Motivation

Well, lack thereof.

I guess i'm on holidays but i've mostly been too lazy to even sit in the yard drinking cold beer on a hot day ... (it's kind of boring without something to do, and reading tends to put me to sleep).

I've been playing a good bit of Ni No Kuni over the last few days after buying it on PSN - some of it is a bit cringe inducing and childish but enough of it is quite charming to keep going. The hand-holding never seems to stop (yes snot-nose, I do know that i should cast such and such here, you don't need to step me through it every single time), the whole pure hearted help-everyone mend hearts stuff is a bit vomit inducing, and sometimes it seems there are just a few too many short battles every few seconds. But yeah you don't play jrpg's for the story. Technically it is excellent - short loading times (just 30 seconds to the main screen from xmb, 5 seconds to load a saved game), very pretty and clean graphics almost always a solid 25fps (only a bit of tearing sometimes when you're starting on the dragon). I haven't played a decent RPG since Rogue Galaxy and I keep forgetting Level 5 make much better games technically than square enix (the stories are usually a bit better too if only because you can work out what they are). The only final fantasy I really liked was 12 but the loading times for each tiny area sucked. I'm more of the lazy 'grind until the battle is winnable' type so I found FF-13 a pain since it was easy to get stuck with no way to back-track in order to build up capabilities. It doesn't help that you hate most of the characters. I actually don't mind Lightning - if i was in her situation I would hate all the wankers around me too and just focus on getting shit done (not sure she deserves her own dress-up game though, and seems completely out of character). I thought Vanille was a cutsy bit of fluff until I found out the back story of her coping with something bad in her past - and then I hated her with a passion. Reminds me of someone I knew once; pretty and fakely shallow but ultimately a complete fuck-up living in a detatched reality who would simply make shit up to try to please/impress those around her. I didn't get very far in 10 so maybe I should try again, although the loading times there suck even more. Given how much time they take as it is the loading just kills it.

I've been to the beach a couple of times on a weekend but although i always 'fully intend' to go during the week I never seem to get out of the house. Either too hot or too cold or too windy but really i'm just too lazy. Today? hmm naah.

Although i'm not a complete lazy arse. I finally built a shaded frame over some of the garden - a couple of months too late, 45 degrees in the shade is enough to do some real damage when there isn't any shade. The garden in general has been pretty dissapointing this year. Tomatoes should be nearly over by now but i'm only just getting fruit now from the most developed plants (well, I had one ripe fruit). And even then there hasn't been many bees around so lots of the flowers just aren't setting. I have some basil flowering now so that should help. I think I can count on one hand the number of chillies i've picked from last years plants - the ones I planted this year are about 5cm high after 3 months. I thought i'd be inundated with beans this year as I was last but even they aren't producing very well although a lot of that has been the heat. I've got two cucumbers so far and only one plant (of 3) looks like ever fruiting. I got a few sweet corn but I think i'm down to the last one and some I picked too late. It takes too much space and water to be worth it. No fruit set on the peach tree at all this year which was a bummer weather was wrong at that time of year.

And I somehow completely killed my mandarine tree ;-(. My best guess is a tiny bit of stray glyphosate killed it but i'm not sure how plausible it is for that to kill a whole tree - either that or something stressed it to death. Had nice juicy and tart fruit too. Maybe i'll drop in a valencia to replace it, or leave it bare for a while. I also killed the rosemary I had in a pot - I got sick of just keeping it alive watering it constantly and it was root-bound anyway so it always grew poorly. I had one come up by seed in another pot though so all is not lost (i had a couple come up in the paving too, for such a tough plant it seems easy to kill). About the only things doing any good has been the annual herbs so i've been using handfulls of mint/basil/lemon basil/parsely with pretty much every meal (particularly sandwiches, noodles/soups/pasta or curries). Sage is going well too.

It's been too hot to do much interesting cooking although I baked a cake a few days ago to try to use up some stewed apricots I froze when I had a tree (before that one died - about 5 years ago!). A bit heavy but passable. It's been too hot to brew beer. I did a couple of batches last month but due to the high temperature at the time they're not going to be beating any personal bests (sat around 28-30 most of the time which fucks up the flavour). Still, I might go put some in the fridge for something to do later today.

I haven't turned on my parallella for a few weeks. I thought I was going to get into the FFT hacking there for a bit before I went off on a tangent on the GA + OD stuff but I can't muster enthusiasm for any coding right now. Since i've been playing games a bit lately I also thought about some game stuff, dusk, or a shoot-em-up; but that's as far as that went. My laptop is a bit of a pain to code on because it needs more memory and the fan rumbles loudly sometimes (thinkpad fault) and the hand rest gets hot, so i'm keeping an eye out for a small (micro/mini itx?) machine with one of the just released HSA-capable APUs but there isn't much of them around here yet.

I guess I just need a break anyway so I shouldn't be too hard on myself. But I think being tired all the time from sleep apnoea has to be a contributing factor. And unfortunately there's not much you can do about it. Losing weight or just exercising is supposed to help but I had it even when i was a skinny-arsed cunt back in uni riding every day and it's hard to lose weight when the sleepiness fucks with your appetite and ability to exercise. Makes one a bit fumbly and accident prone at it's worst too. Even something purportedly relaxing such as sitting under a tree on a warm day drinking a cold beer and reading a book can become a bit of a struggle and ends up being not particularly enjoyable.