/*
avlmod.css
Alexander van Loon's style for the Tarski theme - http://tarskitheme.com/
Designed by Alexander van Loon, http://alexandervanloon.nl/
*/

/* Tables */

table {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #F9F9F9;
    border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    margin: 1em 1em 1em 0;
}

table th, table td {
    border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
    padding: 0.2em;
}

table th {
    background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #F2F2F2;
    text-align: center;
}

/* Body */

body {
    background: #F7F6F5;
}

/* Wrapper */

#wrapper {
    box-shadow: 0 5px 18px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
    background: white;
}

/* Header Image */

#header-image {
    margin: 0 0 -50px 0;
}

/* Title */

#title {
    border-bottom: medium none;
    margin: 0 0 0 40px;
    position: relative;
    top: -70px;
}

/* Blog title */

#blog-title {
    color: white;
    font-family: "Trebuchet MS",Verdana,Sans-Serif;
    font-size: 2em;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em black;
}

#blog-title > a:visited {
    color: white;
}

/* Tagline */

#tagline {
    color: white;
    font-family: "Trebuchet MS",Verdana,Sans-Serif;
    font-size: 0.9em;
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em black;
}

/* Navigation */

#navigation {
    border-top: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
    margin: 0;
}

/* Post title heading */

h2, h2 a, h2 a:visited {
    color: #444444 !important;
    font-family: "Trebuchet MS",Verdana,Sans-Serif !important;
    font-size: 20px !important;
}

Developing my own theme wasn’t easy, it took a lot of trial and error, searching and reading to figure out how CSS works. Because there were some things I didn’t understand I posted a topic at the WordPress.org forum, while it didn’t provide me with the help I expected I did get the very good advice to use Firebug. Fortunately a nice colleague at work helped me out.

Yet, I still have little idea of what I’m doing and if my code is any good or an ugly hack. Take the last paragraph of code for an example, it seems the !important is necessary to overrule some inheritance to make it work. I don’t think this is the right way and I’d like to know how to do it without using !important. Also the border above the navigation bar (with “Home” and “About”) is placed just below the header image in Firefox, but on Chrome (and other browsers using WebKit) the border is placed over the header image.

To make my theme I borrowed some CSS code of other websites I examined, to get an idea of how others do it. The table code is borrowed from Wikipedia and already features in the child theme (alternate style) I made for K2. The background color and the box shadow in the background were borrowed from OMG! Ubuntu. I like what I have now, while my original goal was to mimic K2 as close as possible I’ve made some different changes which I like. And even if I’m still  a newbie, I like the fact that I know a bit more about CSS now. What I’m still missing is K2 rolling archives slider bar, which also stays on top along with the search field as you scroll. Copying that to Tarski would probably involve quite some time and advanced skills, which I don’t have.

Recently we have witnessed the death of SOPA and ACTA being the subject of much criticism. I have already written a post about it on my Dutch weblog. I observed in that post that there are politicians who are willing to take action against these corporate attacks on the public domain. But even then, it seems we are merely defending ourselves and stopping the attack, but we don’t counterattack. While stricter intellectual property legislation may have been averted for now, it is still possible for film studios to cash in for eternity on films under their copyright, even if they are more than half a century old.

But we do have the power to make change happen with our vote. We have the Pirate Parties for example. I have not studied the political program of the Dutch Pirate Party, but if my own party the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy continues to tread on privacy and other parties don’t do enough I might be tempted to vote for them in protest.

By the way, a much longer documentary film on intellectual property I’d recommend is RiP!: A Remix Manifesto which can be watched here.

From my personal experience I remember when I was on vacation with my family in the west of the USA, in Zion National Park. When we stopped our car along the road in the middle of nowhere to enjoy the scenery, two cars drove by. Both stopped, with one driver taking our photo because he noticed us taking photos and another driver because he was concerned our car might have broken down. But I’ve experienced generous hospitality even more in Nepal: I was invited to weddings and dinners often and I was even given a place to sleep for free in a private home by Uttam and Meena. But, being such a rational person I’m not going to trust my and other’s anecdotal evidence alone, so I fired up Google Scholar. It was a bit difficult to find studies on the subject because unrefined and even more refined search terms return articles on the hospitality industry, but after filtering I read two interesting articles.

In a study of the hospitality of the Jordanian Balga Bedouin, Shryock (2004) writes that for these (formerly) nomadic people, hospitality was/is a means of public security. They are hospitable to strangers because they might one day be strangers themselves in need of hospitality when they have traveled for a long distance and are in need of food and a place to sleep. It is like a tax they voluntarily accept from each other, comparable to the Golden Rule they treat others how they would like to be treated themselves. Yet, the hospitality in its purest form is disappearing because now there is a government which imposes taxes and provides social security, among other influences of modernization. In the past hospitality served as a substitute for government (p. 48–51). But still, hospitality has it’s uses. Hospitality should impress your guests who will then spread the word about your hospitality, increasing your reputation (p. 36–37). A greater reputation gives you fame and influence. (p. 54-–55). While Shryock’s article is behind a paywall, you can read a shorter news article explaining his findings more briefly.

Lashley (2008) combines multiple social science perspectives to explain hospitality. He describes a common theme of religious and cultural factors as motives for hospitality (p. 71–72). In the studies he cites reciprocity is a red thread. What is very interesting is how people from a remote tribe in Indonesia invite tourists to their celebrations, even though the tourists are not able to offer reciprocal hospitality (because tourists stay for only a short time). They do not feel there is a lack of reciprocity however, because tourists bring news from the outside world and feel honored by the presence of tourists (p. 74). But there is also much discussion about what genuine hospitality is. Another scientist is cited who argues that genuine hospitality is fueled by altruism, which includes the following motives (p. 75):

• the desire to please others, stemming from general friendliness and benevolence or from affection for particular people; concern or compassion;
• the desire to meet another’s need;
• a desire to entertain one’s friends or to help those in trouble;
• a desire to have company or to make friends, and the desire for the pleasures of entertaining – what we may call the wish to entertain as a pastime.

The paper ends with a conclusion mentioning that cultural and religious obligations to be hospitable no longer have a weaker moral force in mature industrialized societies (p. 83).

I think the hospitality given to me by Uttam and Meena definitely falls in the category of genuine hospitality. Since then I’ve had a desire to offer them hospitality in return, but that’s not realistic because it’s unlikely I will meet them again in the near future. I probably have done something in return for their hospitality already by doing volunteer work in their country and helping Meena with teaching English. But if I can’t offer it to them, I can offer it to others. As soon as I’ll move out of my parent’s house (maybe this year or the next) and get my own place to live, I intend to sign up for CouchSurfing so I can provide others with hospitality.

References:

Lashley, C. (2008). Studying hospitality: Insights from social sciences. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 8(1), 69–84.
Shryock, A. (2004). The new Jordanian hospitality: House, host, and guest in the culture of public display. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46(1), 35–62.

• The Expendables (2010)
• Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
• Gegen die Wand/Head-On (2004)
• Todo sobre mi madre/All About My Mother (1999)
• Låt den rätte komma in/Let the Right One In (2008)
• Shame (2011)

The Expendables wasn’t meant to have the qualities of a good film, it’s an old school action film which aims at exciting it’s viewers with fighting, firearms and exorbitant explosions. It’s not as action packed as Stallone’s earlier work Rambo (2008) which probably shares the first place for the most violent film I’ve ever seen with The Passion of the Christ (2004), but that’s no wonder given the excess of that film. It’s good to see an uncomplicated action film like this once in a while, but I was not impressed by the hand-to-hand combat. Other films manage to do that better, this brilliant action scene from the film Flash Point (2003) is one of the best examples of what an hand-to-hand combat action scene should be like.

Howl’s Moving Castle is another one of Studio Ghibli‘s wonderful films. Some scenes in this film amaze me with their detail, and must have taken a lot of work to draw and animate. Spirited Away (2001) is still my favourite however. I hope to see some of there more recent films, too. Gegen die Wand shows us the life of Cahit and Sibel, two Germans with a Turkish background being torn between two cultures, not feeling accepted by both. It shows themes such as honor killing and averted love becoming true love, but it ends with Sibel’s sense of loyalty or duty to her children and new husband winning over her love for Cahit. It’s an ending which is sad but justified at the same time. Having become a fan of its director Almodovar, Todo sobre mi madre didn’t disappoint me with it’s brilliant dialogues and script. Låt den rätte komma in is one of those rare good horror films, the gloomy snowy winters of Sweden make a great decor. I went to see Shame after having seen Steve R. McQueen’s previous film Hunger (2008). While it doesn’t surpass Hunger, Shame is another great film from his hand. As someone who has had to cope with serious procrastination issues, I think I can understand how Brandon is affected by his addiction. We see that he suffers, he desperately wants to change his life and lose his addiction, but he can’t because his will has no control over his addiction. I had a wtf-moment when Brandon was walking around New York at night and is then invited for a ‘lift’ by a female in parked car who is is apparently preying on hot guys to pick up. I wish real life would be like that.

If you want to switch windows, it’s easy to move the mouse pointer over to the Activities menu in the top left corner. This is a relatively small change, but very smart: you don’t even need to click (but you still can if you want) and you require almost no accuracy to reach the top left corner. Of course, it’s even easier to use the Windows key to show the Activities menu instantly, or to use the Alt + Tab key combination to switch windows. This and more advice to make working with GNOME Shell more productive can be read in the GNOME Shell Cheat Sheet. With GNOME Shell I never use the minimize button because it makes no sense without a task bar, so I don’t miss it at all. I either have my windows maximized or tiled (see the Cheat Sheet) and in the rare case I do want to maximize or return windows to their previous size I double click the title bar.

The visual design of GNOME 3 is minimalistic yet beautiful. I guess GNOME 3 has also cut down on the amount of options and simplified them. When GNOME 3′s System Settings is compared to KDE’s System Settings you see they are as different as night is from day. KDE offers a lot more options which is nice if you want to control everything I guess, but there’s only very few options I miss in the GNOME System Settings. I only used GNOME Tweak Tool for two things: slightly decreasing the font size and changing the font. I didn’t install a different theme, but I imagine that if options for changing fonts and themes are added to System Settings nothing would be missing. As far as I know that is probably going to happen in the future because the designers didn’t have time for it yet.

Another interesting thing to note is that the designers and developers have a concept of core applications through which they intend to integrate important functionality into GNOME 3 itself. Most of these ideas are still work in progress, but we can already see how well instant messaging is integrated in GNOME 3. Personally I haven’t been using instant messaging for a long time because it doesn’t really interest me any more, but the impression I have of the design is that it’s very ingenious, something which hasn’t been done by other operating systems and desktop environments as far as I know. I especially look forward to the Music core application because Rhythmbox could use some improvement. It’s also very encouraging to see the amount of work going into Web, the former Epiphany. What is great that they intend to save as much vertical space as possible, so they moved the Application Menu and display the options contained in that menu through other means. This change is also on the menu for other applications. For me it’s essential to have as much vertical space as possible in this age of widescreen monitors.

To finish, what are my most important problems with GNOME 3? The problem with the first priority to fix should be the omission of the Power Off option in the user menu. It took me a while to find it, but you can read all about it in bug #643457, which has over 100 comments. It surprises me that the developers and designers haven’t returned the Power Off option after all the outrage of the users. I’m not sure what their motivation is, maybe a desire to fix it properly? But all that doesn’t matter when the end result was that I had to use Google to figure out how I could shut down my PC with GNOME 3. Let alone my mother who wouldn’t have any clue without the extension to place the option back in the menu. Breaking with conventions can be a good idea, but breaking with this convention was a bridge too far. The fact that distributions such as openSUSE install such an extension by default shows there is a consensus against this decision. I hope this will be fixed in GNOME 3.4, the fact that it remains missing in GNOME 3.2 was something I didn’t expect. Another issue is that searching for applications after having opened the Activities menu gives a lag of a few seconds before it returns the search results, for example if I search for the Terminal application. As far as I know this has something to do with icon caching, but I can’t find a bug report or other explanations for this yet.

I’ll be using GNOME 3 as my primary desktop environment as much as possible from now on. I’m still having serious problems with Evolution, but I’ll save that for another post. At least Evolution does a better job than KMail at this moment. I’ll probably still check out KDE now and then. With all these upcoming improvements to GNOME 3 exciting times are ahead.

Reporter: it is -27 ℃, the ice one and half meters thick. But the Siberians here don’t think it’s cold at all, it is ‘just’ -27 ℃, they say.

Siberian: what do you mean, cold? I don’t even have my jacket on. Are you making a joke? It is warm today, it’s not cold at all! We think it’s cold when it’s -42 ℃, -25 ℃ is warm and if it’s -15 ℃ it is so warm that it isn’t interesting to come any more. Then it’s like summer.

Reporter: tents provide some protection against the cold, but seasoned Siberians like Aleksandr don’t even need those.

Aleksandr: why would I need a tent? The sun shines! Today it’s extremely hot, it’s beautiful, it’s a delight to sit here.

Both Siberians which are interviewed are ice fishing without any gloves on, with their bare hands. The comment about -27 ℃ being extremely hot seems like hyperbole to me, because the average high for Barnaul in July is 26,2 ℃ according to Wikipedia. But they’re not bragging if they have no qualms about exposing their bare hands in that low temperature. The Wikipedia article on frostbite mentions that some individuals and population groups are more resistant to frostbite because of their adaptation and exposure to very cold environments. Curious as I was, I decided to fire up Google Scholar to learn more.

A more recent article by Daanen (2003) which is cited often gives a review on cold-induced vasodilation (CIVD). I noticed this term doesn’t have an article on Wikipedia yet so I hope to write one in the near future myself. When the finger tips are exposed to cold CIVD usually occurs after five or ten minutes and is believed to reduce the risk of injuries from cold exposure. People who are often exposed to local cold such as fish filleters develop an increased CIVD response with an earlier onset, and race (along with many other factors) also plays a role with black people having the weakest CIVD response. Further on in the article adaptation and acclimatisation are elaborated on, with a large table showing the large differences in CIVD obtained from many prior experiments.

However, the notion that black people would have an inherently inferior CIVD response as the introduction of the article seems to indicate is put into perspective at that point. One experiment showed that tropical residents who lived in an Arctic region for seven weeks acclimatized and showed the same CIVD response as the Arctic natives. Caucasians had a lower CIVD response than Japanese, but when the Japanese were compared with Caucasians living in the same region in Japan there was no difference. Therefore the conclusion is that ambient factors such as acclimatisation and diet may be more important than ethnic differences. The article concludes that while it is difficult to distinguish between the effect of adaptation and acclimatisation, people born in cold regions and people who expose their hands to cold for a prolonged period of time have an increased CIVD response.

We had some very cold weather in the Netherlands for the last weeks, see this graph with the grey line showing the normal average temperature for February and the blue and red line showing minimum and maximum temperature respectively. After witnessing the Siberians on the news I thought I should be able to handle the cold without gloves too, but it was not an easy ordeal. Let’s take last Monday for example, February the 6th. According to the graph the minimum temperature was -15 ℃ and the maximum -3 ℃. That day started with me going to the bus stop. Without gloves my hands felt cold and painful initially but after approximately ten minutes the pain went away and I regained the sensation in my fingers. However, later I had to wait at Utrecht Central Station and Rotterdam Central Station for delayed trains. As such, after my hands had warmed up in the bus they had to cool down again two times. These subsequent periods were much more painful for my hands and my CIVD response seemed to take a lot longer to kick in.

It seems like I still have a long way to go until I can compete with the Siberians, and right now it looks we’re going to see warmer weather in the Netherlands for the rest of the winter, without temperatures below freezing during the day. Not that I expected that increasing my acclimatisation would be easy. But even if the freezing temperatures are going away, there still is another solution, winter swimming.

Yesterday I watched the short documentary The Ice Tribe on YouTube, which shows ordinary Finnish people enjoying ice swimming. That’s winter swimming in a hole in the ice, in this case with a water temperature of 0 ℃. There are more video’s on YouTube showing this, for example a Estonian women even dives under the ice without too much discomfort. These persons do seem to have some experience which enables them to endure the cold water for at least one minute, because other videos show inexperienced people quickly leaving the water within ten seconds. And I was thinking only supernatural persons like our Wim Hof, the Dutch Iceman, could pull off feats like that.

What is notable is that the ice swimmers in the documentary describe ice swimming as a great experience. Some scientific research has been done on the benefits of winter swimming, with the consensus being that it indeed provides physical and psychological benefits. In their introduction Siems, Brenke, Sommerburg and Grune (1999) argue that we have effectively become weaklings thanks to our modern Western society because we protect ourselves so well from cold and heat stresses with heating and air conditioning. This sounds very familiar to me, with my sister and brother who are eager to turn up the heating to 21 ℃ with the recent cold temperatures here.

This lack suggested to have led to a greater incidence of disease. These negative consequences can be partly prevented by exercise and body hardening, with cold exposure being a traditional example of hardening. They report that previous studies have revealed that winter swimmers contract infectious diseases much less often. They researched experienced winter swimmers who swim at least once per week in ice-cold water for about five, but not more than ten, minutes. Their research concludes that winter swimmers have a better defence system against oxidative stress than the Average Joe. Similarly, Huttunen, Kokko and Ylijukur (2004) also conclude from their experiment that winter swimming significantly improves general well-being.

So, if both anecdotal and scientific evidence says it’s good I want to start doing it too. There are several large bodies of water in my neighbourhood which are suitable for swimming, but I think it’s too much trouble to make a short trip to go winter swimming. I could fill the hot tub in the garden without heating it up, but this is also troublesome for me because a hot tub needs a lot of water before it’s filled and it needs to be cleaned because it’s exposed outside. What seems like a better idea to me are cold showers. This alternative is easy, saves water and saves gas for heating. With the current temperatures I like standing in the shower for a long time with very warm water. Today I’ve taken a shower with lukewarm water without any discomfort, and plan to lower the temperature each time for successive showers until the water doesn’t get heated at all. Unheated water from a water pipe is probably not 0 ℃ even in the winter here, but it should do. Maybe I’ll switch to hot water for a minute to finish off, but from now on I’ll be taking ‘winter’ showers and doing myself, my father’s wallet and the environment a favour.

References:

Daanen, H.A.M. (2003). Finger cold-induced vasodilation: A review.  European Journal of Applied Physiology, 89(5), 411–426.
Huttunen, P., L. Kokko and V. Ylijukur (2004). Winter swimming improves general well-being. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 63(2), 140–144.
Siems, W.G., R. Brenke, O. Sommerburg and T. Grune (1999). Improved antioxidative protection in winter swimmers. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine, 92(4), 193–198.

On the one hand, remakes can be worthwhile. For example, I like both Infernal Affairs and The Departed. I think The Departed contributed something substantial over the original from Hong Kong. Also, more unfortunately a remake seemed to be justified because Infernal Affairs was barely known in the West. On the other hand, while I must admit that I have not seen the English version of 2011, let me point at the scores at Metacritic. The Swedish original scores 76 and the English remake scores 71. And that’s with a $13 million budget for the former and a $90 million budget for the latter. The Swedish original was not obscure, in fact it was broadcast by a Dutch public broadcaster a few weeks ago. There is merely a gap of two years between the release of the two films. So when the quality, age or availability of the Swedish original is taken into account, there is no reason to see the remake. This is yet another effort of Hollywood to steal foreign films so they can make easy cash off fools who can’t be bothered to read the English subtitles when they see the Swedish original.

So, unless a remake makes a significant contribution in comparison to the original, let’s refuse to reward the filmmakers for remakes like this. Vote with your wallet so Hollywood learns to be more creative instead of promoting the production of shameless copies. The English remake is on the same level as counterfeit clothes.

According to the article in The Washington Post funding was going to expire on Monday 2 January, so Obama signed it on Saturday 31 December after last-minute modifications were made by Congress at the request of the White House. Seems to me like they had better done it a few months in advance instead of waiting for the last minute if you ask me, procrastinating is supposed to be something what university students like me do, not presidents. So Obama had his hands tied because the funding was about to expire, but in that case why did you wait so long? Did (Obama allow) the House of Representatives with its Republican majority stonewall the process so they could force Obama’s hand when the deadline for new funding came?

If Obama has so much difficulty with closing Guantanamo, maybe the Cubans can kick the USA off their territory? They would have good reasons to do so. At least Ron Paul (among others, of course) has a mind of his own and realizes the value of civil liberties with his opposition to the NDAA  Unfortunately I find many of his other ideas such as those on abortion, climate change and higher taxes objectionable, so I wouldn’t want him to be the next president.

Yes, of course Obama has also achieved change for the better, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). But then again, it doesn’t make up for this unforgivable mistake he made with the NDAA. But there’s more. There’s the upcoming Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) which is another great danger to freedom, but it’s unlikely Obama would veto it. While Bradley Manning rots in jail, he thinks the treatment he gets is appropriate. He might have the intention to raise taxes for the rich with the Republicans preventing him from doing so, but as I wrote earlier his government is still too friendly towards Wall Street.

Concluding, I think the Democrats and Republicans which have been controlling the government in the USA for such a long time are what we would call “regent’s parties” in the Netherlands. Meaning, they have become so used to governing that they don’t represent the people of the USA properly anymore and care more about their own position. But in the USA it’s much worse than in the Netherlands where some of the parties who were accused of being regent’s parties have been punished by the electorate. Almost half of Congress consists of millionaires who are in the pocket of the special interests. I hope Americans Elect would have the power to break this duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans.

Now that I’ve calmed down after striking my fist at my desk a few times, let me tell you that I’ve seen two films this month, La piel que habito (2011), also known in English as The Skin I Live In and Drive (2011). This is the second film from the hand of Pedro Almodóvar I’ve seen, the first being Volver (2006). After seeing another film directed by him I can say I’ve become a fan of this man’s work. The subjects of his movies are unconventional. His last work contains some murder and rape which makes for tougher subject matter than Volver. Because La piel que habito is a film which is as least as surprising as The Sixth Sense, I can’t reveal too much about it because otherwise I would spoil the surprise. If you are going to see this, which I certainly recommend, refrain from reading the plot summary in the Wikipedia article. Or I should probably say, refrain from reading the Wikipedia article at all. Reading spoilers against my will happened to me recently when I read a summary of the sixth season of Dexter. Before I was even realizing I was reading spoilers I shouldn’t be reading I had already given in to my curiosity and the temptation to read on. I could bang my head against the wall after reading them because it spoiled the fun for me. Returning to the film, I wonder if the encounter between Vicente and Norma could be considered rape? I thought that the end of the encounter certainly amounted to that, but strangely a woman with who I was watching the film as part of our date thought otherwise, she blamed Norma for freaking out. Almodóvar is on my side and made sure that what comes around goes around for Vicente, who is punished in a most fitting manner.

Drive is a great film which didn’t deserve to be overlooked by the wider audience. It’s got Ryan Gosling, the beautiful Christina Hendricks and a few car chases. Most importantly it has the ingredients to appeal to both the mass audience and the art film audience. The Wikipedia article says that the film was initially planned to be released as a blockbuster, but that it was finally released as an independent film. But I don’t understand why? Because the director is Danish? As a consequence I had to see this film in an art house cinema, but I think that if the release wasn’t limited (it certainly was very limited in the Netherlands) and the popular cinema’s also showed it, it would have grossed a lot more. Because of the limited release the wider audience has missed it mostly, but it’s their loss if they only get Hollywood productions shoved through their eyes and ears. The film’s opening scene works wonders with suspense, similar to having a hard time with evading the cops in car chases in the GTA games, but two scenes later in the film do it even better. What I didn’t like about the film was the protagonist playing shy and mute most of the time. Like La piel que habito it’s also violent, the scene with the depiction of catching buckshot to the head is justified because it’s realistic. But a violent scene close to the finale left me wondering what kind of message the director wanted to convey, just shock? Critics have frequently placed this film on their lists of best films of 2011, which is well deserved.

Something else which I’d highly recommend for viewing (for free) are the film reviews done by Plinkett. Especially his reviews on the Star Wars prequel trilogy are great to watch and frequently got me gasping for breath after I rolled over the floor laughing. I already thought that the prequels didn’t compare well to the original, but he manages to articulate so well and in so much detail what is wrong with these films, unlike other reviewers.

The game still has the telepathic ranged units, like in Rome: Total War and Medieval 2: Total War; archers outside the walls can fire at enemies within the walls who they can’t even see. And this time they can also inflict heavy casualties at archers defending the walls, which is incredulous given the very good defensive position on the walls. What changed for the better is that defenders who are climbing the walls can now expect to get riddled by arrows while they do so. In the previous games archers on walls would fire at approaching besiegers, but once they had ladders up the wall they would be out of harm’s way for a moment until they reached the top of the wall.

Even worse is that my bow ashigaru standing on a notable hill don’t have a greater range than the enemy bow ashigaru not standing on a hill. I still remember playing Medieval 2: Total War as the French and placing my Scot’s Guard (or any other faction or any other units which have ‘long range missiles’) on the slope of a very high mountain. That was possible if you attack or get attacked by an enemy force near mountains. In extreme cases if you were placed on a much higher elevation and the enemy at a much lower elevation, your ranged units had a very extreme range of maybe one-third of the battlefield. While the enemies would tire themselves with moving uphill they would meet a hail of arrows or crossbow bolts and they would be dead before they could even get close.

Like in previous Total War games (with the exception of Empire, where it didn’t bother me) units are still marked with the very bright color of their faction to identify them, which makes them look silly and unrealistic. It’s not necessary at all to identify which units are yours and which are enemy, Europa Barbarorum and other mods don’t do it and there it never caused problems. Again a mod is needed to fix it I guess. While researching technologies in Empire made sense because that game is situated in the 18th century, the ‘Mastery of the Arts’ stuff which is essentially the same in Shogun 2 does not because the Sengoku period did not have such technological and intellectual advances. The peasant foot soldiers, the ashigaru, are cannon fodder for the samurai in this game, even though Wikipedia tells us that they could vary from having no armor to very heavy armor. The developers must have some kind of obsession for snow, when the winter season arrives the whole of Japan looks like Siberia. But in reality snow cover only lasts in northern Japan and higher altitudes. In Tokyo ‘snowfall is sporadic, but does occur almost annually’: with the average high and low in January being respectively 9,9 °C and 2,5 °C it should melt quickly. Glad I paid no more than € 15 for this game.