Author: Sleepypete

Late Easter

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April 22, 2022

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone, a belated Happy Easter to you all. Gosh it’s been a while again. I have had a few ideas simmering on the brain for a post but the “New Post” button wasn’t getting pressed to initiate them … However, one thing I did manage to do was break the sketch block that had been going for about 18 months …

Picture. A rough sketch of a dwagon. He's standing with his feet pointing to his right (our left) in black strokes intended to be shoes. His right paw is raised above his head, his left paw is on his hip. He is winking his left eye.
Friday? Night Fever ?

I probably gave away the muse but hopefully you recognise the pose from the movie. The inspiration was Knightenator, who I just recently started watching on Twitch (link) after she was raided again by the ever lovely Tashnarr (link). Raiding is where a stream takes their viewers over to another streamer when the time comes to shut down their stream and it’s fantastic for discoverability of streamers similar to who you were watching. It gives you an immediate suggestion for “If you like me then you should like this person too who is continuing after I go offline”.

Hmm. This could be a randomised post. I can see it coming :-). Knight was on earlier playing more multiplayer Apex Legends (not something I play but she makes it curious to watch) and is another one who indulges in the Truck Game, European Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying that game a lot although I think I might take a break from it for a bit because they’ve tweaked the AI and made them pretty dangerous (which has been annoying me).

So … what have I been up to ? The post ideas in my head are things like : Truck Game and how it relates to modern day logistics. You know, things like when you click the button to order something online, what’s involved in getting it to your door. Or to the shop you get the thing from. That’ll be for a later post I think. I think I’m due a music post at some point too. I was in Cardiff on Wednesday and picked up some more cd’s, 3 from Morcheeba, 1 from Enya, a Nerina Pallot cd and something speculative from Beverley Craven. Haven’t listened to them yet, I’ll weave the new tracks in between the other music I listen to and gradually figure out what I think of them like that. And then I’ll weave in the whole album along the way too.

I had this week off work, which has allowed for :

A bit too much Truck Game time;

Indulging in Skyrim again. I have a heavily modded playthrough going …

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back of our heroine. She's wearing heavy iron armour and is on a ledge looking down at a valley filled with thin tall trees.
A snowy view

It still looks good, it’s an easy game to play and the ease of modding it enhances it even more. That’s a curious one though, it’s an easy one to lose yourself in because they’ve buried stuff to find everywhere and the gameplay style I prefer of a big sword and heavy armour means I’m not having to think too much about hitting things.

The Motorsport Manager campaign continues and still provides interesting racing. As in, the team is winning races now but I’m having to work hard to get the wins or we’re getting advantage from being able to handle changeable weather better than the AI.

And a trip to Cardiff happened on Wednesday.

Picture. We're looking over a balcony with a golden railing at a clock in a steeple. It's in a wooden building above a row of market stalls underneath. There are more shops on a far balcony over to the other side.
Lunch with a different view

That’s the indoor market area in Cardiff and I discovered a bacon sandwich shop and a cd shop next door to it. One pondering after though is, places like the cd shop and the book shop don’t seem to change their offerings too much … I haven’t registered too much change to that Picture Of How Things Are in the book shop lately. How often do they get new stuff in ? A curiosity …

I’m mostly going to wrap up there though but one thing I did want to think out loud on was remote control cars again. I didn’t get one on Wednesday because homing instinct was kicking in (apparently I tweaked my knee again and couldn’t feel the pain from it yet) and I don’t like to make money decisions when my head’s not right. When I do get one, I want to make sure I get all the right things … What’s needed ?

Picture. We're looking at a remote control car. It has two thing wheels at the front and we see one (of two) wheels at the back, with a spiked rubber tyre. The shell is white plastic with stickers above a black plastic tub.
Ah ! Grasshopper

So – things you need include : The Car ! Batteries. These come in packs of 6 in a moulded casing. It takes about 15 minutes to fast charge (which you don’t want to do too much due to damage) and they give about 15 minutes run time. So you want two battery packs. You want AA batteries for the receiver and transmitter. The remote control part is a 2.4GHz pair. You need a motor, a speed controller and a servo for the steering. Oh and you probably want a toolkit if what you have isn’t up to what you want.

One thing I’m confused about is what’s actually in the box … The couple I have my eye on are the racing car style Porsche 911 kit (link) and the more buggy style 4 wheel drive Thunder Dragon (link). Yep. Dragon pulled it out of the pack. They’re both Tamiya kits. You can get “Ready to Race” kits as well which are fully assembled but I’d want to put it together so I can understand how all of the parts work together.

Both kits take the standard 7.2V battery module, both have a motor (RS540 is a standard size for pretty much all electric remote control cars) but whereas the buggy has a speed controller, the Porsche kit doesn’t.

Antics supply a collected kit for most of the bits : Carson 2.4GHz radio and receiver. That’s got the transmitter and receiver pair, a battery pack for the car, AA batteries, a servo that does the steering and a trickle charger for the battery pack. The Porsche would need a speed controller as well. Which might mean a different type of motor as well … Choices :-D.

Motors ? There’s lots of different types that run on different types of power. The ones that go in your vacuum cleaner or mower will be Alternating Current (AC) Induction motors. They rely on the waveform of mains power to work. It’s a wiggly (sine wave) waveform and the motor rotor (the bit that spins) basically follows the electromagnetic field in the stator (the shell) windings that have the power. These motors just keep going because there are very few contact points outside of the bearings that hold the rotor where it should be.

Direct Current (DC) motors that run off batteries can’t do that. Instead of the power waveform being wiggly, it’s a straight line of constant voltage. A brushed motor has contact points that connect the electricity to the spinning part. As the motor spins, the connection swaps over and the motor keeps turning. However, the brushes wear out over time and need to be cleaned and ultimately replaced to keep the motor working. Brushless motors are kind of a mix between DC motors and AC Induction motors, they rely on a speed controller to turn the power on and off at specific points in the rotation of the motor. (Is too complex to describe here but was probably inspired by how 4 stroke combustion engines work)

The speed controllers work by chopping up the power going to the motor. If the power is only turned on for 10% of the cycle, the car being driven by the motor goes slower. The brushless speed controllers apply the power so that the rotor follows the electromagnetic field.

Oops. Digression and nerdiness happened … Bits list ! I did say I’d be thinking aloud … If I was to go for the Porsche, the bill from Antics would be :

The car – £129.

Carson Reflex pro radio kit, 7.2V battery, charger, servo – £80

Etronix ET0103 electronic speed controller – £20

(A brushless motor and controller starts around £80)

Extra 7.2V 5300mAh battery – £35

Fast charger Perkins GTP0166 – £28

Mini toolkit for £20.

So … that all works out to £312 to get in to the hobby and that’s going cheap on a few items. One thing I have already is the boost starter for the car. That has a 12V car battery in it that can also do 240V mains power so it can feed the charger.

It’s a fair bit to get in there isn’t it ? One thing I’m very conscious of is there’s a big gap between what I currently know and what the magazines assume that you know. And the only way to bridge that gap is by diving in. Although i have just looked at the Ready to Go cars and there’s a buggy car for £125 which includes the radio kit. Maybe it’s all what you pay for again, like that extra battery is 4 times the capacity of the one in the £125 kit.

We’ll see. I think that’s enough thinking aloud for now. Book time ! I enjoyed reading Light Chaser by Gareth L Powell and Peter F Hamilton. A bit short again maybe but there’s a lot to be said for a story that gets in, tells its thing and gets out again fast instead of indulging in repetition of what you already read or having a promising beginning that dribbles out into a tame end. Worth the cash and well worth a read.

Good night everyone, I must post more !

April goes Fourth

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April 4, 2022

10:09 pm

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Hello everyone,

Yep. The “I’m gonna be an Aussie Outback Bush Pilot” was the April fool post for this year. I do enjoy crafting those. Sometimes there’s more production involved for some years posts than others. This year, I kinda got a bit too addicted to Euro Truck Sim 2 so the thoughts of putting a Dwagon in the seat of the truck didn’t happen. More on that in a bit …

Picture. A pocket dragon is on the left looking up. It's the one wearing "Feed Me" on a bib. He's amongst a collection of small chocolate mini eggs. To his right, a yellow packet with Mini Eggs written in blue.
Hashtag New Profile Picture

Normal blog stuff – really tired tonight. Had a day in the office, followed by wandering around the Mall. Successful for one thing (Magnesium tablet resupply). Didn’t get the other thing, need bathroom DIY supplies. May need new plan seeing as I couldn’t see where what I needed was in the only the biggest DIY store surviving at the local Mall. (Wickes had them. Wickes moved out).

In other news, I got a parcel today (which is why the bin moved). I wasn’t expecting an Amazon parcel … It has my address but someone else’s name on it. Apparently there’s no way to report this to Amazon except by negotiating the customer service bot long enough to get to a number where they call you.

(I’ll hold on to it, hopefully get a knock on the door when they see “delivered to” with a different address on it but if I still have it next week, it’ll go back).

Oh yeah ! Really tired. That’s probably down to hitting the Truck Game a bit too hard lately. Nice things about people time ! I’m glad I had the excuse to watch a ttrpg show (it’s just ending, sadface). It’s being hosted by TheWanderingInn (twitch link). The rest of the cast are :

Amelia Tyler (twitch). Lady of many wonderful voices. You’ve probably heard her around somewhere. She’s the narrator on Baldur’s Gate 3.

PeachyPixel8 (twitch), I don’t watch him much but he brought us a wonderful short and different cyberpunk series called Glitch starring all of the people here plus Valenvain. Less guns, more brain. It was a great little series, hopefully we’ll see a series 2.

Saffypie (twitch). Similar here, not watched much (discoverability can be an issue with Twitch) but her Queen Bitch in Glitch was absolutely stunning and I’m enchanted by her Astrid in Drifting. Great faces, brilliant characters.

Tessachka (twitch). Tess builds custom keeb keyboards when she’s not having fun bringing us the games she can play through a long term hand injury. Lovely lady, check her out. Last seen having fun in Tiny Tina’s Wonderland.

And then there’s the ever lovely Tashnarr (twitch) who guested on today’s episode. She’s been on the Final Fantasy XIV gaming lately and we’ve been enjoying her moving through the story together.

But anyway, on an evening where I was feeling blasted and need something to make me NOT play the truck game (sore arm and elbow too), it was great tuning into Drifting today. Wait, what’s Drifting ? (And Glitch). Gonna have to tune in to The Wandering Inn’s channels to find out :-D.

Ok. April 1st aftermath time. Actually most of that post is true, probably a surprising amount of it. I’m not leaving the UK any time soon, although … the UK isn’t a particularly brilliant country at the moment. The overall Class of the place has definitely gone down. That’s a curious thing actually, we’ve somewhat left the rampant homophobia and racism of the 70s and 80s behind (look up Alan Turing’s fate for worse crimes done by society back then). It’s still there but it’s not quite as bad as then. It’s been replaced with other nasty elements and just Not Smart Stuff. That’s probably the best description of it I have. People got dumb. And rude. And they have new targets for their Different From Us prejudices. We should celebrate differences, not have them as a trigger for abusive behaviour.

I’m not leaving the UK any time soon though. Not leaving the job either and it’s been great being back in a project world I was in about a decade ago. The old knowledge has been reawakening. It’s Pretty Darn Cool Stuff that I won’t talk about here. And it feels like a genuine contribution. I’m not going to say anything about contrast to what was happening before but you can probably guess from my mental state picking up that there is indeed, quite a contrast.

Picture. A green pocket dragon is holding a paw to his face in a shush gesture. It seems a bit, let's say, conspiratorial.
Less about the past, look to the future

You do have to learn from the past but it’s best not to live there. Be in the present … but spend your energy turning that present into a great future. How can you turn your present into a future you’re going to enjoy being a part of ? The answer there is different for everyone. I hope you all find a fun future to be part of.

That’s been a recurring theme for the April 1st posts. Whether it’s being taken away by aliens, being a Men In Black alien police, coming back to cricket (alas, too broken now) and oh no, I better not check back in the archive for all the April 1st posts … It was fun doing the Elite one. That had my Photoshop GIMP skills from a few years ago, which held up for that one just about. An idea I had for Friday’s post was to add the Dragon in to the truck or plane screenshots. I’m not sure if I could have managed that to satisfaction, it can be really tough to match the insertion to the original especially when one source is computer graphics and the other source is a photograph.

I think the photos and screenshots in there worked for what I wanted. The little pocket LED torch I have is proving its worth … My reading light has yellowed as its burned itself in, which taints pictures. The LED torch is white and I can juggle it as a spotlight and the phone camera (on a timer) to get acceptable pictures.

A light box would be better … but you work with what you have available.

Enjoying games where you trade stuff from place to place – I find myself really enjoying these. There’s a sense of progress and progression from earning the moneys and building up the fleets. The Elite spaceship empire has one of every ship now, so that’s complete. I don’t feel like I have any real objectives or reason to play Elite at the moment. The truck fleet is up to 5 now and that’ll just build and build. One of the achievements requires you to have 20 employees at maximum level, all with their own trucks. So I’m 25% to having the trucks and people for that so far and then they need to learn all the skills. Another achievement sees you needing 10 garages with 5 trucks each and I can totally see me meandering through the game until I get that.

It’s chilled out, mostly non stress (the AI drivers that you share the road with can be a bit nuts) and the visuals are nice. But it was taking a toll on my arms so I’m glad that I had Drifting to watch tonight instead of being in the game. Book later.

Middlesborough – yep. Been there. It was not for the faint hearted like a number of British towns I’ve been through. But it was a while ago so it may have perked up since. Nottingham was where I did university and not feeling safe when walking through the city centre in daylight was a very real feeling. It’s weird that … I’m fortunate that my white male genes make me mostly immune to the abuse and issues that people who aren’t white males get but when people say that they don’t feel safe in the world, I hear you. I don’t necessarily understand wholly due to not being exposed to it as much but : I hear you, I believe you and I’ll look out for you if I can. And sometimes that’s staying up and active on a discord channel when a very scared lady is finding her way home after dark (this happened, she had scare paralysis but we all helped her find the confidence to get home safe).

If you can help someone like that, please do. If only for the “yay me, I did a good thing today” feeling. Although I’ll understand if you have to retreat from it. I’ve been there too, especially over the past few years when the world started going even more scary.

Crewing on a ship – interesting prospect. The physicality of it would need a huge amount of getting used to though. I could probably regain some of what I had when I was legging it around a cricket field but the long term illness I had in the last decade has left a mark on me. Now if I were to win a lottery though, cruising in a barge around Europe is an enticing prospect.

Reality shows like Deadliest Catch, Ice Pilots and Ice Road Truckers – love these. Deadliest Catch might have gone on a few seasons too long though, it’s become very samey over the last few seasons. Ice Road Truckers definitely went on too long, it was good seeing the stories of truckers like Lisa Kelly, Art Burke, Alex Deborgorski, Darrell Ward, Jack Jesse and Todd Dewey unfold. (There’s a big name from the show missing there, it’s deliberately skipped). I gather that the production company upset the trucking companies though, which meant they had to find new places to cover. A pity, because the Alaska Dalton Highway years were the best years of the show.

I would like to learn Flight again though. As mentioned on Friday, space sims have it easy. The flight model is usually translated into gameplay with cheats. Definitely in the case of Elite. And you have full 6 axis control which makes landings and manoeuvres trivial. By the way, 6 axis control is : 3 for moving … Forward and Back. Left and Right. Up and Down. 3 for rotation : Pitch up and down, roll left and right, plus yaw which is turning in place. The trucks are an education because in 30 years of driving cars, I’ve never used a trailer. Trailers turn according to the force put on the trailer by the hook up.

Flight is a whole other order of complication. You have control over the 3 axes for pitch, roll and yaw and the engine applies force in the forwards direction. The wings provide lift to counter gravity … but only if sufficient air is moving over them, that’s the extent of your control over up and down. It’s pretty tough to move a plane left and right though. So flight is a huge challenge, you can’t really brute force it, you have to live within the limitations of the control surfaces having to interact with the air and the physics of drag. So the more you deflect the air, the more drag happens and if you lose more energy than the engine can put in, the wings stall, the plane falls out of the sky and that doesn’t tend to end well.

I’d like to learn it again though, so at some point a dive into MS Flight Sim will happen.

But I’m not about to move to the other side of the world and become a bush pilot any time soon, although … There is a game called Deadstick which is a Bush Flight Simulator game. Looks pretty dead though with the publisher dropping it and development hitting a wall. We’ll see !

For now though, I have that curious contrast between being very tired and being very buzzed. The buzz is partly down to being fully engaged and interested in cool stuff happening at work. Purpose is good. And it’s also partly down to tonight’s Drifting episode being super fun.

Book time now though – it’s an Alex White book, the second in the A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe trilogy. More on that at some point.

Later everyone ! Be well.

Live the Dream

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April 1, 2022

12:09 am

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Hello everyone,

I know I’m slipping on the posting lately again but this could be one of the last posts …. from the UK ! More on that later.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon facing the camera. He's looking upwards. He has a walking cane in his right hand and we can see the traps of the backpack he's wearing.
Bags packed, time to be on the road again

Yep. The wanderlust has hit. It kinda started with the space trucking in Elite, being guided by either the trades in the big ship …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our big spaceship is landed on the left, with a small planetary settlement spreading out to the right. The sun can just be seen poking above the horizon, so everything is in silhouette with long shadows. The moon's surface is dirt brown and there is a ringed gas giant in the sky.
To the moon !

It’s interesting going to new places and seeing new things. Everywhere is different and it has its own charm. Even Middlesborough. Been there. Escaped and survived. (It’s ok, it’s just one of those towns without enough investment to make it a more tourist trap location like Warwick). Where did the Middlesborough reference come from ? That was weird, sorry people who live there and love their town.

But yeah, I did enjoy the traveling aspect of Elite. Trading was a good guide there, to go from port to port sampling the scenery and bringing the goods to those who need them. A few years ago, I was seriously thinking about checking out work as a person working in a Harbourmaster Office. They’re the people who run the access to ports and marinas and now the world is opening up again, there will be an increasing amount of traffic coming by sea to and from those ports. So, new ships, new crews, new cargos coming and going.

That’s kinda fascinating. I was wondering if I’d be able to visit some of the ships too, as either a formal type inspection or just being welcoming. Getting a reputation for being friendly and welcoming brings the people back for more later.

No smuggling though. Cos smuggling is bad. Wonder what’ll be a good opportunity for going across the border to Cardiff again.

I haven’t been playing Elite much lately though, I’ve had the attention drawn more by virtual trucks instead and quietly become addicted to European Truck Simulator 2.

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're looking at a 3 lane motorway stretching to the top left. Our green truck is towing a red flatbed trailor with a yellow digger on the top. To the right, is farmland and in the distance is a building with a pointy top. The sky is blue with scattered clouds.
Tractor tractoring truck tractor

ETS2 is built around you doing contracts and taking cargo ferrying jobs. So you’re going from place to place on the compressed map of Europe, visiting the cities as you’re delivering items like the digger in the picture. The current Steam sale means that I acquired the expansions that make the map stretch to pretty much all of Europe now (except Spain because not much discount yet) and there are some lovely sights along the way. It is game-ified though, so lots of time and distance compression. Traveling 1600 miles from Zurich to Istanbul took 2 and a half hours real time. Going into and out of places like London is kinda blink and you miss it.

But (oh no cliche time) it’s also about the journey. There are 81 achievements for the game, I have 14 so far and I’m pretty sure it’s one of those games where I’m going to try for the completing the achievements. I’ve been enjoying (and being a bit addicted to) the chilled out journeying to all the places. After visiting virtual Istanbul, I’m going up the coast to hunt another of those achievements, finding places I never knew existed.

Crewing on a ship doing the trades would be a curious proposition. Ships are a bit slow though, you’d go from place to place but it takes a good while in between. Same for barges. Canals used to be the arteries of trade in the 18th and 19th centuries before the internal combustion engine was a thing … but they’ve been supplanted by the ease and speed of trucks now.

So … abandon ship and become a truck driver ? Maybe not. It’d be good to satisfy the wanderlust but trucks still go on the road which means having to interact with other drivers. And ETS2 is very good at simulating the limitations that trucks have. I’ve never towed a real trailer before, so that was an education … And the power to weight is vastly different. It takes a while for 20 tonnes of truck to get up to speed.

Give trucks (and buses!) more space ! It’s a tough job in the cabin there. We car people need to make it easy for them.

About those bags though … I occasionally watch the reality TV things like Deadliest Catch (Bering Sea conditions would eat me alive) and Ice Road Truckers but some that really caught my eye were shows like Ice Pilots which had small planes keeping the trade and travel going in the frozen areas of Canada or Alaska.

Game screenshot. MS Flight Simulator. We're looking at a small white with red trim propeller plane sitting on a runway. There are mountains in the background.
Am leaving, on a prop plane …

Must listen to that song again, it’s a great song.

Yep. Not Alaska (bit cold there). It’ll be Australia for me. The language is just about right, I reckon I could fit in pretty easily down there. Just gotta wear the hats, adopt the accent and be prepared for a lot of Pom jokes. Do they drive on the correct side of the road ? Must add Outback Truckers to that reality show catch up thing.

Anyway, the picture is from Microsoft Flight Simulator and it’ll be a great initial training aid for …

BECOMING AN AUSSIE OUTBACK BUSH PILOT !

Talk about getting out there, going from trade to trade, passenger flight to destination and seeing that wonderful country from the air. I haven’t done much in Flight Sim so far (fired it up yesterday, was too tired to do much with it though …) but flying is a really enjoyable sensation.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon who is looking left. He has his arms out like wings and is leaning forward. He's wearing a pilot hat and goggles. The background is sky blue (and he's on my pale wooden keyboard tray)
Feel that breeze

Space sims have it easy, 6 axis control makes landing trivial. Atmospheric flight though, needs the wings to interact with the air in order to make the lift. So unless it’s a special aircraft like the Harrier which overcomes gravity by brute force, the aircraft needs to be going forwards to make the lift to make it not drop from the sky.

It’s a special, interesting kind of challenge which I want to relearn again. I used to play flight sims a good while ago, the last good one was Falcon 4.0 from the mid 2000s.

And as an outback bush pilot, you get to go from place to place, seeing new things, meeting new people and experiencing what’s out there from the most spectacular viewpoint.

Should be fun.

Fly safe everyone !

(Post April 1st addendum – this is of course, an April 1st post and you should always be wary of what you read on this day. However … most of this is true ! Except for the emigrating to Australia to be a bush pilot.)

Been Truckin’

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March 19, 2022

9:54 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again ! I really must get back into the habit of posting reasonably regularly again. I may have been diving into some game addictions again … Oh and cricket’s been on (it hasn’t been great to be honest) and I’ve been diving into the work stuff.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking up at our character. She's pretty much just a silhouette against a sky which has orange aurorae fading to yellow and green. There is also a ribbon of stars to the top right. We can see a few tree tops as well.
Head in the skies ?

Yep. The new Skyrim save happened and I’ve been collecting mods again. I’ll never share the full collection of mods (most modded Skyrim installs will have a LOT of mods) but some of the big ones are Caliente’s Beautiful Bodies Enhancer which makes everyone prettier. Apachii Sky Hair adds great hair styles. There’s a map enhancer, some quality of life type things like the achievement re-enabler and a thing that tells you what books you haven’t read yet. Realistic water, weather and better road signs amongst other texture improvements.

There’s a Death Alternative mod in there which changes what happens when your character is defeated. Normally, you just reload a save. But with mods like Death Alternative Your Money Or Your Life, things happen like being ransomed off, robbed, left for dead and other things that you can actually recover from. Sounds odd doesn’t it ? But it does let you recover from a situation without the reload and another mod sets up having to rescue the people who were with you which gives a reason to explore more. Oh and there’s an Alternate Perspective thing, which alters the cliched start.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back left of our character. She's wearing an orange dress top above a light green skirt. Behind, is a medieval city type scene with stone brick buildings to left and right. A sign to the top left says "Winking Skeever"
Solitude in Solitude

In my case, I started my character as someone stepping off a boat at the Solitude docks and we’ll see where it goes from there. You can even go into the main story if you choose to. What adventures will she have ? She’s already in the garb of one who likes to hit things with a big sword. I haven’t got the mod set complete yet though. Seems like most of the time I spend in Skyrim isn’t so much the adventuring, it’s checking whether mods do what they’re supposed to do and sorting out incompatibilities.

It’s a game I’ll keep coming back to. It’s very easy to play, they’ve scattered interesting things to do all over the rather extensive map and the mods just add more to that. Oh and I’m being very curious about Elden Ring as well because a lot of people are really enjoying that. It’s another open world adventuring while bashing things with pointy things game.

There hasn’t been much Elite lately. To be honest, it’s an extremely pretty game but the hold there isn’t as much as it was. I do enjoy the space trucking though, which brings me to …

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We'd looking down on a truck from directly behind. There is a "Euro Goodies" logo on the back doors on a mostly white truck. We're on a suspension bridge and can see the chains to the left and right. It's a sunny day, showing greenery on hills in the distance.
Don’t mind me, being on the hard shoulder

Since acquiring another gamepad controller, I’ve been enjoying the driving games again. Forza Horizon 5 is one, I’m a bit relieved that I got that on Game Pass instead of shelling out the £50 for it. It can be a hugely fun game … but it also has a lot of annoyance and shallowness to it. I think I’m getting bored with what it wants you to do already. Fun while it lasted but shortlived fun. The screenshot above is from Euro Truck Simulator 2 which I’m being very happily addicted to. Just one more run … honest. Oh and it’s also from the early days where I was getting used to the actual driving on a controller.

I do like games that have a story unfold as you play them. The story this time is starting as a journeyman driver who does jobs in other people’s trucks. After a while, you earn enough to buy your own truck …

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're sitting in a left hand drive truck, looking left our of the driver's window. We're currently going over a bridge and we can see a wide river channel stretch out into the distance.
Pretty river

Not actually my truck. I couldn’t resist taking that screenshot though. The map is very extensive, potentially covering all of Europe. I started off in Cardiff but the character hasn’t been back there for a while. As you do more runs, you get more experience which lets you carry more varied cargo and go longer distances.

It’s been compelling so far and I’ve enjoyed going from place to place across Europe. I said “potentially”, because a decent amount of the map is hidden behind expansion downloadable content which you have to pay for. So that’s half of France, all of Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, part of Turkey, Scandinavia and other parts of Eastern Europe. There’s a huge map there and I’m invested enough so far that when the game goes on sale again, I’ll buy more of the DLC and roam to more places.

Oh and this is perhaps going too much into the geeky but you can link up your game to a World of Trucks service and have your progress logged and jobs given via there. Here’s my link and I’ll pop it in the links to the right as well.

That’s the thing. There’s games that you enjoy for a few hours, there’s games you can get really invested in. There’s games that transport you to somewhere else for a while. Games that have a story open up as you play them. I like the story games, whether that’s a finite scripted story like Horizon Zero Dawn (must go back to that), the building up of the Sleepy Star Fleet in Elite or starting from nothing and building up a trucking company. Or being a tough lady with a sword sorting out the bad people in Skyrim.

Tonight though, it’s watching the ever lovely Tashnarr in another story game, Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve played that a bit … but I kinda bounce off the massive multiplayer game playstyle now. It’s fun watching though. Especially if you have a good book to dive in to as well.

Time for the Armageddon Inheritance !

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.