Month: November 2015

Happy Birthday. I'm sure that there will be something in the post when I get my act together!

I need to post more !

And I have another idea for an ongoing meme too. I really enjoyed doing the Xmas December Photo Challenge last year and I think it did some good in changing up how I do posts. As in … more pictures.

Talking of pictures … I have cake.

There was a third, which was as gertlush as the other two there look. I have lots of cake here at the moment (German market visit yesterday!) but those two there will be the ones disappearing first. Homemade cake always has a certain something extra that market or shop bought cake is missing.

Oh – those words … Yep. Another birthday coming … tomorrow. I’m getting older ! Feeling older too. Tiredness is hitting but that just means I need to find a way of unlocking the energy that is within the excess baggage I’m carrying around again.

What does help with the motivation is getting smiles and hugs. People on my Facebook will have seen a picture where I caught a special little lady in a moment of sheer joy. Huge smile and it gives an idea of those bubbly chuckles I keep talking about.

I had a lovely evening last night, one of the better birthday evenings for a good few years now. Presents, a film (Bond), tasty munchies (Wagamama) and excellent company. What more could you want :-).

Bond was pretty good, although I do remember back to the old Bond films which were all about the entertainment, the toys, the corny jokes, while still keeping the spectacular and often silly action going. New Bond is far grittier, the scripts are better and they don’t descend to the level of cliche that spoiled Die Another Day. It does help that Daniel Craig is one of the best Bonds to have played the part.

Yep. Spectre is a pretty good film, way up there in the standard of Bond films. It is very brutal though, not suitable for kids (this is picking up on a discussion on the radio). There are scenes there that would give kiddies nightmares (some adults too I bet), which is not what Bond films should be about.

Oh that cake is being very tempting … but I shall resist until I hit Publish and make sure it’s on the Facebooks and the Twitters.

That gets me to hype, which is currently bridging both the film and the games. Bond is heavily hyped, as are others where you probably see more minutes of trailer and advert before you see the film than there are minutes in the film. The Star Wars film is a classic example, hopefully it will live up to the hype. Hype is a dangerous thing, it raises expectations past a point which is utterly unrealistic. I’ve enjoyed films best where I go in with no expectations at all, except to be entertained by what I’m about to see. When I saw Star Trek Nemesis, I’d read the book before and the book was fairly ok. The film, however, was an absolute travesty that killed off Star Trek until the new films came out.

There’s a lot of hype in the gaming world as well at the moment. There is a category of game called the AAA title, which are the games with most money thrown at them. You’ve probably heard about Call of Duty, Fallout 4, the Star Wars game and a bunch of others …

Call of Duty – I avoid these like the plague although I did enjoy the first CoD. It was a solid, well made single player game. The newer CoDs are all about the multiplayer, which is a format I do not enjoy.
Fallout 4 – has massive hype and I’ll enjoy watching the Hannah playthrough (linky) but … I got grabbed far quicker by the start of her Rise of the Tomb Raider playthrough (linky) which is written by the ever fantastic Rhianna Pratchett.
Star Wars Battlefront – meh. Another bad multiplayer online shooter with no depth and apparently very poor balance. Just living on the licenced setting. Try Team Fortress 2 or Planetside 2 instead. Don’t pay the EA idiot tax.

Yeah – I won’t be buying any of those games, in fact I swore off getting anything that DICE (makers of Battlefield and Battlefront) are involved in after being unable to play Battlefield 3 due to game breaking bugs. I built a computer for that ! (Ok, it was to showcase the graphics a new machine I was building anyway was going to have).

I may acquire Rise of the Tomb Raider when it comes to PC. They’ve released it on a console as an exclusive and it’s coming to other platforms later. That’s not a bad way of doing it, means the game is properly sorted out instead of being the mess that Batman Arkham Knight (another megahyped game) was on launch.

Hype comes from two different places :

People who have experienced something and who are telling everyone how awesome it is.
People who want you to buy something, it hasn’t been released but the expectations are out there.

The first is me with that German Market and the Happy Cookie Place. It deserves its hype. The other is people being blind to past performance by the people making what the hype is about. In the case of Fallout 4, it’s by a company called Bethesda who have a massive reputation but I’ve never really got on well with their games. The games are gorgeous :

That’s Skyrim from a few years ago. But they are also deeply flawed in terms of their gameplay (this matters in games above all else but is quickly forgotten under the hype), storyline and evolution of that ongoing free to explore world.

I’ll give Fallout 4 a miss, although I’ll watch the Hannah playthrough to see how it evolves. It’s telling that she’s completed Rise of the Tomb Raider already. I guess that one is going to be a 10-15 hour game, so I’m looking forward to lots of videos. The best games grab you and their story keeps you playing when you should really be going to bed before the sun comes up.

Oh – one reason I’ll keep watching the Hannah playthrough is because her commentary genuinely adds to the experience. Must play through the first Tomb Raider at some point, I’ve watched the play through twice ! And enjoyed it both times, both for story and the added commentary. (Link to Hannah-channel)

That cake is becoming irresistable now so it’s time to hit that Publish button :-).

PS The meme will be from a book called The Alphabet of the Human Heart. I see lots of trigger in there for things to write about. Cheers to little Cupid’s Gift for the gifts ! 🙂

I like fireworks. I miss them too.

Those are some from quite a few years ago now, taken at Thornbury fireworks just up the road. Actually a lot of years ago …

The 5th of November is remembered in Britain for Guy Fawkes, a revolutionary mercenary who almost succeeded in an attempt to blow up our Houses of Parliament. If I remember my history lessons right (they were from more than half my life ago!), he got taken in by a bunch of amateurish noblemen who had been thoroughly infiltrated by the spymaster of the time. The plot got them all out into the open where they could be quietly arrested. Guido was caught under the Houses, close to being able to blow them up. This was in a flour warehouse … And flour is quite flammable and explosive under the right conditions …

Yep. Plot failed, although I suspect more than a few people would like to see a contemporary equivalent. There’s nothing wrong with our system of government, except for those who sit in the house. The unelected privilege based house appears to have the voice of sanity at the moment, unlike the elected house. Well, a majority voted for the elected half.

Enough politics ! That way lies insanity …

We used to do an annual meet up with the work-ish mob (CQ, CK and BD) to let off a few hundred pounds worth of fireworks before retreating into the warm with pizza and movies. Those were fun chilled out nights and it’s a shame we don’t do them any more. Part of that is not having suitable places to let off the fireworks. That brings me to point one :

Pets and fireworks don’t mix. All that unexplained banging is really bad for the nerves. Mine too ! Ish. I can put it out of my mind immediately and possibly even look out the window for them (not really fast enough to do that). For me, it’s not as unnerving as when the car alarm decides to disgrace itself by going off mysteriously. (It happily hasn’t done that since I started turning off half of the alarm system).

But yeah – it’s a really bad time of the year for pets with all those noises going off. (This is one reason why one of our firework hosting places is off the list). It’s worse than just one night a year though, People seem to think it’s acceptable to let the fireworks off for a period of around 3 weeks around the 5th.

That’s partly policed by the supermarkets, who will stop selling the fireworks soon. There’s scary point 2 actually …

This time of year, you can buy explosives freely in the supermarkets. (They happen to go up in the sky and make pretty explosions but they’re still explosives). And we sell these to anyone, including those who cannot give any evidence that : They can read, Can follow safety instructions*, Are sane, Have any good sense. I’m going by what I see daily on the roads there. There are a huge number of morons out there.

*(Let’s be honest, you’ve read that “25 ft minimum safe distance” warning and followed it every time right ? right ?)

One of my biggest fears around this time of year is hearing a knock on the door, followed by a “TRICK OR TREAT” and shortly after that, a bang as a firework is let off under a car. Yep. I have that high/low an opinion of modern society. Perhaps that’s why I’d like to escape to somewhere with less people ?

But being around people can have its positives :

Happy Cookie Place is back and it has Happy Cookie Customers ! Yep. They’re expensive. But they taste so good (as well as being massive). There was no one there when I rocked up but by the time I’d started walking away with a bag full of cookies, there was a tidy queue there.

Yep. German Market is back, complete with lots of stalls selling touristy type stuff plus assorted munchies. There’s a Cake Place as well but their standard may have dropped somewhat. I’ll check again on Wednesday but the cakes there yesterday weren’t as good as I remember from last year.

After picking up the cookies (first stop ! VITAL!), I had a lunch of bratwurst and hot chocolate. Word of warning – be sure to ask for your deposit back on the cups. It’s a £2 deposit that I really shouldn’t have had to do a “And the deposit?” for after handing the cup back.

And then 3 (4) cds walked out of HMV with me. Yep. Got caught by a 2 for deal where I didn’t have much idea what the second would be. The cd’s are Laura Marling’s Alas, I Cannot Swim, Carly Rae Jepson with E-Mo-Tion and Iron Maiden’s latest which is a double album. I have to stop buying things now because it’s the birthday soon and it wouldn’t do to buy anything that someone else might be looking to buy me.

Did I mention cookies ?

Let me take a moment to explain how that picture got taken … My camera can talk to my phone. You can run an app on the phone that controls the camera. It means I could point the camera without having to look at its display, as the view was being replicated on the phone. So :

A dishcloth that I wish I’d ironed formed the backdrop, dangling from the front of the sofa.
The dwagons and cookies were on a plank of wood that forms my makeshift table (no room for proper table!).
Diorama posed to satisfaction (and then picture retaken as I realised that crumbs from the cookies were on the plank!)
Camera propped up on my knee (as all this was on the floor)
Phone on the floor within easy picture taking reach.

Yep. First time I’ve taken a scene like this. Perhaps I should have gone for the blackscreen backdrop as I have done in previous diorama type pics ? That’s where I put the scene on top of my subwoofer with a black PC box base behind that. I think this one would have been a bit big for that. I also like to pose the light as well, which limits where in the room I can pose it. Natural light is far better than flash light.

Did I mention I’d be checking the German Market out again soon ?

HURRAH ! Wednesday. Looking forward to it because I’ll have a little bundle of chuckly smiles along too who I suspect will encourage me to acquire more cookies. Not seen her for ages and it’s only in the last week or so where her wounded ankle has improved to the point where she can get out and about again.

Watching Bond too. Am looking forward to a really fun evening.

PS And the dwagon pic drew a comment of “Holy mother of god” from one of the Twitter people. Made my day.

I think I have that elusive thing.

A possible story idea. I don’t think I’ll dive into doing NaNoWriMo, although it would be fun to see what would happen if I did so. When I write posts like this, it’ll start from a basic idea and usually just flow into a Wall of Text. With occasional picture.

I’m curious what would happen if I shunted the writing over to story writing. I’ve thought about doing that before but didn’t actually translate much into story. I think I’m in a better place now though, after coming out from recovering from bad outsides being what dominated my thinking. It’s weird looking back at posts from even just one year ago and remembering what I was like then. And that was when the decline had been arrested and I’d started to very slowly recover.

Hell, it’s been a year and a bit now since that recovery started and I’m still not all fixed up yet. It’s getting closer … but it’s still a state of always improving, never actually fixing. And although work tends to tire out my brain to the point where I don’t really want to exert the thinking too much at home in the evening, I think writing stories would be somewhat cathartic.

You know that feeling when you’re reading a book or watching episodics on telly … where you wonder what would happen if they went further, did things different or just didn’t fall into the scifi trope of having a magic solution happen in the last 5 minutes of the episode. Where you think you could write a better story. Where you think they missed opportunities. Yeah, I get that a bit.

One of the really magic space scifi series of the last little while was Firefly …

I think my story would owe a lot of influence to that series, although I would set it in a different universe. It would be Post Diaspora Earth universe. I.e. humanity’s home would still be Earth in our Sol system but we would have spread out through the stars. Firefly has humanity jumping ship to a massive solar system with loads of planetoids. I love the series but I’m not a fan of the setting.

I’d have a setting with faster than light travel, possibly hyperspace. There’s a few examples of that :

Star Wars – has hyperspace and a magical means of space drive when not jumping between the stars. The type of drive that seems to depend on drag and other weirdness.
Star Trek – faster than light warp drive and sublight impulse. This makes a lot of sense, although it wasn’t really used much in the series or it was dealt with in an inconsistent fashion when it wasn’t just ignored for thin plot devices.
Firefly – I think this uses sublight exclusively. It takes a while for them to transit from planetoid to planetoid in that system.
Farscape – lol. Again, love the series but its means of travel made no sense whatsoever.
Andromeda – probably the king of scifi space travel. This had a slipstream drive where ships travelled rapidly across the galaxies by riding cosmic strings and then by sublight when in system.

And there are more, like David Weber’s Honorverse using gravity drives that go quick in system and go to higher dimensions for interstellar travel. They don’t explain that one all that well.

Yeah – I’d want to go with a warp drive and sublight. Gene Roddenberry was a genius for making scifi sound realistic, although a lot was sacrificed to allow it to get to our screens.

But this time, it’s not about the journey. Errrm … misquote. It’s not about how you make the journey, it’s what happens on the journey.

Interstellar mailman ? So much scifi ignores communication delay. They have a magical system where base can talk to ships many light years away, in real time. If your comms are bound to light speed like our’s are, then if you beamed your message to a neighbouring system 5 light years away, they’d get it in 5 years. That’s bad.

So my story could well be based around an interstellar mailman. One of many. They’d be contracted to move the messages from system to system. They’d file a course plan jumping through several systems and would load up with the messages that needed to be sent on. That way the messages get there so much quicker than beaming them from system to system.

That wouldn’t be all they did though. That’d be kinda boring and … it sounds like government contracting. That doesn’t pay very well.

Enter the Firefly influence …

If a ship is going from system to system, lots of people will want to move more than messages. There’s also the potential for nefarious dodgy deals to happen before moving on. Exciting things. Way more exciting things than just delivering the mail.

I’d want to go a bit further too. There’s potential for things happening on the home ship. It’d be an old battered, beat up tramp freighter (how many times have we heard that trope !) with a character of its own. But we’d want to do things off ship too.

One of the better books I’ve read for getting the feels out is one called Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. That’s a series of shortish stories woven together by the central character, a protagonist of many Heinlein books called Lazarus Long. One who is so in love with life and those he comes into contact with that he just keeps on living. Several thousand years and counting. One of the more memorable parts of that book is where he goes homesteading. The intelligent mule character is adorable. Anyway yeah, one of the miniplot ideas is that our protagonist has to disappear off the grid for a while and he just happened to be carrying homesteading kits* along with the mail.

*A homesteading kit would be a wagon with all the bits needed to start off a homestead away from support from a town, Time Enough For Love sets up the concept pretty well. There’s more to it than you’d think … And the people going would need to be jack of all trades to survive without that trader/crafter support.

Curious concept. It’s bubbling away in part of my head looking for the ideas to develop into something more usable.

Actually there’s another couple of influences popped up while I took a moment or two away from keyboard … 3d printers ! Essential for that homesteading kit. Except that I think that 3d printers now are restricted to cutting nylon. The future 3d printer would do that with metal for hardier bits and pieces. And you’d have another machine for getting the metal.

Dragonsdawn by Anne McCaffrey is also a great influence. It goes several thousand years backwards from her Dragonriders of Pern series and it is a fantastic tale of setting up a colony from scratch.

So many influences. The challenge is to keep them all consistent and come up with a tale that’s truly Your’s. Or Mine.

Hopefully the tale will still be coherent by the time it escapes from my head. That’s what has happened before, I haven’t had the mental energy to go keyboard tapping and the idea fades before I do type.

Or it turns into something completely unrelated to what I started typing. Wall of Text Alarm ! I better stop there :-).