Discouragement
Before I begin, I finally updated the wedding entry with a couple of pictures, after saying I would for weeks.
So, another year. I don't like the sound of 2007, but I never really liked 2006 either. 2005 was a much better number. Last year was fairly good overall so I have no reason to expect this one to be any better other than in the sense of natural progression. I have never made new-year resolutions, but there are a few things that I aim to begin very soon. Namely, getting my driver's license, moving into a larger house and starting to fill it with new family members. I've been promised a further payrise when I return to work (which is tomorrow), and none of those goals should present any real obstacle. I actaully got the application for a provisional license years ago, when I was at college. I just never filled it in.
Christmas was alright. I left everything to the last moment as usual, not that it mattered too much because Shanna took care of most of it. I still ended up riding to my office on Christmas Eve though, to pick up some cards and things before heading down to Grahams. Shanna had gone on ahead, so she was already there. Someone started of the exchanging of presents, so we ended up swapping them all despite having just agreed to put them under the tree and wait until Christmas.
Graham gave me a book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. I mentioned a similar work by him before, a two-part documentary on Channel 4 entitled 'The Root Of All Evil?'. This book contains most of what was shown in the show, plus a lot of historical background and detailed reasoning on all the points made on both sides. I'm finding it very interesting to read, because I don't actually agree with all the arguments he makes. Whilst his explanations and subsequent defeat of the arguments for God's existance are interesting, I don't always agree with his alternatives. The difference, of course, is that he will admit that his ideas are theory whereas the religious viewpoint is absolute - their way is the one and only true way. I also don't agree with the general opinion that he is a good writer, at least based upon this one book; I find a little too much repetition of the samer points in different ways and at some points the language is a little tedious, but then, I have no other experience of this kind of book to compare with. Overall, I'm finding it very interesting to read, and I would recommend it to anyone who can read it with an open mind (by which I equally mean those who are not religious as well as those who are - blindly accepting all of Dawkins' arguments without thought would be as much 'blind faith' as the religion you are trying to claim is wrong).
Shanna gave me her presents very early on Christmas Morning, before we went to bed. Quite unusual they were, too. I had for a while been looking for my old Sega MegaDrive II, and whilst I could find all my games and controllers, I could not find the console itself. She apparently managed to find one in one of the shops in Bournemouth, which actually surprises me. She certainly paid too much for it (I wouldn't value it at more than £5 these days), but I'm glad to have one again. The other present was a DVD of Pingu, a show I used to love as a child. Slightly unfortunately, it's changed a lot since the time I used to watch it, and the Wikipedia article explains why: "In 2004, Hit Entertainment bought the UK rights to the series (including the original 105 episodes), and produced a further 52 episodes which were animated at Hot Animation, and were broadcast in the same year. These feature new voice actors Marcello Magni and David Sant, as Bonomi, now in his sixties, was considered too old.". It still brings some very warm feelings back to me though.
I 'had' (chose) to go back to work on Boxing Day, which wasn't bad, but the journey home didn't go too well. I rode home around 7:30, and was only about five minutes away when I was involved in an accident. I had already come off of Wallisdown Road onto Boundary Roundabout, observing as I did so a single car coming up Boundary Road. Since I was already on the roundabout, the driver should have slowed down as he approached it and waited for me to pass before joining it. However, he decided not to do this, and just as I was trying to exit onto Talbot Road I became momentarily aware of some bright lights far too close behind me. I don't remember how I got off the bike, but I must have done it well because I managed to land on my feet and run for a few steps, before falling over purely because I was travelling too fast for me legs to keep up. As I fell over I instinctively put out my hands to take absorb the impact, which was a good idea except for the speed I was travelling. So luckily I wasn't really injured in any way, but did slide along the floor for a little way and remove areas of skin from my hands and knees. I got up and walked back towards the car which had stopped behind me, and the driver did at least get out and ask if I was okay and needed any help. There wasn't much he couldn've done to help me, so I told him to go and resumed the last little section of my journey home. The damage to my hands was extremely painful and rather messy, but after I got it cleaned up it didn't look too bad. It was too painful to use them though, especially typing and other things I need to do, so I took the following day off work.
I really would've appreciated the rest of the week of to let them heal properly, but I was asked to come back the following day quite urgently. I reluctantly agreed to, but it turned out I didn't have to do any of my normal work anyway - the urgent problem was something quite new and, unfortunately for me, quite unsolveable. Wallisdown Road is having very frequent disconnections from the Ringwood Road servers, but only for very short durations. To me, this is a good indacation of the problem I observed months ago on the NTL connection at Ringwood Road: it would unpredictably fail for about a second, and then immidiately resume performing very well. I did mention the problem and suggest that signal loss, possibly by electrical interfereance was to blame, but nothing was done and it wasn't a serious problem. Suddenly however, the problem seems to have becmoe extremely serious such that it can barely hold a connection for more than a few minutes. Sadly this exposes a failure in my software in dealing with a poor connection. Whilst arguably it shouldn't expect to, when the connection is lost even for a moment, there is no way to resume without restarting the program to reconnect.
It doesn't help, either, that mine and Darius' thoughts on the root cause are entirely opposed. Whilst we both agree that either could be right, it does affect what is given priority in attempts to solve the problem, and will probably result in a resolution taking longer than necessary. That isn't my fault, but I'll be the one to have to deal with it, and as a result, the last week of December was an extremely stressful one, and indeed that is likely to return when I go back to work tomorrow.
To further raise my mood during that last couple of weeks, I was reading an article about how my dreams are completely unreachable. Rather ironically titled 'Blinded by Reality', the subject of the article is in fact nothing to do with me, and is about the story of Epic MegaGames during the development of Uneral. My problem with the article might not be immidiately obvious, but it is that something similar will probably never happen again. Indeed at the time I would have called it unlikely that such a small team could produce something so successful, but now I would call it impossible. The industry is now dominated in the same way that the film industry is - by those with the money. Small developers can still produce their products in the same way small or ameture film studios can produce films, and though they may very well be of high quality, who, on a public scale, really cares. It makes little difference if their product is fifty times better, than the latest 'same old' offering from one of the industry giants - they simply don't have the resources to compete. Companies like Epic owe their success to being there at the beginning; some of their early titles were not particularly impressive, but at the time, small-team and individual efforts were pretty much what the market consisted of.
There is one single exception that I can see, and this comes from an observation I have made on writing business software. Although games are now completely out of reach, application software is not by any means, and the reason for this is diversity. There are only a limited number of types of games we are familiar with, and all of these have been well exploited by now. On the contrary, applications tend to have very specific markets, and the sheer number of these alone is an advantage, not to mention that a large number of businesses need custom solutions which do not already exist. So, the only was I can see to make any impact in gaming is to create a new genre of game. It's just unfortunate, then, that along with everybody else in the world, I don't have any new ideas.
I'm getting tired of writing and hungry for some food now, so I will leave, although I expect to return quite soon.
So, another year. I don't like the sound of 2007, but I never really liked 2006 either. 2005 was a much better number. Last year was fairly good overall so I have no reason to expect this one to be any better other than in the sense of natural progression. I have never made new-year resolutions, but there are a few things that I aim to begin very soon. Namely, getting my driver's license, moving into a larger house and starting to fill it with new family members. I've been promised a further payrise when I return to work (which is tomorrow), and none of those goals should present any real obstacle. I actaully got the application for a provisional license years ago, when I was at college. I just never filled it in.
Christmas was alright. I left everything to the last moment as usual, not that it mattered too much because Shanna took care of most of it. I still ended up riding to my office on Christmas Eve though, to pick up some cards and things before heading down to Grahams. Shanna had gone on ahead, so she was already there. Someone started of the exchanging of presents, so we ended up swapping them all despite having just agreed to put them under the tree and wait until Christmas.
Graham gave me a book by Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion. I mentioned a similar work by him before, a two-part documentary on Channel 4 entitled 'The Root Of All Evil?'. This book contains most of what was shown in the show, plus a lot of historical background and detailed reasoning on all the points made on both sides. I'm finding it very interesting to read, because I don't actually agree with all the arguments he makes. Whilst his explanations and subsequent defeat of the arguments for God's existance are interesting, I don't always agree with his alternatives. The difference, of course, is that he will admit that his ideas are theory whereas the religious viewpoint is absolute - their way is the one and only true way. I also don't agree with the general opinion that he is a good writer, at least based upon this one book; I find a little too much repetition of the samer points in different ways and at some points the language is a little tedious, but then, I have no other experience of this kind of book to compare with. Overall, I'm finding it very interesting to read, and I would recommend it to anyone who can read it with an open mind (by which I equally mean those who are not religious as well as those who are - blindly accepting all of Dawkins' arguments without thought would be as much 'blind faith' as the religion you are trying to claim is wrong).
Shanna gave me her presents very early on Christmas Morning, before we went to bed. Quite unusual they were, too. I had for a while been looking for my old Sega MegaDrive II, and whilst I could find all my games and controllers, I could not find the console itself. She apparently managed to find one in one of the shops in Bournemouth, which actually surprises me. She certainly paid too much for it (I wouldn't value it at more than £5 these days), but I'm glad to have one again. The other present was a DVD of Pingu, a show I used to love as a child. Slightly unfortunately, it's changed a lot since the time I used to watch it, and the Wikipedia article explains why: "In 2004, Hit Entertainment bought the UK rights to the series (including the original 105 episodes), and produced a further 52 episodes which were animated at Hot Animation, and were broadcast in the same year. These feature new voice actors Marcello Magni and David Sant, as Bonomi, now in his sixties, was considered too old.". It still brings some very warm feelings back to me though.
I 'had' (chose) to go back to work on Boxing Day, which wasn't bad, but the journey home didn't go too well. I rode home around 7:30, and was only about five minutes away when I was involved in an accident. I had already come off of Wallisdown Road onto Boundary Roundabout, observing as I did so a single car coming up Boundary Road. Since I was already on the roundabout, the driver should have slowed down as he approached it and waited for me to pass before joining it. However, he decided not to do this, and just as I was trying to exit onto Talbot Road I became momentarily aware of some bright lights far too close behind me. I don't remember how I got off the bike, but I must have done it well because I managed to land on my feet and run for a few steps, before falling over purely because I was travelling too fast for me legs to keep up. As I fell over I instinctively put out my hands to take absorb the impact, which was a good idea except for the speed I was travelling. So luckily I wasn't really injured in any way, but did slide along the floor for a little way and remove areas of skin from my hands and knees. I got up and walked back towards the car which had stopped behind me, and the driver did at least get out and ask if I was okay and needed any help. There wasn't much he couldn've done to help me, so I told him to go and resumed the last little section of my journey home. The damage to my hands was extremely painful and rather messy, but after I got it cleaned up it didn't look too bad. It was too painful to use them though, especially typing and other things I need to do, so I took the following day off work.
I really would've appreciated the rest of the week of to let them heal properly, but I was asked to come back the following day quite urgently. I reluctantly agreed to, but it turned out I didn't have to do any of my normal work anyway - the urgent problem was something quite new and, unfortunately for me, quite unsolveable. Wallisdown Road is having very frequent disconnections from the Ringwood Road servers, but only for very short durations. To me, this is a good indacation of the problem I observed months ago on the NTL connection at Ringwood Road: it would unpredictably fail for about a second, and then immidiately resume performing very well. I did mention the problem and suggest that signal loss, possibly by electrical interfereance was to blame, but nothing was done and it wasn't a serious problem. Suddenly however, the problem seems to have becmoe extremely serious such that it can barely hold a connection for more than a few minutes. Sadly this exposes a failure in my software in dealing with a poor connection. Whilst arguably it shouldn't expect to, when the connection is lost even for a moment, there is no way to resume without restarting the program to reconnect.
It doesn't help, either, that mine and Darius' thoughts on the root cause are entirely opposed. Whilst we both agree that either could be right, it does affect what is given priority in attempts to solve the problem, and will probably result in a resolution taking longer than necessary. That isn't my fault, but I'll be the one to have to deal with it, and as a result, the last week of December was an extremely stressful one, and indeed that is likely to return when I go back to work tomorrow.
To further raise my mood during that last couple of weeks, I was reading an article about how my dreams are completely unreachable. Rather ironically titled 'Blinded by Reality', the subject of the article is in fact nothing to do with me, and is about the story of Epic MegaGames during the development of Uneral. My problem with the article might not be immidiately obvious, but it is that something similar will probably never happen again. Indeed at the time I would have called it unlikely that such a small team could produce something so successful, but now I would call it impossible. The industry is now dominated in the same way that the film industry is - by those with the money. Small developers can still produce their products in the same way small or ameture film studios can produce films, and though they may very well be of high quality, who, on a public scale, really cares. It makes little difference if their product is fifty times better, than the latest 'same old' offering from one of the industry giants - they simply don't have the resources to compete. Companies like Epic owe their success to being there at the beginning; some of their early titles were not particularly impressive, but at the time, small-team and individual efforts were pretty much what the market consisted of.
There is one single exception that I can see, and this comes from an observation I have made on writing business software. Although games are now completely out of reach, application software is not by any means, and the reason for this is diversity. There are only a limited number of types of games we are familiar with, and all of these have been well exploited by now. On the contrary, applications tend to have very specific markets, and the sheer number of these alone is an advantage, not to mention that a large number of businesses need custom solutions which do not already exist. So, the only was I can see to make any impact in gaming is to create a new genre of game. It's just unfortunate, then, that along with everybody else in the world, I don't have any new ideas.
I'm getting tired of writing and hungry for some food now, so I will leave, although I expect to return quite soon.