rapid-fire catchup, each paragraph a different topic

[baratron]

I had this great plan to get caught up on livejournal and email this evening. Then I got distracted by a book, and have been trying to combine chatting on irc with reading it. It's sorta working.

Was in an awful mood this morning. Had two nightmares, one after the other, and woke up mumbling about tarantulas. I must have been in quite a state, because Richard went out and bought me breakfast without being prompted. I felt like crap. When I'd finally got dressed and walked round to the bus stop though, the workmen working on the house on the corner were outside with the radio on loudly. And they were playing "Somewhere in my heart" by Aztec Camera, and one of the men was singing along. It's one of the few songs that never fails to lift my mood, and it was all I could do not to stop and join in.

Okami has suddenly got very, very hard. Oni Island was more of a drag than a pleasure. Fortunately, the game has that wonderful feature whereby it's able to adjust the difficulty level to the ability of the player. You have to repeatedly race against a scrap of paper (!) called Evil Being Tobi, and I noticed that the fifth time I had to repeat the first race it was easier. After that, I started paying attention to the amount of time Tobi took to run the racecourse, and after the third attempt his time increases, and goes on increasing until finally you manage to beat him. (For me, it took 5 to 9 attempts on each bloody racecourse, and there are something like 10 of them, making this area of the game ridiculously slow. If it wasn't for the game varying the difficulty because I sucked, I couldn't have got past that at all.) Why can't all games do this? It's so frustrating when you're unable to complete a game that you've paid money for simply because your coordination or ability to press buttons rapidly or depth perception isn't fantastic.

Tree sex season is annoying me muchly. I have itchy eyes and a runny nose all the time. I'm reminded of when Richard & I went to a lecture about "planting an allergy-free garden", and Richard condensed the whole thing to "have only lesbian plants". It does make sense: hay fever is caused by pollen, so if you only have plants that are exclusively female, rather than ones that have both male and female on the same plant, you reduce the amount of pollen in your garden. I just find the idea of lesbian plants hilarious.

Comments

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Why can't all games do this?
Adjusting difficulty is one of the hardest things about writing a game. Adaptive difficulty adjustment systems are even harder to write.

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Try going for plants that use incects to pollernate. They still produce pollen but htey don't throw it out in to the air as much (If at all in many cases.

[ludy]

i love that song. It reminds me of being 14 and finally having a group of friends/people that acpeted me. I got my brother to give me the album for my 15th birthday. And it's very pretty anyway

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Sadly, a lot of insect-pollinated plants are among the ones I'm most allergic to. Insect pollination gives the plants thick, heavy pollen, and usually a strong scent to attract the insects. Things like lillies and orchids are beautiful, but they make me REALLY ill! (Annoying, because I used to love orchids.)

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

Some do leak and if the cemicals that make up the sent is a problem It does make things more tricky. I'll Have to start trying to remeber which plants leak polen (Not a large number) and which have sents. Do you have problems with all sents(Lavender for instance)?