don't think there's any real problem with those.

What I did have a bit of a problem with is that it relies quite heavily on stupid people.  Two of the characters are clearly not working with a full deck of cards.  Now I'm sure that such people are probably taken advantage of by terrorists, it's just that we don't really see anything of that side of things.

And that applies to all the characters - why are they terrorists?  What has convinced them that blowing themselves up is the thing to do?  Weirdly there's more on this in the extras, where issues such as racism are touched on, but in this it's not at all clear how these particularly guys came to be terrorists, just that main character is convinced it's the thing to do and the rest are either idiots or not quite mentally all there.

Another point of frustration was the flipside of things.  I appreciate the focus was on the main characters, but the film does also touch on the government side of things, I just wish there'd been a bit more of that.  I'm not saying it should have been like 24 or anything like that, but a bit more of the authorities botching things would probably have helped provide a bit more balance - if the terrorists are stupid but still getting away with it, then clearly the police are too.

Which is the other aspect I found didn't work - the logistical aspects of being a terrorist and that side of things doesn't actually seem to be consistently portrayed.  So when they eventually decide to target the marathon they basically turn up in London in a van, have no troubles finding somewhere close by to park and then at one point basically randomly join some of the runners.  It's just unrealistic and surely the point of the film was to focus on that side of things.

I've been quite harsh there - as I say, there was plenty in the film I enjoyed, and some good comedy.  It also makes some good points and makes you think.  I guess my real issue is that it's not entirely consistent with that, but it doesn't really harm the film, as such, it just feels like they missed a couple of opportunities.

face scrape

Had my second double-edge shave this weekend.

I can't honestly say it was much of an improvement.  Obviously it's still early days so I'm not quite going to give up yet, but I have to say I'm kinda wondering what all the fuss is about.

I did my best to keep the angle right - certainly I had less razor burn than I did last time.  The key word there is "less" - I still had razor burn, it just wasn't as sharp as it was the first time.

I have a particularly tough beard.  This second time I was shaving after my long Sunday morning shower and did all the usual stuff so the beard was really at maximum softness (well, without spending half a day in the bath).  I mention this because this is always when I get my best shave out of my Mach3.  I generally change the blade and the shower + stuff gets me a super-close shave that has little burn and lasts for a good while.

The DE shave was again more like the 4th shave I get out of the Mach3.  I didn't change the blade - I understand you're supposed to get 3 or 4 shaves out of a DE, but then you're supposed to get 8 or 9 out of a Mach3 and I get half of this so perhaps that's an issue.  If I have to change the blade every time I shave I won't actually mind.  Each DE blade only cost 20p, compared to several pounds for a Mach3 blade so it'll still be massively cheaper.

What I would say is that there's a big part of me suspects I won't get a good shave out of the DE until I've had more practice and I start going against the grain.

The truth is that I really only get a good shave with the Mach3 if I go against the grain as well.  See, the problem is that that really tough beard I mentioned doesn't really grow out of my face so much as along it.  The grain of my beard is rather unusual, going strongly  in odd directions (up at the base of my neck, but down for the rest of it so I have an "anti-parting" about three quarters of the way down my neck, for example) but also the hair almost universally emerges very much in the that direction.

So if I shave with the grain I cannot possibly get a close shave - the hairs simply lay down as the blade comes near.  If I go across the grain then it will feel smooth if you run your finger in that direction, but rubbing against it feels like sandpaper and (more significantly) you can see stubble left behind.  Only by going against the grain (and I really do mean going against - the blade has to travel in all sorts of weird directions for me to achieve this) can I get what looks and feels like a reasonable shave.

Since I'm not comfortable enough to do that yet with the DE I've a feeling I will continue to have what seem (comparatively) like poor shaves.  And that's the problem really - I'm trying this because it's meant to give a good shave more consistently with fewer issues like razor burn, but so far no joy!

Tomorrow I'm going to be out at a meeting all day so I won't be posting.

It's also Shrove Tuesday, so I'll probably be stuffing myself with pancakes!

first shave

So I had my first shave with a double-edge razor last night.

It was okay.

I was somewhat worried I might slice my face to pieces - that is the traditional criticism of DE shaving and certainly my dad always said he used to slice himself to bits.  That didn't happen.  There was a tiny nick on my jaw line, but we are talking scrape, rather than cut.

I have been using the prep technique for a good few months now as I wanted to have all that to a stage where it was natural and normal so that when I did finally give the DE razor a go I would be able to focus on that as the single new element, rather than totally confuse myself.  I think that worked well, although I was a bit heavy with the shaving soap and I think the lather produced dried out a bit much, but I don't think there was anything wrong on that front.

It wasn't a spectacularly close shave.  Partly I was a bit nervous, as I say, but also I had a lot of razor burn.  I went back and consulted the book I had read when working out DE shaving and it turns out that I had gotten the angles all wrong.

The blade for a DE sits between two edges of the razor (one above and one below, where it's clamped in) and I had done my angle based on the lower of these.  I'd remembered it should be a relatively shallow angle (30 degrees-ish) but because I was doing that from the lower edge, I essentially ended up scraping the blade across my face, scratching the skin and causing the razor burn.

I should have been going from the upper edge.  In other words, I'd started with the razor parallel to my skin and moved it up, where I should have started with the razor perpendicular to my skin and moved it down.

Other than that it was okay.  I don't think I applied too much pressure - I was all very "light touch," though as I say, difficult to really tell with me having the blade at the wrong angle.

Certainly the overall shave was not close one.  It was a brand new blade and I did two passes (one with, one across - I'm saving against until I'm more comfortable with the blade as a whole) and the resultant shave was similar to what I end up with after about the third or fourth shave with my mach3.  So not baby-soft smooth but clearly shaved rather than unshaved and with a touch of razor burn that would tell me to change to a new cartridge.

I'll keep going - this weekend I'll give it another go and see if I can get a better handle on the technique.

new procedure

So when it was snowing I had a lot of difficulty with doing my laundry.

I use the local laundrette, which is just up the road, but they don't tend to clear the roads and pavements around here very much, so it's difficult to get too.  If I have multiple bags (generally I produce two bin bags of washing every week during the winter) then I have to drive.  So if I have to walk like I did during the snow, then I can only do a bit (a three-quarter full bin bag is about all that's practical to carry, so I just do the essential stuff).

Now because the worst of the snow as over the weekend I decided to try doing my laundry in the evening during the week after work.  Previously I have gotten up super early and done it Saturday morning and it normally works.

The real problem is people who clearly have washing machines but not driers.  There are only a handful of driers in the laundrette and usually at least one is out of action.  That unfortunately sometimes means I will have my washing in the machine and people turn up and fill the driers with clothes.

This is actually a bit of a bugbear with me as they tend to use the driers like they would a smaller home drier, spreading what are large home loads (or perhaps 2 loads) across multiple driers.  The whole point of the big industrial driers they have in the laundrette is you can get a big load in them.

Also, the best way to use them is to load them up with a few pounds and let them run for a good while.  If you spread the laundry out across multiple machines it is less efficient (obviously there's a tipping point, but these people are way below it) and then feed in small change, checking it all the time and therefore letting all the hot air out, it will take longer and therefore cost you more.

Anyway, point is that I discovered that generally the laundrette is not particularly busy in the evenings.  Certainly not as busy as at the weekends.

Now obviously part of the reason I have not previously tried the weekend is time - I get up early and therefore tend to go to bed early so spending 1.5-2hours in the laundrette after work is basically my entire evening.  But there are also some other issues - obviously it's more efficient for me to drive straight there after work, so that means loading the bags into the car in the morning.

Now that's fine, but what if I need to wash my work trousers or similar?  Also I only have a small number of vests, so it can get complicated if I'm not doing the washing at the weekend when I'm wearing casual clothes.  So yeah, there are some kinks, but I think I prefer it.  It's quieter, quicker and it frees up my early Saturday mornings.