Grinning idiot

A short note to anyone that sees me walking to work in the morning and wonders why I seem to be a giggling imbecile... You would be too if you were listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast. Recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

Half Life 2... hmm

I'm about a third or half the way through Half Life 2 and so far so good but I'm a little disappointed. When this game came out it was big big news. I think it actually came out about the same time as Halo 2 so there were a lot of fanboys arguing which was the superior game. I don't think they're really comparable, as it happens. Halo is a full-on first person shooter. Half Life isn't. Half Life is more like Metal Gear Solid where the action happens at a slower pace, with more attention to gritty, realistic environments and varied gameplay. So Half-Life 2 vs. Metal Gear Solid 3 (or 2)? Well so far the plot's been a bit thin on Half-Life 2 after an interesting start. The driving levels have been rather repetitive and dull. Although each new area is beautifully designed to feel like a real location and some effects like the water and real physics are very impressive at times, the only one that really made an impression on me was creeping along the girders under the railway bridge - otherwise it's just seems like standard game fare of old warehouses and sewers. The fun-with-physics aspect hasn't been used a great deal up to now, but I'm hoping there's more of it since it's one of the strongest points. Early in the game you had to dive underwater to break out some barrels so they would float to the surface, which you could then jump on to reach a ledge. More of that cleve stuff needed! In summary, HL2 has so far been quite fun, but just not on the same level as MGS or Halo.

Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results.

I came across this little piece of wisdom on the excellent (mostly business oriented) blog by Guy Kawasaki:

Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results. If you want to be at peace with the world, here's what you should do. When you judge others, look at what they intended to do. When you judge yourself, look at what you've actually accomplished. This attitude is bound to keep you humble. By contrast, if you judge others by their accomplishments (which are usually shortfalls) and yourself by your intentions (which are usually lofty), you will be an angry, despised little man.

I've noticed for a long time that people will talk themselves and their plans up as being the best thing in the world, but in reality often fail to deliver (bosses, people at kung fu, dubious friends). I hope I'll be able to follow this advice that will stop me being angry and bitter, no matter these people who talk big and do little. I'm a big fan of humility... it's just not always that easy!

New photos!

--- Update ---
I spoke too soon about the new photo feed feature, it seems like it only works Mac-to-Mac, and only if you have the newer version of Safari or iPhoto that do RSS feeds. :-(

I have an updated link to the feed, which may work for you, depending on what RSS reader you use. Hopefully they'll fix this soon... until then, try this:

http://web.mac.com/gordonbaty/iPhoto/best-of-the-last-3-months/index.rss

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OK, the first of my great new blog features - I have a Photo Feed! What is this? It's an RSS feed that will deliver my latest favourite pics to your computer!

Just click on this link:

Gordon's best pics

PS You need to be using Firefox, a Mac, or know what an RSS feed is to use.
PPS If you're using Internet Explorer, go get Firefox at Get Firefox and you won't look back

Vegas, by the way

Oh yeah, while I'm blogging about blogging, I should drop a note to say we just got back from Vegas. Diana was there for CES, which is a big consumer electronics conference that she and her colleagues were attending (it's a hard life). I came over to join Diana for the weekend. I thought it would be a short hop but it was a good 4 hours on the plane to get there. I managed to sneak into CES with Diana, which was a lot of fun - tons of new gadgets, giant TVs etc.

Neither of us are gamblers, so we focused more on the food and attractions, and there's plenty! We had a couple of disappointments with the dinner, but finished with a brunch buffet at the Bellagio and it was fantastic - including my discovery of cheese blintzes, which are sort of like cheesey crepes.

Diana predictably grabbed noodles and sushi; I had cheese & herb polenta, smoked mackerel with capers, cream of haddock, muesli with fresh berries and Diana made me eat canoli's even though I was bursting by this point. Oh the buffet came with champagne too, so we decided to have bucks fizz all the way through ('mimosa' in Americanese).

On Sunday we were killing time before our flight in the Paris hotel, when Diana noticed that the people who had just sat across from us in the bar (and quite oblivious to us) were ex-colleagues from BT! It turned out they were there for the next conference in Vegas, for online marketing...

More changes coming

I've got a copy of Apple's new iLife applications on order, so watch out for some exciting changes on my blog soon! I don't know yet if I'll use the iWeb software to create a new blog on my .Mac account or just keep going with this blog (I'm thinking the latter at the moment) but the new video blog features sound like fun!

Watch this space...

Scientists... what do they really know?!

One of my Christmas presents from Santa was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and after speeding through it I can tell that's the first page-turner I've ever read that's all about Science. I haven't read any other Bill Bryson books (and I'm now inclined to) but in this case he's done a great job of distilling lots of scientific theory into very clear descriptions, with some of the human story (mostly quarrelling and peculiar scientists) around their discovery.

One thing that has stood out to me from reading the book is how, unlike typical scientific writing, he doesn't present every recent theory as The Answer. In fact, you come away realising how Science is only as good as the latest thinking on the available facts... and some of the facts are very limited (eg, about the nature of the universe, or atomic physics) and hence the theories are quite likely to be replaced in the future with better ones! Although you might be given to believe that Science allows us to predict the weather, when volcanoes will erupt, meteors will hit the earth, and so on, it turns out we're really not good at those things at all (well, I'm sure you knew that about weather forecasts!). It seems to me that in the future we'll be looked back upon much like we do the Victorians - that we really thought a little more of our understanding of the world than we should!

Food court BBQ chicken

I've noticed something about food courts here... it seems like every vendor in every food court you go to has 'bourbon chicken' or 'honey barbecue chicken' or 'bobo chicken' and it's always the same - grilled chicken with a sweet glaze. Every single place does it - whether it's a Malaysian, Texas or whatever stall. And there are always 2 or 3 people hanging around giving out samples on cocktail sticks. It really does taste good, but it's bizarre to see that everyone offers it, like there's a huge vat of the stuff somewhere behind the scenes that they sell. I'll have to get some shots with my mobile phone to show what I mean... it's on every menu.

Christmas comes early

Well here it is, my first entry in the new blog. You can still visit the old one but I won't be updating it.

Enough of that, now for the interesting stuff! Since we'll be in England for Christmas we had an early gift giving event with Adam & Karen & the girls yesterday. The Clark tradition (well, probably Diana's more than anyone) is to give big snazzy gifts and I think we all came out of it with smiles bigger than our empty pockets. Adam and Karen had noticed that not only is my camcorder broken but that I had ooh-ed and ah-ed over their camcorder when I had a go with it at the kids' football - so they got us one! It's very nice - huge, bright screen and a crystal clear picture. It doesn't take 2 minutes to start up like my old one either. We'll be making good use of it in England!

Adam and Karen got from us a Roomba, which is one of those vacuum cleaner robots. It looks like a giant hockey puck and is quite entertaining to watch as it goes in a seemingly random pattern of zig-zags and wall-following. When it's finished it trundles back to its charging base and backs up while wiggling it's bum (presumably to get the best approach!). Despite not noticeably picking stuff up, it actually accumulate quite a pile of dog hairs and dust on a short trial run and we were roundly impressed. The idea that it troundles around while you're out at work and takes care of all the dust and hair is quite an appealling thought.

The girls got some great gifts from us (if I may say so myself!). Adri got the new FlyPen (I think that's the name) which does all sorts of tricks - like you draw a calculator and then you can use it. Kati got from us a talking learn-to-read activity book. Sami got a handheld Leapster, which is like a GameBoy except the games help you with spelling, maths and so on. Tori got the best gift of all, which is the new Guitar Hero game for the PlayStation. You actually get a plastic guitar in the box, with buttons to press for the frets, a flipper thing to simulate strumming the strings, and a whammy bar for playing the notes. We discovered the inner rock star in ourselves in no time and had a complete blast playing some of the 'easy' songs. There are coloured dots on-screen showing how you should play the notes as it does faves like 'I love rock and roll' and you try to keep time with it. Needless to say, Tori was wasy better than all of us, but it was hilarious watching everyone turn into an instant rock star!