May, 2022 - Sleepypete's Pillow

Watching racing, thinking cars

by Sleepypete

May 30, 2022

3:35 pm

Comments Off on Watching racing, thinking cars

Uncategorized

cars, racing

Hello everyone,

I enjoyed watching quite a bit of the Nurburgring 24 hours race this weekend …

Picture. We're looking at the tarmac of a racetack snaking a route through grassy banks to the sides. There are quite a few race cars in diverse colours making their way through, all with headlights on. We can see a few spots of rain on the camera. The caption to the top right is "Total 24 Nurburgring Formation Lap". — Brrrmm

This was actually from the race held in September 2020. It’s normally held a couple of weeks before the Le Mans 24 hour race which aims for the longest days of the year with a little bit of separation to allow drivers and cars to compete in both if able to. The weather this year was far better … previous years have seen the race suspended overnight due to fog or just too dangerous conditions but they got a full uninterrupted 24 hours of running in this year.

It’s a classic race, I enjoyed watching it a lot this time around. And there’s something I find way too fascinating about having the timing screen up instead of the actual cars and watching the sector time numbers steadily collect there. Especially if a faster car has had a problem, got repaired and is catching up through the field again. Or a slower car is steadily gobbling up fast cars that have retired from the race several hours before.

Stats ! It’s run on the Nurburgring Nordschlieffe course which is in the various racing games. I tried it when I played Forza Motorsport way back. Here’s a wiki link. The 24 hour race is held on a layout that includes the 3.2 mile (5.1km) Grand Prix circuit for a total of 15.77 miles or 25.378km. It’ll take the fast GT3 cars 8 minutes 15 seconds to cover that on a fastest lap, or the Dacia Logan taking 11 minutes 46 seconds on their fastest lap.

I like it more when I can adopt? a car to follow for the race and see how its doing throughout the race. Sure, the racing at the top is pretty close and spectacular, like when the Van Thoor Manthey Porsche slightly tapped another car on a fast part of the circuit and pirouetted itself a heap of times before hammering into the barriers. It bounced off a car driven by the other Van Thoor brother too so the commentators were speculating for a while about christmas card lists in the Van Thoor family :-D. But I think I connect more with the little guys, the underdogs, the ones that people write off as having no chance but they’ll keep on punching on reminding you that they’re there waiting to slip ahead when you make a mistake.

And the little Dacia Logan outdid super fast cars like this :

Picture. We're looking at the grass run off area beside a race track on the left edge of the screen. There is a car, stopped, with the back end engulfed in flame with black smoke rising to the left. The caption is "KTM X-Bow GTX". — Toast is good. Toasty cars … not so much

This was one of the oddest things I’ve seen in racing for quite a few years. Before I go on – driver escaped fine and the only things hurt were the grass, several bits of barrier and the car itself. What happened ? The cameras caught the KTM car on fire with the driver looking for a good spot to abandon it. The flames were pretty much out as the car was stopped and the driver jumped out. However … this is where the weird comes in.

Apparently the car wanted to continue racing and set off again, sans driver, down the steep hill. The flames then reignited … Several more cars came through and avoided the fireball before it took an early left and embedded itself in a roadside barrier. The marshals quickly got the fire under control again and the incident was pretty much done again.

Most races would see this being handled under a full course yellow or safety car but this isn’t really practical or sensible for a nearly 16 mile race track. So what they do instead is to have the area with marshals under a Code 60 protocol with a strict 60km/h speed limit. They’ll have a Slow Zone before with a strict 120km/h limit and waved yellow flags before to make it safe for the track marshals to work and return the track to a safe state for racing. I.e. a small portion of the track under a local speed control with the rest of the track under green flag unrestricted racing.

Yep. Enjoyed the race again this year and it was good to see excellent conditions throughout with occasional rain to add even more interesting times for the teams during the second half.

Post Part 2 time !

One thing about the race is the variation in cars taking place. The fastest cars are GT3 standard, so road going race cars like the Porsche cars, the fast Mercs, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and even the hideous BMW M4. Hopefully the Lexus cars will be back as well, they’ve brought the RC F variant of the IS cars I had before. That’s like … a 2 door coupe version of this car :

Picture. We're looking at two saloon cars with swept back aerodynamic roofs. The one behind is red, the foreground and to the right one is silver grey. — Yesterday’s Shinies

Whereas those had 220bhp and a hybrid electric drive, the RC F loses a couple of doors, goes a bit lower, they swap out the powertrain for a 460hp V8 cylinder 5 litre engine and send it round a racetrack. Bit like what BMW will do with their higher spec M cars. The N24 race also includes cars more like what we’d have though, like Hyundai i30N’s, Toyota Corollas, there were a collection of VW Golfs of various ages, Opel Astras and … the Dacia Logan. The Dacia was being a bit of a running joke because it was taking 50% longer to go round the course than the fast cars but … it kept going and came 98th out of the 135 cars taking part despite losing about 90 minutes that would have kept it competitive with the other 4 cars in its class. The two Corolla Altis were doing better than the GT86 car that was also in their class.

So … post part 2 ? I’m warming up the thinking to what the next car I get will be. It’ll be a Toyota again for a bit because I put myself on a multi year servicing deal (might have oopsed there) but Lexus don’t make a car I want to buy any more so I’ll be moving away from that brand. The UX is their small car now and its SUV doesn’t have much sport and little utility. The ES that I have now is too big, as are the other cars in their range since they put the CT/Prius and the IS in the bin.

To be honest though, I’d rather drop a size and cost level and go for the highest spec in a cheaper range than read the manual, see shiny features (even down to a kick open boot release) that aren’t included in the car I get.

Because I like shiny things and I was sad when nothing happened when I waved my foot under the back of the car as well as other things in the manual that weren’t in my car this time. So one thing that might happen next is go for a top spec Lexus CT from the last year they were sold, instead of having something new.

One thing I find odd though is that manufacturers look as if they’re tuning their ranges … SUVs are taking over (I’m not a fan of SUVs) and car makers are either going small or big. Vauxhall don’t sell the Cavalier any more. The Dacia Logan from N24 isn’t for sale any more. Honda aren’t bringing the Integra to the UK.

It feels like an odd trend. Perhaps they’re looking forwards in time to when petrol and diesel cars are stopped from sales. Or they’re recovering from the Dieselgate scandals. One huge consideration for me though is what car I’ll find myself in at the end of the decade … because unless politics change, it’ll be the last car I get due to electric not being a good option for me. I’d have to charge it on a public road with a cable going across a pavement – that ain’t an option and I bet I’m pretty common with that consideration. If you live in a flat, where are you supposed to charge the car up ?

What am I looking at as the options at the moment ? Considerations are : Speed but economical. Toys. Comfort. Size bracket. Being able to put shopping supplies in the boot. The Lexus UX fails utterly on the boot.

I’m actually looking at the latest Puma, even if it is an SUV style. It would feel weird to be back in a Ford after the horrid 2002 Focus ST … but I wouldn’t be captive to an emergency buy this time. The original Puma sports coupe was a lovely little car.

There’s also the latest Corolla hybrid, Lexus should really be looking at bringing a posh version of this out like they did with the CT / Prius. They did a wonderful job with the CT, delivering a solid ultra high quality conversion of the Prius which had them break through into the UK market which was continued with the faster IS300h that I was seeing in work’s car park a lot. It’s weird that they discontinued both CT and IS.

Audi looked ok until you started adding in the options. Similar with BMW and Merc. Vauxhall were a nope (plug in hybrid isn’t an option). And I wouldn’t touch a French car unless thoroughly convinced otherwise. Mazda are a curious one. I wonder why the MX-5 Miata isn’t at Nurburgring … perhaps they can’t fit the safety stuff into them.

Volvo are off the list because their cars are too big. Will have to expand the research a bit while being careful about what any magazines I get say.

Last bit – we had a work trip last week that allowed a bit more research … I’ve enjoyed having decent satnavs in the Lexii, although the last two have had deficiencies come in. (The last IS was an utter failure at last mile navigation, i.e. the most important bit, the destination point can be difficult to set on the ES satnav). This time, we used Android Auto as the satnav. It actually worked really well, with two phones connected to the car quickly and the signal staying good throughout.

However … the reason we used two phones is that sending the signal continuously through Bluetooth murders the battery and we didn’t have charging facilities. My impression was that Android Auto is very viable as a satnav … but I won’t be using it because it connects to one phone only, so I’d have to think of something to allow my music to be used. I wonder if I’d be able to satnav off the old iPodPhone I have, that might sort out that one.

(My main phone is a Pixel 4. Is good phone. My music comes off an iPhone 5, which is staying on an ancient version of iOS so that it talks to an equally ancient version of iTunes. I can’t update them. Similarly, I can’t allow the iPodPhone to connect to the internet because it’s hilariously exposed on security.)

So there’s another big consideration – getting satnav and music via two different devices.

I think that’s it for now though. Time to have a little diversion looking at Mazda’s site to see what they got :-D.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Thinking about tech …

by Sleepypete

May 22, 2022

10:30 pm

Comments Off on Thinking about tech …

Uncategorized

computer building, geeky

Hello everyone,

After seeing a few people talk in the discords about getting tech upgrades, I thought I’d check out the market again. I’m highly unlikely to get any tech for me but it’s good to keep an eye on the market to see how it’s doing. Especially as we seem to be coming out of a period of extreme scarcity where components like graphics cards just haven’t been available to buy. But first ! Thumbnail pic.

Picture. A black dog and a shaggy brown coated dog are looking up at a grid of cookies. The captions are "We are from Tech Support." "We are here to delete your cookies" — I too, have cookies

I am starting to look into laptops but to be honest, my current one is still above what I needed it to do. The trigger point for the laptop will be when I want something smaller (it’s a chunky 15″ gaming laptop), when the battery fails (it’s lost 25% of its capacity) or when Windows 10 goes out of support and they stop releasing patches for it. Because cyber security is a much bigger thing now, the cyber threat is not something to be taken lightly. Case in point, 2 laptops ago when being infected with a keylogger led to my Eve Online accounts getting hijacked. I think the keylogger came from a 3rd party advert on the Eve site as doing a bit of dual boxing in Eve was literally the first thing I did on that laptop … and it was only Eve that got hacked. (Maybe GoG too but that was years later)

We’ve got until October 2025 by the way for the shuttering of Windows 10 support, so there’s lots of time to go. My desktop may have an easy route to go for a Windows 11 upgrade but the processor in my laptop isn’t supported and I don’t want to bother fighting that, the laptop will need replacing by 2025 anyway. Maybe. A memory just reactivated about me replacing the Macbook Air that I had before due to its keyboard failing … that Macbook Air bore the brunt of my outsides being in terrible condition and it would have been bits of Me going in the keyboard which made it bad. I’m healthier now. I’ll see what happens with my desktop Meltdown.

Picture. A wizard with a grey cloak and a very white beard (Ian McKellen's Gandalf) is sitting behind a laptop computer that's on a desk. The captions are "Please Wait" and "While the wizard installs the software." — Me, yesterday

The one thing I might do with Meltdown is to give it another Solid State Device disk drive. There’s 120GB of space on my current SSD which is about the kind of space something like Star Citizen would want to consume. I looked at that yesterday in a very rapid peek and a conclusion was to believe their strong recommendation to put it on a SSD instead of a conventional hard disc. (An SSD is much faster at loading in the textures that get painted on the structures of the walls). Specs !

Cookie Monster (laptop) has an i5-7300Hq laptop processor, with a 1050Ti graphics chip and 8GB of RAM. I’ve never played games on this gaming laptop :-D. It seemed like a good idea at the time, plus that class of laptop was the only one that allowed easy installation of 2 hard discs, which was a hard requirement at the time because SSDs weren’t big enough or cheap enough and my iTunes library is too big to fit. When I go away, I’m rarely thinking about doing gaming. I’m usually too tired from the day’s activities or I’m watching stream or video and generally chilling out instead.

If I were to replace Cookie Monster tomorrow, I’d get something like this (at the link) from PC Specialist. I’d change the spec there to 16GB of memory (in 2x8GB because that works better) and I’d increase the SSD to 1TB for an overall cost of £675. I’m not convinced increasing the price for a Quad Core chip is worth it for my use case. One thing extra I would acquire is a memory card reader. My digital camera uses a full size SD card and it’s just easier to import the pictures across by using a memory card reader. Oh, I’m a little uncomfortable about the PC Specialist link as I’ve never seen any of their hardware … I picked the one at the link to show because it’s slimline and it has an IPS (In Plane Switching) screen, which gives better and more consistent viewing angles.

Picture. A sad looking dog is on a sofa. The captions are "Someone figured out my password." and "Now I have to rename my dog" — See earlier about stolen game accounts …

What’s Meltdown got ? My desktop Meltdown was built in July 2019 and it has a Ryzen 5 3600 6 core processor, 32 GB of memory and it now has a 3060Ti graphics card. I upgraded its data drive to a 3TB and it runs off a 500GB SSD. Those specs are still pretty good now, which is another reason for not needing to look at upgrades for a while. (Except for maybe a big SSD because I made an error with the 500GB one).

Looking at Overclockers, I’d pick out these bits. I’m going to zoom over the logic here because I’ve covered the what everything is in previous posts …

You start with a processor and then the other bits follow from there. I’d go for an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 for £190, which is an upgraded newer version of what I have. (Worth noting that the faster 5600X is on offerr at the moment for £210, down from £300). The processor goes in an AM4 socket and wants 3200 to 3600 MHz DDR4 memory. The Asus TUF Gaming X570 Plus is a compatible board in stock for £210. It’s a standard sized ATX board so it needs a full sized case, which you’d want anyway for the graphics card. Add in 32GB of DDR4 3200 Kingston memory for £140, that’s what Meltdown has and it’s been a rock solid machine.

With graphics, it looks like there’s a lot more stock now although it’s starting at £500 for a 3060Ti which is still higher than the £470 that I paid for mine last September (I think it was September!). The 3060Ti isn’t in the same league as something like a 3080Ti … but those are £1200 and I’ll never spend that on a graphics card.

Picture. Two kittens are sitting in front of a laptop computer with a third kitten behind. The caption is "Ok, just one more click and the dog is sold!" — That’ll help

What’s next – storage. The mistake I made with Meltdown was to buy the wrong type of drive. The key thing to look for is “PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD”, these are a thin strip of board with memory chips mounted on them. The form factor is called “M2”, however there are slower SATA drives and the faster NVME drives. If price is equal, buy faster. I’ve been very happy with the series of drives I’ve bought from Crucial and they do a 1TB one for £113. (That feels a bit high). The conventional drive that I’d pair with that is the 3TB Blue drive from Western Digital for £75. No need to go fancy, if something needs outright speed in this machine, it goes on the SSD.

Last up is the more mundane stuff – it’s wise to go for a named brand assured power supply because they do break … and when they fail you want them to fail in a way that doesn’t damage anything else. I’ve been happy with power supplies from Corsair and they have a 750W one for £92. That feels high too. It’s also wise to over spec the power supply, so it isn’t being strained and therefore lasts longer.

That’s a theme in the PCs I build, I don’t overclock any more and I run them within their capabilities. I like them to last a long time, like the 8 years that the i5-2500k based Pumpkin lasted. (And it could have run longer too). Everything needs to go in a box, this is one where I’d go to Currys and inspect a couple before picking one up. Things I’m looking for include access, general size and quality of build. I wouldn’t get another Bitfenix case again, it was awkward to put the power supply in due to a small dint distortion. (OCUK have a bunch of suitable looking cases for £35). I don’t think it’s worth requiring the case to have drive bays to put CD/DVD/Bluray drives in now, as it’s very simple and viable to run these drives off USB now and the need for these drives is much less now due to streaming services.

Last bit – it’s advisable to get an uprated cooler for the processor as well, although the AMD chip has an acceptable one included. Around £60 is about right for what I’d get. You’re looking for a big lump of a cooler with a 120mm or 140mm fan, the bigger the better. Fans make more noise when they’re spinning faster and the big fans can run much slower for the same effect. The Coolermaster that went in Meltdown is essentially silent … but I learned with this one that it’s well worth seeing if you can find the instructions first. It was a lot more Interesting Times to install than was desirable, due to needing to unclip and clip leads on it in extremely limited space.

So that’s all the bits ! How much is all that ?

Picture. Two cats are on a blanket looking at each other. The captions are "Oh, No." "Too expensive" — And there’s the rub

All those bits come out at £1415 and that’s before you add in the Windows license, monitor and keyboard and mouse.

That’s the real reason for holding off … gradual inflation in prices and a hefty entry price for graphics cards have pushed that price up to where it’s something you want to do like the 8 years that Pumpkin gave me instead of the older days where technology would demand an upgrade every 3. Hopefully the prices will settle down again and reduce to more affordable levels. For the moment though, we’re being rather priced out of the market.

I’ll be ok with Meltdown for a good few more years yet. The lesson from this little excursion into the price sites is that it would be far more than I’d want to pay for something that would be pretty much the same level as what I have now.

So I’ll close with – getting shiny new things is great but … ask if you need to spend the money on that, or whether it can go to other things instead. (Like an RC car!)

See you all next time, be well.

Mining for bugs, chaotically

by Sleepypete

May 16, 2022

9:36 pm

Comments Off on Mining for bugs, chaotically

Uncategorized

cars, games, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I need to hit that “Add post” button more often ! Things are in my head that aren’t getting chance to escape. First though, one of my more weird thumbnail pics …

Picture. There is a blue implement with handles at the top and some black fittings between. There are a pair of arms below a hinge in the centre. The arms curl round to a couple of yellow pads facing each other. (It's a clamp) Two green dragons with flying goggles are on either side of the handles. — Get it good and tight boys

I got that a few weeks ago but hadn’t applied it to its given purpose since acquiring it. What’s it for ? My flightstick and throttle are a bit chunky … Let’s see :

Picture. We're looking at my red fluffy dwagon sitting on a very chunky joystick. The stick itself is about 8 inches tall, slightly taller than the dragon. It is covered in switches, most of which have lights. — Dwagon at 9 o’clock !

If you pull back on that, you’re giving it a fair bit of leverage. I had the joystick and throttle on a wooden (chopping!) board to extend the reach on my desk so that I could push the throttle all the way forwards without it clashing on the upper deck of my desk. Trouble was, pulling back on the stick put in all that leverage which made the board come with the stick. The clamp stops that.

Which means …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the back of a spaceship with several engines firing away. The paint scheme is dark purple at the back, light blue at the front. We're in the midst of a dimly lit rock field and above the ship and to the left, we see a light orange yellow planet which the ring system is orbiting. — Awaiting an unsuspecting asteroid

Yep. Been back in Elite Dangerous again, with a new ship. This one is another tribute ship, the Dances with Snowmen. The callsign there is -K1R1-, for 2dKiri, who is a lovely Austrian lady who streams games in the afternoon. A happy soul who will make you feel better as she’s playing through the games. And I managed to catch up with one of the names on my ever expanding names list there with a miner. The Dancer has just been molesting rock type rocks so far but I think I’ll take it into ice belts at some point to do core mining. That’s where you blow up ice balls to get the very precious Void Opals inside.

It was good being back in … although Elite is a hard game to love at the moment. There are a few too many bugs in the game right now that just aren’t being fixed. So on Saturday, the bugs list started at not being able to see the good bits of the belt (didn’t matter), through to the market bug and topping off with my first trip through hyperspace from the carrier bridge ending up with :

Screenshot. We're looking at a Crash Reporting dialogue window with a browser window hiding behind it. — Yep. It’s the crash reporting tool

Yep. Crash to desktop. Everything was ok when I logged back in again and I got enough mining done to pay for the new ship and a selection of new services that went to the carrier. That is, before another bug stopped me checking out any rocks for the remainder of that session. (You use a prospector to see what’s in the rock and then mine the best ones – the prospector bugged out).

But yeah. First time back in for a while, I enjoyed chilling out blasting at the rocks for a while.

Keep ‘er warm, back soon

Today’s jump through hyperspace actually worked ok as well. Ok so … explanation time – Elite does its travel between stars using hyperspace. The main ships you fly typically make jumps of 20 light years or so, although you can shove that up to 75 or more light years with special stripped down fits. But 20 light years is good for a fully laden trading ship. It takes them about 50 seconds to go from star to star. (4th wall explanation – it’s taking that time to load in the info for the system you’re jumping to). The fleet carriers can jump 500 light years at a time … but it’s a special system that takes 15 minutes from command to execution and you need to specially mine the fuel.

Yep. Good being back in, there are a few too many bugs still in the game though that should have been eliminated by now.

Going from one Frontier developed game and a Frontier published game, you can tell the difference with the new Chaos Gate game. I’ve enjoyed 6 hours of that so far, although I think I’m going to restart a bit easier with lessons from the first play through. Oh, the developers have been listening to the player base and actively adjusting the game to the feedback since launch. What’s Chaos Gate ? I think it’s a remake but I didn’t play the original so I have no knowledge there.

It’s been described as an XCom game with Space Marines. You have your 4 high powered super human marines, being sent into missions against followers of Nurgle. That’s the Chaos God for plagues. Nurgle is looking to eat a sector with a plague and your people are recruited by an Inquisitor lady to stop it. Easy to play, really tough to win.

Last thought before today’s closing picture … I mentioned small cars last time. Not got one of those yet although this vintage Escort Mk II rally car is very promising. (Modelsport link) (Tamiya Link).

Nah. This time it’s big cars. I’ll need to make a Decision there in the somewhat near future. What’s next ? Lexus aren’t selling a car I want any more, plus I’ve kinda fallen out of love with their offerings due to the quirkiness and other issues. When the carpocalypse comes around 2030 and petrol cars stop getting made (I honestly don’t think this will happen then), I’ll need to find a petrol car to keep around. That is, unless I move to a place that’s compatible with electric charging or electric car charging becomes actually convenient.

What’s the thinking at the moment ? There are 3 cars on the radar … first is the Ford Puma hybrid. Yep, a return to the cars I used to own quite a bit. Calling the SUV a Puma is a bit of an abomination to this previous owner of the old Puma sports car but it feels like this one is a good balanced car worth checking out.

Second up is the Toyota Corolla 2.0 hybrid. It’s back to a smaller car (the ES300h is way too big) with a good balance between going quick, having space and being frugal. The last one would be going backwards a bit … the blue 2011 Lexus CT I had is quite probably the best car I’ve owned. The build quality was stunningly good, it had bundles of space inside, it just wasn’t as fast as I’d have liked. But if you just go for chilled out motoring, the CT was an incredible car for that. And going used (they stopped importing them to UK a few years ago), you could get a top of the range version with more toys than mine had for an acceptable cost. (Linky)

Time to close up, one more Elite picture … Found this guy on the carrier.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a spaceship, looking at a couch against the wall. 2 people are sitting on the couch, on the right is a fella in a green and grey uniform suit. One the left, is a fella in a blue uniform. He is asleep. There is also a potted plant to the left. — Bosun ! Prepare the airlock

Yep. Totally going out the airlock. Crime – drooling on the upholstery. Sleeping on board is indeed, permitted. We have cabins. Sleeping in front of the command deck door … No. Drooling on the upholstery, you know what’s coming …

😀

Stay safe, be well, don’t drool on upholstery that isn’t yours.

May the Fourth Cup be Earl Gray Hot

by Sleepypete

May 4, 2022

10:54 pm

Comments Off on May the Fourth Cup be Earl Gray Hot

Uncategorized

games, geeky, RC car

Hello everyone,

Oops, I blinked and another fortnight went by since the last post. What’s been happening ?

Picture. It's a meme picture of two Ewoks (about 3 foot tall bipedal bears) wearing hoods and a tie. One is holding an open book, the other a picture of a golden bipedal robot. The captions are "Excuse me sir ...." and "Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Saviour C3PO ??" — Not now Goldenrod

No remote control car yet, although I found a different site that seems cheaper, has a wider choice and also gives very clear advice on what’s needed to have a complete thing at the end of it. What’s stopping me ? Firstly, no idea where to put it, I need to rouse myself from eternal tiredness and do a number of jobs around here, not least of which is clearing out some of the clutter.

Oh and also, none of the normal car type models really speaks to me in a “I connect with that model” kind of way. I’m not that interested in the Porsche, Ford GT and Merc models ? Maybe the Toyota Supra, maybe the Miata / MX-5. Here’s a car I was close to going for back in the day :

Picture. A mostly white coupe car with flashes of red and grey paint. It has an aggressive body kit with widened wheels and spoiler wings front and back. — Yep. It’s a Capri

When I was looking to move on from the Astra Mk1 I had, the Ford Capri was one of the cars on the radar. It never happened, partly due to the possibility of finding one. Also because … the Capri was a little bit rubbish and things worked out to put me in the rather spicy and much superior Belmont SRi instead. There’s another bit of Stuff’s Gone Weird here too. I just looked at Autotrader to see what Capri’s are going for now, here’s a link to the cheapest. Yep. That’s a 2 litre Ford Capri going for £12,000. It’s not even one of the good ones ! It does look good though. Crazy things have happened to the classic car market now, there’s been hefty increases in prices happening. Perhaps it’s because all the not so good ones have rusted away and only the excellent and looked after ones are left.

Remote control cars ? Here’s a link to the Zakspeed Capri model page, the model from the picture. That’s Modelsport’s pages and I do like that they give the Bundle things as an option for getting the bits. Without clicking, it would be £222 for car, radio gear, batteries and charger. Not bad and probably a good kit for a learner person.

Time seems to be going whooshing by at the moment doesn’t it ? Perhaps it’s because what we do isn’t being broken up as much as it used to be due to the working from home pattern. Or it might be a much better state at work because what I know is being properly utilised instead of being shunted aside and pretty much ignored. That got grating after a while and it’s been good to have the old knowledge reactivating again. It’s kinda like doors in my mind reopening.

Gaming has been happening too, which might be a reason why the time is whooshing by. The Motorsport Manager campaign was completed tonight. It’s been an epic run going over I think 35 seasons and finishing in game year 2049. The target was to win the championships in all 3 of its single seater, GT and endurance racing. It’s a cracking game, it’s certainly kept me interested and engaged for (uhoh) 1795 gameplay hours since picking it up pretty much on release in November 2016.

There’s another motor racing manager game coming, this time by Frontier. I have my doubts over this one. The genre is horrendously difficult to make a good game for. I’ve previously played Grand Prix Manager 2, GP World and F1 Manager … and bounced off them because they were either annoying (GPM2) or fatally bugged. I can’t even remember what was wrong with the original F1 Manager. One issue with GP World is that campaigns could only last a couple of seasons before inflation made it impossible to run a team, plus it had fatal bugs. Hopefully the Frontier one is a good game, they certainly need to reverse their fortunes after the disasters of Elite Odyssey (still bugged) and Lemnis Gate (meh and ignored). Chaos Gate is looking good on stream, although that’s published by Frontier, not developed by Frontier.

Other gaming ? I just installed Mass Effect again … This is the Remastered version, so it’ll have all sorts of graphical updates, including better lighting so you can see their world better. That’ll be good to play again, although I suspect I may drift away from it during Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect games tell a terrific story and there’s a wonderful fresh new world to explore during the first two games but … I do like a happy ending and ME3 is anything but that. It’s one reason why I’ll enjoy reading The Expanse novels again, they pulled off an excellent ending there.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Simulator 2. We're looking at our truck on a 2 lane motorway. The camera is looking from behind and from the right. The truck is green and towing a flatbed that has an orange tracked digger on it. There are tall wind turbines to the left and right of the road which curves gently to the left. In the distance there are blue skies and pretty clouds. — Keep on truckin’

I’m still playing the Truck Game, although the addiction isn’t quite as strong as it was. It’s a good chilled out game when you’re on your own on the road, going from place to place and delivering varied things. Especially with a graphical mod or two installed like improved headlights so you can see more than a little postage stamp of screen when it gets dark. I looked at trying modding to put in a custom paint job, that needs a bit more brain cell activity than I was willing to give though. I’ll attack it again at some point.

Other stuff :

Netflix is gone now. I just wasn’t using the subscription and their output isn’t that interesting any more. It’s part annoyance at them setting up good series like The Expanse and Cowboy Bebop and then letting them go. At least The Expanse got rescued by Prime (need to watch s6) but it’s sad that Bebop was ended early. It was its own story inspired by the anime and was building in a rather promising fashion. It’s a shame Faye wasn’t in more, I liked the live action character more than the anime version and she didn’t really get enough episodes to have fun in.

There’s a few too many streaming services out there now. I haven’t watched any of the new Star Wars stuff, or the various Marvel series. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything there. So that’s Netflix, Disney, Apple and I dunno how many more. It’s a lot … The fear of missing out is quite active. Oh ! Paramount+ coming soon here for Star Trek. I’d very much like to watch Strange New Worlds, the Enterprise crew that was in Discovery season 2 was excellent, especially Anson Mount being a very charismatic and commanding Captain Pike.

But I’m not wanting to sign up to a I dunno how much a month service just to watch one series.

Oh ! Getting late. Time to get the Tashnarr Chaos Gate stream centre stage again and I left A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy at a rather delicate cliff hanger yesterday.

Be well everyone !