Crucifer's Keep

One For All...

2010-03-25T04:09:00.004Z

Back in January, Elsha and I fulfilled a small dream of ours of owning a pet. We have both been smitten for a long time in getting a Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Cavaliers are a Toy Dog breed as they are quite small (average weight about 6kg), and are well-known for being lapdogs. In case you miss the reference, they love to sit on your lap and keep it nice and warm on cold days.

Cavaliers are very affectionate dogs seeking human or animal companionship at all times, although they do love to sleep - they have been known to sleep for as much as 18 hours during the day, wanting only a stroke or pet in between, a frolic in the garden and to stop to eat and drink before going back to bed.

They are very good around children and not at all a danger to others; indeed, sometimes it has been known that a parent or adult step in to stop a child for being too rough. As they are very affectionate animals, they will never make a good guard dog as they love to wag their tail at strangers, especially if the stranger makes a fuss.

Also, they can never be allowed off the leash as, although they are a small dog, they do derive from the Spaniel, and therefore have a strong hunting instrict that gets them chasing after butterflies, birds or other small animals; as such they tend to easily run across the road without due regard for their surroundings.

Why am I telling you all these things?

Because this is our Cavalier!

Though we had wanted a puppy, we decided to adopt a slightly older dog. And after meeting him, we realised that we had to give D'Artganan a home.

Yes, that is his name. D'Artagnan - from The Three Muskateers (although the three in the title of the book are Porthos, Athos and Aramis; D'Artagnan joins them by the end of the book).

We were wanting to name the dog differently, but decided that the name was quite fitting, considering that The Muskateers were of a contemporary time period for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. So D'Artagnan keeps his name, though we and others, children especially, have truncated his name to simply Tanyen for short.

He is an adorable, very affectionate dog but incredibly timid. We introduced him to our nieces and nephews and other young children and though they were initially scared of him, he was behind our legs the whole time. As we slowly introduced them to each other, Tanyen slowly allowed them to pet him and to make a fuss over him.

He's been with us now for over 6 weeks and, as time goes on, he's very quickly become part of the family.

The Great Experiment

2010-03-09T07:49:00.003Z

In case you haven't been following things in the World of Warcraft Blogosphere, Tamarind of Righteous Orbs made a proposal last week that sounds very interesting: All bloggers unite on one Server, and play in the same guild.

The reaction has been not unsurprisingly tremendous. The original idea of setting up the guild on the European servers has now even spawned a sister chapter house in the US set up by Miss Medicina, and I am a member.

The name of the guild is [Single Abstract Noun] and is available as Horde on Argent Dawn-EU or Alliance on Argent Dawn-US, and its a great guild so far. Plenty of chats in peak US time, plenty of insight and discussion in late Singaporean time.

Unfortunately, Crucifer was taken. I had briefly thought of playing as Icara or Keltash, but I decided to go with *wait for it* a male toon with the name of Istarian *yes, I know shocking!*.

Then it was the choice of class. So far I have played:

Hunter - Al'Akir
Druid - Eonar
Warrior - Eonar
Paladin - Caelestrasz
Mage - Caelestrasz
Warlock - Caelestrasz
Shaman - Caelestrasz
Death Knight - Caelestrasz

There are two classes missing there.

I once played the Rogue back in the US beta and I hated it. I remember getting as far as Westfall and then being ganked over and over by mobs. I dropped the class and went Druid. It was much less painful.

Priest, I'm reserving for Cataclysm. I hope I can play a Goblin Priest. From a character concept its an interesting one. The reject Goblin, kicked out of the Guild because he wanted to *help* people.

So, I have a Hunter by the name of Istarian. I decided Hunter because they're incredibly fast to level up and given that I have huge timesinks in my real life, not including raiding on a different server on set days, a hunter was the logical choice. So far, I have got him to level 18 and I'm having real fun. One thing I have noticed is as an Alliance Hunter, I've not yet run into anything that has the potential to kill me. Ah well, I'm sure that will change.

The only problem - the only issue - I have noticed is that people are racing to get up to the end game as fast as possible. Guys, its not a race. Explore the game, do stuff you wouldn't normally do. Revel in the moment, chat with people, offer help wherever possible.

This is a great experiment but it is not proof against the same fate that every other guild had that started sociably and eventually went hardcore.

Nostalgic Gaming

2010-02-19T06:27:00.002Z

Back before World of Warcraft, before Asheron's Call 2, there was a game I was obsessed about. In fact, obsessed is probably too weak a description of just how fanatically interested I was.

I was first introduced to it by a friend of mine - Greevesie, we'll call him - who was also fanatically interested in it. The game was called Phantasy Star Online and it was available on the Dreamcast console [Ed. this was circa 2001]. He had been eulogizing its many merits, how insanely fun it was and, most amazingly for a console, you could play it online.

Remember this was on the Dreamcast Console back in 2001 - in the UK, it was before most people had Broadband access, meaning it was a dial up MMO.

Phantasy Star Online was basically about a ship of full of people that was sent out into space to colonize a new planet. An earlier ship had been despatched to get the planet mostly ready for living on, on board which were scientists, doctors and engineers. As the second ship arrives in orbit, they witness a massive explosion on the planet and then nothing. No communication is available down to the planet. Its your job to go down there, find out what happened to the people, and on a side quest, find out what happened to the Mayor's daughter.

I played this game on the Dreamcast, on the Gamecube... and now I'm playing a version of it, called Phantasy Star Zero, on my Nintendo DS.

Amazingly the gameplay is almost the same as I remembered it on the other consoles - what a brilliant nod to a game than to have it on a hand-held console.

I've already been playing enough of it to get to Level 10 as a Human Ranger and looking forward to exploring other sections of the game whilst on the train, waiting for Elsha, at the shops - in fact, because its a hand-held - everywhere!

The only downside is that whilst the Nintendo DS console does allow for limited online play, it does so using WEP security.

And since our home router has WPA2, should I really drop security settings on our router so that I can go online with my DS?

Hmmm...

Blogpo

2010-02-17T02:08:00.003Z

Something that confused me for a long time about Australians is their ability shorten long words down by using -o.

So for example:

"Hey Damian, don't forget to write up that documentation this afternoon so we can send it to Fremantle."

becomes

"Hey Damo, don't forget to write up that doco this arvo so we can send it to Freo."

Of course, the chances of so many abbreviated words in the same sentence is pretty unlikely, but still it freaked me out when I first heard a co-worker asking me if I had read the "doco".

Me: Sorry, what's a doco?

Co-worker: You know, doco. Guides. Manuals, Doco...

Me: Oh, you mean documentation?

Co-worker: Well if you want to get all lardy dah about it...

At first I thought it might just be me, but oh no, its something that other non-Australians have picked up on as well and was equally confusing to them too.

Is there some rule that applies to how and when you can use the -o abbreviation, I wonder?

Return to Writing

2010-02-10T01:15:00.001Z

So. Months have passed and no blogging. What have I been doing all this time?

Well, for a start, I've been enjoying my free time. I have had heaps of ideas for blogs - for example, why is it still snowing in England! - but absolutely no time alloted to spend on actually writing about it.

I know, I know, make time for the important things. But, last year I had plenty of other things that needed to be done and took up all my time.

Aside from that, I did continue to read posts in the blogosphere. There have been plenty of things going on that caught my attention and kept me interested.

But for now, consider me returned to house and hearth, and posts will continue once more to flow.

Food For Thought

2009-06-12T02:06:00.002+01:00

So, what's been going on over the past month?

Well... Firstly I took a week off work, specifically because the house needed some painting and renovating, and Elsha and I were long overdue for a break. The house was sold with just bare walls with cream colour or what we later discovered was a very close approximation to Antique White USA (we discovered this at random). In order to bring some life to the house, we decided on painting a lounge room wall, a kitchen wall and the master bedroom wall in Davinci Red with Suede effect. The Suede effect just makes it easier for first time painters like ourselves to stick the paint on without worrying about brushstrokes.

Next, it afforded us some time to spend with some very special new neighbours. Several years ago I lamented about the resignation of Scythe, who was moving to a different company. Well, very recently, Scythe decided to uproot from England and move to Australia. And he now lives about 10 minutes away from us. How amazing is that. I just can't quite put into words how I feel about having such a close connection to my life in London just around the corner.

No post would be complete without a World of Warcraft update. Well, Scythe is playing too but destined to the lower levels. And learning quickly that the game has changed from its first incarnation into something smaller, at least at the lower levels. I'm currently running dungeons over and over for him in order to garner large amounts of experience points in a short amount of time.

Health-wise, I find myself struggling to overcome the usual winter cold. At the moment, the media screams daily about the on-going swine flu and with people constantly coughing and failing to cover their open mouths with their hands, I wonder if this outbreak is because of the breakdown of general healthcare that people take on a day to day basis.

One fact continues to surprise me. When I was growing up, people would often wash their hands before eating. Now it seems that eating with a knife and fork and not washing hands is perfectly fine for the majority. Even worse, how many people do not wash their hands before preparing food?

Goings on in the homeland

2009-05-11T08:08:00.002+01:00

I've spent most of the afternoon reading up about how MPs in the UK have essentially fleeced the taxpayers - that is, the public they've sworn to represent - of their money and lined their own pockets with our money.

This is at the same time as introducing more and more 'stealth' taxes, presumably to aid in their above aims of fleecing as much as they can.

I'm just gobsmacked at the sheer arrogance of these people. What is it that happens when criminals steal money and then get caught?

Oh yes, they're made to pay it all back.

Speeding

2009-04-28T05:19:00.002+01:00

What is it with experienced drivers complaining about P Platers speeding? Although its occasionally true (we have no experience of speed), I find its almost the exact reverse.

Yesterday I sat in my car driving down the 70kmh dual carriage road whilst cars overtook me driving way past the posted speed limit. This is clearly against the posted rules of the road and had there been a policeman with a radar gun there, those speeding drivers would have been behind me all the way. Either that, or on the side of the road getting a ticket.

On Sunday I was at a party where people were talking about P platers as if they were all speeding madmen/women. Of course, they didn't mean me, because I drive fairly cautiously (I have to, the roads are all full of speeding experienced drivers).

Its odd, you know. As the old adage goes, people speed faster than you, or drive way too slowly than you. But of course, to them its the other way around - you drive too fast or drive too slowly.
Me? I drive at the posted limit. I'm not in a hurry, I like to get to where I'm going with as less stress as possible and, to be honest, who cares if I'm 10 minutes late.

This isn't London, after all.

The ever winding road

2009-04-02T07:24:00.003+01:00

The journey [pun intended] that I started 6 months ago has finally come to an end; at least, the formal journey has, but the road of unofficial learning continues ever on.

Six months ago, I decided to finally suck it up and learn to drive. As I had previously blogged, I had no need to drive in London as the transport infrastructure is such that its easy to get around on public transport.

In late September I called up an instructor and asked for a lesson, explaining that I was an older and nervous and that I had never driven anything before - such was my reticence on driving that I hadn't done anything for nine months after I had passed my Theory Test.

The lesson was simply amazing; driving at 15kmh, I drove around the small roads and even moved around parked cars. By lesson three, I was going at 90kmh along major roads.

My instructor felt I wasn't entirely ready for my practical test and kept putting back my test time after time after time, even though everyone else I'd driven with had said I was fine. I was cautious, I looked before turning, etc. If anything, I only had a problem with judging distances (I've had this issue for as long as I remember) when making turns. But nothing that would impede my test.

After a long preamble, my instructor agreed to 2 pre-tests so that I could see what the final test would be like. The first pre-test ended with me driving straight (lane changing) through a dual-lane roundabout essentially causing a huge traffic violation that would have had me automatically failing. But as I did it, I knew what I'd done - and that it would never happen again; and thats when I fell to pieces and had to pull over to one side to recover.

The second pre-test was a bit better but the instructor took me out of the way of the test and I failed to slow down enough when coming to speed bumps - another automatic fail. What annoyed me the most there was that that road was not on the test, so I would never have failed anything. Sticking to my guns, I stubbornly asked for the test to commence.

On the 21st of January, I finally took the test. It lasted 30 minutes but it felt like only 10 minutes had passed. I made a few errors but overall I was happy with my performance, and when I was told I had passed, I was over the moon.

After that, it was a laborious 6 weeks to get my 25 Hours Supervised driving logged (a practice to stop teenagers from jumping in their new car and wrapping it around a tree or around a family) and finally on the 20th of March, I took my Hazard Perception Test.

The Hazard Perception Test is a computer exam with flash-based videos to determine if the learner driver understands what hazards actually are - from sand on the roads to a motorcycle concealed behind a turning truck, to knowing when to safely over take. The questions were fairly ambiguous too as on occasion not slowing down was the safest thing to do. Another 30 minutes of testing and I had passed. I finally realised that the Hazard Perception Test was not really evaluating my understanding of the rules of the road, but whether or not I had falsified the 25 logged hours of supervised driving...

I now drive a White Hyundai Accent car, air conditioning inclusive. Its not the fastest car in the world nor the prettiest. Nor the most kitted out.

But for all those failings, its MY car.

Silly Costumes

2009-03-25T06:45:00.002Z

As Elsha pointed out today, she hates it when people dress up in a silly costume and then wander the streets looking for victims to de-purse of money.

Now, I will quite regularly donate to charities or funds that I think are quite deserving, like the Rememberance Day Poppy Appeal or Imperial Cancer Research or any of the similarly serious but deserving trusts.

What I will not do is be embarrassed into parting with cash as someone in a costume titters on in front of me. I just don't understand what they're trying to say. Is it ok to wear a silly costume and meander the streets asking for cash?

Not for me, at least.

Today in Perth it was Radio Lollipop Day, a day when the Perth Transit Authority is supposed to put on the radio in their buses and entertain everyone whilst their silly costume prats accost you for cash for kids in hospitals. Whilst the notion of giving charity to children in hospital is undoubtedly a rewarding one, today was an unmitigated disaster.

No radios on in buses but even worse, no buses. At the stop I normally take, I was left having to wait 12 minutes. Not a long time perhaps but try waiting 12 minutes during rush hour on Ealing Broadway in Greater London and you will soon imagine the type of crowd that developed here.
And of course these were people who were not dressed in silly costumes but just trying to get to work. No radios on in buses as people shoved and pushed their way onto a coveted place on the bus.

I'm not sure what changed this year but it was a far cry from the entertaining morning that we had last year, and if you base your fund raising around entertaining people, well then one must wonder if the people in silly costumes have any other tricks up their sleeves for next year.

Back and posting

2009-03-22T23:49:00.002Z

I've just realised that I haven't written a post since January.

Hmm.

I've definitely started lots of posts but somehow their connectivity to topical issues always seem dated by the time I've finished.

Like the aborted post about how it was snowing in England and I how I was jealous. I had a post written up but by the time I had put my thoughts into order and bypassed co-workers watching over my shoulder, the snow had melted and England was back to working order.

Still. Here's a post. Saying I'm back.

I'm back.

Hurrah!

The Driving Test

2009-01-29T00:08:00.002Z

The Driving Test is perhaps one of the most important events in your life, alongside Marriage, mainly because it opens up opportunities for greater travel (at least in Australia).

In London, I was never really that interested in learning to drive because the transportation network was amazingly efficient. Not only did you have buses, ferries, 'tubes', trains and aeroplanes, you also had mini-cabs and taxi cabs. Add all these to walking and you have the ability to pretty much go anywhere.

In Perth, West Australia, you really do need to drive around, unfortunately, as the distance between landmarks and locations is so much greater. They do have a great metro transportation network but in terms of reaching the outskirts of the city where all the people live, a car just makes it easy by several magnitudes.

So, last year I decided to learn to drive. First off was the Theoretical Test, a set of 40 questions aimed at general rules of the road. Who has right of way when turning left onto a road, for example. Most of the questions are fairly self evident but some of them do get confusing.

Passing that earns you a Learner's Permit and you get to then spend your time driving around in a car with an L plate hanging off the back whilst either a professional instructor or a supervisor teach you how to drive. My first lesson was at 6pm and probably not the best time as the light was beginning to fade. Still, driving a half-tonne of metal on the backstreets around the house was amazingly fun but equally nerve-wracking. My hands were shaking when I finally got home.
Lesson after lesson constantly pushed the driving envelope until I was driving at 100kmh up the Freeway and learning about merging traffic.

Eventually though, given enough time and practice, you get to sit The Test. Here in Perth, you need to complete 3 exercises - Stopping For Shopping, Finding An Address and Retrieving Your Wallet - with the Examiner checking your surreptitiously checking your general driving skills.

Stopping for shopping is based around the notion that whilst driving you pass a shopping centre that you meant to have turned into. The exercise calls for you to turn the car around, drive back to the centre and find a spot to reverse park in; the other two exercises call for similar manoeuvers. Passing The Test requires that the manoeuvres are completed above a certain level and, unfortunately for you, that level is fairly high - at least 75%. Unlike normal tests, getting above the minimum mark does not guarantee a pass as the Examiner is likely to find that even though you have demonstrated that you can drive, your safety record is such that as a whole you are not safe to pass.

So I am pleased to say that the Wednesday before last, not only did I take the test (with much pressure from friends, family and co-workers) but that I passed with good marks. Of course, there were mistakes but these were of issues that I can but learn from and become a better driver. All I have to do now is log 25 hours of supervised driving and sit a Hazard Perception Test - a computer-based exam that tests my ability to recognise potential issues on the road and to adequately react to it.

I'm a bit surprised though by this final test. Why have this at the end? And why allow me to drive this half-tonne metal object around in broad daylight if my reactions are not adequate.

Still, I am glad to be past The Test and on my way to driving in West Australia.

A New Day, A New Year

2009-01-06T00:22:00.001Z

Where to begin? 2008 is over and now we're prancing into 2009, a new year with new opportunities.

2008 was a great year for me. As I've previously blogged, Elsha and I got married, bought a house, and I began the long, slow path to getting a Driving License, something that will continue into 2009. New opportunities will include getting my Australian Citizenship sorted out so that I can come and go as I please.

I didn't post at Christmas primarily because I was having too much fun, so here's the present list:

- Nintendo DS Lite

This is a great present. I really like the idea of the DS Lite, that you use a stylus to interact with the game in some way. For years I had liked the idea of having a PDA but good games just aren't made for PDA's (or at least not the ones I've been looking at).

With the DS Lite came some games...

Transformers: Autobots should have been a great game. You get to run around shooting at things, scanning vehicles to add them to your repository of known forms, and then transforming into them and driving around. Except that age old problem of the boss. At the end of each section, there is a humongous fight where you have to smash your controller to death to get to kill the boss. In this case, I'm playing Bumblebee and I'm fighting Barricade (the police car in the movie), who just happens to have heatseeking missiles, whereas I get to have a pea shooter.

Star Trek Tactical Assault is a cool game. It mirrors Star Fleet Command for the PC, itself modelled on the Star Fleet Battles boardgame. You get to take command of a starship, and then you get to fight alien ships like the Romulans or the Klingons. Its great fun, especially when you realise that if you switch to Red Alert (to get your weapons charged up) the attitude of the enemy ships become aggresive. Stay at Yellow Alert and you run the risk of getting attacked versus calming the enemy down.

Sight Training is just that. Its a series of activities designed to increase your use of vision. Some of it is luck I find but its a good way of calming yourself down after frantically pressing buttons as Bumblebee.

The other two games I received were of the Final Fantasy variety, one a rpg and the other an rpg strategy game. I haven't really had the chance to get involved with those but give me time.

Dvd's next. I received a fair few and one set, arguably the best present of the evening, was especially well received:

I can't say much more about Blackadder Seasons 1-4 than what you probably already know. Its brilliant!

Next up was Season 4 Part 1 of Battlestar Galactica, the continuing re-imagined series I had watched with diligence so far. In the previous season, we had just discovered the 4 of the final cylon models, one is left to be revealed!

Another DVD I received was a Harry Palmer movie - Funeral In Berlin. I've been in love with the Harry Palmer movies ever since I was introduced to them by my eldest brother. He's so typically English and in sharp contrast to the Americanised James Bond. He even has to sign a form to get his "new" car. I love it!

In any collection, Transformers the Live Action Movie would be a gem even if it is overshadowed by my other DVDs. Its still a great romp though.

Other than the DVDs and the DS Lite, I also received some Dragon Car Covers for the seats of our new car and a car vacuum cleaner, which will come in handy seeing that some people never ever clean their cars.

I also received a World of Warcraft Calendar from a co-worker and it was a great present to get, and totally unexpected.

I'm sure I've forgotten something but hey, thats what the next blog post will probably be about.

Busy Bee

2008-11-14T03:34:00.002Z

With the new job it has been a very busy several weeks. I wish I now had the time to write up more posts but sadly I have had a very steep learning curve getting to grips with Lotus Notes administration and SMS Client - remote installations.

Today, Wrath of the Lich King launches in Australia and so I expect I will be busy all weekend being glamoured by the new shiny sights in Northrend, but I will be writing up a proper post.

Ten years on

2008-10-10T05:57:00.001+01:00

It was exactly ten years ago today that I arrived in Australia for the first time. I had had a long internet relationship with Elsha and we had moved onto 'phone calls and had even met up in London for 6 weeks so by no means was I coming to Australia blindly.

Unfortunately, it is also the date that Elsha's mother passed away, so its not something that can be celebrated. We've since moved our anniversary to the 15th of February, the date we first met in London, simply to avoid celebrating a date that has such horrible connotations.

Ten years ago, I spent months at Elsha's home watching Tv, reading books, playing computer games and looking desperately for jobs that might come my way. I did land two jobs, one with Home Building Society and the other with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital - both of those have left me with co-workers who became friends.

Ten years on, and I'm now living in Australia permanently. I've met those guys but equally I've made new friends and have fit in to the social network - enough now so that I get the regular invite to the pub for a few drinks and to chit chat about work and home life. And of course, since they invite their friends and co-workers, its a great way to network.

One way in which this has paid off for me is that I'm leaving my current job and moving to a mining company; a friend mentioned my name in passing and I got a call for a job interview. The friend will be working with me so he of course gets a referral fee and since he's currently working there, I have backup in terms of dealing with sticky jobs (and it makes meeting up for drinks easier!).

So this is how ten long years have changed me from the guy who lived in London to the guy who now owns a house, is learning to drive and is in the process of getting a top notch job.

Bravo! - (even if I do say so myself)

DPS: Their role

2008-09-15T02:52:00.001+01:00

Cap'n John said in a previous comment that the DPS should listen to instructions and know how to perform their role, so I thought I would make a post about it.

DPS encompasses pretty much every class in World of Warcraft; that is, even warriors and priests have the ability to perform some amount of DPS. Due to this, it is very rare that a request for a DPS member will take long to fulfill for an instance.

So why are DPS so bad in instances?

Well, for a start, the game allows for solo play, suggesting that group play for DPS is actually a bad idea. In a previous MMO, I was a healer, and I was regularly picked up for group quests because it was more efficient to kill things with other people than it was by myself, or them by themselves. Monsters were very powerful as compared to a healer or a tank, and DPS classes did not have enough health or armour to keep themselves alive long enough to kill the monster - they NEEDED a tank or a healer, and we needed someone to kill for us.

In World of Warcraft, you don't NEED a tank or a healer to kill normal monsters. And you can avoid group quests all the way up to the end cap, level 70. At which point, suddenly you DO need a tank and a healer.

DPS classes have low to medium health, low to medium armour and high Damage Per Second.

This means they are able to solo more efficiently than a tank or a healer so long as they do not encounter more than 1 monster at a time. Two or three, and they won't survive the fight (meanwhile tanks and healers may survive but the fight will go on for a very long time, as their DPS is low in comparison, potentially causing more monsters to join in). In fact, solo grinding is actually more profitable than killing things in a team, in terms of speed and experience points.

Thus, DPS players do not have any experience with the role that a Tank or a Healer should bring to the group. Equally, Tanks and Healers know that something is very wrong when DPS players either take aggro away from the tank or force healers to switch to them rather than healing the tank. Many a time, DPS players will say things like "L2Play Tank! Keep Aggro!" with a swear word thrown in when the monsters turn away from the tank and bash up the DPS player. My response to this is and has always been:

Any DPS Class should be able to steal aggro from the Tank. The skill is in not doing it.

Interim Measures

2008-08-14T01:18:00.001+01:00

If you're wondering why there's no forthcoming posts, its because I'm currently in the position of moving house. And not only that, but buying a house too.

Although at the moment I'm waiting for the banks to make their mind up and do their job properly so the settlement can be lodged, so I can actually own a house and not just rent one from the seller.

Thus I have no home internet. I do have internet at work and, even though I regularly abuse it, making blog posts is difficult at best when I'm supposed to be working.

I still read though and I'm making some notes for some blog posts once I do get internet at home.

Or when things calm down around here...

Tanking: Protection Paladins

2008-07-15T01:15:00.001+01:00

Protection [Prot] Paladins tank through reactive damage.

That's a pretty interesting sentence, so let me explain what it means.

Prot Paladins cause aggro and threat by essentially taking damage. Yes, that's right. By taking damage.

Whilst other tanks have a rage bar that allows them to use abilities that cause monsters to single them out and beat on them, paladins have a mana bar that they use to cause holy damage to gain the attention of monsters and then shield spells that reflect damage when they are hit.

It's pretty fun to tank as a Protection Paladin because you can be surrounded by monsters and know you will kill them not because of anything you are doing but because you know that every time they hit you they will be damaged. Ergo, all you have to do is keep yourself healed and keep those shield spells up and the monsters will both be captivated by your damaging them AND by the threat of the damage that is being caused by them hitting you.

The problem comes when you are playing with a group of people that have no idea how a Protection Paladin functions (and let me tell you - this accounts for 4 in 5 WoW players).

I was doing a dungeon a few days ago with B-I-L who is geared for heroic instances (they're a
harder level of the same maps) so I knew the chances of my dying was fairly remote. But what irked me was when the DPS (yes them again) attacked straight away, casting spells, firing arrows, using pets - without giving me the chance to gain the acquaintance of the monsters.

Politely warning them that they need to give me a few seconds extra to pick up the slack got me a polite "sure". That particular group worked well, and apart from a few silly deaths, we managed to get through the whole thing fairly quickly.

But, of course, MY understanding of how Prot Paladins operate has only come about because I'm now playing one, which means that essentially until players try playing a tank, they will never learn what a tank is used for, or how to function around one.

And Me

2008-07-10T01:00:00.002+01:00

I'm seeing this phrase used more and more.

When I was at school, my teachers made a point of highlighting that this was lazy English, and that the correct phrase was "and I", but it all really depends on the context of the sentence.

For example:

"My friend and I went to a party last night" is correct.
"My friend and me went to a party last night" is wrong.

On the other hand:

"John invited my wife and me to the party" is correct.
"John invited my wife and I to the party" is wrong.

The basic rule that applies to this form of grammatical correctness is this:

I am the subject of the sentence, but the object of the sentence is me.

Tanking: A Basic Explanation

2008-07-02T01:11:00.002+01:00

There are generally 3 main archetypes of characters in World of Warcraft; the Tank, the Healer and the DPSer.

Tanks are invariably heavily armoured, high health characters with the ability to dodge, block or resilient in some form or another to incoming melee attacks. This allows them to stand at the front and be a shield for the group whilst everyone else can safely attack. Tanks are normally paired up with a healer so they can last for as long as the healer has mana.

Healers are usually low armoured, low health, high mana characters with the ability to heal others over time or in one-shots. They normally stand at the back and are paired up with a tank.

DPSers are those classes that are rated for their Damage Per Second (hence DPS). Most classes fit into this category in form or another. DPSing is insanely easy. You pick a target, you use an ability and you cause damage.

For most of WoW, there is a very singular course of gameplay. As a player is trying to kill the opponent as fast as possible, there is an onus to cause as much damage as possible so that the monster can be killed before it can do its damage. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to Instances, Dungeons or Raids, and here's the reason:

Inflicting as much damage in as short a time as possible will cause the monster in the dungeon to come after you. Unless you are over-geared against the monster, you will die.

I cannot stress this highly enough.

DPSers are generally people wearing anything up to Mail armour and usually they've sacrificed the ability to shrug off damage to gain the ability to inflict as much damage as possible. They cannot tank, and if they try to, they will die. Usually, this starts a chain reaction in which everyone tries to speed up damage rather than let the tank take over, and inevitably one by one, they die too.

Equally, but rarely, healers sometimes commit themselves to healing everyone in the team rather than just the main tank. And this also causes the team to die because healing more than one person generally means they're going to attract the attention of the monster. Healing the Tank is both health-efficient and mana-efficient; the Tank can take damage, he can block, dodge, etc.

Other players are not designed to take damage so their health will drop quicker, and that will cost more mana in the long run.

I've said all this because in my runs to dungeons, players invariably try and do as much damage as possible and when the team dies because they've attracted too much attention, the Tank is generally blamed.

Time to move on virtually...

2008-06-06T02:02:00.001+01:00

And so the guild that I helped co-create back in April 2006 finally came to an abrupt end last month. A lack of impetus coupled with slowing momentum caused the guild to slow down and then... stop.

A long discussion with the mods/officers of the guild revealed that they had slowly burned out with the content of the game, resulting in sheer boredom. Having friends online helped but eventually they had no other recourse but to pull the plug.

Most of the guildies have moved on to other guilds on the same server, others have transferred to different realms and others have just stopped playing MMOs in general.

Meanwhile, I'm now playing on the Oceanic Servers and have created my own guild. This time I'm only aiming for a simple progression guild with mature values. I haven't really put much effort into the creation of the guild and much of the structure has been lifted from past efforts.

At the moment I've decided to go for the Tankadin, a Protection Specced Paladin. So far so good, enjoying myself and my time online.

A different version of WoW?

2008-04-29T01:33:00.002+01:00

So.

I finally decided to give WOW US a go. After much anguish over not going to Karazhan, over having to go to instances with kids bunking off school, over generally not playing with mature adults, I plucked up courage and installed WOW US.

Or at least I tried to.

The problem, it seems, is that WoW EU and WoW US, although claiming to be different versions with different patches, is that they're exactly the same. So when I came to try and install WoW US, my computer quite rightly told me to stop being an idiot - WoW was already installed.

Of course, this made me pause. If my computer thinks WoW is already installed, then thats because it has registry entries telling it so. How do I tell my computer that I want to install WOW somewhere else because I want TWO versions of it?

The simple answer is that you can't.

The only way out for me was to make a copy of the entire WoW folder and move it to a different directory or, in my case, drive. I've since renamed the folder and the shortcut to WoW US. And thanks to Elsha, I had a valid WoW & TBC license Key. And just to top it off, I went and got a free 14 trial key so I could play for free for a couple of extra weeks (I now have 44 free days to play to see whether I like it or not).

I checked with Elsha's B-I-L, and picked an Oceanic Server as my new home. Oceanic Servers are those that have been formatted to match the Australian daytime so our night is the Server's night. Unfortunately, the server itself is in America, so I still have latency, but it's not as bad as Europe - 400 to 800ms.

Umming and aahing, I decided to pick Paladin (I have so far played Druid, Hunter, Mage, Priest, Warrior, Shaman, Rogue and Warlock) and try levelling her as Protection-specced. That basically means I level slightly slower but I have boosted Armour and by picking the right equipment to wear, I can also boost my health.

Elsha's B-I-L went for a Priest, ostensibly so we could form up and play a healer/tank combo.
So far so good.

But... I do miss my old guild. I have friends and companions there whom I miss.

Must Blizzard really make me start all over again simply because they couldn't stick my details onto a dvd and send it overseas? Even though WoW EU and WoW US are exactly the same?

Why Western?

2008-04-24T04:11:00.001+01:00

A long time ago, I was bought Bushido: The Way of the Warrior roleplaying game, and it remains today one of the few games I really want to play but have not managed to find anyone who could either understand its rules or want to play it.

Its a really interesting game system because it doesn't hinge at all on Western Ideology. Western ideology is apparent no matter which game you play in now, and I blame that fair and square on Capitalism.

Just for once I'd like to see a game where money doesn't matter, but in fact social status does.
The more quests you do, the more honour you receive. You can't trade honour, you can't sell it or buy it, you can only personally make it.

Killing things does not give you phat lewt. Saving towns gives you honour, helping people, etc.

MMOs should adopt a pyramid scheme so better and more social players can help lower level
players. Suddenly you have a game where community is more important than the gear you wear.

Why must we play Westernised games?

Time

2008-03-31T01:41:00.001+01:00

Here in Perth, we've finally completed our second cycle of Daylight Savings. Clocks have gone back an hour, assisting our transition into Winter. On the weekend it was bright and sunny.

Today it's raining cats and dogs. On steroids. Winter is truly here.

But what interests me is how we adults are affected by time. Time is, in itself, a very interesting "thing".

Time in nature exists as the following:

Sunrise. Noon. Sunset. Twilight.

Changing of Seasons.

Waxing and waning of the Moon and Tidal changes.

For us, time affects us like trees that get rings as they grow older - our body and appearance change as we grow older.

But beyond those things, time has no real "value" - its hard to quantify time from a layman's point of view.

Oh, we can look at it as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millenia, aeons, but those are all man-made concepts. Those are things we've created in order to allow us to record events that have happened and to date them.

From a child's point of view, time has no real meaning. You wake up, you eat, you play, you eat some more, you nap, you play some more and then you go to bed. At some point, around the age of seven, you become self-aware. At that point, time 'requires' meaning. You begin to realise that your working parent(s) is away some days and not away other days; those days being weekends. The adult world creeps into your child life and imposes values.

But what if those values didn't impose themselves? What if all concepts of time ceased. If there were no work days and weekends, if there were no clocks or watches to check timetables?

Would we 'miss' time?

Burnout

2008-03-26T23:16:00.003Z

Every several months, I get burnt out from playing World of Warcraft. Honestly, it's a great game but it's just repetitious to the extreme.

"Go kill 10 of these rats" becomes "Go kill 10 of these Giant Ultra-Elite Dragonspawns" until eventually its "Go kill 10 of these Ancient Dragons and bring back their ears".

Comparatively, Asheron's Call 2 was also repetitive but for some reason I enjoyed that repetition. Perhaps it was the feeling that around every corner there was something new waiting whereas in Azeroth/Outland/Northrend, its all the same.

Anyway, as you may have noticed from the title, I burnt out from playing my Level 70 druid. The guild I co-created is still thriving but I just can't bring myself to log in and get involved. So I'm busy creating a mage who is at level 33. I've tried levelling a mage before but got stuck around level 27 but I think I'll persevere with this one; she plays well.

In the meantime, I have finished Puzzle Quest. It's a good game and is a different challenge to normal crpgs. A decent 7.5 out of 10.

After that, I decided to finish off the Neverwinter Night expansions I have and am stuck in Hordes of the Underdark. But that too has become a bit repetitious so I wanted to try something else - a little bit different than your run of the mill crpg.

And lo and behold, I find Fastcrawl. A dungeon game that will last for around 30 minutes. I had a quick go of the demo and like it a lot; I may even buy it and give it a proper go.

And finally, my attention swings ponderously to Dungeon Runners, a free game made by my old friends NCSoft (they also make City of Heroes). Dungeon Runners is no World of Warcraft. It's buggy, slow, and even on my machine, runs like a dog. But its very much Diablo-esque, and a lot easier to jump into than WoW, even though its based very much on that Blizzard game. DR does not require membership subscription but if you do pay, you get to have equipment that's otherwise restricted. I probably won't pay membership rates but that's fine. I just want to play something a little different.

The other big deal is that I don't have anyone to play with. One part of MMO's that I don't get is that they're meant to be collaborative games. I wish they would make a game where meeting people was a lot easier...

E. Gary Gygax (July 27, 1938 – March 4, 2008)

2008-03-17T23:09:00.000Z

The man primarily responsible for the view of fantasy in the modern era sadly passed away on the 4th of March 2008. His name was E. Gary Gygax and he was one of the co-partners involved in creating, designing and publishing Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons was the first real game of its kind in the world. A system of rules to allow for collaborative improvisation in a fantasy setting. From humble beginnings, its now a game known worldwide and has spawned a myriad number of other roleplaying games, wargames and computer games that all trace their lineage back to that first set of simplistic rules in a pamphlet of a rule book.

I was first introduced to D&D back in 1979, when I was but 7. My brother had had the basic edition box set purchased for him by a family friend but he really didn't get into it. I, on the other hand, loved the idea and spent hours reading up on the rules and on the examples of gameplay. I finally could actually immerse myself in a fantasy world where elves were the good guys and orcs were the bad guys and where, most importantly, I could change the outcome of that.

These days D&D is most prominently compared to its online successor World of Warcraft. But WoW is not a proper immersive setting, nor do any of your actions change anything in the game.

For that alone, I think WoW is years behind D&D.

Returning to Gary Gygax, there has been a marked outcry from gamers around the globe on the best way to honour his memory. Some have made joking remarks such as "Roll for 1d4 minutes of silence".

But I think the best way to honour Gary would be to create and name a deity in his name. And so, in all my games, there shall be...

"Zagyg, the God of Gaming"

Pet Peeve #3 - Queuing

2008-03-17T00:07:00.001Z

Australian's, please take note. This is how we Poms queue:

1. Discuss what your companions/relatives/friends want in advance.

2. Stand in line by yourself. Have money on hand, preferably correct change (this is why you were taught Mathematics in school)

3. Declare in a clear loud voice what you want. You are not allowed to change your mind half way through.

4. Take your purchase and leave the queue.

Congratulations, you have queued correctly.

Do not:

* Take your kids with you, all 4 of the little brats, letting them run amok.

* Look at the display or product and wonder to yourself what it is you want. If you don't know, you shouldn't be queuing.

Return from the wilderness

2008-03-13T21:53:00.001Z

After two months of wandering around in the blog wilderness that is the Internet, I have returned.

It's been a fun packed two months and there have been at least one momentus life changing event.

Essentially, my marital status has changed. Yup, Elsha and I have got married.

It was something we had had planned for a long time that once we returned to Australia we would plan a wedding and get hitched. Friends and family were invited over, and there was plenty of merriment. Indeed, it was good to see Kalistro and TheNumNum in person, and it was equally bizarre but fun to have them check out Perth. We did some sightseeing together but ultimately we had to spend a fair bit of time on wedding planning. I have to admit that Elsha did a lot of this - I only helped on the finer details - and everything went off without a hitch.

In and Out in the Blink of an Eye

2008-01-15T23:02:00.000Z

One of the things thats been bothering me since I've been in Perth is that I don't seem to have much of a social life. In London, it was easy. Pubs galore. In fact, Ealing has been long considered to pubs what Las Vegas is to casinos. For example, Castle to Red Lion to Kings Arms to The Green to Park View to Old Orleans to Edwards to North Star to Townhouse... and that's just the ones I remember. Of course, it wasn't all about pubs. I had TBO and J, Kalistro and TNN, and ex-work mates. All in all, I had a varied social calendar.

In Perth, though, it just revolves around Elsha's family. Which isn't a bad thing by any means, but I do wish I could get out and about by myself and meet new people.

So, over the past 2 months, I've been trying to get myself inserted into a roleplaying group. And I pretty much succeeded when last Saturday, I ended up in a group rolling up a Dwarf Fighter. Yay.
But then came the bad news. They wanted to meet up next week. And the week after, and a week after that. In fact, they wanted to meet EVERY week.

Now, I'm not sure about you, but there are some things I like to do on weekends. Go to the cinema, go shopping, laze around the house, etc. Sometimes, I don't want to go roleplaying. So I politely told them that I wasn't really able to commit to an "every week" kind of thing.

At which point I got forced out of the group and into the sidelines. Of course, no one actually forced me but the silence started to become unbearable. I have to say, 5 hours in a group is a new world record for me, especially since I have to say I was probably the second only experienced player there.

So now I'm back to looking for a new group. Hopefully one that actually lets its players spend time on weekends doing things other than roleplaying.

London-sick

2007-12-31T01:56:00.000Z

Last week, as I lay in bed, it suddenly overwhelmed me. I finally felt homesick.

Well not homesick exactly. I'm not missing friends and family that much. No what I'm feeling sick over is that I'm not in London. That's the closest I can get to describing the feeling.

Living week by week in Perth is ok. Manageable. Thinking about being here for the next thirty years is horrible though. Living here week by week for thirty years isn't. Does that make sense to you? It doesn't to me. But that's how I feel. or felt, because as long as I think about it in terms of how it affects me month by month, I'm fine.

Elsha lasted a year and a half before she had to go back to Australia for a holiday, and she was going to go with or without me. Me, I can handle it for awhile longer.

But there is more to London than just friends and family. There are places I used to go to for R & R, shops I used to spend money in, pubs I used to drink at, restaurants I used to eat at.

I'm going to fight for a trip back to London, because I don't know when we'll get the opportunity again.

Festive Cheer

2007-12-26T23:12:00.000Z

It's been a while (again) since I posted, but thats generally because of various Work issues that have me tied up [not literally] from spending time writing. That is, if I appear to be typing an essay out, my bosses will want to read it. Thus, I have taken a much needed rest from blogging, collected my thoughts and spent many a day reading other people's.

One thing I have noticed about myself is that the older I get, the more cynical I become. It's not hard for me generally because in my present circumstances I see things around me every day going on that leave me astonished and a little outraged.

For example, yet again, another Christmas has come and gone. What did I see? Plump shoppers scurrying around spending their money on comparitively useless presents in an attempt to curry favour with friends and relatives. I can say all that because I fit into that category too.

Caught up with the Christmas (dare I say Capital-mas) festivities, I spent many a penny on things I thought Elsha would like. I wasn't far wrong with them either.

Christmas is just an odd time, a festival that appears to have nothing going for it but buying things for other people and watching them unwrap it. If you don't do that, the only thing that you can do over Christmas (at least in the UK) is watch TV. There are loads of good telly stuff on, and one of the best things you can do is sit down with the Christmas Edition of the Radio Times and circle all the things you want to watch.

Alas, this is something that doesn't exist in Perth, West Australia. And the problem with this, is that its summer over here. The peak of summer, no less. So when your UK-bred brain tells you that you should be stuffing your mouth full of mince pies and chocs, and watching tv films, in reality its nearly 40 degrees centigrade and there's nothing on because everyone is out at the beach, or having a bbq.

On the other hand, I'm not about to give back any of my presents as I got quite a haul.
Here they are in no uncertain order:

1. Wallet

A new wallet is always handy every so often, as your old one gets worn down by the amount of shrapnel you carry around with you.

2. Battlestar Galactica: Seasons 1-3 + Mini-series

A particularly good pressie as now Elsha can join in with me and watch BG. Although we will have to go back to the beginning again.

3. NCIS: Season 3

Mmm, I like NCIS. In fact, I like all the Detective Shows. Except Quincy.

4 & 5. Long Way Around & Long Way Down

A few years back, Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman (of Excalibur fame) decided to travel from London to New York. Via Alaska. And Russia. Yup, the long way around. Then, a few years later, they decided to travel fom the north of Scotland to the tip of Southern Africa. Via Europe.
Madness, but it makes for fun watching, those two.

6. $20 EB Voucher

Never a bad thing, this means I can buy something in the New Year sales. What, I wonder?

7. Dungeon Siege 2

Something I wanted.

8. Gothic 3

Something I didn't ask for but got anyway. Kudos.

9. Bottle of Red Wine

Just because sometimes its good to try something different.

Haul

2007-12-04T23:11:00.000Z

With yet another birthday, I have received a modest haul of presents.

Elsha decided that my whinging about having to play World of Warcraft with my measly poxy headphones would be better resolved with some "proper" headphones. With that in mind, she purchased me some travelling headphones.

They have the benefit of being able to be packed away and come with a variety of leads (one of which allows for an extension in lead) and also a variety of connectors, including one that plugs into the armrests on Aeroplanes.

Excellent. Trying them out battling with the guild in Gruul's Lair proves a Thumbs Up experience.

The Brother-In-Law (to be) and his wife bought me a computer game - Loki.

I've never heard of it but it sounds intriguing. A clone of Diablo 2, it's a hack and slash roleplaying game that features four different environments and heroes, with a similar plot to kill some dangerous evil.

The Stepmother-In-Law bought me a game I've been wanting to try out for awhile - Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

So all in all, a sack of good birthday pressies.

Annoying Ad

2007-12-03T06:28:00.000Z

As always, I have been reading other people's blogs and spending far too little in my own. With work also taking a life of its own and dominiting most of my time in the office (how dare it!), even though I have lots to think about, I have little time and energy to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard.

However, I thought I would talk about something that has been bothering me for a long time - an advert in Australia.

It's done so badly that I don't even know the name of the product or brand but I can recall every single nuance of the ad. It is, of course, the pad ad.

It starts off with a thin blonde woman and a man lounging on a bed. He is dressed and ready to go, she is still in her bra and knickers. She spends one scene desperately trying to pull on a pair of black jeans that are obviously a few sizes too small. Then, after this, she struggles into a jumper that again is too small for her. He makes a gesture to indicate exasperation and falls back onto the bed whilst she goes into the bathroom.

We are then treated to her high screeching voice:

"Hey Niiiiick! Can you get me a pad?"

Nick gets up, trots over to the chest of drawers and takes two out. Being a man he is, of course, completely unsure of which one she is referring to. He moves to the bathroom and says:

"Which one?"

She then immediately points to the left one:

"These. You see how they're shaped to fit. You wouldn't want me to be uncomfortable would you?"

With that, she retreats into the bathroom and he looks confused and perhaps a little astonished by the turn of events.

Now, I have no idea what the name of the product or brand is so technically the advert fails. I really don't care because I am too bothered by the ad to notice product-placing (and probably hindered because I am not a target market as I'm male).

Nick and the woman are obviously seeing each other because he knows where her pads are. But this is not the sort of thing you tell to just anyone, so obviously they are living together. But not seriously or long enough to know what pad she uses. The other point is that she meets him at the bathroom door, blocking his entrance. Co-habiting but not long or serious enough to let him just walk in.

And there's the confusion over why she has 2 sets of pads in her drawer, one of which she doesn't use because its not comfortable. Would you keep something like that?

I'm even more confused as to why she just didn't pick up the pad on the way to the bathroom which is right next to the chest of drawers - except of course its a way for the ad to demonstrate how stupid men are (I will be posting about this later, never fear).

My big gripe is that not only after this do I have no clue as to the name of the product or even the brand, no one else I've spoken to does either. And yet everyone in West Australia knows about this ad and everyone is equally and clearly stupified about it.

In Remembrance

2007-11-11T22:57:00.000Z

Remembrance Sunday

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae

Pet Peeves Post #2: Shopping

2007-10-30T23:02:00.000Z

Shopping is another one of my pet peeves. In fact, it probably rates very highly on my list of peeves. Why, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it has something to do with the huge proportions of SHEEP/ZOMBIES that are out and about "shopping" at the same time as me. You know, the people that walk straight into you with their trolleys. or their prams or trikes. And then get annoyed that you haven't moved out of the way. Have you ever gone shopping and decided to not move out of the way of people? You end up having people walk into you because they thought you would move. Why exactly you should move instead of them is a big mystery. Even worse, and this touches slightly on the Slow Walkers post I made earlier, are people who walk side by side. In three's. Might I suggest that if you are out with you friends you walk in a triangle formation. Because walking side by side makes it hard for OTHER people to walk on the same pavement as you.

Or perhaps the reason Shopping is a peeve is because of the crappy customer service. For a long time now, I have worked in customer service, and at one point, it was on a shop floor. I've had people shout at me, people roll their eyes at me, all manner of things, so I understand that customer service is probably very hard to get right and fairly unrewarding. At the same time though that is what staff in shops are paid to do. Not talk to their work buddies or chit chat with friends pretending to be customers. I know it's boring and quite horrible, but please don't start talking about Big Brother when you should be serving.

Shops and shopping is about spending money. You have money, they have products. You need to use money to get products. They need to convince you to hand over money, you need to convince yourself not to. This is why generally when I go into a shop, I know what I am going to buy. When I walk into a clothing shop, I think to myself - "Aha! What I want is a shirt. Or 2 Shirts. I don't want trousers. Or socks. Or a hat. or anything else."

Very rarely, I won't know what it is I want and I will wander into a shop. This is how I found Knights of Dark Renown by David Gemmell. Or Johnathon Strange & Mr Norris by Susannah Clarke. It's not a coincidence both of those are books; I love perusing, meandering in and out of aisles', my head tilted to the left or right. But only in bookshops. Or perhaps when I am looking for a particular DVD. I don't peruse much when I am looking for a shirt.

The other problem, which thankfully doesn't happen in Perth, is that of heating. Shops in the UK keep their heating on, it seems, all year round. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Having heating on in Pubs is something I understand (because you get hot and you want something to drink) but not entirely sure why this should be the same in a shop. Perth has air conditioned shops in which you hide in because outside it is too hot. Going outside is a major issue, so you stay in the shop. And peruse, and possibly buy something. Having heating on in a shop in Winter is pretty good, but not when it's summer outside (although in the UK, summer tends to only last for about 2 weeks).

I find shopping tedious. I don't particularly want to spend my off-days trawling through shops buying things that I might not really need. Internet shopping, on the other hand, is a wonderful thing, although you do need to know what you want before you start shopping online. It's no use thinking "I want something, but I'm not sure what. Let me ask Amazon or Tesco" because you're going to spend a long time searching the sites. And you would probably have a better idea if you were there in person, perusing.

Perth, unfortunately, does not have Online Shopping. Well, it does and it doesn't. All the big stores are represented online by websites but their products are not listed individually. Instead their 'catalogues' are scanned and displayed online. Here in Perth (not sure about the rest of Oz), the stores print out fortnightly specials and have them posted through your letterbox, the intention that you will sit at your table reading them and finding out which shops sell what stuff cheaply, so you will go there and buy them at that store. And quite possibly buy other things whilst you are there because you can't be arsed to go to another store and buy their cheap stuff.

One Year On

2007-10-28T22:21:00.001Z

For want of a better date, today marks the anniversary of my leaving my old job in London and setting out on the adventure that would lead me to holiday in Singapore, settle down in Perth, West Australia, get a contracting job, leave that contracting job for a permanent job in Software Testing, leave that job back for the contracting job and then leave that job for another permanent job.

Many things have changed since that fateful day a year ago when I was presented with items and given a speech on how I'm a gamer (read "loser"), whilst others have stayed relatively the same.

I'm still in the same industry, at pretty much the same level I was 7 years ago (although it can be argued that I am a much more senior person through sheer experience). I'm still having to deal with shoddy management and, of course, working for a government post means I get to fulfill that role on a daily basis.

All in all, my quality of life has markedly improved. London is a cold, grey, dingy landscape with very little good things to say about it. Perth may be a small blip on the West coast of Australia but it happens to be a warm green land with white shores.

Whistleblowing

2007-10-24T04:36:00.000+01:00

One thing I do like to do when I have some free time is to read other people's blogs. I like reading the casual ones about cats or people named after cats, but I also like to especially peruse the ones where people involved in an industry are dishing the dirt about their work ethics and conditions.

Like the Police.

I have read this blog now for a few weeks and I'm simply amazed, nay gobsmacked, as to what is happening now in England. I mean, really! Suicide Bombers being renamed to Personnel Borne Explosive Devices, so that suiciders won't feel they're being victimized.

"All of this has made me seriously consider whether I’m wasting my time in the police (I didn’t actually start this post with a rant in mind - it just happened). The vast majority of my time is spent dealing with shite, to nobody’s benefit whatsoever. You only have to read the myriad of police blogs to understand why we all get frustrated by the system, and to see why when you call the police you get such a slow response (there are enough police officers in the country - many more than half are sat on their arses in day jobs ticking boxes and sending snot-o-grams to the rest of us).

I joined the police for the clichéd appeal of trying to make a difference, to better society by making a stand against those I see around me who take liberties at the expense of decent folk. I earn much less money than I did previously, work longer hours (completely unsociable ones at that), I’m tired most of the time, I hardly spend any time with the future Mrs AC and I’m stating to ask myself “why?” All I seem to do is race around from one drunken unwashed fool to another. The names and faces are different at each job (within reason given our prevalence of regular callers) but the circumstances are always the same. The outcome always makes me think I’ve wasted my time in one way or another. Be it arresting someone and doing 6 hours of work on the case for the CPS to declare that due to there being no independent 3rd party witness, or CCTV coverage, that they aren’t prepared to take the case to trial. Or getting a case to trial, with the Brucie Bonus of a conviction, for the burglar (of multiple dwellings) to be given a 9 month supervision order (this happened to me recently and to coin a phrase I was “as cross as f**k”). I could list things like this until I am even bluer in the face than I am now, but I shall relent."

His words, not mine.

In fact, West Australia is now employing more and more emigrated police than ever before, and more and more people are taking up the offer.

A Night in the Life of a Level 70 Druid

2007-10-23T08:14:00.000+01:00

On Monday nights you will normally find me at my computer playing World of Warcraft, generally on my level 5x Hunter attempting to get him up to level 60 and into Outlands where all the money is. Last night though I decided to waive that and try and do an instance with my main character, my level 70 Druid. Instances are the other name for dungeons.

In this case, I wanted to do one of the dungeons in Terokkar Forest. Since I have never ever done Mana Tombs, I decided to put myself down as LFG - Looking For Group.

The first group I get are a Warrior, a Mage and 2 Druids (one a healer, the other a dps feral), all lower level than me. This puts me into a different category. The dungeon is levelled at around 65 whereas I am level 70. So this gives me some ability to shrug off the damage I'm getting. Not much, because even though I'm 5 levels above, 2 or 3 monsters of 5 levels lower will be able to beat the living daylights out of me.

I ask the team, "What Role should I play? Healer, DPS Cat or Tank Bear?"

The Warrior pipes up with "Duh! We have a Tank, me! Play a Healer."

The Druid DPS comments "Duh! We have a DPS, me! Play a Healer."

The Mage shrugs and picks his nose.

The Druid Healer hugs me and says "Yay! Please help me!" In private he messages me with a "I'm so glad you're here."

The reasons behind this is that the Warrior and the DPS Druid have no idea how to play their classes and lack even basic knowledge of what to do to in a Dungeon (Don't wander around because it will aggro monsters. Don't think that you can dodge attacks, you will only make it harder for your team mates to help you. Don't shout at the Healer when he doesn't heal you, he's avoiding Threat so he doesn't die when you wipe from your stupidity).

After over aggroing the healer, Tank and DPS, I decide to switch my role to a Bear Tank.

Druids have the amazing ability to play a variety of classes - Bear Tank, Cat DPS, Tree Healer, Moonkin-Mage. The last two are specifical specifications which mean that if you choose either of them, you can only play in a very limited way with the others. But that's not to say that you can't play as anything else at all. I am a DPS Druid, meaning I excel when in Cat Form. I'm good in Bear Tank form, and only less than average as a healer or mage.

Anyway, I'm now Bear Tank. This now makes things interesting because I'm out aggroing the Warrior, and requiring less healing. He decides to quit, taking with him the mage, leaving us with holes in our group. After a few minutes, we get another level 70, this time a Warlock and a Hunter. Both classes use Pets, so this allows us to crowd control a bit more. But it would be better having a dedicated healer and a Mage, for the DPS. However, spending time looking for these classes will take longer than we have, therefore we make use of what we have and plan accordingly.

So we get back into the game. 40 minutes later we confront and take down the 2nd Boss monster. Hurray. Suddenly the Druid Healer decides to scarper (Sorry I have work to go to). So we replace with a Priest. Another 30 minutes later and we take down the 3rd and final Boss, in a battle that kills everyone.

2 and a half hours after I've started, I trudge off to sleep, Mana Tombs vanquished. At the back of my mind is the fact that if I had gone with my guild, we could have raced through in half the time with minimum casualties. General players don't know how to play their classes.

The Warrior was not taunting. The DPS Druid was not watching where he was going, and he didn't know what Innervate was. The Healer Druid did not heal entirely well but he was trying, so he can be forgiven. The Hunter didn't know how to leash his pet, which continuously aggroed as it raced to keep up with its master.

All in all, it was a fun night, but one that needn't have gone on for so long.

Hellgate: London Demo

2007-10-20T00:19:00.000+01:00

The Hellgate: London demo has just been released by Flagship.

You can download a 1.45gb copy for free on the link above. The demo only lasts for 4 levels but you get to know your way around the game and the quests, and whether or not you'll buy it.

Hellgate has had mixed reactions so far. It's been compared to the Diablo franchise as its made by the creators of that game, but it's much more action-orientated.

There are 2 ways of playing the game, offline and online. If you want to play offline, you just buy the game and play solo content, if you want to play online, you have to subscribe. It's a bit like Phantasy Star Online was, but since I'm already tossing up between City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, I'm not sure I want a 3rd online game to occupy my time.

Pet Peeves: Slow Walkers

2007-10-18T06:32:00.000+01:00

This is a post about one of my pet peeves. I have more than one but I'm not going to list them in any order or prioritize them because, quite frankly, they all annoy me in the same way. Please keep in mind though that Pet Peeves are not on the same order as Genocidal Wars. I'm quite aware that a lot of this happens as normal human behaviour and, whilst I am normally irate with them, I don't do things like attack people or call the police...

First on the list is: Slow Walkers.

Now, I am myself a fairly fast walker. I don't power walk but at the same time, I don't canter along. When I'm going somewhere or shopping, I pretty much know what I want and where to get it so I walk from A -> B in the full knowledge that if I take my time, it will only slow things down. So I WALK.

This basic knowledge seems to have left most people's minds; that if they walk at a reasonable pace they will get to their destination fairly quickly. You may be able to not use your legs much in a car but when walking, you have to use them. On the other hand, I can easily understand people who want to take their time. I take my time too, sometimes. Like, when I'm walking around a museum. Or in a cafe or restaurant. Or even at the gym.

Shopping? No. Shopping should not involve slow walking. Shops are there to strip you of your money, that is why you will never find down escalators pointed at the door. They want you in and shopping, with no clear avenue of escape. When I go into a shop, I have a fairly good idea of what I want and then I buy it. Then I escape. Quickly.

But I don't want to stray into another Pet Peeve, so I'll stay clear of Shopping for the time being.
So, imagine. You are walking quickly to the train station. You know that train may come early. Unfortunately the sheep and lemming population are all walking at the same monotone speed towards the train station, so you have to resort to weaving in and out of the crowd to get past them. When you say "Excuse me..." what you really mean is "FFS, get out of the way you zombies!" (I will let you ponder on what FFS stands for).

And if you think it's just me, had a read of this piece of old hat.

I honestly don't mind if you want to window shop. Or Chat to someone on your mobile. Or if you're walking the dog.

But either move closer to the buildings or closer to the road. Don't stand in the middle like a lost child. if it's good enough for driving in a car it should bloody well be good enough for pedestrians.

Stereotyping?

2007-10-16T01:09:00.000+01:00

Whilst out shopping a few nights ago, Elsha was perusing baby clothes as we are now (again) Uncle and Aunty once more. I, of course, spent my time wisely checking out dvds and eventually came across a small copy of "Wild Palms" by Oliver Stone. I had the videos when they appeared on BBC 2 years ago (1990?) but threw them out when we moved to Australia. As it was quite a cheap price, it seemed good value for money, even if I never get around to watching it; I still have Team America, Forbidden Planet and Hitchcock's Rear Window to watch first.

Anyway, back to the baby shopping. Standing in front of a whole set of clothing, it occured to me - why are boy's clothes blue and girl clothes pink?

According to various websites, the blue used is actually quite a dainty, and not a strong vivid, colour therefore it's much more suited to girls. Pink, on the other hand, is a watered down red, and therefore much more standout-ish. This was very much the case before the 1950's. Boys were dressed in strong pink, girls clothed in dainty light blue.
Interestingly enough, whilst the rest of the Western world have adopted the boys = blue and girls = pink colouring, the Belgians have remained the same; that is, they are in reverse.

There are various theories posted on the interent about why this is - dyes in china being rarer for boys, an evolutionary preference for specific colours or just "because its always been that way"...

...if you have an answer, please let me know :)

Creating Chaos

2007-10-10T01:22:00.000+01:00

This week, Transperth are adding a brand new line to the Perth Rail network, linking Mandurah, Rockingham and Kwinana, amongst other places to Fremantle, Clarkson, Armadale and Midland. As the city grows, it's probably a requirement that the rail infrastructure grows as well, to allow more and more people access for business and tourism.

This planning has been going on for well over a year, so it was already in motion when we arrived last November. The modifications that are happening this week have been carefully thought out over a period of no less than 3 months. In order to connect the new line to the network, the Clarkson line has to be disconnected from the Perth station. Theoretically, passengers on the Clarkson line should have to travel in to Glendalough where they can catch a bus the remaining way or continue to Leederville where they can walk for 25 minutes into the city.

Unfortunately, it appears that there was no organisation regarding the actual workaround for the passengers. On Monday, Elsha and I decided to get to the station for 5.40 and catch the earlier train so we would miss the deluge of passengers not knowing where to go. Imagine our frustration when the train we were on stops halfway between stations for an hour and a half.

That's right, not 10, 20 or 30 minutes but 90 minutes without a good explanation. Then, we manage to get to the next station where we can catch a bus to Perth City. Imagine more frustration when we get to the bus platform and discover that not only do the regular bus drivers not know where the rail replacement buses are but that there are no Transperth staff available.

Within 5 minutes, though, staff do make an appearance but confusion continues to reign. Do we "tag on" or not? Some people do, some don't. The Smart Rider system that was introduced in order to stop payment fraud unfortunately doesn't seem to work well, so with lots of people trying to get onto buses, the system began to throw out errors. "Don't worry about tagging on, just get on the buses!", we are shouted at by the Transperth Staff. We didn't "tag on" but what about those people that did?

So we left Joondalup at 5.40am and got to Perth city at 7.30am. That's normally a 30 minute journey.

The unmitigated disaster was quite obviously reported in the News that evening. It was made abundantly clear that the Transperth staff neither had any information as to what was happening nor was being organised in any way to handle queries, questions and issues. Or perhaps no one had forseen that the rail network would be crippled by signal failures that would bottleneck passengers onto buses on an already congested motorway system.

But they should have.

Passengers on other lines have retaliated to those stuck in the choas by stating that this will only be for a week and that the connection to Mandurah has to happen.

I'm not denying that, but is it too much to ask for organisation, sound business planning and keeping your customers satisfied?

A Memory of Light

2007-10-09T07:27:00.001+01:00

I only found out about this now...

"Robert Jordan was the pen name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr., under which he was best known as the author of the bestselling The Wheel of Time series. He also wrote under the name Reagan O'Neal. He died September 16th, 2007 from complications due to cardiac amyloidosis."

Definitely a Pro

2007-10-05T02:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I woke up bleary eyed and absolutely tired. Dragging myself out of bed, I made a coffee (which I then forgot about and only discovered when I came home), showered, dressed and walked out of the door.

So far, the above would be typically the same morning in London.

But, imagine my surprise when I feel the heat of the sun on my face. I look up, momentarily dazzled by the brightness of the sun and turn eyes even further upwards to see nothing but blue, blue sky. Not the deep blue of summer but the pale light blue of spring.

For the rest of my day, I felt energised and stress-free.

When friends ask me if I'm home sick, I should make them read this post.

Switching

2007-10-02T01:44:00.000+01:00

I know I haven't posted in some time, that's mainly because I've switched jobs.

Previously I was working for the Government via an employment agency as a full time contractor. Now I'm working for the Government via an Outsourcing firm as a full time permanent member of staff; I'm not working for the same client, by the way. Different methods of employment, different government departments.

So equally, different procedures for everything. My first post had little in the way of procedure and a lot in getting staff out to resolve computer issues. My second and current post has a lot in the way of procedure and very little to do with getting out of the office. In terms of workload, I have moved from high to low, from 10 jobs a day to around 3 jobs a day, if that.

Unfortunately, this new role also requires a lot of knowledge regarding paperwork. I don't think I've ever worked in an environment where so much paperwork is required so that so little can be done. This has all been a rush to the head so I haven't quite been able to pen my thoughts. Instead I've taken to reading other people's blogs.

Play Time (continued...)

2007-09-04T09:43:00.000+01:00

Ok, so I finally succumbed to temptation and went and bought City of Heroes.

I then spent a frantic 2 days over the weekend realising that the same pitfalls that are inherant in any MMO is in CoH - that is, you need friends to play with to make it come alive.

In World of Warcraft, it was Horse (and to a lesser extent Scythe and Kitten) who was there to group with, and much later our guildmates of Swords of Justice.

But in CoH, there is no one about (well, so far at least. Hopefully, I'll be looking to join up with some Australian buddies).

So, if you're interested in giving it a go, don't be shy. Just send me an email and I'll drop you a trial cd-key and we can meet up on the Justice Server. Of course, you'll have to download the client.

Play Time

2007-08-29T04:55:00.000+01:00

Now that I finally have my new budget-ranged computer, I find that I'm in a bit of a slump as to which computer games to play.

World of Warcraft really offers me very little, and I'll explain why. At the moment, I'm still signed up to the European servers but, because I'm 6 hours ahead, I rarely get to meet with the players I used to hang out with. As I'm in a guild, I do get to meet up with other players, but generally there is very little comraderie between them and myself. I say hi, they say hi, we go do different things, etc.

The other real issue is that most of my guildmates have moved onto daily raiding. Karazhan (yes, that guild breaker) requires that players spend a lot of time in the dungeon to clear it out - this requires at least 4 days out of every 7 raiding there. Since I can barely spend 2 days online, I just don't have the ability to go there. Ever.

So, in order to inject a bit of fun, I decided to give Knights of the Old Republic a go. KOTOR is a Star Wars game, set about 4000 years before the films. It was great fun. Hand a man a lightsaber and he turns into a whimpering kid. Hand him a double-bladed lightsaber and he turns into an even bigger whimpering kid. In the game, you get to choose whether or not you want to be a Jedi or a Sith, based on your actions and the consequences of those actions. It only took me 2 weeks but I plowed through it.

The current game I'm playing is Fable: The Lost Chapters. Essentially a roleplaying game, the choices (and thus like KOTOR the consquences) you make effectively determine your appearance. If you play like a baddie, you look like a baddie. If you get a scar during a fight, you keep that scar for that character. Scars and tattoos accumulate during a character's lifetime thereby demonstrating how your life has been led.

It all looks good so far with some interesting gameplay but one thing I did not realise was that combat was in real time. KOTOR's combat was real time too but you could pause the combat and plan out your choices.

I'm not that particularly fond of real time combat, especially in fantasy settings where you have to block, roll or swing a sword but so far it looks fairly easy. And of course you have the easy options of using archery (move the crosshairs over the target whilst drawing the arrow back) or magic.

But I'm still hankering for some MMO action. And the only game that keeps me interested is City of Heroes. Now, I know I've posted before about COH, and that the Customer Support was fairly bad, but damn it, it still looks like a cool game.

P-P-P-P-Potter!

2007-08-10T01:42:00.000+01:00

EDIT: I suppose I should start by mentioning that if you're reading the book, this review does entail a few shadowy spoilers. So, if you want to remain completely in the dark, I would suggest skipping over this.

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Sometime in December 2000, Elsha's brother bought me Harry Potter Books 1-3 as a present. I'm not entirely sure if it was a Birthday or Christmas present seeing as how for me both are within weeks of each other but that's how I was introduced to the Potter Epic-dom.

Elsha was originally indifferent about the books - she doesn't much like fantasy stories about male protagonists - but after I read some of it to her, she warmed to it very quickly.

So, I read Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone in around a few hours. I liked how the story flowed, and how it didn't take itself very much seriously. I was aware, of course, that the book was aimed at an audience of 11 year olds but that didn't really enter into it for me. I have always been fond of books aimed at the Children's/Young Adult market - Susan Cooper's "The Dark Grey Rising" and Alan Garner's "Elidor" are a good example.

Books, 2 and 3 soon followed and, like most other people, I was hooked on the stories. Book 4 was huge, by comparison, to the other books being nearly as large as the other 3 combined, but since then, the later books have been nearly as large.

Unfortunately, Book 5 - Order of the Phoenix - was a complete disaster. It was billed as the book where Harry "becomes a teenage rebel". Sorry, I must have missed that phase; I didn't realise being a rebel meant antagonizing practically everyone around you. If I was in the book, I would have probably belted Harry Potter for being a nob.

But Book 6 - The Half-Blood Prince - revitalised the story again with some nifty work, and of course, set it all up to with a magical and epic ending.

Where did Book 7 - The Deathly Hallows - go wrong then?

Upon reading the book, I spent 200 pages wondering when the story would start. We attended a wedding, which although was wonderfully written, probably had no bearing on the ending. And of course, I spent most of the 200 pages knowing this!

Then, we had a bit where Harry, Hermione and Ron spend time searching for the vital essences of Lord Voldemorte's soul, those extracts contained in the Horcruxes mentioned in book 6 (essentially You-Know-Who hid bits of himself in items scattered throughout wizard-dom in an attempt to become immortal - similar to the way that a D&D Lich hides its mortality in a phylactery). We are warned again that there are 7 of these and that at least 2 have already been destroyed (the ring and the diary) but that 5 more remain.

So we then spend around another 200-300 pages hunting down these items. Along the way people die.

That's about all I can say about the plot, not because it was written badly but because there was just no point in any of the deaths. No, even worse than that, it felt like people were being killed off in the story just because otherwise it would feel odd that the Good Guys won without any losses.

Consider this. In Book 4, Cedric Diggory dies, and there is much made of this death, the first in the series. In Book 5, Sirius Black, Harry's Godfather, dies tragically. In Book 6, Albus Dumbledore dies and there is a chapter dedicated to his funeral.

In Book 7, around 5 people die, in such quick succession that the reader cannot take in that they have died. No, more importantly, their deaths do not further the story in any way. Not mentioning their deaths would have as much impact on the story as what Rowling actually did.
The ending, though, is good. Very good. Your connection to Harry is fulfilled.

But then, we have this terrible, terrible, epilogue, where everything is wrapped up for the reader and all those bad things that have happened seem to have been washed away as if it was all a bad dream.

It seems plenty of people hate the epilogue.

There are other problems with the storyline of Harry Potter, from books 1-7, at least for me.
Initially, the world of Harry Potter depicts Evil as evil and Good as good, with there being no shades of Grey. Slytherin housemates are all as evil as, I wondered why Dumbledore didn't take them out and have them shot. Gryffindor, on the other hand, stand as bastions of virtue. Kids who can do no wrong, or if they do, get rewarded for generally being cheeky to their elders. Hufflepuff seems relegated to being a place for retards and Ravenclaw for those who are wannabe Gryffindors.

Basically, in my eyes, the 4 houses at Hogwarts seem incredibly skewed. From what I understood from the original book, Slytherin should have been a house for those most intelligent, Gryffindor for those with nerve, Hufflepuff for those who are loyal, and Ravenclaw for those who are wise. Now, the houses stand for something completely different. Was that the intention of Rowling?

By Book 7, Rowling tries to show that Good is not necessarily always good. Wizards have been abusing the magical creatures with their notions of racial superiority (the Centaurs and the House Elves, for example) and meanwhile, Dumbledore has had a chequered past. In the same instance, Severus Snape was not necessarily inherently bad, something you deduce when he starts to help Dumbledore by spying on Lord Voldemort.

In conclusion, the story of Harry Potter and his quest to find eternal peace is grand and fitting but Book 7 does not do well to fit into that pattern. Too side-winding in places, Rowling appears to have lost her way in several places. People die for no other purpose but for the reader to realise that death is a terrible thing (a thing we learn much, much earlier in the series). And finally, after a momentous ending befitting the epic, a horrible, cliched epilogue that hints of more books to come.

P.S. Yes, there are more books to come. An encyclopedia on the subject. Why for heaven's sake?

Interim measures

2007-08-07T01:31:00.000+01:00

In case you're wondering, I haven't posted anything new because I don't have much to say at the moment.

I suppose I could go on to make a post about people who infest shopping centres and who walk around "really slowly". What's with that anyway. You're there to shop, not saunter around like it was a park.

Or, I suppose I could go on to moan about the fact that when it rains in Perth, WA, it really hammers down. English rain is this sort of light fluffy rain that goes on for most of the day and annoys the hell out of you. Australian rain, on the other hand, seems to come down with the force of bricks but usually tires itself out in about 20 minutes.

Work is continuing to drain my life energy so that the days seem to merge into one big monotonous cycle of waking up-work-home-sleep followed by a glorious weekend that ends too quickly.

I am severely procrastinating about several goals that I should have completed by now. Driving: I should have taken my Theory test, if for nothing else but to shut up the droves of people who ask me if I've taken it yet.

No. I haven't. Please. Shut up about it.

I also haven't gotten around to ordering some computer components so I can build myself a budget PC. I'm hoping that writing all this down will force me to get it resolved. Besides, building computers wins out over driving theory tests.

And finally, I AM slowly becoming a little home sick. Not enough to move back, heaven's no. But enough to sit back and think about the fun times spent in Boston Manor or Ealing. The Take Away joints. And, glorious of all watering holes, the Old Goa, a pub that still hasn't been matched by any we've found in our travels.

Gone are the days we'd walk out of work and meet up in the Old Goa, have a few beers, contemplate going home and cooking food before dashing that idea and staying until closing time. Phoning around to see if we couldn't get others to come out and join us for an evening out. These days, the best we can do is get a bottle of wine or two out and just about finish one off sat at home.

Whatever happened to those times?

Musicness

2007-07-13T01:54:00.000+01:00

Is it freaky or weird not to have much interest in music?

Most bloggers, I have noticed, have a section dedicated to what music they're interested in or which bands they enjoy - alternatively, they have something like SwissToni's "Earworms of the Week".

Me? I barely know the names of the tracks being played let alone have enough for an "Earworms of the Month".

Only two bands particularly shine out for me:

1) Gwen Stefani.

Pretty much whatever she does, I like. I stuck her original album onto an mp3 player and listened to it when going to work and I liked what I heard. Occasionally, she does an annoying track with grating girl-like screeches but that's easily forgiven.

2) Sol Invictus.

A Neofolk/Folk Noir "band", I've had a hankering for them ever since my elder brother introduced me to them back in 1991 - indeed, my avatar piccie is taken from them.

They're not really a band in the main sense; the lead singer, Tony Wakeford, sings and does some percussion work, and there are numerous guest musicians who are invited to join in on the work.

I did once play the music to some Old Ealonians, which was a pretty bad mistake. These two Old Ealonians did not easily understand that Sol Invictus was not about making money but about making music.

"They should get a professional Singer to do the lyrics"

Yes and quite possibly get a professional band to play the music as well, yes?

Anyway, I like them but it's not the sort of thing you can normally bring up in a music conversation/discussion:

"So, what bands do you like?"

"Oh, I like [insert name of band]."

"Hmm, I like [different name of band]"

"Nice one. What about you Crucifer?"

Oh, I like Sol Invictus.

"Mm? Who? Anyway..."

So, back to my original question. Is it freaky or weird not to have much interest in music?

Back to the drawing board #2

2007-07-06T01:53:00.000+01:00

Right after my last post (on the monday before last), one of my old work colleagues rang me.

"Hey, I heard you were out of work. Do you fancy coming back here? We really need some help and everyone here remembers your work!"

I'm not entirely sure how he managed to find out I was out of work. At that point in time I only told one other guy about my being let go, so I'm guessing it was him. Presumably he told one of his mates where I used to work, and word spread verbally.

The fact that they wanted me back perked me up a lot. I don't think I did that good a job there, swapping enthusiasm for technical skills but it seems they think I did a wonderful job.

So, after informing the guy hiring me that I was really looking for permanent work (better to be honest and open, is my motto), I sent off my details via the recommended contract agency.

30 minutes later and I was hired. The agency rep, who's never met me, had to go through standard agency policy and pull me in for an interview, even though he had the contract signed up and ready to go.

In that interview, he confessed that this was the fastest hire he's ever had. He didn't even know I existed an hour before I rang and an hour later, I'm not only on his books but I'm pulling in a decent amount of pay!

The good news is that everyone here is aware of my current dilemma - I'm still looking for permanent work but doing the contract until I manage to get it sorted. In the meantime, this place gets another contractor who knows the ropes for a bit longer.

Back to the drawing board...

2007-06-24T02:47:00.000+01:00

I had some bad news on Friday evening. Work related. Yes, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

I was "let go".

My boss cited 2 separate reasons for this reason:

1. "You weren't proactive enough. For a company of our size, you really have to get involved more."

The size of the company was 4 people (including me), consisting of a programmer, the technical director and MD. Quite frankly, there wasn't anything I could be proactive in - I would have had to sabotage things so that I could fix them.

However, there is an element of truth in what he said. I didn't get involved as much as I would have liked, and by the end of 5 weeks, I had become a mind-numbingly bored worker who had absolutely no motivation.

I did have a conversation with him on Thursday morning that sort of went counter to his exit-interview statement though - "I know its frustrating not having any work at the moment, but once it starts to come in, you'll be in the reverse situation. You'll be rushed off your feet."

Now, that doesn't sound to me like I wasn't being proactive. That sounds to me like I had no work and they knew it.

2. "Your technical skills aren't up to scratch. I asked you to produce a document on the product, and what you wrote wasn't up to standard."

The problem here though is that in my interview I told them I didn't have any technical skills apart from server administration and installation. Beyond writing a thesis and this blog, I don't have any technical writing skills to speak of. That was also evident in my interview when they assured me that any required skills I would need, they would train me up on.

As I have come to realise, they could have shown me what standard they had expected and asked me to write more in that format. Asking someone to write up a document in an industry they have no knowledge or experience of is pretty counter-productive unless you offer them some serious help.

This is the first job that I have been unsuccessful in and it really hurts. Could I have done more? Could I have been better? People whom I've worked with have said to me that the chances are, they hired me too early. There was no work for me to do, and they finally realised it would be less expensive to let me go and then in 3 months hire someone else as opposed to paying me for 12 weeks of twiddling my thumbs.

I had a long talk with Elsha about this and the fact that sticks out is that after 5 weeks of no work, they let me go during my probationary period which should only have a day notice. They've given me a week paid and references. That's not something you do for a lazy worker.

But it still hurts.

...says it better than me...

2007-06-22T01:48:00.000+01:00

Tobold is a blogger I read on a daily basis, and in this case, says it much better than my previous post.

Reputation grinding

2007-06-21T01:30:00.000+01:00

I said I would blog more but with Work occupying my time recently, I haven't had much of a chance to sink my teeth into a blog post. Seeing as how I've finished my latest exercise though, and now I'm waiting for some feedback, I thought I'd write something new up on Gaming.

I haven't said much about my exploits on World of Warcraft except to skim over them and say that I'm having fun. I'm not sure I *am* still having fun but I continue to plod my way through the game.

Currently, I'm trying to hit Exalted reputation with the Netherwing faction so I can get a Netherdrake to fly around on...

...I suppose some explanation is required, for those reading who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

In World of Warcraft, in order to achieve certain items or goals, players have to obtain an amount of reputation by doing quests for certain factions. For example, if you want to go through the Timbermaw Hold from Felwood into Moonglade/Winterspring, you either need to become neutral/friendly with the Timbermaws or run really fast. Since running really isn't an option, you have to do the quests instead, which isn't too bad. The quests themselves are repeatable and can be handed in over and over, each reward amounting to a certain amount of reputation points. Before long, you can get past the Timbermaws and carry your journey on. For those who want more though, you can continue to gain reputation past neutral/friendly/honoured/revered to exalted for special items that will only be purchasable once you gain that reputation rank.

Of course, that example is from the Old World (a term to denote the game before The Burning Crusade expansion arrived). With the Netherdrake, the pre-requisite is to have purchased the epic riding skill, costing 5000g and be mounted, costing another 200g. This pre-requisite is actually hard to achieve although not as difficult as many make out. I spent around 2 weeks of gaming farming materials (oh dear, another explanation?) so I could sell things to make the money to buy the skill and the mount.

Once you have the skill and the mount, you can set off to do the Netherwing quests. Which quite frankly, suck.

There has been a lot of recent murmurings about the issue of World of Warcraft, and it seems finally the bubble has burst. For the first time since the game launched, subscription rates are not going up. In fact, they appear to be slowly dropping.

One of the big issues that has been uttered over and over again is that of The Burning Crusade expansion. It's clearly not doing what it's supposed to be doing - actually driving away the people it was supposed to be retaining.

The expansion was supposed to allow players huge amounts of solo content over a lengthier period of time. This means that players who don't wish to play with other players can go off and do their own thing. If you want to play in dungeons with groups though, the expansion also introduced "instances" where you could meet up. And finally, if you wanted to raid together against huge opposition, you could do that too.

The problem, though, is that the expansion took something away from the original game. For example, the end game that you reach eventually has changed. Instead of gearing up with mates and raiding, you have to handpick your raid mates instead. Essentially, the original game catered for "casual" players, those who weren't essential to your victory but kept your morale up for the 3+ hours that the raid required. Bards, for want of a better word (in the Dungeons & Dragons game, bards were a cross between mages and thieves but didn't really offer much else). So for Molten Core, a 40-player raid dungeon, 25 players were heavily involved, 10 players were semi-required and 5 players were just there for the hell of it.

In The Burning Crusade expansion though, the 40 and 20 man dungeons have dropped to 25 and 10 so the "casual" characters aren't being taken any more. This reasoning, although brilliant on paper, has destroyed whole guilds in their efforts to get ready for the raids (Swords of Justice, the guild I'm in is no different).

All of this is slowly making me want to try out City of Heroes once more. I just can't wait for Stargate Worlds to come out...

EDIT: Blizzard recently announced that they were changing the requirements for raiding in World of Warcraft. No longer will players have to become "attuned" to various dungeons in sequence. Essentially, this suggests that Blizzard's number crunchers have realised that subscription rates are slipping considerably and have pushed for a change. I'm not entirely sure, though, that this is enough.

Pain...

2007-06-01T03:33:00.001+01:00

Dentistry really does has to be a profession with one of the worst reputations you can possibly have. Not only are you dealing with people's teeth - arguably one of the places that people could never reach by themselves without inflicting large amounts of damage - but you also have to deal out some pain.

As you can imagine, I am not a good patient when it comes to dentistry. Whilst Elsha can go without a dentist for years, I can just about manage around 3 months.

Tops.

I haven't been to a dentist since June 2006 - mainly because we were moving to another country and, with dentists in the UK now going private, we couldn't afford the quarterly checkups. So I stopped going and thought that once we were ensconced in our new place in Perth, I'd start up again.

Now, back in January, Elsha hit upon the bright idea of joining a private health insurance firm called Medibank. You pay money to Medibank, they help cover your health costs. One way that they do this is to give you two free dental exmainations and scalings with their local dentist.

So far so good. I checked - yes its all free and anything not is happily subsidised by Medibank. So, today, I went down for an appointment.

"Well, your teeth are in a pretty bad state of affairs. You're going to need 3 fillings. And most likely root planing as well. But if you get back onto track with your regimented cleaning practises, you won't need as much care."

Succintly put, and filling-requirements all pointed out. X-rays taken, and wrists slapped.

All in all, its a much better experience than it was in the UK.
...

Just more costly.

Each filling comes to around $117, about £45 each. Is that normal? I suppose it is for a private dentist.

Of course, now I get to spend days going on about the state of my teeth to poor Elsha who, quite frankly, puts up with a lot of whinging from me.

...it's in the trees...

2007-05-30T08:08:00.001+01:00

Night of the Demon is a black and white horror film made in 1957, and based around the story "Casting the runes" by Montague Rhode James. The screenplay was by Charles Bennett (of Hitchcock fame), and the film was directed by Jacques Tourneur, famously known for his other horror film, 'Cat People'. It has gone on to pursue the claim that it is one of the best horror films in movie history (although The Haunting probably equals, if not outdoes, it).

The plot revolves around the eccentric and strangely powerful Julien Karswell, a man who, it is claimed, leads a devil-worshipping cult. The story opens with Dr. Harrington racing to Karswell's house, where he tries to get Karswell to "call off whatever it is he's started". In return, Harrington will publicly announce that he was wrong and that Karswell was right; a refute which Karswell turns down as well. Karswell does not want media attention. A simple letter would suffice. Harrington agrees and leaves, amicably and knowing he has just put off a monstrous death. However, it is too late. Harrington dies the horrible death he tried to avoid.

Enter Joanna Harrington, the niece of the Professor, who begins investigating her uncle's death at the same time as an American professor arrives on the scene, Dr John Holden, who is also investigating, although this time its Julien Karswell and his devil-worship cult.

The two end up together trying to solve the mysteries of the runic symbols found inscribed on a parchment that Karswell has slipped Holden, and why Holden's death is evidently going to happen very shortly.

As the film picks up its pace, its clear that something is haunting Holden. The pages in his diary are ripped out after a certain date - "when a witchdoctor curses his victim, he always let them know well in advance" as Holden puts it to Ms. Harrington. However, that doesn't explain the many oddities of events plaguing Holden.

In an attempt to sway fears, they both head down to Karswell's manor to obtain a book missing from the British Library, entitled "The True Discoveries of Witches And Demons".

It's here that the audience, and Holden, are properly introduced to Karswell, a character supposedly based on Aleister Crowley himself. Karswell and Holden talk about magic and about the human mind - and whether the two are entirely seperate entities.

The film has many wonderful scenes, revolving around the idea of witchcraft and that, perhaps science can't explain everything away.

If the film could have a tagline, it would that of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which is also featured in the film):

"Like one along a lonesome road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
Because he knows a frightful fiend,
doth close behind him tread."

I would heartily recommend this film for anyone wanting a fright. It doesn't have gore or screams but it does have plain old goosebumpy horror.

5/5!

Technically Fun

2007-05-24T04:36:00.000+01:00

I haven't written much in this blog recently I've noticed. I definitely haven't written up a movie review for "Night of the Demon" especially. As it's a really good movie, I'm going to have to spend some time doing that soon. And, for reasons that will become apparent later in this post, I'll do it at work.

The initial jubilation at having a macbook soon turned sour when I realised the delete key didn't work correctly. Now, for those of you who have never experienced a Macbook, some interesting comments:

1) The delete key when working from Windows (via Mac's Boot Camp) does not function as a delete key. Instead it is a backspace key. You can trick it into thinking its a delete key by having the FN or Function key depressed.

2) The keyboard itself is completely flat. Or rather, the keys on the keyboard are completely flat. This is something of an unnerving experience (as Elsha found out) as pretty much every PC keyboard has a curve to it so your fingers know where the middle of the key is, so when you depress it your fingers have purchase.

But you can get over those two. You can't get over having a delete/backspace key that you have to HAMMER, to do anything.

Mac Desktop Support is also different to PC/Dell Support. I'm normally used to explaining the situation and booking either an engineer to come fix the issue, send a spare part out for the user to fix or having the computer picked up by courier.

Mac Support said "Oh. Right. You're best off buying another one."

What? Buy another one? What's wrong with this one?

"Well, you just said, it's got a dodgy key."

Yes, but I don't want to buy another one when I can get this one repaired. It's only a keyboard issue, how long would it take to be repaired?

"4 weeks. Give or take a week."

WHAT?!? 4 weeks for an engineer to unscrew the base, remove the connectors between the motherboard and the keyboard plate and then to check/replace the key connection?

"Yup. Or you can buy a new one, and send the old one back in. Since you're on your 14 day 'remorse' period, it may work out quicker."

So that's what I did. Bought a new laptop, had the old one picked up. Total swap out time, 3 days. BUt I still can't work out why it takes 4 (!) weeks to repair a keyboard...

Anyway, laptop is back with me and I've already installed Warcraft 3 on it.

Warcraft 3 is a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game where you do some exploring, build things and generally go around destroying other people's bases. Blizzard (for it is their product) have added some unique features into the game, like having Hero Units that can pick up special in-game items that increase their statistics and off-side quests to complete. So your paladin hero might get a quest to go destroy an Orc base but on the way there, he gets a quest to go save little davey from the bad gnolls - upon completion you get rewarded with a special item.

RTS games are a favourite of mine, especially Starcraft, but I still have a hankering for TBS - Turn Based Strategy - games like Laser Squad or Ufo: Enemy Unknown. TBS games differ obviously in that you take your turn by positioning your units, and then the enemy (computer or human) takes their turn, and if anyone moves into your line of sight - *BANG* they're dead.

The difference between the two is that in TBS there is of course no real time requirement. You don't need to pause the game because there's no timer ticking away.

On the other hand, assembling a vast army in, say Starcraft is monsterously satisfying. Nothing beats sending 12 Terran Battlecruisers on an errand of absolute carnage (except perhaps 12 Protoss Carriers or 12 Zerg Guardians).

Finally, I've been doing a bit of background reading - one of the things I love the most about World of Warcraft is its lore. The history and storylines behind the the game make it, in my opinion, a much more immersive experience. It's ok not to know who Medivh or Illidan are, but knowing what they did and the consquences of their actions make the game come more to life.

So I've read The Last Guardian by Jeff Grub and Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden. And just for good measure I did some reading of the Diablo universe - written by the excellent Richard A Knaak, who should be known by every fantasy reader, if not on their bookshelves somewhere.

So, anyway, laptop working correctly, but little or no work to do on it at the moment. I've been browsing various websites, reading up on lore and just generally increasing my knowledge of Small Business Server 2003 in the hope that it may be of some use later but, currently, there is no web testing going on.

I hope that will change soon, I'm so ready to start...! So, in between increasing my knowledge of all things technical, I will try and catch up on some blogging. :)

Learning all over again

2007-05-14T23:15:00.000+01:00

So, this is what I'm using at work:

*

That's right, I've been told to use a Macbook. This is because in my new job as Software Tester, I have to test all kinds of websites on different browsers - Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Opera 9.2., Firefox2 - and Safari, the Mac Browser.

Which means that occasionally I have to dip my toes into toes into the tepid waters of the Mac OS. I had a play around with it yesterday and found it ... quite daunting, actually.

Everything is there that is on the Windows version but subtley different. Different enough to actually make you scratch your head and wonder how to get it to work like Windows. And then, of course, you wonder if Mac users have the same problem with Windows - do they sit there scratching their head and wondering how to get it to work like a Mac?

Anyway, day 1 was interesting, to say the least, and I'm ready to go back for more.

* That's not my desk by the way. Mine has nothing on it at the moment.

...To Boldly Go...

2007-05-07T09:01:00.000+01:00

"Hey , Check this out!"

"Mmm what is it?"

"It's a job where you play computer games!"

"Mmm. It's a job where you have to 'test' websites of computer games."

"You should apply for it mate."

"I have no qualifications in software testing or in any of the listed requirements for that position. Beyond playing computer games, I can't see why they would even want me for an interview."

"You never know unless you apply for it."

Which is why I did apply for it, with a jokey email, never once thinking I may actually get a response.

Imagine my astonishment when I receive a reply email:

"Well, you are correct. You do not meet any qualifications for the listed position, however we are still very much interested in meeting with you. Would you be available for an interview?"

So, I attend the interview, am asked lots of questions like:

"Do you know .Net?"

- NO

"Have you had at least 6 months experience of Linux"

- NO

"have you ever done any software testing?"

- NO

"Have you played World of Warcraft?"

- Err. Is this a trick question?

"No. So have you?"

- Well... Yes. Hasn't everyone?

"No. Have you played Unreal Tournement?"

- The original or the 2003/2005 versions?

"Good enough answer. What other Online games have you played?"

- City of Heroes, Silk Roads Online, The Matrix Online...Phantasy Star Online.

Next day, I receive the email I've been waiting for:

"Congratulations. You have been offered the position of Software Tester."

... Wait.

I've been offered a job based on the list of Online games I've played?!?

Anyway, I cannot go into more details, mainly due to the Non-disclosure Agreement I signed when I said yes to the job. All I can say is I have no idea what the future holds for me.

Hopefully, lots of game playing.

P.S. It's Night of the Demon. Movie review to follow.

Memorable Movie Quote #1

2007-03-22T23:45:00.000Z

This is a quote from one of my most favourite movies - one that whenever I get a chance to watch, I'll quite happily sit down with a hot cup of coffee and just laze the day away.

Do you know what movie its from? No cheating, mind...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Do I believe in witchcraft? What kind of witchcraft? The legendary witch that rides on the imaginary broom? The hex that tortures the thoughts of the victim? The pin stuck in the image that wastes away the mind and the body?"

"Also imaginary."

"But where does imagination end and reality begin? What is this twilight, this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about? How can we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of the mind?"

Unbelievable!

2007-03-22T00:03:00.000Z

Do you remember my old Boss's leaving speech in October 2006?

I certainly do.

It was where he went on to tell all my friends and colleagues that I was a gamer and a geek. If he had said it with a bit of tease in his voice, I wouldn't have minded so much, but he didn't - he said it from the point of "This man has no life, no purpose. He is a waste of space."

I've had lots of people from my old workplace tell me they couldn't believe his leaving speech, couldn't believe that I just shrugged it off. Well, I had dealt with far, far worse at his hands. Being told to "curb my internet usage especially on game sites" during my lunch hour when it was company policy to allow you to look up personal websites was particularly chafing but I dealt with it.

Amazingly, in my new workplace, my new boss is completely different. He also plays an MMO although he's derogatory towards WoW - but in a friendly way. There is that look of amazement that I play World of Warcraft which is compared in every way to his MMO - EVE Online - and how I'm playing a game with no hooks or penalties (as far as he is concerned).

However, I don't mind it so much. Now I'm in a workplace with people who love gaming, I can look up internet sites about games all day long if I wanted to (although I would have to do my work too!) and, best of all, people don't look down their noses at me. In fact, having my boss play an MMO means at least we can talk on a level playing field. I did try and keep secret the fact that I had to get up early on the weekends to play with the Europeans but he astounded me one Tuesday by telling me he was up until after midnight playing EVE..!

Bliss.

I've also been asked to try out a different MMO called Silkroads Online - a trading/WoW-like game. I've installed it but yet to try it out...

I really should...

2007-03-18T23:34:00.000Z

...make a post.

Considering how it's been around a month since I last put fingers to keyboard, I would love to say a lot of things have changed in the past month but really they haven't.

I'm still in Oz, still working away in a contract, still gathering up the energy and bravery to start learning to drive. Still taking things easy and saving up to pay off the debts we have in the UK still. And still getting up at 5am to go to the raids in the UK.

I did write something up awhile back but Blogger has this horrible re-formatting ability that takes single space lines and turns them into double space, so everything that reads out well suddenly looks like it's been written by Uni students trying to bulk out their essay or thesis. I don't need to bulk out my blog, I could happily witter on for hours in this style of prose - called conversational prose or some such, as if I'm actually talking to my audience.

Other than that, I have continued my voracious reading of books via Joondalup Library. A great resource centre that unfortunately has made a mistake of unmitigated proportions. They've re-shelved their books into categories and then alphabetical order. So now, rather than browsing General for any books that might be a good read, I head to Sci-Fi & Fantasy straight away.

Which is good because I don't have to spend so much time looking for the authors that I know I like but equally bad because I have to scour categories for potential new authors. Even worse, if I like an author that writes in different categories - like Sci-Fi and Horror, I have to search two sections instead of just heading over to the one area.

On the up side, they have a marvellous collection of DVDs - recently I managed to acquire the miniseries of the re-imagined 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica. Back in September last year, I watched the first episode of Season 1 of the show but couldn't work out what was going on. Why did Baltar, the traitor of the Colonial Humans, have a first name - Gaius? How the hell had the Cylons designed and created Human-like models? Why in heaven's name was Starbuck now a woman?

The miniseries (which actually is just 3 episodes) serves as an introduction to this new universe and it actually works quite well, except for the bit about Starbuck being a woman. I'm not quite sure why they thought that should be changed. Is it more acceptable now to have a woman drinking, getting into brawls, swearing?

Or perhaps the real issue is, which demographic is this new show being aimed at. After all, the original show was aimed at a family audience with kids emulating their new tv stars (we always had to flip a coin for who got to be Starbuck) and now I suppose the target audience are young 20 somethings who can't quite remember the original show but quite like the sassy attitude of this new show.

Another show I'm watching - and voraciously devouring - is Alias. We're on Season 2, about halfway through now, with Season 3 waiting in the wings. It's a pretty good show, mixing James Bond-style spy stuff with a lot of Sci-Fi. What Elsha and I both love about this show are the cliffhangers. Pretty much every episode ends on a "Omigod, what's going to happen next?" that always has us coming back for more. Actually, it gets pretty horrible because you just want to keep on watching to find out what's going to happen next. Apparently, Seasons 4 and 5 are much weaker due to writing issues, etc.

Anyone have any other shows they like to watch?

Picking up...

2007-02-01T02:22:00.000Z

As you may have guessed, the past few weeks have been a blur of activity as I've been getting to grips with my new job. It has not been an easy start nor did I expect it to be. The computing environment is very much different from my old workplace, with the emphasis on very.

As its a government position I'm loathe to reveal details but essentially the environment is completely locked down - meaning, for those of you with less than perfect computer understanding, that permissions have been stripped from the users.

This of course creates multiple problems for the administrators. When things go wrong, it might be the program or it might be that something that needs to be run isn't being run.
But, even with a steep learning curve, I'm slowly lowering myself into work.

Other news, Friday 26th January was Australia Day. This is basically the day when the Colonists arrived in Australia en masse - what the Aboriginals call Invasion Day (or even Survival Day because at least some of their ancestors managed to escape with their lives), because they were invaded by Europeans intent on colonizing/conquering the country.

People over here have a public holiday. People go to the beaches, they have bbqs, they sit in town squares drinking beer listening to music. Sometimes, all 3 things at once, I guess.

I spent most of the time sleeping, playing WoW or watching Season 9 of Stargate SG1. We had already got through Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy. I have just one thing to say - even though I hated the character of Addison Shepherd (played by Kate Walsh) initially, I now love said character.

A) She's very attractive (in that 1940's style of Hollywood Actress)
B) She gets some terrific scenes and lines.
C) She's not like Meredith Grey - Thank God.

We've also been loaned Season 1 of Alias (in exchange for the 2 seasons of Grey's Anatomy that we have) and I managed to bag the first 8 episodes of Farscape - after all, Brian Bowden and Claudia Black have already been introduced to us in SG1.

Other than that, I spent my time off playing Wow:BC and really enjoying myself. The expansion has easily opened up new areas of gameplay and a lot of people are having lots of fun. FOr the time being though, the onus is on levelling up, doing quests and having fun. All too soon, it will turn to raids and we will as a guild go back to doing that.

Finally, I have been browsing the blogging community again. I've managed to locate a few Australians out there, as well as one who's made the amazing and counter-trip to the UK. It's pretty weird to read her blog about all the differences between Oz and the Uk, but from her perspective - she can't believe the UK has Argos, and I can't believe they don't have it here...

My timing sucks!

2007-01-14T06:50:00.000Z

I have a job!

Yay!

...now that I have World of Warcraft working...

Boo!

Infinite time vs lack of things to do has now been replaced by lack of time vs infinite gameplay on WoW.

:(

Displacement

2007-01-11T21:56:00.000Z

It's been about a month since I last visted my blog so in the New Year spirit, I decided to make another post.

Yay.

The last month has been a bit dream-like for me, what with looking for work and staring around in a sense of bewilderment at the scenery. Life is not what it was like in London but I think I'm finally over the honeymoon "holiday" period that everyone talks about when people emigrate - you know, that sense that you belong somewhere else and that you're only visiting, and that eventually, you will get back on a plane and soon re-integrate back in that place that you "belong" in.

Yesterday, it rained in Joondalup. Not for the first time in the last month I might add but it was an odd day for weather. The rain made it feel exactly the reverse that it does in London when it rains; instead of feeling clear and refreshed, it felt muggy and humid.

Things I miss about England:

1) Television Shows.

Here the shows suck. No, really. Much worse than even Channel 5. I would pay to be back on British TV. Hmm I wonder...

2) Keyboard region.

Arrrghhhh.... Why is the @ above the 2 and not above the ' where the " is. Who decided to move the \? For what possible reason would there be for making such minor but amazingly horrible changes to the keyboard?!?

The worst thing is that I want to change my keyboard settings back to the UK but if I find work, I'd have to do it there as well, which I may not be able to.

Elsha has a job now - she works for a big financial institution as Customer Support - Or Customer Relations as she is called now. I, on the other hand, do not have a job and am finding it a struggle to get work. Or at least, I was until Christmas and the New Year ended. Now, everywhere seems to be picking up the pieces (I can only imagine how many companies have had christmas party gossip, office liasons beginning/ending and people leaving to get away from those they accosted/been accosted by - ah the cynic in me).

And finally, I have my own pc on the internet. In theory. The PC belongs to Elsha's brother and is strictly on loan. It's on the internet through Internet Connection Sharing. Hence the theoretical part.

ICS - why do they have to make it so hard. Mind you, I'm not surprised. Anything that comes with a Microsoft tag should have fine print that reads "...if you get this to work, great - send your cv to us, we need people like you".

At the moment, I've taken great pains to re-install World of Warcraft (mainly to occupy my time until I get work - you have no idea how boring it is being on your own in a house without any of your personal effects save for a few boxed dvd sets) which involves installing via cds and then downloading and installing around 1gb of patches.

So far so good. All I have to do now is get up at 4am my time for those 7pm UK time Raids in Zul'Gurub.

Topsy Turvy

2006-12-03T06:00:00.000Z

Singapore came and went and now we're firmly ensconced in Perth, Western Australia.

Its interesting that when you chat to people from the UK, they seem to think Australia is this overgrown savannah where you might expect to see crocodiles prowling the local swamps waiting for the latest victim to trot past.

Alas, Australia is as built up as England, perhaps more so since they have less history to worry about and more space to account for future growth. Looking out the window, I see nice clean houses with less than 30 years of history. The roads are all clean and wide, and the paving stones have yet to appear weather-worn by acid rain.

The greatest benefit though is the blue sky. It stretches from the top straight down to the bottom. In London, you would have had clouds, smog and light pollution that would have given a dismal bright grey look the closer the sky got to the horizon. Here, nothing but blue. So blue in fact, that it actually hurts the eye and makes the green grass look very green. Not dark green, but bright green.

I feel like I'm in a painting - that's how bloody good it is.

I'll see about getting a photo uploaded so you can all get jealous.

In Motion

2006-11-18T12:03:00.000Z

I'm now sitting in the same place that I used to work at 10 years ago, although that internet cafe has now gone and another is in its place. Still, I do have this queer sense of Deja Vu about the whole thing - as if I should suddenly get behind the counter and ask people to pay up.

Out of a flat, living in a Travel Lodge is taking its toll on us as we ready ourselves for the flight to Singapore for the 4 nights that we are there. At this point in time, we are less excited about the holiiday and more concerned about money situations and wondering what the hell we do if the UK suppliers we were with don't take note of our status and stop payments.

Oh why does it have to be so hard!

More to come, perhaps from humid, rainswept Singapore...

Memories

2006-11-10T12:43:00.000Z

Memories are such odd bizarre things, aren't they?

You have lots of memories and the further they go back, the nicer the world felt.

My earliest memory is of the feel of the carpet when I was in Primary School, in Yeading. It has a clean feel to it with a very short pile - more functional than luxurious. The other memory I have of that period is getting on to the school coach at the beginning of the day, and being driven to my primary school. My brother is sticking me on and telling me I'll have a great time. I'm sick inside and almost crying.

Other memories are not so banal. When I was 7 my mother died in a housefire, and I was there at the time. I won't go into it as it's always painful to dwell upon but a lot of my memories concentrate around that period.

After that, I have memories of outings, school friends long since gone and the closer we get to the present the more banal - the more average the memory - they become.

I speak of memories now because for the last few days, Elsha and I have been down in Bath, in Somerset. It's a wonderful place with great architecture and history, and its far, far from being like London. The old aldage, that people are friendly outside of London, was proved right when on our first day we tried to find our Guest House, we had 2 old ladies asking if we needed directions. And there I was thinking we were about to be mugged...

Finally arriving at the Athole Guest House, we were shown into very nice accommodation; a large bedroom with onsuite facilities, a shower that I can only describe as being out of this world, and a digital tv for those nights where we couldn't afford or were too tired to go out. It's all run by a very nice man by the name of Wolfgang and his staff, where "all you have to do is ask" is the motto. And, boy, does he cook up a mean cooked breakfast!

The next few days we travelled around, saw the usual sights, window shopped, but for the most part our trip out to Bath was to see and say goodbye to Elsha's relatives there, on her mother's side - the O's.

A large dinner with 20 family members allowed us to chat and dine with them and for memories to begin pouring out. And of course that was the most interesting part for me, being from such a small family with little or no ties to our families abroad.

Memories of Elsha's mother when she was young and how she interacted with her siblings. Memories of our visits down to Bath 8 years ago. Questions from the youngsters on what Australia is like and how it compares to England. The talk was rich and varied and fun was had by all. It was a shame for it to end.

We came away wondering why we hadn't moved to Bath so long ago, in the first place.

A New Day Dawns...

2006-10-29T23:04:00.000Z

So, I've finished work.

After my last post, I had a few cups of coffee (yes I know, but I needed the stimulants) and then went to work, all the time thinking - knowing - that it would be my last walk to work. I put the mp3 player on and listened to some old time tracks by INXS, Gwen Stefani, etc.

Got to work and had a quick meeting with my boss who proceeded to dump a load of work on my nearly clean desk. I had a quick sifter, realised I would get perhaps one job done and then started beavering away on it. Meanwhile, my replacement was getting the rest.

All through the day, people came up and congratulated me on my imminent departure and asked when I would finally fly out - even though I had emailed everyone in the company with that information (I did feel by the end of the evening that I should have had it stickered to my forehead).

The last lunch is normally a time for a departmental reflection - where the boss buys the leaving man/woman a last lunch. I am proud to say that he didn't.

In fact, it got to the point where everyone else had got to the restaurant (Nandos by the way) except all the people in IT and me. I was then grabbed the secretary of one of the Directors and dragged away to the restaurant for some much needed food and chat. My boss turned up 30 minutes late, stayed 30 minutes and then left with his cronies.

After lunch, one of my colleagues (a senior guy) grabbed me and took me off to the coffee room/chill out area and told me to stop working (after all, what would they do - fire me an hour before my leaving presentation?).

Presentation time came. My boss launched into a speech about how I was a gamer, how I was a geek, how I was going to be missed and finally, that I should stay off computer games because it was a pointless exercise.

Sort of like working for him, I thought ironically.

I really didn't mind the leaving speech - because everyone I knew at work was there to see me off. My workmates had got me a wonderfully large collection (which will soon be changed into Singaporean dollars) and the very friendly secretary had got me some goodies from the various clothing departments - 2 wallets, 2 caps, a bag, some boxers, a belt (which doesn't fit me) and a sort of keyring thingy (don't ask me, ask Elsha). All in all it was a wonderful surprise and I told everyone assembled the truth - I would miss everyone and I would definitely keep in touch.

Shortly thereafter, we headed down to the various pubs where people continued to ask me when I was flying out and, more importantly, bought me beers through the night. It was a very good night but, boy, I was drunk by 8.30pm.

*******

Next day, Bufu (don't ask, it's a looong story) and I headed out to the Game On Exhibition at the Science Museum to check out some old, old games and some newer games.

After that, we headed out further to Temple Walkabout where we met up with Horse for his birthday bash and oh so didn't get involved in Kiwi drinking games!

It was actually a very nice day out where otherwise I would have spent hours on World of Warcraft getting more and more bored...

*******

Today, we met up with another work colleague (now ex) and Scythe (whom I used to play AC2 and WoW with before his wife, who also played, got pregnant). A nice meal in a local restaurant with a glass or two of wine and we came back and slept our way into the evening.

...which leads finally into me building this Duron 650 that I am typing on at the moment as the other two computers we have, have been reserved for selling off this coming Thursday.

So no more WoW after that. Elsha smiles a lot at that thought but I haven't yet told her I have loads of computer games that will work on this pc.

*Ouch*

Last day at work

2006-10-27T07:51:00.000+01:00

It's my last day at work and I can't sleep.

I don't understand this. I've spent years dreaming of this moment, of escaping, of getting out of that hell hole and now that I'm finally doing it, I'm feeling miserable and I can't sleep.

Why?

Maybe it's because I don't have anywhere else to go so instead of a transitional period its become an ending.

Bollocks.

I can't wait for it to be over and for me to be ensconced in a pub having a beer knowing that it's all over.

Australia, here I come.

Ringing in the changes

2006-10-24T18:43:00.000+01:00

Back in August, I made a post about some upcoming news that I had been working on, but that I wasn't able to
reveal at the time.

Well, time to tell all...

Last year at Christmas, Elsha's folks announced that if we were interested in moving to Australia, they would help by paying 2 One way tickets to Perth, Western Australia.

Elsha and I had a loooong chat about it and we decided to go for it. A lot of things had to happen before we moved over - getting the visa sorted out, working out money issues, etc.

Back in July, we sent off for a Temporary Resident Visa and waited with baited breath as to the results, with
fingers crossed, hoping for good news.

Early September, the visa envelope finally arrived with some very good news. Not only had they agreed to a visa but they had authorized a Permanent Resident Visa. Basically this means no more arsing around with visas ever again.

2 weeks later, I resigned from work, giving 6 weeks notice. I could have given 4 but I decided to do it by the
book and this way at least I would get paid my holiday entitlement instead of being told to take it. The weeks
have whizzed by and now, finally I'm in my last few days at work - literally.

Work is odd. I feel like I should be enjoying my soon-to-be-had freedom, but in reality I feel moody as hell. I'll miss all the people at work, all the friends I've made and even all the arsholic managers who haven't got a clue as to how to run an IT Department. But most of all, I'll miss being an integral part of something. Of waking up on a monday morning and knowing that I have some place to go and something to do. I suppose I'll have all these things in Perth, but as I don't have a job yet, it's all a bit daunting.

3 more weeks or so and I will be leaving, cold, dreary London for the bright blue sky of Perth - via Singapore.
Not only are Elsha's folks paying for our tickets to Perth, they're also paying for a holiday of 4 nights in
Singapore first. Since we're a bit low on cash, I'm not entirely sure how we're going to survive this but its the last holiday we'll have for awhile...

As many people have found out when they've asked me I'm not at all daunted by leaving my family and friends and travelling to Perth. Back in '98, I did just that for 10 months when I went to see Elsha after meeting her in the flesh. She was on holiday in England and had to return home and of the two of us, I earnt more. Spending 10 months in Perth was a liberating experience, because I could come out of my shell and be more forthcoming with experiences and life in general. Here, I'm a bit more sheltered as to what I do or where I go - I use the excuse that I live in London and that I don't need to see sights to get out of seeing sights. Resulting in my not doing anything or seeing anything - now that I'm going I wish I had spent more time doing "stuff".

I AM looking forward to living in Australia but I'm also nervous - who wouldn't be. All that I know will be left
behind to be replaced with new things - clean cities, plastic money, oversized rodentia, beeer. Did I mention the Beer?

Roleplaying is going to be a major problem, World of Warcraft too. I'm not entirely sure I can survive roleplaying with people in Australia or playing 8 hours ahead of Europeans, but it's not enough to sway me from going

So, come the beginning of December my post code will be WA6027 and not W5. My new home town will not be Ealing but will be called Joondalup...

Is it forever, people have asked? Let's see, one day at a time, shall we?

Hiatus

2006-08-13T09:39:00.000+01:00

Heh.

So things didn't get back on track since the last post. But I have been floating around out there reading blog posts and keeping in touch occasionally with the community.

Alas, other things had diverted my attention.

Horse, a mate whom I play and work with, induced me back into World of Warcraft, but this time on a new server - Eonar, a PVE server where you can't be jumped by enemy forces.

3 months later, I have a level 60 Night Elf Druid (yes, this time I went Alliance to check out what I missed in the original beta oh so many months ago) and a new guild called Swords of Justice.

I've also been checking out Sacred, a crpg which resembles Diablo 2 - although it IS a bigger game throughout, it just isn't as intuitive as Diablo 2.

Other than that, I've read everything on my bookshelf again, including the new Robin Hobb book "Shaman's Crossing" - which although wasn't as good as her Assassin's series, was good as her Liveship trilogy.

Work is as labourious and dull as it always was. People have asked me what I'm still doing there after a year of my suggesting I was going to leave but I have plans afoot. That sadly require money. So I must stay put for now and, when the whip is cracked, get to it.

I'll write up a bigger and more fun packed post later.

Back on Track

2006-04-02T12:03:00.000+01:00

Ok so I didn't to make another post later on "in the week" as I expected to. This was mainly because I have been spending all my time playing Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO for short).

It's a very interesting game and very unlike World of Warcraft.

Firstly, you don't get experience points for repeatedly killing monsters in the game. You only get experience points for finishing the quests. Which sounds counter-intuitive, because let's face it, killing things is fun. But the point of the game is to get your party members through the quest safe and sound, and if you can do that without fighting so much the better.

Next, no more ninja looting. Ninja Looting is where a group of party members get to some treasure and then a player, who is very quick, opens all the treasure chests and takes everything before anyone else has a chance. In DDO, treasure is reserved for party members by default. Which I have to admit is a very nice touch.

I could go on but probably the biggest point of DDO is the visceral thrill of entering a dungeon for the first time and hearing the narrator describe the crypt as being "dark and dank, and in the distance you can hear the dull scraping of bone on stone".

This, for me, is a massive selling point reminding me of the first years of my roleplaying experience as a dungeoneer in the Dungeons & Dragons Pen and Paper (PnP) game.

For those of you who have tried roleplaying, there is that instant rememberance of sitting around a table for the first time, wondering just what the heck is going on, and descending into a dungeon for the first time whilst your more experienced friends start to discuss party formation. That instant terror as a skeleton emerges from a room of cobwebs and attacks you whilst your DM (Dungeon Master, and no, not the red robed midget in the cartoons) requests you roll attack and damage dice to see if you hit and whether or not you have scored any damage.

And of course, that final warmth of triumph in your chest as you are told you were the one who smashed the skeletons ribcage to shards, stopping it in its tracks. Not to mention the coldness as you find out that a fellow party member has been killed.

Dungeons & Dragons Online is, perhaps, the closest game I have played on a computer to that ideal.

****

Other news...

I didn't get a chance to see V for Vendetta. I suppose I won't get a chance now until it comes out on DVD, which sadly for me, has become the norm.

ElshaUK bought me The Matrix Trilogy for a tenner the other day after I had spent ages whinging on about getting it. I sat down on saturday and watched Reloaded and Revolutions. Points out of ten? Hmm... around an 8, I'd say.

Ok so it wasn't as good as the first one but the Warchowski brothers did try and keep the theme of "control" going. I do remember reading an article about how the mass public had argued that those who had criticised the original Matrix film had "not understood the point the film was making". As a counterpoint, those who had criticised the second and third film came under equal fire for "not understanding the point those films was making".

Of course, mass opinion was on the side of the original matrix film as opposed to the second and third films, and the mass public do not take well to being told they're idiots.

Ian, the mate of mine who went to Japan for four years, has finally returned - with a wife! Now, I met Ian through Jamie (an Old Ealonian) as they were at university together. Ian is the consumate roleplayer, who has played Warhammer, D&D, Cyberpunk, and a myraid of lesser well known games.

Anyway, Ian introduced me to the board game Settlers of Catan, which comes across a bit like civilisation or any strategy games.

He's found a website where you can try the game out for yourself. It's very intuitive and fun, I might add. Give it a go!

Finally, I came across this piece of trivia - for those of you who like Transformers, check it out.

Valerie

2006-03-09T14:53:00.000Z

The following is an excerpt from the graphic novel, soon to be a movie. As it may not appear in the movie, I thought it would be of interest to those going - as perhaps a showcase of what the movie is all about...

Crucifer

****

from V for Vendetta

Written by Alan Moore. Art by David Lloyd.

I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a woman. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X

Procrastination

2006-03-06T15:29:00.000Z

Hmmm... Should I play DDO or WOW?

That's the latest dilemma I face. Sad, I know, but there you have it.

World of Warcraft has the larger population but it's getting more and more boring. Endless similar quests of "Kill this and return that" and "Take this there" are beginning to wear me down. I rarely see Horse, Scythe and Kitten on these days which just adds to the monotony of playing alone on a Massively Multiplayer Online game. I've even considered creating a new character and joining a brand new guild but the issue there is that I've done it all before. It's just getting BORING.

Dungeons and Dragons Online, on the other hand, is brand new. You HAVE to join up with other players to do quests and, because of this, people are encouraged to join up in guilds with complete strangers to begin with - which sounds like fun.

But I suppose in the end I'm just getting bored with the lack of interaction within games. Is it just me who has the time and the inclination to play these games? Surely not...

Other gaming news, Stargate the Alliance has been cancelled amid reports of the company making it going bankrupt. Guess I'll just have to wait for the MMO instead.

EDIT: Finally, decided and bought DDO, and now giving it a go. So far so good. It's as different from WoW as day is to night. The fact that you are encouraged to group up to begin with means you're working co-operatively with other people from the outset and not when you hit level 50.

EDIT2: Noticed that this is the first post I've made in a while. Sorry, but due to real life situations I've been a bit busy. I will another post this week.

Promise.

Ill Again

2006-02-15T23:00:00.000Z

Hmm..

Ill again. Actually that should read "ill again x 2" since I am dealing with two different
illnesses.

The first is a flare up of the same problem I had back in August last year whilst the second
is just a plain old fashioned cold/sore throat. You know, when you get a scratchy throat and
anything you eat or drink pains it except alcohol which helps - but only in the short term
and just makes it worse.

My doctor tells me it might be stress related, which actually makes a lot of sense. I have
been very stressed with family related stuff so it stands to reason I'd get ill.
It's still sucky though.

I'm still writing up Chapter Two of Pioneers and I am making some headway. I still have a
lot of writing to do though, because even though there's less to tell in terms of events,
there's much more to say about characters and description. I think I'm settling into writing
chunky chapters.

And finally, there's this!

This makes me want to weep with joy. I'm hoping that it will come out soon and when it does,
I'll buy a copy for myself AND for ElshaUK so she can come join me online - assuming of course that its something she likes (but its Stargate! Of course she'll like it! :])

Which reminds me, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that it's our 8th anniversary. 8 years ago
we met for the first time!

Normal Service Resuming

2006-02-10T19:27:00.000Z

Ok, so you got me.

I haven't been updating my blog for awhile as lots of events have been going on.

Firstly, I took an impromptu holiday as I was getting fairly stressed out at work. 6 months without any kind of break will take its toll on you, and on me it was working flat out with no consideration of what was good for me.

ElshaUK also joined me in the week long holiday as she's been getting stressed out with her new job - Manager of Accounts (or Cash Office to us normal people). She gets paid loads more money and she finally becomes what she's always dreamt of being - a manager. It might not sound like much to some but being a manager in Retail means you get to have authority. Customers, when demanding to see the manager, get told "Well you're looking at her".

My father has also been using up my spare time. Mmm, "using" is the wrong word, I suppose but there it is. I've been running to and fro for him and even through my week long holiday I was going over there to see how he was and doing some shopping for him.

I've decided, with some prompting from ElshaUK, to take more of a stand against his "I want this or that" and have politely suggested that instead of my buying something for him and then returning it when he doesn't like the colour or the quality or something - why doesn't he mail order it?

Of course, the answer is he wants attention. And he was getting it, until I put my foot down and corralled my other brothers into helping out.

So far so good.

Then I returned to work and got inundated with queries and support projects, which ultimately resulted in 2 issues being resolved today:

1) Our retail stores got updated computers, which took me the better part of 5 hours to sort out.2) I managed to resolve the whole burdensome issue of how to convert a Quicktime .Mov file so that it can be played on a standalone DVD player.

I'm so pleased with myself that I'm going to play Wow now and let nothing disturb me :)

Oh, and I've finally finished with Pioneers; at least the first chapter. It's probably the longest piece of fiction I've written and I'm not entirely happy with it. I try and write short pieces that I'm immensely proud of but long pieces... I don't write these. I excel at the sprint rather than the marathon. Still, it's done, I've checked, edited, moved and cut, often times savagely, but it's time to post it.
Go check it out HERE.

Nightmares

2006-01-20T19:02:00.000Z

A few people have been writing blog posts about sleep issues and, especially, dreaming.

I don't tend to dream that often but when I do, boy are they long. They say that dreams are meant to be your subconscious mind rationalizing your feelings and events of the day, and trying to work out some meaning to it all.

Below is a dream I had about a year ago, back in October 2004. I do know that George Rennie is someone who works for my current company so obviously that's where I heard the name. Beauport sounds to me like it might be a version of Kingsport, which is a fictional town taken from H.P.Lovecraft's novels about the Cthulhu mythos. The rest of it is ... well... foreign to me.

The ending was very shocking for me and I woke up in a sweat. Now, for a long time, I've realised that once I know I've been dreaming, when I go back to sleep I can try and push the dream or nightmare into a more satisfactory conclusion - something that I can deal with that won't have me trying to work out where it all came from. So I have added a little note where the original ending was and the second ending was.

Have a read and see what you think...

-------

The dream starts with a man called George Renny, an American who walks into his home (in America) to find his wife ...erm... engaged in various lewd actions with another man. However, his wife and the stranger don't stop but continue with their passionate *cough* embrace. George feels his anger rising but just turns on his heels and leaves the house. Later, much later, his wife comes to look for him and tells him that she doesn't find him sexually arousing any more but that she has been trying to be a loving wife at home. George nods but tells her that he can't and won't put up with this and tells her he will be leaving soon. She replies that she can't stop thinking about the stranger that she has just been with and leaves.

Later - it has been a few weeks - and George finds himself in the French seaside town of Beauport. He is reading a paper and he sees the date is 1942 (this information is not apparent earlier). As he walks around the town he meets the various people, especially a young lady called Raquel who flirts with him. George reciprocates and they find themselves mutually attracted to each other.

Racquel tells George that he should'nt have come here though. The Germans have invaded France and have already "snatched" some people that have been outspoken to them. George replies that he isn't afraid, and as he's an American, they won't take him. I forget how but in the dream George agrees that he will go with her to a barn where she thinks the Germans have a few of the townsfolk.

As they travel to the barn, Raquel falls behind with a sprained ankle. She hobbles on but George tells her to wait here for him and he will go on and be back in an hour. However when he gets to the barn he gets captured by the Germans and one of them is a strangely Machiavellian-looking man with slick black hair and a finger-twirled mustache. For some reason this man brings dread to George. The man (I'll call him the Villain as he reappears later in the dream) tells George that he has been extraordinarily foolish and that he should not have come here. George looks around himself and then runs for the barn door.

He escapes and runs to Raquel, picking her up in his arms and runs to Beauport. There he tells her that the Germans are already on the outskirts of Beauport and that they must leave as soon as they are ready. Alas they are too late and German soldiers surround them. The Villain reappears and tells George that he will never leave Beauport...

Later George awakes and finds that he is in the barn again. He looks around but doesn't find anyone. As he walks back to the town, he notices some children playing by a water outlet and some of them bury themselves to hide from the others. As George rounds the corner, he meets the Villain waiting for him, who tells him he will never leave the town of Beauport.

George wakes again into another dream... and another... and another...

Years pass.

He's now an old man and a distinguished private detective who has just finished a recent case for some townsfolk of Beauport. As he reveals what has been happening in his case, the Villain reappears and congratulates him. George immediately feels dread at the sudden reappearance of this man after so long.

He suddenly whirls and jumps down the sandy dunes. As he runs he hears the Villain whistle for German guards to recapture him. George keeps running but suddenly he has a memory of the kids playing in the sand.

He stops and buries himself and the guards run past. George waits and waits and waits and falls asleep.
When he awakes he is still buried in the sand, so he waits a while longer and then gets up. Stumbling he walks along the beach before collapsing.

When he awakes, he's in a small fishing village where he's been found by a woman and looked after. Somehow, I am there but I'm from the British Embassy looking for missing people, etc. He tells me he is George Renny and when I check I find out he has been missing since 1942 - it's now 2004. He tells me his story so I immediately contact the authorities.

But then the villain reappears looking as he did in 1942. I realize then that somehow I'm dreaming George's dream as well. When I tell the Villain this, he replies that "You've always been at Beauport and you always will be".

---(this is the original ending and I was very shocked by it. But I decided to try and dream a different ending, and this is what happened when I fell asleep again)---

I faint at this shocking statement and awake to find myself in hospital. A friend is next to me and tells me I've been rambling some story about someone called George. I ask him a trivial question that I know no one else will know the answer to. He looks stumped. And I realize I have been dreaming...

I awake again to find myself in hospital. My friend is next to me and tells me I've been rambling some story about someone called George. I again ask him a trivial question that I know no one else will know the answer to. Again, he looks stumped. And once again, I realize I am dreaming.

When I awake next, I ask him a whole host of questions and he answers every one of them correctly. When I ask him about George, he says they found an old man dead next to me from natural causes and I've been in a coma for a few days.

When I ask him if they've identified him, my friends tells me no. They don't know who he is. Only I know.

Games, Games

2006-01-19T17:17:00.000Z

It's been a slow few days and I've been sticking into writing my little ditty, entitleed Pioneers. So far, I have a rough idea of where I'm going with it but it's completely outside the domain of science fact. Which I suppose isn't much of a biggie since it's really a sci-fi story. I'm still writing the introduction to it and it sounds like this might be longer than just the short stories I end up writing. I just have no stamina.

In the meantime, I've been bouncing off playing World of Warcraft. The game is just getting too boring. It only shines when you play with friends - since it IS an MMO - and since no one is playing, the interactivity is just not there.

This has led me to other games.

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction has a wonderful storyline with some great cinematics. It's a Blizzard game so it also has the quality of all their games. Blizzard games rock.

At the moment, I'm playing a Barbarian by the name of Nostarian. He's managed to get to Mephisto's Durance of Hate in Act 3 but hasn't yet killed the big guy yet. I've also got Istarian, a Paladin and Azure, an Assassin, who's really a fast combatant.

At the same time, I'm debating whether or not I should buy Starscape. It's a retro game that harks
back to the 80's so it doesn't have 3D realistic graphics but it does have immense playability.

Definitely worth checking out the demo.

Then there's this. A fan based computer game based on the Babylon 5 TV series. I haven't yet played it as I'm downloading it at the moment but so far it sounds good.

And last, but not least, we have the anticipated release of Stargate: Alliance. A computer game based on the current TV series of the same name. I am beside myself with excitement at the release of this game. Seriously.

I may have to actually buy this game when it gets released.

Keeping up appearances

2006-01-15T15:16:00.000Z

Just a quickie.

As some of you may have noticed - probably not - I have added a series of blog links to the right under my archived posts. These are the blogs I check every day or thereabouts in an effort to better understand my fellow bloggers and the community I've suddenly found myself in.

ElshaUK and TheNumNum you need no introductions, nor Reader Meet Author. SwissToni and Lord Bargain, as far as I understand, are friends of TheNumNum and Alecya is one of their friends as well as being a partaker of Reader Meet Author.

There, done the introductions for the others. Now you can go and explore their blogs.

Collaborative Writing Part 2

2006-01-14T08:30:00.000Z

Oh dear.

It says something when your readers post comments about items that you're going to talk about sometime last week but I haven't really had the time recently to browse blogs. My father has been ill and was at hospital for the past week, and this really brought the family back together. The upshot is that I've been very busy sorting out visits to my father, visits to my step-mum, phone calls to my eldest brother and receiving visits from my other brother who lives in Brighton.

During this time, work has also become busy - nay, chaotic. Customer Services at work have been revamped so that instead of three CS desks there is now one. This involved making four people redundant and then moving all the other's equipment upstairs, in a bid to make the new CS completely different from the old one.

Bizarrely enough, my manager decided to NOT write down all their phone numbers and data ports onto a single sheet of paper but decided to instead write them down willy nilly on post it notes. Now, I don't know about you but post it notes have a tendancy to fall off at any given moment so I told her I thought it was pretty slapdash. She replied that she thought she was perfectly organised - an opinion that absolutely no one else involved in the move shares.

Anyway, back to the topic of today's post.

As Alecya posted in last comments page, I have been involved in a collaborative writing blog entitled "Reader-meet-author" set up by SwissToni. So far I have penned two pieces - "Ravenous", a horror piece, and "Worrying about acceptance", a short piece of prose regarding Ravenous. Both of them were recieved well by the other authors. They in turn have posted a number of interesting pieces, and you should really have a read.

I am currently mulling over a number of ideas, two of which seem to be arriving at critical mass in my brain. The first one is a Starcraft story about a lone marine who escapes death from the talons of the Zerg long enought to run into the Protoss. Interesting but I'm not sure it will be that interesting to my fellow authors.

The second one is based loosely around Phantasy Star and is about a Hunter who begins his occupation learning all about the dangers of Ragol. A little bit more interesting and challenging for me as well.

All I have to do now is find the time to pen the words running through my head; not easy, when I have had such a demanding schedule recently.

All I want to do at the moment is sleep.

...well, and play Diablo 2. :)

Collaborative Writing Part 1

2006-01-06T23:45:00.000Z

"And do write more, put up a story online on a blog, you'll be surprised at the comments (good and bad)."

If you read the comment to the last post, this was what TheNumNum suggested I do.
Since the only things I really care to write about is roleplaying and this blog, I've decided to start up a new project for myself, loosely entitled "Writing up Roleplaying".

As Roleplaying is a collaborative effort by all the players involved, what better way to write it all up than to create a Wiki dedicated to our own peculiar gaming sessions.

I'm actually very excited by this because having a Wikispace will not only allow me to upload any and all information that I've collected or authored over the past 14 years so that people can read up and work away from the personal sessions, but it also allows my fellow players - those both in this country and abroad - to add their bits as well.

Here you will find a whole collection of stories I've written up over these past years and just reading them, you can really see the improvements I've made with character viewpoints, emotions, conversations, etc. I'm actually impressed by all the mistakes I've made and how I've moved myself to correct them.

On other news, I've been hit by a particularly nasty piece of spyware/malware that keeps on messing up my google searches in Internet Explorer, and so I've decided to split with Micro$oft and go with Opera.

I'm especially taken with Opera's ability to continue from your last location, meaning that if you're a bit of a wanderer when it comes to surfing, you can actually go back to where you last were, rather than having to work out all over again just what it was you doing in that last session.

And finally, another co-worker has decided to try out World of Warcraft. I know, I haven't mentioned Wow of late. That's because Crucifer long ago hit level 60. Azaghul is now about level 36 and my current character, Istarian the Tauren Druid, is now about level 25.

But I've decided to try my hand at Starcraft again and this time I'm going to actually beat the Expansion - Broodwars. I've also decided to try my hand at the other expansion packs.

Resolutions

2006-01-02T23:35:00.000Z

Last night ElshaUK and I saw "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonard Di Capri and Tom Hanks. Despite my initial fear of it being a turkey, it was actually a good movie. It actually reminded me of the case where the notorious hacker, Phiber Optik, was captured by Federal authorities for hacking into computer systems and phone phreaking.

Just as in that situation, the main protaganist in the movie was able to do so much damage because the system allowed him to. It wasn't just a case of someone going out and committing these crimes - it was that the system wasn't designed to stop people.

There is a old saying, that if you put on a white coat and act like a scientist or a doctor, people believe you are a scientist or a doctor. After all, only scientists and doctors wear white coats.

Ergo...

It's a crazy state of affairs, but I wonder if I wore a white coat, just how much damage I could do in somewhere like Ealing Hospital where no one checks who you are and no one challenges you when you walk in to a ward.
Definitely food for thought.

On Saturday night (New Years Eve), a bunch of us went out to TheNumNum's new house to celebrate his birthday. We had wine, some fantastic food, a home made firework's display and some excellent conversation.

I really loved looking around his house and it made me green with envy. Not so much that he has the place but that he's putting down roots. It's something we still have to do. Hopefully, 2006 will be the year to do it.

Which leads me to...

New Year Resolutions:

1) Write more. I'm still doing a good job of writing but I need to do it more often. People do read this blog even though I'm sure it doesn't interest them in the slightest but it sure as hell interests me when I come to read it months later.

2) Save. We need to budget our income and expenditure and make the books balance.

3) Be happier. This also means less arguments at home and less all round miserness with ElshaUK.

4) New Job. 'nuff said.

5) Increase productivity. In an email conversation, I mentioned I was interested in Linux. Actually I've been interested for awhile but I've never had either the inclination or the ability to pursue this. This year, that changes. I can set up a 2 way switch and work off a second computer, which will be my scratch machine.
Things to look forward to:

In March, Greevesi finally moves back to the UK from Japan - with his bride to be. Blimey! Where did the last 3 years disparate to?

In December, hopefully we move to Perth, Australia. It's a big step but hopefully it will be in the right direction.

Plenty of family visits - Bath/Bristol for ElshauK's family and Brighton and Surrey for mine.

All in all, it looks like this year will be a big year for changes, improvements and an end to old habits.

Like Buses...

2005-12-31T16:38:00.000Z

...nothing gets posted for weeks and then suddenly 3 come along in the same week. Or thereabouts.

Today I feel like shite.

ElshaUK tells me its because we've eaten nothing but junk over Christmas and this has resulted in us feeling like shite - lethargic, weighed down, tired.

I finally got around to watching the last two episodes of Babylon 5 - an amazing 5 season long DVD set. They were great and reminded me so much of when I saw them on TV. And contrary to popular belief (and I mean Indy by this) Season 1 is not the best season. Season 4 was by far - the end to the Shadow/Vorlon Saga and the beginning of the fight to reclaim Earth.

On Tuesday, I also spent about 5 hours playing Starcraft with Jimbo - an Old Ealonian, and possibly one of the only one of the Old Ealonians who actually likes playing computer games with me. We've played Diablo, Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, Starcraft, er, more Starcraft, Age of Empires, Age of Empires 2, Empire Earth and even more Starcraft. In fact, we definitely love playing Starcraft.

He tends to play Terran and churning out huge armies of Marines whilst I go for Random loving the unit friendly Zerg or the powerful Protoss.

And then we sit back and play on a map that an Ozzy mate made for me back in 1999, where we get to kick the shit out of computer opponents.

The one time we played against each other, he created a vast army of marines whilst I had secreted a cloaked Protoss Observer in his base, watching his every move.

Ah fond memories.

I mentioned to Kalistro and Jimbo (you remember, the WoW wanabee) that we should try and meet up online in a multiplayer game. Diablo 2, I think.

Mainly because it has a very good linear story and meeting up on Battle.Net (Blizzard's online server medium) should be particularly easy for all concerned.

I can already feel the excitement building up as we meet up together to take on the Three Prime Evils.

Ah well. New Years Eve draws close. A new year with new resolutions already being thought up. A new year with new goals.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whomever you're with - Happy New Year...!

RPG explained

2005-12-30T23:12:00.000Z

ElshaUK and I were out having dinner with the Old Ealonians on Wednesday night and the subject of Roleplaying came up.

"So no board? How does THAT work?"

Roleplaying is essentially Storytelling or unscripted amateur dramatics if you wish. 1 person is designated the Referee - he sets the stage, so to speak, and fills everyone in on the backdrop to whats going on. So for example, if we were playing a Call of Cthulhu game:

"It was a dark and stormy night. The car sped up the winding mountain lane as heavy rain obscured the driver's vision. He tapped his cigarette on the side of the dashboard and settled into his chair, stretching at the same time to stop himself from falling asleep."

So here we have a detailed environment and a particular character. Who the man is and why he is driving in such weather still remains a mystery, but the players are told that the man is not one of the players. He is, in fact, a chaffeur, driving them somewhere.

The story background begins to gel in the Referee's head and he invites the players to create characters to match the mood of the story so far.

In most roleplaying games, the players have to roll up statistics for their character's attributes (normally, things like Strength, Dexterity/Agility, Constitution/Endurance, etc). These attributes remain mostly fixed for the duration of the game, perhaps increasing only when the characters have suffiencently advanced in levels or when they have recovered magical items that they can equip - as a reward for their patience and endevours.

Once that is done, the players name their characters and work out other details - such as equipment, knowledge, etc.

As the story progresses, the players gain information and make decisions based solely on what their characters are aware of. For example, you yourself might be aware of how to repair a car but that doesn't mean that your character does. Their narratives essentially make up the rest of the story/game.

So whilst the Referee is telling the audience what is happening in the immediate background, the players are telling the audience what their actions are.

At this stage, there are two very important distinctions to be made: OOC (Out of Character) and IC (In Character). Most of the time, the players will be in IC until they wish to disagree on a ruling or ask for more pertinant information at which point everyone switches to OOC.

In the above example, let's pick a character called Edward Black, a journalist for a small newspaper, the Scyamore Herald. He's about 25 and just starting out on his writing career. He has never been involved in the Cthulhu Mythos but when he was younger he did have an experience with a ghost-like manisfestation that left him with a shattered childhood, and to this day he is still a little insecure.

I've decided that Edward is travelling to talk to a professor of archaeology regarding an article for his newspaper.

This is something the Referee did not take into account at the start of the game but decides to run with the idea. It just so happens the Professor of Archaeology will fit in with the game quite nicely - so long as a few minor changes are made.

As other characters are introduced to the game, their decisions will affect the outcome of the beginning of the story as well, and it is the job of the Referee to intregrate these ideas into the game.

The Referee, by the way, is considered an unbiased person. Even though he knows the players and knows the background of the game, he is neither against the players nor for them. He is simply telling a story and adjudicating battles and other judgement decisions.

A roleplaying game has no clear ending. Whilst there are objectives - rescue the princess, kill the dragon, etc - the game doesn't come to an end once those objectives are completed. The princess might have to be escorted back, the dragon might have been a servant of some greater evil.

You can get more information from Wikipedia

Merry Capitalism-mas Everyone!

2005-12-25T10:02:00.000Z

Well, its been a while since I last posted and I've been putting things off until christmas arrived... and here it is.

First of all, an explanation of why I dislike Christmas. It's a time when people seem to go mad in their gathering of presents for their friends and family. Mad is not the word, sadly. They become selfish misers who are out for blood - they want presents at the expense of other people and this selfishness is put on display for all to see during this time.

People who would go out of their way to say "Thank You" in shops now shoulder past looking for that single present that will clinch their dealings with their family. Parents use their children's prams as rams as they batter you out of their way. People just go crazy at this time of year. Maybe they should rename Christmas to Capitalism-mas.

Happy Capitalism-mas folks.

Saying that, I've bought ElshaUK presents and she's bought me hers. So am I a bit of a hypocrite for saying all that stuff about selfishness? Not really. I didn't go mad when buying her pressies and she didn't go mad buying me pressies. We took it calmly and bought all our presents either over the internet or the week before Capitalism-mas.

So, what did I get?

Well, first and foremost, the best present so far was not from ElshaUK but from her folks. They were 2 x home-made vouchers made out to the sum of "a one way flight ticket to Perth, Australia before Xmas 2007".
Now, that is a brilliant Christmas present.

ElshaUK and I have been thinking seriously about going to Perth, Australia to live permanently but the money side of things has always been a worry. How do we pay for flights, for the visa, for sending stuff over, for paying off credit cards, for paying off loans...

...well this takes a huge chunk of that money off our hands.

Other presents:

A nice shiny new black Logitech Keyboard - which is going to take some time getting used to.

A Sony Walkman 256Mb MP3 player + Holder - those who know me well know I don't have much taste in music. It appears that 2006 will be a complete change.

A pair of flannalette pyjama pants

A leather Wallet (which had the airline vouchers in)

A bag of authentic Dungeons & Dragons Dice

A World of Warcraft Atlas

A World of Warcraft Strategy Guide

A Hair Trimmer for side burns and err other unslightly hair.

Everything has been a complete surprise, especially the tickets to Oz and the MP3 Player.

Now I'm off to have some breakfast, a shower, and some playing of the above mentioned toys and reading of the above mentioned books on a day of complete relaxation where both of us can do whatever we want (either playing on the computer or watching tv or listening to music) without any cares or worries.

Maybe Capitalism-mas isn't so bad after all...

Revenge of the Prequels

2005-11-22T11:10:00.000Z

These past two weeks, I saw two movies that I never got to watch at the cinema - Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins. What can I say? Both are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of likability.

First of all, let's start off with SW3: RotS.

The film is basically a live-action cartoon depicting the events leading up to Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader. That's the entire plot in that sentence alone.

The story is convoluted and disjointed leaving so many issues unresolved. Why, for example, doesn't the Emperor find out where Yoda is hiding - he has 20 years to despatch billions of imperial probe droids (taking into account it only takes about 2 years to find out about the Rebel's base on Hoth)? How does Leia know about her mother being beautiful but sad (as she explains in Return of the Jedi) if her mother died in childbirth? Why doesn't R2 remember Obi-Wan or tell Luke about his father if only C3-PO's memory was wiped?

The film also has a problem with its special effects. Each scene has more special effects than normal acting, rendering the effects useless. Rather than highlighting the story, it paints over them instead. Also the use of cutscenes is rather bad - in A New Hope, it was used to indicate movement of the story. Here its use destroys that movement.

I also find it unlikely that a huge religion that spanned a civilisation could become in 20 years "ancient and hokey" as Solo describes the Jedi in A New Hope. As a 32 year old, I can easily remember 20 years ago! And why is it all the space craft that were shiny and sleek 20 years ago are all battered and dusty now? I just don't understand it - have they stopped making space ships?

These are just some of the most basic problems I had with the storyline. Don't get me started on how stupid Anakin seems to be when he gets "seduced" by the Dark Side (he wasn't seduced, he made a direct choice) or how it seems very unlikely that Obi-Wan, his friend and mentor, would cut his right arm and legs off and then leave him to die on a lava planet after he's discovered to be in league with the Sith. Somehow, I think not. And knowing that Anakin possibly died on the lava planet, why then the reason to split his children up? Neither Palpatine nor Anakin knew of the twins and it would have been just as likely that the children died in child birth.

On the other side of the spectrum is Batman Begins - a re-write of the Batman saga, this time explaining just how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman. The story starts off Bruce Wayne trying to discover what it is to be a criminal and what makes them tick and ending up meeting Liam Neeson as the mentor that teaches him how to be a ninja. When given a choice to be judge, jury and executioner, Bruce jumps ship and returns to Gotham to become Batman and to instill fear into the hearts of criminals.

The plot is well done and leaves you gasping for more, the fight sequences are believable. In fact the whole thing is really well done but how does it compare to Tim Burton's Batman? Well, Batman was iconic, it was dark and moody but its aged. Batman Begins is much the modern take but somehow it's not as iconic. Still I look forward to the sequel.

Firefly

2005-10-17T22:22:00.000+01:00

Why did no one tell me it was a Western? As I said in my last post, I bought the entire series of Firefly thinking it was a really good sci-fi. And it is.

Except that it's a Western set in space. When I told people they said, "oh but so was star wars".

No, Star Ways is a swashbuckling adventure set in space. Light Sabres, Laser Crossbows, Space Barges. The whole thing is a pirate-type genre.

Firely, on the other hand, is a Western. As depicted by the horses and wagons seen in the pilot, by the fact that even though it is set hundreds of years in the future, people still use revolvers and talk in an American accent (although they do sometimes lapse into Chinese when swearing).

I can still remember ElshaUK whooping with delight at my face when the title music started and it slowly dawned on me that it was basically cowboys in space - not my favourite genre especially :P

On the other hand...

It's a damn good series. No, really. Really, really good. I can see why people say the Movie version, Serenity, is better than Star Wars. That's because it is. It doesn't concentrate so much on the story but on the characters. And let's face it, that's why the last 3 Star Wars movies have sucked so much - because they don't have characters or a storyline, just lots of wonderfully colourful special effects.

We've watched about 6 episodes now and are hooked. The episodes tend to revolve around the whole western genre as do the characters, so you have Mal, the ex-soldier captain of the Firely-class vessel Serenity. You have Zoe, his comrade in arms, and Wash, Zoe's husband and wise-cracking pilot. And that's another thing. A sci-fi series that openly talks about sex. As in Zoe telling Wash "Hey husband, let's go have some sex."

The other characters make up the usual sort of people you'd find in a Western town - a chaplain (Book), a prostitute (Inara), a doctor (Simon Rivers) and a mechanic/blacksmith (Kaylee).

And it all works wonderfully well. Go and buy it and for heavens sake, give it a chance to get going (by episode 3 I guarantee you will want to carry on watching).

Now we're looking forward to watching the feature-length movie at the cinema. If I convince ElshaUK to go with me...

Other news - I'm ill again. :( A re-occurrence of the original infection from 2 months ago. Why oh why does this happen to me.

I hate 'phoning in sick. Your employers always ask you the same questions:

"Have you seen a doctor?"
Err. Yes. I've seen a doctor and he believed me when I told him I was ill. Why can't you believe me?

"Will you be in today/tomorrow?"
Err. Shouldn't I get better first?

"It's really a bother, we're so busy here."
Great. I love being a slave as well.

Companies should just wake up to the fact that their employees are actually human beings and stop treating them with carrot/stick motivation. It would probably make everyone happier. The Star Trek era should just arrive and make monetary concerns redundant.

...And finally, I can't finish without mentioning that I'm now level 58 and soon to be 59 in World of Warcraft. Hopefully in the next week or so I should be - finally - 60.

And then I can begin all over again. :)

Same Old

2005-10-05T13:11:00.000+01:00

Just an update really. No new news to tell - or at least any interesting news.

My 5 year anniversary came and went at work with nothing said at work. I doubt if anyone even noticed. Meanwhile, I have been told that I am now the Hardware Engineer. I'm sorry, I thought I was the 2nd Line Support Engineer. Now it seems I've been relagated to make sure the infrastructure doesn't crumble. Great.

Scythe's replacement has finally been found. Another South African, by sheer coincidence apparently. I don't believe in coincidences and I told Management that to their faces - they laughed it off but I still wonder.

I'm starting to grind away in World of Warcraft so I can get to level 60. I'm at level 56 at the moment, soon to hit level 57. They say the game opens up at 60 but I'm sure what they mean is, if you have the time... For the first time in a while, Horse, Scythe and Kitten were all on at the same time - which is frankly astounding, given that we now all play at different times. They're all level 53, which gives me a slight advantage to hitting 60 before them.

I am still reading Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It's a good book and the adventure hasn't lessened up in the slightest, although I have, if you know what I mean. I'm not keen on reading huge books so even though I will be disappointed when the story ends, I will be happy to start reading something else.

I'm not too sure what else to read - Engines of Destiny sounds about right. A "What if" story, it asks:

"What would happen if Captain Montgommery Scott (now in the 24th Century [ST:TNG - Relics]) zipped back in time to just before Captain Kirk disappeared into the Nexus [ST:Generations] and beamed him aboard a cloaked ship, thereby saving his life?"

The answer is, of course, a complete disaster. Kirk never disappeared into the Nexus which means he wasn't there to help Picard stop Soran from exploding the Viridian Sun. It also means that Kirk never died in that stupid way.

As you can see I am a Science Fiction fan. The other day, interested by the film Serenity, I went out and bought the entire series (14 episodes) of the original tv series, called Firefly.

Tonight I get to watch the first episode with ElshaUk to see if it was a good choice.

2005-09-22T00:47:00.000+01:00

Back from our holidays in "fairytale" Cornwall - St. Ives, to be precise.

We (ElshaUk, the Father and Stepmother-In-Law) spent a glorious seven days pottering around Cornwall, seeing sights and drinking copious amounts of Tribute Ale whilst enjoying ourselves immensely. We've been there before, once again with them, a couple of years ago so this holiday was a more sedantry affair. Neither rushed to see all the sights nor many a shopping trip in the local towns, this time we spent the holiday as it should be - slowly unwinding.

Illness-wise, I am feeling much better. No longer on antibiotics or creams [touch wood] I am up for work tomorrow, well actually today in about 8 hours. I dread to think what my workmates and manager have been up to whilst I have been away, but I'm sure I won't be surprised by their stupidity when I get to work.

I am still looking for a new job. This has been a cause for concern to me as I am coming up to the 5th anniversary of my current position. This means that instead of the usual 4 weeks of notice, I must now give 5 - meaning extricating myself from work will be that much harder. Still, I am insistant that I remove myself from my work place. No more shall I be made to suffer the indignity of working for sheer incompetant managers that pay themselves about £15k more than me whilst making me do all the hard work.

Unfortunately, 3 days into my holiday in Cornwall and mainly caused by severe bouts of insomnia, I read straight through the two books I mentioned in my previous post and ElshaUK made me buy another book I had taken an interest to in a local bookshop - Johnathan strange & Mr. Norrell. This is one of those books that turns you into a compulsive obsessive; every day you will force yourself to read more of it and to ponder on the meaning of every chapter.

The story is set in a fictional alternate world of the 1800's where Magic actually exists. Not the magic of Dungeons & Dragons nor that of Paul Daniels but the other-worldly magic long since forgotten by adults - the Fairy-tale magic of old. The plot revolves around two gentlemen magicians - Johnathan Strange and, of course, his one-time tutor, Mr. Norrell and their attempts to revive English Magic from centuries old neglect.

One quote from the book is:

‘“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never could”’ (p.304).

This book is up there with Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien but is more similar to the writings of E.R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroborous" - a long-since forgotten contemporary of Tolkiens. Apparently it took the author, Susanna Clarke 10 years to pen it.

If you read one book this year, read this one!

Cornwall

2005-09-10T06:49:00.000+01:00

Off to Cornwall now for 10 days or so.

Feeling a little better but still far from ok, illness-wise. Had a terrible night's sleep last night (nothing new there) so will probably sleep in the car on the way down from Bristol (train from Reading there).

Otherwise, I'll see you all soon.

Bad Elves vs Good Elves: Discuss...

2005-09-09T17:59:00.000+01:00

I am still ill.

This hugely frustrating state of affairs has not only stopped me from continuing to look for work elsewhere but has made me more and more morose regarding my health.

Why does this always happen to me when I go on holidays? This time at least I wasn't stressed. At least, I don't think I was stressed. Alright, so Scythe and Assassin-UK left me holding together the company's infrastructure like it was my guts spilling out all over the floor but I don't think I was that stressed.

On the other hand, of course, I will get better. Eventually. Hopefully before my holiday finishes.

On other news, I've been playing World of Warcraft some more and have decided that before the Expansion pack comes out (it's rumoured to be coming out for Christmas) I will get Crucifer up to level 60. At the moment, he's level 52 and in a very nice tourist site known as The Searing Gorge. It's not that bad to be honest, but the necessity to team up to complete quests are becoming more and more irritating.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't have a lot of time to spend on computer games. When I'm not playing Wow, I'm reading (and soon to be reading Terry Pratchett's "The Last Continent" & Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time Prequel: New Spring"). When I'm doing either of those things, I'm on the internet looking up info on roleplaying material for our game or spending time with Elsha.

Following on from the last post, we decided to sit down and finally build ourselves a game world, asking very serious questions like "why are elves good?". Tolkien made them good of course, that's why. And everyone else followed suit for a long, long time until TSR finally brought in evil elves called Drow. And again, everyone followed suit.

We've decided to use some of the ideology from the Stargate Universe - Elves were ancient beings that eventually transcended their material forms and left for distant parts unknown. Those few that remained behind kept to themselves. Some other elves, the Drow, decided to return to the Material World and work with the humans.

And so, we have our first real issue. Good Elves with a non-interference policy trying to stop the Drow (bad Elves) from helping the Humans, who don't realise what's going on (nor would care even if it was explained to them).

But the main point that we're looking at in terms of the above is why are the elves there? Not just because they have a passing resemblance to Legolas but the actual reason for their existance. Now it's something very interesting that we can work into the game's storyline maybe.

And bizarrely enough, my browser was having problems with Blogger's composer bar. After reinstalling IE6 SP1, eveything is working again. Yay.

An Overdue Update

2005-08-29T13:47:00.000+01:00

well its been nearly a long month since I posted last and I wish I could say lots of good things have happened. Alas, I've been ill for practically the whole time with one of those... erm... embarrassing illnesses that seem to crop up every now and again and is kept out of polite conversation.

I took a couple of days off work and was reminded why I was looking for work elsewhere. My boss rang me a couple of times and wanted to know if I was coming in - not from any concern for my wellbeing but because she wanted to go to the Passport office and my not coming in was preventing her from going.

Deciding to look after myself for once, I said no and she went out anyway. Nice.

Job-wise I am still looking for a better place but like with flats, you spend ages looking around, maybe get to see one or two really nice places and then find out that either they're not good enough or there is a catch - and you go back to looking for that perfect place.

Not feeling very well has only made it worse.

I haven't been playing WoW much. Susan's Dad and Step-mum came over from Oz via Canada and so we've been doing the flat up. We spend friday, saturday and sunday morning with them and had a great time. Now we're back to vegging out until the 8th when we go down to St. Ives for a week long holiday in Cornwall.

This saturday I'm doing another stint of paintballing but first I have to get checked out by the Doctors to make sure I am fit to go.

Roleplaying has taken off again. We've been trying to meet up every week or so to keep continuity and so far it all seems to be working. The world-designing is really taking off and we're mostly having fun. Except Jamie who thinks Dwarves should look like Dwarves and Elves should look like Elves. But shouldn't dance. Especially under stars.

I will be posting a bit more about that and WoW when I'm feeling a little better.

Scythe's gone AWOL, Sarge!

2005-08-03T23:55:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow (Thursday 4th August 2005) will be Brett's last day at work.

I am both dreading it and looking forward to it all in the same breath because although on the one hand that old comraderie I have come to expect from going to work will be gone, I will have no reason to stay there anymore. This is a turning point in my life and I need to realise that there is more to the world than my crummy job where other people take advantage of my skills and abilities.

To mark the occassion we had a good old Red Faction game night, where Bufu, Horse, Kitten, Scythe and even Assassin-UK logged in and hunted each other like stalking tigers. It was great fun and I think we will be doing it a lot more in future.

Here's to you Scythe, *big gulp of wine*

Gone, but never forgotten.

RIP AC2

2005-07-31T17:21:00.000+01:00

Hmm, thought I would give imaging a go. Funnily enough I don't seem to be able to instantly set up pics like other people do.

Anyway, the pic below is from an online game called Asheron's Call 2 - now no longer played as we've discovered WoW. Still I played the game from October 2003 until November 2004. A long long time playing as the Tumerok Missile/Healer Crucifer.

Test Pic from Asherons Call 2

...the devil you know...

2005-07-31T11:03:00.000+01:00

...is a saying I absolutely agree with and unfortunately, readily identify with.

Just as we thought the flat was perfect - washing machine working, power shower working, window opens, bathroom door looks nice - things went horribly and very drastically wrong.

As Susan was opening the blinds last weekend, they came crashing down on top of her and the tv, tearing a chunk of plaster out of the wall. Susan was thankfully ok; so was the tv for that matter. But the wall looks horrendously bad. And it doesn't look like it's something that will be fixed in one day.

The landlady finally came out to have a look last wednesday and she brought a builder with her. Lots of umming and ahh'ing took place, with lots of "there were no cracks in the walls when we installed the blinds" statements by the builder.

Of course not, Susan and I got up on chairs and repeatedly hammered the walls just to get that effect (that's sarcasm by the way).

As far as I'm aware, they will have to tear out the loose remnants, mix up some cement, apply it, plaster over it, and then in a weeks time when the cement has set, re-attach the blinds to it. That's if the landlord decides that it's worth the bother and not just attach a curtain rod.

This means more time off for me and its at the worst possible time. Not only has Brett resigned and looking forward to leaving (which means he will only help me occassionally) but another guy has been made redundant and the 1st Line Support engineer has gone on holiday as well. Arrrghhh!

Over the past few days, the idea of working in a company where the 3rd Line Support Techie is leaving in 4 days, where the web designer is leaving in 10 days, where the 1st line Techie is on holiday for another 5 days is all too much for me.

I have been run off my feet the past week, and I have another week to look forward to. I can't take time off for interviews because I've been warned by management that any time off I may take will conflict with business-critical issues. A fancy way of saying "if you leave, we'll be up shit creek without a paddle".

The question I'm asking myself more and more is:

"And why do I work for these people exactly?"

The Flat Vs The Job

2005-07-12T23:44:00.000+01:00

Well...

We've moved into the new flat and things were looking up. Then, unfortunately, they looked down again.

Firstly, and because this is at home, its very important, there are a lot of things wrong with the flat. "Hiss boo sucks" I hear you say? Yes, unfortunately.

The power shower doesn't work. The washer/dryer doesn't work. The sink leaks. The sealant around the bath isnt there. The WC isn't flush against the wall. The carpet in the hallway hasn't been tacked down. The main window in the lounge doesn't open. the bathroom door handle keeps falling off... The list is endless. I'm glad to say though that some of these things are being fixed as we speak. Hopefully, things will begin to look up and we will be happy to spend shed loads of money for a flat that actually doesn't annoy us.

EDIT: Hopefully some of these will be addressed soon. We've since found out that the Washing machine doesn't work because some clever genius attached it to the Hot water mains and not the Cold water mains. This means that on a cold rinse, you get... wait for it... hot water. In fact, on any programme, you get hot water.

This could also explain why the power shower doesn't work, because it too is on the same pipe network.

Next, Brett has resigned from work. For those of you who don't know, Brett was the Senior Network Manager and the guy who kept on about paintball for weeks after TheNumNum's stag do.

Brett kept wondering if there was life out there and decided just before his appraisal to actually look. Indeed there was life out there and in fact, that life was better than the one he had at the moment. So he made a big decision, went for an interview and came back all smiles. I think he was actually looking to see how much he was appreciated here but no counter offer was forthcoming and he resigned.

He came over yesterday and whispered in my ear "You need to think about your future". Which, of course, made me think, 'am I appreciated here?'.

When I gather the courage to find an answer to that question, I'll let you know.

EDIT: The answer to this question has been a dismal "maybe". Unlike Mr. Volunteer (That's Brett to you and me), I don't put myself into a situation where I can be exploited, therefore I'm not integral to the system. Still, I am now looking for work as I'm coming up to FIVE years in this company. I know I wanted solid experience in the IT industry but this is getting ridiculous.

"I just want a melon..."

2005-06-28T12:10:00.000+01:00

As the Malibu ad explains, "why make life unnecessarily complicated?" Mind you, after the move from hell, I could have done with a bottle of "seriously easygoing" Malibu to wind down with.

The removal company, Abbey Crown, were frustratingly customer-unfriendly as they quoted us as arriving at 9AM and actually came at 2PM - that's 5 hours late for a move that only took 4 hours in total. The driver and his mate weren't bad at all but they didn't work for Abbey Crown directly (so big cheers to Peter and Kaleem, who helped out a lot on the day and though they didn't get the couch through the door, they tried extremely hard).

Yes, our couch didn't fit as it was too wide and the angles of the hallway door was just too tight. Peter and Kaleem tried their hardest for about 30 minutes, even taking the front door off its hinges, but it was evident to all that it wouldn't fit through. In the end, we despairingly held our hands in the air and surrendered. The couch was dumped and that cost us as well to have it removed. All we have now are memories of sitting on our mandarin-style blue couch watching CSI and eating our dinner.

*big cry*

Still, we had a futon hidden away and that can double up as a couch and as a second bed, which will be handy as Susan's folks will be coming over to stay for a few days later in the year. Would we have moved though knowing that the couch wouldn't have fit? Well, to be honest, we sort of knew that the couch woulnd't fit - we were just hoping that it would.

Waseem [Kalistro] and Jamie, two Old Ealonian chums, came over last night and helped assemble the futon, the main bed, some wardrobes and 2 desks - which totals most of the furniture in the flat. Without their help (and it even took us 4 hours to get it all right) we would have been spending days sorting things out so we were very much in appreciation.

As always with a new flat, problems have begun to emerge. The power shower (the one we were enamoured with) doesn't seem to work, bringing up a "low pressure" warning light - strange because it's meant to handle low pressure fairly well.

The bathroom door, is hung badly on it hinges so that there is an inch gap at the bottom, allowing you to see in.

Minor niggles include the bathroom door handle which has been botched. And some of the windows are sticky, although it might just take us some time to get accustomed to them.

The neighbours are extremely friendly and we've met Kev (not Kevin!) who lives in the downstairs flat, and Tony and Gloria who live across the lawn from us. Susan and I are still coming to terms with neighbours who actually speak to you.

For 2 and a half years, we've lived in Boston Manor where our neighbours spoke a total of about 200 words to us. In 10 minutes, Tony and Gloria had spoken about 400 words and, if I hadn't been dragged off by Susan, would have probably spoken another 400 easy. But they are nice, which is good, as it adds to the whole atmosphere of the place.

So in the end, I just wanted a melon, but had to wait five hours before I managed to get an overripe mango. Not quite what I wanted...

T Minus One day

2005-06-26T10:22:00.000+01:00

Well, in one day's time we'll be moving to our new flat in Ealing. Is there some trepidation? Absolutely.
Things are starting to go wrong with the move. Well, not quite the move itself, but the packing.

We estimated the packing would take about 10 days tops. It hasn't; it's still going on. Basically, 90% of the packing took about 5 days and the last 10% is dragging on, partially due to a mixture of reticence on our parts to do any more work and the fact that there seems to be an unending accumulation of "stuff". Where did it all come from, we ask ourselves? But the answer is, we've been living in a very large spacious flat for two and a half years and this is the end result. Boxes and boxes of "stuff" - we're truly running out of patience on explaining to each other what things are and why we have them. They just end up being "the stuff we bought last year for this purpose, remember?"

Susan's back has gone as well. She's had back problems for as long as I have known her and every now and again she ends up with a bad back. This time it seems to have happened as a result of the high temperatures in her work place - stress about moving out have taken their toll on her.

So this means that Plan A - to dismantle the furniture tonight (the removal company arrives in the morning) has taken a major turn for the worse. I can dismantle most of the stuff but I'm going to need help. I've sent out a call to various Old Ealonians for help. If the worst comes to the worse there is a work mate I can call upon but I'd rather not.

The new flat looks good but beneath the glossy sleek exterior, I've already spotted some problems. Nay, problems is too harsh a word. Niggles, mainly.

1. The main window in the front room doesn't open all the way. It looks like it should but just before the pane clears the frame, it gets stuck. It looks as if it's been put on wrongly.

2. The bathroom is a complete tip. Nothing a major clean won't put right and even though we would clean the bathroom anyway, it's not something we wouldn't to do straight away.

3. Parking. Where the hell do guests go to park? There doesn't seem to be anywhere for them. This is something we'll have to speak to the neighbours about, along with where to put the bins and what day they get picked up on.

The new flat hasn't got a phone line yet; it's going live on Wednesday 29th June, which means all we'll have for two days will be our mobiles, assuming of course that BT actually gets things right first time.

Wanadoo Broadband is another matter completely. I've been told that I will need to phone when the new line is active and then it's going to take up to another 20 days to move the broadband from the one number to the other.

Now my question is WHY?

It takes BT 5 days - FIVE - to set up a new line. Surely it's not going to take Wanadoo 20 days to move a line? What are they going to do, come to Boston Manor, dig up the line, transplant it to Ealing and then bury it again? That, I can imagine, would take 20 days. But moving a line - most likely, on a computer - should take about 20 minutes (well, with a backlog, I'd be ok with 5 days). This does not make me very happy so come October, when it's time for us to renew our broadband, I will be going elsewhere for my broadband account, maybe even sooner.

Alas, this means we will be without broadband access for awhile. As the phoneline goes live, we should be able to dial up with a modem for awhile, at least. But we will most likely limit ourselves to checking emails so alas, I will be unable to post from home.

Excuses, excuses...

2005-06-22T10:46:00.000+01:00

Take, for example, the discussion at work I've been having recently.

I've decided to walk to work from my new flat. That's from Eaton Rise in Ealing to Mansfield Road in Park Royal. Look it up on the map now.

You see? It's about a 30-45 minute walk to work.

When I first mentioned I was thinking of walking the distance to work, everyone was heaping praise on me - "well done", "it's great exercise", "you'll lose lots of weight".

Now, as the day of my first walk fast approaches, people are changing their tunes - "you're mad", "it's miles", "why don't you look for alternative transport".

First of all, it's meant to be exercise. I'm meant to dislike it because if it was easy it wouldn't be exercise.

Secondly, it gives me time to reflect on Life, The Universe & Everything. Whilst other people are running around like mad chickens on speed getting to work on time, my aim will be to walk to work knowing full well that either I'll be on time or I'll be late - because I won't be dependant on any other variable. Like Traffic, or crap excuses for why the trains are late.

Thirdly, and this is only a bonus point, it will cut costs.

Maybe they're right, though, and I'm completely wrong. Maybe it is too far. What are the options?

1. I could learn to ride a bike/scooter/alternative vehicle.

2. I could walk to the Western Avenue and catch a bus:

This will of course involve a 20 minute walk, followed by god knows how long actually waiting for the bus, followed finally by waiting for the traffic to move. A possibility perhaps for when it's absolutely pissing down.

3. I walk to Ealing Broadway, catch a train to Ealing Common, catch another train to Park Royal and walk to work:

Hmm, this involves a 15 minute walk to Ealing waiting for a train, a 3 minute train journey, waiting for another train, a 5 minute train journey, followed by a 7 minute walk to work. At around 30 minutes minimum, this is a particularly stupid option considering I could walk to work and save myself £40 and a whole heap of stress.