Hoke’s Ramblings

…actually, this is a poorly masked attempt to show off my skills as a BF2 chopper pilot, but play along for now.

You 'normal' people won't understand this, but being a lefty, your choices of highish-end joysticks is severly limited. For that matter, even low-end abidextrous joysticks are extremely hard to come by, which is why I originally settled for a Dodgitech Attack 3 joystick.

When that started to die – a slow and excrutiating death, I might add, with bigger and bigger compensations necessary as time went by – I decided I needed a new stick.

Pretty much all searches for left-handed joysticks pointed to Saitek's range. Not being a huge fan of force-feedback, and being too poor to afford their high-end flight sticks, I settled on the Cyborg EVO.

It truly is a remarkable piece of engineering, with fully adjustable left/right-handed grips, and even silver knobs to tilt the buttons on two axes. It's not quite as comfy as I was hoping, but to be honest I was too keen to get flying to fiddle the silver knobs for too long. More adjustment may be necessary tonight.

Flying a chopper with a twist-grip for a rudder is a whole new experience. Doing everything with one hand is quite tricksy, and I went to bed feeling a little airsick from overcompensating with everything. Then again, people probably already think I'm overcompensating for buying a big joystick. Ahem.

But of course the proof is in the pudding, so I thought I'd put it to the test and see what I could do with it. I can't shoot anything at the moment, but low speed manouverability is outstanding. The throttle control is nice and sturdy. Not like the flimsy doo-hicky in an impossible to reach place on my Attack 3. Altitude control is waaay better than using the keyboard. Just check these screenshots. Any piece of equipment that allows me to survive flying into the docks of a carrier, turn 180 degrees and hover long enough to change cameras and grab a screenshot without being blown to oblivion is OK in my books!

Even the Blackhawk, while being a lot more stable than the Cobra, is hardly a nimble beast, and it seemed to manage ok too.

Now what geek toy next…? Maybe this… Track IR

While some people glean great joy from posting mundane inanities every day, I prefer to wait until something worthwhile comes along to post. But then others get antsy if you don't post something for a week or two.

Since the current rage seems to be posting stuff about demonic parallels with your favourite pet, I thought I'd stick this pic up…

Goodness me, it's been AGES since I last posted. Hopefully I haven't lost too many of my regulars …especially since there weren't too many to begin with.

I recently spent a marvellous week diving in Mozambique, but the moment seems to have past to relegate it to the halls of blogging, but what other purpose does a blog serve, than to commemorate these marvellous moments – I pledge to have it up here, um, soonish.

Been trekking around the country – Xmas in Durban, a night in PE, and now I'm in Cape Town, where I have become an uncle-in-law-to-be…Lina's sister gave birth to a healthy baby boy yesterday – Geluk, Kobus en Jodrieka!

And obviously a belated Merry Christmas to all, and all the best for this new year, that has sprung upon us all too suddenly…I mean, I'm getting married THIS year now!!

More sometime.