Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in 21 Reasons' LiveJournal:

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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
9:24 pm	I fought the road and the road won So yesterday I did something stupid on my ride to work and I made a bit of a mess of myself. I broke a bone in each hand, got road rash down the left side of my face and neck and needed a few stitches put in where my glasses ploughed into my face: Lovely, I'm sure you'll agree. In addition I managed to knock myself out so I got to spend the whole day in hospital, as they kept an eye on me to make sure I hadn't done anything worse to my head. Hey ho. I am pretty thankful that there wasn't any cars right behind me when I came off. The hand bones should heal in 2 to 3 weeks apparently but for now no cycling and everything else is a little bit more awkward than normal... Current Mood: sore (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
10:12 pm	A Shorter Post As I cycled to work this morning, I was heckled by a pedestrian. He shouted at me that I should be running a red light, not stopping for it, as I was. You can't please everyone, I suppose. Current Mood: calm Current Music: TV on the Radio, Golden Age (Comment on this)
10:10 pm	Mass Effect, CRPGs and Me Mass Effect, CRPGs and Me Mass Effect came highly recommended by several friends. Hell, one friend liked it so much he went to work for the company that made it. However I've never really warmed to CRPGs so it was not until it became available for a fiver that I decided to give it a shot. I've been trying to like CRPGs pretty much ever since I discovered traditional tabletop RPGs, way back at the tail end of the '80s while on holiday near Arisaig. The Bard's Tale was the first CRPG I bought but didn't take to and others followed, with Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights sticking in my mind as games I tried but just couldn't like. Along the way, there have been exceptions. I enjoyed Final Fantasy VII, Septerra Core and now Mass Effect. Mass Effect was not without its irritations though, which has led me to start considering what aspects of CRPGs I like and which annoy me. I think one fundamental problem I have with CRPGs is that I expect them to be like (tabletop) RPGs and they're not. The CRPGs I've liked have been those which I have not attempted to treat as if I am playing a regular RPG where the GM and the other players are hiding behind my monitor. Final Fantasy VII and Septerra Core both felt as closely related to Lucasarts-style adventure games as RPGs. Sure there were fights, stats and inventory systems to deal with but they never pretended that you were role-playing your own custom character or had much control over your destiny (except whether or not you survived the numerous fights). I was playing a character that had been defined along with the plot I was experiencing. The interest was in seeing how the plot unfolded and affected my character, not in deciding how I would navigate the plot and deciding how my character would interact with it. Mass Effect is a more traditional CRPG than these other two. However as it uses a very FPS-like combat system it could often feel as much like a shoot 'em up as a CRPG. In other CRPGs I never really appreciated the simulation of a tabletop RPG's roll to hit, roll to damage mechanic. Clicking on a monster and waiting until its hit points or those of my character run out is not much fun, nor particularly immersive. Instead of being bored by combat, combat in Mass Effect was generally fun. Mass Effect did highlight one other major issue I have with CRPGs and it's to do with time and causality. It is exemplified by what two friends both said about how they played the game. The initial stages of the game are fairly linear and set up the main plot. Mass Effect has a space opera-style science fiction setting so needless to say, the fate of the galaxy is at stake. Once this is set up you are given a spaceship and left to your own devices. There are three or four planets you can visit that are connected to the main plot but there is a whole galaxy of other planets out there, too (well maybe a couple of dozen or so you can actually visit). To paraphrase, both friends said "When I got in the spaceship, I totally ignored the plot worlds and concentrated on side quests in order to level up a bit". This, I gather, is what you do in CRPGs. Who cares if the fate of the galaxy lies in your hands? There's levelling to do! I think it comes down to the old accusation that CRPGs suffer from linear plots. By making loads of side quests available and not requiring you to approach the plot worlds in a particular order, Mass Effect can claim to be non-linear and open. Unfortunately this approach feels fake to me and reduced my immersion in the game and its plot, even as I succumbed to it. I was no longer Commander Shepard, on a desperate mission to save the galaxy from an ancient menace. I was back to being plain old me, playing a computer game by exploring every bit of it that I could access. You see, it doesn't matter how long you take on side quests, the plot worlds will still be waiting for when you get round to them. Neither does it matter whether you go to plot world A first, or plot world B. The plot on each planet is almost entirely unaffected by what has already been done and what has not yet been done. Whenever you go to planet A you'll encounter bad guy X. Whenever you go to planet B you'll encounter NPC Y. If you spend half a year bumming around the known galaxy, bad guy X will still be on planet A when you finally visit. You may not have to play through the game in a linear order but the order you choose to play it has little or no bearing on what you encounter. Additionally, even though the game presents itself as allowing you to choose how your character interacts with their environment throughout the game, most of the time the effects are all very similar, irrespective of what your character chooses to do to cause them. While I also had some more implementation-specific issues with Mass Effect (annoying loading/cut scenes and poor inventory management, mainly), this I think was the main CRPG issue I had with it. Like I said, the combat was entertaining enough that I could put up with it but I still wish it could be done better. I understand that heavily divergent branching plots would be a nightmare to implement on a large scale in any computer game. However I think that it must be possible to at least give a stronger feeling of narrative causality than Mass Effect manages. If you leave visiting planet A too long you may find that bad guy X has already left for planet B in order to torment NPC Y. Alternatively visiting planet A early on may catch bad guy X unawares, allowing you to prevent them from unveiling their sinister scheme on planet C later on in the game. Personally, I'd be willing to live without quite so many side quests if I felt that the manner in which I approached the main plot had some real affect on how it played out. Mass Effect is a step forward for CRPGs, at least from my perspective. However I still think they've got a way to go before they really live up to the expectations that I have due to them having "RPG" in the genre's name... Current Mood: calm Current Music: TV on the Radio, Stork & Owl (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 9th, 2008
10:17 pm	Have you ever wanted to be in a band? If so, reading The Spirit Speaks may make your humdrum, non rock 'n' roll life seem like a better idea after all. The Spirit of Love is the keyboard player for Alabama 3 and while his intermittent blog posts are always very entertaining to read, they are also very good at getting over the fact that being in a touring band is not a good place to be if you want to stay healthy in mind and body... Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008
11:09 pm	The Watchmen - Trailer Here it is. From what I can tell from viewing a quicktime movie, it's a little more hyper-real in appearance than I'd have hoped for. Not surprising I suppose, as it proudly proclaims its from the director of 300, but I'd have thought the comic's low-fi visuals would translate best as something a bit more realist. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
11:07 pm	Chop chop busy busy work work bang bang! Friends may remember me mentioning an advert from my childhood, which involved a factory full of penguins saying the mantra "Chop chop, busy busy, work work, bang bang". They probably also remember looking at me askance when I mentioned this and questioning not only the accuracy of my memory, but also my sanity. Well, thanks to the power of teh Internets, I have found evidence it existed. I had even correctly remembered that it was an ad for British Telecom - a quick Google suggests I therefore remembered it more accurately than most folks who remembered the phrase. Current Mood: vindicated (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, February 1st, 2008
8:14 pm	I despair As is usual when I am at work, today I went to the local Greggs for lunch. As I was waiting for my tuna roll to be made up, a woman came in with a young boy (presumably her son). She indicated that he could have one of the sweet goods on display. The boy pointed to a strawberry jam doughnut with pink icing. In reply, the woman said, and I wish I was making this up... "You can't have that one. It's pink. You're a lad. You're not a poof." In case anyone present thought this was some odd joke, she proceeded to point to all of the available doughnuts, muffings and other assorted sweet baked goods, telling him that he could have any of these, but not the pink doughnut. He could have had a yellow one, if one had been available, but not a pink one, because he was a boy. I think I was a little stunned. It was the sort of dialogue I might have expected in an episode of Life on Mars, but not in real life. Beyond the sheer stupidity of it, I couldn't help but wonder how she could be certain that this 5 year old boy was straight? Or did she actually think that eating some pink icing could influence the boy's sexuality? Current Mood: aghast Current Music: Wilco, Company In My Back (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
8:47 pm	http://www.0pornos.com/? Are you kidding me? I'm a moderator for a mountain biking forum. One of my main duties is to filter genuine membership requests from those being made by spammers. Frankly, if I just deleted every new membership request, I'd be right 95% of the time or so. Around 10 spammer accounts get created each day. A vanishingly small amount of these spammer accounts could be confused with genuine membership requests. For a forum dedicated to mountain biking in Scotland we get a surprising number of membership requests from directors located in Canada who enjoy snowboarding. Still, even amongst all the blatantly spambot-generated membership requests, those who list their home page as http://www.0pornos.com/ (I am not going to hyperlink to that) take the biscuit. Really! Could they at least fucking try? Current Mood: irritated (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
10:06 pm	The Clown Prince of Time? I have until now left the Doctor Who blogging to Dr Sordid and craigoxbrow, but The Sound of Drums finally got me to open my mouth. While I have fond memories of watching Doctor Who as a child, I was never the dedicated fan that others were. So compared to some I haven't been too upset by some of what Russel T Davies has done to turn the show into what he and the BBC reckons a 21st century audience expects it to be. I didn't agree with it all but generally mostly it's produced decent enough TV. Turning The Master into The Joker though is just not on. Unlike the Doctor, the Master's portrayal has previously been somewhat consistent across regenerations. Turning him into a capering trickster (albeit a sociopathic, megalomanical capering trickster) just doesn't sit well with me. This feeling of wrongness only intensified when I watched the Doctor Who Confidential that accompanies The Sound of Drums. I'm not sure if I'd ever actually seen Roger Delgado's portrayal of the Master, but the clips of him on Confidential presented a Master I much preferred to the new one. For me, one of the reasons that the Master is scary is because he is in control. Lunatics are scary because around them, nothing is predictable, or under control. These two impressions do not sit well together. The reasons given for the Master's new behaviour were unconvincing too - apparently he's always been insane. So why has he only now started acting all manic and gurning? It is particularly galling to have this not-at-all-like-the-Master interpretation of the Mast served to us when in the previous series an impressively Master-like villain got crammed into an episode that really had too much stuff going on for its 45 minutes run-time. Tony Head made a great Master, unfortunately he was playing a Krillitane (actually you could argue that John Simm's Master would have been fine as some other villain, but I digress). I could even have forgiven him for not having a goatee. (Is that really how you spell goatee? Wikipedia thinks it is, anyway.) Derek Jacobi seemed to be doing OK without one too, come to think of it. But then he didn't have to do a song and dance routine. The thing is, despite my irritation about this, I'm aware that to an extent, Russel T Davies and the rest of the production crew had an impossible task. My impressions of the Master are based of a few fuzzy memories of those old Doctor Who stories that I saw that contained him, and a lot of projection. Every other old-timer Doctor Who fan will have remembered him in a slightly different way. For example, siliconowl's ideal Master would probably be camper than mine. There's no way that the Master could return and be right for everyone, especially when he would have to be right for all the people who have not seen Doctor Who before. However, I'm not sure the production team's done themselves any favours by changing the character so much. So basically, there's not actually much point to this post except to bitch about how The Master should not be The Joker and to generally sound like an old curmudgeon. Bah. Current Mood: grumpy (Comment on this)
Friday, June 15th, 2007
7:34 pm	I thought that in lieu of ever actually having something bloggish that I wanted to say, I could try posting some of the gaming ideas I've had. Random RPG-related ideas still strike me occasionally. Sadly I am rarely able to force them into something that would give me the will or the confidence to actually GM something, so they usually at most get stored away on a hard drive and forgotten about. Maybe by posting them some good will come of them. I'll start off with a couple of special items for Feng Shui. It once occurred to me that while the Shadowfist CCG and the Feng Shui backstory both contain magical artifacts and whatnot, none have really turned up in the game itself. At least not in the adventures I've played, nor the game books I've read. What I ended up creating aren't really magic items per se, but they are special and unique and they could add a little bit of flavour to a Feng Shui game. The Twin Dragons Backstory A pair of Colt M1911A1s, each detailed with dragons etched along their barrels and down their handles. The Dragons' eyes are picked out in jade. In recent years the guns have been stored in a sombre black briefcase, along with 2 clips of ammunition for each gun. These guns belonged to a near-legendary postwar hitman. He disappeared mysteriously in the late 1950s, though his infamy has lived on, along with stories of his pistols, the Twin Dragons. A person can use the Twin Dragons for one 'hit'. During a hit, the guns are deadly; a perfect pair of pistols. Countless bodyguards have fallen before them and they have signaled the end for mob bosses, gang leaders, Secret Warriors, monsters and even ghosts. After the hit is complete, their wielder must pass the guns on to another, or they will suffer terrible misfortune for as long as the continue to possess the guns. No-one except their original owner can ever use the guns for more than one hit. Rules If a character with a Guns AV of 13 or higher gets their hands on the Twin Dragons, they function as normal M1911A1 pistols until the character picks a specific target. The target need not be present and can be vaguely defined as long as the target is unambiguous. For example, the target could be "Freddy Cheng", or it could be "Whoever masterminded the attack on our Feng Shui site". In any fight directly related to taking out the target, the pistols gain some special abilities when used together: They count as Signature Weapons, each inflicting +3 damage. They take out unnamed characters on an outcome of 4 or more. They give their wielder 3 schticks in Both Guns Blazing. If their wielder already has schticks in Both Guns Blazing, this will not raise their number of such schticks above 3. They can damage *anyone*. Damage Immunity: Bullets has no effect. It is up to the GM to decide which fights these benefits are awarded, but they should be directly connected to taking out the target. For example, fighting a bunch of mooks who know where the target is doesn't count but fighting a bunch of mooks guarding the entrance to the target's base does if he is at home. After the target is killed or the character declares they no longer intend to kill the target, the character must quickly give the twin dragons to another character. If they do not, all characters they fight gain a +5 bonus to their AVs against the character and the character suffers any other misfortunes the GM can dream up. The definition of "quickly" is again up to the GM. They shouldn't have to hand them to the first passing person as soon as they drop the target, but hanging onto them when they have met plenty of people who could accept the pistols is unacceptable. Doc's Lucky Gun Backstory This gun is a .380 detective's special, well used, its wooden grip worn by a multitude of palms. As these things go it is an unremarkable looking weapon. The only way to distinguish it from countless other similar firearms are its obvious age, a filed hammer and the inscription "H. Lloyd" discretely etched into the weapon on one side of its barrel. The history of Doc's Lucky Gun is far less well known than that of most legendary weapons. It is thought likely that H. Lloyd was the titular Doc, the original owner of the gun, but no-one really knows for sure. As many of its subsequent owners seem to have led rather short and unfortunate lives after taking the gun into their possession, it is likely that its first owner started this trend rolling. Doc's Lucky Gun is a fearsome weapon and it has brought about many a person's doom. Those who have wielded it have described it as almost eager to be used, keen to jump out of its holster and into its wielder's hand at the slightest provocation. Unfortunately, while deadly, the gun is not too picky about who it shoots and it has gained as fearsome a reputation as a source of 'friendly fire' as it has for its deadliness to its wielder's enemies. Rules Doc's Lucky Gun counts as a Signature Weapon, inflicting +3 damage compared to a regular detective's special. Doc's Lucky Gun takes out unnamed characters on an outcome of 4 or more. As long as the wielder is using Doc's Lucky Gun it grants its wielder the equivalent of 2 levels of the gun schitck Fast Draw. If the wielder already has schitcks in Fast Draw this will not raise their number above 2. While it is in their possession, whoever wields Doc's Lucky Gun has their Fortune stat reduced by 2. This Fortune penalty applies until someone else chooses to wield Doc's Lucky Gun. Throwing it away or hiding it in a closet does not stop the bad luck, somebody else has to pick it up. If the wielder of Doc's Lucky Gun fails an attack roll while using it, call for a Fortune Check, difficulty 0. If this roll fails Doc's Lucky Gun will shoot a friend of the wielder (or a bystander) determined by the GM with an outcome equivalent to the negative of the outcome from the Fortune check. Credit Where Credit's Due Doc's Lucky Gun is largely a creation of bozobaggins, though another friend, Bruce, actually played the titular Doc. My contribution was to GM the chaos that Doc's Lucky Gun caused, and to realise that it could be happily transferred from Call of Cthulhu to Feng Shui. Current Mood: lethargic Current Music: Rats, Pearl Jam (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
8:53 pm	His Life in Serious Organised Crime Mark Thomas: My Life in Serious Organised Crime was the funniest thing I've listened to in ages. Go download it and listen to it before Radio 4 take it offline - which may be on Thursday, so hurry! Current Mood: sore (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
12:16 pm	In the news today... A collosal squid's been landed by fisherman near New Zealand. This enormous cephalopod is roughly 10 metres long (though the little graphic at the bottom of the BBC story seems to suggest it's about twice that length) and a whopping 450kg in weight. Cthulhu is going to be mighty annoyed when his cousin doesn't ever return from his trip to the shops... Mind you, if Cthulhu spends the next handful of years plotting his revenge before attacking humanity, we'll be able to fight him off with lasers. Rock! Current Mood: Fed (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
12:51 pm	I expected more bureaucracy I phoned the speed camera people today. In the second of two short conversations, I was informed that a police officer had reviewed the photo taken by the speed camera and had concluded that it was not a picture of my car. Presumably it's entirely the wrong model, or they took me at my word that my car has a tow hook and is a different colour to the colour of the photographed car as it was described to me. Anyway, a letter has been posted to me, which apparently apologises for the inconvenience and confirms that no further action will be taken against me. This is all very much a relief for me. While I knew I had not been speeding down that road on that day, I expected a Brazil-esque journey through bureaucracy or the legal system in order to get the speed camera people/police to agree... Current Mood: fed (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 11th, 2007
12:54 pm	My Magical Car Apparently, while I was at work two Fridays ago, my car started itself and went for a drive! How do I know this? Because the following Friday I got a notice of intention to prosecute due to a speed camera getting my car on the A68 on the morning of the 2nd of Feburary. This I find odd as: I haven't driven on the A68 since June last year. I was at work at 10:21 on the 2nd of February. Hell, I even cycled to work that day! Anyway, the lovely letter I've been sent doesn't actually tell you what to do to contest one of these things. I get three options: Admit it was me, tell them who it was, or tell them who I've sold my car to. So what's the procedure for actually saying "you've got it wrong!"? The one bit I know is that I can make an appointment to see the relevant photo at their offices. I was vaguely under the impression I was supposed to be sent a copy, but apparently I'm wrong about that. So tomorrow I'll phone them up and try and work out what to do next. Hopefully the method for contesting this will be fairly straightforward. If I'm lucky the camera caught an obviously different car with a similar number plate that it mis-read. If I'm unlucky the cars could be very similar or worse still, someone for some reason could have 'cloned' my car. Anyway I will try and keep my blog updated as to how this progresses. Current Mood: Thirsty Current Music: Paint it Black, The Rolling Stones (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007
10:48 pm	Bikes. Everywhere. So last week, I got my new bike. Because the bike's arrived ahead of the lock I've ordered for it, it's having to live in my flat, instead of secured to the ground anchor in my shed. But then again, it's not like I haven't had a bike in my flat before. This morning, my commuter bike's freehub froze while I was riding to work, about a mile from home. This meant that I could no longer pedal. Arse. An often suggested method for unfreezing a freehub is to, ah, relieve oneself on it. However I was on a busy street with an empty bladder, so instead I elected to push my bike home. By the time I'd changed and grabbed my car keys, the freehub had defrosted, but I was no longer in my cycling kit. Hmm. I guess my commuter will be sleeping in the flat too. Two bikes up here is a bit of a pinch, but not impossible. On Thursday, siliconowl will be coming round for roleplaying. He's likely to cycle here, which means there'll be three bikes trying to fit into my hallway. That could be tricky... Current Mood: thirsty Current Music: State of Love and Trust, Pearl Jam (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 19th, 2006
8:24 pm	Change is Possible! That's what the machine in the NCP car part said last night. Including the exclamation mark. I know that it actually meant that we would get change if we overpaid for parking, but as someone who generally finds change very hard work, I found it amusingly encouraging. Current Mood: okay (Comment on this)
Monday, September 25th, 2006
7:45 pm	Were you, like me, told as a child that if you dug a hole all the way through the earth you'd end up in Australia? Apparently Americans are told they'll end up in China, but you get the idea. Well sadly freakcrab has blown a hole through that childish misconception, by sending me a link to DigHoles.com. Thanks to this interesting use of Google's mapping technology I now know that were I, no matter where I was in the UK, to dig a hole through the centre of the Earth, I'd end up in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere south of New Zealand. Anyone digging such a hole from Australia would end up in the Atlantic Ocean. Some Spaniards are luckier and would make it to New Zealand but for most of us it'd be a watery experience. If we weren't fried to a crisp due to all the molten hot stuff that resides inside the Earth, that is. Any Falkland Islanders looking for an unconventional way to escape their sheep and penguin-filled homelands could tunnel their way to the China/Russia border. I think that a plane to Blighty would probably be a better idea, on balance. Current Mood: rushed Current Music: Some Sweet Day, Sparklehorse (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006
11:37 pm	Crappy book meme bozobaggins has tagged me for a meme. Because it is a thought-free way to get my blog updated, I thought I'd do it. So, here's the meme: Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest. Tag five people. OK, so here's what we get: (Sea trading requires the Astronomy advance, and Ocean trading requires Magnetism or Navigation.) These connections are affected by enemy territory. One last thing deserves mention. You can trade strategic resources and luxuries with other civilizations, but only if their capital is included in a trade network with your capital. Oddly enough, the closest books to my PC appear to be manuals for complex games. The manuals for simple games being booklets. Consider yourself tagged if you're reading this and you haven't done this meme already. I'd be quite surprised to discover that there's more than five qualifying people out there... Current Mood: tired Current Music: Teamspeak chatter (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
9:27 pm	When people get in the way of politics The Register has an article about Masood Khan, and how he's going to save the Internet. It's uplifting to hear that sometimes politicians and diplomats can be coaxed around all the political issues that often seem to stop things getting done. Mind you it doesn't sound like much is going to be achieved anytime soon, but at least things are moving. In addition, wouldn't it be nice if it were something like world peace rather than Internet governance? Still, something's better than nothing. Current Mood: tired (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2005
10:19 am	Shadowrun in a nutshell From this RPGnet review of Shadowrun's fourth edition: SR4 is a game in which, by default, Players will play Shadowrunners, who are Horrible People that Shoot People Right in the Face for Money. They will form Extravagant Plans, something will go Completely Wrong, but they will Improvise and get Paid Anyway. The Shadowrunners will then Fence the Loot to feed their Crippling Drug Addictions that they acquired so that they would have the build points to better Shoot People Right in the Face. I think that sums up Shadowrun pretty well. Well actually the few times I played it I don't remember any PCs having Crippling Drug Addictions but that may be because only the fourth edition has merits and flaws as part of the core rules... Current Mood: Monday morning (2 Comments |Comment on this)