Year: 2018

Thursday saw me heading East. I’d accumulated almost 3 days worth of flexi working credit, so it was time to burn some of that down a bit.

I had an ideal location picked out.

Hello Legoland. I’m going to keep the pictures smaller because there are rather a lot of them (Facebook got 126. Yep. 3 figures worth. Not gonna post ’em all here !), as always …. click for bigger. All of these are taken with my proper camera so there are lots of pixels to see.

Lots of bricks too. The first main ride type area you get to on site is Star Wars and these two are outside. Inside, there are incredible dioramas depicting scenes from the first 6 movies.

They look amazing. And in fact a couple of messages sent to people quite early were along those lines. I was pretty blown away by the dioramas. The site is chock full of them. Some, you might not notice so much.

Check out the fella on top looking to nab your snacks.

Some are a lot more impressive. This fella is highly likely to become an avatar at some point.

And pirates. Quite a few pirates as well. And a Mariachi band. The lunchtime show involved pirates too. Most of the site is targeted at 6 to 12 year old kiddies and their parents but this lunchtime show was fun to watch for me too. Perhaps I am that 6 to 12 year old kiddie in a somewhat older body.

Hell, you should indulge yourself in some harmless fun if you can get away with it. Good for the soul.

Although don’t swim. Swimmers might get eaten. Those dragons looked peckish.

Especially that one. Burger Dragon will definitely be an avatar at some point. Lego creations like this were all over the site. Most of the place was theme park, which didn’t impress me too much. Too much roller coaster, not enough brick. Saying that though, I didn’t actually partake in the roller coaster thing, maybe next time.

Humour too. As I walked past these fellas (and there were more of them), Queen’s We Will Rock You was playing.

The really massive treat for me on the site though was Miniland. This had intricate statues inspired by places from all around the globe. USA, Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Russia, China, India and quite probably a few more too. Need to go back to refresh the memory.

We have lift off ? Yep. That is a giant Lego Space Shuttle and launch gantry. There’s a crawler transport vehicle too and models representing the rest of Kennedy Space Centre. Definitely fanboyed over that.

Had great weather too, check out that sunshine.

Enough sun for crisp, clear shadows. Erm … Totally didn’t intend for my own shadow to be in shot ! Wear hats if the sun is as powerful as this folks.

The amount of detail was amazing, as was the number of different landmarks. Quite a few from London and beyond.

Wonder if they move the stones when the clocks change ? Couple more before I close ?

If you haven’t watched The Mole sketch by Jasper Carrott, you’ve heavily missed out.

I loved this scene hidden outside the Atlantis aquarium area. That’s definitely better visited than on camera (the low light wasn’t so good for camera).

Just one more ! Star Wars again, this … was larger than me.

Here’s a video of them building it and … those are small Lego star fighters dotted around the outside.

Great day. Had fun, enjoyed the visit, when can I go again ?

Back to books !

It feels like it’s been a long time. Quite spookily coinciding with the cricket season and the reactivation of the Warcraft sub.

(Picture unattributed – it’s from Pinterest and they don’t play nice at all with attribution. Let me know if it’s yours, if you’ll let me keep it there and it you want a note/link).

To the book ! More natter later.

This one was Iron Fist, the second in the X Wing Wraith Squadron books by Aaron Allston. It picks up on an excellent start from the first book and runs from there. There are new characters to replace those lost in the first book. Not all of the squadron survives this book either … It’s part of why these books have a certain compelling factor to them, you don’t know who is going to survive out of the characters that don’t have Plot Armour*.

*Plot Armour – a device where certain things have to happen, certain characters have to be in one piece for later. Like Picard could get captured (multiple times actually), Data could have his head blown off … but they’ll be back for the next episode.

Anyway. The story in this one follows the first, where the Republic born from Rebellion is trying to track down and deal with the Warlord Zsinj. He’s an elusive one …. with a very powerful and nigh on unchallengeable Super Star Destroyer, the Iron Fist of the title of the book.

Just for chuckles … Lego Super Star Destroyer build video ! I’d love to put one of these together but … It’s still £550+ for an unopened one on That Auction Site Everyone Knows About.

To the book !

Yep. The Wraiths are set up this time as a pirate band, with them even stealing the fighters they use to prey on a star system. The hallmark of these books is clever tactics and strategy, where it’s believable that the squad have everything in hand for the plan …. and then react as the plan falls apart around them.

Oh and the characters have a lot of fun throughout the books and you, the reader, are invited to share in that totally free form fun.

I won’t put too much more but I’m looking forward to reading the last book of this three and then there’s Isard’s Revenge if I can find where I buried it in the mountain of books.

I’d say that’s me but ….. I suspect Cyberkitten got there first and stole the chair.

Actually no ! The shadow off to the left is Cyberkitten’s mountain of books … towering over mine.

I may acquire more Stuff tomorrow. Legoland ! Looking forward to it. On a school day too. (I have tonnes of flexi credit built up and I need to burn some of it down).

I haven’t been posting much lately, the ideas haven’t been flowing like they can do. Hopefully another post soon !

Haha, I suspect a Legoland post may appear over the weekend.

There ! You were warned.

Now let’s see what random thoughts are in my head :

Quite.

I’ve been … cruising along is probably the right term for it ? Work is busier than usual … and there’s a change coming there too. More on that in the next month or so when we figure out what it’s going to be. I’m highly valued where I am at the moment … but the boss people are actually quite supportive and want to put me in a spot where I’ll be happier. Quite where that be depends on what the best fit is … and that will need a little thought and not rushing into things.

As per usual, I’ll set things up so they don’t have to chase me (too much) for “Sleepy how do that ?”

That’s enough about work though. It’s often a challenge (be boring if it wasn’t), always fun and there are some great people around in the team who politely laugh when I unleash daftness on them. That can happen a fair bit. Because if I draw out chuckles from them, that cheers me up a lot.

I like being around people who chuckle at the daftness.

Check this daftness out :

Yes.

You are right.

It is an abomination of a race car. TRUE ! I fully admit to that. Stands out though. I’ve been enjoying playing Motorsport Manager again. It’s early days (and I’ve injected a huge amount of cash to allow me to skip the early game, finish last all the time but grind for money) but at the start of season 2, the team will start to challenge the leaders …

It’s a great game for the strategy person who is also interested in motor racing. The racing side of it seems very nicely done and gives believable (and quite challenging to win) races. The strategy side between races has its contrivances like the money model working per race instead of per month like is usual for things like salaries. The workers don’t get paid in the off season ! But outside of that, it is an incredibly sound and accessible racing managing game and I’d heavily recommend it to anyone interested in that. It’s a rare game that is harsh and fair at the same time. If you make mistakes in this one, you’ll be punished. But the logic behind it is impeccable. The game stemmed from a mobile game, which was simpler but also pretty good.

There will likely be more screenshots from Motorsport Manager but it’s one I’ll enjoy playing offline.

Roguetech might get another look too, although I’m waiting for patching with that one. The mod requires the current beta patch, which has a few issues.

There will be another video at some point … all plans to do that in Roguetech were abandoned due to how awkward I found it to set up (self inflicted wounds with a mod).

What’s the video about ? I need to open this game again soon ! I kinda want to do that when I can record though, which needs quiet time and enough concentration to be ok with the voice and not make a total hash of it. I will be coming out with Firefly quotes like …

I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar … closely followed by :
Did something just fly off my gorram ship ?
(Battery compartment !) Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal …
This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then – explode.

Firefly was an amazing series full of wonderful, interesting characters. It would be wonderful to pay a little homage to it while making a video about a futuristic frontier pilot.

More quotes ! From Serenity courtesy of IMDB and from the Firefly series courtesy of wiki people. Go peek ! I bet you’ll be chuckling and laughing within the first few lines.

I’ve also been spending the time in Stellaris … The plan for this game didn’t start out this way … but it kinda turned into seeing how long we could go without going to war, while still being strong. We managed 205 years before I got pulled into a war by the other people in the Federation. I actually quite enjoyed that unintentional pacifism, enough to perhaps try an actual Totally Pacifist race …

They fight to defend themselves … but the one I’ll do will have issues with talking to other people. Could be a good one for the Star Trek Next Generation ship models mod that I have waiting.

Anyway. Stellaris was left last weekend in about 2425, with a War In Heaven about to break out. Not decided yet which way I’ll go in that …

An older map … My mob are now in a federation with two of the races at the top and we spread into all that empty space over to the right of the map.

Talking of starry things …

Advent is sorted …

One last random thought …. I’m up to 3202 tracks listened to so far on the laptop ! A few have been favoured by the random number generator and listened to 3 or 4 times so far. There is still only a 1 in 5 chance (rounded) of a repeat track … Must get the new Ting Tings album soon. They do great music.

Hmm.

Just listening to the lead track off their coming soon album. Could take some getting used to. Wrong Club is amazing though.

Curious isn’t it ?

The catch phrases that stay with you and that you keep using sometimes come from really poor sources. In the case of that last one, it comes from Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome where the law is Two Men Enter. One Man Leaves.

A crazy film … probably the second best of the 3 Mel Gibson Mad Max films. (The second is the best in my opinion). The newest Mad Max with Charlize Theron stealing the show is the best one in a crazy series of super daft movies. Must watch that newest movie again sometime.

I need someone to draw me a MechaSleepyDwagon at some point too :-). Maybe spoilers for why I want it. I have someone in mind …. They’re called Alex Foxtrot Whiskey and here’s a link to their site. And …. ideal post thumbnail pic !

I was quite chuffed and impressed when the Alex delivered that and its fellows on the big pic.

Just had my tea actually. I don’t think there will be any gaming tonight. Pain level has gone into moderate level with occasional yelpy spikes. I’ll be ok there, just my body telling me to have an easier night than usual without dipping into the games.

They’ve been frustrating … As I mentioned in the last post, I tried checking out the Battletech Roguetech mod. It vastly expands on the equipment available and opens up all sorts of possibilities with the engines of destruction that you control in game. But ….

Modding in the Dragon with Tea icon from the last post apparently irretrievably broke my profile (I got it up and running with a different email address) and that was the start of problems. I eventually did get the mod running but …. got frustrated and tired with it.

A video series on that would have been an utter nightmare.

I haven’t been in Warcraft for just over a week as well …. I think I just found other things to play and watch ! Many streams have been on. Oh and the Warcraft playstyle tends to aggravate the pain issues instead of alleviate them.

Other games ? I did really enjoy watching the cricket over the weekend. It’s been a classic series where one side seems to be on top. Then they blow their advantage. One side seems to have blown it. And then come out on top of the other team. That’s what we need in sport. Predictability leads to boredom. Cricket depends on wickets falling, the mostly unpredictable event. However …. the wickets are usually set up by the bowler out thinking the batsman and coming out with something that’s a huge surprise.

That’s the plan at least. One of the issues I have with the Battletech game is that almost all of the missions see you outnumbered 2 to 1. Never 4 or 5 enemies facing your 4 mechs. Always 8. Or 9. Or more. Without an ongoing campaign to hook me in, I got bored with that.

I tried out one called Frontier Pilot Simulator. Here’s a pic from their site :

I think this one is highly promising. It could well herald a video or two.

What is it ? It’s an early access game set on an alternate near Earth planet in a scifi universe.

The game sets you in the pilot seat of an advanced helijet. The engines you see on the wings there rotate forward and back to move you around. But … you quickly find out that’s not a good idea because while they’re pushing you forward, they aren’t holding you up and you plummet like a rock.

They’ve also implemented ground effect, which is something we see on today’s helicopters as well. As they get close to the ground, the rotors that make lift by furiously pushing air downwards get more effective … The air being pushed down bounces off the ground and pushes the aircraft up more.

This gets rather tense as you’re maneouvring over a landing pad that’s raised up from the ground. The differing levels of ground effect lead to the aircraft trying to tip over. It’s an early access in development game but it looks like they have a really sound flight model.

And all of that is far better shown in a video. Where of course you will see me pinpointing perfect transits and making landings with no issues.

Oh look ! A pig is flying by the window !

The weekend finished off with a dose of Stellaris … The current game is with a race style I don’t play much, it’s a bunch of goody goody Federation builders … With suitable ships :

And the Fleet has grown since then.

I nearly quit out of that game but it’s developing nicely. The first war I’ll carry out will involve invading an enemy’s space via a wormhole. Sounds familiar doesn’t it ? But a tad reversed …. I don’t have to do that yet so I’m watching the enemy while they fight it out with another neighbour. If one gets strong, I’ll attack the strong one before they take over the weaker one.

Lots of scope in that game.

It’s been too long since I’ve been in the books too ! I’m still midway through XWing Wraith Squadron – Iron Fist. I may go back to that one tonight.

Later !

I’ve been getting lost in that Stellaris game again …

Gaming is good at the moment. On the one hand, I’m enjoying my time in World of Warcraft again with an active guild and fun stuff to explore. That may be a little time limited perhaps though. On the other, I had an epic Stellaris campaign that I took all the way through to fighting the Fallen Empires (brutal campaigns) and an end game crisis.

We need a thumbnail though ! Check this out.

I’m working up to doing a heavily modded Battletech play through using the Rogue Tech mod, plus a little addition of my own. Check out the Company Logo. I haven’t started that yet because I may well record the play through, for however long it goes. I’d be heavily editing that, because after a while the battles blur into each other. So I’d be picking out the important parts and wrapping a few battles together.

Looking forward to it.

I said to someone not too long ago that I’d tell them whether I thought the Stellaris DLCs were worth buying … Here we go :

Apocalypse – gives you planet killer weapons and space pirates. Optional, the space pirate marauders are highly annoying and the planet killer weapons are end game things.
Utopia – buy this one. This expansion opens up a new set of Ascension perks and other mechanics.
Distant Stars – meh. Optional. It opens up new clusters of the galaxy with hidden dangers … I haven’t seen these properly fire yet … but I’m only in my second game with them in. More buy than not buy.
Synthetic Dawn – buy it. This one allows you to play as machine races, which are an interesting variation on playing as the typical organic. Things like energy being required instead of food and actively needing to build up the population instead of watching it grow naturally.
Leviathans – Optional, it adds in a series of mid level power encounters which are quite varied in nature and level of menace. I enjoy these encounters and I’d miss them.

Ones I don’t own (make your conclusions as to whether I recommend them !)
Humanoids, Plantoids – give you new ship models and species appearances. Meh.

On top of that is a vast array of mods that are available for the game. I’m using a few quality of life improvements (like a speed dial feature) and some mods that change and expand on game mechanics. Oh and then there’s the ship models :

Click for bigger as per usual ! At this point, the Swarm had 10 fleets of 40k power each. Each of those is a fairly powerful fleet. The game makes you split your fleet up like this and it’s a good feature when you get used to it. Each separate fleet can be given attack duty, blockade duty or back to base for upgrades or repairs.

In the above shot, I’d gathered the massed fleets together for an invasion of a Fallen Empire homeworld. My swarm had 10x 40k power fleets, the enemy had a few 60k power fleets plus a hefty space station. A brutal fight but the swarm prevailed.

The mod in this case is the Star Wars Rebel Ships mod and the larger ships are Mon Calamari cruisers forming the Battleship wings. If you zoom in real close, you may be able to make out a mass of Corellian Corvette zooming around.

This was the final fleet action of the game, with 12 massed Swarm fleets advancing on the last vestige of the Machine Contingency which had awoken to sterilise the galaxy with only the Swarm able to deal with them.

It was an intense campaign when it kicked off in the end game. Very enjoyable.

The latest campaign has quite different ships. I’ve only unlocked the corvettes and destroyers so far. Here they are :

Shiny ! The next game will have Next Generation ships and something must have gone horribly wrong because I’ll be playing a machine assimilator race.

Warcraft ? I definitely enjoyed the social aspect of the raid I was involved in on Saturday. We made an attempt at battering the content from the last expansion. The social side was awesome, with lots of fun over the voice comms. But it did remind me of the very fiddly and punishing mechanics that exist in the raid encounters in WoW. A single mistake or misunderstanding of the mechanics is punished very heavily.

I think that’s made up my mind somewhat on how heavily I’ll stay in WoW in the weeks to come. A younger me would have been grinding away to get to the required gear level and I’d have been training myself in raid modes. (I have an idea … but haven’t played that idea for quite some time).

I’d honestly rather play different games now than be subject to those raid mechanics. Like Stellaris !

More Gromit hunting happened ! Oh and I also reopened that video editing thing …

This was from Friday last week and it completed the tour. Pics ?

That’s from the app and the Light as a Feather was the last one to visit. This was a harder trail than the ones before, there is a lot more gradient involved on that side of town. (Or it was a factor of not feeling that great when starting off).

It started off at Clifton Downs, with George Wallace before heading back into the area by Park Street. There are lots of pretty buildings there (and a Forbidden Planet for peeking at the geeky stuff).

If you looks real close, there’s a Gromit in the sightline to the door.

Gromit of the day. A very bright Thermogromit. More sights of the day involved the Clifton Suspension Bridge :

Bridge … and Bristol Hound Gromit.

More Bridge. From a considerably higher up position than the other picture. The bridge took 33 years to actually build in all (with a pause) and was completed after the death of the original designer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Here’s more info (click for bigger as per usual).

I wrote after posting the picture for the last one : “What a long strange trip it’s been.” It’s taken me to parts of Bristol I’d never have considered going to but enjoyed visiting, some parts I’ll never go to again (bit rough) and some bits I will definitely look to check out more thoroughly in the future. Worth it. Would I do it again ? Probably not. I still have unfinished business with a couple of them where the shop they were in was closed when I got there.

That’s the big comment that I’ve said before about this turn of Gromit Unleashed, a few too many were locked up behind doors after certain times of the day. Previously, access by the public was pretty much guaranteed.

You want the big pic … There is a big pic ! Here we go :

Click for bigger again. At thumbnail size, it’s pretty much just a jumble of random colour. Apologies for the slightly odd resolution, I was aiming for 1080p but for some reason, couldn’t remember the other dimension. Oops !

Talking of 1080p …

I’ve been in the video game video game again. This time it was a Warcraft video about one of the achievements. I actually quite enjoyed making it and I’ve been having the thoughts of doing more. The issues with that are varied but first … the video :

I hope that doesn’t autoplay. The last thing I want is that someone visits a website I’m responsible for and suddenly something starts blaring out with the sound.

Hope you like it ! Not sure if I’ll make many more videos and definitely won’t be giving up the day job as would be required for making one or two daily videos. Why is that ?

Ideas – the one above is pretty much a one-off. I wouldn’t want to subject people to levelling videos. I started watching a much better video person than I (Tradechat !) and I couldn’t stick with it. Let’s play type series are good though, where you talk around the gameplay of a series like Battletech or XCom 1/2. The creativity comes from how you play the game and how you react to what’s going on.

Time – this is the big one. For each video, there is a necessary production and set up time. For the 11.5 minute video above, it needed :
10 minutes or so of time around the recording time to get the character in the right place and to manage the recording software.
Multiple bits of software working together. This isn’t actually an issue. I use nVidia’s Shadowplay to record gameplay video and audio and Audacity to capture audio from my headset mic. I then use Magix Vegas to stitch them all together. I do it this way because it allows me to mute the voice audio when I sniffle or sneeze (v important) and it allows me to tweak the levels for betterness.
(words are being hard tonight)
Editing time – this needs at least the run time of the video, preferably at least double.
Rendering time. This is where Vegas takes what you produced and turns it into something suitable for uploading to Youtube. The 11.5 minute above took 46 minutes to render on my desktop or would have taken 29 minutes on my laptop. So I’d be doing rendering for further videos on the laptop. It’s a very heavy cpu activity, so you wouldn’t be able to capture more video while a first is rendering.
Upload time. It felt like this took a couple of hours on my 5Mbit/s line. The actual video was 1.45GB for 11.5 minutes.

I hope you like the video ! One person watched it and the feedback was “You need to make more videos”. And that came from the person who got me caught on watching Twitch streams. Coming from the lovely HeyChrissa (link on the right), that comment gave me a huge happy feel.

Maybe more videos again at some point. I quite enjoyed making a video again and was looking for excuses to make more.

I’ve been buried in Stellaris for the long bank holiday weekend though (outside of a couple of Photoshop/Gimp projects!) and Stellaris was objecting to the Shadowplay capture software … just pics from that.

But that’s for another post … First :

Building with pointy roof !

Back at work now !

And feeling like I could do with another holiday. Let’s see :

Thursday – I’d given up on getting the laptop working with my old Airport Express so I went out Gromit Hunting, with an objective of acquiring a Bluetooth based widget after finishing up the Gromit Hunting.

Success !

Champion indeed.

I’m up to 55 out of 67 Gromits, Feathers and Wallaces now and I’m hoping for cool, clear skies on Friday to finish them off. I’ve enjoyed hunting them down, although some are in odd places this time. Definitely places I won’t be interested in going anywhere near if this event happens for a 4th time. Bristol has some very rough places. Not so rough obviously … but places that you suspect could turn very rough if you visited at the wrong time. (I live in a good area).

More Gromits !

Or Feathers even.

There we go. That’s the Marshal, keeping an eye on an idyllic setting at Chew Magna lake.

Yep. Not many more Gromits to go before I see them all. That’s Friday afternoon’s plan. Did I mention music ?

I’d previously used an Apple Airport Express to stream music from laptop to hifi across the network. A good bit of kit, it worked pretty well although it needed the network gear resetting occasionally because it would lose the connection.

Things got a lot worse with it last week, where it would drop the connection and the audio stream after a few hours play. Efforts to fix it (updated firmware and moving it to a socket where it had more air for cooling – it runs warm) were in vain and I started looking for an alternate solution. I actually had that solution in mind already and acquired a Logitech Bluetooth audio adaptor. (Disclosure note – I paid for it, it was not a freebie). I’d thoroughly recommend it. Sounds good, so easy to set up that they barely give you a manual (if you’ve set up anything on Bluetooth, you don’t need a manual for this) and it’s been rock solid. Ok, there have been one or two minor glitches in the audio but these are very infrequent and last less than a fraction of a second.

Yep. Recommended. It is a standalone bit of kit that picks up the audio from Bluetooth and routes it to any sound device via headphones or RCA phono cables.

A while ago, I read a hifi mag report on wireless speakers and I was very disappointed at the time. It didn’t have anything that could turn your existing hifi into a wireless receiver. It just covered stuff that was massively overpriced and was pretty much a second hifi. They didn’t cover the Bluetooth adaptors … and didn’t cover that Apple Airport Express. Hifi mag very interested in having you buy the kit that comes from the people who advertise with them and Logitech and Apple don’t advertise with them much.

Be wary of the motives of people who tell you to buy certain things … have they given that proper disclosure note to show their motives. I add short ones because a disclosure note is an FCA required thing … at least I think it’s FCA. It’s required in any case. I might even need to add “#ad” somewhere.

Anyway. Laptop is mostly tamed. I just need to :

Acquire a decent email client as the standard Microsoft one is utter garbage. I would rather pay for a new one than use that for much longer. The big issue with it is that I can’t see where to set up a series of archive folders. I’d routinely pop invoice emails into a “Business” folder and new account set up things into a “Computing” folder. And similar. There doesn’t seem to be a clean way of archiving stuff you want to actually keep.

More picture !

Gosh this build turned into a bit of a marathon. Can you tell what it’s going to be from that ? The undercarriage set up may give it away.

Lots of moving parts in this one, including an undercarriage that goes up and down plus an F35-like lift fan with doors above and below that open up. The canopy also lifts up and the twin tails go left and right.

It took a while (maybe 10 hours) and here it is :

A comment : “Wow it’s huge !”. Yep. It’s a big unit. Sadly back up to full price now too ! (I got it for £30 off).

And I now have the craving for more lego. Haha !

Still taming the new laptop.

Before diving in, here is the disclosure note : I bought the laptop and the SSD that I added to it. I’ll also be buying the Bluetooth adaptor that I’ll mention later. I also bought the Canon camera I’ll mention. But … the Acronis software came free !

I have some early impressions, plus … I need to buy even more stuff !

First thing is … speed !

I kinda knew this was coming from what we get from the machines at work but … do not buy a Windows PC/laptop without a Solid State Device disc drive in it (SSD).

What are they and why do you need them ?

They’re a bundle of memory chips that act as very fast storage. Not so fast in terms of Mbytes/s transfer rates but extremely fast to find the information that’s on them. So when Windows goes nuts swapping back and forward around its various storage places, an SSD makes an unbelievable difference in how smooth the experience is.

It’s a pleasant laptop to operate now after a little surgery yesterday instead of a disappointing pain on Monday before the SSD arrived. The other type of hard disc involves magnetic chemicals spinning on glass platters, with an arm going back and forward across the disc. They’re much faster than they used to be but that archaic technology takes its toll in the time needed to find the information that Windows is looking for.

I’ve spoken about this before a few times … It makes a massive difference though. The laptop struggled to transfer half the iTunes library over on Monday, it transferred the lot yesterday over the course of about 6 hours. That’s 16,000 tracks … (I was being selective)

Oh – before I move on, it is a complicated affair

How about the rest ?

I haven’t tried out the graphics part yet but it looks ok. Gotta be careful about your viewing angle though. That was the point of rushing into this laptop instead of holding off more, the 504 model has a TN screen instead of an IPS Panel. IPS is a display screen technology which is far superior to the older TN technology. It’s that old chestnut again. If you’re in the market for technology and two bits are the same price, buy the better one ! It seems obvious but … how many people do you know who settle for second best ?

That 504 thing … The laptop is an Asus 503VD modified to have an SSD complementing the normal hard disc. The key differences are the display and also that the 504 does not include an SD card reader slot. I kinda need that …

I was expecting this one as well but while the desktop and laptop can see my camera over wifi, neither of them can connect to it. I believe there is a key bit of software missing from the Canon drivers. But I was happily using SD card transfer with the Macbook before.

Network is a bit tricky though. Could be that the laptop doesn’t have the April update installed yet but it doesn’t want to see the other computers. It can see their iTunes libraries … but not their network shares. The other two can see it however. (Means it won’t actually be an issue).

Bluetooth is nice. Bluetooth is shiny. I’m hoping it will solve an issue I’ll get into in a sec but I was able to send a file from phone to laptop ok. Technology is progress …

My Little White Box (Apple Airport Express running Airplay) seems to have died ! Or it’s having an argument with Windows iTunes. It was pretty solid with MacOS iTunes. The interweb searching suggests that there is an issue with Windows iTunes 10.7 that isn’t present on the MacOS version. My fix will be to acquire a Bluetooth adaptor to send music from laptop to hifi again.

A disappointing issue but not insurmountable.

Other stuff :

It’s a big unit. A lot bigger than my Macbook Air. Heavier too … but more capable. It should be properly capable of showing streamed video and sport. The Macbook Air had issues with its wifi and sport streaming would be too much for its cpu (a Haswell indeed) and it would get occasional blockiness. The problem there was that to aid cooling and battery life, the cpu was underclocked to about half its normal speed.

I’m sure there’s more but it’s struggling to escape my brain at the moment !

Oh and there’s also Warcraft …. which I totally didn’t play today as I thought “I’ll open Stellaris up for an hour or two and then Warcraft”. Oops. Stellaris tends to turn into 10 hour sessions. I think only 6 today.

Perhaps more Gromits tomorrow. I still have 20 to tick off.

Or Warcraft later. The new expansion has hit and while I’ve only gone through half a zone so far, it is very impressive. Nice stories, fantastic music. Great atmosphere. They’re getting better at this stuff.

Epic things happen …

And sometimes unusual old friends appear.

Week off for me !

I suspect with what my legs feel like after Friday, I’m going to need it to recover. Lots of Gromit hunting ….

Many, many Gromits.

I started on 16 when knocking off work on Friday and was up to 47 by the time I was ready to drag my weary body home. Oh and the phone desperately wanted charge too, I doubt whether it would have lasted to do the ones at the top of Park Street !

I especially liked the Oh Bollards in the middle, the Lego Gromit and the Gromitronic with the lights.

There’s the Oh Bollards,

Lego Gromit and …

Gromitronic with lots of flashing lights. The Feathertron 3000 was good too but was behind a very reflective piece of glass which I was having trouble getting a good angle on.

Too sunny ! It was a good day for Gromit Hunting on Friday. Despite skies threatening early (and a heavy rain shower while I was in work), it was dry throughout and more than a little warm. Forgot my water bottle again ! Oops.

I don’t want to know how many miles I walked though. My legs haven’t forgotten yet. I started feeling the effects of a calf strain halfway round …. which is where you ask if you’ve passed the point of no return (i.e. it’s less distance to go forward than go back) and keep on going if you’ve gone past it. Which I had !

Bristol was putting its good side forward on Friday.

I could be living on one of those at some point in the future. Not one of those, my own barge !

The harbourside was being especially shiny.

Some lovely looking big ships out there today too.

The river, swollen by the earlier rain, was looking like chocolate. Hmmmm chocolate. The wind up there was also wanting to eat my hat. I didn’t let it although I did have one hat chasing incident earlier in the day.

By the ending stages though, I was starting to question :

STAIRS ! Why did it have to be stairs ! I might have had maybe 10 miles in my legs at this point with a diversion to an off-trail Feathers and a little more diverting around.

I’m looking forward to a quiet week now with lots of music listening. The new laptop is arriving tomorrow, although I’m definitely not thanking the credit card company who I won’t be advertising. They put a caution on my card due to me buying laptop. I don’t make a habit of buying laptops … It’s odd that they flagged that and not the washing machine. Silly people. They should really check the IP address that a transaction is coming from and use that as their check if they don’t have anything better to go on. In the event, it delayed another laptop related purchase and the card was declined at a coffee shop on Friday. Makes you think about switching to another card.

But … Gromits ! How many so far ? Here’s the map :

The green ones are the ones I’ve ticked off so far. Not yet for the red ones. Oh and there’s a couple off the map to the SW as well.

I’ve quite enjoyed the Gromit Hunting this time around. It’s getting me to see some things I never realised were around. It seems a little more commercial though. Last time with the Shauns, I think they were all outside and accessible 24/7. Most of them. This time though, more than a few are behind doors that get locked in off hours and Bristol centre still tends to run 9 to 5 for the shops. With the 2 at M Shed, I was lucky to get there when I did because I took those with only 2 minutes to go before they closed up.

Others were tucked away deep in shops. It seems a bit more commercially affected this time around which is a shame. They’re in different places too, which is great. Means we get to see more.

Anyway, that’s it from me for tonight. As always for these pictures, click for bigger. Except for the map and the montage, they’re all full resolution from the camera. Camera has lots of pixels.

Status check – still not recovered from it yet, my legs still haven’t forgiven me but at least I escaped the potentially more serious damage that was threatening from the calf strain midway around.

More later in the week perhaps !

PS Techie note on the montage … Gimp crashed with the first attempt where I tried stitching them all together at native resolution. I had a feeling it would have trouble because the image was starting out at 4608×3456 pixels … times by 30. So to make it work and make it easy, the working file was at the native picture resolution (4608×3456) and each picture was imported into its own layer. Layers make things very easy with the picture editing. Then … divide each layer by 10×10 to make them 1/100th the size and memory requirement and use the grid align tools to arrange them in a 6×5 grid. Job done in 30 minutes perhaps. Oh and when crop the arrangement down to remove the extra unused space around the outside.

More Gromits !

This one is a very endearing Dearest Gromit out by the UWE Bower Ashton campus. Friday saw me enjoying a day off work and hoping for less traffic than usual to head around some more of the outlying Gromits … with an ulterior motive.

It’s still pretty hot and dry too, as demonstrated by the condition of the fields overlooking the Bristol skyline. This was quite close to the last Gromit, just up the hill in fact.

Gromit number 13 was Wild At Heart with Ashton Court providing the venue for an iced tea lunch.

A quick hop over to Ashton Gate football stadium saw me finding Rockin’ Robin. Traffic wasn’t too bad up to this point, outside of the usual idiots on the roads. We have a lot of those ….

The motorway was clogged up by something unmentionable so I ventured into the backroads to get to the next Gromit over by Puxton Place. This one is the Merry Go Gromit, with the venue offering a charming farm shop and an activities park I’m curious about. Traffic was nasty though, was very happy that I had the air con, especially after emerging into a blast of heated air.

It wasn’t quite so bad on the way to Weston Super Mare, which was where the ulterior motive was located … I’m going to be buying another laptop very soon. It’ll be an Asus (not-sponsored) and the PC World offering was the favourite, courtesy of another discount. But ….

Bristol – none available
Weston – wasn’t honouring the discount.

If the shop isn’t being cooperative, walk away. Don’t be in a rush to spend more money than you need to ! (As it happens, the offering at Scan has got its discount back and is a superior laptop).

Oh I ended up parking at completely the wrong end of the sea front. I believed the signs ! They said “Grand Pier, park there”. And there was a mile between car park and Grand Pier. They were asking for money at the Pier so I didn’t check it out (most of the seafront prices were inflated) but waiting outside was :

I thought a slightly sad looking Giggles. Now up to Number 16 of 67 ! And starting to tick off some of the trails which are collections of Gromits.

The next set will happen on Friday, which is a possible Cunning Plan time. It’s expected to get cooler as the week progresses, which means the conditions will be well suited to the 7.5 mile walk which is the Gromit circle in town.

But … there is that possible Cunning Plan. It’s also the Bristol Balloon Fiesta this next weekend and the timings could be convenient to do part of the circle and then head to Fiesta. Or even do the whole circle and head there. I’ll have to see the timings and how things work out. (Nightglow is at 6pm so I would want to aim to be there around 5pm to sample what’s at the Fiesta.)

Oh and then there’s also laptop ordering … And a week off coming very soon ! I’ve been at the counting down the days stage for a little while now. Definitely looking forward to it.

Last word for today – it looks like Microsoft have broken something again in an update. The antimalware service was taking up a whole cpu core’s worth of processing. I.e. the cpu % load was continuously between 25 and 30%, even after letting it do its business overnight. That heats the room up and makes other stuff perform badly.

I’ve now disabled it and put Avast antivirus on. Things like this shouldn’t happen. It’s a shame we’re locked into the slavery to Microsoft products, they really don’t know what they’re doing any more and just unleash bad software on us. I’d describe that antimalware service now as …. malware.