On the apparent launch of two ballistic missiles in the Mediterranean area.
3rd Sept 2013
Here's how it went on the information I saw go by, in the order it appeared:
Launches detected by Russia, identify two missile launches from mid to East Med area.
A bit of silence.
Reports of gas pipeline in Syria destroyed in explosion (story later vanishes).
First story appears that this is a US test, along with rumour that it was an accidental launch.
Pause
Israel report no record of any missile launches.
Pause
France reports no knowledge of missile launches.
Then almost together:
Sky News reports that it was a US test launch.
Russia speculates that they may be weather testing related launches.
Much longer pause...
Israel claims it was a joint exercise with the US to test missile defence systems.
I missed the point where the US claimed it had no knowledge of missile launches, I'm only seeing that come in now in retrospect, so don't know where that would be on the time line.
But hang on here...
Israel / US launches missiles in the Mediterranean area, apparently at Syria (from Russia's initial analysis of the flight paths) .. with absolutely no press / media preparations? Nothing at all? Hours passed between launch detection news and the final Israel / US story appearing. Result? I don't believe the official story on this one either.
Something here stinks.
As does virtually all the information concerning Syria at the moment.
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
3 Sept 2013
26 Aug 2013
Syria
It won't fit on twitter, and I don't like monologuing so much on there, so...
It's not about Assad.
The aim of any surgical strike (if it happens) on Syria, will be to destroy weapons that Israel believe to be threatening to themselves whether in the hands of Assad OR whoever might gain power following Assad's removal.
This explains in part the US & allies readiness to strike. They really don't intend to get dragged in to an Iraq war scenario here. It's just destroy the weapons then leave Syria to fight it out again.
But it raises some issues:
Firstly Israel must not only believe that it's strikes on Syria earlier this year were unsuccessful or limited in scope so a risk still remains. That or Russia has recently supplied Syria with more advanced weapons that Israel can't confidently deal with.
Next that it has reached a point where Israel doesn't believe it's safe for them to strike again to remove this threat as they have done in the past. Far safer for Israel to get America & chums to do it for them to avoid direct retaliation.
Next up? That Russia has knowingly provided more advanced weapon capabilities to Syria presumably in response to Saudi and US constantly funding the rebels for dubious reasons.
So if you stand back and take a look at it, it's once again super powers that be using another country as the playground of political gain with messy results.
This time however, there are some problems. The Syrian military has already said it would view an act of aggression by the US as an attack directed by Israel and would fire on Israel in retaliation. Bluff? Bit of a gamble? Israel / US counting on the fact they can neutralise the entire Syrian threat to Israel in one strike? Well ... If Syria does respond with a successful strike on Israel, all hell will break lose.
Now .. it's at this point I get a bit worried.
In the UK in recent days there's been a dramatic up turn in immigration control stopping and "taking away for interview" any ethnic minorities they can scoop up off the streets. Today it was Victoria station in London, and Oxford that I heard of. Want to minimise the risk of terrorism in response from within? Strike first and round up all you can?
Tenacious perhaps. But then there's the build up of military planes in Cyprus today. Easily the preferred point for US attack on Syria ... But ...
Look back up at the top there? We started this ramble on the assumption the original strike was simply to remove arms that Israel regards as a threat. Now all of a sudden, we're looking at contingency plans going in to place for a prolonged engagement and presumably a successful retaliation from Syria against Israel. If that does happen and it is being planned for as a side effect of the initial strike? Then the term "All hell will break lose" is very carefully chosen.
It's not about Assad.
The aim of any surgical strike (if it happens) on Syria, will be to destroy weapons that Israel believe to be threatening to themselves whether in the hands of Assad OR whoever might gain power following Assad's removal.
This explains in part the US & allies readiness to strike. They really don't intend to get dragged in to an Iraq war scenario here. It's just destroy the weapons then leave Syria to fight it out again.
But it raises some issues:
Firstly Israel must not only believe that it's strikes on Syria earlier this year were unsuccessful or limited in scope so a risk still remains. That or Russia has recently supplied Syria with more advanced weapons that Israel can't confidently deal with.
Next that it has reached a point where Israel doesn't believe it's safe for them to strike again to remove this threat as they have done in the past. Far safer for Israel to get America & chums to do it for them to avoid direct retaliation.
Next up? That Russia has knowingly provided more advanced weapon capabilities to Syria presumably in response to Saudi and US constantly funding the rebels for dubious reasons.
So if you stand back and take a look at it, it's once again super powers that be using another country as the playground of political gain with messy results.
This time however, there are some problems. The Syrian military has already said it would view an act of aggression by the US as an attack directed by Israel and would fire on Israel in retaliation. Bluff? Bit of a gamble? Israel / US counting on the fact they can neutralise the entire Syrian threat to Israel in one strike? Well ... If Syria does respond with a successful strike on Israel, all hell will break lose.
Now .. it's at this point I get a bit worried.
In the UK in recent days there's been a dramatic up turn in immigration control stopping and "taking away for interview" any ethnic minorities they can scoop up off the streets. Today it was Victoria station in London, and Oxford that I heard of. Want to minimise the risk of terrorism in response from within? Strike first and round up all you can?
Tenacious perhaps. But then there's the build up of military planes in Cyprus today. Easily the preferred point for US attack on Syria ... But ...
Look back up at the top there? We started this ramble on the assumption the original strike was simply to remove arms that Israel regards as a threat. Now all of a sudden, we're looking at contingency plans going in to place for a prolonged engagement and presumably a successful retaliation from Syria against Israel. If that does happen and it is being planned for as a side effect of the initial strike? Then the term "All hell will break lose" is very carefully chosen.
30 Jul 2013
Yet Another Game Review...
Sorry guys & gals.
I'm making a real effort not to spend my entire life bound up with the frustrations of injustice and petty run downs. So I still find the time to play games.
Most of the time, I'm even frustrated in that simple pursuit, but recently, I chanced some time with "Kerbal Space Program". And this one is something of a gem. Well a gem for anyone who ever dreamt of launching a rocket anyway.
It's a game in development, currently only with a sandbox style approach, and actually? That's moar than enough to have managed to give me some of the biggest laughs from a computer game for a long long time. It's self challenging. You don't need a plot. It's more ... well ... what can I do with this next?
The first challenge is simply building your own rocket and getting something, or some hapless Kerbal in to space. The Kerbal's and running humour in item descriptions work well. Your budding astronauts don't have a huge splay of skills and experience. They have bravery and stupidity. I'm not sure which serves them best as I accidentally curse them to a fiery death or life in a perpetual orbit I can't rescue them from, but the stupid grin or freaked out "ARGH!" on their faces has finally persuaded me to stop laughing snot bubbles out of my nose and send more unmanned test launches instead.
The first challenge is simply to build your own rocket and launch something or someone in to space. It's ... well ... it should be easy. Actually it's a nice little first lesson in rocket design, staging and structure. When you eventually manage it, it's either a lesson in ... ohhhh that's that the parachute's are for! Or ... Yeah ... it's relatively easy to launch something in to a meaningless orbit round the sun.
And that's where it starts to really shine beyond the absurd hilarity of the initial rocket designs going wrong in all kinds of unimaginable ways. No really. Watching your own "That's my best idea yet!" design destroy itself in new and original ways just doesn't seem to get old. The physics engine in this bit of code is just fantastic. So yes, sometimes things don't place where you want them, and sometimes it's best to just save it, reload it and .. ta-da! It works more like it did before! But overall, glitches aside (it's still in development), physics are the cruel jester as you try to wrestle with gravity again and again.
Anyway. Having escaped the upper atmosphere, putting something in to stable orbit around your own planet becomes the next challenge. This is where you begin to learn about apoapsis and periapsis happens. In other words .. yeah .. actually? How do you chuck something in to orbit and adjust the orbit?
Then it only expands beautifully. Kerbal's own moon "mun" is a nice target, as is the insanely difficult challenge of building your own orbiting space station. The challenges of sending your homebrew payload across gravity wells of other planets and moons begin to beckon.
It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Raw around the edges. Yes you can find fault with part placement. Yes sometimes that previously good design needs a retouch on the launch pad, but somehow even those glitches add to the Kerbal derp humour level as you try to figure out work arounds.
For anyone who ever dreamed of being an astronaut or launching a rocket. This is one fantastic, time absorbing, oh so simple, oh so fun and yet oh so incredibly complicated bit of fun.
Tips
Take it small steps. Each challenge you set yourself and learn from helps a lot when you reach for the next milestone. Figure out the basics of staging and launching, then simple orbit, then adjusting orbit. Add in how to get your derpy Kerbal home again, and before long you've spent hours laughing like a loon and got a pretty good grip on what you can cope with.
The orbital view will blow your mind to begin with. What the hell are all these little symbols when I add an adjustment waypoint?!?! Start simple. The basic tutorials are minimal but put you in the right direction. When you do understand the challenges of orbital flight, the little symbols all suddenly begin to make sense. When that happens you suddenly find the orbital view is incredibly clever for conveying what you want to do next.
Back on the orbital view. If you've messed up a target flight path and can't get a delete X on it, just grab the inner circle and drag it to one side. When it turns red, let go and it's gone. Now try again derp head! What is this? Rocket science?
And...
What can I say? It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Physics become the challenge. What you want to achieve next becomes the aim. Even with it's basic graphics, the satisfaction of your first stable Kerbal orbit is fantastic. Watch the sun rise in true NASA style, launched from your own designed rocket. Then stretch it to managing a near miss with the Mun, then your first stable orbit of a nearby body, and eventually, your first non Kerbal landing. Then ... you begin to wonder ... which planet is easiest to get to next? Can I get a Kerbal to land and plant a flag on the Mun and then get them home again?
The game expands itself. It's beautifully done. Right down to your own space debris kicking you in the ass from time to time.
Don't pirate this one. If you do? Then it taught you that these guys deserve the payout. Now go buy it and enjoy the updates.
I've not enjoyed a game this much since discovering Grand Theft Auto III back in 2002. So this is my once in a decade "Oh hell yes that's goood!" game!
I'm making a real effort not to spend my entire life bound up with the frustrations of injustice and petty run downs. So I still find the time to play games.
Most of the time, I'm even frustrated in that simple pursuit, but recently, I chanced some time with "Kerbal Space Program". And this one is something of a gem. Well a gem for anyone who ever dreamt of launching a rocket anyway.
It's a game in development, currently only with a sandbox style approach, and actually? That's moar than enough to have managed to give me some of the biggest laughs from a computer game for a long long time. It's self challenging. You don't need a plot. It's more ... well ... what can I do with this next?
The first challenge is simply building your own rocket and getting something, or some hapless Kerbal in to space. The Kerbal's and running humour in item descriptions work well. Your budding astronauts don't have a huge splay of skills and experience. They have bravery and stupidity. I'm not sure which serves them best as I accidentally curse them to a fiery death or life in a perpetual orbit I can't rescue them from, but the stupid grin or freaked out "ARGH!" on their faces has finally persuaded me to stop laughing snot bubbles out of my nose and send more unmanned test launches instead.
The first challenge is simply to build your own rocket and launch something or someone in to space. It's ... well ... it should be easy. Actually it's a nice little first lesson in rocket design, staging and structure. When you eventually manage it, it's either a lesson in ... ohhhh that's that the parachute's are for! Or ... Yeah ... it's relatively easy to launch something in to a meaningless orbit round the sun.
And that's where it starts to really shine beyond the absurd hilarity of the initial rocket designs going wrong in all kinds of unimaginable ways. No really. Watching your own "That's my best idea yet!" design destroy itself in new and original ways just doesn't seem to get old. The physics engine in this bit of code is just fantastic. So yes, sometimes things don't place where you want them, and sometimes it's best to just save it, reload it and .. ta-da! It works more like it did before! But overall, glitches aside (it's still in development), physics are the cruel jester as you try to wrestle with gravity again and again.
Anyway. Having escaped the upper atmosphere, putting something in to stable orbit around your own planet becomes the next challenge. This is where you begin to learn about apoapsis and periapsis happens. In other words .. yeah .. actually? How do you chuck something in to orbit and adjust the orbit?
Then it only expands beautifully. Kerbal's own moon "mun" is a nice target, as is the insanely difficult challenge of building your own orbiting space station. The challenges of sending your homebrew payload across gravity wells of other planets and moons begin to beckon.
It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Raw around the edges. Yes you can find fault with part placement. Yes sometimes that previously good design needs a retouch on the launch pad, but somehow even those glitches add to the Kerbal derp humour level as you try to figure out work arounds.
For anyone who ever dreamed of being an astronaut or launching a rocket. This is one fantastic, time absorbing, oh so simple, oh so fun and yet oh so incredibly complicated bit of fun.
Tips
Take it small steps. Each challenge you set yourself and learn from helps a lot when you reach for the next milestone. Figure out the basics of staging and launching, then simple orbit, then adjusting orbit. Add in how to get your derpy Kerbal home again, and before long you've spent hours laughing like a loon and got a pretty good grip on what you can cope with.
The orbital view will blow your mind to begin with. What the hell are all these little symbols when I add an adjustment waypoint?!?! Start simple. The basic tutorials are minimal but put you in the right direction. When you do understand the challenges of orbital flight, the little symbols all suddenly begin to make sense. When that happens you suddenly find the orbital view is incredibly clever for conveying what you want to do next.
Back on the orbital view. If you've messed up a target flight path and can't get a delete X on it, just grab the inner circle and drag it to one side. When it turns red, let go and it's gone. Now try again derp head! What is this? Rocket science?
And...
What can I say? It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Physics become the challenge. What you want to achieve next becomes the aim. Even with it's basic graphics, the satisfaction of your first stable Kerbal orbit is fantastic. Watch the sun rise in true NASA style, launched from your own designed rocket. Then stretch it to managing a near miss with the Mun, then your first stable orbit of a nearby body, and eventually, your first non Kerbal landing. Then ... you begin to wonder ... which planet is easiest to get to next? Can I get a Kerbal to land and plant a flag on the Mun and then get them home again?
The game expands itself. It's beautifully done. Right down to your own space debris kicking you in the ass from time to time.
Don't pirate this one. If you do? Then it taught you that these guys deserve the payout. Now go buy it and enjoy the updates.
I've not enjoyed a game this much since discovering Grand Theft Auto III back in 2002. So this is my once in a decade "Oh hell yes that's goood!" game!
13 Mar 2013
Diversion
Yeah enough thinky stuff.
Game review time!
This thing called DayZ came to my attention.
It's utterly geek friendly. By that I mean a bit of tech knowledge may help even before you launch it.
So what the hell is it?
It's a fairly brutal multi-player game. You're a "survivor" with incredibly basic equipment (depends on the server you log on to, but the standard issue is basic). You're in a world full of zombies. You need food, drink, warmth, and you need to survive, so you need bandages and weapons.
Why am I bothering to write about it? Well it's a "mod" a modification of a game called Arma 2. Arma 2 is a strange game in itself, aiming to be a very realistic modern military simulator. It manages on a lot points. A single bullet will kill you, pretty much instantly. Your storage space is based on your pockets, tool-belt and backpack. It's very limited. You can catch infections, or more rapidly just bleed to death if you can't bandage yourself up fast enough. Pain makes your vision blur and shake. Broken bones stop you moving. Blood loss slowly blurs the entire world in to grey as the pain pounds away. You can forget "I've got 40,000 hit points and a codpiece of non-damage" here.
There's your feel of the game. Now back to the tech bit. It's geek heaven. You can't even run it with just Arma 2 installed. You need a whole mission pack of extras to bolt on to Arma 2 first. Even then, you're best off downloading a further add on called "DayZ Commander" to browse the 6,000+ listed servers and find one right for you, and then download even more maps and variations to play. Once you're in the game the tech assault doesn't end. This isn't your standard GUI. It's not going to hold your hand and tell you what this does to that. It feels like the entire keyboard is configured to do something weird with any key at all, and what you do with your mouse to get things to happen is perplexing to begin with. Think steep learning curve. It makes sense once you get the hang of it, but initially it's a case of "I have no idea how to do anything".
It's worth adding in here that the graphics are up there in the "really very good" category. If anything it relies on blur filters and light contrasts a fair bit, but actually that doesn't harm it at all, and blends with the visual damage from bleeding and throbbing pain. At times it's almost artistic, but it's always very easy to feel you are there. The quality of daylight changes, night time is nicely gothic, the rain really does get you down, and you can see the sun glare slowly fade as you emerge from cover in to bright sunlight again. Lets just say that it's immersive enough. You can moan that you can't get in to more buildings, but that's about it. They still look nice from outside.
So what some genius did was plonk that sort of simulation, in to zombie apocalypse land. The result is fairly intense! To give you an idea, apparently the average life span of a "survivor" is slightly over one hour.
But ... around about your 5th or 6th life time in DayZ, you start to get a bit of a grip on how to survive, (the lessons are fairly brutal), and here's why it has a bit of a cult status. It's not actually the zombies that are the most dangerous things in DayZ. It's the other players. Here the game pings in to a new kind of multi-player environment. There is no dungeon to team up on. You can either fight together or against each other. The rewards for taking down a well equipped player are tempting. You can spend hours or even days scavenging for the same results. On the other hand, your survival rate as a duo at least are hugely enhanced. Blood transfusions can only be made by another player, and that can be a life line. Mentally though, you're still thinking it's another mouth to feed and they better pull some weight. There's not even any moral compass added by the game designers here. This is it. You're a survivor in a world full of zombies, there are other people around sometimes, how do you deal with it?
The whole basic need vs greed morality debate suddenly hits you right between the eyes. How nice are you actually? Given you have to survive in a world full of zombies. How much do you trust other people? Suddenly that "Where are you? Let's meet up." in conversation isn't as simple as it looked.
To add to that mental pressure, this is a game with one life. You start a game, you can log out and back in on the same character with the same equipment right back where you logged out ... until you die. Then you have to start again from zero. That doesn't sound so bad if you're only surviving an hour or so anyway. It becomes a major mental factor when you've managed to survive for a week.
I'm not sure I've managed to get it across in this little review, but this is one hell of a brutal strange little sub-genre of game in all kinds of ways. It seems to bring out the best and worst in people.
So there's your basic review. Insanely hard to get in to. But actually .. something quite special if you ever do. A total departure from immortal, hand holding, user friendly, "which guild are you in?" online games.
But wait up .. something else I noticed. I know many players just treat DayZ like any other game. But I noticed something that reminded me of William Gibson going on. I really do need to be in the right frame of mind to log in to DayZ. It grows when you are in the game. You pause, gather yourself and then plan ahead the next scavenge, open the doors and cautiously look around. Time to move on again... It's the game that finally has me "jacked" in to it. From log on to log out, I'm in DayZ, and that little realisation, is why I bothered to write this blog post.
Game review time!
This thing called DayZ came to my attention.
It's utterly geek friendly. By that I mean a bit of tech knowledge may help even before you launch it.
So what the hell is it?
It's a fairly brutal multi-player game. You're a "survivor" with incredibly basic equipment (depends on the server you log on to, but the standard issue is basic). You're in a world full of zombies. You need food, drink, warmth, and you need to survive, so you need bandages and weapons.
Why am I bothering to write about it? Well it's a "mod" a modification of a game called Arma 2. Arma 2 is a strange game in itself, aiming to be a very realistic modern military simulator. It manages on a lot points. A single bullet will kill you, pretty much instantly. Your storage space is based on your pockets, tool-belt and backpack. It's very limited. You can catch infections, or more rapidly just bleed to death if you can't bandage yourself up fast enough. Pain makes your vision blur and shake. Broken bones stop you moving. Blood loss slowly blurs the entire world in to grey as the pain pounds away. You can forget "I've got 40,000 hit points and a codpiece of non-damage" here.
There's your feel of the game. Now back to the tech bit. It's geek heaven. You can't even run it with just Arma 2 installed. You need a whole mission pack of extras to bolt on to Arma 2 first. Even then, you're best off downloading a further add on called "DayZ Commander" to browse the 6,000+ listed servers and find one right for you, and then download even more maps and variations to play. Once you're in the game the tech assault doesn't end. This isn't your standard GUI. It's not going to hold your hand and tell you what this does to that. It feels like the entire keyboard is configured to do something weird with any key at all, and what you do with your mouse to get things to happen is perplexing to begin with. Think steep learning curve. It makes sense once you get the hang of it, but initially it's a case of "I have no idea how to do anything".
It's worth adding in here that the graphics are up there in the "really very good" category. If anything it relies on blur filters and light contrasts a fair bit, but actually that doesn't harm it at all, and blends with the visual damage from bleeding and throbbing pain. At times it's almost artistic, but it's always very easy to feel you are there. The quality of daylight changes, night time is nicely gothic, the rain really does get you down, and you can see the sun glare slowly fade as you emerge from cover in to bright sunlight again. Lets just say that it's immersive enough. You can moan that you can't get in to more buildings, but that's about it. They still look nice from outside.
So what some genius did was plonk that sort of simulation, in to zombie apocalypse land. The result is fairly intense! To give you an idea, apparently the average life span of a "survivor" is slightly over one hour.
But ... around about your 5th or 6th life time in DayZ, you start to get a bit of a grip on how to survive, (the lessons are fairly brutal), and here's why it has a bit of a cult status. It's not actually the zombies that are the most dangerous things in DayZ. It's the other players. Here the game pings in to a new kind of multi-player environment. There is no dungeon to team up on. You can either fight together or against each other. The rewards for taking down a well equipped player are tempting. You can spend hours or even days scavenging for the same results. On the other hand, your survival rate as a duo at least are hugely enhanced. Blood transfusions can only be made by another player, and that can be a life line. Mentally though, you're still thinking it's another mouth to feed and they better pull some weight. There's not even any moral compass added by the game designers here. This is it. You're a survivor in a world full of zombies, there are other people around sometimes, how do you deal with it?
The whole basic need vs greed morality debate suddenly hits you right between the eyes. How nice are you actually? Given you have to survive in a world full of zombies. How much do you trust other people? Suddenly that "Where are you? Let's meet up." in conversation isn't as simple as it looked.
To add to that mental pressure, this is a game with one life. You start a game, you can log out and back in on the same character with the same equipment right back where you logged out ... until you die. Then you have to start again from zero. That doesn't sound so bad if you're only surviving an hour or so anyway. It becomes a major mental factor when you've managed to survive for a week.
I'm not sure I've managed to get it across in this little review, but this is one hell of a brutal strange little sub-genre of game in all kinds of ways. It seems to bring out the best and worst in people.
So there's your basic review. Insanely hard to get in to. But actually .. something quite special if you ever do. A total departure from immortal, hand holding, user friendly, "which guild are you in?" online games.
But wait up .. something else I noticed. I know many players just treat DayZ like any other game. But I noticed something that reminded me of William Gibson going on. I really do need to be in the right frame of mind to log in to DayZ. It grows when you are in the game. You pause, gather yourself and then plan ahead the next scavenge, open the doors and cautiously look around. Time to move on again... It's the game that finally has me "jacked" in to it. From log on to log out, I'm in DayZ, and that little realisation, is why I bothered to write this blog post.
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