Summer break so far...

I had been meaning to put out another post a bit earlier but I have started work recently and that has taken up a lot of my time and I had not anticipated quite how tired it would make me which left me unable to do much in the evenings... (The world cup being on every night probably hasn't helped either.) However here I am again, not really sure what to write but here we go...

My job consists of receiving marked exam papers and then checking that the total marks that have been added up by the examiner are correct, exciting I know but it's money so I can't complain too much. The work is tedious but I have been listening to podcasts such as the BBC Radio 5 Live film review show and the +YoGPoD which have both kept me entertained while working, maybe a little too entertained as while listening to these through headphones I have occasionally had to consciously stop myself from laughing out loud, which is a lot harder than I was expecting it to be. 

I don't think I'd ever really appreciated weekends properly as I would always have homework or something like that to do once school got properly difficult, and since this job, which is 8:15-5, Monday-Friday with no work whatsoever on the weekend, I have realised how good weekends are. I can imagine that they can only get better as the length of employment increases as they only seem a little better than the week or so I had off in uni after my exams had finished. 

One annoying thing about living in Britain is that the weather can be very temperamental in that the weather changes from sunny to raining very quickly, this trend also seems to follow a pattern that it'll be really sunny during the week while everyone is inside doing work and then as soon as the weekend arrives tit'l decide to rain for a large proportion of the weekend. This is true of this weekend where it had been fairly sunny up until wednesday and thursday was dry, but overcast and Friday onwards has been raining on and off. This probably means that I'm not getting as much out of this weekend as I could have hoped, but then again the +Steam summer sale may also have something to do with that...

The summer looks ok once I have finished this six week long job, I am about to start my third week tomorrow so I am almost halfway which is a nice feeling and after that I have a fairly free summer but no money to be able to afford to do much, oh the joys of being a student!

Oh well, now that I know that i'll probably struggle for money next summer I can plan ahead and will hopefully be able to look forward to some form of holiday abroad... 

Factorio (Again)

My slightly muddled factory

I have had a lot more time to play +Factorio since my last post about it and have had more time therefore to form a more in-depth opinion. I have played a few games  with the longest lasting around 12 hours gameplay so far. I have not managed to get as far as I'd like I don't think but that's probably because I was/am still discovering more things about the game.

I hadn't had any issues with the game in terms of bugs or glitches until the latest update which was released last friday (6th of June) but the developers had warned users of this. However these glitches have been merely graphical and can be attributed, according to the forums, to my VRAM allocation being low due to my web browser or another similar programme being open. 

The technology tree at the stage I'm at

The tech tree has been more expansive than I was anticipating. It looked pretty in-depth when I started the game for the first time, but as you unlock technologies more get unlocked and this leads to yet more and the list seems to go on and on. I still haven't touched on a load of the technologies but I am already overwhelmed with choice, however this appeals to me as the technologies so far. Although they have made the game more complex they have also made the game more enjoyable as the craftable items become cooler, or more interesting, or more useful. I'm constantly surprised by how well the game runs and how polished it seems at such an early stage of development. 

A train, cause why not?

The gameplay itself is very easy to pick up and creating vast, expansive factories is easier than I had anticipated. The beauty of the game is that every factory is unique. Of course there are going to be some similarities between games in terms of certain areas being set up efficiently but as the map is randomly generated resources will have to come from different places leading to a new challenge every time. A friend of mine also has the game and when we look at each other's factories we can see bits of what is happening but it is so much easier to understand what is happening in your own factory as you placed everything there, so you know how it works exactly.

I cannot recommend this game enough, I have been playing it every day without fail since buying it over a fortnight ago, granted these sessions have not been particularly lengthy but they have been enjoyable and I have managed to rack up the hours very quickly whilst maintaining some sort of a social life...

Moving House

The House from Outside

Well, this post is a bit later than I'd hoped it would be... As the University year has come to an end I was kicked out of my halls accommodation this weekend and moved into a really nice new house. Or so we thought...

We had found a house that was all alone on the side of a main road opposite one of the university campuses which was convenient for me as that is where most of my lectures are but the rest of the house will have to walk twenty minutes to get to theirs, which is still not bad. When we had a look around back in January everything was clean, there were no obvious issues with any of the house, of course it was slightly unclean in places but, what can one expect from a house where six people are currently living? However having now moved a few things in we have started to find a few little problems with the house.

My room

My first impressions were once again very positive, the house was as spacious as I remembered and it seemed pretty nice. It was only after I started looking at the house with a bit more scrutiny I started to notice a few issues. Some areas of the house were unclean and just seemed to have been poorly maintained.

I was then told of what had happened in the morning. My flatmate had to catch a train at 11:30 that morning so that he could go and see his girlfriend for her birthday. But when he turned up at 10:15 to move in the 'previous' tenants were still moving out, even though they had been told to vacate the property the day before. He was not best pleased and ended up missing his train and staying in Aberystwyth.

Some of the issues we found

There were issues with some of the furnishings, mostly that they were unclean which isn't a major issue but it would have been nice to not have to clean a house we had just moved into. A few of the fittings were loosely attached to the walls as seen in the photo below. There was a damp issue in both shower cubicles and possibly on one of the walls in the hall. The bins had also been filled and then had more bags piled around them. This seems to be because there is only one wheely bin but the bins weren't even piled tidily, they had been thrown roughly in the direction of the bin by the looks of things and had just been left dotted around the gravel area.

Hopefully these issues can be resolved or at least noted (for now) so that any damage is charged to the previous tenants and not to us. Anyway, summer has begun and relaxation can begin!