2020

2020 for some may feel like a black hole, a year to be struck from the calendar and the annuls of history. While being asked to ‘stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’ can for some feel like their whole world has been put on hold, for me it has been a catalyst. 2020 has been the spark I needed to look at what I value in my lifestyle, that gives me a sense of purpose and wellbeing and what I need to let go of to move forward.

The first thing I started to address this year is increasing my agility to a constantly changing situation and my resilience to those sudden changes. I am not the type of person that naturally copes with sudden changes, it is a learned behaviour that takes an enormous amount of energy for me to handle. Agility in my home life is not something I have had to look at for a long while. Dealing with these this year has tested some of my assumptions about the direction of the Digital Age. I had thought that we now live in a ‘post PC era’ of tablets and mobile phones which have taken on a lot of the roles previously given to the humble desktop. Given their size, expense and complexity it is easy to believe their time had come to an end, relegated to the office where their origins began. Not so. For all their many failings, the desktop computer is still one of the most powerful and versatile digital tools available.

As the pandemic hit I was given a laptop to work from home and I quickly realised how much I easier it is still to work from a desktop. I put aside space in my house for a home office and gathered my peripherals from my old PC for work. Using a full sized screen keyboard and mouse on a desk made all the difference to me. I could come in, do a full day and not be frustrated by small screen, small keyboard and a track pad. For anyone still struggling I strongly recommend investing in these.

Lockdown created some interesting challenges for home as well. I could no longer visit my family face to face. Telephone calls become video calls which grew so long that the battery in my phone was drained by the end. As a one-off occurrence, I paid no mind to it but at the weeks marched on it became clear that a mains powered alternative is needed. My trusty desktop came to the rescue. I am fortunate that I was able to get a decent webcam and microphone at a reasonable price this let us all spend time together.

By the autumn, the PC had once more become the hub of activity it once was a decade ago, with it my interests around the PC. It has been an interesting year, a return to my roots and my interests that I have had not spent time on for a very long time. It has allowed me to focus on what can be done and move forward. This has helped me maintain contact with my family and work at a pace that left me satisfied.

With the new year fast approaching I hope this year has been kind to you and your family. I wish you & yours, health and happiness in the new year to come.

Benners.

Pokémon Sun & Moon

It has been announced that Pokémon Sun & Moon will be release here in Europe 23 November 2016.  I have been very impressed with the more recent entries but I hope that the game mechanics will continue to grow more child friendly.  Whilst building a competitve team will likley remain outside the abilites of the youngest players, I do beleive the game needs to be more discoverable for kids and not rely on parents looking stuff up.

Having watched our nine year old play his game and having caught all the legends myself I still think Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Saphire is far too hard for kids.  He has struggled with the Pokémon cobminations required to activate all the hidden locations and relied on me to show him where they are.  I had to make heavy use of Serebii to find them so I wonder how are children are expected to figure these out on their own?

Collecting all the Pokémon is one one the foremost tasks and one that will grow harder as more and more are added to the pantheon each generation.  There are currently 721 to catch but our child was only able get 60 or so by the time he has gone through the game.  That leaves hundreds (661, in this instance) to grind through the game for outside the main narrative.  That’s a lot of work for a young child.  The recent games do help by providing a completion gauge for each area but instead of having more variety, many of the areas continue to repeat the same Pokémon.  That leaves the remainder down to leveling up and breading.  These aspects have not been a main part of the narative and there has been no in-game guide to help with the basics of breeding.

Pokémon Sun & Moon could help by giving the player side quests, such as collect a male and female Pikach and bring them to the Daycare.  Another way to help younger players is to change the caught Pokémon indicator should the opposing gender appear.

As leveling up still needs some work, I would like to see more trainer battles available after the completion of the main narrative.  Presently you have to use the one of the games many menus to dig down and search for replayable trainers.  Perhaps having all the non-player characters’ offer to rematch on encounter with their Pokémon always be a couple of levels higher than your own would help.  I really enjoyed the sports stadiums of Pokémon Black & White and hope they make a return.

The game mechanics for effort value training have been great on recent games thourgh the super training sub menu but it is not immediatly obvious what this is for within the game.  Perhaps this was intentional to leave the more detailed aspects of battling to one side.  However I believe there is room post-game to have some narrative to explain this and offer a side quest to intigrate this in more.

As for getting and passing on individual values, that reamains a dark art even for me after playing all these years.

I have enjoyed the main series of Pokémon games and look forward to what is to come in November.

Book of the Stranger

I recently contributed this review for The Pod of Casts.  It’s a great Game of Thrones podcast and I would encourage you to listen if you enjoy the TV show.

So John’s watch is done. The price for his resurrection seems to be the loss of his sense of purpose. Sansa’s arrival then must appear to be heaven sent. Seeing them together after so long was very touching but not without flaws. It seemed to miss a beat when they were eating together. Did they simply eat or were we rejoining them after exchanging tales? Some cue would have been helpful, a montage, a fire loosing its flame to indicate the passage of time. Despite this what we gain is a direction albeit backwards, to Winterfell. Sansa’s plea to John gives him someone to fight for, someone to rescue and a dividend to put towards the war to come. Sacking Reese and installing Rickon as Warden of the North will give the Wildlings more security for their new homeland and a banner for John to use to gather the armies of the north and replenish the forces at Castle Black. Numbers appear against John until Little Finger returns to The Vale and rallies the troupes. While this could assist John and Sansa, the price for doing some deal for the combined forces of House Arryn & Royce could be high. Choices made here could irrecoverably decide their fate. While the Starks fight to maintain their way of life in the north, the high borne at Kings Landing fight for the same at any cost to others. After all, better them than us. The lowly High Sparrow gives another illustration that deep down, both sides the same, flawed people. Sadly this is proved true as we see further hints of torture from the faith militant and the Lainisters plotting a military strike. I fear this can only lead to mutually assured destruction. Meanwhile Tyrion tries to impose a new way of life in Slavers Bay. He is cautioned that he doesn’t understand the culture of this region but Tryion responds that he understands these type of people and that appealing to their self interest will succeed. I enjoyed the dramatic irony of this scene that proposes in order to allow the people freedom, he alone must devise the new order. I am reminded that this is the same mistake Daenerys made last season which leaves the question, after freedom, what next? Daenerys seems locked into the same sociopathic thought process: you are evil rulers, I shall destroy you and lead your people so that I may rule instead. The last scene, we see once more Daenerys doing the right thing but for the wrong reasons. I hope that somewhere along this journey she and Tyrion will learn, as John has, to set their own ambitions aside for the sake of others.