Word Verification is annoying but it's worse without

I disabled word verification on my blog a week or so back after someone was saying how difficult it was to leave a comment on one of my posts.

Now I have to admit that I fully agree.  I absolutely hate word verification - for those not sure what I'm talking about it's when, usually at the end of filling a form in on the Internet, you are confronted with a box similar to the below:

Let me find my dictionary, is it the traditional spelling of endeeden?

You have to copy out the two words in the box to prove that you're a real person and not a computer firing off spam.

The problem is, far too often the system gives you two "words" that as far as I can see aren't words, certainly not ones that I'm familiar with (then again I only have a Grade C GCSE in English so perhaps they're all words that are only taught to those students attempting to get A's and for people like me who just wanted a C they only taught words in common usage) and because the words are blurred to defeat automated OCR systems I end up typing the words in wrong.

The type of verification system shown above is probably the most common, but I know of one that I came across last Friday that was so annoying (and had to be accessed to allow me to play a game) that I ended up uninstalling the game rather than tackle the verification system again.

So, I turned off the verification on my blog.  Unfortunately this has led to automated spam systems taking glee in spraying my blog in comments, to the point where I've turned on the word verification again.

Sorry.

I've been playing more FTL whenever I have a spare moment - I've now completed it two or three times on Easy and unlocked a few ships (although many still await unlocking).  I just love how the game can, in a sudden twist, change your fortunes.  You might be limping along, trying to keep everything together, then happen upon a random cache that kits you out with missiles and gives you a new uberweapon to destroy the rebels with.  Or you might decide to help out some fellow spacefarers with their big spider problem, and lose your helmsman that you've been training for eight sectors.  It really can give you a bit of a kick in the shins and you'll find yourself grumbling away half an hour later that you had the perfect starship until you blew up an enemy light cruiser, forgetting that your two hardcore Mantis boarding guys were still on it.

Finally and slightly randomly I'd like to highlight the Cambridge Union Society YouTube channel.  On it's channel it includes speeches and lectures by people such as Brian Blessed and Al Murray, and it's well worth a watch if you want an entertaining hour that also makes you feel somewhat intellectual, a bit like Radio 4.

subscribers and dan abnett

Wow! I didn't realise I had subscribers!

I think Feedburner is being a little optimistic

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Why don't they make sausages with four flat sides rather than tubes? It'd make them a lot easier to cook..

Sorry, I'm not very focused today!

I've been trying out a rather interesting game called FTL: Faster Than Light.  I bought it on Steam for £6.99 because I like space stuff and I like strategy games, it had quite an interesting spin which makes it more of an adventure.  You basically have a ship to race across the galaxy, attempting to escape the rebel fleet following you.  On the way you encounter ships to blow up, merchants to trade with, alien races to meet, deserted space stations, all kinds of weird and wonderful things can be found.  It has a good combat system which is complex enough to be interesting but not too complicated, and a bit of system management (but again not too complex).

In case it isn't clear - I just pounced on a rebel transport and they smacked me good.

It's all good.

Until the below happens...

Game Over. This happens more often than you'd like.

I still need to get the hang of the game, I tend to push all of my money (scrap in FTL) into ship upgrades but whether I should be doing that or saving up for something like a teleporter or maybe a cloak I'm not sure.  The game is a lot of fun though, and the key thing is that you never know what you're going to warp jump into - every system is random so it could be a planet doing some scientific research, or a seriously tooled up alien cruiser that isn't actually looking for you, but if you don't play your cards right will happily dismantle your ship while the captain uses your bones as toothpicks.  All the time a rebel fleet is busy chasing you so you constantly being pushed to drive forward, to reach the final rebel flagship.

One of the best things, strangely, is that it's short enough.  As an example, I love Birth of the Federation. I love Space Empires 3.  I loved the original X-Com: Enemy Unknown.

But the problem with all these games is that (unless you're extremely bad at them) they last a long time.

You can spend days, if not weeks, conquering a galaxy and achieving ultimate victory.  Which can be fun, or can get boring - when you're twelve days into a game and you're again tweaking the exact outputs desired from Gamma Hydra III, a small planet in the middle of nowhere that to be frank will never have any impact on your overall empire, you can think to yourself "I'm supposed to be enjoying this.  I'll go watch the Big Bang Theory instead.".  Whilst in FTL, you're going to be dead in less than an hour.  I'm sorry - the game will be over in less than an hour.  There's about a 98% chance that it will end with your ship being in pieces scattered across the cosmos, but you never know, you might just get lucky and win.  And even if you don't win, you'll have enjoyed the ride.  It reminds me of "choose your adventure" books you used to be able to get, the most popular ones written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, founders of the Fighting Fantasy series, you almost always died when playing them but it was fun trying.

Anyway - check it out.  It's cheap and won all kinds of various gaming awards.  It's definitely better than a lot of "commercial" games.

Totally changing the subject...

Anyone who is a fan of Warhammer 40K fiction will be aware of Dan Abnett.  Whilst not saying that there are several very good Warhammer 40K authors (Graham McNeil, Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Sandy Mitchell immediately spring to mind, with honourable mentions given to Gav Thorpe and James Swallow) Dan is certainly one of the best (if not the best) author writing for Black Library.  I do recommend for anyone who reads any of Dan Abnett's work to check out a group of videos of him here, very very interesting.

Best of all I managed to pick up two of Dan's books from Oxfam today at lunch, so I've got a bit more time enjoying his works before I have to return to rereading "Know No Fear"