Civ4: BtS (25h)
Dwarf fortress (10h)
Trackmania Nations (3h)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Zenith for Coaches
St Luke's coaches for sport picked up a set of Azuma Zenith shoes as thanks for the summer season. Although not as useful in Competitive Computer Gaming as other sports, they are a comfy shoe that should do well in touch footy.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
UniLog 4
Wow, almost a month since the last UniLog. That's going to test the memory.
After my Monday afterschool session out at the Uni on the 17th I had come to the conclusion that it might take a little more work than I'm putting in. The amount of reading is huge! Since I'm still officially on 4 days a week instead of full time due to the PhD deal, I had a quick calc and worked out that I had enough days built up to see me through the 2 days a week teaching over the next 2 terms. I can now go back to 4 days a week for the remainder of the Uni calendar to get some dedicated time to work on the course. Finally settled on the same deal as before, Tuesday and Thurday afternoons off to work on Uni.
20/3 (3h) - First Thursday 1/2 day to head out to Uni. I've noticed it takes longer to get to Uni from Work than it does getting to work from home. Anywhere in Bundy used to seem 15 mins from the beach. Now the city seems larger.
Concentrated on Learning Management to see if I could get through the quizzes as fast as possible. The stuff is really interesting to read, but after 3 hours of flicking through text after text I'm frazzled. I've seen that the average marks on the next quizz are down in the 7's, so it's possibly going to be harder than the netiquette one.
25/3 (3h) - Tuesdays for Design of Pedagogy. 3h goes past pretty quick but at least I've finished off topic 1.
27/3 (3h) - Back to Learning Management on Thursday. I've been through all the readings and am pretty comfortable about the content. I harden up, open a couple of windows on some likely content and pop open the quizz. Some tough question in there all right. There's possibly 4 questions that I wasn't confident about because of the ambiguity. You could easily have 2 or 3 of the answers chosen and think you're right. In the end I get stung on all of them. 6/10. Warning bells time.
More concerned with the ambiguity of the questions rather than dumping marks, I wrote a rationale for my choices and submitted it to the lecturer. I was happy to find that the next day I'd received my marks back on the 2 I sent in. The reasoning being that the quizz was to test whether you understood the content, and writing a couple of paragraphs on each point explaining why one answer should be better than the given one show that I understand the topic. Since it was all to do with the "Knowledge Economy" that I work in day in day out, I knew i was on solid ground. 8/10. Should have written up the other 2 as well ...
29/3 (2h) - Turned up to the Saturday gathering but no-one else was around. Maybe the easter weekend last weekend threw them off. Spent some time trawling the forums and picking up on the progress of others. Bit disappointed in not getting to have a chat I head home early.
1/4 (4h) - Design of Pedagogy is getting more boring. Just seems to be reading and reading and reading. Some of it is Ok, but the Learning Essentials that are supposed to set the goalposts are so flimsy you could interperet them to teach practically anything and demonstrate that you "met the goals". I'll need to see some standard testing to get a true feeling of what level they are expecting. Don't know if it exists here at St Luke's so it's going to be a dive in the deep end. Finished the day thinking that 3-4 hours is my limit without talking to people. I miss lectures ...
3/4 (4h) - Set myself a goal to punch through a whole topic and the quizzes today. in the end I had ~20 windows open with all sorts of stuff I'd read and was pretty happy I had it covered in under 3 hours. Popped open the first quizz and it's all about one document. I'm a little intrigued at dedication a whole quizz to the one document, but since it really defines the "Learning Management approach" that the whole course runs on I guess it one way of stressing its importance. Blitz it 10/10. Next one is a little more spread, but it's pin the fact on the donkey to blitz another one 10/10.
I thought having all the windows open would help me get to the info I wanted, but in the end it was a hindrance. Without tabbed browsing through IE7 or Firefox it was pretty useless organising the windows into an easy to navigate order. I left Uni feeling that I might spend the next few sessions at home where I can control my desktop better and have more screen realestate to play with.
5/4 (1h) - didn't take long for the lazy gene to kick in trying to work from home. We're off car hunting anyway and that's chewing up a lot of my time.
8/4 (0h) - School holidays at St Luke's, but I still lost 1/2 of Monday thinking about cars and checking stuff online. Tuesday turned into testdrive day and we finally have a winner. Toyota Camry Sportivo. Sorry Uni, now I can concentrate more on you.
After my Monday afterschool session out at the Uni on the 17th I had come to the conclusion that it might take a little more work than I'm putting in. The amount of reading is huge! Since I'm still officially on 4 days a week instead of full time due to the PhD deal, I had a quick calc and worked out that I had enough days built up to see me through the 2 days a week teaching over the next 2 terms. I can now go back to 4 days a week for the remainder of the Uni calendar to get some dedicated time to work on the course. Finally settled on the same deal as before, Tuesday and Thurday afternoons off to work on Uni.
20/3 (3h) - First Thursday 1/2 day to head out to Uni. I've noticed it takes longer to get to Uni from Work than it does getting to work from home. Anywhere in Bundy used to seem 15 mins from the beach. Now the city seems larger.
Concentrated on Learning Management to see if I could get through the quizzes as fast as possible. The stuff is really interesting to read, but after 3 hours of flicking through text after text I'm frazzled. I've seen that the average marks on the next quizz are down in the 7's, so it's possibly going to be harder than the netiquette one.
25/3 (3h) - Tuesdays for Design of Pedagogy. 3h goes past pretty quick but at least I've finished off topic 1.
27/3 (3h) - Back to Learning Management on Thursday. I've been through all the readings and am pretty comfortable about the content. I harden up, open a couple of windows on some likely content and pop open the quizz. Some tough question in there all right. There's possibly 4 questions that I wasn't confident about because of the ambiguity. You could easily have 2 or 3 of the answers chosen and think you're right. In the end I get stung on all of them. 6/10. Warning bells time.
More concerned with the ambiguity of the questions rather than dumping marks, I wrote a rationale for my choices and submitted it to the lecturer. I was happy to find that the next day I'd received my marks back on the 2 I sent in. The reasoning being that the quizz was to test whether you understood the content, and writing a couple of paragraphs on each point explaining why one answer should be better than the given one show that I understand the topic. Since it was all to do with the "Knowledge Economy" that I work in day in day out, I knew i was on solid ground. 8/10. Should have written up the other 2 as well ...
29/3 (2h) - Turned up to the Saturday gathering but no-one else was around. Maybe the easter weekend last weekend threw them off. Spent some time trawling the forums and picking up on the progress of others. Bit disappointed in not getting to have a chat I head home early.
1/4 (4h) - Design of Pedagogy is getting more boring. Just seems to be reading and reading and reading. Some of it is Ok, but the Learning Essentials that are supposed to set the goalposts are so flimsy you could interperet them to teach practically anything and demonstrate that you "met the goals". I'll need to see some standard testing to get a true feeling of what level they are expecting. Don't know if it exists here at St Luke's so it's going to be a dive in the deep end. Finished the day thinking that 3-4 hours is my limit without talking to people. I miss lectures ...
3/4 (4h) - Set myself a goal to punch through a whole topic and the quizzes today. in the end I had ~20 windows open with all sorts of stuff I'd read and was pretty happy I had it covered in under 3 hours. Popped open the first quizz and it's all about one document. I'm a little intrigued at dedication a whole quizz to the one document, but since it really defines the "Learning Management approach" that the whole course runs on I guess it one way of stressing its importance. Blitz it 10/10. Next one is a little more spread, but it's pin the fact on the donkey to blitz another one 10/10.
I thought having all the windows open would help me get to the info I wanted, but in the end it was a hindrance. Without tabbed browsing through IE7 or Firefox it was pretty useless organising the windows into an easy to navigate order. I left Uni feeling that I might spend the next few sessions at home where I can control my desktop better and have more screen realestate to play with.
5/4 (1h) - didn't take long for the lazy gene to kick in trying to work from home. We're off car hunting anyway and that's chewing up a lot of my time.
8/4 (0h) - School holidays at St Luke's, but I still lost 1/2 of Monday thinking about cars and checking stuff online. Tuesday turned into testdrive day and we finally have a winner. Toyota Camry Sportivo. Sorry Uni, now I can concentrate more on you.
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Panasonic DVD-R
We picked up a DVDR a couple of weeks ago and it's just about perfect for setting up a whole day's worth of recording, then sitting back and watching stuff at your leisure. It has an inbuilt guide which is pretty accurate, although we have missed ends of programs due to the guide not lining up exactly with what's shown. It can record away and let you browse the HDD and play anything pre-recorded, even a show that is recording. It's great for sitting down 1/2 an hour after the show has started and watching it adless and in less time. Great for House.
Only thing I'm a little miffed at is that it can't play DVD (or DivX on DVD) while recording. Hasn't happened too many times, but it does break into the "watch anytime" philosophy. One time we were watching a DivX and a recording started. I couldn't for the life of me get the recording to stop so we could get back to finishing the movie. Finally found out that the drive setting was still on DVD so all the buttons were triggering the DVD (which couldn't respond). You need to swap it back to HDD, stop the recording, then go back to the DVD. Seemed obvious in the end, but how hard would it be to change it to HDD mode if you know that the timer recording precluded any DVD access?
Only thing I'm a little miffed at is that it can't play DVD (or DivX on DVD) while recording. Hasn't happened too many times, but it does break into the "watch anytime" philosophy. One time we were watching a DivX and a recording started. I couldn't for the life of me get the recording to stop so we could get back to finishing the movie. Finally found out that the drive setting was still on DVD so all the buttons were triggering the DVD (which couldn't respond). You need to swap it back to HDD, stop the recording, then go back to the DVD. Seemed obvious in the end, but how hard would it be to change it to HDD mode if you know that the timer recording precluded any DVD access?
Friday, April 04, 2008
GameLog 33
Down a bit this week mainly due to more TV watching.
Football Manager 08 (18h) - Finally got a hankering to get back into footy manager. Gateshead push up into the middle of the league and , apart from a crazed chairman selling up and firing me in a parallel universe, we're travelling Ok for a lunge to the finals. We've lost all but the FA Trophy earlier than the board would have liked, but hopefully a good finish to the season will wipe away any misgivings for employing me.
It's interesting with the confidence screen giving more feedback from the board and fans about how you're doing in a variety of aspects. Seeing what they think of your signings makes you think twice about hiring anyone with a pulse. I found out that you can squirrell away poor acquisitions by sending them for a trip to a feeder club. some of their picks I wouldn't have agreed with, but I certainly picked up some crappy players just to get a team fielded at the start of the season. I think I'm up to 20 players recruited this year.
Warcraft 3: TFT (15h) - Easter Monday LAN led to many hours of DotA and TD variants.
Trackmania Nations (2h) - St Luke's CCG.
Football Manager 08 (18h) - Finally got a hankering to get back into footy manager. Gateshead push up into the middle of the league and , apart from a crazed chairman selling up and firing me in a parallel universe, we're travelling Ok for a lunge to the finals. We've lost all but the FA Trophy earlier than the board would have liked, but hopefully a good finish to the season will wipe away any misgivings for employing me.
It's interesting with the confidence screen giving more feedback from the board and fans about how you're doing in a variety of aspects. Seeing what they think of your signings makes you think twice about hiring anyone with a pulse. I found out that you can squirrell away poor acquisitions by sending them for a trip to a feeder club. some of their picks I wouldn't have agreed with, but I certainly picked up some crappy players just to get a team fielded at the start of the season. I think I'm up to 20 players recruited this year.
Warcraft 3: TFT (15h) - Easter Monday LAN led to many hours of DotA and TD variants.
Trackmania Nations (2h) - St Luke's CCG.
Monday, March 24, 2008
GameLog 32
Sins of a Solar Empire (25h) - An email coming through alerted me to a 1.03 upgrade to Sins. I hadn't even touched it since the betatesting my pre-order over 6 months ago.
The game plays Ok, but is oh so slooow. It's especially true when you're trying to finish up the game. The game on Sunday night went for 7&1/2 hours, but I knew after the first 2 that I'd win. After the first 4 I had every tech and 1/2 the map, but it still took 3 hours to hunt down each race. I haven't even finished either. It got to ~2:30 am and I was nodding off waiting for my fleet to munch through their defences and colonize. Maybe another 1/2 hour for them to concede.
Dwarf Fortress (10h) - Soaking up my lunch hour at work along with a different dungeon at home. Convinced Sam to give it a go too.
Pirates! (8h) - Started getting hard to win the sword fights at level 5, and then got distracted with other things.
Football Manager 08 (2h) - Still debating whether to write up the Gateshead games from a manager + history buff wife's perspective.
Trackmania Nations (2h) - St Luke's CCG.
The game plays Ok, but is oh so slooow. It's especially true when you're trying to finish up the game. The game on Sunday night went for 7&1/2 hours, but I knew after the first 2 that I'd win. After the first 4 I had every tech and 1/2 the map, but it still took 3 hours to hunt down each race. I haven't even finished either. It got to ~2:30 am and I was nodding off waiting for my fleet to munch through their defences and colonize. Maybe another 1/2 hour for them to concede.
Dwarf Fortress (10h) - Soaking up my lunch hour at work along with a different dungeon at home. Convinced Sam to give it a go too.
Pirates! (8h) - Started getting hard to win the sword fights at level 5, and then got distracted with other things.
Football Manager 08 (2h) - Still debating whether to write up the Gateshead games from a manager + history buff wife's perspective.
Trackmania Nations (2h) - St Luke's CCG.
Monday, March 17, 2008
UniLog 3
17/3 (2h) - Went out to Uni after work today to hopefully meet up with more from the course. I didn't see anyone familiar, although I didn't look that hard. Spent the time in the lab going over the difference between teaching and pedagogy. Finally some time for the 'other' subject.
15/3 (3h) - Went out to Uni for the Saturday session. Didn't really achieve much, mainly a chat session, but it was a good litmus for everyone else's position in the workload. The time spent at reso is still paying off, but I'll need to get moving to keep up.
15/3 (3h) - Went out to Uni for the Saturday session. Didn't really achieve much, mainly a chat session, but it was a good litmus for everyone else's position in the workload. The time spent at reso is still paying off, but I'll need to get moving to keep up.
GameLog 31
Pirates! (25h) - After playing through PotBS test it reminded me of Sid Meier's Pirates! Matt had mentioned playing it over the christmas break and that had also made me reconsider digging it out. For some reason I didn't get much out of it the first time around. I don't think I even finished 1 character. The original on the amiga was awesome, one of the first truly open ended games. Maybe it was the fond memories of the original that made me critique the remake so much. It certainly felt a lot fresher going back to it and the ship combat was smooth and tactical. Certainly felt more engaging and 'getting down to the fun' than PotBS.
This time around it was really hard to put down. I'd spent most nights of the week up to at least 2am playing it with 'just one more battle' or 'just gotta get back to sell off that spice before dividing the plunder'. Hallmarks of a great game.
Dwarf Fortress (20h) - Soaking up my lunch hour at work along with a different dungeon at home. Convinced Sam to give it a go too.
Football Manager 08 (2h) - Dabbled a little. Still no more games though.
Trackmania Nations (1h) - St Luke's CCG.
This time around it was really hard to put down. I'd spent most nights of the week up to at least 2am playing it with 'just one more battle' or 'just gotta get back to sell off that spice before dividing the plunder'. Hallmarks of a great game.
Dwarf Fortress (20h) - Soaking up my lunch hour at work along with a different dungeon at home. Convinced Sam to give it a go too.
Football Manager 08 (2h) - Dabbled a little. Still no more games though.
Trackmania Nations (1h) - St Luke's CCG.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
