Cycling To Work: Good Or Bad Idea?
Posted on 19 May 2011 | Comments Off
Following on from my last post about the price of fuel, I thought I’d see whether I could make a difference to the amount of time that I spend in the car. Not really to save money – although that’s a bonus – but to see if I could get into shape without spending lots of my time exercising!
I decided that I’m going to start cycling to work at least three times a week. It’s about four miles from my home to the office, so an eight mile total bike ride three times a week should make a difference. It’ll also be nice not to be stuck in the morning rush hour all the time!
During the summer months I think I’ll quite enjoy the challenge of biking to work. I don’t have to ride the whole way on roads as there are a few cut through routes on footpaths, so it’ll be great to cycle through some countryside on warm days. The problem is going to come in the winter – it’ll be difficult to get motivated to cycle to work when its freezing outside and raining at the same time!
The other problem is that I don’t actually have a bike to use at the moment. I’ll probably end up getting one second hand on eBay. If I enjoy biking I’ll be willing to spend a bit more on a new one, but I think it’s a good idea to save some money to start with in case the whole idea fails.
Ever increasing fuel costs
Posted on 16 May 2011 | Comments Off
The price of fuel seems to be going up and up at the moment (you probably don’t need me to tell you that) but what really annoys people is that the prices don’t seem to reflect the price of crude oil. Whenever the price of raw materials go up the prices of the products (including fuel) also seem to go up.
Yet whenever the prices go down the price of fuel rarely reflects this.
I do understand that there is a lag when it comes to fuel prices and the price of fossil fuels. This is because companies have to buy the fuel in advance so the petrol prices on a certain day will not mirror the price of oil on the same day, but a period before.
I could understand this but the price of petrol never seems to go down – it might stabilize for a short time while the price of crude oil drops, and then continues to rise when the raw materials rise too.
The amount of tax on fuel obviously doesn’t help either, but I think people are getting more and more angry about how high fuel prices have got. On the other side of the coin, you can’t imagine anyone deciding that they are going to drive less, so it’s difficult to see what consumers can actually do to make a difference.
I know that most people can’t change the amount of driving they do on a meaningful level even if they wanted to, and if less people started driving the companies would probably put up fuel prices anyway just to avoid any loss of profits!
Thoughts: Shogun Total War 2
Posted on 14 April 2011 | Comments Off
One of my favourite games of all time was Shogun Total War, so I was very excited to get started on the recent release of the second version. There have been numerous releases of Total War games since the original (Medieval 1 and 2, Rome etc) and they have been good, but without ever really capturing the fun of the initial game. At least in my opinion anyway! I’m glad to say that the latest game is the best yet.
The problem I have with the other games is that they became so difficult to manage. It’s one thing managing provinces across Japan, and another entirely when you’re struggling to keep hold of regions across the world. The new Shogun game feels a lot more enclosed and limited than the other versions (where you could conquer the whole of Europe and even America) but that definitely isn’t a bad thing.
The combat has also been made more fun. Enemy units seem to be smarter, especially on the higher difficulty settings, so you have to really think about how a battle is going to play out. There are still some strange things that happen – when the computer tries to attack a castle it often gets it horribly wrong – but these can be forgiven.
An interesting feature is the “drop in battle” mode. When you’re playing the main game and start a battle, you can select the drop in mode and the computer will be taken over by another player online. I haven’t actually tried this mode yet, but it sounds like fun and should extend the longetivity of the game. It also increases the difficulty.