Month: December 2024

Day 3 ! One for the pew pew

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December 3, 2024

9:47 pm

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games

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Hello everyone, what’s behind door number 3 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow scene, with red dwagon to the left, Leia figure rear right and the XWing is behind a starfighter with two black hexagonal wings either side of a little pod in the centre.

I think I have a little behind the scenes stuff to catch up on here :-D. I’m seeing a “Generate with AI” button on the picture uploads, which I will never use and kinda object to the WordPress mod people adding there ! Oh dear, just started and we’re massively tangenting already. Only one thing to do there … grab that tangent and dive right on in !

Tangent 1 – AI generated pictures … I won’t call them art because I don’t consider it art in the same way as someone putting their soul into what they make is art. But I have seen some wonderful pictures where people take a number of objects and a theme and weave them together into something that looks absolutely stunning. That’s a bit different from people just putting “a fierce dragon with a sword in a fantasy setting” into a picture generator and getting something out that looks almost identical to something Askren (aka Exploding Dice) has taken days to make and was paid to create.

(Askren is a good egg, check him out, that’s the Twixxer link above which probably won’t last that much longer).

Tangent 2 ! Social media. I’ve been struggling to keep up with these lately. I’ll monitor Instagram closely because I have that tightly curated down to only show me a small number of selected individuals who post content on there that makes me happy. I’ve been enjoying the general vibe on Bluesky, the artist and author community there is fun to keep up with. Twixxer is dying a death due to the policies being introduced to it and … Farcebook is algorithm driven and doesn’t let you keep up with people without spam being introduced.

The main thing there is … social media can be very overwhelming. It can be a bit too much trying to keep up with it all. It’s ok if you need to withdraw from it and go a bit lower profile on it. Look after yourselves. If it’s getting too much, consider dropping the follows of people who don’t bring you joy or otherwise reduce how much you feel obliged to keep up with it all.

Picture. Star Trek Meme. We're looking at two men in overalls, red at the top, black lower down with black shoulder areas. The bald one on the left says "I've never written a trigonometry paper", then "But I cosigned a few". The black haired fellow on the right is now holding his head in his hand.

I’m mostly going to be doing fairly random posts throughout advent (including tangents when they hit) but also maybe getting led by the day’s model … It’s a TIE Fighter today, which is taking me back (way back) to the first space fighter game that had me addicted on PC. It’s TIE Fighter from the days of the 486 based machine. Yep. Last century. TIE Fighter was a really, really good game in its time. Excellent graphics and a tight, responsive flight model. There was a decent story running through as well, TIEing all of the missions together.

Game screenshot. Tie Fighter. We're looking out of an octagonal window into space, from a small fighter ship. The lower part of obscured by a target display showing a boxy shuttle. Top left and top right are a couple of circles with dots showing what is around us.

I went to the X Wing game a little later, I actually enjoyed TIE Fighter more. The missions were difficult but I managed to complete them all. Whereas some of the missions in XWing got me stuck and I couldn’t get past them.

Fast forward a whole heap of years and we get to …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. Our character is in the foreground wearing blue jacket and faded brown trousers. In the background, a boxy grey white spaceship pointing left with engines to the right. It's a day scene with hazy clouds in the sky.

That’s from Star Wars Outlaws and has our player character, Kay Vess, looking at a spaceship called the Trailblazer. I really enjoyed this game. I’d effectively rented it from the publisher because … it’s really expensive. I can easily afford the asking price to buy it (£95 for the version with a season pass for expansions), I just don’t want to pay that much for a game. I did massively enjoy it though and will happily play it again when the discounts are low enough. 25% (current Steam sale) is a decent start at a discount but …. I got other games to play first before going back to Outlaws.

It was a lot of fun though and I did love feeling immersed in the world that the developers created for us. They gave us something special here. That’s my honest opinion there, lots of other opinions are out there about this one. If you’re deciding whether to play it, please go by the opinions of people who have actually played it, not the ones who see : female protagonist, Star Wars not what they would have done and all of the other weird prejudices people get.

I think I might be getting a bit too excited there and it’s telling in how my shoulder is behaving :-D. (It’s a little sore and is making my right hand start to be numb again).

I better leave it there, maybe another epic screenshot ?

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're on a desert planet, looking at sandy blocky buildings in the background with mountains behind there. In the foreground, our Kay Vess and lined up behind her are 2 speeder cars and 3 speeder bikes.

That’s from the Mos Eisley space port, first seen in the original movie. I loved seeing the little Easter Eggs that they seeded through the game, including this line up of the various speeders from the various movies.

Also oh look, just under a day to go on the Steam sale. I have the following in the cart and should really buy :

Mass Effect Legendary edition – I enjoyed going back to Deus Ex Human Revolution again and playing this fresh. So the Mass Effect games at 92% off (£3.99) have the attention.

Slipways and soundtrack – a somewhat speculative one at 50% off (£8.08). This one is a space strategy game.

Tank Mechanic Simulator – ok, a weird one but I did enjoy Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. This one is 76% off for £3.71.

Tavern Master’s Pirate Cove DLC – no discount, this one is £4.29 and I did enjoy building a legendary tavern in the original game which looks like its lost its discount early.

Ok, that’s it for me for tonight, enjoy the rest of your evening, see you tomorrow. I’m going to be concentrating on enjoying the rest of Billietrixx’s Twitch (with link) stream, Tessachka (linky) is on the laptop and there’s a Mike Oldfield album playing in the background.

Nite all 🙂

Advent Day 2 and a little … reading ?

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December 2, 2024

9:15 pm

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books

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Hello everyone,

What’s behind door number 2 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow planet scene on the advent calendar box. The small space fighter ship is to the right, to the left is our (big) little red dwagon and in the centre, a Lego figure. She's got the dark hair in the circular bun style of the Princess Leia from the first movie. She's wearing white on her legs and a blue jumper with a scene from the second movie.

Good jumper, also lots of alt text that time. I do like the jumper there, I’d wear one of those IRL. (Blue with a walker vehicle to the right, a defence laser lower left and a snow speeder attack craft in the sky)

I thought I’d talk books today … I’ll be back with more Cruise Things later but I’m trying to space things out a bit. Space ?

That’s what I’m reading at the moment, with Aftershocks by Marko Kloos. It’s the first of a set of 4, which was a bit of an impulse buy with all 4 books on offer for 99p each. Can’t resist a bargain like that and the reader reviews were really good. I’m enjoying it so far, it’s set in the aftermath of a huge system wide war five years after peace was declared or rather imposed on the people who started it. It’s being an intriguing set up so far, it feels like there’s a lot going on. With a lot of hints about how the situation is being steadily developed from people behind the scenes who we haven’t met yet.

Worth checking out.

Picture, meme. We're looking at an orange and white cat, with their head resting on a closed book. The captions are "I finished my book" "And now I don't know what to do with myself"

Solution … buy another book !

I actually went through 3 on the cruise. I finished off the excellent Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s someone I had a bit of a rough start with on his books because I didn’t gel with Children of Time much at all (too much swapping between viewpoints and timelines) but Eyes of The Void is a really good continuation of what started with Shards of Earth. It’s post apocalyptic scifi, where just as humanity was getting started with expansion into the universe, moon sized alien things appeared and started reworking planets into artworks. With the people on. Eyes of the Void is a really good middle book, building on how the characters and universe got established in the first book and moving on the story at pace. I’m curious to see how the author finishes off the story.

Much recommend. I’ve enjoyed all of the Adrian Tchaikovsky books since going back to them with Dogs of War.

Before then was Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Another fun romp, where you’re drawn into the world that the main character has suddenly found themselves dropped into. John Scalzi has a wonderful, easy to read style, with fun varied characters that get the chance to breathe. Oh and surprises along the way, you can see some of the bits of the end coming but it’ll be a fun surprise all the way. I started reading John Scalzi’s books with Redshirts, which is an essential if you’re interested in the Star Trek universe.

Oh and he’s a standard bearer over on Bluesky too, showing the way to go to have a good time over there and generally make it a fun chilled out space to keep up with.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat, sitting on a wooden bench, with a towel on their legs. They have a book open in front of them and they are reading, intently. The caption is "Oh Tigger, I enjoy your crazy antics."

Suitably for cruise times, I chose Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days. It dates back to a journey made well back in 1988, when the world and the technology with us was a very different place. I think mobile phones existed ! But they were massive chunky things with battery packs, not exactly like the massively portable, massively capable things we have now. And the political situation evolves too, including how open the travel is. I think this was in the days before travellers in the Suez Canal area needed to be as wary of pirates, plus the world was as dangerous in places for all the different reasons.

Michael Palin has a dry humour running through his books and it’s an honest commentary often showing and explaining things that we didn’t see on the series. I’ll keep collecting and reading his books. Oh ! One fun coincidence was seeing someone on the cruise bring Michael Palin’s Erebus to breakfast with him one morning. Cue a little natter about books while ignoring the 3 other people at that table who switched from speaking English to speaking French as soon as we arrived. (Almost all of the other guests were lovely and not like that)

Picture, meme. We're looking down at the open pages of a book. Looking over the top of the page, a curious orange cat. The caption is "Hey Man What Ya Reading?"

Yes. Meme game is strong tonight.

I’ve finished off a series called The Belt by Gerald M Kilby. It’s the last of a set of 6, set in a future solar system where humanity has spread out as far as the gas giants. They’re quite short books, not much to them to be honest but they have a decent story running through them and I’m glad I saw them through to the finish. All I ask for in a book or a series is that the end either wraps everything up really well … or it leaves it at a place that is satisfying yet leaves you hoping there will be more. The Expanse worked well for that, it wrapped up its major story arc while leaving lots of room for more stories in that universe.

And that’s all you can ask, that you enjoy what you’re reading. I’ve seen comments on the socials that people think that authors are all in competition with each other. It actually works as completely the opposite. The authors encourage each other to do the best they can and keep on writing. They’ll understand that what they take months to write, us dedicated avid readers could demolish in less than a day (I’m not that quick). That just means …

More authors is great ! We’ll happily buy all of the books from the people we enjoy reading. And the more authors in the game, the more there is for us to enjoy. We need all the authors so that we have something new and fun to read while we’re waiting for that most favourite author to give us something new and wonderful. One day we’ll be in a Gareth L Powell, then an Aliette de Bodard, over to John Scalzi, following an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel, enjoying not feeling smart enough for the John D. Clark science book (rocket fuel, very complex) or even going back in time for a bit of Heinlein.

Sketch. We're looking at one of my rough sketches. It's a green dragon sitting on his butt, looking to the right. He's holding up a book, which he's examining with his bespectacled eyes.

Enjoy your reading, have a wonderful day. See you tomorrow.

Back from cruise, advent day 1 !

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December 1, 2024

9:07 pm

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travel

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again, I did mostly intend to do some posts while I was at sea but it didn’t quite work out that way. A lot of that is down to where my own headspace was (it’s improved now) when I disappeared. Some of it down to enjoying the cruise as well. Sometimes you really do need that time away from the world to get centred again and do a little reset.

Advent ? Here we are :

Picture. We're looking at the top of a box, with a snowscene. There are numbered doors on the box, it's an advent calendar. A small grey space fighter is lower left, being looked at by a red plush dwagon.

There we are, I’ll hopefully find something suitable for you every day. Like I’m not going to drop 12 days of cruise all at once :-D. Little X Wing there for day 1, with little Ellardy there for scale. The cruise turned into a bit of a Dwagon On Tour with the pictures. The little fella wasn’t in all of the pictures but was definitely in a lot of them. Let’s see …

Picture. We're on the outside deck of a ship, looking at the little red dwagon looking at us. It's night time and in the distance behind, disappearing into blur, is the rail defining the edge of the deck and the blurry lights of the city we are departing.

This time around, it was the Mystery Cruise with Fred Olsen, going from Southampton to Portsmouth and 6 ports in between. We’d find out where we were docking up when we arrived (although there were niceties with international shipping conventions that meant we could find out early). There was much speculation as to where we were going … Some thought we might head East to south Scandinavia (my theory). Others were looking south.

We headed south in the end, although that did lead to a couple of uncomfortable crossings of the Bay of Biscay. It’s not a forgiving place for shipping :-D. So I spent the first day and a bit being quite uncomfortable from a combination of not having my sea legs and my own metabolism and psychology ganging up on me. (I unconsciously don’t do a number 2 unless I trust the place and it takes a couple of days to get that unconscious trust – it’s silly and I don’t know why it’s in my head!)

Picture. Our little red dwagon is perched on top of a pole, looking off to the right. In the background, our huge cruise ship is docked up alongside. She is blue at the base, with a thin red line separating upper decks in white. There are red funnels on top and yellow lifeboats half way up.

That’s us in our second port of Ferrol in Northern Spain. This’ll be a quicker kinda intro overview for the cruise. I’ll go into each port separately in later ports.

The whole thing about cruising is that the ship will go from port to port, where you’ll see new things at each place. And then you can retreat back and be extremely well looked after when you’re back on board. And we were very well looked after by Fred’s people.

There’s a certain etiquette that each cruise line will go by. Hurtigruten were very casual. Fred’s ship was a bit more formal than that but still somewhere you could happily relax as a casual person that doesn’t really do formal stuff. Other cruise lines are more formal, like I won’t include Cunard on my samplings of the different cruise lines because I think they’re Too formal.

I have to admit that I was rethinking my life choices on the first Wednesday, when I had the bloating and the sea sickness from crossing the Bay of Biscay. But managed to reset my head (and body) during the first port visit on the Thursday.

So – cruise as a whole : really enjoyed it. Wanting to go back on a cruise as soon as I can get away with it. Probably not with Fred’s people just yet … however I would happily recommend them to people looking at a good company to go on any holiday with. (I’m just wanting to sample everyone’s offers but there is a tempting August 2026 solar eclipse cruise …)

The excellent customer service started when preparing for the cruise, I think I commented before that it was making me happy seeing the details steadily come in through the post. And that continued on board with my cabin being looked after by the lovely MT (hello MT !) and our dining table in the main restaurant was being looked after by a chap from India who, true to form for me, was a lovely guy and super polite. They’d be asking me about what I was seeing and I think they were being as invested in the adventures of the Little Red Dwagon as everyone else who was seeing me suddenly bounce off somewhere to set up a picture.

It was a genuinely fun time.

I won’t go into it too much more here outside of a little : people can look really fine on the outside when they are definitely NOT fine. I needed a chance to get out of the world for a little while and the cruise let me do just that. Whereas a hotel trip can be … good while you’re cozy, there’s still the travel involved. A cruise handles all the travel for you, plus the crew are wonderful people. It makes for a lovely time and, as it was last year, just what I needed.

Picture. It's a sunny day with clouds in the sky. We're looking out over a beach. Our little red dwagon is sitting on the wall separating beach from the city areas. In the distance, we can see a ferry and our cruise ship with the two funnels.

We were looked after incredibly well. Food was great, I could always have something compatible with my curious requirements. (I’m find with fish but have trouble with steak these days) And I really enjoyed being able to wander around the decks, including doing circuits of the Promenade deck looking out to the sea and the view we were getting from the open part of the upper deck.

I think that’s it for me for this post, have a lovely evening everyone. I’ll be aiming to do an advent post every day, so more cruising posts interspersed with other things like gaming, reading and the music. I haven’t got a theme in mind this year, I did that a few times over previous years and I think it burned me out on the blog posting a fair bit. Maybe doing 3 themes in a post every day was a bit much.

Still, time’s turning, hope you all have a good holiday season and you get the chance to be able to look after yourself :-).