Year: 2019

Another meme is doing the rounds ….

Top Ten Video Games of all time ! This one is supposed to be thought of really quickly, so I’m going to brain dump first and then you’ll see the filled in post eventually when I hit that publish button.

1. Elite
And its various incarnations over the years. I’ve played the original on the BBC B, Elite on the Atari ST, Frontier Elite 2 on the ST, attempted Frontier 2 on the PC (far too buggy) and enjoyed Elite Dangerous as well.

These games are an open ended dream, allowing you to set out on an alternate life as a space trucker, mercenary, bounty hunter or a mix of all that. And they all looked amazing in their day, with the latest game being perhaps the most beautiful game I’ve played.

2. Master of Orion 2
Ahhh, an oldie but a goodie. Think Civilisation mechanics translated into space, centred around stars with a planet to colonise and fleets of spaceships going all the way up to Death Stars to impose your will on the rest of the races of the galaxy. Perhaps a bit of a one trick pony with the races though, as it had a mechanic where you couldn’t have all of the technology unless you were Creative, so there were race picks that were massively overpowered. I hugely enjoyed losing days in this one until Stellaris came along.

3. Master of Magic
Another old classic. This one was again heavily inspired by Civilisation, however instead of human races with minor differences, this one had Humans, Orcs, Elves, Dragonpeople, Dark Elves, Trolls and more, each having far more major differences, advantages and disadvantages. This is a legendary game and I really must give Endless Legend another look as the most recent attempt at doing this type of game again.

Oh and one thing this had which was a major plus over Civilisation, there was a tactical battle layer in which to resolve the fights between your units and heroes. Civ never, ever had that. And your character could take an active role in your campaigns, with world altering spells on the strategic scale and the ability to unleash fireballs, lightning bolts and the apocalyptic flame strike in the tactical layer.

4. Revs

This was another game that really pushed the boundaries of what was possible on these first home computers. Revs was a game by Geoff Crammond for the BBC Micro back in the 80s which had you racing around old Silverstone in a Formula 3 car. It was amazing for its day and I loved playing it. There was later an expansion which brought more tracks and it was developed into the Microprose Formula 1 Grand Prix series of games. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the original ideas were carried through to the F1 games of today.

5. Neverwinter Nights
This was a Dungeons and Dragons game from Bioware, which was their next game after the legendary Baldurs Gate 1 and 2. But whereas I bounced off the more acclaimed Baldur’s Gate games (and haven’t finished either), I was happily addicted to the less complicated but far easier to play Neverwinter Nights. The innovation here was to take the 2d isometric games into the 3d world, within the limits of what could be done at the time again. When I’d finished this game with one character, I was very happy to dive straight back into it with more characters to play through the game in vastly different ways. And then I did the same with the two expansions and the Player Race Consortium (or something other for PRC!) pack which added in all of the 3.5ed Prestige classes for even more variation.

6. Tie Fighter

Another Star Wars game from the mid 90s and another cracker. Whereas the original had you flying for the Resistance in an XWing, this one had you flying for the Empire in their mix of TIE fighters, bombers and interceptors. A fantastic game with a gameplay model which was immensely satisfying. It was superbly balanced between rewarding reflexes, introducing adrenaline and avoiding the frustration that games like this from that time could introduce.

The area where a lot of these games fell down on were missions which were just plain silly, which must have been designed as gateways to stop you completing the game too quickly. Missions with instant fail conditions or where the opposition was just plain daft. You’d play the mission perfectly but because some part of the AI did something silly, you’d fail and not be able to progress. This one was difficult … but still very possible.

7. Deus Ex Human Revolution
I was very happily addicted to this one when it came out. It didn’t do everything that games like even the older Deus Ex did but what it had, it did incredibly smoothly and accurately. The gameplay was tuned to perfection. And I enjoyed the storyline too, completing this game numerous times.

7.5 Mass Effect series
I nearly forgot this one ! How could I ! You play as Commander Shepard, an elite space marine who finds her(him)self on a crusade to save the galaxy from the implacable Reapers. Another classic from Bioware, although it’s a shame that ME3 and ME-A suffered from interference from the publisher and were rushed out before they were ready.

8. Motorsport Manager
I’d been after a good racing manager game for quite some time before this one appeared. It’s given me excellent chill out times while still being somewhat of a challenge to win. Your decisions have a genuine impact on how your people do in the race and it’s no cakewalk. However, the one criticism I’d have is that when you figure out the metagame of how to rapidly grow your team, your group will outstrip the competition in the space of a season or two and then the challenge starts to go.

9. UFO and XCom
These games have been going for years … decades ! The idea is that aliens have arrived to invade the Earth and your covert XCom organisation is the only thing standing in their way.

These games depend on a steady ramp up of difficulty where more advanced and deadlier enemies appear as your organisation researched the technology to match them and eventually figure out how to repel their invasion. Take too long though and the aliens will win and that’s curtains for humanity.

The original game had you starting with 10-14 soldiers, going up to 26 later. It had a sequel called Terror From the Deep and then XCom Apocalypse which added a real time mode. I hugely enjoyed Apocalypse but it did get grindy at the end. The less said about XCom Interceptor the better and then the series effectively died until the recent XCom reboot. The two newer games are excellent as well.

10. Starfleet Command
Lastly for this set is the Starfleet Command games. These were based on the tabletop Starfleet Battles game and is another set that I hugely enjoyed.

The first 2 games covered the Original Series Kirk era, with SFC3 moving to the TNG era. Whereas most of the real time strategy games of the time were based on basic hit points and other resources, this one was about single ships and put much more detail in there. Shields with recharge rates, power generation that had to be managed between systems and it was much slower and strategic.

The story based campaigns were excellent but it was a shame that the online Dynaverse system didn’t work too well.

Did I mention being able to customise your Star Trek ships too ? These were excellent games.

Honorable mentions go to :

Stellaris – took over from Moo2 as my space strategy game but the 2.2 patch has damaged it considerably.
Falcon 4.0 – I need to play more flight sims and greatly enjoyed this one. It had the combat elements, the flight elements and put them into a dynamic war campaign.
Star Wars Pod Racer – so close to being in the Top 10. Thrills and adrenaline and fun.
Defense Grid – a tower defense game with a dangerous high score system … The idea on these is that you have to set up the defense towers to beat back massive waves of enemies of increasing strength and the challenge is to keep enough in hand that you can stay ahead of what you need to stop them winning. I much preferred this one to the sequel.
Planetbase – a chilled out space colony builder game which suffers from very dumb colonist AI.
World of Warcraft – the open world exploration and questing is brilliant, with humour and fun all over the place. But it’s let down by the end game and the silly mechanics.
Battletech – I’ve been enjoying playing through the campaign again. The sad thing is, I know that it should have been better. There was a very solid table top game to build on and the stuff added by the developers just … isn’t very good. There is very little variation in the non story missions beyond “Drop and murder twice your strenght in enemies, repeat in next battle”.

That’s me list ! Crikey this one has gone on for a while.

Oh – small announcement – I’ve really enjoyed doing the April 1st posts over the last few years but I may well be skipping it this year. Brain feels melty, this weekend is going to be quite tiring and I’m not feeling the ideas I have so far. We’ll see if anything promising comes to mind over the weekend.

More random thoughts today !

I need to find some coherent themes for posts again. I’ve been struggling to find stuff to write about ! Also not drawn in a week either.

What’s been happening ?

Work’s been very busy, with me having good excuses to do some runs in the car to get to away trips. They’ve been mixed. Two trials were excellent, one was … mixed feelings and then there was a safety meeting. No one really likes safety meetings, although the alternative to not doing safety right is to have things happen with your kit like what’s been happening with Boeing’s 737 Max airliners lately. Nobody wants lives lost due to safety negligence to be on their conscience. I definitely don’t.

Oh eck, that was a bit of seriousness creeping in.

I help to support and test equipment that other people have to use later. I like to think that my efforts prevent other people from getting broken.

But yeah, getting out and about with work again has been great and the tiredness from long days (I’m 27 hours in credit on the flexi !) is being balanced from learning a huge amount on those away trips. Yep, I get a kick out of seeing what we deliver being used as we wanted it to be used and we deal with some quite unique exotic equipment.

Of course, that’s led to home time being either recovery from those long days out or concentrated chill out time. But …

Skyrim seems to have broken on me again. I run with a lot of diverse mods and the mods have either broken or stopped talking to each other … Oh well. This one is an odd one … Saturday was spent removing and reinstalling mods to try and fix it and I tried a reinstall of the game tonight, it’s more stable but those mods are talking to each other even less now. Ho hum.

Computers are weird. I actually observed one issue on the trial yesterday that could be closely related to why my home networking doesn’t work quite as intended here. Windows was never the most reliable thing.

Music wise and getting through the library, I’m approaching 3/4 through the library now. Only 4,745 songs (11.5 days) to go before I’ve listened to it all again. Getting there. The current album is Dreams, the greatest songs collection from the Cranberries. It’s a great album to listen to.

Back to that networking, I may have to get a new wifi router. I keep having to reset mine to keep things talking. I also got an email from my ISP saying that they’d changed the software on my cable modem. Without telling me. It’s supposedly doing more wifi tricks now, which I have specifically disabled because I don’t want the neighbours to be stealing my bandwidth via Virgin Media sharing my connection without my explicit consent. (The VM cable modem router is also really bad at rejecting interference of which there is apparently significant amounts around here)

Car’s doing great. And I have a suspicion that the last one had a broken power steering pump. The steering is much more fluid and smooth than in the last car. Oh and the front end has had suspension improvements too and lets you attack the corners with more confidence.

I’ve been losing days to Battletech as well. I’ve been rather enjoying playing that again, although I’ve hit that phase in the game where it gets pretty brutal. Bigger mechs appear with more weapons and it’s more likely that arms and legs get blown off your own people’s mechs.

Media ? I’m avoiding paying too much attention to the news because all of it just confirms what we’ve known for years. The people making the decisions in this country are utterly incompetent and self interested.

I’ve been really enjoying Star Trek Discovery again. The scriptwriters have been doing an amazing job of creating an exciting series with great characters where you have no idea what’s coming next. They’re borrowing ideas from old Trek, which is fair enough too and gives them scope for going straight to story with little introduction.

Ooo – feeling tired again now. I’ve given up on troubleshooting Skyrim for now, I’m probably missing something or missed reinstalling the mods correctly. It’s weird.

It’s videos at the moment with a HeyChrissa stream going on the laptop, music going to the hifi and game video catch up on desktop. I may pick up Embers of War again soon for more reading.

Last bit – odd phone stuff …

I picked up another charging lead on Monday so I could charge the phone in the car and … my original charging lead starts getting rejected by the phone with the claim “Stuff is moist, wait for it to dry out.” Very weird. It was fine to connect in the car yesterday although there’s weirdness with something called Mirrorlink. That’s supposed to allow the phone display to clone to the car display but … it just succeeds in locking out the phone and I can’t get anything on the car screen yet.

Need to disable that I think.

Closing out – tired definitely, needing some recovery time, definitely feeling burned out on the internet. But work has been having its moments and I’m taking the chance for some time off before Easter which should get me back to feeling good again. Outsides are definitely much closer to being fixed, although those last few bits to heal are frustrating.

PS Captain Marvel was a fun film to watch. Recommended !

Time feels like it’s going in a blur at the moment !

Mind you, last weekend was busy. Actually feel really busy at the moment.

Oh ! Thumbnail pic :

That’s the latest.

The hair is better. I’m still rubbish at faces. What’s on the skeleton needs work. I cheated on the bike wheels and pedals, plus the bike is not tall enough. (The bike is too long and shallow). I like the dog though. And it’s made people laugh. To get chuckles from people is the whole point of doing the drawing.

I’m steadily learning more about the Paint programme that came with the graphics tablet. I’m using a pencil tool to do the outlines, the hair highlights (and attempt at braids) and the freckles. The colouring is done via the airbrush tool. That’s one odd thing, the Painter programme is very much additive colour. Adding something on top of something else will change the colour of both, even if you’re working on different layers. That’s a big difference to GIMP, where something on a higher layer will cover up what’s below.

The Painter programme feels more natural to sketch in though, compared to GIMP.

Oh – this one was done at work last week after an incident where we lost our network connectivity.

Click for bigger as per usual. These were sketched in pencil over lunchtime (I had a longer than usual lunch in order to get that idea out of my head on to paper where it wouldn’t cause any trouble – ideas can be distracting). And then it was later digitised via the phone camera at home (hence the rubbish quality !) and you’ll probably detect where I was struggling with the paint tool in order to cover up the boomerang (supposed to be laptop!) that got turned into the keyboard and screen.

That’s enough of the pictures for now though.

Last weekend felt nuts !

Friday was spent having a quick wander through Cardiff on the hunt for music shops and other curious places. I didn’t find new music but I did find more sherbets. The sherbets have disappeared already.

I also learned to not attempt to escape Cardiff at 5pm on a Friday. You end up escaping Cardiff at around 6pm having not moved very much in the meantime.

And then I retreated my exhausted bones back home (via Sainsburys for a little recycling !) Ahh. Domestic stuff. Since I’ve been putting the plastic bottles in the recycling bins, my waste bin has needed emptying far less often by the bin men. The bottles used to go in there and they’re a decent amount of volume.

I may have watched 24 hours + of motor racing last weekend. The World Endurance Championship was a decent 8 hour race and the next day I was following the Lexus RCFs again in the 12 hours of Sebring at the same track. The two Lexuses decided to take bites out of each other though and didn’t repeat the promise they showed at Daytona.

And then there was the Formula 1. A decent season opener and it was good to see Valtteri Bottas emerging from out of the shadow. He had a really poor year last year. It’s sad to see what’s happened to Williams, from being up with the leaders, they’re now firmly at the back. You can pretty much expect who’s going to be fighting for the win in F1 but there’s usually a decent amount of interest down the field for what’s going on in the teams.

What else is going on – it was good to have the run in the car to Cardiff and back … and I’m getting longer shakedown runs later in the week too.

Random aside – it’s really sad to see the state of international cricket at the moment, he says after seeing yet another bowler resort to throwing the ball. Throwing has become endemic in international cricket. The door was opened with bowlers maybe 10 years ago getting away with the occasional throw … and now certain bowlers are doing it all the time. A blind eye is being shown. Dale Steyn was an incredible bowler when he started, now he throws the ball and is actually less effective for it. Lasith Malinga had a wonderfully weird slingy action when he started. Very round arm but definitely a beautiful example of how to bowl in a completely different way to how you are taught to. Now it’s like a javelin throw. It’s also less effective because the throwing means he doesn’t get the last instant boomerang swing any more.

And there are more in a similar vein too. It’s quite sad to see once great players have to resort to that either through injury or age. Bowling the ball means you can put a lot of spin on it, which stabilises it for seam movement and gives gyroscopic action which causes the ball to swing round corners if done right. Throwing doesn’t impart that spin on the ball.

I better stop whinging about that before the trolls find me !

Hectic couple of weeks coming up … then I’ll be escaping and chilling out for a week before Easter. Been feeling the need to take myself off somewhere and disconnect. The neurons feel a bit toasty. I do like to keep up with the various streams and communities though.

That’d be the fear of missing out ! Need to post more too 😀

A meme ! Haven’t seen this one before either.

At least, not before seeing it on Cyberkitten’s blog on today’s catch up. Here’s a link to his post and his list. I’ve had a quick peek but I’ll have a good look after I hit publish for this one. Don’t want to be led too much by it :-).

Ok. The meme is 11 fictional places that you’d like to visit. You’ll probably quickly guess what a few of these will be …

First up, as suggested by the thumbnail is the Federation of Star Trek. And the other assorted worlds and empires that make up the Star Trek universe. They created such a rich and varied universe in Star Trek and around the various war areas, it seems a great place to live in. A utopia. But it’s that richness that attracts one to Star Trek, there’s something new to see in every light year and the ability to travel to see it.

In more fantasy territory, there are the Dragonriders of Pern. These are from the books of Anne McCaffrey and it was a fantastic series until it kinda ran out of steam when it finished its main arcs. However ! It has dragons. It also has fire lizards, or miniature dragons. The books I liked the most were the Menolly books, where she escaped from her early life and found wonder in music.

Third one will be the Culture universe of Iain M. Banks. You’ll probably notice a theme where I’m looking out for the variety in the universe and the Culture is no exception. Humanity are overseen by Machine Minds, who take care of their whims. Humanity joins in with the ultimate variety via self modification. It’s most definitely a utopian society, however there are always things nibbling at the sides, threatening the integrity of that utopia. And then there are the Minds and the often irascible drones that are a vital part of this system.

Fourth up is the Belgariad world from David and Leigh Eddings. These books were amazing for their character interplay, which brought a huge amount of fun to the books. However, the books also form a journey through the diverse countries and cultures that make up this world. Always something new to see and fanatic cultists to avoid in case they turn their beady eyes to your chest and the heart within.

Let’s see. Babylon 5 has to be number 5. This was a very special series from the 90s and I was utterly glued to it throughout. This series was utter brilliance from start to finish. Threads were set up early that took seasons to develop. You had spectacular interplay between characters such as Londo and G’Kar. Susan Ivanova was an especially inspiring character. There was high drama, there was fun to break it up. It brought spectacular battles through innovative cgi. Hopeless battles and last ditch fights. Inner struggles and galactic wide conflict. This series was amazing, brilliant and I think I’ll be watching it again after I’m done with Stargate.

These next two will probably go together. I’m a firm fan of The Expanse, although I’m not too sure about where it’s going … It’s another rich world to lose yourself in although it’s perhaps a little too polarised between the various communities. A dream given form with ports where diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs and wanderers gather. All alone in the night A dangerous place but our last best hope for peace.

Oh wait … that quote is from Babylon 5. It’s the season 1 intro and it’s quite brilliant. Here it is voiced by Michael O’Hare who is sadly no longer with us. He had to leave the show due to severe mental illness, although his character Cdr Jeffrey Sinclair had a chance to return and complete his story. So many things about Babylon 5 were incredible and I would thoroughly recommend giving the series a watching.

Number 7 is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. These called out to me right from the start as a triumph for engineering, especially Nadia’s story as she’s setting up the first Martian city.

Hmm, what shall 8 be ? Larry Niven’s Known Space series is also an excellent example of diversity and wonder. But watch out for those Kzin because they’ll eat you. The Rimworld books are books I would heavily recommend.

Number 9 is back to fantasy and it’s a really dangerous place. It’s the Warhammer Fantasy universe with a planet inhabited by your classic fantasy cultures, with man split up into several nations, there are the dwarves and elves, dark elves across the ocean and a few other cultures and races dotted around too. Always something happening, usually weird, usually with influence from the portals at the poles of the world from which chaos boils forth, corrupting the land around. Another dangerous place but full of adventure.

I think Number 10 has to be the near future, as a mix of the various cyberpunk worlds of games like Shadowrun and Deus Ex. Everything is possible, everything is feasible … at a cost. These worlds dive into extreme modification and high technology with our minds breaching into the cyber world or being melded to cybernetic technology in the real world.

If the first is Star Trek, the last definitely has to be Star Wars. This is another galaxy of endless wonder and variety. There’s always something new to see, a new scam to run, a scheme to evade and something of wonder to find. I think I’d choose the prequel era to avoid the Empire or the Old Republic era of the games, which was set around 4000 years before the films.

That’s it for my 11, although honourable mentions must go to worlds like : Anne McCaffrey’s Brainships, Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon’s Sassinak series, the Honorverse from David Weber, Elizabeth Moon’s universe that started up in Hunting Party, the Forgotten Realms of Faerun, the grim dark future of Warhammer 40k, the multiverses of Heinlein and …..

How could I miss this one out :

I’ll make it 12 places and add the Discworld as the last one.

Friday was car day !

This means you need a picture ….

There we go. Old grey shiny and new red shiny. And me, showing them both up.

It didn’t quite go as per the original plan … I’m feeling the burn out exhaustion creeping up on me again, which is one reason why there haven’t been as many posts lately. I have my first week off of this year coming in the middle of April. Not too long to go. I’ll have to find some excuses to go to places.

Plan A was to head off into Cardiff but I emerged from the car place a little too late for that. I also hadn’t had any lunch because an unwelcome distraction at work needed stamping on. We’re organised into Functions and mine has just woken up to something in my profile that I want to avoid doing … I’ll be removing it from my profile tomorrow, it’s a skill thing which could pigeon hole me into a soul destroying dead end. I’m happy using that as a minor part of a main job, as I am at the moment but it’s an area of non-engineering that I’m looking to avoid being dead ended into. However the functions think they can move people around to suit the whims of people demanding that other people be found to meet gaps they can’t normally recruit into.

It’s a really bad system and it’s causing massive retention issues.

Anyway …. car ! Here’s another angle :

The red works well.

The spec between old and new is pretty close. I have had a couple of upgrades though in a Protection Pack which includes parking sensors (very nice, I’d missed those), something shiny and chrome and some bits to protect the boot.

I think there are a few other small upgrades as well.

Plan A was to head off into Cardiff for some shop wandering and while I was at it, take some pictures of the car at the viewing spot by the Severn Bridge. Rain intervened with the bridge pics and I’d have arrived at Cardiff at about 4.30, just in time for traffic mayhem and with no time to bimble before the more interesting shops closed up.

But I did get a picture by a bridge :

So shiny you could see your face in it ! Maybe not. But if you look really close, there’s a reflection of a me in that picture … And the Avonmeads bridge behind it.

The travelling (including lunch at the really nice Gloucester services and a raiding of their farm shop) got me to Avonmeads just in time for the Lego Movie 2 which …. was still fun. Maybe not nearly as inspired as the first movie but still a lot of fun to watch.

That was pretty much me toasted for the weekend though, got back in time (via the supermarket !) to watch a great England thumping of the West Indies in the cricket. Definitely enjoyed watching that.

Oh and …. cake ?

Need more cake. (And the dwagon needed bigger legs !)

I’ve been in the games a little bit again as well, I dredged up an old save in Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 (Kotor 2) yesterday and enjoyed bimbling around that. It feels incredibly linear compared to the first game though. Odd. There’s a lot more shades of grey in this one though compared to other Star Wars games.

Need to have a look at Mutant Year Zero too, which arrived courtesy of Humble Bundle. It’s another tactical style game.

But before then … Roll4it has their Stargate Horizons finale tonight, there’s more Eng vs WI T20 and I’m looking forward to a bumper weekend next week where it’s :

World Endurance Championship at Sebring on Friday night (I’ll record this and watch it Saturday);
Formula 1 is back in Australia (same with recording to watch at a more hospitable time)
And the finale of the Six Nations. It’s looking like a Wales Grand Slam this year … unless Ireland stop them.

Later !

My mind seems a little fried still at the moment !

The bugs from last week must have had a bit of an effect. I’m still feeling the effects with a cough that isn’t going away. (Feels like something stuck in the back of my throat being ticklish).

Hot chocolate helps.

That’s a mk2 version of the Dwagon Pushes Coffee mug from last week. One of the streamer people who I occasionally watch is called Avery, aka Littlesiha (Twitch link). She’s usually to be seen playing Just Dance and bopping along to it. She hopefully has as much fun playing and dancing as it seems on screen. Anyway, I thought I’d modify the mug to be a dancing Avery lady mug :-).

Still learning. I’m probably overcomplicating the drawing still as you can do some amazing things with simpler line art. Here’s a childhood child favourite :

I don’t rate his chances. That’s from Calvin and Hobbes by the brilliant Bill Watterson. Check out his stuff.

But you look at what actually constructs that scene and the artwork is surprisingly simple. And very precise. I’m missing precision still.

But I’m having fun with it now that my brain seems to want to get back into drawing again after the bugs.

Anyone for pizza ? I’d like a bit of pizza.

Maybe Friday. That’s the big day for car changing and it needs a little preparation … which I think I’m pretty much there on. Hopefully won’t forget anything this time. Let’s see :

Registration document – got it;
Insurance all changed – sorted;
Extra key – found;
Blingy valve caps – gotta switch those (I use basic plastic ones because kids steal the metal blingy ones and set the alarm off)
Work car park pass – to do, early next week. There’s no real rush here.
Empty all my rubbish out of the car – pretty easy because I try to keep things out of the car.
Can’t think of anything else there. I’ll wipe the car’s memory as well before doing the handover.

I want to find where I put my Pebble extra battery for the phone, I haven’t seen that since Roll4itcon in December. I suspect I’ve put it down somewhere and it’s been covered up by books.

That’s part of the plotting for Friday’s pick up day actually. Plan is to head up to Cheltenham to do the switch in the afternoon and then I’ll head back down the motorway with camera to take pics (and raid the fancy service station too). I’m planning to check out the viewing area for the Severn Bridges and then most likely, head into Cardiff for a wander.

Cardiff has books. Cardiff also has a Lego shop. (Mind you, Lego hasn’t brought out many kits that I’m interested in lately).

I’ll also undoubtedly pick up more music too as Cardiff has a few good shops for that as well. Film watching is likely too with Captain Marvel coming out this week. Should be good. I enjoyed watching XMen Apocalypse again on Friday evening.

My current book is Embers of War by Gareth L Powell and it’s intriguing so far. Santorini by Alastair MacLean was excellent, I’ll pop up a quick review of that one when I’ve drawn some Sleepy Does Cover Art for it.

One last one and then it’s back to the penultimate episode of Stargate Horizons :

Not sure if that one has worked so well. But I think he’s going to be enjoying those noms.

Been a bit under the weather this week …

The bugs hit on Wednesday and they felt really bad. I was still heading off into work but very definitely reduced capacity. Still not right but closer to normal again. It’s been the classic hot/cold with a dry cough but add crippling headaches and joint pain to that as well. The headaches were intense on Wednesday. (Meningitis did cross my mind, thankfully it wasn’t.)

It did mean I didn’t have a chance to play more with the new toy acquired on Tuesday though. Yep. Acquired a tablet … graphics tablet. It’s a Wacom Intuos thing which is purely input. There’s no screen on it but you can have it on your lap, keep your eye on the screen and it’s fairly intuitive linking the hand movement to the screen when you get used to it. (It seemed to be fighting me today though which could easily be Windows).

Anyway … I thought I’d try a sketch or two and this happened :

Click for bigger as per usual. I’ve been attempting to learn more from a group called Inklings, where the lovely pair of Steph (@sourfruitjunkie) and Aria (@genkisoda) have huge fun just drawing things while talking about the techniques that go into what they’re drawing.

One thing I’m taking from it is … there’s a huge amount of work that goes in before it becomes as apparently effortless as when an expert does an activity. As a beginner, you look at what you make and think it looks rubbish. You forget that there’s a massive amount of work and practice between the beginner and the expert. The thing to tell yourself is that by practicing, you’re making the steps to becoming much better and you should learn as much as possible from your early efforts and from watching other people.

There’s always room to learn. And it takes ages to get to an expert level. The underlying message though is that drawing is fun. Keep at it.

Here’s another sketch :

This one is for the lovely Random Tuesday who had a birthday last week. I was doing more learning about the brush tools available in the drawing package (still far from getting the best from them) and looking to apply some of the skeleton lessons. Everything has a skeleton (even dragons!) … and remembering that will make your drawings look a bit more real. So in here, I’ve used a pocket dragon as a reference again and added in customised arms and fingers to make the symbol on the middle. I hope she liked it.

The last one of the evening was for the weekly Mage Cast show, which has been huge fun to watch. One of the cast members has been busy doing other things for the last few weeks though. Where could he be ?

The original had lines which were far too faint, I hope the brightness adjustment makes it more legible. That’s another lesson to learn, my AOC screen is extremely good but I think it’s bringing out details that other screens cannot. Hence the one above having detail that’s too faint to read.

One of the issues I’m fighting with myself on is that I want to unleash the drawings as quickly as possible, before refining them to be up to good standard. I dunno, I get ideas that I think will make people chuckle and I want to get them the chuckles as quickly as I can.

One last sketch before closing thing … anyone need coffee ?

That one’s from coming back to drawing today. I’m trying to keep the style to simple outline with filled colours (I’m surprised at how many drawings and animations actually are simple outlines and flat colour!) with highlighting coming in as appropriate.

But yep. Felt more like drawing today after the bugs in the week. Maybe could have yesterday but I wiped myself out with stuff going on in the morning.

Car service trip up to Cheltenham and …
My cards were nearly wiped out by a bad reader in the petrol station (I may actually have flipped their PINs in my head, yep – bugs)
Scarily friendly receptionist. As in scary.
Distance travel. Not much but energy is very low still.
I’m changing the car again.

Yep. Lexus number 4 is on its way as part of an offer I couldn’t refuse (of the nice kind, not the Godfather kind). I think they’re terrified of Brexit and it’s led to an offer where :
I pay the same monthly amount;
It holds off the “what happens at the end of the period” issue where I have to either fund buying the car or let it go;
They’ll pay 3x services;
Massive deposit contributions – I’m basically not giving them any extra.
Possibly one for a disclosure note ? Maybe. The usual thing where disclosure is necessary is where you tell people how good stuff is without saying whether you were paid to say that. The incentives are all there above and I haven’t said anything why I’ll be on Lexus 4. (They’re fantastic, solid, reliable cars with great performance and spec – what’s not to like!).

The next one will be red and one reason to change is that while IS no 2 was better than the first, there were still a couple of thoughts like “It’s not giving the economy of the first” and an issue with the phone which I was a bit perturbed about.

More in a few weeks there. In the meantime, I can feel bug affected legs threatening a pain flare up so I’d better hit “post” and say bye !

PS Check out Inklings on Geekspace.tv (twitch link). One more session on Monday evening (Tues 0.00 GMT) in this current run but I hope they’ll be back. They’re fun.

And with my new found quest to learn how to draw, you probably know what’s coming for the thumbnail ….

There we go.

Gosh, this one has felt like a grind which is a shame because there was a lot of good stuff in there. Book ? Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The book has a two main threads running throughout and it alternates between the perspective of the creatures on the planet and the humans on board the Gilgamesh, an ark ship with the last remnants of the human race fleeing a dying and toxic Earth.

The planet they arrive at is the subject of an ancient terraforming project headed up by Dr Avrana Kern. However … at the culmination of the project, all sorts of crazy people erupt and overthrow the old order. Humanity is thrown into chaos, all sorts of bad things happen and the original subjects of an accelerated uplift project all burn up in a firey reentry.

Hopefully going to avoid the spoilers !

With the monkeys all gone, what’s left to inherit the uplift project ? The book is split up through various epochs, where the crew of the Gilgamesh wrestle with Dr Kern and with themselves in various vignettes.

Similarly, the spiders on the planet steadily evolve into far more complex and intelligent creatures and face their own challenges.

The book ended well and the various challenges were well written. It’s a very well written book looking back on it.

But I didn’t really enjoy it and found it a bit of a slog to get through to the finish. maybe due to the constant swapping between perspectives ? I don’t think so, I’ve read similar books and enjoyed them. I suspect I formed a low opinion of this one quite early due to the tiredness and general burning out feeling but I didn’t want to give up on it.

What’s next ? Not sure actually ! I might well go back to an older book. Nah. I’ve got a few books on the Kindle waiting to be read.

PS That’s totally not a Thargoid up there that’s hosting Dr Kern’s Sentry Pod.

People have had me looking for a cake joke just now and I found an old meme … You know me and memes, can’t resist. And I couldn’t resist updating this one.

But … cake ?

Cake from the archives ! This was great cake.

Meme ?

The idea is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends that you probably didn’t know already. It’s going to be curious how many of these have changed since the original post in 2006.

1. What time did you get up this morning? Awake 0710 ish, on the bus at 0730. My morning routine resembles a terrified realisation that quite soon I will be in work and terror can be a powerful motivator. (I skip breakfast at home, have a teacake at work and gradually wake while on the bus).

2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds are more sparkly ? Yep. Same answer.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? That time it was Narnia. This time it was Battle Angel Alita, which I would highly recommend for a bit of anime style action fun.

4. What’s your favourite TV show? Currently, it’s Star Trek Discovery because it pulls off what it does with a certain style and it has continually kept me guessing as to where it’s going to go.

5. What did you have for breakfast this morning? TEACAKE !

6. What’s your favourite cuisine? Pizza. Yep. Still pizza.

7. What foods do you dislike? Foods that are too mushy or are hassle to eat.

8. What is your favourite crisp flavour? The Flaming Bacon type flavour.

9. What’s your favourite CD at the moment? It was Alisha’s Attic Vaults cd 1 back then but I’ve since developed a heavy Nina Persson addiction and it’s between the A Camp self titled album and Long Gone Before Daylight by The Cardigans.

10. What kind of car do you drive? Back then it was a Puma, now it’s a Lexus IS300h. Both are fantastic cars in their own ways.

12. What characteristics do you despise? Misplaced Arrogance – gotta agree there. Still the same.

11. Favourite sandwich? Ham tea cakes. Not had one of these in years ! (I don’t keep butter in the house any more because I waste it by not using it quickly enough)

13. Favourite item of clothing? Clothing with no holes in the wrong places. Jeans, t shirt, leather jacket. Same ! I have a newish T-shirt with a kitty in a ball of string that says “It was like it when I got here !” that’s a favourite (link !).

14. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go? Kennedy Space Centre on the way to the Moon. No change here !

15. What colour is your bathroom? Blue and yellow (I haven’t repainted it since moving in). And it’s still the same colours.

16. Favourite Brand of clothing? I avoid clothing brands that put their name on the item as they’re not paying me to advertise their stuff. No change there, although I would happily recommend Genki Gear and Fuzzballs (link)

17. Where would you retire? Caribbean probably – cos of the cricket. Might not like the heat there though. Not any more, due to attitude of people observed while the cricket coverage is on. Now it would be on a canal barge, touring the canals.

18. Favourite time of day? Getting home from work. Same ! Oh and stream time or any time I get nice messages from good people.

19. What was your most memorable birthday? Can’t remember many of these … The last few when I’ve had gifts 😀

20. Where were you born? Birmingham. No change there ! I have not been cloned since the writing of the last post. I think.

21. Favourite sport to watch? Cricket. No change there !

22. Who do you least expect to send this back to you? It’s not really a sending back to thing any more ….

23. Person you expect to send it back first? See above

24. What fabric detergent do you use? Was Persil. I actually have issues here now due to my outsides. Believe it or not, I am allergic to hypoallergenic washing blobs. Nowadays it’s Persil blobs (still!) and Tesco softener, although I’ll switch the softener when it runs out.

25. Were you named after anyone? No. Don’t think so …

26. Do you wish on stars? No. Although they are very nice to look at.

27. When did you last cry? 17 – just before going into an exam. (Tears weren’t due to the exam !). That’s changed ! The tears come a little more often now, the emotions seem to have woken up a bit more. Last time was actually Friday, with a few tears pulled out in bits of Alita.

28. Do you like your handwriting? Nope. Can barely read it. And … it hasn’t improved much at all.

29. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Aye – Unless I’d rubbed me up the wrong way. Haha, no change there.

30. Are you a daredevil? Yep. I’ll risk stuff, although I do wear a helmet when batting now. I’m older now but I’ll still go for stuff. It’s just moderated by what my body currently lets me do.

31. Do looks matter? Only to those who don’t look at the personality beneath the looks. Are they worth knowing ?

32. How do you release anger? I get aggressive and try to release the aggression on sport. I try to redirect the anger/aggression into driving myself harder. Tough one, I don’t think this has changed much, except I don’t have that release in sport. I generate much less anger now because I redirect it into better emotions.

33. Where is your second home? Lincolnshire with the parents. Same !

34. What class in High School was totally useless? Previously : Foreign languages. Make them speak English ! Muahahaha. (heh – kidding). Now : Religious Education.

35. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Yep. When I can, although sarcasm tends to be destructive and I prefer to use constructive humour. I try and use it more now too, hiding daftness behind words that take a little time to decipher.

37. Favourite movie? Previously : Sky Captain. What would it be now ? The Martian is right up there, Rogue One. Must watch Sky Captain again.

38. What are your nicknames? Then – Sleepypete or Ice. Now, I’ve adopted Sleepydwagonman as the nickname I tend to use online.

39. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Yes – makes it easier to get them back on. No change.

40. Do you think that you are strong? Reasonably – can hold my own in cricket but I suffer from injuries too much. Haha, not any more ! My legs are probably above average strength but they’re not getting the exercise at the moment while my arms are affected by really unhappy shoulders.

41. What’s your favourite ice cream flavour? Vanilla. It’s Mint Choc now.

42. What are your favourite colours? Then : Red, blue. Yellow for cars. Now : Blue’s a good one, last two cars have been dark grey metallic, which has worked well with them.

43. What is your least favourite thing about yourself? Easily distracted, absent minded. Add “has difficulty with wrods” to that now.

44. Who do you miss most? The dogs. Oh yes. Muttleys are awesome. Add my dad in there too.

45. Do you want everyone you sent this to send it back? Muahahaha – maybe 🙂 Lol, if anyone who sees this does a copy/paste/change, let me know !

46. What colour pants are you wearing? Then : Dark blue, unless you’re going by the American definition in which case it’s black. Now : Erm … exactly the same. And they’re not the same two items of clothing. Oh wait ! Switch them around. And no the underpants are not on the outside.

47. What are you listening to right now? Then : 3 phone conversations and 2 people (inc me) tapping a keyboard. Wonder what the other person is doing … An Enter Elysium video, Heychrissa streaming on the laptop and the current iTunes track is “It”, the first track on the Chaleur Humaine album by Christine and the Queens.

48. Last thing you ate? Then : King Size Twix. Now : a small Smarties Easter Egg. Yes. I have no shame in that. HA !

49. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? Then : Rainbow. Now : probably green for the dragons.

50. Last person you talked to on the phone? Then : Mortgage people. (Wonder what that was for ? It was +1year after I had to remortgage). Now : a fella at work about a training solutions meeting tomorrow.

51. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite s*x? Then (I believe being sarcastic !) Hair. Unless I’m sitting down or they’re way taller than me – then it’s breasts. Now : eyes and what the eyes are saying in their silent way, curiously though, I can never remember someone’s eye colour. Then hopefully a smile :-D. The grin tends to bring out an answering smile.

52. What’s your favourite drink? Coke (diet). Same !

53. Do you wear contacts? No but I have glasses on through most of my waking hours. Now – I still have the same glasses I had back then. I need new ones ….

54. Favourite Day(s) of the Year? Christmas, days out of work and the day I bring the donuts in to work (sometime near birthday). No change ! Although add in Comic Con plus the Lords trip in the summer.

55. Scary Movies or Happy Endings? Then : Happy Endings but endings that are definite. I.e. not a Spielberg multiple ending. Now : happy endings. Movies that have a satisfying ending.

56. Summer or winter? Cricket season. <- br="" this.="">
57. Hugs Or Kisses? Hugs, although anyone I know who I spot with Iceangel is in danger of a good tickling. Now : Hugs are awesome.

58. What Is Your Favourite Dessert? Then : Chocolate fudge cake – must resist … Now ? Hmm. Still cake ! Although the lunchtime thing if I have cake is usually a lemon muffin.

59. What Book are you currently reading? Then : The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber. Now : Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I meant to slot a few tasty pictures in there to break it up but I think the way I copy/pasted it in made the format go a little wibbly … However !

Historical accuracy is everything.

Seem to be busy again at the moment !

Definitely missing the chance to do more posts. Things happening lately and I’m ending up crashing out when I get home and turning the brain off as much as I can. I did feel like an escape to something where I definitely could turn the brain off though …. this was Friday pm.

What’s that ?

Friday’s escape was a film called Battle Angel Alita. Without giving too much away (like some of the images that Google will show you !), this one is a live action / cgi film set about 500 years in the future where all of the cities of Earth have fallen in an apocalyptic war, save one. The film is set in Iron Town, below the flying city of Zolom. (I may be getting a couple of the references wrong here).

I really enjoyed it and …. a tear or two may have escaped at certain points. Actually, I’ve been feeling the crispiness of impending burn out this week* and it feels like this film gave me a much needed reset. Films tend to be like that.

*(what I mentioned last weekend, plus I damaged my eye last Monday which was getting me down too. It’s ok now.)

Anyway, the story picks up with our Alita being found in a junkyard and being put together by Dr Ido, very ably played by Christoph Waltz. She has no memory but everything that she sees and experiences is met with total joy and absolute commitment.

And there are those big wide eyes too that take in the world. But there is more to Alita than the big cute eyes and a personality that wants to jump into absolutely everything.

And the story leaps off from there. As usual, there is daftness involved with the storyline and shortcuts to make it all fit into a film. But … lots of action, plenty of spectacle and I thought the central character was incredible.

Thoroughly recommended.

Friday’s escape wasn’t just about the film though. (It was on at 5pm so I needed to find something to occupy until then ! Plus lunch).

One thing I’ve been observing over the past years is that our High Street is steadily disintegrating. It started with a few big names collapsing when the banking collapse happened. But it’s continued ever since then.

My theory is that the continuing austerity regime means that people don’t have any disposable income any more, so the shops that thrived on that have been driven out of business. The curiosity shops with knickknacks and trinkets. Fun stuff. Useless decorative stuff that makes you smile when you look at it.

Those shops don’t exist any more. We have expensive clothes shops, nail bars and vape shops instead. I’m not interested in those. I’m not sure if I’ll be doing the old run across to our local Mall any more, with the closure of the HMV shop there. That place now has an increasing number of empty lots and the HMV was one of two shops I’d regularly have a look in when there. (The other was the Lego place).

It’s a similar story in town, except that it still has its HMV and its Foyles bookstore. (And Waterstones too). The HMV thing is curious actually, they’ve just suddenly closed another 27 stores out of their 127 and some of them are very painful looking closures indeed. (Here’s the BBC story with the list).

It’s only part austerity though. Some of it is down to the online people who don’t play fair. Like Spotify who draw you into their renting model and other places who don’t pay their taxes. Places like Waterstones and Foyles can’t get away with that and compounding that, have their prices fixed by the publishers. I’m not even seeing the old Buy 1 Get 1 Free type offers that the bookshops used to do.

I choose what I buy based on what’s more economical to buy, which means favouring Kindle over Paperback. But …. I’d much prefer to buy paperback if it were the same price because … paperback will always be better and you’re helping to support the awesome people who work in the Foyles and the Waterstones.

Oh and I’ll always want to own my music rather than use Spotify. Even better to acquire the music from places like Bandcamp or as downloads from the artist’s own site. Spotify and Youtube are rubbish for supporting the creators … and if those creators aren’t getting the recompense for making stuff for us to enjoy, they will quit and get jobs to let them eat. I’d rather see them making videos or music.

I sense I should come down off that particular soap box though. I did acquire a few things on Friday :
Seal – Standard
Jean-Michel Jarre – Equinoxe Infinity
Ed Sheeran – divide
Lorde – Pure Heroine
It might take a while before I get to listen to them though, there are still 6,000 unlistened to tracks in the library and I’m going from A albums to Z albums …. (After 6 months with the laptop, I’m in the C albums).

There’s a Steam sale going too …. and games called Frostpunk, Unavowed and Blood Bowl 2 have been acquired. (Maybe a little dealing with Sad by buying stuff ? Haha, maybe).

Last bit … I’m trying to develop the drawing still. I have ideas, one nearly emerged for today but after cogitating on it over the last week, I didn’t get a solid enough idea. Not like the one someone gave me the other week … Here we go :

There we go. A Sleepy Wagon Man, dreaming of pizza.

I’ve been enjoying watching as much of the Inklings streams on Geekspace.tv, led by Steph the sourfruitjunkie who has a thing for crows. She saw the Sleepydwagonman username I use on Twitch and wondered what a Sleepy Wagon Man would be like. And then there’s pizza.

I quite enjoyed making that one, as I’m enjoying learning more of technique from teaching streams like Inklings and by observing what I’m seeing. When you look at cartoons, drawings or animations, keep an eye open for the technique. It may surprise you how flat the colouring of the picture is ! Gotta keep it simple though, as less seems to be more.

Erm. That “it’s getting a bit too more” pinger is going off, especially as I haven’t had me dinner yet and it’s getting later ! Cya.