July, 2022 - Sleepypete's Pillow

Relax, chill, maybe laptop, BOOK

July 31, 2022

10:09 pm

Comments Off on Relax, chill, maybe laptop, BOOK

Hello everyone,

Feels like the planet has calmed down a bit since the last post, it no longer wants to roast us alive. Perhaps it wants to drown us instead … I’ve been enjoying watching the cricket while it’s been on. There’s been series of England vs India and both the ladies and the men have been playing in England vs South Africa games. And while the ladies dominated their games, it was a bit more balanced in the mens games.

I do like it when you’re watching something sporty and have no idea what the result is going to be, right up to near the end of the game. That’s a more interesting type of game to watch and follow. The cricket has definitely been like that lately, although it’s been a bit rain affected.

Picture. We can see a tiny dragon perched on a normal finger. The dragon looks very overheated. Caption "Please take great care out in the hills and mountains of Wales today. The heatwave is prematurely hatching the eggs of the Welsh dragon (Y Ddraig Goch). If you come across a baby dragon just leave it be. Do not take it home! Dragons do not make good pets, they very quickly get too hot to handle." — Take care of your dragons

It did get pretty toasty. The fan in my room was reading 32 degrees C at one point, it’s down to 26 C again now. When I put my graphics card in the machine in I think September last year, it was idling at 46 C. That reached 56 C at one point … (54 now but I have a twitch stream running which means it’s not quite idle).

Curiously though, it felt hotter when I was building Meltdown, my desktop PC. That might have been down to me being more physically active when putting that together. And one way I have of counteracting heat is by reducing physical activity, especially since the probable covid of Mar/Apr 2020 where the slightest bit of extra physical activity was making my own temperature go into meltdown. That’s been with me for quite a long while since as well. Maybe I’m just not great at regulating my temperature now.

Talking of technology … I thought for a bit today that I might have to retire my laptop. It’s 4 years old and still does what I want it to. It’s actually capable of more as it’s a gaming laptop. I haven’t actually played any games on it, which feels a bit wasteful. Ok, so reasons for retiring it :

Picture. We're looking at a stone statue scene. A woman is sitting on a throne, looking left towards a small lady holding up a tablet. It looks suspiciously like an open laptop computer. — What’s that ? The Amazons will deliver ?

Ok, it’s only from 2018, so it isn’t due to it being steam driven. It’s actually more than capable of handling what I want from it, which is pretty much just web browsing, stream watching and hosting the iTunes. It can also easily link into my camera (via the SD card reader) and my phone via Bluetooth. Although a replacement could be able to do that too.

So what’s wrong with it ? I’ll do what might be the clincher last.

It’s heavy, it’s big, the screen isn’t what I wanted because the visual quality isn’t great when you’re not looking straight at the screen. The sound is awful. On a gaming laptop too. It’s just too quiet. But then again, it’s competing against my desktop (which I think is cheating with volume levelling) and the hifi or telly.

But the clincher might be that a tenacious phishing trojan might have crept in. It was detected when I turned on the laptop yesterday, supposedly dealt with … and detected again today. I’ve done an offline Defender scan and another full machine scan but if it’s popping up again then I think I’ll have to retire the laptop. Sounds drastic that doesn’t it …

The laptop is also the machine I used for my online banking and the answer to the “how did it get in ?” may be a coincidence but the detections started on the reboot after I paid off the credit card this month …. and I don’t web browse on that laptop much now, I usually do that on the desktop. (Could have been American Truck Sim related).

It needs to be a safe laptop. We’ll see what happens when I fire it up tomorrow. One thing that will mean is copying the iTunes library over again. That’s reached 19,000 tracks now … I won’t copy it all over, there are a few game soundtracks on there which don’t really have much going for them, they’re a bit generic, boring and not special. There’s also some albums in there by people like one E.C. person who stole I Shot The Sheriff amongst other bits of music crime. He’s a racist piece of trash and I don’t think I want his greatest hits album in my library any more. So I’ll trim down some stuff like that … and other albums that are a bit boring.

So what would it be ?

Bit beefier than my last Apple product

I’ve actually used one of those … A very good friend from when I lived in Northern Ireland had one. It was a good machine too, although that’s a long time ago. I won’t get an Apple laptop again, they have curious ideas about who gets to decide what people do with their machines. Me, I believe that I own the machine and the hardware and I should be able to do what I want to it. Apple believe otherwise, so they do things like disable the ability to use a 3rd party wifi USB stick, which I was using because the wifi in the laptop was having trouble. I’m also running iTunes 10.7 because it has the iTunes DJ feature which was removed in later versions of iTunes. I’ve spoken about that before – updating iTunes and losing that feature isn’t an option. And …

Ok. We’re ranting. But Tashnarr does that so much better. (Twitch clip link)

Probably use iTunes 10.7 still, which links to my iPhone 5, which can’t be upgraded past iOS 6 because then it won’t talk to iTunes, which means the iPhone 5 isn’t allowed to connect to the internet any more. Because Apple gotta Apple. I would be rather interested in knowing about music playing applications that have an iTunes DJ type facility. It’s an automatic playlist, where you can add songs and have them in a particular order and then the software will randomly pick more songs to add in if there are less than a certain amount in the queue. So I’ll queue up an album and some more songs and then shuffle in what the software suggests.

Before I move on from it, if I get a laptop it’ll come from PCSpecialist and I’ll go back to a thinner and lighter 14″ model with 16GB of memory and either a 1TB or 2TB SSD. Big SSDs are viable now, whereas they weren’t when I bought Cookie Monster (current laptop).

A poster picture. We're looking at a sleeping cat, curled in a ball with front paws gripping tail. The caption is "Relax it's what cats do best" — Cat gotta cat

I’m off work this week, I was getting the “take a break or be made to” messages from inside and this week was a good opportunity to get away. What’s the plan ? I need to get out the house a little bit, my health is going to need me being more active. And I need to counter an increasing reclusiveness tendency. We’ll see there. Cinema is likely, as is another wander around Cardiff.

As well as lots of music listening, there’s going to be games and books …

Games is likely to see me in the truck a fair bit. I was back in Euro Truck Sim 2 for the first time in a month today after getting fed up with the narrow roads. American Truck Sim has much bigger trucks and loads on much bigger roads. It’s curious seeing the differences between the two games. The Motorsport Manager campaign has continued, I’m about to go back into the top tier with my 4th team in a campaign that’s reached the year 2060.

Last thing – book ! Since seeing a “reading streak” thing appear in the iPad Kindle since allowing that to update, I’ve been getting a little or a lot of reading in every day. And I’ve been really enjoying that. The Worst of All Possible Worlds had a very satisfying conclusion to that trilogy and I’m intrigued by where John Scalzi is going with The Human Division, which is book 5 (really book 4) in the Old Man’s War series. He’s setting up an interesting universe situation where things may not go well for the humans and I’m curious as to where he’s going to go with it.

I’m also looking forwards to heading into Head Case, book two of the Starship for Sale series.

Reading is fun. Would recommend.

Picture. A person sitting in a chair, reading a book. The caption is "I found a 100 per cent foolproof way to prevent sunburn. It's called "Stay inside and read a book." Subtitle on there is "someecards" user card. — Seems legit

And it’s good for avoiding sunburn too. Stay safe everyone, be well.

May resemble puddle

by Sleepypete

July 17, 2022

9:01 pm

Comments Off on May resemble puddle

Uncategorized

climate, games, geeky

Hello everyone,

We have a heatwave on …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our spaceship is parked on a planet, to the right of shot. We're pointing towards an orange sun that is dominating the horizon. We can only see half of it, stretching across three quarters of the picture. — Fetch the sunburn lotion !

It’s been a while since I did spaceships actually ! One of my strategies for not getting too hot currently involves adding as little heat as I can to the situation :-D. And as Elite Odyssey maxes out the graphics card, I haven’t been in that game for a while. Computer do work, computer make heat. But that’s ok because there’s other games that are still really enjoyable but don’t need the computer to do as much work.

Like Motorsport Manager, it’s now reached the mid 2050s in my campaign and I’m about to move up to the next higher up league. I still play this one so much because it gives good racing to watch and it’s still a challenge to get the win in there, although I do know a lot of the tricks and ways to make strategies work. (A lot of that is math).

American Truck Simulator has been good as well.

Game screenshot. American Truck Simulator. Our mostly black truck is on a road in the foreground, driving to left of shot. Behind, is a sandy scene sparsely populated with light grasses. Mountains are in the distance but a bit closer, there are a series of radio telescope dishes pointing upwards. — Hunting for signals

The Truck Games are nicely chilled out. I think one reason I like them is that I can set a route up through the World of Trucks system (or the non online options) and just go. And that’s about the limit of the thought required. I can give Brain a rest while being in the game. Other games need a bit too much Brain than I’m willing to give in order to learn them, or the gameplay isn’t restful.

I might actually be taking advantage of the heat … got the freezer doing a defrost at the moment. It’s actually been a good opportunity for that, I’ve only had to chip away the ice a couple of times in the last month to break my ice cubes free.

I know, being domestic. Out of character.

Not looking forward to tomorrow, we’re expecting temperatures around 37 degrees C, in UK houses that aren’t set up to handle that kind of temperature. I’ll have my fans going all day … I may actually do an out of the house run tomorrow evening … The car got the air con and so will the cinema for a potential hiding in an air con building for a while.

Going into the office isn’t viable, it’s not going to be particularly habitable in there at the moment. (Air recirculation, no cooking and buildings that catch the heat). I do need to be going back into the office more though, being static at home isn’t doing me much good.

What else has been going on ? Lots of cricket on the telly, with series ongoing involving the England ladies and England men teams. It’s been good to watch, especially with newcomers like Issy Wong coming through to the senior side. She’s raw and has a lot of potential with the bowling. Sophia Dunkley is already regularly turning that potential into match winning performances. It’s good to see. Not sure if I’m seeing similar potential come through to the men’s side but we’ll see there.

Books have been happening too. Still in the middle of Helsreach, but I did complete Starship for Sale by M.R. Forbes. That one’s well worth a look. It’s worth mentioning that you can dip in and out of this one quickly due to the chapters being really short … And it rattles along at a merry pace with our two boys Matt and Ben being whisked along on a wild ride as (spoilers …). It saves up some surprises right up to the end too. Worth a peek, not just for Matt and Ben, and I’m curious to see how the story unfolds during the next books.

I’m currently in The Worst of All Possible Worlds, third in the series by Alex White where we have magic and technology intermixed in a sci fi space universe. It’s good and I’m very curious as to how he wraps up this trilogy. It’s been pretty blood thirsty (and caution warning – creative with that too, there’s lots of description of gore).

Right – I’d better sign off and fetch something cold again … Tashnarr stream is on (which is also convenient because it takes very few cpu cycles to show a stream, therefore less heat!) and I’m feeling like diving into book again.

Stay safe everyone, hopefully find some chilliness amongst the heat.

Hello it’s toasty

by Sleepypete

July 9, 2022

11:07 pm

Comments Off on Hello it’s toasty

Uncategorized

books, games, geeky

Hello again,

Me again – I think I’ve needed a bit of a rest from writing things. Could be because I’m diving more into the work stuff again, where I put the energy into what I’m doing in working hours and feel more like chilling out with reading or games in the evening with that resulting in me not really wanting to write stuff. But it’s more like having trouble hitting the Add New Post button despite having things to talk about.

Picture. An orange dog is lying down in a big collection of ice cubes. The caption is "It's too bloody hot today" — Yes I know. I have summoned the spelling bees

It has gone very warm here … I last did spaceships on the 12th of June and there’s no way I’ll go back until things cool down a bit. Elite pushes the graphics card really hard (because it’s an unoptimised mess) and that turns into heat going into the room. So no space ship for a bit. That said though … it’s still pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at an icy white planet marred only by the tyre tracks of our buggy. Our pilot is standing on a rock to the bottom left. Our buggy is parked behind, with 6 red lit wheels. A spaceship is parked beyond. The sky is a lovely pink on the left transitioning to purple on the right. — Preparing to scout

This is the latest ship in the fleet, the Searching for Chamomile. The callsign is T-CK13 after the lovely Teacakes 13 (Twitch link) who battles various health issues (don’t we all !) and time availability (same again – day job!) to bring us no commentary gameplay streams of No Mans Sky. That’s another space game which I should have a look at but I keep bouncing off it for some reason.

Anyway, I thought I’d make my latest objective be one of exploring planets again and checking out the wildlife. All my scout ships (well, most of them 😀 ) are named Searching For … things and this time Chamomile came up as a hardy plant. Haven’t done much in that quest yet, I’ll wait for things to cool down a bit.

One thing spaceship related that I have been enjoying is watching Psyche’s streams. She’s a bubbly bundle of chaos from Northern Ireland who likes streaming the space games and there’s also been lots of Rimworld chaos too. Well worth checking out. Here’s the old twitch linky thing. I haven’t been watching long at all but with me rearranging who some of my Twitch subscriptions go to, she’ll be getting one of the ones that have been cancelled.

So – Twitch subs … what’s that mean ? The benefits include little emote pictures that you can use across Twitch chats. Plus it gives a bit of money to the streamer which means they can continue entertaining us on the screen instead of having to … quit that and get an actual job in order to afford rent, food and electricity and the other things.

Twitch is feeling like a rough place for streamers. The organisation takes way too high a cut of the money that viewers send in, plus because it’s live, you pretty much have to choose one (or maybe two) only to watch at once. So at the moment, it’s having fun watching Tashnarr playing Subnautica. She’s doing hard core runs where if you die, it’s new save time. Not dead yet tonight but there’s been a couple of close calls. Tash is always great fun to watch and put daftness into chat with.

Oh and sometimes the Twitch people will play a game you’re interested in and give you an idea of whether you’d want to buy it. Or they play games like No Mans Sky where you enjoy other people playing more than you enjoy the game itself.

Game screenshot. American Truck Simulator. We're looking at a roadway on a small bridge. In the distance we can see a shallow waterfall. Our green truck is on the right. — Water … falling

I’ve been enjoying switching from the European roads over to American Truck Simulator with map packs appearing courtesy of the Steam sale that’s just finished. It’s curious seeing the differences between the two games. Both ATS and European Truck Sim 2 use the same underlying engine, the trucks and roads are different. American trucks have the long noses, European trucks are more of a slab front with the engine underneath. It feels like the loads are heavier in the US trucks, although that could be what the World of Trucks service offers. The US roads are definitely more forgiving than the occasionally very tight European roads. But the European maps have more features in them and things to look at.

Whereas I was feeling frustrated in the Euro game, I’ve been enjoying playing with the American trucks.

Oh ! Did I get anything in the Steam sale ? I bought Fermi Paradox and Disco Elysium plus soundtracks for Skyrim, Rimworld and the two games above. Fermi Paradox is a game about development of alien civilisations, Disco Elysium is a role playing adventure game where you’re a cop who’s lost his memory and he has to investigate a rather curious murder. But not all is as it seems.

I’d better wrap up soon so I can dive into book … Reading has been happening, much reading. Completed books from the last few weeks are :

Dune – think I mentioned that. I’m not sure if I’ll even go into Dune Messiah to be honest.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear was an interesting one. Perhaps a bit too much in the psychology side but I was kept in there by a highly intriguing unfolding mystery.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi was book 3 in his Old Man’s War series. This is in a developing universe of his where humanity goes to the stars, to find that they’re pretty crowded with alien races. Most of whom don’t like humans much, mostly due to how humans treat them. Nothing new there, good commentary :-D. I’ll be curious to see how this moves on in Book 5 (book 4 is an alternate perspective retelling of book 3). J.Scalzi is a good author to keep coming back to.

Current books are Starship for Sale by M.R.Forbes. It’s heavy on the world building with it being the first book in a series but that’s ok. It’s good world building. Our two friends start out going to a Virtual Reality games place and before they know it, they’re being hustled into buying an odd starship with a very curious occupant. I’m enjoying it, will come back for more in the series. Oh and “books” is Helsreach from the 40k universe. I have a 30+ day reading streak going in Kindle at the moment and Helsreach is a paper back. So I’m in two books to keep that Kindle streak.

Nearly went to see cinema things yesterday, chose chilling out instead. It’s been a while …

Picture. A hopefully looking dog is looking up directly at the camera. The captions are "I see you haz a hot dog ..." and "I too like hot dogs" — Hmmm. Hot dogs

I like hot dogs, good cinema munchie. Oh, another reason I didn’t go is because Everything Everywhere has pushed out and while the latest Thor and Top Gun sequel have potential, wasn’t feeling it yesterday. Maybe next Friday. I was feeling a bit blasted yesterday after I closed up the work laptop.

Work’s been going well after I switched late last year. It was good catching up with one of the people from the old team too when being in the office on Wednesday this week. But if you know what I mean by Spoons, I throw all my spoons at the work stuff at the moment and it doesn’t leave that many over for home stuff. That’s one reason why I like the Truck Games, they don’t need much real thought while giving a definite sense of Progress happening.

Motorsport Manager is another I’m continuing to enjoy, after almost 1900 hours now. But that one needs a bit more thought.

Time to devote some of those thoughts to enjoying Tashnarr (still not dead yet) and Starship for Sale.

Be well everyone ! Stay Safe. Try not to let what’s happening in the world (it crazy innit) get you down.