Year: 2019

Are they ?

Yep. Pop ups are annoying but … bear with me on this one.

But first … birthday stuff ! I have new books. Especially looking forward to reading Ignition! (An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants) and I also have Ready Player One and Armada from Ernest Cline. Cheers CK !

Can you tell what it is yet ? As always with these, click for bigger and I really must put my seat cover through the washing machine soon.

A small beginning.

It grows …

4D can barely see over the top of it. Oh and … reflections … don’t look in the reflections :-D.

A couple of bags later. And even more reflections.

What is this ? Something that opens ? Also lurking dragon inside.

Shiny ….

Is it a house ? Looks dragon sized.

Or maybe just Pizza Delivery DwagonBoy sized.

Job done. 4D looks suitably impressed.

Looks cosy in there.

A view from above. A curious one with this piece is that it’s kinda double sided. On the other side of the chimney, a fireplace.

And fully opened up. 4D helping out like the trooper he is. It’s missing something though …

Dwagons ! There are also mini figures in there too. There’s a Little Red Riding Hood, a Granny and a Werewolf. With big teeth.

A very tidy build and as is normal for Creator and Ideas kits, it ends up in a very polished, finished result. The simple mechanism for the pop up works extremely smoothly as well.

Enjoyed this one :-).

Hmm, I don’t usually leave it this long between posts !

Thumbnail first … someone found this one and posted it on one of the discords. I may stand accused :

Credit to the artist as always, although I don’t have a link as I usually like to put on.

I sadly haven’t put any Lego together since the last post but I do have that Porsche sitting waiting. Sometime … soon.

It’s been a pretty busy fortnight at work, with a couple of away trips. So last weekend was very definitely a recovery/breather as was this weekend (and I’m missing words again which is another sign of tiredness with me). I was away for the first Wednesday and Thursday and also for the Monday and Tuesday of this week just gone.

I have good pictures too … which I can’t show here because they give too much idea of work away. Locations and places, things like that. However, one of the trips did see me near one of the hardware techie stockists and I acquired the latest techie morsel that will go in to Meltdown at some point :

There we go. More examples of my techie graveyard of bits that are scattered around the house.

From left to right, we have :
Seagate ST32130A 2GB conventional hard drive
Western Digital Caviar 60GB
Toshiba P300 3TB

I’ve long since discontinued the use of the 2 on the left but the one on the right is an upgrade that will be swapped in for a 1.5TB drive that’s being pretty pushed for space with some of the newer games with more pictures, textures and data. The 1.5TB drive is 8 years old now, I think the one on the left might be around 20 years old, maybe more.

The 60GB drive probably belonged to Godzilla, which was a couple of machines ago and had a companion iPaq called Godzookie, which I used as a satnav for a few years. They’ve kept the same package over the years, with all 3 of those being in a standard 3.5″ box. The interface has changed though, with the 2GB drive needing some special measures to access the whole of it. Those special measures were unnecessary for the 60GB and the 3TB uses a different type of cable.

Be careful taking your Godzillas on the ice.

Yep. Busy couple of weeks, with even a couple of overnights in a hotel. Mustn’t forget the chargers next time though. Oops ! It was ok, I have an iPhone and Android charger lead in the car so I was able to charge everything up off my home laptop.

Hotel internet is pants. As was the attempt at doing internet off the 3 mobile hotspot. Oh and then there’s Microsoft stealing your bandwidth for windows updates first chance it gets. You can set your connection to metered which means it holds off a little but … new internet connections default to unmetered which means Windows thinks it’s time to grab the stuff.

Talking of trying to watch stuff … I tried to start watching someone new on the Hotel Wednesday, 3 internet couldn’t cope. She’s “HelloitsKolo” on the twitch and there’s a link over to the right. Another person who plays a lot of Elite Dangerous. I haven’t done much in that over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling a bit too blasted to play. However …

That’s coming in to land at Fowler Legacy, picking up supplies to help out the latest Generation Ship to be found and added to the game. More pics of that one when I pay it a visit.

One thing I’ve learned …

Some of these logs (not this one apparently !) have audio attached to them too … I shall have to go back and revisit some places I’ve been to already.

Other stuff …

I’ve kicked off another Motorsport Manager campaign again, this time in the endurance racing category. I’d achieved what I could with the sportscars and the endurance racing is more of a challenge. There’s been a couple of races so far and my people are doing ok. I’m in the process of changing around the drivers at the moment, as there is a Fitness attribute that matters a lot more in the endurance racing because it determines how long each driver can stay in the car. More fitness, more time in each stint, less time lost in the pits.

And there may well have been Stellaris happening again. Patches have been coming thick and fast lately. I have a Fanatic Purifier race that’s going to destroy the galaxy (may well do that as something spectacular in the end) and I’d quite like to complete that game before the next expansion hits because it could well shake things up again.

Other news – birthday happened again !

I didn’t travel like I usually do because I needed a quiet weekend this weekend. It even got to me thinking that Friday morning was actually Saturday due to a little confusion. Oops. Managed to get in to work for 9.15am (almost an hour later than usual) and I have 3 days worth of flexi credit to use up so … didn’t matter in the end.

There’s also the Xmas market opening up in Bristol again … last week. No cookies !

Alas.

May have to go farther afield for cookies.

Yep.

Hectic week last week, first one back after my mini break. I didn’t go too far, outside of what ended up being a several day Stellaris bender …. oops. Enjoyed it though and it got me further on my quest to get all the achievements. It was a good game too, lost the homeworld at one point, got it back. Then went to take several homeworlds of other empires. That feels like a long time ago now !

Hectic week next week too, definitely Interesting Times at the moment. Lots of Internet Spaceships too, although there’s other things going on than internet spaceships :

Glasses – had a wander in town on Friday, didn’t see a place to get the new glasses from though, may have to go to Mall.
Phone – gonna replace the phone with a Pixel 3 XL as I’ve had enough of Samsung’s burned in malware. Looks like you can get the Pixel 3 XL online still but not in store, which is a shame. I’m not convinced the newer one is worth £10 a month more.
General wander – I do like wandering around the city centre, although I didn’t get that far this time. Wiped out after the week at work !
Terminator Dark Fate – watched this on Thursday with the boys. Very watchable, Linda Hamilton and Arnie are definitely the class of the movie. The backstory is completely …. terminated now with all the holes shot through it but they still keep coming out with very watchable action movies.

There’s gonna be a tonne of pictures appearing today, click for bigger as always. That ship’s the Commodore Tuesday, named after the Random Tuesday who should be in a link over to the right. The ship didn’t do so well, although that’s me fighting in conflict zones, which are really dangerous places. I’ll bring it out of the hangar again at some point with a better fit.

Back to exploring though, although before then it was a matter of getting to the place I’d left the Biscuits. Here is the Strength of Atlas, coming out of hyperspace by a neutron star.

And off on a little jaunt again. This is the Crumb, by an abandoned Thargoid wreck site. What happened here ? Looks old.

Betelgeuse is a big place. This was taken from 5 times the orbit distance of Earth from our sun.

The exploration expedition runs are usually guaranteed to find you some amazing screenshots. This is a nebula from inside another nebula.

There is a science ship inside as well.

And a very colourful planet in that same system too.

I found a base, last known location of an explorer who mysteriously … vanished. As did the rescuer sent to find them. (You find this stuff in logs scattered around the base).

A blue star this time …. and an updated paint job.

This ship had seen better days …

This trip saw a few excuses to dock up and fill up on tea and coffee from local stations too. This is a Coriolis station, a design which harkens back to the original game, updated for this iteration. There is a trench that runs around the face with the docking bay entrance, I must get a little ship and try a trench run around it at some point.

Oops. Left the headlights on again.

Dreaming of the California Nebula.

One of those discoverable logs. I wonder if they escaped ?

It’s always a little nervous when you drop out and there are two stars close by, although it hasn’t caught me out yet.

This White Dwarf star may have been a bit tricky to get a boost from. No gentle streamers here … just a rapidly vibrating pair of cones.

Another find, this time a generation ship which had to be abandoned by the crew.

The black hole effects in this game are very pretty. In this case, I flew around until the black hole was between me and the galactic ribbon and you can see some of the lensing effects. It’s most apparent where there are irregularities in the ribbon, with a false lensed image coming from the other side of the black hole.

The trip was not without mishap. This landing was on a 2.8g planet, which was a bit too much for the thrusters on this one. May have bounced. I’m sure all the dents will come out.

Almost the last stop. Here, we see a science ship. The science ship had holes :

I was tempted to try and fly all the way through …

However, it was time to return eventually though. This particular ship has been a joy to fly around some shorter distance expeditions but here is Jameson Memorial, the eventual home of the Searching For Biscuits. I’m back now to doing missions for the Federation to unlock another ship.

Although not so much today, sore wrist meant a halt to gaming for today !

… Arising to write a few words.

That’s a wonderful sleeping dragon isn’t it ? (Picture credit – Sticky Beak Boutique and here’s the link to the Amazon page that Google pointed me at)

Ok, so I haven’t been asleep since Friday but I have been enjoying my week off work so far. And it’s just a rumour that I’ve been indulging in a 5 day Stellaris bender … Maybe.

There’s been lots of music listened to now. Even with a Portishead album, Evanescence’s Synthesis and a Sophie Ellis Bextor orchestral album appearing, I’ve listened to everything in the library now ! Need more new music. Got a few things in mind but music has gone overpriced and I like my bargains.

It hasn’t been all Stellaris. There’s been a little bit of the internet spaceships too :

That’s the Strength of Atlas on approach to one of the planetary bases. I do like the amount of detail that is added to these bases.

I’m pretty sure it’s all programmed in as part of a toolkit approach where the designers have a box of bits that when stuck together, comprise all of the bases … but it looks fresh whenever you visit a new place. And especially the planetary bases.

And there’s a toolkit for the space stations too. In this one, you dock inside the ball and the rest of for your imagination. I think this one had a habitation ring aft, up above the top of the picture, wider than the docking bay ball. If you landed on one of these and only spin gravity were available, you’d be in low gravity in the docking bay which would handily suit docking operations and make cargo handling much easier. Same mass, less apparent weight. And then you’d be in zero g in the spine, transiting up to the higher gravity habitation ring.

I found this as well, an unexpected interchange zone in the middle of the station. Never seen one of those before. It’s lovely to see all that unexpected detail.

But anyway – Stellaris … the latest game in the hunt for the achievements saw me going for the Authoritarian run, where you need 500 population units with at least 200 as slaves. Done that … although I’ve gone away from the slavery approach now and emancipated everyone because there were serious problems keeping everyone happy.

There must be a morality thing in there somewhere. Which I’ll completely ignore when I close out the game fully because there’s another achievement “Keep at least 5 different species as livestock in your empire.” On one hand, emancipation of the slaves. The other hand is fetching the dinner plate. I sense it’ll be easier to get that achievement in this playthrough instead of the more obvious approach of bringing out the Nomnivorian Swarm (devouring horde) again. The Swarm hungers … and eats quickly.

I’ve had deliveries this week too ! Today actually. I don’t like to order stuff online unless I can be around for when the delivery happens. So Meltdown’s components got acquired when I was last on leave and today, these turn up :

Portable bluray drive – I didn’t transfer over the bluray drive from my previous desktop because I thought it was bust. And … proven correct. There were some jitters and issues when I first fired it up (sound plays but screen goes black) but those mostly went away with a reinstall of the software. Still not perfect though, there were still skips happening. Must test more.

But I did manage to watch and enjoy Rogue One again. It’s a cracking movie. I may well work my way through Eps 4 to 8 again before Rise of Skywalker comes out. I’m expecting that one to be absolute junk for story, as per eps 7 and 8 but I think it’ll be another stunning spectacle of a movie.

Why do I say that ?

There was an Expanded Universe of books and games that built upon the original trilogy of Star Wars. The X Wing game in particular was a prequel to the first movie, A New Hope, with the Tie Fighter game picking up afterwards. I came to X Wing late and struggled with it (a different era of games which went to insane difficult to gate your progress) but I hugely enjoyed Tie Fighter.

There were many important and incredible books too. I’m thinking of the Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston X Wing books and the Timothy Zahn books in particular. They expanded upon the worlds and galaxy introduced with the movies and added rich storytelling. I also enjoyed the Knights of the Old Republic (aka KOTOR) game, set 4,000 years before the movies and should really finish Kotor 2 at some point.

Anyway, all that rich story material was swept aside with the new movies which were stunning spectacles … but really bad for whether or not they make any sense. Star Wars doesn’t really make sense anyway but you’d like them to make a bit of an effort for it to.

That said, they make for an incredibly good spectacle and I really enjoyed watching The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

And then there’s Rogue One, which was a stunning movie. I suspect Rise of Skywalker will be a stunning conclusion to this epic series. Although …. George Lucas way back said there were going to be 14 episodes in the series. Hmm. At least I think he did.

What else appeared ?

Advent calendar is sorted :-D. I don’t think the other packets will last until then somehow …

PS Ever since I had my attention drawn to it, I can’t not see the difference that makes the Star Destroyer in the picture above an old one … On the tower between the two shield domes there is an additional bit of detail there. That makes it an Imperial class Mk1 Star Destroyer. The bit between the domes is different on the Mk2 Imperial Star Destroyer. And … the latest trailer for Rise of Skywalker apparently is showing the older ships. Curious. Perhaps it’s reuse of ancient models ? Probably a JJ Abrams special. But there might be something more to it.

Names of things have been popping into my head again ….

(picture credit – http://clipart-library.com/clipart/1334520.htm)

It’s partly out of curiosity for what the next Royal Navy ships will be called. I’m really curious about that !

The Royal Navy tends to go for catchy, shorter names like Dragon (like that one), Warspite, Hood, Cattistock, Glasgow, Albion, Ocean (now Atlântico), Lyme Bay, Richmond, Mersey, Grimsby. Names that fit a theme too, like Queen Elizabeth or Ark Royal for the really big ships. Tideforce is one of the new fleet tankers.

The River class ships currently coming in are named after … you guessed it, rivers and the City class Type 26 start with Glasgow.

Other countries sometimes follow that theme, sometimes they go for names that come from people. Like the USN aircraft carriers being named after Presidents. The current class of Arleigh Burke destroyers are named after an Admiral who served during WW2 and the Korean War. (Here’s his wiki page) The USN also have the Oliver Hazard Perry frigates and the Spruance class destroyers.

They are really grand fantastic sounding names. Even the Nathan James, from the series called The Last Ship. Another excellent name.

And that got me wondering about the names I used for the Internet Spaceships … Before I do that bit though, I’ve just finished enjoying watching a Rythian XCom playthrough where he went by the commander’s role and used the names of his Yogscast for the troops. Other video people use Patreon name lists and apply those names to the characters in their series.

Names definitely add a little something. A tighter connection with what’s happening. When Fuzzy does a Rimworld stream, if my name gets adopted for one of the characters I’ll watch that particular character a little more closely.

I’d been thinking about that for the internet spaceships, I even did use some first names for ships owned by my previous character. I used first names for people in my last XCom 2 run. I must open that game up again sometimes. Some games won’t have names adopted … I’ll use modded in name lists for games like Stellaris but because there are whole fleets of ships, there isn’t that same connection to the individual ships. At best, with games like Moo2 it was a name for the class of ship although I’m not sure if Moo2 supported the naming of individual ships.

Names are also unique. You could use them as a mark of respect for people in a kind of “I like you as a person and I’m going to remember you by applying your name to this thing I really value”.

I have had fun with the Elite ship names too … here’s the latest one :

She is an Alliance Challenger ship called the “Old Aged Ben Pup”, following a theme started with the sCRUFFY nEIGHBOURHOOD and Goldie Runner. I haven’t actually taken that one out of the hangar yet, there’s been a couple of community goals going which have been pretty profitable and I’ve been using the Strength of Atlas for those :

There we go, on landing approach to pick up more Synthetic Reagents to help fight a crop blight.

But while I’ve had fun with the ship names chosen, lending a friend’s name to the ships adds something a little special feeling. And something like the “Admiral LTK” (switch real name for codename!) has an amazing ring to it. The “Commander Fuzzy”, “Captain of Elysium” and the forthcoming “Commodore Tuesday” and “Admiral Maggie” from my current Elite character’s list of ships have a great ring to them.

This was a good little ship and the Queen Skye would have been followed by the Queen Karen and Queen Jenny. I liked the Ice Road Trucker name themed ships too : Lisa Kelly, Alex Dewey, Art Burke and I’m not sure if I got to the Darrell Ward. I loved the show and hugely enjoyed seeing the stories of each year told through those wonderful characters.

(Addon cos I forgot it) One thing though … because the ship names get posted here and this is a mostly anonymous blog, no real names ! Oh well 😀

Yep. Naming things after the people hugely adds something special. But please. Not this. Definitely not this :

Cya !

Hello everyone,

Just over a year ago, a new laptop arrived and one of the things that meant was …. listening to all of the music again ! I could copy over the library again but transferring over the stats would have been Interesting. Especially as I was switching over from Apple to Windows and the two systems have different ways of organising their files.

The picture that I’m gleefully borrowing there is from the always inspired TeeTurtle and here’s the link to the t-shirt that you can get it on.

Music ! How long did it take ? Later. I use iTunes exclusively and the iTunes DJ feature (now long gone) to semi randomly line up what I’m listening to. The feature they replaced that with is utterly worthless and it does mean I have to stay on iTunes 10.7 and iOS 6 on my otherwise retired iPhone 5. It’s actually why I retired that iPhone in favour of switching over to Android. What iTunes DJ does is say “I want at least 25 tracks in a playlist and when that goes below 25, add some more in.” So I’ll queue up albums, queue up stuff I haven’t listened to much, queue up the best tracks again to space out the albums and then iTunes will fill in with more random stuff out of the library.

It’s led to a nice way of getting through the library for me.

I’m listening via a Logitech Bluetooth adaptor that takes the audio from over the airwaves from the laptop and sends it to my hifi. There’s no need to get expensive dedicated stuff from the likes of Sonos, you can easily and effectively use much cheaper adaptors to take advantage of the sound systems that you already have. The Logitech device has been very solid over the last 14 months, having taken over from an Apple device that expired the same week as I changed the laptops (or it could have been issues with Windows iTunes vs MacOS iTunes). I do have to power cycle it occasionally but that’s maybe 5 times in a year and it’s getting used A LOT. It’s also excellent for sound quality and doesn’t need a router reboot every week or so like the Apple device did.

(Declaration note – I bought it, devices not provided)

But … you’re here for the music right ? iTunes keeps a lot of stats for me which I use to help space out what I listen to and decide what’s coming up next. I have just over 16,000 tracks in the library now and it’s taken 14 months to get through all that lot and get it listened to. Sometimes multiple times too, as there are still 1500 tracks that I’ve only listened to once. I’ll listen to individual tracks first and then listen to the albums a little while later.

Music ? In usual tradition, least listened to stuff first. In the tracks with 7 plays over the last 14 months, we start with :

Bear & Cat – Teslagrad theme. I didn’t copy over that many of the gaming soundtracks to the new laptop but some were special. Distinctive. This is one where it comes on and you go “Wot dis ?”

From there you have the amazing voice of Tori Amos, who is in here a few times with tracks from The Beekeeper album. The track, The Beekeeper is one of those that tends to come out in those late evening sing along to youtube sessions but here’s it’s going to be Toast. Haven’t had any buttered toast for too long.

We have film soundtracks in there too with Ron Goodwin music from Where Eagles Dare and Elmer Bernstein’s The Great Escape (The Chase) plus Sheena Easton’s For Your Eyes Only from James Bond. Curiously, the instance of Crockett’s Theme from Miami Vice is not the one from the soundtrack … Going back to Where Eagle’s Dare, I’m reading Athabasca by the same author (Alastair MacLean) and it’s sooooo good.

Back to voices and we have the wonderful :
Katie Melua with Blame It On The Moon from Call Off The Search;
Lily Allen with the brilliant Who’d Have Known from It’s Not Me, It’s You;
Kate Bush with Wuthering Heights from The Kick Inside;
Frank Sinatra kicking out I Get A Kick Out Of YouAnd Siobhan Maher of River City People with Walking On Ice.

Moving back to songs like Road To Somewhere by Goldfrapp on the Seventh Tree album. This has been picked for the car a few times because it’s a really chilled out album, which definitely helps on GB’s roads at the moment …

Talking of travelling, the one Cardigans song that has snuck into this Top 40 (and a bit) is Daddy’s Car from the Life album. Great track.

There’s a few not so perfect voices that still come out with amazing songs :
KT Tunstall with Saving My Face from the more rocky Drastic Fantastic album.
Duffy with Warwick Avenue. Another incredible track. She has a very unusual voice but when she gets a song that fits it, it’s a piece of wonder.
George Harrison with My Sweet Lord.
Castle In The Clouds from Beverly Craven.

The last of the 7 plays are :
Eleanor Rigby from The Beatles. There may be more of these coming because this one is from the 1 album, which I haven’t listened to all the way through yet. This one will always be a special song.
A collection from All About Eve but I’m saving them for the 8’s.
For a little while, I went by the name Alisha’s Addict due to adoring tracks like Barbarella from the Illumina album.
And then there’s the pretty new Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan, with tracks like Prescilla and the very special Laura. I still need to pick up her latest album.

And the very last of the 7’s is Agnes Obel with a track from Aventine, The Curse. I heard the track Close Watch from a sampler album and I’m now on 2 albums later. Well worth a listen if you haven’t heard of this group before.

Into the 8’s we have :
All About Eve ! With Apple Tree Man, which will always be a favourite for me. Here it is with a bonus Martha’s Harbour too. Julianne Regan has one of the best voices I’ve heard.
Mindy Gledhill is in here with the lovely Cravy Love from the adorable Anchor album.
Roxanne from The Police.
An unusual one for me, Sex On Fire by Kings Of Leon.
A little bit of classical, with Holst’s Mars from the Planets Suite.
Beware … Christmas music with Elaine Paige’s excellent version of the Coventry Carol and Chris Rea’s Joys of Christmas.
And the last one of the 8’s (there are more … but only so much room in one post !) is one from one of the best albums there is, Go Your Own Way from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

And then there were the 9’s :
I seem to collect music that has very dark lyrics inside, music that otherwise sounds wonderful but when you listen closely … very dark. Caution warning on Dubstar’s Not So Manic Now. This is incidentally why I’m very careful about linking tracks from The Cardigans !
Christmas is in here again with O Come, O Come Emmanuel sung by Joan Baez;
And then there’s David Bowie in here with Golden Years. This was on one of the most charming sequences in A Knight’s Tale, which I would thoroughly recommend watching if you’ve missed out so far.

Queen get in here with no other track than We Will Rock You and the last of the 9s is from the Arctic Monkeys with 505 from their brilliant Favourite Worse Nightmare track.

A great 14 months listening to music !

This is a travel pics and not an Elite post !!!

Crikey. That’s a new one. I had a tonne of flexi credit to burn, ahead of more long days this week and thought I could take advantage of it to do a little scouting … So off over the border and bridge into Wales we go, towards :

Raglan Castle !

This is a castle that saw its peak in the 1640s, up until it found itself on the wrong side of Oliver Cromwell’s army who destroyed the fortifications after capturing it. This one is a two part castle, with the main area off to the right of that pic and a stronghold keep with a moat over to the left.

Must have been a spectacular sight in its day. That area holds the main business area of the castle, with trade areas set up inside in the courtyard and kitchens off to the right.

There’s that moat for the Keep. Also see off to the left where the walls were undermined, causing most of one side to collapse. Also see the drawbridge, I should be posting another one later, it’s not a usual drawbridge.

And another one too. That’s the internal moat from the gatehouse.

Anyway ! First room I enter past the drawbridge has …. BOOKS ! Truly a place of great civilisation.

May also contain T-Rexes. This was a cellar underneath the castle which had been closed off. I didn’t climb all the stairs and go up all the steps, my legs went NOPE at a few of them and brain didn’t argue.

That’s a view of the main courtyard, with the kitchens off to the right.

Kitchen ! With stove set into the wall and also cunning drain holes.

Lovely views through the various passageways.

Some of the treasures inside included a Medieval Snack Warmer Device. The owner of the castle was an inventor and there are a small collection of curiosities inside the castle.

Including invisible stairs ! Never seen any of those before.

Nice view out the back. Those are the tops of some decently sized trees, so you can probably guess how much the valley behind the castle dips.

That’s the remains of the Great Hall, including chair with devices for when the minstrel starts looking longingly at the bagpipes.

That’s the outer courtyard, also very defensible with steep terraces leading away from it. As in, really steep with 6 feet high walls separating the levels.

Inner Courtyard, leading up to the Keep. The base for the fountain survives in the centre of the grassy area.

One of the residents popped in to say hello.

There’s the drawbridge up into the Keep. This used to be in two parts. The wide part has been restored there but off to the right was a smaller drawbridge suitable for one person. Or one person to toss the dwarf on to the main drawbridge.

I found the treasure ! But look closer …. it’s trapped …

And that was that ! An enjoyable morning scooting around Raglan Castle. I’d recommend it. I went off season, so it was pretty quiet and peaceful.

Oh and there may have been a run into Cardiff later on where I found something shiny :

Wow. I kinda want one of these but at 113cm long, I have no idea where I’d put it.

May also have come away with many bonbons, kola kubes and sherbets.

Hello everyone,

Things still seem to be continuing to rocket by at the moment. Time seems to be moving fast ! But before I get on to the inevitable pretty screenshot spam …

Too late !

That one was illuminated by the light of a Neutron Star, shortly before :

Diving into the streamers to get a hyperdrive jump boost.

Back to the real world ? I should have a couple of days off this week ! Yey ! This is mostly due to getting close to busting the flexi time working hours credit limit though, with more of those long hours to come later. I don’t mind that, because those super long days are due to getting out of the office and seeing Stuff. Stuff that I can’t talk about here because of you know, it’s work 😀 And I try to keep the work stuff out of this blog.

Oh – click for bigger on the pictures as per usual. Apparently they aren’t in the full 1440p source resolution but I hope they still look amazing.

Plan for the two days off involves chilling out (of course) and … hopefully a trip into Wales again. I want to look at a castle, plus there’s Cardiff and the book caves and the sweet shop and the occasional music store and … (hushed voice) …. Lego shop. Yep.

Other game, big ship. I think it’s from either X Wing, or it’s an Imperial Assault Gunboat from Tie Fighter. Big ship now in Lego. I’m not fussed about the other new Lego stuff that’s coming, it’s either Meh or seen it before. But I do want that big one, if I can find a place to put it.

 Might melt in the sun though.

I’m almost getting to the end of the music library with what I’ve managed to listen to as well. Not long left, only about 350 tracks. That’s taken over a year ! It’s good to listen to it all again. I have a few things in mind actually for content to come :

Something about soundtracks. Some films are memorable for their story, some films are more memorable for the soundtrack. The best films match an incredible story and great soundtrack. I want to talk about those someday soon. This thought brought to you by listening to soundtracks from :

John Williams – incredible soundtracks for Star Wars, Raiders, Jurassic Park, ET, Jaws … and so many more. The magic of this one is that, while you can recognise the style of the composer, the soundtracks are different and fit the film.
James Horner – wrote the memorable soundtrack of Wrath of Khan as well as Battle Beyond the Stars.
And a few more (Stu Phillips, Barry Gray, John Barry, Hans Zimmer, Bear McCreary) but that would be spoilers for the talking about movies post !

I’m wanting to do a few more Elite videos as well. The subjects in mind are :
Neutron Star Boosting
Exploration and the new Discovery Scanner system.
Both of these should do for some short and hopefully sweet videos with pretty stuff on screen. And apparently it’s stuff people want to see.

Like nebula ! And a paint job apparently getting a bit tatty.

That looked amazing while jumping towards it. This was the Bubble Nebula. Quite little actually.

I think it looked better from the outside to be honest !

I caught this shot after jumping away one spot as well. A local star, with the bubble nebula behind.

This was the next nebula, Altera’s Eye. There’s actually a black hole in there. I thought there’d be a chance to land and take a nice screenie with black hole distortion but that wasn’t to be. Next time ! To be honest, I was feeling a little burned out on the exploration run and wanting to complete the route before the time limit expired. The other routes that I have in mind have more generous times.

The second last stop was in the Gorgon Nebula. This was another one where the region of space appeared first as a small feature on the galactic ribbon, with those brighter stars all spread out there in a distinctive cluster. And then you get closer and the feature steadily resolves. This was the last jump before the destination :

The Gorgon Nebula research facility. Another asteroid base, in the rings of a gas giant. A good stopover before the last stop :

A station so posh looking on the inside, I thought I had to get the paint job sorted out before taking the screenshot.

It’s a curious layout actually … That’s the docking bay on the inside of a rotating section. It’s a bulbous cylinder pattern on the outside split up into distinct sides on the inside, with the docking landing pads taking up the whole of one of those sides. The centripetal gravity goes towards the floor, or rather it goes directly outwards. So where the sides join, gravity is not straight down.

That must blow the mind if you were to actually try and walk around in there. I suspect space legs would soon acclimatise to the irregular spin gravity though. The hab sections of the stations tend to be more like :

That’s an old one, showing the docking bay in the centre and a habitation ring surrounding it. The farther out you go, the faster the linear velocity and the higher the spin gravity. So the hab ring will be at higher gravity than the cargo and docking area. (This is a good thing for healthiness). That’s Pratchett’s Disc and the screenshot is from my first Elite pilot … That long ago !

It’s good that stuff like this is in the game. It looks great and there’s a nod to science and a proper physics way of doing things without cheating too much.

Because I do like my internet spaceships to not cheat too much :-). It’s also good that they’ve added in various tribute locations, like Pratchett’s Disc, as well. It’s a lovely gesture.

Hello everyone,

Been back in the pilot’s seat again. Out in the stars, finding the lovely looking places.

And of course, landing by them and taking the screenshots (click for bigger as always). Before diving too deeply into those internet spaceships :

Work stuff – I don’t talk about work stuff much here because … work. There were a couple of away trips last week that were instructive plus a couple more away trips this week which we’ll hopefully learn more from. And more to come ! Busy.

Outsides – I’m going to talk about these in more detail at some point. After perhaps 8 years of the long term condition, I’m actually almost better now. It’s very, very close. It must have been a case where the damage increased so quickly and dramatically that my immune system just couldn’t keep up and it took a while to stabilise the condition and get it under control before repairs could happen. Almost there now though.

Feeling old on the inside now though.

Film stuff – Ad Astra is worth a watch. It’s a new film starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut who has to appeal to his astronaut dad to resurface from being holed up at the other end of the solar system. It’s been described as a mix between 2001 and Apocalypse Now. I need to watch Apocalypse Now again at some point to see if that’s a fair comparison but it feels about right. There are stunning visuals here, great action sequences and in between those, what felt like a fair bit of psychological nuance going on. It feels like the mix is a fair comment.

Worth watching. Leave your expectations at the door as usual, ignore the dodgy science (gravity simulation in films is tough) and see what it’s got. As mentioned, there are a few bits of dodgy science in there but nothing on the scale of Interstellar’s dodginess and I rate this and Interstellar pretty high on Intriguing Film, Worth Watching.

Talking of science, I know more about this one now. The crater to the right has a distinctive pimple in the middle. I’ve learned that this is a telltale for a particularly heavy impact, the type that makes craters a few kilometers wide.

Did I mention that the rover has a name now ? Searching For Biscuits is the mothership, the Crumb is the rover.

Found a Jellyfish Nebula on the way …

And a Crab Nebula too, with the ribbon of the Milky Way running down its centre.

And more opportunities to take beauty shots of Biscuit and Crumb.

This is a nebula in the NGC 1491 region.

Before heading off to an encounter with a ghost ship, the Zurara. One thing I look for in games is how things are put together. So here, we have a space ship with a couple of partial spinning habitation rings. There is a command section up at the bow :

And an engineering section aft, with a pair of gargantuan engines coupled to it. One thought about those engines, there’d be massive torsional stress going through the pylons as the engines fire up and go forward with the pylons transmitting that thrust to the central body. The engines want to move, Newton’s Laws say that the centre section doesn’t want to. The pylons are what connect them up and transfer the force.

There we go. I do like my internet spaceships to make a certain amount of sense and it’s great how much of stuff like that has been hidden in the game.

I attempted a landing on the engineering section but didn’t get in. No keepsie salvage this time.

On to the next way point and this planetoid was close enough to that sun that the fuel scoop was happily collecting more hydrogen.

I never want to get too close to these, the distortion in the Galactic Ribbon is the lensing effect of a black hole.

I think I’m learning the trick of getting close to these though. That’s a Neutron Star at the centre, a star that’s gone boom in a nova but isn’t quite massive enough to collapse completely into a black hole. They’re also known as Pulsars, as the streamers you see there give off EM Radiation (X Ray radio waves) that our telescopes can pick up and we see them on Earth as pulses of signal as the neutron stars rotate. In game, if you fly into the streamer, you get bounced around a bit (dangerous) but you can jump 4x the distance you can normally. Handy for going long distance in less time.

You do miss the sights though, like this moon that is so close to the gas giant’s rings that it’s almost touching them. I had the happy sight of seeing this one in daylight today after landing there in darkness yesterday.

On to the last location, ominously named “Explorer’s End”. Ominous.

That’s the sight as you drop out of hyperspace. The orange star is a super young Herbig AE/BE star. (More on Wiki). The star is 0.777 times the radius of our sun. Not big. The white one is another matter, it’s a Class O giant star, 158 times the radius of our sun. Chunky.

Those are the same two stars, after backing away a bit. But that’s not all for this system. There are also a couple of black holes. One was only 2.5 Light Seconds away when dropping out of hyperspace, the other was safely ages away. (2.5 Light Seconds is about twice the orbit distance of the Moon). The issue with this system is that you can drop out between the two stars, instead of to the side like I did there. Or … you can drop out too close to the Black Hole. That’s always a bit bad.

I’m actually finding Elite to be a little grindy at the moment though. It’s like my mind wants to be playing other games (it does) and is resenting being on a bit of a timescale for the current exploration run. Not too far to go though before civilisation.

 That’s the Jellyfish Nebula again and the faint lights of another asteroid base.

It is a very pretty game though.

So I left yesterday’s post with a picture of the Searching For Biscuits, landed at a space port …

I had a chance to do a little more flying around yesterday, following a new expedition route.

This route has nebulae … lots of them. I’m hoping to find some amazing screenshots from this route. As always, click for bigger. Most of these are in 1440p from the game, although there’s a reduced hi-res one later.

About that one though, I’d been looking for a Voyager Surfs The Rings shot for a little while now. If you’ve watched Star Trek Voyager, you’ll know the shot I mean, it’s from the intro sequence. A rather fine intro sequence too, although flying through the rings like that is kinda vandalism. You can’t do the astronomic vandalism in Elite but you can acquire some very pretty screenshots. In this case, there’s an asteroid base tucked inside one of those inner rings. More later.

I did 3 stop offs on the route yesterday and found things more mysterious than nebulae …

What is this ? A crashed ship ? Looks like a Cobra Mk3, the ship of the first game. Investigating further, you find various logs from the pilot. Who could it be ?

It’s a little faint but the word Jameson emerges from the dark … (That’s the default name from the ancient BBC B game and there’s a fair bit of game lore built up around him).

Turns out there is various skullduggery going on. The story goes that our Commander Jameson was dispatched on a mission to protect human space by planting a virus that disables the hyperdrives of the Thargoids, preventing them from using faster than light travels. Except …. the virus doesn’t just target the equipment, it targets the life forms too. Skullduggery indeed. Our nameless, faceless skullduggers go even further, by planting a bomb on Commander Jameson’s Cobra Mk3, disabling all power systems and stranding him on this desolate, airless planet.

It’s great when lore like this finds its way into the game. You get the impression that there is an absolute tonne of stuff to find.

Also bases, carved out of rocks in the rings surrounding the gas giant, with a great view overlooking the Hind Nebula. I found another mystery out there too :

A quiet, dead looking ship going by the name of Alcatraz. A prison ship apparently … and crippled by an attack by unknown forces.

You may spy the words “Cell Block” around there. I wasn’t going to get too close. But. What’s this ! The computer announces “Frame Shift Surge Detected” and out pops a new object.

It’s small compared to Alcatraz megaship but you may be able to pick it out on the right hand side, just below the far end of the megaship. There was a scary moment as it pops out into real space, as the surge makes the ship computer drop offline. Totally immobile, drifting, powerless, lightless. A definite enigma, with capabilities we don’t fully understand.

A closer look at this mysterious octagonal object that seems to fly around through pure anger at the presence of humanity in this system. Perhaps it still remembered the anger at what Commander Jameson’s mysterious masters attempted to do to its Thargoid ancestors. It allowed me to close and follow and while missiles from the megaship were bouncing off it, it allowed me to follow along without incident.

Time to move on though.

I’ve actually been to this station before. It’s the Witch Head Nebula science station, in the rings of another gas giant. A quite beautiful sight with a very white looking gas giant and very bright rings. One thing I missed with the trading and combat interludes was how pretty this game can be when you’re getting out and about.

On to the next destination and we see the Orion Nebula, albeit somewhat occluded by the rings of another gas giant.

And another view, this time of the other side of the nebula emerging from above the ring.

That was it for Sunday’s investigations. Maybe more tomorrow. We shall see !

Last post for today … sometimes the screenshots don’t go quite as planned :

This was an attempt at a high res special screenshot of the Searching For Biscuits closing in on the central node of the Alcatraz in order to scan for communications logs. The high res screenshots work by rapidly capturing many images to build up a higher resolution whole. For my set up, the standard 1440p screenshots become 5760p, or 16 times the pixels. (4×4). Except sometimes it doesn’t quite work … I suspect being inside the gas cloud messed up the lighting and you should be able to see the resulting patchiness.

Still, it was a good interlude, hanging around while the Thargoid Medusa Interceptor had a good look around the megaship. And a fun session too.