The other cover of AC/DCs Thunderstruck

One of the commenters was spot on: "One Part AC/DC, one part redneck, one part genius".

Elder Scrolls Online Annoyance Again!

Yesterday the Orsinium DLC for Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) has been released. The patching as such on Monday (evening) went rather smooth, and apparently everything was fine afterwards. Today I was contemplating of purchasing the ESOPlus subscription, partly to support the currently frequent updates and patching even minor glitches in the game, partly to get some crowns, to pay for the Orsinium DLC.

But then the terror started ... the whole Steam (as game distribution platform) -- ESO (the game itself) -- elderscrollsonline.com (as store for purchases for DLCs and in game purchases) is just sooo messed up.

At first I couldn't login, because apparently I forgot the password for elderscrollsonline.com. Not a problem, just reset the password. But lo! before sending an email to the email account I have to enter the answer to security question ... greaaat idea! You really think I can remember that damned security question, when I can't remember my password? Really?

After countless tries of passwords I have used in the past and their variations, I finally managed to login to elderscrollsonline.com. First things things, I am going to change the security question and write it down then. But lo! before making a new security question/answer combination, you have to answer the old one. And that's even if you're already logged in and can change various account settings, you cannot change the so-called security question easily. This is simply bad user interface design. Now what you can do, is to open a support ticket, to get the security question reset. But for that you have a answer a myriad of questions which is exchanged via an unsecured email ... great job of passing along sensitive information and making the whole process more secure.

The the next shenanigan was on the horizon. I was logged in and wanted to acquire an ESOPlus membership for 3-4 months. But apparently since I had acquired ESO initially on Steam, my ownership of ESO is not properly registered at  elderscrollsonline.com, and henceforth I am not entitled (or eligible for) the ESOPlus membership in the shop ..and the whole concept of purchasing so-called crowns in the elderscrollsonline.com shop, for which in turn I can then start the game, and then with these newly acquired crowns buy the DLC from within the game is just a mess of a concept ... but maybe ZOS was a bit too afraid to be sued by amazon.com for their One-Click-Buy patent.

THIS WHOLE SHOP/WEBSITE/SYSTEM OF ZOS NEEDS A SERIOUS OVERHAUL ...and by that I mean a user friendly, non-intrusive way of interacting with the user (and by that I mean: your customers). I wanted to spent so (more) money there, but you are actively preventing me from doing that. Most likely, after I sort the problems out (as described above) I am buying the basic Orisinium DLC, but that's it ...

Other mayor annoyances at the moment:

1. The downtime windows for maintenance are huge at the moment. Last week the hardware infrastructure was upgraded and the whole operation took ZeniMax Online Studios from GMT 08:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Which is a whooping 14 hours of downtime! That's huge! I work in IT as professional consultant, and this amount of time for a online system with several thousand users would not be tolerated by the customers I am working with. And there are ways to reduce these long times of downtime, by either gradually updating the systems and/or putting the new infrastructure in place in preparation and after switching to the new infrastructure, you then decommission the old hardware after the switchover. Yesterday for the Orsinium DLC another downtime was scheduled, this time for another 8 hours ....  can you image an internet shopping site or an internet banking site going down for a total of more than 20 hours in two weeks??
2. Finally the reason I am writing this, is that I have some time at my hands. The ESO launcher came up with an error message of incompatible versions, and I followed the instructions on the elderscrollsonline.com site and deleted a number of files (depot.version, ...) to allow the launcher to repair the ESO installation.  But Io!, they poorly designed interface has the repair option well hidden in the middle of the screen in the tiniest font possible, so accidentally (and yes, for that you could blame me for once!), I hit "Install" in the ESO launcher. And then, instead of asking me the Launcher deleted the whole local installation on my PC and restarted the whole download/installation with 30+ GByte to download ... well done, ZOS, well done!

Disabling the introductory videos in Elder Scrolls Online

In order to disable the two company/introductory videos in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), you only need to switch one preference in the ESO's user settings file: The file name is

• C:\Users\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\liveeu\usersettings.txt

The preference you need to set is

• SkipPregameVideos=1

Facebook Shenanigans

Keep those super annoying "top stories" away on facebook by simpyling using the following URL

• http://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

instead of the standard one.

Firefox Upgrades Shenanigans Again!

Did an upgrade from Firefox 24 ESR to Firefox 31 ESR, because various websites (YouTube I am looking at you) keep nagging and nagging about this ... Again as with all of the latest Firefox upgrades .. huge, huge mistake.

All of the annoying updates and "innovations" like stripped down interfaces and hiding information, which may be suitable for mobile devices and such things, but for other users like the ordinary PC users are so infuriating ...


To name a few mishaps and misadventures reappearing are:

• Forced UI changes
• Reordering of menu bar entries
• Missing status bar (Link information in particular)
• Missing Download Manager functionality (no I don't want any mini-windows; I want a decent overview of what downloads are going on at the moment. Gosh ..

Regarding the UI changes, you may say, "OK, but you can change all that to your liking ..". But my answer is "Why, of why, do I have to do this over and over again after each FF upgrade???" This costs me a lot of time each and every time, because developers have found a new "optimal" arrangements of buttons and menu entries.

Again, I have to do a lot of stuff, to make the FF appear in fashion, that I can work comfortably with FF. Includes installing and/or updating:

1. Classic Theme Restorer
2. Status Bar Forever
3. Download Manager
4. Add-Blocker (OK, this one is not affected by FF upgrades, but you get the idea ...)

 Again, I am really, really close to ditching Firefox for good.

Rehearsal of Schumann's 4th Sympony with Herbert von Karajan

The Kraken

"Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die."
-- Alfred Tennyson (1830)

'nuff said.

"Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you."

Light Entertainment Police, Comedy Division, Special Flying Squad.

Just brilliant!

Best of Both Worlds: Quast and Crowe

Stars (from "Les Miserables") sung by Philip Quast and acted by Russell Crowe.

Beyond Earth: Extended Trade Route Duration

One of the more annoying features in Beyond Earth is that you have to "renew" your trade routes every 25 turns. What sounds reasonable in the first place, becomes very, very tedious when your number of cities and trade routes are growing in the mid- and endgame. To help with this situation you can modify the length of trade routes via the configuration that comes with Beyond Earth:

• Editing .xml file 
• Go to the installation folder of Beyond Earth, e.g. SteamApps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth
• Open subfolder assets\Gameplay\XML
• Locate the GlobalDefines.xml with a text editor.
• Find the string TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_TURN_DURATION and replace the value by one that suits your needs, e.g.
•         <!--International Trade-->
          <Row Name="TRADE_ROUTE_BASE_TURN_DURATION">
              <Value>40</Value>
          </Row>
• Save the file and close the text editor.

Afterwards you can start the game, and you'll see any new trade routes will have that extended duration.

Games -- Ten

My ten favourite games, ordered by publication date ..

• 1991+ -- Civilization -- all of the them
• 1997+ -- Fallout -- all of them
• 1998 -- HalfLife -- the original
• 1998 -- StarCraft
• 1999 -- Alpha Centauri
• 1999 -- Homeworld -- original game & "Cataclysm"
• 1999 -- System Shock II
• 2001 -- Operation Flashpoint -- the first two
• 2005 -- Battlefield 2
• 2011 -- Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

Many, many more honorable mentions are ...

• 1993 -- Day of the Tentacle
• 1996 -- Warhammer: Dark Omen
• 2000 -- Diablo 2
• 2000+ -- Total War series
• 2000 -- Deus Ex
• 2002 -- Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
• 2004 -- Far Cry
• 2007 -- Crysis
• 2009+ -- Borderlands -- all of them

I dare you!

This is an initiative (not really a new one, but still) to raise awareness what privacy means and that users of social media (and I mean that's not only Facebook) should be ware what they post, and what information they share.

Look at the original website Take This Lollipop for the full experience.

TV Series -- Nine

Ten TV Series that stayed with me ...

• 1984 to 1992 -- Miss Marple -- the one with Joan Hickson
• 1989 to present -- The Simpsons -- really only up to season 7 or 8 or so.
• 1993 to 1998 -- Babylon 5
• 1998 to 2004 -- Sex and the City
• 2000 to 2007 -- Gilmore Girls
• 2001 -- Band of Brothers
• 2002 to 2008 -- The Wire
• 2007 to present -- The Big Bang Theory
•  ..
• 2011 to present -- Game of Thrones

Edge of Tomorrow

Really enjoyed this one .. the enthusiasm might not last, but the first impressions were really good ...

Pirates!

The Original of the Original of the Original

Trying

"I don't know, Marge. Trying is the first step towards failure." -- Homer Simpson in "Realty Bites" (1997)

Amazon Prime (Germany) and Original Language

I just started using Amazon Prime, that is for accessing their Amazon Instant Video, in Germany. Unfortunately the service doesn't allow switching between languages, dubbed and original. Or so I thought. Technically you can't really switch between languages of the movies or tv shows, but at least they have some offerings in that direction. What you can do is add "OV" (original version) or "OmU" (original with subtitles) to the search when looking for a particular movie or tv show, e.g. "Breaking Bad OV". (OmU usually means that the language is the original one plus subtitles, but almost all the time you cannot turn off the subtitles (which will be usually in German).

Unfortunately only a rather small portion of the overall content on amazon.de is available in the original language. Better than nothing, but it's now 2014 and I would really expect that in the global environment and economy we're living in, it's a cruel joke that this dual offering (original and dubbed) is not possible. Companies will argue, "oh yeah, but we don't have the proper DRM for this kind of offering, bla bla", while usually they're claiming "we there customer", "we understand the customer", etc. etc.

Then please understand, this dual language offering is what we want! And yes, subtitles would be nice, too, if you turn them off and on!

Afterlife