Year: 2022

Carrier, Book, Printer, Meme

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March 6, 2022

9:55 pm

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Has it been a week again since last time ? Time’s flying by at the moment isn’t it …

I’ve actually been out amongst people, although it was just a run into the centre of Bristol after a necessary trip to do some recycling. (Too many plastic bottles) A Lego McLaren nearly came back with me … although at £160, it feels a bit pricey for me. That’s one thing about watching the build videos, you get an impression of what’s in the box before laying out the money. It has some smart bits in there for the suspension but … I think it’s a hype kit more than a wow kit to be honest. I also had my eye on the Globe but at £175, that’s a bit rich for me too.

Thumbnail for post ?

Picture. We see three pocket dragons in a line. On the left, he's sniffing the air. The centre one has a bib with "Feed me" written on it. The one on the right has a slice of pepperoni pizza almost as tall as he is. The caption on top is "The three types of dwagon". From left to right at the base it's "Smells Pizza" "Wants Pizza" and "Has Pizza".
Someone mention pizza ?

There’s been a 3 types of Pokemon meme going round at the moment which people have been borrowing and adopting and that creativity part of my brain sparked into making the picture above. It’s felt good that those creativity ideas have been coming back in and I’ve mostly had the physical stuff to make them happen. 2 things there :

I think my creativity was being heavily damped down by the Work Stuff that was going on last year. It was a rough year, despite getting stuff done. Or perhaps we were getting stuff done despite the new guy who came in. That’s in the past now though, the new role has been building into something that should also be getting Stuff done while being enjoyable. But I won’t talk about that too much here.

I’ve been having physical issues again … It’s part shoulder, part arm plus some digestion issues in there as well. Nom trouble aside, the physical issues have been limiting game time at the same time as that more active creativity side wants to do gaming. I think I’m finding somewhat of a balance with it and using a controller for driving games will help. I managed to do a fair bit of Elite flying again since Thursday … Let’s see :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at two starships, with the lower segment of a brown moon above. The closest ship is all curves and purple at the back fading to white at the front, with two engines coming out of the sides of the centre fuselage. She's perhaps a third of the screen wide. Behind her is a much larger ship in a mixed livery of blue and white. There is a flat section near the front. This ship is perhaps 80% of the picture width.
Behold the Herald

Thanks to lucrative trading opportunities in Elite, I had just about enough to cover the acquisition of one of the big Fleet Carriers. These aren’t ships you fly about in direct control like the rest of the ships, they’re more like small mobile starbases. The flat section disappearing off to the right has the landing bays. It has 8 big enough to accept the big Tiamat’s Chariot, 4 medium sized and 4 small. One of the opportunities with these ships is to make it far quicker to haul the commodities needed for the community goals. So instead of making 5-6 jumps to go from place to place (maybe 30 minutes round trip), I could park it near a station and just have about 5 minutes round trip instead if that. They’re a pretty powerful tool but they cost 5billion credits to buy and have a steady upkeep.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The off-brown moon dominates the upper part of the picture, with the ribbon of the Milky Way stretched across the lower half. Our ship is pointed away from camera, engines flaring purple as she heads towards the Herald floating in the distance with all of the rectangular landing pads illuminated.
Tiamat arriving

That’s Tiamat’s Chariot heading into the Herald of Bakunawa (that’s the name of the carrier). Where did the name come from ? I figured it had to be something suitably epic and I wanted the dragon theme to continue as well, so I went to a name list for mythical dragons. The name Bakunawa stood out (wiki link). Bakunawa is a Philippine Dragon God, believed to be responsible for eclipses. I.e. a dragon god that eats the Moon. Perfect. And Herald seemed right because the fleet carriers mostly spend their time hovering in orbit around moons.

A good few sessions in Elite over the past few days. It has massive flaws and I keep spotting more (like terrain errors around an engineer base and shadow errors) but it’s been good to have there as a chill out space trucking game. It does help that Tiamat’s Chariot is an after end game level ship that combines massive cargo capacity with defences and armament that can take on nearly all comers. (I run if a fighter gets involved).

Picture. It's a print out of my reading dwagon. He's sitting on his bottom pointed towards the right of shot. His tail is up in the air, the wings are taut as if he's enwrapped in the book that he's holding. There is also a pair of glasses perched in front of his eyes. The dwagon is mostly green, however there are regular vertical bands of yellow throughout.
Ermm …

When you see something like that coming out of an inkjet printer, it’s usually followed by an “oh bugger” because it’s the main sign that you haven’t been using it enough, the jets have clogged up and that’s usually terminal for the printer. What makes it worse is if the built in cleaning processes kick out a test page which has pretty much nothing on it. However …

Picture. We have a good quality version of the one above (with the reading dragon). There is a book on the right by David Weber titled "The Armageddon inheritance" and above the book, there is a tan leather bookmark with a line picture of a dragon burned into it.
I think he’s eyeing up that book

Ahhh the relief that I hadn’t killed a printer that’s just 6 months old :-D. The book on the right is the next book. It’s the second of three in the Dahak sequence, which starts with Mutineer’s Moon where Colin the astronaut finding himself in the middle of a 51,000 year mutiny where the mutineers have been exiled to Earth from a starship that’s actually Earth’s Moon. Oh and the ship has become sentient over that time as well.

Armageddon Inheritance starts up straight after Mutineer’s Moon and covers the other threat … There’s an apocalyptic sized battle fleet that circles the galaxy wiping out all intelligent life in its path and it’s almost back to Earth. And so Colin, Dahak the Moonship and the collective resources of Earth have to try and survive in the face of that threat. There’s some epic stuff in the book, like the aliens getting so fed up with how resilient Earth’s defenders are that they essentially give up on conquest and just throw one of Jupiter’s Moons at the planet.

I thought it was good enough for a re-read. That Moon thing was a big a OMGWOW book moment as the Project Orion starship reveal in another book. That’s not the lander type ship which is the current Orion starship. It’s the cruiser propelled by nuclear bombs. Super cool concept, achievable (maybe) with current technology, incredibly nuts. Here’s the wiki page. Hell of a concept.

Anything else ? I enjoyed a little more Forza. I have a Pikachu Lexus in that game now and I was enjoying the dirt racing far more than I thought I would. I was even getting smooth and fast race driving going on my flawed (50% travel gives 100% output) controller.

Time for book now though. I try not to game too late in the evening nowadays … although Skyrim mod testing happened yesterday. I’ll be restarting my game again there as the last character was saddled with mods that aren’t completed and have a fair few issues. So I’ll reset with the defeat mod replaced by another that ties into a mod called Caged Followers. It’s a curious one, if your party is defeated then instead of Game Over, stuff happens to your character like being ransomed for money or becoming a prisoner of vampires. With Caged Followers, your companion gets taken off somewhere and you have to rescue them. That’s going to be an excellent excuse for exploring the Skyrim world more …

Must go back to Horizon Zero Dawn, finish off the Car Mechanic Simulator achievements and enjoy the other games too. They’re a good chill out and let me block out the world for a little while. Like books !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Boats, Worry, Wind, Break, Monster

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February 27, 2022

8:50 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been a bit quiet – it’s a worrying time at the moment. I’ve been on a break from work this week, I usually struggle to go straight through from Xmas to Easter without a little time off and this week felt convenient. Especially with a boat show on at the NEC last weekend. I figured I could go on the Friday …

Picture. We're looking at a rain soaked tarmac path going directly ahead of us. Either side is a drenched grassy area with occasional trees.
Bit nautical …

However … Worry part 1 was the big storms that happened last weekend. I’d originally planned to go to see boats on the Friday and I’d have been travelling at Peak Storm Time. So I chose life and went on Saturday instead. It was a good day out. I didn’t see much damage from wind to be honest, although the worst of it was to the South West of where I am and I was heading North. One of the Severn Bridge crossings was closed again though and I suspect that Avonmouth Bridge would have been pretty nasty too. I left the motorway early again on the way back, the last little bit is pretty exposed and can catch the wind. Boats ?

Picture. We're looking at a black and dark blue barge from its left hand side. There is a queue of people waiting to go on there. The entrance is at the back, with a set of stairs going up to a canvas roof.
It’s a big one

It’s a big one isn’t it ? That’s a widebeam barge, I think it was a 72ft boat. Note the flat bottom. This one is a river cruising widebeam barge suitable for living on. The inside looked nice but to be honest, I really dislike that colour combination. I had a walk through a narrowbeam barge as well, it was really cramped.

Picture. We're looking into a narrowbeam barge. There is red painted wood forming the door and roof above. The wood inside is pale pine type wood. Inside the boat there is a cooker to the left and a sink to the right. Two people give a sense of scale. The gap between the two worktops is about the size of one person.
A tight fit ?

I don’t think I could live on that. It was very cramped. There are narrower barges than others though. That seemed extraordinarily tight … Of the two though, I liked the colour of the narrowbeam with the red setting off its green pretty well. I didn’t like the colour of the dark blue one. That didn’t work for me. What colour would I want on a barge ? I think a green shade with wooden trim. That would work well. There’s something about a rich well varnished shiny wood finish. White is a good colour for them as well but I’d be wary about how grimy those would get.

Picture. We're looking at a small wooden motorboat on top of a stand. It has a small cuddly bear in the pilot area. He's wearing goggles and a flying hat.
Bear ! On a boat !

I hope he packed his essentials.

It was good heading out to see the boats. A decent amount to see, although I’d exhausted it fairly quickly (About 3/4 of a Hall of the NEC) and the homing signal was kicking in again to get me away from that amount of People.

The wind came back on the Sunday and I think it may actually have been worse than on the Friday. I spent most of my Friday afternoon being another person watching the Big Jet TV guy. That was good. And scary at the same time as the wind was demonstrating its power over our feeble constructions that we send into the skies. It reminded me of what was happening when I was coming back from Canada, where I think my plane had to do a crabbed landing. There was definite sense of the plane having to do that reorientation to straight as it landed.

I could actually try flying planes again … I’ve signed up for Game Pass. Mostly for Forza Horizon 5 …

Game screenshot. Forza Horizon 5. We're looking down a road that's gently curving to the left. Our car is a silver sports car, there is a black sports car a little up the road. One the right is a desert type landscape dotted heavily with greenery. A huge dust storm threatens at the horizon.
Do you feel the need for speed ?

Well. Maybe not Need For Speed, although I did enjoy playing Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit in its 1998 incarnation. That was a very fun arcade driving game. It was early days in Forza H 5 for me but it was gratifying when it suggested Extreme (pretty) graphics settings for me and great when the system had good frame rates with that. I should go back to it. I’m playing on a cheap controller which might actually hit that “cheap is more expensive” thing because I’m either going to take it apart to modify or replace it already with something better.

How come ? It’s a console style controller with the analogue sticks, with the value of 100% coming at maybe 50% of travel. That’s making the driving particularly difficult. Forza was well behaved but the Automation cars weren’t … Talking of that,

Game screenshot. BeamNG Drive. We're looking at a monster truck parked on top of a slightly banked concrete area. It's green with big black wheels. The front grille is triangles facing each other like teeth. It has two spotlights in front of the cab like eyes and red triangles attempting to look like spines.
Gets you anywhere, if you can climb in

Conedodger’s Automation build off challenge this week was Monster Trucks. It was the first I’ve joined in on and that truck above is the result of 11 hours in Automation and about 3 hours in BeamNG.Drive. (Automation is an early access game that lets you build custom cars, BeamNG Drive imports what you make and lets you drive them in a full physics simulation). People seemed to like what I’d put together and Mr Cone seemed to enjoy driving it round the Monster Truck arena built to test them all out. Not the best, not the worst. Happy with how it came out. It drove well around the test track above but it (and the other trucks) tended to explode when landing on jumps. It made for a hilarious stream. And then there’s Truckball (twitch clip link)

I think I need to hit post now though (and my shoulder is approaching pain point). I do intend to post more often. Bit worried about the world at the moment and it’s affecting the want to share anything at the moment.

One thing I have noticed though – since changing job my mental state seems to be recovering to the point where the daft creative ideas are coming out again. Which is really good. I’m looking forwards to being more involved again going forwards. But enough about work :-D. I’d like to get back to the drawing again. It was good creating a couple of memes for the Tashnarr/Sheepy 40k layers miniature painting show which had a special episode with KatiePetersPlays on Friday. People seemed to love them but I think it used up all my brain wanted to give on Friday. (Not posting them here, ask if wanting to see them)

Time to hit post. Stay safe everyone, be well, hopefully the world sorts itself out soon.

A little music ?

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February 16, 2022

11:44 pm

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What’s this ? Two posts in a week ? There might be more at the weekend if we’re not all blown away by storms by then :-D.

I think my back has started to improve, add that to my mental state improving at work again in the new post and I’ve been a bit bouncier letting the daft thoughts come out and have fun. Haven’t been banned from anywhere yet, so there’s still a bit of control there :-D. I’ve been enjoying listening to a few bits of music again and I’m way overdue a music post. This one’s going to be fairly random … But first, a thumbnail !

Picture. A very forlorn looking orange dragon is on a stage with a microphone in front of them. The microphone appears to be on fire ...
Don’t be shy singer dwagon

Attribution on this one is to Tooshtoosh from a site that’s pretty hostile with its cookie popup thing but here’s a link anyway. Oh, the music thing is also inspired a bit by the ever lovely streamer lady Tashnarr (twitch link) who treated us to a rendition of Still Alive, the song at the end of the Portal game.

There’s been some amazing tunes on the iTunes DJ* selection as well this evening. It’s come time again to listen to the best tracks of Madonna’s Ray of Light album, currently listening to Frozen but I don’t think that’s actually the best on the album. Let’s see … It starts off remarkably well with Drowned World / Substitute For Love and keeps on going throughout. Perhaps my favourite Madonna album. And I can mostly sing along to it which is always good.

The album before was Aventine by Agnes Obel, who has a fairly distinct sound and a great voice as the centrepiece of it. Here’s what I think is the best track from it, The Curse. I do like it when the instruments interact with the voice, with the instruments feeling as important a part of the melody as the voice.

Another group that did that extremely well was Dire Straits, with Mark Knopfler weaving voice and guitar together. Here’s their interpretation of a modern Romeo and Juliet.

Thinking of Portal and Staying Alive, I think Lisa Miskovsky did a song called Staying Alive for the original Mirror’s Edge game (not played it or heard the track). This is another lady with a remarkable voice, although the songs might end up sounding a bit bland and over produced. When she’s good though, it’s a A Brand New Day of very very good.

All song links go to youtube as per usual.

Katie Peters Plays (another wonderful lady streamer) added in a Stress-Less-Zone for her discord not long ago and while listening to Clannad’s Legend album, I thought a few of the tracks in there could be a good fit for it. Legend was an album that came out accompanying the 1980s Robin of Sherwood series and was essentially a soundtrack album for it. The Clannad music set a wonderful tone for the series and Together We was one of the signature tracks.

The next album up here is the ‘Til We Meet Again album by Norah Jones, which is a bit of a collection of previous work. My favourite track on there is After The Fall, which came from the Little Broken Hearts album.

Going back a bit, I remembered All About Eve for someone the other day. This is one from way back, one of the first albums on cd we owned. Martha’s Harbour was a fantastic introduction for this group and that voice. Oh and I love how she disappears off into the background and lets the band take centre stage for the instrumental section of another of my favourites, Blue Sonic Boy.

I’ve picked up a few albums lately, I thought Invisible String by the prolific Taylor Swift was pretty good. There was another album by Metric too but I’d go back to Gold Guns Girls as a particular highlight from them. They got energy.

Time for a few other favourites ? I mentioned instruments being as much a part of the song as the voice and Congregation by Low caught me like that too. It was chosen as music for the series Devs for a few episodes. Didn’t bother finishing the series, did like the song.

The Awake And Always Dreaming album by Hannah Peel came up as well, she started out with a wonderful music box accompanying her singing but she didn’t want to continue doing semi traditional song arrangements and moved on to a more classical style. Lovely voice, good one to listen to. And you have to respect the choice of moving on to a different style. Here’s Don’t Kiss The Broken One. Oh and apparently Song For The Sea, The Almond Tree and Unwound on that link too.

I was looking forward to another little lady singer (name like shoes) who’s giving us another album soon but she’s gone into NFTs so nope. Seeya.

I don’t want to leave this post on a downer though … oh ! Here’s an appropriate one for people who publicise and promote the NFT thing. Rocket by Goldfrapp. You’ll know why when you hear the words :-D. Oh and that’s an underrated album too, it’s another one that maintains energy throughout.

Part of this is from pondering if I go back to selecting albums to listen to in the car on Friday. I’ve been lazy for the last few years and just letting it do its semi random selection. But it would be good to listen to some of those great albums in the car again. Kate Bush did some wonderful albums where the tracks blended in to each other, Pink Floyd would tell a story with their albums too. Wish You Were Here ? I think it’ll be on the flat on Friday and no Running Up That Hill.

One last song before I disappear off to pay more attention to Tashnarr’s stream …

I bought a Game Pass subscription yesterday with the aim of trying out Forza Horizon 5. I enjoyed a couple of hours in that yesterday although apparently my cheap and (not) cheerful controller gives 100% of signal after only 50% of travel on the analogue pad so driving is challenging. Looks awesome though :

Game screenshot. Forza Horizon 5. We're in the middle of a sandstorm, so everything is light orange and sandy. In the centre, coming towards camera is a small jeep, apparently speeding along past a broken statue in the background. There are sparse trees dotted around the landscape.
Zoom through the storm

I did enjoy a few hours in that yesterday. And it was good that it recommended Extreme graphics settings and was actually able to give a good frame rate with that.

To the music ? Last one. And it’s the old theme for the Grand Prix coverage on BBC. It’s The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. (edit – redid the link)

Later everyone ! Stay safe, be well, don’t get blown away by the storm.

Back, Boat, Controller, Drive, Meme

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February 14, 2022

10:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

I had a bit of a blur of a weekend which followed something daft that happened on Thursday. Let’s just say I had a daft idea and the means to make it happen.

Picture. A short green pocket dragon is standing in the middle of a 5 pointed pentagram star made of Smarties sweets of varying colours. The dragon wears a bib with "Feed Me" on it. The scene is lit with a white pen light, with ominous shadows ...
That’ll do it

People seemed to like that one, it didn’t take much time for me to make it happen. I think the juggle of phone camera and my pen torch light helped add a little spooky. (Timers are super handy for when you need a hand to hold the phone and a finger to press the picture button). Oh and I like Smarties too. It’s drawn a few lovely reactions which made my day when I saw them. I get the ideas in my head for pictures like that and it feels good when I can make them happen.

And then I hurt my back on Friday afternoon and that was Brain in a cloud of subconscious pain for the weekend. That’s a weird Me thing apparently. I wasn’t getting much actual pain from my back, so I must have just come short of seriously hurting it. But I could feel something pretty Wrong back there and I was getting the warnings. It’s like my subconscious could feel the issues from it and natural painkilling was stopping me from properly feeling it. But it was clouding my thinking.

It’s started to improve today, which is good. Plus my mental state at work is far better than it was last year. Mental state is pretty critical to the rest of your well being. (But I’m sure everyone knows that !) Mine goes up and down, I’m completely driven by confidence and that feels like it’s got some rungs to climb back up on.

Oh and boat show on Friday. That should be good. I just have to get myself over to it. Pictures will most definitely happen. The Brain Fog over the weekend led to me retreating into the shell a little bit, although I have finished off The Expanse series and the Space 1999 Technical manual. I did try something new though … How it started :

Game screenshot. Automation. We see two cars on a coppery sea side scene with flat rock among puddles. The nearer car is a small modern red convertible with a slot grille. Behind is is a dark blue classic car convertible with more curves and round headlights.
Party on the beach ?

Those come from the in development game, Automation. It’s a car building game where you can get in to pretty detailed and well modeled parameters for the engines, gearboxes, chassis and suspension layouts. And on top, you can fiddle with the body options with a huge range of basic shells to work with which you add the features like headlights, mirrors, vents and door handles to. Anyway, that’s my first couple of cars. It made them pretty.

It has a companion simulator application called BeamNG.Drive, which lets you transfer over the cars from Automation so you can drive them around. Because what could make looking at a pretty car better than actually driving the car around and it has a number of tracks to test out your cars on, with the parameters that you designed into them. The two cars in the picture are pretty modest affairs though. The blue one is modeled on the old Triumph Spitfire Mk3, which was a 1960s era cheap sports car. The car started with an 1147cc engine and the Mk3 has a 1.3 litre engine. Small … but these cars were tiny without the modern features that add to the weight, so they were still quite sprightly. (The Spitfire competed with the Austin Sprite too).

The red one is a more modern interpretation, still a 1.3 litre but with a turbo attached for more power and other features included like fuel injection over the dual carburettors of the old Spitfire. Oh and a sensible suspension set up because I added in an interpretation of the rather dangerous rear suspension of the Spitfire.

This is probably the time for the “How it finished” …

Game screenshot. BeamNG Drive. We see the blue car from before. We're looking at its front left quarter with it straddling the kerb on the inside of a bend. The front right corner is showing major damage.
Oops

Oh well. That’s from one of my early attempts at driving in BeamNG Drive. I’m using a controller because setting up the steering wheel takes a bit of an effort and I need to clean some of the built up Stuff on my desk in order to accommodate it. I needed to tame the controller a bit too, plus it’s about 10 years since I tried to drive with a controller and I had a concussion at the time :-D.

It was curious though, the game/app drove pretty much how I expected at lower speeds … and then bit back pretty nastily at over 100mph. I haven’t driven over 100mph in real life, (stick to 70mph yes guvnor honest) so I don’t have a valid comparison. But I think about it and without any aerodynamic devices like spoilers, splitters or diffusers, the car body will start to act like a lifting body with enough speed which means … unstable. And crashes.

I quite enjoyed that little look at driving games again and was starting to get the hang of it again after a few attempts at doing laps. I’ve been looking at Game Pass and Forza Horizon. I’d quite like to try getting into driving games again, they were fun.

I mentioned book !

The Expanse is finished, long live the Expanse. I still need to watch series 6 but I saw the books through to the end at the weekend. I’m not going to say anything about the content or storyline except that they end it well. There’s a satisfying conclusion and the last page gave a “YEY that’s a great way to finish it”. Which is about all you can ask from a series of this type. Let it tell its story … and then finish on its own terms. That’s how it should be. I was a big fan of the Honorverse series, which I gather were supposed to end at a Point … but they lost their way badly after they continued after that particular point.

It was similar with Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War series, those ended well too. I’d recommend giving those books a read. I’ll reread both the Embers of War series and The Expanse series at some point, which is perhaps the best recommendation you can give a series of books.

I’ve also finished reading the Space 1999 Technical Manual too. I have to say the writing in the technical manual was far superior to the writing in the series. If you were to use it as source material for a role playing game, it would be top notch. The Moonbase Alpha setting was very well visualised and set up, it and the characters deserved better stories.

Next up is Mutineer’s Moon, which is another series re-read. Except in this case, I only re-read the first two books and don’t bother with the third.

Have you read any great books lately ? See you around, stay safe, be well, don’t be a lunatic in the car.

Browser, Moon, Horizon, Film

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February 6, 2022

8:51 pm

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Hello everyone,

Missed posting again ! I must post more regularly again. At least I’m able to post on the main browser again. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first … Been checking out a sale acquired game. It’s pretty.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Our heroine is standing on a hill, looking towards the lower left. Behind her is a fog filled valley with a scattering of thin, tall trees plus a couple of wooden tower buildings. In the background, there are mountains. Our character Aloy, is in the foreground. She has braided ginger hair and is an athletic built lady wearing light leather garb and boots.
Hey ! Horizon’s over there

The game is Horizon Zero Dawn and while it came out on console in 2017, it came to PC in 2020. It’s pretty demanding on the graphics too, so I had my eye on it partly from acquiring something super pretty to see what the graphics card could do but also because it’s got a renowned story. It’s one of the best games of its type in the 2010s. The graphics do help there but graphics aren’t everything. Where it really scores is the story, the world they’ve built and how that fits into the story and just how everything in the game works. I’m in the early days so far but something I was really enjoying was even just how the foliage reacts to your presence.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. We're looking out towards a grassy area sloping up to the left. On the left, there are a series of light orange coloured rocks. We can just see Aloy's head lurking in a patch of long grass with red leaves, at the bottom of the shot. In the distance are the tall thin trees and we can see a two legged mechanical beastie a little way down the road.
The Whistle Bush Awaits

So without giving too much away, we’re in an environment that feels a lot like Earth but there are no buildings or signs of our current civilisation. At least that we can see on the surface. Our heroine, Aloy, starts off as a child in the care of a fellow called Rost. They’re both outcasts for (redacted story reasons) and the child phase gives a chance for the game to pass on a few of its gameplay systems. There’s one there up on screen, where there are a series of faint purple triangles that show where the robot’s going to go.

Yep. Game has robots. They start small, resembling predator animals but they’ll get a tad bigger too as the game goes on.

I’m not too far in to the game, I’m barely past the prologue. But I have been taken by what they’ve built here. The terrain feels crafted, in a way that procedural generation cannot do. Even Skyrim, which is a crafted world too, shows signs where they’ve been needing to cheat with terrain textures that repeat in a pattern you can easily see. I haven’t seen that so much in Horizon Zero Dawn, it feels very real. Oh and that foliage will move with you as you pass through it. It’s a stealth action game, so hiding in those red leafed bushes can let you entice over an unsuspecting enemy or mechanical beastie so you can quietly stab them with the big spear.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy sits with back to camera at the bottom left. On the right is a platform made of wooden logs tied together. There are three slim ladies in assorted tan leather garb standing on the platform. One is arching her self backwards with both hands in the air. The platform is in front of a building built from more wooden logs.
Party time !

I was really enjoying this little celebration, with the three ladies on the stage there singing away in something traditional. These are the Nora and they call their warriors Braves, so you can probably guess that the world borrows a lot from Native American culture. And I was loving it in the bits of the game I’ve gotten to so far. The animation of the world is top notch. From the foliage, to the people having a little dance, to the main character reacting to your inputs.

I should say though that I’m running this gorgeous game on a Ryzen 5 3600 machine with 32GB and through a 3060Ti graphics card. That’s Meltdown and it’s turned into a machine that can handle everything it gets given now. It’s a pretty powerful machine, especially in these days of not being able to get hardware due to the shortages that are going on. I was very lucky to get the 3060Ti card when I did, it was literally an offer available for 10 minutes before they were all gone.

Other stuff ? I was actually in work again a couple of times … Once was to rescue the stuff from the locker. The second was to meet the team I’ve been in for a few months now. They’re a good bunch. As per tradition for here, I’m not going to be mentioning the work too much though.

Browser – I’m typing this on a new browser, having had to change because the Waterfox classic was getting too annoying and limited. So I’m on the better Waterfox now that is actually supported. It got to the point where Classic wasn’t allowing me to edit here, didn’t support Netflix, was critically slow in Twitter … etc.

Thursday’s work at work day also gave the excuse to head over to the Mall after, so of course cd’s happened. They’re : Morcheeba’s Blackest Blue, Taylor Swift’s Folklore and a double concert cd from Jean-Michel Jarre.

I’ve also picked up albums from Metric, check out Gold Guns Girls. They got Energy. I’m way overdue a music post so that’s going to happen at some point too. Need to get the Ting Tings latest too, I’m missing an album that they only released on a limited circulation for some reason. The Ting Tings have Energy too.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. It's dark and we're looking up at the sky from boot level on our heroine, Aloy. She's looking off to the right of shot. We can see the top of a broad branched tree to the left. Left half of the sky is cloudy, with a full moon. Right side is clear and we can see the stars. Everything is a tint of green.
Horizon Zero Moon ?

Yep. Game is pretty. I watched another film on Friday at my favoured (empty) local cinema. It was Moonfall. What can I say about Moonfall ? The visuals are done incredibly well. As in, stunning, epic cinematography. The story though … oh dear. Ouch. It’s so bad, it’s actually pretty bad.

The premise is that people on Earth have suddenly discovered that the Moon is dropping out of orbit, with dire consequences for everyone on Earth. There’s not much science in its fiction, which is most of the problem with the movie. There’s a lot of set pieces stitched together with the barest minimum of science to back them up.

I still somewhat enjoyed watching it … but the story is mockbuster quality with top standard visual effects.

One comment on it though – it’s got me wondering about doing a re-read of David Weber’s Dahak series of books. It felt like one of the core premises of Moonfall may have been inspired by what goes on in Mutineer’s Moon and the Armageddon Inheritance in that the Moon may not actually be a big ball of rock …

Anyone else feel like time is zipping along at the moment ? Like you realise that several days have whooshed by without you really registering them ? I have that. I think that’s one contributor to me not posting so much here lately. I need to get some build pics transferring from the phone camera into the PCs so I can post those. Oh and music posts, I’ve still been steadily picking up new stuff.

I think that’s it for me now though. 2 streams on, music on and Olympics to enjoy at some point. And more reading, I’ve been away from the Expanse finale for a little while now.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Out and About and Spiders

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January 24, 2022

9:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been People-ing since the last post … Several times ! And not just for the usual reason of resupplying the food cupboards.

Photo. On the right, we see the arches of a shopping arcade with varied signs in front of the shops. The only readable one says "Bird Blend Tea Co". The arcade is lit throughout by hanging lights and we can see sunshine at the far end. On the left is a shop window with many packets of tea on the shelves.
Anyone for tea ?

That’s Cardiff and I had another run over there a couple of Fridays ago. I like Cardiff, there’s a good selection of varied shops to wander around over there (although I don’t actually go in many of them !). In particular, there’s Troutmark Books which can kinda be seen in that picture. The Bird Blend Tea Co is just a couple of doors up from Troutmark. Wearing a mask does kinda complicate book shopping due to the glasses steaming up but that’s no actual hardship. I was tempted to look at the tea, although I usually have coffee or hot chocolate instead.

The other shops I usually head into are Wally’s Delicatessen for their bonbon sweets selection. Those seem to be suffering at the moment, the selection’s been a bit limited both here and at the Farm Shop service station. Wonder what that’s about … Hopefully it gets back to normal, I’m a bit partial to chocolate mice :-D.

A shop that’s come into the rotation is Antics models. At some point, a remote control car will appear … In kit form of course. Remote control cars come in two types at the moment. There’s pre-built ready to race versions and the older form of cars that come in kits. I’ve had a remote control car before, a Tamiya Grasshopper 2. I was continually taking it apart and rebuilding it. I have this thing where I can look at a mechanical object and visualise how everything works on it, how everything moves and interacts but there’s no substitute for actually taking it apart and seeing how the various components play with each other. So I’d want to have a kit in order to properly understand how it all goes together.

Picture. This is a Grasshopper 2 remote control buggy made by Tamiya. It has a white bodyshell with stickers above a black plastic underbody or chassis. It has two thin wheels at the front and two fatter spiked tyres at the back. Suspension springs are visible.
Ahhh Grasshopper

That’s the Grasshopper 2 I had a few decades ago. It’s powered by an electric motor at the back, with radio gear and the battery in the middle. The radio I had was an old 26MHz radio with 2 channels. One channel does the steering, one tells the motor how much power it’s allowed to use. Each transmitter and receiver pair had a couple of crystals that governed the channel used and there were 6 of these available. Looks like that’s changed now, with the radios working at 2.4GHz, which is an open band which your wifi is highly likely to be using. Trouble is, it’s also becoming a bit of a congested band (because it’s open, everyone uses it) which is why your wifi might drop out. But for the purposes of a remote control car, it should be good … (Uhoh, I’m descending to geeky) Your home wifi would drop out because it wants to push lots of data around and that high bandwidth application is more susceptible to interference. When it’s down to just sending Channel A value, Channel B value, that’ll be a lot more resilient. I’ll have to see how it goes when I get one.

There’s a lot more research to come though, including looking at which type I’d get. There’s a few main types. The buggies like the Grasshopper 2 still exist and they’re ideal for buzzing round a grassy field and tracks will be built up with jumps and obstacles that the buggies would eat up. The other main type is more like a tarmac racing car …

Picture. On the lower half, we see a medium sized red hatchback car. Above, we're looking down from above at the chassis. I'll put a description in the main body but the basics are fairly normal. 2 wheels at each end, a red tub with components in the middle and suspension components for each paid of wheels.
Zoom zoom

Attribution notice – both of the pictures of remote control cars are for Tamiya models.

That’s the type I’m looking at currently. Tamiya do a whole series of cars based on their TT-02 chassis, with different bodies that clip on top. The chassis itself has all the electronics in that central red tub. Above shot, right side of car, there is a servo that links to the steering. Central, that box is an electronic speed controller that is a cleverer version of the simple resistor thing in the Grasshopper. These do power and regenerative braking for the car. (Actually looking again, not so sure ! I think it’s an integrated receiver and servo with separate speed controller – look at the wires). There’s a motor in there as well, driving a 4 wheel drive transfer box at the back of the red tub. In the centre of the tub, that’s a propeller shaft that connects the front axle to the transfer box. In the left side of the tub we see the battery. These cars work off 7.2V, which usually comes from 6 1.2V rechargeable cells in a sealed pack.

Each end has double wishbone suspension for the wheels to let the car cope with the bumps. All sorts of improvement parts are available for these little cars. My Grasshopper 2 just had springs and friction dampers but you can go all the way to miniaturised versions of the coil over dampers that you’ll have on a road car. (A suspension spring to cope with the bumps and an oil filled damper to stop bounciness). Oh and there are also miniaturised bearings all over the place too going from simple nylon toruses up to ball bearings.

Yep. Wanting to build one of these again, race it and then take it apart and rebuild it multiple times.

There are more types of remote control cars too … You have the dedicated flat surface racers that’ll look like F1 cars or Sportscar prototypes. These tend to have minimal suspension and are stripped for speed. And there are the Nitro cars which have tiny engines inside like the FTX Force Pull 18 (link). The 18 is for the size, or 0.18 cubic inches / 3.0cc. Pretty tiny ? It’ll send a remote control car above 50mph. But I don’t want to be messing around with nitro fuelled cars, I’ll stay to electric only for the time being. It’s cleaner …

Where would I get one ? Antics (link) have a few local stockists … I’d go through them first and then there’s a few local clubs around that will hopefully be able to open up again fully soon. But I do need to learn more first though so that when I do spend money, I avoid mistakes through having a bit more knowledge.

Oh ! Cardiff also has a Lego shop, which tends to get a visit.

Photo. Standing on top of two books is one of my pocket dragons. We see him from the side, looking up at a penguin adorning the front of a lego box. The red fluffy dragon can just be seen to the right.
Loot happened

Yep, a couple of escapes … The books are Titan by Stephen Baxter and Eon by Greg Bear. I’ve had my eye on these authors for a while and the thing about cheap book stores is that they make you more likely to spend a little bit in there speculatively … (I keep looking for another copy of Red Mars though).

One place I would like to find in Cardiff is a good music shop … There’s an Oxfam with charity shop second hand cds and another shop with cds. The Oxfam shop is worth a peek but the other shop makes it quite tough to actually browse what they’ve got, so I don’t go to that one.

Note to shops – make it easy for us to buy stuff from you. Make it easy for us to spend our money. If I have to flick through every cd on the shelf to see what’s there, I’ll walk away.

Talking of music, a track from The Outer Wilds just came on. It has a wonderful chilled out soundtrack with a few recurring themes. The game itself is … worth a peek. I don’t own it but I’ve watched a couple of playthroughs of it. I’m being light on description because even a small description is a big spoiler, I can probably say that it’s a mystery adventure where you need to figure out what’s happened and what’s going on in order to fix it all.

Maybe when I get Game Pass, which is definitely going to be a thing … sometime. I haven’t been too great over the past week. I dunno, loss of appetite and still general total lack of energy although it’s somewhat there when I need to draw on it. Why Game Pass ? Since getting the 3060Ti upgrade, I haven’t really pushed its limits to see how pretty it can get. Elite is still a great screenshot generator and I did enjoy heading back in there to get a hyperspace upgrade (not yet delivered!).

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our Imperial Cutter starship can be seen descending to a rugged planetary surface. We're looking over the ship from behind and the starboard side. Purple engine exhaust is flaring from a wing engine and several central engines. The ship is white at the front and on the two wings, blending to purple at the back.
Tiamat arriving

That’s my flagship, Tiamat’s Chariot, descending to another planetary base on a trading mission. I’ll have a Fleet Carrier at some point to make it easier to get silly amounts of contributions for the community goals. The carrier needs a name though … I haven’t had the appropriate idea hit yet.

Yep. Elite’s pretty but it only pushes the graphics card because the Odyssey expansion is an unoptimised mess that should be better. I do own Control courtesy of Humble Monthly, this is apparently a benchmark game for graphics but … I find it drab, dull and uninteresting, so I won’t be playing that. Outer Worlds might be worth another look. But the thing I’m likely to indulge in is the racing game, Forza Horizon 5. I haven’t played racing games since 2013 ish, when I was unknowingly suffering from a concussion which meant I just couldn’t play those games. Better now.

And there’s a few more interesting titles on Game Pass too. It would have to shove Idle Champions aside though, yep, still addicted to going through the stories in that one :-D.

My shoulder is starting to rebel though at all this typing. Dunno why there, my posture’s ok. I have People’d more over the past week. I’ve actually been in to work instead of working from home all the time. I needed to pick up a replacement car pass and to remove the stuff from my locker before those go away. Including a set of coffee mugs that surprisingly didn’t say hi let us out when I opened the locker for the first time in almost 2 years.

Spiderman No Way Home happened on Friday too, in a completely empty similar. I’m not sure how that particular cinema stays operating but I have no complaints. Apart from lacking headrests for the seats, the food’s good, the films are good and it’s totally quiet. So I keep going there when I’m on a solo cinema run.

I’ve also been researching the road cars too … but I think that’s one for another post, especially as that’s likely to be for 2 years time. The ES I have now is a great car, it’s just way too big and the smaller, cheaper toys cars pack in more toys.

See you all next time, stay safe out there.

Randomised Thoughts

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January 11, 2022

12:27 am

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Hello again,

I have that “I need to write a post!” feeling, which usually connects to Brain having thoughts that it needs to extract from the grey matter and put somewhere else. And then I ask Brain what I should be writing about and Brain goes :

Picture. A green Pocket Dragon is standing up, looking toward us with a slight lean forwards. The left paw is off to his side, his right paw is to his face with one digit extended in a "Shushing" gesture.
Don’t tell anyone !

Yep. Brain goes : nope, not giving a solid idea to write about.

There’s a few random real world stuff things at the moment that have caught the attention … Couple of those are in Australia at the moment ! Firstly, it was good to see a better result for England in the last cricket Test Match, although it was a bit more tense than it probably needed to be. England’s cricket is in a bit of a bother at the moment in all departments. It’ll definitely help if all of the various injury struggles sort themselves out. It would be great to see Jofra Archer being able to bowl again, he’s been out of the game for far too long with an elbow injury. Cricket puts either a huge amount of stress on the body for bowling or a high amount of risk of broken bones when they’re batting. Or you can be like me and combine both of those.

I mention Jofra Archer in particular there because he’s one where he’s just really unlucky that his elbow has reacted like this. In all other respects, he’s perfectly suited for the fast bowling that instills terror into everyone at the other end. He’s tall, properly shaped (not too thin, not too beefy, just right) and on the outside, has the perfect physique for it. Fast bowling is what he was born to do and he clearly enjoyed doing that a huge amount. It’s just sad that he’s being prevented from doing that by this long running injury.

There’s a parallel to me there too, I recovered initially from the dislocated shoulder and rotator cuff tear that stopped me bowling for a couple of years but had to give up bowling about 10 years later. Two reasons there, time away from the game (to get my head right, plus management change in the work team) led to the shoulder stiffening up more plus I think I got a secondary injury in my side from lifting a heavy old CRT telly on my own. The result was a hitch in my bowling action that wasn’t particularly painful (although i could feel it) but it was very dangerous to the person at the other end. I’ve talked about that too much in the past though.

That’s a thought about the current England team though. It feels like they aren’t enjoying the game very much at all at the moment and only part of that is down to coming a distant second to a thoroughly on top Australia. It’s not like seeing Trent Boult (New Zealand fast bowler) who gives me the impression of relishing the challenge of bowling at international players and thoroughly enjoys his work. There’s a certain confidence there too that’s completely gone from the English players. It doesn’t help that proper technique seems to have disappeared from being instilled into the batsmen. It is good to see Haseeb Hameed back in the side though, he looked thrilled to be a part of the England team again, hopefully he can make his place in the team stick this time.

But I wanted to talk about something else too …

Picture. On a blue table and cloudlike backdrop, we see a model of a small sailboat. Within sit 3 green pocket dragons. One is hugging a little teddy bear, one is sniffing the breeze while wearing a red and blue woolly pointy hat and the other is holding a rod (for fishing?) over the stern of the boat.
Don’t breathe one the sails boys

Both pictures so far have come from Google, along the Pocket Dragon theme. The copyright for these resides with Real Musgrave, the creator of the Pocket Dragons. They retired from creating these gorgeous figurines many years ago but they’re still available second hand on places like Ebay.

Anyway – boats ! I’ve been greatly enjoying watching a fellow with a youtube channel called Aquaholic. He does short tours of boats and yachts which can be anything from under 10 minutes to over 30 depending on how much there is to look at. He covers big boats as well as small going from owner operator boats suitable for day trips and overnight trips up to palatial super yachts that are more full blown ship instead of yacht. And it’s got me thinking more about my own ambitions to up sticks from brick and mortar housing towards living on a barge as well as opening my mind to the possibilities, the realities and the opportunities that it could present.

The realities are things like the amount of space available on board. The facilities available are comparable to what you’d have in any house, although things like the plumbing take a bit more thought. I.e. houses have permanent connections going two ways for all things water related … boat connections are temporary, I’ll leave it to the reader to think of what that means. Power is easy, it either comes from shore supply at a marina or from on board generators. These don’t have to be particularly big either, this house is typically consuming well under 500W and that could be reduced if the computer wasn’t on all the time. I’m using more at the moment but that’s because the heater’s on. Internet could be Interesting Times … it would require something something mobile internet. Taking on supplies while away from a marina could be needing a bit of thought.

There I am looking at the realities … there’s some great opportunities though. Like if you’re not happy with where you are, there’s the option to up sticks to a different marina while keeping the same living space around you. Or (maybe one for retirement which is a long time away) steadily cruising around the UK or Europe if we’ll still be allowed over there. There is a limit there though, the type of barge I’d be looking at would have difficulty fitting down the canals around the centre of the UK because it would be too wide.

Picture. We see a long barge type boat pointing to the left. The lower hull is black and there is a gentle curve from a high bow to low midships and up a little again to the back which divides off a creamy yellow upper hull. There is a wheelhouse aft and windows down the side of the boat. There is a lovely reflection off an almost millpond surface of the water.
Have boat will travel maybe later

That’s a dutch barge, the most posh of the various options for canal and river cruising (and I now know why sea is not really an option for these boats). Barges are available in narrowbeam, which go up to 7 feet wide. Any wider and they don’t fit into all of the locks and tunnels. (Locks are water gate facilities that allow boats to go up and down in height). Widebeam barges go from 7 feet 1 inch up to whatever will fit into the locks, that’s around 14 feet for some locations. (7 feet = 2.13m, 14 feet = 4.26m) The other restriction is length, the maximum is 72feet (22.2m). Narrowboat and Widebeam barges tend to be pretty low as well, with the boats being steered from the stern instead of having the raised wheelhouse of the Dutch Barge style. Bigger boats have more space inside but also cost more.

What can I say, I like the wheel house style, I think it looks great and also provides that functional separate space to run the boat from. The internal space is also comparable to the amount of space in this house too. What would need a bit of thought though is things like working and living spaces. Cabling isn’t an issue these days with wireless becoming far more of a thing, although I would want to have part of the boat built around something that could be a movie theatre type style. So instead of the usual thing of a large TV that hides in a cupboard (or lowers itself away) when not in use, I see a projector in the ceiling with a drop down screen. Yep. I think that would work pretty nice although you’d want a low power consumption projector because …

I’d want to pack in more tech too … Like solar panels combined with sizeable batteries and hybrid electric drive. If not cruising, the idea would be that the solar panels would give the excess power for chilling out overnight. That theatre set up would need sound as well. It could be really really cool to have that built in to the boat though.

Oh – barges vs boats … Have a look at the picture again and especially the shape of the bow (front end). Apparently because it’s vertical, that means that this boat shouldn’t go to sea as the bow will pitch into the water with the effect of the waves and the boat sinks … unless you try the transit on especially calm days. That’s not an issue on canals because the only waves are from the motion of other boats. Sea going boats have their pointy end at an angle, which pushes the front end upwards all the time and if the boat’s going fast enough, it starts coming out of the water and planing for even more speed.

So yeah, watching more, learning more, getting more excited about the prospect of doing it although it might take a lottery win or similar. I’d definitely need to sort the house out (the house would part fund the boat).

Gosh – is it midnight ? I had a few more random thoughts but it seems to have been taken over by boats.

Things about dutch barge – I like the style with the wheel house. I like the flowing lines around the sides of the boat. I’m not so keen on the centre part though, which looks a bit like a box in the middle. I like the flowing curves. It’d be curious to see how those could be worked into the design, especially with solar panels coming in to the roof. And possibly even a navigation kit (radar and AIS) and VHF radio as well if sea travel was to be a thing.

Things about the yachts – so many of these are built around multiple decks on board … This gives them more available space but also means steps and stairs, which I’d want to avoid for reasons not for here. (Not to do with me, I’m still very ok with stairs 😀 ).

I mentioned “a couple of things in Australia” and then only talked cricket … The other is Tennis, I don’t think it’s really worth any more time than a brief mention but … I think he should have been deported, they’re setting a dangerous precedent for themselves by prioritising the show over their health rules and apparently it’s also walking into an impression where the government down there seem to have one rule for the rich people and much stricter rules for everyone else. That’s dangerous … and it’s also happening over here too.

And … I better hit post before I go too much into politics or other things like that.

Night all, stay safe be well.

New Year’s Here

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January 4, 2022

11:05 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a good break … Back to work tomorrow but it’s been a good time away. I have to admit, I haven’t been getting out much outside of visiting family. There’s been a lot of indoor time happening. I’ll talk more about what that’s been in a bit. (I’m ok, just avoiding the outside world !)

So, what’s been happening … Thumbnail first.

Photo. We see the heads of two dogs (the rest is hidden behind them). One dog is white haired with ears pricked behind her head, the other dog is golden haired with a whitening muzzle. His ears are resting downwards.
Hello, We Are The Bacon Sandwich Inspection Patrol

That’s Icey and Murph again, being very attentive. Yep, was off to the mum’s and sister’s places this holiday. Mum’s first, then sister’s place for Xmas day. I last saw my mum last Xmas as part of the support bubbles we were allowed to have. This year is rather more open (I’ll rant on that in a bit). It was a good little visit. I hadn’t seen the sister, the dogs or the D boys for a couple of years now. Xmas 2020 even. Murph is still the sweetie that he’s always been, perhaps a little too slurpy still :-D. That’s not a bad thing in a dog. I do seem to get a lot of attention from them both. I wonder why that is.

Icey’s improved a hell of a lot. They’ve done a lot of good work helping her be more relaxed around people she doesn’t encounter much, even accepting (and maybe encouraging) random pats. She’s actually more accepting of some of those than Ben the Staffy was. Ben was a little ball of love but he’d shy away and leg it if you tried to reach over his head to give him scritches. Almost as if he thought you were going to poke him in the eye. Icey was fine with that.

Oh and there was very definitely an ulterior motive behind the attention in the picture above …

Photo. Murph the golden lab dog is sitting and giving paw to my mum who is just out of shot to the right. Icey is sitting in the doorway looking away from us into the kitchen. In the foreground, the real subject of Murph's attention ... a bacon sandwich.
If I is Good Boi Can I Haz Bacon ?

Yep. It was breakfast time. They did get a little bit of that sandwich. A definite case of inhalation and the bacon not touching the sides. We haven’t been doing presents for a few years now but I did take something away with me :

Photo. Our red fluffy dragon is mostly in shot to the right. To the left, a flat pack consisting of wooden sheets. We can see the front page, which is mostly green with a wooden owl model printed on it.
Owl Be Assembling That Later

I’ve got a couple of model assembly posts to bring you all now. I’ve been slipping on that. The owl came together fairly well and is now inhabiting a perch on top of my book cases. May need to acquire some wood glue though.

Yep. Good trip away, actually one of the first times I’ve had a chance to play properly with the latest car too. It is rather too big, but that doesn’t get in the way of it being a nicely handling car outside of where the road surface is a bit broken up. That confuses the traction control and other driver aids built in.

I’ll get something different next time though. I haven’t been enjoying manoeuvring such a big car around car parks and it would be good to get back to hatchbacks instead of the booted saloons. Trouble is, Lexus aren’t currently making a suitable car available in the UK. The IS and CT’s have both been discontinued and they’ve pinned their banner to SUVs. I’m not interested in owning an SUV. (Although the NX that the sister has is a perfect fit for their different requirements).

It is curious looking back into that world, where I know very little about the cars available on the market. Toyota’s 2 litre Corolla hybrid looks absolutely ideal, with enough speed and practicality. I’ll have to take a peek next time I’m around one of their garages. (Service due around March). I would like to know what else is out there though. I have been enjoying driving the hybrids and the effortless nature of their electric drive. It makes for pretty impressive acceleration too when you ask it to go fast in an overtaking move.

Been thinking about getting back into the racing games too, although I haven’t pressed the button on buying one yet. The closest I have is American Truck Simulator (courtesy of Humble Bundle a while ago). I acquired a controller not long ago, with one of the things putting me off trying the racing games being the set up needed to get my racing wheel back in commission again. (Heavy desk clearance). Thinking about that though, I need to do some desk clearance anyway because a combination of a high monitor and a chair that (needs replacing) is too low is leading to neck ache.

Things I’ve been playing on the time off :

Idle Champions – a bit too much of this. It’s an idler game, where you set up the adventuring party and they’ll battle against increasing waves of enemies. There’s a bit of story in there too, which is usually amusing. Oh and there’s a little group of us on EnterElysium’s discord server who have gotten each other addicted to the game.

Motorsport Manager – it’s gotten interesting again because I accepted the promotion for the team and getting good results has become a challenge instead of a Press Fast Forward Until Win. I wonder how long it will be until the team is the front runner again and the long running challenge of winning all three racing types comes to a finish.

Solasta – is a computer role playing game based on the 5th edition D&D rules set.

Game screenshot. Solasta. We're in a wooded landscape with our heroes standing on copper coloured rock. From left to right we have a dark skinned pointy eared fellow in scale mail. Then a lady wizard in a white top and long dark blue skirt. Then it's a light skinned lady in half plate mail with light green cloth cape covering. On the right is a short dark skinned rogueish looking fellow.
Heroes, fresh out of the wrapper

That’s the group I’ve restarted the game with. From left to right, we have ranger, wizard, cleric and rogue. It’s a decent mix, although it’s curious seeing some of the restrictions come in to play. The cleric has the biggest restriction. She’s supposed to be up front taking the hits … but has a choice between using a shield and being able to cast spells. She can’t do both. The ranger can poke things with swords or shoot from range with a bow. The wizard stands back and casts spells at everything and the halfling rogue is there to do damage where he can and to pick all of the locks and defuse all of the traps. It’s been a curious start to the game, I’ll have to look into the campaign some more. That said, the first attempt was a false start because I put a druid in there instead of the ranger and it felt like he wasn’t achieving very much.

Trans Road USA had my attention day – this is a company game, where you’re running a haulage company. The aim is to build a firm of truckers spanning the USA. Could be a good one to relax to, although I am nursing a sore neck now after losing some time to it today.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided – I do enjoy these games and the world they’re set in. Especially meeting Entity again. This run has reached Prague 2, where the sun has set into the night time period. I’ll pick up the last remaining main game achievement in this run, although I’ll make a save before because that achievement is incompatible with my preferred ending where you save everyone.

A little Plague Inc has happened too … it’s a curious catharsis that game and very easy to play.

Talking of plague …. the reason I haven’t been out at all (1 shopping run and alarm clock buy – lost mine) is plague … I’m in the thought space now of if I don’t have to be out and about amongst all of the new cases that are happening, I’ll stay in. It’s an incredible number of cases at the moment in the UK, yet no restrictions on movement have been announced. What I would like to have done is to do a run over to Cardiff (getting closer to remote control car acquisition) for Lego shop, sweet shop, book cave and general wander. There’s a couple of interesting films out there at the moment too. The quiet Showcase is still quiet and worth a shot. Maybe Friday, pending work :-D.

Yeah, too much going on out there in the world at the moment. I need to get a couple of small dents in the car looked at too.

But for now, Fuzzy’s streaming, I’ve posted enough and I’m going to head back into reading more of Leviathan Falls. That’s the 9th book in The Expanse series. I was worried before starting about whether they’d be able to wrap it all up neatly but their traditional prologue start kicked it all off in the right direction. Looking forward to finishing it in the next week.

That’s it for now though. It was a good break, lots of time off. Visiting great people, indulging in steam sales acquisitions … Like Beam.NG Drive, which takes cars from the game Automation and makes them driveable.

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you do need to be out and about among People, be wiser than our politicians are being at the moment …