The past wasnt so bad, Im old and ...............

Well hello interweb, 

I find it strange that I am interacting with you again after saying goodbye in February 2011. I initially used you to help me give up smoking which worked very well and yet I am still here posting all over your ones and zero’s.
I have posted a few posts since then but not too many however now I have retired at the ripe old age of 46 I guess you are gonna have to suffer my ramblings a little more. Tough shit baby.

This evening I have currently been listening to a mixture of music from Led Zeppelin, Yes, Rainbow, Rush et al and it has transported me back to my youth.
Sat in bedroom with a kaftan hippy skirt wearing petulia oil scented young hippy girl with a 2 pence piece balanced on the stylus as we smoke copious amounts of weed and drink cider.
I honestly think that I had reached the age of about 19 before I realised that a girls breath doesn’t actually smell of sweet cider.
Fucking amazing times without a care in the world although I do have to admit that I never really cared for the whole CND anti Conservative anti war shit and just went along with it to make sure that I got laid.

It was a much easier time to live I believe. Many people seem to think that today’s world is much better but I beg to differ.
I was never so tied to my mobile phone that I nearly got run over as I nearly did to some stupid student today, in fact make that two of the little bastards
One was on a skateboard thinking that the Grand Cherokee would come off worse when I hit him.
 I’m sure average IQ has dropped over the years but I digress.
No internet no mobile phones, when I was doing stuff I was never checking my phone every 2 bloody minutes and people could not get hold of me at their whim so to speak.
Not that they can now I just ignore them or plead ignorance of the technology.
Speaking of which I registered my cards on my phone for Apple Pay thinking that I would never ever use it. I mean why would I.
Right up till I got to the check out at the CO/OP tonight with my bottle of wine and I had forgotten my wallet.
A quick flash of the phone and a fingerprint scan all sorted. HAHAHALOL I used Apple Pay.

I mean to be honest all the crap that is going on in the world, Wars, Crime, Technological breakthroughs etc,
Ive been through it all before and it’s getting pretty boring to be honest and I feel myself regressing.
And it’s great. Actually it’s fucking great. I’m now pretty much retired at 46 and taking my photography back as a hobby instead of  a way to earn a living and that is also great.
I feel that I am finally leaving the rat race and despite now owning more tech than I did last year I do feel that it reasonable tech and justified.
Man I just feel like rolling a joint to be honest, lol
Led Zeppelin Ramble on just come on. Lol

Some things do still annoy the living fuck out of me, I saw an advert for the new series of the apprentice today.
Oh dear you affected little fucks. Just piss off please.
“I just feel I need to be the biggest thing most important productive person that I can be”
Fuck off you twat just because daddy didn’t give you enough attention you feel the need to afflict the rest of us with your fucking neurosis? Really.

Others sit there and give it the whole, it’s because I is black innit, or white, or yellow, or any goddamn shade.
Honestly the majority of people in Britain today do not give a flying fuck what race or religion you are till you start blowing stuff up.
Then you become an annoyance. That is all, just an annoyance really so stop it.
 Here is the update on that you self centred retard.
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and colour, we would find some other cause for prejudice by lunchtime.
Amen.

You are doing this because you are so full of your own self importance and think that everybody else actually gives a shit.
It’s reality TV.
Have your 15 minutes then please just fuck off because nobody cares past the tea and digestive break.

Well I think I’m going to buy some incense get some 2 pence pieces ready and drag out the Vinyl records guys n girls.

So let me leave you with this, Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art

Peace out THE BAGSTAXXXX

Star Wars, The Beta Episode 1. !!!!

Good morning interweb, Yes I did say morning which is very unlike me but the only reason I am experiencing a morning is that I have not yet gone to bed.
What I have been doing over the last few days is putting in some time on Star Wars Battlefront beta.
I have played for quite a few hours to get some real experience with the game and read a lot of other peoples experiences with the game.

Here is a wallpaper if you are into that kind of thing.
As advised I started off on the single player survival mission level to get an idea of the controls and rattled that off perfectly first go out of the gate.
I then went on to play dropzone to level up and unlock some goodies before trying my hand at the Walker assault on Hoth.
Hmmmmm, dropzone was at first very difficult with stock weapons and I simply thought that everybody had better guns grenades etc than me and so took the pain in the ass till I got to up to level 5 which was the level cap.
I unlocked all the good stuff and threw myself into the Walker assault game mode.
Well Holy Light Sabres Luke, I am in The Empire Strikes Back, literally Tie fighters and X Wings screaming overhead, hulking great AT AT's slowly stomping across the landscape. Laser fire going pew pew pew all over the place.
After a few minutes I realised that actually this was more like the movie than I thought, I was firing my laser rifle at the enemy with no affect whatsoever. I was an extra in the film and not a lead character so my laser bolts did absolutely no damage at all whilst many of the enemies shots took me out with one of two laser bolts.
The lag was totally horrendous for me.
The youtube clip here shows a typical encounter for me, Firing first getting nearly every shot on target with a more powerful weapon and the enemy kills me in two shots with half of their health bar left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXx0gu_AY50
Yes but it's Star Wars man, and I agree it was good fun for the first couple of hours play. It is a beta and many people from different countries were not having the same issues as myself but a fair few were.
Another thing I noticed was that when I did get a kill it was shortly after dying myself. Almost as if we killed each other at the same time which makes me wonder if the lag compensation algorithm isn't a bit off.
I had to turn off my Netduma R1 to be able to join a lobby and the Walker assault was mostly on a server in mid Europe whilst the drop zone was on the West coast of the USA.
A few other niggles were the inability to go prone, the vast amount of people head glitching behind rocks and my distinct lack of ability when it came to flying stuff about.
A guy I game with on a regular basis kept saying "was that you?" every time I crashed an A wing or a tie fighter. lol
But heck man it's Star Wars, and yes it is but for £46.00 on final release I think they have far to many issues to sort out before release. The veneer of "It's Star Wars" wears kinda thin after an hour or so of lag induced death and swearing in different languages.
The only way I found to do well was to either get a pick up token and get inside the AT AT and blow the fuck out of everything for a minute or to flank the enemy and get into one of the many turrets on the Hoth map. 
Having played both the Black Ops 3 beta and the Star Wars Beta I cannot decide which is worse to be honest. I have Black Ops pre ordered but do not think that I will be rushing to pick up Star Wars based on the beta. At least with Black Ops there is a campaign to play as well.
And so interweb I will leave you with these thoughts,
  I get up every afternoon determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.
and remember this, We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend.
Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX
Oh and one last thing if you are reading this Iain from Netduma,  When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Star Wars Beta times

I was hoping that I would have been able to download the Star Wars beta after work tonight at just after midnight but alas it was not in the PS store.
After much searching I found the following information from the Star Wars Battlefront community online.

I have no idea how accurate the information is but thought I would share it anyway.
October 8th

• UK 3 PM
• Perth, Australia = 4pm Sydney, Australia = 7pm New Zealand = 9pm
• US East 1PM
• GER 4 PM (16:00)
• France 4PM (16:00)
• India 1:30 PM
• Korea -9th Octobre- 4 PM
• Poland 4 PM (16:00)
• Finland 5 PM (17:00)
• Dubai 6 PM (18:00)
• Romania 5PM (17:00)
  
  
  Happy hunting folks.
  Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX

Rainbow 6 siege PS4 codes

So Rainbow6 siege is getting extended to the 4th of October. Here are a few codes if you aint got one. 

For PS4

A926-JKNF-2ACT 

ER3M-2QN6-HRL2 

GE33-55N2-89QP 

876J-LJNF-DGFT

Crashes, Eclipses and Upcoming Games!!!

Good afternoon interweb, I trust all is fine in the world of zero's and one's.
I have had an interesting few days which have left me somewhat tired and a little broken to be honest.
I was working Friday evening into Saturday morning and on my way back to base in the Doctors car I had a bit of a coming together with a car full of students.
You see it's freshers week here and we have once again been swarmed by thousands of teenagers on their real first time away from mummy and daddy.
The small compact VW (emissions tests aside) with the 4 students in decided that they were travelling in the wrong direction and would jolly well do a U turn and go back in the opposite direction.
However sat in her "blind spot" Was a 2 ton White Land Rover with Green flashing lights on top and High visibility stickers all over it.
As she made the turn I had nowhere to go so I hit her setting off airbags and making lots of lovely crunching and grinding sounds. Also making the VW that bit more compact.
Unfortunately some of those sounds were coming from my back and neck.
After making sure everybody was Ok which they were I arranged recovery of vehicle and went home for pain killers and vino.
On a better note I was fortunate enough to stay awake long enough to witness and photograph the lunar eclipse of a super moon, which was a stunning sight to be honest and something which will not be seen again for some time.

For those that are interested the red colour comes from all the shite in our atmosphere and this event occurs when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in perfect alignment so that the earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and the Moon spends a little time in the Earths shadow.

And so now onto my views of the latest festival of games that are close to release.
It is going to be an expensive holiday season this time with many different titles trying to grab you attention and hard earned cash.
Fallout4, Star Wars Battlefront, Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Rainbow 6 and Halo 5 and Uncharted  to mention just a few.
Weighing in at and average of around £44.00 -£50.00 per release just for standard editions that makes for an expensive time.
I am sure that the fact many of the companies releasing these games are also doing a beta is no coincidence, but they could have shot themselves in the foot.
The Blops3 beta for instance had a negative impact on me personally and I have toyed with the idea of cancelling my pre order but the Rainbow 6 was enjoyable but I have to think that the game play may become stale too quickly.
Star Wars battlefront is up next Thursday for a few days so hopefully that will be great and I can order that up to.
I think that COD will still be the best seller simply from the point of view that people enjoy gaming together and if that is what your friends are playing then you're gonna have to get it as well.
There are still plenty of people playing previous Cod's and I am sure that it will sell well.
I will be very interested to see how these games play on final release through my Netduma R1 router as I am sure are many owners.
There is an upgrade coming soon to the router which should dampen down jitter and spikes on the connection and this hopefully will help with game play and those frustrating moments.
The upgrade is free but the devs are ironing out some bugs at the minute which to be honest I have no problem with. The R1 does exactly what it says on the tin and any upgrade for me is a bonus.
Just a shame some people seem to feel it is their God given right to have it NOW or they will throw a tantrum like a a small child.
Anyhow interweb I have an appointment with a doctor shortly, Not a Doctor called shortly you understand just a Doctor in a short length of time.
And so I will leave you with this,
" The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling."
and I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but I still keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX

ipads, cardigans and pissing !!!

Good morning interweb, I know it's early but the little darlings from next door seem to think it is fine to charge around the place at 90 miles an hour screaming their frill off at the top of their lungs with no interference from their parents.
The house is sold and I will dance around the garden with glasses of champagne as they load up the removals truck.
People have said that you don't know what the new neighbours will be like but to be honest we have had 3 students living there before and even they made less noise.
Sunday was all a bit of a strange experience for me, you see i have put off buying an ipad for years now saying how they are a waste of money etc etc and I cannot do half the things I need to do on an ipad that I need to do.
But since my wife took over my laptop after hers refused to work anymore, I discovered that now my 46 year old ass is pretty much retired I don't actually need a laptop that often!!!.
So it was after a little research that I dispatched myself off to John Lewis to purchase an ipad mini2.
It wasn't until I had parked the car in a designated disabled bay (yes I am that broken, my misspent youth catching up on me) and I was walking towards John Lewis that I thought "what a sight I am to behold" 46 years young limping along in combat trousers and Guns n Roses t-shirt and a cardigan with leather elbow pads and big buttons on the front. A fucking CARDIGAN for heavens sake, when did I start wearing fucking cardigans?

Upon reaching the 3rd bloody floor of John Lewis I got talking to a sales person and explained that I had seen the mini2 at £259.00 and would they price match to which he replied yes. I then proceeded to explain that I had seen the Griffin survivor case for £30.74 in the BT shop and would he price match this too as I keep all my tech in these cases as they are pretty much bomb proof.
Ahhh he said we only price match things that are in actual shops.
"yes I replied, it is in an actual shop, the BT shop"
"Ahhh but that is only online" he replied all cock sure.
"No it isn't there is one in meadowhall and one in Rotherham and if you are not going to price match it I will buy both items from Meadowhall"
It was at this point that he back pedalled rather quickly and I saved myself £40.00 on the whole deal.
Anyway interweb I digress, I was pissing and moaning earlier about my age. Pissing being the topic at hand to be honest. Iain from Netduma is approaching his 30th birthday and bemoaning this mile stone. All I have to say to him is enjoy it whilst it lasts mate.
As you reach 40 for some reason your body seems to think that it requires massive amounts of nose and ear hair to sprout forth at an alarming rate and as you turn 45-46 ish you know you are old.
3 hours after you go to bed you need to get up to go for a piss, and this takes longer than normal because just as you think your done and ready to pop Alf back in your shorts a bit more needs to come out, then a bit more. For fucks sake.
Anyway interweb a bit of good news is on the gaming front it was confirmed on something I was reading yesterday that Star ars Battlefront will allow you to "seamlessly switch from 3rd person to 1st person on the fly. So it looks like that will be ordered along with Black Ops 3 as I fear Black Ops 3 will end up getting recycled very quickly after playing the beta unless it is vastly improved upon.
Last night I watched a programme about GTA and the battle between its makers the ESRB rating people and some lawyer who was against all these violent video games.
It was on BBC2 for those who are interested and I am sure it will be on iplayer.
The long and short of it was about some kid who basically shot 3 police officers and kind of blamed video games for his acts.
I call bollocks on the whole video games make you kill people thing, small children shouldn't be playing an 18 or 17 rated game anyway and bad parenting isn't an excuse either.
If a teenager is going to kill 3 police officers steal their car and make a run for it I personally think that there are bigger issues going on there than playing video games.
Anyhow interweb I have to go and have a look at today's racing card as I am £70.00 up in the last 3 days and I intend to try and double that by Friday.
So here is a photograph of the view from the back of my house just after sunset last night.

Peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXX

Disks, Scuf and Complex Carbohydrates!!!

Good afternoon interweb, I have not been around for a few days due to injury.....again...... The consensus of several professional doctor types is that having had 2 herniated disks in my lower spine that have been operated on my neck is now feeling left out and has decided it wants to have a bit of attention as well. DOH!
I guess crawling around beneath Thumper painting an under body treatment for this coming winter on her underside didn't really help matters but it did save me over £500.00 and so as a Yorkshireman I will call that a result.
Well I have been the proud owner of a Scuf 4PS controller now for about a month and said that I would report back as to how it is holding up.
Well it is holding up very well indeed and I am totally loving gaming with it.
There are no gaps appearing at the seals and the only paint that is coming off is where my KF extender on the right stick hits the top of the controller but even then it is not that apparent.

I haven't been online for a couple of nights now since AW dropped the new map pack as trying to find games was becoming increasingly more difficult.

So not much to report or write about to be honest with you but I did have a few thoughts the other day and one of them was about Bankers. 

Yes Bankers and banking...... with a letter "B"

You see the way I figure it is this, if I wanted a bank loan the bank would decide on the interest rate it would charge me based on my credit rating and risk factor.

Fair enough, so why can I not get interest on my savings based on the performance of the bank I have my savings in?  Things that make you go Hmmm.

Another thing I have been reading about recently after the Black Ops 3 Beta is that people are still bleating on about throttling connections to beat lag compensation!!!

Throttling your connection to beat lag compensation is like feeding complex carbohydrates to simple people. 

And finally for today, maybe it is just me and maybe I am actually losing it but does Andy Murray look like The Predator or not?

 I think his mother had a sordid affair with a Predator and he is the result. 

Peace out Yall, THE BAGSTAXXX

Black ops 3 bug reports and feedback link.

For those who wish to report bugs or feedback to the devs on the Black ops 3 beta you can do so here.

https://support.activision.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-III-Beta-Feedback-and-Bug-Reporting

Blops 3 beta problems, PS controller button remapping and tolerance!!!!

Hello again interweb, another Monday has hoaved into view and to be honest I am feeling pretty "meh" about it.
Between going to a wedding dropping off people at airports and all the usual weekend crap I have been trying to get a few games of the black ops 3 beta in with friends.
Trying is the word here, I have played game beta releases before but this a couple of months out from actual release has to be the worst I have experienced.
Playing solo the lag, rubber banding etc spawn trapping, frame drops and  400+ms ping spikes simply make the game unplayable for me and many others on my friends list.
The first couple of days of the beta the game was playing OK and was actually a bit of fun but in the last 48 hours it has gone to total shite, and yes that is a technical term.
Try to join friends to have a few games as for me gaming is a social thing, well you can just forget that.
All Nat open chatting away in PS4 chat lobby form a party no games found, change party leader reboot everything still no dice.
 In the space of 90 minutes we managed to get into 2 games where the rubber banding was so bad it took nearly 30 seconds to get from the spawn point to the nearest capture point on Domination.
I was going to ask my wife to hold my monitor and shake it about a bit to try and cancel things out but she has buggered off home to Ireland for a week. DOH!!!.
So back to Advanced warfare it was, or wasn't as the case happened to be.
All emblems and emblem editor tools appear to have been removed from the game for all players.
Finding games solo was no problem but as we found with the Black ops beta connecting with friends to find a game, no lobbies found.
Chat working fine and could play private matches despite been host and having a 3 bar connection..... in a private match..... WTF?
There is a common theme to all these problems this weekend and that is Activision.
 I am guessing they need to order another load of servers from Walmart to try to fix the issues or maybe order some better ones to try and resolve these issues.
I am hoping when this beta thing ends I can resume gaming with friends again.
I other news I have been gaming with my new Scuf nearly 3 weeks now and I am loving it.
 No issues at all yet. all functions still working as they should, no paint chipping off and no casing gaps appearing. Thumb sticks and levers all still operating the way they should and at just over £100.00 for it I must say I am happy they are.
A friend pointed me towards some settings in the PS4 menu's that he uses to effectively make his standard PS controller into a poor mans scuff.
The settings I didn't even know existed and if I didn't I am sure there may be a few others who are not aware them either.
It is a button mapping / configuration setting in the menu's. Not default or tactical but actual button remapping type thing.

To find this menu on PS4 go to settings - Accessibility - enable custom button assignments - custom button assignments.
This enables you to make R3 jump for example meaning that you do not need to remove your thumb from the sticks to jump or slide or go prone etc
Not as good as a scuff but certainly a lot cheaper option.

So in conclusion to today's post I would just like  to make the following observation to which I am sure many of you are fully aware and that is that,
 "Good things come to those who wait, but shit turns up right away"
This includes for me the next update for my much loved Netduma R1, take your time guys and get it right. :)
Oh and one other thing I have come to realise this weekend is that as I get older i find my tolerance for bloody idiots is closing in on zero whilst my ability not to lose my patience is getting better.
This is causing an imbalance in the force.

Right then grumpy badger needs feeding so peace out yall, THE BAGSTAXXXX

Black Ops 3 Beta, First Impressions.

Hello again interweb, I have spent a frustrating couple of days trying to get a few games on the Black Ops 3 beta. It would appear by searching your ether that quite a few people are having a spot of bother as well.
First off the pause trick I mentioned a couple of blog posts ago worked a treat reducing the 15GB 9 hour download time to 1 hour and 9 minutes.
When I fired the game up and played a few games the first thing that struck me was the horrible graphics. Not as bad as Black ops 1 but not much better in fact it felt very much like playing a slightly revitalised version of Black ops 1. The audio announcements etc and general feel of the game play. It certainly doesn't feel next gen or worth the price tag either.
I know this is not the finished version and only a beta but to be honest they have a lot of work to do to polish this game in time for release.

Even with the R1 the game is a little bit laggy and when turning off the geo filter connecting to a USA host from the UK the lag was horrendous, Even Advanced Warfare doesn't have lag that bad.
The inbuilt ping meter seems to be a bit off as well.
The specialist thing doesn't bother me that much but I do thing the sparrow exploding arrow thing needs a tweak, in my experience it doesn't even need to be aimed to blow people up, almost as if the hit box surrounding a player is tripled.
The mic mute all but party has to be reset after every game which it shouldn't but this shouldn't be a problem if you have ps4 chat room set up but alas I could not test this as the game would not let me join friends to have a few games in the same party.
Team balancing needs a look at as well as on the few games I have managed to get they have been very unbalanced as in level 16-24 on one team and 3-11 on the other.
The return to the 3 lane map design has brought an influx of lay down and aim down sights back and a lot of players playing Domination games like TDM, I mean anybody who plays a full game of Domination can get at least 2 captures,
 Apparently not but 34 kills 27 deaths 0 captures and 1 defend seems to be no problem. Not a new thing I know but a pet hate, go play TDM please.
The streaks that I have either been on the end of or called in myself seem to be OK with the exception of the Hellstorm missile or whatever it is called. That thing destroys the entire map.
So it seems that on my limited time with the game (despite my efforts to get more games in) that I do not like the game, actually despite all my grumbling about the game it is actually fun.
The games I have had even when I have been getting my ass kicked have been fun. Normally I play hardcore so core is a bit of a change for me but the few games I have managed to get I have enjoyed.
With that said you know the game is a Beta and needs a fair bit more work doing on it when you load up Advanced Warfare  and really really enjoy the games with no bitching at all about it's issues.

Peace out YALL, THE BAGSTAXXX