Surprised you there didn't I

So two blogs in two days, unheard of I say...

So today's thoughts - going to setup a couple of Tribute pages for my Mum and Dad with several photos and plenty of stories, it will help with the ongoing element of missing them like crazy.

Absolutely believe that cremation is the better option these days given the number of humans on this planet but it does mean you don't have a grave to go and visit which has been niggling my head a bit for the last couple of months, so good news there.

Work wise, fun time as they are investing in training for me, something with all the work in Maggie's we never got around to, not to say they didn't want to or that BCC has less work for me, more just a determined investment in staff development no matter the workload.

As I say, still love Maggie's and what they do but training time vs workload time is something that isn't quite there but is here, so on wards and upwards and all that.

So two years later...

...and I'm still not blogging regularly, though I have got around to setting up a gaming themed Twitter handle @GorbalsGamer, which going by current I'll do for a while and wander off again, weird that, not.

How's the Gaelic language study going?

It's not, losing both of your parents within two years will do that to your noggin especially if you have to keep your shit together as a responsible parent and all that entails, am I negative about the lack of progress there?

Nah, in those two years I've seen my boys grow by spending as much time with them as possible and keeping at least a toe in the language learning side of things, I've also moved job to Beatson Cancer Charity, a fine bunch of people doing great work, Maggie's was great but we've all got to move on at some point if our skills are needed elsewhere and I'm already seeing the benefits of me being here, ho hum, more random thoughts as I fly by, let's see how long that take's this time...

Sleep tight little fishies...

Pedal for Scotland - the return of the tryer

So,

Doing Pedal for Scotland again this year...

Let's do a potted history -

• First time done and completed with my wife
• Second time, birth of our first lovely son
• Third time, signed up, death in the family
• Fourth time, signed up, got about 10 miles in and pedal kept coming off - ended up stopping and catching the train back to Glasgow very much ticked off and fuming, calmed down by having lunch with wife and family on my return

That brings us to this year, so what do we have on the cards?  Several test runs of varying lengths have been completed and happy with overall fitness if going to be a slow one, bike has been checked out and extra weight of commuting removed.

Camelbak light weight back and 2 litre bottle bought and ready so running light, no major dramas on the calendar (hear that life?  Leave it!) *achem* had to get that out.

So am I feeling like it's going to happen this time?  Hell yes! is the answer resounding, will it be a fast one?  Not bloody likely but that doesn't matter, as long as I finish that's all that matters at this point, the challenge and the enjoying it with good mates is where it's at, any negative vibes can go take a swim in a deep dark lake with their hands tied behind their back.

Bring it on!

Crysis FPS thoughts

So finally got around to playing the Crysis series after I picked up 1 & 2 in the Steam sale a while back and have to say I'm pleasantly surprised and quite hooked on playing more.

I say this because it did initially look like a gadgets vill FPS that tried to grab attention by having 'cool' powers in your suit rather than a straight forward run around and shoot.

Whilst the graphics of the first one do feel dated and that's natural given when it was released the game play and storyline were solid, I have to admit to getting wound up no end by how the control system worked but when I got the hang of it things cranked up in the fun stakes no end.

So example you say?  Well, attacking a base/group of bad guys from one angle whilst visible, then when they all start shooting/running at you cloaking to cover then running like blazes to another completely different angle, allowing you to use that advantage to snipe/take the objective as needs.

So I finished that (you finished a game, with two toddlers?!) Yes, I did and I even managed to move onto the second in the series and complete that!  Wonders will never cease...

The second was a definite shift in focus & increase in playability, where the first could sometimes come across a bit, here's some bad guys, now move on, the second flowed much better storyline wise and tactics used given it was an urban environment were a good shift.

Something about the overall feel of the game just felt much better put together, I enjoyed playing Crysis 1 but I loved playing Crysis 2, as I felt much more involved in how the game was going storyline wise, enemy AI was definitely improved as well, I clearly remember taking out some bad guys in a base in the first game and a bunch of guys just stood around without reacting, whereas in the second game if you make enough noise EVERYONE will come running, so you have to either a) Don't or b) be prepared for all out war.

I so enjoyed the second that I swallowed my 'I hate Origin platform' concerns and picked up the third in the story, only played about 10 minutes so far but it's shaping up to be another great game, can take or leave having a bow tbh given how practiced I got at using a silenced weapon/knife/fists to take an enemy down silently but we'll see how it develops.

As a last thought it's been entertaining from a gamers view to see how the game has developed both in graphics and overall game functionality from the first to the last, I haven't touched the multiplayer element and frankly I don't plan to, if I want to play MP I can do a bit of Borderlands/any other game where I can play with friends that doesn't involve going up against folks who will have practiced using the suit skills to the Nth degree, if I wanted to get frustrated I'm sure there are plenty of RL things like how folks can believe the crap the UK government is spitting out re: the Yes vote that could get me wound up ;)

My Dad

You were there to deal with the nappies & the late nights. You were there to enjoy the wonders of my coming into the world & my gummy smiles.

You were there to enjoy my first steps with me, the inevitable falls & pick me up. I loved that you were there play with me & help me learn all those first things as a toddler.

You were there for my first days at school, teach me right from wrong & that violence never makes you the better person no matter what.

You were there for my days at high school, the ups & downs of being a teenager, the dramas and the fights and the serious debates of who was the better snooker player, the critical topics of the day clearly, enjoying the quiet times with you watching any & every sport you could find on the TV.

You were there to support me & drink with me through the student years with many a pint & chaser and laugh as I regaled you with stories of the late night antics of my friends and I.

You were there through my 20s and 30s and I joined you for one or two nights at the Gunners enjoying your & Mums company and enjoying watching you dance together. You probably heaved a sigh of relief when I settled down with Lindsay & I know that you loved that I married a woman of Islay descent going by the number of bottles of whisky that I brought back over the years and the fun of the wedding on that lovely Isle.

You were there as a wonderful Granddad to my fine sons & help me develop as a parent. They always looked forward to seeing you for their tickles and hugs & a few cheeky tugs on your moustache.

I was there at the end to help you when you needed me along with our family to keep you company and smiling.

At the end of things you have been many things to me Dad, all of the them remembered with great fondness & will be treasured forever.

To my one & only Dad with love eternal,

Your Loving Son,

Greig

Boy, time's two

Wow is it almost 6 weeks already?!

Almost 6 weeks since our lives were made even happier with a second child and second son.

Really doesn’t feel like it until you look around and realise you’ve missed a couple of friend’s birthdays and the summers almost over, totally understandable but apologies to those who have been missed!

We’re doing really well, both boys are as healthy as can be and whilst Ruaraidh hasn’t quite learned what ‘gentle’ means he clearly loves his little brother, he’s even been known to give him a couple kisses which is immensely cute to say the least.

Struan’s even managed it all the way over to Kirkcaldy which we didn’t do until about now for Ruaraidh, he’s met one of his Grand Aunties, the one he inherited his Yoda ears from, his cousins are queuing up for a shot of a cuddle, very funny to see them having little arguments about who had a shot last and how long J

Unfortunately like life in general you get ups and downs, our only down at the moment apart from the afore mentioned lack of sociability is Ruaraidh’s fractured bed time, the little bundle of joy hasn’t went to sleep till after 11pm on quite a few occasions, we can only hope this is some kind of phase because if it keeps going someone is going to have to plug is into a caffeine drip!

As I thought it’s going to be hard to make sure Ruaraidh still feels like he’s getting the same attention as he’s used to, but that will become a little easier when Struan gets a bit more movement and he sees him as more of a little person than an interference to his play plans, which does happen on occasion just now.

Just hoping the rain will sod off at some point so he can get to play out the back more, he’s loving his slide and trike, even if he still tries to use the neighbours boys scooter whenever he sees it, typical toddler behaviour but still very funny, he’s a little charmer and has got the next door neighbours playing peek a boo with him when the weathers good enough, shame that the younger kids in the block don’t come out to play more often, but I suppose that’s the curse of living in a block of flats, they all live on the higher levels and don’t quite see the back court as a play area as much as we do.

All the fun little developments of Struan are great to watch when I get a chance to, he’s a wee smiler, very cute, more than likely he’s going to be another charmer like his big brother, and he certainly lives up to his name when it comes to nappy time and that sure keeps us on our toes!

Back again when I’ve had more sleep/conscious thoughts, have a good one folks J

Mass Effect 3 - The end, eventually...

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So we’ve reached an impasse.

I’ve absolutely loved playing Mass Effect 3 let me say that right now, they’ve done another fine job with the storyline.  Heavy hitting choices, grand scope, funny buddy interactions, and all fantastic stuff, kept me hooked all the way.

New characters are well fleshed out and seeing what’s happened in the characters lives from ME2 in some ways surprising, some ways bitter sweet, I’ll let you play the game and you decide but overall really happy with what they’ve done there.

Combat is improved since ME2 & I’ve been won over by the melee weapon idea which I was pretty sceptical about during the run up to the game release.  I used to be the long range fighter with the occasional close quarters only when needed.

I actually found myself getting my squad to provide covering fire whilst I used Tactical Cloak + Shotgun to get in close with sprint, hit them with the shotgun to drop their shields and finish them with the heavy melee attack against three or four enemies.

For those who know how I tend to play FPS games this is a fairly major attitude shift, but serious amounts of fun & an adrenaline rush as you’re in close quarter combat with multiple enemies whilst your squad mates shoot around you.

The missions structure is pretty good overall, with a bit of practice I found the Cerberus heavies easier to take down, as long as I planned where to hit and who to put where.  I even got to the stage with the sniper rifle where I was getting on with the ‘postal slot’ achievement, which is where you shoot a Cerberus Guardian, who attacks with a heavy shield, through their line of sight slot.

Even though I’ve not been able to dedicate long sessions to the game it’s been structured in such a way that I’ve been able to get close to end game with completion of a lot of the side quests and a fairly hefty War Fleet.

This is where we come to the impasse.

Without ruining what the potential multiple endings are there is a widely discussed & even publicised on the BBC website issue with how the ending is structured.  How the game pans out is basically worked out on a percentage scale of your overall readiness, which is worked out using multiple factors, not like before based on in mission achievement, more of a long road way.

However, to get the ‘best’ ending, which is always what I strive for after all, you either have to ‘Gem Hunt’ the galaxy for War Fleet assets in single player, or play Multiplayer which increases your readiness.  So it pretty much boils down to how many points you have in the ‘bank’.

If you do the hunt, you’re pretty much wandering the galaxy scanning planets till you get what you need, yawn!  However because your readiness can’t go above 50% without playing multiplayer it’s your only choice in single player.

If you instead do multiplayer to increase the percentage readiness, all fine, but there’s a kick in the tail, as soon as you sign up to play multiplayer there is a ticker in the background that drops your readiness by 1% every x hours, 6 hours from what I remember.

Given my status as a parent with a toddler and a bay on the way I really can’t see playing multiplayer enough to get away from the minus ticker.

So do I a) do the galaxy hunt which will be boring and tedious, but will mean no minus so can be done over time

Or

b) Start multiplayer at a time I’m certain I can do it in a night and do the final mission as soon as I’ve got the points needed, how likely is that do we think given I have problems doing a N4SW race J

Either way it’s going to leave a little bit of a bitter taste in my mouth in which was otherwise a fantastic game experience, I tend to treat my games these days like a book and it’s feeling like a great book with a crappy ending at the moment, I’m sure when I finally see the end game I’ll love it, here’s hoping!

10 Months on

And still loving every day with the wee man, there are days where he tries my energy levels a bit when I'm knackered, normally about 2am!

Hard to figure out what you should do sometimes as a new Dad but I'm learning every day, I know most parents say this but he is a star, he only ever really cries when he's in pain from teething or over tired, he's coming on leaps and bounds in the balance department as well, certainly the last week he hasn't had any falling over episodes & is cruising around on the furniture as much as he can ;)

So far we're on tooth number 5, two in the bottom & three in the top, he's started grinding his teeth on occasion which is such a fun thing to hear when he's right up by your ear!  House is pretty much Ruaraidh proofed now which is a big help, now thinking of getting something for the cooker as he loves the light when it's on, joy...

We're at the stage where we're going to have to move him into his own room, have to admit to being a little worried & sad about that, worried from he won't be visible & sad from not being to hear him breathing during his sleep, really going to miss that but he needs to grow & develop, what can you do :(

Weekends have turned into meet the folks which is a little knackering given Granny Macindeor is in Eaglesham, and family Wishart/Taylor is in Kirkcaldy, at least the second part is helped by the M74, down to an hour now & no stress from traffic/lights through the city centre.

Going to really miss the baby phase, being able to hold him in my arms & watch him sleep, putting him in his cot & see him curl up like babies do, give him a bath & watch him giggle as he splashes, the list goes on, but hey ho, he's almost a little boy now so things move on, new things to see & help him develop through.

Love you Sprout

Halo 3: ODST - Finally!

That’s Halo 3 ODST single player done & dusted.  Took me long enough; 18 months almost as Lindsay kindly reminded me last night, ah long term memories.

Well worth it I would estimate, probably a 4 out of 5 personally, single player might have been a little on the short side but the storyline was strong & the sideline “Sadia’s Story” was a nice touch.

There has been various things said online about elements of the game being unfinished, haven’t touched the fire fight or co-op elements so I can only comment on the single player part, from what I experienced it was a solid story with the intersecting story parts on the whole pretty good.

The wandering around the city as the Rookie started getting old with the same old bits of the city, but you can’t really have too big a map, otherwise it would get a bit lost, it didn’t get old for too long though as the end pieces starting coming into play just as I was getting bored J

The voice actors were perfect choices; I’m a little biased with two of them being ex Firefly characters & the female lead being Number Six from Battlestar Galactica.  Plenty of banter during their parts in the game kept the game fresh as you fought your way through the increasingly harder mobs of enemies.

Was definitely fun being a little more ‘human’ than the Master Sergeant who could almost take on a tank one handed!  Definitely makes you look for cover and flanking firing positions a lot more than you would normally do.

The friendly soldiers are still quite suicidal in part; so you do end up not caring about them as much as you know they’re going to run right in front of a Brute at some stage as if they’re going to take it single handed!  AI is fairly good for the bad guys though, you have enemies running off to escape/get more support and chasing you when you dive for cover.

So overall well worth it, now with Halo 4 in the offering (who didn’t see that coming!) plenty of game play to come. 

Still haven’t decided if I’m picking up Halo: Reach, it’s a bit of an emotional thing with me given the events of the last year or so, playing a game where you know the main characters are all fated to die in the lifetime of the game is a bit black for me just now J

End of a season

Well that’s the end of that, we’ve handed in our notice at Oatlands Allotments that we are giving up our plot.

A sad day, but we had to be realistic with the arrival of Ruaraidh and the fact that we’re helping Lindsay’s Mum out with the garden in Eaglesham, which for the record is approximately 85 metres in length!

We’ve learned a lot about the ins and outs of growing your own veggies.  That and the internal politics of an allotment, but that’s best left alone, trust me, if I let myself get started there I will just become growly, and it’s all about moving on and upwards.

So what have we learned, we’re reasonably good at the whole thing but we need to find the time to do it, so we’ll need to decide on days/nights to work on the garden.  The area dedicated to fruit/veg is about what you’d expect of a normal size allotment so that’s going to be a fair amount of work, but there’s also the fruit trees and the general garden to take care of to make it safer for the wee man to run around in, not to say it isn’t just now, probably just the usual new parent worrying J

A shame to leave, but best to let someone else take care of the ground who can work on it properly, will miss the banter with the old guard, they were a great laugh for the end of day wind down after work, we’ll still do small bits of veg in the back court as well so our green thumbs will stay green no matter what!

Cheerie!

Thoughts of zombies and parenthood

Kind of two thoughts at once, a sudden realisation of my attitude changing, and how it makes complete sense that it has.

To roll back to where this started in my head...

Caught a trailer for a new zombie related game, before it started I was thinking "Great!  Another zombie shooter, this will be fun", but then it started and to not make it too tearful it shows, in computer graphics, a family being attacked by zombies.

Unfortunately it doesn't end well and looks like the three of them, mother, father and child are taken, the way they do it with a couple of scenes is what had me turn off getting into the game, with the father outstretching his arm to get his kid on his shoulder and then barricade the door as the mother puts the child on the bed, new world zombie stuff there as the kid turns zombie almost immediately and attacks her mother.

Now, today, I came across a graphic novel/comic in the library with a different scenario where there is a baby that doesn't survive a post apocalypse world situation.

So it seems I no longer find this acceptable as much in books/games as I may have used to, I say may have because I'm not entirely sure I ever would have in those scenarios and it's simply that my sensitivity to all things children has been dialled up a notch or two, given that I actually really like 'The Walking Dead' which is  a zombie world related drama, where in the first episode the hero is forced to shoot a zombie kid who is about 9/10 years old.

I also still really like the original 'Dawn of the Dead' by George A Romero where one of the hero's of the piece is put in the exact same situation and forced to shoot two zombie kids of about the same age.

But you then have the remake of the same film where you have a pregnant woman who has a zombie baby and I find that pretty much over the line and will never watch it again.

So it appears parenthood brings some interesting realisations amidst the no sleep, baby giggles and running around, I'm sure I'll come across other films/games/books that I used to like that now drop off my radar as 'likes'.

See below for a lift to the slightly dark thoughts above :)

Space is big

Caught the BBC2 programme with Professor Brian Cox on Monday night, Wonders of Our Universe.

Thought compelling stuff, made me realise again that I need to poke my head up out of baby world once and a while to see what interesting stuff is going on.  First time I’ve seen one of his programs, he has a really good straight forward way of explaining concepts and genuinely appears to be excited about everything science and space related.

Something fresh amongst all of the one brain cell programs that are out there just now, the concept of Entropy can be a bit scary and depressing given that it highlights there will be an end to everything eventually, but you know what, that end is so far in the future that it really should be seen as interesting rather than scary.

Given what the human race has achieved in it’s short time on this planet there is no reason not to imagine how advanced we can get, given the chance and our own ability to get over land grab wars, religious wars, the list goes on.

When you see how many wonders are out there, and even down in the oceans of our own world it is quite easy to get frustrated and mad over how many lives are wasted over all of these disputes and wars, can you tell it personally frustrates me?

So here’s to the wonders of science and the Universe, may we keep stretching and striving for the future as much as we can!

Hello world

Finally getting around to sorting out one place to record thoughts, general dribbling etc so I've closed down 'officially' updating in Microsoft's live space, will still post on the old Facebook but closing down everything else as I have less than no time to be mucking about with multiple spaces!


Today's thoughts - Swimming last night, learning back crawl is a new favourite as I appear to be able to do it, interesting sub note, my fear of drowning, drowning reflex, call it what you will appears to have flown the coop.

Have no idea why, Linz thinks it's down to an overall state of tiredness, e.g. too tired to care!  Whatever way it's great, now that I'm not panicking in water I can stand up in I can concentrate on actually learning to swim.

So I can do the back stroke legs, just, knackering stuff, haven't got the hang of the arms yet, funny stuff as I ended up effectively swimming head under water for about 20 seconds as I was so concentrated on learning I appear to have forgot my head was about 2 inches under water, until I stopped for breath lol.

 More general thoughts on life, parenthood and fledgling scribblings to come, have a good day world!