Housing Shortage

Why is there one?

Lack of land to build on is the reason often given. Builders who get permission to build a new housing estate then build as many as they can as close as they can for minimum cost vs return. And max return is I believe proportional to the number of rooms a house can claim to have.

Ok that explains why they don't build houses with the very useful/essential item of a cellar, even though it would be worth its weight in gold for most people and add minimum cost to the price of the house (at least I believe this is try, perhaps this is a case of citation needed).

So why not build about 2 stores, one fo the first things a lot of people do when getting a house is to turn the loft into an attic room, so there is clearly desire for it. My guess comes down to planning regulations again. That said the new development near us some houses do have 4 floors, but they are mainly flats so...

All this bugs me, because underground is so well insulated that is effectively perfectly insulated - hell if you dug deep enough you'd have as much free heat as you could ever want ;-) So there should be every reason to dig out at least one layer of cellar if not several. As for building higher, well gardens are that small these days, and many are paved/decked over so the reasons for keeping them in sunlight fall down.

So I would say that if the government wants to improve the housing sitation, get them to build cellars and encourage them to build taller houses.

Bailing out Manufacturing

So this Times article got me thinking.
Bailing out manufacturing vs bailing out the high street.
Call this simplistic, but a person employed in woolworths serves the UK itself, however from a simplistic analysis they do nothing for anyone else in the world. If you use the old cliche of UK PLC, then they don't produce anything that someone outside the UK wants, in fact they consume vast quantities of goods manufactured abroad.

At least car manufacturers produce something that is exported.

This may be 1st year economics, but to the country as an export (i.e. to pay for imports) what use is any of the high street? The high street may make the country itself more efficient, but it doesn't actually contribute to the bottom line, whereas the car industry does.
Ah, you say: that business has been making a loss for years. Well once you take away subsidies farming makes a massive loss and yet there are plenty of arguments for having a local farming industry.

Transport Let me Down

I had an idea for a new blog:
Open to as many people as possible to post(some limitations to prevent abuse). You then give your tale of how a particular form of transport has let you down.

Could be good for collecting tales about transport woes, particularly some sort of relative measure of how much different forms of transport cause woes. It could also be absolutely dreadful.

You never know until you try, next time I get 10 minutes...

Who throws a shoe?

I've been thinking about the current news story of the shoe thrower; particularly the allegations that he was beaten after he was detained.

Now, two options are possible, either he was beaten up after he was detained, or he wasn't.

If he wasn't, and the injuries are from while he was being detained then, then do I think he was justified in the event. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and call it a protest. Not really, no, I don't think it is valid to use physical violence to make a political statement; it happens a lot, but seeking to hurt others in order to further political aims has got to be a big bad, and the cries of 'he did it first and worse' might be valid, but the use of retaliatory action should always be condemned; after all, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. I think if the middle east in general could learn that lesson then things would be much better.
Now let's assume that he was beaten up after being detained. Words fail me trying to say how wrong this is if it were true, this is Guantanamo Bay level of wrong if it is true. Now this man's protest that I think is a bad thing has exposed a larger wrong. It's not quite the level of Jaywalking to bring the attention of Concentration camps to the public eye, but it is certainly I believe a lesser wrong to highlight a greater wrong.
You know I can't help thinking that did the shoe thrower himself put Bush at risk? Not really no, I'm fairly sure that a shoe even to the head isn't life threatening; whereas Bush ordered the bombing of this Journalist's city. Looking at the big picture Bush put this Journalist's life in much greater danger than the Journalist did Bush's.

Maybe it's me, I expect very high standards from law enforcement agencies, well I expect them to follow the law if you can call that a high standard.

So let's assume an almost worst case scenario that he was beaten after being detained and that this is exposed in light of investigations. Do I think the thrower did the right thing. Absolutely not, even if it did expose a greater wrong he didn't know that at the time. Fundamentally in the ideal case a society in all forms must be able to cope with unstable elements and survive without breaking its own principles; if you're going to break the principles at least admit that you are universally breaking this and state that you aim to break them before you break them - i.e. make it official public policy that terrorist suspects even in lack of any reliable evidence will be officially tortured for information on the country's home soil. If you see that any element of this is wrong and therefore want to not do that, then you have to give up on the whole thing.
Or at least that's how I believe things should work, as it stands it looks like I'll carry on being the good little automoton.

Sex Education

Is on my mind at the moment thanks to technocrat.

So I am obviously for it, I don't believe anything has ever been gained by hiding something that is both useful and truthful to all who hear it. After all, we tell children from a very early age how dangerous knives are, and endeavour to teach them about their proper use as soon as they become capable of using them.
I'm not going to do old arguments to death though, so instead I ask a thought experiment of you: Suppose contraception was 100% effective. Suppose that either there aren't STDs, or even where there are, we have easy effective cures for them. I ask this now in the hope that one day both of these conditions will be met; I doubt they will be met perfectly during my life, but we may get close, so let's think about the impact of this to society.
If sex is risk free what do you teach teens/children about sex? Does it change your opinion on how we do teach sex education if that were the reality?
But which way does your opinion change? Does this mean we should teach about it more or less?
I can see arguments both ways, but if you truly do have sex without consequences then how does society change? Do we go the way of the bonobos monkey, do the swinging sixties actually return and this time include people outside of a tight social group in London? Or does life just carry on as it always has?
Most likely I see us continuing on our current course, England was recently found to have the most one night stands of anywhere in Europe, so this may well continue.

As for education, forewarned is forearmed; if you're talking about the body anyway...

Christmas and the turth

Looks like you can be fired for telling the truth in school.

I can understand why in some ways, but even if this was malicious, is there anywhere in any code of conduct that teacher is out of order? If the teacher was mistaken, then this is even worse. What happened to verbal and written warnings? It's not as if this was criminal? This sounds no different than being persecuted for denying the existence of god.

Which comes back to Santa. It seems to me that the lies associated with Santa are terrible; we tell lies to children in order to make lives easier for children so that they'll behave themselves for a month or so. This sounds like one of those Taboos of the modern world that Paul Graham was talking about.
And don't argue that this is taking the magic or innocence out of youth. If we wanted children to live in blissful ignorance of the real world we'd tell them about faeries at the bottom of the garden and an all loving omnipotent being. Granted some people still do this, but many don't, isn't it time to stop lying to children about Santa in the same way many parents have stopped telling them about that other bearded omniscient being?

Clearly "you'd better watch out"

So you're a child being taunted in the playground...

I was thinking about children who get in trouble in the playground for physically attacking someone who has been teasing them, calling them names, etc.
Then I thought about the pen being mightier than the sword, the idea that ideas are more powerful than actions. Of course when the pen is mightier than the sword it is only when the pen is a proxy for greater physical violence; but the point stands.

Of course no-one ever died from being called a name, but to be telling the child at one point that ideas and intentions are vitally important, and then in the second instant that name calling should be ignored sounds a little vacuous.
Also, what do you want the child to do? In the limit, how much verbal abuse should a person take before they do something else about it.
In the real world (such as the workplace) you'd have someone in court or fired for verbal abuse. Any physical action would cause police investigation with either a charge of GBH or ABH. So why then as a child was I repeatedly punched and kicked in school and nothing was done about it by the police? Why are so many children being told that they should ignore name calling, while adults are taking each other to court and getting serious compensation for racial and sexual slurs.

A few reasons I guess:

• Children aren't yet fully aware of the consequences of their actions.
  

Yes for a three year old I buy this argument. I don't buy this argument for a twelve year old. But where do you draw the line? The answer to me is simple, you have a rapidly increasing punishment and responsibility requirement.

• It happens far too often to bother the police/courts with.
  

Again this is an excuse, not a reason.

• It's part of growing up to experiment with this method of solving problems.
• Adults can't be bnothered to get into the depth of details for children
• Children are often a mirror for their environment, and in their predudices we see our own and we don't want to face this.
  
• A reluctance to treat children as young adults.

My old thought experiment is were I now with my mind, put back in the situations I was in as a child (particularly with bullying) what would I do? the only answer I can come up with is to form the playground equivalent of the UN. Not form our own gang as such, but at least try and convince others to form a united front to be protected as a group.

A ruling elite

Lots of people talk about the problems with a ruling elite. (Ignoring the fact that elite has a very specific meaning) I was just reading an article about the early lives of some of the problem men of the 20th century. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin. All had very humble beginnings, all went onto gain massive power and all are lamented as being some of the worst men in history. Yet they are a rags to riches story. They are, at least in that respect exactly what many people would like to see more of.

Which implies that the only way to rapidly climb to high power is to be one of the most brutal and heartless people in history. Which is not surprising, but it does make me look on the established ruling classes in a new way.

Jazz review

I've had my car now for the past 4 years. It's a Honda Jazz and has so far done everything I've asked of it, however always worth having a check and thought it was worth looking at what else was out there; suffice to say I've come to the conclusion that the Jazz is a sufficiently good car that I'm not changing it any time soon.

So in typical me style, let's look at its good and bad points:
Good:

• Carrying capacity - can be converted into a van like back which is great for carrying anything up to and including a 3 seater sofa.
• People Capacity: Can fit 4 large adults in or 2 large + 3 small ones in the back. Even someone with long legs like me is fine and there is plenty of headroom.
  
• Size - Externally it's quite small which is good for parking.
• Good visibility - not as good as a land rover or similar, but fabulous for a small to medium car.
• Good fuel economy. Your only choice is a petrol engine. I used to get about 50-60mpg, now I get 40-50mpg. It depends on the speed I'm doing. But it has definitely gone down as it has aged.
• Good enough handling. It's not going to challenge a Lotus Elise any time soon, but it is predictable and with that engine you can certainly have some fun provided you're willing to rev the engine like crazy and deal with the understear.
• Excellent Engine. Again it's not going to win any prizes for power (my 600cc motorbike produces more horsepower); but that's fine, it becomes a challenge to get some performance out of it: and that is fun. Especially since the engine loves to rev unlike any other car engine I've ever driven and it's great fun.
• The front windscreen wash jets have a fabulous spray pettern that works brilliantly.
• Electric windows all around (more useful than I thought it would be)
  

Bad Points:

• Comparatively expensive to maintain - Honda parts and servicing aren't the cheapest on the planet.
• Rubbish rear wash squirter. It's like a 5 year old peeing on your back windscreen.
• Wiper blades are none standard - so you have to buy from Honda
• Car stereo is intentionally none standard size. This is sold as an anti theft device, however it is a bloody pain as it is now really showing its age (no mp3 or aux in being the big ones) and there is nothing I can do about it.
• The wing mirror fold in motors should be automatic
• The passenger electric window should have the auto function like the driver side does. Not having it is just petty bean counting.
• No rear window intermittant wipe
• Hondas are expensive to buy but this is supposed to be balanced by a high resale value. Unfortunatly a recent valuation on mine (a low milage, full service history in perfect condition) proved this wasn't the case.
• Poor street cred*
  

I believe the new model Jazz fixes most of these problems, but they're all very minor and livable with so no plans to buy that until this one breaks.
But if you want an all rounder that will carry a huge ammount to the tip one minute, and take 4 large adults out for a meal the next, and you want low tax and fuel consumption then i think you'd be hard pressed to find a better car.

* Hondas and especially the Jazz have poor street cred, they're seen as an old man's car. I don't mind this at all though, in fact I somewhat revel at it. reminded of the days when people used to take the piss out of me for driving a tiny Fiat Uno; and my retort was just that I was compensating for something. I try and claim the same applies now, but I don't think I'm fooling anyone.

Page Visits

I have head the comment that many bloggers judge their personal worth by page views.

I'm now worth 16!
and at least 5 of those must have been me checking that it worked. Still according to Google analytics I'm 433% up!

Somehow though I don't I'm not going to take over the world quite yet.

A Change To Clarkson

Bear with me and assume for the moment that Jeremy Clarkson is is hit on the head by a heavy object and suddenly loves Motorbikes and Caravans.

What would change?

Trailer racing
Best tow car - POWER!!!!!
Motorbike vs Car challenges - Hammond and May would love this

Comming not so soon to a shop near you.

This may start off sounding like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but years ago I predicted the many bladed razor. They'd just released the dual blade Mach 2 and I joked that it was only a matter of time before they did a 3 bladed one (if you're in the game of one upmanship). Then years later when they did this I joked that the only thing left was the electrification of them. An electric disposable razor would be the thing. I thought they'd have it oscillating, but I believed it would be quite a significant stroke action to do much of the work of shaving for you, as it turned out it was a pezzy vibrate, but the idea was there.
Whether you believe any of this or not is immaterial I just mention it in passing...

So I was doing my ironing this morning and I had another idea. For decades if not the greater part of a century we've had a better solution that the thermostat clicking on and off. Well if by better you mean more precise/expensive.
Now I don't claim this idea makes good sense in the real practical world, but I do believe that if a 4 bladed razor can be marketed and dominate the market, then so can this.

What you do is simple, take some sort of thermocouple or similar temperature sensing device, infra red sensor would do, as would termistor or anything really that will sense temperature electronically. Then you hook that up to a standard dimmer unit, thyristor or triac based. If you're feeling fancy stick in a PID.
The result? You have an iron that much more exactly follows the correct temperature and can react as you change the thermal load on it.
Will that iron clothes better? Probably not, but I'm not really convinced the none stick base in my iron does much either; that doesn't matter it could be a new gimmick.

So in 2/10 years time when this comes out I'll be looking all smug again.

Dr Who Thoughts

Since I was late publishing this week, I give you 2 posts:

For this tale cast you mind back to the Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who. This could be an apocryphal tale, I don't know, but it amused me so I'll share it. They needed a costume for the new Doctor, and part of this outfit was to be a scarf. Unsurprisingly this department of the BBC had a tame little old lady who whenever they needed something special knitting they went to her. On this occasion a junior runner was sent to get some wool, and take it to the old lady for her to make a scarf with. He then went out and bought a selection of wool and took it to this lady and basically passed on the message "This is the wool to make the scarf with". A week later he went back to find she had used all the wool to make it. Without time to make a new one they went with it and the arguably the most memorable part of the most popular Doctor was born.

Let's assume this tale is true. Let's assume that they somehow had to work in this slightly batty bit of costume to the episode/character. We see evidence of this, right at the start of Robot we have the Doctor trying a range of wacky costumes including a Genghis Khan type affair, finally he comes out in the outfit we know and love and the Brigadier settles on this as good enough. Would this scene have existed if not for the miscommunication?
Without this battyness, would the Tom Baker Doctor have been as batty? Probably (this being Tom Baker) but possibly not. If not then without Tom Baker being batty would later Doctors have been? What we now have as the staple of Doctor Who could so easily not have been.

Just a thought anyway...

Pre Budget announcement

Here
Somewhat annoyed by this for a number of reasons, however the one that needs shouting about the most is:
"And he said he was increasing duties on alcohol, tobacco and petrol so they would remain at the price they are now."

Fair enough except:

1. I don't recall him cutting taxes to keep the prices stable (can someone correct my memory)
   
2. Wouldn't the government's costs go down as the price of a barrel falls? Therefore their need for revenue would go down too.
3. This gives the feeling that the government seems to feel that the tax payers are a resource to get the maximum amount of revenue out of possible, not that they the government should place the minimum burden possible. They seem to think that the population should support the government not that the government is there to serve the population
4. Regardless of all of the above, will this duty ever be removed or is this increase, unlike the VAT decrease here for good?
   

Mission Statement

It looks like I'll never get the site to the state that I want it to, not without spending more effort and money than I'm prepared to at the moment so the site will have to do as it is for now. I always preferred keeping things simple and as close to default settings as possible anyway.

So a mission statement for this blog:

• I'll try and update it at least weekly on a Monday. If I miss it's because my phone is having issues. If I know I'll be out of touch I'll post one in advance.
  
• This blog is not about doing cutting edge news or tracking latest trends or keeping you up to date with hot stuff. There are lots of others who can do that far better. I know this means I won't score highly on search engines, but primarily this blog is for me to record thoughts, not for me to enhance my ego by having a large hit count.
• Mostly the blog should consist of my larger philosophies and long term reviews. Lots of people will give you a review of a mobile phone that has just been released. FHowever in my case I'll give you a review of the mobile phone I've been using for the last 6/12 months - admittedly this may not be very useful from a buying perspective as I'll probably be a generation out of date, but it might give you ideas of things to look for in the new model.
  
• I'll try not to edit posts, but where I do I'll mark them as such (excepting spelling/grammar errors).
• I'll review and rant and rave about just about anything that interests me or incites a passion. There's already posts on subjects from motorbike to mobile phone reviews, from game strategy to conversation techniques; I plan to keep it wide and varied, random and unpredictable.
  
• The blog is PG. Although many things cause me passion that are not of a PG nature the actual words themselves and the topics covered will stay safe for my nephew to read. Unless of course I explicitly mark the post otherwise...
• I don't promise to be interesting, just honest and forthright.
  

I think that's it really.

F1 News

So I've never really talked about my love of Formula 1 on here, but I do, so when I heard the news of the BBC's plans for next year then I have to say this is good news.

Eddie Jordan was always a hoot as a team boss, so I look forward to his commentary, and Coulthard should have some great gossip considering he is staying on as a test driver for Red Bull. Let's hope he keeps un-biased though.
They're keeping Brundle which I'm glad of. He always had an interesting spin on things, and some continuity would be good. Unfortunatly they don't seem to have Louise Goodman - This I think is a shame I always liked her pit side covereage and thought she did manage to get a side to things everyone else missed. Although i was always convinced there was something between her and Coulthard, maybe that was my dirty mind...

Other than that I reserve judgement about this Jake Humphrey person. I hear he has done a reasonable job on football and the Olympics, so let's look forward to some fresh blood and the perspective that brings. However he doesn't seem to have any experience of motorsport but from the sounds of it he's a quick learner so fingers crossed.

Should be a very intersting year next year, maybe it's time for a rant about aero packaged and KERS... Just don't get me started on Berie's barmy gold medal system idea...

Civilisation Revolutions

I've had a lot of difficulty writing this review for a simple reason; I don't know how to pitch it. Let me explain:
When I first started writing this blog I made the decision that yes it would be a bit random, and certainly not cutting edge, but the audience had to be wide; particularly for computer games it had to appeal to people like myself (Who have been playing computer games all be it intermittently almost all their lives - since the BBC back in 1982 when I was 4), to my partner (who frequently expresses how much she hates computer games and is on a mission to discourage me from playing them), right through to my flatmate (who works for a games company).
So a review of civilisation is tricky as if my memory serves me correctly I had a copy of back in the days of the Atari ST, if not then we certainly had it on at least one of our Amigas. This is a game therefore that spans nearly 2/3rds of my life and yet the question still needs answering why am I still so addicted to it? Why do i still find myself going on there with the intention of playing it for half an hour or so and still be there at 3am unable to leave the computer?
From that you can guess that the new version is just as addictive as the earlier versions and in my eyes the remake has lived up to the old ones in terms of playability. More importantly for me it is very playable on the XBOX and also (my flatmate informs me) on the DS.

So if you are familiar with Civ, then you can stop reading here, yes it is as addictive as the earlier versions, yes the interface does work on a console, yes that sim speak the avatars use is bloody annoying, but you can turn the volume off for that at least, and no it doesn't really add much to the previous versions of Civ except possibly a balancing of all the modes of combat and some pretty animations if that's your thing. If you enjoyed civ in the past and want a solution for your surrent games platform of choice then civilisation revolutions should leave you at the very least sleepless, even if you disagree with some of the fine tuning changes they've made.

For newcomers then, what is Civ?
Well a turn based strategy game where the aim is to become the dominant civilisation on your map. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
Military
Simply wipe out enough of your competitors that everyone else is crushed beneath your mighty war machine. IME this is one of the easiest ways to win the game, and often the most fun, still where's the challenge in easy.
Culture:
An interesting concept introduced in the new game (to me) is culture. Each city produces culture and you can do things like build temples and cathedrals and wonders (such as the hollywood wonder) to enhance your culture. If you are cultured enough neighbouring cities will want to join your culture. This is an interesting feature of the game as on my first time playing as a military domination I lost 3 of my major cities to my neighbour because i was pouring all my resources into building fighting units and the citizens of my industrial cities thought "bugger this, we'll join an interesting civilisation" and left me. Sure I swiftly concoured them back again, but that was enough of an experience to mean that the next game I played to win a culture victory which added a very interesting spin to the game with a significantly different set of objectives. i.e. every other method of winning requires a large number of cities, with culture you can win with a powerbase of just 3 cities (provided you supe them up enough)
Economic
Easy, get the most money, build the world bank, control the world. (You think that's your sword you're waving at me? You still owe me money for that :-)
Scientific
As part of civilisation you research new technologies, get to the stage of building a spaceship the soonest, and get it to Alpha Centuri before your capital is taken, then you win the game.

So lots of strategy, a multitude of tactics. Certainly not hot paced blowing aliens up stuff, but IMO far more entertaining. (BTW don't get me wrong, i still love those types of games, just see my gears of war review, it's just a case of different things for different moods).

So what else? If you're not convinced by now you never will be, so I thought I'd share some of my tactics I use while playing the game, I'm not saying these are perfect, but it may save you some time in figuring these out for yourself:

At the start of the game, siting your first city asap is vital, unless you start at a totally rubbish place, I would accept the square you land on just so that you can get producing things as soon as possible.
Attack those barbarians - they're always an easy kill.
Send your first military unit out exploring, use your second or 3rd to guard the city.
Once you have a couple of militia exploring and a guard on your first city, found a second and third city asap.
From this point on always make sure you have at least one guard unit in each city. Later in the game you'll need more then one. Three units of the same kind can be combined into an army. An army can normally defend itself against an attack by any unit of the same technology level. If you need to withstand a determined attack, (multiple units) or attack from a more advanced foe, invest in city walls. These sort of things though you don't need to worry about until later in the game.
Look very carefully at the terrain before you found a city: You need some food and some production (unless you wnat to buy everything), some science/money. You can site a city to be very rich in one of these, but you need at least a little of all of them. Also don't site cities too close to each other, once you have a courthouse you will be able to utilise squares 2 away, so don't site cities any closer thn 4 squares.
Decide early on the end game you want, ideally before you start the game - this will help choose the civilisation you want to play as.
For a military victory this is my rough plan. Early on get as many cities as possible, spread them out sparsely. As soon as you run out of land to expand into (you come across a neighbour in every direction), stop and build more cities in the bits you have missed until you they are as close as economical (4 squares). Identify which cities are your production cities and which are your money cities and skew their resources appropriately. Wherever you have the chance put the effort into food so that your city will grow, then swap effort to production/money as needed. Pour your research effort into military technology, if you don't have the most advanced military units available then you are very unlikely to win the game this way. If you are the first to get catapult/canon for example then that is the cue to go on a concurring spree. Build roads from your production cities to your cities nearest your neighbour you are preparing to attack. First make sure your base of attack city is well defended (remember which units at which technology level are best at defence and attack) then send them out with a defence force too. Once you have the initiative, press it. I often find that the computer will anticipate my above moves and prepare the nearest city for such an attack, so I will where the map allows have an initial attack on the city it expects me to attack, then in a few turns change my attack to another nearby city where there are probably less defence forces and therefore quickly capture that one. This blitz style method worked for Hitler and it can work for you too. Once you have the hang of this technique the military victory all comes down to perfecting the flow of resources and troops. Pay attention when you capture a city what it is good at and what it needs and build it up appropriatly. Always try and stay at least equal with technology and if you can get ahead and go on a spree. Once you get sufficiently large you can have two attack forces which can (if you do a thrust with one force, then with another) be very effective at catching the computer off guard.
So I would start with a military victory as that gives you the basics of resource management that you need for all the victories.
Technology Victory. Similar to the military one, but your emphasis is very much on the tech. You will at times find yourself well ahead of your neighbours in technology and therefore during these times I press my advantage and take their cities as is convenient. Also this is a stratogy to go seafaring and have bases on multiple continents. Go exploring with settlers early and have a base on each major continent and you'll be surprised how easy you can overrun your neighbours. If doing this though beware of being overrun by other's culture - you'll need to build temples/cathedrals and city walls in your seed city unless you go concurring. Watch carefully which cities are producing lots of science and equip them with libraries and universities.
Culture Victory.
A good victory to go for if you find yourself with a few very strong cities close together. Especially if this is on a large continent shared with many other civilisations. You'll eventually absorb your neighbouring cities. One tirck I found is if you're feeling a bit militant and you notice your nearest neighbour's city is on the verge of converting then go and concur the city beyond the one that is about to convert and you'll get two cities for one.

Governments:
Democracy - great if you're on a build phase where you're trying to strengthen your existing cities and don't care about going concurring. Equally good if you're falling behind others materially, but are more advanced technologically and need them to declare war on you(because you can't declare war on them as a democracy). An absolute must for culture or economic victory. I tend to use this if I'm not feeling very aggressive, often then I'll end up being ahead in one area which will mean someone declares war on me. At that point you can usually use your advantage to get at least two cities of theirs before they offer peace. Then throw your resources into getting those new cities up to spec and repeat the process.
Communism - Good for growing the number of cities as settlers are very cheap. Not bad for military either
Republic - a good one for a concurring phase as you can declare war and are reasonably productive

If I can think of any more things to do I'll add them later...

Witches Of Eastwick - In Ipswich

This weekend we went to see the Witches of Eastwick production in Ipswich. Quick summary, I enjoyed it, but there were so many ways it could have been better.

Let's start with some background and disclaimers on my part:
My first exposure to Witches was to crew the show for The Festival Players in Cambridge.
My second exposure was that when I liked the show so much I got the soundtrack from Amazon (the west end version was all they had). This compared poorly to the Festival Players version as although without a doubt the quality of the singing was better, it had far less soul and wasn't half as much fun to listen to. Also they didn't have on it one of the best songs of the show: "The Glory Of Me" instead they had "Who's the Man"; this is fine though as that reflected the original run of things, not the re-worked one.

And so now we get on to Saturday's performance, I was almost giddy with anticipation, the first time actually seeing one of my favourite shows (when you're running the fly tower for a show you may not be able to actually watch it, but you can still enjoy it). So lets first get onto the stuff that was good about the show and make the inevitable comparison to the production that I was involved with:

• The singing was better than either production(including the west end version). For once when the witches sang "Perfectly in Tune" they actually were. And as for a Darryl who could actually sing - well that was a wonderful change from the west end version.
• The set was produced to the high standard you would expect from a professional touring show
• The wealth of new songs might not have been what I was expecting, but they brought fresh light onto a show I thought I new very well.

Now of course we have the problems with the show

• Marti Pellow was being a ham. The fact that the audience applauded him simply for walking on stage was a very bad start, but the fact that he carried on acting like a spoilt attention seeking child throughout the show almost ruined it for me, was it not for his stunning rendition of some of the songs I could never have forgiven him for his shoddy and unconvincing performance. I was not the only one who totally lost belief that Darryl as played here was capable of seducing these women. For those who didn't see it, he frequently rubbed various body parts in a very exaggerated manner that was as idiotic and unconvincing as it was inappropriate. This man has clearly read all the worst bits of Michael Green.
  
• The tech was very very limited. No arrival of Darryl through a trap door, no flying witches, only a few seconds of the self playing cello (and that was pretty pathetic), no pretty much anything; they even cut the exploding tennis ball and the frying pan kill. If an amateur group can do these things on our budget, for a single show run then that's the least I'd expect from a professional company doing multiple show runs.
  
• The lighting design was very basic - I have done better myself in Edinburgh in a 2 hour get in; and I am no lighting designer, just an enthusiastic amateur.
• The three witches never really gelled as a trio, individually their performances were the best I have seen/heard, however they didn't convince as a whole.

So all in all the individual performances were very good, together and with very harshly cut back tech they failed to deliver what I'd expect from even an amateur production, never mind a professional one.

Edit:
So after reading some online reviews in a few different places, this has brought me to a simple set of conclusions: Either they saw a different show, we are looking for different things/find different things entertaining, or all critics are idiots - which I'm sure they'd agree counted for me.
Thinking about it more the show was about Witches - it needed the Magic; which they cut out all of it. It needed great music and dialogue, a lot of which they cut out for new music (which might yet grow on me and is subjective so I'll save judgement). It needed charisma from Daryl most importantly he needed to be believable that he could seduce those women and I'm sorry that even if i had been a teenage girl with a crush on Marty, his idiotic gyrations and pissing about on stage would have instantly turned me off. As a 30 something man who always was suspicious of him anyway it was a sure fire way to blame him for the failure of the shows in my eyes, and the eyes of everyone who saw it.

Gears Of War 2 Review

First impressions:

• Lots of cutscenes - about half the game play time feels like I'm watching cutscenes
• To add to that, it seems like someone in the first one complained that there wasn't much story, so they've tried to make up for that and then some.
  
• They have kept the duck and cover mechanic that was so much fun in the first - this is a good thing
  
• There are a few annoying parts where you need to shoot a moving target - very easy with a mouse, (How I anticipate the game was designed) not so easy on the XBOX 360 gamepad that I'm using.
• I'm first playing on the normal difficulty level and there seems to be an aweful lot of level and scare monsters. I'm looking forward to re-playing it on a harder level.
• The AIs for your companions is the best i have come across in any game - they are actually willing to push ahead without you having to force them forwards
• Ammo is (on this difficulty level) plentyful.
• They've (mostly) avoided the current trend in current generation FPSs of making everything 20,000 different shades of grey + blood. There are blues and yellows and everything. This is a very good thing - I can see the georgous game that I'm playing.
  
• The actual combat itself is fun! Contrast this to Prey.
• No more bezerkers (yet). I hated these levels in the first game - the first one was fun/new/challenging; by the 3rd time I was bored and fed up. So far they've avoided this and that's for the best. In a game that's supposed to be a fast paced shooter, sneeking around and stealth are a welcome occasional change of game mechanic, but still not what I bought the game for - stick to what you bought the game for.
• So far no vehicle section - again this is good. If i wanted to play a driving game I'd break out the steering wheel and play PGR 4 - unless they wanted to support using the steering wheel as a method of controlling the combat vehicle - then that would be cool! (for the first time anyway).
• They have a habit of doing: checkpoint, really boring easy section, section that requires you to learn new skill/figure out puzzle. So having a difficult bit after a boring bit means you have to play the same boring bit several times - which grates!
  

Overall, a lot of fun and a very very good looking game. Just don't take it too seriously, even if the person who wrote all the cutscenes that break the flow of the game did.

Webcomics

So I thought a repository of the comics I like or dislike and why. This will be an ongoing post as I'm always discovering new things; however as i discover new ones they'll probably get their own post as appropriate.

Where appropriate I'll link to the first comic in the series that I find funny/worthwhile reading. This is important for some comics as some don't get going for a while (xkcd in particular). I've broken down the comics into rough categories, obviously many of them cross multiple categories so I won't obsess over which should be in which.

Geeky Comics
So since I've started with xkcd lets put that one first. Very sciency and geeky and a big fan of using the alt text in order to convey a further joke. If you have the slightest bit of geek in you, you should read this.
In a similar vein is Irregular Webcomic. This again uses geeky humour and science as regular plot points but goes into great depth with some explanations sometimes in more detail than you could imagine. there are a number of set themes that he uses and probably the best archive system of anything out there on the net.
And whilst we're in the geeky vein how could I not mention Nukees. One of the oldest comics on the web and certainly some of the weirdest humour/plots I have know. Still it's good fun.
Of course there is also GPF. Although it is beginning to show its age a bit...

Space Comics
Ones that have space travel as their main theme, it seems to be quite a common theme.
The utterly classic freefall. Still running after over a decade, still scientifically accurate and still yet to have anything resembling significant plot action occur. Ok that's a bit too harsh, but I nominate this webcomic for the award of "Slowest plot development ever".
Ever wanted a spoof of Battlestar galactica, star trek, star trek, heroes and goodness knows what else in one place? Well either way there's Legostar Galactica.
Finally there's outrim. Placed last for 2 reasons: First I've only just started reading it, and second because it strongly overlaps with the next category. Another comic that tries to get bits of it's science accurate and where it is inaccurate it is at least sufficiently implausible that it just might happen.

Animal Comics
A massive theme seems to be one a world of intelligent animals in place of humans.
The origin of this genre must be found close to Kevin and Kell. From which I am sure many others have taken a lead. There's also Sherman's Lagoon, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy that I recommend.

Story Comics
Most webcomics have a story, but these I class here as being story first and comic second.

This is the only place i can put Sam and Fuzzy. It's a weird comic, but it has its moment. The NDA enforcing robot being one of my favourites. What can I say? I liked it so much I bought the T-Shirt, not to mention the explicit cowbell...
Then there is afterlife blues created by the same people who did the epic Miracle of Science. Afterlife has yet to get going, but if MOS is anything to go by, we are in for a real treat.

Mad Scientist
Mad science seems to be a staple of webcomics, so here are a few of the main ones in my life:

Miracle of science I previously mentioned in the story section, but happily fits here.
The definition of this genre would be the excellent Casey and Andy. Unfortunately finished now, but the author has other projects so we can hope...
Of course considering all this mad science where would life be without some radioactive panda - smaller and infused with atomic energy. A cast complete with mad scientists, zombies, mad robots, werewolves and runaway genetic experiments.
For somewhere in between surreal and out of this world you can't go wrong with a bit of Bob the angry flower.

Gaming
Ever played D&D? Well, I love this concept; imagine a world where Tolken never existed and the story of lord of the rings came about only as part of a D&D adventure. After this the same people who did irregular webcomic went and did this superb parody of Star wars EP1.
now I have mixed feelings about Ctrl alt delete. At times it is very funny. At other times it is as far removed from humour as i can imagine. I won't dissect it, others have done so far better, especially the unstoppable Yahtzee. Suffice to say I think it's worth the read.
However one gaming comic I cannot find funny no matter how hard I try is penny arcade. I just don't get their references and even my flatmate going out of his way to point me at the best of the strips (in his opinion) didn't give me strips I found funny. Never mind, each to their own.

Unclassified
Not sure where these fit in the grand scheme of thing.
I always look to Wellington Grey for some insightful commentary on modern society.
Not sure how the tales of baby dragons fits into the grand scheme of high art, but dragontails is a joy to read to a gaming geek or fans of certain mangas.
Of course life from the perspective of a serial killer has its ups and downs. And for a usually subtle, often blatantly disturbing look on life, there's a softer world.
If slightly sick humour is your thing, have a look at Edible Dirt. In a similar vein is the Perry Bible Fellowship.
And finally in an example of how things should be done, Garfield how it should have been! Yep that's it, the best thing to happen to Garfield is to remove him from the strip.

Little Shop of Horrors Thoughts

I've recently been involved in a production of Little Shop of Horrors. This is one of my favourite musicals and thought I should state a few things about it that have been going through my brain.

My first encounter with this musical was through my brother at a very young age, at the same time as he introduced me to the Rocky Horror Show soundtrack he introduced me to LSOH. I remember at the time being very taken with the fact that it had a song in it that used the word shit. I'd never heard swearing in music before and this was a very big and cool thing as far as I was concerned.
Over the years I then got to see the film itself and then finally a few productions of it.

Imagine now this is an analysis of the show for some sort of English essay...

The plant is telepathic and can perform telesuggestion:
There is ample evidence in the script that the plant has the ability to influence the events around it with telepathic means. notice how the first woman who buys $100 worth of roses arrives perfectly as needed and responds perfectly to get the maximum possible effect. The plant clearly can influence people's thinking.

Now one theory I've had for a while is that the reason the plant needs blood is that it gains language skills and access to the human condition from its consumption of blood. Some could argue that it could get it's language skills simply by listening in and learning as a child would. I don't buy this as it learns language far faster than a human child would; and without ever making any mistakes. But learning from blood makes no sense, there is know information in blood about language, so the only explanation for the plant's language skills is again telepathy. From this we can be secure that the plant is able to both read minds and influence them; at quite some distance too.
Moving back to the consumption of blood, the plant gains sustenance from blood purely as an animal or a flytrap would. If this is true, why insist on human blood? This is an alien plant after all so it must be able to process any type of blood, it simply prefers to go after the blood of the dominant species of whatever planet it visits. Again though this makes no sense, if you were an alien species bent on world conquest your first imperative would be to multiply your numbers, once you were secure in your numbers only then would you go onto attack the dominant species. Clearly world conquest is not its highest concern. It must gain its blood from the highest status species. The plant either has some religious or moral objection to gaining power through eating lower animals, it must gain power from those who it is most at risk from. This to me is actually a very sporting attitude and one you seldom see in nature.

It has been in my mind for sometime, but a comment in the show's program really drove it home to me. Seymore is a classic doomed figure. His fall was not only inevitable it was all for the love of a woman and such blind desire proved to be the downfall of both of them. At each step Seymore is doing his best for his love and is still tormented by his every decision. He is a moral character and never actually kills anyone himself, yet is tormented by the accidental deaths that surround his actions. This is not surprising yet it is still tragic how his story finishes.

The plant is virtually indestructible. This is made abundantly clear in the end as Seymore tries to kill it with poisons, a gun and a machete. With the story as it ends, what hope does humanity have?
Well lots actually. Rat poison doesn't really have much effect on terrestrial vegetation so we'd expect the same on extraterrestrial vegetation. Maybe he should have tried some herbicide.
The bullets are likewise unsurprisingly ineffective. Try shooting a tree with a revolver and see how easily you kill it. As for the machete, again take a few swings at the average tree and see where it gets you. Yes you'll hack bits off, but the tree itself carries on. Hell on some plants you'd actually help it, after all Seymore himself sings "I've cut you back hard like I'm s'posed to" and laments how this doesn't help the plant be healthy.
So no the plant is almost certainly far from indestructable - he just used totally the wrong methods. He's started to think of the plant as an animal and that is his failure in killing it. You'd expect better from someone who was supposed to know his plants.

Conversation Techniques

You know I haven't always been the happy together and all round froody guy I currently am. Why I once had to resort to sarcasm for humour. There used to be a time when I was absolutely rubbish at conversation, and while I'm no expert or Casanova now I thought I would put down some of the things I learned/came up with years ago to try and help.

The first thing i did was to spend time looking and listening to the people who were popular/successful and try and work out what they did that I should emulate. Likewise look at others and try and work out what to avoid. This more than anything has been my guiding light. Oh, that and considering what kind of person I wanted to be.

The main lesson: It's all about the other person in the conversation. No-one likes someone who comes into a conversation with a "hey everyone, let's all talk about me" attitude. The key to doing this is most of all to listen to the other person and try and guess what they want to talk about. If you must talk about yourself, then try and only do so as an empathising technique.

That of course wasn't enough so I tried to plan in advance conversations to have with people if I needed to come up with something to stimulate the conversation. Think about the group you will be with in advance and if all else fails have some generic subjects to fall back on. Yes the traditional English ones of the weather and complaining about the latest Tax, Police event or even other pointless news story is always a good fallback.

Finally if all else fails, listen to them; most people when given someone who is paying them full attention and asking for more will try and fill the gap.

The result? Well it works for me, so much so that it has changed significantly who I am. YMMV.

Atheist Bus Campaign

I got to thinking about the success of the Atheist Bus Campaign prompted by this article.
Now the only thing I have against the plan is that the word "probably" in the advert isn't a strong enough word to convey the meaning, and "almost certainly" doesn't quite flow right. However unless you're going to do a parody with something like the Invisible Pink Unicorn I don't see how you can make the improbability of a god more clear. I do think that the original author knocked the nail on the head though when she said:

"It tells you that, [...] a man with a beardy face is going to be upset with you, for ever, because you've refused to acknowledge his existence, despite the fact that he's too antisocial to come down here and say hi."

Unfortunately that's a little long for an advertising campaign.
It's clear to me that if god did exist as part of our society he would be locked up immediately. If one needs more confirmation of how antisocial, criminal and dangerous god would be in modern society, a quick read of The Skeptic's Annotated Bible should do the trick. God is clearly racist, homophobic, sexist, pretty much every ist there is. He seems to approve of incest, infanticide and ritual sacrifice.
But that's surely the problem with modern day values, social reality and ethics; people are trying to apply the values of 4000 years ago to the current day and it just doesn't work.

Which brings me back to an old thought of mine; to me you become an adult when you arrive at decisions based upon a set of choices you yourself have made rather than because someone else has told you to do it. Children have to be told what to do often with the explanation of "because i say so" and this is fine when the child doesn't have the life experience to make fully informed decisions. Likewise there are times when adults have to follow similar orders be it in following bureaucracy rules that make no sense (unless you see the big picture which possibly no-one can), or in a military hierarchy where orders must be followed blindly for a multitude of reasons. However I see the ability to think for yourself as that quality that defines humanity and I see religion as acting against this.
Fundamentally I think that is it, an atheist wonders how anyone can think for themselves and not see that god is a fantasy, and a theist wonders how anyone can have the presumption and arrogance to presume how they want the world to behave.

Dungeons and Dragons

Ok so I'm a geek, I know this, I embrace this, I wouldn't want to be anything else.
But people who play D&D were looked down on even by me. However in the traditions of "Try everything once except incest and Morris dancing", when my flatmate invited me to join in one of his campaigns I decided to give it a try so that I could at least scorn it with justice.

I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed it.
I'd best describe it as a mix of boardgames, story telling, and that most important piece - roleplaying. I think it's this last characteristic that attracts the scorn because the other elements seem to be things that most people will gladly admit to enjoying; after all, lots of people enjoy a good game of Monopoly, many people enjoy reading a good book, and people who attempt to write fiction are often admired even if they aren't successful or good at it.

But let's not worry why it has such a poor image let's get onto the game itself:
The DM had a basic story that he had in mind that extracted from the game environment itself was the sort of thing you might have found as the opening to any cheesy fantasy novel. Villagers in danger, goblin raiding parties, heroes have to go and save the day, heroes go off and after a number of confrontations and puzzles return to the town and find that a greater force has come and destroyed the town while they were away.
Not the finest or most thrilling piece of fiction ever, but as a framework it served the purpose of getting people into the swing of things.
Then you had the battles: Your character was created with a number of weapons/spells you could choose from and during battle you could use these at various times to win the day. The success of any attack chosen by rolling dice. This part in itself was quite tactical and fun and if it was a board game that wasn't fantasy based (with the stigma that has attached) I think many people would enjoy it.
Then there was the role playing - well many actors do this as part of their training. I found this getting into character to be a very useful exercise and quite an interesting experience and certainly helped me in my other fiction writing efforts. So again this was all useful
Overall a great experience, so when that campaign ended and our DM wanted a break he asked if I wanted to take over; in the interests of trying it out I went ahead and did.

Being a DM I would say was a very different experience. I went and read up online as much as I could and all the advice I could find emphasised preparation and a willingness to be flexible with your players. So I did. I had multiple plot lines ready to explore, side quests ready if needed. Lists of spare character names, spare battles ready to throw at them, puzzles if needed, the whole shebang.
Good job too because the players never did anything I expected them too. It was enough to drive me insane - but it was great fun too to try and second guess them, even moreso when you were trying to think how to motivate them into shooting themselves in the foot and they did. I found myself enjoying pulling their strings a little too much as for example you had one of the character's playing a religious zelot who you could get to do some things the player himself wasn't keen on, but his character would do this thing, so he had to do it.

With the previous plot having been a bit of a cliche, I tried to make mine a bit more intricate; choosing to have my players in a conflict between chaotic good and lawful good (an elven Lord who wanted to protect the forest against a human Lord who wanted to advance civilisation) . The point was at any point the players were having to work out which side their heroes would support, occasionally coming into conflict with each other.

So all in all, lots of fun, but a huge consumer of time. I would like to do it again, but not sure how I will get the chance - there are other things that are more important. I can certainly see how it gets the bad image it has but I also believe that the image is pretty much the bad thing about it. Well it also encourages you to sit indoors, eat snacks and drink beer as opposed to getting out into the world. However it also encourages you to socialise with your friends and gives you a reason to meet up and explore parts of your character you might not otherwise do.
As with all things, just don't let it get an obsession/your life and it has a lot of potential; give it a go and you might enjoy it, what is there to lose?

Vauxhall Automatic Gearboxes

Sometime last year I had the opportunity to borrow my parent's car whilst mine was being worked on. It was/is an automatic Vauxhall Corsa. This being a computer controlled manual gearbox rather than a traditional automatic gearbox. It was also a small engined car for having an automatic gearbox so it's problems showed even more. For the record though I have a Honda Jazz with a similar sized engine so I believe I was comparing like with like.


Why did I hate it? Let me give you an example. Suppose you wish to overtake someone on the motorway. My normal move would go something like:
* Realise you want to overtake
* check you can/plan your move
* indicate /double check planning
* Start to move lanes, change gear, accelerate to pass
* finish off the move

However doing anything above a minor acceleration means that the automatic gear box takes about 3 seconds to change down a gear and sort itself out ready for acceleration. This changes the overtake sequence to:
* Realise you want to overtake
* Floor the throttle
* Check you can/plan your move
* indicate /double check planning
* Abort the Throttle if needed otherwise:
* Start to move lanes, Finally the car starts to accelerate to pass
* finish off the move

Don't get me wrong, once its started to accelerate it goes fine, it just somehow takes an age to get itself in the right gear and then get the drive train engaged.

The other gem it has is when you pull up at traffic lights it has a habit of putting itself into neutral and not telling you. This would be fine if it took itself out again - it doesn't it just sits there in neutral with you revving the engine wondering why you aren't going anywhere. The fix I've found is to always stick it into neutral and then only put it back into drive as you wish to pull off.

The point being that to drive it i found two strategies where the gearbox system worked as you'd expect:
1) Drive very sedately
2) Drive very very aggressively.

Anything inbetween and it found itself in the wrong gear and you'd be bricking yourself while the car twiddled its thumbs and woke up.
Not recommended.

Nokia E90 Review

So after having had a number of mobile phones over the last decade a few months ago I got a Nokia E90. In an executive summary I'd say it's certainly not the smallest phone I've ever had (nore the largest - since I first got a mobile back in 1998) but it is certainly the best as a central point to run my life.

When I chose this phone I had the following constraints:

• Not a Windows Mobile device - friends who have had those proved to me it was too slow and unstable.
• Not an Iphone (No I won't use Apple's bastardisation of the English language) - Too trendy
• Needed to be good for web browsing
• Needed to have a full keyboard
• Needed wifi

Which pretty much said I had to have this phone or a Blackberry, and the Blackberry was too corporate for me to have it for my personal phone.
So decision made, what are its good points and bad points:

Good Stuff:

• Between the supplied tool to sync with outlook, goosync and google calender I can synchronize my private life calender and working life calender allowing me to always know when I am available and friends/family to check my busy status without needing to ask me.
  
• Built in SIP client is damn handy
• The notes application + keyboard is brilliant to suppliment my aweful memory for everything from Birthday present ideas to things to write a novel about.
• Always having a web browser, GPS, WiFi capable device with you is a godsend.
  

Bad Stuff

• Camera shutter button doesn't start camera application- which is annoying when you just want to take a quick picture.
  
• During a phone call going into tools/active keys crashes the phone
  
• Birthday detail in contacts does not show up in calender.
• Pictures (flickr etc) don't scale properly, you can't zoom in either which with the aspect ratio of the internal screen makes them unviewable.
  
• Web browser doesn't remember logins/passwords
• Search in contacts only searches first and last names, other details are ignored.
  
• Cannot change default calender or contact settings; e.g. Alarm on, sync type etc
• No timer application
• Deleting all note content deletes the note - I'm sure this is an intentional feature, but for things like my shopping list note it's bloody annoying.
  
• Phone number or text in txt messages cannot be copied into the clipboard, same for web pages. This means that if someomne sends you a text with a phone number in it, you cannot dial that number. Likewise if you get a web page with a postcode on it you cannot feed this into the mapping application without remembering the postcode yourself.
  
• Wifi cannot be simply turned off. Once it is connected it is neigh on impossible to shut it down.
• No spell checker for anything
• Any applications you have installed are uninstalled on a software upgrade
• No indication of where the infra red port is in any manual or webpage I could find - had to find it out by experiment.
  
• Would be nice to have multiple web browser windows open in a similar manner to tabbed browsing.
  
• Being disconnected from a wifi point doesn't give you a handover option to an alternative connection - you have to re-start everything you're doing.
  
• Calculator has no advanced functions e.g. Sine pi square

To summarise it is the most functional phone I have every had and I wouldn't want to be without it and know of no phone/solution that would do a better job. However it really is suffering from traditional Symbian problems and the integration between applications is so poor as to be a joke; sharing data between applications is clearly something that was added on at the last minute rather than a clear design objective.
It occurs to me that this is where the Iphone is strong, they have got the integration working and so seens much stronger than it might otherwise be.
I fear that most of the problems though mostly aren't a question of polish, but of a fundamental design flaw in the Symbian architecture so we won't see a fix anytime soon, even the replacement model I would expect to be equally inconsistent.

Suzuki sv650s

So a month or two ago while my normal bike was broken I ended up with a hire bike; a Suzuki SV650 S. Suffice to say for my purposes it's rubbish and for almost any purpose I can think of, it's rubbish. I wanted a bike for long motorway trips with panniers that I could fit on - you know a replacement for my bike that was being fixed. What the SV650 is is very much a toy, and a broken one at that.
Well I'll rephrase using an analogy. Imagine a Golf GTI with the bottom of the range diesel engine in it. The engine in the bike is a twin so very torque-y, which would be great for touring or town work were it not for the riding position which feels like something off WSB - totally uncomfortable. The riding position has you leaning over in a sport bike position and for someone of my height this means a lot of my body weight is on the handlebars, which is a recipe for pain. Out around country lanes it's certainly very responsive, but runs out of power just where you need a sporty bike to have it. For example trying to overtake someone on it, it just doesn't have the power to accellerate once you get to 50+.
In summary for blasting around empty country lanes by yourself it's brilliant. For overtaking a car in front of you doing 50 it's rubbish. For taking a passenger it's rubbish. For having luggage on it's rubbish. For motorway riding, it's rubbish.

The Force Unleashed Review

So I got the Force Unleashed a few weeks ago when it was released and have been slowly playing it. How on earth people are raving about this game is beyond me, it commits all the cardinal sins of gaming!

• Jumping puzzles
• Quicktime events
• Rubbish Level design that requires you to complete puzzles IN A CERTAIN ORDER - it's not enough that you have to kill all monster A , then use force lightning to activate Item B then Kill uber-monster C then use force grip on item D, you have to do it in that order or you are trapped. If you choose to kill uber monster C first, then try and move item D then forget it. You must restart the level and kill things in the order the designer intended. Even if you manage to figure all that out (in my case in exasperation by going to a cheat website) they finish it off with a bloody Jumping Puzzle
• Quicktime events
• Rubbish level design that makes it blatantly obvious that you have to destroy item A but no hint that you have to use force grip on item B to set you up for another bloody Jumping puzzle to jump through destroyed item A
• Endlessly re-spawning enemies
• Storyline Cliches that a fan-fic writer would be ashamed to use. Yes I knwo some people have raved about the story and yes I knwo I haven't finished the game yet, however I stand by what I said so far.
  
• Quicktime events for every kill more troublesome than a small mouse
• Scenery that's impossible to tell the difference between a ledge you're supposed to jump onto in order to progress and a pretty backdrop that you can't leap onto and any attempt to do so will plummet you to a quick death
• Buggy Buggy levels/engine. I'm hitting about 3 glitches per session. Be it going to a part of the map that leves you endlessly falling, or the entire screen turning white and all that happens is your character re-draws leaving a trail of you behind it as you move around or getting a monster into a place where you can trap them and attack them to your hearts content, but they never feel any hurt from the attacks you do.
• Suspension of disbelief problems. I mean seriously, I know it would ruin the game play if every single time I used a lighsabre it instantly killed the oponent, but it is seriously hard to suspend disbelief when I have hit this guy with a lightsabre literally 20 times and he still is runniing around looking like I've merely insulted him with a mildly naughty word.
• Further to the lighsabre problem I think they'd be better off if they embraced this problem that the lightsabre is too deadly. You could have foes who knew this and therefore tried to keep you at arms length or used some tactics other than stand as close to me as possible and try to hit me with their blaster. Embracing this problem and comming up with ways around it would make the game interesting and fun. As it is it's more just a case of trying to memorise as many combos as possible and follow a linear path.
• Some of the combos are ludicrous - how on earth is a lightsabre infused with a little bit of force lightening anymore deadly than the lightsabre itself???
• Bloody Quicktime events!!
• The block system is ok for a computer game, but does not tie in with the films at all. While you are blocking blaster shots you are totally vulnerable to all other attacks, you are also incapable of launching a new attack without making youself totally open to new blaster attacks. This means that you can with great ease be pinned down by a bunch of stormtroopers and the only way to escape is to take the odd hit or two while you start dispensing with the stormtroopers. Luke never had this problem!
• And back to the lightsabre - from reading other online reviews I know I'm not the only person who has pretty much given up on the lightsabre and just stuck to a combination of force lightening and force push to get most things done. If the lightsabre is supposed to be the jedi/sith's main weapon then why make it so feable compared to the other powers?
• Object Throw problems - One of the best ways to deal damage seems to be the ability to grab items from the scenery and throw them at your opponents. While I'm sure this works fine on a PC where you have a mouse to control it with finness, on joypad on a console (as I play it) you've more chance of hitting yourself than your enemies, especially of you're having to use an item not directly in line with the enemy.
• Poor Auto-Targetting. For things like force lightening you need to rely on the auto targetting which frequenty sees a nearby flower as more of a threat than the Giant 40 foot high Rancor that is 2 inches behind it.
• Camera with a mind of its own. In front of me I have a horde of stomtroopers, to the left of them there is a a random beast i forget the name of; I am running towards them. So what does the camera choose to look at? You've got it, it swings around to concentrate on a stormtrroper I just dispatched and is now fading away into nothing behind me.
• Inconsistent difficulty. last night I was working through this planet of mushrooms (inventive level design or what?!) And was cutting through the enemies like a lightsabre through a jedi's arm. A blast of lighting or two, or a lightsabre slash, or a force throw would be enough to dispatch any of them. Very easy but still quite fun. Then you get to the end of level boss and he kills me in about 5 seconds and it takes me about an hour of practice to string together a sequence of combos that work to kill him. Now I have no issue with really easy games, or really hard games. If it's genuinly that I'm bad at the game i can accept that and try an improve my technique, but this was just so inconsistent that it was infuriating and felt like the game was suddenly lauging at me.
• Baddies that die when they're damn well ready for it! After the previous end of level baddie I must have got my combo skills up to the mark because I took 95% of the health of this guy in about 10 seconds worth of combos. Clearly the game wasn't happy with this because suddenly any further hits didn't do any harm. Then a new lot of monsters spawned. Killed them quickly. Still can't cause damage to the maion dude. More Monsters spawn. Dispatch them quickly, no harm possible to main dude (even though by their health meter they must have been at about 5% health) And now another monster. Kill That. Finally a last attack of the main dude and my favourite thing - quicktime events to finish him off. Disbelief doesn't just have to be suspended, it's turning blue from a force choke.
• Unskippable cut scenes. I'm fine to make them unskippable the first time, but after the aforementioned sudden encountered difficulty wall, listening to the same cutscene 50 times doesn't do much for your mental state.

At it's heart there's a really good game here if you look hard enough. The new physics engine is very cool, I like the RPG style levelling up system they have in place, and despite all it's flaws I do enjoy playing it, but it could have been so much more. It really is buggier than an autum holiday by a scottish loch - as I say 3 times per session is the average for restarting a level due to a bug in the game. maybe I just explore the maps more than their testers did, but I find that hard to believe since I'm rubbish at finding all those holocrons you get bonuses for finding so I don't think it's that.
There really is a lot to be had out of this game and it does have so much potential that if they'd lost their obsession with jumping puzzles, quicktime events and remembered that a lightsabre is a Jedi's/Sith's main weapon, oh and perhaps tested it! If I can find this many problems without trying then their testing department should be wither sacked, or listened to my senor management. If all that was done you really would have had a great game. I wonder if many of these problems come from the designers both being too close to their own game to see the flaws and from testing it on a PC rather than on the Xbox. It really does have that feel as if how I'm playing it isn't how it's supposed to be played. I feel that like Spore this works better as a technology demonstration than as a full game in its own right.
All of that I could cope with if there was feedback to tell me where I'm going wrong, but for all the work they've clearly put into the physics engine, they seem to have put next to sod all emphasis on the actual gameplay itself and what makes pretending to be a sith warrior fun.

Oh and will someone please tell Lucasarts to lose their obsession with the Star Wars franchise. There are plenty of stories that would allow you to have warrior wizards combined with cool technology - especially if you wrote one for yourself. I can see why they are trying to milk more money out of star wars, I just wish that with this game that doesn't sit well with the rest of the Star Wars canon they'd have shown some inventiveness. Thus follows my commandments to Lucas Arts:

• Do something other than Star Wars
• Test your game on all the platforms you release it for - ideally with people who are rubbish at the game
• Learn that quicktime events aren't fun - I have Rock Band/guitar hero for pattern matching games and they do it much better than you ever could
• Realise that jumping puzzles don't work for console gamers; at best they're a distraction from the main game, at worst they make me long for a dictionary of swear words so I can learn some new ones to hurl at the computer.
• Fix the auto-target algorithm to prioritise based upon enemy threat/HP level
• If you're going to have a camera algorithm that will happily re-orient itself mid battle, try and make it re-orient itself onto enemies that are alive and a threat to you and more of a threat than the one you're currently attacking.
• When writing your storyline, get a 5 year old to read it. If he thinks it's corny and has poor dialogue, then give serious thought to re-working it. Either that or embrace the fact that is a corny story and therefore not the strongest part of the game so don't make such a big deal of it.
• I will admit the Imperial March is one of the coolest bits of music ever written, however this isn't a reason to use it for 1/2 of the soundtrack. Write something new!

Under Construction

So when all this is working I'll have somewhere to put my rants, raves and reviews that keep popping through my head. My occasional such posts on Livejournal seem out of place - that seems to be a place for being emo, so here we are, the next experiment.
But first I have to get the technology working first so you'll have to bear with me...

EDIT:
Seems like Fasthosts who I have always used for my domain hosting cannot set the CNAME entry for a domain they provide the nameservice for. So until I can come up with a better solution, i.e. find someone else to run the nameserver http://doubleudoubleudoubleu.co.uk/ will simply re-direct to the blog address.