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.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Wednesday, 27 March 2013
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!
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!
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
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.
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.
Monday, 25 March 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 14 March 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, 13 March 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 12 March 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 8 March 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 7 March 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, 6 March 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 1 March 2013
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.
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.
Monday, 25 February 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 22 February 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 21 February 2013
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.
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.
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
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.
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.
Monday, 18 February 2013
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.
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.
Friday, 15 February 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, 14 February 2013
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.
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.
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