Back to work (and other things)

First day back on the job today.

I'm not healed yet (not by a long way to be honest) but I'm in better condition than I was early last week. I'm managing to leave some of the really bad bits alone (but still harassing others) and they're responding by being a little bit tougher. It's still really easy to break the discipline and set the healing back, although the bad bits are recovering better too when I do attack them.

But work's not all about me wondering whether or not I need to hide bits of me away.

I was hoping I'd get a chance to give a Big Grin (tm) to someone special today but she's still not feeling well. Not back yet. Grinning at the canteen girls just isn't the same as the challenge of trying to invent something suitably daft to make someone smart smile.

Today was actually pretty good, the first day back is always a catch up day and I think I've caught up fairly quick. Tomorrow's job will be to start to analyse one of our key documents to see how we need to update and refine it. But today was more pain free than I've had for a while. I still have pain issues but the hip seemed ok.

Happy days.

I was feeling good enough to do a Mall run as well tonight, although I did have ulterior motives :

Replacing worn out trousers,
Grabbing more cash

And I happened to walk out of there with 5 more blu-ray movies (Willow, ET, John Carter, Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter and Real Steel) and puzzlement about one of the Russians who work at the KFC asking how I was.

Oh - games ... There's a youtuber out there called Totalbiscuit. He's dangerous. I blame him for me buying the new Shadowrun Returns game. It's actually pretty good, it's an isometric* role playing game that concentrates on story over complication. I've been impressed with it so far, although it's starting to outlive the boredom factor.

*(isometric - flat 2d world but projected on screen as fake 3d. Like if you put a picture on a coffee table and then looked at the picture from the side and above)

The look of the game works pretty well and harkens back to the old days of computer role playing games. Modern games make the mistake of making everything 3d and rendered on the fly. That's good from a feature point of view but doesn't work so well from a game point of view.

Baldur's Gate - was an isometric 2d like Shadowrun Returns. Sold like hot cakes. Predrawn backgrounds made it look sharp.
Neverwinter Nights - was fully 3d but in the isometric style. Just didn't look as good as Baldur's Gate, it wasn't as popular.
Neverwinter Nights 2 - fully 3d set up like a shooter. Ugh. Nasty. I didn't like this one at all.

Compare that opinion of 3d to the telly and movie world and ... They're moving away from 3d as well. Audiences see it as a gimmick which just doesn't add anything of value. And when we look at Shadowrun Returns, it's gone back to old style 2d on predrawn backgrounds and ... it looks good plus you can concentrate on enjoying the story instead of fighting the game.

What else have I been playing ?

I discovered World of Tanks over the weekend ... I've known about this one for a while but hadn't tried it. Opinion ? I'm really impressed. I'm hooked already. But I want to save talking about this one for another post.

And as a close :

That was the latest Kerbal Space Programme attempt. Yes. It's an abomination. And the first attempt at a launch saw it blow over in the wind and snap in the middle ... Oops.