wyatt1048

It's been a bad few days. We've got neo-nazis walking the streets of England, an MP murdered then immediately forgotten about, the economy collapsing and the Union tearing itself apart. Take note, America: this is what happens when you let the far right nationalists take control.

It's difficult to pick out what the worst part of this is. Is it the close margin? Is it the reaction of people who voted leave and then promptly said they regret it? It's probably the the massive upswing in blatant racism that's everywhere that's the worst, but the most frustrating is the complete lack of plans on the part of the Leave campaign. The Remain camp didn't make any plans on principle, but the Leave refused to. Just plain refused.

I think they didn't expect to win, so didn't bother to think what might happen. It's all down to the negotiations, the the EU trying to make it as painful as possible to prevent anyone else thinking of leaving. Our main tax source, the banks, is falling apart as some companies plan to leave, so when professional buffoon Boris Johnson gets in, he'll captiulate to them to keep them in the country while causally insulting the europeans, I expect. It's not looking good.

I don't know just how badly this is going to affect me. My company has a lot of business in European contries, but also a lot in China and the USA, so we might survive. It all depends on what the actual arrangement for leaving is - and that won't even start for months, until we have a new Prime Minister, leading to a lot of uncertainty, and the crashing markets that brings.

The only good thing that could possibly come out of this is being able to point at the far right and say: "This? This is all your fault."

Sir Terry Pratchett died today.

The first time I was handed a Pratchett book (Weird Sisters) was before I had seen the scottisish play, so the references went completely over my head. I could see there was something funny there, but I simply didn't have the knowledge to understand it. A few years later, I picked up one of the earlier books in the Discworld series - and devoured the whole series up to Soul Music, which had just come out. And in it, there was a lot of stuff I didn't get - I was only 12 at the time - but when I didn't get a joke, I went out and found why the joke was funny, found the reference that made it make sense. Every book, there was something new I'd never considered. Something I learned from them.

Each time a new book came out, from then, I got the hardback, and stored it carefully - I still have them. I bought all the other Pterry books available, then started looking for the ones that aren't. I even managed to get a copy of The Hades Buisiness. Never seen one of the plays, though. I probably should.

So, yes, Sir Terry Pratchett had a huge impact on my life. His death today was a big shock. The thought that there's never going to be another Discworld book after The Shepard's Crown comes out is like a looming darkness - I'm going to take a long time to read that. His style of writing, the easy humour that turns your view on the world to a differen angle is something that no other writer I've read has managed to replicate. I'm going to miss that.

I think I'm going to go re-read some books.

Either the hard drive has gone, or it's the psu. It starts up, but powers off before boting completely. It also won't boot from cd, so I'm leaning more towards the psu. Oh well, it kind of needed to be rebuilt, anyway.

Since the Steam Sales (oh god I spent HOW MUCH it's supposed to be a sale and CHEAPER dammit) I've played through The Walking Dead and The Wolf Amongst us, the latest adventure games from Telltale. Actually I'm not even sure that they quite fall into the adventure genre: there will be absolutely no getting stuck until you've rubbed every item on every other item, and tried every possible combination of verbs available on the skeleton statues, because the puzzles are short to non existent. No, these are all about the character interactions and how they melodramatic they can get in reaction to your choices.

First off: I'm probably going to sound as if I'm criticizing the games (and the format), so I have to say that I enjoyed playing these games, and would recommend them as enjoyable in themselves, as well as being useful experiments on the format of story delivery in interactive media. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way: The big problem with these games is the lack of effect your actions really have. Throughout, you are told that your actions are having a big effect on the world, but if you play through twice, you still end up in the same place, with the same characters living and dying. If you have the choice between saving one or the other, you can be sure whoever you save won't have much impact. Successfully save someone? Well, they'll be dead soon anyway. Nothing you do really changes the plot.

That's another problem: the story must move constantly forward, because these aren't really games that you play, they are shows that you watch, occasionaly making some input. Good shows, compelling and well written, to be sure, but a show nonetheless. The quicktime events are especially grating: these are success / failure states, where success means more of the story, and failure means doing it again. They are rather frustrating, but it's a case of limited interactivity, or no activity at all. Every now and again, there is an interesting take on the formula - like the babysitter zombie in Clemantine's house, where it only take two hammer hits to kill it, but there's so much time available that you can keep smashing away until there's nothing but a pulp left. You have to question: do you go for overkill, and if so, why? Panic? To be sure it's dead? Venting anger?

In a way, that is the great strength of the format. Because you don't have a huge amount of control over the character's actions as events overtake them, what you do control are their motivations. The player characters are well defined in most cases; you can be sure that Lee is never going to toss Clem to zombies for a distraction, and Bigby is never going to tear out Snow's throat. However, within the limits of how they are, you can still choose the reason they act the way they do. Basically, these are analysis simulators: you get to decide what is driving them, not what they do. Perhaps that's part of the reason these games are loved by reviewers, who love to analyze things deeply.

In summation: enjoyable games, with a heavy dependance on a scripted narrative.

The UK's porn filter has been up for what, maybe a week? And already they've started blocking political websites. The ones that have been blocked, though? Both Lib Dem and Conservative (Boris Johnson is a big name Con). Given that both these parties are in the government that set up this filter, and they are both targetted by it, the conclusions we can draw is that the technical people behind it either really don't want to be working on it, or are totally incompetent. No doubt we'll find out which soon enough.

The ride back and forth to work is knackering me. I swear, I used to be able to cycle that far and then actually carry on, but by the time I get home in the evening I'm worn out and not good for anything. It's pretty depressing.

My new flat, however, should be much closer, so I should have a lot more energy once the sale is done. That is moving along with the typical slowness of bureaucracy, although I have been told that the seller has found a place to move into that's already empty, so it should go (comparatively) quickly. No news on the final date, of course.

I bought a new car - about two weeks ago, now, it's been a long time since I posted. It's a Ford Fiesta, and a 1.4 5-door rather that the 1.2 3 doors I've had in the past. It's still a little cramped in the back, but simply being able to get in and out means it's a lot bigger. The extra engine size makes it a lot more nippy than the Corsa was. I managed to get a reasonable price for the Corsa as well, a thousand pounds, which is far more than I was expecting given that it's only a matter of time before the engine frags itself. I did explain how much damage there was in there, so they can't blame me when it does.

Also? I've put an offer in on a place, and it got accepted! It's on a flat rather than a house, and it's at the upper end of what I can afford, but still within my price range. The block is a newer block, and the flat itself is very well maintained and big inside - most new builds (flat or house) tend towards the tiny box rooms due to the British obsession with having more rooms, not usable rooms. I've never lived in a flat, so this should be interesting.

So now it's back to the waiting game. I'm not sure what's worse, having something to do that I can mess up, or having nothing to do and having to blame someone else when something goes wrong.

Probably the second, because then you've got someone to swear at.

My parent's dog had her puppies!

Eleven of the little squirmy fuzzy worms.

...The poor girl. Apparently, she is exhausted, as you might expect, but she and all the pups are doing well. It's her first litter, so the guide dog people are watching over her very carefully to see how good a mother she is. Hopefully I'll have a few photos to stick up next weekend.

Car has gone from bad to worse. What started out as an electrical fault became a water pump problem, which became a head gasket problem, and apparently the timing belt needs changing as well. Next the wheels will fall off when they try to drive it out of the garage.

Just after I make a post about how powerless I feel in the whole house buying process, I find out that the deal has fallen through. After another week of silence from the estate agent, I rang them up, and got told that the seller is pulling out. Apparently, they hadn't even considered whether they would have enough of a deposit to buy a new place once they sold this - and they didn't; at least not for the size of house they needed. I have no idea how they afforded that place. Presumably it's mortgaged to the hilt.

What really galls me is that they were scrabbling around for cash for weeks. That's weeks of fucking about while I waited to hear from them, pissing about while I sat on my arse and worried. Plus, there's a time limit on the mortgage offer, so that's got closer to running out.

I'm shy of a thousand pounds out, too. Not all of it is completely wasted: the solicitor is still hired, the mortgage arranged, but the survey and electrician money is lost (hey, at least I don't have to get the wiring fixed). Strangely, I'm less angry about that than I am about the time lost.

Still, it goes to show how impotent the buyer is when buying a house. I pay out, and get nothing in return, just because he was an idiot that couldn't work out how much money he had.