Project Blackbird Cancellation

This is a very hard post for me to write, not only am I personally and quite emotionally involved, but I am also still under a strict NDA and as such I can only point you to search the internet for many of the other leaks on the topic.

But finally I can perhaps explain why the number of blog posts I have been making has dried up; I often said it was because I was busy.

On January 2nd 2019 I walked into my first day of development on Project Blackbird as part of the core engine tech team with my employer The Multiplayer Group and as a founding member of the project with Zenimax Online.

The project as it stood the day it was cancelled was, is, stunning to look at.  Alex Tardiff lead the standing up of a brand new renderer from the ground up, a brand new engine was also stood up along side this and the two interoperated superbly.

Early in the development we did a lot of research, selecting technology, containers and performance considerations; we stood up a project with a handful of people and scaled it sucessfully to hundreds.  Standing up a new engine, a new renderer and the complete tooling stack for it is no mean feat.   Think an almost skunkworks kind of deal, with just a dozen members standing up something like Unreal 4; then scaling it out to something which in my opinion visually looked better than Unreal 5, with all the tooling, all the content creation to roll out experience after experience coming together nicely... Within just over six and a half years!

The experience of playing was incredible, the mechanics in the game unique, the world in which the player experienced the game mezmerising.

The team was amazing, sure we had ups and downs, but we were one under the Blackbird banner and until 4:03pm Wednesday 2nd July 2025 we believed there would be a cornerstone gameplay experience delivered on PC, XBox and Playstation 5.... Alas, no more.

As you may understand I am extremely upset by these events, finding constant moments of almost grief, automated message reminders still appearing from headless accounts, sprint goals all planned out but no actions to make, I am bereft of purpose, I am emotional, I was a BLACKBIRD.

https://www.trueachievements.com/news/canceled-xbox-mmo-project-blackbird

https://insider-gaming.com/phil-spencer-loved-zenimaxs-new-mmorpg-but-it-was-canceled-anyway/


https://www.eurogamer.net/zenimax-online-studios-head-matt-firor-announces-departure-following-widespread-layoffs-and-the-cancellation-of-in-development-mmo

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/a-new-mmo-in-development-at-elder-scrolls-online-studio-zenimax-has-been-cancelled-as-microsoft-puts-thousands-more-people-out-of-work/

 

Disgusted by the BBC (Taiwan & Ukraine)

I'd like to bring a heart warming post this Easter Monday; but I can't... Instead I just sat down and listened to the 1 o'clock news by the BBC and I'm shocked, annoyed and disgusted by their describing Taiwan as a "self governing province".

Taiwan is a country in it's own right!  I admit a fall out of the Chinese civil war, but the BBC describing Taiwan so is like my British head calling the Republic of Ireland a "Self Governing Province"... or Canada, or New Zealand, or Australia.  It would simply not be tolerated.

And I think this narrative can only be for one purpose, to placate Beijing!

I say, this Chinese exercise to "encircle Taiwan" is illegal, should be utterly condemned, not just in the strongest words but by physical action to see them off.

And whilst I'm at it, the same rhetoric left to the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine and I can only express my opinion that the west needs to stop with the words and act.

A warmonger I am happy to be called, if just one person retains their own self determined liberty, and that is what is at stake with Russian in Eastern Europe, and with China as a whole.  Countries led by literal megalomaniacs, unlike  me who hold the free world hostage!

Final Thoughts for March - Apple M1

I've been looking at the new like of Apple equipment, now I'm not an Apple guy... I only recently acquiesced to buying a second hand Mac Mini (Core i5, very old) not really to play with the old version of Mac OS it could run, but to use it as a Linux box.... Of course I took a look at the Mac OS and the hardware.

It is very neat tidy design, but awfully bespoke, terribly difficult to repair, but not impossible, I actually was able to fit new SSD's, upgrade the memory and fix a failed fan.

That's the bare minimum I'd ask of a piece of kit, to be able to change the storage, upgrade the RAM... fix a fan... Hard drives, be they mechanical or solid state fail over time, they literally wear out.

Hearing that some Apple models have their only storage literally soldered onto the main board was a real turn off, how can such a thing be upgraded or repaired?  Well it can't.

And this ability to repair something is pretty key to me, and I presume a lot of other people.

Soldered on, fixed in position, storage is just a no-go... And as I understand it this is how the new M1 Mac's all work, they have a fixed amount of storage, no additional storage interfaces (SATA etc) sure you could use an external USB drive, but that's... that's not going to stop the main boot drive taking a battering.

Worse still I've anecdotally heard about the massive swap usage on the M1 Mac's, which prematurely ages the storage.

It is the perfect storm to leave a lot of electronics in ruins and the waste of resources and environmental impact of all this just has be aghast.

Corvid 19: Chronovirus Bemusing Me

I'm a bit bemused by this whole Chronovirus affair, the amount of news time it's receiving and the amount of public awareness is brilliant; if not itself curtailing the inevitable spread of the virus itself.

For people to be aware is great.

In Nottingham it's not stopped my observing at least five people randomly spitting in the street today... but hey ho.

What bemuses me though is the news worthiness of this Corvid 19 virus, there are far more common and more deadly diseases and disorders out there, that are not receiving their due attention.

Lets assume the numbers given today on the BBC are correct, 78159 cases, of which 2717 deaths arose.  That's what 3.47% fatality rate....

Malaria can be up to 20% fatality rate, but we don't kick off about that do we?

Maybe it's something new, something about the modern works, Malaria is old it's no consequence, it's been killing us for millennia... Corvid 19 has only had a couple of months and that's alien not familiar.

I don't know, I'm just bemused by the whole thing....

Where have I been?... Well, I've been very busy with work and so I've not had chance to come to these pages at all this month, my apologies for that.  I've also been busy with the new land we've purchased, fitting gates, laying a road and helping in part to refurbish the stable block... More about that soon, I promise.

Happy New Year

Yes, it's a happy new year from me!

In case you have been missing them, I've been posting regularly about a C++ project I'm working on, the multiboxer for World of Warcraft (and eventually other games).

You can catch up on all the original posts and tests, as well as the new in my play list here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okuqAMVEDyM&list=PL5XLYa90LcKTt8u__dwzGMxUxWavRuN0r

2019 refused to go out without a final surprise for the wife and I... we were blissfully watching a film (John Wick 3 in case you're interested) and I got up to make us each a drink, only to realise I'd stepped into a hallway full of a centimeter of cold water.

The toilet cistern had gone berserk and started to flood through its top, so it was clean water, but toilet water non-the-less.  We mopped up, I've ripped up the floor in that toilet totally as it was ruined.  We've left the heating on (so the house is boiling) and we're hopeful it'll dry out.

The wooden floors through, I'm hoping not to have to take them up... hey ho.

It's been a hell of a year, new job, new house, lots of things going on, travelling to the US with work a lot (none of which I can talk to you guys about here).

So, you will have to forgive me being so busy.... 2020 here we come.

Its all a question of metier

I've had one of those moments, taking the wife to a new hair dressers, I had to sit and after giving up the pile of decidedly feminine magazines as a bad job I used my phone to crib up on a problem I'm having setting Code Collaborator up properly.

The problem aside, it's just one of those things, I needed to read the info.

About fifteen minutes into my reading and with many female voices cackling merrily away their 11 o'clock comes in with her husband in tow.  He takes the seat with me and we do the usual nod of the head and tut at the flapping the girls are all doing cooing and fawning over one another.  It really is all a bit beyond me, some form of communication is taking place, but I'm not certain what kind.

Alas, five minutes after our perfunctory nod and his going through the self same magazines he strikes up a conversation "you reading something good?"

I reply, good naturedly and we're washed over with a wave of cackling.

"Computers eh?" he says it like it's some mystery force in the universe, "our lads into them, doing his A-Levels".

I listen again, "Yeah he wants to go into using them, looking at his degree options and he got into Nottingham".

So, I do the dutiful thing, I ask what degree... I'm expecting computing, programming, systems or something...mathematical maybe physics at an outside edge.

"He's going to do English Literature"

I don't really think about it, I just ask what's the link to computers then?

"Wants to work with them".

And I can't help it, but we're in this rabbit hole and I ask "How does he jump from English Literature to working with computers?"

The guy fumbles a little here, I think this maybe the first moment he's thought about the tenuousness of the connection from A-Levels in Sociology, English Lit and Physical Education, a degree in English Literature and the wish to work in Computers.  But he gathers himself in a flash.

"He uses a right good laptop for his home work".

Game over, good night vienna, sensible has left the building.

Our conversation peters out some at this moment and I just leave him to this thoughts as my wife's done, but I can't help think about the metier here.  Computing is a goal, or the lad enjoys playing games, but he's studying completely unrelated topics, with no seeming extra curricular things, and he'll no doubt be out trying to get any computer related job, I don't know what, maybe sweeping out server rooms.  But he'll be cheaper than a qualified person in a computer academic bent.

Programmer Between Jobs...

Announcement time, I'm unemployed... Yes, as of the 28th December 2018 I have not been gainfully employed.  But fear not, I am starting my new job on Wednesday 2nd January.

I've covered this in a nattering brief on my YouTube, which I now link, but stick with this post for more information.

I've never really spoken directly about the job I've had and how its evolved over the years I've been with it, so I was at that role for 14 years.  That's a very long time, especially in today's markets, but as you all know I keep myself busy and informed on these very pages.

I did work in what's euphemistically called "the pay to play industry", this is the gambling industry to the rest of the world, but saying that I didn't write the actual games.  I was a systems engineer, so I wrote software which drove the money accepting and paying hardware, and especially software which worked to store the current state of a machine, avoid frauds, count, collate and communicate metrics to central servers or offline (USB) uploads.

And I did all this according to a set of quite strict legal guidelines and requirements, so we're not talking about the much media covered "crack cocaine of gambling the FOBT", we're talking at most about £1 stake machines, family game machines, questions and answer style stuff.  The more cuddly end of the market if you're asking me.

I am leaving that industry, all that knowledge of BACTA standards and other stuff has been slowly ebbing out of my pores and leaving me, as I actually resigned in early October and in late October (when it became public knowledge in the office I was leaving) they placed me on gardening leave.  We'll gloss over that as some folks got their righteous fury out and pointed it in my direction; needless to say, being on gardening leave this long has let the move happen seamlessly, but it will be a shock to return to early morning rising to get into Nottingham City Center... Plus, no more day time tele... Oh thank god, no more daytime TV!

So, where am I going?  Well, I'm going to a company called The Multiplayer Guys, this is an actual game company, a computer game, console game crew with close ties to an actual game house Super Punk Games.

Now I can't share anything about what I'm going to be working on, but I'm carrying my C++, Windows and Linux experience high on my shoulders.  I'm eager to learn more about the Client Side structure of modern game engines and leverage my server-side and networking experience with the high-speed low latency efficient demands of a modern game.

So, yes, I know what game I'm going to be working on, that's the bit I can't share with you, maybe over time, but right now, nada, nothing, no comment... Move along, move along.

P.S.  I got an e-mail at 16:42 that my Laptop shipped, from China (despite being told the Lenovo reseller was in the Republic of Ireland) by UPS Global... I'm wondering if it'll be here within the week now, I really am.

Good Riddance Google+

When I was forced (through my YouTube account) to create an interlinked Google+ account I was not best pleased.  And I posted as such on the pages there, then never returned to them.  As a social media platform it was flawed and ran into the "Google being evil" motif far too strongly.

Anyway, I look through BBC News just now and find this....

The fact Google knew about the issue in March and didn't disclose it... Well it's pretty much just the dregs.

Projects and General Update (September 2018)

I have no idea why you can hear my breathing so loud on cam... I promise I don't walk around wheezing... at least, I don't think... Shit, maybe I do?... Fat man fail I guess... 

I'm pretty sure I blogged about my gut having to go, it's not... At all.

Gamer Clarity

I had a bad time getting off my addition... Addiction?... What am I talking about?  Drink?  Drugs?  Women?... No I'm talking about Azeroth.

Yeah, I was addicted to World of Warcraft, in a big way, it came after a time being a member of a top flight Day of Defeat teams - Yes, I was once a hardcore FPS player folks - Enemy Down ladder anyone?  Yeah, old school....

And myself and another couple of players on the team (waves to Chaplain) were looking for something else to play, and it was the weekend before I started a new job - the job I currently still have technically - and a friend came to stay (waves to Paul) and he'd just bought a new game "World of Warcraft".

Now I knew about Warcraft, I'd played the RTS games (I even still have my copy of Warcraft II on the shelf behind me) but I'd not ventured into any MMO ever before; yes EverQuest and even Ultima had passed me by.  And I went out that night and bought the game from the local Asda.

I rolled a human, a Warrior (flexes muscles) and I roped Chaplain into playing too and that was it, I was hooked... I played every hour I could, my day was get up, boot PC, walk dog whilst machine booted and kettle boiled, back in tepid tea, toast and check the auction house and may be pick up a few nodes of metal ore before work.

I'd work until lunch when I had an hours gap at that time, and I lived 10 minutes away from work, so it was drive home, see the dog, feed him, and check the auction house, check my mails, post messages to guild members (yes I ran a guild) planning the nights activities (usually an instance for either myself as the main tank or the main guild priest to get gear - so everyone else could get theirs that little bit more easily) and it was back to work.

I'd blaze through the afternoon and be setting off home as soon as I could, arriving home I would walk the dog again and either we'd stop at the local chip shop for a kebab or I'd call for a pizza on the return trip, that would arrive when we got home and the dog would curl up around my feet whilst I played and ground and quested all night long.

I found achievement beyond my normal day, I found organizing the team purposeful (at the time I had gone from running a team of folks at work, to being the most junior developer, a hard knock so I channeled my team building and drive into the guild - not always to great success, but I ran two different guilds in my time - one a family style small team the other a vast ramshackle affair of infighting and subterfuge).

After years, I mean years, the vanilla game, The Burning Crusade and through to Wrath I played all day everyday, in Wrath I became a top flight PVP terror (not on the arena circuit, but out in the world, world PVP baby!)  I digested every tip, watched hours of "WarcraftMovies.com", I lived and breathed that game.

I was still playing ten years ago when I had a revelation, at work I had the chance to start to lead product, to do that my focus, my drive, my energy had to be focused back on work, away from play.  I'd already diluted my Warcraft time anyway - as by then I also ran two accounts (carrier pilot) in EveOnline and a multi-billion ISK empire and a small corp of players.  But work needed my focus.

I had met my future wife as well and frankly grown up... "When one becomes a man, one has to put away such childish things"... So I quit, boom, overnight, my final two characters a 68 priest and 78 druid were to be the last I took to higher level, Wrath was the last expansion I played.

All my characters now sit in the pergatory of the unsubbed account, but I yearn to see them again.  I'm sure you've all seen my efforts to set up my own server (an on going affair I might add), and it's that yearning for the old days which drives me to want to do that, time is the only stopper.

Time, the one element missing when I quit before, the yearning was there, but time is short and you have to focus.

At the moment at work I'm focussed on a delivery of a new product to a new market, I need that time back to myself, but I also need a release.  The current gaming trend for high impact, high drama, like PUBG is not doing my relaxing any good, the stress of World PVP would not in Warcraft either, and Eve - forget it, nerve wracking - so maybe my original home World of Warcraft PVE, on EU Thunderhorn server?  Maybe my old characters are still there?

Xelous the 60 warrior.

Eylomae the 60 hunter - who must look completely out of place in 2018 with a full set of Beastmaster (tier 1 I called it, but I've recently learned it's considered tier 0.1 - if it's even called the Beastmaster armour set at all!).

And all the rest, Blackthorn my bad-ass 80 Mage... 

I thought I might resubscribe the other day, it hit me like a pang in the gut, to call Chaplain and say "3pm Stormwind Gates, EU Thunderhown, Xelous will march back into town".  But I couldn't make myself do it.

So much has changed in the game, some maybe for the better, but to my play experience, to my recapturing the past so much has changed for the negative.

The moment of clarity shone through, I can never go back, I am still a gamer, though of which game is yet to be seen.

Where have I been?

Where have I been and what have I been doing?  Well my wife has been for more surgery, those of you know the tale will be well versed, for thos eo fyou not in the know, she's on the mend; slowly.  I have therefore been busy looking after her.

In the hopes of getting more hours out of me the office delivered one of our huge machines to my home and I've been working from there, immediate results were that I did nearly 48 hours of project work whilst not in the office, unfortunately none of that project work is going to be used as the product has changed... Hey ho.  I've also learned that I could never ever work from home for real, even barring surgery recovery, she simply could not wrap her head around how you have to concentrate whilst doing my job and would say my name, wait exactly one second, and say it again, then again and again... So yeah, never going to be able to work from home.

What form did this work take?  Well I was working on porting a Linux USB driver for a device back to windows, so I've written Linux code which drives the USB device in Linux by observing and reverse engineering the activity of a pre-existing windows driver for the said device.  Then someone found a fault in the original windows driver, so the idea was to back port my Linux work back onto windows... Which worked... It worked first time, out the box, before I even had the machine at home to look at directly.  The problem?  The device driver I've then created for windows expresses the exact same issue as the original windows driver was.

A lot of debugging later and I pretty much came to the conclusion that this is a badly behaved USB device, along the way I learned that the sync.c file in libusb has some problems expressing LIBUSB_ERROR_TIMEOUT (-7), indeed I started to write custom cuts of the functions within to let me take internal metrics on them to work out what libusb itself was doing.

So, I maybe, doing the next part of my coding standard rant videos on the contents of some of the libusb source files.

Project management also raised it's curly bonnet to me, I need to sit down, clean up and finish "Super Simple Tickets".  This is because there is no quick way to work with "tickets" in the current provided platforms in the office.  There are ticketing systems, there's a Jira system and there's a Redmine system, and my personal preference has been towards (the now out of vogue) trac for Project Management and ticketing, but none of these are simple and strippled back enough.

I need to hit a lot of users, as simply as possible, from as many devices as possible, including anonymous feedback.  The overhead of managing this is more than the whole effort of collecting & collating the details about the software... That's what we're interested in, what is the software doing, what do our testers and users think... I don't care what group or gantt chart you're in on the project management tool, I don't care who's assigned to what ticket for what purpose, so I want a central place that folks can throw information, ideas or issues... The three I's.

Plus this lets me get back to learning Flask with Python, which is a personal project I never got to finish last year.

After all the above, boost beast still needs more of my attention.

As does my WoW TBC private server.

In short, for my short supply personal time, there's a lot of projects and to get any of them back on the rails I need to sit down, sacrifice a day and just get them cleaned up and in a state where I can pick them up and put them down, literally to let me bit and bob.

I hope that explains to you all where I've been for like a fortnight, but I am here, and things will start crawling out more now the projects have passed at work.

My Three Lions 2018

Being English, specifically an avid supporter of English Football this week is extremely hard to bear, the hope, the wish, the fear the turbid mix on the street, wafting on the radio airwaves and in nearly every news report.

I love English football, the agony, the pleasure, that moment the wife storms out the room declaring "I'm stopping watching this" only to see here peeping around the door-frame thirty seconds later.

We love you England, we do.

And I find a tear in my eye whenever I think back to that warm summer of '96 as here in Nottingham we saw the Turkish team play at the City Ground and the hurt that followed.

I stand up to be counted.  I am English.  We are United.  We will play.  I hope they can win.

But whatever the weekend brings, we still have our Lions, three of them, proud and loud.

Hear Us Roar.

CPU Speed : That Time I got Conned

As a technologist I've always been interested in the newest kit coming out, and many moons ago this exact demand for kit made me very mad.

For you see, the previous year I'd built my first 2 ghz machine, and it was very costly.  Hyper threading was new to the market, at least in the Pentium 4 range.  And as usual I had need for more power from my machines.

So I hit the interwebs and found a machine (on ebay I think) which was 2ghz... A nice CPU was mentioned in the specification... But the memory and graphics capability were lacking...

I could make the difference up from my spares bin, so I took the dive ordering this machine as a base on which to work.

It duely arrived, I plugged it in, and was dismayed to find it clocking only around 1.1 ghz.  Baffled, I check the advert, "Dual core 2 ghz chip" was definiately there, with the sub-note "exact type may vary, select Intel or AMD preference".

Back to the machine it is dual core, but it is not 2 ghz, no where near.  So I call them up...  Not even have I explained and the phone was put down on me.

Maybe, just maybe it was a mistake, I call again... Phone rings unanswered.

Paypal dispute time as I pack this machine back up into it's box.

Except, the seller won't refund nor accept a return.  They have meticulos pictures of the machine and documents stating that it's correct and I'm trying to con them...!

The ebay resolution center rule in their favour, I'm obliged to accept the item.  I forget the details exactly, but it was a very protracted affair.  All whilst the machine say unused and I started to build an actual second 2ghz machine for myself.

After about four weeks though, I get the resolution center ruling, and accepting the fact I have this potato (it was still a good price for the potato, just not the fabulous deal I thought I had gotten)...

But one of the documents catches my eye, it said:

"2ghz speed is from our including two processors of at least 1ghz speed"

and in pencil of this digitized photo of the page they've put the processor spec and the maths... 2 x 1.1ghz = 2.2 ghz faster than they had paid for.

You know and I know that's not how processor speeds work, but ebay had accepted it, the conners at the other end of this sham had me very very annoyed by this....

However, whenever I seek people bemoaning the 5ghz tests being carried out by Intel, with external hidden sub-ambient coolers helping, I can't ever stop the phrase... "that's 2.5ghz x 2 easy"... Or thinking my current machine at home is a 48ghz speed (12 x 4ghz).

Donald Trump hits Rock Bottom

Just watching this travesty....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44017172

What he fails to mention is that when everyone has a gun they hang out of casino hotel windows gunning down festival goers, kids kill kids in the hall ways of schools and colleges, that murder suicide is through the roof and you can be shot dead for as little as looking at someone in the wrong way.

Donald Trump and especially the NRA have this attitude utterly and totally wrong, and I can't begin to express how god awful this man is.

But then, let us remember, he is "leader" of a country where we report mass shootings as "the worse in" and insert very short amounts of time.  This however is glossed over in US reporting of this to it's citizens.  Where as we hear that Stephen Paddock killed 58 people, "the worst mass shooting in the US since 1991".

The CNN version states "the deadliest mass shooting in modern US History".... Define Modern Mr Trump and Ms CNN... Because 1991 is not a long time ago, I mean I know you're in a country with a history we can list on the back of a couple of greasy burger wrappers, but please 1991 is not old, and 1992 on wards is not modern history, and how many mass shootings have there been in "modern history", in say the last five years?

Well we have:

1. Stoneman Douglas - 2018 - 17 murdered
2. Lass Vegas - 2017 - 58 murdered
3. Sutherland Sprints - 2017 -  26 murdered
4. Orlando - 2016 - 49 murdered
5. San Bernadino - 2015 - 15 murdered
6. Umpqua College - 205 - 9 murdered

That's six attacks, how many where terrorists?  None... Not a single one is a comparison to the Paris attack, not a single one of these attacks was in effort of a social political aim, they were murder, for jealous, revenge, homophobia, all by people whom had armed themselves without the need to leap through hoops of be part of a terrorist cell.

Normal everyday people killing people with whatever happens to be at hand.

Which takes us to Trumps commends about the London Knife Crime, he's right, this is a problem, it is the exact same problem as I have just mentioned are on US streets, people killing people with whatever happens to be at hand.  Except, a kitchen knife, a shiv, heck even a sharpened stick is in an utterly different; lower; category of concern that someone picking up a .38 pistol and pointing it at coworkers over a parking spot, or their YouTube video loosing advertising!

America you have a problem, a much larger problem than you realise, you are being brain washed into looking outwards, that the world around you is horrid, that you might have it tough, but "hey look at London, look at Paris".... Beyond Terrorism, which is clearly more common here in Europe where we have a land bridge to the middle east & north African unrest.... we do not have a problem here, and you are being made look idiots (more so than usual) as you're letting Donald Trump and the NRA pull wool over your eyes.

There are no mass shootings, nor mass killings, here in the UK, nor Paris, nor anywhere else, except by extremely rare nut jobs, and I mean extremely rare.  The only ones which come to mind are Anders Brevivik in Norway in 2011 and Derek Bird in the UK in 2010... Remember we're going on the "modern" moniker given by CNN... Five years, both these attacks happen outside that time frame!

Look for the next killing spree in the UK, one does not look to the same year, not even the same decade we have to go back to the Dunblane killings in 1996.

This is what the world means, yes we all get this behaviour in our populations, people killing people, since time immemorial, the difference is in the US the tools to achieve such aims are so so much more readily available.  They are not a "tool" to fend off a terrorist attack, guns just become a tool to carry out more attacks, more people killing people, in more places on more occasions.  When will the American people wake up and smell the cordite?

This whole situation beggars belief.

Intel Home Server CPU

You're all aware (I hope) of my stack of servers under the desk, however, the main server I use is actually a re-purposed desktop - it's the G33 chipset Socket 775 to Socket 771 running a Xeon E5420...

And I have my plan forming to re-case my main workstation, however, I wondered... As I'm currently very exposed with data not replicated across drives on my little server and the machine being quite high power, whether I might not do better in the short term of recasing both... AND changing the server to an always on box.

This way, I could build a machine around a dedicated new board and chip... I started out with the AMD APU's the 2580 and some others, up to a quad core, and as fabulous as they look on cost they didn't float my boat.

I don't need a lot of number crunching power on the server, so what was my concern?  Well, I'm an Intel guy... Always have been, and think I always will be.  Obviously I started with MOS processors, then moved into the world of Motorolla, but since 1994 I've steadfastly bought and used Intel.

Why? Well, I remember the original AMD offerings, they were copies, and hard to find in the UK market without knocking the quality of other items in your build, so I stuck with off the shelf Intels.

I then build my own Pentium II and III computers, I also found use for Celerons - I've never had anything against them - I had a Pentium IV Prescott when they were literally brand new, then I've had the Core i7 950, plus all the Xeon servers and modding fun.

At work I've always been supplied Intel too...

What options does the market offer in the Intel world?.... Well I spotted the dual core, dual thread Celeron G9300.... Which looks just the ticket for me, it's pretty low power (53W compared to the Xeon E5420 at 80W), it can address more RAM, so giving me expansion options and it had decent reviews.  The trick is to not expect a lot from it, and to actually put it to a good use.  If that use is as an SSH point into my network, a git server, NFS host and squid box, then that might work quite well.

I've therefore drafted a build, you can see it here.... 

If nothing else that case, might be a perfect buy, to get the ball rolling, and guess what!... Tomorrow is pay day.

World of Warcraft - Classic

Its happened, the announcement with not quite enough information, but it did happen and the WoW orientated internet has slightly melted over it, everyone and their dog on YouTube have posted opinion pieces on whether this "in development" service will fullfil their desires.  I have no opinion in that, instead I'm going to talk about my Warcraft Experience...

I first met the world that is Warcraft with "Warcraft II", which I remember my brother and I bought whilst on a trip into Nottingham, we bought it from GAME on Lister Gate, and talked about it incessantly as our parents made us trudge around Marks & Spencers, rather then rush home to play immediately.

We played this on our Intel 80486-SX2-50Mhz, with 4MB of RAM and a 128K S8 video card - VGA baby!

I don't remember finishing the game, I have to be honest, I don't remember it that much... However, I still have the game, the exact box we bought is proudly on the shelf, and has been visible behind me in most of my YouTube videos.  And in 2000 I returned to play the game in full, as I had played AOE2 to death, was vastly disappointed with C&C3 Tiberium Sun and so wanted to return to Azeroth.

Fast forward to the release of WoW, and a friend (Hi Paul) came to stay for the weekend, and he brought this game with him... And I walked under the trees of Elwynn Forest for the first time, killing pigs with his level 6 Dwarf Paladin... And I loved it.

The moment he went home on that Sunday evening, I went to the Asda superstore in Long Eaton and I bought the game, the original game, with the first edition of the manual... Many years later I threw this away, when I moved house, I still kick myself for that, and remember distinctly looking at it all in the bottom of the empty dustbin...

But at that moment this was brand new, and I set up my account and went to it... I didn't understand my friend would be on a completely different server to me, so I just allowed the game to pick any server it liked.  I wanted to play and adventure in the game, so I picked the what I thought of as the "single player" option... PVE.  I did not understand what an MMORPG was.

Into PVE I stepped, Allience, Human, Warrior... And there I was, I remember I played three evenings around Northshire Abbey alone... Just three evenings, about 2-3 hours, maybe 6 hours played total, just to finish the Northshire Abbey quests and then I was sent by this NPC to "Goldshire"...

There were no loading screens, I thought I had moved from one zone to another when I left Northshire, I saw the section of map discover, and I thought this is huge - whilst only looking at Elwynn on the map.... And then I right clicked..... And the map stepped out... These slabs of undiscovered map... Darkshire to the south, Westwall to the West, Lakeshire... OMG this is a continent.

And then I right clicked again.... Two continents, two whole continents... I was a very small cog in a very large world.

The the server crashed, this was a three-four days after release.

When everything came back up, I set about questing, and I overwhelmingly remember it taking so long, like a week into my experience I was wearing all white gear from quests, and was eyeing up an Axe - purchased from an NPC - for 10 silver.  Which was a hell of a lot of money.

I remember playing with a friend who had rolled a Paladin, when he sat down to drink, I sat down to drink, I didn't understand what drinking did, I didn't read the tool tips, I was so naive.

A week further on, and my hours sunk into the game expanded and expanded, I was sleeping less and playing more, I used to drive home from work at 12noon, play 30 minutes, not eat, then drive back to work... Where I would leave the second it ticked past time, to get home and play again.

I soon had more friends in the game with me, and I helped form a guild... "Arx"... Named for the Latin word for fortification or castle.  I designed the natty guild tabbard in dark royal blue, a white tower on the chest and suitably lush borders... And we started to level.

I hit 40, and thanks to my side-line of mining - selling stacks of copper bars for 10 silver in general or by mail - as I didn't know where the auction house was - I'd not been to Ironforge (the only place there was an Auction house at launch!), but I hit 40 dirty poor...

I set about that evening going further afield, I travelled to Stormwind and then through to Ironforge, and I found more and more quests, I found the auction house, and saw I could sell the copper stacks I had for 35 silver each, 50 silver as bars... So I did, and made money for my mount so much more quickly.  Back to Eastvale I went to train and buy, a brown mare whom I always referred to as "Nelly".

And I travelled the world, meeting new people... It happened in the swamps outside Theramore, I met a night-elf.  The first I'd ever seen, she was a hunter, level 32 ish, and running... I was mounted, I didn't know any different, this was a female character... I spoke to her, and she spoke to me, we quested together... She joined my guild... THANK GOD she actually was a women... (Hi Sue).

I fancied the pants off of this woman, and rightly so, I saw a picture a while later (grrr baby, grr), I made the mistake of that same assumption before... Not so much fancying, but wondering... "Is that actually a dude?".... (Hi Nick, aka Eve - lol - yes we wondered for a long time mate, before you joined vent!).

The trouble then started really, you see I was a warrior, and the guild main tank, and I was struggling and pushing myself to level and gear up... The first little niggle was my co-guild leader (Hi Chaplain) was also a warrior, so there was a little trouble there that what I had, he had, what he needed, I needed.  This was solved later as he rerolled to a rogue, but we're talking very early vanilla, and having two warriors was a pain.

We also vastly lacked casters, we had a lovely priest (Hi NW), but he would never come into vent, or certainly never spoke, making it hard to dungeon - however, he was a world class top notch priest.  We had the lovely Sue as her Hunter, a Paladin (aka Nick), Chaplain in his Warrior or Rogue.  And then a rotation of different team members, we had a Druid (Hi Hlaalu), we had a warlock (whos name I forget) and that was about it... For a long time.

A friend from work rolled a Dwarf paladin I think, and he got very very drunk and that caused a fraction between WoW in my down time and my work life, so he left the server to play elsewhere.  We then had a few other paladins come and go, and then another female warrior - but she often wondered off to play Horde... True Blue represent, we ain't dealing with no half-Hordies here.

Mage and Warlock were always missing from our group, and it showed.

But we did get Strat and Scholo on farm, meager progress, but we had it on farm, we could go there over and over.  The next chapter of drama was about to burst all over me, a few of the folks in the team were not really grasping the idea of progress, about gearing up, some folks would go spend two or three hours skinning or picking herbs then go sell them, or skill up, and wonder why they were still taking a load of damage - inspect, because you're still wearing level 40 gear, you're level 58.

Another person took an aeon to get from level 57 to 60, and when they finally did break the level cap, they were too busy farming gold for an epic tiger mount... To be frank it all got slightly derailed, but I had pretty nice gear, and kept increasing it by going PVP Battleground farming... Knight Captain, thank you very much, gave me boots and leggings and some other bits to augment my gear, sadly though I lost the plot here, I fell out with Sue... I fell out with a bunch of other folks, and basically kicked them out of the guild.

Chaplain and I re-rolled new characters, I think Nick did too, and we later swapped to a PVP server.

I never enjoyed another Warrior like that first one ever again, I never met as good a healer as I had in NW the priest again, and PVP started to take over.... I rolled my own Hunter, and outdid Sue's progress - basically as she'd moaned she couldn't gear up, I got a full tier 1 (as it was then) including the cap and bow of bones form dark-master gandling, and the chest piece form General Drakkish, I had the full set... Just to point out - spend your time and you get what you want... And I did this before she'd progressed further.

I'll be honest, it was petty, but I fancied her, it was all I had to brag about - look at my gear - eyebrows waggle - I look back on that boy and laugh now, but that doesn't mean I don't miss that kind of playing, and as you can see from this text, I still know so much about the game at that time.

I miss being the sort of thotbott for the guild, literally, anything vanilla and Alliance, and I could pretty much answer on the spot.  I had learned the game.

As BC dawned I ventured as my hunter into the new lands, and I enjoyed them, but I also started my favourite of all my characters, a female human mage... Yeah rocking the female toon now... and I went full fire, never frost, I levelled for 1 to 70 in about four weeks full fire, in every dungeon I could get to, and I got into the level 70 PVP world, especially in AV and WSG.

I also re-rolled a new Hunter, a female one, which I also levelled quickly to 70, and I played DPS classes, no more tanking from me, though I did have a level 70 warrior for the good-old times.

I was mid-way through the vast and complex attunements in BC when Wrath was announced, yes I was not a progress attainer in BC, I just enjoyed it, thoroughly.

I never high-end raid in BC, I tried sun-well a little before Wrath came out, but I said to myself I would try to Raid in Wrath.

It never happened, I took my mage, blasted through the PVE to get to 80 and went dungeons and collecting my marks, and just went full on PVP.  I had a lovely full set of Gladiator gear, when it was very hard to get that.

However, I hated arena, I hated the starting of the crossing of realms, I hated that everything felt the same.  I loved the game, and still progressed my hunter to 80, and then started a druid - who strangely got a full set of tier gear raiding Black-temple as a level 70, but I never level capped everything.

I did Gruuls lair with a guild I had joined, fell out of love with the game, and stopped playing long before Wrath's era was over.

Since then, I have played on Nostalrius, but I missed my team, I missed the feel of my original server.

I fear that many of us have rosy tinted glasses when it comes to Vanilla, what I miss is the server, the knowing everyone, the need to know everything and travel, the RPG aspects.  And I can't help but think today players want instant gratification, they are not going to await for travelling to get somewhere, they are NOT going to want to plan their hearthstone and flight routes for optimum action in a quest hub, they want to point, click and win.

Will Classic servers work?  Perhaps, will they be Vanilla servers?  No.  That time has passed into legend.

The State of Today (Sex Ed)

Lets take a moment to read this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/41510170/both-sexes-should-be-taught-about-periods-together-at-school---charity

And realise that this is 2017... 

I'm not saying this to say, "OMG they're not teaching boys about this", but in 1989/1990... When I were at secondary school, we were taught about sex, and periods, and masturbation...

Yes, we were.  I admit there was an awkward moment with Mr Simpson (the Physics teacher - who used to yell - and smell) but he showed us a video and gave us the basics.

Then, in the lower school, there was a personal health conversation with Mrs Salisbury, where she talked to everyone, and explained how periods happen, they're natural, how much menstrual blood (on average etc) ladies deal with and all-sorts of things like that.

I was eleven, I remember it...

So why in 2017 are kids not being taught?... If I had to endure these jaw clenching moments, wondering my eyes around trying to not admit I was hearing this stuff, then damn it kids today should be similarly scarred....

Whilst I'm on the topic, no kids should be able to get access porn online... They need to go get a shot of boobies where I got it, from discarded copied of "The Sun" which have spent a couple of days blowing around the street.

4000 Monthly Viewers

Back in May I came to these pages to thank my Russian viewers and I mentioned I had passed the 1000 viewers a month mark...

Well, here we are on the first of July, with the numbers in for June... 4143 viewers.... What the?

Where are all you guys coming from?  The google stats don't tell me :)

Tech Office: Talking Dress Code

Lets put this clearly, I don't believe in a set dress code (as in defining what anyone can wear) in technology, I've seen anecdotal evidence of the history of IBM where they insist on suits and sock garters and alsorts of things, I've seen companies demand you wear a suit - indeed I used to work in Formalwear production and had to wear a suit - I like suits, however, I don't believe they have a place in the everyday development office.

If you're seeing customers, if you're "forward facing" then sure, dress up.  But smart casual is enough for me, what is "Smart Casual"?

Jeans, sure.  Shirt, sure.  T-Shirt if it's plain, sure.  What's not... Well, how about a 30 year old sagging woolen jumper?  Please no, just no.

What about a bright orange flair neck shirt which has its top three buttons missing and is worn by a hairy chested 1970's throw back?  Please god no.

What about shoes?  Well, I wear a nice pair of Rockport leather shoes, they're functional, comfortable, ageing but decent looking... Trainers, I have no objection to trainers, sandles... No... No sandles.

Shorts?... Please No, just no.

Combat trousers, I'm find with them, so long as you're not putting ammo in the pockets, oh and they're a plain colour.

Then you come to the more sticky points, its kind of the dress code, and sure medical considerations aside, how do you smell?  I've worked with people, not directly in my team, who stink.  Bodily, as though they don't wash, but also as though they've been dipped in something... Chemicals, paints, cigarettes, bad breath, BO... It's just not acceptable, it's not polite, when you're working elbow to elbow or if you smell so bad people give you a wide birth, or close their mouth as they come past your desk, beware you will be asked to spray.

That said, what do you spray?  Please god, nothing totally stinking...

Health : Burnt Toast

Catching this one in the news this morning...

And I already know this... I already know Burnt Toast is a health risk, I remember being told by an Oncologist when I was about 15 that burnt toast was, in his professional opinion, responsible for the spontaneous occurrence of stomach cancer in some of his patients.

I remembered this, I remember when I worked for Boots mentioning this to some folks and their laughing.

I remember telling a house mate at uni and his sceptical look; but then I was rather odd, especially in the final year of uni... I used to cool my toast in the fridge for example (I like cold toast, okay.. nothing too strange about that!).

So, as far as I can remember this isn't news, it was news about twenty three years ago, but since then I've known this, about coffee too... I still drink it, as the oncologist I knew said, it either gets you or it doesn't, don't worry about a slice of toast; worry more about first and second hand smoke, diesel fumes and UV light.