Clarity

I've quit Facebook. Temporarily. My mum once said to me "if your not enjoying why keep going?"  At that point she was talking about the Greenfaulds Theatre Group but those words stayed with me. That's why I'm off Facebook. There's too many posts lately that make me angry or annoyed. Whether it's video of the vile groups of unionist thugs "celebrating" by terrorising Glasgow city centre or the supposed nationalist who have now decided because we didn't get a Yes vote they are "abandoning" Scotland and no longer consider themselves Scottish. I've had enough. To the first lot I say violence is never the answer. No Surrender? No Sense! Glasgow spent millions hosting the commonwealth games. Showing the world that it was a new better Glasgow. A nice place to visit and a great place to stay. In one night all of that has been destroyed. Hang your heads in shame. I've watched a group attack a young man for no reason, a young girl having the Scottish flag ripped from her hands and all to choruses of God Save the Queen. Vile. Is this "Better Together"? I think not.

To the second group, you showed pride in your country. You stood up for what you believed was right. You believed Scotland could stand on it's own two feet and be a nation again. Yet the minute  the country disagree with you, you turn your back. You claim the country is full of cowards because we didn't vote yes. I say shame on you. How can you claim to be a nationalist when you turn your back on your nation when it needs you the most. That is truly cowardly.  What this country needs is unity, not "screw you, I'm leaving" We need everyone, and I mean everyone, whether they voted no or chose yes to stand up and make this country strong. To show the world that we can make this work. 97% registered to vote. 85% did. That is a country politically aware. We need to hold onto that and make sure the politicians follow through on their promises and if not then hold them accountable. We are a great nation of passionate people. We just need to channel that passion into the right places. We need to teach our children right and wrong. To be proud of their heritage as Scots. To learn from the mistakes of the past and the mistakes we have made and stop this cycle of hatred. I really wish I had some great quote to end with. Something patriotic and worthy of a feature film monologue but right now all I can think of is straighten up Scotland, stop being a bawbag!

I'll share this on Facebook via the blogger app but if you want to comment on it  and make sure I see it then comment below. I won't see Facebook replies, I've deleted the app for now.  Cya later! 

Voting

So I've cast my vote in the Scottish referendum and it was more difficult than I thought it would be. Throughout this I've gone from a definite No to "undecided" onto "maybe yes" then becoming "damn right it's yes! FREEDOM!" But in the past couple of days I've moved back to undecided. Over the last month or so Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were simply repeating the same things over and over. Alistair Darling all but vanished and Gordon Brown started weighing in with his points, some of which, made sense. I thought this morning would be easy. I'd walk in there full of Scottish pride, grab the ballot paper and place my cross and leave happy in my decision. It wasn't like that. As I walked to the polling station, a short walk to the local primary school and a walk I've done thousands of times into life, weighing up the various arguments from both sides. I arrived, picked up the ballot and headed to the booth. Then I just stood there looking at it. I still wasn't sure. This was a decision that would affect my sons future more than mine. After what seemed like a hell of a long time but was probably only a minute or so, I cast my vote and placed it in the box. I've cast my vote. Now it's up to the rest of the Scottish voters to cast theirs. Whatever the result, I'm confident I've made the right choice. If the rest of the country agrees with me then great. If not, then I'll stand by that decision and move on. It's clear that no matter the result things will change in Scotland, hopefully for the better. We have to put our faith in the most untrustworthy people, politicians, and hope to god they don't screw it up! Cya later!

To Boldly go....

As has probably be come apparent through this blog, I'm a bit of a geek. Although this post might just take my geek points into overload!
I'm a lifetime subscriber to Star Trek Online. I love it! its a great game that really help immerse you in the Star Trek universe. I could go on about the different parts of the game and the various races etc but that would be a whole blog right there and that's not what this one is about.  One aspect of the game i love is the various calender events that take place throughout the year. There's always some kind of reward for completing them and its usually a new ship. This year to celebrate the end of summer STO (as its known in its abbreviated form) were giving away a Federation Support Cruiser. Its an Ambassador class, which for trek fans means its similar to the Enterprise C. Here's what the standard one looks like.

Federation Support Cruiser

Now I've been playing fora while and have amassed a fairly large selection of ships so I really didn't need a new ship. However, this one was free and it was one of the Enterprise style ships so I grabbed it while I could. Now that I have it though what was I going to do with it? Quick overview on STO ships. Each ship comes with a varying number of weapons slots, but fore and aft and a varying number of the different console types. the Consoles add to the effectiveness of the weapons the shields and other ship systems. Each ship also has a Deflector, an Impulse engine, a Warp core and shields.  When you "take it out the box" it has a set of standard weapons and systems for the level of the ship. in this case they were all level VIII. Not bad but my character is capable of using up to mark XII weapons so with its set equipment it was looking like this ship was destined to sit in  my space garage gathering dust. Just another ship taking up space until i deleted it. Then I had an idea. One of the recent updates to the game was a new Research and development system which allows players to make their own equipment to either sell on the exchange or equip onto their ships. My plan for this ship was simple. this ship was free so all of the equipment on it was going to be free as well. I would make everything from scratch for it and build it up using only the parts I made or loot. For the non gamers who have stumbled onto this, loot is items that are dropped after you defeat an enemy in combat or complete a mission.  This would be a heap ship with cheap equipment and so needed a suitably cheap name. So was born the U.S.S. Poundstretcher!

 I started by stripping everything out of the ship leaving it looking like this.

See all those black squares? that's the stuff I needed to make. I'd not really done much on the crafting side but had collected a large amount of supplies needed for it. Within half an hour I'd made 3 phaser array's, a proton torpedo launcher, a deflector, impulse engine, warp core and shield array. My ship was ready to fly! All i needed to do now, before heading off into battle was to give it a suitable paint job. Having picked something just the right side of tacky it was time to launch and head off to pick a fight with some Klingons! That, however, will be a story for another blog. Until then, cya later!

maiden flight