Wednesday 30 April 2008

Grand Theft Auto Hysteria

GTA is a game that inspires fear and dread in the hearts of all peace loving people everywhere. Apparently.

One of my favourite quotes from the hysterical reviews is related to the fact that in the game, it is possible to "sleep" with prostitutes in order to regain health. It's also possible to eat food in later versions of the game, but let's not dwell on that. The services of a prostitute of course cost money; given that one of the aims of the game is to amass money, this doesn't sit well with some players.
So, if you like, you can get out of the car after the deed is done, and mug said lady of the night. Having done so, you may well end up making more profit than you originally spent on her services (presumably, her pimp hasn't collected the takings from her last client).

Some smart person took this to the web as "Wow - you can have sex with a hooker then kill her for the money" - which of course sparked the fear of the game that we all know and love.

Let's set the record straight though - doing this is not necessary to complete the game. In fact, you can complete the game without ever visiting even one hooker, let alone killing one. It is, purely and simply, a possibility - a result of the sandbox style game-play that lets you do pretty much what you want, how you want.

I confess, I did it once (in the game, that is). Mainly out of curiosity to see if it was worth the effort - it wasn't. See, in GTA, killing people attracts the attention of the police, which you then have to shake off or bribe, costing time and money. All that for a few measly dollars?

So, rather than directing criticism at the game for allowing you to do this, why not ask the question "why do people then chose to do it?"

The answer, in most cases, is probably "To see if you can"... and the odds are, most people don't do it all that much - it's just not worth the effort. If one of my friends said to me "I killed 40 prostitutes in GTA last night" I'd be very concerned - it's not normal behaviour.

That's what it comes down to in the end. Normal people play games and react normally, abnormal people play games and react abnormally. The games don't make them that way.

Hmmm... here's an idea - why don't Rockstar add a psyche profile to the game?

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Words...

Pertinent... Pertinacious... you'd think they would have a vaguely similar meaning, wouldn't you?

per·ti·nent (pûr'tn-ənt) pronunciation
adj.

Having logical precise relevance to the matter at hand. See synonyms at relevant.

[Middle English, from Old French partenant, pertinent, from Latin pertinēns, pertinent-, present participle of pertinēre, to pertain. See pertain.]

per·ti·na·cious (pûr'tn-ā'shəs) pronunciation
adj.
  1. Holding tenaciously to a purpose, belief, opinion, or course of action.
  2. Stubbornly or perversely persistent. See synonyms at obstinate.

[From Latin pertināx, pertināc- : per-, per- + tenāx, tenacious (from tenēre, to hold).]

Typically though, I think they're functional opposites - the more someone insists on sticking to a point, the less relevant it usually is.

Don't you just hate the kind of people who will go on and on about why that's not a square peg - it's rectangular, or cuboid or something - when in actual fact, no-one cares about the square peg, because the hole we have is round!

Tuesdays suck.

Monday 21 April 2008

Fawlty Towers

A couple of nights ago, I re-watched the first episode of Fawlty Towers (IMDB) for the umpteenth time. Although I've watched the series enough for it to be part of my repertoire of humour (I leernt eet from a boook!), the last time I watched it was so long ago that it was like watching it for the first time again. Someone's been kind enough to create a transcript of the episode - have a look here if you've no idea what Fawlty Towers is all about (and bear with me, there's a point to this).

It struck me while I was watching the episode that while Basil Fawlty is undeniably a stuck up, odious pillock, at least half of his problems stem from simple bad time management and poor communication, rather than his more obvious personality faults.
If instead of jumping to the latest task presented to him (regardless of his current task), he took a moment to consider which should be resolved first, at least half of the problems would never have occurred. Of course, trying to suck up to an aristocrat doesn't help with that!

Time Management is a tricky subject for most people though. We all fail at it now and then - those days when, despite being busy from sun-up to sun-down, we seem to have achieved nothing at all. There's many ways to deal with huge lists of tasks, and they all start by telling you that none of the other methods work. For what it's worth, here's my way of dealing with it all:

Magnús Magnússon probably had the simplest starting point to offer - "I've started, so I'll finish". Once you've picked something up, don't put it down again until you've finished it. That applies to everything from tidying a room (don't hang a coat on the bannisters "for now" - spend the extra 30 seconds to put it away properly) to writing a long document (keep working on the same one until it's done).

That said, there are some exceptions to that rule, and for me, proper time management boils down to working out what is, and is not, a valid exception.
Emails: For me, reading emails is a valid and necessary exception. Some of the messages I get demand instant responses, others are a lower priority, but will only take a moment to reply to. Anything else gets flagged for "Follow Up", and moves to my task list for later.
Phone Calls: It's much harder to delay answering a phone until it's convenient! However, there are times when it's necessary to ignore the phone, or get someone else to answer it for you - and it's worth knowing when that is. You also must consider whether actions arising from a phone call are quick and/or important enough to break from your current task for.
Scheduled Tasks: This is the only other thing that should break the "I've started, so I'll finish" rule. If you plan to do something at a particular time - whether it's eat lunch, watch a TV program, or go to a meeting - you should do your best to do it then, even if you're right in the middle of something else (after all, if you scheduled it for a particular time, there must have been a reason for that, right?)

As a rule of thumb, only tasks with a much higher priority are worth breaking your current task for, unless it's going to take a very small amount of time. For me, that small amount of time is about 90 seconds - if it's going to take longer than that, I will forget what I was doing and end up wasting time.


The King of Hearts provides the other component to my time management strategy - "Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end; then stop."
To me, that's all that needs saying - it doesn't really matter whether you order your tasks by priority, length or enjoyability; just start with the first one, and keep going until they're all done. Personally, I sort by priority and length - a very quick, low priority task will often get done first, simply so I can reduce the list as fast as possible, but longer running, lower priority tasks will take second place to any high priority task.

In the end though, as long as it all gets done, any method will do. Just remember, when it comes to other people, don't blame on stupidity or laziness what can be easily explained by simple bad planning.

Edit (Tuesday): It seems I missed the funny at some point yesterday - I honestly meant to make this one a funny post, but it strayed into a lecture on Time Management. Weird what happens when you're low on caffeine!

This should make up for it:

A farmer is herding his sheep across a road, when a fancy sports car pulls up and stops beside him. The driver gets out, looks at the sheep crossing the road, and walks over to the farmer.
"I bet," says the sports car driver, "I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have, without leaving this spot right here."
"No chance," says the Farmer - "Half of them are still behind that hill."
"Let's make it sporting then" responds the driver "If I get it right, I keep one of your sheep; if I'm wrong, you can have my car"

This is too good an offer for the Farmer to refuse, so he accepts the bet, and watches as the driver of the sports car opens up his laptop, links up his satellite phone, and starts pulling information off the internet. After a couple of minutes, he announces "Done! You have one hundred and fifty two sheep - and three of them are still pregnant."

The farmer's amazed - he'd been hoping to use that extra three to weasel out of the debt, but he concedes and allows the driver to pick out any sheep he likes. The driver looks around, then selects a small black one that looks a little more energetic than the others, and prepares to leave.

"Wait" cries the farmer "Double or nothing - if I can guess your day job, you'll return that, otherwise you can have another?" "Okay, that sounds fair" says the driver...

"Right... well.... clearly, you're a consultant" says the Farmer. "You're right," answers the driver, "but how did you know?"

"Simple - you showed up un-requested, told me something I already knew, and charged me for the privilege. Not only that, but you know nothing about my business... Now give me back my sheep-dog!"

Sunday 6 April 2008

Hamster Sitting

I'm hamster sitting this week. My house-mates have gone away, leaving me in charge of the Rodent. I used to have a hamster of my own when I was younger, so this shouldn't really faze me - except this Rodent is a serious escape artiste. My own hamster escaped twice in all the time I owned her... Rodent has escaped twice in the last week!

Fortunately, the house isn't huge, and is very tidy right now, so she's easy to track down. Helpfully, she rather likes the smell of urine (her own, by preference, but any will do) so she's usually tracked down to the nearest bathroom.

What I want to know though, is why do hamster cage doors open outwards? The poor thing probably wasn't even trying to escape - she's just climbing around the walls of her house, puts some weight on this random sticking out bit (the latch), and suddenly, the door's swinging open with her on it!

I nearly got a repeat performance of this very trick just after returning her to her house... totally unintentionally, she managed to push the latch of the door back just enough to start the door opening!

Seriously... why do they open outwards?