Blogs

Claude is my favourite GTA character. The mute protagonist in GTA 3 made some of the dialog difficult but made him somehow loveable. I got to decide Claude's thoughts, to me his quiet resignation was a deep distrust of the people around him. Tommy Vercetti (GTA 3 VC) and Niko Bellic (GTA 4) had some personality but got progressively less interesting to play because there was less choice. You character was, well, a bit of a dick. I quite liked the gangers in GTA 3: SA but only because - as gangsters - they were shit.Everything went wrong all the time and that was enderring.

The Uberstore works well but it isn't perfect. Just recently I've had problems where one box overflows into another. It's quite annoying because resetting the system is tricky.

This chap explains the issue rather well:

He also has a solution, which means taking apart all the workings behind the scenes. I get to reuse most of the bits and I'm going to keep the layout. It's just a bit annoying.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

So I have yet to have decent broadband, even when my local exchange gets upgraded I get poor connection speeds due to being one of the furthest houses from it. Because of this you really notice when something else is using your connection when you want to, something that has despite much effort over the years has started becoming noticed on my connection quite a lot recently.

Here's where we last left Under Glasslake, stretching 20 blocks North of the end of the Cathedral. You've seen this pic before in the last postcards episode.

Yesterday was my best flying day so far. I managed to get through 4 batteries without running out of propellers (although I broke a load) and I managed more close proximity flying at speed than ever before. By the end of the session, I was getting pretty smooth!

Here's the video. Beggars Canyon is right at the start.

So I built a pub

EMW has built some pretty epic farms, one that delivers watermelon and the other pumpkin. I didn't like that the output just spilled over into nothingness, so I decided to build a pub where the melon was paraded in front of the people. Here it is:

Situated between the Uberstore and the Evil mansion, where I've been building recently. I rather like the roof. Here's the inside...

Some big finishings going on with this selection. We've got a remodelled Uberstore, a finished Vertical Slum (although I seem to have missed a roof) and finished Cloudship Atlantis. You can also see the new stables near the old villager-village, the "West Way" road that leads from St. Spawncras out to the bridge west of Ringwall and the current state of Under Glasslake. I've sneaked in a pick of Bacon Shack, which I am not sure I've posted before.

My body goes through periods of hating me. No gallbladder and a damaged spleen and pancreas means that sometimes I'm left going between the loo and my desk. Dizzy, sickening, weak and cotton-headed. After work, I have little energy left; very little creativity to plough into Icar. When it's bad, I'm no use at work and little use to my much understanding family. The only thing I appear to be able to do is potter around in Minecraft.

During some recent wanders in our shared virtual world, I snapped this and that. Let's start with my Vertical Slum project, a medieval village thing that goes up rather than down. I'm rather pleased with how this turned out. This is the superstructure. The buildings are all working but I want to put in better walkways and staircases higher up on the inside. I'll also start working on the interiors of all those buildings. Much to do and lots and lots of resources to collect for it.