All the Books, None of the Fuss, Plus Spoilers

So I've recently finished a few books that are worth talking about, and a few that most definitely are not. 

Let's start positively, in this case with a small independently financed book called 'Empires of Eve.' 

If you don't like games then you can skip this.  Empires of Eve is a book written entirely about a game, about the political intrigue and entirely inconsequential goings on in the virtual universe imaged by the players. 

It is conceivable that you have never heard of Eve, because its player base is, frankly, small.  Only tens of thousands play the game regularly, which in the MMO space is a paltry figure.   

The giants (World of Warcraft, Runescape) aside, MMO's launch with one of two aims.  Either, they aim to gain enough subscribers to support continued development of the game, earn a little money on the side, and keep chugging along indefinitely.  Or, they try to dethrone the king.  They go for broke, cost tens, if not hundreds of millions to make, and require a million monthly subscribers just to break even.  The latter approach spawned WOW, and a host of failures.  The former approach spawned Eve, one or two others, and a host of failures. 

With this small community comes a fervour that takes all aspects of the game to illogical extremes.  Or perhaps it's not terribly illogical.  If you consider the amount of time, and money, people spend flying the ships around and building corporations, it starts to make a little more sense. 

The universe they've built is one almost entirely player driven, so humans control the vast business interests and swathes of space that end up causing wars that engulf everyone and everything.  This, without over-egging the wotsit, means Eve feuds are some of the best on the internet.  Not even celebrity hacks hold a candle to these spats. 

And this book chronicles the first half of the games history, from creation to around 2009 (if I remember correctly) in which time any number of nefarious, nonsensical acts of treason and treachery were enacted unto the (virtual) universe. 

The writing is solid, striking the right balance of facts (whatever 'facts,' there are in a virtual world) and editorialising.  The way things pan out from a neutral observers perspective (namely, mine) mirror real life to a frightening degree.  The times a player in charge of thousands of people and multiple corporations accidentally left their PC running, leaving something exposed, or vice cersa, the result of whichch is a collapsed empire, really strikes home.  The only times we find out about nefarious banking practices, corruption, or prime ministers shagging pigs, is when something goes wrong behind the scenes and someone accidentally left their laptop open in a taxi. 

Corporate espionage is more fun (and, frankly, more interesting) when giant spaceships, and not your pension scheme, are on the line. 

The one complaint I have is that of pacing.  He leaves every chapter hanging with a parting line that reads along the lines of, 'and that was just the start,' or 'this was a precursor to bigger things.'  This grows tiresome after the first few chapters, and positively obnoxious by the end.  There are other annoyances, like the book starting halfway through, jumping back to the start, chronologically speaking, then continuing on as if nothing was amiss.  This tired writing cliché might work in a novel, but this is an entertaining jaunt through actual (virtual) history.  Cheap tricks are unnecessary. 

The author is also desperate to justify his writing, reminding the reader on several occasions that the digital happenings of the game hold value just as the real world does. 

Insofar as tens of thousands of people have spent more time in this game than all the politicians on either side of the Atlantic have ever spent in their respective parliaments in the whole history of America or the U.K. it is important.  To the people who spend their times planning how to destroy 6,000USD (one of the later battles, not included in this book) worth of virtual stuff, it's obviously worth their time and, by being such, is important.  It's entirely unnecessary to keep reminding us of this, or even, to be perfectly honest, to bring it up in the first place. 

Everything is important to someone.  Just look at train spotters, who have always been at the bottom of the ladder in terms of nerd-dom and might very well remain there until the sun explodes.  They don't have to justify their hobby any more than you or I do.  Don't even open that dialogue. 

The book is great bar the mild annoyances I've mentioned, I don't recall any spelling mistakes, which for a self-funded (is it self published?  I'm too lazy to check) book is a minor miracle.  The story(ies) are great, and I love the interviews, which punctuate the diverse ways in which humans enjoy themselves, and enjoy the behind-the-scenes machinations usually reserved for millionaires and politicians born into that particular life. 

Rating:  3 that's no moon / 4 space stations 

Another book I recently read, on the recommendation of a website I frequent, was called The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. 

I'm not going to guild the lily here.  This book is not good.  This book is very not good, to the point that I've struck that particular website from my list of recommendatables (what a word). 

If you've ever seen the cult hit Firefly, you know the basic premise for this book.  It's about a crew, some weird alien/human mix that ensures plenty of 'we're all weird and special in our own way,' proselytising without a single meaningful interaction in the whole book.  There's not a single point at which I could say I was entertained, nor could I say that the message of diversity struck any meaningful chord.  It was stiff, inflexible, and dull. 

The plot is uneven.  The main plot point occurs thirty seconds before the end of the book, which makes me wonder whether the author originally intended a duology, or whether they ran out of ideas and needed to wrap it up quickly.  It reads like an introductory lesson in the lives of the crew and how their species function, while never physically moving forward.  The scenes in which the new human crewmember with a dark past (whom the reader is supposed to identify with perhaps?  I certainly didn't) learns about the various aliens and their clutures may well have been better handled in the form of brief flashbacks.  Instead we are treated to long, winding, and entirely dull sequences of no importance to man or alien. 

The scene in which the overt racist is humbled is contrived to the point of being cringeworthy.  In fact, at that point I put the book down and vowed to read no further.  Unfortunately as I was putting it down (read: closing the application on my phone) I noticed that I was near the end, and having struggled this far thought I may as well continue. 

There's a racy relationship between two of the crew which is kind of forbidden, I guess?  There's another racy relationship that has to be spelled out as being such in order to give it the spark of forbidden love.  If you have to spell it out to such a degree for the reader, I think it's fair to say that something has gone wrong in the telling.  The whole point of these things is that they stand on their own two (or four, or six, or in some cases eight) feet!  For heavens sake, if you're going to treat your reader like an imbecile then at least give them something to think about, however small it may be. 

But the author doesn't.  They just spell everything out in the most basic terms, stopping just short of supplying a set of crayons and colouring instructions. 

The writing is fine.  It's by no means the worst thing I've ever read in that department.  There were a few spelling mistakes which makes me suspect this is independently published.  The entire thing is easy to read which is good, because the whole ordeal can be dealt with in an afternoon. 

I would definitely check this author out again if someone else supplied the plot details. 

Take that for what it's worth. 

Rating: 1 canteloupe / 13 pineapples 

The star of this particular edition, for me, is a book entitled Earth Has Been Found.  It is by an author called D.F. Jones, and is one I recommend picking up for any fans of sci-fi, mystery or fantasy books.  Tonally speaking it's quite dark, so if you skew towards more light-hearted fare I might give this one a pass.  If you enjoy watching people scrabble around fighting around in the proverbial dark, this will be of interest. 

Before I continue I must address the biggest, most annoying flaw at once. 

This is an overtly Christian book. 

Moreover, this is an overtly American Christian book. 

Without spoiling too much (hopefully) the central conceit allows for the possibility of extra dimensions and other associated fluff. 

The author makes the monumental leap that this necessitates the existence of god.  That aliens may exist, in an extra dimension, and this is basically used as de facto proof of god.  If you don't see how ridiculous that statement is then I'm afraid you were probably inculcated at too young an age and are too far gone to see the priestly buggering from the trees. 

To add the cherry to this cake, they use this ridiculous assertion to ridicule and undermine an entire nation.  This is an american author writing an american book for an american audience so, you guessed it, it's the Russians.  The eternal bogeyman for the american psyche are at the pointy end of an existential dilemma brought about by the a few yankees that slept through a school philosophy class once. 

Let's stop, take a breath, and backpedal momentarily.  The book is set in the 1980's, so the red menace makes sense as the go-to big bad.  Fine.  Let's go with this conceit.  The initial disappearance of a plane and subsequent setup of a government agency is great.  There are a thousand books out there whose main premise is this kind of clandestine operation, that market themselves as being for war nuts, and that barely live up to the interest this book creates. 

I found myself drawn in during the first few pages and, not knowing anything of the plot, was utterly drawn in.  Had I known where this story was going, I would still have loved it because the pacing is just perfect.  The writing is strong, but there are a number of spelling mistakes, particularly towards the end.  I assume the author and/or editor ran past some deadlines at the beginning and was rushing by the latter stages, as up to about three quarters of the way through it's quite well edited.  It all falls apart towards the end though, which is a shame because it's the only criticism I have of the presentation. 

Having just lambasted the author for lazy ra-ra american-centric nonsense, let me say it's an excellent book.  The lives of the people are interesting, the story travels everywhere you want it to, and inept doctors aside, everything is as I imagine it would be.  Nothing pulls you out of the story (except the world shattering eye rolling I did when they talked about god, and then the universe shattering eye rolls when the russians were introduced) which is a great endorsement given the science fictional nature of things. 

In all I'd say this book is an absolute delight.  There are areas that could be improved, but none of those are in the writing department, and I suspect the author would have to be re-brainwashed in order to get the stereotypical nonsense out of his mind long enough to write something for non-americans. 

That I spent most of this time talking about the two terrible aspects of the plot, and yet still whole heartedly recommend this book is probably proof enough in my own mind that it's a great read.  I'd recommend this to almost anyone. 

Rating:  One russian beating a bear over the head with a salmon / one lazy U.S. writing stereotype 

That's about it for now.  No one reading this will buy any of the books I've written about, but I think they were worth writing about nonetheless (that last one is really good!). 

Bumper Buggy Bugger Blamers?

So it's been a long time since I last wrote something for the blog. Partly (mostly) to do with laziness, but partly due to a lack of interesting things to write about. In order to remedy this situation I spent thirty minutes on Sunday getting sunburnt in order to bring you a picture of two of interest.

Firstly, I was in the sun with my shirt off for thirty to forty minutes. Secondly, it's not full blown Summer yet, in fact it's barely what one might graciously call the end of Spring (it's absolutely heaving down at the moment, and has done since the morning). As such I thought it might be safe to stand around outside for a while, but I was completely wrong as it turned out.

I think this lot looks pretty cool to be honest. If I had any amount of land whatsoever I'd set aside a percentage of it to see what happened. In this instance a bag of compost with two 5 centimetre squares cut out of the top was left outside over Winter. When I got back to it I found this lot.

I have no idea how many species are in there, but with those strange flowers I should imagine a fair few insects would like to rummage around – assuming an area large enough to sustain an ecosystem. Of course these two small bags are not big enough by a long shot, but the amount of plant stuff going on in there with zero care is preeeeetty coooooool.

In the meantime I'd been growing up some strawberries from seed. I found out the usual method for growing strawberries was from the runners they produce (kind of like the spider plant I assume) which are coerced into a nearby pot, then snipped once the new plant is growing. This umbilical system ensures a new plant sprouts very quickly, which is great, and it means that if you get in early in the year you can have a fruiting plant the same year, which is also great. The problem is I can't find anywhere around me that sells them. I also couldn't find anyone that sells the seeds (the aforementioned method being so much preferred that no one bothers with seeds). As such, I had my mum purchase some seeds for me, which ended up coming from China of all places, which she then sent to me.

Modern sustainable sourcing of plants at its finest.



Anyway, they were up and running, and needed a new place to live.

While growing these strawberries I was also doing this:

Which is to say taking very blurred pictures. Quality aside, these are beans. Or at leas they will be in the future. Hopefully. These went into the now empty bags of compost to create this:

If my melon disaster has told me anything it's that there's no way to tell how this will turn out, even if they grow twenty feet tall like the melons did. Just as things are flowering, fruiting and so on, there's sure to be a disaster of melon ending proportions.



I really, REALLY didn't want to use chemicals to control the insects last time (not because of holistic therapeutic arm wavey pseudo scientific hippy bullshit, but because it feels like cheating) but without a surrounding ecosystem to support the animals that could predate potential pests, there's really no way of getting around their use.

With the crowded strawberries replanted into individual pots we'll see how things turn out. With the amount of rain we've had today I don't think the dozen small holes I poked into the bags will be enough to allow all the water to drain away. Then again, a ten foot diameter pipe would probably have trouble draining all that rain away.


Anyway, that's all for the flowers at the moment. The strawberries grew quickly at first but slowed down. The beans come out guns blazing, with roots and leaves absolutely everywhere within a week. We'll see which one ends up being the winner by the end of Summer, if indeed either survive.

Bicycle Mango Boat

Mango Bicycle Boat

Mega Oh-No!

So I've had this PC for more than 5 years at this point.  I bought an all singing all dancing computer for games because A: I like playing games and B: Half-assing a computer build means spending the remaining life of the PC upgrading here, changing there, and generally dicking around with it.  Something I wanted to avoid like the plague.

I have changed the motherboard once (the old one had dodgy hdd controllers, a flaw in the design that I was too slow to reclaim through the manufacturer), but that's the only modification I've made.  This PC has done me pretty well, all things considered.  I can't remember exactly how much I paid for it, way back when I was living in korea, but with the screen, speakers, mouse and keyboard, it was probably a little over 1,000 USD (stuff is a lot cheaper in korea, probably on account of half the stuff being made there or in Taiwan which is basically just up the road).

For the first time since I bought this PC, I came across a game that I can't play.  The new Doom game (yes they are still making them) won't run on this PC.  It'll boot to the menu, load into a game, but I can't do anything, it's too slow.  Too few frames.

So this year I'm going to buy a new PC.  There's no point 'upgrading,' the parts, because everything will have to go (it also makes it easier for compatibility purposes to do it this way).  I will keep the peripherals like the mouse and keyboard, screen and whatnot, but I'm thinking of getting a new case, and I'll definitely get a new power supply (this one has fits every now and again).

So, having said that, I'm torn.  I don't have nearly as much money as I did when I was in Korea, but once this thing is built, I want it to last another five years.

I managed to get in at the perfect time with this PC, because the old consoles held PC games back in the sense that there was almost zero software innovation, games in 2008 looked pretty much the same as they did in 2013, and until recently, this computer played games incredibly well.  Now, looking forwards, VR is going to completely change that.  The requirements for games in VR are astronomical, and for the first time in more than a decade there's going to be an arms race with regards to graphics hardware, which leaves the consumer back in the old annual or biannual upgrade grind.  This isn't set in stone of course, it's just my prediction, but Sony have recently announced that they're going to release a new PS4, one with upgraded innards - essentially a playstation 4.5.

That may not sound newsworthy to people who buy a new phone every year (which is the way of the world now, unfortunately), but to games people, it's enormous news.  It's the biggest news in gaming since the introduction of consoles.

Aside from being incredibly anti-consumer (in the footsteps of apple) it's a tacit admission that they can't afford to take a hit up-front on tech, and the recoup via other means.  In fact, inside sources have indicated that they broke even on every console sold from the get-go.  This is unheard of, every other console in recent memory has been a loss-leader, the companies making money up on software and more recently internet services.

What does this lengthy diversion have to do with me buying a new PC?  Well, firstly, it's the basis for my theory regarding the future of PC hardware.  CPU's will continue trudging along as they have done for decades.  Memory will, bar natural disaster, be cheap enough that you simply buy as much and as fast as is available, the overall percentage of your budget devoted to RAM will always be negligible even if you opt for top-of-the-line stuff.  Hard disks have stalled in a major way, and SSD's are still too unreliable for my needs (frankly, I find it worrying that so few resources online mention that they aren't reliable enough for use beyond a couple of years) so I'm going to buy a 4tb drive and just be done with it.

PSU's are slightly more efficient now than they were 5 years ago, but not the the point of being noteworthy.

So, as it always does, it comes down to graphics cards.  4K and VR are the new frontiers and the next wave of cards coming out around September won't be enough to see me through for another 3 years, let alone 5.  So do I buy a mid-range card, live with it for a couple of years, then upgrade when they've figured out the new architectures, or do I just go big now and live with it?

I still need to save up the money, which is going to take a long time, so at least I have the luxury of being able to wait and see how the early stakes pan out.

Vietnamore

 So I've decided to spread out the distribution of pictures from Vietnam.

Instead of dropping a ton at once, I'll drip feed them over the space of a few blog posts.

As we were walking around Hoi An (I think) there were tons of people taking wedding pictures, either on the river or next to the colourful lanterns.  This couple were sitting on a boat next to a famous bridge, away from all the tourists.  I waited until the lighting man (each photography group was three strong, camera dude, light dude, boat dude) lit them up, then snapped a few while they were busy doing whatever with their lanterns.

This last one was shot miles away, it's slightly cropped, slightly dark, slightly imperfect, but I like it anyway.  You really need to blow it up to fullscreen, otherwise you can barely see anything other than a red blob.  Regardless it's got an interesting feel to it.

That's it for now!

The Flowers of Vietnam

I didn't realise, but Vietnam supplies a large number of flowers to places around the world.  A lot of these blooms are ones I've seen before (not that I'd be able to name them) and are quite familiar around the UK.

One or two are not, however.  There's one particular plant in this list of pictures that I'd never seen before, and despite asking what the name was, have since forgotten.  I think it's a bird plant?  That's probably no the Latin name though.

The name that flower game begins here with one I've seen about the place in england.

There are a lot of pictures here so you'll just have to make do with a list of pictures and no writing.

...

Okay, you can have a tiny amount of writing.

These ones are quite popular in england too.

This one was taken in the grounds of an old presidential estate, just after watering.  Either that or it was so hot the flower's melting.  Probably the former.

The pinkest/purplest flower ever.

I think I turned up the colour too much on this picture.  Then again, the leaves look just as they did, so maybe it really was that colour.

What's this then?

The colours are definitely wrong in this one, the greens in the background look more like the colour of toy army men than plants.

I'm going to guess, marigold?

This one looks a bit better.  I could crop it to bring the flower closer, to make it larger, but then I'd lose detail.  A good close-up lens would help with tiny flowers like this one.

What a fantastic flower!

This is the bird looking thing.  I'm going to say, bird plant?

Looks good from both sides.

Bird flower?  Whatever it's called, it's a really interesting shape and colour.

It really is this pink.

This one, and most of the following flowers, were grown in a greenhouse we looked around.  I was surprised at how big the flower growing industry is in certain parts of Vietnam.  It's not something I thought of before, but I guess they have to come from somewhere.

An orange version of the pink one above.

These were slightly yellowing on the edges, giving a really nice graded finish.  The kind that looks fake and plastic.

It wasn't really that dark.  I don't know where the background went.

 I like the many colours of this one, even though it isn't really my taste.  Also, it looks like the picture was taken at the dead of night for some reason.

This is a real plant, honest.

 This one looks absolutely fake.  Faker than the moon landings even.

I assure you that it's real though, I even touched it with my hand.  (Don't tell the police)

I like this one because it's all deformed and kind of difficult to look at.  I mean, the middle is all stretched out and weird.  It's just not right maaaaaaaan.

Still bloody pink though.

Tokyo Weekender Magazine

So I got back from Vietnam yesterday, around midnight.  I've spent today doing work stuff, uploading/downloading/reloading/side-loading photographs, going to the gym (I lost 4 kg's!) and generally catching up on all the stuff I should have been doing instead of eating frogs.

When I got back I had this magazine on my doorstep:

I didn't take the pictures this time.

 It's an article I wrote for Tokyo Weekender magazine last month, you can check it out by clicking here.

I've not read it since I sent it in, nor have I looked too carefully at the pages in the book - if I look at it and find a phrase I don't like or a spelling mistake then there's no changing it.  It's better to have the image of what I've written in my head be my truth, there's just no way I won't find something wrong with it if I do have another look.  Ignorance is bliss.

On an unrelated note I'll get the photographs done and put on here soon.  The computer is working on archiving, resizing and converting about 80 gigs worth of pictures and videos, and that's going to a NAS over the world slowest network connection so it's taking a while.  The jpg's will be ready by tomorrow (I accidentally off-loaded all the storage to the NAS, so every picture has to be pulled back onto the PC, edited, then saved back to the NAS which is monumentally innefficient) at which point I'll have a look through and decide which ones I want to work on and which ones can be stored away, never to be seen again.

I think I'll probably used about 200gigs by the end, with video editing (video editing is a black hole of storage usage, the space is gone before you even realise you needed it) and image manipulation (I think that's what the cool kids call photoshop these days).

Anyway, the pics will come slow and steady over the coming days/weeks (read: months).

The Years End

Of course it's not the end of the year, that happened some months ago.

But it is nearing the end of the school year here, so I'm soon to be out of work until the new school term ramps up (the contracts are designed to be slightly less than full-time so you can't claim the benefits of full-time work from the company, like rolling holidays, maternity leave and whatnot).

In the meantime I'm going to be off on holiday.  The one I alluded to earlier that made me ill.  I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures and probably more than one or two videos.  I'm somewhat concerned about the battery on my camera, it doesn't last very long these days and being out and about doesn't lend itself to recharging.  However, I will also take a little 35mm film camera which will do in a pinch and requires only watch batteries.  If it requires batteries at all.  (I'll double check later).

Anyway, I'll hopefully have a few pictures to put up in a couple of weeks when (if) I make it back.

So that'll be nice.

Skiing in Pictures

So I went to Hakuba a while ago for some snowboarding.  We went for the weekend, arriving early Saturday morning and staying overnight.  The hotel was, like all Japanese hotels in the mountains, old and grubby, but the town was pretty nice.  It was obviously styled after a european town, but no one managed to get to europe before they did so.  Everything looks like a disney town from the 70's, plastic and glass fibre which is kind of weird, but also fun.

The skiing was okay, but the snow was terrible.

It started raining on the Saturday night and didn't stop on Sunday, so we decided to abort the Sunday skiing and check out the town.

There were a few quite interesting places to visit in the town, including a place to make some glassy stuff (pictures at some point later) that we did.  Walking around with the clouds and the mountains gives a pretty cool (haha!) effect whenever the sun comes out, in that the roads heat up and create great swathes of mist, which form fog, which cool the place back down, which clears the fog, which then let's the sun through and so on.  It happened a few times while we were walking around and enabled a couple of these pictures where everything seems foggy and mysterious.

It was difficult to tell when it was going to stop raining, so when it did we ran around taking pictures and trying not to step in the lakes that had formed about the place.

I'm not sure whether I like this picture, but it has a light and a dark half which is kind of cool.

My favourite snow based machine.  These are everywhere as you might imagine.

See how filthy that snow is?  That's because they hadn't had snow in weeks by the time we got there.  The conditions were downright bad for skiing.  It snowed the day after we left.

End of Term

So the end of term is near.  The third year middle school students had their farewell ceremony thing today, which is an incredibly drawn out affair lasting three hours.

All variety of plays and songs are performed at these things, including a few performances fro the various bands associated with the school.  One performance, by the brass band, took me completely by surprise.  From the second it began I knew exactly what it was, which is weird because I haven't heard it in quite a long time.

Of course you've guessed it by now.  It was this:

Okay, you may not have guessed what it was just from the writing above.  To be honest it took me by surprise.  I wonder if this music is famous in its own right, perhaps an old composition by a famous composer of yore?  Regardless of origin, this music will always be thunderbirds for me.

It sounded surprisingly good, even with a school brass band playing.

I Was Sick!

I thought I'd let the internet know that I was sick, not once, but twice today!

It's been years, at least 2, since I vomited.  And I was sick twice today.

But the interesting thing, and why I share it with the internet, was that it wasn't from illness.  It was from stress.  I stress vomited for the first time in my life.

I'm trying to book a 'holiday,' (this is very much not a holiday at the moment) that involves co-ordinating three people on two continents, none of whom can communicate in real-time due to the distances involved.  Having to start and stop over and over again for the past three months (I've tried to do this seven or eight times so far) means （ａｓ　ｓｕｒｐｒｉｓｉｎｇ　ａｓ　ｉｔ　ｍａｙ　ｓｅｅｍ，　Ｉ　ａｍ　ａｃｔｕａｌｌｙ　ｂｕｓｙ） I've forgotten everything that was talked about last time.  And the time before that.  And the time before that.  Now I just want to be done with it, but I can't, because of the time difference.  I am busy, which means I can't get it done during my free time, which means I have to vomit everywhere just to make myself feel better?  Question mark question mark.

It's strange the way the body reacts to stress.

I also have a massive headache.

I no longer allow anyone to come to Japan 'to see me,' (they can still see me if there's a valid alternative reason, like holidays or sightseeing) for the reason of organising stuff for them to do is up there with moving house levels of stress, i.e. among the most stressful thing I had ever done.  But now pissing away absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, and other peoples money, has officially topped that record-high level of stress.  Is there another word for stress?  Because this is stress, but I don't want to keep calling it stress.  I feel like stress is something that people getting shot at feel.  This is vomit-inducing something.  Fear?  Anxiety.  There we go, I found the correct term for this.

It isn't vomit inducing stress, it's vomit inducing anxiety.  Phew, glad I figured that one out.

Now I can go and eat nothing while I bite my nails trying to figure out what to do.  And also more vomiting.

I wonder when my hair starts falling out?

Project A Super Reveal Alpha Go

So I've got an absolute ton of projects on the go at the moment.

Super secret project X was started over a year ago and is nearing the end of alpha testing.  It's super cool, and for once I'm not going to backtrack with a deprecating comment here.  It is really cool.

Super not so secret project Y was started before Christmas, but the parts I need are currently out of stock almost everywhere, leaving me with the choice of paying twice the RRP or just waiting.  Obviously, as the richest man in this house right now (I live with a woman but am also currently alone) I have chosen to wait.

So with a long term-project in the works and a short-term project on hiatus until the chinese get their act together and start making electronics again, I was short of something to do for ten minutes one day.

Therefore, I went on the internet and bought some stuff.  That stuff was to go inside a jar I received for Christmas.  This jar was originally full of delicious sweets, which have since been eaten.  The jar itself is really cool, kind of corrugated glass which gives an interesting effect when waving your hands around inside it (it's a really big jar, more than a gallon, or in other terms, 2kg's of fizzy dummies) which gave me this idea.

The De Roeck Microbiome Project

So I filled it with water and added some plants and moss.  Now, the first thing you're going to say is that's stupid.  Yes it is.  Deal with it.

The second thing you're going to say is that plants don't perceptibly move, so the cool effect I saw when waving my hand around on the inside has no bearing on this thing.

Now, of course, you're right that plants don't really move when there are no external forces (yes, yes, yes, they grow and whatnot, stop being pedantic) but this is just stage one.  These plants are to create a livable non-mechanical environment for a creature.

Now, you're worrying that I'm going to buy a shark and put it in there.

There's no denying that would be cool, but it would also be kind of cruel.  So as of right now I'm thinking of a couple of snails and/or a couple of tiny shrimp.  There are obviously a few important milestones that need to happen before I can get to this point.  Firstly, the plants need to get substantially larger.  They're going to be the main input of oxygen into the water.  The neck is large, and has a fair surface area, but not enough in such a small volume of water.

Secondly, the plants are going to be the things filtering all the other toxins, which won't be enough to keep anything alive for more than a few days, which means I'll need to change an amount of water every week or so.  How much I'll need to change is up for debate at the moment, but my current estimate is around 20%.

Before all this, however, I'll need to test the water for nitrates, nitrites, nitritium, nitronium, nitroxidium, heavy metals and all the other good stuff.  With such a small volume of water, quick and exacting problem identification is crucial.

The plants are growing incredibly slowly right now, which leads me to suspect that it'll be well into Summer before they're big enough to process any of the waste products from an animal.  Even something as small as a snail or a shrimp.

There are also concerns with the winter temperatures in Japan, or more specifically the incredible lack of insulation any building has here.  If it's -5degC outside, it's somehow -15degC inside.  A small temperature controlled heating element might do the trick.  Will have to investigate if it comes down to that.

Anyway, keep an eye out for the reveal of the next project.  Start saving up, you'll be wanting to spend the big money when it turns up!

I Came Here To Gloat, But Then I Forgot

So I started having another go at a book of cryptic crosswords today.

In the history of this medium I've managed in the order of five solutions.  Five solutions over hundreds of questions and dozens of years.  Not exactly making myself seem intelligent here.

But today I nailed one.  I intuited a question without any adjoining letters helping me.  I was on top of the world (yes, I really am that sad) and then I forgot my briefcase.

Now, before you say anything, it's not really a briefcase.  It's just an A4 wallet that happens to have a lid and a carrying handle.  It's not posh and definitely not leather bound.

What it is, however, is a recepticle for every vital piece of paper and or information that I own.  It used to hold (after today, I will ensure it no longer holds this information.  Not because having your stuff in one place is inherently bad, but this folder is now tainted with bad juju and must be replaced.) postcards for those back home, letters for the same, bank books and myriad other things that identify me.

I was uncontrollably angry with myself when I arrived home without my case.  I don't think I've ever felt the same sense of self-loathing at any other point in my life.  It doesn't help that the case also holds other personal items, stuff that represents a ton of work and other items that represent the irreplaceable personal items we all hold.  What an absolute idiot.

So today I'll go back to that place and try not to forget my own goddamned feet or something.  There will, even in safe old Japan, be some loss.  If it were England it would have disappeared never to be seen again, so at least it turned up at all.  But I'd be foolish to think there won't be any repercussions for my negligence.



Acquires vases, it's said:

Urns

In case you were wondering what the cryptic was.

Canterbury Boots

Since I tried a pair of Predators (TM) (C) (All Rights Reserved.) (please don't sue me) when I was a kid, I've never really stepped (Aha!) outside of Adidas.  They're the right size, but more importantly, the right shape (I have what can generously be described as wide feet) and that counts for a lot when you're running around.

How much does it count for?

The right side has taken a beating

The boots are mostly fine, so I'll just get a set of insoles and re-use them for training or something.

I've had these boots for about a year and this wear and tear is the result of training three times a week with one game a week, which makes these a decent pair of boots in my books.  The shell is fine on both, it's the in-soles that've had it.  I'll replace those in the future, which will give me two pairs of boots because I've now got a shiny new pair of Canterbury something or others (TM) (C) (All Rights Reserved.).

And they actually fit pretty well.  They feel fractionally heavier than the ones you see above, but they have the same wide touch along the balls of the feet and they don't taper too heavily at the toe which is nice for us abnormals.  The stud arrangement seems fine for a hard grass surface, so I expect them to perform well on 3G too.  I haven't tried them on wet ground, but I could see the heels clogging up which is an annoyance, but one shared with all blade designs, (or at least I find it is) so take that as you may.

I did get a small blister on the back of my heels from not tightening them properly.  Whenever I wear a new pair I tend to leave them slightly loose at first, to work out the stiffness in the material, before moving on to proper lacing.  That caused the blister, so don't fret if you're thinking of purchasing them.

Looking good so far.

So would I recommend them?  If you have an Adidas foot (wider feet, wider toe profile, prefer a more supported arch than Nike offer) I would say they're a solid choice.  The arch feels slightly lower than Adidas who tend to offer more support, but they're a world away from the Nike boots I've tried, which have arch support bordering on the masochistic.  Nike shoes are for hooves, not feet.

I can't really comment on their long-term comfiness or their durability yet because I haven't worn them enough, but early indications are good.

Brand loyalty makes sense with boots where it doesn't with other items.  Each manufacturer has a test foot they keep locked away in a vault, that they bring out for new designs.  If their test foot is a plaster mould of a sheep footprint (as is the case with Nike) then your foot is obviously not going to fit.  Internal designs don't change much, so you can be fairly certain a new shoe in the same range will fit if the previous pair did.  At least that's been my experience over the years.

Canterbury have made a smart choice in basing their design off human feet instead of bovine or pachyderm trotters like some of the competition, and these seem to be a pretty decent pair of boots.  If you want to save fifty quid on the Adidas competition, head on down to your local sports shop and try these on.  You might end up liking them!

How Big is Tokyo?

Check out this link:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/tokyo-is-a-mega-city#.jal3XqZxko

It's a map showing Tokyo (I live in 'Funabashi,' if you're interested) showing the town relative to other places on Earth.  It covers things like surface area, relative population density and so on, and gives you a visual representation of just how massive this place is.

Obviously, being English the overlay of Tokyo onto the map of England was the one that struck me most.  Absolutely, utterly bonkers.