Sunday 3 December 2017

22 - Games

I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by video games. And this is, mostly, a relatively recent thing, and has been building in the time I've had a PS4.

Whilst I'm not a particular gaming obsessive, over the years I've had a Spectrum, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, PlayStation, Wii, 3DS, and PS4. 

I'll go through the things that are annoying me lately...

New Games needing an update.

I can't recall a game on the PS4 that hasn't needed a patch before I start to play it. If it's a game that's been around a bit, I can understand that there might be some potential improvements that may have come to light, based on customer feedback; but on new release games? Really? That's rather a tacit admission that that they couldn't be bothered to get the game right before duplicating all the copies of the game. In the old days, before 'net connection was the default a company had to get it right from the off. 

This leads to...

The insane amount of space taken up by games on the hard drive of the PS4.

Because every game needs an update, and because this needs storing on the hard drive, this takes up a huge amount of space. This, coupled with the fact that each game copies an amount of data from the game disc on to the hard drive, as well as save game data, means only so many games can be stored. And not enough for all the games I have...

Because of this I keep on having to delete stuff off. Which means next time I want to play that game I'll have to re-download the updates. Unless..

Well, this leads to...

The lack of ease of upgrading the hard drive.

There's USB ports on the thing. Why can't I just plug in an external drive in to one of these? But, no, it seems the only way to do so is to open up the PS4, take out the old one, make sure everything's copied over on to a bigger HD, and then stick the new one in. It's somewhat of a faff...

And then there's...

DLC.

I mean. Do you need it? For each game is it relevant? If you buy a season pass for all this stuff in advance, how do you even know it's going to be worthwhile, or worth the money? Or does it mean when you buy the game, you're only getting a bit of it, and to get the whole game you need to buy this stuff? I liked it that when you bought a game that was it. You had, in one hit, everything there was for the game.

And then...

Dumb omissions made by games makers.

There seems to be a bit of a trend whereby you have long standing games series, and over time you get to know them and what to expect from them. Then when they release new versions, elements are conspicuous by their absence... take for example;

Street Fighter V - the Street Fighter games have, all over the course of their history had a mode based on the original arcade games whereby you fight a series of ten fighters, each getting progressively harder, until you get to the toughest boss. This is absent from SFV. There's a story mode where you switch from character to character, and another one where you fight three or four matches on an individual story... but the main meat of an SF game just isn't there...

(I should actually note here, that SFV is a good use of DLC; there's some extra characters, and you can either pay from the off to get access to them, or you can earn them through fighting. That's a good compromise.)

Gran Turismo Sport - now this one is very frustrating, in that they've actually forgotten to put the actual fucking game as an option... yes. Really. 

In the earlier GT games, you had to enter series of races, and through this you could earn money to buy better cars, or upgrades to cars, to win more races. You could tweak the performance of your cars to get an edge on the competition. When you earnt a new car it was a real achievement; especially when you had you're eye on a specific car. You could also earn places in more difficult races by passing licence tests completing specific tasks, and earning different licenses. It was tricky, a challenge, but so much fun. 

There was also an arcade mode, for quick races, but that was always just a side thing, and not the main event. 

Fast forward to GTS, and it has the arcade mode, it has the driving test side of things... but the actual career style mode... not there. It feels like the heart of the game has been torn out of it, and the whole thing feels terribly incomplete. 

Add to this, you get awarded new cars left, right, and centre. For example, if you play it and drive 27 miles in a day - which takes very little time - you get an extra car. Every day. There's no achievement. Getting a new car just elicits a shrug, rather than being an achievement. 

This version does have an online mode, but that's somewhat half assed. There's tracks you can race on each day, but only at specific times throughout the day, which to me seems very limiting, leading to waits for the race to start. There's also tournaments you can enter, but these only run on some days, and you have to enter at specific times in advance. I don't know if I'll be on the PS4 in two days' time. I might be. I might not be. Again, it's limiting. Just makes me not want to bother...

(As an aside; I recall Mario Kart online on the Wii. When I played that mode, I'd have a race up and running in less than a minute, based on whoever was online at the time. If the Wii could do this, surely the PS4 can?)

This is all very frustrating, as GTS plays so very well. What there is I enjoy, but I think I'd rather be playing GT or GT2 on the original PS. And that's surely not right?

Wouldn't surprise me if a proper career mode is something they'll add on as DLC at a later stage and charge a wodge of case for. When it should have been part of the thing from the off...

Guess I should have waited for the reviews before getting this one... but then who would have thought that they'd have not bothered including the actual game???

There's some good stuff...

It's not all bad on the PS4; I keep going back to Grand Theft Auto V; it's just a wonderful, expansive game with so many things you can do in the town. Sometimes you just want to drive around the town, ignoring the main missions. Just hang out there. Get distracted by things... go do one of the races. Get in a chase with the cops. It's just one of the best things there is. 

Talking of one of the best things there is... the PS Store sells a nigh on perfect version of Bubble Bobble. That I'd play this old game on new tech is a testament to its enduring appeal. And I'm currently #38 in the world on the 5-minute high score mode. 1-credit high score mode... well, I'm a bit lower. 

Can we have Grand Theft Auto 6, now, please...? 


Sunday 8 October 2017

21 - Housing.

The first thing I'd like to say about this post is that really this is pretty much a stream of consciousness about the subject of housing. It's some of my initial thoughts on the topic; no more than this, and should be read with that in mind. I may return to topic another time... But for now...

TL:DR version of this piece; the housing system in the UK is fucked. 

Of course, the problem is rampant capitalism. That is, the pursuit of money above all else, whereby the acquisition of money and wealth is the be all, and end all. Of course, all businesses want to make money, as if they don't they will soon go out of business. But there is a difference between a business that exists to make a reasonable amount of money to cover its costs, improve its services, and to make a reasonable profit, and those businesses where everything is geared towards squeezing the absolute maximum they can get away with.

I know the counter arguments here, in that the markets will self regulate and that if a business charges too much for its good and services it will go out of business. But the big companies are not daft. They have teams of people who work analysing data to report to them exactly what they should be charging in order to maximise every single penny of profit.

And its this that's at the heart of why our housing system is in such a perilous state. 

It used to be the case that mortgages were based on multiples of three or three and a half times the salary of supplicants. Then, house prices started to rise, and rather than the market correcting itself (as capitalist theory suggests they should), with prices correcting to that level of multiples, things went different. 

The banks and building societies started to increase the multiples of salary they would lend on. Four times, five times, six times salary, etc. This was intended to help people to have a greater chance of affording these increasing property prices. 

Of course, estate agents aren't daft. They soon twigged what was going on, and knowing that there were these increasing multiples available to those seeking to buy, they advised their clients that they could get more than they might initially have thought for their homes. 

(It is a point to remember here that an estate agent's client is the seller, not the buyer, as it is they who pay the commission on the sale, and the greater the price of the sale, the greater the value of their commission, whch is based on a percentage of the sale of the house.)

So, house prices continued to increase, and this increasing value became a real political issue. More and more people were being excluded from being able to buy a house, as prices had gone even beyond the multiples of their salary they could afford. Deposit amounts increased, and formed higher percentages of the price of the house. 

All of this meant that people were having to attempt to save many thousands of pounds - tens of thousands - whilst managing the day to day costs of living, including the rental of their current homes (I'll come back to renting later). 

Politicians on both sides of the house have long since struggled with this thorny dilemma, as on the one hand you have people who can't afford to get on to the housing ladder, and on the other you have those who do own their homes who want to protect the value of their houses.

Any action taken to lower house prices would be a great benefit to those trying to get on the housing ladder. However, for those who already own it will mean their house becomes a depreciating asset, they'll have a mortgage with negative equity, and owe more to their mortgage provider than they could get if they sell it. 

Shared ownership, and “help to buy” schemes are no more than a sticking plaster over the problem, and don't actually address the issue. They are trailed as being there to help people get on to the housing ladder, but really all they are doing is maintaining the excessively high prices of properties by offering subsidies to buyers. 

The property ownership boom of the 1980s was fuelled by Thatcher's decision to sell off council housing stocks at a cut price; whilst this increased the number of property owners, it shrunk by a significant amount the stock of housing that councils could offer to its residents, which in turn increased the amount of private renting in the country, and by extension eventually the amount of people buying houses only to rent them out, vis the “buy to let” concept.

There's a lot of talk about what constitutes a "fair" rent, or an "affordable". The problem is these levels are based on that horrible thing called "market rates", which ties in with the comments at the start about capitalism; the "market rates" for rent are, essentially, as much as landlords can get away with charging. So, these "market rates" are as high as they can be. 

A much fairer way of setting "fair" or "affordable" rents would be to base them on the national average wage; that way they would actually be based on the ability to pay. You'd have a scale of rents, based on the type of property - you'd expect a three bedroom house to cost more to rent than a one bedroom flat, for example - with some regional variations. This would be a much fairer way of setting rents. 

And whilst I'm complaining about renting, there's another bugbear of mine; clauses in rental agreements that prevent you from doing things that really should be considered "normal" living. For example, many private rental agreement prohibit the tenant from having pets; to my mind this is unnecessarily  restrictive. The counter argument is that sometime pets can cause damage to the house or furniture, so the landlord doesn't want them in the house for that reason. However, there is a counter to the counter in that it would be a simple matter to put in a clause in respect of pets that if the tenant has a pet they are responsible for the cost of any damage caused by them. There are other examples I could cite.

Moving on to one final issue; the overwhelming amount of developments of “luxury apartments” that seem to be springing up. Ever time I see a sign advertising them I read the word “luxury” as “over-priced”. There's enough of these already. In London there are apartment buildings where vast numbers of the apartments are unoccupied. They are bought up by investors who see them only as assets to be bought at one price, and sold at a higher price a few years later. They are not bought to be lived in, just as boxes to be bought and sold. 

I think there are few (barring those doing the buying and selling of such properties) who wouldn't see this as a problem. Every empty property is a property that could be being lived in. But how to solve this problem? Well, if we return to the cause of the problem in the first place – capitalism – the solution is surely to make it unprofitable to leave the properties empty. Perhaps if a property is left unoccupied for more than a certain amount of time, say six months, without good reason then it could attract an additional tax based on the value of the property. Don't want to pay the tax; rent the property out. This may not go down very well, but it would be a way to reduce this kind of property speculation. Personally, I'd also apply it to second/holiday homes as well, but that might be a step too far.

Thank you for taking the time to read these ramblings. I may return to some specifics, in more detail, at some point; but this is a reasonable, albeit lengthy, overview of some of my initial thoughts on the topic. 

Saturday 7 October 2017

20 - Tea

There's a thing about Star Trek; The Next Generation that, for some reason, really bugs me. And it's something really trivial. 

It's to do with Jean Luc Picard. 

No, it's not about how a Frenchman has a perfect English accent. It's way more trivial than that.

Whenever Jean Luc orders his favourite drink from the replicator, he says;

"Tea. Earl Grey. Hot"

Just let that sink in. Think about the thing you've never noticed. The thing that, really, seems completely illogical...

Okay.

First he says "Tea." Fine. Yes, he doesn't want coffee, whiskey, or that drink Data once described as "green". 

Second he says "Earl Grey." Again, yes; otherwise he might have got English Breakfast, Darjeeling, or maybe a nice peppermint tea. 

Then he says "Hot." 

And therein lies the problem.

The default way for tea to be served is "Hot." If I were to go in to a tea shop, and want a pot of tea with my cake, I would not expect to have to tell the person taking my order that I wanted it hot. That would be expected. 

So, why do the replicators on the Enterprise, the flagship of the fleet, need to be reminded every blimmin' time to serve a drink exactly how it is meant to be served? What nincompoop didn't think to set "hot" as the default, and only require a modifier should some poltroon decide they want cold tea? Think of all the times Jean Luc has had to waste time saying a redundant "hot". Think of all the times all the Starfleet officers have wasted time saying a redundant hot!

Think of the time it's taken me to write this post about the word "hot". How I could have been spending it writing a section of a great work of fiction. Or maybe writing a piece of biting social criticism. I could have written a piece of such political bite it could have forced the Prime Minister to resign. (Don't you think she looks tired?)

But no. I write about how Jean Luc Picard ordered his tea in a TV show that ended over 20 years ago.

This, dear reader, is my life in a capsule. 

Thursday 26 January 2017

19 - Orwell.

I never would have thought that George Orwell would ever have had anything to say about internet dating... yet he does. Sort of. I came across this article he wrote today for one of his regular columns, and this portion of it seem eerily like internet dating in the 21st century.

Yes, it's true it relates to a printed periodical, rather than the internet. But the underlying principles of this article hold true...

"THE MAY number of the Matrimonial Post and Fashionable Marriage Advertiser contains advertisements from 191 men seeking brides and over 200 women seeking husbands. Advertisements of this type have been running in a whole series of magazines since the sixties or earlier, and they are nearly always very much alike. For example:
Bachelor, age 25, height 6 ft 1 in., slim, fond of horticulture, animals, children, cinema, etc., would like to meet lady, age 27 to 35, with love of flowers, nature, children, must be tall, medium build, Church of England.
The general run of them are just like that, though occasionally a more unusual note is struck. For instance:
I’m 29, single, 5 ft 10 in., English, large build, kind, quiet, varied intellectual interests, firm moral background (registered unconditionally as absolute CO), progressive, creative, literary inclinations. A dealer in rare stamps, income variable but quite adequate. Strong swimmer, cyclist, slight stammer occasionally. Looking for the following rarity, amiable, adaptable, educated girl, easy on eye and ear, under 30, secretary type or similar, mentally adventurous, immune to mercenary and social incentives, bright sense of genuine humour, a reliable working partner. Capital unimportant, character vital.
The thing that is and always has been striking in these advertisements is that nearly all the applicants are remarkably eligible. It is not only that most of them are broad-minded, intelligent, home-loving, musical, loyal, sincere and affectionate, with a keen sense of humour and, in the case of women, a good figure: in the majority of cases they are financially OK as well. When you consider how fatally easy it is to get married, you would not imagine that a 36-year-old bachelor, ‘dark hair, fair complexion, slim build, height 6 ft, well educated and of considerate, jolly and intelligent disposition, income £1,000 per annum and capital’, would need to find himself a bride through the columns of a newspaper. And ditto with ‘Adventurous young woman, left-wing opinions, modern outlook’ with ‘fairly full but shapely figure, medium colour curly hair, grey-blue eyes, fair skin, natural colouring, health exceptionally good, interested in music, art, literature, cinema, theatre, fond of walking, cycling, tennis, skating and rowing’. Why does such a paragon have to advertise?
It should be noted that the Matrimonial Post is entirely above-board and checks up carefully on its advertisers.
What these things really demonstrate is the atrocious loneliness of people living in big towns. People meet for work and then scatter to widely separated homes. Anywhere in inner London it is probably exceptional to know even the names of the people who live next door.
Years ago I lodged for a while in the Portobello Road. This is hardly a fashionable quarter, but the landlady had been lady’s maid to some woman of title and had a good opinion of herself. One day something went wrong with the front door and my landlady, her husband and myself were all locked out of the house. It was evident that we should have to get in by an upper window, and as there was a jobbing builder next door I suggested borrowing a ladder from him. My landlady looked somewhat uncomfortable.
‘I wouldn’t like to do that,’ she said finally. ‘You see we don’t know him. We’ve been here fourteen years, and we’ve always taken care not to know the people on either side of us. It wouldn’t do, not in a neighbourhood like this. If you once begin talking to them they get familiar, you see.’
So we had to borrow a ladder from a relative of her husband’s, and carry it nearly a mile with great labour and discomfort.
I'm sure I don't need to point out all the similarities here. Internet dating seems to me to be the least worst way of meeting someone, but it's so frustrating and I have so few other opportunities to meet someone even vaguely suitable. If I'd been around in the forties I swear I'd have ended up putting an ad in that paper, or similar. 

Orwell was right about big towns. They're full of people who are lonely, but wishing they weren't. People who pass each other silently by, who would otherwise potentially be good friends if only they could talk. But it's not the done thing to approach people, and to start something up. Sometimes I think I should be brave and give it a go. But then, like in that Smiths song, a strange fear grips me... 

Still, onwards and upwards...

Tuesday 3 January 2017

18 - Matching.

Sorry to keep wibbling on about online dating and all that guff, but it is somewhat on my mind. The thing that annoys me about many dating sites is what they call a “match”.

So, I'll put in my requirements, which just for the sake of an example are “must look like either Diane Morgan or Danai Gurira”. Which I'm sure you'll agree is an entirely reasonable list of requirements. One or the other. I'm not fussed.

I'll hit the search button... and the site will give me a host of ladies who look either like Diane Morgan or Danai Gurira. I click on the first match to come along and start to read her description and wait... it'll say something like

Must be called Sven, and be able to juggle hedgehogs whilst yodelling the Guatamalan nation anthem.”

Hang on. I'm not called Sven. And whilst I can juggle, it's only with balls and not hedgehogs. And I don't even know the Guatamalan national anthem...

You see, whilst the site gives me a wealth of ladies who meet my entirely reasonable requirements, it doesn't bother to check their requirements to see if I match theirs. So I'll be wading through all these lovely ladies who look either like Diane Morgan or Danai Gurira, and get increasingly disappointed that I don't meet their entirely reasonable demands.

OK Cupid tries its best with this with its match percentage, but this is still far from perfect as there are certain questions there which are complete dealbreakers, which can still be answered in the “wrong” way and not have that much of an effect on overall percentage as there are so many other questions answered in the “correct” way.

All I want is for there to be at least one place that will only show me matches where she matches my requirements and I match hers. That's not too much to ask, is it?


Well, either that or a date with the real Diane Morgan or Danai Gurira...

Sunday 1 January 2017

17 - Resolution.

I do sometimes make New Year's Resolutions, but invariably break them. I think part of the reason is because I keep changing my mind. This year I'd thought of making a resolution to go on at least one date every month, as that would give me a target to aim for. But then I started to talk myself out of it for numerous reasons... I mean, mainly, though the chances of me actually getting 12 dates over the course of the year is roughly zero, as that would require me to find that many girls that would not only want to date me, but also to put up with how tricky it can be to even find times and days for dates... it's tricky being a single parent.

Then I thought... but what if I end up finding someone on the first date of the year who was not only right for me, but I was right for her. When my subconscious picked itself up after rolling around on the floor in laughter for a few hours I soon rethought that notion. Never gonna happen.

And then even trying to insist on a set number across the year seemed to be a folly, as surely all this kind of thing should come naturally, not as a part of some sort of artificially imposed quota that's putting an emphasis on quantity, rather than quality.

So, no. I guess I'll continue my way through this year in the same way I've been muddling through 2015 and 2016...


I could try to think up another resolution, but it's 2017 now and I'm not sure I have the energy to do so.