Do unto others...

Most people that know me will most likely atest to the fact that I'm quite a polite guy, maybe a bit of a cheeky sod but a fair minded kind of chap who minds his P's and Q's.  Unless you're whining constantly on comms or chat in MW2 in which case you will be the target of some imaginative ridicule on my part.

The thing is, when it comes to forum and blog posts, the vast majority of people will not know me, nor I them.  So it constantly astounds and depresses me that there are so many idiots out there that feel the anonymity of the internet gives them permission to be unpleasant to other people who have a differing opinion.  Disagreeing and discussing issues is fine, healthy even and if that's all they were doing then that'd be fine.  But no, not only do they seem to automatically oppose what people say but they then seem to want to verbally attack the other person which is just not on.

As we all know, the medium of the internet has a tendency to allow intent to be miss-interpreted which can cause conflict.  So with the knowledge that what you read on screen isn't necessarily what was meant and that the person on the other end of the wires doesn't know me, I try particularly hard to conduct myself like a true English gentleman, ask for clarification if I'm dubious and never (well rarely) belittle people on forums.  All I ask is that they extend me the same courtesy.

Mind you, I also lurk on a number of forums that declare they take a dim view of such things and yet seem to completely ignore it, even when blatant trolling is occuring, it does make it rather hard not to follow suit and flame the trolls because it can be damn good fun. 

We're all only human, but frankly that's just an excuse.  Yes we're only human, but we should be trying to be more than we are, raise the bar and both expect and demand better!

Pigeon holing

We all like to label things, now come on don't be shy, you do too just admit it and lets face it, why not?  It's a useful system for quickly identifying things so we can decide whether we will or will not like stuff.  Perfectly reasonable.  I mean I for one like cars, I like car racing, I like games with cars in so on the whole I'm a car kind of guy.  But there it is, right there, did you see it?  I'll write it again just in case, "on the whole I'm a car kind of guy".  How about that time?  Just because I'm in to my auto-mobiles doesn't mean I like EVERYTHING about ALL of them and there's where the pigeon holing thing stops working, because there's just no getting around the fact that there are things we just don't like and vice versa.

The real problem is that because of our need to speed up figuring out what we are going to enjoy we have a tendency to become blinkered about things and this can make us miss out on some real gems, even going so far as to choose things we don't like because they fit our generic brackets of taste.

So what am I saying?  Simply put, keep an open mind.  Maybe you dislike dance music, that's fine but don't automatically assume that you hate ALL dance music, judge everything on its on merit.

The countdown begins again

So the new release date for Gran Turismo 5 has been announced and I can start looking forward to 24th November.  I've been following the series since the first one and that one was the deciding factor for purchasing the original Playstation.  As a fan of racing games I can honestly say the only thing that comes close is Forza for the Xbox.

One of the insults I often throw at games like FIFA soccer, Madden football, Tiger Woods golf and their ilk is that they're exactly the same game but with another unit added to the end of the name.  While the same statement can be made for GT somehow it doesn't seem to bother me as much and I can't help but feed my addiction for faced paced racing simulation.

The only trouble I have with the GT games is that Polyphony Digital seem to be perfectionists and the release dates for these things keep getting further and further away with each iteration.  I preordered GT4 when it was announced and in the end there was over a year between my initial pre-order and the eventual release date, had I done the same this time round GT5 would have blown that record out of the water.

With each announced delay has come the statement that they're working on trying to make the game perfect for release day.  While this does nothing to help my withdrawal symptoms I can at least take heart in the knowledge that unlike other games which have been released with entire colonies of bugs, GT5 should be the gilt coated platinum that I'm hoping it will be.  The thing is though, with them giving it the Goldilocks treatment if there's even a small problem on release day they'll look very foolish indeed given all the time they've spent on it and lets face it, in the gaming world, nothing is ever perfect from day one.

On the whole though, I'd rather spend extra time waiting for a highly polished game than suffer through the faults while they rush out a patch to fix the big problems and then end up introducing more.

Why weigh?

Like most people with a desk job in IT and a love of gaming/movies/music I have a fairly sedentary life and rather more weight than I'd like.  Well ok, I have to walk in to the server halls on a regular basis and out to the shops to buy my lunch but on the whole I sit around a lot.  Because of this in the last couple of months I've once again tried to get back in to doing exercise.  This time it's Zumba, an exercise regime based on Latin dance movements. 

I've tried a few things in the past and quickly learned that a gym membership is just not for me, but this dancing thing seems to be good fun.

This time however it's lead me to consider, why do we use weighing scales to define whether our training program is working?  When I think about it, I'm not actually trying to lose weight as such, what I really want is a more pleasing figure.  Ok so weight is definitely involved I agree, but if the result can be corrupted by having eaten recently, water retention, wearing or not wearing clothes, recent salt intake and even going to the toilet it becomes easy to see why people can get so disheartened but those fluctuating numbers on the bathroom scales, not to mention the never ending concern of if your scales are properly calibrated.

So stuff weighing yourself, it can't be trusted and if we're perfectly honest, what I really care about are do I like the way I look in the mirror, can I touch my toes and can I run up the stairs without being out of breath and sweating like a pig.

Ceremonial visit

I've spent the last few days cleaning the house, granted I do this most weeks but this weekend my parents are coming to visit so naturally I need to step my game up.  As much as I hate having to clean (hey it'll all only get dirty again) I almost appreciate it when we get visitors because otherwise this place would turn in to a pig sty.  Admittedly it's normally a horses tack room seeing as my wife Elizabeth and I own two horses but it's still possible for it to go down hill.

Now back when I was a kid, my mum would occasionally ask me (usually when I left the house in a mess) what a prospective girlfriend would think about my untidiness, little did she realise that the answer was so simple, marry someone more messy than me!  You can tell where Elizabeth spends most of her time because there are little nests of stuff around where she regularly frequents.  Most of the time I really don't care, right up until a weekend when my mum is visiting and I'm left in charge of clearing up, because I know some of the stuff in these piles has been there since the last time they came.

Anyone who has met her will know that my mother is a formidable woman, I'm 6'4" tall and she's only 5" shorter than I am, not only that but I think she may have been a drill sergeant in a former life, if there's one person on this planet you don't mess with it's my mum, well ok I do, but I'm her son and have spent many years finding the line between smart arsed witty banter and getting smacked for being glib.  So it's not normally just her coming to see her youngest son, it also turns in to a formal inspection.  This means anything that's not up to muster will get commented on which makes an untidy house a big deal.  I already know my hair will come under scrutiny as I didn't get round to getting it cut this week and the garden will be brought up as we've barely touched it in the 10 years we've lived here so getting called on something that's not really my fault gets me worked up a bit.

Reading this you may be thinking that I'm not especially enamoured with my family and you know something, you'd be dead wrong.  I love both my wife and my mother dearly, not to mention my dad, brother, cousins, aunties & uncles.  I actually consider myself to be lucky to have such a nice happy family free from divorces and other issues that other people seem to have.  As far as I'm concerned nobody is perfect, we all have faults and foibles in our character that could be improved.  I could probably have an argument with my wife about tidying up, or tell my mum where she can go if she doesn't like how I live but it would only cause more problems than it would solve.  And so I clean.

Thanks for the memory

So why is it that I can remember exactly how to do everything in The Secret of Monkey Island,
I can recite lines from innumerable films,
I can remember what song comes next on countless albums,
and the road layout of my home town in Wolverhampton which I haven't lived in or visited in around 10 years,
I can tell you how to get a Moltres in pokemon,
or the best line to take around Laguna Seca on scores of video games....
I can remember server names, IP addresses, passwords, physical locations of equipment I installed years ago,
I can telly you how to do pretty much any quest in World of Warcraft from levels 1 - 60 on both the horde and the alliance side,

But can never remember the names of some of my family members (ok, maybe not the immediate ones but the ones I see at weddings and funerals)  I mean I'm related to them and have been since the day I was born!  Surely that information is more important to me than some of that other stuff.

F1 Grand Prix - Singapore

Introduction over, now on to the real first post.

The Grand Prix is now over and entertaining it was too.  I do enjoy watching Formula one, I find the mixture of speed, noise and glamour intoxicating, plus with Singapore being a night race it really adds to the sense of theatre, not to mention this has been one of the closest seasons in history with 5 drivers still challenging each other for the world champion ship and only a few races to go.

And now on to my point.  As an Englishman I'm naturally cheering on my fellow countrymen Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, two very different driving styles and both are exceptional.  Of the two Lewis is the more exciting one to watch, he is far more aggressive and creates passing opportunities, when he succeeds he is applauded for his skill, when it goes wrong he is slammed for making a careless mistake.  The difference is only a hairs breadth in reality, but one side of the line has him praised as a driving legend, the other as a reckless fool.  Today's overtaking manoeuvre is a prime example, he saw an opportunity and went for it, unfortunately he hit Mark Webber and it ended his race.

Jenson on the other hand has a smooth driving style, he is far less likely to make a mistake and the car will get to the end of the race in better condition than Lewis' but he tends not to overtake people, instead he will try to find a way to get in to some clear air and just drive better than other people.  Not very interesting to watch but nobody can argue that he isn't a capable driver.  On demanding tracks where the reliability of the car is tested, he is more likely to reach the end and score points.

So two very different people with very different styles, but both have the same issue.  The talent that they are renowned for, draws both adoration and insult purely on whether it earns them victory.  We the viewing public are rather a fickle bunch really.

How do

Greetings all and welcome to my blog, I have been reading other peoples blogs for a little while now and thought I'd put up some stuff of my own.  While I have nothing in particular in mind I will from time to time have something I want to say on various subjects, so I will say it here.

So who am I?  At time of writing I'm a 32 year old IT engineer who works in the North East of England, fairly easy going and content to bumble through life without too much drama.  I like to look at both sides of an argument rather than just declare that one side is right and that's the end of it and find humour in just about everything.

The title of my blog is the name of a book by Douglas Adams, a man who's first name I share and who's writing I love, my Avatar is "The Guy" from a Disturbed Album cover and there is now only 20 minutes until the start of the F1 singapore Grand Prix.

That'll do for now I think, so until next time, have fun.