Chicanery’s Requiem

Well since my last post I’ve gone down to the hospital, picked up Alex & Ben and moved them to The Grange in Petersfield. Which is great, as its so much closer and more convenient. The original Grange, which was up the road in Liss, is where I was born, so it’s nice that Alex & Ben get to stay in it’s name sake. We were very lucky, as The Grange in Peterfield only just (on the 1st April) started providing 24/7 care, and has been opened and closed repeatedly over the past few years. Anyway enough babble, I’ve got my camera back so here are lots more pictures, from Ben’s first day -

Well I spent last night throwing up and generally not sleeping. I finally started feeling better at about 09:00 this morning, and decided it must have been something I ate instead of a bug, when Sam promptly threw up. So it looks like we’re having a day at home, taking it very easy, instead of going to see Ben. Which is all very crappy.

Alex & Ben are doing well, and made it through the night without too much incident, although he’s already managed to soil two vests and babygros. That’s my boy! We’re trying to get it sorted for Alex to transfer to The Grange in Petersfield (which is about 3 miles away instead of 25…which would be nice).

And btw I intentionally left my camera at the hospital, as I knew Alex was getting visitors whilst I wasn’t there, so wanted the camera left there to take pictures as needed.

After the mayhem of Sam’s birth and Alex’s recovery afterwards, I have to say that today couldn’t have been more different. We went into the operating theatre at 11:17, she was then prepped and then anaesthetised at 11:34. And then as easy as that, Benjamin was born at 11:58. I was strongly discouraged from watching the operation/birth but I was able to watch from the moment he crowned (is it still called that during a section!?) onwards. It was really amazing.

Vital stats:
He weighed in at 7lb 6oz (for reference, Sam was 8lb4oz).
Both he and Mum are doing really well.
Benjamin is my middle name
- It is a Hebrew name meaning “son of the south”.
Thomas Moss were my grandfather’s middle names.
- Thomas is the Greek form of the Aramaic word for twin.
- Moss is the medieval version of the Hebrew name Moses, and means son or deliver.

I left my camera at the hospital, but here is one pic taken with my phone, I’ll post more once I have my camera back -

(BTW if you blinked and missed it, the site went down for a couple of days, but is back up now!)

It is with regret that it looks like this site (& TchrinsPhotos.net) will have to go down for a week (or so) whilst I wait for my next pay cheque to come through, as I find myself a little short on petty cash this month. Which considering the imminent arrival of #2 Son (in a weeks time!!!) it particularly frustrating, as I want to be able to be able to tell as many people as possible about it all. Anyway, I hope to be back with my semi regular mumblings soon, and with pictures of our new son.

In the mean time, here is a surprisingly well written interview on violence in computer games. The long and the short of which basically says, games can’t be directly linked to violence or other general naughtiness, but every child is different so parents need to use their noggins and a bit of common sense (ie we’re all doomed). I fully recommend a read. (Source of link: Raph Koster’s blog).

Well we just got back from seeing the consultant. and we now have a date for Alex to have a caesarean section. So, three weeks tomorrow, on the 3rd April 2008, our second son will be born! It’s suddenly just got a lot more exciting and real, and although I know its going to be hard work, I can’t wait

And now to do a full days work in just a few hours.

Maybe I’m just an old Speccy fanboy, but when it was announced yesterday that you’ll be able to get Commodore 64 games on the Wii’s Virtual console, my first thought was a decidedly sarcastic whoopdy doo. Now, don’t get me wrong the C64 certainly had its fair share of good games, not as many as the Spectrum of course, but it had a few. It also had the ability, and I can barely believe it’s true, but yes, it had multi coloured sprites, with fairly decent collision detection. Woo indeed. Oh and it had Sensi Soccer, which every Spectrum owner secretly coveted. We still had Dizzy though, so take that C64 fans mwhahahha!

Now there are two reasons I take umbrage at the fact you can get C64 games on Virtual Console. Firstly, there’s the fact that they cost 500 Wii Points. Which if you buy your points over the counter from Game means they cost £3.75 each. Now considering that most C64 games cost £1.99 or less when they were brand new nearly 20 years ago, charging something that’s approaching double that figure is somewhat scandalous.

The second reason I’m put off spending any of my hard earned/bought points is Commodore Gaming. Now, if you didn’t know, Commodore Gaming bought the rights to the C64 brand a few years ago and then launched a company specialising in bleeding edge PCs featuring C64 branding. And since Alienware sold their soul to the devil (aka Dell), they’ve become the new ‘cool’ brand in PC gaming (and yes I’d love to have one too). I suspect that the reason they now sell their games on the Wii’s virtual console, is to increase brand awareness. The problem they have is that the C64 brand is fine with us old school gamers that remember playing on gaming machines with rubber keys or when Grandstand was a name to contend with in the console war. However with those young scallywags who were born after Thatcher left power, the C64 doesn’t mean a thing. So by selling some of the olde C64 classics on Wii’s virtual console, its building brand awareness.

It’s all annoyingly clever, if a little transparent. I mean, they’re making money advertising. There’s very few people that manage to successfully pull that one off…which reminds me of Playboy (sorry!). In my opinion the Playboy brand is one of the most cleverly advertised brands in the world. Playboy, at its heart is a stroke mag, but somehow Mr Hefner has managed to make it a cool brand with girls, and make them adorn themselves, their homes and their cars with the Playboy brand. Genius.

Anyway with that strange digression I’ll go back at drooling at Commodore Gaming PCs and then work out how many times I’ll need to strut my stuff to the sailors down at the dockyards before I could afford one.

Just wanted to give a big hearty congratulations to both Ben & Sonia on the birth of their second child; Jacob Andrew Stallion-Gomez. Ben’s phone ran out of batteries when I was talking to him, but he did say that all was well with mother & baby, although Ben sounded a little dazed and confused still! Anyway, congrats to both of them again, and Ben if you’re reading this we demand cute baby photos with proud family damnit!

This is a little pre-emptive but c’est la vie. Over the weekend I got in contact with my mobile provider, Three, as I wanted to see if I could lower my monthly payments as I knew I wasn’t using even half of the minutes/text messages I was paying for. And it transpires that my contract is due to end in mid February so I was advised that I could both lower my payments and upgrade my phone. Which means…I get a new toy! woo!

So…after not a lot of research I’ve opted for the 3 Skypephone (in black) which basically means that once I get it (tomorrow) I’ll be able to make & receive Skype calls (and Instant Message) from my mobile for free. Admittedly the phone isn’t as bleeding edge and feature laden as phones I’ve had in the past, but to be honest I rarely use my phone for anything other then calling, texting (if I have to) and occasionally as a camera. So feature wise it will do me fine.

Anyway, as my Skype contact list is sadly lacking I thought I’d post and see if I can get a few more people added. As you can see on the right I’ve added some shiny new message/txt buttons. And if you want to add me to your contact list click the following button -

Apologies for people that subscribe to email notification of updates to my site, as would have received an email informing you that I had updated the site back in June! I have now fixed the script so it should be working as designed, apologies for the spam.

Yes I haven’t updated in six months, and no its not because I didn’t have anything to write about, its just I’ve been busy or simply not motivated to update stuff here. I’m not going to try to play catch up now, and without trying to belittle any of this since my last update I’ve got married (read about it on my lovely wife’s blog here and see all the photos here) had a honeymoon in Borneo, been Best Man at Dan & Lil’s Wedding, moved up the corporate ladder (by changing roles, getting promoted and by becoming an accredited IT professional), sold cats as well as getting new ones and finally, and by no means least, Alex is now pregnant with our second child. Another boy, called Benjamin, who is due on the 10th April.

Now after that abuse of the comma and sentence structure that I can’t be bothered to fix, lets move on. I’m posted to complain about the continued dumbing down of games, notably World of Warcraft. WoW is something that I play a fair bit of, on and off, and have done since it was in beta few years ago. The most recent major patch to the game, version 2.3, has made first 60 levels (it currently goes to 70) considerably easier. They’ve done this with the following ‘levelling improvements’ -

* The amount of experience needed to gain a level has been decreased between levels 20 and 60. In addition, the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60.
* Level 1-60 dungeon quests have had their experience and faction rewards increased.
* Many elite creatures and quests in the level 1-60 experience have been changed to accommodate solo play.

This is part of the continued trend from Blizzard to simplify the bulk of what is already a very easy and simple MMOG. At the same time as this they continue to focus on adding ‘end game’ content, primarily raids. So they’re making the content that 95% of their playerbase actually make use of, last a lot less time, and make it considerably easier to partake in, not to mentioning belittling the efforts of those who’ve already done it. It would appear that they’re doing this to firstly do what the bulk of their playerbase wants and secondly I presume to get players to this high end content that so few players get to experience.

This is so so sooooo wrong. The problem here is twofold. Firstly that 5% that plays the high end content is also far and away the most vocal, so they’re the ones that will get heard the most. Secondly the game’s lead designer, Jeffrey “Tigole” Kaplan, comes from Everquest, where he ran one of the largest and most successful guilds in the game, who famously were the first to do a lot of the high end content on EQ. ie high end content is what rocks his boat.

The reason so few players get involved in the ‘end game’ content, isn’t because they don’t get to a high enough level, its because they don’t have the time or the will to do it. The time, because most instances take a bare minimum of two hours to complete, and the bigger ones take a lot longer then that. And the will, because, at least for the raid content (more then five people teamed together), it requires either joining up with random people which is pretty much guaranteed to failure from the start, or to join a ‘raid guild’ which tend to expect military like obedience with enforce a raiding schedule. Neither of which are what most people want out of a game.

The worst thing about this continued trend in WoW is that most players appear to think its a good thing. Come on, think people! A game without challenge is entirely pointless, no fun at all and offers no real rewards. And Blizzard need to realise that they’ve got a great opportunity here to deepen their gameplay, not make what is already a simple game, even easier. I want to see additional content for the lower levels, and I don’t mean in terms of more quests/regions as all that would do is continue to make things easier as it would allow players to choose the easiest, no effort, quests. I mean I’d like to see more ’side content’, expand and deepen the trade skills. Fishing & cooking could really be a hell of a lot better for starters. And what about things like player housing. Introducing that could come with a whole ton of other trade skills such as stone masonry and woodcraft/furniture maker etc etc.

So in short, I think Blizzard really need to deepen, and not shorten the gameplay experience.

*UPDATE* I’ve just read Raph’s post on his blog about people cheating in MMOGs, which I couldn’t agree with more, and is something I’ve considered blogging about for a while, but Raph puts it better then I ever could.