Finish What You Started

There are exceptions to this rule but why is it I can't seem to finish what I've started?

Today I'm going to write a story, hey that sounds like a good idea, I've come up with a storyline and all I have to do now is write the whole thing in detail... wow I just got to the last level of Thief: The Dark Project, now all I have to do is... at last, the finale of Thief 2: The Metal Age, the ultimate challenge is just around the... a map for Half Life 2 you say? What a splendid... today I think I'll learn the harmonica... it's important that I keep healthy no matter what the weather is like outside, I don't care if it's raining or just dark I'll go for a jog at least four times a week... these ideas are great, I've got to draw a comic about them...

Oh boy. I managed to finish Thief: Deadly Shadows and caught the endings of the other two from the Internet and watching the videos on the CDs... but that's not what's important. What's important is that I haven't put my mouth the harp for months now, the last time I went for a jog was late September, I'm rapidly running out of patience when it comes to drawing and nothing seems to come out right when I do get my head down to it.

I feel like I'm overly busy. Once I finally get home from a day of sitting on my arse I'm starving and need to cook, then eat, then do anything else that needs doing (shopping for food, chores that need doing), I also feel that the time between having eaten and needing to go to bed to catch enough sleep flies by so fast I don't have the opportunity to 'get into' anything I want to do.

Reading has gone straight out of the window; I feel too busy to relax and empty my brain enough to fill it with a story - I just can't get into anything because my mind is too full of everything else I need to do. It wasn't any easier to do these things on my week off either.

I do keep going with about half of the projects I give myself but even then it requires effort and inspiration usually not within my power to summon.

Vacant

Well this is it. Already the end of the autumn term break is over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. Where the hell did it all go?

Okay so I spent a lot of time playing Portal, Halo 3, Half Life 2 Episode One, Hitman Blood Money, Dead Rising, and Gears of War. But I didn't just play video games during my time off.

For instance, on Wednesday I went to Borders Farm to see Sam, my youngest brother, who works there. His boss has been on holiday too so Sam's got the place to himself so to speak. I can see why you'd get bored working on your own on a farm but other than that I could see myself enjoying it. Especially holding onto a rogue quad bike for dear life while it bucks and lurches over the fields as you round up the sheep. I almost drove the quad down a nine foot ditch; I suppose I'm not used to four wheels and four wheel drive... yet. We also had some coppicing to do which resulted in minor lacerations around the hands and forearms, a king's thirst, and a sore wrist from swinging a blunt bill hook for three hours. I enjoyed it a great deal. We also had to check on the cattle, feed and clean out the chickens before getting them into the hutch for the night, and do the same for the geese. And the pigs. And the ponies. And the llamas.

Sam's boss apparently told him he'd pay for every rabbit Sam shot this week. I don't think Sam's had much time to do anything but work (fencing, painting, fixing, etc.) and he was also complaining about his gun needing some attention so I'm guessing he hasn't been able to use that opportunity.

I've uploaded the third adventure in my D&D campaign to my website so if you're looking for some relatively risk-free tasks to put your 1st level PCs through then that's the place to go.

I've been trying to draw all week but I just can't get my head down and do it. Artist's block?

Natural Gauge

It occurred to me, while working (no, honestly, I was working) in my office yesterday, that the cobwebs that sway lazily from the ceiling are black with dust. But when you see spider webs in the country or even in most regular abodes, they appear silvery-white and even clean-looking just the way they should.

So in a way that's evidence of the horrid air I have to breath when I'm stuck in that cramped shoe cupboard all day. It's bad enough when you look at the air intake on the fronts and backs of the servers and they're covered with dark, fluffy, dusty particles. But even the spiders have died out thanks to the choking atmosphere.

So, if you want to see how clean the air is in your home or office, let the spiders in the dark corners continue to spin their webs and show you just how much crap they can trap in their webs apart from flies.

In other (real) news: Nick passed his CBT and stuck L plates onto his bike. So we went out for a ride yesterday evening. He did pretty well except for one or two common errors. I recall him saying he wants to go out for a solo ride today while everyone else is at work so after that perhaps he will have ironed out some of those creases that we all have when we start riding.

After the ride, I took his bike (which used to be Richard's and has more than 15,000 miles on it) up the road and back and I just want it to be known that I would not be comfortable sitting on that thing for any length of time. Despite being the same make and model as my bike it seems very different; the rear wheel feels like it could slip at any time, the rear brakes aren't responsive enough (probably thanks to the wheel), the gear box is getting on and really jumps from 1st to 2nd, the handlebars are too low, and the gear pedal/lever is set too high. Well, the last two won't really effect the performance of the bike, but it was still strange to ride it. Hopefully Nick will just save up enough to take his direct access test (which, incidentally, is my plan too) and get a Bonneville before Richard's old CG breaks down completely. Then again it is a Honda CG so it will probably keep going for a few decades before the engine needs replacing.

Branded for Life

So yesterday my brother Sam and I went to Brands Hatch to see the last Super Bike races of the season. Earlier this year I won two gold VIP tickets from Honda in a raffle (of sorts) and Sam played the brotherly-new-biker-take-pity-on-a-poor-farmer game to tag along... well really he drove us there in the car so how could I say no anyway?

And god damn are those bikes fast. I've never been interested in watching the races on the television (or watching much at all on TV. If it was up to me there wouldn't be one in the house), but seeing the bikes in person is completely different. I can only describe it as "WOOAAAAAHH!"

If you try and watch a stationary point as the bikes speed past then all you see is a blur, no joke. Trying to track them around the course gives you a headache. The speed and torque of those bikes is pure, unadulterated madness. The corners are taken so low you can see sparks from the pegs and flames from the exhausts, friction burns increasing in intensity on the riders' kneepads... and when they accelerate out of those corners they almost always end up having the front wheel off the ground for at least forty meters because of the sheer increase in speed they are putting those machines through.

And for the more aggressive observers (like Sam), yes there was one crash. The guy is fine as far as I know, I read on the Brands Hatch website that he was uninjured but disappointed. I'll bet he was dizzy after all that rolling though.

I got to sit on (but not ride) many big bikes (most 1000cc or more) and those tanks are truly intimidating, not to mention uncomfortable. We stayed clear of the foul smelling burgers; the fake tan, fake blonde, fake god-knows-what "bike babes"; and the over priced merchandise but otherwise everything was really cool. Especially the free buffet.

A Lot of Legwork

This is the second day since I did thirty squats with some 25kg behind my shoulders and my legs still ache. I've slowly been thinning the lactic acid with stretches and light exercise but I am still noticing slight discomfort when climbing/descending stairs. I can feel the benefit of those squats though already but I think in future I'll use less weight (a lot less weight) and do around twenty squats. That way I can exercise more often and be able walk twenty-four hours later. I suppose those thirty squats were more of a measure of my current limit than what I'd expect to do every week. Twenty was attainable enough, twenty five hurt something awful and the final few repetitions were murder; especially when Richard shouted "Do the last two in slow motion!"

Before that gruelling task, I had taken a jog over to Ore cemetery. That place is big. Admittedly the last graveyard I remember visiting would be one in Etchingham and before that was probably the one in North Wheatley where I grew up and that was even smaller (if I remember rightly, but then I was only ten when we moved to Sussex). The carvings and statues and memorials were very nice though. It's a shame that new gravestones/markers don't look as pleasing as the old ones.

In other news I've purchased Campaign Cartographer 3 from ProFantasy. From what I've read and seen it could make my Dungeon Master duties a million times easier. I also found Journey Planner which is also going to make writing adventures, settings and the like a whole lot simpler.

Other than that, nothing much is going on. I had a package arrive by courier yesterday and found that the two VIP tickets I won earlier this year to the Honda Superbikes Races at Brands Hatch are finally here. I think the race is on the 14th which doesn't leave me that much time to find and remember the route to the site.

Routes

The weekend was all about routes it seems. You'll have to forgive the pun but the first route was a router that I bought from KC Computers along with some Cat6 cabling so I could make a small network to share the broadband among my computer and the two laptops we have at home.

It worked but only for a few moments. It took a while to set up too, I had to call Tiscali and have them give me the configuration for them as an ISP (VCI, VPI, AAAoE, etc.) Eventually we were on line but the signal was very slow (downloading at 30kb/sec). Then it just died. I haven't been able to get it to work on demand since. Tiscali said they are sending us another filter. We're only using the one phone socket so I can't imagine there's anything else in the house that could be interfering with the signal and it's not a wireless router so it's not radio interference or anything like that. The LAN side of it works fine except on Nick's laptop. I tried changing it from Vista Home Basic to XP Home SP2 but it still doesn't accept the router software. Something else to look into!

The second route was the walk I took with Matt (a college comrade) through the country park. We spent most of the day hanging from trees and trying to find clearings in the woods that were hard to get to and therefore more remote. We encountered a grass snake which promptly fled when we got too close. Obviously it could sense we had both been playing Metal Gear Solid 3 recently. I lent Matt Call of Cthulhu and told him to play it to the end if only to see the Flying Polyps which scared the crap out of me. I remember thinking "WHAT THE HELL?" throughout the entire encounter with them. Sanity blasting stuff, truly epic in its portrayal.

Sunday was spent "lazing". I didn't change out of my dressing gown until - ooh I don't know - six o' clock... PM? Well it was a busy week. Then, seeing as we never get to talk when I visit back home, I took my mum out to dinner at The Windmill.

I got some work on my third D&D adventure done over the weekend but not much. Also, why must there be a postal strike the very day I order something over the Internet?

Random Encounter

Operative word: random.

I took a long ride after work, I'm still not sure where I got to. Somewhere around Burwash, Broad Oak, and Three Cups Corner. It was a very nice ride. It was relaxing and I had time to reflect on things that had been bothering me that day, I definitely felt better once I got home (an hour and a half later than usual). I'm not one hundred percent where it was, but there's a village on the route I took which had a nostalgic sense of tranquillity and harmony about it. I'll probably try and find the route again at the weekend if I find time.

Anyway. On this ride I caught a glimpse of what looked like a car's rear from behind a bush. I thought it was odd and stopped to have a look. I'm not sure how it ended up there, but through a small gap in a hedge was an abandoned silver car. The windows had been smashed in, the tyres deflated, boot and bonnet popped open, and it looked generally dishevelled. I took a closer look but there was nothing of special interest. It was half way down the bank onto the road, supported by wiry saplings and a thick bush so it was half way on its side. There was a minimal amount of vegetation inside the car and the seats still looked to be in good condition despite the sunroof being open (or missing, I couldn't tell). The registration plate was broken off so I couldn't make out how old the vehicle was.

I can only assume the driver lost control (perhaps on a day with poor visibility like the ones we've had recently) and drove through the hedge, slammed on the brakes and shat themselves as the car lurched sideways, almost rolling onto its side. I can only imagine the profanity uttered or screamed afterwards.

So. Travel for long enough and you will come across a random encounter.

The view from a stile next to where I had stopped my bike was particularly nice: a deep valley among several rolling hills, thick woods in between fields divided by wild hedgerows, and a flock of sheep grazing in the fog on the opposite rise. Because of the hills obscuring the horizon, it was easy to imagine being in an idyllic (at least, idyllic for me) region with a sparse population of farmers and honest, hard working people where the simpler things in life are valued and nothing is so convenient that you take it for granted.

Come rain or... more rain...

When Richard got his new bike he said he was thinking of becoming a fair weather rider because of the costs of maintaining a new big bike over the year. So of course, it makes me feel like a bad-ass riding my CG125 to Robertsbridge and back every day through the abyssal inclement weather we've had this week. But then I remember I'm riding a one-two-five.

This morning I hardly got out of second gear and above 20MPH until I found my way onto the road out of town. I'm not sure if it's the weather or if there was just a lot of traffic this morning but it was a crawl. And there's no space to filter, certainly not in the weather we are having.

But the slow speed commute did give me a chance to reflect on the eerie nature of the foggy, rainy day. It's actually quite beautiful in a funny sort of way. It was as if the whole word was muted and secret; I just wanted to keep riding past Robertsbridge and keep going until I ran out of petrol.

Out with the Old...

Yes I've played Halo 3, yes the graphics are really that good, no it's nothing ground breaking - it's just a really good first person shooter. I'm not going to go on and on about it. I played Halo 3 co-op for an hour or two with my brother when I went over to visit yesterday. The cinema mode is more than I hoped it would be and the game itself is very smooth. You still can't fly Pelicans (as far as I know) but that's about the only limitation they give you, I don't know about Phantoms either.

For me it's not just the continuation of a solid game series that makes a game exciting. It's innovation. That's why I think Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell: Conviction should have more attention than Halo 3. I'm not saying Halo 3 isn't as good as those games, but it doesn't really bring anything new to the party does it?

I found out that Hitman: Blood Money runs on my computer just fine despite it only being marginally better than the minimum specifications for it (mainly, my processor is the oldest component in my PC, the graphics card could do with a replacement too but it's good for maybe a month).

I've been thinking of just splashing out on a new motherboard and an AMD AM2 6000+ 64bit processor this week. I was previously considering saving up for a completely new computer but with the price of motorbike riding lessons (so I can stop riding on L plates) and other things looming around the corner, perhaps it would be better to just buy components in smaller steps. I'll have to check if the motherboard will take an AGP card and the RAM I've got but otherwise I think I should be fine shopping at Overclockers, eBay, KC Computers (local), or CrysTech for the components. I'm also thinking a new hard drive wouldn't go amiss (especially since the house will be connected to the Internet in a week or so), and I should replace my two 512mb memory DIMMs with a single 1GB DIMM in preperation for 2gb of RAM, but I'm also thinking about replacing the graphics card, although I don't think I'll spend enough to get a card bigger than my motherboard.

I'm still reading The Book of Vile Darkness. There's a lot of interesting material for creating dark artefacts and villains that might be the focal point of a campaign. I've also gone back to studying Races of Stone and Races of the Wild, there are things I missed in there like guidelines to settlements for said races and guidelines on writing adventures in settings relative to the races of stone/the wild.

As a side note there was enough warmish weather to clean my bike in. It's much better with the rust on the suspension forks but I should have done more polishing on it while I had the chance. Today looks too dismal to add a finishing coat of protection.