Arg the heating

has packed in. I’ve made sure everyone is somewhere else (mostly grandma’s) and am holding the fort solo. I have an electric storage thing that will keep me warm, so it’s not too bad. Even so I’m in my hoodie. Being visited by people with soup. I refuse to call anyone out because it is Easter Sunday, of course. The funny thing is it was serviced last week. In this day of digital aids perhaps gas companies can time your boiler to fail during times when you will be charged double or triple for callouts??? hmmm…. Come to think of it tinfoil under the hoodie might work quite well and conserve heat. Whether it is a conspiracy is irrelevant. I’m still not calling anyone out until Tuesday.

I liked the format of the 3am post yesterday with the headings, so going to try using it again. (I’m being persuaded to abandon ship here, but meh, I’m ok. Plus still tired and in need of another peaceful day.) Figured out what’s wrong with yesterdays post – some fights are too big, plus there are just too many of them. Fights I mean – not tinfoil kind of “them”. To sum it up I’m worried how things are going in Britain but don’t fancy being squished in crossfire anytime soon. Ranting here is futile too. Most of the stuff needs to be settled through the courts at high levels. Meanwhile I strengthen the good things in life where I find ’em and keep an eye out for non-leech stragglers eh, that suits my temperament better anyway.

There is one thing I’d probably work to see improved – when the littlies are all grown and safe. That’ll be some time yet though. It’s a white fury issue with me, never mind red mist – I personally would be happy to see children’s social work dismantled one paperclip at a time and replaced with something that’s accountable, competent, properly monitored and effective. Too many failures. Of many kinds.  I’m stopping right there on the subject though. Now isn’t the time, and again, a rant here is futile.

Wurm

It’s a perfect day for Wurm. I must say it’s nice to have 2 wild pigs come up and nose about while I fix a wall. The hunting cave looks like it’s worth expanding a little now too.

I’m having another go at all the paperwork while it’s peaceful round here. Thinning out old bills, tying up with string and depositing in mauve document boxes (hopefully never to be seen again !).

Vanguard (vital information!!)

Never mind the ultimate build, here’s how to move the store icon around the screen. Worth it’s weight in gold this. Thankyou, thankyou!!

http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/index.php?threads/cant-move-store-icon.1775/

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Wishing a peaceful Easter to All

It’s a beautiful day here, cold again but in that clear sun-on-snow way. Here’s wishing everyone who kindly reads this blog a good Easter and much choklit !! (or equivalent).

Happy Bunnies!

Time out

With great relief I might add. That’s Easter launched. I wasn’t happy with the second post I did today – took ages to write and then I had to keep rereading it because something’s bothering me about it. I’m still not sure what. Now, after what must be the 50th reread (ok maybe I exaggerate) I decided to give up for now and remove it.

I’m just tired and I know it. If I was three I’d have put me to bed with a hug ages ago 🙂

Will look it over again and see if I can fix it another day. The 3 am one is ok – …….noooo! not getting up every day at 3 am. Not even for the bloggy woggy.

Below zero again

Hmmmm…. mini ice-age? It’s not a lot below zero, but uncomfortable. Must be about a month now. More? Mostly staying inside places. I miss outside! Later today I will go out and risk breaking a hip. Meanwhile:

http://www.bfxr.net/ ( .wav sound maker for that superduper retrowav. sound). Yes the neighbours think I’m mad. Apart from the one that’s also a computer nerd. He understands.

For anyone idly batting the same ball of string with a lazy paw (shall I try doing something for android?) : http://stuffandtech.blogspot.in/2010/11/android-development-eclipse-vs-intellij.html#!/2011/10/android-development-eclipse-vs-intellij.html looks interesting (need to pay for this one). I don’t somehow think there’s a decent free/open source alternative for this task. (I’ll keep looking though). Eclipse really is orrible! The text editor glitches and you think you have an error in your code? Nah. Not doing that. Sry. It’s not only off the menu, it’s off the radar. 2013 now and a lot of open source is better (and more flexible) than paid alternatives (and more fun!!) – open source is for grownups now. Eclipse is an antique with very old-style bugs to prove it, the kind that miraculously vanish on restart , or mysteriously aren’t there when someone else tries your code, errors that come and go randomly between one run and the next identical run! Being free doesn’t excuse that kind of sloppiness nowadays (I haven’t used anything so bad in *years* !!).

I don’t have an android btw. I just want a learning-something-type reason to keep the emulator on my hard drive. (I’m not into clutter).

Maybe I should declutter the house again. Stuff is creeping out of the woodwork onto surfaces.

Blech still have paperwork. I’m on the second pass through the total paperwork in the house. This time reorganising it. Still 2.5 metres of the stuff in here and I’d rather be able to find that one bit I need easily. Now and again I find some I missed first time around and can throw away. Bliss. Plus paperwork means Wurm. I like this option.

It’s actually …oh… 3.20 am. I can’t sleep properly when it’s cold like this. The house is warm enough, but the cold registers somewhere in my crocodile brain and instinct is to sleep only for short hours then move around. It’s annoying – I could do with sleep after 5 or 6 weeks of this, plus I can feel the energy bill rocket every time I get up and reheat the living room in order for my bodily chemical reactions to function. On the other hand: http://whoblend.tumblr.com/ (the series entitled ‘When'”) made me laugh so much that my heart has gone all warm. This is a good thing, I started the weekend very crabby. I notice more now I look back.

I’m not having a day off (Wurm)

just so you don’t know. I never tell people if I have days off. It’s fatal. People immediately find ways to keep me busy. I intend to not spend this day I’m not having off mostly on Wurm recharging batteries and returning to my happy self!

Wurm and not another game because it’s still the best virtual world and the real one outside is below zero as well as bonkers (http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/03/health-and-safety-strikes-again-triangular-flapjacks-banned-from-school-because-they-have-pointy-bits/   –   I rest my case).

If anything interesting happens I’ll write about it. And as a caveat I might get diverted – it happens oo a butterfly. I better use headings.

Wurm
This person is not very popular (and weekends are trrrrrrrolltime) but he has gone straight to the point. It’s a poll. Should crafting be allowed in a crafting game?
http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/78419-dont-allow-anyone-to-create-anymore-items/

Well you tell me. The databases being unable to cope unless everything deteriorates rapidly (except deeded walls, keys and locks) has resulted in me logging in this year only to repair and improve stuff. I log in for the virtual world, the fact that development is live and ongoing, that the playerbase is interesting, that I can get real paperwork done while I chop virtual trees. Due to limited playtime (like what most people have) I’m on Wurm for a ton of reasons none of which is (currently) gameplay. Go figure.

Twitter
Still fooling about with it. Once you get rid of the obvious bots – (PR for musicians, tv chefs, football), you get people doing activism – also partly botted judging by the repeats. Activism via Twitter is ok by me,  but I do think an acceptable format has to evolve so it’s not witch hunts. So far the art of using Twitter appears to be finding anyone with anything interesting to say. The Blender community is nice to follow. And I also like the Dalai Lama’s gentle reminders err …to remember to be gentle.

Butterfly
Bound to happen. Well in Wurm my brain was idling and then it spotted a string of thought that was half hidden under a piece of cheese in headspace from earlier on today. So I fired a few things up in the background and  managed to get a working android emulator on the laptop (quite cool).  After that I started doing xml things to play with the emulator ….. you know Eclipse is the buggiest thing I ever did see. I almost went nuts before I looked at all the complaints in stackoverflow.

I can’t pretend Wurmtime is nonproductive. Emulator will come in very handy – maybe for that spinoff. If I can find a way around Eclipse. Now my brain hurts and I’m tired, (but very pleased with myself for remembering to explore that emulator and getting it to work). Also I forgot to eat lunch!

http://www.scatterbrain.nl/ I should use it.

Twitter…

Hmmmm.

Update: Hmmmm !!

I see trending can be manipulated. Even in a good cause it’s still slanting, spinning, distorting things. A campaign today. (I know how to pick my time eh.)

Well, Twitter is very interesting indeed, but I get better clean information from just talking to people as I go about my daily life. Campaigns apart, also there’s an awful lot of regular-ish spam. Looks like bots. Mostly from people with something to sell. Musicians, TV personalities.

What is nice is that once you get rid of those it’s a quick way to check on favourite sites without doing the whole slow-load of an ad-riddled webpage which is trying to datamine you. And also enjoyable, I can find out what’s going on in ITV This Morning without having to watch the bliddy thing on TV. Sometimes they have interesting guests/stories.

Will keep for a while, but on this visit it looked heavily and easily hijacked – albeit in a good cause  – this time.

That was fun! (Wurm)

The changes to animal caps, movement and disease haven’t shaken out yet – but for me (at least until the latest change), for one day only, Wurm was extraordinary. Rolf is welcome to the silver I spent hiring a guard for the first time ever on Celebration because with the extra animals and mobs that feeling I used to have – of being in the wilderness and surviving by my wits and carving out my holding was back. Tis gone now unless things change again.  Although there are more of them about, the aggros stay off deed so back to suburbia and my repair/improve year – I won’t be interrupted, and the guard is fired again but what a blast while it last

ed. (I’m never giving up bad poetry)

Romeo, wherefor art thou? There art potatoes needing peeled.

I’m hoping things still walk about in the perimeter – but so far not much there.

err…. you can leave those potatoes just outside

I’m really grateful for the fun – was much needed. Tx Rolf.

Why are all the house walls pink? Even the stone ones. I just noticed.

Giving Twitter a whirl then (things in general)

Since there is a gap in the barbed wire which Scotland may or may not wish to escape through, the hysterical targetted ranting in Westminster has become a distant tinny oinking, and I could reasonably ignore it for the time being. They all sound disjointed and overstimulated to me. Has anyone ever checked for lead in those ancient pipes? I do hope no money is going up noses.

Whatever, another day, another flirt with things they did not ought to play with. Yesterday was food vouchers instead of cash – a visible mark of poorness when they are used; a second class, less valuable currency for those scapegoated – and incidentally these things can only be used in “approved outlets” and will be adminstered by an “agency”. (Toot toot all aboard the 2 new gravy trains!) Though I can’t wait to give up the passives again, I think all the little things that are going on amount to scary and I’d like to be alert to that, and informed about the issues.

The press – sigh of exasperation – well I’ve ended up being a Guardian reader (which is a term of derision in some circles) but only because the rest are even harder to get information out of. Like trying to open a door in a tilted building. Enthusiasts tell me you can get current news via Twitter. Hmmm. Well I’m not wanting it for social interaction. (I still don’t watch tv).

Bus remains the best bet for keeping finger on the pulse still – human interaction, simple and not very fashionable. Doesn’t even need forced grouping. However I’m on the lookout for signs and portents that I won’t be able to pick up there. Mainly when I see the wide-bottomed and complacent getting uncomfortable I’ll be reassured that sense will prevail, if not decency. The wide-bottomed are unlikely to shift to change or improve the government for anything less than poverty creeping upwards far enough to nibble at their …toes. Sooner or later it will. They don’t subject their cushioned bums to buses though, so the comments section of the press is where to look for signs of anxiety and possibly Twitter, I’ll look.

More worryingly I dread unrest. People of reproductive age often mistake the excitement for a hormonal surge and can quite enjoy it whether participating, viewing or actively quelling it but for children particularly it is dangerous and destructive. More so as the adults that ought to be protecting and guiding them are not at their most rational. All too often you see children doing foolish and foolhardy things in such situations. I don’t like what unrest does to ordinary people at all. The force used to stop unrest is also not gentle. I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that, and frankly the poor, ill, disabled and unemployed have so far appeared to be hugely aware that they will be even further persecuted should there be any such occurrence, and no matter who is really involved. But each time there is another weird one lobbed at the populace from on high civil unrest becomes more likely.

Bedroom tax next month.

SOE presents… : Another Funnel !! (Vanguard)

Telon and Halgar are being merged. Sheesh. Usual disregard for EU players, usual besotment with trying to get everyone breathing everyone else’s digital armpit. People just love seeing a ton of other people’s spam about the latest single hair they grew in chat, it makes it look more alive (would be better if it just *was* more alive)  yada yada yada….Ho hum. Merged server with New Improved Lag no doubt.

https://www.vanguardthegame.com/news/article.vm?month=032013&id=1568

Regarding the ‘more alive’ – it’s a great game and it’s not the players’ fault that it doesn’t have a heaving population, it would be more alive if SOE ceased with the stop/start developing and put their backs into making something of it rather than removing the perfectly good and extremely interesting racial starting zones in order to create a funnelled start experience to go with their funnelled servers.

Squishing players together for an illusion of popularity fools nobody. Even worse, judging by some of the comments over at Massively, some people  read “about to close down this game” into server mergers.

Checking for strangeness in the wind (Wurm, things)

This horse and I have the same idea I think

I am a tree. 

The horse has this to think about:

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/78263-more-creatures-creature-deed-limits-and-changes-to-elevation/page__st__20

and I’ve got life. Let’s hope this strategy works out for both of us. Great powerful people changing bigstuff, for us both – well I’m pretty sure I’m well within the limit for domestic animals per deed size, so the horse is probably safe. But I totally understand.