Month: May 2015

I think this could be another theme … I have a few of those.

There are the random ramblings. I occasionally go ranty but I’m not keen on doing that. Besides, there’s always that filter on my whinging where certain topics, certain thoughts, aren’t for public viewing. You never quite know who’s looking !

There are the music posts. I do enjoy doing these, as it gives me a great excuse to listen to some of my most favourite songs via the youtubes. But I don’t think many people click on the links to the videos. Sometimes it feels like a “Look at the size of my music collection” brag too. I don’t like to brag. The dominant feeling when I look at how much music I’ve collected is that I like a wide variety of music. Never a bad thing.

There are the whingy posts where I say how I’ve struggled. These have their place. I find it really helps if I can quantify what’s getting me down. To get the thoughts collected and organised. They act as a kind of reset where I can take stock, shape up and move on. And it usually does help too.

But – smiles from Pretty Ladies are usually way better. And that includes messages where I’m imaging a Pretty Lady smiling and chuckling at me while she’s tapping out the message.

There used to be a series of cricket posts. I’ll still post about that but with me not playing any more, the source material isn’t there to build a post on.

Movies are an occasional post too, as well as me taking excuses to put the adorable Ben (he’s a popular puppy) on screen.

And now the gaming posts are coming back … This used to be either WoW or Eve, now it’s going into the territory of the Elite Dangerous pilot. I think I’m liking that game perhaps a little too much. It is a rather pretty game and there’s still a decent amount going on in it. The latest community goal is a trading initiative where you take agricultural machinery to Diso to help them with their farming. The last one involved bounty hunting to clear the pirates out of Zaonce.

The big thing that made Elite grab my attention is that it appeals to that inner adolescent in me that while growing up, wanted to be a Space Pilot, going on missions in outer space. And this game lets me escape this life and act out those early ambitions by plying the tradelanes out there, fighting or running from the pirates or just getting out there and exploring.

But there is something very important to consider – games should never be more important than real life and if they start feeling like a job, that’s when it’s time to walk away. That’s why I fell out of love with WoW and Eve, I wasn’t enjoying playing them any more and it was actually more fun working in my proper job than doing the grinding these games demanded. Ok, WoW has less of the grind now as it accommodates the recent influx of players suffering from entitlement but that’s part of why I went away, it offered me zero challenge outside of accommodating daft mechanics in the boss battles.

Back to Elite !

I need a ship name. I’ve just upgraded to a Python :

Yep. It’s not much to look at but it’s a great all rounder. I currently have it set up for lots of cargo carrying but you can also use it as a really nasty combat ship and I suspect it would do ok as an explorer too. It can land at the smaller outpost stations as well, so when this farming community goal is all done, I’ll look to use it to run lots of missions for naval ranks, these let you buy more ships.

Oh dear. It’s sounding like working again isn’t it ? I walk away from the game when it starts feeling like that. I used to be reasonably competitive in the games but … if it isn’t fun, why are you playing the game ? And putting pressure on yourself to advance through as quick as possible, is how you quickly evaporate the fun out of a game.

A name for the Python ?
Monty is banned. That’s way too obvious.
IMV* Michael Palin has potential. I loved his travelogues which started with Around The World In 80 Days, a modern day attempt to recreate the journey in the book.
*(Independent Merchant Vessel)
Sid. As in Hissing.
“Oh please god don’t hit anything”. When I bought it, I literally didn’t have enough money to fill the cargo hold. And if you lose the ship and can’t cover the 5% value insurance, you’re back in the starting ship. Oops. I’ve just managed to get enough back in the bank to cover the insurance but there’s a massive amount of upgrading to do.
“Making Miss Millie Proud”. There seem to be a lot of Miss Millies but one of them makes Big Cookies, which fits in with my usual theme for trading vessels.
“Firefly Enterprises”. That’s more like a company name than a ship name.
“Pegasus Rising”. Spot the scifi series that one is inspired by. Actually it could be two series that I immediately think of.
“Sky Eagle”. I like that one but that name deserves to be on something much shinier, prettier and littler than the Python.

Any more ideas for a name for my Python ?

The world has its eyes on Britain at the moment …

That includes Wales, home of the Dwagons, Ireland, home of the Giants of the Causeway and those barbarians north of the border. Scotland is it ?

Just joking there. Ireland was a much loved home while I was in primary school (last millenium) and I adore that accent. I’ve been going wow hearing it again, we’ve had a recent joiner and we’ve been occasionally swapping war stories. Yep. I been about 200yards away from a bomb going off. Only a little one, it knocked off the front of one of the stores in Lisburn. Different times. Yeah, you had the end days of the Troubles but it was also safe enough that 8 year old me was trusted to walk through town to the bus home.

Wales has the dragons. Watch them around the sheep though.

And I had the pleasure to work with some amazing people up in the Scottish part of the organisation in my previous project.

Yep. We been voting again. No matter who wins our elections, we’re always deeply unhappy with the result.

I don’t believe the fault is in the ideologies of the parties. I don’t think the parties know what their ideologies are any more, they’re just saying anything to chase votes. The trouble comes from them chasing votes from different parts of the population. There are also those deeply entrenched ideas (which I have too and I’m struggling to throw them off) about who we should be voting for. People vote Labour all their life, people vote Conservative all their life.

Some people voted LibDem all their life, up until the last election where they showed their true colours by shattering all the promises they made in the run up to the election … and then reminding everyone what they’re like with some incredibly negative campaigning over the last week. They still looked surprised when they went from 50+ seats to just 8.

Nah. Our problem is with the politicians. No one with any credibility wants to be a politician any more and by the time they reach real power, their credibility has been knocked out of them. They are not rooted in the real world.

Someone once said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for those already tried.”. But – the important thing is, we have our freedom, our streets are mostly safe at night, our police enforce most of the laws that are in there to keep us safe and we still have the last vestiges of a National Health Service.

Enough about politics.

About that vote ?

There are far more important concerns than who we choose to inhabit that lunatic asylum that sits on the banks of the Thames. Yep.

That’s from my current trading expeditions in Elite.

What could be more important than life or death ? Tea or coffee. Definitely. Although I will admit to being very partial to hot chocolate as well.

Ending thoughts :
Vote the way you choose.
Try to banish prejudices when you vote.
Make sure you vote – it’s the only way the lunatics will pay attention.
Norah Jones had it spot on with My Dear Country.
Cricket’s second main break of the day is called “Tea”.

Which way do you go ? Are you a coffee or a tea person ?

Just had a busy weekend. Well, technically it’s weekend +1 now but hey.

Actually – come to think of it, it is +1 day on something :

May the 5th be with you ! Oh wait – one day late. Oh well. That’s an example of one of the Gimp photomanips that I’m maybe … 80% happy with. Why not totally ? Because there’s a mismatch between the two images that have been cobbled together. To really work, the images have to be all sharp, all fuzzy, they need to be consistent across the image. In this one, the dwagon is fuzzy, the Star Wars bit of it is sharp.

Oh and they don’t trust me with lightsabers any more.

It’s going to be mental around the scifi geek community in 2 years time when the 40 year anniversary comes around. Star Wars really caught the imagination when it came out. There’d been scifi films before then but they’d never really hit the mark before this one. Hell, Star Trek had been going strong as well. But Star Wars grabbed people in a way nothing before it had. And then it continued that with Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (one of the first films I saw in the cinema).

The sequels weren’t quite the same but I think they were still pretty good.

Enough about Star Wars though. Just had a busy weekend :

Work trip on Friday – 100 miles there and back and a fairly full day of meetings too. It’s a new contract and it’s very encouraging. We might be hard pressed to keep up with our contractor, they’re really cracking on. (A nice refreshing change!)

I could have done the run to see the parents on Friday night but to be honest, bank holiday traffic can be nuts and I welcomed the easy evening. So I travelled on the Saturday morning instead. Straight to the pub. Lovely steak and tangy chips too. Yum.

And as well as seeing mum, dad and sister for the first time in a while, I get to see this fella too :

That’s Ben the Staffy. He’s getting on a bit now but he’s still got an absolutely lush coat, finely defined muscles, a distinguished greyness to his muzzle and a tail that oftens disappears into motion blur.

He’s got a great temperament too. He’ll bark when unfamiliar people come around but when his people give the impression that the unfamiliar person is ok, then he’ll start with the slurping. Typical Staffy. And he likes to keep an eye on his people and make sure they’re ok. And if they’re not, it’s slurping time.

It’s good to see the family. And there’s another important thing – dogs, cats, they’re family too.

Back to work today though. I may need to escape for another break again soon, although that might come partly due to domestic stuff. Need to sort the house out. I’ll accept certain standards for me, even a certain amount of clutter (because my brain likes familiarity, including clutter) but I expect to provide higher standards for others. And I need to bring my house back up to those better standards.

In a bit. Having me dinner now.

At least it’s calmed down a bit now. I added the following to Facebook earlier “It’s a hat stealing, umbrella murdering, wig pinching day out there but not quite at ‘small person grab an anchor’ levels”. Very windy. Thankfully it wasn’t raining when I was outside. You know what the unsettled weather means though don’t you ?

Cricket season is upon us !

One of the work sides starts the season tomorrow night. I’m oh so close to being intact enough on the outside to play again. That’s a bad idea though because I wouldn’t be able to put in the performance level that I’d be happy with. If I had the chance to up the fitness levels and prepare, maybe. But as it stands, an evening of play would be followed by days of pain. Besides, there are fitter, younger players who want a game more than I do who can be more effective for the team.

Why do I discount myself there ?
Reactions have slowed – so my batting has suffered
Carrying the weight (this is something I need to sort anyway!)
Very weak throwing arm

I have like 95% movement in both shoulder and hip but the movement lost in the shoulder is critical to bowling and throwing (and not much else!). So while I can throw when I need to, I save it for special occasions.

The upshot is, there’s people who play way better than I do now. So I’d be taking away from the team if I demanded a place ahead of the young whippersnappers. And the captains like me enough (I’m gobby on the field with constant encouragement for the team and my energy level is usually high) to find places in the team for me if I wanted it.

I dunno – it just doesn’t feel honest to everyone if I still looked to play. And honesty is everything with me.

And on that note … cya soon !