Your Personal Micro Blog(s)

Just a couple minutes ago, I finally came back to playing Pokken Tournament.

Did a bit of practice again (since it was been a while since I even played that game), and started doing some single player matches using the same character to fight with: Braixen.

Surprisingly, I won all of those matches (though I did lose a few rounds, but I still was able to win the match). Must've been because I've upgraded the character a lot back when I used to play the game, and I was able to upgrade her a bit more.

 

so I slept outside due to the heat in the UK, and well it thundered and poured it down for ages, my tent has a broken zip, which I fixed but broke when I folded up the tent :0 this meant the door was now broken, and I left my tent out there whilst I was getting ready, and there was a pool of water in there, maybe 3-4 inches deep! so I had to sleep in my friends tent.

the humidity was mad, 20c 96%RH, luckily no condensation, but it was close! and very damp!

 

Movement of eyeballs has to severely restricted due to insane heat, or immense sweating will occur.

If I wanted all this heat, I would of probably chosen something closer to equator, it is also bone dry, only water comes from condensation during the early morning hours, so plants are turning all yellow, which can't really be very good for the nature.

Can't even put new steering wheel properly to test as there is only hour or two at early morning that I can have such temps indoors that some movement without sweating is possible.

At Friday I was riding a bike and signpost next to road has clock and temperature display, which did show 34C, not sure how accurate that was, official reading was over 30C too though and it was just hopeless to attempt to climb any kind of incline with faster than walking speed.

When it rains wet snow, that is at least mostly manageable, I can't understand how people in warmer climates can survive as my HR goes to max even from walking when it is this hot.

Anyway I'm lucky in there as opening balcony door and putting fan to balcony to blow cool air inside brings down temps quite quickly, despite building retaining heat, that give few hours each day where it is possible to not suffer quite so much, I guess I'm just not made for heat, unlike neighbor who keeps balcony door open only for 1 minute each day, there must be well over 30 inside as I have trouble keeping under 29 with all night ventilation with a fan

 

All of the grass is yellow here, since it barely rained in around 50 days, with 26c+ temps being normal for that period, some days in the 30's. But we got a yuge thunderstorm yesterday, meaning today is low 20's and it is honestly bliss. Its incredibly difficult to get anything done in 33c heat when the only way to cool down is to pour water on yourself and consume ice lollies.

 

Drifted a go kart yesterday

 

I participated to a convoy in ets2mp with car killer and thomatoes50
It was very cool as I test the limit of my new pc

 

Yeah, but the main bit that is good about this new weather is the dew point has gone down so much, previously it was lingering around 17c and on Saturday it was a glorious 8c, air was so fresh! I do kind of want the temps to increase a bit more, maybe around 25-27c.

Like what @fufsgfen said, doing anything intensive in 34 heat is mad, I tried fixing a tent zip (broke again ) and I couldn't stay cool, there was no wind and I literally covered my face in water from the hose pipe (out in garden fixing tent) and I was still hot!!

Also I don't like how the "cold" water isn't even cold, it's pretty warm now. (this is from mains)

 

I usually take water after showering, as pipes have run considerable amount of water it is colder and fresher, trick here is to take PET bottles and fill those, put them to fridge and there is always cold water, even if there is problem with main supply.

3x1.5l is what I usually circulate, it is only 2 days max with this heat, so it is quite perfect amount for me to keep cool.

Saves water too if you compare to running water until it cools a little for each glass, which I have seen some people doing.

 

Yeah good point, but my house has a cold water storage tank, so the shower feeds off that, instead of mains. Granted it will run some more water through mains but not as much as a normal house.

Yeah I think the water idea is good, but it's also worth noting how my and probably many other fridges are running flat out in 34c heat almost. I put in a USB fan and powerbank to defrost the back, and whilst doing so the compressor was clicking on overheat or high pressure! (I was forcing it to take in heat). It was fine with a fan in but it is a bit silly I suppose. And also there is a freezer below it (fridge freezer, single thermostat) and so I might have been messing that up a bit maybe.

 

Enjoyed this weekends WRC event, was fantastic to see Akio Toyoda on the podium with his drivers getting covered in champaign, not often that you see a car company CEO getting into the spirit of the sports that they take part in.

Also some fantastic jumps, with Ogier absolutely sending it with a 60m jump...

Ogier had knocked the rear of the car on a corner just before this jump, hence the bits of car flying off over the jump

 

Too bad he still doesn't understand fun to drive (auto-only Supra, TRD discontinuing its entire supercharger lineup, etc.)

 

I did notice some more than usual odd looking vehicles and few flying things, it just is bit too crowded and place is infested with ridiculous amount of smokers, so I did not go for a photo shooting.

Thankfully it is not too long until I can move back to more civilized world again.

Update: Once again, I was having balcony door open to get bit of cool air indoors, but sure enough some person decided to smoke and that stench enters to my living quarters.

I wonder why it is socially accepted to smoke at balcony, but it is not socially accepted to emit equal amount of egg fart, effect is really the same, or smoke being still being bit worse.

Hmm, need to get good amount of sulfur to 'smoke'.

 

Today has been interesting in a few ways.

Started packing my stuff ready to move out and back in with parents for the time being. Noticed my vacuum cleaner was starting to lose suction again, it never gets close to max capacity, and it starts doing weird things once suction is reduced. Then to empty it out I have to open it up as per normal, then there is an area inside that requires undoing two screws in order to unclog it. I figured Vax can't have designed this cleaner so badly for this to be such a frequent issue, otherwise they wouldn't be in business for long. Turns out I was right, my cleaner has a component missing from inside it that separates two chambers (only supposed to be removed for cleaning). Clearly whoever sold it to cash converters had lost that component. Doesn't seem to be anyone selling spares of it either. So have had to resort to building my own.

Hopefully when I get back to parents house I can make a better fix out of wood, perhaps with an elastic band as a makeshift gasket. (current solution is brake cables, plastic folder, and Sellotape).

Also got a takeaway tonight. But the owner had gone on holiday, leaving his brother in charge, who has a bit of a hard time with English. As such while waiting for my Pizza to be cooked, he had me taking a customers order and address over the phone, because he couldn't understand them
He gave me a free drink to say thanks. Not sure that counts as work experience for my CV sadly xD

 

Ugh. I keep coming up with ideas for a storyline to my game (that I will actually make someday), starting them, then hitting a wall and starting over. Does anyone have any advice on how to get better at writing? On how to finish what I start?

 

Start short, make one paragraph stories, but don't skip on character background building or timeline.

Oh and have timeline, that is a must, have some history to world and characters, build all that first, then it is easier later to come back to and check that what you write is actually making sense.

Then you could make variations, what if, you write one storyline and then do alternative to that.

Without some kind of mind map software it is kinda hopeless to get anything of such done, so use one of such.

Do spinoffs, when you hit a wall, go back some, find interesting point of story that you could fork a spinoff, write that and return to your problematic point, often writing spinoff has caused your brain to figure out new solution to your wall problem.

Rarely you get a story from starting from A and going to B, fork story to different directions, you probably end up ditching most of what you have written, but result will be so much better.

 

I almost forgot about this thread, I posted something about a nuclear bunker in "ask a British person" and that basically applies here, It was very interesting, and in some rooms there were projections of some old films about it, granted it is a bit of an issue as the advisories were to use and carry in about 1 tonne of soil! in a day. Aswell as living underneath a door slanted against an interior wall for about 48hrs.

The bunker was very eerie, and there was some surprises, for example we walked past the sewage room and the compressor started up making quite a noise and scaring the hell out of everyone

 

There are some books on that. Two that I have read are:

"video game storytelling" by "Evan Skolnick" is the most specific thing to what you are looking for. It starts at basics and goes through a lot of useful stuff. Including character arcs etc

"Level Up! The guide to great video game design" is more of a general video game design book that covers all aspects of designing games. It's pretty excellent, lots of information and it's quite entertaining to read. Loads of annotations as well to make things easier to understand and more interesting.

 

Going on holiday to benidorm, and i'd like to watch some films on the plane, so i'm transcoding lots and lots of videos to HEVC using Mediacoder as it lets me use NVENC to encode, although it is nagware, so i had to pay £5 to allow it to run continuously. (otherwise it stops and asks for math questions).

I'm being quite heavy handed with compression, i'm doing 2/3 to 1/2 the size. I don't really mind that much with quality.

Also i'm going to watch aircrash investigation, i did last time i was on a plane and it sure did make people stare (funniest thing ngl) and so compressing that.

What's odd is that my tablet, Huawei Mediapad M5 has these codec support:
AVC up to 4k 60 decode, 4k 30 encode
HEVC up to 4k 60 decode, 4k 30 encode
but no VP9?? So it's limited to 1080p as YouTube doesn't store higher than that for AVC.