Year: 2017

How did Saturday’s trip to the car people go ?

Hmm … I still have the money spending guilt. 🙂

Yep. It’s on the way. Just as you see above. Shiny and red and wind up powered. Ok. Maybe not like that. But there’s something new on the way.

I think you already know what it might be.

Yep. A thing of beauty. Definitely not one of these :

That abomination barely even sailed, it wouldn’t be good at all on land.

Could it be … something classic ?

Truly a beautiful old thing. If somewhat lacking in modern attributes like water proofing. And reliability. (The old Spitfire could be a bit temperamental and needed TLC in a way modern cars don’t).

I’ll show a pic of what I’ve been agreeing to spend the money on in a bit. I suspect you have already guessed what it is …

It isn’t the Lexus GS. That one would have been a superior car to what I’m getting in terms of toys but … it’s also bigger, less speedy and more thirsty. It’s just a bit bigger than what I like to drive, which is one reason why the NX that my sister has was rejected as a possibility. It was about the same list price but less deposit contribution and higher interest rate.

It isn’t the Lexus RC either, that’s the coupe version of what I have now. That’s also slightly slower and thirstier. Dunno why there as it should be a lightened, speedy, sporty version. Perhaps the chassis has been beefed up to cope with the power of the V8 5 litre edition of the RC … Maybe. Nah. This one got rejected due to me having difficulty clambering out of it and also … less deposit contribution and higher interest rate.

I’ll get to what’s coming in a bit …

It’s not of those either. If I had trouble getting out of the RC, think of the problems involved in getting out of that monster. Besides, I do enjoy the company of other people in the car and … I think passengers would be riding on the anti crash roll fin of that car. I don’t think they’d like that.

I do have to hand it to the Lexus people. It’s only happened a couple of times where I’ve gone back to a garage again after buying a car from them. Indeed, in the family, it has rarely happened although I think the parents have been doing that lately with their car changes. The Lexus people are different …

(disclosure note – I’m paying them, they’re not paying me outside of normal business deposit contributions and they definitely don’t know I’m writing this !)

… they look after their customers. Instead of treating you like muck, they get to know you. They want you coming back. They want your business. They want you as a repeat buyer because you get treated well and you like the cars.

With my car, it’s been legendary in its quality. The only reason I was interested in changing was the seats, I think they were steadily destroying my back and shoulders. The upgrades the car has involve much better seats. And there are a few more upgrades too. I’m hoping that the upgrades see their way through to improved handling (the old one was a bit reluctant to be thrown around corners) and better low speed performance in Normal driving mode. I’d drive mine around in Eco because Normal would kangaroo hop on the slow down to traffic lights.

Nope. Not one of those.

The day was a bit of a bust actually. I’d planned to get the car serviced and after that, chill out with a wander around Cheltenham, cruising the shops. The town was packed ! Pretty busy. All the munchie places were definitely packed out. I retreated from all of them with a definite sense of Too Many People ! I also checked out what was on at their cinema … if I had done that though I’d have been watching Rogue One again (wouldn’t mind but it’ll be with company if I see it at the cinema again) and I’d have been having popcorn for lunch.

Don’t think that’s healthy.

I’m pretty exhausted now, although that’s mostly self inflicted due to going to bed way too late. And then yawning my head off while trying to sleep … instead of nodding off. That’s really annoying …

Another decision will be to finally get scribbling with that novel I’m looking to write. That’s going to be more and more inspired by what’s happening in the world at the moment and specifically … America. I hope he doesn’t damage the world as much as it looks like he will. Yep. There will be a lot in that novel inspired by what we’re seeing at the moment, from GB and other governments too. One of the trigger motivations for switching the car now instead of in a few months time is that the UK government is dismantling the tax breaks that low emission cars like mine have. I don’t think the £140/year will be applied to my current or next car but if I had waited a couple of months, it would have been.

That’s Mr Osborne again. Although the price rises due in Feb are pure Brexit.

And that’s too much politics for here.

What’s the decision to come ?

Grey Ghost 2 will need a name … Yep. I’m getting something that will look on the outside very much like what I have. But I’m rarely looking at the outside (bit like Elite and the cosmetic ship paint jobs !). I’m more interested on the insides. The toy count. The handling of the car. How relaxed it is to drive. The reliability.

And this one should be as good as the last one. But … she needs a name … It cannot be Grey Ghost 2 ! Suggestions in the comments :-).

I have a decision to make …

Soon ! At the weekend perhaps even. And it could lead to …. more decisions ….

So – what is it ?

Shiny ? More shiny ?

The car gets serviced at the weekend, which will put me in the showroom about 6 months before the finance period on my current car finishes. Which means …. the sales people will really want me to acquire another new car.

What do I think of the IS300h I have now ? It’s an awesome car. There are only a couple of things I would criticize with it :

The boot is pretty big but it’s no hatchback. The car is a saloon style which means no really big things to go in there. It has a split folding rear seat but it’s far from the flat folding arrangement that made the CT boot into a cavern.

The other thing is the seats, my back doesn’t really get on well with the seats. I can still do the 3 hour to and from my parents without needing a break but my back has been stiffening up more of late and I’m pretty sure the car seats have something to do with that.

What are the options ?

Time for another pic :

That’s my last car, which was another really good car. It was my introduction to Lexus and Hybrids and it was a pretty good introduction. Their customer service is excellent and I saw that across two garages, the one in Cheltenham and the one in Lincoln. You are made to feel much more welcome than what I’m used to, more welcome than the sheep dip approach other garages have.

The CT was an excellent car but it was a bit slow for me. The thing about the hybrids is that they will give you exactly what you ask for. Ask to go quick, it’ll give you everything its got. Settle into a cruise and it’s chill out time. Pootle along in traffic and it’ll decide whether or not the engine should be on. But there is a limit there and the CT just didn’t have enough power for me.

The IS is definitely more pokey. The CT does the 60mph thing in 10 seconds, the IS does it in 8. That’s a bit more like my style.

There are faster hybrids too. Let’s see … the GS450h (bigger car, bigger engine and motors) goes to 60 in 5.9 seconds and it will do that every time you ask it to do that. A conventional car is limited by how you are as a driver, how you handle those clutch and gear changes. The bigger car is also less economical and costs more. It has much more power than I’m interested in having available. I’d miss the economy and cheaper insurance while not using the extra speed much.

One alternative is the GS300h. It uses the same engine and motors as my IS300h, it’s just bigger and has more toys. This means it’s also slower and thirstier. But … those toys !!!! Intriguing. It’s not actually that much bigger too. 3cm wider and 20cm longer, although that is that little bit much bigger than a car which I already find to be on the upper end of Big for what I like to drive around in. And Park. The IS would be difficult to park, although the camera turns parking into child’s play.

They also have a sporty coupe with … the same mechanicals as my car. That’s the RC300h. Not sure about this one. It’s pretty much the same car but slightly slower and less economical.

Everything else Lexus have is either too expensive or not really what I want. My sister has one of their NX smaller SUVs but … too big for me.

I’ll see what they have on offer but you can probably tell … I’m very tempted.

We’ll see what appears at the weekend. I’d like to be off the treadmill of a new car every 3 years. Yep. It’s good to have New Shinies but … it does cost. And I’d like to be able to start putting money aside for a boat.

I also have a bad back though and the facelifted cars have better seats. We shall see.

Toot Toot !

Oh ! Before I go. The garage trip is likely to lead to a wander around the Cheltenham town too. It’s a good place. And it’s a sign that my outsides are finally deciding to heal up. There’s still a fair bit of damage to heal up but … getting ever closer. Close enough that I don’t have too many concerns about wandering around the town centre for a few hours.

I just hope I have the energy !

Is this thing still on ?

Apologies for not posting that much lately. I don’t think there’s any special reason for not posting much, outside of getting distracted in the evenings with streams to watch and feeling drained after throwing all I have into work during the day.

It doesn’t leave that much coherent mental effort left for post writing.

But first … a thumbnail pic is required ! We have had snow again …

But it melted before we could make decent snowmen out of it. That’s the Bristolian edition snowman, which I spotted on someone’s Facebook yesterday. I can’t take credit for the idea (or the potholes) but it did get lots of laughs from many people yesterday.

We got a dusting of snow here. Enough to make untreated roads and pavements turn dangerous. I used the Snow Mode on the car for only the second ever time … What’s snow mode ? It cuts back the power available to the motors and engine to prevent wheelspin and allow forward motion. I don’t know whether it has something in there to stop you sliding when turning corners … best not to trust that kind of thing to electronics anyway. It does things like stop the usual forward motion that you get from an automatic naturally when you take your foot off the brake. Effective too, the traction control lights only came on once during the trip into work.

I’ve been on the games too. Somewhat … I’m watching two streamers regularly now. Heychrissa still but now Radderss also (links on the right). I’d also watch EnterElysium plus Totalbiscuit but not the regular podcast type content. It’s enjoyable but … time ? Not enough time.

Yep. It’s good to relax, chill out and actually get involved with the content being watched. Youtube videos are disconnected from the community. They’re usually recorded several days before release, so anything happening on screen is set. You can’t give a reaction in or a little help on a Youtube video and the commenters are usually those that feel compelled to tell the world that they are more important than the content creator, often in a nasty way.

No – I’m drawn more to the streamers and streamer communities where it’s much more interactive. A comment in chat will attract comment, chuckles and that feedback which is what I crave. Putting a comment into chat and seeing it get happy reactions ? Awesome.

Oh and it also gives me ideas to unleash the creative side of my personality that usually struggles for ideas. I like making Stuff … I just find it difficult to come up with the inspiration for the project. Here’s a before :

A first comedy edit for the Purple Chocolate Company Edition :

And …

Radderss Edition to match a hair colour that starts blue and goes green. (Could do with a lighter blue aft but … you work with what you have).

I’ve gone back into that ship now and it is …

Shiny ! That’s the first of the spaceship skins I bought over the Xmas period. Looks spectacular doesn’t it.

I’ve also been enjoying a game called Motorsport Manager, although I am in a pretty grindy phase in that. The objective is to take the bottom team and have them win the championship and I’m doing that in two phases. 1st phase, build the infrastructure, the headquarters, the foundation. 2nd phase, win everything, destroy the competition, see their broken engines driven before us and hear the lamentation of their fans. (Bit of a Conan moment, I do apologise). But in phase 1, it is a Manor racing situation where my cars are several seconds a lap slower than everyone else. You get given time though in this scenario to let the plans develop. I’ll be back in there later for a little more.

Back to the real world though – I’ve been blighted somewhat by pain over the last week or so.

I might have mentioned a poorly neck – that hasn’t actually fixed, although it has become more tolerable. Until yesterday that is when the other side of the neck decided to join in too.

It’s probably my sleep pattern and position, which is being affected by the condition of my outsides. They’re improving !!! Slowly. And I can still set that healing back by over aggressively looking after the damage.

But it is getting there. Slowly. But I am seeing parts of me that were pretty damaged and problematic get reclaimed to proper good skin again.

About time !

PS Other news :
Rogue One – go see it.
Earth Final Conflict and Haven – am enjoying watching these. I missed out the first time.
Passengers – go see it. It won’t be what you expected, more romance movie than scifi.
Assassins Creed – deleting it from my memory. Avoid !

Sleeplessness is a bit of a bane of my life at the moment.

I can be yawning away in the evenings and be on the verge of sleep … until the time comes to actually go to bed. Then I’ll still be yawning away but … not going to sleep.

Tis frustrating.

But my brain will also fire off in all sorts of random directions while I’m trying to shut it down for sleep. What are the daft ideas coming out of it lately ? I can’t remember most of it because the ideas tend to evaporate by the time I wake up but …

Lego Star Destroyer.

Yep. My brain was attempting to design a Lego Star Destroyer. You can still acquire Lego Star Destroyers but a medium size one (I think the microfighter one is a bit too ickle) would be £70 minimum on Ebay. A proper size one would be £200+. Mad.

I reckon I could design one out of bits. I think the Lego Millennium Falcon would give me pointers for things like the off horizontal wedge that dominates the Star Destroyer design.

Yep. Brain was giving me lots of ideas last night. I may even remember them at some point. Here goes :
Hinge pair pieces that let you make angles;
The angles would make the iconic wedge design;
Technic pins to put bits together;
More angle bits to create areas like the engines at the back stern;
I know how I’d do the shield domes and the energizer dome.

What is the source for this idea ?

There we go. Apologies for the blurriness on some of those. It’s something like 1 pic for each bag of bits for the Falcon and shows it coming together. Lego is a bit of a discovery project as you see it slowly coming together.

The finished article looks great.

Yep. Feels good. What’s next ? Most likely, a Metal Earth R2D2 which has intimidated me since I received it for my birthday. My first attempt at Metal Earth was an XWing which didn’t go so well. Too fiddly.

There were other things bouncing around in my head too. The other night it was some kind of Hunger Games inspired montage where an orphan girl-lady-child was sitting on her bench in the bunker watching the situation steadily disintegrate around her. Conditions getting worse, things like plentiful water going to shortages and rationing due to policies from the politicians. The politicians made the ice miners into scapegoats and they’re the ones who made the water available. I suspect the Hunger Games aspect came from remembering the movies that the actress in Passengers (Jennifer Lawrence) previously starred in.

Odd dream. Possibly inspired by the constant thought that’s going into the impending writing of book.

I’m pretty sure I know what that book will be now. It’ll be a scifi universe thing where a group of colonists have to escape their home planet in a rush, before that home planet annihilates itself in a civil war. There will be a huge amount in there that borrows from what we’re seeing in the world at the moment.

There’s a lot of struggle happening. A lot of it is down to the crowd and herd instinct making people go down some very dark paths. Intolerance making things difficult for those who are seen as being something different.

This story would start out as people attempting to escape that before it explodes.

Kinda wish we could do that with our current world ?

Writing the thoughts into a book would be a bit like escaping that world by making up a new one.

Last ramble for tonight – I watched Passengers last night. It was a great evening, I really enjoyed the movie and the company. The movie drew out a tear or two as well. Great story, dodgy scifi … but scifi that worked in supporting the story. One of the central aspects is a decision … which I won’t spoil. I’d like to think I’d have made the opposite choice, although you don’t know what madness will do to you.

No. I’d have written. I would have made up a person to write for and … wrote to her. Bit like this blog !

It’s a great film. Best film I’ve watched this year so far. Oh wait … it’s the 4th of Jan ! It’s the only film I’ve watched so far this year !

Hopefully my brain will behave itself a bit better tonight and let me sleep more.

Ok,

So that episode of Sherlock was, as a very good friend likes to say, emotional. But I better not say why cos … you know … spoilers.

The thought got into me to talk a little about spoilers. Partly where I see them, partly what I do to avoid them. (Oh and I’ll say a little about holiday Sleepy too). But first …

Happy new year !

May you have an excellent 2017. And definitely a better year than most people’s 2016’s seem to have been. My 2016 was mixed I think. I’m in a better situation now than I was in at the start of the year. I still have the problems with my outsides which I hoped would have been fixed by now. The condition seems to be constantly evolving. But more about that in a bit.

Spoilers first. All the spoilers.

I’ve gone kind of out of my way a couple of times recently to try and get the maximum enjoyment out of a few things by not getting spoiled as to what’s going to happen. There’s things like :

Rogue One – seeing that as early as feasible because I just knew it was going to be spoiled. As it happens, for this and The Force Awakens last year, spoilers were fairly easy to avoid. For me at least, I was seeing reports of malicious comments coming in to the internet personalities which were detailed spoilers. I can avoid that but the internet personality people can’t. It’s no wonder some of them turn reclusive.

I just finished watching Sherlock and there is massive spoiler potential in that. A reasonable episode I thought, although it was really dragging in its first half hour. It warmed up though. The author tends to be a bit too impressed with his own cleverness sometimes, we see that in Doctor Who as well.

With the cricket, I try and watch that as live. If it starts in our early morning, like an India tour typically starting play at 3.30am our time, then I’ll record the weekend’s play and watch it time delayed. I enjoy having it on more there, where I don’t know what’s going to happen.

(And then I get bored and fast forward until Important Things actually happen)

It’s a sense of not wanting to know what’s going to happen, before it occurs. We enjoy the surprise more if we don’t know exactly what’s coming.

The ending of Rogue One was definitely unexpected. Well. Part of it was expected, part different. I was very curious though, because I’ve played through a similar story to what was happening in Rogue One through the X Wing game. Or rather, I played a little of X Wing (it was a very tough game, unfair daft missions meant I gave up when the enjoyment evaporated). That game is set around the same time, in the lead up to Star Wars A New Hope and part of it involves how the Rebels get the Death Star plans.

The game is still available on GoG if you really want to slog through it but … that timeline is wholly gone now and there are far better space games out there.

And I am still silly tempted by this space ship skin :

Shiny.

PS Go see Rogue One. It’s an excellent movie. And they got the excitement going for it supremely well, hyping it up through the trailers without giving away too much of what would be happening in the movie. Good job.

Contrast that to a certain Terminator movie, which gave away a critical plot point in the trailers and … in the animation reel in the menus of the bluray/dvd. The people responsible for that need to have every major movie spoiled as they go in. Or similar punishments like being forced to watch BBC. (I suffered through the last bit of the new Open All Hours … it was a pale shadow of what Ronnie Barker created).

This holiday has been a fairly chilled out one. Some repairs have happened, some damage has occurred. Same old story huh …. Gaming has happened, perhaps a bit too much gaming. I’ve done another couple of stay up all night events … One was planned and involved pizza. Because I don’t seem to be able to have pizza at the moment without a sleepless night due to acid attacks. If I don’t go to sleep, I can cope with the acid better. (It is much more unpleasant if I’m lying down).

The other one involved Stellaris … the space strategy game. At 4am this morning and still going strong it didn’t seem worth going to sleep. Besides, there was a big metal mystery globe examining a black hole and I wanted to know what it was up to. And the latest race is pretty mean. They’ve got a sufficient lead now to allow them to go to a total war mode now, steamrollering the galaxy before them.

How am I doing though ?

I’m learning more about my external condition. I don’t think I can use the Aveeno any more, which is a shame because it seemed to be helping out a fair bit. My outsides are still dry but that’s a consequence of how much damage I have. With the Aveeno moisturiser, it dampens but also leaves behind something which I don’t think is helping.

Oh well. It did really well for a time and I have a back up plan, next time I go shopping I’ll pick up some Eurax … another special moisturiser that I’ve heard good things about from multiple sources.

And my outsides seem to be trying to heal themselves on their own now. I just have to figure out how to protect them for long enough for them to fix up. And not redamage them …

That’s the real trick though. I’m used to going : IMPERFECTION …. DESTROY !!! Which just leads to the damage lasting longer and getting worse as I attack bad bits. It does feel as if it is trying to fix though, which is a welcome change. May that continue …

And I’m rambling …

Spoilers are bad. Try to avoid giving them out because you’ll wreck someone’s enjoyment if you do. And it’s not funny. Far too many people on the internet have the wrong idea of what’s funny. Something funny to one person can completely crush another. Or it just may kill off a series. I read all of David Weber’s Honorverse books up until the last, which I didn’t finish. I actually spoiled myself on the wiki pages … which broke all motivation to read the 1200 page book. May have saved myself some pain there.

May you have an excellent 2017. Hopefully I finally fix up !

Something I saw earlier (A Facebook nametest site thing) said I’d find the object of my dreams at London Excel arena. There happens to be a boat show there next week … Not narrowboats though. Barges are off the table (water?) there.

I have lots of new music to listen to … A bit of raiding happened while I was at my parents house (old stuff, still good). And donating a bit to the Yogscast jingle jam got me a bunch of awful games which happen to have some promising soundtracks. I doubt whether I’ll ever install the games (except to raid the soundtracks) but I’ve been enjoying some odd music from them.

And I’m looking forward to watching Passengers on Tuesday too.

Not long until we go back to work !! It’ll be a fortnight off for me but it’s absolutely flown by. I don’t feel quite ready to go back yet. Not bored enough yet. Or is that me not feeling the bored due to having been awake for over 36 hours now.

Could be.

Post and zzzzzz !!!! Nite all, have a great new year with much enjoyment that isn’t spoiled for you.