Things one notices living in Adler

These days we're in St. Petersburg, visiting relatives and the city. The place is very nice, and so far we're enjoying the trip.

This has also allowed us to see another part of Russia, a big city this time. After seeing these two sides of the country, one can start knowing what may be usual and what is just happening in Adler (or maybe in little towns in general).

First thing, i already commented it, but in Russia, looks are very important. There is clearly a lot of time and efford dedicated to it. Our apartment looks like an old palace, and other apartments in the same price range had similar styles. If they didnt resemble a palace, they resembled an executive secret apartment for lovers and parties. Practicality is ignored when there's money, and the important thing is to look impressive. More normal apartments look like anywhere else, practical and cozy.

The importance of looks also applies to women (not so much to men). Its not the same for all of them, but lots of women wear very high heels, little dresses, make up and complex hairstyles, etc. For office work it may not bother, but we were rather surprised by a hairdresser with 10cm heels, which we cannot understand how did not hurt her enough to change to slippers after the first client.

We've been told by Russian women that they're not really integrated yet at work, and people usually treat them as mere decoration in worplaces, so i guess that's part of the reason...

We can confirm that driving is rather aggressive everywhere, but i believe Adler has proven to be much worse than a big city. In here traffic seems more normal. In Adler it was easier to see people burning tires in preparation to start moving their cars at high speeds...to stop 5 meters later and let people cross the street.

There is a lot of soviet-made blocks. In Adler it was harder to see this type of building, but i've seen the same type of neighborhood in Vilnius. These buildings look in bad shape from the outside, and they seem to have been made from small cubes. You can still see the lines of union quite clearly in the outside. Inside the apartments, they can be very nice. However, any public part (elevator, stairs) are usually not in good shape. The buildings are usually tall, 15 floors or more. They are separated from one another with wide streets that serve as parking spots for the cars of the people living in them.

There is lots of poverty. Sometimes not very evident, but still there. Lots of little cheap shops, lots of shady-looking markets, lots of people with clearly low-qualified jobs. These same people seem to have had no access to good educations (lots of low-level workers here do very, VERY stupid things, specially in construction).  Lots of these workers wear leather black jackets, dusty and old. Feels like some unofficial uniform sometimes. Lots of these people follow a curious clothes-conservation system. In order to avoid damage when cleaning clothes, they don't clean them. The result is....not good. In Adler it was much more noticeable, thanks to all the workers brought for the olympics, but in here we've also noticed cases like this around the city.

On the other hand, there are lots of luxury shops of one kind or another. Its easy to find jewelry shops, expensive restaurants, bosco shops (which charge a lot for any simple sports clothes), electronics, etc. You can also see lots of clients of these shops, and it seems lots of people also have a lot of money. There are lots of very expensive cars in the streets (specially in Adler, considering the total population). It seems that there is little middle class in here, just lots of lower and upper class.

There's lots of flower shops, that seem to be doing well. It's common to give flowers for lots of dates and reasons after all...

There's lots of dust in the streets. As mentioned, maybe as part of the socialist years, people pay lots of attention to personal possessions. Public things are more abandoned, and less clean. The subways in St. Petersburg are impressive, and the center is very clean. However, less turistic spots, or turistic for russians only, are more abandoned in general (Adler is very dusty).

St. Petersburg is a normal city, like Vilnius or London. Adler, in comparission, is more like the result of providing shops and services for a few hotels and resorts that happened to be there. These services needed their own houses, and more houses were build around them. It doesnt have a city feeling, or a town feeling, it's more like something that spontaneously grew, and now they're trying to adapt it so it works as a town.

Adler has a weird weather. In general, it is warm and nice, while having rainy days, more than in Spain (which is normal). However, it can be VERY windy. This winter, there were 2 days when we had strong warm winds. Walking in the street felt like being under a giant hairdrier. Temperatures went from 10 to 30 degrees, and the wind was strong enough that one of the dish antennas that we have in our apartment (and we don't use) got ripped off from its metallic hanging place. That was an extreme case, but other times it has been windy enough to make it hard to close windows.

And well, thats all for the moment, just some impressions and things we've noticed around here...

Protests and unemployment

Time for another small rant about things in Spain.

I try to follow the news in Spanish newspapers, and things are, as usual, bad. The latest report, from today, is saying that around 6.2 million people are currently unemployed in Spain. From the active population (people searching for a job or working), that represents around 27%.

This is retarded. I mean, the government is showing that they cannot do shit. The old government was exactly the same. Aleix Saló explained the problem very well in his last video, but it's still surprising how stupid and useless they can be.

Spain needs to make it easier to create companies and to make contracts. Last reforms only made it easier to fire people. Again, this is a faulty logic. The idea is that companies that do bad could fire more people so they get better. The problem is that said companies usually depend on people buying their stuff. That same people who do not have jobs any more. Ergo, you're just making the problem worse, not better.

Latest reports are also showing that the whole idea being followed against the crisis (to reduce public debt) does not work, and it was based in faulty studies. An important economist is explaining something quite evident and basic: countries in crisis have big debts because of the crisis, not the other way around. Things will not get worse just because your country has debt.  It's because things are getting worse that companies are closing, work-related taxes are not paid and the country has less money overall, thus increasing the debt.

Anyway, I'd like to talk about a form of protest that is lately happening in Spain, the "Escrache". This type of protest consists on bringing the protest to the house of the persons responsible for the problems. So, instead of making a demonstration in some central square, you do it in front of a member of parliament, explaining that their ideas are doing bad stuff, and trying to convince them to change their opinion and talk about it.

The main organizers of this type of protest are the people affected by the lack of consumer protection that Spain has regarding mortgages. The European union has already said that the Spanish legislation regarding mortgages is unfair and not compatible with European law. The current government has ignored this and hundreds of people are kicked out of their houses daily.

These people have started to organise themselves, to prevent police from removing them from their houses, and they have presented to the parliament a petition to eliminate the debt after giving the house. Basically, with Spanish laws, it's not enough with being kicked out, you still need to pay whatever you owe to the bank, minus the house price. These people are saying to modify that, so at least, if you give the house, your debt is cancelled. This is already done in other countries, but not in Spain. Besides, in Spain the bank has all the rights when executing these agreements, and the consumers have almost none.

These people presented this idea to parliament, and the ruling party has ignored it completely. So, these people have started going to the houses of the parliament members, to tell them and their families, in person, that not having a house is a big problem and to reconsider their vote.

The ruling parties (several of them) has started to scream that this is an outrage, this is antidemocratic, it's pure terrorism, and things like that. They have concentrated attacks towards Ada Colau, a spokesperson for the affected, as if she's their leader or something  when she's  only a spokesperson. They're following the traditional attacks against other parties, in a situation that doesn't fit, and it's confusing them, making them even more moronic.

This "Escrache" brings in me opposed feelings. They have a point when they say it's not very democratic. After all, if 100 people protesting in front of your home could change the opinion of a government, it would not seem fair. It's the majority of people the ones who would be able to change your opinion, not a few that  just happen to know where you live and go there to protest. They are free to do so, but if they could change politics like that, it could be abused. It should also be pointed out that they have been very pacific so far, and therefore considering them violent or "terrorism" is stupid.

However, this would be true in a true democracy, where the government actually tries to check what people want (with polls and referendums and votes), and tries to correct their policies to match the opinion of the majority of the population. Spain is not like that at all. In the newspapers it has been proved already that the current government accepted more money than what's legal from big companies, specially banks. The same banks that are rescued, protected, and have special laws that defend them and strip their customers of rights. These payments have been distributed among the leaders of the ruling party, and have not been declared. They are clearly illegal, and represent the fact that big companies are asking for favours to the government, which does what the big companies tell them. Last government probably did the same, it's just the evidence has not surfaced yet.

In this situation, where the big companies, a minority, is actually controlling the government, I think Escraches are the only possible protest. When you live in a dictatorship, the ethical thing to do is to overthrown the dictator. You cannot expect to do it nicely and legally, since the laws are imposed by unethical bastards who need to be kicked out.

If you are ruling only for your rich friends, dictator style, you need to be pointed out in the street and be told you're a bastard. And if (or when) somebody gets too tired of living in misery and poverty because of you and instead of killing themselves they just shoot you in the face, you will have it coming.....

Mansions of Madness

I don't remember if I've mention it before, but we really love tabletop games. We love making meetings where we can play them in group, and we have a nice selection of them that we have moved already a couple of times around the world, when changing houses.

I believe that around one year ago, for christmas, we got as a present this big game, Mansions of Madness. The game is set up in H.P.Lovecraft world, with cults, monsters from other dimensions, elder gods and stuff like that.

We already had one game from the same universe, Arkham Horror. We really like that game, its hard and compelling. It doesnt have any exploration component, but the feeling is similar to a Survival Horror, managing your resources and always having some shortage. There is lots of combinations in the game, and a certain randomness, but it adds to the excitement, and you get really involved while playing.

Mansions of Madness is different, but with a similar feeling. For starters, one of the players is the bad guy. The game is based on fixed scenarios, that allow several combinations, but they are more limited. Before the start, the bad guy needs to prepare everything according to that scenario.

The combat is much more random, based on cards, the attacked monster and the weapon used. In general, the game tries to set up everything as an ongoing story, even random events. All the cards have some little story, and after some turns special cards that advance the story are revealed.

The game has little figures representing the players and the monsters, and each player and monster has different stats and skills. The players need to explore the map, find clues towards their objective, and kill monsters. The "evil" player needs to command monsters and play nasty cards against the players, while trying to complete their "evil" objective.

The game sounds and looks awesome. However, it has problems. We've played it twice, and both times the same problems became apparent.

The first problem is that only one player explores. Most clues are protected by some key, and most keys are part of former clues. Therefore, the first player who gets the first key will be the only one finding all the clues (unless they drop one of the keys, which is a waste of time if done voluntarily). The other players are left with the task of killing monsters...which is not boring, but there may be moments with no monsters, and in general it feels as if you're not part of the important things in the game.

The second problem is that the "evil" player is overpowered. Its really easy to play game-breaking bad cards, which makes things less interesting. Cards, seems to me, should be more balanced.

The last problem, which seems to me the worst, is that there is no mistery, except in one scenario. You can find what you need to do by simply visiting all rooms, and just using the keys in the order they're found. The game advertises itself as a mistery, but most of the time you're just dragging the players from one side of the map to the other, with no possible thinking.

I believe that the game has a lot of potential. It has really great ideas, and the mechanics are really good and innovative, but the scenarios need to be improved. Mistery should be added, and there should be more posibilities and actions to take.

I believe that adjusting the rules and creating some scenario with more story parts and a bigger range of options can make this game a great one. However, i haven't made these changes yet, and the game as it is now feels like something is lacking...

Liberal Policies

There is a new video from Aleix Saló, Europesadilla. I'm sorry, this time I could not find English subtitles yet. The video, as always, explains the situation in Spain in a funny but direct way, while showing that we're totally and utterly screwed unless we kick some current leaders and their friends out of the power.

In the video, they explain two economic and politic ideas that are currently clashing in the democratic (or "democratic", like Spain) countries around the world. I thought I'd made a rant about these ideas, specially regarding the public services...

At heart, both ideas want to make life easier for everybody. The idea towards socialism defends that government has to control companies, offer services, give money support and redistribute wealth, so people have jobs and money and are not exploited. The liberal idea says that this control and redistribution makes it harder for companies to prosper, and without companies people will not have jobs and will not have wealth.With more freedom, companies thrive and hire more people, and share this wealth with their employees, redistributing it. It also defends that public services are inefficient, because they don't have as an objective to create wealth. All this money lost in the public services makes wealth to be lost for no reason. It also defends that we should be free to choose which service do we want, and by having a public service this freedom is denied, since we need to pay for the public one.

Lately, both sides are being considered as worthy options. However, I'm taking a side, and I consider the other one unethical, for several reasons. I'm talking about the liberal side, of course. I believe it can only make the situation much worse.

So, let's concentrate on the public services issue: The idea is that services will be more efficient being run by private companies, plus we will have the freedom to choose which service we do prefer to pay. If presented like this, it may sound reasonable, specially in a moment of crisis.

The problem is that private companies have a clear objective, to make more money. Please notice that the objective is not to make money, but to make more of it. A company that always wins the same amount of money is not considered successful, and may even be considered a failure. The point in the modern world is to always grow, forever (an impossibility), so when you're not growing, you're failing at your job as a company.

When these abstract services become things like healthcare or education, you can see the problem: These services are vital in making us, as a society, able to deal better with life and work. If your only concern when making these services is how much money they will gain, while keeping the service barely acceptable, you will cut costs in any way you can. It's good not to waste money, but in these services a cut in expenses may mean thousands of dead people that would have lived otherwise, or thousands of idiots who are unable to think higher thoughts when doing even the most basic tasks, which will result in poorer results in these tasks.

I'm not saying money should be ignored in the equation, but that the equation should prioritize first, the quality of the service. Then, it should try to equalize expenses so the balance gets closer to 0. If you have benefits, invest them in growing. In private companies, the directives and the stock owners get part of these benefits, so they will try to increase this amount. Some directives will even try to maximise short-time benefits, so they get a big chunk of them and then the company can crash, since they will be retired and enjoying the bonuses they got. Eliminating them from the equation guarantees that money will be dedicated only towards the improvement of the service. As per motivation (people say that public workers are unmotivated  with some truth to it), I kind of agree that, sometimes, public workers do not do as much as they can. However, I believe that this problem can easily be solved: Treat all public workers like private ones. Make it easier to fire people according to their productivity, and establish productivity evaluations. Offer also the possibility to ascend in ranks (and salary), if you choose to do so. If you make somebody unfirable, no matter if it's public or private, you have a problem if they turn out to be lazy, so make sure you can do something about it....

As per improvements, another argument is that without the motivation of money, the services will not try to become more efficient. About that, you can always make public evaluations of the services, auditories and plans for improvements. Since it's a public company, it's easier to implement. Private companies, unless demanded by law, will not have such checks, and I agree to the fact that the law should not interfere too much with private companies, apart from requiring some taxes and guaranteeing a certain level of well-being and security for the employees. Also, when a private company tries to make improvements, the underlying cause, as mentioned, is money. With the public one, these improvements can be triggered by other reasons, and problems that would be considered too expensive to fix can be resolved in the public ones, since the economic benefits are not as important.

Of course, I'm not saying all services should be like this. If you want to get rich, go ahead and create a private company that offers some non-vital service, and do whatever you legally can do to increase your money. However, there is a list of services that should always be available in a public way, that are too vital to be left only in the hands of private companies. Services like healthcare, education, security (firemen and police, and even the army, although I believe armies should not get a big part in modern, civilized countries with no problematic neighbours) or some basic transportation should be always available for everybody, in public form.

One of the arguments against that is that your freedom to choose a service is denied: Part of your money is taken to pay taxes for those services. This argument assumes that you're rich enough to pay for any service you want. One of the things that is usually said about freedom is that your freedom ends where the freedom of another person starts. Basically, you're free to do things as long as you're not decreasing the freedom of another person to do them. If we try to follow this, if you force people to choose such vital services (instead of having always the public option available), your're decreasing their freedom. Not everybody is going to have enough money to pay for these services in the first place, so if there is no public services, you are denying their freedom to use these services and to choose what to study, or even more basic, their freedom of getting better and live after falling ill.

Defenders of liberal theories will usually be rich, or people that believe they are rich enough to have freedom in paying the service. I believe that those critical services can be offered by private companies, as long as there is a public service offering the same, and if you have enough money to pay for the private one, please go ahead. However, eliminating the public one because you have the freedom to choose does not mean everybody shares this same freedom, so the public one should always be available. Denying it destroys the freedom of the people who do not have enough resources, and the only thing that does to the people who do have the resources is to charge them taxes, not killing them.

Anyway, just a rant about the latest decisions taken in Europe  where some bastards are trying to turn everything private, even when examples like USA and UK show proof of the big disaster that this will cause...(ask USA about their healthcare, or ask UK about their private train system and some of their hospitals....)

Some other day I'll rant some more about politics....

Doctor Who

We just finished watching the last chapter of Doctor Who, aired last Saturday, apparently. Other times I have mentioned this series, but I have never explained much about it...

Doctor Who is an English series, very VERY old one, that started as a way to teach some science things to kids, mixed with fiction. It evolved quite rapidly into a full science-fiction series with different plots, the teaching part mostly forgotten. The tone varied, and even if considered for kids most of the time, there were more adult themes thrown into the mix.

We're talking about lots of years and changes here, it started in 1963 and continued for a long time. In 1989, a big break in the series started, and it was not continued until 2005, with a movie in the middle of it, in 1996.

They got away with all this changes by the fact that the Doctor, the main character, is an alien with human form, that can regenerate when about to die. Using smart applications of that theory, they have changed the actor playing him all along these years. The Doctor is also accompanied by a "Companion", usually a girl, although later years there has been some more variety. To change companions, they just need to show that one of them got tired from travelling with him, and then the Doctor just finds another one (after some brooding). In some cases the companion has accidents and dies or is lost somewhere, but well, the end result is that they change.

The important thing, of course, is that the Doctor travels in a spaceship that is also a time machine (in the shape of a blue police box), so they can explore other planets and universes, the future, the past, even the present, and in some extreme cases, complete other dimensions.

Depending on the writer, things try to make more sense or less, from a scientific point of view, but it always tends to the "less sense", just for the fun of it.

We started watching it after the big break happened, and we have only watched the chapters emitted after 2005. Alba recommended them, and we really enjoyed them^^.

Anyway, the main writer for the first new seasons after 2005 had been Russel T. Davies. The plots had  been complex and interesting, plenty of times with some common theme present in most of the season's chapters.

The actors playing the Doctor in the first 4 new seasons were Christopher Ecclestone and David Tennant. Tennant in particular has done an incredible job, and is one of the best Doctors ever.

Of course, being the main writer does not mean you write all the chapters, there were other writers. One of these writers was Steven Moffat, a fan of the series since he was a kid, that has done work as the writer of other successful series. In the first 4 seasons, Moffat wrote one or two chapters in each of them. And they were awesome. Truly incredible chapters, scary, creepy, interesting, touching, funny chapters, all at the same time.

The chapters are The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
.
Watch them, even if you're not going to watch the rest of the series. Specially, watch Blink.

When Davies decided to end his period and leave it to someone else, that someone else was going to be Steven Moffat. The actor playing the Doctor would change and Tennant would leave too, but the fact that Moffat would take charge promised to be awesome.

The new Doctor ended up being Matt Smith, and even if not as good as Tennant, his doctor is quite interesting too, more goofy and in another world, less serious, but still giving a nice touch to it.

Moffat, however, was a disappointment.

His plots are usually much more simplistic than Davies, and make much less sense (when he starts getting into time travel, the amount of bullshit that doesn't make any sense with everything established beforehand is astounding). He made some awesome chapters before, but when he got free rule over it, lots of chapters resemble pure fan fiction, where he crams 6 different alien species (that appeared in the old series that he watched as a child), without making any sense of why they are here or why they're fighting with or against the Doctor.

Moffat is a fan of not explaining things too much, but you need to draw the line somewhere, and if you killed an entire dangerous alien species, and/or locked it inside some other dimension, when they appear again without further explanation it feels kind of...cheap. As I said, like cheap harry potter fan-fiction, where all of a sudden Hermione falls in love with Draco, logic be damned.

That's half of the chapters...the other half, the problem is another one. In the other half of the chapters, where things make sense, the world feels...empty. Davies was an specialist of showing probable real-life consequences of some alien attack over London (for example, people leaving London for Christmas because every previous one some dangerous thing was happening in there). It's little things that help to create a world that has internal workings and makes sense.

Terry Pratchett, I believe  has mentioned several times that the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork, that he created, makes sense because you can imagine it working even when the heroes are not around. It has a life of its own, it's not only a background scenario where plot happens.

Moffat missed precisely that for a very long time, and there were lots of chapters that felt as if there was no other world population than the 6 characters shown in screen....the feeling was that something was weird in that world, it was not really logic, it was half empty.

The last 2 seasons where Moffat has participated had these big problems, the plot was going all around the place, made little sense, introduced 5 minutes-characters as some kind of star guest and other similar bullshit.

There were good chapters (for example, I liked a lot The Doctor's Wife, done by Neil Gaiman, a writer of books that I really like), but the overall feeling was a disappointment.

However, even with problems, we could enjoy chapters, it's just that not as much as before...and the two-three companions of these 2 season managed to become interesting and nice. After a while, the companions had a life that made sense, and this added much-needed logic to the world.

Anyway, we've noticed that the chapters are getting better, and I really enjoyed this last chapter.

The current season, that stopped months ago and just now is being continued, has had already 2-3 chapters where the "world half-empty" feeling has disappeared. Maybe it's a little thing, but with these chapters, I finally got the feeling that we were in the same universe as the one done by Davies. There was a retarded chapter too (Moffat doesn't understand time travel at all sometimes, or contradicts everything we've seen, including things he has said), but overall things seem to have improved, and it's getting back to a very interesting place...

We'll see how the next chapter goes^^

Good Old Games and Indies

My birthday was on 6th of March, and I got lots of very nice presents.

One of these gifts was an electronic gift, by Denis: A game added to my account in some website, provided I create one in there. At first I thought it was spam from some website where I registered and put my real birth date  but after reading the personal comment I saw that it was for real. The game was System Shock 2, and after creating the account I was able to download it.

The website is called GOG (Good Old Games)

First, I will say that System Shock 2 seems really cool. I haven't finished the game (I haven't played very long, actually), but it's a hard game, with clearly lots of options and stuff. Graphics are old, of course, but the overall feeling is tense and scary, and I still don't know what's going on in there at all. I was told Bioshock is like a worse version of this game, and I can see that Bioshock, even with better graphics because of being released years later, has huge similarities with simplified gameplay. We'll see how it progresses.

Anyway, I'd like to talk about this website, and it's awesome. It has looots of old computer games that were absolutely awesome, and lets you buy them for a cheap price  usually, and modified so they (sort of) work with new computers. You basically just download the installer, and it installs the game with the necessary emulators, if any needed. Games do not have any DRM or anything like that, and anyway you have an account with the purchased games, so you can download them again if you need to. You also get some extras, like soundtracks or concept images, wallpapers and such things.

I like to pay for games, because of several reasons  First, it requires a lot of work from lots of people, so it's always good to support that work if you enjoy the game. Second, I don't have much free time, so if I only play games that I bought, I manage to keep their numbers under control. When I buy a game, I try to finish the game before getting 4 new ones (even if sometimes I do just that).

Of course, I like to pay when the prices are reasonable. This website is charging reasonable prices (6-10 dollars for an old game seems right), so I don't mind buying them.

The website also has indie games, which are also rather cheap. I don't know if you can get them from any other place that is cheaper, but it seems to me they're cheap enough. I'd like to comment about two more games I tried, Sanitarium and Hotline Miami.

Sanitarium is an old graphic adventure, one of the last ones made when they were still popular. In the game, you apparently have some kind of car accident and wake up with a bandaged face, in some kind of mental asylum. Things got weirder and creepier from there, where you explore places without knowing what's real and what's just in your mind.

This is an old game, so the graphics, voice and controls could be better...however, it's still pretty immersive, and really creepy. You explore really demented places, when trying to solve different types of puzzles, with a few action segments. It's hard to get really stuck, although sometimes you need to pixel hunt to find some hidden object...or you need to apply certain weird logic to solve some complex puzzle.

As you move through worlds, there's a number of repeating themes in them, that develop the story and give hints about what's going on...even if the plot itself has been used other times, so it's not that hard to guess. Still, it's quite a nice experience, and it gave me a very nice feeling, like playing old adventure games.

Hotline Miami is a new indie game. You can see Yhatzee's review here.  The game is new, but it's made in a a very retro style, with very simple graphics made by pixelated figures and scenarios (that still contain huge amounts of detail, usually quite gory). The music tries to emulate electronic music from the eighties, and it gives the whole thing a very special touch.

The game itself, when explained, seems to give arguments to those who say that videogames are just violent crap: You're some kind of professional killer, clearly demented, who gets messages in your answering machines with contracts. Once you have a contract, you go to the indicated place and kill everything that moves.

The gameplay is just that. You see everything from the top, so you see buildings as if they were maps of the floors, and you move around killing everything. You can punch people to stun them and then kill them on the floor, or you can steal their weapons and kill people with them. Everything kills in one hit or shot, and everybody, you included, dies after only one (well, there are some exceptions later in the game). If you die, you press R and restart right away, without loading times or anything. Firearms make noise, and when people hear it they rush towards that position, but they can kill from a big distance.

And that's about it. You need to plan your killing spree, and you usually need to react in milliseconds to new enemies coming towards you, or sudden changes in your plan. There's also the masks, which you gain when you complete missions, that give you different extra powers or advantages. It's incredibly addictive, really.

Between killing rampages the game even develops a complex and quite touching story, and without using any text, just by showing your house every time a mission start, and showing the changes that keep happening in it. It also shows that you, the main character, is clearly going insane as well.


I've heard that this game is the computer version of Drive. And in a weird way, it is....set in the 80s, with old music and style, you're some crazy psychopath that between jobs is trying to help some people...really, quite a deep and layered game for something that looks like this....

Highly recommended.

Adulthood

For those of you that do not know yet, my wife and I are going to have a child.

This is, of course, an important step, probably one of the most important things we'll ever do. There's still some time until birth, but we'll need to prepare, be ready for it, and it will change our daily lives.

Thinking about it, we're "young" for it, at least among the people we know. We're not the only ones who have children at this age, but most people I know that have studied something in University have kids and stable couples later. That does not happen in every culture, of course.

In Russia it seems most people are married and with kids way before reaching 30. In Spain it's otherwise, with people delaying these things until they become 30. I think in Lithuania it's something in the middle of this positions, while England is closer to the Spanish situation, but slightly younger.

Of course, an important factor is the security one feels in that culture or country. Spain right now has a terrible economy, and it's hard to afford some of the things that come with stable couples and kids. However, I think that in Spain it's also very important the cultural factor.

For example, for lots of people of my generation, we passed from the need to get married to the philosophy of not getting married, and seeing marriage as a terrible thing.

I hate stupid traditions. I believe that to do things just because "it has always been done like that" it's a really bad idea. For example, the idea that when you get married you need to do a wedding where you are the centre of attention and where you spend a huge amount of money to make it as impressive as you can. I'm not saying you cannot do it, or that it's very stupid to do it. I'm saying that you should think about it, to see if it's really what you want to do, and analyse the pros and cons it has in your personal opinion. To do it because it's proper, it's what everybody does, without thinking, is stupid.

And not to do it because everybody does it is equally stupid.

Anyway, right now I believe there's people that are not getting married or having kids because they don't feel ready. They also look around and see the same thing happening to other friends, so they believe this is normal, and by that it becomes normal.

I believe lots of people are not doing these things because of  a mixture of rebelling against the past traditions, the current lack of economic security, and that feeling of not being ready.

My current generation (people with similar age, similar level of studies, similar economy, etc.) has been the result of a number of coincidences that has made our lives quite easier than for other generations. We have lived in economic prosperity, with nice houses, with all this new "toys" at our reach, and I believe that we've all been...well, spoiled. Not in a bad way, but still, our lives have been relatively easy (even if some people have had it harder than others).

I believe that this kind of environment makes it easier to not have big responsibilities, or even if you have had them, to not easily think of yourself as an "adult". Well, I know I have trouble with this thought at least. It's not a matter of being immature or anything, it's just that, mentally, we all believe to be somehow in our last teenage years, or beginning of our twenties (and maybe that can be applied to everybody).

It's kind of the same reason why some hobbies are considered "childish". We put labels and categorize things, and we expect that things that we like as a child will latter seem silly, when the truth is that if we really like something, there's no reason to stop doing it, since we're the same person than before. Our tastes may change from time to time, but there are no childish hobbies, we just need to learn when can we indulge in them or not.

So, in this change from young to adult, since we're in the last teenage years, we're still having fun. We're not ready for some of those big steps that would clearly be something only an adult does.

What I mean is that sometimes we're somehow waiting for a change in our mind, that will switch into "adult" mode after that. And this is the problem. This does not happen. We're the same person at 15 that at 51. Sure, we'll have more experience at 51, and we may be wiser because of this experience (or not), but we're basically the same person. It's very well said in the movie American Beauty. The main character says that he could tell to his teenage daughter that the insecurities and problems and doubts she's having will pass away after adolescence,  but he does not want to lie to her.

Therefore, while we're waiting to be adults, we try to avoid marriage, or having kids, or buying a house, or any other thing that we believe only an adult, centered, stable person will do correctly. Because we do not feel specially centered or stable sometimes, and we've been told hundreds of times this is just a phase that teenagers pass after some time.

Is this a defense of traditional things? Of course not. As I mentioned, I hate to do things just because. I'm just saying that delaying things because we're not considering ourselves "adults" is something that we should try to fight back. We won't get a sudden revelation telling us this is the right moment. We won't know with stone-written certainty that we're ready. We will not avoid contradictory thoughts about these things.

And we should get used to that and get on with our lives. I'm pretty sure everybody has had the same thoughts, maybe just in different ages. The other people we know that are considered adults by us did these things in a way that seemed they had a different mind than our own, that they knew more than we do. And I believe that's not true at all.

Basically, we should not expect to have a huge different mentality some point in the future. People do not change much. So do not wait for some spontaneous change in your mind.

Just think about what you really want to do, something that makes you happy, plan for it (don't just randomly do or avoid doing things), and do it.

Second Snowboarding Trip

A few days ago, we finally repeated the excursion to the ski resort.

The first experience was fun, but later on we didn't find a moment to repeat it. Basically, I was lazy. It's fun, but it requires your whole day, so several times when we had moments to go, I preferred to stay and do different things instead.

Anyway, in the end we decided to go one Monday that, because of the weird pattern of shifts I have, we had vacations. We went with a co-worker,  Carlos Climent, to show him the way and how things were in the ski resort area. We knew that the station we were going to use was not the best one, but the idea was to show the way so later on he and the other people that has come from Spain to help us with shifts could know the way and go by themselves.

This time we didn't go very early, and instead we took the bus at around 10. We arrived without problems, and we got our equipment and pass quite fast, since we knew what to do now.

The start of the tracks had quite a good layer of snow, I believe it had snowed recently. It was more like powder, and the floor was harder than before, but smoother too. Carlos went on his way, since he had skied before. We asked for one more hour of training for later on, to practice my balance some more. Since I had one free hour before the training, I started to practice on the green track.

After a few tries, I managed to remember more or less the lessons of the last day. I still had lots of problems, but I practiced turning and stopping. I discovered that I was starting to easily turn to the left, but the right turn was hard for me, most of the times I tried that I ended on the floor. Still, I learned some more things, and I managed to stop at will, even if backwards instead of looking towards where I was moving.

Before the instruction we ate some little sandwiches we had with us, and  then I went to meet the guy who would teach me. This one spoke English, even if with some mistakes, so it was easier to communicate with him. After asking what had I done before, I explained that I had trouble with balancing, so we went straight to practicing that. To do so, we went straight to a blue/red track.

Basically, we started to travel that track with the snowboard across the track, so we were not going fast. Still, the first moments were kind of scary...

I discovered that my forward balance had improved a lot in just these 2 days,  and I managed to go down unassisted for a long period. Then he explain how to move from one side to the other, maintaining the position and just changing the weight distribution. It was possible to control it more or less, with some moments where I needed to adjust the weight because I was sliding too much or too little. After these exercises, we did the same but backwards.

This time it was harder for me to control the backwards movement, for some reason. I think it was just a muscle issue: This simple exercise requires you to use your leg muscles and put tension in them for long periods. I'm not in good shape, and muscles started to ache quite fast after a while of this. It was quite tiring.

Anyway, we managed to go down to the end of the track, but it took a long while, almost an hour. At the bottom, I finally used the ski pass, and we took one of the chairs to go up. This in theory is easier than the other type of lifts, but since it was my first time using it I though it was harder. Sure, you only needed to keep the balance a the beginning and at the end, but these were the most crucial parts.

After this hour, the instructor's time was over, so I went to practice some more on the green track. I had improved a little bit more, and even if I was not able to turn right correctly, the last time I went down I managed to stop at will and looking to the front. At least now I knew how to stop....

On our way back we had one last adventure. Everything was going fine, until we got close to Adler: There was a huge traffic jam. First, the bus driver asked if someone wanted to use a number of stops that were in the middle of the mess. Since nobody wanted to use them, he changed the route and used a different way. We managed to advance quite a lot more, but eventually we arrived to the traffic jam again.

After a while, and after receiving calls that were explaining to us that this was a massive traffic jam affecting everybody around the Adler area, we started to see people walking on the highway. Several passengers decided to imitate them, and went down the bus.

It was weird to walk in the highway, but it's true that no car was moving at all, and the people walking were covering ground faster than us. Besides, we noticed that the buildings where we live were visible. After checking the map, we calculated to be 2-3 km away from home.

Seeing that the traffic jam was not getting better, we decided to imitate other people and we went down in the middle of the highway to walk home.

It took us around 50 minutes, and there were lots of smoke and bad roads in the way, but we managed to get home, and clearly we managed to do so faster than the bus. It was still a weird experience, seeing how people just said "fuck it" and left the car or bus in the middle of the highway....but well, we're in Russia after all^^
 

The Halo Games

These days I've finished Halo:Reach. This is the last Halo game made by Bungie, although not the last in the series (that would be Halo 4). Spoilers ahead if you haven't played any Halo games.

I left it for last because I understood that it was not as good as the previous ones. This is kind of true, but still is a pretty awesome game. The graphics are better than previous versions, and the world feels quite richer, with heavily populated areas, cities, bases, etc. I'd say its weak parts are the characters. I didn't manage to connect with them much.

As Yahtzee explained in his review, a team called "Noble Team" is clearly competing to see who is more selfless and caring, and performs a better sacrifice. The only two characters that had some slight development, in my opinion, were Jorge (the first guy to die) and the female researcher(don't remember her exact name) that acts as the usual crazy scientist (usual, but interesting). The rest were quite...bland.

It didn't help that there were moments where the IA of the other characters made them look while 2 huge hunters were playing tennis with my character's corpse....that cannot be helped I guess, otherwise you wouldn't have a challenge (since the other team members are kind of immortal unless killed by the plot), but when all characters are supposed to be super-soldiers, it doesn't quite fit....

Anyway, the game is still good and fun to play. However, I liked more the other Halo games, including 4 (and I'm not counting Halo Wars among them).

Halo games got me addicted some time ago after one friend from university, Alex Urbano, introduced me to them. They have something special. The main character, even if he's not talkative and it may appear rather bland as well, has a certain sense of humor, maybe like stereotypical action heroes, but that puts more personality than all the Gears of War characters combined. Together with the second main character, the AI Cortana, it makes the game much more fun. They interact like some kind of couple, and they kind of are a couple, in their weird way.

The main games always have a feeling of greatness, of something epic going on. I think the music has a great influence on that, I already commented in other posts that it's awesome, transmitting the action of the game together with the awe of discovering new planets and technology. By the 3rd game, it even adds a melancholic touch, and the feeling that it's the end of the world.  But it's not only the music...the graphics and the areas also give a special imprint. Instead of gritty realism, in these games everything is shiny, colorful, well illuminated (unless the are is supposed to be dark, of course). The different places are usually beautiful, in their modernity or their impossibility (a world in the shape of a ring, a huge structure with floating parts, an underground area that goes kilometers deep, etc.)

ODST, probably the weirdest game of the group, it's really great in making a simpler plot with new characters interesting. It centres more on the exploration of the city, and uses quite well the feeling of being completely alone, surrounded by enemies, trying to get help and get an idea of what has happened while you were unconscious.

It also has Malcolm Reynolds in it as the squad's leader, which is always a plus^^. 

The gameplay for all Halos  is quite simple,you need to explore different regions, gather useful weapons and kill everything to advance. In some exceptions, you can just try to run through enemy territories very fast. When you get hit, your shields take the damage. When you're out of shields, sometimes you have a life bar and sometimes health regeneration, but the effect is the same: Enough hits without shields, and you die. If you wait without getting hit again, shields recharge.

If you play in a difficulty harder than normal, the games are actually pretty hard. It's not easy to get out of places were you're heavily outnumbered and outflanked. Usually there will always be  a group of small enemies together with a couple of big ones. The small ones are not a big danger by themselves, but they interrupt you if you try to concentrate on the big ones, and their added attack can easily kill you if you don't find some cover.

In these harder difficulties, an important part of gameplay is actually something closer to survival-horror style games, where you scavenge for ammunition, and where it's important to not miss and waste resources. Lots of times you need to use the normal rifle instead of the big huge laser, since no matter how good you are with the laser, in the end it can only kill 6 enemies before you need another weapon.

In the end, you learn to use whatever is at hand, you learn to use as few shots as possible, you learn how to use grenades....you learn how to play better and better. And it's done nicely together with the advance of the plot.

I'd like to finish talking about Halo 4, the start of a new trilogy created by a Microsoft department dedicated to make more Halo games, while Bungie dedicates itself to other ideas and games.

When you heard such a thing, it sounds like the usual big company crap, where they beat the corpse of any franchise as long as it expels a little bit more of money for them. Probably the managers that decided to do this had that in mind. However, it seems they selected for the job actual Halo fans and ex-members of Bungie.

The result is really great. This game has more plot than any of the older games, and it manages to develop some very interesting secondary characters, apart from giving new dimensions to the usual ones. Sure, there are plenty of things that still don't make much sense, but the care and detail that has been dedicated to it is clear.

There is this example, further in the game, where you meet some old lady scientist, where without saying much, her expression in the game says thousands of things. You're forcing her to get rid of something she is researching. Without saying much, the face shows the regret of wasting hours to throw it away, the regret of not being able to know more, that she doesn't want to do it at all, but she knows that there is no other option to save the station where they are situated. By this simple trick, they develop her into a likeable character, with an inner world.

And then they kill her in a gruesome way. And they manage to motivate you to kill the bastard responsible for this.

This is good storytelling using video games  This is what they can offer. Sure, without good graphics they may have not been able to pull this off, but the idea of the whole scene, of all your efforts  of all her efforts  of the expression and tone of her voice, all that....that's storytelling when it approaches art.

Compare it with the stupid little kid in Mass Effect 3...I could not care less about him. He appeared once, he was a little bit annoying, maybe with reason, but with no nuances. We were supposed to feel bad because he was a kid. But the voice used, the face used, the situation, the dialogue....I could not care less. Specially because they force it on your character, who gets traumatized by it.

In Halo 4, they do nothing like that. They just show an interesting character, and kill it, and they do it in a way that you care...but even that is up to you to choose, in a way.

That shows that this game was made with care and respect, whatever the reason of its origin was. And that's why it's a great game.

The Dresden Files and other sagas

I don't remember if I mentioned before that I also love to read.

We both have kindles at home, and we both like to read whenever we can. I've always liked to read, and since we have kindles it's really easy to gather some books in the same device and just read one after the other.

I've been reading since I was very young, and I've managed to get certain...speed. Depending on how motivated I am and how much free time I have, right now a book 300 pages long may take me 3-5 days. If I'm very motivated to read, that may take just some hours and be done in less than a day, and if I'm not specially motivated it can be prolonged for a couple of weeks or so.

The problem with that is that books I find very interesting don't last me much time, and I always feel...I wouldn't say depressed, but demotivated to do anything else, after finishing a good story. I just want more of that story, and since I can't get more, I don't feel like reading anything else. Sometimes I feel like not doing anything else at all, in fact.

The solution to this is a good saga. A good series of books that you can read one after the other, sometimes without sharing a common plot but connected between them.

Discovering good sagas is an awesome feeling. It's not always the same case, but usually you start with some little book, that usually is good but maybe not spectacular. They usually have beginner's mistakes, and even when the story is compelling, they may have some boring parts, or some sections that do not make much sense.

Then you discover that there are more books, and since the first one was interesting, you start reading those. The author gets a better pace, the stories become more complex, there are less mistakes and things become more and more interconnected. The characters develop, and you start liking them more and more. You share their hobbies and passions, their fears, their lives. And you get into their world. You want to know more about their world, and you devour every little new piece of information, recreating everything in your mind and joining all the pieces into an awesome experience.

Of course, exiting this world is traumatic.

For this post, let's just focus on 2 sagas I want to comment about.

The first one is "Song of Ice and Fire" (stupidly known as "Game Of Thrones", because TV viewers are morons according to TV executives). It's a  famous one, and lots of people love it. I had re-read it again once the 5th book came out, in order to remember all the details and get back into that world.

The merit of this saga is to twist preconceptions and play with common fantasy tricks. The promised hero has a high chance of being killed two lines after appearing in these books. Not saying that this happens, I'm just using it as an example. The first two books can be summarized as "things go to hell, the bad guys get huge rewards for being bastards", so they're kind of depressing and slow, even if well-written. The third book is awesome, and I believe is the main reason this saga has so many fans. Things do not get better, but you see that, well, there is some remote hope at least...sure, the author likes to crush hopes, but there's always a little left, somewhere.

There's one thing that I don't like about these books, and is the fact that they were not planned very well (as the 7 year break can prove). The author is making things more complex and not offering any kind of resolution anywhere. He's not solving threads, he's creating more. I've seen this happening before, in other stories. The end result is usually not pretty, with years passing between updates and huge plans about the story that are never applied. I really hope to be able to see the end of it, but I'm not sure the author will be able to pull it off, even if he's a really good writer...since, by his own declarations, he has gotten stuck more than once in some parts that did not advance the story.

Maybe that's his ultimate preconception twist: All these threads left loose, with an ending where everybody dies and nothing gets resolved. Maybe the books are a huge staged suicide preparation by the author, where all the rabid fans will enter like a swarm to cut him into pieces after reading the end...With this author, who knows?

The other saga that I want to talk about is "The Dresden Files". And it's awesome. A friend, Joan Serrat, recommended it, and it's true, it's just awesome.

The books follow the stories of Harry Dresden, a wizard and private detective, in our modern world. Everything is narrated in first person, in the past, as if it's some kind of diary written by the protagonist. The thing is, in this world all the myths seem to be true. There are faeries, vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, Norse gods, angels, fallen angels, paladins, demons, God, other Gods, Eldrich Abominations, Outsiders....and as usual, most people have no idea, since these beings are hiding in plain sight, living in our world and conspiring against each other.

These books can also be described with "Things getting worse all the time", but the experience is much different. First, things get worse, sure, but they tend to get a little better at the end of each book (although not in all of them). Second, the characters are usually pretty awesome. The books are filled with pokes, with action, with crazy ideas that work. They mix magic and practicality (why fight a dark wizard with magic? Just shoot them in the head when they're distracted, or get close to them and punch them to unconsciousness), and there's lots of comedy thrown in the mix (although there's also plenty of dramatic moments)

The first 2 books were a little bit...formulaic. However, I read that the author did that on purpose, to demonstrate that formulaic books do not work. And he was completely wrong, and they were very successful. Since then the other books had more work and care in them, and they got better and better. I got quite addicted to them. They also play with some preconceptions, although more like in the way the characters are thinly aware of being led as if in a story. For example, after several incidences, the main characters know better than to say out loud "things cannot get worse than this", since the universe is happy to prove them wrong...

There's lot's of pop culture references, geeky stuff, bad jokes, and plenty of irony and sarcasm, mixed together with apocalyptic fights, conspiracies, murder investigations, soap-opera plot twists, femme fatales taken straight from black novels and lots and lots of action, in an awesome way (I don't want to spoil some of the awesome things that happen in the story within this post, in case someone decides to read them).

In a way it reminds me a little of Firefly, with the right mixture of comedy, tragedy and action, and a special touch and care that makes it quite compelling. (By the way, there's a Firefly reference in the last book...which the main character does not get, which makes him grumpy for not knowing about it).

So far, there's 14 books plus one extra book that collects short stories the author wrote about this universe. In theory I believe the author plans to make around twice as many, probably ending up with close to 30 books, and ending the whole thing with an apocalyptic trilogy.

The bad thing is that the last book came out last November  I started to read these books at the end of October, and I finished them in January. The author seems to be able to write a new book after a year/year and a half, but that still means that a year or so will pass before we get a new book in this saga, and we're far from the end of it....when I finished that last book, I got the familiar feeling of a lack of will to do anything for the next few days....

I know I'm repeating myself, but this saga is just that awesome. Read it. I'm really tempted to re-read it myself, after I finish with my other current books....