Showing posts with label The Armchair General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Armchair General. Show all posts

Friday, 16 August 2024

Another Toy


Another toy to make me gnash my teeth and whimper.  
My phone, which I rarely use as a phone, is giving trouble.  Too old to upgrade so I am forced to upgrade by buying a new one.  This is not a problem in that I have saved money donated at Christmas by attractive young women, well one, and that covered the cost of this cheap improvement.  
The old one was making noises, setting off alarms, and running through all the apps for no good reason after being on for a while.  It is clear it now must go into reserve, it must be at least 10 years old and in today's world that means it is past it.  
I hope to just change the 'sim' card and continue from there, no doubt this will be the first problem.  I expect to find many of them once I get it going, that is, if I get it going.  More power and more ram and less needless apps this time say I.
I will get the straightjacket out of the cupboard just in case.


This Christmas gift appears at first sight to be a good idea.  Written by two famous historians off whom I had never heard, it gives the reader the opportunity to decide what you would do if placed in a situation during the war.  
This sounds fun.
If you were Gavrilo Princip what would you do if you see your enemy approaching, indeed stopping in front of you.  Would you fire or not?  You are young, enthusiastic, determined to fight the enemy, and, in my opinion, stupid!  Gavrilo fired, killed his enemy and wife, and was swamped by those around him.  What did he succeed in doing bar starting a major war?  Nothing.  
Had I the chance in similar situations I would not stand with a gun amongst a crowd.  A sniper ensures his escape and remains in hiding.  How could such a straight forward point be missed by Gavrilo and his three friends standing along the route of the procession?  
Each chapter in the book leads to a choice of actions and follow ups with this.  Here it becomes complicated.  While I started to follow all this I soon became bemused by the confusing choices of pages.  They did not appear to me to fit.  Some gave a tale of what 'might' have happened if, but, I say, it didn't, so what is the point of this?  This is only guesswork and dos not work in my view. 
Anyway, through the Battle of Jutland I got myself confused.  The story itself is straight forward but I found the book confusing it somewhat.  And that ended things for me.  
A good attempt at a book of this kind but for me it did not work.