Touching Duke

*I’ve been sitting on this wondering what to do with it as it was written on the demo launch day for www.plughead.net who went for something a little more detailed instead. So I’ve decided that rather than let it rot in my Google Docs I’d put it here.*


The game so delayed you’d think it had been sent by City Link is almost within our grasp. Those who pre-ordered or bought Borderlands GOTY edition and therefore got a membership to the First Access Club have been hurriedly downloading the demo all day.

If I was a comic character and you were reading the strip about me playing the demo, here’s what would be appearing in the thought bubbles:

• Intro is like a ‘previously on Duke Nukem’ montage. Nice.
• Games starts and I’m stood at a urinal. And now I’m pissing. Stilll pissing. Bored of pissing now.
• Why have a Whiteboard unless you want me to draw a cock on a rocket powered skateboard on it? I am not above that juvenile level of humouring myself.
• Ugh, checkpoints.
• Locked door syndrome. Duke Nukem, the guy who single handed tears off alien heads and shits down their necks can’t open a door. Go Duke!
• Replaying the last level of Duke 3D is nice. Reminiscent of good times. A simpler time. All nostalgic and warm.
• The health meter is labelled ‘Ego’. Can see why, it’s certainly reflective. Bit wank really though.
• Cycloid dead, field goal scored. Yay.
• Fourth wall broken, 12 years in the making joke done. Yawn.
• The twins fellating Duke while playing is a bit crass. Not sure who that’s supposed to appeal to. It’s not in any way erotic and on a humour level I don’t see what a joke aimed at thirteen year olds is doing in an 18 rated game.
• Driving section. Everyone loves a driving section in a FPS, right?
• Hang on, am I in an RC car? No, it just looks out of proportion and as responsive as a Trappist monk to an offer of a bit of karaoke.
• I do so hate the bloodied retinal blur of impending death.
• Is it me or is the FOV a little narrow?
• Shotgun is meaty. Wish it was as powerful as it feels and sounds.
• Can only carry two firearms at a time. Good. All shooters should adopt this rule.
• Some of the environment is destructible. Cool.
• Yeah shrink ray. Squishy pigs, kersplat.
• Executions. That won’t get old quick.
• I’m sorry the game seems to have accidentally stumbled into an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom game. If I could just borrow a mine cart to ride back to the FPS I was playing, thanks.
• Oh, is that it?

So that’s that. The demo is short and doesn’t offer anything new or original to the genre. Neither does it make me want to rush out and buy the full game on release. It does remind me of how shooters used to be. Simple, ridiculous, fun. For that reason it’s definitely on my list for a purchase, but it can wait.

Return of the Thing

Hello and welcome to 2011. I know I’m a little late getting around to you, and I know I didn’t actually send you an invite, but I’m glad you made it all the same.
So, here’s what’s been happening in Peachville (up yours Zynga, I’m keeping that) since the little episode with our stupid American friend.

Life In All But Name
This is the stuff that gets in the way of doing meaningless unimportant things that are far more fun than the serious business of work and maintaining a family life. That’s not to suggest family life isn’t fun. Who put this hole here? Anyway, work is moderately satisfying, the family are wonderful, and the house needs work.

Games Unplayed
You’d think that as most of my posts inevitably turn to the subject of games that the lack of posts meant that I hadn’t been playing much. While my gaming has been suitably restricted, those who truly love me will know that I’ve been giving my ill conceived game related words to www.plughead.net and www.gamingdaily.co.uk who seem to like my musings so much they pollute their otherwise excellent content with it. You should visit them. Frequently.

As I discovered when we had our daughter, it’s difficult trying to nestle a child while using a keyboard and mouse, so the arrival of the boy means it’s console gaming time again. The Wii waggling doesn’t work either as there’s still too much scope for dropout, so I’ve finally relented and bought an XBox360. My experience with the Xbox support team is a tale for another day, though you’d be right to surmise I’ll be declaring them a bit shit.

Vroom Vroom
Since the accident last August that killed my FZ6 Fazer I’ve eased back into riding. It took a few months of exercise and physiotherapy to get my neck and shoulder back to how they should be, but thankfully there doesn’t appear to be any long term damage. It’s interesting for me how my caution in certain situations has been replaced by fear. I’m hoping that over time that will change as it does detract from what is an otherwise very enjoyable way to commute. Thankfully the car driver’s insurer didn’t mess us about over the bike and payed up, though I am still waiting for my out of pocket expenses, not least for the replacement gear. Having never been in this position before I don’t know if it’s normal for it to take this long.

Tomorrow
I’ll be a little bit fatter, a little bit balder, and with less life left.

And that’s about it for this brief howdy do as I really should get back to mingling. Try not to make too much noise when you leave.

Twit Her

Twitter provided an unexpected surprise this week. Though before I continue, why is that an acceptable sentence? Surely if it had been expected it would not have been a surprise?

Those of us in the UK can't have escaped the fact that Pope Benedict XVI is visiting our nation, and like many I have been appalled by the stories of abuse and the incumbent Pope's alleged role in assisting in keeping the perpetrators from justice. It is this background that inspired me to reacted to one of the seemingly endless newscasts of the Papal visit with the tweet:

Kid can't believe he saw Pope with his own two eyes. Makes sense, those priests usually approach from the rear.

Now I think that's funny, but I am also well aware that the only person who finds me funny, is me, and I would like to think that the people who follow my tweets accept me for the simple fool I am. The surprise I mentioned arrived a couple of minutes later when I received this from @_Boring1_:

When is it ever funny to make fun of a child that has been molested? Never,it makes you just as sick as the child molester.

I didn't recognise the name of @_Boring1_ as one of my followers so my initial reaction was one of wonder as to who this person was, and my second was to disagree with their reply on a number of levels. Firstly, if there is a victim in my tweet it is the institution that ordains priests, as the inference is that the priest or priests or indeed the whole institution is one of evildoers who would pray on the innocent. Secondly, following @_Boring1_'s logic, any act that has the potential to have a victim would become taboo for humour, which if @_Boring1_ has ever laughed at a Marx Brothers, Three Stooges or Laurel & Hardy movie, or comedians such as Bill Hicks, Eddie Murphy, Richard Prior and George Carlin, makes them a hypocrite, and if they haven't then I simply cannot be dictated to by someone so emotionally crippled. Thirdly, as @_Boring1_ neither follows me nor knows me personally they have no idea who I am or what motivates me to tweet. What if I am a victim of abuse and deal with it through humour, lashing out at the institution that allowed that abuse to happen?

I am now curious though as to who @_Boring1_ is, not only because they felt the need to reply to me but also because they clearly feel morally superior to me and in a position to dictate what I may or may not comment on. So off I pop to Jessica's Twitter page. Jessica describes herself as “a girl,a mom,29 years old.” A 29 year old girl? I would hope that by 29 years of age my daughter would be a woman. Also I notice that while she is proud to boast on her ability to breed, she does not mention a husband or partner. Not that either is a requirement or I believe is a necessity, but I did want to establish the grounds for Jessica's moral superiority claims and why she felt empowered to start dictating morality issues to others.

Having taken the time to search out my tweet and reply to it, I felt it only fair to correct Jessica on her error and so replied:

Phew, good job I didn't actually mock an abused child then. Happy trolling.

I should have known better than to feed the troll but having been attacked by Jessica, who took it upon herself to find my words remember, I never imposed them upon her, I wanted to point out that she was attacking me based on her misunderstanding of what I had written and not what I had actually written. Maybe calling her a troll, while accurate, was a bit rude, but I wasn't abusive and never felt the need to resort to inappropriate language.

Jessica replied again:

Thanks and Happy being a sick fuck.

Obviously Jessica was unable to restrain herself or couldn't articulate her feelings without resorting to abuse. Whichever is the case, how anyone can claim any kind of moral high ground while resorting to that kind of abuse is beyond me, and I would hope beyond any intelligent observer of human behaviour too.

Realising that Jessica would not or could not engage in a rational discussion and was clearly only in the mood to be abusive, I decided to return to the humour:

I'm sick? You're the one chatting up a stranger! Didn't even need to offer you sweets.

Jessica retweeted that. Possibly the most productive thing she's done in her 29 years.

Is it relevant that Jessica is American? Alabama no less!

Motorcyclic Argument

It is not without a sense of irony that my first post since Caught On HelmetCam should happen to be in the wake of me being involved in an accident that left my bike an insurance write off and me off work for a number of weeks recovering from my injuries.

First thing I think it's important to do is thank the North West Ambulance Service as well as the doctors and staff at Arrowe Park Hospital who were pleasant and considerate throughout my time with them, and the Merseyside Police Officer who attended the scene and was very helpful.

Fortunately, though battered, bruised and in a lot of pain, I came out of the accident intact. Communicating with various people and parties since the accident and I could be forgiven for feeling I should have expected the accident to happen simply because I ride a motorcycle. Certainly there have been a number of voices suggesting I should take this as a sign to give up two wheeled transport and shocked that I haven't dismissed the idea of ever riding again.

Having joined the wealth of statistics on road traffic accidents I've been digging a little deeper. Before I took up motorcycling I was aware that relatively speaking motorcyclists are involved in far more accidents than car drivers (I believe motorcycles account for 1% of traffic while being involved in around 20% of accidents) so motorcycling being unsafe is an easy conclusion to reach. That leads me to wondering why it is that when so much time and effort has been put into improving rider training with the emphasis on defensive riding, and a much stricter and difficult two part practical test for motorcyclists, there is still such a disparity?

One statistic that gets raised consistently is that 80% of motorcyclist fatalities involve the motorcyclist travelling at excessive speed, though in raising that it doesn't address the vast majority of the accidents as while 80% is a large proportion, the actual number of fatalities involving motorcycles is a fraction of that involving cars and larger vehicles. That's not to belittle fatalities or diminish their significance, just to give context.

Campaigns aimed at reducing speeds saw little reduction in the number of accidents because most accidents weren't caused by speeding motorcyclists, and it's looking at where safety campaigns are focused now and are seemingly having an impact, combined with the statistics from accident reports across Europe and America, you see the cause of most accidents is in car drivers' observations. Almost everyone I've shown my HelmetCam video has commented on how 'normal' those examples of inconsiderate driving are. Surely that's where the problem lies? While the vast majority of accidents involving motorcycles are the car drivers fault, and almost half of those are cars pulling out from junctions into approaching vehicle's path, the natural impulse seems to be to remove motorcycles from our roads rather than tackle the poor driving standards we've allowed to develop.

I have no doubt that those wishing me to hang up my helmet only have my best interests at heart, and I am grateful for the love expressed (particularly that little lump in the throat from Sheffield, despite him hitting the delete key), and when I am all healed and am able to get back on a bike I won't be doing so in deference to those expressions or because I feel I have some kind of right to be a biker. I'll be doing it because I enjoy it; it's low cost commuting; and because I have faith in you to look, and then look again.

Caught on HelmetCam Vol.1

I got a small DV camera for Father's Day which I mount inside my helmet when commuting to and from work. The examples of poor driving I capture are astounding and surprisingly numerous. It has to be said, it's not all car drivers, I've seen some mad and dangerous stuff from bikers too, however the bike stuff tends to be really obvious and you can probably think now of occasions where a biker has ridden past at ridiculous speed or been pulling wheelies. Thankfully, those do tend to be the minority, all be it a very visual one.
What I've found interesting is the casual attitude of some car drivers. It's almost as if once some people get their license, the basics go out of the window. The most obvious example of this is the middle lane hog. Someone who will sit in the middle lane of a three lane motorway, even when the nearside lane is clear and they are travelling slower than cars in that nearside lane who are approaching from behind, forcing those drivers to either undertake or cross two lanes out and then two lanes back to pass. I've even heard the argument that the driver felt less likely to have an accident by staying in the middle lane as he would need to perform less manoeuvres on his journey so would be less likely to have an accident. Surely someone that unsure of their ability to even change lanes safely shouldn't be behind the wheel?
I don't mean to sound like a car basher, I do drive as well as ride, and I am equally frustrated by fellow road users when driving. The main difference then though is that those inconsiderate and oblivious drivers are less likely to seriously injure to even kill me when I'm in the car.
I've put a few examples together in a video. Please don't emulate anything you see in it.

Oo, colours!

Having once again drifted off to that most unreal of places we call the real world and in doing so neglecting my little bloggette, I thought it was about time I put some words down (up?). Logging in while I thought about what to moan about I found myself confronted with choices and templates and opportunities for prettyness. Not that I'd be interested in such trifling things you understand.
So anyway, forty seven minutes later and I've made it orange. Whoop!

My friend, the racist.

I've not felt compelled of late to share my thoughts, what with being so busy in work, preparing for the new arrival, and just enjoying the political roller-coaster that's been the televised debates and the election itself. Those things, and others, have kept me pre-occupied and happy enough to leave the blogosphere to it's own devices.
Then out of the blue I receive a text message that was so astounding in it's thinly veiled racism that I find myself back at the keyboard.
The guy that sent it to me claims he's not racist (would it be wrong to note that BNP leader Nick Griffin claims the same?), and (unlike Nick Griffin who surely knows he's a bigoted lard sack of intolerance and hate) I think he genuinely believes he isn't.
So to help my racist friend understand just how racist he is (I'm doing this out of love in the hope that together we can make a better world, ish), I've de-constructed the version he put on Facebook:

If we marched for our race and rights, you would call us racists.

This is not a great start as it's immediately evasive. It soon becomes apparent who “we” and “you” are so why wasn't the author comfortable stating so from the outset? Perhaps because if they had it would all too soon have descended into farce as we try to fathom exactly which 'white rights' we are currently denied to the extent that we would need to march. I'm certainly not aware of being denied any rights, including the rights to march and engage in legitimate protest, on account of my ethnicity as a white man. On that basis alone I can't help but see the claim as inflammatory and designed to promote racial tension.

You are proud to be black, brown. yellow and orange (just felt the need to interject at this point to say how pleased I am that the Umpa-Lumpas are represented), and you're not afraid to announce it, but when we announce our white pride, you call us racist.

This is difficult for me to address because I can only do so on assumption as with not being black, brown, yellow, orange or purple or blue, I can sing a rai.. sorry.. I have never suffered ridicule and persecution based on my ethnicity. I'm not helped by the fact that I can't claim to understand exactly what “white pride” is supposed to be either. Am I or should I be proud to be white? My being white would never have meant I was treated as sub-human, so why would I feel the need to reclaim something that has never been forcibly stripped from me? What significance does my whiteness have on how proud I feel? I feel a sense of pride in my achievements and the achievements of those close to me, but my whiteness has no bearing on that. I think I'm probably labouring the point a bit but I just don't see where the “white” fits in, other than to be inflammatory and promote racial tension of course.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us, but when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

Wow! So, in context, all black, brown, yellow and orange people are violent, gun toting, drug dealing thieves. It follows then that us whites are all fine upstanding law abiding citizens, hence the lack of white people currently in prison! Good job that's indisputable or someone might think it was inflammatory and designed to promote racial tension (last time I say that - promise).
The police are tasked with upholding the law, they are not the dispensers of arbitrary justice (well, they're not supposed to be anyway).

Why is it that only whites can be racist?

It isn't. Racism is faultlessly tolerant in its bigotry.

There is nothing improper about this text message.

Apart from the fact it's overtly racist and designed to create division of course.

Let's see which of you are proud enough to send it on. I sadly don't think many will. That's why we have LOST most of OUR RIGHTS in this country. We won't stand up for ourselves! BE PROUD TO BE WHITE! It's not a crime YET..... but getting very close!

The level of ignorance on display here would shame a lump of igneous rock, right down to the short-sightedness of the author in presenting an opportunity whereby simply attempting to refute the text would in itself disprove the author's premise. Oh irony, you sexy bitch! (someone else can deal with that casual misogyny.)

It is estimated that ONLY 5% of those reaching this point in this text message, will pass it on.

Estimated by who? That's up there with: 73% of statistics are made up on the spot; 13% of people are unlucky; and 100% of this blog's authors see that figure as another attempt at creating a sense of marginalisation where none exists.

Over the next few weeks England will be awash with flags of St George, and the pubs throughout the land will be packed with football fans cheering on England at the World Cup in South Africa. Will every flag bearer be white? Will every drinker screaming his passion at the TV be white? Will every player pulling on the shirt and representing my country be white?

I'm an overweight, middle aged, balding, academically weak, white, heterosexual male, who was born and raised in England. So what?