So, I’m a bit of a gamer. Well, I like to game a lot, really, but I find that my free time is more often dedicated to crafting than gaming, and that way I can watch my fiancé game, so it’s all good.

Anyway, I jumped on to IGN to check out what’s new in the world of gaming. I noticed that a preview was up for the video game of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and quickly went to check it out. I’ve not actually played any of the HP games in the past, though that upcoming LEGO one does have a certain appeal, hehehe.

I was shocked to find that the game played much like a first person shooter – FPS – which is fine as EA are trying to match the more serious nature of the final book, but then I read that the different curses you use with Harry’s wand don’t actually do what the curses are supposed to do – and as they have done in previous games, apparently – no, basically, what they do is shoot out different coloured sparks that correspond to different gun types in regular FPS games.

Well that’s crap, in my opinion. It’s just… it’s just wrong. Sure, I think the game deserves to be more serious, but at the same time, why does that mean the game has to diverge from the lore, so to speak. I mean, if all the other games kept in line with the books, that Petrificus Totalus made the enemy completely unable to move, and Stupefy knocked them unconscious, then why couldn’t this game, even if they did want to be a little darker? And what the hell is Harry doing using the Crucio curse!? He is only ever able to use that curse twice in the book, and yet here he is firing it off at random bad guys in this game? Ugh.

Now for a knitting pattern. Well it’s got to be Potter related, so… How about the most basic of the basic. The Harry Potter Scarf! I’ve actually got a fantastic Gryffindor badge that inspires me to make one of these scarves… I must get around to that and then put that badge on it!

Basically, my aunt and I don’t see each other very often. She’s a nice person, mostly, but she’s not my kind of person. She almost never calls, almost never emails, and if I do email she doesn’t respond often, or within a fortnight if she does respond, and if I call her she seems completely uninterested in anything going on in my life, though she feels quite comfortable offering advice about anything and everything, whether or not she has any actual knowledge on the subject at hand, and will spark to life suddenly if I ask her about any of her interests… such as Second Life… Ugh!

So recently she started giving me crap for not talking to her enough or visiting her. I told her it’s pretty difficult to visit – really my fiancé and I just don’t want to as it’s incredibly uncomfortable – so she’s been sending me emails suggesting ways for us to talk to one another more often. As in emails about internet, video, and audio conferencing! Can you believe it? It’s so… bizarre! I mean, I refuse to use Skype with her, let alone going through upgrading my IP phone system to that of a business or office so that I could do the whole video conferencing thing…

I feel like she’s cracked a little, to be honest, which in my family really wouldn’t be surprising. They’re all batty, more or less, but it’s just so irritating that she’s acting like I’ve done something wrong by matching her level of communication over the last few years. Bah!

Now for something not annoying… Knitting! As I said in a previous post, I love Winter and cold weather. In that spirit, I’m thinking this year might be the one to create the Tempest pattern from Berroco. I love the way it looks, all big and slouchy and warm and snuggly.

Okay so run down just in case you’ve missed all this, which would be bloody amazing because the story is everywhere, but here it is anyway. In mid-December, Google noticed that someone was trying to attack it. No news there, that happens all the time, however this was a very skilled and very targeted attack on their corporate site, and email accounts of many humanitarian workers in China. Google traced the attacks and found that they also targeted companies in the media, finance, and defence areas.

Some news stories have even suggested that the attacks have hit companies that currently hold defence contracts within the US. Google hasn’t come out and said that the Chinese government is behind the attacks, but the the level of sophistication, and Google’s reaction, people have pretty much assumed that the attacks are backed by the government.

These attacks come on the back of Google deciding that they would no longer censor their search results as China demanded they would have to do to be able to operate within the country. This was a very controversial decision on Google’s part, and I think many people are very happy to see it overturned. However there are now fears that, with Google pulling out of the country, the censorship of information for the Chinese people will be even greater… and that’s pretty crap.

Google isn’t the only company to be trying China at the moment, and it’s interesting to see these pushes on China’s demands all occurring at the same time. Companies that sell raw iron ore – used to make steel – usually sell around half their yearly product to China, and last year China used this buying strength to set the iron ore price for the year at a less than great rate to iron ore sellers. This year, iron ore sellers – Vale of Brazil, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton – skipped China and went straight to Japan, completely leaving China out of price negotiations for the year. That’s massive considering the proportion of sales that go to China.

In another aggravating move to ol’ China, the US has just signed a deal to sell over 200 missiles to Taiwan, something China expressly ‘asked’ the US not to do, and now they are rather persnickety over it. I have to say, I really do enjoy seeing countries say no to China. I don’t approve of their censorship, and other practices going on throughout the government, so I like to see the playing field evened out a little.

Oh, by the way, China does have it’s own set of hackers, who are often very patriotic – which leads many to believe that they are in fact sanctioned by the government – and lately these patriotic hackers have set themselves the task of defacing Iranian websites because Iranian hackers attacked one of China’s biggest search engines. If you’ve found this whole thing interesting at all, then please read this news story, because it brings up so many breaches of security perpetrated by China that I can’t mention them all here!

Okay now for a knitting pattern. How about a blanket? This pretty Sutter’s Mill Throw Blanket, to be precise. It’s chilly in my part of the world, and I’d like to have this blanket on my lap right now!

My fiancé and I got to talking about those ‘naked scanner’ things they’re still trialling in Manchester Airport and whether we thought they were appropriate or not, so I got to looking it up afterwards.

My initial reaction was like that of many fellow Brits, disgust at a government gone mad with how far it can invade a person’s privacy and that sort of thing, though my fiancé was a little different in his reaction. He said that he would prefer being able to just be scanned rather than have to be searched if the occasion should arise, and I can agree that I too would feel the same way. I think that the regular metal detectors should be used in airports, but that if the need should arise for a specific person to be searched more thoroughly, then they should be asked if they would prefer to have the full body scan, rather than the physical search, I don’t think that these ‘naked scanners’ should replace the regular ones, but a ‘next-step’ if something is iffy about a traveller.

Whilst I was looking up that issue to find the BBC article, I also found a few other things along the same lines that are interesting. Britain has the largest amount of CCTV cameras per person in the world! No other country has them in the same kinds of numbers per capita that we do! It also seems to do very little for us! Though I’d guess that criminals would be caught more often, even if they’re not deterred by the cameras. That just makes them seem stupid… here’s hoping they all win Darwin Awards.

New technology with GPS vehicle tracking is also being implemented, but this is mostly for businesses, I think. I don’t actually have a problem with this, I think it’s a good idea for family vehicles, too. How nice would it be if, say, someone was missing? You could look this up and find out where the car was, maybe they ran off the road and just knocked themselves unconscious? Or if your car was stolen?

RFID tracking, however, seems wrong to me. Well, wrong for companies to be able to put into products to see who is buying them, that’s just whack and a serious invasion of privacy for no good reason. See, that’s the defining point as to whether I’ll personally say something is okay or not. The reason behind it. With the ‘naked scanners’, CCTV cameras, and GPS vehicle tracking, there are all security reasons for implementation; they can help to keep us safe. The RFID tracking, however, is purely for commercial purposes, and therefore not appropriate. If this technology was being used to keep tabs on potentially dangerous items, guns and chemicals, now that’s a brilliant idea if I do say so myself!

Okay, now for a knitting pattern. In keeping with the reason behind this post, I’ll have to link a knitted toy aeroplane.

In this case I’m referring to HDTV. I have a seriously awesome television that my fiancé and I bought earlier this year. We’re really happy with it, though we did spend more than we originally intended, partly because the sales person told us that with this television we wouldn’t need a set top box to be able to tune into free-to-air HDTV channels. We thought this was a good idea, because had we bought the TV we originally were going to buy, and then a set top box, we would be over the amount for the better TV.

Okay so as I said earlier, we have IPTV, so we haven’t bothered yet tuning into the other channels because we get them all via our cable channels. A few days ago our cable went out, it’s something that probably happens about twice a year, and isn’t too much of a bother… usually. So I tried to tune our TV into the HD channels, because that’s what the salesman at the store said I could do. Of course, that’s not the case. The salesperson had completely neglected to mention the fact that I would still need a digital aerial device to actually pick up the channels – the other function of a set-top box – so we then had no channels at all, as we had rearranged the living room thinking we didn’t need to be close to the analogue aerial point any more. I had to pour over technology forums to figure out why I wasn’t picking up those channels, and it was a very annoying discovery! Shortly afterwards our cable came back on so it wasn’t anything to worry about then… but I suppose one day I’ll have to figure all that out. Ah well, not today!

The pattern for this post is going to be this amazingly beautiful depiction of the Roman God Silvanus. It’s my birthday in a few days, on the 3rd, actually, and for my birthday my fiancé is getting me a set of Lantern Moon Rosewood needles, in just the right size to knit up this wonderful bag, and that’s just what I’ll be doing! I can’t wait!

I’ve got a pretty darn good net connection, to be honest. I have cable broadband, which also gives me access to a VoIP telephone system and IPTV, which is all really fantastic. I love my set up. I’ve got a 300MB download per second. Yes, that’s a really good set up. My fiancé and I play LOTRO so I have to have a good connection, lest we run into all sorts of lag. However, our uploading time is 2MB per second… That means my download speed is 15000% faster than my upload speed. That’s just ridiculous!

Now I know why business always have those SDSL lines, I always thought they were a rip-off. They are really expensive, but if you were working on large files that needed to go online, then I would have to consider it a wise investment. It’s not for me, because the only thing I wanted to upload were videos of my cats, and I wanted to host them on Photobucket, not YouTube, but the uploading times on my net connection meant it would take, ohhhhh a long, long time.

You see, with anyone’s net connection, just because you’ve got a maximum download of 300MBPS doesn’t mean you’re actually going to have that all the time. If you’re computer is doing something else that involves being connected to the net, then already some of that bandwidth is being used for something else. Same with uploading. Those figures are the absolute maximum that you could reach, but most of the time you’re not sitting at your maximum amount.

Anyway, I just wanted to complain about that. I suppose now I’m just going to have to wait and see if I really want to upload those videos – and have them at the scrutiny of the YouTube populace :/ – or if I will forget about the whole thing!

Now for today’s pattern, I am in the mood for something cute, and I’m tired, so I’m going with a Daisy Pillow. I think this is such a versatile pattern, this pillow could have any cute face embroidered onto it, and I love when patterns can be dramatically altered with a simple touch.

For one, I am a user of an internet forum – who isn’t? – and I like to make my own signatures to go in my posts. Most people who’ve used forums will know what I am talking about, but in case you don’t, it’s basically a banner like picture, where you include a bit of text. In my case, it is the name I use on this particular website. On past websites where I’ve held Administration positions, I’ve also included that information.

Anyway, so I use a free photo alteration application called Serif to do my particular sigs, and it is actually alright. I’d prefer to work with Photoshop or Fireworks, but I’ve yet to go out and purchase it so I work with what I’ve got. I download a lot of little pictures or fonts to use when I make these things, depending on what mood I’m in. I’ve gotten a lot better at making these, and all it really took was patience. I’ve even progressed onto altering people’s avatars for special occasions, which takes more than making a sig from scratch. I’m at a point where I can alter quite well, but can’t create from scratch, with regards to avatars and picture creation. I really enjoy doing this, and can waste SO much time downloading fonts from da font to use in my sigs.

Okay today’s knitting pattern is going to be related to something I’ve talked about often. Totoro. There’s some new Totoro patterns up on Ravelry and I’m very impressed with them. I want to make some of these little fellows in the near future, because they are just so cute!

The film came out back in May, but apparently I missed it. You can take a look at the trailer here, and it does look very good. Sort of an evolution of Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, but with a more interesting storyline, the characters look and move better, and less dead things, which is a plus for me. Anyway, that video lead me onto this one, which is about Althea Crome who knits tiny little garments for the movie. She knits jumpers with yarn as thin as cotton, on needles as thin as pins, it’s just amazing.

Apparently, this lady has been doing this micro knitting thing for quite some time, it is an art, to her, and I am very much a fibre-art enthusiast, so I took a look around the Web to see if she had a website. Sure enough she has one, and her work is just so amazing. Her gallery of mittens and gloves alone makes my brain hurt, and these are all proper garments made miniature, not just the flat shape of mittens, but proper, wearable (should anything have hands that small), mittens and gloves. She’s even done miniature microknitting. I’m not kidding, these tiny jumpers are small enough that she has a picture of six of them along one finger. These things have approximately 80 stitches per inch… that’s just mind boggling.

Now onto the macroknitting… okay I just made that term up. But anyway, there are a few macroknitters out there, people who knit on a very large scale. For instance, Christien Meindertma knits with needles large enough to be curtain rods… I’m not kidding there, either. Here is a link to an article showing some of her work, though I don’t advise hitting her site, the rather idiotic decision was made in the case of her website that every link you click on brings up another little window… It’s horrid.

Another macroknitter is Rachel John, who did an art piece with 1000 strands of yarn, and needles about the width of your arm. There are some really amazing knitters out there, I love seeing where this craft is going! One of these days I’ll do an entry about the origins of knitting!

Okay so after all that complicated knittery, today’s knitting pattern has to be super easy… How about a big chunky scarf?

I was looking at this diagram this 2mb leased line provider website has, and it looks so complicated. I mean I get the basics, but is that really necessary? I suppose businesses that have to secure their data or have heaps of net usage going on need that sort of thing, but wow, that is complicated!

I am so glad that now I don’t have to worry about all that business broadband stuff, thank you very much, but I’ll stick with the normal broadband providers! I am just so glad I didn’t go ahead with anything business wise before I had a chance to sit on the idea for a while! Life is often like that, before you run headlong into something you really need to sit down and think for a while… often it can be just what you need to take on a task properly, or it can be a way to avert getting half way into something and then deciding you don’t want to do it.

I was just about to go have a look for which pattern to link to today, I was wondering around Ravelry, perusing vests, scrutinising cardigans, and looking over cushions. Then I happened upon something so cute, I knew it had to be today’s pattern. Hamsterbeans… Yes, a cross between a hamster and a jelly bean… knitted. Oh my, they are so damn cute! As a lover of Hamtaro, I especially like this pattern. I think a larger one, knitted and then felted, to look like Hamtaro would be great!

It’s an interesting notion, as he goes on to talk about the internet being like a blank piece of paper, that we can draw or write what we choose, and largely with impunity… In some ways, I can understand this, but in others, I disagree. He says that certain uses of the internet need to be policed, but that governments and companies should be limited in their powers.

I think that certain aspects of surveillance and security have been fought by the public, but have then been accepted. When CCTV first came around, there were numerous scare-stories about the systems being used illegally, or inappropriately. But then it came to be accepted, and now we see so many crimes being solved because of CCTV system footage of the perpetrator. As long as these systems are kept out of bathrooms and changing rooms, I don’t care where they are implemented, because people who don’t have anything to hide don’t hide anything, but they are still entitled to privacy. That’s not to say that I think these systems should have full audio, I am talking visuals only.

Security companies are flourishing these days, because people don’t want to put up with anything they don’t have to any more, at least that’s my take on things. I have to say, though, that I am not a strong advocate of call logging. If someone is suspicious, sure, tap their phone lines. If they aren’t talking about anything that’s of concern, then those monitoring the phone calls need to drop the line.

Here’s a little personal anecdote. I once worked for a major company doing over the phone tech support. This job was… well it sucked. Imagine being stuck to a phone for 8 hours straight, trying to help people with their computer issues, and being harassed by your boss for how long it takes, and also being harassed if you don’t fix enough issues. When I worked at this place, my team leader repeated something back to me that my fiancé had said on the phone to me, when I was talking to him during one of my breaks. He had been listening in on my calls, not unusual as that was how they made sure we were doing okay with our jobs, but I wasn’t on the job, I was on a break. I was furious with this team leader, and promptly found in the regulations set out for such matters that this person had indeed broken the rules in what they had done. The team leader took it well, but nonetheless, I was furious. I quit the job not that long after all that, because as I said, it was a terrible job, and then managed to walk into a really good job two weeks later!

Okay today’s knitting pattern has to be something nice and cozy… how about a Longcat Scarf!? It is such a laugh that someone turned Long Cat into a knitting pattern!