The Art of Conversation

I don't often stay up until the wee hours of the morning, but you could say that last night was an exception to the rule.

I started playing GMod, thinking to join a GMStranded server or find a new gametype to try out. I found GMP (Garry's Mod Parkour) and I'd seen the mod's thread in the FacePunch forums, so I decided to try it out.

The gametype itself didn't keep me up. It's fairly mediocre. You can jump from building to building in narrow corridors to scale your way to the rooftops (the default map, and the only one that really works, is a huge city full of skyscrapers and big roof-to-roof jumps), slide down walls to slow your descent, and roll on a big landing to avoid grisly death by bone breaking etc.

Some guys were using microphones, myself included, and someone found they could scale a building using only one wall because the server's gravity setting was below a certain threshold. So we had races up a single side of the building until a handful of people got the knack for it.

We had a few races, chases, runs, and games of tag. But the thing that kept me on the server was the conversation.

One player, whose handle was Heretic_Christ turned out to be very good at speaking. He was open minded, forward thinking, polite, intelligent, and agreeable. Not something you find every day on computer games.

Anyway, we got to the chin-wagging and it turns out that he has strong, well-informed views on politics, religion, and cultures around the world. We talked about surveillance, police brutality, how America could one day become a Fascist nation, football hooligans, accents, a little religion, being a gentleman, tea, traveling the world, places to see in Europe and the far East, castles, good and evil, terrorism, gun crime, food, cultural differences, rugby vs. American football, West Virginia, the battle of Hastings, diction, paramilitary forces, pronunciation, violence in modern society, chivalry, fast food, martial arts, parkour in real life, Obama, Garry's Mod, things being delightful, origins, opinions, racism, prejudice, good films, trans-humanism, post-humanism, humanitarianism, and a whole lot more. Although, in West Virginia, it was close to 20:00 by the time we parted ways, it was closer to dawn over here and now I can feel my body clock struggling to adjust itself for the day (read: afternoon) ahead.

It really was a very interesting session. It wasn't a debate, so much as a conversation. We didn't agree on everything but we agreed on most things. The items that we didn't agree on were discussed, and then put to one side. There was no shouting-your-opponent-down or desperately-trying-to-get-your-point-across. A lot of it was not only interesting, but educational (for me at least). I can't count myself as someone well versed in current politics or global events. I don't often seek out the world's news (or even local news) and because a great deal of my secondary education was away from school, I didn't learn as much history as I could have done. I didn't do A-levels and now I don't have the opportunity to do so.

But Heretic_Christ knew his stuff. He backed up his claims with evidence and citation, references and valid points. Not only that, but I admired him for his attitude. Yes he was an intelligent guy, yes he had a lot of knowledge in his brain-box. But the most impressive thing was what he was doing with that knowledge.

In basic terms, he is a activist. He has strong beliefs and opinions, and acts on them. Although he was not in the habit of ticking off a list of accomplishments, I think he has already done a lot for his community. He certainly mentioned speaking to people and trying to get his message across (without being preachy), and helping the homeless near where he lives.

So, most of all, I admire his passion, his will to give a damn, his patience, and his urge to make his world a better place. Although we were in a deep and meaningful conversation (there were plenty of other people on the server who were invited to contribute, and they were all listening intently), some other players were intent on messing around and screaming inane babble into their microphones which detracted from the discussion. But all the way through it, Heretic' told me that if he could just get the message across to a single person, then he would reach his goal.

I think of myself as having become jaded and intolerant. At one time I might have acted in a similar manner if I saw the things that are wrong with society. But now I find myself just not caring enough to do anything. I have a stable job and Britain's society isn't as scary as Heretic_Christ's rendition of modern-day America.

So, anyway. I had a weird dream about zombies and now I'm going to have to adapt my out-of-sync sleep cycle as I really should go down to Argos and buy a landline handset.

Finders Keepers

I can't say "you see all sorts in this line of work" because it's not true. My line of work is far too boring to provide you with stories to tell young children by the light of a campfire. Oh! The great power cut of 2006! You had to be there! It was terrifying! A real eye-opener! Or the time when somebody forgot their password... well, you could have blown me down with a feather, I tell you!

But there are little things, things that you keep to yourself. Like the coffee mug, forgotten over the summer holidays that is literally brimming with mould. Brimming. That's a horrible word to combine with mould. Brimming.

Or the other day when I found a false fingernail under someone's desk. That was unsettling.

And then I found two spiders, one dead and one alive, inside a PC I was fixing.

And the cat that used to sit on my bike's seat in the spring and summer when the sun warmed up the leather. Of course, now I have a bike with a side-stand, the cat has gone elsewhere.

There's something else about work that I've only really noticed today. The Head'. Most of the time you would think something along the lines of it's the boss, better not get on her bad side, draconian rules, brrr, scary lady and such. But this morning, it was like I was speaking with an entirely different person. I suppose that either a) she's in a very good mood this morning, or b) she's in not-such-a-good mood on most mornings. But as a colleague once said, who would want to be a headteacher? You get paid about the same amount of money (and sometimes less) as a supermarket manager, and have an incredible workload. The stress, time, and attention demanded from the job of headteacher must be crippling. It's not a job that I would go for, I don't think, but then I'm not as industrius and hardworking as some people. Some people, like our Headteacher.

I only get to see another side to the people I work alongside once they have a problem that needs solving and I have a short amount of time to speak with them. The ex-Deputy Head (who is coming back to be part-time Deputy Headteacher) once told me "you talk to people as if they're actual human beings..." which, apparently, he wasn't expecting. I think that perhaps that is what allows me to see the other non-work side of people when I do get a chance to talk to them. The barrier is, of course, getting a chance to talk to them.

I've been looking for the RPG system/setting Deadlands: The Weird West. I found the wikipedia page and now I'm inclined to get the books and start digesting them. I wasn't a fan of the wild west as a child, but it grew on me in my adolescence. Now the concept of a table-top RPG set in the west is one that appeals to me greatly. The card-drawing rules also not only look original, but also fun and clever. It sounds like the setting focusses a great deal on roleplaying and character development as well as combat. And the combat seems highly dangerous, which is always good. The less twenty sword swings style of combat that you might see in Dungeons and Dragons, the better.

Sometimes I think that even Dark Heresy's combat system is too light-heared because it might take at least two shots from a lasgun to kill someone. But that's the beauty of narrative roleplaying.

I've also created another wallpaper for my Dark Heresy campaign The Demise of The Diocletian. This new wallpaper was made in Photoshop, virtually all from scratch, and came out pretty well. I made a 1280x1024 version and a widescreen 1440x900 version (which looks much better because of the text placement). I'll post them next week some time since they contain spoilers and my players may be reading this blog.

I know I already mentioned doing it, but haven't got around to doing it... but at some point I will write up some GM's notes on my Dark Heresy adventures. Adventures like this week's, the introduction adventure, and some in-between.

Playing with Minds

Creepy people were cropping up left, right, and centre in Dark Heresy. The players met a biologicus techpriest heretek called Greimolt who had a grand master plan complex, partially revealing all his gruesome experiments to the acolytes before luring them into a trap. As the old Imperial saying goes: Trust is a prerequisite of betrayal! I wanted Greimolt to leave an impression, which I think he did. I wanted to make his insectoid appearance betray his alien mindset. I think I suceeded, but who knows what goes through the twisted minds of your players?

One player almost killed him with a shotgun blast to the head! Unfortunately for the players, Greimolt managed to escape and the acolytes were unable to follow. So he could become a recurring villain - although, the universe is a big place so they might never seem him again.

The players also disagreed with each other when they were presented with the choice to betray a group of outlaws who let them live in return for their confidence. One player wants to betray that confidence while the other thinks they shouldn't.

Now that they've left the planet Siculi, I'm hoping I can reign my own campaign in to the locations that scream "Warhammer 40,000" to me. While Siculi demonstrated, perhaps, the toil that the faceless mass workforce of the Imperium endures - it didn't symoblise, to me, the grim darkness and underlying madness of the Imperial mindset. You couldn't apply the wacky Imperial proverbs to situations and locations that the players inhabited.

I should think I could make Siculi fit in with my idea of 40k more easily if I had more experience with GMing Dark Heresy. The guys are enjoying it, but a lot of my ideas are visual in nature and I can't really get those ideas across in a few sentences. By the time I'm done fully describing a certain scene, the players would have forgotten the descriptions I'd started with and might even be at a loss to remember why they were where they stood.

They're desperate to know what The Diocletian is.

And apparently I'm a woman beater or something. That's right, a woman beater. Me.

As I was waiting for a colleague who was giving me a lift home on Friday, one of the teachers (with whom I have been naught but friendly) said "Getcher hands out of your pockets, boy!" in a jesting manner. When I complied, she suddenly dived away from me, barrelling into the door. Of course, my face wore an expression of surprise. "I thought you were going to hit me!" she says. I could express only puzzlement bordering on alarm. She did say, afterwards, "I know you're not a violent person." but if that's the case then why did she flinch so?

When I related this tale to some friends of mine over dinner they had a good laugh, of course. Then I asked "Do people really think I would just attack someone like that?" to which the reply was "Well you do look like you could just... you know... go crazy." What? This escalated until I was described as having "a killer's eyes" and "blood on [my] hands" and so on. First I knew of it.

PS: The F.E.A.R. 2 demo was pretty trippy. Awesome graphics, Crysis-parallel stuff (it beats Crysis in my opinion because it runs at such a better frame rate), but it's just more F.E.A.R. and nothing really new.

Inane Babble

When I was persuaded by the weather to take the train into work on Monday, I sat behind some drama students going to Bexhill College (I think). I couldn't help overhearing their conversations, thanks to the volume of their voices.

Inane babble. That's the simplest way to explain it. If their "conversation" was anything to go by; all these people do is get drunk, sleep around, and live on MySpace, Facebook, or their mobile phones. And while one person is reading out the texts they sent to their ex-significant other, all proud and aloof; a member of their "audience" will butt in complaining that ohmygod I, like, missed a braid in my hair this morning - can you see it? Ohmygod its so annoyin'. And then, of course, you have the complementary ohmygod I love this song, followed by have I told you how much I love this song, and ohmygod, at which point the mobile phone's speakers are turned up to the loudest they can get and the entire carriage has to put up with the bilge they listen to.

Unfortunately, the rant does not end there. This morning, again due to the foul inclement weather we have been having, a colleague gave me a lift into work in his leaky Land Rover for which I am very grateful. However, Radio 1 (which I avoid like the plague and will, in future, avoid like two plagues) was playing on the 'Rover's radio. The quality of conversation was comparable to the one I overheard on the train.

A listener had called in and was telling the presenters about her trip up Kilimanjaro. A fascinating subject, surely. But instead of asking interesting questions or expanding on the information they were receiving, the presenters proceeded to make fun of the caller, imitating her voice in ridiculous falsetto and repeating the same lines over and over. In particular, they picked up on the fact that you have to chop up your chocolate bars (required for quick-release energy) because they freeze once you get to a certain altitude and you can't eat them if they're still whole. If someone told me that for the first time in a conversation, I'd be genuinely interested and ask if there were any other similar practises that are carried out before embarking on mountain expeditions.

Right. Raging rant over. Move along, nothing to see!

School Trip

There was no Dark Heresy this weekend as Sam has come down with a virus of some kind. I saw him on Saturday when Marcos came home from Thailand (he has either had enough and didn't find what he was looking for, or has run out of money I'm guessing), and his cheeks were very puffed up. He looked groggy and generally unwell.

Apparently his doctor told him that in the week or weeks preceding the virus' main symptoms, the patient feels lethargic, tired, restless, and doesn't want to eat anything. I've actually been feeling like that for a while so, who knows, I might be next on the sick list. I hope not though.

Today was different from the usual rigmarole in that I went on a school trip. Trippy. The day out was to a Universite of Brighton campus in Eastbourne with most of year eight. I was invited along because the dance teacher hurt her ankle last week and couldn't go. I'm almost glad because it was much more fun than being stuck in a cupboard all day staring at loading screens.

I didn't participate in any activities. I was mostly there to register twelve of however-many students and make sure they got to where they were supposed to be, and take photos. Since my line manager managed to misplace the camera I lent him, I borrowed John-from-reprographics' (who, along with his wife Fran, has fast become a good friend) SLR camera. Oh boy was it a dream to use. Nothing like the shaky, clumsy, little camera I got so I could take photos for the website. Sam has a very nice SLR camera but he won't let me near it at all.

But the best part of the entire day was the chance to engage in some interesting conversation with other members of staff. It took me a good while to convince one of the PE students that I do not, in fact, have a television and that there are plenty of things to do without television and that I don't need a sofa. Even just that was interesting enough; but some of the other subjects were good too. If only we could have gone on talking for the rest of the afternoon, but soon the busses arrived and we were all made painfully aware of the time.

I'm sure conversation is one thing that people engaged in before they had televisions to hypnotise them. I certainly miss being able to just talk with people the way I could when I was at home. Of course, I'm living entirely on my own now, surrounded by much older people (I've not met a neighbor younger than fiftysomething) and at work I hardly get an opportunity to speak with my colleagues. Certainly not for any length of time.

Street Jousting

So while GTA IV works (initially I had problems with the sound, but managed to find a fix on the game's forums), I'm having a lot of trouble accessing the multiplayer side of it. I've only managed to get onto a single server that hasn't immediately kicked me off. You have been removed from the server. You have been removed from the server. You have been removed from the server.

Why? Is the admin kicking me because he doesn't want more players? If that's the case then why leave a game open? Or is there some sort of auto-kick for certain latencies? If so then perhaps this problem won't be a problem forever. Since I've only just aquired Internet access from Tiscali, my connection speed is jumping around all over the place while they stabalise the speed. Or something like that anyway.

Things are much clearer on the PC, and although I haven't set the graphics to maximum it still looks impressive. The video editor will take some practise to get used to. I made a very short clip of the swingset of doom but it's nothing to write home about and I was just playing with the editor to get my bearings.

And yet, I find myself wanting to play Mount & Blade. I've hired myself out as a mercenary captain to the king of the Vaegirs, who is at war with the king of the Nords. Recently I helped (read: single handedly) break through the defences of a Nord castle to claim it for the kingdom of the Vaegirs. Unfortunately the Vaegir king has now been captured by the Nords. I have no idea where he is and I only have a small number of men compared to most of the Nordic lords.

The last time I played Mount & Blade I made a big tactical mistake. I was given perhaps one of the best possible tactical advantages in terms of starting position. I was on one side of a very wide river with a cliff face to my left and open ground to my right. I placed my archers on the clifftop overlooking the river, and my infantry on the riverbank protecting the slope leading up to my archers and ready to spear my sea raider opponents as they struggled out of the water. Then, while the sea raiders were struggling through the river and getting peppered with arrows, I ordered my cavalry to charge the sea raiders' flank. Forgetting that the sea raiders were, of course, still in the river. The result was that my cavalry lost virtually all of their momentum in the river and didn't really help at all. In fact, several of my high-level cavalry units got killed.

I managed to win two tournaments though, so my honour and renown has gone shooting up, allowing me to hire more recruits from the nearby villages.

I still have The Witcher to complete. I'm right at the end and I still have the expanded stand alone adventures that come with the Enhanced Edition to play. The only thing is that the last three "boss" characters I fought were incredibly tough. One of them killed me four or five times before I was able to figure out which combat style was best, balance my potion, oil, and sign use, and get lucky with the damage dealt/taken during the battle. Now the game seems like it's going to just be combat, combat, combat all the way to the end. What I loved most about The Witcher was the character development, the darkness of your surroundings, and the sturdiness of the system. Towards the end of the game it feels like a lot of the things that make The Witcher special have been wasted.

Like Crysis when you're put into a tank. A soldier can use a tank just as well as a super soldier in a nanosuit. Your stealth, speed, armour, and strength enhancements do nothing for you while you're stuck with the limitations of a tank. The tank doesn't become invisible, it can already knock down walls and kill people by running them over, your suit can't make it go any faster, and it doesn't get more armour just because the driver is bulletproof.

Oh well. I really should just complete it before I forget how to play it.

Boom! Headshot!

Yesterday I smashed my head on a hand drier in the staff toilets. Ouch. Drew blood even. In both the C block staff toilets, the hand drier is positioned perfectly so that leaning just a little too far forwards when you stand up from the toilet means your head impacts with the bottom of the hand drier.

I've been doing some more 40k-themed drawings and I'm writing up my notes for Dark Heresy on Sunday. I wasn't entirely sure how to move the current adventure forwards but the players helped a little last session and the spark that they threw my way has turned into an unstoppable wildfire.

Sam's character has yet to use his semi-automatic combat shotgun, so I'm very interested to find out how it fares. I've heard a lot of people say that for its price, a combat shotgun is more worthy than a bolter in the right circumstances (i.e. point-blank-range). Originally, Sam wanted a flamer but couldn't afford one. Then he was going to settle for a hand flamer but, again, he didn't have the cash for it. Then he saw the stats for a hellgun and tried to get one of those. However, since the acolytes aren't really fighting opponents with armour or having trouble with their enemies taking cover all the time, I suggested that perhaps a weapon so indiscrete as a lasgun so bulky and powerful that it needs its own backpack power source was not the best idea for undercover work and strolling about town. While he can attempt to hide his lasgun inside an overly large duffel bag, a hellgun (complete with backpack) is another story. So he got a combat shotgun.

I realised that the NPC combatants aren't really fleshed out very well either. There have been no threats, warcries, curses, or challenges yelled mid-combat. There's a lot to concentrate on, and I think I said this about the other two in an earlier post, but when you're focussing on the rules and trying to remember where everything is, it's very easy to forget that you've got a character down there in your imaginary world, as well as a bunch of statistics, modifiers, and values.

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to mention... nope. Can't think what it was.

I've Seen The End

This is the second time I dreamed about the end of the world. I don't think I mentioned the last one, it doesn't really matter because it wasn't anything special. Odd, but most of my dreams are. But it doesn't strike me as being newsworthy.

Last night's end of the world was the 2012 end of the world that a lot of people are yabbering about. My "official" stance on 2012 doesn't exist, so please don't ask me what I think, if anything, will happen.

In the dream though, the end of the world was a purely human one. A self fulfilling prophecy even! People started rioting, looting, and fighting because they thought civilization was about to end. Stepping back from the chaos and anarchy that was taking over, you could see that civilization was only falling down because of the people who feared it doing so. You get me? Riots didn't magically appear out of nowhere because the calendars ticked over; the riots began because people expected them to start, and started them themselves. There was no global catastrophe or natural disaster. There were some strange elements to the dream involving cats, mock firearms, YouTube, and corner shops, but it is not translatable from dream to text.

I finished a very quick sketch the other night which was an attempt at a drawing style I've not really dabbled in before. No prizes for guessing what style it is. I was happy with the result, but the lines don't look clear enough - I think Photoshop's path tools can help with that but I have no idea how to use them. I tried following an online tutorial but there seems to be some setting somewhere in my version of Photoshop that automatically fills any shape I make and doesn't allow me to apply a stroke to a path. It's all very confusing (and a little frustrating).

The rosy cheeks were an afterthought. They reminded me of an old friend. Well, I say old but how old a friend can they be if I'm only twenty-two?

As promised, here's a screenshot of Mount & Blade. Not that you can't find better screenshots elsewhere online. The screenshot shows my character (Albrecht Helden) and his host of two-score men willing to stride into battle for honour, glory, valour... and a grand total of seven-hundred denars every week! It really has been very addictive and I had to force myself to play The Witcher to make sure I don't just forget about it now I'm in the final chapter of the story.

Too Cold to Cook

It really is too cold to cook in my kitchen. Well, too cold to cook properly. There's no real heating in there apart from a wall-mounted blow-heater which is strategically positioned directly over my fridge and is a very costly way of heating a room.

So while I can chuck fish and chips or pie and chips or turkey escalopes and chips in the oven and then crawl up into a ball in front of my halogen heater while it cooks, something more adventurous (and better) like a chili-con-carne, pasta, a curry, or a casserole requires the cook to stand in front of the oven while the food is being prepared. That means inhabiting a room almost as cold as it is outside. I suppose I'll just have to ignore the shivers and take it like a viking.

Speaking of vikings, I haven't taken many screenshots or videos of Mount & Blade yet. If I do then I may post them here.

This morning I posted my most recent drawing, the xenos servo skull X978-1, on my GooglePages site. For those unfamiliar with the fluff behind Warhammer 40,000; the "Prime Directive" of the Imperium of Man is to seek out new worlds for the Imperium to dominate, to kill any xenos they find (Look Not Upon The Alien, Listen Not To The Alien, Speak Not Unto The Alien), and to spread the word of the Emperor and Holy Terra. So an alien skull reconstructed to serve as a servo skull (usually an honour reserved only to noteworthy servants of the Emperor, and certainly not filthy xenos, so that they may serve the Emperor in death as well as in life) is a very, very strange thing. Nonetheless, it is an important element of my Dark Heresy campaign which, as I said in the last post, is going very well.

Because it was snowing in the morning, I took the train to work yesterday. It was a waste of £5.90 since a) it wasn't snowing in Robertsbridge b) we did not even get one centimetre of snow, and c) I was not approached by a conductor on the trip out or the trip home for my ticket. You don't need a ticket to get onto the platform and I think Southern Rail are losing money hand over fist from commuters and travellers who don't go all the way to London, and don't buy a ticket because no one checks.

Back Online

There has been so much time between now and my last post that I don't really know where to start or how much to write. Nothing dire or especially important, but a lot of stuff.

Well let's start with Dark Heresy. The campaign is going really, really well. The players are enjoying it much more than Dungeons and Dragons and the storyline just flows so much more readily. I'm sure a large part of that is the setting and system being so much better, but also I think I learned some valuable lessons while DMing for Dungeons and Dragons. Bob was visiting his family for Christmas and asked if he could join in for a game or two while he was in town. Of course, I've been planning the storyline around two acolytes, not three, so plonking another character into the players' midst in the middle of the game isn't very easy. Still, we kind of did it.

Sam's guardsman character just spent his last coin on a combat shotgun and has decided that Drive (Ground Vehicle) isn't actually the worst and most useless skill on his list. In fact, I think he has rolled more Drive (Ground Vehicle) tests than Tech Use. Nick's character just bought a laspistol but I don't think he's managed to hit anything with it yet. The largest weapon the characters have used so far is an industrial tractor which killed a building. They also managed to avoid dozens of alternative means of taking down a grox while avoiding combat, and instead just filled it with shotgun shells (this was before the combat shotgun; both characters were using very basic weapons).

Nick introduced me to Mount & Blade, a free indie-developed game which smells like Sid Meier's Pirates! with a side of Medieval: Total War, seasoned with Age of Chivalry. I've only played a little bit of it and my first few characters were taken prisoner (i.e. I lost a battle but the game felt like being nice to me rather than killing my character off) far too many times. The combat mechanics are really good; momentum plays a big, big part in dealing damage to your opponent (so of course, being on horseback gives you a massive advantage); shields get smashed and broken by axes, but can be covered with a forest of arrows; you can ally yourself with so many knights and nobles, raid villages and turn yourself into a villain; and, most awesome of all, trot slowly through peasant villages admiring the sun setting over fields of crops.

Unlike Pirates! or Freelancer, Mount & Blade allows you to physically wander through villages, towns, and castles to recruit warriors, discover the latest gossip, and buy provisions. Oh, and don't think that the village blacksmith will sell you a new sword or some sort of magical armour, oh no; Mount & Blade is much more realistic than that. Peasants have no gold to give you in return for looted weapons and armour, they don't make or sell weapons; but you can buy food (to raise your party's morale) and the like from them. You can also buy cattle, the only use I have so far found for cattle is giving the cows to another village in order to help it expand.

Prince of Persia was great. The style was different from the Sands of Time trilogy, but unlike many small-minded and intolerant gamers out there, that didn't phase me one bit. Elika's presence provided another dimesion to the way the game worked. She very rarely gets in your way, and when she does the results are never lethal. The game's way of saving you from death did not actually make me cringe at all. In fact, when I was playing Gears of War 2 with Sam (we completed all fifty levels of Horde mode, although to my shame it was on Casual difficulty because we were getting destroyed on Hardcore; don't even ask about Insane) I kept thinking that having some automatic return to checkpoint system would save so much time rather than continually being prompted with "reload to last checkpoint or quit?" over and over (in the campaign I mean, not on Horde mode). Speaking of Gears of War 2, the Dom/Maria cinematic (linked video contains spoilers - you shouldn't even consider watching that video if you are playing Gears 2) half way through the game was really, really good. Proper drama.

Anyway, the ending of Prince of Persia was actually really good. It was very, very cleverly done. There was a built up to it that you never saw coming until it was too late. The twist was appreciated. I haven't found all one-thousand-and-one light seeds yet, but I'm playing the game a second time because I enjoyed it so much the first time around, so this time I'll keep an eye out for them. Besides, the banter between the Prince and Elika is very entertaining. Oh, and Ubisoft did themselves proud by avoiding horrible DRM software (I'm looking at you EA!) with Prince of Persia. I won't be getting Dead Space for PC, regardless of how awesome it looks, if I am limited to the number of installs I can run on it while people pirating the game will just download fresh counterfiet versions of the game for free if they run out of installs.

And in real-world (boo, hiss) news; I almost slipped up on the way to work yesterday due to the icy conditions. We saw snow and the snow saw us. The school's caretaker is running low on grit and doesn't have a proper spreader to spread it with (I think he just has to use a spade). So my bike's tyres were spinning like crazy but had absolutely zero traction no matter how gently I manipulated the throttle. Eventually the caretaker arrived to help me push the bike out of the way of any traffic moving through the carpark. Still, it was unnervingly sketchy for a moment and if one of the schoolbusses hadn't pulled up to let kids out in front of me, I might not have been so lucky to see the icy patch dead ahead.

On its way out, one of the busses locked its front wheels on the ice. I thought a collision was due by the driver was lucky/deft enough to stay out of trouble. I suppose he must have Drive (Ground Vehicle) too.