A truly excellent quote
I was reading an article today about why pissing people off is not necessarily a bad thing in a company and almost a necessity for good management and I stumbled upon a quote from Colin Powell.
Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It’s inevitable, if you’re honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you’ll avoid the tough decisions, you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you’ll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.
Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally “nicely” regardless of their contributions, you’ll simply ensure that the only people you’ll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization.
I think it’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, and something anyone who’s managing projects and people should read and really understand.
Pirated vs Purchased
I will admit I do “borrow” some films off the net – to see what they’re like – if I’m skeptical. The stuff I know will be good I see at the cinema
But anything I think was good I buy on DVD – and I have nearly 500 of them now
It is annoying though that a lot of the time watching a film on DVD is a lot more annoying than watching an “illegal” download…
I’ve just put “never back down” on – which is a personal favourite of mine – and compared the download to the dvd
Download
Click on the film on my apple tv – it plays
DVD
Sit through an advert for some shite looking B rated horror flick.
Sit through another advert for some chick flick
Sit through an advert for red bull (seriously WTF)
Choose play from menu – it plays
I got a similar experience with House M.D
I love that show so much I spent £80 on a box set of all series
But with the box set I have to sit through a load of bloody “pirate dvd’s are illegal” adverts that I can’t skip – before watching the show. Ironically on my downloaded versions I can just watch it without that hassle
Why can’t the film and music industry realise that more people would pay for stuff if they didn’t fill the discs up with crappy adverts for films that we don’t care about?
COD:MW2 – boosting & sniper rifles
First of all let me just say I think the Modern Warfare games are superb. I played the original for 18months on and off and never got bored of it, and I’m now fairly hooked on MW2. Whenever I get a free weekend that’s what I’m doing.
I bought battlefield Bad Company 2 – but how anyone can say that’s a better game is beyond me. The single player campaign is a joke, enemies just appear from fresh air in front of you, and several of the maps you can just run down the side all the way to the end without ever shooting anyone! The battlfield fans (and I used to be one – BF1942 on PC was awesome in its day) will tell you it’s superior because of the environment damage. I’m sorry but it’s clearly not. Yes you can shoot a telegraph pole down, but then if you run at it you can kick it along the floor like it’s fresh air – it never really feels like you’re actually in the game 
But anyway, moving on – I mostly love the COD:Modern Warfare series – but in MW2 there are 2 major problems which are nearly making the game unplayable
BOOSTING
Not 5 minutes goes by these days without getting a message from someone I don’t know saying “FREE 4 ALL BOOSTIN ASK 4 INVITE”, which is frustrating, but worst of all it is very VERY rare that you can play a free for all game without finding 2 people in a remote area of a map shooting each other.
For those who haven’t come across this (you must have had your head buried pretty deep in the sand for the last 6 months) it involves 2 friends joining the same free for all map and boosting your score using tactical insertion.
One person puts a tactical insertion down and the other person then shoots them in the head, when the first person respawns they put another tactical insertion down and get shot in the head again. Repeat this as you work through your killstreak (helicopters, ac130, then finally a NUKE) and you get a load of points and finish 30 for 0.
What a fucking stupid thing for the game developers to allow!! Also how retarded do you have to be to think spending 3 hours shooting the same person over and over in the face just to get to rank 70 prestige 10 is a fun way to spend your spare time?? Arggghhh!!
Sniper Rifle Scope Bug
The sniper rifles are good in MW2 – very good. You have to hold your breath for a steady aim (unlike battlefield) and the scopes are quite realistic. HOWEVER a massive bug makes them get completely misused.
If you pull the left trigger to go to a scoped view – but halfway through the gun coming up to your eye you then pull the right trigger to shoot – it will 99% of the time kill whoever is in front of you, regardless of if you’re actually aiming at them or not. Which means people use sniper rifles for single shot kills from the hip.
How utterly stupid is that bug? I’m 99% sure people don’t run around in real life with .50 cal sniper rifles rapid firing them from the hip or halfway up to their eye..
Every search and destroy game I play is ruined by the sound of 15 snipers all firing rapidly across the map!
Rant over
Modified Nationals 2010
I’ve not been to a car show in quite a long time now, but the weather was lovely last weekend and I decided to head over to Peterborough Showground to the Modified Nationals show. The cars there were utterly garbage but I did have a chance to practice a bit of glamour photography (if you can call it that).
I’ve upgraded a lot of my camera gear recently and am now using a Canon 50D with a 24-70 ƒ2.8L and a 70-200 ƒ4L. Both brilliant lenses and I loved taking photos with them.
Check out the rest of my shots on my flickr!
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