Story Time - Worst Meal Ever

I've told stories about women and dates, so now for something just simply funny... or Disgusting... I have a dog, well we have four now, but I used to just have the one a golden Lab named Dude... You can find a picture of him on these very blog pages...

Anyway, when I first met the wife Dude and I moved in with her, and my Mother got all uppity that the wife was not looking after Dude, and started to send him food parcels, like some refugee prisoner of war... Needless to say, Dude loves the wife more than he loves me, and so these care packages were not needed...

But, one day one of these packages turned up, and there were three pies... Cottage pies... The wife got these... But being my skatty brained wife she didn't read the note, she cooked two of them whilst I was at work, and she and Dude had a right royal meal, then I got home... And the wife put the third pie into cook.

Slathering, because I know how nice my mothers cottage pie was, I tucked in... To this slimey, greasy, strong smelling thing... It was disgusting... But I was so hungry I ate it... It was meaty, very meaty, and covered in gravey after all...

I kept saying to the wife, this does not taste like my mum's cottage pie, and she's saying "mine was lovely"...

Anyway, I get through and look at the pie dishes the wife took them out of... Mine was plastic... hers and Dudes were porcelain... that's strange sending the dog a pie in a porcelain bowl... Hang on... Mine was plastic... 

A telephone call later.... and I'm sat there... I've eaten the cottage pie made of dog food...

Yes, my mother sent best minced beef for the wife and I, and one made of Aldi - Earls - dog food for Dude... The wife, just cooked two and never thought... Hmm, maybe the plastic one is different.

I've never quite gotten over this trauma, but suffice to say, Dave Lister is correct, dogs lick their balls to take away the taste of the food.

Confession Time - D&D

I've got a confession for you all... I have never played Dungeons & Dragons... There, I've said it, I hope we can move on after this.

Now I'm not including the online incarnation of the game, which I've played, and also blogged about...

I'm talking about the actual pen & paper, around a table, D&D...

I'm not sure where or why this passed me by, it is exactly my thing, but I think my trouble is I don't want to be a player, I think I want to try my hand at being the Games Master.

I dunno, I wonder if you can D&D via skype?... Anyone want to try?

WarThunder - Stuka Bad Day

My apologies for the lapse in posts over the last couple of days, however, I've been a. Very Busy and b. Very Ill.  So ill in fact that on Wednesday last, I was vomiting at work - proper up chucking - and the wife had to come get me, and then I spent time pulled over in a lay by vomiting some more with traffic hooting at me... Yes, all you bastards on the A52 near Bardills Island Hooting at the guy vomiting blood into the bushes, that was me, your hoots of hilarity didn't improve my day.

But, before I was down and out I did spend sometime playing about with my recording settings, both with OpenBroadcast, then Bandicam and then nVidia Shadowplay.  The latter producing Blueray quality footage with absolutely no lag - I was mesmerised by it - and so I used it as the source for some footage for a video I'm putting together about flying the BF109 series in WarThunder under Simulator Battle full aerodynamics, so expect that as soon as my new mic arrives from the folks at Amazon, because the narration I had recorded was terrible on my headset.

Other things which made me laugh in WarThunder was this... Notice the German AI plane in the foreground, it is locked on to and chasing a player landed at the Russian base, whilst the Russian AI you can also see there are locked onto a German player attempting to kill said Russian... The AI however, are simply flying formation with one another in the race to blindly follow whoever has aggro on them... This is Simulator level play... Hmmm... 

This is also a reported bug, which reading the reply from Gaijin they're not saying much about, check out the Moderated bug report forums for the thread - I can't find the link at the time of writing.

Another annoyance was I decided to stop playing BF109's and grind some skins, the first being the Skins for the Stuka B2 model, there are a LOT of skins (6 I think) for this little rank 1, level 1 plane which gets ignored...

When you're winning a 17 ground streak plus one human Air Kill streak in Realistic in the B2 STuka, you do not want to then see this:

I can tell you now there was nothing wrong with MY network, I was connected, able to open other websites and had up and download speeds reported of over 6mbps... Yet, the server decided I had a problem and kicked me.

At this point I was something like 21 ground kills and 2 air kills, I had landed and returned to the battle three times.

This was utterly frustrating... But you know what was worse?

In the next battle over Malta, I was 12 ground kills up and in the middle of a turning fight (which I win easily with my air brakes) against a Nimrod Mk 2... And suddenly this happened again, and gave the nimrod a kill for me slamming into the ground out of my control!

To then rub shit into the open wounds created by this the game then chides me for "Leaving the Battle Early"... I never, you kicked me!

This server instability was reported by Jingles, but I'd not seen it, until now... This was a weekend day, and there were a lot of players on, but... still...

These two shots also show a problem I had over the weekend of the 27th October, the massive number of American playing players in the queues, world wide... It was very interesting to play German, as one either got a swarm of B25's flying formation which one was totally unable to tackle without bursting into flame... Of we got people flying P38's, P40's or P26's who simply didn't know how to fly...

Tech Pricing - The UK Getting A Bad Deal - International Shipping & UK Import

With the news today that Samsung is not going to be selling laptops in Europe, I wondered about how in the future we here in the UK would be able to get our grubby mitts on their Chromebook offering, and other hardware.

Whilst trawling the interwebs, I became more and more infuriated, now this is a matter I've seen before, but I've largely ignored it.  But with the purse strings needing tightening here at home I've had to think carefully about hardware changes and upgrades, but this problem I'm going to put forward just pisses me right off...

International Pricing... Specifically with technology kit, I was watching a review from Linus Tech Tips, and he was telling how this kit he had costs less than $1000 US... That's £612.89 at the time of writing, not a bad price for the overall package he was touting... However, paying for the exact same kit, from supposedly the same suppliers here in the UK came to a wallet busting, mind numbing, pay-packet stealing rip off price of £1014.58, over a thousand pounds, which is $1655.41... A six hundred dollar price hike...

I could pay for the same goods in the US, pay shipping and import and not end up paying as much!

Here's an example, two Amazon pages, both showing the same item (honest it is the same graphics card, just different pictures)..

£330 to $339... It almost seems as if they've taken the dollar price and slapped a pound sign in front of it, this clearly aids them, in this particular case the card comes to £208 if we convert the dollar price to sterling... £208 for the latest graphics card seems a lot better than £330... So where does the additional £110 come from?

Well, I looked at "Value Added Tax" in both the UK and US... I wondered if Amazon UK was having to add more, and it seems not, most "General Sales Taxes" in the US are calculated per state, and start around 23.5%, so that's more than the VAT 20% rate in the UK... So the US is paying a lower price even after tax.

Okay, what about shipping?... Are there significant shipping costs to bring goods into the UK?... Nope, same container ships burning the same fuel... And then once in the UK they are moved around on a single tank of fuel, unlike the US where deliveries are quite literally transcontinental!

So, if the sellers of goods are not paying more to deliver, and we in the UK are not paying more in TAX where does this £110 hike come from?...

It plainly seems to be because of greed, I can't fathom out a single other reason for the difference, all the goods I've looked at are made in the far east, it's just as far to sail them across the Pacific or around to Britain... It's less distance from any port to Amazon warehouses in the UK because we're such a small island, even if we look at Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Mann they all stack up to be less distance than some of the Amazon Warehouses from Manhattan!

All in all, it makes my blood boil... 

So, what if I just bought the goods from the US?.. Well, apparently here in the UK I'd then have to pay Tax again, so I've paid for the goods taxed in the US, then to even bring them into the country I have to pay again?...

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/customs/post/buying.htm

This, this just makes no sense, in this modern age of the internet and it is full of holes, I can go onto Steam log into a US server and order then download a game, paying for it once in one place, I can do this with Music, with Films, with Streaming services, with Porn, with News, with almost anything on the screen... But I have to pay tax to import the screen, and pay for the imported delivery service, and pay to then get it off of the customs chaps who poke and prod it?... Mental.

And I think just a way for the exchequer to keep an eye on what I'm doing, and to skim off the top.

So, how much do I pay?... Well, say it's this £208 graphics card... This comes under the "Non-EU Country" and its "All Other Goods", and I have to pay "Customs Duty on goods with a value that exceeds £135" and "import VAT on goods with a value that exceeds £15"

So how much are these two costs?

Well, the HMRC website doesn't want to give you clear straight forward figures, they give calculators for VAT deadlines, link upon link to registering for VAT.... But never do they give a figure...

So you go to the internet to find out, and you're met with searches which ironically relate to overseas imports from overseas countries... For example this: http://www.dutycalculator.com/popular-import-items/import-duty-and-taxes-for-graphics-card/ it has a very nifty calculator, so I stuck the $339 price in, selected $50 shipping and $20 insurance, so this is a total of $409, which is still only £250, so we're still making a saving on our price even importing the item...

The calculation site gives us zero duty, and 20% VAT, to be added, this brings the price to £300... Still a £30 saving.

It's a lot of faffing about, but it's a possible saving... My question now is, who wants to try this out?

Story Time - The Stand Up

This story could also be called "Little Red Riding Hood on the Sofa, in the Mr Men ear rings".

In a previous post I talked about my worst ever date, well another time I got stood up... Yep, it happens to us all... The difference here is that in most cases we've been stood up and don't get the booty...

.......

However... In this case, I'd already had the booty... Let me explain...

A week before the fable stand up, it was a mutual friend's 21st Birthday, and he had a party... So we got together, and it was fancy dress... Now I'm not big on the fancy dress, I have no costumes, and I had been working 6am to 9pm most days, as a consequence my Fancy Dress is my Karate Gi and belt.

Off we run to this party, and there's this girl, she's come as Red Riding Hood... Oh yeah, now I drove everyone around and when we got out my car she gives me this big hug... Okay it was cold, but not that cold... And she's all over me, she's pretty, dark hair, dark eyes... Nice looking.

I'll be honest, I'm single, I'm enjoying the attention, after the time at this (strange) disco we head back to my friend's house and we're all friendly, this girl is still all over me...

It's getting late, we're talking 2am gone, and everyone is falling about passed out or sleeping, anyway, she's next to me on this sofa, cuddled up to me, and suddenly she's hands all over me, she's trying to get my junk out my trunk; I cope a feel, I get busy on there and soon things are going on on this sofa, with people passed out all around us... I don't know whether to take her to my car or what, but... come morning she kisses me and makes her way home.

I'm all smiles, and leave with her number handed over...

I give her a call, and arrange to meet her later the next weekend.  And I call again mid-week just to you know keep in touch...

Saturday rolls around, I'm all pressed and dressed, I pull up at the arranged place, and I wait... And I wait... And I wait...

I figure, she's a girl, she was in fancy dress last time we met... Lets give her an hour... So I give her an hour...

Now this is before mobile phones, this is before the internet is a big thing, so to get hold of her I have to go find a street telephone box.

I call, her house mate answers, she comes on the phone... dead quiet... and I just quietly say... "You're not coming to meet me are you?"...

"No"... She squeeks.

"Right, okay, no problems babe"... I'm friendly, I just want to check before we slam the door on this, she was nice... "I'm guessing you want me to loose this number and never call again?"...

"Yes"  She's a little angry...

"Right, well that's a shame, but okay, good bye"...

As I hang up I kind of hear half an ounce of confusion, which I can't be sure of, but to this day I'd like to think meant "hang on, this guy is kind of reasonable"... But what ever, shut down, home I go.

I get home, watch some TV, think nothing of it and get a hold of some other friends and arrange to go out to meet them the following week, one of them being the guy who had the 21st party... So I'm at least going to tell him about the escapades.

Next weekend, I head out meet these friends and immediately get a strange vibe, the guy seems dead smug, and the lass we're with is all giggling at me... I ask what the matter is...

"We know you got stood up"

But before I could reply, or tell them about the sofa banging, they both laugh... "We knew she was, she told us, she called us"... And then the guy says... "Besides, YOU can have your shot AFTER I've had mine"...

Now, let me explain this guy is a ginger, with a big lump in the middle of his forehead, he's fat and quite boring... I'm a heavy metal listening, heavy drinking, hard working good bodied black belt in karate... Go figure the chances he had.

But I sit back, all calm, and just look at them, inside I'm laughing, I had my shot, and I scored!... Have my sloppy seconds, I'm thinking...

The guy had, until this moment been my friend, but this day ended that because basically sitting there laughing at me when he knew she'd not come pissed me off... You don't do that to a friend, firstly you don't cock-block, if you want your chance have it, but if you've seen a girl garlanded around your buddies neck like this guy saw her around mine he should know to back off and wait... To sit and laugh is just a bit sick.

Then I just filed the guy away into the pile of douche bags in my minds eye.

Unfortunately about a year later, I had to file the lass who was there that day away into the same file, but for different reasons...

And it annoyed the shit out of me, this guy being all high and mightly... Proper childish... "I want my try with her", "I knew she wasn't coming"...

Dude I already had her, I banged her on YOUR sofa, at YOUR party, where YOU spent more time in the Kitchen than with your guests, and YOU took us to that strange disco... I had her.

I'm also fine with her not wanting to meet up again, but I have the strong susicion that this episode, the first and only time, I've ever been stood up was something of your concotion, that you talked to her and you said something about me behind my back... It's a shame you did that.  Shame on you.

Expert question of the week.... Archaeology

I've just been looking at an article about Roman London, specifically about a Temple found and removed from below the Legal & General building in 1954, which is now going to get placed back for a new development...

One item mentioned in the article is that...

"Roman London is seven meters below current day ground level"...

Why is it archaeology gets covered like this?  Is it dust and dirt?... Floods?... Mud?... Shit?... Plant cover?... I mean, muddy land gets wet you push coins into it, I get that, but whole cities?...

And, since we've concreted and tarmacadam so much ground are we stopping this natural covering???

OpenBroadcaster - x264

I spent a bit of time last night messing around with OpenBroadcaster, capturing some of my Simulated Battles in WarThunder...

As you can see I've got my name, the game and what I'm up to added as text legends, I've included the track IR window and the game itself.

It worked, I've captured like an hour of game play, including three air kills (which was good going in the Italian G50 I was flying).

My main challenge is playing about with the settings... So I have an EVGA 770 GTX SC graphics card, so not a slouch... And my CPU is a Core i7 (8 threads) running at 3Ghz (I can over clock it, but its not at present)... and I've got fast cooled DDR3 RAM...

However, the x264 encoder really sucked the life out of my machine, making flight hard, but the video very poor quality.

After that I set about looking at using NVENC, but it came out as this very strange sort of effect where as things moved the screen recording was fuzzy, as the screen stopped changing so much it would spring up into perfect detail, and then slowly degenerate again.. Pulse of detail, then blurr... over and over... so it was strange.

Tonight, I am intending to mess about with my settings some more, and if all else fails I'm going to revert to capturing the game with nVidia Shadow Play and using an editor to overlay text.