Monday 30 September 2013

WarThunder - Patch 1.35 - Economy Fixed!

The latest patch of War Thunder... Hmmm... Yes... Yes....

THEY FIXED IT

*cough* sorry, I got a little excited there, yes after walking away at 1.28/1.29 with the terrible changes they made to the economic model, I've been back with 1.35 and I've made a profit.  I've even lead the score board a couple of times, and I've had fun doing it.



I've bought the new BF109E-1, which complements my German Fighter line where I'd rather have been using the Do-17's than try to use the BF110, or the Italian shite.


I've also upgraded a couple of my British crates with all their upgrades, as I can afford to, and from 250,000 lions at the start of the weekend, I spend down to around 95,000 and I've played only a handful of games and got back up to 200,000.  I consider this a miraculous turn around.

And its made the game fun again.

The visuals are just as good, though on the latest build I am seeing some horizontal tearing as I'm scanning the camera around, but then this is the first time I've run WarThunder on this rig with Windows 7, it used to run flawlessly on Vista on the same hardware, but I've not even bothered mucking about with the settings (yet).


The other new plane I bought is the Spitfire IIa, new in line, and I took it up for a spin on the Battle of Britain Event Mission, now I posted my Spit Mk I success as a youtube video some time ago, however, things did not go as swimmingly in the brand new - low crew skilled - Spit IIa.  No, I climbed to altitude in the usual way and then got bounced by four 109's of various models, the final blow going to a BF109E-1, but I managed to take one with me even with a shredded wing.  Dowding would have been proud - well, perhaps not, but I tried.


Friday 27 September 2013

Sky Internet Customer Service Sucks

I've had a very busy few days, I mentioned a certain bank dragging their feet, well all is forgiven they've got into gear and are getting on with things.  However, not before I've been accused by the party on the other side of this transaction - a transaction wholly out of my hands - of being a time wasting bastard.  Hey ho.

I'm also investigating issues with the in-laws ADSL, now I hate ADSL, I hated it when it was ISDN and I hated dial-up even more before that.  I have, since 2000, exclusively used cable internet services, they're faster and for the most part more reliable, for instance cable in my area has been fiber optic since around 1996 when it was laid.  Not like the Johnny Come Lately British Telecom offering of "Fiber has arrived".. yeah, well I've had fiber a long long time slow coach.

The issue with the in-laws connection though is a case of the utter diabolical service from Sky, their provider, Sky's service just piggy backs on BT's infrastructure, and its ADSL based... I hate ADSL... I don't have spare routers for them to try, and I don't have filters or anything like that... so I'm struggling to fix the issue, and the reason is that Sky simply put the burden of proving the fault on the customer.  Its not a case of calling customer services and getting actual customer service.

No, its a case of calling Sky customer services and being told to fiddle with wires, filter and even wall sockets like some giant rubix cube and their telling you how expensive it is to involve BT Open Reach into this situation...

Now, luckily Sky customer services were not telling these tales of woe and foreboding to the technofeeble in-laws, they were telling me, and I batted them out the ball park as the bull shit they are.  Though Sky insist the issue is not their end, its with "your" router.

The router which is sat in their home says "Property of British Sky Broadcasting"... yet sky say it "belongs to you" and "you have to buy a new router"... yet the label on the router says "property of sky, do not dispose, not for resale"... its like... erm.. this is your kit, I'm just a customer paying for a service.

I'm tempted to lay the whole statutory rights on Sky here, because in essence the in-laws have been without a service they pay for, for over a fortnight, and all because Sky are arguing, or trying to rope the in-laws into being stuck with them for a further 12 months contract on the internet...

Anyway, I have an ADSL router to try, and I'm going to strongly advise the in-laws to move to a cable internet provider in the area.  Sky suck, their customer service is the worst I've come across - whilst actually sounding legit - they are so full of shit its untrue, they may as well just let this guy do their support... 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byFhCC2pUEU


UPDATE 30/9/2013 - I finally got them to admit a line fault, I did this by borrowing $1000 worth of Cisco professional grade routing kit from work and setting it all up and running my own reverse line test, when the guy (who, give him his due was helpful) on the phone then tried to argue I had them by the short and curlies because I could see them just try to PING the line... Some line test... and I could see the carrier wave of the ADSL coming and going with no more than a 12% peak it was unacceptably low.  Explaining all this worked (well i think pointing out I had Cisco testing kit attached worked) and now an engineer appointment is booked.

But, not before four very technical phone conversations, not before proving absolutely everything in the house was in order and having to borrow professional kit to prove the point, an unacceptably high level of entry just to get a support call booked me thinks.

So I stand by my statement, Sky customer service, your bar to entry is too high, so you suck!  Support shout be "Have you turned it off and on again?"... "yes".... "Right, we'll come see", even it there is then say a £10 call out charge or whatever.

But to blanket say "no" and then only offer to send out a new router IF they sign up to 12 months more contract.  If it were me, I'd tell you to get stuffed after already having been a customer for 10 years.  I don't need to sign up for 12 more months to prove loyal and worthy of support, I already pay my monthy service fee to be worthy of help!

Thursday 26 September 2013

Blizzard - WoW Typo's

I'm not tempted back to the depths of World of Warcraft, certainly that game - at least for me - has had its day as a pay to play title. I might, just might, be tempted to take a look if it were free to play - but I know deep in my bones it won't be like the good old days ever again.

But, Blizzard aren't really tempting me with their marketing, not with typo's like this:


Oh a siege OF somewhere... right... Horde bias, gotcha. 


Eh, what's this?


Oh its a typo, right in the predominate headline item.

Parking Ticket

The wife just got another parking ticket... How she manages this?...

I've been driving 21 years and never got one!  This is her second in as many months!

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Code::Blocks - A few Tips

I'm trying to set up a new Linux box to do some code (C++) in code blocks, now I do like how easy linking with multiple libraries is with code blocks - rather than fiddling with the command line or creating a make file which can obfuscate your build results...

But I'm not a huge fan of Code::Blocks, my biggest problems at the moment is I have a huge screen resolution, but no-matter how big it never feels like I've got enough workspace area available, it sort of feels hemmed in, this mainly comes from the poor way you can't layout editor windows side by side, or horizontally.  Forcing you to feel one file open at a time.

Then add to this that some of the editor settings pages - like "Settings->Environment" - full the whole height of the screen.  So you're there trying to edit the editor and you have this whole page filled with settings, and just as annoyingly you can't click off the editor settings back into the editor to look at something you've changed... You have to accept the settings, close the settings page and then you can see what you've done, this disjoints what you've changed from what you're viewing.

But I have a couple of tips to help you make things better.. First of all, pop into the View table and turn on the TODO list


Dock the panel for to-do items wherever you like...


And then you can add simple "// TODO MESSAGE" type items into your code to remind you what you're up to.


Another tip, if you want to maximise your coding area, you can close the messages windows - where the build output and messages go - but then getting them back open is a pain... To open them again, just press F2!

And finally, another one to maximise your working space, the editor tab showing the filename you're typing in.. Double click it... This will move into the maximised area version of the editor (by default) its a new theme called "Code::Blocks::Minimal".  If this is not setup then you can go into "Settings -> Environment" and then select the "View" (eyeball) on the right, and you're looking to make sure that this setting is selected:



Monday 23 September 2013

Windows OS History - Francis at his Finest

You see Microsoft are well known to create a good OS, then a shit OS.... Now ignoring DOS, which has the same interface and API as CP/M *cough* Thieves! *cough*, as a company they've produced several Visual OS's... Windows 1, was shit never got out to us... Windows 2 was better... Windows 3.0 was broken, Windows 3.1 and 3.11 were okay and added... Windows 95 was dreadful... Windows 98 worked....

Are you seeing the pattern yet?

From windows 98 we have a bifurcation, Windows ME which utterly sucked and Windows 2000 which worked, but Windows 2000 was based on Windows NT (New Technology) which is Microsoft parlance for "rewritten" and by a different team, so it worked differently and was; I believe; intended to compete with the work station market then rules by Sun Microsystems and other Unix or Unix a-like systems like Silicon Graphics and SCO.

So, at one point they had two decentish systems Windows 98, and 2000.  But 2000 being so new it was shitter than 98 for games and the common man, so we'll just grass over this and say 98 good, ME bad!

Then came Vista... Windows Vista... Now I bought it, and it was utterly crap mainly because of driver issues and their first pass attempt at including a method of elevating the user from "normal" to "super" for installation or operation of high-level functions.  Us techno-aware knew this, but the Technofeebles were left to flap all alone because they'd installed their new OS and could not get the fucking network drivers to install to get back on the internet and ask "Why the fuck don't this thing work"?

I've only just recently got rid of Vista, in favour of affordable copies of Windows 7... Because after being stung for £120 for the Ultimate 64bit Vista I was not going to fork out for Windows 7, until I knew its pedigree was up to scratch.

And so, the bad good bad good cycle continued... Vista Bad... Windows 7 good....

This brings us to Windows 8... Well, I know a man who can say it better than me...


Oh by the way, I'll just pass over the fact I had a Red had Linux installation in 1999 and flattened it in favour of Windows 2000... We all make mistakes okay... But, at the time I needed to code with Borland C++ Builder 3, and it was windows only, okay... okay... I'm sorry!

And before you all say I'm picking on Microsoft... Apple do it too...



Sunday 22 September 2013

Dangerous Dogs

I have to say this ladies experience is similar to the problems I dealt with last year, having to tackle staffies attacking a neighbours dog and also the persistent straying of a dog from a rented property on our street.

The police in our area were totally in effective in the second case, but in the first the woman bitten in the scuffle with the dogs refused to press charges, they let that dog get away with attacking theirs unprovoked, now you can see the struggle these people had with that large dog in that report.

I was riding the back of such a dog, and at the time I'd punched, pulled and tried to control that animal, and I have a black belt in karate, my punches get attention.

My only options were to stick a screw driver into the things brain, or throttle it... I was reduced to strangling the thing to death.

As the owner of four dogs, one an older lab, and three young, small, dogs... if any of them were now attacked I'd simply have to kill the attacking dog, because these pitbulls and staffies are trophy dogs they're not under control, many times - like that one reported - they have no lead, no collar, or collars which can be slipped, and never any muzzle.  Because people, mostly - but not exclusively - young men are using them as weapons.

Because if two dogs are fighting and you intervene, and the dogs bite you, the law says its your fault, its not a dog attack, it was animal on animal... But that is such a shaded area, for a large dog attacking my little dog, my little dog is 3 kilos... a large dog would kill him... I'd have to kill that dog.  And I'm afraid to say what else I'd do to its owner with the grief.

But, I should not have to have that worry, people should self control their dogs, they should not be a burden on me for their life choices.  And if their life choice is stupid, like having these huge uncontrollable dogs, then the law and society should protect me, not reinforce their right to stupidity... The laws current stance smacks of being too softly softly touchy feely, and it leaves me for one feeling very exposed.

Saturday 21 September 2013

WoT - Cockbites - Pushers

I am continuing my TD kicker, and I've been doing well, 5 wins in a Row just now... That was until I ran into this prick... "xuxinha" in his Type T-34... now this prick came and parked his arse in front of me, but was worst than useless sat whilst there, shots on two targets never took them... and then when I moved to get the shot he pushed me off a cliff...

And called me noob... So lets have a look at his comparison with me?...



And this waste of skin had the balls to call me a noob... Here's the footage in all its gruesome detail... And yes, I shot the useless retard on my way down... But have to laugh as two of his point blank shots bounce... What a douche he is.



Banking, Maria DB and Panzer!

I have already briefly blogged about the identity thing with a certain bank, well the irony continues.

The DVLA identification I need to update my drivers licence is all the stuff the bank just turned down, so when I send all this valid, correct identification to the DVLA to get my licence, and then send the license onto the bank... I'll basically  have been chasing myself around in circles and wasting time...

Its all rather annoying.

In other news I'm moving forward on my personal project to create a game, and to host my world I'm setting up a persistent server, I had done a bunch of preliminary work on this in MySQL, but I've decided to go with Maria DB instead.  So I'm going to be putting together the basic "how to register" an account PHP & database.  Then I'll be linking to that with C (well C++).

I've got a login-server which will then pass them onto the hosted game world server.

On the very small scale I'm at, with just a few test accounts concurrently connected, I've got these various servers hosted on my beefy desktop PC as a series of Virtual machines, and I'm connected into it over the wireless and my wired hub from two laptops (and the Raspberry Pi).

And now onto Panzers, specifically Girlz Und Panzer... I found a playing of the first episode... and I've taken a look, before I order the DVD... Nop over to "Daily Motion" folks and search.

Its completely mental, absolutely mental, but that's Japan for you... (And I speak from experience, Oss).

The other "tankery" issue was my edict to only play TD's... it worked a treat, I earned over 1,000,000 credits, did my 15 mission wins in random games, got lots of fun... My Stug III went from a pooting 46% win rate to 49%.  And I generally had a damn good time.

However, come Monday a new mission arrived, "Flank them"... where you earn a gun laying drive (500,000 credits worth) for getting 15 wins in random missions in a TD from the list... Of course this swamped the Match Making with dozens of bloody Tank Destroyers.

In one game there were 7 Stugs, 4 Hellcats, 2 Hetzers and a T80... it was mental... No tank could move, no-one could breath, let alone play!  So, tho my plan for the weekend was ace fun, when that mission came out it ruined it.

I'm also still not enjoying the Tiger II at all, I just die... and die hard.  I'm clearly doing something wrong, but I can't place what I'm doing that's so bad.  I kind of wish my commander had sixth sense, but my performance is so bad they've only got 30% of their selected skill trained - and I didn't even pick Sixth Sense first for him as its a 100% kick-in.... Hey ho.  I'll figure that out.

Oh, whilst watching this video on Daily Motion, I notice that the ad-blocker count is already at 101 adverts... That's as compared to YouTube where you get 2 per page... 101 adverts!

Friday 20 September 2013

White Man Rap

I've always been told that - apart from a select few - White Men can't rap...


This is my first meeting with Dan Bull's channel, but on his list I've also seen this...


Now, my new man lab is on a canal... I think I may see if these chaps want to come entertain...

Thursday 19 September 2013

My Jedi Wife

My wife is starting a new job, and she's having those first day nerves, so much so she just said she's not going...

I've talked her around and sent her on her way, this is a common knee jerk reaction we all have, but unfortunately unlike most of us my wife has parents whom let her get away with this far too often as a child, and so she acts out now as an adult.

But, hey ho... What I'm worried about now is whether the wife figures out my pep talk I just gave her was from Master Yoda...


"I try" she said "I will try"...

Immediately, yes you guesses it, I hit her with... "There is no try, do or do not".


The resolution which washed over her face was worthy of the Jedi order.

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Young 'uns and Headphones

I've just seen an interesting change in "da youth"... They just simply have to have the most extravagant brand of headphones, and they just had to show them off.

There's a fair few "young 'uns" in the office here, just out their teens at most, and they all have bright, purple, white or silver headphones... and its like conspicuous consumption.

One lad has a pair of bright white headphones on, and he must be cold, cus he has his parker on and the hood pulled right up... and the headphones on over the top... So... he's listening to the music through the muffle of the hoods fabric... its... nuts.

Just nuts.

Plus, why the fuck has he got his parker on in the office anyway?... We've got heating!

Mrs Goggins

Harry Enfield's turn as Jacks father on Bad Education was so funny... "Tried to keep a lid on it"... slayed me, I literally fell about laughing.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Real Life People of Walmart

I've you're a frequent visitor to YouTube you may have noticed the Zeitgeist about "People of Walmart" a few years back... Jessica Frech in all her dressing up madness... Can be seen here.

Anyway, here in the UK Walmart is actually the brand... "ASDA", and the wife and I have just been to Asda... Oh holy Christ... We saw everything...

When I say everything, I mean everything, there was one lass with so little covering her breasts - which here huge - she could have been in Heat magazine - I mean real topless in appropriate for the super market, and she was loving all the guys gawping too.  Her fella with her was the beefiest bloke ever, with a look of "You even look at my ladies titties and I be unscrewing your head to shit down your neck"... but it made no difference, her tits were huge and on display.

Next, there was a lass, now we only followed her up one isle, but even the wife said to me, "What she's wearing is indecent"... it literally was not even a pair of pants starting below her crotch, you could see her entire anatomy through the sheen fabric, and then just bare legs immediately... Now I'm no prude, and in a porn film this would have been fine, but this girl... was 14 tops... it was indecent, and embarrassing... her mother was wearing much the same, but her short shorts were topped with a muffin roll of middle age fat, which offset the camel toe show, but even so.

And then finally, there's a guy walking along with his lass, she must have been two decades younger, I assumed he was father to her being daughter... that was until he said she could buy a bottle of liquor for the evening and she flung her arms around him and gave him a big tonsil tickle of a kiss... It was like... OH MY GOD.

In appropriate dress, in appropriate age and in appropriate activity all in the space of one store within ten minutes.

Monday 16 September 2013

Banks with no Common Sense

Here's a weird for you, my wife and I have had to use our ID for a bank related issue... My wife proved who she was from the bank statements on our account and our marriage certificate, it proving she had taken her surname from me... But the bank would not accept the same from me... They would accept the marriage certificate gave my wife my name, but would not accept I had that name in the first place!... 

Go figure.

I can't name this strange sexist inversion following bank... but... here's a clue....



Sunday 15 September 2013

Saturday 14 September 2013

WoT - Pre-posting

I'm writing this Friday afternoon, whilst waiting to go out for a curry with the wife and in-laws.  And I'm thinking about World of Tanks, I've been watching the results of Jingle's replay contest and wishing I had a few more games like that.

I've also been looking at my noobmeter score, I'm not sure I understand how they calculate efficiency, as in the last round of bullshit teams and insulting idiots - whom I blogged about earlier in the week - every stat on my score went down, mainly because I was loosing in teams, but my efficiency went up... Now, I'm starting not to trust, or enjoy these state metering sites at all, because they seem to have their own agenda, and they incite players to just insult you, whilst not actually being very representative of what's going on.

For example, on one of the Cromwell games I was on the new map - I don't know its name - with the rail road tracks and water surrounded path on the flank... whatever... anyway, in the middle of that map is a dip, and I sat my Cromwell in that dip, owned a T28, lit up the enemy ELC AMX trying to spot, and then I kept lighting up - over and over for 6 minutes - a hellcat, an M4 and a Tiger... And not one artillery shot, not one friendly, not a single member of my team helped kill them and release me from my pinned position.

Indeed, I got to that position in the Cromwell in the first 20 seconds of the game, and I was the second to last friendly to die at just before the 7 minute mark... that's half a match count... I survived jinxing and ducking, but I got no help... The other stats also have that ring about it, I know I was helping cap, and helping damage dozens of enemies, but driving my now heavy classed German ex-Medium tank (hate it can't even bring myself to say its name) and I was nerfed and could feel it... Then the cromwell, I was pecking at heavier higher tier tanks rather than getting good equal match ups, or even getting in as highest tier.  Hey ho, none of that reflected in the stats, I just clearly suck.

So, my reason for pre-posting?... My reason is I'm going to play WoT tonight and over the weekend, but I'm going to do something simple... I'm going to play my tank destroyers, this is the JagdPanzer IV and Stug III.  And then my Churchill I only, this is because, of all the tanks I have in the garage, those few seem to get into decently balanced games, and I'm going to play them this weekend.

Now, from the JagdPanzer you have the JagdPanther, and I have that unlocked with XP, I just need the cash to buy it... and from the Churchill I you have the Churchill VIII, and I also have that unlocked.  Therefore, my TD and limited heavy action will be all about getting cash.  I'm going to avoid tanks which are costly to run, like the Tiger II.

I can run a profit in my Tiger I, but not at weekends, the match making and quality of teams drops until well after mid-night and so its not worth trying to earn cash on them.  And I can earn cash in my Panzer III/IV and the Panzer IV, but I don't enjoy them any longer... The Panzer IV of course I had when it was actually the Panzer IVS, with the sturm turret and donk cannon.

Friday 13 September 2013

Why?

You know those times when you have to stand back and think why?  Well, I've got one of those going off with the whole world today...

The car park here at the office, is subject to the whole Nottingham City parking tarrif, so we have to pay to park at work, and if there are stray cars in there the company gets fined, so the public are not welcome.  This is a problem as we're basically right across the street from a public municipal building which has sadly lacking parking arrangements at the moment.  So we're getting all the waifs and strays in our car park.  This morning there was one chap blocking the road, and he was adament I wanted to go into a completely other car park than the one he was blocking... "No I want to go in that one, thank you"... The stream of expletives this fuck-tard threw at me, because he had to move.  Why?

Our next door neighbour is having new windows put in... She never opens the windows, never opens the curtains, never cleans the house, never uses the windows... so why replace them?... Why?

We're selling our house, we've had several offers all for far too little... one lass sent the message "We've watched all the property programmes, we know to make a cheeky offer"... "Cheeky yes, but 15% off the asking price... WHY?"

WHY WHY WHY... that's all I've been asking myself today... and I have a feeling its going to continue.


Addendum... It continued... Why?

Thursday 12 September 2013

Lovable Linus

So, the register made a big thing yesterday of another outburst from high linux overlord Linus Torvalds about SoC architectures, you can read this here.

But they seem to have missed the slightly more creepy reply to that discussion thread by one Neil Brown...

"As you wish."

We all know where we've heard those words before...


Wednesday 11 September 2013

More World of Tank Cockbites

Tired of the morons, tired of the snide comments, tired of them all... Yes, this is a world of tanks rant, I know the internet is full of idiots, I know that there are horrid people, I know that there are fools and heroes, but the latter has been massively lacking in my last 48 hours of online play, and it has me so weary I'm tempted to just stop playing with them.

Last night I snapped, I was goading people back, and nailing them with my ability to type, spell and think... One chap was so speechless at the scenario of pain and suffering I thought up for him he simply gave up trying.

And my main problem?  The comments about what you're doing in the game... People install statistic mods and look at your stats and decide "you're a noob", or "you're shit" and that tars their game.  SideStrafe has brought up this exact phenomenon, and I think Quickybaby is a big exponent of actually doing just this, and people want to ape QuickyBaby more than it seems they want to be nice and friendly like SideStrafe.

But I'm not picking on SS or QB specifically here, each to their own, who I am going to pick on are the magnanimous pricks who having seen you do something they start calling you out, usually from the grave.... I had it all, idiots saying I was not a team player whilst being forces to scout and tank in a Stug III - and carrying the game for an easy clean up by a late starting KV1S.  Or changing strategy in a Tiger II (more about this in a moment) but getting an already dead idiot calling out my position to the enemy should "Kill the Tiger at B4"... He's calling me a Noob, but he seems to have failed to realise the map is the other way up for the opposing team, so I'm not in B4  from their perspective!

Another great one was on the new (at least to me) map Artic, I'm in my Cromwell and spotting, I get way out in front of everyone else, so take cover and sit NOT firing... This is key, I'm spotting, I light up an enemy Tiger, I light up a PZIII/IV, I light up the enemy Stuart trying to scout... But the Stuart also spots me, he's like 10 feet away, so he's going to... I fire at him, then start to relocate, get a track blown off by arty, so repair and get to more cover... But now I'm exposed... if the friendly forces who were behind me come up the hill, I'm not going to get surrounded, my right will be covered by them, and I can wait for my illumination to fade and pull back... But the friendly forces don't come up, they instead stop on the reverse slope hitting the tanks I lit up... I'm now a victim of my own success, because there are two columns of friendly tanks all shooting at the few targets I lit and allowing the rest of the enemy team to take positions... the result... I'm spotted again and blown up, its only a Cromwell, the armour is not fantastic, and I was unfortunately stationary waiting for my right to get secured and counting in my head to hope for my being spotted to fade... so no big deal, we take a slice out the enemy I lit and move up, hopefully we'll win... But then from the doldrums of chat comes the second biggest prick of the evening... "Ho you Cromwell, what you doing that there fore noob? Learn to play the game"....

Now, I have to point out at this point I called the guy out, because you know what except for the few tanks I lit up - NO OTHER TANKS GOT DESTROYED ON THE ENEMY TEAM - so, though I only shot at them, I lit them, I spotted and all my damage was spotting damage on them... the fact we lost was not my fault, it was the fault of hesitant players in the columns moving up, whom rather than looking at their mini-map stopped to shoot at targets others were better positioned to hit, effectively leaving me hung out to dry.

I could see this, I take SideStrafe's mantra of reviewing what I was doing, what went wrong, and what to do next time seriously, so I know what I did wrong... Looking at the team scores of this prick at the end, I wondered what he did wrong... seemed everything, with his zero damage and just 12 XP reward.

But his being such an arsehole peaked my interest, so I took a look at this noobmeter page... Irony of Irony, this self appointed expert on what the Cromwell (me) should have done, has never drive the damn thing... look.


That's his tank nationality spread, not only has he never played the Cromwell, he's never played ANY British tank, ever!

Now, I don't doubt he's played the 6000 games it says he has, I've played 2100.  But playing 6000 games and still being a vile little rat to people tells me he's either unemployed, unemployed and learning deficient, or a child.  Either way, he didn't impress me and I stand by my recommendation he get finger cancer so he can't masturbate any longer.... You know who you are, feel ashamed!

So, back to the biggest prick of the evening, who was he?  Well, straight after playing that Artic game in the Cromwell, I went to my Tiger II, a new tank for me, less than 20 games played.  I've still not got the best engine - and they're going to change all that around tonight with patch 8.8 so I'm in no rush to waste XP or credits - and when I spawned into the match I waited to see where the split was, four of the six heavies went to the city - with three TD's and four mediums went left with one TD, the other heavy sat in base.  I decided to see where the scouts went, they went left and died fast.  So, I trundle left to support the mediums, and I'm putting hits on T44's and T25/2's to give relief to the left flank, but this leaves me in the middle of the map, too slow to climb the hill and charge down it on the left side, and already part way down the centre.  The other enemy are moving both flanks - no-one is moving down the middle - So, with my position already pushed out in the centre I decide to take advantage, and I do down the middle - with an E-25 who was playing like a boss - we split the enemy team's fire, shooting up a JagdPanther in city from the side, chewing on the KV-3 and an IS-2 also in the city, as well as putting marking shots and lighting up the TD's on the ridge on the left allowing the mediums to kill them and advance to cap.

I pushed all the way up the centre as the E-25 pushed right to help in the city, and I lit up the last TD a Ferdinand, and their Arty - unfortunately I missed two shots here, the RNG just hated on me and they missed, but my third hit the Ferdinand hard making him turn towards me - and hence away from the advancing - lighter - medium tanks... I tank the Ferdi whilst the rest of the team mop up, and then the last TD of the enemy in the city retreats and of course has me in the ass - but that TD only pulled back because of the aforementioned prick saying "There's a Tiger in the middle", "Go kill the noob Tiger"... this prick had no inclination what I was up to, he had no spark of imagination that you could bifurcate the enemy line, he's clearly never read about Nelson splitting the enemy line at Trafalgar, or Guderian meeting columns of Shermans from the side.  No instead he sat there spewing god knows what in some Slavic language which only he and his platoon mate understood and when someone else - not even me - called him out on it he started to deride my efforts, calling me and my use of my tank stupid.  He was already dead, I finished the game with second to top experience, and second to top damage as well as the Spartan medal, master gunner and I was quite happy it was also a Victory, but it would not have been if those three mediums had had to face off with the Ferdinand, it'd have lit them for the arty and one shot all three in their turn as they crested the ridge.  The city would have been lost faster than it was, because the TD's pinning our heavies in the town would have had free range, instead of constantly being harassed from their flank!

The long and the short of it, I don't care if I've only 2000 odd games, I do know what I'm doing and if I don't - like on a new map - more often than not I tell the team so.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Backwards Play Lists - A YouTube Annoyance

Today I have mostly been doing COM work in the office - yes COM - I hate COM... but enough of that, in my personal time I've also been doing some 2D OpenGL, not sprites either, I've been using real quads to do things, blending them and playing about, I'm thinking about little scrolling game ideas to put my 2D graphics to the test.

I've also come here to rant a touch, because I'm so so sick of people on youtube - and there are dozens of them who do this - not looking at their content, these are people with sometimes swish content, cool intro's, 1000+ views per video - which is good going... but then they do the little things wrong, things like.... They have a play list, and the list is backwards!

What do I mean "Backwards"?... Well lets say its a series of uploads, and they're numbered "Episode 1", then "Episode 2", it'd be freaking nice if they bothered to add them into the play list in that order... I know its probably a real fiddle to remove all the videos from the play list and then re-add them all again, because the YouTube folks don't seem to have spotted this problem themselves.



But to us the viewer, where content is king, having to stop move to the player and click back down the list to find the "next" to play is a fucking ball ache.

Monday 9 September 2013

WOT - SMFL

I've spent a lot of time this weekend - well night time - playing World of Tanks, the challenge was to make the XP for my Tiger II, and I did it, I even had enough free XP to unlock the second best gun and enjoyed putting a 100% crew in her with some gold.

But, my using of her has been either epic win, or tragic failure, I'm down to around 25% win rate with her, which is bad, but hey ho, I had a few epic games in other tanks to make  up for it, my personal best was in the old Churchill I


Yes, a victory, reaper, top gun and my first ever Radley Walters medal, which was good fun, I also did the most damage by over 400 and the only damage I took was friendly first - hey ho.

My other time was spent setting up VMWare on this my new installation of Windows 7, I wanted to host my Linux machines, rather then dual boot.  Because I may be re-re-installing Windows 7 soon with a change of the motherboard, so VMWare the development linux environment I wanted for the short term.

The trouble I had, I could not get Mint (xfce) to install, every time I tried the ISO was reported to be corrupt - with an invalid check sum - during the file copy stage.  I got so frustrated with this I ended up setting up Xubuntu and I'm yet to go back to find a suitable solution to what was going on.

But one good thing came out of having to set up the Linux environment, for you see one personal project I have on the boil needs a little media work - its a game - and I needed a way to get a window on screen, in a cross platform friendly way, and so started to see out such a layer.

I am well aware of Simple Direct Media Layer (SDL), but I came across "SFML", a new one on me, and this seemed to support the 2D sprite work more natively and so more suitably for me.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Car Body Repair Review - Steve Haskard - Eastwood - Nottinghamshire

I had to have my car repaired, just body work, and we went to a small local place and I can't highly recommend the place enough, you'll save a packet regular dealer prices, things work fast and they're nice chaps.  They're a small back street repair shop basically:

Steve Haskard
12A King Street
Eastwood
Nottingham
NG16 3DA

Phone: 01773 765 172


They're just off the main drag at Eastwood, turn down "King Street" next to the Wellington pub and they're on the right.  Get a quote, get booked in, and you're golden.

They work fast too, sourcing, replacing, colour matching and refitting a whole door and side of my car, took just under two days, it would take over a week with other outlets I checked with!

Give 'em a try if you need body work, or paint work, in the east of Nottingham west of Derbyshire.

Monday 2 September 2013

Something Amazing - World of Tanks

Something amazing just happened, it has me ready to go out and buy a lottery ticket... check this out...








That's right, they're all victories... seven in a row... and counting, now this will send the noobmeter reading mad because they're all victories, but also taking a look I'm not doing bad, the most fun game was the Tiger game, where despite facing IS-2's and other heavies much more able than me, I hung in there and got confederate.

The last game with the crusader was also a good one, where I tried to do something with the ravine down the middle rather than play about in the edges.

All in all, its been a great little play time... But, midnight now, and I think I have to go to bed, not least because I have to take the car in for some work tomorrow, and the wife is off to her job, so I'm on foot... Yes I got to walk about 5 miles home.

Sunday 1 September 2013

Upgrading to 5ghz

I've been using my N-class router in single band mode quite happily for months, however, the street has taken a change of residents there are four new younger couples, and along with them have come more and more wireless networks - all on the 2.4ghz band.

Now, I had been being a bit sneaky and watching the bands being used, and switching to the quiet channels.  However, there's a whole flood now, on channels covering the whole spectrum.

The result has been a whole series of slow-downs, drop outs, and poor network performance on my systems, except for my laptop - which was using the higher 5ghz band on the router.

So, I've stuck a new 5Ghz card into the PC.... Lets see how it goes.