Author: Dave VR

Characters left hanging

I hate it when you have invested a lot of time in a TV show, following the complex plot and all the characters and then the show ends, leaving you hanging. Not knowing what happened next. How did the character’s lives pan out? There’s no more episodes, no more insight, just a hard, abrupt, end. As if you were a voyeur observing a life and then your window closed and there is no more for you. The character’s life continued without you knowing what happened next.

Some finish off their characters’ stories with leaked scripts post cancellation, or the stories continue in other media such as books or comics. Most end though, never to continue. Fan fiction satiates some, others, like me, are left with nothing. An investment with no end.

Generous car parking spaces

This annoys me so much: The size of your average car parking space in the UK.

They haven’t updated the dimensions in decades, yet cars have gotten bigger. You have to be an expert at parking to be able to fit your car in a space and be able to get out. My car is so long that the front and back overlap the white lines and the sides are in, but only just. If anyone parks next to me I can’t open the doors.

Parking spaces are worth a fortune in many towns. So owners of car parks are happy not to increase the size of the spaces, as more spaces means more money. God forbid anyone should create spaces big enough for the vehicle and so you can open all doors and the boot. The amount of times my boot opens into a hedge or I’m forced to choose which side the doors should open on.

I’ve seen SUVs park in two spaces so that the occupants can get out. People leave notes under their wipers to point out the terrible parking, but what choice do they have? Cars have gotten bigger and the places to put them have not. Move with the times you vehicle real estate moguls!

Let’s start a campaign for bigger parking spaces.

Kingpin

I have old game discs lying around. I even have a few floppies, albeit they are rarely used thanks to emulators, and my last floppy drive having developed the click of death. I keep only the games that I enjoy, and continue to do so. Ones with a journey, a campaign, a linear storyline with entertaining gameplay.

Games with titles such as Kingpin, Cadaver, Max Payne, Half Life, and the more recent The Last of Us, and Uncharted. All offering virtual escapism for hours on end. With well trodden familiar territory. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve completed Kingpin. Yet despite the aging graphics, it still entertains me. Occasionally It’ll replay Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, and other 90s FPS titles, but Kingpin remains my favourite.

I’ve played mods and have my favourites, especially for Max Payne. New Dawn leads by far. I know the levels inside-out. Some games I’ve played so many times that I’ve gone way beyond a hundred percent completion, beyond easter eggs, and testing boundaries, to testing how the games handle the unexpected. Most stand the test of time. My hats off to their QAs.

I’ve dipped back into point and click revisiting Monkey Island, the Amazon Queen, Enchantia, and Kyrandia. Said hi to Simon, Larry, Sam and Max. Dropped in on top-down with the early GTA and very early Commando. And I’ve emulated the Valhalla Classics. Yet I keep coming back to my well-worn Kingpin disc. I’ve replayed this at least once every decade, if not more. Maybe every half-decade. I keep coming back to it. The forgotten classic.

What games have stood the test of time with you? 

Self-fulfilling prophecy

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hate that term, but it’s true.

Anxiety attacks. You try to avoid them but the thought of them happening only sets in motion a path that leads to their happening. Self-fulfilling.

Watching your heart rate after a workout. It’s not coming down during cooldown. So you stress about it and your heart rate increases. Self-fulfilling.

Learning to derail self-fulfilling prophecies is hard. But it’s worth it if you succeed. To control yourself, your thoughts, your mind. Tell yourself it will happen and hopefully it will be self-fulfilling.

Watching a business fail

I’ve worked both good and bad contracts. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve seen great successes and bad failures. Sometimes really bad failures. That no matter what you say or do you can’t prevent the inevitable. So you watch, you observe, you learn.

There are case studies on failed businesses that you can study. There are even books, like Boo Hoo. People like to read about the success stories, not the failures. Read both. A balanced education is good. It’s far cheaper to learn from other people’s mistakes.

Living through the fall of a business can be interesting. Especially if you have no skin in the game, and you are financially secure, and confident in your skill-set’s marketability. You learn to spot the signs. Customers going quiet on you, senior management updating their LinkedIn profiles, less orders coming in, shareholder changes, whispering in corridors, linchpins leaving, less work coming your way.

As the topple starts you begin to see moves to stop the fall. Redundancies, reduced budgets, delayed payments, and shelved projects. Once everyone was asked to take a pay cut. Temporary of course. Just to help keep the company going.

Then the fall happens. Sadness follows. Why oh why? After all you put in. You weren’t steering. You were merely a cog. Hopefully a well paid one. One that will fit nicely into another company. One that hopefully won’t fail. 

The you on the outside

The you on the outside is not the same as the you on the inside.

Look in the mirror. You don’t look the same. That’s not how you think or dream that you look. You look older, more stressed, more grey.

Record your voice and play it back. Is that really you? It’s what others hear. It’s not what you sound like in your head. An accent? What accent.

What others see and hear is not the real you. It’s camouflage. It’s the outer shell, the skin, the layer that protects the real you. The one that only you can see. What everyone else sees is just what’s painted on the outer wall.

There’s you on the outside, and then there’s the real you on the inside.

Virtual retail therapy

On occasion I enjoy some virtual retail therapy.

It’s that feeling you get from browsing online stores but maybe not always buying. You have money and the plan to buy something, but buying is not the end goal, enjoying the virtual window shopping is.

Browsing the latest books looking for something new from your favourite authors, or maybe something You’ve not read before. Looking for clothes or gadgets, or maybe even window shopping for something bigger like a holiday, car, or house.

Virtual retail therapy can be a pleasant pastime. Unless you do it often and buy a lot. Then it can become a problem.

For me though I can quite happily drift from one virtual store to the next from the comfort of my own home.

There’s outlived and there’s out-lived

Living longer than someone is not the same as enjoying life as much as they did.

I’ve met people that say they outlived their friends by X number of years. They tell me that they ate healthy, didn’t drink, or smoke, or do drugs. They also never travelled, some never even left the country. They worked in jobs they hated, married the first person that showed an interest, if they married at all. They had no real hobbies or interests. They have no interesting stories, never left their comfort zone, never took a chance, or risks. They went for a walk every day after work and church at the weekends to make mum proud. They didn’t enjoy it but it was what you did.

I outlived my mate John by twenty years! They tell me. John was on his third wife and was the captain of the local snooker team. He was always off on a cruise or holiday somewhere. Always a smile on his face. His heart gave out in the end. Too much of a good life. Could have lived another twenty years like me they say.

There’d outlived and there’s out-lived.

Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs)

I was in a local supermarket and noticed that a shelf label was glitching. What I thought were actual paper labels were in fact ESLs, aka Electronic Shelf Labels. These mini screens make use of e-ink with 1-4 colours and a long battery life to, in theory, save time and costs changing labels with promos, discounts, new stock, and so on. Instead of having to wander around the store changing printed labels it’s all done from a central computer.

A couple of the labels were on the fritz, alerting me to what they were. They were flickering random pixels like a faulty phone screen. When I got home I did some light research. These particular ESLs were manufactured by a company called Pricer. They are controlled via IR from hubs mounted in the ceiling with line-of-sight like a TV remote. Central software named Pricer Plaza allows you to monitor and update the ESLs from the store PC.

I looked into the security in play. Encrypted comms, auth keys etc. The usual fare. There had been some reported hacks. Changing prices, arrow keys with this way messages, naughty stuff. There was even a few cases of ramsomware, but mostly defacement of some kind. Kids having fun. Like the days when smart watches first appeared that could control TVs and TV stores were constantly having to deal with the display models having their channels changed. More an annoyance than anything clever.

I’m not sold on ESLs being better for the environment. It’s probably just more tech that will eventually end up in a landfill. Still, it may be fun to play with.