Over here, clocks were set forward one hour last night, which of course made me think of this again. Seriously, even if it might have had some purpose at some point in time, there’s currently little excuse for setting the clocks forward and back like this, but the negative consequences of doing so remain. In fact, considering how connected our society currently is, how much people travel these days, the role computers and other “smart” devices play in our lives, such negative consequences probably increase in significance every year, and will continue to do so for as long as we’ll manage to continue on the path of development.
The original purpose was reducing the amount of electricity used for lighting, wasn’t it? Well, today we have technologies that can achieve that goal much more efficiently, and other technologies that can generate electricity sustainably, so how about we leave behind such outdated concepts and get to work on what is actually effective? After all, daylight saving time is now little more than a cultural relic… Oddly, a cultural relic that is mainly observed in the Western world, which tends to take pride in being modern and at the forefront of development.
Still, before I end this, I want to point out that I’m quite aware that daylight saving time is also some sort of modern attempt of adjusting people’s schedules according to natural cycles, but the approach is wrong and the effects negligible overall. I’d be completely in favor of altering schedules according to the time of year, the weather and Nature in general, but such alterations should be much more significant and responsive to changing conditions, and they should actually take the form of changes in the “standard” schedules, not of claiming to control time. This last part may appear to be a small detail to some, but to me it’s one more proof of mankind’s arrogance.
As in other places of the world as well, winter decided to return at the end of March here. In some parts of the country, I hear that people even had to tunnel through the snow, though here we barely got some ten centimeters and the winds were far from being as strong as originally thought. Still, it was some snow and, after spring pretty much started in early February, it felt as some small compensation and I couldn’t pass up the chance to at least go for a short walk yesterday. After all, the only time I actually like to simply be outside, albeit relatively briefly, is when there’s snow on the ground.
Today seems to be the last day of this cold period, however, as temperatures are supposed to even get past 20°C over the weekend. Unfortunately, it’ll get cooler again after a few days and apparently start to rain a fair amount, likely including on the day of the next scheduled protest against fracking, which will certainly have a negative effect on the turnout. Under these circumstances, I sure hope my cold will pass before then, because my throat has been very sore since yesterday and when I woke up today I had to take a while to make some room through the snot before I could breathe properly, meaning that I’ll find myself forced to sit this one out if this keeps up for a full week or even gets worse by then.
Meant to throw a few other personal updates in this post, but currently too pissed because of the new shit I noticed. I’m talking about having my Hotmail account, which has been my primary e-mail for the 15 years I’ve been on-line, forcefully “upgraded” to the Outlook.com look and features last night, leading me to wonder what to do if I really don’t want to be stuck with that crap, and also about Goodreads being bought by Amazon mere months after I had moved there from Shelfari largely just to stay on an independent site and get rid of Amazon’s influence.
As every year, I’ll observe Earth Hour as fully as possible this evening as well, by turning off and unplugging everything in my room, seeing as I always keep the lights off unless absolutely needed. In fact, this year I’ll probably have the computer off for more than an hour, seeing as I once again only got a few hours of sleep this morning and tomorrow I’ll be waking up early again in order to watch the race, so I’m going to take a nap after turning it off and turn it back on when I’ll wake up. Not that there is much to this event, of course, being more of a publicity stunt and a way for people and, very importantly, authorities to feel better about themselves without actually making any lasting changes than anything else, but for the time being I am able to take part and I do, simply as a symbolic gesture meant to show support for actions meant to help the environment even if they require humans to make some sacrifices.
Seeing as the problem is not that we use electricity, but the way in which it’s still usually generated, likely how much of it we use and, at times, what we use it for, it’d obviously be far better if it’d be changed to a day dedicated to energy efficiency and independence and green energy, but I guess we make do with this for now. Whether it’s a day or an hour, however, instead of turning everything off, it’d be interesting to see, for example, major users switched to completely renewable energy, demonstrations of devices and machines that use extremely little electricity without sacrificing too much performance, or even whatever the electricity-related counterpart of little stunts like this billboard that turns the moisture in the air into drinking water would be, seeing as that made the news yesterday, on World Water Day. That way, this event would actually help in creating the change we wish to see.
I’ve been exchanging a few messages with Gigabyte support lately, seeing as the most notable problem I’ve been experiencing on Windows 7 is related to their Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, but besides telling me to update the BIOS to the latest version and to certify that I’m using a legitimate copy of Windows 7, because they say it’s known that some cracked copies interfere with DESA, they haven’t done anything yet. Now that I did what they asked, they say they escalated my request and will fill me in when they figure something out, but I’m not exactly getting my hopes up, seeing as a quick search reveals DESA issues at least since 2009, so it may well be that it doesn’t deal well with Windows 7 and that’s how it’ll stay.
Of course, I can mitigate the issue in at least a couple of ways, turning DESA off and then back on after every reboot being probably the most effective, but I’m worried about the potential effects of that and of any other issues this may be a symptom of. At the same time, turning it off completely is not an option, not only because it feels nice to be a little “greener” by saving a few watts, but also because having a few watts less go through the CPU also reduces its temperature quite noticeably and I certainly don’t want to have a five year old CPU run significantly hotter than it’s been used to when I now intend to keep it for at least another year, which obviously also includes another summer.
Otherwise, at least I didn’t crash quite like that again during this past week, which also means that I’m starting to get somewhat back on track with my story. Of course, that still doesn’t mean much, but it was particularly sad to fall way behind even my own pitiful goals. Now if I could also start reading the books I got and get back on track with MobyGames submissions as well, at least until the next crisis, it’d be something. A certain new approver making everything a royal pain is of no help when it comes to that, however.
After the release of Heart of the Swarm, I looked for the cinematics and eventually even started watching a complete playthrough, to see what else is there, largely ignoring the actual missions and only looking for any other dialogs and cutscenes that may add to Kerrigan‘s character development. While otherwise the story they wrapped around the game mechanics isn’t exactly something to write home about and the other characters are shallow as well, Blizzard truly managed to accomplish something with her and I consider her to be clearly one of the best characters in gaming. Of course, considering who owns them now and their despicable policies when it comes to DRM, I’m boycotting them and won’t be playing these newer games even if they’d give them to me for free, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize what they managed to do with her.
Creating a character you can truly care for is an achievement in itself, but when said character is also, for the most part, a villain, not to mention one as terrible as the Queen of Blades, the feat becomes absolutely outstanding. I react badly to what I perceive to be evil in characters and actions, yet here is a character who lied, schemed and played all others according to her whims and desires, crushed most of the galaxy and is directly responsible for untold suffering and billions of deaths, including those of several other key characters, and not only that I don’t hate her, but I actually find myself cheering for her, and did cheer for her back when I played the original StarCraft and Brood War as well.
A part of the reason why that happens has to be the fact that she’s not solely a villain, but switched from hero to villain and at times even to damsel in distress several times so far and the lines between the three are becoming increasingly blurred. However, the most important part is that she can be understood, that she has an actual personality that you can feel you can get to know and her grand plans have complex motivations. This, as I already stated, is rare in itself, yet Blizzard seem to be getting constantly better at it, even if it does seem that it requires focusing most of their creative talent solely on her at the expense of any other character or detailed story elements.
Now don’t read this next part if you don’t want spoilers, but I have to say that I believe the crucial moment when it comes to her is not the ending of Heart of the Swarm or what comes next, but her rescue of Raynor. Managing to make “the queen bitch of the universe” actually look vulnerable and perhaps more human in every good way than any of the characters that actually are completely human is quite an accomplishment, and in fact the reason why I’m writing this. I remembered her fondly and looked up a lot of information after the release of Wings of Liberty as well, but if there was still room for doubt before, this one scene clearly makes her fight for the top spot in any classification of best characters in gaming.
