Tesco – a policy too far.

In a world where alcohol is becoming more and more of problem, Tesco have instigated policies, that that limit the consumption of…….bread rolls. A friend of mine had a party 2 weekends ago and needed some bread rolls. He went into our local Tesco to buy 85 bridge rolls. ‘Sorry sir, you can only buy 65 rolls, its store policy’. Now we wouldn’t want anyone binging on bread would we.
But they were quite happy to sell him 10 packs of cheap lager, a litre bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, a bottle of scotch and 6 two litre bottles of cider.
Nice one Tesco, once again you have instigated policies that contribute to the well being of our community.

Diesel

Diesel

Last year the second of my two cats, that we had had from kittens (from Stapeley Grange RSPCA) passed away. LaLa was 12 years old and one of the most affectionate cats that I have ever met, second only to her brother, Spikey, who developed diabetes at ten and lived another 12 months before we found that he had a tumour. Anyway those 2 little white bundles of joy brought us so much happiness and our 2 little girls missed them. Anyway, last weekend we decided to get a new cat. So after much discussion with SWMBO it was agreed that I could have the one cat that I had always wanted, a British Short Hair Blue. For those of you who dont know what one of those ‘blue cats’ is, it is the cat off the Sheba advert. Their coats are a blue / grey colour with very dense fur. Their eyes (when mature) are a golden orange colour and they have large round heads.
We hunted through the internet and found several breeders with kittens for sale within driving distance. After an afternoon out, driving and looking, we found a breeder with 2 Blue Boys, 1 Black and one Chocolate Girl. It took all of half an hour to make our minds up, so off we went to pick up a cat carrier, supplies and some cash. 2 hours later we arrived back home with our own 13 week old kitten, who we have christened Diesel.

Welcome to the family Deisel

Garden Furniture

My wife walked out onto the patio the other day and decided that she hated our Teak garden set, to the point that she said that she hated eating off it. Why ? Because as with much Teak furniture, especially in UK climes it turns a silvery-grey colour.  Apparently the natural oils in the wood oxidize, turning the outer layer from golden to silver-grey. Personally I love the colour, but She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) got her way and so I started to work.

Firstly any lose or vegetative matter was removed, then it was given a liberal coat of wood furniture restorer, which is mild caustic solution. This was left on for several hours, then removed with a wire brush and a hose pipe and there underneath was the beautiful golden colour of the wood. After being left to dry for an hour or 2 in the sun, it was given a light sanding with a palm sander and then had a generous amount of teak oil rubbed in.

I think for the future that I am going to get a furniture cover for the tables and chairs, as I don’t fancy spending another day, next summer doing the same.

Modern Warfare

Since deciding that my life was too hectic to play MMOs, I finally ditched my PC altogether – I gave it to my 2 young daughters to play their games on, I live on my MacBook Pro now. Anyway, having a very sympathetic wife who decided that as I had made the ultimate scrifice (giving up my beloved MMOs) she would buy me an XBox 360 so that I at least had something to game on. At the time I thought ’she doesnt understand, console gaming is for lightweights and kids’ but I accepted it with grace. Nearly 2 years on and my 360 Elite gets a hammering almost everynight. As I was weening myself off MMOs I started playing BF2 (on my PC) which I really got into. Looking for something similar on my XBox I found Call Of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare.

It took me a while to get into it, but slowly it got me hooked. I think that Infinity Ward have done a stirling job, the game as a whole is nice, except…..

Except that I play a sniper (being old I dont have the reflexes like I did when I played CS) so the long gun is the weapon of choice and here’s the rub, the sniper always feels like it was an afterthought. Why ? Firstly many of the maps are too small for a sniper to effectively play a sniping role. There are no real sniping perches that many games provide. The unlocks for the sniper- are well – pathetic. All the other classes get the ACOG Scope – which is designed as a low light, image stabilised close to medium range scope, or they get the excellent red-dot scope. Snipers unlock is an ACOG – WHY ? It has a maximum effective range of 300 – 400m, why not give us a nice x10 Leupold or Schmidt & Bender. Give us a scope that is befitting of the weapon – The Barrett is accurate upto and over 1500m, so why on earth would you fit a x6, 400m max scope on it ?

Whilst on the subject of the Barrett, it is, potentially the weapon with the greatest penetration in the game. That .50 BMG round is going to go through near anything (it is designed as an anti-materiel rifle) it will even shoot through armour plate and the bulletproof glass on attack helicopters. So why on earth do you need to hit someone twice, or have to have ’stopping power’ perk to kill someone who has ‘Juggernaut’ on. OK I accept Juggernaut represents or is equvilent to Kevlar Body Armour and Ceramic Trauma Plates – but even they are not gonna stop a .50 round shot at 2 – 300m. Why do I need ‘Stopping Power’ – which is supposed to be armour piercing rounds – being hit by this gun is NOT going to slightly wound you, it will punch a hole the size of a melon in you. C’mon Infinity Ward – you did your research, you added the weapons (mostly fairly accurately) then you just degrade the sniper weapons, because they dont fit your game model – Lame.

Which brings e on to another issue with the Barrett develops in excess of 10,000 ft/lbs power. That is enough kinetic energy to punch through 3″ armour plate – so why in BF4 does it barely shoot through mud brick walls, when some monky with a 9mm or 5.56mm SMG is drilling holes in the same wall like it was cardboard ?

One thing that I loved in CS was the fact that bullets had a spray pattern, which got wider over distance. In Modern Warfare I get sniped over 5 – 600m by a player with a LMG and an ACOG scope – because there is no spray pattern. So I get 5 rounds at best, he has 60+ – pointless. Infact many players say that the best sniper weapon in the game is the M4 with an ACOG – go figure.

Ghilie Suits – Why dont we get these as an unlock ? A modern sniper, with a ghilie suit in similar terrain is almost undetectable. Even with a UAV overhead you would be hard pushed to find a sniper. So what do we get in MW ? A little red dot that pinpoints exactly where we are. So all that happens is, snipers get ‘nade spammed, noob-tubed or the area gets hosed with automatic fire. And please dont say use the ‘UAV Jammer’ Perk as that means that I lose my ‘Deep Penetration’ perk, so all of the ‘Juggernaut’ kiddies run around like they are invulnerable, as I am lucky to get a +1 against a moving target. C’mon Infinity Ward – give us a ghilie suit unlock that doesnt show us up on radar – or at least only shows us up for 5 seconds after we shoot.

Some of my other game issues are:

Claymores.- once again it didnt take five minutes for the Juggernaut brigade to work out that you can actually run through 2 Claymores and be almost unscathed

Autofire Controllers – these are the scurge of the game and shame on you Microsoft for licensing their production and use. They ruin the game. full stop. They allow players to run round the map with sprint on (almost) permanently. They turn single shot weapons into fully automatics – like silenced pistols and they seem to increase the fire rate of fully automatic weapons, so that facing them is like being fired upon with a mini-gun (which I do not believe are in the game yet). I hope that IW can write some scripts into MW2 that detects their usage and either re-adjusts fire rates or disables them altogether.

Airstrikes – I cannot tell you the number of times I have been spawned in the middle of an airstrike, only for it to happen time and time again. 2 issues here: 1. IW can you make your AI a litle more intelligent, so that it doesnt spawn players in the middle of an airstrike. 2. The number / ease of geting airstrikes, can we eather make them harder to get or limit their number per round. This isnt Berlin 1944 with the RAF carbet bombing, its supposed to be modern warfare, where you get 90 seconds of fast air, if you are lucky, in an entire battle.

Oh maybe a third issue, lets have some friendly fire ON, so that airstrikes kill anyone in their blast radius, not just selectively killing enemies.

One thing that I will say is never has a game polarised its players so much on a single game issue – Juggernaut, the vehemence that this draws from players is almost on a par with finding out someone is hacking or cheating. – me included.

Finally MW2 – will I buy it, probably. Will I pay the £60 release price, not a chance, I’ll wait, IW makes some good games, but they’ll have to do a lot better than MW for me to spend that kind of cash on a new release.