Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

So I've been up late listening to the special 'Big Link Up' edition of BBC World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service, who celebrate 75 years of broadcasting today (December 19th) - happy birthday, BBC World Service! - and also have a spiffy new website; nice and clean, although I don't know if the interactivity is worth it. I'm wondering whether to recommend that they - or atleast, WHYS - go through the (supposed?) pain of setting up Slash, just so we can get threads and conversations and so on just like this (heh, you thought I wouldn't mention Perl's birthday two days ago? 'e don't know me very well, do he?)

So, umm, yeah. On that note there's somebody birthday I "forgot", except I didn't really forget and it's a long story so yeah. Feel free to complain in person, or wait a while, and it'll all be made up and all. I smashed a bottle today - glass! Glass! The horror. Had to sweep it up and all. Did I mention we don't have a dustpan? Nasty.

Am supposed to be in tomorrow, or rather, I can skip (it's Bakri Id/Hari Raya Haji) but would prefer not to. But obviously I'm not going in in the morning. Had a pretty decent game of Civ4: I started my last game again, but quit it because I'd made some stupid strategic mistakes earlier (mainly: attacked too early). So I started over. Now, my Civ's in much better shape, I think; it's hard to tell, because if either of two huge empires who are currently very friendly towards me suddenly decide to take me down, I've had it. A lot of my money's in the ground, and I can't really finance a war. It really is very Roman, though: hodge-podge of foreign colonies captured from someone else, ruled by one or two purpose-built Roman cities, while the "homelands" are vast open spaces, beautiful cities, Rome herself (3 wonders, I think!) in one corner but very much the centre of it all. And now, as 1400 AD creeps up, I have given up my dictatorship to be King of the Romans! Now, if only I can fill up the uneven areas of my emp... err, kingdom, reform my economy (I'm back up to 40% research taxation, and have lots of ignored techs to work on!) and develop my countryside (particularly in the "colonies" ... I'd prefer to leave the homelands pristine and clear for the enjoyment of true Roman citizens), and avoid not getting swallowed up for fifty years or so, then I could consider declaring war on the Aztecs and finishing them off, giving me - I hope! - a land advantage over the Americans and Germans. Unless they make it to other land masses, I guess. And I better be careful not to let me guard down: both the American and Germans probably feel entitled to my Russian conquests, and to say nothing of the Roman homelands ... let's see, let's see. Lots to think about!

I've spent large portions of last week finding new photographers I like, and especially new favourite photos. I hope I didn't creep anybody up by sneaking up on family photos from the Everybody's Photo list! I'm going to stop for a while, 'cos I'm scared Flickr will think I'm creepy, but hopefully will start again soon in a while. There are so many undiscovered gems lying around (and discovered gems I haven't discovered alsos). And yes, Flickr Stats is just as addictive as I thought it would be.

That might actually be all for once. Several links and other detritus remain unposted, but, hey - do I look like I care? They're time will come, and my Mac has space enough for a large inbox, should it come to that.

Then, friends, 'til break of day - I'll away, I'll away! Goodnight, all.

Labels: bbc world service, birthday, civilization iv, flickr, late night, photos, radio, world have your say

This post was posted by Unknown at 4:26 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment

So, I impulse-bought Civilization IV today. My first Civ game in *ages*, literally years.

And how does it feel?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghbutitfeels GOOD!

:D

Don't have much to say. The game itself is so-so: jumping from X to Y and back to X gives me headaches (I was organizing a campaign just now: omg it was a pain! It was like playing an RTS game without features like "rally points" and queues and so on: you had to keep ordering your cities to produce more, and after your queues were depleted, you had to go back 'round and give everybody orders again, and if you were in the middle of a major action while you were doing it. And, err, can you not destroy buildings any more? Other than that, things which are new - city placement, unit characteristics (how do you deal with Civ when there's no Phalanx? No caravels? No triremes? Omg!), and style of combat are taking me some time to get used to, but it's not too bad, i guess. It's still a lot of fun, although it feels really different in many ways.

Sigh. What a lot of crap. I spew. Still, it is so incredibly amazingly cool to be doing this stuff again :).

Whee!

Labels: civ4, civilization iv, games, macintosh, whee

This post was posted by Unknown at 3:31 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment