Hello everyone,
Short one again today kinda out of necessity because my internet is giving some problems ! Sometimes it seems like my internet can’t handle cold weather and … yep it’s on the RCS Partial Service and SYNC Timing Synchronisation failure warnings again, which means I’m running both laptop and desktop off the mobile phone hotspot and there’s a stream running on the laptop.
Before I ramble too much, what’s behind the door today ?
There we are, it’s a U Wing transport spacecraft from the excellent Rogue One movie. It could actually be the best Star Wars movie for me. It just made sense from start to finish, it avoided a lot of the mysticism of the Force which is literally handwavium. You could identify with all of the characters and they were acted so completely brilliantly.
Gonna have to watch it again soon. If you haven’t seen it for any reason, I’d thoroughly recommend finding a way to see it. It transcends itself past the source material.
Situation I mentioned yesterday – I don’t have any updates yet, which I’m taking as a good or at least neutral sign. I’m still feeling very broken mentally and physically at the moment but my concern is without rather than within. I’ll be ok although I do need rest, which is why that concern is pointing outwards rather than inwards.
Other stuff …
I’ll upgrade the mobile phone over the break. I can’t trust it any more, I’ll occasionally open it to find that some of the settings have gone weird. Like a Google authentication text disabling the notifications on incoming text messages, so I didn’t see some important info until I looked in the text messages area (by incidental look). It has some other quirks as well that may be interfering with normal operation.
It’s a Pixel 4 from 5 years ago, it’s done pretty well and it was a great move to go to it from a Samsung Galaxy 7 which was absolutely riddled with malware and intrusionware from Samsung. I believe they toned that down after the Galaxy S7 but I’ve got no reason to go outside Pixel, so I’ll replace the Pixel 4 with a Pixel 9.
Like, it’s doing well at the moment by hotspotting for both laptop and desktop and providing an active local area network link between the two. But I’m not going to push it too much by pulling cruise pictures over from the laptop today.
I’ll hold off for now on the desktop PC upgrade. Part to ease out the spending a little bit, part so I can see what happens with the graphics card market next month. I may well go for the option of doing a core (Processor, memory, case, mainboard) upgrade to go to Windows 11, while keeping the current 3060Ti graphics card. It’s still pretty good for power moving the pixels around the screen.
About that …
I think that shows that when I start gaming, it’ll be long sessions. Someone on a discord is showing 1600 sessions, so they must be swapping between games a lot. I suppose each Skyrim session shows up as well and those can be only about a minute if I’m messing about with my set of mods.
I left out what the games were in the alt-text, so here we go for them by play time :
80% Idle Champions – this is an idle game where you set it up and let it run in the background. It kinda has story links in it but the main aim is to complete the adventures and make all the numbers go up, with your adventurers steadily getting stronger and stronger. Not quite sure why I still play it to be honest, maybe a habit. This one has accounted for 194 of those 393 achievements.
11% in Little Big Workshop – I love this cute easy to play factory building game and can easily forget about the world for many hours by opening it in the evening and then realising that the sun is coming up. It’s also 80% off until the next daily reset, which I think is going to be the start of a Steam sale anyway … so it’ll probably go off discount straight back on discount.
Motorsport Manager comes in at 4% of time played – this is a racing team simulator game, where you set the strategy and watch your drivers attempt to go around the track faster than everyone else. I’m currently in another megacampaign which has reached the late 2050s. This game caught me when it came out because it did everything so, so right … and gave believable races. Whereas I just bounced off the recent F1 Manager series, maybe they’ll get those right by the end of that contract.
Euro Truck Simulator has had a late revival with about 1% – I came back into this one in October. It’s another easy to play game where I’ll pick a route to go down and just attempt to chill while going from place to place. It has the progression factor that I look for, in that as I get money in the game, I can add more trucks to the company empire. I think I’m back to 15 now since restarting.
Last up for Steam is Aliens Dark Descent at 1% again – this is a real time strategy type game, set on a planet in the Alien universe. Big scary monsters are out to turn everyone into more big scary monsters but you’ve also got to contend with cultists and corporates. It’s a great game for the mechanics it introduced and the tension it builds. It does have bugs … but it’s another one that I enjoyed finishing. Apparently in just under 60 hours.
And that’s it for Steam – honourable mentions go to American Truck Simulator, the 2 Deus Ex games (Human Revolution and Mankind Divided), Cobalt Core was a fun find, Rover Mechanic Simulator is a nice little take stuff apart, fix stuff game. Dredge is in there with a bit of time spent on the latest DLC expansion and I’ll keep dipping into and out of the old Battletech game.
There’s more about the Steam Stuff at the link.
Outside of Steam, I did go back into World of Warcraft for a while … although I think I may have broken that addiction again and should probably either go back in again or cancel the subscription.
Then there’s also Elite Dangerous, which I did enjoy dipping back into again earlier this month. Warcraft and Elite aren’t launched via Steam for me, so the hours don’t add up there.
And the highlight for me of this year was Star Wars Outlaws. It has been criticised for bugs, which I only saw a couple of. It was a delight being immersed in the Star Wars universe doing shenanigans with the main character and companion. It was a weird feeling not really wanting to run it through to the finish of the story because I wanted to keep playing … but I was on a time limit due to not wanting to pay the asking price, with me playing it on the monthly subscription.
And that’s it for me for today ! Have a lovely evening everyone. Be well, hope you and yours are doing ok.