Archives

The biggest problem with CW’s Batwoman, is a lack of problems.

Nov29

So you’d expect that a post-Batman Gotham would be a pretty awesome setting to stick a crime-fighting vigilante and have a measure of success.

Gotham, a city best described as as completely corrupt, crime from top to bottom, from street thugs all the way up to boardrooms and old-money.
A city that lead to the creation and rise of The Bat because the authorities couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about the problems.

The Bat was a symbol of fear and terror to the bad people, the problem was that a costumed vigilante lead to the rise of costumed criminals.
Be it success or otherwise, the Bat, at some point three years prior to Batwoman, left Gotham.
This would leave some sort of a void, a void that would end up attracting criminals and bad-people to fill it.

Supposedly the void left by The Bat would be the reason why Kate Kane’s father’s private security force ended up moving in to town.
This situation would lead to a rise in crime, gangs, thugs, boardroom misfits and so on.
And yet, it didn’t, none of them showed up to play.
The Crows, the Cops, the Authorities, none of them are dirty.

Seriously, this version of Gotham doesn’t need a masked vigilante.

All Gotham has is a bunch of family drama.

Kate’s crazed sister and her gang, who want revenge because their father stopped looking  for the sister because the step-mother falsified some evidence, is all we have to look forward to.

Alice/Beth abducts Kate’s ex-girlfriend, which is the trigger point for Kate returning and everything going bad. Family Drama.

And thus, Gotham is too clean.

Take care of yourselves, nobody else will.

Mar25

So I never really took where I lived in to account for my exercise requirements, and it seems that’s been one of the missing elements in keeping this gamer body healthy.

After a hard day of gaming, like raiding and stuff, naturally you end up feeling exhausted, and so the inclination is to take the easy way out, order takeaway, or drive off somewhere to find something.
What I’m saying is that after sitting on my arse all day playing games, that I’ve then sat on my arse to go and get food, after which I’d return to sitting on my arse playing more games.
It’s just way too easy to do it.

I of course now realise that is exactly my problem.
A car makes it far too convenient to avoid a simple walk down the shops.
That walk of course can make a huge difference for me staying healthy.

Back when I was a kid, a teenager and all that, I lived in a country town, I personally didn’t have a car, so if I wanted to go somewhere by myself I had to either walk or ride my bike.
The shops were around a kilometer away, and yet I thought nothing about the distance.
I also walked the dogs.

When I first moved to the city, I still walked to the shops, driving was a rarity.
If I wanted food, I’d walk to get it, it made perfect sense.

After that things went downhill, and I started driving everywhere to get food.
I didn’t go for walks, didn’t really ride a bike, it was just easier to drive.
I got used to doing it.

I’m guessing that the increased driving for close things coincided with my weight gain.

So given that I dislike being an overweight male gamer (not judging others, I just personally am not enjoying it), and that this year I’ve chosen to get back in to shape gradually, I’m going to begin walking to the shops again.
I did it tonight, it was easy, it felt good.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, a simple walk to the shops regularly is beneficial in the long-term, don’t force yourself, don’t let yourself get to the point that you feel unhappy in your skin.
I waited far too long before doing something about it, but I’m not letting that stop me.

Besides, spending an hour away from the computer or console a day shouldn’t kill you.

I may have been a little harsh on Hi Voltage and NetherRealm studios, but it may have been warranted.

Apr22

So we’re basically a week after the launch of Mortal Kombat X, figured that since the dust has settled that it’s time to follow up.

So far the track record of NRS and HVS with fighting games on PC has proven flawed.
They had Injustice, and MK9 previously, and they copped quite a lot of flak for it.
MKX being the 3rd in a row from this combination of developers.
However I only picked up the previous two long after release with their ultimate versions so I’ll focus on MKX.

The first issue I, and a lot of other people had, was that the retail release of MKX for PC was required to be downloaded due to the shift to the streaming install model.
At the least they could have packed enough data to fill a DVD9 disc, the amount would have been good for a preload, and people would have less reason to complain.
The retail disc contained virtually no useful data other than installing Steam.
I have thus repurposed it as a drink coaster.

Then a few days after release, they decided to roll out some revised shaders for the various graphical assets to help deal with bad performance from many users.
Sadly due to the number of items, this patch ended up around 15.4gig in size, wiping out my saturday (well in theory, shifting Steam to Offline mode allowed me to play without patching and let me finish the story mode) and some of sunday.
Those fellow gamers on terrible internet like myself would no-doubt have had the same problem.
Amusingly this patch completely renders the core DLC structure pointless.

Another couple of small patches later and we’ve now got Faction server functionality back, as well as stats and online play and apparently the foundations for future DLC releases.

This of course doesn’t do anything about the rampant swarms of raging Scorpions, but then again the only way to do anything about the posterchild of Ed Boon would be to not include him at all.

Due to things settling I chose to shell out on the Kombat Pack, which is almost but not quite a season pass.
To explain, it’s a DLC package that over time will have characters and skins release.
Given the price of Goro being $4.99, I guess the $29.99 for 4 characters (Jason and Predator being two of them) plus a heap of skins such as the Samurai pack, it seems like it could be decent value.

PC may not be at the forefront of WB Games attention, but all we ask for is equal attention and support.
We want something more than a pitiful 10 thousand krypt koin bribe, we just want our game to work properly.
For the game to work with the posted minimum specifications, and well with the recommended.
To not have gameplay elements locked to 30fps for a so-called “cinematic experience”.
For us to be able to open that damned cave door in the crypt further than half.

PC gamers just want to be treated as good as console gamers, it’s the least we can ask for from AAA studios.

Teamwork – In Space Things Will Explode.

Nov8

So tonight a group of friends got together for a project called Horrible Stream to play a game called Artemis.

This is a star-ship bridge simulator game, we had 10+ people in one room attempting to work together.

Originally we considered running two ships, but the problem was both competing crews were in the same room, so we abandoned that idea.

Under the command of Captain Wolfmother, the S.S. Sandox (LoveULongTime, ‘sWarhead, ‘sThing, ‘sShongalong etc,) attempted to plumb the depths of space and generally not explode.
We did have a successful mission, we also had a failed mission where Weapons told me the Helm to fly in to one of our own mines.

Things changed up a lot, I stuck with Helm the entire time, and we had some incidents with Comms Officer Wolfmother (after things changed) effectively declaring war, and Weapons launching a trio of nuclear warheads at a cluster of 7 newly aggravated warships.

Artemis, gonna be good in future as everyone enjoyed themselves.

Random musings of a random nature

Aug13

So sitting up here in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
I haven’t been here in around 14 years, a lot longer since I actually had a relaxed holiday (The D Generation were still on ABC backthen.)

Here I am with no broadband, and my wireless hotspot is simply my phone, I have a limited amount of data, and no games.

And you know what, it’s given me some time to think and muse about things with no distractions.

It’s so easy to get lost in gamer culture, games constantly being released, daily log in rewards or challenges, new dlc, ranking up and so on.
There’s no time to actually stop and think with things becoming based on reflex and repetition.

Yet here I am, no games, no real ability to log in, and the only challenge is getting back to basics.
Sadly with basic browsing it’s alarming to see how quickly I’m using data, and I’m not even watching funny cat videos.

However I get a chance at gaining and maintaining a form of clarity due to sitting back.

For example, capitalism. Much like communism, it works in theory.
Everything we do, everywhere we go, everything around us, all driven by capitalism, or rather in it’s current form, consumerism.
Products and services are created to consume, profit is derived, and the profit accumulates in the hands of the few.
Such a thing should naturally be cyclical, you earn, you accumulate, you spend, injecting the money back in to the economic ecosystem.

The problem is people are actively rewarded for accumulating wealth with interest. The more money they have sitting there, the more money gets added due to interest.
The interest has to come from somewhere, with a limited pool in circulation it has to come from other people, banks just can’t create it.
This is purely an incentive to store our money in a bank, granting them the capital with which they can offer loans.

At the same time, loans gather interest as a way so banks and such actively benefit, allowing them to add it to the piles of wealth they’re looking after.

The mechanism of interest itself is what I feel is driving society in a death spiral to the point that the accumulated wealth will gain enough mass to create singularities and the whole lot will just implode.

People will tell me I’m wrong, of course, we’ve all grown up with banks and interest, it’s simply the way things are.

And yet, we’ve seen economies crash, the mega-rich getting richer without having to do anything.

So I wonder, if banks as they are now, no longer existed, all currency was released in to circulation, would society improve due to one less greed-fueling mechanism, or would it get worse?

This is why in part I’m really excited by crypto-currency, there are no interest rates, only transaction fees (and then only if doing things such as converting from one currency to another).
The value is based purely on demand, there are limited amounts that can ever be in circulation, we’re in change of securing it, and the people involved are typically not dicks about it.

So, I’m willing to perform tricks for doge, like a good little shibe.

This has been yet another of my pointless posts, the first from tropical north Queensland.

Temporal Thought Conumdrum.

Jun10

Over the years we’ve had many movies, many tv shows, books, comics, games and so on dealing with time travel.
The most recent of note is Continuum.

So someone travels back from the future, they take technology in to the past, and then they change things.
Depending on what and how they change thing determines if the technology of the future changes or even exists.
Just by being there and used as a sample it may accelerate and enhance development, which of course by it’s nature changes the subsequent iterations leading up to the seed tech in the future.
By it’s very nature improving the technology in the past with technology from the future changes that very technology in essence.

The beginning of this has been covered in Continuum with HALO incorporating future elements.
By it’s very nature, all the technology based on HALO from then on will have different future iterations, unless you posit that the path to the end journey doesn’t change as much due to the level of science required to analyse things is insufficient to do more than provide a road-map.

This of course starts falling apart when you start including multiple alternate future timeline technologies.

Liber8 travel back to the present to prevent the corporate congress from forming and thus if they succeed they lead to a temporal paradox, their very history no longer exists.
Kiera travels back by accident (or the intention of Alec Sadler) and seeks to prevent Liber8 from accomplishing their goals.
Sadler sends information back via Kiera (unknown to her) for himself as a way to change his future.
Sadler sends Garza back again for his own goals, muddying Liber8’s purpose.

That’s just the first batch from the exact time period, it doesn’t even include Freelancers.

At the end of last season Alec traveled back two weeks to change the past and save someone from death, resulting in two Alec Sadlers, two time travel devices, and two timelines, of which one ceases to exist.
Kiera travels back as well, resulting in two Kieras, two CMRs, two suits and so on.
Things start escalating quite dramatically from there but technologies don’t change too radically.

The problem is from there a third timeline spawns leading to Brad being sent back.
His technology is completely different to the other two timelines.
His very being there invalidates all the other tech that has traveled back, possibly even the very method of traveling back.
And yet the other tech does not cease to exist.

The only way this works is if the multiple timelines co-exist, with the path taken being determined at key junctures but the potential to cross between them.

Whatever happens, Continuum is handling such things interestingly.
I look forward to seeing where they go from here with the advent of the Bradpocalypse timeline.
It’s just going to get even more messy and lead to some great character development.

AmK

Modern methods of information manipulation still fail for my needs.

Apr21

So I’m not a normal person.
I’m far from the lowest common denominator.
I’ve rated highly in standardised tests to measure intelligence.
I’m also hindered by those very same tests.

I’ve struggled throughout the years before I was identified as being on the autism spectrum.
I’m still struggling.

The issue I have is one of concept arrangement and mapping.

Most people are happy establishing things in a clear order from start to finish.
There are others who work better in as planar format utilising two axis’.

My problem is one of depth and freedom.
In at least an additional axis with which to work.
I also needed to be able to physically manipulate the conceptual elements and link them as I need.
The problem is that there is no environment or software that meets my requirements.

Anyone who’s watched the movies involving iron man has seen the system that Stark uses to interact with Jarvis for his designs in the dimensions with the freedom to manipulate individual elements of the holographic display.
This is along the lines of what I need.

However it’s still not quite right.

With the advent of the oculus rift I feel I’m one step closer to the environment organisation I envisage.
Real-time stereoscopic display with head tracking would give me the depth and ability to change perspective at will.

Combine that with something like the kinnect and you have body tracking.
Still not quite there.

I did encounter one device online that utilised lasers foot hand tracking and manipulation of a 3d environment, one step closer.

Next there’s tactile feedback.
Traditionally this has been accomplished by off-centre motors and equivalents, creating a vibration to inform you of contact.
The problem with this is one of scale, it’s useless for fine control response.
What is needed is something along the lines of a glove that squeezes the contact surfaces of the hand to apply pressure based on contact strength.

So combine these all together and you have the ability to perceive objects arrayed in a three dimensional space.
The ability to reposition yourself and your viewpoint relative to the objects.
The ability to interact with those objects, be it move them or otherwise.
And then finally a way to feel the interaction with those objects.

From there it’s simply a matter of being able to expand and contact objects to be able to interact with their constituent elements.
As well the ability to link objects to form more in depth concept structures.
Grab, drop, link, scale and so on all in a free form structure add needed.
Objects can be arrayed around the user easily enough in this state.

Some people might query why I don’t utilise a mind map.
The problem is that’s a planar structure.
This concept is something far greater.

The problem is that I have a fairly unusual way of organising things, there’s not likely to be a lot of demand for such a conceptual system.
Not to mention all the components are from different sources.
There is also no way that I could program it for the simple matter of not being able to arrange the code along the lines of my mental processes.

However at the least I’ve managed to put this down in text, hopefully in a way that will allow others to visualise the concept and understand it.
Forget words on a page, relationship objects are where we should be at.

If anyone does end up developing something along these lines I only ask to be involved so I don’t lose any more time than I need to, also a discount in the financial aspect would be appreciated.

AmK

To upgrade my OS or not to upgrade my OS, that is the question.

Nov27

So, as many people will not know, I run two desktops at home. (I also run my SGSIII, Nexus 7, and a WDTV Live, but they’re not relevant to this.)

There’s my old system which I was using up to this year, it’s a core2quad 8200, 8 gig machine with a GF9800GTX+.
When I upgraded I left all my productivity software and stuff on it, because quite frankly I didn’t want to have to install it all over again if I didn’t need to.
Of course it’s OS drive is a puny 200gig SATA drive, it’s a bit fully currently, but it’s still functional.
This is Angelique.

My new system is one I built at the start of this year, with the plan to upgrade as I go, multiple PCI-E 16x slots and so on.
I play all my games on this one, I’ve avoided installing productivity software on it, it’s purely for entertainment.
This is Stitch.

So I remote desktop from Stitch in to Angelique quite commonly.
It works.

Anyway one of my big issues with Angelique is that I really need to do something about the OS drive.
So I’m thinking I’m going to pick up a 128+gig SSD, because quite simply it’s amazingly fast with load times.

Then I think to myself, hey wait, I can pick up Win8pro for $39.99~, would it be worth upgrading from Win7 Ultimate at the time I shift to the new drive?

It’s a legit license. In fact 7 is the first windows OS that I personally have owned a license for since 95a.
I own two legit licenses for that matter. I considered it worth the money.

So it comes to the fact that I need to consider if it’s worth shifting my productivity machine over to win8pro or not.
I intend to have Angelique displaying movies and such in the lounge-room, and have no idea of the media capabilities of win8.
I’m only considering it as it’s dirt cheap.

Any thoughts on this scenario?
Comment away if you do.

Mar20

Old tech can be used for new and wonderful things.
I feel jealous of the skill and talent of some people in the world when they manage to use it for such win.

DC Universe Online – You will not be missed.

May4

So anyway, back at the beginning of things I bought a copy of DC Universe Online, since you know being able to be a superhero or villain and beat shit up is pretty cool.
It was fun to play, but then the problems began.

Like all MMOs, after the initial free month of included time (not really free if you think about it), the huge surge of players that lead to the need for server queues dropped off.
And with the plethora of servers available we ended up with veritable ghost towns.
This being a problem when on a PvP server wanting to pwn people.

Of course this doesn’t take in to account the number of people using exploits, which were driving people to PvE. Exploits which just weren’t being addressed.

Major issues and bugs kept cropping up, but none of them were getting fixed.
New content was promised, and what we’ve received has been fairly lackluster, as well as being very buggy.

Of course what’s really happened that will kill this game is major security breaches have happened, first with the PlayStationNetwork, and now with SOE.
Breach 1 happened, we got informed that everything was fine and there was no problem with SOE and our information was secure since it’s in a different location. This shook our confidence.
Breach 2 happened, and we’re informed around 24.6million user’s information may now be out in the wild, as well as over twelve thousand user’s direct debit and credit card information.

It may not be a lot in terms of things, but come on close to 25 million people?
And there’s a good chance I’m one of those people.

So naturally I do the obvious thing and try to cancel my subscription, but I can’t get in to do that.
I doubt anyone can.
The game’s also down for however long, and apparently we’re going to be granted 30 + 1(each day service is unavailable) days of free play time. Somehow to me, and no doubt many others, this isn’t enough.

So the short of it is this, when I can end my account I will. It’s too much of a security risk.
DC Universe Online is a low grade product, and can’t compare with much else out there.
It’s just not worth the time or money any more.