Monthly Archive for March, 2010

Maybe They Should Call It Nemesis

Published on March 31, 2010 in People Be Fools. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m beginning to wonder what goes through people’s heads when major events are scheduled to be hosted within their jurisdiction.  I’m not thinking about things like Auld Firm  matches, or even the Tour De France, but about giant monster events like the Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games and the World Cup.

It seems like everything that’s important to ordinary people goes out the window. Here in Glasgow we’re scheduled to host the Commonwealth games in 2014 and the preperations are already playing merry hell with the socio-political landscape of the city.  It’s already been partially implicated in the resignation of Steven Purcell the leader of the city council. Well that and other reasons that I won’t go into. All around the East End great swathes of waste ground, that’s lain abandoned for decades, have suddenly burst into life. A velodrome, an athlete’s village and a dozen other projects are all hammering away at untold cost to the residents of Glasgow and the wider tax paying public. It’s marvellous that Glasgow Council can find the money, time and effort to do all this work. It’s equally marvellous that while they’re throwing up all these impressive facilities their having to lay off a large amount of their staff to make ends meet.

Hell I wonder how much money they paid to the marketing firm that made the logo for the commonwealth games. If you squint a bit it looks like someone copied the OCP logo from Robocop and coloured it in.

OCP

2014

Meanwhile down in London they’ve decided to go completely off the rails. That’s even without me mentioning that fact that the UK government is more or less burning tax money in an effort to outdo every other city that has even, or will ever, hold the games.  Sadly the headcases that are runnign the games seem to have completely forgotten that the main focus should be on, you know, THE GAMES! Instead they’ve gone running off spending taxpayer’s hard won cash on such amazing things as a logo that looks like colour blind five year old’s crayon rendering of a smashed plate.

Today they’ve unveiled a “monument” to mark the games: The ArcelorMittal Orbit.

Designed by Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor it’s going to be taller than the Statue of Liberty, cost nearly TWENTY MILLION QUID, and it looks like an aborted roller-coaster that I made once when I got cramp in my arm while playing Roller-Coaster Tycoon 3. There’s nothing about this girder mashup that makes me think it has anything to do with athletics, London or anything else for that matter. The only thing it does make me think of, other than the aftermath of the roller-coaster disaster I mentioned, is the Duga-2 array in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone AKA the BRAIN SCORCHER from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Not a fan. Why don’t they use the twenty million to build a hospital, or maybe some affordable housing for those of us that can’t claim garden furniture and hookers on our expenses. At least they won’t fall into vandalised, jakey haunted ruins once the games are over…

Get Offah Ma Roof!

Published on March 31, 2010 in Dreams. 0 Comments Tags: .

I had an odd dream last night. It wasn’t particularly long, in-depth or profound. It was just me, on a shadowy flat rooftop, fighting a bunch of men dressed like the guards from Assassin’s Creed 2.They seemed particularly desperate to get onto my rooftop, but I kept kicking, punching and manhandling them off the edge into some bottomless dark chasm that surrounded the building.

Not sure what it means… Maybe I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed too much.

Earth Hour You Say

Published on March 28, 2010 in People Be Fools. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

So Earth Hour came and went, and I turned off my house lights and non-essential electrical appliances just like the hippies wanted. It’s no skin off my nose. I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2 on my PC at the time and didn’t need the lights on anyway. Hey don’t look at me like that: to me a PC is an essential appliance.

I can’t say I’m all that amused by Earth Hour. Sure some hip young things across the globe might think it’s a good idea to turn off their electric for an hour or so, and maybe for every one of them that turned their lights out, another five people were busy watching CSI on Channel Five. The street lights still blazed on across the world, the wheels of industry still turned and when the lights went back on the world was still the same.

Critics say the effect of earth hour is negligible. That the net effect across the entire world is virtually the equivalent of putting half a dozen cars of f the road for one year. Give me a sledgehammer and immunity from prosecution and I’m sure I could do twice that in an hour.

The organisers say that the net effect isn’t the  point. They say the point is to raise awareness off climate change and to point out that everyone can make a difference. The trouble is that the people behind this are assuming that people naturally want to help save the world. That they are as idealistic, and perhaps optimistic, as they are. They believe that a grand demonstration, such as Earth Hour, will be enough to get people seriously thinking about how they can impact on climate change.

I believe they’re deluded.

They’re deluded because they’ve made an assumption that human beings are proactive and altruistic, but if we’re approaching this realistically, and honestly, we must first admit that humans are selfish, self serving bastards of the highest order. I don’t blame humans for that though. It’s what dragged us from the swirling soup of single celled organisms to the lofty heights of space travel, quantum mechanics, representational democracy and the X-Factor.

Our very nature, and the nature of all life, is to reproduce, multiply and expand for as long as there are resources to sustain us. We didn’t make it to the top of the food chain by helping out strangers, avoiding using resources or acting in moderation. We slaughtered, burned and fought tooth and nail for our place in the world, and that struggle for survival is still deeply ingrained in us. We won’t turn out the lights because we expect that others will do it. We, each individually, need our light to be on, because we need that light  no matter what effect having it on may have on future generations.

How many times have you gotten in the car and thought about how every trip, long or short, could be poisoning the air, the ground and the seas for future generations. I bet you didn’t give it a minutes thought as you turned the ignition. The only thing on your mind was where you were headed, and what you were going to do when you got there.

This is why I believe that Earth Hour will never have the effect that they imagine. The vast majority of people don’t see it as a serious attempt at education. They see it as a novelty, a grand spectacle. They turn off their lights for an hour, and the world looks funny on the pictures from space, but they haven’t learned anything. When the hour is up their light goes back on, and life goes on, as though nothing has changed.

Because it hasn’t.

A Long Time Ago…

Published on March 25, 2010 in Gaming. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I just discovered the disk for Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance buried at the bottom of one of my drawers and it’s got me thinking about the potential that was missed with the game. Don’t get me wrong though, it was an excellent addition to the venerable X-Wing game series, but it could have been much much more than just another space fighter game.

In X-Wing Alliance, or XWA as it’s known to fans, you play the role of the unfortunately named Ace Azzameen the youngest son of an outer rim merchant family. You spend much of the start of the game cutting about aboard a battered old freighter doing missions for various members of your family before inevitably joining the Rebel Alliance. While in the alliance though you occasionally have to head home to help out your family with transport jobs, rescue missions and so on using the family space freighters. It adds an interesting bit of variety to the battles against the dastardly Galactic Empire.

What I would love to see though would be a game based in the Star Wars universe that combined elements of the X-Wing games, and space trader games like Elite and the X series.

I know that there is sort of an element of this already in the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies, and possibly in the forthcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, but these feel clumsy and bolted on instead of being the core of the game play.

What I would love to see is a game where you can traverse the Star Wars Galaxy, or even a small part of it, at will. Trading, privateering, blockade running and carrying out random missions for various factions. As the player grows richer they can invest in upgrades, hire new associates, buy increasingly powerful ships and eventually end the game with a vast fleet, space installations and a fortune in credits.

I’m surprised nobody has thought to develop a game like this yet.

Incidentally I love Wookiepedia the Star Wars Wiki site. I could probably spend days reading it and never get bored.

The Same Old Faces

Published on March 25, 2010 in Travel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

I’ve posted before that I regularly walk to work and back, and that it’s a fairly long walk compared to what most normal people seem to do.  One of the more interesting things about travelling four miles on foot to get to work is that you get plenty of time to observe your surroundings. Things that flash by in the blink of an eye while you’re in a car suddenly become noticeable when the world is slowed down to walking pace.

One particular thing that amuses me is that I’ve begun to notice certain individuals that walk in the opposite direction. What’s more interesting than that is the fact I’ve begun to realise that I can judge how early or late I am by when, or if, I see them during my walk.

Now I’m sure, given the regimented ways of human employment, that there are many others I pass every day, but these particular individuals stand out for reasons.

Every morning, just after I leave the flat, I see a guy that I call Bike Gear Man. Bike gear man appears to be a fairly generic person who uses his bike to get to work. He hasn’t went all out and bought the latest carbon frame super-cycle, but he does have a fairly shiny hybrid bike and plenty of hi-vis equipment. You couldn’t miss him if you wanted to. What’s outstanding about him is the fact that he seems completely incapable of using the gears on his bike. He grinds along, pedalling for all his worth, and gets nowhere because he’s constantly got the bike in the lowest gear possible.

Next up is a guy that looks a bit like Worzel Gummage in a padded body warmer. I’m not entirely sure where he works, but he has a wild and unkempt look about him which makes him seem like an interesting character. His googly eyes put me off saying hello though. I’m scared he might chuck me off the Squinty Bridge.

Up from teh squinty bridge I regularly overtake a guy I like to call the Man Mountain. He’s an enormous gentleman who wheezes his way up towards PC World in Finnieston at a snails pace. He doesn’t seem to mind being overtaken though. He moves at a fairly constant pace so it’s easy for me to judge how late or early I am by how far up the road he’s managed to go.

Next I usually see the Sikh Joiner who cuts past me fairly quickly while loaded down with all of his carpentry tools. He seems like quite a nice old gent with a greying beard and orange turban. It’s odd to see a tradesman wandering about on foot and not in a battered transit, and even odder that he carries all his tools with him including a battered old hand made saw horse.

Next up is a female version of the Man Mountain who comes ambling down the road with an old, battered personal CD player in one hand and a ragged old jute bag in the other. She has to pause frequently to have a wee rest and is always wearing great fluffy earmuffs. She looks fairly scary to be honest.

The last person I always see is the Turbo Chinese Lady. I see her every day on the same stretch and she’s always jogging towards the city centre  in all weathers. I even saw her when I had to resort to the bus during the big winter freeze. That’s dedication for you.

The Break

Published on March 17, 2010 in Teh Madness and Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I can’t be entirely certain, but I think I suffered some kind of emotional or psychological breakdown in work today after being handed the umpteenth retarded flap-task. Afterwards it took me a few minutes to realise that something wasn’t quite right, and I think at think that was the veil of mental imbalance departing.

It seemed like a fairly ordinary morning. The boss was sweating it over the latest thing that her boss, and her bosses’ boss had gotten their expensive gold plated knickers in a twist over. It was something trivial and inconsequential, hell isn’t it always, but they had to have spreadsheets of data this instant.

I’m fairly sure it’s at that point my brain just shut down. Like I said, I didn’t notice personally, but one of my workmates brought it to my attention that I had just spent ten minutes staring at the computer screen, rigidly locked in the FPS player stance of left hand on the WASD keys and right hand on the mouse.I wasn’t doing anything, or saying anything. I was just sitting, staring blankly through the screen as though the world wasn’t there.

I hadn’t even noticed.

Incidentally I hate the mentality of many middle managers when it comes to coordinating staff and assigning tasks to them. In the example above I explicitly told them I didn’t have enough time to do their regularly scheduled flap-tasks/business activities and their latest flap-task-of-the-moment. The boss looked a bit blank for a minute, and I thought maybe she was going to reconsider. How wrong I was.

“I’ll need to authorise some overtime then to let you get them both done,” The Boss said.

“Well no, no you don’t, because I’m not doing overtime,” I said.

At this point I think her brain seized up. I could hear the cogs turning as she tried to fathom why I wouldn’t want to sit in the office for another three or four hours bashing out some asinine report that they’ll probably forget about. This growing presumption that employees should be so grateful that they have a job that they’re willing to work whenever and for as long as necessary as management require just at the mention of “overtime”  really gets my goat. It’s especially galling when it’s accompanied by an undercurrent of “you would do this if you were a team player.”

I’m sure I would…

The Assassin’s Creed

Published on March 16, 2010 in Gaming. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

After making several grand recommendations that I should get hold of Assassin’s Creed 2 for the PC El Kay got tired of my relentless application of the Infamous Tendering Process and bought it for me, and I’m already glad she did.

To be honest though the main reason for my reluctance wasn’t anything to do with the game itself, but more to do with the now infamous DRM system that Ubisoft have applied to the game. To be doubly honest though if El Kay hadn’t pushed me I’d probably have hummed and hawed for so long that I would end up never buying the game. It’s a good job El Kay “doesn’t take any humming and hawing shit” though because I’d have missed out on an excellent game.

At it’s heart Assassins Creed is simply a platform game set in a sandbox world, but it’s not the genre that makes it remarkable: it’s the world itself. There is a framing story set in the near future of 2012 where Desmond Miles, who’s DNA contains the genetic memories of a long lineage of assassins stretching back to Altair the medieval Assassin from the original game. At the beginning of Assasins Creed 2 Desmond has just been freed from a shadowy corporation that has been using him to access his genetic ancestor’s memories using a Maguffin called The Animus. The vast bulk of the game is set in Renaissance Italy between 1476 and 1499. It follows the life of Ezio Auditore da Firenze a young Florentine nobleman who, as the result of his family being murdered, becomes embroiled in an a secret war between the ancient order of assassins who seek to free mankind, and their enemies the Templars who are  conspiring to control the world.

Two things really make the game for me. Firstly the world of 15th century Italy is so vividly realised that it almost becomes an important character in the game. Merchants peddle their wares to passing groups that wander realistically through the finely detailed streets. Guards react realistically to you when you pass into restricted areas, or even if you’re rude and bump into other people in the street. Bards run after you strumming medieval ballads that bear an uncanny resemblance to 80′s rock lyrics on their lutes. Everywhere this is activity which makes the cities seem alive in a way that I think only Grand Theft Auto IV has even approached. Interestingly the game also includes a database, part of The Animus interface, which  contains details on important historical individuals and landmarks. It really fired me to investigate an area of history that I really knew nothing about. I was a aware that Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo both lived and worked in Italy during this period, but I knew nothing about the politics or culture. The makes of Assassin’s Creed should be rightly proud of themselves for avoiding setting their game in a far more recognisable age such as the second world war, or medieval England.

The second element that I really loved from the game was the control method. Ezio is a master of free-running, and the game manages to allow you to control him through complex, and dangerous, manoeuvres across the rooftops of medieval Italy without the controls ever becoming difficult to handle or intrusive. You simple hold down the run button, point him in the direct that you want to travel, and off he goes scaling buildings, sprinting across rooftops and balancing precariously on ledges. It really has to be seen to be appreciated:

Complètement scotché !

Published on March 13, 2010 in Youtube. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

This may be the single most terrifying thing that I’ve seen so far this year.

TTFN TGIF

Published on March 10, 2010 in Food. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

El Kat and I took a trip out to TGI Fridays on Buchanan Street last night for one of our infrequent evening soirées that we have in an attempt to treat my Grumbling Unshaven Hermit Disorder.

In the past TGI’s fayre has always been good, not outstanding, but good for a chain restaurant. They do seem to have an obsession with putting Jack Daniels Sauce on everything, but it generally adds to the flavour rather than being overpowering. The Buchanan Street store was recently refurbished so we were expecting an OK meal at a fair price, and poor Kat is probably sick of having to go into Pizza Hut for Stuffed Crust pizzas.

I love those Stuffed Crust Pizzas!

Sadly this story doesn’t have a happy ending. First of all they managed to sit the pair of us in one of those half moon booths designed for drunken hen parties to crush into. The reupholstered couches were comfortable enough, and there was plenty of elbow room, but on the downside a few other tables had to put up with us staring right at them throughout our meal. We made a valiant effort to avoid seemingly like we were staring at the trio of people were directly opposite us when we arrived, but I apologise if they felt uncomfortable.

Our waitress was efficient, maybe overly efficient as she was round wanting to know if we were ready to order/getting on OK/enjoying ourselves/finished/finished yet/finished now/how about now/now/OK finished now? At least she didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry to get us out the door, and there was no hint of exasperation in her voice so I assume she was just being helpful.

El Kat ordered some Spicy Buffalo Wings and Sizzling Chicken and I got some Potato Skins, of course, and a Jack Daniels Monterey Burger. Our appetizers arrived promptly enough, but there was a horrible taste of salt when I bit into the first Potato Skin. I wasn’t just a nip of salt either, but a full on mouthful like the salt shaker had been accidentally spilt on top of them. Since the skins consist of potato, cheese and bacon I’m fairly sure that salt isn’t a regular ingredient: Nasty!

Meanwhile I noticed that the trio opposite us were picking at their food and looking around like a gaggle of nervous meerkats. Their food looked decidedly dodgy with burnt burger buns, droopy lettuce and apparently cold fries. Not exactly what you want to hear just before your own meals appear. Kat’s Sizzling Chicken seemed OK, but myMonterey burger was intensely salty tasted, as were the fries, and the greenery in the burger itself was droopy and malnourished looking. I ate it of course, there’s weans starving in Africa as you know, but quickly started to regret it. The entire thing started talking to me almost straight away, and I developed an overwhelming desire to fall asleep as did Kat. It’s almost as though they laced our food with Roofies in an attempt to keep us in the place buying cocktails. Kat seemed OK at first, but we weren’t five minutes out of the place though when she developed severe indigestion and and pains in her stomach. Thankfully it wasn’t food poisoning or anything, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

Sorry El Kat! I’ll pick somewhere better next time!

Hiatus

Published on March 9, 2010 in Site. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

It’s funny how easy it is to lose momentum writing a blog. One minute you’re bashing out post after post, and the next moment you realise you haven’t written anything for weeks. It’s not really for the lack of things to say either. It just seems a big effort at times to actually articulate the ideas that I have.

Really the same could be said about anything though.

I give myself a C- for effort – Must try harder