My posting on here has been erratic this week--I've posted the posts I would have, but they've not really been one-a-day like usual.
The reason for that is because I have been working on a training course. And it's not been a whole lot of fun.
The idea is that one of the companies we do work for wants to get a better idea of how the work we do works... er, if you can unpick that sentence, more power to you :/. The training started off as a bit of a weird thing in the proposal we responded to. It was aimed at them essentially receiving enough training to do the work we do themselves.
That seemed like a very dumb idea to us. One of the fundamental points it ignores is that if you're not the sort of person who is adept at stats, then you're just never going to 'get it'.
I know in these ages of equality and stuff we're not supposed to say stuff like this, but the fundamental truth is that different people's brains are wired in different ways. And that means that some people will never be any good at some things. Sure, they might be able to work hard and gain some competency, but there's a huge gap between that and having a natural ability at something.
Anyway, it never quite panned out that way and so instead, we've given a mini "introductory" session. It's been hell putting it together--balancing elements of what the person will be able to grasp and actually covering some useful stuff.
And there were some worrying signs--asking of questions we'd actually answered in material we'd already covered, for example. But I think some of it sunk in.
It definitely put paid to any possible notion of me becoming a teacher. Not that I've ever wanted to be a teacher, but this confirmed it's definitely not something I have a natural affinity for.
And this joyous week of work has been capped off with me having to put myself forward for some SPSS seminar rubbish.
Basically, they're just a massive hard-sell for SPSS add-ons, but the boss seems to think it's going to be useful. Really I wanted to say 'no' to going, but I always worry about--being overly negative, not wanting to "advance" myself. Better to just grit my teeth and bear it and then say it was useless afterwards, I think.
Plus it's on a Friday, so it's not a bad day out of the office to have.
Thursday, 4 September 2008
witche-brade-oh
Or witchblade if you're not hampered by Japanese phonetics :).
I finished watching this the other day. It was surprisingly good. It was yet another one of those shows I'd seen the first couple of eps of and then purchased blind.
I'm not sure it ever quite got to being great as there were a lot of niggles I had with the show. It's perfect review material from that point of view :).
What I would say, however, is it was extraordinarily good value for money. The disks all had slip-covers and booklets, there was a soundtrack free with the box set. Each disk also had several extras, and we're talking proper meaty extras--not just textless songs.
I finished watching this the other day. It was surprisingly good. It was yet another one of those shows I'd seen the first couple of eps of and then purchased blind.
I'm not sure it ever quite got to being great as there were a lot of niggles I had with the show. It's perfect review material from that point of view :).
What I would say, however, is it was extraordinarily good value for money. The disks all had slip-covers and booklets, there was a soundtrack free with the box set. Each disk also had several extras, and we're talking proper meaty extras--not just textless songs.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
gamering-ism
I don't talk much in the old blog about gaming.
Well, there was that obsession with Civ3 a while back, but that was a separate issue. The main reason I don't talk about it is I don't do a lot of it.
I have a slightly love/hate relationship with gaming. There are a few reasons for that. One of the most important is that the types of games I enjoy tend to be those that you have to really get involved with to get the most out of.
I mainly play real-time strategy (RTS) and first-person shooters (FPS). Both of which generally have levels that last a long time. A good RTS level can take hours and so can an FPS level, especially if it's some way into the game and it's getting more difficult.
This means to really play the game you need a good few hours and I generally don't have that much free time kicking about.
Another reason is that I'm just not very good at games. It's not so much that I get annoyed with dying or anything, it's more that I'm just not very good. So I get shot a lot in FPS's for example, which if the game mechanics aren't kind means I die and then that means restarting.
Also, I can get annoyed at some of the bizarre attempts at realism. One of my "favourites" is the 'you can only carry two guns' thing. This just seems patently ridiculous to me--it' a game, just give me bigger pockets. I mean, how realistic is it that I can survive a shot-gun blast at point-blank range, and yet oh-no, I can only carry two guns.
I also worry slightly about gaming--I mean, is it a grown up activity or not? I mean, if I still played with toy trucks or Star Wars figures people would think I was werid right? So isn't playing computer games on a par with that? Shouldn't I just read a good book instead?
Anyway, this entry was a bit inspired because I spent most of Sunday gaming. I was playing Company of Heroes, which is an RTS.
I picked this up actually mainly because I understand that Dawn of War 2 will use the CoH game engine and I wanted to check it out.
I can't say I've been wonderfully enamoured. Not that it's a bad game or that it doesn't look gorgeous or play well, it's just I'm not really feeling it. I mean, I don't quite feel connected to it--there's no individual character that I can relate to.
The game uses an entire company of soldiers (Able company) and it's kind hard getting to feel that I have a vested stake in their activities. It's like the classic trick is to have 'hero' characters--leaders or special characters who stand out and give you that feeling, but here there aren't. If one unit gets mown down by machine guns, I just build another.
They also don't do the classic C&C trick of referring to me the player as "Commander" or anything. In fact the briefings are all phrased as "we need to do this stuff" not "you need to do this stuff" even though it's me that's controlling everything.
I just hope they include hero characters in DoW2 - the stuff I've seems to suggest they will.
Well, there was that obsession with Civ3 a while back, but that was a separate issue. The main reason I don't talk about it is I don't do a lot of it.
I have a slightly love/hate relationship with gaming. There are a few reasons for that. One of the most important is that the types of games I enjoy tend to be those that you have to really get involved with to get the most out of.
I mainly play real-time strategy (RTS) and first-person shooters (FPS). Both of which generally have levels that last a long time. A good RTS level can take hours and so can an FPS level, especially if it's some way into the game and it's getting more difficult.
This means to really play the game you need a good few hours and I generally don't have that much free time kicking about.
Another reason is that I'm just not very good at games. It's not so much that I get annoyed with dying or anything, it's more that I'm just not very good. So I get shot a lot in FPS's for example, which if the game mechanics aren't kind means I die and then that means restarting.
Also, I can get annoyed at some of the bizarre attempts at realism. One of my "favourites" is the 'you can only carry two guns' thing. This just seems patently ridiculous to me--it' a game, just give me bigger pockets. I mean, how realistic is it that I can survive a shot-gun blast at point-blank range, and yet oh-no, I can only carry two guns.
I also worry slightly about gaming--I mean, is it a grown up activity or not? I mean, if I still played with toy trucks or Star Wars figures people would think I was werid right? So isn't playing computer games on a par with that? Shouldn't I just read a good book instead?
Anyway, this entry was a bit inspired because I spent most of Sunday gaming. I was playing Company of Heroes, which is an RTS.
I picked this up actually mainly because I understand that Dawn of War 2 will use the CoH game engine and I wanted to check it out.
I can't say I've been wonderfully enamoured. Not that it's a bad game or that it doesn't look gorgeous or play well, it's just I'm not really feeling it. I mean, I don't quite feel connected to it--there's no individual character that I can relate to.
The game uses an entire company of soldiers (Able company) and it's kind hard getting to feel that I have a vested stake in their activities. It's like the classic trick is to have 'hero' characters--leaders or special characters who stand out and give you that feeling, but here there aren't. If one unit gets mown down by machine guns, I just build another.
They also don't do the classic C&C trick of referring to me the player as "Commander" or anything. In fact the briefings are all phrased as "we need to do this stuff" not "you need to do this stuff" even though it's me that's controlling everything.
I just hope they include hero characters in DoW2 - the stuff I've seems to suggest they will.
who watches the watchers of the watchmen?
I finished reading Watchmen this last w/end.
I'm kinda unchanged in my opinions on Alan Moore, being that I'm not his biggest fan. I know a lot of people love his stuff, and more power to them, it's just for me he doesn't quite work.
The problem I find is he doesn't really seem to write comic books--he seems to write novellas that someone else then draws accompanying pictures for. They're very words and there's very little real reliance on visual story telling, which is really what comics are all about.
Really, the purest form of comics would have no speech at all. And it's like the decision in watchmen to not have sound effects--it's backwards, really to be a proper pure comics, s-fx should be the only text.
Which isn't to say that watchmen doesn't achieve what it set out to do--it's got a complex, interweaving plot and lots of sub-texts and all sorts of other clever things. I'm just not sure that makes it an entertaining comic book.
It's also far too dense as a 12-part comic book--really it's 24 part comic book (or novella, as a mentioned) that's been squeezed into 12 parts by the clever use of tiny panels.
I could go on with loads of other tiny quibbles, but those are my main feelings.
I'm kinda unchanged in my opinions on Alan Moore, being that I'm not his biggest fan. I know a lot of people love his stuff, and more power to them, it's just for me he doesn't quite work.
The problem I find is he doesn't really seem to write comic books--he seems to write novellas that someone else then draws accompanying pictures for. They're very words and there's very little real reliance on visual story telling, which is really what comics are all about.
Really, the purest form of comics would have no speech at all. And it's like the decision in watchmen to not have sound effects--it's backwards, really to be a proper pure comics, s-fx should be the only text.
Which isn't to say that watchmen doesn't achieve what it set out to do--it's got a complex, interweaving plot and lots of sub-texts and all sorts of other clever things. I'm just not sure that makes it an entertaining comic book.
It's also far too dense as a 12-part comic book--really it's 24 part comic book (or novella, as a mentioned) that's been squeezed into 12 parts by the clever use of tiny panels.
I could go on with loads of other tiny quibbles, but those are my main feelings.
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