Completionist

  I"m getting close to finishing as much of Skyrim as I can. I've done so much in that game it is kind of incredible that it is all in one game. I think my current stats are at something like 128 quests completed, 250 miscellaneous tasks completed. I'm the boss woman of pretty much every guild and/or group in the game that you can be. Still though I can't help the nagging feeling that I've missed something. I really don't like feeling like I didn't see everything when I play a game. Some games force you to make a choice and that I'm ok with since I'll just play through another time and try the other choice. But if there is something I missed completely or can't do due to some arbitrary restriction (or in the case of Skyrim a bug.....) then I get annoyed. There should be no impediment to getting the most out of a game. I spend a reasonable amount of money on gaming and I want to get every last drop I can out of it, especially if I really enjoy the game.

  I don't know if this is a good thing or not. I can spend hours just trying to do one little thing in a game just so I can say I've done it and seen it. To me this is just what you do. It can mean I spend a huge amount of time doing something though when I could be playing something else and getting more stuff per hour as it were playing something else. This is my dilemma, how do I balance my need to see everything with my need to try other things as well. I've resigned myself to the fact that the videogame industry is so big now I'll never be able to see it all like I could back in the 80s. Somewhere within me though I still want to take as much of it in as I can.

  The really strange thing to me is that this kind of do everything is very enjoyable to me and I don't know why. Why does getting every last doo dad and widget in a game satisfy me? Why do I obsess over it? Does it matter that I obsess slightly about it and how does it affect the other parts of my life? Does losing myself in a game like that make me a hermit or some kind of recluse? All of these are things to think about that I don't know the answer to or if there is even an answer.

  Still, I think I might actually finish playing Skyrim for a bit soon and move on to another game that I got for Christmas since I've now been playing this game for over a month (with a quick break to play through the great Uncharted 3). I want to at least finish the 3 other games I got and maybe even get everything in those as well.

Keep on trucking

  I took the car in for a service on Friday, it is at 242000 miles and needed to be checked out. The final result? It is still pretty much in total working order. After 8 years and that many miles there is still nothing wrong with it. The only things they found were normal wear and tear (brake pads, tyres) or stupid niggly things that don't affect the car itself (like the small shocks that no longer hold the bonnet up or the one that is meant to pull back the parking brake pedal (yes it's a pedal) that doesn't fully pull it up). All the important stuff though like the engine and drivetrain and wiring is all in working order. I can only hope that it keeps up like this for many more miles to come since I don't want to replace this vehicle any time soon and if we do it will be with something that is equally capable of towing our caravan.

  In other important news I have a delicious muffin and lovely bap to eat today. My wife did some baking at the weekend using a brand of flour that we found recently. All her previous efforts didn't come out quite right but just by changing to this flour everything is coming out perfect. It is amazing the end effect using crappy mass produced supermarket flour has on baking. Of course with my wife's careful eating she can't eat half the things she makes but I am definitely going to benefit from all this :) .

  The final piece of news, I wish we had the ability to have and support more cats in our lives. I was at the pet shop this weekend picking up some biscuits for Daisy (she really likes one type of one brand) and as usual looked over the pets for adoption (the very same place we got Lucy and Daisy). In there were two absolutely lovely siamese kittens that had to be about 8 weeks old. They looked very like Fudge at a younger age. They were so lovely I had to take a quick video and send it to my wife who promptly ordered me to bring them home. I really wish I could since having cats around, despite the odd bit of annoyance, is a wonderful part of our lives. One day I hope we are in a position to have more than 4 cats (which is a fair bit of work but so worth it).

One more song

  I've been listening to random youtube songs of stuff while I work. I find it helps block out the noise of people around me and allows me to think properly. One I came across was this one from Assassins Creed II, the points in the game where this is used are very well done and suit the story points you reach very well. As a game it has music that matches the style and period of the game incredibly well. Ah Ezio, such a dude.

3 to go

  I got my 1997th trophy in a PS3 game last night. That leaves only 3 more until I hit 2000. That is a lot of game playing that I've enjoyed and I'm not sure exactly what trophy I get will push me over the edge. It is a strange thing really, these trophies don't mean anything but they are a virtual form of bragging, as in "I have done this much" or "I actually did this in a game". Despite that I'm kind of proud of what I do have. I've done a few things in games that the majority of people haven't actually done (confirmed this by pulling stats from giantbomb.com which tracks this kind of thing), it makes me feel special in a weird kind of way.

  You could argue that in the end none of this means anything in the "real world". To me though this is part of my world. It may just be a simple bit set in a piece of data in a computer but it is still something that shows what I have done with some of my life that I have a way of showing other people. They may not care about it but it is my way of showing who I am. Or at least one of my ways given that not many people read this blog which is another form of self expression for me.

  I have no problem with how people express who they are most of the time. The only time it grates me is if you force it on me. I may not like it, may think it is stupid and may even actually agree with some of it. Just don't try to make me be part of it. Religion is a big part of that for some people. I'm an atheist in the truest sense, I've never believed in any power other than the fact that the physical world exists and works in a certain why. It also works in a certain way for a reason and slowly we are discovering those reasons. The amount of strife in the world just from groups of people forcing other groups of people to believe in something that is purely fictional is fucking stupid and downright destructive. Let people be who they are as long as they don't infringe on how other people want to be and live.

  Huh, all that from me getting slightly excited over a number going up to a value that only has meaning because we use base 10 arithmetic due to us having 10 fingers. Way to go brain wandering all over the place.

Bloody good food

  Here is a conundrum. Why does food that tastes so bloody good have to be so bad for you in anything other than tiny quantities. Last night for dinner we had leftover pie, a delicious home made steak and ale pie. There were a few vegetables in it but the main ingredients were meat, ale and other flavourings. Not to mention lovely puff pastry that is full of fat. It was so good we had nothing else with it since it didn't need it. When my wife cooks the results are always incredibly tasty, she has a knack for putting together incredibly tasty food.

  I've put on a little weight recently mainly due to eating food that is too tasty if that is such a thing. I've tried not eating so much that is bad for me but with the other stress at the moment I keep eating bad things. I know I feel better when I eat better but it is another hard thing to do and letting this slack a little is easier when trying to deal with all the other things in my life.

  Speaking of which I really don't have much time right now so I'm going to cut this post short and get back to work so I can get back home to my wife.

Self doubt

  I'm filled with self doubt at the moment. I'm coming up to a deadline at work and I'm not sure I'll get it done. It may be the opposite of an effect I learned about recently (see this link for an explanation of it) but for once I don't feel like I'm going to get this done on time. It is a combination of things, the work is incredibly dull, not something I enjoy, in a product area that was obsolete ten years ago but is still used in less developed parts of the world and is something that I'm one of the few people in the company who actually understands.

  I've never had much self confidence (the result of being a shy child I suspect) but I know I can be good at things. But then I get to things like this and I freeze up. I see all the pitfalls before me and rather than deal with them simply sit here and do nothing which simply makes the situation worse. I've done this so many times in my life but rarely pull myself out of it.

  There are other areas in my life where this same thing applies although in those at least I'm trying. I do not know with any surety that I'll be able to move my wife and I to another house that we can live happily in. I don't know if we can afford it or if I can earn enough money to get away from where we are. Even at the age I am I still feel like that unsure scared quiet little boy I was growing up.

  I know I can't just run away and hide from this pressure, that will never work. In the end though I feel like relieved but downtrodden once I've gotten through these things. Life is not always pleasant and too often I try to hide from those parts of it. I just wish I had the confidence and strength to do what needs to be done without all this doubt. But then again is having the doubt itself a sign of that I need to improve at what I do? See, even in this simple thing I can't decide the right thing and end up just bouncing back and forth.

  One thing I do know though, I'm posting this post on my blog :| .

140 hours

  Take a guess what I've done for that amount of time. That is almost 6 days and will soon be more than that. The thing about it is that I am loving the time I'm doing this thing. If you know anything about me it is kind of obvious what this thing is but still. That is a lot of time.

  When I think about what I spend time doing I also think about something my wife said to me. She mentioned that we never get in to long discussions about things anymore. More than likely that is because we know each other so well and know exactly how the discussion would go. You know so much about how the other person thinks and how they communicate you end up just talking in sentences formed of a few words, effectively completing and filling in information in your head that ends up unsaid.

  I think being at that point in a relationship is somewhere everybody should be. To be so secure and understanding of each other that you can communicate without saying things. If you need to go in to detail about things you are doing it wrong, just a few words should be enough to describe anything to your partner. There is such a breadth of shared experience and knowledge that you can pull from that and the other person will know what you are talking about instantly.

Why me?

  I asked myself that question this morning when I got to work and found out I had to do something. Something annoying and not particularly difficult but it had to be done. The answer was obvious though, it is because I'm the only one capable of doing it and the only person actually in the office at that time of the morning.

  Generally this question, when it is really asked, the answer is already know. You are just complaining about the fact that you are doing this thing. It is normally because, like my example, you are the only one that can. Sometimes it is because you are the only one willing to do it. Sometimes it is because you are the one forced by someone who has more control over the situation to do something. There are a variety of reasons but it all boils down to frustration at having to do something you really don't want to.

  The reason you don't want to do it may vary. It may be incredibly boring. It may make you sad and unhappy having to do it. It may be physically unpleasant doing it. The list could go on.

  Most of these situations there is no choice but you still say "Why me?". I think the only thing you can do is get them over and done with and get back to something that is better. There's no point in dwelling on the crap, get back to the good things and enjoy them. That point of view might be because I'm usually slightly more optimistic than most people (even if I do downplay expectations sometimes) so I would rather see what I like about something than the things I don't like about it.

  I dunno where this is going, just a thought train that came in to my head after this morning. I'll leave it here I think and let whomever reads this use it as a way to think if they want. Then again you could ignore this completely because it is not something you enjoy and go to something you do actually enjoy.

Some music

  I listened to a podcast, as I usually do, on the drive to work this morning. In it they were covering some of the music in games that came out in 2011. It was an interesting thing to cover considering that when you say videogames most people assume it is a mostly visual entertainment medium. They think of what it looks like, maybe what the sound effects are but rarely of the music in it. True for a long time the machines that played videogames were simply not capable of generating what most people consider "normal" music. Chiptunes will never be considered mainstream music despite what vocal parts of the videogame community say.

  Anyway, due to this podcast I thought I would link some of the music (you'll note most of them don't have vocals, something that really doesn't work in videogames) that I thought stood out. I've not played all of these games but have heard the songs being linked. We have:

1. The main Skyrim theme I've linked to before.
2. The main piece of music for Deus Ex Human Revolution, a game I don't have and I'm not that interested in playing but it has a very cyberpunk style.
3. A piece of music written by Hans Zimmer of all people for Crysis 2.
4. The main theme from Batman Arkham City.
5. The unforgettable theme from all the Uncharted games that was used again in Uncharted 3.
6. The end song from Portal 2, not as unexpected and cool as the one from Portal but still worthwhile.

  That is about it for now, there are more but my youtube searchfoo is escaping me at the moment on what other songs I actually first heard last year. You get the idea though, a lot more effort is being put in to videogame music these days and it shows (ok, is audible).

Actually thinking

  I read something the other day complaining about the fact that information is easy to come by. There were some other arguments as well but that was where it all started. The basic premise was that older generations could remember exact details of something whereas younger generations could not. This was put forward as a bad thing (tm).

  I have a different opinion on this. I don't see this as a bad thing. The fundamental problem with the argument is that simply remembering facts is not a good thing. The good thing is being aware that the facts exist. I'm aware that there are lots of different species of dolphin but I could not name them all. If I needed to name them all I would research the information and discover it. I would also probably then promptly forget a lot of them but the sheer act of memorising them is not what is important.

  You don't get to think critically and expand your knowledge simply from remembering things. You get it from examining the ideas, finding out information about something so you can push deeper in to how to use that information. Knowing information is not enough, you have to know how to use that information. Being the greatest at trivia quizzes may be great but actually using that memory is a different thing.

  In my job there is a huge amount of information I need to be aware of. Take the current software product I'm working on. It has 2376 files. Most of those files have thousands upon thousands of lines of code. There is no way I can know where every function is and what exactly it does. If I need to find it there are quick and easy ways for me to find out where it is. If I need to find something that does a particular thing there are ways for me to find that too. However when it comes down to how to put all that together to do something I need to actually THINK. This is the practical implementation of the idea I'm trying to express here.

  We have an unwritten, although it should probably be formalised, rule here at work. If you find a way to do something that hasn't been done before document it. We have a wiki where this kind of information can live. Make it easy to find and describe the where, what, how and why of what you did. Then when someone else needs to do that kind of thing they already can find out how. They didn't need to remember every detail. I've done this, implemented something and then documented it. I've then come, years later, to use that thing again and not had to know it all by heart. I've been aware of it and through sharing that information allowed other people to be aware of it and be able to use it.

  When interviewing people here for a position we put them through a coding test. It is something every programmer type must do because when it comes down to it if you can't write code you are not going to be any good at actually doing the job. As part of that we set them a problem, with several known obvious solutions and ask them to write some code to solve it. You would think you would need to know the details of all of those solutions. But no. We also allow them unfiltered access to the internet and full coding language documentation. They don't need to remember any details at all, they simply need to be aware of the solutions and how they are used. We allow them to copy and paste code found on the internet (we keep a search history so we know where they have been) and as long as they use it correctly and aren't breaking any copyright or open source laws we allow it. We want people that know how to put a software product together, to use the various parts of it to make a good working useful product. Someone who can just regurgitate code at us is useless the vast majority of the time since they don't know why that code is just what it is.

  In the end you need to keep expanding what you know about so you can use it, think about it, explore it and in the end hopefully come up with something new. You can then add that something new to the knowledge of everybody who can use it to expand it further. This is how civilisation has grown, the sharing and further exploration of ideas not the simple remembrance of facts. When someone says to me "I don't know but I know how to find out" I generally have no problem with that. If they are aware of something and can find out details when they need to this is a good thing. There is too much in the world to simply remember it all, let alone be aware of it all but if you can increase what you are aware of without having to know all the minutiae you are doing the right thing.

LOUD

  They are testing the fire alarms at work here this morning. Unfortunately since I'm always in early I am always here when they do these. To give you an idea of how loud they are I took this video of it so you can understand why I currently have ear bud headphones in.

Getting away

  My wife and I need to get away from where we are. She needs it since the hell neighbours made our house somewhere she doesn't want to, actually can't, live. I want to so we can change our lives. Everything has become a trudge, there is no joy in the work I do, my wife hates being stuck where she is. It all pretty much gets us down.

  I'm not saying that we have a bad life, just that there are too many bad things that have happened over time it is hard to separate those memories from what is good about what we have. We had a nice dinner out last night at the local Mongolian bbq place but coming home seeing the dosshole next door that has been abandoned really brings up the crap that went on.

  If only I could find a way to take us away from all this and support us in what we want to do. There is a life we want to live but being able to live that life and afford what we need to live just from a basic food, housing and medication point of view is a hard balance to put together. We want to live somewhere out of the way but to do that we won't be able to get much of an income. Why I can't work mostly remotely with the way my job is I don't know but people still feel the need to be physically in the same place when they work. It is a hard thing to break people from doing, force them to adapt to new ways of working. This is especially true given the new tools and ways I work with my colleges. At least half of them are in different places in the country yet I'm stuck coming to this same office because of what I can only think of is tradition.

  It is the same short sighted, stuck in their ways, unimaginative leadership that sinks so many companies. They can't think of changing the way they do business or modifying what they do for things that are more efficient and productive. In the long run that leads to being more profitable and overall actually happy employees.

  So, if anybody out there can find a way for me to work at what I do while not being stuck where I am please speak up. We need to get away from where we are without destroying our lives in the process.

Freaking mother in law

  My wife spoke to her mother yesterday over Skype. Like me talking to my parents my wife talks to her mother weekly just to chat and keep in touch. Why my mother in law bothers I really don't know though. To sum it up you should not end up in tears when you finish talking to your family. This is the kind of person my mother in law is.

  She is totally unable to see anyone's point of view other than her own. She seems unable to talk about anything other than what is going on in her life and can't understand what happens to other people. It is supremely frustrating and all I can do is stay quiet. If I try to say something I'll end up on a rant about what a incredibly stupid person she is. She ended up bitter and angry after her divorce, my wife and I have now been married much longer than she ever was yet she still tries to give advice about living with someone.

  Living with my mother in law is an exercise in angry outbursts which seems to be the way she lives. She never has a kind word to say about anyone but can find some way to complain about anything and everything. I try to avoid interacting with her for this very reason, there's no point in living like that. You end up sad and grumpy, I would rather do things to be happy about than dwell on the bad like she has.

  So in case you are wondering why stereotypes exist you now know why. They do exist in real life as well and my wife and I seem to be living it.

Blurring together

  Today has been a bit of a blur. If pushed I couldn't distinguish today from any other day. I've been doing so much coding and dealing with a bug somewhere else today that I really don't remember much of today at all. When you get down to it you get a lot of those days in life which kind of sucks. You want to have them all mean something or be worthwhile. In the end though they all end up kind of the same and not that memorable.

  The good side to all this though is that I get to spend my days with my wife. If nothing else is ever worth it then I don't care because being with her is worth anything. She makes my days mean something and worth living. Everyone needs that kind of person in their life, if not all the time, then at least for as much of it as they can get.

  Enough pondering for now, I need to go write some more indescribable lines of code to do something obscure that nobody will ever realise is happening.

Writing sucks

  I've been doing pretty much nothing else at work other than writing design and functional specifications at work so far this year. It is annoying, awkward, nit-picky and not particularly fun. It is even more awkward when you consider that the only people to review it are my few peers at this company who generally don't have many suggestions to improve what I do. In the end it feels like a pointless waste of time but has to be done just in case someone needs to refer to the documentation later.

  Even writing this blog post is easier than writing technical specifications. They have to be exactly right otherwise they are useless and in the world of writing code some things can be extremely fluid. Coding is not an exact science. There are proven methods and ways to do things but knowing when and how to do these things is more of an art form. Having those moving, not always exact, functional pieces of code described in a permanent document is hard. I try to put just enough to understand what needs to be done without making it such that a monkey could sit down and write the code since what is the point of doing the document in that case?

  Still, they are all done now. Just need to get them reviewed and approved. In the mean time I'll be coding what they describe and hopefully won't need to change too much.

I am old

  I made a comment last night that made me realise I am old. My wife and I were watching an episode of Grimm and during part of it two dodgy brothers kidnap someone and hold them in their basement trying to find out if they killed their other brother. By the end of the episode though this sub-plot has been completely forgotten about and as far as the view knows this person is still tied up, bruised and battered, in this basement. I commented to my wife when the credits appeared that "what happened to that kid".

  Now the point to make here, which will clearly show I'm old, is that this "kid" had to be in his early 20s. It is because of this phrasing that my wife was initially confused as to my point until I added "you know, that kid in the basement". It then dawned on her that I was referring to someone just in to their 20s as a kid. Talk about joining the old man get off my lawn club in earnest. Pass me my zimmer frame and point me to the bingo hall.

Brain is stuck

  Finding it hard to get back in to the work mood. Having time off and being sick really got me out of the flow of working it seems. Not to mention the disruption of people being let go yesterday and the dealing with that. At least mister jesus hippie, no you don't refer to me as a "valuable resource" to my wife, was given the boot. That was the second best bit of news yesterday after the first one which I wont say what it was but it will make life a little easier from now on.

  Another reason why my brain is stuck is that damn game Skyrim. Spent a little more time playing it last night (after a nice celebratory dinner out with my wife, told you I had good news yesterday) and it really is rather good. Even the theme song is something to hum along to (although I don't quite think I can match the full 30 man choir singing) that suits it incredibly well. Roll on the next iteration of consoles that can run even more complex versions of games like this (hello Fallout 4 and whatever Elderscrolls 6 ends up being).

  Just need to wait out the next 30 minutes now until I get out of here (or there abouts) and go home back to where I should be with my wife. It is going to be even weirder next week when I actually do a full weeks worth of work. We shall see how much I actually get done.

Still around

  Yes I'm still around, just been busy/ill/doing other things for the last couple of weeks. Lets start with Christmas shall we, it was just before that that my wife came down with a cold. That necessitated some looking after of her and canceled going out to the cinema plans. Still by the time Christmas rolled around and we were planning on me cooking the Christmas dinner that she felt well enough to do most of it. Although with her being so organised most of the dinner was already prepared before the day and all that was left was turkey cooking, potato peeling and a little bit of arranging everything in the oven so it would fit. As usual my wife's cooking was splendidly scrumptious and wonderful. So good in fact that we had the very same dinner on boxing day.

  Anyway, Christmas was fun, food filled, loot filled and only slightly interrupted by parents/in laws and other relatives. It was a brief day of excess followed by more eating of nice stuff for the rest of the year. My father's birthday falls between Christmas and New Years so that required a quick Skype call on the day, and due to my works miserly attitude I had to work that week as well. Luckily with my job I can work from home so I did that which also mostly involved thinking about my design for my new project and keeping on top of any emails/IMs that came in. That made for an easier time of it. Oh and we applied for our US passports too. We had to cringe slightly at the appointment though when our nice new crisp naturalisation certificates were stapled through. I wanted to try and keep that pristine but for a passport the state department wants the original copy of the certificate.

  So after the father birthday I came down with a variation on the cold my wife had. No sniffles for me just a very sore throat and a general meh feeling. Fortunately that allowed us to skip out to the cinema to see the new Sherlock Holmes film (or was it Mission Impossible, although we may have watched that earlier, I forget, we watched both over the break). Unfortunately that meant I was down for the count and only actually came back to work today even though I was meant to go back to work on Tuesday. Good for me and my wife to spend time together, bad in that we were both sick.

  One accomplishment I did do was build my Lego Tower Bridge, a huge structure of 4287 pieces. I tried to get it finished last year but after 6 hours of continuous building on New Years eve in my ill state I just couldn't take anymore and had to give up. My wife, champion that she is, sat with me through all that. She also sat there while I finished it the next day, another 4 hours worth of building. The end result though is pretty impressive and looks really good. So many of the pieces though are only one or two bricks in size and the towers are so intricate in their construction.

  And I'm back although I doubt you would have noticed. Just got interrupted for a meeting at work where they announced they laid off some people. Mostly people involved in our federal business since the US government doesn't want to buy anything anymore. Now the company really is just behind the product I work on, it is growing and bringing in the expected money, it just needs to continue to do so.

  Where was I? Oh yeah New Years. Slackers that we are both my wife and I were in bed come actual midnight on New Years eve. Being ill really takes it out of you and we couldn't make it through.

  The rest of the time off was spent playing Skyrim for me with my wife watching. So far I've played an inordinate amount of that game, over 60 hours so far. The scary thing is I could easily go for another 100 or more and this is only with my first play through. I want to play it again, trying different things. There is just so much to do, you can wander around and run in to things to do, to see and to interact with (ok, mostly fight and kill) it is amazing how good Bethesda have gotten at making this type of game. It is also one of the few games that my wife doesn't mind (too much) sitting watching me play. She even can play it better than I can, when I get to something that gives me trouble she comes up with a strategy that works whereas I simply keep trying over and over sure I can get it to work and not die again. I did play some other games I got for Christmas over the break, even finishing Uncharted 3, but most of my time was spent wandering around Skyrim killing dragons.

  Then we come to yesterday, a day that last year I did something stupid. I was in a bad place mentally and hurt people around me. I can still see it clearly and don't think I'll ever forget it. I'm not going to repeat it all here since I've already documented it but it got my wife down a lot yesterday. I'm not sure how I can ever make up for it or get over it but there it is. Time to move on.

  Now for something happier, our super smart hamster Andy. We give her these yoghurt treats every so often. Within a few seconds of us putting one in her expansive habitat she will be out of her nest and sniffing around. Within a minute she will have found it and be happily munching away on it, she really can hunt them down quickly. Considering she is a small 2 inch hamster in a habitat that is something like 4 feet long and a foot or two tall with various tunnels and areas to explore she really is the expert in finding these things. It is nice to know we have another happy pet that we can look after now that we have 5 of them in the house.

  So there we go, a quick recap of the last bit of time. I should try and put more posts up here in the coming weeks and get back in to the habit of doing so. It helps me keep things in perspective in the long run. It also keeps my thoughts in order usually. Now if only I could get our hamster to be a little bit quieter running at night in her wheel, she can rattle that thing around like crazy once she gets going.

  Anyway, bye for now. I'm off to find some way to get a new job and/or more money and/or move us somewhere nicer than where we are. Until next time.

  *last minute update* Just got reminded about a couple of things (very important). We saw MI before Christmas and Sherlock after. There aren't you glad you know that now. Also I built another Lego set, a really cool looking Emerald Train which seems to have shot up in price now the Lego have stopped selling it. Grrr bloody "collectors".