Catching Some Rays... A Million Or So Of Them

It's been a fairly average winter here in Adelaide. Some good rain, but also some nice bright skies. Already the temperature's starting to hit the 20's... very nice indeed. It's well and truly on it's way to Spring, and I've just realised that I clocked up over 1 MEGA WATT HOURS (that's 1 miilion watt hours, or 1000 kWh) of electricity generation since April when I installed the system. That's generated during the darkest part of the year. Bweeeerrrgghhh [evil laugh].... my plan to take over the world is working.... one Watt at a time.

At 8:00am you don't generate a whole heap of power... but it's only just getting started

Solar's definitely become popular these days - and I'm amazed to see how many panels have sprung up all over the place. To all those that have Solar-enabled your homes. Well done. I do wonder what will happen when all of the great deals come to an end however. October's the deadline for when you can no longer add panels to existing systems without losing the great feed-in rate. Part of me wants to beef up my system to a 3kW set-up... (from a 2.1 kW) but the majority of me wonders if the price of panels will go through the floor and the economics of it will suddenly change post "the good deals". Also - people don't stay in their houses that long...

An Interesting But Almost Unrelated Fact Adelaide's first electric power station opened only in 1900, and was located in Grenfell Street (in the heart of the city). It's initial purpose was to power the new-fangled electric street lights. It started off having a capacity of 0.280 MW... and to put that into perspective that's only about 130 times bigger than the system I have on my roof.... and that was powering the whole city centre. Source: Paul Scott's Historic Adelaide website.  Actually, many of you may not be aware the the Adelaide Electric Supply Company's power station is now the Tandanya Aboriginal cultural museum. I never knew that, and happily walked past there many times without realising it had once been a power station!  And on the question of power in Australia... it's funny how things change. Back in the 90's everything looked rosy, and you might be forgiven if you felt that prices were going to continue to fall in real terms... Source: A Dictionary on Electricity, 1996. Just over a decade later, the picture looks dramatically different, as shown below, with an overall 30% increase in the over 4 years (by the way, whoever produced these graphs was being a little disingenuous as the vertical scale is manipulated to appear overly dramatic). Source: Energy Market Outlook, 2010 Still my point is that we are often unaware of these trends, or even the historical perspective, as we live through our lives. We are at the mercy of a shallow memory, knowing only that electricity is getting expensive now. Will it continue to get more expensive... it certainly seems to be that way. Especially with the drive to reduce carbon emissions... but I would caution about betting too much (or investing too much) on what is maybe going to happen. These economic systems are very complex, and depend on many factors rather than just a simple policy decision of the day.

Anyhow - I think if you haven't put panels up now, or haven't ordered new panels to be put up, then you've most probably missed the boat. Of course, it would really suck if power prices suddenly started getting cheaper... naw... it's still good for the environment regardless.

Although, I'm quite happy with our system whatever happens. I still maintain that the main advantage of solar panels is that you suddenly start thinking about your power usage. And that leads to changes in behaviour. I don't want to get political in this post, but it seems to me that people are inherently lazy. And greedy. The best way to encourage widespread changes in behaviour is to link it to money. Either making money or saving money. However, for all those that are out there that do the right thing on principle alone, please keep doing what you're doing. It's an important service to us all.

Game Review - Total War : Shogun 2

This is quite a change of pace now... and was inspired in part by a similar review by Jamaipanese's blog. A quick and dirty game review of Total War: Shogun 2 by Creative Assembly / Sega. Now I used to be a bit of a gamer (back when I was younger, and a bit more care-free - and stoopid). But I have to admit that I was always more in to the First Person Shooter (FPS) style games... like Modern Warfare 2 etc. To be honest however, I rarely get a chance to try out any new games. I couldn't however go past this game that was released earlier this year. (By the way - the top image comes from GameZone - as the TWS2 website didn't have a good cover shot that I could see)

The game is set in the 16th century AD, in what was known as the Sengoku Jidai, or the Waring States Period in Japanese history. It follows the daimyo or domain lords battles for ultimate supremacy over Japan. Part turn-based strategy or campaign game, part in-your-face 3D warfare simulation  the game would seem to have a large areas of the market covered. Especially if you have an interest in Japanese warfare or history. In the campaign game you have to build up your empire by careful diplomacy, cunning and civil engineering, as well as knowing the right time to make your move. The battle mode takes you down to ground-zero, as the tactical general, where you command all of your units against a strong AI opponent.

(Source: Official Cinematic Trailer)

The graphics are quite detailed, and add to the feel of the era. It's great to go down to ground-level and what the action (but it's not always that clever at choosing the viewing angles). There's a lot of detail here - though I understand that they've reduced the unit set considerably from previous versions. The one thing that I found a bit annoying is that the game doesn't really allow you to play at the operational level... once you jump into a battle, you're having to micro-manage all units all the same time. In my view, it would be better to be able to set up better "intents" that the units are able to follow (rather than just "move from A to B, doing C"). Instead you find yourself having to flit around the map giving minor unit directions (such as telling units to turn to face a new threat). I also get a little worried when you have to refer to an encyclopaedia to play... it's good to have the info, but less enjoyable for casual play if you need to be constantly checking things up. There's both ground-based and sea-based battles. The sea-based battles are to my mind the weak-point in the game, being too sensitive to individual commanding of each ship. The other main type of battle is based around seige warfare... and this can be quite fun.

Now I haven't been able to play this game anywhere near as much as I would like... and the FPS-gamer in me gets frustrated often (just shoot them....shoot them!), but with a little patience you can have a really challenging experience out of it.

I've included an IGN video review that does a much better job at describing the glorious detail and excitement of Shogun 2 - and to be honest, I don't have the experience to capture the game or put together anywhere near as good a presentation as they can do. It's also good to see how the gameplay looks and feels...though I have to say, it looks easier than it is....

(Source: IGN)

I have to say that I'm not convinced that the game is completely realistic in the construction or behaviour of units, however, in the quasi-mythical world which they create, it's both a plausible and fulfilling environment. You need a pretty good system to get the most out of it (thankfully my box still has a enough juice after 18 months) - although for me the load times were painfully slow. Also - I'm not a fan of the Steam system... there's nothing more annoying than wanting to pick up a game and then having to wait for 300 MB of new downloaded content before you can play. Be warned. On the flipside, you can update and expand your gaming experience very easily.

If you've got an interest in historical Japanese warfare, or just want to immerse yourself in a game with plenty of detail (did I mention that it comes with an inbuilt encyclopaedia) then this is definitely a good game to check out. Let me know your experience if you've played it - especially on the historical aspects of the game. I'd give it a 7/10 as a game - just coz I'm a total FPS-head and don't have the patience to really spend the time required... but it's worth buying just for the experience.