Good Plastering Progress

I come to you live, it really is half past midnight, the reason being I can't sleep... I'm extremely tired, bodily tired, but my brain is very very active.

So, lets round things up, first of all the plastering YES I got what I wanted doing and a little bit more done, I got in Friday and steamed four walls, chipped shitty old plaster off, I dug 1970's cavity clamps out of the wall, I fixed the chimney breast and applied PVA to the old plaster to control suction.

Saturday, I did the front wall, blending it in, and then both chimney cheeks, and spent ages blending the front wall.  Finally a second mix I did the facing side of the chimney breast and tidied up... Now I tore the plaster on the thin top here, the walls are strange, I need to apply less than 1mm of plaster above the old picture frame position and nearly 3.5mm below... This however means I need to polish and can polish the lower half quicker and better, but the upper area I pretty much have to leave alone as once it starts to dry I just tear it...

And I tore a good 6 inch gash in the chimney breast front... gah.

But anyway, Sunday two mixes and I got both of the side walls done... And the walls are good... The plastering is acceptably smooth....

However, my corners, especially the in ward directed ones are awful... I don't know why, I use a brush, I smooth them, I try my best, but they're just shit and with the handicap of not being able to work the very thin tops a lot they tops are worse.  And adding insult to injury there's the curved front roof...

Anyway, lots done... Gaming... Well the wife and I did finish GTV5 through one set of senarios, we've started again however, to play through a whole other way.

I really had wished I'd got something else played however.  So, there's another post with no nice pictures, no information, just me moaning about plastering... But, I really have to get this room done now.

Manlab & Minecraft

It has been a long time since I got any gaming in, least on the PC, been playing a lot of GTAV on the PS3... But I want to play some more PC stuff, however the room still needs work...

The front wall now has the built in wardrobes removed, so I've got to just re-finish the plaster along the front, I can see the chimney breast now, so I need to steam all the old wall paper off of that and prepare the surface for plastering.

But, I do hope with these little walls to do some plastering this weekend, indeed I hope to finish the front wall, and plaster both cheeks of the chimney breast from the same mix... and then do a second mix to do the front of the chimney breast and/or the ceilings.

I think tonight I'll get in and get on with the prep work - streaming & bonding the holes.

Once done I've got wire and I may go and wire some things in the loft.  The first thing I may sort out when I've wired the loft room is actually setting up a Minecraft server, I want a persistent world which I can work in and access from anywhere, I've until now been copying the world downloads around, however, that's now proving problematic as I've turned off and packed the main PC, which was the last place I used my world from.

However, I may re-start my last world from the seed and record my activity...

Also I've been looking at a new mob farm, Koala's seems cool and easy to build.

More on GTAV - Review

I got stuck into GTA5 last night, and on some levels I was impressed, but on others wholly unhappy.

The controls, in my opinion, are far too twitchy, the AI traffic getting in your way is more annoying than ever, especially when you see the run through and you go to do it and ludicrously your car slows, or their car accelerates totally out of place for the situation.

I also hate the aiming mechanics, the aiming dot on my TV is so tiny as to disappear in the background most all the time, also the set pieces of missions, some of them are so annoying, I was in a car chasing my boat being towed; for example; and the car would literally slow just to give time for the dialogue to be played... and then when one character had to leap from the car onto the towed boat, I was behind the trailer, pressed against the boat for like 2 minutes... No jump, I finally move, so there's no boat to jump onto... the AI character leaps forward and under my wheels for the big fat "Mission Failed".

It just feels so glitchy, I'm going to let the game update tonight, by attaching to the internet with the console at last, but I've purposefully played the game away from updates to see how they let it be released, and you know what, it's not as impressive as the news coverage would have suggested.

There are bugs... Like you get a visual crash with static and then the system resolves this and recovers, but its very jarring.  You have floating and moonwalking animations, you have really rather poor facial animation of the characters going on.  Some of the mouths don't sync at all, especially on prominent supporting characters, like Michaels wife Amanda.

And then there are problems with the character switching mechanics, like I was Michael, I was told to change to be Franklin, so I did... The game changed me back to Michael and informed me to change to Franklin again... because it was mid-tutorial... in the mean time... "Mission Failed"...

The wife was sat there watching "Mission Failed"... "Mission Failed"... and my frustration showing, and she was saying... "just turn left"... on the motorbike.. yeah, sure it don't turn it just pirouettes, no finesse.

Then the map in the bottom left, yes its showing me where to go, but its 21 inches from the view point I'm looking at to the map on the bottom left, at least on my screen... And you can't take in the map without actually staring at it, the reason... its slightly transparent, so you can see textures through it... Road textures especially look like static on the mini-map, it looks like the sat nav is having a hard day with static... and that distracts from being able to take in the mini-map's information.  Also the oblique angle its at (isometric) is not as easy to read as perhaps a 2D top down mini-map would have been, especially with fast moving car chases...

And that's the big appeal, the big world in this game, but until you get to know the place - and its a big place! - you're going to have to use the mini-map, and its too short sighted, too small a heads  up of what's coming in the early game to plan where you're going.

So to be fair the game's good, but not as spectacular as everyone would think.

The other problem I have is the jaggies, I've watched the YouTube, I've checked out how it should look, on both PS3 and Xbox360 before buying the console just for this game, and it looked ace.

I've had it, seen it, checked my display settings are good... all to no dice, it looks so jaggy in places on this PS3... I dunno, maybe I'm spoilt by my PC which easily out performs this PS3 by 3 or 4 fold, but right now GTAV on the PS3 does not look like any of the footage I've seen recorded... And this isn't to start a flame war.  I'm just saying is all.

GTV5

I got a PS3... No, not one of the refurbs, though I got a refurb online the blue rays were all duff so I got a nice new PS3 slim for Christmas... It came Tuesday.

Now, after making the wife suffer the hugely long GTA5 install period she went to bed, but this was lucky as the first thing - after initial missions - that I ended up doing was going to a lap dance and pulling the dancer whom the character took home and he bedded... receiving a morning text saying "I can hardly walk"... lol

Not quite the same as GTA3 - the last game in the series I played - where the hookers would get in the car with you, but you'd only get a comic bouncing of the car springs... GTA5 has "evolved" and so I had full pixelated titties jiggling across the screen.... much to my own chagrin.

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...

Busy Busy...

Oh me oh my, could more be going on this week?  Gaming wise, we’ve had the release date for Cataclysm… Clearly someone at the BBC News desk has a huge game boner for World of Warcraft, because they report a lot of stuff about the game on there.  I reckon they’ve also got an Eve player and a fair few Console players… get in touch chaps & chapesses, I’d love to hear what you play at the BBC?

But yes, Cataclysm, 7^th December, if you all missed it, just in time to get the bugs sorted for Christmas, or more specifically for the University holidays… yes here in Britain the Universities full of Students start to break up and most have completed the break up for the Yule period by the 15^th… so I guess most all Student UK customers of Blizzard will be busy busy busy enjoying the new game.

I still fear for the inflation of items in the game, I’ve also noted that the retail price is listed as €34.99, that’s about £30.  That’s the price of a whole new game… I don’t doubt Blizzards work is worth the cost, but thirty quid… when you already pay a subscription?... Nooo thank you.

I have to admit, I’ve had a few pangs to go back to WoW recently, notably last weekend, when I thought long and hard about trying to introduce the misses to it with me… it’d only end in tears though, and she’s got better things to do with her time… As have I… *cough*.

Eve-Online

Alas other gaming news, I’ve had to let my Eve Subs slide for a few months, I might pick them back up after Christmas, but I simply wasn’t playing enough to warrant all three subs.

Grand Theft Auto… WHERE?

The other gaming news I wanted to bring to the fore, since Darren took my link about Wii elbow J, was a report of Take Two Interactive (aka Rockstar Games) winning damages in the High Court… yes the law came down on their side; and rightly so; after Express Newspapers (a tatty rag of a newspaper here in the UK) said they would make a new game… “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.

This fictional title was so named for the town in which the now infamous gunman Raoul Moat had his final stand off with Police, the full story is here.

I’m not too bothered about Rockstar winning the case, I just find the “joke” from the newspaper; which kicked off the case; as in such bad taste it’s like I’m sucking on a pocket full of old pennies.  Bitter Bitter Bitter.

Obituaries

And finally, sadly, we’ve lost two shining lights in Entertainment and Film this week, first in the US Tony Curtis.  I liked Curtis in his films, my favourite being Operation Petticoat where he starred opposite Cary Grant.  I don’t know why I really like that film. I just do, and I enjoy Curtis’s character within.

But a bigger loss for me is that of Sir Norman Wisdom.  Who died yesterday evening.  Many of you in the US won’t have a clue who Norman was, you’ll not have heard of him, not have seen his films.  You may see one on BBC feeds soon, as a tribute to our Norman.  You may not understand the films, you may not get the social context, you may not know the jokes, just watch the utter brilliance, the sheer delight that is Norman’s legacy to us.  His body acting, his comic timing, his slap stick style.  He was described by Charlie Chaplin as “my favourite clown”, go on, go find out why.

Sir Norman Wisdom, OBE (1915 - 2010)