Friday, October 16. 2009
Coming to terms with getting older it seems an interesting process, I think when I turned thirty –some thirteen years ago- I realised my mortality, the knowledge that I was aging and would one day die came as quite a surprise. Of course when I say the ‘knowledge’ I mean the understanding deep down inside as opposed to the common understanding we all have, this was a deep seated understanding that I would one day die, that it would happen to me, that I could not dodge it and it wasn’t going to be something that always happened to someone else. Accordingly as this understanding pierced the fog of daily existence I had a bit of a crisis turning thirty.
Ironically I felt no such issues when I turned forty, I had come to terms with the reality of mortality. Instead I find it interesting that I seem to have passed some invisible line where daily life is fairly routine and the body functions as expected, to a state where life is still fairly routine but that the body doesn’t always function as expected and daily medication becomes a normal part of life.
I think many of us know someone in their senior years who has to take their pills each day to address a number of ailments usually associated with old age. It never really occurred to me that these folks obviously started at some point in taking regular medication to keep functioning. It therefore has come as a little bit of a shock to find myself taking tablets each morning for several ailments that have till recently not been issues for me. Oh my goodness! I am getting old, this is a sure sign of the inevitable. Should I panic? Suppose not, they would only give me another pill for it. lol.
Wednesday, October 14. 2009
Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games. MMORPG’s or MMO’s as they have become known now days. I’ve played a few over the years, fairly casually, though it was not always so. It is a genre of gaming I have maintained a love hate relationship with for quite some time. The alluring appeal of a virtual world, populated with real and virtual characters, offering pure escapism and adventure in a theme based world usually associated with a topic I have some interest in.
For me it began with Asheron’s Call, my first MMO and the one that caused me the most grief. Six months of AC addiction at a time in my life when I was not working proved a valuable lesson. Prioritising my subscription fee’s over food and rent might give you some idea of the state I was in. I do not however blame the game for this valuable life lesson. That would be a cop out on my behalf, no, as a unemployed person, with undiagnosed depression, smoking a fair amount of the green weed and surrounded by other such person I can only blame myself for letting a game become more important to me than real life. I am glad it only cost me six months before I snapped out of it and chose to change my life. I learned a lot about myself from that little journey.
As such I stayed away from MMO’s for quite a few years after that. Preferring to immerse my gaming time in multiplier flight simulations instead or other community based administration projects for the online-community I was tied up with at the time. This proved much more fruitful.
Then through the same community I got involved with Never Winter Nights online, which though not a MMO was an online RPG of limited sorts. After a while this group left the community I was with as often happens in online groups and those who remained chose to switch to Guild Wars. So it was that I elected to delve back into the MMO scene. Guild Wars proved to be a great adventure and I learned that under different circumstances I could manage my MMO interests and my real life responsibilities. Much to my pleasure my partner (and future husband) also took an interest in Guild Wars which proved a great “light” MMO for him to get involved in as his first online gaming experience.
This provided me with a gaming buddy most of the time, though it did teach me a lot about how we both dealt with frustration and failure in very different ways. It also taught us both to work and plan together as a team. Eventually though Guild Wars grew stale for us as it lacked the depth of a more traditional MMO and so began our search for an alternative.
We grabbed the demo version of (WoW) world of warcraft, I installed it downloaded a plethora of patches and finally entered the legendary realm of wow. Strangely our reaction to wow was anything but wow. It was more like oh my god this looks shit! God look how crappy the graphics are! And can you believe people play this game? The mechanics were slow and the low level graphics just turned us off. I uninstalled it later that day and have had a low opinion of it ever since. Oh I know all the arguments about the art style and all that, but coming from GW which is both low spec and stunningly beautiful for it’s time made wow look very primitive to our eye’s. In fairness we were also quite used to the very fast paced game play of GW so wow felt slow and boring as well as looking like shit. So thankfully we both avoided getting sucked into that game.
We moved on in our search for another MMO, I looked at the Beta of LOTR Online and found it to be very pretty, but still the game play felt slow. We kept searching and a friend recommended City of Heroes, so we tried that and found we liked it, a superhero based MMO was something of a breath of fresh air, though the graphics were okay they were not stunning but the game play was fast and there was a level of depth greater than GW but not as deep as a traditional MMO, thus we found City of Heroes/Villains was a step up from GW.
The game was not without it’s flaws, and after playing it for 18 months began to loose it’s appeal. My biggest criticism of it was you never really felt truly super as a super hero. Missions were repetitive and yes after a while the graphics engine got a bit tired and old. Of course we joined CoX just prior to Cryptic Studio’s selling it. Cryptic went off and started work on Champions which we promised to look at down the track. So our tastes in MMO’s had evolved somewhat and we were now seeking a game that was fun, had depth of story, in-depth crafting as well paced game play and combat and the all important decent graphics.
I scoped out Vanguard and we both tried it for a few months but it was hopelessly flawed, it had so much potential but just never seemed to get there. We adored the flying mounts, they were the drawcard that made us decide to try it, but in the end it just couldn’t cut it as a game. I looked at Tabula Rasa, a great concept, but once more lacked depth and direction. For a while we were without a MMO, oh we tried reloading Vanguard and CoX sever times but found they had just lost there lustre or were still problematic. Then one day we found Age of Conan and all our prayers were answered.
What a game! High end stunning graphics that rewarded us for having high spec PC’s, so unheard of in the MMO community and so gratifying. Fast paced combat and adult oriented gore and content. Good story background (though could be better in the higher levels) in-depth crafting and did I mention the fraking magnificent beauty of the game environment? Guess I did. We fell upon AoC like a starving man falls upon a sumptuous feast and indeed we revelled in it. AoC was everything Vanguard should have been. The game is certainly not without fault, don’t get me wrong, they have some issues with sufficient high end content for higher level players. Also funcom seem to focus on a lot of content that cant be done solo or as a duo. Which for hubby and I is disappointing as we have no interest in getting involved in a big guild just so we can access that content.
Which is interesting, hubby and I have been playing together so long now that we prefer to play as a duo (or solo) yet we like being in a MMO where others are playing. We have had so many bad experiences with other players that we are reluctant to team in larger groups. But occasionally we do meet a player who doesn’t behave like a 10 year old and does wok well with us. Such persons we cherish, the others we despise with a passion. But then what mature aged gamer doesn’t?
We have been happily playing AoC since release; it has provided us with many many hours of enjoyment and adventure. In the mean time I eagerly await Bioware’s development of The Old Republic. As an avid star wars fan this MMO looks to be the one I have long awaited. I tried the SWG (Galaxies) Demo and was very, disappointed in what sony did with it. So I was very excited when Bioware and Lucas arts decided to work together to bring us SWOTR. This looks like a MMO I could really settle into and have fun with. I hope so anyway. I am also watching funcom’s dark days are coming MMO with some interest. In the mean time AoC has taken the backburner while hubby and I explore Champions Online, so far we have had it a week and feel it is the game CoX should be. Ncsoft need to pull their collective fingers out and make CoH2 from the ground up if they plan to compete with it, though I doubt they will as they are not known for being overly innovative. GW2 and Aion both look to similar to the original GW product for our interest. Developers need to realise that games like AoC and SWOTR have well and truly lifted the standard for MMO’s. They need to step outside of their safe formula’s and make products that look good, play well and meet the new standard for this genre.
Saturday, September 19. 2009
What a complete joke the child welfare systems of this country are. How can we as a nation sit back so blithely and be shocked and surprised at these recent revelations. Whether it’s Docs in NSW or the Victorian system or somewhere else in Australia it does not come as a surprise to anyone who has dealt with these agencies from the inside that they are failing the community.
Any politician will tell you how they naturally love our children and want the best for them, yet when you look at the allocation of funding for government departments you quickly see that such priorities are not consistent with departmental budgeting. As we watch our health system crumble, our almost non-existent mental health care system fail and our child protection agencies implode under the pressure of decades of neglect should any of us be surprised? I appreciate the State/Territory vs. Federal Funding issues, but seriously, as a nation we should collectively bow our heads in shame at the inadequacies of these departments when we compare what we spend on things like defense, and energy.
When the price of single F-35 multi-role fighter is expected to reach somewhere around $70–80 million per aircraft, how can we justify our failing welfare systems? I don’t doubt that we need adequate defenses, don’t get me wrong. But in light of how much we as a nation spend on such projects and how little resources go to child welfare departments who have a long term history of being under resourced how can we as a people sit idly buy and argue about who is at fault. While politicians play the blame game people are dying and children are being abused. For goodness sakes stop whining about the cost and fix the bloody system once and for all. How many innocent people have to die, be raped or tortured before the community decides taking care of our own is the highest priority we have!
Wednesday, September 16. 2009
What a strange society we have. I wonder if anthropologists of the future will look back on us as a people and question our ethics and motivations as we do when we look back the great ancient civilizations?
I really have an axe to grind with the media this week. Misleading Stories and Stories designed to entice readers often seem to have headlines that are completely false or designed to incite a response. Often a sensationalist one. How the media gets away with this I fail to understand. Today I read a story about a convicted person who committed a heinous crime some 20 or 30 years ago and has served their time and since been released from prison, albeit with a bevy of special conditions while they are on probation.
The legal justice system of the day sentenced this person to a significant time behind bars, yet they were not given a true life sentence, that is to say life meaning life behind bars never to be released. Why this is the case I can not fathom, it should be a sentence that can be handed down to the truly awful crimes that some people commit. Yet today in Australia most people sentenced to life will serve a minimum of 18 years or a maximum of 26 years in prison. Though a significantly large sentence it is not life and here we have the problem.
Governments do not want to pay the costs of keeping prisoners in jail for a true life sentence. Understandably it is costly, though surely this is the price we pay for being a community with a social conscience, a community that believes in supporting the notion of reforming criminals and not abandoning them, a society that must take fair and reasonable responsibility for the miscreants we as a society create as a direct result of our failures as a society. Thus I do not support the death penalty, not do I believe any government on the planet should have the authority to legally sanction killing people. History has shown that such power is manipulated by politics, abused by Governments and that innocent persons will die. Thus I can not support the death penalty. But I do support life imprisonment for certain exceptionally heinous crimes.
Despite this view, I do accept that a significant number of persons will serve there time in prison and one day be released. As such these persons have paid their price to society and –in theory- society has taken the time to seriously attempt to reform the person and integrate them back into society.
However, we then have the Media interfering with this process and highlighting persons who are attempting to rebuild their lives. When there is such a significant cost involved in this whole process, should the media be permitted to short circuit the process by outing ex-convicts and forcing them to flee public scrutiny? Should they not be held responsible for inciting mobocracy against persons who have in theory paid their debt to society?
If we as a society feel that these persons have no right to integrate back into our society then do we not then have a responsibility to ensure our justice system reflects this? Conversely if we as a society feel they do, then likewise shouldn't we reflect this also? Ex-convicts have the same rights as anyone else, some may have special life long restrictions placed upon them, but for the most part once they serve their time people need to get over it and move on. Hounding these people only serves to distract us from the true threats to our safety.
Tuesday, September 15. 2009
It occurred to me a few days ago whilst thinking about the latest Federal Government Apology issued or due to be issued with regard to those abused whilst in Government care over the years. The Australian Federal Government has at least since the Labour Party led by Kevin Rudd got into power made quite a fuss about being able to Apologize where previous governments from all sides of politics have failed to do so. So far the ALP have apologized to Indigenous Australians for their treatment at the hands of British Commonwealth and Successive Australian Governments. Of it self this is somewhat of a debating point among many non- indigenous Australians who have been here for many generations and have had no real say in what took place generations ago.
As a sign it was willing to start a process of reconciliation the Government had a National Sorry day. Now I don't want to enter the argument about that event other than to provide a little background as to what it was about. The Government also went on to apolagise for the Stolen Generation/s who were mostly (though not restricted to) indigenous children who were removed from their natural homes and placed into (usually christian based) schools and orphanages and raised to be good Australians. That is to say they were anglicized as much as possible. Certainly something worth apologizing for, such a horrid practice yet like many practices of the day it was accepted policy in what was essentially a belligerently racist nation who embraced the White Australia policy.
More recently now with the revelations that so many children were abused while in government sanctioned care yet another apology is forth coming. It would seem that the current Australian Federal Government is very willing to apologize for past wrong doings. Which leads me to pose this question.
Will Governments of the future, 20, 50 or a hundred years from now be apologizing still? Will the leaders of tomorrow look back at Kevin Rudd as so many of us look back at Menzies and other PM's of bygone era and cringe at the policy of the day and even worse will they have to make apologies for the crimes of discrimination made by the current government. Fifty years from now will the Australian Prime Minister need to offer a public apology for the open discrimination of same sex persons, women in the workforce and people of non-anglo race? Has our Government learned anything from all it's apologizing? It doesn't seem that way.
Which once more highlights that in the 21st Century Governments are nothing more than self serving, short sighted organizations with their own agenda that has nothing to do with serving the greater good of the population.
Friday, September 11. 2009
Simon Lauder (for the The World Today) has had a misleading story published on the ABC website. The Article is a prime example of how the media can and does twist "some facts" to lead a reader to a false conclusion. The story headline would have us believe that Aussies (all 21 million of us) are the worst polluters in the world. Yet clearly this is not so. Australia is not responsible for the pollution produced in vast nations like the USA and China. The article quotes per capita figures to draw this conclusion. LOL @ Simon Lauder! Mate your a wanker. This article is a complete crock of shit! Hello sure per capita we might be deemed the worst polluters, but crikey there are only 21 million of us compared to close to 400 million Americans and a billion Chinese.How can 21 million people be responsible for most of the worlds pollution. Simply put we can not. The headline is misleading and depending how you elect to read it, both true and false. Talk about a steaming pile of misinformation. Mr Lauder you suck, i hope you don't consider yourself a journalist fella cause your clearly pushing your own agenda. Just another scaremongering wanker trying to guilt trip Aussies into accepting nuclear power as our answer I bet. Fuck Nuclear Power and Fuck Maplecroft, the company responsible for this pile of steaming bullshit can go fuck themselves. Wow that's three fucks in a sentance, guess i am pissed of, well Fuckity fuck fuck fuck, I sure am. Per capita measurements mean NOTHING. Do a national measure per country before you try and send us on your bleading guilt trip. This article offends me and i vote Green!
Monday, September 7. 2009
Jeff Kennett has arrived at a Sydney tribunal for a mediation hearing because of comments he made last year about the sacking of a gay football trainer.
Mr Kennett, who is currently chairman of the anti-depression organisation Beyond Blue, made the comments in a Melbourne newspaper after the dismissal of a gay AFL trainer from a Victorian football club.
In a Melbourne newspaper, Mr Kennett compared homosexuality with paedophilia, saying the club had done the right thing because the trainer was in charge of a group of young boys.
Mr Kennett is currently meeting with anti-discrimination campaigner Gary Burns and an official from the New South Wales Administrative Decisions Tribunal in a closed mediation hearing.
Obviously Mr Kennet has some interesting theories on Homosexuality, if we take what he is alleged to have said as meaning that all gay men and women are potential child abusers because gay men are attracted to men and thus boys, and gay women are attracted to women and thus girls, then by the same measure all strait men who are attracted to women must likwise desire sex with girls and all strait women attracted to men must want to abuse boys. Let us not even begin to wonder where bisexual people might lay in all this sordid pathetic stereo typing. Ironically, I am fairly certain that figures have indicated that the largest majority of sexually abused children are girls, abused by Men. With boys being abused by Men the smaller (but no less appalling) statistic. Would this then not suggest more strait men are pedophillic than gay men? Personally I do not feel that a Pedophiles "adult sexuality" if they even have such a thing, is any reflection on the types of victims they abuse. Clearly Mr Kennet is living in his own little world full all kinds of weird preconceptions. Such a man should not be a figurehead for Beyond Blue.
Sunday, August 30. 2009
Two weeks ago I ordered a Quiver Kit from this website i found via ebay. The website is called Nifty Notions and they sell a range of kits and finished leather and fur products. They are very good. I bought there Quiver kit for under $20.00 Australian, it was delivered promptly and was fun to sew together and quite easy even for a novice like myself. Anyway here's a picture of my new Quiver. I have ordered some Rabbit Pelts from the same site (very hard to find) and intend to dress it up with some fur linings. 
Wednesday, August 26. 2009
I had a really good night last night at the local SCA Arts & Sciences evening. A complete opposite to the last time I was there. Lots of people were in attendance, several new faces I had not seen before and as always most of them friendly and outgoing folks with their own special interest in history or medieval life. My friends who introduced me to the SCA were there so it was good to catch up with them as always, and good to see people who hubby and I had met before. I took my –work in progress- tunic along with me and tried it on and got much praise for the work hubby and I had done so far along with some very helpful advice. Hubby volunteered to do some embroidering work for the group who needed some help with a project. Which is cool, it’s great to see him getting involved with something on his own level that interests him. Sunday morning is a bit of an archery event, I think I will go along and see what it is like. It’s not a costumed event so I wont feel out of place not having a costume finished yet. Which admittedly has been a little bit of a concern, but we are making steady progress on that front.
Behold the Hunter! Bezza the Bold! LOL@myself!  
The Chubby Hunter.... hmmmm now there's an new angle on Chub4Chub.
I decided over the weekend that I should treat my beloved husbear to a little special attention. Kind of as a way to offset the probable stress and difficulties of living with someone who is learning to manage clinical depression. It is way to easy when you have this insidious mental health problem to become overly “me” focused and not enough focused on your significant other. With that in mind I decided to set myself a challenge. My challenge was to find at least one special little thing I could do for my hubby each day for the next week, that would let him know how much I loved and appreciated him.
It is so easy to fall into a routine and become swept away with the day to day toil of living that I find often we forget the romance or are just to damn exhausted to do anything special. So my challenge started on Sunday. My sweetie loves his chicken thighs, so I cooked southern style chicken drumsticks for dinner Sunday night. They were indeed finger lickin good and home cooked.
Monday I went a little further, I undressed my bearish fella and gave him a good rub down with a nice body scrub then took him into the shower and bathed him. This was really nice, there is something intimate, yet not necessarily sexual, about bathing your partner. The sharing of an private act, with a trusted partner brings a wonderful closeness. I recommend it. Tuesday was more spontaneous, a little bit of a cop out, because I was exhausted and feeling blue, but after we got home I took off his boots, laid him on the bed, removed his socks and gave him a quick foot rub. Wednesday, when I made his lunch I hid a little note in the lunch wrap expressing my love and appreciation for him and hoping he had a nice lunch break.
Not sure what to do tomorrow, still thinking about it. This is proving a good way to keep him in my mind too as I find myself thinking about things I might do for him. I imagine this is a good habit for me as it helps me be less self oriented. It's also fun!
Sunday, August 23. 2009
Well yesterday I purchased my arrow shafts, nocks, feathers and points. I bought a single fletching jig and spent the whole afternoon and evening fletching a dozen arrows. It is such a relief to have more then three arrows. My feet will be very grateful that I am not walking back and forwards so often.
Of course one issue with only a few arrows was I didnt really shoot long enough to correct my technique over the course of several shots. Hopefully that will change now.
 
Friday, August 14. 2009
Violence on our streets, usually as the result of drug abuse, most often alcohol fuelled sometimes other drugs too. When will we as a society come to understand that there is simply no need to have drinking venues open for business till the wee hours of the morning. No one needs to be drinking at two three or five am, there is simply no reason for it. Unless you operate the venue in which case your profit margin is the only point of interest you might have. There was a time in this country when hotels/pubs shut in the early evening, then it was pushed forward to late evening and midnight, now it can be any time of night/morning. There is a clear correlation between instances of the availability of venues serving alcohol at increasingly late hours and the violence on our streets. Anyone who has lived through the last four or five decades can confirm it is so. Responsible service of alcohol strategies don’t work, are often not utilised by venue staff and owners. The responsible consumption of alcohol message has failed in an epic proportion when you witness first hand the prolific binge drinking culture that prevails in Australia today. Why then do we not simply roll back the clock on operating hours of these licensed premises? Of course I am not proposing prohibition, as history shows clearly that it doesn’t work. As soon as you ban something it goes underground and becomes part of the black-market and criminal organisations. Take the drug trade in Australia as an example. But why don’t we simply shut the venues at a sensible hour? Sure the hotel industry will cry poor and bleat like they have had their livelihood taken from them, but so what. It is an industry that peddles in legal recreational drugs (alcohol being a drug) and needs to be wound back. It is clear that all the current measures are failing and as a result costing the community billions in health, policing, insurance and other social costs. Surly these costs to society are of greater importance than the profit margins of the hotels industry? Why should responsible citizens be held at ransom by the alcohol and hotel industries who want to be open at all hours at the expense of the innocent. There is no excuse for this to continue. The experiment in extended hours of business for this industry has failed, time to wind it up and return to the way things were before we allowed such venues to operate into the wee hours of the morning. Enough really is enough!
Monday, August 10. 2009
Archery, I have always had a fascination with archery since I was a boy. I was introduced to it at a summer camp and instantly enjoyed it. I am long sighted, yet only have 5% vision in my left eye which makes me lousy at ball games as my depth of field is limited, yet I can see well over distance. The vision in my left eye, a condition I have had since birth that was not properly treated by indifferent parents during early child hood. As a result my left eye vision can best be described as seeing what a healthy eye see’s in it’s peripheral vision. With a few exceptions I have hardly ever found it hinders me in life. But sports was one area that it did seriously prevent me from doing anything much enjoyable. As a consequence I developed a very negative attitude to sports never being able to participate without being ridiculed. During my school years the only sports on offer were Australian Rules Football, Cricket and Hockey. So when I did discover a sport that I was suited to, one which was interesting to me and which as a stocky lad I could do well in, or at least compete on a level playing field it was something of note. Cycling was my first sport, but my robust build did not suit road cycling or touring, track cycling yes, but I wasn’t interested in going round in circles. Horse riding yes, but again not for a solid lad and prohibitively expensive for disinterested parents. Ironically weight lifting was never considered, something I may have excelled at prior to injuring my back through a work related accident in my mid twenties. After this sport just became something I took no interest in and Archery was a romantic notion I recalled from my one experience in my distant youth. Then in my late twenties I briefly became involved with a medieval recreation group and was once more exposed to archery. I immediately took an active interest but soon moved away from the area and it was something I thought I would like to do if I had the time and resources. Decades past and life moved on as it does. Till recently a dear friend of mine bought a bow and got involved in archery. He has a lovely property and ample space to practice. When visiting with him I was introduced to a lovely couple who were also avid traditional archers who are deeply involved in the local (SCA) Society for Creative Anachronism. The SCA are a global medieval recreation society. I had an opportunity to borrow a bow and do some target shooting with friends and realised how much I enjoyed archery and had always wanted to pursue it. I also have a strong interest in medieval history and recreation so getting involved with the SCA is just a natural step in the right direction. So the culmination has been that my partner has a keen interest in costuming as do I, and I have finally bought a bow for myself and started practicing at home. At forty three years of age I have embraced a sport I can do and enjoy doing. Yay for me! It feels good. It is nice to be active out doors and away from the computer, it’s also great to have another common interest with my partner that takes us out of the house and brings us together with interesting people. Here is a picture of what my new bow looks like, this is the same as the one i have bought. All i need to do now is come up with a name for her as she is lovely indeed. 
Monday, August 3. 2009
The Federal Government continues to stonewall the ACT Governments request for a review of the Self-Government Act. Read more about it here; http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/08/04/2645152.htm In the Article Mr Stanhope says; "I hope it's not around continuing concerns around some of the legislation - we might as a very progressive Government and community might be inclined to pass, for instance in relation to civil unions." Let’s face it, that’s exactly what it is about. Kevin Rudd does not want same sex marriage and he will stop it any way he can. He also does not want anyone else to bring about a system that undermines his own plans for a national civil unions scheme. Even though he repeatedly defended the rights of all the various jurisdictions to self government without interference prior to his election. Hypocrisy? Absolutely it is, but are any of us truly surprised at the gall of this man any more. I hope that Tasmania as a progressive state will break ranks with the PM and legislate for same sex marriage. As a state and not a territory if they do so there is nothing that the Federal Government could do about it. However I suspect they won’t and I believe the National Rollout of the new broadband network starting in Tasmania just might have something to do with it. I hope I am wrong.
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