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I’ve been reading a huge 5 or 6 volume book called ‘World War II’. A bit of an arrogant title, assuming you can cover the whole topic, but it was written shortly after the war by Winston Churchill, so he’s allowed some slack. Obviously it’s insanely long, and I’m only on volume 3, but it’s fascinating stuff, especially when you are working on a battle game :D.
Here is some of the stuff that has stood out as interesting to me so far.

1) Invasion of Poland my ass. We get taught in school that this is when WW2 started, but thats bullshit. Hitler had already frogmarched into a number of countries by then, and Mussolini had been misbehaving too. We didn’t officially declare war with Germany until then, but the idea that this was sudden or even slightly unexpected is wrong. There was tons of obvious buildup.

2) Everyone thought England was fucked. The Germans assumed they could conquer us, The Americans had strong doubts we will hold out any longer than the French. (They wouldn’t send us arms that they secretly thought would end up in the hands of conquering Germans).  The global consensus was that England would fall next, and Hitler would have the whole of Europe soon. Nobody took seriously the idea of the Brits fighting to the death.

3) The British Navy was fearsome. We kicked ass in terms of naval combat. The Germans didn’t really try to engage the royal navy, because they were just outgunned and they knew it. The story of ship v ship combat (ignoring subs) for the first part of the war, was the royal navy tracking down enemy ships and sinking them. No wonder we have this ‘brittania rules the waves’ lyric.

4) The battle of britain was vital purely because it stopped Germany having air cover for a seaborne invasion of the UK. They knew their ships wouldn’t make it over the channel without air superiority, which is why they tried to take out our air force. The whole bombing of cities was just plan B after it was obvious that an invasion was impossible

5) The Italian army was rubbish. Really hilariously bad. There were some engagements where it was literally a 100 to 1 ratio of British troops lost to Italians killed or captured. That’s just laughable. This isn’t knocking the Italians, it’s probably just that the average Italian soldier wasn’t as keen on the war as the Duce. Good for them!

6) Churchill was on the ball. This was not some upper class twit drinking port and leaving the war to the military. He was intimately aware of troop dispositions, strategy, diplomacy, economics, and always hassling everyone to get things done better, faster, and with more enthusiasm. He was determined to take the fight to the enemy, and a big believer in using new technology to win the war.

It’s especially amazing to read Churchills multi-thousand page history of the war, know all about Bletchley park, and notice he never even hints at what went on. Talk about keeping a secret…

I’m sure in 4 years time when I finally finish the books, I’ll have more to report :D If you have a million hours of free time, I recommend it as a fascinating read.

I’m working on the UI for a custom challenge editor thing…

Now and then I stop programming for thirty seconds to do other things. Compulsive blog readers may recall I moved house recently, just before PC Gamer put my business on the map as being in Guildford (not any more!). The good news is instead of having a view of a busy road, and the house about 60 feet away from me across the street, I can now look out of windows and see this:

Woot. There are sometimes cows and sheep and horses and all sorts of ‘country’ things. It’s l33t. the downside is that the only way I get to afford to live here is by getting somewhere that needs ‘work doing’ as they say. This house was built in 1750, and I think 1750 was the last time anyone tried to insulate it. Having no cavity walls, single pane thin ‘post-war glass’ windows and a damp cellar/dungeon with a well in it, does not make for a warm house. Even worse, as it’s ‘listed’, you can’t even bung in modern windows. Nor can you do almost anything. What you *can* do is insulate the cellar ceiling / living room floor, so it’s no longer just floorboards and then icicles. But due to the damp / listedness, it can only be insulated with sheeps wool.

Cue a whole day installing wool insulation. Now you might think its’ easy, if you’ve seen the TV ads. After all, they sell the stuff pre-cut to the standard joist gaps. Those gaps must have become standardised sometime after the battle of waterloo, meaning when this house was built, it was more freeform. Not a single strip of insulation went in without cutting it to size first with a breadknife (it’s the best way). The insulation is called thermafleece, but it’s basically just wool. Cue silly expression posed for camera… Behold my l33t pipe lagging too. (They hadn’t even done that).

It’s about half done, And I don’t reckon just wedging it up there will hold it in place. I need a breathable membrane sheet over it I reckon. Still, it’s one step towards being able to sleep without 6 jumpers 4 blankets and 2 cats on the bed to keep warm.

I still did *some* work today. Some more work on the supply limits editor, which I’ll use to test out and implement that feature, and eventually will maybe make it into a generic player-usable challenge editor.

As it is the UK custom to drop the interest rate on all bank accounts, and then open new ones each month with a higher rate (to screw customers out of money) anyone who keeps an eye on things in the UK and doesn’t like rip-offs has to constantly change bank  accounts.

As a result, I recently tried opening an account with citibank. I should point out I’ve been a UK citizen for all my life and have been a company director for over 10 years. I have had a number of different bank accounts, and never been in any financial trouble that would put up a warning flag. In short, I am a good customer. Here are the highlights from citibank:

send us one document from each of the two lists below to our freepost address by 26-Dec-09.

Proof of Identity (a certified copy)
Current signed passport.
OR
Current UK photo card driving licence (a non photo driving license is, unfortunately, not acceptable)  [sorry, non got one. mines too old]
OR
Current signed national identity card issued by a member state of the European Economic Area (EEA). (Click here for a list of EEA countries)  [ we don’t even HAVE THESE IN THE UK YET!]
Please send only certified copies of your documents, and not the originals. Certified simply means documents that have been signed and dated by a lawyer, notary public or banker using an official stamp, and with their name and address written on it.

They actually expect me to go find a f****g lawyer to get the lawyer to say ‘yes that looks like the passport of a guy I met 10 seconds ago!’ (lets dwell briefly on the idea that the most trustworthy members of society are lawyers and bankers shall we? not a heart surgeon or a priest or a social worker. They are obviously corrupt and evil, unlike the banker…) They also wanta  utiltiy bill which does not exist because mine is online. yay! Also I love the word ‘simply’ in there, just ebfore the bit that makes it stupidly involved. Hardly cutting edge NLP…
And the highlight:

We look forward to welcoming you as a Citibank customer.

Note: Please do not reply to this email, because this email address is not set up to receive incoming email.

Classic. In other words. “we want to hear from you!. But not really. Sod off.”

Citibanks correspondence now lines my cats litter tray, where it is at least of some practical use :D. It amazes me how companies get so big by treating their customers as an irritation. I treat my customers as partners and as a major benefit to the company. Some of the best feedback I get on my games is direct from customers. There is only one email address ending in positech.co.uk that gets auto-deleted:

cv@positech.co.uk.

I’m sick of crappy recruitment companies that don’t even update their database every decade…

We moved house recently. I shall entertain with pictures of its quirky bits at some point (the house was built in 1750). Right now, my opinions of the house is ‘cold’. However, even though most of our life is in boxes and the shower (if you can call it that) onyl has cold water and it’s winter in England… None of this seems to bother either cat, which have both settled in incredibly easily and well.

Jadzia posing:

Jack Relaxing

And here is the new office. Right now its empty, and freezing, and badly needs carpet (which I’m sure I’ve measured wrong. what a dork…) and so on, but at least it’s big enough for me to actually move my chair an inch backwards, unlike the last one. Plus it’s on the ground floor! Hurrah!

I haven’t had any time at all to really chill out in the new hosue due to GSB stuff, but that;’s indie game development for you. GSB is live on steam any minute now!! (bites fingers).