November, 2021 - Sleepypete's Pillow

Cricket Bebop Shuttle

November 23, 2021

9:42 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again since posting – must get back in the habit of posting more regularly. I keep saying that don’t I :-). Things have been occurring since the last post. Bit of healing maybe, bit of hanging in there until we all get a chance to relax over Xmas. It does feel a bit like we’re getting a little wrung out lately. I’ve definitely been feeling that on this end and a good number of the people I interact with seem like it’s sinking in on them as well. Perhaps it’s plague related stuff … we have fatigue over being cautious mixed in with disbelief at people just forgetting that it’s still a thing.

Oh wait – forgot something … Thumbnail pic !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the aft end of our pink space ship, mostly hidden in shadow but with a row of 9 engines blazing away as the ship flies towards the opening of a circular space station. — Pixels returns …

Game wise, I feel like I’m between games at the moment. Sometimes, I’ll look at the games list and think I want to play some of them … but I don’t want to put the mental effort into learning them. Car Mechanic Simulator is cool and cathartic but I’m not sure how long I’ll continue with it. I have enjoyed my time in there though.

A definite head turner

The mods are fun though. I think one thing I’d like to try is another driving simulator type game. You can drive the cars in Car Mechanic Simulator around the track but the driving model is poor* and the driving is limited to a single race track, a drag strip and a test track.

*Or the Jaguar E-Type might have been undriveable because it was fitted with upgraded everything giving it way more power at the rear wheels than it could handle :-D.

I’ve been looking at the Truck Simulator games. I actually own the base American Truck Simulator, courtesy of Humble Bundle way back. Never played it. One thing I like in games is progression, where you can build up your character as you go or build up your empire … or build a fleet of starships. Or trucks. With the entrance of Thunderdwagon 2 :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a docking bay, with our ship on a rectangular landing pad illuminated by spotlights at the corners. It's a dark green ship, with sleek lines and 2 wings in the middle and 4 wings at the stern. — To the rescue !

This is the ship that completes the fleet in Elite for me … I own them all now and have used them for a genuine purpose, even if that purpose was swiftly cut short when the gameplay loop involved got boring or the ship proved inadequate for the job. In this case, the ship was built to dash in to damaged burning space stations and pull as many people out as possible. Hence the meme of the ship resembling a ship you may recognise … That gameplay loop is deeply unsatisfying though (and doesn’t pay much), so I’m back to mining again.

But apart from a Fleet Carrier, that is the end of that gameplay objective for me in Elite, unless I reset the save again and start afresh.

Other stuff – I mentioned the Cricket T20 World Cup … turned out I didn’t actually watch the final there. The wrong teams got to the final and the team that won it definitely did not deserve to. They were poor throughout, including getting murdered by England in the early stages. Perhaps there’s a bit of sour grapes there, because England got knocked out in the semi final due to a statistic I’ll get to. Mind you, England started strong and I think they were running out of steam towards the end with a few injuries taking key players out of the tournament.

Statistic ? The toss was key to the tournament … mostly because at the halfway point in the later games, the dew would come up and soak the ball making it an uneven contest. You want to have a chance at being surprised by the result … I had a sinking feeling for England’s semi because New Zealand won the toss and bowled first. Same happened for Pakistan’s game and the toss determined the order for the final too. All 3 games went with the toss. 30 games out of 45 were won by the team who won the toss. In Dubai, 12 out of 13 games were won by the team batting second with conditions in their favour.

That’s not something that makes for a tournament I’m interested in watching. The better side should win, not the side that was lucky with the coin toss at the start of the game.

Cricket’s another sport that has trouble actually, especially in England and Wales. At the moment, that’s a very well publicised case of racism at one county but the stories are coming out at the other counties as well.

I’ll make one thing clear there – I love cricket. I love to see people enjoying cricket. It doesn’t matter who they are, the colour of their skin, their ethnicity or the religion they follow. I just want to see people enjoying playing that game I love. And it turns out that too many people are turning away from playing the game due to the attitudes of those already there. That kind of attitude takes a lot to root out. It has an insidious approach as well. When I was learning the game myself, my idol was a fella called Devon Malcolm.

He was a tall, beefy fast bowler of West Indian descent. Couldn’t bat, bowled really fast (if a bit erratic). Wore glasses too for a while. I wanted to bowl like him. And he was one of a long line of players following people like Philip Defreitas, Gladstone Small, Syd Laurence, Chris Lewis, Alex Tudor and a bunch of others who’s names aren’t coming to memory right now. (I had a quiet migraine yesterday – no real headache but definite brain fog – not quite right yet)

When I saw Yorkshire playing at the start of the last season, they were all white men. And I knew back then that there was a problem. They’re based out of Leeds, with that area being a heavily BAME populated area. Even by averages, there should have been at least one BAME player in the team. And yet there were none. I think we know why now, with Yorkshire being the centre of the racism scandal hitting the English game at the moment.

I hope it sorts out. It needs to. I’m not that bothered about it making England a better side by having these guys to choose from, I just want to see more people enjoying playing the game. Oh and the more great players to see, the better the games are. I want to be guessing about the results all the way to the end, not see “Team A won the toss and bowl” and know the result from there.

I think I needed to get that particular rant out for a while. It’s not just colour though. It’s about sexuality and religion as well. I am in that privileged position of being a white straight guy. I don’t like it. It means that others are being dismissed because they’re different. Our differences make us stronger. They make us interesting. The most interesting character I saw on the series Another Life was Zayn.

The most fun character on the new Cowboy Bebop was Faye Valentine. I think the actress had a lot of fun bringing that character to life. I’d thoroughly recommend giving that show a look by the way and then watch the anime as well. It’s a quirky silly daft show set in space with a definite trend of smooth jazz style running through it.

Oh and it’s totally polarised the opinions about it as well, which amuses me.

Summary and other stuff :

Lego Space Shuttle is complete ! Need to arrange taking some decent pictures of it. It’s a chunky unit, big enough to take 5 pocket dragons in the back.

Cowboy Bebop is silly stylish fun, go watch it. Another Life is another one definitely worth watching. Paramount need a kick up the backside for taking ST Discovery off air days before it was to be released.

Internet spaceships good … disappointing implementation bad.

Racism – ugh.

Boats – yay. I’ve been watching a channel called Aquaholic. It’s run by a guy who takes a GoPro camera on to boats and does tours for us. They’re pretty special now, although we are talking multi million pound yachts here. It may be reawakening the thoughts about living on a Dutch Barge. Wonder if you could make those properly seaworthy ? One thing needed there is a radar and those go on the roof. That conflicts with barges needing to be able to fit into tunnels and under bridges.

Stream watching is good. Currently got Fuzzyfreaks on the laptop and Fallenshogun on the desktop. They’re good people to listen to. May they be able to continue entertaining us for as long as they can.

Last one – new job happened. Same organisation, different part of it. I’m learning the new basics at the moment but it’s in an area that I’m already very familiar with. It’ll see me getting out and about more too, which is great. One reason for switching is the trips in April and May reminded me of something (that I can’t put here) and this new post gets me closer to those. There are other reasons too but those aren’t going to be written here. Let’s just say healing is required …

Games can be pretty good for the healing. Whether it’s bringing the cars back to life, or flitting into an alternate universe where you can go from port to port as a space trucker.

I like being a space trucker :-).

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Have names, need ships !

by Sleepypete

November 10, 2021

10:11 pm

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internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I’ve been meaning to post more often but time feels like it’s whooshing by again :-D. I did have one idea of a Thing to write about though. (And there’s a Lego Space Shuttle that I’ll get back to after finishing this). This is going to be an Internet Spaceship post. As per usual, they’re all Elite Dangerous again, which is something I’m obliged to mention due to their picture use terms.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Out pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower half. We're looking at the back end, with a row of 9 engines flaring away. In the top half is a round space station that we're heading towards. The backdrop is the black of space with occasional starry dots. — Pixels returning to hangar

There’s stuff been going on at work which I’m not going to mention too much here but it does mean new opportunities to look at different things. Should be a good move.

In the internet spaceship domain though, I took the ship home early after quite a decent trip out there. The sightseeing tool that I have wasn’t showing any promising things to look at and there was a community goal thing that looked interesting … (The goal got completed before I got there !)

Screen capture. We're looking at a map of our galaxy from the top down. Our path is mapped out by a white trace which roughly circles the galaxy. — Have spaceship will travel

That’s the travel map as of a stop at the centre of the galaxy on 3rd November. Since then, it’s pretty much a straight line back to our part of space at the bottom. I was following a set of expedition waypoints which I would usually finish … except that apart from someone who absolutely blitzed it (their flight log on EDSM is crazy!), it looks like I’m the only one running it. I did run across the organisers’ carrier along the way but it was pretty early on in the route. So I came back early. I could go back out again … probably not though.

Elite’s on borrowed time for me. The Odyssey disaster broke a lot of the appeal for me. It’s still a very pretty game … but the flaws are raw and exposed and there’s even new bugs coming in as well now. Like a thing where it takes about 5 seconds for the stations to appear when you drop out of FTL at their location. The game needs time to load in the textures so it can show us the station. Performance has improved though, although my system is not a fair test there because it’s gone from a fairly recent but struggling 1060 3GB card to a brand new 3060 Ti card with 8GB of memory. That’s going from a card with 1000ish parallel processing things to one with just under 5000 and far better memory infrastructure on it. (Without being geeky – it’s possibly 5-6 times as powerful and has other advantages).

Wait ! I had an idea for this post. I have a bunch of names for ships … and I don’t think I’ll be expanding the fleet any more past :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in an enclosed ship hangar with dim overhead lighting and adverts and struts to the sides. Our ship stands proud on the pad. It's a big green smooth sided ship that we're looking at from the front. It dwarfs our pilot, standing below the nose. — Waiting to rescue

That’s Thunderdwagon 2, callsign IR1965. People may recognise where that comes from :-D. The purpose of this ship was to run rescue missions to evacuate people from damaged space stations. But I didn’t last long with that because that particular gameplay loop is boring and doesn’t pay at all well. I may well reconfigure this one for spaceship rescues and press CAT404 back into service as a miner. That’s another tribute name :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A blue and white angular and blocky spaceship is pointing down and towards the right of shot. We're in a field of space rocks. — Prepare the mining lasers !

That’s the Towel of Space, aka CAT404. This is another tribute name for Katherine Of Sky, who is one of those lovely voices I enjoy listening to. Here’s a link to her youtube channel and the first of a few links for today. The problem with this ship is that because it’s bigger, mining sessions were taking too long and pushing my arms to the point of pain but different mining might mean shorter sessions.

I have all the ships now … and still have a bunch of names I want to use ! Which is conflicting with a wanting to say nice things about people. So I thought, do I need the ships to say the nice things ? Nope. Here goes. On the ship list is :

Searching For Pixels, callsign FUZZ3H. I do actually have the ship, this is the pink with white checkerboard one that I’ve been dashing round the galaxy in. The name was for the mission of the ship, to see how the Odyssey expansion affected exploration. (Lighting is terrible) The callsign is for Fuzzyfreaks, who is a delight to watch. Her eyes just got drawn to the game Kenshi again, so she’s been playing that.

The next one is the Bringer of Nuggets, callsign V4N-D1 and there is definitely some meme-age going on there. OMGVandi is one of those fiery passionate people who catches you up totally in what she’s doing. I first caught sight of this lovely Canadian lady from the Moonkissed and Sunkissed role play shows but she also has way too much fun playing Among Us with friends as well as Grand Theft Auto V role play. A definite force and one hell of a personality. She enjoys what she does so much and is very happy to bring viewers along for a wild and exciting ride. OH ! Check out her artwork too, there’s a collection here (Linky)

If I was to build a new ship for Drew Wagar’s farewell tour, it would be Acolyte of Wagar, callsign F3D0R4. Drew Wager (Twitch link) is one of the authors who wrote in the Elite universe as well as universes of his own creating. He does several streams with games like No Mans Sky or retro games, plus a writing stream. He’s a chilled out English gent who is another pleasure to listen to, although he’s usually on when there’s other people I’ll watch instead who are also streaming. And there’s only so many people you can watch at once. His youtube channel has the videos for his previous Lore tour, which I enjoyed catching up with. There’s another event coming up but I’ll bring out the old Cobra, Tea-89 for that as a nod back to the original Elite game.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a spaceship within a hangar. This is a small ship with cockpit window in the centre. The outer wing sections are orange, the centre is white. — At rest, for now

Next up is the Searching For Dynamite, callsign SH4RK5. This is for the wonderful KatiePetersPlays, (Twitch link) who streams all sorts of games, appears on role playing shows and has a couple of podcasts too. She’s a lovely person, is the centre of an incredibly welcoming wholesome community and the anarchy around what she does is massive fun to be around. Her discord server is the Space Sharks, most of her twitch emotes are sharks, which will tell you where that comes from. And then there’s also a fun alert that she has where in totally serious mode says “And the dynamite goes boom”. It’s one of those things that makes me laugh and watching her stuff is great for the soul. On a bit late for UK viewers though :-D.

I had a little series of potential names for a ship named for Enter Elysium but didn’t settle on one I was happy with. The theme was generally around robbing banks, after this became a bit of a meme in his channel following the disappointing follow on to the original Evil Genius game. EE doesn’t make much content now but when he does, I try and tune in when he does, plus the old videos are still there on his youtube channel. He’s a fun one to watch and the old content is still good.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in the in game paint job store, looking at a ship labelled "Cobra Mk III Festive Red". The ship is roughly half a hexagon, chopped in half and we're looking down on it from above. The ship is painted red, with some white snowflakes. — It’s almost that time folks …

This one would be Dances with Snowmen, callsign -K1R1-. I haven’t been watching 2dKiri for long and she starts a bit early for me too, with streams starting up at lunchtime. But I’ll tune in after closing up the work laptop. She’s another lovely chilled out person who is a pleasure to watch. You know, calming and enjoyable around that too with great chat interaction (she doesn’t miss much at all) and is very happy to join in with chat’s odd sense of humour. Youtube link this time because the highlight shows are on there plus links to Twitch. There’s also a snow meme that runs throughout her content and I especially love the dancing snowman emote, so 2dKiri’s ship would have to have something snow related. (And I got this one free!)

However, if I used this for Drew Wagar’s farewell tour, then it would be somewhat along the way to advertising another streamer in his stream, which is really bad etiquette. So it’ll be the Tea-89 Cobra instead.

Last one for today is the wonderful person I’m listening to at the moment … Tashnarr (Twitchy link). I missed out on so much of Tash’s content, mostly because Twitch is a thing where you can only really watch one person at a time. If I’m watching Tash, that means I’m not watching Shenryyr (great guy, another really chilled out fun one) or a different one. So it took a while before I started watching Tash as much as I do now. And she is definitely that person that I’ll switch over to as soon as she comes online, disappearing quietly from the person I was watching before. Definite character, cheeky, chirpy, sassy, lovely person on screen, very emotive, smart, great voice and I’m running out of adequate words … I think she has a lot of fun with what we come up with in chat too.

This is Tash’s latest tribute ship :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A blue gas giant can be seen in the background. A ring system of rocks is in the upper right half, starting diagonally across the picture. Our ship is a crimson and orange diamond shaped ship, with 2 clusters of 6 engines at the back. — Ready to mine

That’s the Manic Minarr and I’ll go back into that one at some point soon. Back to Tash’s stream now though ! Although I’m now wondering about what a tribute name for Becca Godsey, aka Caustic Phoenix would be. She’s another fun passionate lady to watch (on late again 😀 ) and is a fantastic host for the Pink Pixels weekly podcast on TheGameHers channel.

Stay safe, be well everyone.

Where was I again ?

by Sleepypete

November 3, 2021

9:09 pm

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cricket, games, internet spaceship

Been meaning to post for a bit 🙂 Subjects have been escaping my head though :-D.

I do enjoy talking about the computer games but it does feel sometimes like it’s a one track thing for here and I do like the variation. I haven’t done a music post for a good long while, so that’s due as well. I’ll go on to the cricket world cup, which I’ve been enjoying having on in the background or time delayed for after I close the work laptop down.

Cartoon picture. A T-Rex dinosaur is stretching their little arms towards a big red button on the wall. A sign above says "Push button if you're sick of cartoonists making fun of short T-Rex arms." — Needed thumbnail tribute, randomness selected

Credit to the Roguesymmetry link and signature in the picture. I have been pretty tired lately, although the body is somewhat cooperating. I do have issues sometimes reaching for things with my right arm though. That’s the arm with the weak shoulder, so stretching out the arm can push it beyond a certain limit and then I go ouch. I am really struggling for energy at the moment though.

Internet spaceship has been busy … and surprisingly ok on the arm. Although there are limits there as well. I’ve had a couple of days off the crazy travel mode flying but :

Screen capture picture. We see a map of our solar system, seen from above. Where we live is down in the lower part. A thick white trace shows my travel path over the last 12 months. — Zoom zoom space ship

That’s my Elite travel map over the last 12 months. There’s a lot of light years been travelled, although that includes the more epic round the galaxy to its extreme extents trip that finished around May this year. This one has been a bit more modest, starting out around our area of space down the bottom and sightseeing my way up and left (North Northwest) and around to the top end of the galaxy. Since then, it’s following a set of waypoints back into the Galactic Core and the way back will follow the faint green line on that map which starts off going to the right a bit.

I should get back well in time for a planned rendezvous and meet up with other Elite people on the 18th. And then I’m honestly not sure what will happen with Elite. The Odyssey expansion was such a disappointment. It is still a very pretty game though and I did like wandering around space. Some of the new minigames and mechanics though like the exobiology exploration are just really, really bad though. I’ve seen only minor variations on the new foliage on the atmospheric planets and the stuff you need to do to collect the required information to log them is … No. I’m not sure who in the dev team thought that was a good idea.

Oh as an aside, the thing behind the map there is from the podcast type stream I’m watching/listening to at the moment. It’s Sheepy’s aka TheWanderingInn (Twitch link) regular weekly Bar Brawl where he gets a guest in and talks about Stuff. Often it’s about the role playing shows that he runs and the guest’s part in that. And then they’ll go into the mayhem of an arbitrary Tier List. Chaos usually ensues with the tier list. Today’s guest is the ever wonderful Tashnarr (Twitch link again). They’re a good couple of streamer community people and I really enjoy the Tash streams.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower centre of screen. The left hand side is dominated by a round space station with a rectangular entrance in the centre. It is lit by a series of red lights. A planet is to the top right. The sky behind is clustered with a busy field of stars. — A home away from home

That’s Explorer’s Anchorage, a quick hop away from Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. I’m docked up there until resuming the journey back in, which will be at the weekend. (Combination of resting the arms and maxing out the funny internet currency earning that goes towards in game cosmetics).

Oh I’ve also been highly enjoying tearing cars apart and rebuilding them in Car Mechanic Simulator. It’s a satisfying thing. Perhaps I might be coming to the end of the big interest in that but it has been oddly cathartic. Dyson Sphere Programme appeared in the last steam sale as well.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're inside a white walled paint shop area. In the centre, a green Jaguar E Type convertible with super sleek classic lines. — Now with Jaguars

Cricket ? World Cup’s been pretty good so far, although there has been a definite pattern appear where the team batting second has been winning a disproportionate number of games. One reason for this is that with the games being played on the transition to night time, heavy dew comes down which affects the ability of the bowlers to grip the ball. This gives an advantage to the team batting first. I don’t think it’s actually changed the results much though, a lot of them have gone with the expected form.

England have been doing remarkably winning 2 very one sided games and then met Sri Lanka raised their game a lot from previous form and were unlucky to come second in that game. It’s mostly been down to just how good England have been all the way through the side. All of the players have been stepping up with great performances and while a few of the sides have been not great in the field, England have been nigh on perfect.

There’s a cricket saying which is “Catches win matches” and it’s massively true. Cricket sides tend to build a momentum, which can get unstoppable. A wicket usually slams a brake on that momentum, so missing that chance for a wicket by dropping an easy catch has a big impact on the game. Like in the Sri Lanka game, where it looked like Sri Lanka would get over the line for the win until England started taking wickets, with the wickets making the momentum of the game swing the other way.

Another one is the attitude that the teams show on the field as well. I used to really enjoy fielding closer in within the ring. It kept me involved in the game. I’d be noisy and constantly encouraging the other players in the team. Clapping a lot, bringing that noise, trying to terrify the batsmen into hesitating with over enthusiastic fielding. That’s really important too as if a side goes quiet, they drift and it allows the batting to build that momentum. I’d get bored when dispatched to the outer areas of the field. I was away from the people I’d be interacting with and generally less involved in the game. It was tough to maintain the focus out there. The huge thing though was what happens when something doesn’t go to plan, like a catch dropped or a bowler losing their focus. You can respond to that either by attacking your own team, or by upping the encouragement again with a “Next time!” or similar. Some of the teams in the World Cup have been going down the attacking the team route. You have to get your own game spot on there if you do that or it just brings down the team.

One of my later seasons saw a bowler come in after a long time off, including surgery. The tiredness was settling in and getting to him. So I walk back with him to his bowling mark, give him a bit of gentle encouragement, slow his walk down a little and give him a “Take your time, you got this”. Kinda like letting him borrow a bit of confidence back again by showing him that his fielding team mate had confidence in him. Took a wicket that over. Good times. That’s one I still remember :-D.

Anyway – England are doing great in the World Cup. It’s been great to see some of the newer sides come in as well. Like Afghanistan, who must terrify the major teams. They have a great side. Oman were wonderful hosts, it was sad that they didn’t win through.

What else to talk about ? Job change next week, looking forward to it.

Back to the Bar Brawl now though. Stay safe, be well, stay warm everyone.