nastybun

Given that everyone seems to have a foodblog nowadays, I thought I’d give it a go. Unfortunately, the thing I decided to blog about is today’s breakfast. Oh well. It was a bacon and egg roll from the Mobil servo in Raglan, which is near Bathurst in countryside NSW. I was out there for reasons I cannot disclose. Anyway, I was on my way back and has missed breakfast at the motel due to setting the alarm for pm rather than am. Just one more reason I prefer 24 hour clocks. Anyway, after housekeeping woke me and I dropped into certain clients, I was on my way back in The Little Yaris That Could and came over all peckish like. So a servo it saw, and a B&E roll it was. I must say, the egg and bacon were tasty, fresh and cooked very nicely. The bun was merely a cheap hamburger bun, but it wasn’t sugarey like some. All in all, I was most satisfied by my repast. The coffee wasn’t bad either. 7/10.

So, I hear you pondering, what is The Little Yaris That Could? Why, it’s Ronan, my steed for the trip. Ronan is a Toyota Yaris 1.3 auto I hired from GoGet, a mob that both hire and name cars. It’s a car share thing, so it’s designed around people who sometimes need a car for an hour or two but don’t own one or occasionally need a second one. It’s very handy for me, given I fall into the first category. Unfortunately, poor Ronan isn’t terribly suited to driving through lumpy countyside at 100ish kph, what with a tiny engine and automatic gearbox. Still, we got there and back so I’m not complaining. The accelerator didn’t stick at all, for one thing…

Certain frogs can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation of ice, so that they actually never freeze even though their body tempurature is below 0C. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as supercooling. If you disturb one of these frogs (just by touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.

Also you’re a bit of a bastard. Poor little froggy..

Greetings, salutations and furniture. Are you well? I am transposed. Barley!

I installed Windows 7 on my desktop a couple of weeks ago. It’s the full proper real technet version, so it’s not pirated and not going to expire and screw me up shortly. Which is nice. First impressions are pretty much positive.. it’s certainly a set up from Vista. Given I was one of the few geeks in the world to voluntarily use Vista over XP, (on both my laptop and desktop in fact!) I really appreciate the differences. The slightly revamped task bar is definately an improvement for one thing. I like being able to pin my constantly open apps to it for two reasons; it saves on quick launch bar space and they’re always in the same order. Being the pedantic fellow I am, it’s something I’ve been wanting for a while now. There’s a pile of little changes too that all add up to a big positive change in usability. If you’re dragging a window around and pull it to the edge of the screen it’ll automatically maximise. If you grab the task bar of a maximised window and pull it somewhere, it’ll restore (go to its smaller window size). There’s native support for shuffling the desktop background image. Admittedly these are somewhat minor given there’s been basically no changes to the core UI since Windows 95, but if we’re honest it’s always been a nicely functional design. The start menu is the same as it is in Vista and aesthetically there’s little difference. But again, that’s not really a bad thing – especially given all the customisation that’s possible for those who want it.

Under the shinyness the experience feels more smooth and solid. I’ve not done any comparative boot up timing or anything (I’m not that pedantic..) but it seems to be more efficient in what it’s doing. The UAC is far less invasive now, which is definately a welcome change. Pretty much all the screen darkening prompts that I come across are due to running software that was designed for XP or earlier – other items will have the shield on the button but pressing it won’t cause the disruptive UAC prompt we all know and revile. Most everything I’ve thrown at it will install and run however, though I was out and about getting the latest versions of things before I started. Drivers for pretty much everything were fine, except for my Logitech stuff – as of writing their drivers don’t recognise 7 as an operating system that they’ll run on. The keyboard one refuses to install and the mouse one offers to install anyway.. but I didn’t. Given the mouse stores the changes I made to the thumb buttons (who’da thunk it, the on board memory is useful!) it works better without the drivers anyway. I’d really like the media keys on my keyboard to be functional though..

The only other major quibble I have with 7 is that VLC doesn’t scale properly in it. Apparently this is due to the graphics card drivers not supporting under Win7 whatever scaling method that VLC uses.. so I just use WMP. There are other players out there that will work apparently, but WMP has been remarkably non-irritating so far. We’ll see how long that lasts.. but signs are promising. Certainly it’s less irritating than it was under Vista, and there’s now the option to completely remove it if you so desire. Things for MS to work on for the inevitable Win8 include seperate background controls for multiple monitors and not burying the keyboard controls so badly in the Control Panel. Also, for some reason the icons are wider spaced now.. both in the system tray and in Windows Explorer. Not sure why.. but it’s less good. Get on it, eh?

Sperm whales sleep vertically with their heads pointing towards the bottom of the ocean.

The bats of the sea!

Or something like that. It’s been the week of Fable 2 – the game where you decide who you will become. Apparently. In short, it’s an RPG where you’re free to be a dick, should you want to. In long.. well.. it’s an RPG that plays on genre conventions while greatly simplifying the whole experience. And.. it works. Mostly..

First of all, it’s an Action RPG. This means you’re actively swording/shooting/burning band guys, rather than selecting actions from a list while waiting for the bad guys’ turn to smack you in the face. Much more preferable, for me. They’ve managed to pull off a combat system that’s both exceedingly simple to use, yet deep enough allow you to utilise many different tactics to slaughter whomsoever looks at you funny. A button to swing your sword/blunt object at them, another button to fire a bullet/bolt at them and another button to set them on fire/slow down time/make them scrub the floor. There are many moves you can build up to, and the experience system allows you to specialise in the areas you use more than the other ones, but still allows for improvements in other areas. It’s a very good system that I can see other developers borrowing. At least, they should do.

Storywise, it’s a little light on. Essentially, it’s a revenge story combined with saving the world. Nothing groundbreaking at all, yet motivation enough to go rough up the bad dudes. It’s actually the side quests that had me more motivated. Things like finding a farmer’s boy a wife, exacting revenge on a lover for a ghost and finding the sections of a body that have been scattered across the world for a gravekeeper aren’t your usual RPG fare, but this isn’t your usual RPG. It’s also all voiced by British people, which lends a certain air to the proceedings. Somehow it makes the slightly farsical nature of things more fun.

The biggest selling point though is the fact that you can choose to be nice or nasty, or just tread the middle ground. I went through mostly as a good person this time, but only when people were watching. I’m going to try it again as nasty though. This time I only stole things from peoples’ houses when they weren’t looking… Unlike most RPGs you can’t just wander into peoples’ houses and take what you want without them caring at all.. this time if they see you they’ll call the guards and you may have to do some community service if you can’t smooth things over. You can also have sex with pretty much anyone you want to.. or with multiples of them should you choose to. By the end of the game for me pretty much everyone in the game would swamp me guy trying to get me to marry them. There was a particular blacksmith guy that just wouldn’t go away.. even when my guy’s wife and kids were there. All in all it’s a fun mechanic to mess around with just to see what happens.

Another new mechanic in the dog that you have that will sniff out treasure and help you attack bad dudes. He’s a bit useless to start with, but you can train him up to be more effective. A bad dude kicked him once.. he died real quick. There’s also a glowing trail in the game that leads you do your quest’s destination. If you fixate on the trail you’ll miss out on treasures and whatnot, but it’s great to keep you on track for destinations. It’s billed as an open world game, but it’s not really. Most areas have clearly defined trails that lead to the important areas in them and the glowing trail will stick resolutely to them, but it’s open and non-linear enough for that not to be an issue.

All in all, it’s a game that has enough depth to entertain you for a while, but only if you’re willing to be sucked into it. Taken purely at surface level it’s really nothing special, but if you’re prepared to put a little bit of effort in to play with the various mechanics and experiment with what the world will allow you to do, then it’ll entertain you for multiple play throughs. It certainly managed to get me into another play through.. I’ll probably start that tonight in fact. I’ll let you know how evil I can get with it…

I just finished reading Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It’s a funny sort of book.. I’ve tried three times to explain how I feel about it, but I keep deleting the words. I know I enjoyed it, but I don’t know why. That’s either a measure of how unique the storytelling is, or my shortcomings in understanding my own mind. A little of both, I think. A lot of the time I was reading it without really taking it in, but that doesn’t seem to matter.. it doesn’t require thought or analysis to be enjoyed, you just need to tag along with Mr. Okada and let him regale you with the slightly impossible things that happen to him.