Month: September 2015

Haha – that old saying "You can never go back". Still, we got David McCallum out of it, so that's a win.

I'm watching the original Man from UNCLE (series 1) ATM. It's…. TERRIBLE! [lol]

I heard today that an amazing little lady has had an accident and is confined to her bed for the next few weeks … It’s not really bad, it’s a broken ankle. So it’s bed rest for the Little Lady for the next few weeks. (Virtual Hug).

Ankles are awkward. I’ve had my share of broken bones and fractures and other mishaps with my bones but I’ve been lucky that I’ve still been ambulatory with them. The most serious were a broken wrist (which was put in plaster), the dislocated shoulder (an 18 month injury) and the broken ribs. Can’t do much with ribs, except try not to laugh too much and go see a doctor if there’s blood (which there wasn’t). Oh and I think I stress fractured my back as a teenager and had a micro fracture in my shin.

But ankles and other load bearing bits of the body are awkward. Broken bones like humerus, fibia/tibia, radius and ulna (long bones in arms and legs) heal when put in casts that give them a scaffold to build themselves back up on. But joints are a bit more awkward to heal.

I hope she gets back on her feet soon. And before that cabin fever starts sinking in. But I have had a request. I’m calling it a Convalescence Care Package. Lots of music, nothing melancholy. And I’m expanding that into books and movies. Here goes !

If you’re having a grey day and need some cheering up, look no further than Mindy Gledhill’s album, Anchor. It’s a wonderful piece of happiness and joy with tracks like the one which kicks it off, California (better on the album). And it continues the Happy from there. Heavily recommended.

Telly can be good to keep you busy, keep you grinning. I’m looking forward to the Librarians coming back. It’s another Noah Wyle programme, whatever he gets involved with tends to be golden and the Librarians was no exception. There’s also old stuff like :

Macguyver;
The original Men From Uncle;
All the animated series – Ulysses 31, Dogtanian (yes, it’s kiddie stuff but that’s no reason why you should drop it off the Fun Stuff list if you enjoy it !), must actually watch Mysterious Cities Of Gold sometime too and I have the Dungeons and Dragons series that I’ve been meaning to watch for ages.

A game to keep you busy ? Has to be laptop or tablet and not too stressful. How about Machinarium … it’s a puzzle game with a super cute robot who is trying to get back to his partnerbot. Magical masterpiece. I’ve never finished this one, must go back to it. That and The Banner Saga which has recommendations from everybody.

Talking of cheap stuff – www.humblebundle.com run lots of offers, including content for Android and e-book and PC stuff. Their e-book bundle isn’t interesting at the moment (Star Wars stuff) but hopefully better will appear when it changes over tomorrow.

Books ? I’d first go to Larry Niven’s Ringworld series. Little gritty but it’s a ride through the most distant part of the Known Space novels. It’s a dangerous place and full of adventure. Most of the Heinlein books too. Usually good fun reads.

I remember the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books being really good too. Not read them for years now. Good books and my favourite character there, Menolly, was forever linked to Julianne Regan of All About Eve. They’re a goth band so a bit too melancholy to link here. Beautiful songs though. Their first album was their best with songs like Wild Hearted Woman. I know a few of those, they’re fun. (This friend ain’t gonna be a stranger for the girl with stars in her eyes)

But we have happier songs than that. I’ve been impressed with Caro Emerald ever since hearing one of her tracks used for Strictly Come Dancing. That was Dr Wanna Do. Both of her albums (and the live one) have been amazing.

And while I was looking through the library … I spotted A Town Called Eureka soundtrack. Another wonderful scifi series that was all about the fun. It never forgot that the true purpose of entertainment is to … entertain. Some of the new series like Walking Dead have been more about the gore. Stay with the fun !

How about a movie or two ?

I really need to watch Spirited Away again. I vaguely remember it from watching it a decade ago and really enjoyed it then. So how come I haven’t watched it again since ? I dunno ! They did a cracking job with the recent Narnia films too, shame they didn’t manage to film all the books. Anything by Pixar ! And the magic Bolt. Charming film that is one of the few that gets me in the feels. Spot the dog person :-). Robots is another great film, with voice acting from the one of a kind and sorely missed Robin Williams.

And a random neuron just made me think of Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. I’m not that big a fan of the books but BBC did a wonderful adaptation a good few years ago. Here’s the theme tune. And a bonus ! Someone’s put the whole series up – enjoy while you can … Wonder if I can find the soundtrack. The 2005 film is a bit pants though.

More music ? Here’s a few happy highlights :

Anything by Little Boots. Dancing is her Remedy.
Dubstar’s bounciness. Sarah Makes It Better with Stay.
Kate Bush’s Lionheart. Fun album.
I always enjoy Katie Melua purring at me with songs like Thank You Stars.
Lisa Hannigan with that picture story book in Lille.
Lucy Spraggan with the very naughty Beer Fear.
Norah Jones knows who her favourite Man Of The Hour is (WOOF!).
River City People burned bright for a short time. Their first album was full of excellent songs like What’s Wrong With Dreaming ?

And a few more films to pass the time :
Galaxy Quest – a spoof on Star Trek and a piece of excellence.
Serenity finishing off the excellent Firefly series. Much fun.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Fifth Element. One of the best scifi films of all time.
All the Indiana Jones movies. Ok, maybe not the last one.
Lilo and Stitch !
The magic of the Princess Bride
A rather different gangster movie in Bugsy Malone.

And I’ll close on that ideal film for one who needs to heal. What else could it be ? Who else could it be ? It’s gotta be Baymax. And I really need to watch Big Hero 6 again.

I hope it’s not too long before this Very Pretty Lady gets back on her feet :-). I hope she is satisfied with her care package :-).

PS Addon – how could I have missed the Discworld novels ? I need loads of those to read. Always funny, always good fun to read.
PPS Missed another – Guardians Of The Galaxy ! Awesome film, great soundtrack. Am Hooked On A Feeling …

Actually 2 journeys, plus that big long one we call life.

But we’ll leave that life one for the philosophers for now.

Mix of very little game (I hope I don’t digress!), a bit of real astronomy, a bit of theoretical Stuff and some actual real life travel gripe …

Game ?

You’ll know I’ve been on that Internet Spaceship game a bit too much. It so pretty. In its own way. So many pretty sparkly objects and gaps that an active imagination can fill in. Right now, my imaginary Starship Commander is propping up one of the bars in Hutton Orbital in the Alpha Centauri system after an epic journey to get there. It’s supposed to be a resting time while waiting for Hutton Orbital Mugs to be made, hopefully so his dodgy right wrist recovers and gets less painful.

Too much time gripping the joystick me thinks.

Perhaps he should be drinking with a straw to not pick up those heavy glasses with the bad arm ? All the better to empty the glass quicker and make it lighter. I think my Imaginary Spaceship Commander might be an alcoholic and making up for me barely drinking alcohol at all.

Where is this Hutton Orbital and why has it become such a theme with Elite pilots ?

It’s situated in the Alpha Centauri star system. Here’s a link to lots of stuff on Wiki about it. At 4.2 light years distant, it’s the closest star system to our own and is actually 3 stars linked together by their mutual gravitational attraction. (Detailed info in the link). The first two stars are designated Alpha Centauri A and … you guessed it … Alpha Centauri B. They vary in distance apart, closest approach is the same distance as Saturn to our Sun, farthest distance is Pluto.

The two stars are fairly Sol like. Our Sun is a Type G2V star right slap in the middle of the “Main Sequence” almost all stars go through in its life. That means there are millions or billions of years before it turns red, gets huge, eats the Earth and then dims, collapses and explodes into a nova, spreading the elements it has created into the cosmos to become the building blocks of more life. Alpha Centauri A is a G2V as well, B is a K1V which places it a bit further along on the main sequence. The 1/2V refer to the temperature relative to our sun and the V means they are main sequence stars. The actual characteristics are tied by laws of physics.

What’s that mean ? It’s highly unlikely any planets would form in a system like that. The interplanetary Stuff that organises itself in rings and then coagulates together is pulled apart by the influence of the two suns. It would never form a ring and therefore never form a planet. At least that’s what I assume from my limited knowledge of astronomy. There’s a cracking series by Prof Brian Cox that explains all this, I think it was Wonders Of The Solar System. Hopefully understandable by us mere mortals.

(They do actually think there’s a planet around Alpha Centauri B, which shows how much I know)

So – no planets, no reason to go there ? Not quite. There’s a third star in the system, called Proxima Centauri. It’s 0.22 light years away from A and B. It’s a red dwarf star class M6, which means it’s small, dim and almost at the end of the main sequence. If a planet was around it, the planet would be pretty cold unless it was very close.

With current telescope technology, we can’t refine our knowledge much past seeing the 3 stars even on a system as close as Alpha Centauri. We think there might be an exoplanet around AC B but it’s too close to the star to be of any use (way too hot, hotter than Venus).

This is where the game comes in. For a game like Elite to be succesful, it has to have life. It needs population. It needs a galactic economy for traders to lose themselves in. It needs things to see, places to go. In the case of Alpha Centauri, they’ve placed a nearly dead planet called Eden around Proxima Centauri and there is a starport called Hutton Orbital in the skies above it.

Here it is, with my heavily armed trading Python the “Mel and Sue …”

So there is life there, in the virtual domain at least.

If you make the trip to get there … Hutton Orbital is 0.22 light years away from where you drop into the system. The game has its own form of warp drive to lessen the time taken to get to places. It barely takes any time to get from the entry point to stations maybe 100 to 10,000 light seconds away. This one is 80 light days or 6.9 million light seconds away. That takes 90 minutes to get there … During which you’re not doing very much. Apart from going to the shops for dinner bits, making dinner, having dinner, getting dessert, quick nap, facebook and twitter daily update.

So not many people go there. It’s become a hotbed of activity over the weekend though, there is a Community Goal that involves taking scrap all the way to this station. Enough scrap and they make a new Rare Item (something in limited quantities that can only be bought in one place) to be sold here. It’ll be the Hutton Orbital Mug.

I want one.

I want one in real life. Come on Frontier ! Make it happen !

So my in game personality is propping up the bar there because I really don’t want to make that trip twice to pick up the reward for doing one trip. That suits me fine because the RSI tendencies in my wrist have been waking up with the stick time. (Boo hiss). Maybe I need to play some Shooty Game, that’s been good therapy for it in the past. I also have Rendezvous With Rama to read and I’ve discovered an iPad game called Motorsport Manager which I’ve been enjoying.

I mentioned real life journeys didn’t I …

They’re digging up the roads again. And this time is beyond insanity … The plan is to make a new Metro Bus route, which will go very close to my place. Why they can’t use the existing road system, I dunno. But they’re doing widening works which for the short term, will cause havoc. Bristol has a few very strategic routes and exits to the motorways. If one of those routes or the motorway gets clogged, the result is massive gridlock as people get stuck in the traffic, as the traffic stretches back and blocks other strategic junctions, as people use alternate routes.

The other part of the insanity is that they’ve chosen to do this now, at the start of the school term, instead of starting it off in the school holiday. This is important because the traffic increases exponentially with parents doing the school run. I got into work at about normal time today but that’s mostly because I used a Really Alternate Rarely Used Route. Actually never used this one before, won’t do again. I went through a station which has extremely aggressive speed bumps.

Yep. Bit of madness from the Bristol city road planners again. We’ve got used to that over the years. They are actively hostile to road users, whether that be 2 wheel, 4 wheel or truck. You could say democracy has failed us there. We vote for the people making these decisions but if there are no sensible people to vote for, then democracy cannot choose a good leader.

Gripe. Whinge.

I came home by the normal route tonight, which actually went ok. But coming out of the area I live, the traffic was still mental. It all funnels into one big roundabout, which can’t efficiently get everyone out of the area.

Virtual Life becomes more fun than Real Life again. Even if the trip in Virtual Life is 90 minutes watching a distance counter click down.

Hopefully tomorrow’s trip into work will be better as people avoid the bottlenecks. I can’t cos I’m in the middle of them. I won’t be doing the virtual trip for a bit, I want to wait for that Community Goal to complete, then I’ll have my pilot collect the reward and be out of there. Still a bit burned out on the Internet Spaceships though from the explore trip, although there are Spaceship Commanders coming out of the woodwork at work.

And I really must not continue the virtual journey that a character called Etherice (Iceangel was taken – boo hiss) started yesterday. Yep. I have an active WoW account again, even if it is a free trial 10 day period.

Wow – the tireds have hit again.

I feel like I’ll be sleeping for a significant amount of this weekend. Or at least I hope I will be. Sleep’s still been at a premium lately. It feels like it’s been taking ages to nod off again. I suspect that tendency is partly down to keeping on those computer games for a little bit too long at night.

The RSI tendencies in my right wrist and some other upper body issues have definitely been woken up again by a little too much stick time. The Elite piloting position is not exactly ideal. I need to clear off the upper level of my desk again so I can put the keyboard there and have the flightstick in a central position so I’m not twisting my body to do the piloting thing. At the moment, keyboard and flightstick go side by side, so the stick is off the the right. I’m moving around anyway because when I’m doing the piloting, I’m pretty constantly checking over the laptop that’s at my 9 o’clock position compared to my place sitting at the pooter.

I also keep a watchful eye on the telly, which usually has the news on mute while my laptop pipes music over to my amp and speakers. (That’s done better lately actually – I tweaked some settings in the network that’s given a little better Quality Of Service, translation – it’s not doing the dropouts much now)

What is happening with the migrant situation ? It seems like we’ve allowed the situation in Syria to get totally out of control, causing mass migration out of that country. They have the impression that the West is the Land of Milk And Honey, so they’re heading here instead of the actually much richer and closer Oil Baron Gulf.

It’s amazing how perceptions twist according to the whims of our media services. We now have Help The Immigrants campaigns popping up everywhere, a few months ago a neo-nutter political party called UKIP got rather too much share of the vote here on a manifesto based around kicking out immigrants, partly supported by our media. Yet now the media and the sheep who follow their whims have now gone full circle.

It’s curious how the flavour of the month changes isn’t it.

I sympathise with the situation the migrants find themselves in but the question I have is for the people saying “Bring them here”. Ok. Where will they go. Britain is already overcrowded. Most of Europe is overcrowded. We are still having to struggle under the yoke of austerity. There is no money to house them, feed them, support them. Will everyone signing the Bring Them Here petitions offer up enough room in their house to put an immigrant family in ?

I’ll let you answer that for yourselves. What you do is your own business, just think about the consequences of what you ask for. Personally, I need to sort the house out before I’d be happy to have visitors, let alone people joining me living here. I’d actually like that but I’ll be the one choosing who it is.

Some of what I’ve put up there is born out of tiredness making me a bit grumpy. There’s that difference between a group of people saddled with the tag “Refugee Immigrant” and the genuinely wonderful singular Person who is looking to make a new home. Like …

The wonderful bubbly chuckly smiley one who is working so hard to make a success of her talents (not an immigrant herself but from a family that has embraced the English culture).
The tall blonde KFC lady who recognises me when I go in there, asks me how I’m doing and has a truly wonderful smile to go with finding me the bigger bits of chicken.
The possibly Greek group who run the chippie. They start getting my order ready before I’ve even asked for it.
The group who run our Chinese. People come from far around to go to our Chinese.
That lovely Yogscast girl who was born here but is so well travelled, she’s a child of the world.
The Irish Miss L who always looks as if she’s going to burst out laughing if she sees me, in anticipation of possible Antics from the Sleepy One. Not spotted her lately, wonder if she’s seen me first and kept an eye out for potential Antics from an unseen hidey hole …
And a few more.

It’s what people put back into the society they live in and that goes for people born in the country and those who move in. Too many of the natives are destructive (just look at Bristol drivers). Too many migrants don’t want to fit in. But for all of them, there’s the ones who contribute so much. Our society integrates around them and hopes to avoid the chav fraternity.

Last bit on the immigrants – it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of the rest of the world that they’re in a position that they have to avoid Crazy People. And that’s the people with the lack of political will to send our people into danger to sort out the Crazy People and the people who will most certainly condemn our leaders for doing so. They’d be far better off not emigrating, if the Crazy People allowed them to stay in their native country.

Back to me – when I’m feeling down or tired or frustrated, it’s other people who pull me back up again. Like getting the texts in from the bubbly chuckly smiley one. Like getting the messages in that give me so much encouragement. All the smiles and banter from the canteen girls and the canteen daemon.

It’s having people (and definitely one in particular who thinks she’s a pain in the butt with it !) who communicate, who try and see what I’m up to with the daft messages, the people who make me think I’m part of their world.

You guys and girls give me a massive lift. Definitely something amazing that helps keep me going when my body isn’t giving me the energy to feed the hyperactive monkey in control of my brain. To ignore the pain when my body likes to remind me I’ve been too silly with it over the years. To remind me that I’m not alone when my mind is feeling isolated.

To the person who got this far in my Wall Of Text. You’re awesome.

I have a hopefully restful weekend coming up with tonnes of sport on the telly, plus the opening night of Strictly. There’s an England cricket match on tomorrow, which will compete for my attention with qualifying for the Grand Prix and an England rugby match. That’ll keep the pooter busy too, which will keep me away from the games which my hands haven’t appreciated. My Elite pilot is propping up the bar in Hutton Orbital anyway. I’m not planning to move them because I’ll have to go back there at some point to collect a Community Goal reward and it is 90 minutes supercruise travel away from the entry point of the system.

And if you look out the window tomorrow and see the Flying Pig Acrobatic Squadron doing a display ? I’ll have summoned up the energy to do some tidying up. They’re warming up the engines now … after hitting Publish, I’m going to be putting the washing out to dry …

These are the voyages of the starship sleepy pete, her ongoing mission to avoid black holes, seek out new galaxies and to boldly go where no computer ninja has gone before……….

A friend gave me that quote and I thought it was perfect. I think I’m going to have fun with this one, it’s going to be very role play. I hope you have fun and a few chuckles too while you read it. Here we go :

Stardate  3301.08.23
This is it ! We’re setting off today. My Asp class explorer ship, the “Is This The Right Place For The Shauns ?” is all fitted out, kitted out, stored out and I’m eager to set off on the way, point the ship towards the black and head off in the direction of the Galactic Core. It’s a trip every starship commander has to take at some point in their career.

It’s a solo expedition with no one but me and Sitana, the ship’s personal assistant, to talk to and I’ll be pacing myself. I don’t know how long I’ll be so I’ve taken advantage of a craze sweeping Imperial Space where society has looked back 1300 years to the beginning of the 21st century. My ship leisure computers are all loaded with the fiction, music and a little bit of the culture too. Hell ! When I’m 1300 light years away, I’ll be able to turn the sensors back at the Sol system and see what we were all up to. The scanner will reach that far won’t it ? It’s a weird feeling in our Faster Than Light society. We can look back along our track and see where we were a little while ago. Eerie.

What am I doing ! Time to get out there. The plan is to head 2,000 light years to galactic clockwise so I don’t repeat my track coming back as going there. Then it’s straight into the core.

Stardate 3301.08.24
DISASTER ! The hangar monkeys have really let me down. The freezer is bust … Guess that’s me on the backup MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for the rest of the trip. This is not good. I’ll start on the MREs for tomorrow. There’s ice cream in that freezer and I’m not wasting it.

We covered good ground today and yesterday. The stellar-nav can plot out to 1,000 light year trips, which works out at 33-36 hyperspace jumps. The heating as you come out and fuel scoop is being a problem. That heating/cooling cycle gets to me and I can manage 4 of those 1,000 light year legs before I need to take a rest and dive into that 20th/21st culture. For the non-pilots reading this, we come out of hyperspace right on top of the dominant stellar object, be that a star or black hole or multiple stars. You really have to be on your toes. If you get tired and the reactions slip, you can easily bounce off a sun while avoiding another one.

That’s really bad for the complexion.

Stardate 3301.08.27
You may have noticed I missed a couple of days. I think I had the Cerberus Plague. Special Heike Tea sorted me out. I had some on hand and was planning to use it to celebrate when I got to Sagittarius A*, our supermassive black hole. It definitely wasn’t the steak I had which made me ill. It was going to be the last proper meal before switching to the MREs. I’ve been in my rack trying to stay alive but I’m all good now. Ready to hit the stars and head off again.

Stardate 3301.08.28
Hurrah ! Back in the groove. Another few legs done. We’ve reached the bulge where stars get far more dense. In populated space, stars are maybe 7 to 10 light years apart. Maybe more. In the core, you have tens/20s of stars all within 1 light year of each other. It’s a nightmare for the stellar-nav, it takes ages to plot the next leg of the trip. I’ve been zipping through most of that with jumps of 30 light years at a time.

Kind of a rush there and back. Definitely motivated by being on those MREs ! And a limited supply of popcorn, plus I want proper coffee again … It’s not the same without milk (also a victim of the freezer/fridge incident).

Stardate 3301.08.29
We’re getting really close now. Going to make a big effort to get to Sagittarius A* before I have to hit my rack. I have to say, I’m loving this 21st century music. There are a couple of groups called Alisha’s Attic and The Cardigans who are taking the edge off being on my own all this time. I’m really missing the Pretty Ladies Commanders who keep me company chatting over the comms and definitely missing those bubbly chuckles. I think the ships computer is trying to keep my spirits up by saying “Friendship Drive charging …” (it’s actually Frame Shift Drive but there’s a huge accent there)

Made it ! God Damn. Staring at a supermassive black hole from just a light minute away is pant wettingly, brown trousery scary.

One thing about this trip, the various sights I’ve seen have made me look up Wikia Galactica to see the science behind what I’m seeing. Sagittarius A* looks like a globe of deadly nothing. You can see its eye in the picture. It is the abyss. The stars curl around it as you fly by, engines straining to maintain position. That’s gravitational lensing. You’re actually seeing two images of the star, the direct path of the light plus the light after being bent around the black hole. The science people do really clever stuff with that. Way cleverer than I can understand.

WikiaGalactica has info on the stars too. You can only refuel at certain stars. Old stars aren’t kicking out the hydrogen any more. They’re no good. T Tauri stars are too young, they’re not burning their hydrogen like “Main Sequence” stars. Stars in the middle are just right and you can fuel up at them. It’s fascinating the science behind it. We are made of elements only created in stars (and particle accelerators and fusion reactors but those are meh). It’s part of the beauty of the cosmos.

See ! Not just a redneck bootneck Commander who wouldn’t know a wrench from a socket ! I read too. Been enjoying catching up on my reading and definitely haven’t been playing Galaxy Of Goblins in my downtime. And you will never find any evidence of the AgriVille games.

Stardate 3301.08.30
Started heading back from the Core today. The stellar nav is having a massive nightmare. I had to restart it a couple of times to even get 500 light year legs. I’m heading to the Great Annihilator today. It’s a system 3000 light years from Sagittarius A*, in the homewards direction. More later.

OH MY GIDDY SPACE AUNT.

The engines drop you out only 6000km from Great Annihilator A. That’s close enough to still make out the poor unfortunates caught in the time dilation as they got too close. GA A is the first black hole in this system. The engines really don’t appreciate this. This is way scarier than the core. You come out a light minute away from that monster. I swore as I banked away, my right arm felt drawn towards it. Gravity … sucks ?

Great Annihilator has 2 black holes and a few other solar bodies. It’s a really scary place. You’ve heard of Condition Green, Yellow Alert and Red Alert ? Well this is Condition Brown and White Knuckle Alert state. I’ll let you guess what the Brown relates to.

Stardate 3301.08.30 … a little bit later.
There are things more scary than black holes.

There is a spider on the ships canopy. It is looking at me. You’ll be relieved to know that after Condition Brown, the no 1 spacesuit is in the wash/recycler and I’m in my spare. I had been feeling a curious itch like my hairs standing on end. I’d put that down to the heating and cooling of fuel scooping. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently I had a hitch hiker in my suit.

(This gap represents text from the audio log which has been automatically deleted by Sitana – it could not have been printed anywhere due its graphic content and repeated use of unprintable colourful dialogue).

I am now in my spare spacesuit as the other cleans. I do not plan to leave this spacesuit until the spider situation is resolved. There is a problem here, as it seems to know how fragile spaceship canopies are. If that goes, you’re so dead. These ships can only be flown from the cockpit, they’re not big enough to have a reserve flying station. You can escape into the living area but that then becomes your tomb …

So you can see, a really bad situation as I head back to civilisation. Better make it quick. It’s not nice to spill the popcorn down your spacesuit.

Stardate 3301.09.01
Hurrah ! Spider situation has been resolved. I took emergency measures. Have you ever spent 3 solid days inside a space suit ? Trust me, you really don’t want to. I’ll spare you the details. Remember what I said about the air situation in these ships ? The ships can recycle the air pretty much forever but they don’t have that much spare. So I weighed up the options :

Share my ship with a spider that had a talent for getting in really uncomfortable places.
Suit up, SPACE THE BUGGER and sacrifice some of my limited air reserve to the void.

The spider is still out there somewhere.

I dropped it off near a barely hospitable planet designated LV426. That’s not going to cause problems down the line. It’s not like that canopy is exposed to solar radiation (that’s the other reason we wear the spacesuits) that could mutate a spider with an enhanced survival instinct into anything nasty.

Stardate 3301.09.02
Been getting kinda lonely. But it’s almost time to rejoin civilisation.

Two stages in the trip today – the first took me to within 400 light years of my final destination. Then I thought I’d better make myself presentable again. Clean spacesuit. Clean Commander. Explorer’s Beard consigned to the waste disposal. It wouldn’t do to get dragged off and hosed down before turning in all the juicy exploration data.

It is really good to be back home. The Core bathes you in the cosy glow of 1000 million stars (I dunno, that’s what it feels like !). As you leave that central bubble, the star field gradually lessens until it’s just you, the endless black and your thoughts to keep you company. And Sitana. One of those 21st century films I watched was Moon and I think Sitana was taking notes from the AI guardian in that film. She started flashing up emoticon signs on the displays. I hope the computers survive the last few light years.

Stardate 3301.09.02 a little bit later
Home again ! This entry is being dictated from the Adder And Abacus, a charming little old style bar where I’m really enjoying that first steak since … oh dear. Bad memory. Pizza later. I really need that decent food again since surviving on the Rat Pack MREs for so long. The next trip will have a backup freezer.

Enough resting ! Time to turn in all that exploration data. Next plan … This ship has got me through so many light years but I’m definitely feeling the need to paint it black, hunt down where galaxy renowned (and definitely infamous) Disaster Zone are playing their next UltraMetal concert and donate it to the classic Quantum Bomb Star Dive climax. Let’s just say they only play in a system … once.

Commander Iceangel, signing off. For now.