Year: 2024

Advent Day 16 and we’re going Ferrol

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December 16, 2024

10:08 pm

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Hello everyone,

Still in the struggle but seeing what we can do to work through it … What’s behind door 16 ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent scene with the collection of models scattered throughout. The addition today is a mostly white spaceship shaped in a diamond shape. There are windows in front, we can't see the engines at the back.

Yep. Still in that state of exhaustion, although I think I did actually get some sleep last night. Soreness is still in there though, looking forwards to the winter break.

Ferrol ? Time for more cruise …

Friday saw us docked up in Al Ferrol, on the Northern coast of Spain. I might have to bang out fairly quickly and do simpler alt-text because my right arm is not particularly happy with me today.

Picture. We're looking out over a port and in the distance, low buildings of a coastal city. More ships are in the background. The sea part of the harbour is to the right of picture. The sky is cloudy.

Very pleasant chill city. One thing I did notice there were the wind turbines … and there was a lot more of that on the way out of the city. It’s missing on the alt text but there are is a big array of very long blades, all stacked up with each other. Beside those, are the box sections of the actual generators and there are what I think are the bits that link the generators to the blades. There were huge stacks of these all around the port, as well as that not so little collection there.

To the port ! I had a little wander but didn’t really know what I was seeing but … I was drawn inevitably to their naval museum.

Picture. We're looking out over a stone paved courtyard with buildings to the left. In the centre of the courtyard to the left is a big ship's propeller. In the distance is the various levels of a ship's mast, covered with protrusions and aerials and antennas, with a big plate of a radar in the middle.

Complete with scalped aircraft carrier. Not something you see every day. If you’re in the area, I’d thoroughly recommend going to see the Naval Museum there. It starts through the Spanish Navy ships in the age of sail, goes through the early 20th century warships and goes right through to a model of their latest destroyer.

Picture. We're looking at a model of a navy ship in a glass display case. The ship is grey, with a black stripe at the waterline and red below. The bow is to the right and going backwards, there is a naval gun, missile silo, then the Bridge with the main sensors and radios mast behind. Aft of that are engine exhausts and a flat flight deck is at the back.

The pennant number in the middle there is F105 and tells us that this is a model of the Spanish Navy ship Cristóbal Colón. More at the wiki. She was commissioned in 2012. Part of me automatically critiques the design of these ships (see various comments ref ship nerd) but it looks like that ship could do a seriously good job as part of a fleet. Good to see these on our side.

Picture. We're looking at a couple of older navy ships in display cases. The one nearest has a black upper hull below cream superstructure. There are 3 funnels, 2 masts and a gun up front in a round white turret.

Oops. Lost a bit there as I was rudely interrupted by needing to log in again. Not sure why Bluehost is doing that every two days at the moment. I should probably log in around lunchtime sometime so the timer is set different.

Anyway ! Two early century navy ships, where the engines were taking up quite a bit of the ship and they were limited to just a small number of not too effective guns.

Picture. We're looking down an alleyway between two sets of two story buildings. Large ship anchors are stood up on each side.

They must have done well though, look at all the trophy anchors in the collection ! This was also the port that serenaded us on the way out with the bagpipe band. That was a lovely way to prepare for the day’s sailaway from a pretty coastal city.

Picture. We're looking out over fairly calm but rippled water towards a hill, where buildings of the city are there on a couple of levels. It looks like the buildings are climbing upwards to the right and then curling round to the left.

Good to see all that greenery in there around the buildings. This sailaway saw me starting to watch on the Promenade deck …

Picture. We're looking out over water that is just being disturbed by the wake of a pilot boat showing us the way to the open sea. The sun is up in the top left and is reflecting off the water. There is a narrow gap between far hills on the left and closer hills to the right.

We were heading off down that channel there. Here’s our pilot boat.

Picture. We're looking out over the water again, towards the gap to the sea over on the left with hills on the right. There is a little boat in the centre, leading the way out to sea for us. Their wake is making waves in the water.

Must have been pushing it a bit with the wake that they’re generating there.

Picture. We're looking back down the channel of sea that we came down. The surface of the water is disturbed by our wake. We can see a narrow break between hills to the left and right. Beyond the break, we can just see the cranes and buildings of the city.

This is where I found myself up on the Foredeck part of the ship (wasn’t open much) and as the ship turned, we had a chance to see back the way we’d come. Good place to be, nice and chill which was what I was needing at that point.

Oh ! This was where I was attempting to get pictures of a cooperative flag as well :-D. This is about as good as it got …

Picture. We're looking out over the back of the ship, with sun loungers arranged on the deck. At the back of the ship, there is a flagpole flying a flag which is 3 quarters red, with a white cross. In the upper left is the blue and yellow emblem of the Fred Olsen line.

That’ll do :-).

Time to hit post though and ration out what remains of my typing time. Have a good evening everyone, see you tomorrow.

Advent Day 15 and it’s a struggle again

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December 15, 2024

8:04 pm

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Hello everyone,

Probably a short one today again because I’m feeling struggles both within and without … What’s behind the door ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection again, this time to addition is a fellow in white body armour and white helmet, both armour and helmet have a blue stripe of trim.

There we go, stormtrooper today.

Why the struggles ? It does feel like it’s coming from all sides at the moment, with work and family stuff that will definitely not be going here.

It’s definitely coming from within, because I’ve been feeling that I’m nearing the end of a very long and very frayed rope. I think the big part of it is psychological, because I’m finding it very hard to find joy in things. Perhaps that’s a sign of a depression creeping in there ? Maybe.

What I have been finding cheering me up is how people were finding things like the Dwagon on Tour pictures. It was really lovely seeing the various interactions popping up with those with people giving the hearts, the likes, the occasional omgs and general seeing that other people were really enjoying seeing what I’d been posting. Kinda makes you want to disappear out of the world again for a little while and go some place to let me send out more Dwagon on Tour pictures.

Hopefully at some point next year, I’ve run the annual leave down to about the minimum I can carry over. That refreshes at the end of April, so it needs to cover Xmas, Easter and I’ll need to disappear from work for a week around Feb as well due to …

I’ve been in burn out for a very long time now. The first symptoms really kicked in around covid times, with things like the sketching just ending. I haven’t sketched in years now, although a couple of emotes happened when idea plus can I do it combined at just the right time.

At the moment, it’s manifesting both mentally and physically. It doesn’t feel like my brain’s running on all of its cores at the moment, plus I’m even more absent minded than usual. Physically, I’m having increasingly sore hips, what feels like a void in my lower back and the injury I did to my right knee during the cruise hasn’t recovered yet. Add to that, the shoulder joining in and an elbow that’s making me shy away from losing myself in games like the Truck games.

And all that together means that while I look at the new games and think I’d maybe enjoy playing them, I’m not at a spot where I want to learn those games.

It’s not at a point where I would consider myself physically disabled, plus I was able to walk for around 15,000 step days during the cruise. But that constant low level pain does get to you after a while.

Last bit before I fetch my dinner which has the timer bell starting to go …

Any more of you feeling especially exhausted at the moment ? I’ve had that for quite a long of time. I keep hearing it from so many people as well. It doesn’t feel like it’s just me at the moment. It feels like a more generalised malaise has settled in where everyone is struggling to find the energy to do even just those basic tasks. And that’s not just for me in too many years to count, it’s younger people in their 20s and 30s as well.

If you recognise that in yourself, then I hope you can find that energy to get at least some of the things done that your brain is telling you needs to get done.

Another aspect of it for me is that I find it very difficult asking for help. I don’t take time off sick, I haven’t been back to a doctors in years and I probably need to do that for both an allergy test to finally confirm what I can and cannot have and to see if there’s an answer for why I’m so exhausted so much of the time. I can still start doing something and keep going until it’s done … but when that need to finish is over, I’ll go splat.

This isn’t intended as me reaching out and asking for help. I don’t like to impose like that on other people. But what I will say there is … whenever I see an interaction with something I’ve done, it gives me that little bit of Happy that I struggle to generate from within. It tells me that I do things that people like, that people want to engage with what I do and that people care.

If you’re reading this and are wondering if that means you – DEFINITELY YES it does.

I hope you have people looking out for you as well. Hopefully back with a happier post tomorrow but I think I needed to safety valve out some of my feelings like this tonight.

Picture. A grumpy looking small cute red dragon is sitting down looking at us. The captions are "I'm done adulting, let's be dragons"

I kinda wanted to end on a cheery happy meme but that counts I think. Where to for Dwagon on Tour 2025 ? We shall see.

Advent day 14 and I have left it late for a port visit

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December 14, 2024

11:51 pm

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Hello everyone,

I may have got a bit distracted by doing some more Euro Truck Sim 2 and left it a little late :-D. What’s behind door number 14 ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent collection, with the dwagon on the right. The new model is a small square grey fighter craft with short wings at the back.

Apparently the latest one is a Mandalorian Fighter spaceship. See earlier comments about not having seen any of the latest Star Wars output on the telly :-D. I’ve been missing a few other things as well, like the various new Star Trek (to be honest I was put off that a little by Picard season 1) and I’d like to see For All Mankind at some point.

Port visit ?

Thursday saw us come in to …

Picture. We're looking at a sign, with Gijon written in a fancy script in red letters, held up by a rectangular red frame. In the background is a marina with calm water and an array of boats.

Gijon ! This was about the point where I was starting to call the trip Dwagon On Tour and I picked up from ideas from not quite sure where else to sneak the little fellow into pictures wherever I could.

Slightly awkward start because there was unexpected traffic slowing down the buses that were taking us from the ship to the city centre (some ports don’t allow people to wander around in them) but it was really good getting ashore for a wander after being a bit wobbly during the Bay of Biscay crossing the day before.

First order of business was to find somewhere with a good vantage point. Gijon is built on the north coast of Spain, so because the world is how it is, it has coastal fortifications to defend it. Definite wake up call for my level of unfitness to leg it up to the top of that hill :-D. But I did get my first good picture of the outsides of Borealis.

Picture. We're looking out over a slightly choppy watered stretch of water towards the port on the other side. Our white upper, blue lower ship is visible behind the port buildings. There is a hill behind, with sphere buildings dotted around at the top.

Wonder what those spheres were on top of the hill.

Picture. It's a bit of a grey day but we can clearly see a castle gatehouse style building opposite with sandy coloured brick. Two large square towers flank a 5 arched gateway below a 2 storey building joining the towers. To the right, a statue of a fellow holding up a cross. Far right, a modern grey tower building with blue windows. There is a road in front of us.

This saw our first taste of the architecture style as well, with those old castle style roofed buildings there in the older style, with the modern look creeping in there to the right too. And a statued person giving a greeting. I think that’s a greeting.

Also the England in New Zealand test match cricket just swapped over to England batting and I’m struggling to shift my “yay he’s out!” over to “yay our guy just hit a boundary”.

Picture. We're looking at buildings in an L forming two sides of a paved square. There are arches below and two storeys of windows above. The arches are sandy, the buildings above are red.
You could have a game of cricket in that space

They do like their open areas with the pedestrians well isolated from the traffic. Possibly because the Spanish drivers didn’t seem too averse to adding a little blood red to their car paint, although I don’t think they’re quite as bad as Bristol drivers who will back up to make sure after running you over.

I like my city, honest. (No I don’t 😀 )

I was still feeling a little delicate so I didn’t stay out that long but it was good finding the marina again after having a little walk through the city shopping area.

Picture. We're looking out over a very crowded marina at all of the boats. Motorboats are closer, with a large cluster of masts at the back and left. In front, a sea wall with the red dwagon on it.

There we go. Little Red Dwagon enjoying me enjoying see all the boats. It was a good city for boats. And it was a lot more sheltered in that marina than it was outside …

Picture. We're looking out over the area of the city where it meets the sea. Tall buildings are crammed in beyond a short dark wall holding the sea back. We can see white waves battering the wall.

Bit wild and I wouldn’t have been wanting to be leaning over that wall without a raincoat :-D.

I also hadn’t eaten anything for almost all of the day before so it was good to get back on board for a bit to eat. I hadn’t been actually sick with my sea sickness, just wanting to completely avoid food so that I could stay fairly horizontal and eating isn’t exactly compatible with that.

Back to the port ? It would have been good to explore for a little bit longer but …

Picture. It's dark night time and we're looking out over the water towards the bright white lights of the port. Alongside, we can see a red tanker being loaded by a yellow crane.

Back to the ship and preparing for a night time departure. And incidentally, a first really good chance to play with my new 50mm large aperture lens … the one I bought for looking at stars, where it’s been continual cloud since !

Picture. It's dark, we're looking out over the water towards the port. However close in there is a long breakwater made of stone and brick.

It was doing super well at picking out the detail too. I could barely see any of that breakwater there with Mk1 Eyeball.

(looks at time) I better hit post ! More tomorrow.

Have a lovely day everyone.

Advent day 13 and we nearly caused a security incident

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December 13, 2024

11:09 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ll get to that oopsie later. First … Day 13 !

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene. Dwagon is helping on the left by allowing a couple of the models to be on top of him. The new piece is a white and red shuttle. It's on top of a big d20 with the 13 showing.

That’s Ahsoka Tano’s Jedi shuttle there. Not from a Star Wars thing I’ve watched, it’s from one of the Disney series. I have to admit shifting from being a total Star Wars addict to being completely out of touch now with what’s on the streaming services. I saw those as another unnecessary expense that I didn’t have the time to actually get the value out of. I’ll catch up on series telly but I’m a bit behind on the recorded stuff.

I think my losing touch started with the deletion of the Expanded Universe books from the established canon, with those being swept aside in favour of movies that turned out to be … a bit awful, especially when episode 8 ignored a lot of the established Star Wars universe rules (gotta be consistent with how your universe works, even in fantasy) and then episode 9 deleted a lot of the promising threads from the movie before. I was unimpressed and they didn’t exactly make me interested in signing up to the streaming service to watch more.

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're in shadow, looking into a ravine with terrain walls to left and right. We're standing beside a speeder bike, looking towards the wreckage of a star ship that fills the end of the ravine. There is a stream running to our right.

However, after bouncing off the Jedi Outcast due to having fundamental personal conflict with its control mechanism and experiencing bugs I didn’t want to troubleshoot, I massively enjoyed Star Wars Outlaws. It was a wonderful little bit of Star Wars to experience, wander around in, do crimes and have fun with the story. I’ll buy it when it gets a tempting enough discount on Steam.

Wait ! Today’s post concept was supposed to be a bit of a music party 🙂 It’s been a little while since I’ve gone down the Youtube recommendations and let them do impromptu karaoke to the videos (sorry neighbours). One remembering from Steelpanda aka Nikki’s lovely chill Lego building stream (Twitch link) was Floppotron … She’d played a weird synth version of Last Christmas, so I had to check if there’d been a Floppotron version. Answer – yes, here’s a link :-D.

It’s … different.

What’s a Floppotron ? It takes hardware from the Dawn Of IT Time and uses in ways that were never envisioned by the designers. We used to depend on floppy drives of 3.5 inches, 5.25 inches and 8 inches. And then there were the printers … All of them have motors that would make a hell of a racket. And Mr Paweł Zadrożniak gave us the Floppotron. It looks like it’s evolved over the years since the (here’s the Star Wars link!) Floppy Duo playing an absolutely brilliant for what it’s on version of the Imperial March.

They don’t make the hardware like they used to. But my headache is increasing listening to that so time for less grating music.

We're looking at the face is a white furred animal, which I think is a seal. It has a small black nose, their eyes are closed and there are many whiskers. The captions are "Listening to music. Very very nice"

Something I’ve thought absolutely magical since I first saw it was this animated video to Goldfrapp’s sublime cover of It’s Not Over Yet. That song may have started me on listening to Goldfrapp and led to me buying all their albums. And then there’s the animation which is beautiful and heartbreaking.

Next up is going to another animation, this time of Communication by The Cardigans. They said on a collection album that they like to write lyrics that are subtle until they come up and hit you on the head with an axe. And Communication is another very thoughtful, maybe not so much with the axes, song.

Going back to another song on in the background of stream today, I’ve always been a huge fan of the incredible voice that Kate Bush has and she was always massively ahead of her time with the music that she gave us. And it’s still popular with tunes like Running Up That Hill. And she made brilliant albums too that would run the songs in together.

Talking of brilliant albums, there’s always Pink Floyd and Wish You Were Here is always a favourite. Maybe not so much for the middle tracks but oh so definitely for Shine On You Crazy Diamond and the title track, Wish You Were Here which started on the album as someone tuning the radio to find something they liked before starting to play along to what they found on their guitar.

A much more recent discovery for me has been Metric, here they are with IOU. They have a different sound that caught the ear with Gold Guns Girls and a definite catchy energy.

Talking of catchy energy, another fairly recent vibe has been The Veronicas with the sexy energy throbbing through their Untouched, which I’m selecting on the youtubes while chair dancing to Gold Guns Girls.

Back to a couple of favourites from when I was growing up, plus one a little later. All About Eve were a big part of my listening when I was a kid, here’s their breakthrough hit Martha’s Harbour. And one from a bit more recently, Blue Sonic Boy for the Doctor Who fans. I love how she just wanders off into the back of the set for a little while to let the guitar soloists have their moment, with the wander timed just so to have her back in time for more singing.

Picture, sketch. We're looking at a green dwagon wearing a multicoloured tie holding up an implement. He's just emerged from the door of a tall blue box, with panels lower down and windows above. There is a light up top. The caption is "Regeneration gone awry?"

I nearly reposted another thing there but that feels better :-D. I kinda miss sketching, although my head isn’t quite ready to return to that yet.

Next up in this musical mystery tour is something from Chris Rea (I was looking for a bloke singer to post a link to, it’s almost all been ladies so far). It’s not one of his Christmas songs, it’s the bright and happy Loving You Again.

I feel like I need a bit of cute and there’s Lisa Hannigan waiting there to brighten up this particular pub’s evening with I Don’t Know. Must look up to see if there’s anything new from this lady.

Last few ? Here we go. Gotta pick up the iPad soon so I can get that at least one chapter in before bedtime. Talking of books … sometimes they’re awesome in the first draft, sometimes they need a : Rewrite. There’s Sia.

And here I am tempted to go on listening to the great music on the youtubes. Maybe one day I’ll find my way to Mexico ? (Maybe not, bit toasty there). Anyway, that’s a lovely song by The Staves, who do have an album out that I need to get.

Penultimate song for this post – if you’re sad and need a cheering up, one thing is guaranteed to give you some happy feelings, a Kitten Marching Band.

Last one for tonight – I’ll be setting the recording thing tonight so I can Wake Up (wonderful happy track from Sakura Girl) to the cricket that’s on too late for me to watch before going to bed.

Night all, sleep well have a lovely day.

PS The security oopsie was me leaving my bag in a coffee shop after having lunch. Unattended suspicious bag left under a table ? Eeek ! But courtesy of a guy (who I was watching because he was tripping the threat warnings talking to someone on the next table) was watching me a bit too close as I left, I picked up bag before getting too far. Kinda indicative of bad brain times though !

Advent day 12 and the Emperor is on the way

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December 12, 2024

9:19 pm

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Hello everyone,

Bit of a bad body and brain day today so I’m going to attempt to pay attention to that and do a quick post … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. Advent scene again, the model collection grows against the snow scene. Red Dwagon is to the left and the models are scattered. The new one is a dark shuttle with two grey wings extending to the sides. It's on top of a 20 sided dice with two more 10 sided dice in front set to 10 and 2.

There we go. I’m attempting something new today with using numbers on the dice for the days. Does that work ? I’ll keep at it although I’ll need to improvise when the dice run out of numbers.

Today’s new figure is the Emperor’s Shuttle, which has the little central pod with two long wings either side that fold up for landing. The prompt there could be to talk about the evil overlords or modern day who’s in charge. But you know me, I don’t like to bring that in to here. You get enough of that from all of the other sources of media. I’d prefer to be a bit of an island away from all that stuff.

(Wonder how much that sea castle from the other post would be and what it would be like to live there 😀 )

I think it’s updates about me time – I mentioned bad brain bad body day above … I think that’s mostly down to the time of year and it being close to the winter break. I don’t think I saw the sun today (work from home all day plus Big Cloud) and that probably has something to do with how awake I’m feeling. The winter break will be good for getting away from Stuff and generally being able to chill out.

I’m struggling a bit physically, with an ongoing back issue and issues in my hips. I should probably replace my chair again because it’s almost certainly contributing heavily to those issues. Oh and the 3? (could be 2 and a bit) year old chair is already falling apart. I’m also having cramping issues in my legs, which are slowing me down a little bit.

Picture. We're looking at a projection of a lady in a full length robe with a hood. She's looking to the left, holding a mug and the captions are "Help me caffeine, you're my only hope"

Yep. Tired and sore but still mostly functional, so I’ll get by on that. I know a lot of people are worse off than that, hope they can get by on what spoons they have available as well. That’s the thing, we throw everything into things like the day job and don’t have much left for later.

Other stuff ?

I think the day is imminent where I retire the phone … my mobile is with the Three company and it’s over a year out of contract. They’ve just announced an imminent merger with another big company which means … no idea on what’s going to happen with the prices ! So a Cunning Plan could be to upgrade the phone so I get an upgrade for the phone and at the same time, tie in the monthly cost for the length of a new contract.

I’m also heavily considering upgrading Meltdown (desktop PC) a bit early … because this could be a good time to do that. Except I think I’ll do it the economical way and defer getting a new graphics card for a few months. Oh it looks like the ones I’d get are largely out of stock at the moment anyway. I’m looking at going to a 16GB 4060Ti card. The one in stock is £464, the ones on “pre-order” start at £390. Pre-order on a card that’s been released for a while usually means that the website doesn’t know what to do about cards that aren’t in stock.

I think that’s it for now. If you’re struggling, hang in there. Hope you get a good chance to rest and recharge soon. Nite all !

Advent day 11 and we’re shipping

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December 11, 2024

10:37 pm

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Hello everyone, door number 11 ?

Picture. It's our advent scene, with the models scattered behind a grey and red ship on top of a dice. The ship is in the shape of a double triangle wedge with a tower at the back. Our red dwagon is to the left.

Today’s model on top of the d20 there is a Venator class Star Destroyer. It’s the ship that made a debut in the Episode 2 movie, Attack of the Clones and it was the precursor ship for the iconic Imperial Star Destroyers from the original movies. The basic shape is of a triangular wedge, with further triangular sections at the back before the engines come in. The actual ship has two control towers, although the tiny model can only add one.

It’s a pretty good shape for a space battleship, as having the triangle like that means that all of the guns on the sides can be pointed forwards for lots of firepower. The Venator’s thing was to be a fighter carrier as well, so that red stripe in the middle covers a huge hangar.

With today’s model being a big ship, I thought I’d go back to the cruise :-). And bring out the ship pictures ! I saw a few on the cruise this year and some last year too, from grey ships to cargo ships to ferries and cruise ships. First up …

Picture. We're in a port terminal, in the foreground is a pair of escalators and our little red dwagon perched on a dividing wall. In the distance, the blue and white with red funnels cruise ship Borealis.

Yep, gotta be Borealis. This was from the final port, where we stopped in at Lisbon and another moment spotting a place where I could set up a good picture. I like this one (Although Ellardy could have done with more light there ! Maybe need to grab a friend with a torch next time)

Picture. We're looking across a grassy area of the port towards a huge cruise ship. She's somewhat white but with the sides broken up by an absolute wall of glass cabin windows.

Sharing the port with us was the big P&O cruise ship Iona. Whereas Borealis is 231m long and 65,000 tonne, Iona is 344m long and 184,000 tonnes. That’s a similar step up to the difference between Borealis and last year’s ship, MS Maud at 136m long and 16,000 tonnes. Maud (now Midnatsol again) is a small and very cozy ship where you could happily wander through the decks and chill out. Borealis is a bit bigger again and it was still lovely to wander through her decks and go outside on the Promenade areas and generally chill out either inside or outside. And we were looked after very well by excellent crews on both ships.

Would Iona be a similar experience ? I’ll just have to check that out at a later date :-D. One thing I want to try and avoid is being on a party boat and Iona is listed on the P&O site as being Family Friendly. Could be a bit too young a catchment. Will have to do more research ahead of the next cruise. I’d happily go on Hurtigruten (either ferry or Expedition) and Fred Olsen’s ships again but I’m wanting to go to varied places and see what it’s like on the various ships. (That’s a couple of recommendations by the way!)

Going back a year …

Picture. We're looking across open water towards a ship encased in a dock. They're working on her with assorted bits of scaffolding and cranes. The ship is large and grey, can't make out much except for an A530 on the stern.

That’s HNoMS Maud, taken from cruise ship MS Maud. She’s a fleet tanker in the Norwegian Navy auxiliary fleet and is very similar to Britain’s Tide class tankers. It was a fun spot seeing that ship from across the harbour in Stavanger. You can pick up exactly what ship this one is by that A530 on the stern, that’s the pennant number. Like …

Picture. It's night and we're looking at the side of a grey military ship. The front is to the left and a little back from there is a squared off block with the masts on top. Behind here is a long flat deck going perhaps three quarters of the length. We can see lights reflecting off the rippled sea water.

That’s the US Navy ship USS Oak Hill, you can just about pick out the pennant number on the front there. She’s LSD-51, a landing ship dock where landing craft (holding troops and tanks and trucks) go into an open area at the back of the ship. We have some of these as well, similar ships called the Bay Class LSDA (Landing Ship Dock Auxiliary). Oak Hill docked up a little bit of time after we did and was still there when we sailed away.

It was fun seeing the smaller ships around as well. In Norway, the ports would typically have a collection of offshore support vessels looking to supply the oil rigs. They weren’t in Spain and Portugal but we did see …

Picture. We're looking across a harbour towards a blue ship with a thick white band down the middle. She has a tall superstructure up front, with a low more open area aft with a single funnel and multiple cranes.

That’s the research ship Odon de Buen (name’s up front). Definitely wondering what that ship would be up to. I think she’s either running underwater vehicles on tethers for survey work or could have been doing seabed cable laying. Maybe she’s looking for oil to open up a new gold rush for Portugal or Spain.

Picture. We're looking at a navy war ship that's behind a train car with metal rails on it.

That’s the Portugese frigate F333 NRP Bartolomeu Dias, which started out life as HNLMS Van Nes in the Dutch Navy before being sold to Portugal. That’s about the best angle I could get there, although I could have maybe gone to the top of the nearby bridge … maybe next time :-D.

I think I need to hit the lifeboat in search of snacks soon, a couple more ?

Picture. we're looking down at a small boat around 15m long, speeding through the water with a wake from the front and the engines. The boat is black hulled, with a green deck. The wheelhouse is white with "Pilotos" in white text on dark blue. The roof is light red with masts on top. There is a man in dark trousers and red jacket on the back part of the deck.

Can’t forget the pilots. The big ships wouldn’t get into port without incident as regularly as they do without the Pilots and the Tugboats to help them in and out again without bumping into things.

Picture. We're looking out over a marina in the harbour. Up close, our little red dwagon on a wall. Behind in the water, there are several masted sailing ships moored up.

Time to grab an excuse to mention someone 🙂 I have a Curlylocksgamer stream on in the background for the desktop and am enjoying listening in to chill pirate vibes as she’s playing Sea Of Thieves. I’ve met Curly twice at the two Creator North meet ups, she’s fun, good to watch. Struggles with disability issues though, so it’s been wonderful to see her being able to have fun with us on the streams again lately. Lovely lady.

Picture. It's dark, we're looking across a port towards vehicles and containers and lorries on the dockside beside a moored ferry. The ferry is blue below the main deck and white above. The word Condor is on the side. We can see the city lights in the background.

That’s the smaller of the two ferries that was in Portsmouth when we got back home, the bigger one is off to the left of picture. The other one was a Brittany Ferries roll on roll off ship. And on the other side …

Picture. It's night time again and we're looking out over calm water at a couple of grey navy ships. The one in front is another with superstructure at the back and a low open area forwards. Behind we can just about see another grey ship. The calm water is reflecting the ships.

We could see into the Navy Yard over there … with Wave Knight (another older fleet tanker) in front of one of the Type 45 Destroyers (dunno which one) behind getting some work done. Always good to see the ships.

Time to hit post I think, it’s been fun doing the cruise posts a little bit differently to last year. I’ll talk about the ports at some point as well :-D.

Day 10 and a hero emerges

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December 10, 2024

10:16 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone, what’s behind the door today ?

Picture. A little variation in the advent scene today. Behind, my iPad is showing a fierce looking lady with an orange face with a white and blue tentacle on either side of her head. She's wearing a grey cloak and is wielding two light swords. Today's model is a minifigure of the same character.
Yep. Ipad is dusty.

Ellardy had to hide today, they’re mirroring me by not having the best skeleton day today. (Joints are bad, there are ouchies)

Today’s figure is Ahsoka Tano, who first appeared as a raw padawan student in the animated Clone Wars series. We saw her grow from that raw new warrior into a seasoned Jedi and she’s got her own series now (haven’t watched it).

After yesterday’s post on hero ships, the idea for today went over to heroes. As Ahsoka is one of the heroes that grew through the newest Star Wars stories. As mentioned, I haven’t watched much at all of modern Star Wars stuff. I enjoyed (most of) the Expanded Universe books a lot and the modern stuff is all locked behind a streaming paywall that I haven’t invested in and don’t have the time to watch it.

Too much gaming.

But then I thought … there are heroes all around us. All of you reading this, you’re a hero to me. Even you, the person who just randomly found the site and has read this far. YOU’RE AWESOME. Thank you, hope you read some more, it’s wonderful to think people might want to have a read of my rambles.

And there’s special mentions to come there of the two likely readers who are associated with work. One’s retired now, one is still in the organisation and helps keep me sane by being an awesome person to natter to. And tempt with Lego and tea.

There’s Comic Con Friend, who’s going through her struggles at the moment. It’s always a pleasure to see this one have a little peek into my life, either through enjoying sharing the Comic Con experience or those messages coming in.

Lots of other people too, including family. The streaming community has a lot of amazing people who share their lives, share their time with us and just generally make the days better and provide spaces that are just lovely to chill out in.

I have two of them on screens at the moment. Billietrixx is on the desktop and Norina1 is on the laptop. They’re both lovely people who provide fun, chill, cozy spaces to relax in.

Caustic Phoenix will probably be doing a co-working stream tomorrow on Twitch, I don’t get to see all of these due to being occasionally in the office when those happen. Caustic was very lovely in having a look at this site, which led to a few improvements. Caustic’s got a natural sense of fun, is another good one to watch.

It’s not just the streamers though, it’s the lovely communities they gather around them. So accepting, so generous. They’re heroes too.

I should hit post soon so I can take care of the poorly muscles and bones but one last mention for a truly wonderful person … Tashnarr has been treating us to (mostly) daily advent calendar posts over on the Instagram. They’re a little dose of Daily Happy.

There we go. The thought from during the day at work was that I’d talk about gaming and fiction heroes to follow the hero ships from yesterday. But they’re not actually real, just fiction.

You’re real heroes. Thank you all, you make life that bit better.

Picture. We're looking at an orange cat, which is gripping a person's finger between their front paws. The caption is "When ur havin a hard time but ur best friend is there for u"

Nite all, have a wonderful rest of timezone wherever you are 🙂 <3

Advent Day 9 and the Hero Ship

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December 9, 2024

10:02 pm

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Uncategorized

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Hello everyone,

Day 9 sees a favourite appear …

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection. In a semi circle above the middle we see from the left - Y Wing, X Wing, Super Battle Droid, Leia, AT-AT Walker, Sail Barge, Minikit and Tie Fighter. The Dwagon is lying down in front and in centre, the Falcon. This is a mostly round ship, with two prongs up front and a pilot area sticking out to its right hand side.

We have the Millennium Falcon today. That iconic ship for the whole series of Star Wars movies and one that helped define the term Hero Ship. These aren’t the biggest ships, they’re the ones that the heroes of a show or movie depend on. The Enterprise is a hero ship, in whichever series its in, although the Enterprise is on the big size for your usual hero ship.

A hero ship is usually something smaller, which can do everything the crew need it to do but with that sense of danger that comes from being completely outgunned by the big navy ships. And they’ll usually have a decent crew on board as well to keep them running because that gives the basis for a decent amount of cast and crew to keep the series going.

Picture. We're looking at a spaceship being held up by a piece of string. It's bare metal unpainted, there is a cockpit with windows up front, a centre box section with a large engines to each side (total two) and a cylindrical tapered section to the back.

Can’t talk about hero ships without mentioning Serenity, this one’s from the Firefly series which really deserved to tell a lot more of its story. This particular ship was centred around a main cast which had Captain Mal, pilot Wash, XO Zoe, Meathead Jayne (the actor is responsible for dumb attitudes and that pretty much sums up the character too) and lovely Kaylee as the savant ships engineer. Joining the crew for a fare and an escape were Shepherd Book and Simon and River Tam, with the final spot being Inara who would join for a while as a guest and ambassador.

The ship itself was a small tramp freighter, with living quarters and galley living area towards the front, with the central box section being where the cargo would be and the main engine being to the rear of the ship. Because the ship was so small, it could get into and out of places fast for … shenanigans, jobs other ships couldn’t do and the occasional bit of crimes, while still being so vulnerable that it would add in its own contribution to the drama.

If you haven’t seen Firefly and the follow on movie, Serenity, I’d massively recommend trying to catch it.

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Our hero character is standing on a balcony, she has brown hair in a ponytail and is wearing a blue jacket with white sleeves. In the distance, we see a long, sleek ship with wings at the back. It's perched on a landing pad.

The Mass Effect series has had a collection of hero ships, starting with the SSV Normandy of the first game. This one was a small frigate, a stealth ship that could get in anywhere, go anywhere and was that game’s vehicle (literally) for getting the main character travelling between the various locations. There was another, bigger, Normandy later and the ship in the picture is the Tempest from Mass Effect Andromeda. The Tempest was more a very light scout ship with just about enough room to accommodate all of the crew.

And that’s the main role of the hero ship, it’s usually the home of the main characters of the series. It’ll tell its own part of the story. Like Serenity being a little bit unreliable at the most convenient times for the story. It’s there to enable the story to move along and to enable the main characters to get up to shenanigans.

We’ve got some more from the world of books … Like :

Trouble Dog from Gareth L Powell’s excellent Embers of War trilogy. This is a Carnivore class ex warship, which has an embodied AI which is a fully fledged and key character in the series. Trouble Dog is a quite powerful ship, although nowhere near invincible. She’s small enough to get in where the story needs to go and has her own past and personality, plus a fantastic crew to look after.

(Embers of War is another series I’d thoroughly recommend, although a little warning – it does get a bit dark and grisly)

Another I can’t go without mentioning is the Rocinante from The Expanse …

Picture. We're looking at a black spaceship with occasional red highlights. We see it from three angles, side, top and landed upright on legs.

This ship is at the core of The Expanse novels starting with Leviathan Wakes. As your typical hero ship, it goes anywhere and this one fights hard too, being an ex warship. It’s a frigate, out of the box coming with 6 rapid fire guns covering all angles. But at the start, it’s outclassed by bigger ships that have railguns that can punch huge holes in other ships. The Rocinante is the home of the crew for these novels and while the ship doesn’t have an AI or distinct personality, it’s a solid and dependable core base for the main characters of the series.

Any more ? There’s a whole bunch more, like Moya from Farscape. Moya is a Leviathan class transport, a big living ship that becomes the home for Crichton, Aeryn, Dargo, Rigel, Chiana, Zhaan and Pilot with a few more characters occasionally living on board for periods.

And I think I’m running out of steam there. Let’s finish with a blast from the past …

Picture. We're looking at an empty starfield, with a spaceship lower right. The ship is in light colour metal. There is a central spine, with turbine like vanes around the centre. There's a glowy green ball at the back. On three spines, there are big cylinders with pointy bits out front.

That’s the Liberator, from Blake’s Seven and the hero ship I grew up with. The series was probably not something a 4 year old should have been watching but that was ok because I was just looking for the spaceship and couldn’t understand the absolutely nuts 70s era weird writing that was going on. We had some very odd stuff going on the telly back then and when you rewatch it now, stuff like Space 1999 (and Blake’s Seven) make you wonder what non-prescription pharmeuticals were going through the heads of the writers, aided and abetted by actors completely going ham with what they were given.

(I’ve just done the alt text for the picture – hover to see – and I think my brain is melted, I do apologise for people who depend on that for this particular crime to alt text!)

Fun to watch though and Blake’s Seven probably has the best and most nonsense hero ship for that time. It makes absolutely no sense, although that design is literally for space and only space. Like the Enterprise where it was an absolute crime seeing it being built on the ground in the Kelvin Timeline movie. NOPE. The Liberator was thought to be a derelict, found in space. Our characters get sent aboard as expendable prisoners and … manage to reactivate the ship and make off with it. The series sees them being fugitives from an overpowering Federation and … takes them from place to place enabling shenanigans along the way.

Would I recommend watching Blake’s Seven now, almost 50 years after it was made ? Maybe. If you can watch it on a streaming service or similar, go for it. It was a good series for its time, although you will wonder what on earth is going on at times. Don’t touch the Paul Darrow (RIP) book, it has the Blake’s Seven name but it’s not in the same universe. Afterlife is a far better sequel.

Picture. We're looking at a tiny diamond shaped white spaceship with yellow and red trim. We're looking at the cockpit up front, there are docking circles to left and right and engines at the back.

Back to Star Wars for the finish and that’s the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and an advent series from a long time ago on a sofa not that far away from where I am right now.

Gotta go, brain empty, have a lovely rest of evening 🙂

Advent day 8 and a sail away

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December 8, 2024

10:55 pm

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travel

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Hello everyone, what’s behind door number 8 ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene, with the addition of a brown vehicle with a pair of orange sails.

Sail barge today, from Return of the Jedi. I have to admit to a bit of an oops I’m late because I opened up Little Big Workshop again yesterday and yep, that’s where my weekend went. It’s a good little game :-).

I’m a little short on ideas, which could be part of “just came out of game” brain :-D. How about some sail aways to go with the sail barge ? One thing I noticed about Borealis was how smooth she was when getting moving. There was barely any sign that we were on the way. I’d look towards shore and see that we were on the way.

Picture. We're looking out over the water, towards a series of thin towers or cranes on the horizon. The water is dark and rippled by the wind. Upper left, we have the sun, with the reflection on the water. The sky is blue with some thin clouds.

Let’s start with the first day. We actually sailed at night but were treated to a lovely sunset over Southampton before we all got moving.

Picture. It's very dark, we can just see water in the lower part, with sky up above. In the centre, we see cranes and tall buildings brilliantly lit by various colour, mostly white, lights. There is the beam of a searchlight in the centre.

Thursday saw us visiting Gijon, with another night time exit and me playing with the new 50mm large aperture lens I acquired before the cruise. It was doing really well picking up lots of detail out of the darkness there. We couldn’t see very much with Mk1 Eyeball (well used, bit down on new performance), so the camera was bringing out a lot more. I was amusing myself at some points by attempting to capture the beam of light houses.

Picture. We're looking downwards towards a small group of pipers on the dockside. One is hidden but there are 5 pipers and drummers in black and white outfits visible (plus one hidden) being led by a lady in a mostly black dress outfit with red trim.

Some sailaways have a bit of a difference too, like at Ferrol where we were treated to bagpipe music from the locals. That’s one thing about cruises, the local people are usually quite happy with the tourists coming through. Definitely enjoyed listening in to the pipers.

Picture. We're looking out to sea over the foredeck of the ship. We can see a couple of benches right up forward before the bowsprit mast. To the right, the breakwater extends in front of us with a selection of cranes. The sea is a little rippled, there is a small sailboat ahead. It's day time and the sky is mostly hidden in cloud.

Saturday saw us visiting Porto, with me finding the outside observation area on Deck 6 for this port exit. Good view.

Picture. It's dark. We're looking out over a slightly rippled sea. Centre stage, we see another cruise ship sailing away. She is wonderfully lit over all areas, with a row of lights going over the masts from bow to stern. We see her from the side, she's heading left. The lights reflect off the sea.

Monday had us visiting Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. I think this one was taken from the inside of the ship (there are window reflections) but there were some lovely lights at play with the night time sail away this time. Another pretty cruise ship there, sailing away first before our departure.

Picture. It's dark again, we're looking out over the rippled surface of the sea towards a long, low container ship. She has a flat deck and a tall wheelhouse aft. The deck is being loaded with assorted containers by a lit up crane to the left. Orange and which lights reflect off the water.

Not as pretty a ship but I’m really happy I captured all the pretty lights like that. Ships like this are the workhorses of the world, they get our stuff from where it’s made to where the trucks can take over and deliver it to our doors (or shops, I prefer shops).

Picture. We're looking out over the water towards the outer areas of Cadiz, just visible on the horizon there. The sea is calm but rippled again, with traces of blue sky interrupted by thin white clouds over the central area of the sky.

This is us heading away from Tuesday’s port, Cadiz. One thing about the sailaways is the feeling as you’re heading away. I’ll be outside in the open decks areas and we were blessed with sunny, clear, calm conditions on all of the port exit days. The open sea air is lovely to bask in plus … that view.

Picture. We're looking towards a city on a hill. The buildings give that clean meditteranean architecture feel. We can see a large building to the right with a domed turret which is catching and reflecting the sun.

Last couple for today. This is Lisbon, brilliantly lit by the evening sun on our way out of the city.

Lisbon was a particularly pretty sail away, with us heading under one of the large bridges there and seeing features like a few sea castles on the way out. The local sailors are usually out as well and the sailboats kept us company for a while.

Picture. We're looking out over the sea again towards a round castle in the middle of the sea with a small tower poking up above. There are rocks surrounding the castle and a small white sailed boat is in front.

Sea castle ! And a little sailboat there as well. I think this was the day when I was watching some very feisty clouds occasionally berating the sea with thunder and lightning.

I think it’s the sense of “where to next ?” with the sailaways as well. I think they’re magic and it’s one reason I went back to doing a cruise again this year. Wonder what it would be like on a river cruise ?

Will have to see where I go next year. But before I lose myself in checking out offers, I need to do my chapter and a bit tonight … Still in Aftershocks by Marko Kloos, I’ll finish that tonight and wonder how the author will develop the story in the next one.

Nite all, have a lovely rest of evening and a good day tomorrow.

Advent day 7 and it’s a … box ?

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December 7, 2024

9:07 pm

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games

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Hello everyone, what’s behind day 7’s door ?

Picture. Our advent scene now has the addition of a cylindrical object with green and red dots. It's sitting on top of a green 20 sided dice.

Apparently it’s a minikit from the Lego Star Wars games, something you break to get game currency.

Because today’s model has come from a game, I thought I’d talk about games I’ve been playing recently today. First up …

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're looking at a sunset scene, where our truck in the lower left is going past an embankment to the right. On the embankment, glowing purple bushes ...

That’s taken from Euro Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying being back in the Truck Games. Something about the set up of taking a delivery mission from a huge choice (I usually pick the one paying the most £/mile) and then going from place to place appeals to me. Opening a bit more of the map and getting money to expand the truck collection gives me a bit of progress from each session.

Don’t know what’s happening with the bushes there, I think a recent mod has broken some textures or a mod needs to catch up. I think it’s kinda amusing when that happens, there’s no impact on gameplay and I’ve been watching the expansion of our new alien overlord purple glowing bushes.

Game screenshot. Cobalt Core. We're looking at two spaceships in the middle, facing each other. Our crew is shown in three portraits to the left, with the enemy portrait top right. A row of different playing cards is below and there is assorted other buttons.

That’s from Cobalt Core, which I first saw DistractedElf playing a little while ago. It’s a Roguelike game, structured around a timeloop mechanic where it takes about an hour for each run. It’s a good one to dip in and out of. Each battle is done with cards, this particular ship uses the Jupiter’s Moons to shoot the enemy. Each ship takes turns shooting the other and hopefully we can demolish the enemy before they demolish us.

I’ve been enjoying this one, it’s a fun little diversion to dip into and out of. Talking of spaceships …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at an orange rocky planetary surface, with the rust coloured buildings of a base scattered in front of us. In front and low on screen is our ship, it's blue at the back with engines on outriggers to left and right. There is a gold stripe in the middle and the front is white.

I had another little dip into Elite Dangerous again, with fleet flagship Tiamat’s Chariot coming out of the hangar for a new paint job and some trading. I haven’t been interested in the recent Thargoid arc at all but they’re showing info at the moment about a planet colonisation expansion coming soon and … that’s got my attention.

It was a good little session going from station to station taking goods from place to place.

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at a factory separated into various rooms, with little people with bobble hats at work stations. On the right, a list of items being assembled. In the centre, a jolly fellow with a santa hat is telling us we did a really good job getting things together for Xmas.

I may have slid into doing another Little Big Workshop run again. I really love this game, it’s an easy to play chilled out factory builder where you buy workstations for your adorable idiot little minions to use to put together various items that you sell for profit. (They have issues with sticking to tasks, hence affectionately calling them “idiot”).

I’ve been playing and enjoying Little Big Workshop for a huge number of hours (1538!) because it’s just so easy to play and it’s also very addictive. I set myself up for challenge runs now to see how quickly I can get them to finish all of the objectives.

Game screenshot. Motorsport Manager. We're looking at the livery design screen and a purple, black and pink sports car.

Of course there’s been a bit of Motorsport Manager in there. This one is another that I can pretty watch play and occasionally intervene. A dinner time game ! I’m in the midst of another very long campaign here. I’ve won the championships with the endurance car, the GT car and the single seater cars and am now in a second single seater racing team, building that one up so it beats the rest of the competition again.

I think I might have a pattern there … I’ll attach to games that I get really, really good at and then not play anything else. I guess there’s a bit of enjoying the games with that too, is that what really counts there ? Variation is good though.

Last one of this set … I rebought Deus Ex Human Revolution last month. This is probably the number 1 first person shooter story style game for me. It doesn’t do everything another game would do … but what it does, it does extremely well with super tight gameplay. And the story is pretty decent too.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Human Revolution. We're looking out over an industrial city scape at night towards a parking area with wire fencing. There are various concrete blocks to hide behind and a mission marker to the left.

I may have completed all of its achievements in just one single run. I’ll be back for Deus Ex Mankind Divided (the sequel) at some point, I like to space them out to in part reflect there being 2 years game timeline between the two games.

They’re a cracking pair of near future games, where augmentation technology is becoming a big part of life. Definitely worth a look and the games are practically given away at sales time. Like the Mass Effect set !

I dropped a screenshot of Mass Effect Legendary edition the other day so I’ll hold off on doing that again now. These are games from a good few hundred years ahead, first person shooter style games driven by story. Perhaps a controversial one saying that I prefer the Deus Ex games ?

I think that’s it for me for tonight. Oh ! We survived the storms ok ! My bin stayed up too (or was propped up again by CK on his way to/from shops, cheers CK).

Have a lovely evening everyone.