You know those days when you're rushing around frenetically but when the day's done, you haven't a clue what you've achieved ?
Been having a few of those lately. Part of it's firefighting stuff that other people just haven't done, part of it's working my usual pattern of getting the little jobs out of the way quickly and then completely banishing them from memory. But I think the most part is down to being distracted again.
This time it's my back stiffening up and I guess this post shows how much it's bugging me at the moment. I'm one of those people who try to hide all signs of any pain they may be in, which is a trait I really took on while playing cricket. It's a tough game cricket, the randomness means you get hit pretty often by a ball which definitely isn't soft ... And if you show pain, it'll encourage bowlers who then think they're getting the better of you. So you don't show any sign that the ball that bounced a bit more than you thought has fractured a finger or that the one you took on the leg means your movement is hampered.
A batsman shaking a hand in pain or sporting a limp is like a red rag to a bowler, trust me - I've been the bowler with the evil grin a few times :-)
So I try to avoid all outward signs of any pain I may be in. Sometimes that's easy, there are wonderful days when I have no pain whatsoever. Other times it's hard, with the toughest part being to not get caught in a negative feedback loop where taking notice of the pain means you stress more, which tenses up the muscles which makes them hurt more. That's negative feedback (or negative reinforcement) at play.
So yeah - hey, my back's sore, time for me to try and deal with it.
What I'd like to do is find someone with strong fingers to rub that stiff part of me better. (Oi! I know there's one or two out there who thinks that last sentence is smutty :-) People like that seem to be a bit thin on the ground at the moment, or that could be my unfortunate habit of going after the unattainable.
What I think I'll have to settle for is a looooong hot shower (lets see if I can run the hot water tank to empty !) and then hope I don't embarass myself and others tomorrow by begging for a massage :-) :-) :-)
Other stuff I do when stress is rearing its head is try to make myself and others laugh. Turning frustration into fun doesn't make the problem go away but it is like making a statement that you're not going to let the stress win. It's either that or a deep need to bang one's head against the wall. That's why I prefer laughter, it has less chance of needing hospital visits than trying to do demolition without the proper tools.
What else have I been up to apart from feeling sorry for myself with a bad back ?
Think I may leave that for a post coming soon cos I hate to have a depressive post at the top of the blog :-) A summary would be : books, games, music, TV :
Legend of the Seeker - scifi channel series, watched 3 and it's got my interest bigtime. Possibly due to the Foxy & Ferocious Bridget Regan who co stars.
Defying Gravity - BBC are showing this and it's totally blowing away Stargate Universe. SG:U is dim, dark, depressing and devoid of humour. Defying Gravity is highly entertaining light, fluffy, decent scifi that cheats only a little. It remembers the purpose of TV, which is to entertain. Stargate SG:1 remembered that, Atlantis tried hard to entertain but they've totally forgotten with SG:U.
Books - finished the Ringworld series, it's a fitting epic end of the series. Next stop is the 2 books set in Bioware's Mass Effect universe.
Games - more Bioware, they have a talent for good storytelling and most importantly they draw the player in with the interaction with the non-player characters. I struggle with some well regarded computer role playing games like Bethesda's attempts (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3) but Bioware's Dragon Age is another that has my attention. Possibly because of the character Morrigan, voiced by Farscape's Claudia Black.
Right - that hot shower is now overdue, time for me to escape to that so I can listen in to more of Morrigan's antics before trying for sleep.
PS Claudia Black has long dark hair. Bridget Regan in Legend of the Seeker has long dark hair. I'm doomed.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Water, water everywhere
Birthday today :-)
And there's an excellent tradition that we have at work for those. Cakes ! I took mine in yesterday because another tradition at work on a Fryday (deliberate typo) is to haunt the canteen for the fry up. As usual, I buy way too many cakes, to the point where I've brought the remains of a box of minidonuts (chocolate tipped) home. They'll disappear over the weekend.
Watched "The Men Who Stare At Goats" last night with the Crazies. Truly strange film. Entertaining but very weird. The Mall was pretty nuts with traffic due to the Xmas lights going on, so we missed out on getting a decent meal in. I'd have missed out anyway due to being kept at work longer than I really wanted. Flexible working means I don't miss out there, we'll stay longer than 9 to 5 to finish things off because the flexi credit we get from that lets us leg it earlier on a day where we'd otherwise be clockwatching.
The people where I work have a habit of making that kind of thing worth it. I've been lucky to be involved for a while in a fun project with lots of great people. I got reminded of that this morning when I found a Happy Birthday card at my desk, signed by Ms Sunshine, the Snow Queen, WT and two other characters from that section that I've not mentioned before. That's Mrs S (who still scares me due to how effective she was at poking the younger me into doing training!) and the diminutive Miss M who's been keeping me honest with filing system stuff over the last few months :-)
They're a great bunch, complete with Superspy (you'd know where that codename comes from if I let slip his name :-) they're the Unsung Heros (Heroines? :-) keeping a big team running smoothly. Often unappreciated and unduly hassled, they stick to their guns and keep smiling. Especially Ms Sunshine, who's ever present grin brings brightness to dim, dismal days like today. (4pm and it's almost pitch dark from cloud and we're expecting lots of rain today) And our Snow Queen who gets to field all the IT questions about problems caused by the people who provide our IT. Every team needs a heart and that's our BM girls, ably assisted by The Boss. We're lucky to have them around. (Although we lose The Boss in a few months due to the impending arrival of a MiniBoss)
Right - that's work - what else am I getting up to today ?
Picked up presents from the Crazies that had gone back to the Post Office :-) And did the traditional tearing into the Amazon boxes :-) I have new books and new dvds that will keep me happy for a while. Now it's South Africa vs England in the cricket. Fully expecting England to get bashed but they're doing ok at the moment.
Pizza later :-) Unless the rain makes me chicken out and do the walk to collect it another day. Stepping outside the house right now may lead to drowning. I'm not kidding !
Oh - I stopped off to drop off a couple of minidonuts with the canteen girls and had a chance to run possibly my favourite bit of birthday related entertainment ... Most guesses have been scarily close, to within a couple of years (meh) but the Canteen Girl guess was 25 :-) Which is 10 years younger than actual. Cue a Big Grin :-)
But now - time to concentrate on a cricket match that's happily warming up while contemplating how long the minidonuts will last ...
And there's an excellent tradition that we have at work for those. Cakes ! I took mine in yesterday because another tradition at work on a Fryday (deliberate typo) is to haunt the canteen for the fry up. As usual, I buy way too many cakes, to the point where I've brought the remains of a box of minidonuts (chocolate tipped) home. They'll disappear over the weekend.
Watched "The Men Who Stare At Goats" last night with the Crazies. Truly strange film. Entertaining but very weird. The Mall was pretty nuts with traffic due to the Xmas lights going on, so we missed out on getting a decent meal in. I'd have missed out anyway due to being kept at work longer than I really wanted. Flexible working means I don't miss out there, we'll stay longer than 9 to 5 to finish things off because the flexi credit we get from that lets us leg it earlier on a day where we'd otherwise be clockwatching.
The people where I work have a habit of making that kind of thing worth it. I've been lucky to be involved for a while in a fun project with lots of great people. I got reminded of that this morning when I found a Happy Birthday card at my desk, signed by Ms Sunshine, the Snow Queen, WT and two other characters from that section that I've not mentioned before. That's Mrs S (who still scares me due to how effective she was at poking the younger me into doing training!) and the diminutive Miss M who's been keeping me honest with filing system stuff over the last few months :-)
They're a great bunch, complete with Superspy (you'd know where that codename comes from if I let slip his name :-) they're the Unsung Heros (Heroines? :-) keeping a big team running smoothly. Often unappreciated and unduly hassled, they stick to their guns and keep smiling. Especially Ms Sunshine, who's ever present grin brings brightness to dim, dismal days like today. (4pm and it's almost pitch dark from cloud and we're expecting lots of rain today) And our Snow Queen who gets to field all the IT questions about problems caused by the people who provide our IT. Every team needs a heart and that's our BM girls, ably assisted by The Boss. We're lucky to have them around. (Although we lose The Boss in a few months due to the impending arrival of a MiniBoss)
Right - that's work - what else am I getting up to today ?
Picked up presents from the Crazies that had gone back to the Post Office :-) And did the traditional tearing into the Amazon boxes :-) I have new books and new dvds that will keep me happy for a while. Now it's South Africa vs England in the cricket. Fully expecting England to get bashed but they're doing ok at the moment.
Pizza later :-) Unless the rain makes me chicken out and do the walk to collect it another day. Stepping outside the house right now may lead to drowning. I'm not kidding !
Oh - I stopped off to drop off a couple of minidonuts with the canteen girls and had a chance to run possibly my favourite bit of birthday related entertainment ... Most guesses have been scarily close, to within a couple of years (meh) but the Canteen Girl guess was 25 :-) Which is 10 years younger than actual. Cue a Big Grin :-)
But now - time to concentrate on a cricket match that's happily warming up while contemplating how long the minidonuts will last ...
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Thinking of ...
... writing stuff again.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while, I reckon there's a book or two in me somewhere trying to sneak out. Trouble is, it's daunting thinking of all the setting up that a book would need before you can crack on with telling the story. The best books are consistent with themselves and stay faithful to all the little things. Rules get set up that govern the world, if those rules get broken then the readers can quite rightly call you a fraud.
Pacing is critical as well, I'm picking that up from watching Stargate Universe. I'm still curious about this new series, although it seems very badly afflicted by StarTrek Syndrome. That's an episode pacing style that has the cast fumbling to fix a problem, only to miraculously sort it at the end. SG Universe is similar, episodes tend to be slow-slow-slow until 5-10 minutes from the end when the pace goes ultra fast. And their problems get sorted out just in the nick of time. That pacing style seems rather jarring.
I've two options really for what I'd write in terms of the fictional setting. It would either be a Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy swords, sandals and magic world or it would be science fiction with starships. Worlds of magic are pretty easy, there's a blank slate and the Rules that govern the world can be far simpler. You just make them up because you can ignore the laws of physics if you want to. Or bend them with that magic stuff :-) Just have to be careful not to plagiarise someone else's world.
Science fiction on the other hand ... That's much tougher. This is where "being consistent with itself" bites really hard. You see it mainly with series that have grown and grown, with the backstory taking on a life of its own. David Weber's Honor Harrington series is very good but is starting to suffer from "where do we go from here ?" On the other hand, Larry Niven's Known Space books have a very strong theme running through because the Rules of that universe, while being quite tight, give a huge amount of scope allowing the stories to be about the characters.
Star Trek tied itself in hellish knots because of all the "Hey ! That looks cool, we'll use it in an episode". Plot devices that aren't properly thought out come back to bite you later. There's a quote in ST The Next Generation where the computer says "NCC 1701 D, the fifth Starfleet ship to bear the name Enterprise." Which was fine when that episode was written but got broken with the series Star Trek Enterprise. Star Trek also suffers immensely from the demon of Time Travel, allowing this to happen in a series (unless incredibly carefully planned) opens up all sorts of cans of worms. Curiously, the fella who wrote this alternate non-Federation ST timeline avoids time travel completely. That's a good read too, when you get around some of his phrasing :-)
So - I'd like to start writing scifi but I'm a bit daunted by the amount of setting up that would be needed before getting down to the fun stuff of storytelling.
Things like :
Mechs or tanks ? (noone argues with a 100tonne Big Robot)
What type of guns ? (projectile or energy)
How much attention do you pay to physics ? (Star Trek and Star Wars are extremely badly behaved with respect to physics)
Military or civilian characters ? (Star Trek vs Firefly)
Socio-political situation (religion, wars, customs)
Choices made there define the whole world and the rules within which the stories must play out. "New technology" as a plot device can only go so far in changing or bending those rules. Stargate is a decent example of how new technology can change the rules but it has to make sense or the audience is lost.
Hey ! That's enough about theory of writing fiction, why's this come out again ?
There's a few reasons, like reading some of the stories that come through the Eve alliance's newsletter. I play sci-fi style games that have great stories, with Mass Effect being a great example. I also get scenes sparking through my head as well, there's one running that involves a new spaceship in the yard having techs do inspections on it. Now there's a scene where an author could lead a reader into how the ships are put together. Interesting for a techie, not likely to be much story there though.
Stuff I do with work occasionally kicks off ideas that, as is normal with me, lead off into tangents so lateral they've turned longitudinal.
For the fantasy world, I had the starting few chapters of a novel lined up which I reckon would have grabbed people. A fantasy setting is best with a party of characters to have fun with and the Monday night gaming gives plenty of ideas there. Question is though, how to carry it on. Novel's gotta have a plot.
Riiight - that's enough Wall of Text about writing a Wall of Text :-) Time to get back to listening to stuff while wondering if my blocking sinuses (and resulting slight sore head) will let me play that Internet Space Ship game :-)
This is something I've been thinking about for a while, I reckon there's a book or two in me somewhere trying to sneak out. Trouble is, it's daunting thinking of all the setting up that a book would need before you can crack on with telling the story. The best books are consistent with themselves and stay faithful to all the little things. Rules get set up that govern the world, if those rules get broken then the readers can quite rightly call you a fraud.
Pacing is critical as well, I'm picking that up from watching Stargate Universe. I'm still curious about this new series, although it seems very badly afflicted by StarTrek Syndrome. That's an episode pacing style that has the cast fumbling to fix a problem, only to miraculously sort it at the end. SG Universe is similar, episodes tend to be slow-slow-slow until 5-10 minutes from the end when the pace goes ultra fast. And their problems get sorted out just in the nick of time. That pacing style seems rather jarring.
I've two options really for what I'd write in terms of the fictional setting. It would either be a Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy swords, sandals and magic world or it would be science fiction with starships. Worlds of magic are pretty easy, there's a blank slate and the Rules that govern the world can be far simpler. You just make them up because you can ignore the laws of physics if you want to. Or bend them with that magic stuff :-) Just have to be careful not to plagiarise someone else's world.
Science fiction on the other hand ... That's much tougher. This is where "being consistent with itself" bites really hard. You see it mainly with series that have grown and grown, with the backstory taking on a life of its own. David Weber's Honor Harrington series is very good but is starting to suffer from "where do we go from here ?" On the other hand, Larry Niven's Known Space books have a very strong theme running through because the Rules of that universe, while being quite tight, give a huge amount of scope allowing the stories to be about the characters.
Star Trek tied itself in hellish knots because of all the "Hey ! That looks cool, we'll use it in an episode". Plot devices that aren't properly thought out come back to bite you later. There's a quote in ST The Next Generation where the computer says "NCC 1701 D, the fifth Starfleet ship to bear the name Enterprise." Which was fine when that episode was written but got broken with the series Star Trek Enterprise. Star Trek also suffers immensely from the demon of Time Travel, allowing this to happen in a series (unless incredibly carefully planned) opens up all sorts of cans of worms. Curiously, the fella who wrote this alternate non-Federation ST timeline avoids time travel completely. That's a good read too, when you get around some of his phrasing :-)
So - I'd like to start writing scifi but I'm a bit daunted by the amount of setting up that would be needed before getting down to the fun stuff of storytelling.
Things like :
Mechs or tanks ? (noone argues with a 100tonne Big Robot)
What type of guns ? (projectile or energy)
How much attention do you pay to physics ? (Star Trek and Star Wars are extremely badly behaved with respect to physics)
Military or civilian characters ? (Star Trek vs Firefly)
Socio-political situation (religion, wars, customs)
Choices made there define the whole world and the rules within which the stories must play out. "New technology" as a plot device can only go so far in changing or bending those rules. Stargate is a decent example of how new technology can change the rules but it has to make sense or the audience is lost.
Hey ! That's enough about theory of writing fiction, why's this come out again ?
There's a few reasons, like reading some of the stories that come through the Eve alliance's newsletter. I play sci-fi style games that have great stories, with Mass Effect being a great example. I also get scenes sparking through my head as well, there's one running that involves a new spaceship in the yard having techs do inspections on it. Now there's a scene where an author could lead a reader into how the ships are put together. Interesting for a techie, not likely to be much story there though.
Stuff I do with work occasionally kicks off ideas that, as is normal with me, lead off into tangents so lateral they've turned longitudinal.
For the fantasy world, I had the starting few chapters of a novel lined up which I reckon would have grabbed people. A fantasy setting is best with a party of characters to have fun with and the Monday night gaming gives plenty of ideas there. Question is though, how to carry it on. Novel's gotta have a plot.
Riiight - that's enough Wall of Text about writing a Wall of Text :-) Time to get back to listening to stuff while wondering if my blocking sinuses (and resulting slight sore head) will let me play that Internet Space Ship game :-)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Frustration leads to ...
Desperate measures !
One of the things I've been watching again lately is Doctor Who. The repeats have just gotten to the end of season 4 and while I've been watching it on the telly off iPlayer through my cable box, the last episode just ... isn't ... listing ...
Grr !
Desperate measures time.
My newer laptop can't help this time, as the TV output on it is Round Peg Square Hole and doesn't fit the telly. So ...
Old laptop gets resurrected (first time in a bunch of months)
Network cable is stretched across the room to give it internet
Telly hook up cables
And hoping for a decent video considering it's old and tired
Here's the result :
Picture's a bit washed out from camera flash but there we have it, laptop beside telly feeding me Dr Who amidst a swath of cables.
Result :-)
Not a bad picture too, although I think I'm getting a taster of the improvements HD telly makes with the two screens side by side. I think the laptop picture is doing HD while the telly is limited to normal definition. Yep, there's a difference. Gotta be looking for it but there's a difference.
Right - time to get back to Dr Who before I pack away the old laptop again for another 6 months.
PS There's an impending crash, bang, wallop from when I trip over the network cable.
One of the things I've been watching again lately is Doctor Who. The repeats have just gotten to the end of season 4 and while I've been watching it on the telly off iPlayer through my cable box, the last episode just ... isn't ... listing ...
Grr !
Desperate measures time.
My newer laptop can't help this time, as the TV output on it is Round Peg Square Hole and doesn't fit the telly. So ...
Old laptop gets resurrected (first time in a bunch of months)
Network cable is stretched across the room to give it internet
Telly hook up cables
And hoping for a decent video considering it's old and tired
Here's the result :
Picture's a bit washed out from camera flash but there we have it, laptop beside telly feeding me Dr Who amidst a swath of cables.
Result :-)
Not a bad picture too, although I think I'm getting a taster of the improvements HD telly makes with the two screens side by side. I think the laptop picture is doing HD while the telly is limited to normal definition. Yep, there's a difference. Gotta be looking for it but there's a difference.
Right - time to get back to Dr Who before I pack away the old laptop again for another 6 months.
PS There's an impending crash, bang, wallop from when I trip over the network cable.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Pass me the jump leads !
Cos I think I need them at the moment :-)
That post last week, where I said I'd take those cold symptoms, lock them in a box and stuff the box somewhere to give it a good ignoring. Lol - guess who got put in the box instead of the bugs ? :-) Heh heh heh, apart from Wednesday (yes, right after that post got dispatched ...) it wasn't too bad.
It just coincided with a week I was planning to have as rest and recharge ... I don't think it changed much of what I did though, which was listen to lots of music, catch up on recorded stuff and have a crack at the occasional game. Not much Eve, which I reactivated a week or so ago, cos I wasn't particularly feeling like being involved with the rest of the human race.
Until Saturday ... when I went Pizza Hunting. Rejoined Human race, Human race didn't quite know what to make of it. (Human race being a dazzingly cute cherub in the pizza shop taking the form of a blonde possibly half my age - i.e. jailbait) Truth, I wasn't impersonating a particularly impressive member of the human race at the time. Pizza was worth it :-)
Recorded stuff - lots of Stargates. I still think Babylon 5, closely followed by Farscape is the best sci-fi on telly, Stargate SG-1 definitely gave them a good run for their money. I'm up to the end of season 3 now, great early years in this series (fantastic entertainment value), it's a shame it went on probably a couple of years too long. Not sure what to make of Stargate - Universe, needs more time.
House, shaken up again, still good stuff. Regenesis, wanna watch this again from season 1 - it's intelligent drama with strong and highly amusing characters. Warehouse 13, fluffy stuff, still watching out of curiosity. (What's the line about his men would follow him anywhere, if only out of curiosity ?) Flashforward definitely has my attention now.
Music - been raiding music stuff again :-)
Impressed with : Roberta Flack, Cardigans First Band On The Moon (album with Lovefool), Dr Who season 4 soundtrack
Not so impressed with : Paramore's latest - sounds like the other two but not as good. Bit disappointed.
So - couple of hectic days back at work, got stuff done plus I had a few major victories in making people laugh. "Im in ur filez editin ur commentz". I like to make other people laugh cos it makes me feel better too. No-one's noticed the haircut though. Or maybe they have and they didn't want to say anything ;-)
Still not back to full form after the bugs and I have an early start tomorrow, so it's time to wrap this one up before I start rambling and babbling. Oops - Too late !
That post last week, where I said I'd take those cold symptoms, lock them in a box and stuff the box somewhere to give it a good ignoring. Lol - guess who got put in the box instead of the bugs ? :-) Heh heh heh, apart from Wednesday (yes, right after that post got dispatched ...) it wasn't too bad.
It just coincided with a week I was planning to have as rest and recharge ... I don't think it changed much of what I did though, which was listen to lots of music, catch up on recorded stuff and have a crack at the occasional game. Not much Eve, which I reactivated a week or so ago, cos I wasn't particularly feeling like being involved with the rest of the human race.
Until Saturday ... when I went Pizza Hunting. Rejoined Human race, Human race didn't quite know what to make of it. (Human race being a dazzingly cute cherub in the pizza shop taking the form of a blonde possibly half my age - i.e. jailbait) Truth, I wasn't impersonating a particularly impressive member of the human race at the time. Pizza was worth it :-)
Recorded stuff - lots of Stargates. I still think Babylon 5, closely followed by Farscape is the best sci-fi on telly, Stargate SG-1 definitely gave them a good run for their money. I'm up to the end of season 3 now, great early years in this series (fantastic entertainment value), it's a shame it went on probably a couple of years too long. Not sure what to make of Stargate - Universe, needs more time.
House, shaken up again, still good stuff. Regenesis, wanna watch this again from season 1 - it's intelligent drama with strong and highly amusing characters. Warehouse 13, fluffy stuff, still watching out of curiosity. (What's the line about his men would follow him anywhere, if only out of curiosity ?) Flashforward definitely has my attention now.
Music - been raiding music stuff again :-)
Impressed with : Roberta Flack, Cardigans First Band On The Moon (album with Lovefool), Dr Who season 4 soundtrack
Not so impressed with : Paramore's latest - sounds like the other two but not as good. Bit disappointed.
So - couple of hectic days back at work, got stuff done plus I had a few major victories in making people laugh. "Im in ur filez editin ur commentz". I like to make other people laugh cos it makes me feel better too. No-one's noticed the haircut though. Or maybe they have and they didn't want to say anything ;-)
Still not back to full form after the bugs and I have an early start tomorrow, so it's time to wrap this one up before I start rambling and babbling. Oops - Too late !
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
AAA Choo !
Lol - as so often happens with me, a week away from work is accompanied by bugs ...
Seems I share that this time around, most of my friends around Bristol seem to be suffering from bugs in one shape or form. For me, it's an extremely runny nose with the accompanying sinus trouble. Not much sleep last night but I don't seem to be feeling the effects of that.
But hey - my bugs aren't too bad at the moment and I know other people have it worse. So it's time to do what I usually do with stuff that slows me down, stuff it in a box and lock it away. What else have I been up to ?
Trip up to see my mum & dad, always worth it. Drove 3 different cars in 3 days, the Focus I own and the Mazda they've had for a while. The third was something a little more special :-) My dad's retirement gift to himself is a Mazda MX-5 and if various of my muscles weren't unhappy with me at the moment, I think there'd have been many more thoughts of WANT ONE :-) It's still another 18 months though before I can change car and I'm hoping something good will come from hybrid car technology.
Gaming again on Monday night, first time for a while. I have another Bashara this time around, think Girl With Big Sword. Our party this time around is all about getting in fast, doing huge amounts of damage and clearing the bad guys before they know what hit them. First encounter this time around, blue dragon matching the blue dragon on my t-shirt of choice on Monday. Next week's t-shirt is either going to be my Alien t-shirt or my Send In The Wookie. We shall see :-)
Right - time to get back to catching up on all the telly I have recorded, there's lots of it :-) Hopefully I'll improve tomorrow, enough to take a trip into the centre of Bristol for a music raid :-)
PS I see another music post coming on soon ...
Seems I share that this time around, most of my friends around Bristol seem to be suffering from bugs in one shape or form. For me, it's an extremely runny nose with the accompanying sinus trouble. Not much sleep last night but I don't seem to be feeling the effects of that.
But hey - my bugs aren't too bad at the moment and I know other people have it worse. So it's time to do what I usually do with stuff that slows me down, stuff it in a box and lock it away. What else have I been up to ?
Trip up to see my mum & dad, always worth it. Drove 3 different cars in 3 days, the Focus I own and the Mazda they've had for a while. The third was something a little more special :-) My dad's retirement gift to himself is a Mazda MX-5 and if various of my muscles weren't unhappy with me at the moment, I think there'd have been many more thoughts of WANT ONE :-) It's still another 18 months though before I can change car and I'm hoping something good will come from hybrid car technology.
Gaming again on Monday night, first time for a while. I have another Bashara this time around, think Girl With Big Sword. Our party this time around is all about getting in fast, doing huge amounts of damage and clearing the bad guys before they know what hit them. First encounter this time around, blue dragon matching the blue dragon on my t-shirt of choice on Monday. Next week's t-shirt is either going to be my Alien t-shirt or my Send In The Wookie. We shall see :-)
Right - time to get back to catching up on all the telly I have recorded, there's lots of it :-) Hopefully I'll improve tomorrow, enough to take a trip into the centre of Bristol for a music raid :-)
PS I see another music post coming on soon ...
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Zoom zoom
I think I scared a few people on Saturday.
We went karting ...
I'm involved on and off in 2 of the big online games, Eve Online and World of Warcraft. I've hopefully kicked the World of Warcraft addiction now but the Eve people keep drawing me back in to that game. An online game is made far better if there's good people around and I've been lucky to have been involved in a few of the better groups. Warcraft had the Mercs while that lasted and then later the Violence Reborn people :-). Eve has the Volition Cult people, with the Volition Cult being an alliance in that game that's now lasted 3 years.
The karting was part of our 3rd anniversary meet up :-). We went to a place called M4 Karting, not too far away from where most of the UK part of the alliance is based and indeed only 30 minutes from where it was born. Good track this one, housed in what used to be a hardened aircraft shelter attached to the nearby airfield. The circuit itself was twisty and nicely technical, with a good consistent surface. Some karting tracks suffer from bumps, grooves or even things like wooden floors instead of smoothed tarmac ... I had great fun powersliding round all the fast corners :-)
Oh - this track also had a She Who Must Be Obeyed running the show. Most definitely In Charge, although they had one or two techie hitches with the timing gear. Will certainly go back there, we had a lot of fun at that track with plenty of stuff going on to keep us bantering on the Volt forums afterwards.
Will have to check out Radio Control cars some more too as this place had a shop selling them, which is getting rarer and rarer nowadays. It helps to know what you're looking at when thinking about buying things though, especially if it's a specialist market ...
I don't think I scared people on the karting track though, I'm a bit too heavy still for that. The scary was on the trip to the pub afterwards :-). The satnav I use tends to be a little "aggressive" on the roads it chooses ... Let's just say that you wouldn't want to take a lorry down the same routes. And I got to the pub about 10 minutes before anyone else :-)
I'm looking forward to next week at the moment, it'll let me get recharged on "Calm" after a week that I'm still detoxing from :-)
Wednesday - 13 hour day trippin' down to Portsmouth for some performance testing. Cue the "testing diet" ... aka strong black coffee + biscuits. Keeps you awake but the caffeine does weird things to you.
Thursday - coming back from Portsmouth and hoping that Orange Light Of Impending Engine Doom goes off ... Yep, had another scare from that one starting on Wednesday. Also watched the film Creation after having pizza with the Crazies :-)
Friday - easy night (needed it!)
Saturday - karting with the Volt boys, followed by trying to munch a pub dinner with hands that were insisting on cramping up ...
(ow)
I've been needing a bit of chill out time anyway and I reckon that as that gets closer, you slow down and feel the tiredness even more. So come Monday, I'll be looking to think as little as possible of work although I'll be missing having the chance to natter with and tease a few of the people I work with.
There's a few people who make where I work far more entertaining than it could be, from the ever wonderful Snow Queen, The Boss with her empathy, Wild Thing teasing me about the Little Canteen Girl, Ms Sunshine's continual readiness to burst out with a room illuminating smile and cheerful laughter and the diminutive Miss M who's been taking advantage of my techie talents lately (while being bemused by my efforts to have my way with a devious plan for the file system).
We're also blessed with fun people in our finance section (an area I deal with a fair bit lately). We keep an eye on what the project is spending, which means painstaking attention to detail on admin. But that's made into fun by our Finance Girls :-) They've been recruiting too, with someone recently arriving who's shadow betrays her invisible Angel's wings. I also get on very healthily with my actual boss, although healthy in that respect also includes us setting each other off in the mornings when one of us gives in to Munchie Cravings. There's also El Diablo, a fellow gamer and sci fi nut who is the one who pointed me towards the Jack Campbell books. And we have more too that I'd mention except imagination failure means I don't have Blog-Safe codenames for them.
Great bunch of people, I'll miss them next week while I'm off work :-) But after putting this refresher week off for a few, I'm really feeling the need for it now.
Right - I've nattered for far too long ... so long my feet have started to freeze. Time to sign off and shut those curtains for the first time this year ...
We went karting ...
I'm involved on and off in 2 of the big online games, Eve Online and World of Warcraft. I've hopefully kicked the World of Warcraft addiction now but the Eve people keep drawing me back in to that game. An online game is made far better if there's good people around and I've been lucky to have been involved in a few of the better groups. Warcraft had the Mercs while that lasted and then later the Violence Reborn people :-). Eve has the Volition Cult people, with the Volition Cult being an alliance in that game that's now lasted 3 years.
The karting was part of our 3rd anniversary meet up :-). We went to a place called M4 Karting, not too far away from where most of the UK part of the alliance is based and indeed only 30 minutes from where it was born. Good track this one, housed in what used to be a hardened aircraft shelter attached to the nearby airfield. The circuit itself was twisty and nicely technical, with a good consistent surface. Some karting tracks suffer from bumps, grooves or even things like wooden floors instead of smoothed tarmac ... I had great fun powersliding round all the fast corners :-)
Oh - this track also had a She Who Must Be Obeyed running the show. Most definitely In Charge, although they had one or two techie hitches with the timing gear. Will certainly go back there, we had a lot of fun at that track with plenty of stuff going on to keep us bantering on the Volt forums afterwards.
Will have to check out Radio Control cars some more too as this place had a shop selling them, which is getting rarer and rarer nowadays. It helps to know what you're looking at when thinking about buying things though, especially if it's a specialist market ...
I don't think I scared people on the karting track though, I'm a bit too heavy still for that. The scary was on the trip to the pub afterwards :-). The satnav I use tends to be a little "aggressive" on the roads it chooses ... Let's just say that you wouldn't want to take a lorry down the same routes. And I got to the pub about 10 minutes before anyone else :-)
I'm looking forward to next week at the moment, it'll let me get recharged on "Calm" after a week that I'm still detoxing from :-)
Wednesday - 13 hour day trippin' down to Portsmouth for some performance testing. Cue the "testing diet" ... aka strong black coffee + biscuits. Keeps you awake but the caffeine does weird things to you.
Thursday - coming back from Portsmouth and hoping that Orange Light Of Impending Engine Doom goes off ... Yep, had another scare from that one starting on Wednesday. Also watched the film Creation after having pizza with the Crazies :-)
Friday - easy night (needed it!)
Saturday - karting with the Volt boys, followed by trying to munch a pub dinner with hands that were insisting on cramping up ...
(ow)
I've been needing a bit of chill out time anyway and I reckon that as that gets closer, you slow down and feel the tiredness even more. So come Monday, I'll be looking to think as little as possible of work although I'll be missing having the chance to natter with and tease a few of the people I work with.
There's a few people who make where I work far more entertaining than it could be, from the ever wonderful Snow Queen, The Boss with her empathy, Wild Thing teasing me about the Little Canteen Girl, Ms Sunshine's continual readiness to burst out with a room illuminating smile and cheerful laughter and the diminutive Miss M who's been taking advantage of my techie talents lately (while being bemused by my efforts to have my way with a devious plan for the file system).
We're also blessed with fun people in our finance section (an area I deal with a fair bit lately). We keep an eye on what the project is spending, which means painstaking attention to detail on admin. But that's made into fun by our Finance Girls :-) They've been recruiting too, with someone recently arriving who's shadow betrays her invisible Angel's wings. I also get on very healthily with my actual boss, although healthy in that respect also includes us setting each other off in the mornings when one of us gives in to Munchie Cravings. There's also El Diablo, a fellow gamer and sci fi nut who is the one who pointed me towards the Jack Campbell books. And we have more too that I'd mention except imagination failure means I don't have Blog-Safe codenames for them.
Great bunch of people, I'll miss them next week while I'm off work :-) But after putting this refresher week off for a few, I'm really feeling the need for it now.
Right - I've nattered for far too long ... so long my feet have started to freeze. Time to sign off and shut those curtains for the first time this year ...
Monday, September 28, 2009
A to Z of me
Meme time :-) Or should that be Me Me Meme ?
I've been stealing ideas again, this time it's from my neighbour Cyberkitten. He hasn't got round to doing his yet though. Right - this one could be a long one, here goes :-)
A for Allrounder. For the cricket, I'd be able to do everything :-) I'd have seasons where I'd open the batting and seasons where I'd be a main bowler, although it always seemed like I'd be good at one and not the other. I could bowl spin as well as swing and seam. For the indoor side, I was most effective keeping wicket. And as long as I stayed reasonably close (and was awake!), I could terrify batsmen with sharp fielding.
B for BBC B. I've always been a computer person and it was Acorn's BBC B Microcomputer which started it all off when I was 5. Learned a lot from this special machine.
C for Cricket. Although I don't play any more (mebbe next year ?) the cricket still dominates. Hoping that England continue their amazing form (amazing cos it's a surprise ?) in the ICC Champions Trophy.
D for Dwagons. I like Dragons, of the various mythical beasts out there, these are the most majestic. You don't mess with dragons. That's dragons with an R though, Dwagons with a W is for my avatars. I've been using Pocket Dragon (link) avatars for quite a few years now. Big shame they're not still being made.
E for Evil Overlord. Much of my misspent youth was spent going for strategy games. Lots of mental exercise in subjugating those poor defenceless Bit Creatures. I tended to be a bit more Builder though than Evil Overlord.
F for Fragile. I have to admit, I'm rather fragile. I carry various long term disabling injuries from my ankles all the way up to my neck with sore shins, bad knees, groin trouble, back trouble and shoulder trouble in between. Some days are better than others.
G for Gamer Geek. Definitely a Gamer, definitely a Geek :-) I take things apart with my eyes without touching them, I can usually figure out how they work before resorting to invasive methods (translation, without taking them apart). Definite engineer (also see N below). I also get quite a bit of fun out of the weekly gaming sessions :-)
H for Hunter. As my Facebook page says, "Incorrigible Hunter of pizzas, teacakes and muffins."
I for Injuries. I'm usually carrying at least 2 and there's usually another that's waiting in the dark looking to jump out and surprise me.
J for Jokes. Always on the lookout for jokes and for trying to make people laugh, although my humour is more reactive than scripted.
K for Kind. I think I am. I'm not overly generous but I like to help people out where I can.
L for Lonely. No relationship for a while, Facebook helps keep me sane as well as the occasional dabbling in online games. I know some amazing people too, like the Snow Queen, The Boss, Ms Sunshine and the Crazies. But I do miss being able to share things with another person.
M for Music. I suspect that a music addiction has replaced my gaming addiction ... When I'm not watching telly I'm almost certainly listening to music :-) All sorts, from Enya to Iron Maiden with a lot of pop in there too. Lene Marlin coming up on the iTunes shuffle.
N for Nutter. Note of Warning : Keep Sleepypete away from caffeine. I'll usually go for the unorthodox solution where I can, purely because the unorthodox is more interesting.
O for Omnivore. I'll eat anything, although I prefer simple, traditional and doesn't run away when you chase it with a fork (like Spaghetti).
P for PIZZA !!!!!! (see H)
Q for Quiet. I'll usually go by a Yorkshire motto : "See all, Hear all, Say nowt." Quiet people can pick up all sorts of gossip, although my quietness is usually down to struggling to turn rapid thoughts into slower speech.
R for Round. Hey ! Round is a shape too. Perhaps not as good a shape for a person as one more chiselled but it'll do for me for now.
S for Sweet. This one's from our Snow Queen :-) Usually after I've said something related to K above, although it's rare that my words form an adequate description.
T for Toys. I don't go out of my way to get all of the latest toys but I definitely appreciate a well crafted toy. That'd be toys in terms of gadgets that fit their function without too much fanfare and without too much awkwardness. Most important with that "awkwardness" bit, as however fancy a toy is, if it's nasty to use it gets put to one side.
U for Unrelenting. (See Evil Overlord). Could also be used to describe what I can be like when I'm going at a task. Especially a task I'm not too interested in doing so that I can get it out the way quicker.
V for Vampire. When I broke my nose playing cricket, a few weeks later I had an operation to have it straightened so I could breathe better. A side effect of the operation was Vampiric Eyes :-) Literally blood red eyes that lasted for a few weeks. You can probably imagine how much fun I had with this, especially as a number of people on the project were rather squeamish :-) :-) :-)
W for Warcraft. Took over my life for rather a long time this did. I think the addiction is fairly well kicked now, hopefully I'll be able to resist getting the next expansion. I have to say there were a lot of good times with the bad but I'm glad I managed to escape a game that has a tendency to consume and twist those who get too deeply involved with it.
X for eXcitable. Ok, that's cheating but I don't play the Xylophone. I can quite happily go hyperactive, especially when there's caffeine involved :-)
Y for Young looking. One of my favourite games is Guess The Age. People always guess low :-) Will be playing this one again in 6 weeks when I bring in the cakes for my birthday.
Z for Zoom. Live fast, play fast. Run fast too. My bowling wasn't the quickest but due to building up lots of leg muscles from a paper round, I can run Real Fast. For a short distance and then the coughing, spluttering and wheezing kick in.
So there we have the A to Z :-)
I've been stealing ideas again, this time it's from my neighbour Cyberkitten. He hasn't got round to doing his yet though. Right - this one could be a long one, here goes :-)
A for Allrounder. For the cricket, I'd be able to do everything :-) I'd have seasons where I'd open the batting and seasons where I'd be a main bowler, although it always seemed like I'd be good at one and not the other. I could bowl spin as well as swing and seam. For the indoor side, I was most effective keeping wicket. And as long as I stayed reasonably close (and was awake!), I could terrify batsmen with sharp fielding.
B for BBC B. I've always been a computer person and it was Acorn's BBC B Microcomputer which started it all off when I was 5. Learned a lot from this special machine.
C for Cricket. Although I don't play any more (mebbe next year ?) the cricket still dominates. Hoping that England continue their amazing form (amazing cos it's a surprise ?) in the ICC Champions Trophy.
D for Dwagons. I like Dragons, of the various mythical beasts out there, these are the most majestic. You don't mess with dragons. That's dragons with an R though, Dwagons with a W is for my avatars. I've been using Pocket Dragon (link) avatars for quite a few years now. Big shame they're not still being made.
E for Evil Overlord. Much of my misspent youth was spent going for strategy games. Lots of mental exercise in subjugating those poor defenceless Bit Creatures. I tended to be a bit more Builder though than Evil Overlord.
F for Fragile. I have to admit, I'm rather fragile. I carry various long term disabling injuries from my ankles all the way up to my neck with sore shins, bad knees, groin trouble, back trouble and shoulder trouble in between. Some days are better than others.
G for Gamer Geek. Definitely a Gamer, definitely a Geek :-) I take things apart with my eyes without touching them, I can usually figure out how they work before resorting to invasive methods (translation, without taking them apart). Definite engineer (also see N below). I also get quite a bit of fun out of the weekly gaming sessions :-)
H for Hunter. As my Facebook page says, "Incorrigible Hunter of pizzas, teacakes and muffins."
I for Injuries. I'm usually carrying at least 2 and there's usually another that's waiting in the dark looking to jump out and surprise me.
J for Jokes. Always on the lookout for jokes and for trying to make people laugh, although my humour is more reactive than scripted.
K for Kind. I think I am. I'm not overly generous but I like to help people out where I can.
L for Lonely. No relationship for a while, Facebook helps keep me sane as well as the occasional dabbling in online games. I know some amazing people too, like the Snow Queen, The Boss, Ms Sunshine and the Crazies. But I do miss being able to share things with another person.
M for Music. I suspect that a music addiction has replaced my gaming addiction ... When I'm not watching telly I'm almost certainly listening to music :-) All sorts, from Enya to Iron Maiden with a lot of pop in there too. Lene Marlin coming up on the iTunes shuffle.
N for Nutter. Note of Warning : Keep Sleepypete away from caffeine. I'll usually go for the unorthodox solution where I can, purely because the unorthodox is more interesting.
O for Omnivore. I'll eat anything, although I prefer simple, traditional and doesn't run away when you chase it with a fork (like Spaghetti).
P for PIZZA !!!!!! (see H)
Q for Quiet. I'll usually go by a Yorkshire motto : "See all, Hear all, Say nowt." Quiet people can pick up all sorts of gossip, although my quietness is usually down to struggling to turn rapid thoughts into slower speech.
R for Round. Hey ! Round is a shape too. Perhaps not as good a shape for a person as one more chiselled but it'll do for me for now.
S for Sweet. This one's from our Snow Queen :-) Usually after I've said something related to K above, although it's rare that my words form an adequate description.
T for Toys. I don't go out of my way to get all of the latest toys but I definitely appreciate a well crafted toy. That'd be toys in terms of gadgets that fit their function without too much fanfare and without too much awkwardness. Most important with that "awkwardness" bit, as however fancy a toy is, if it's nasty to use it gets put to one side.
U for Unrelenting. (See Evil Overlord). Could also be used to describe what I can be like when I'm going at a task. Especially a task I'm not too interested in doing so that I can get it out the way quicker.
V for Vampire. When I broke my nose playing cricket, a few weeks later I had an operation to have it straightened so I could breathe better. A side effect of the operation was Vampiric Eyes :-) Literally blood red eyes that lasted for a few weeks. You can probably imagine how much fun I had with this, especially as a number of people on the project were rather squeamish :-) :-) :-)
W for Warcraft. Took over my life for rather a long time this did. I think the addiction is fairly well kicked now, hopefully I'll be able to resist getting the next expansion. I have to say there were a lot of good times with the bad but I'm glad I managed to escape a game that has a tendency to consume and twist those who get too deeply involved with it.
X for eXcitable. Ok, that's cheating but I don't play the Xylophone. I can quite happily go hyperactive, especially when there's caffeine involved :-)
Y for Young looking. One of my favourite games is Guess The Age. People always guess low :-) Will be playing this one again in 6 weeks when I bring in the cakes for my birthday.
Z for Zoom. Live fast, play fast. Run fast too. My bowling wasn't the quickest but due to building up lots of leg muscles from a paper round, I can run Real Fast. For a short distance and then the coughing, spluttering and wheezing kick in.
So there we have the A to Z :-)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
We really used these machines ?
Yep - I've got bored with the new games again and gone back to a few golden oldies :-)
The three classics are : Freelancer, Master of Orion 2 (no3 was appalling) and Master of Magic. Freelancer is one of the various spiritual successors to the genre creating Elite. Master of Orion 2 (Moo2) is Civ in space, while Master of Magic (MoM) is Civ again but set in 2 worlds with a huge injection of magic. It also gives Civ a tactical layer to join the strategic layer. Civ 4's a decent game but MoM will be a long time classic due to the magic and the tactical battles.
Freelancer's fairly recent and Moo2 just got released when Windows 95 came around ... Yep - this is RETRO Zone :-) MoM on the other hand needs special treatment. It's a DOS only game (remember those ? so last century) but one of the hardest programs to accommodate on machines of its day. The key problem is memory - it needs 576kbytes of Conventional Ram and 2.7Mb of Expanded Memory. It's extremely tough to manage that on anything but an ancient DOS machine.
At least, not without additional software help ...
What's the secret ? A little application called Dosbox is the key. It's a program that creates a computer within a computer. You run it on your Windows desktop and you have a virtual Retro style PC that should handle what you want to throw at it. Magic :-) Here's a link to the home of Dosbox. It pretends to be an old machine, running Dos while emulating the sound and graphics of the day.
That's not really what I wanted to talk about though today ... Elite hit the news this week because it's just turned 25 years old as a game. It was huge in its day, it did things with the BBC Microcomputer that should really have been impossible. The program itself was less than 22kbytes, the last email I sent was 15kbytes. There's more memory in the cache of my desktop PC than there was in the whole of the BBC Micro.
I smell an attack of Numbers ?
Elite - 22kbytes.
BBC Micro - 64kbytes on board
Modern Desktop CPU (Athlon X2-3800+) - 64kbytes of Data and Code cache. And there's two of these ... And that's just the bit on the processor that makes it go fast.
Speed of a BBC Micro 6502 processor - 1MHz
Variance in speed of desktop cpu - well, it's been hunting between 2001 and 2006MHz.
How about this Master of Magic game ?
Needs 574kB Conventional Ram, 2.7MB Expanded
(problem is getting all the Convention Ram, plus getting Expanded at all in XP)
I had that running originally on a machine with 408MB hard disc hooked up to a 80486 processor going at 66MHz, with 4MB of system memory to play with. Oh, it was a DX too, which meant it had a maths coprocessor. Can't remember what graphics it had, probably just a 1MB "I can make lines and circles" thing.
My current desktop has on its processor : 4x 64kB Data & Code cache, another 2x 512kB cache. That's a total of 1.25MB just to make it work properly. The hard discs have around 8MB cache each, or double what was available to the whole machine for the 15 year old box.
The desktop's memory runs at 200MHz, or 3 times the speed of the 80486 processor. That 200MHz is then multiplied by 10 to get the chip speed. And the ante from the maths coprocessor is well and truly upped by there being two full processors on the chip.
HUGE boost in numbers already. And that's before you realise that there is more memory for just the graphics board (512MB) than there was on that 15 year old hard disc ...
Processor - 66MHz up to 2000MHz
Memory - 4MB system to 2GB system
Hard disc - 408MB to 74+250GB
(the Windows folder footprint on my desktop would take 15 of those 408MB drives ...)
Graphics - "I can draw lines" to photo realistic 3d environment
Things have moved on a lot in the past 15 years of me owning PCs. They're a lot more capable now, although the software has bloated to make them just as responsive ("far less responsive" is more the term when we grapple with work's PCs). The games takes advantage of the new hardware but ...
I'm still playing 15 year old games ! Has nothing significantly better come out in the past few years ? There's some good (looking forward to Dragon Age), some appalling but there's no substitute for the excellence in design and simplicity that we used to see in our games.
Long live Moo2, Long live MoM :-)
And a very big thank you to the open source developers of DosBox for making it possible for us to still enjoy these old classics.
PS It could be much worse for the Retro machine ... My laptop beats my 3 year old desktop on everything except hard disc and graphics :-)
The three classics are : Freelancer, Master of Orion 2 (no3 was appalling) and Master of Magic. Freelancer is one of the various spiritual successors to the genre creating Elite. Master of Orion 2 (Moo2) is Civ in space, while Master of Magic (MoM) is Civ again but set in 2 worlds with a huge injection of magic. It also gives Civ a tactical layer to join the strategic layer. Civ 4's a decent game but MoM will be a long time classic due to the magic and the tactical battles.
Freelancer's fairly recent and Moo2 just got released when Windows 95 came around ... Yep - this is RETRO Zone :-) MoM on the other hand needs special treatment. It's a DOS only game (remember those ? so last century) but one of the hardest programs to accommodate on machines of its day. The key problem is memory - it needs 576kbytes of Conventional Ram and 2.7Mb of Expanded Memory. It's extremely tough to manage that on anything but an ancient DOS machine.
At least, not without additional software help ...
What's the secret ? A little application called Dosbox is the key. It's a program that creates a computer within a computer. You run it on your Windows desktop and you have a virtual Retro style PC that should handle what you want to throw at it. Magic :-) Here's a link to the home of Dosbox. It pretends to be an old machine, running Dos while emulating the sound and graphics of the day.
That's not really what I wanted to talk about though today ... Elite hit the news this week because it's just turned 25 years old as a game. It was huge in its day, it did things with the BBC Microcomputer that should really have been impossible. The program itself was less than 22kbytes, the last email I sent was 15kbytes. There's more memory in the cache of my desktop PC than there was in the whole of the BBC Micro.
I smell an attack of Numbers ?
Elite - 22kbytes.
BBC Micro - 64kbytes on board
Modern Desktop CPU (Athlon X2-3800+) - 64kbytes of Data and Code cache. And there's two of these ... And that's just the bit on the processor that makes it go fast.
Speed of a BBC Micro 6502 processor - 1MHz
Variance in speed of desktop cpu - well, it's been hunting between 2001 and 2006MHz.
How about this Master of Magic game ?
Needs 574kB Conventional Ram, 2.7MB Expanded
(problem is getting all the Convention Ram, plus getting Expanded at all in XP)
I had that running originally on a machine with 408MB hard disc hooked up to a 80486 processor going at 66MHz, with 4MB of system memory to play with. Oh, it was a DX too, which meant it had a maths coprocessor. Can't remember what graphics it had, probably just a 1MB "I can make lines and circles" thing.
My current desktop has on its processor : 4x 64kB Data & Code cache, another 2x 512kB cache. That's a total of 1.25MB just to make it work properly. The hard discs have around 8MB cache each, or double what was available to the whole machine for the 15 year old box.
The desktop's memory runs at 200MHz, or 3 times the speed of the 80486 processor. That 200MHz is then multiplied by 10 to get the chip speed. And the ante from the maths coprocessor is well and truly upped by there being two full processors on the chip.
HUGE boost in numbers already. And that's before you realise that there is more memory for just the graphics board (512MB) than there was on that 15 year old hard disc ...
Processor - 66MHz up to 2000MHz
Memory - 4MB system to 2GB system
Hard disc - 408MB to 74+250GB
(the Windows folder footprint on my desktop would take 15 of those 408MB drives ...)
Graphics - "I can draw lines" to photo realistic 3d environment
Things have moved on a lot in the past 15 years of me owning PCs. They're a lot more capable now, although the software has bloated to make them just as responsive ("far less responsive" is more the term when we grapple with work's PCs). The games takes advantage of the new hardware but ...
I'm still playing 15 year old games ! Has nothing significantly better come out in the past few years ? There's some good (looking forward to Dragon Age), some appalling but there's no substitute for the excellence in design and simplicity that we used to see in our games.
Long live Moo2, Long live MoM :-)
And a very big thank you to the open source developers of DosBox for making it possible for us to still enjoy these old classics.
PS It could be much worse for the Retro machine ... My laptop beats my 3 year old desktop on everything except hard disc and graphics :-)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Orange Light of Impending Doom
Cars have personalities ... They really do.
One element of that is their feelings, you can hurt a car's feelings and they do sulk. Honest ! This is a certified (hey ! who said "certifiable" ?) MEng Electronic Engineer talking.
Do Not Upset The Ghost In The Machine !
Ok ok, enough ramble, time for the "what is an Orange Light Of Impending Doom ?" answer. Since they kicked out the old mechanical solution for keeping an engine working right, there's been a light that tells you when the Engine Management Unit isn't happy. There can be any number of explanations for that, from loose connections to broken bits to sensors that are lying.
The Orange Light Of Impending Doom started coming on (when it shouldn't) on Tuesday. No discernable difference in the car's performance and all the dials are in the midline, looked and sounded ok under the bonnet too. So I let it go for a day or so to see if it would go away on its own. No such luck Wednesday, no such luck Thursday. Which, with my driving profile (about 10 miles a day), isn't too much of a risk with a possibly failing engine.
Thursday evening was when I got off my backside to start getting active on sorting out warranty stuff, although I started ringing a bit too late cos the warranty people had gone home. Probably a good thing because Orange Light Of Impending Doom was a no-show today.
Huzzah !
How about this Car Personality thing then ?
I've been getting bored with this car for a while now. After the Puma, it's bigger, heavier and about the same power to weight. Which means the Go Power is about the same but bigger and heavier means it's not so good at going round corners. Ho hum. Probably a bad choice to go for another performance car after the original one, maybe there's a good reason why I always go Cushy - Fast - Cushy - Fast.
My mistake this time was to mention the boredom while in the car ... Car's have ears, if they feel unloved they'll let you know.
How did I fix it ? There's the olde philosophical superstition argument here too :-) I was checking out how much it would cost me to change car last night. The Prius I'd go for is the T4 model, about £20,000 new. Toyota's site says their finance stuff would be looking for a £7,000 deposit and £200 a month over 3 years. Guaranteed Future Value thing would mean a further payment of £9,000 after the 3 years (or you start again on another new one).
Very curious :-) Although with 20 months left on my car loan, it would cost a couple of hundred pounds more to pay off the loan than I'd get in part exchange. And it would also throw away the guaranteed servicing deal and warranty I have. So I keep my current car for another year and a half, which gets me more time to get more Green Stuff and more time for Prius Mk3's new now to get older and cheaper.
Hopefully the Orange Light Of Impending Doom (OLOID ?) will stay away for the 8 months to the next service.
PS I reckon it was Speed Bumps upsetting something. Cos the schools are back, I've been forced to divert to Plan B route to get to work, which in infested with speed bumps.
One element of that is their feelings, you can hurt a car's feelings and they do sulk. Honest ! This is a certified (hey ! who said "certifiable" ?) MEng Electronic Engineer talking.
Do Not Upset The Ghost In The Machine !
Ok ok, enough ramble, time for the "what is an Orange Light Of Impending Doom ?" answer. Since they kicked out the old mechanical solution for keeping an engine working right, there's been a light that tells you when the Engine Management Unit isn't happy. There can be any number of explanations for that, from loose connections to broken bits to sensors that are lying.
The Orange Light Of Impending Doom started coming on (when it shouldn't) on Tuesday. No discernable difference in the car's performance and all the dials are in the midline, looked and sounded ok under the bonnet too. So I let it go for a day or so to see if it would go away on its own. No such luck Wednesday, no such luck Thursday. Which, with my driving profile (about 10 miles a day), isn't too much of a risk with a possibly failing engine.
Thursday evening was when I got off my backside to start getting active on sorting out warranty stuff, although I started ringing a bit too late cos the warranty people had gone home. Probably a good thing because Orange Light Of Impending Doom was a no-show today.
Huzzah !
How about this Car Personality thing then ?
I've been getting bored with this car for a while now. After the Puma, it's bigger, heavier and about the same power to weight. Which means the Go Power is about the same but bigger and heavier means it's not so good at going round corners. Ho hum. Probably a bad choice to go for another performance car after the original one, maybe there's a good reason why I always go Cushy - Fast - Cushy - Fast.
My mistake this time was to mention the boredom while in the car ... Car's have ears, if they feel unloved they'll let you know.
How did I fix it ? There's the olde philosophical superstition argument here too :-) I was checking out how much it would cost me to change car last night. The Prius I'd go for is the T4 model, about £20,000 new. Toyota's site says their finance stuff would be looking for a £7,000 deposit and £200 a month over 3 years. Guaranteed Future Value thing would mean a further payment of £9,000 after the 3 years (or you start again on another new one).
Very curious :-) Although with 20 months left on my car loan, it would cost a couple of hundred pounds more to pay off the loan than I'd get in part exchange. And it would also throw away the guaranteed servicing deal and warranty I have. So I keep my current car for another year and a half, which gets me more time to get more Green Stuff and more time for Prius Mk3's new now to get older and cheaper.
Hopefully the Orange Light Of Impending Doom (OLOID ?) will stay away for the 8 months to the next service.
PS I reckon it was Speed Bumps upsetting something. Cos the schools are back, I've been forced to divert to Plan B route to get to work, which in infested with speed bumps.
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