Sleepypete - Sleepypete's Pillow

Mouse, Ouch, Glasses, Trekking

by Sleepypete

May 10, 2021

8:06 pm

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games, hardware, internet spaceship, ouch

Hello everyone,

I need to get back into the habit of posting more often again ! I’ve won something …

Picture. On a cream fabric jumper there is a box and a computer mouse. The word Corsair is on the top left of the box. Bottom of the box says "Sabre RGB Pro Champion Series". The mouse is black with a rubberised wheel. Standing on the cable in front of the mouse is a little dwagon with an apron. The apron has a cartoon style drawing of a pretty blonde lady going Yay. — Mouse acquired !

I won it in a giveaway run on Tashnarr’s channel (Twitch link). Tash is a lovely lady and I’ve been watching her streams for a couple of years now. She rapidly became one of those people who I’d switch over to her stream as soon as she comes on. She has a blast playing the games and it’s infectious chilled out fun that brings a great community along as she goes. And Tash has fantastic engagement with that community. It’s not just Tash having fun with the games, it’s Tash enjoying us having fun watching too and joining in with daft things in the chat.

Mouse ? I set it up this evening after closing the work laptop down before having a play with a little photo editing there. So what I did for this one was :

Set up the jumper (including attempting to remove all wrinkles and folds for this mark 2 version !)

Make the pose happen. The mark 1 had the dwagon too low, hence propping him up on the mouse cable this time.

Tricky bit … Set phone camera to a 10 second delay …

Hold a pen light in a suitable place to banish the shadows from the sun coming in the window …

Juggle phone camera and pen light while the countdown is happening.

Sorted ! I think it came out ok. Oh and don’t worry about the framing when juggling the pictures like this. Modern cameras have a ridiculous amount of pixels so if you capture stuff outside the border you want, just crop it to size. (Also rotate and scale). I use GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), it’s free and does what I need on the photo editing, although it does have its usability quirks.

The ouchie though is one reason why I’m not doing any gaming tonight. (That’s ok, am enjoying the Tashnarr stream). My shoulder was starting to complain through yesterday’s Elite internet spaceship travel session so I wasn’t going to be in there today. But my back has apparently decided to join in as well today. Not as in big pain but more like that promise of deep pain and being on the floor after an injudicious movement. So I’m being careful in how I move again and how I’m sitting. (Probably perversely brought on by sitting more normally this afternoon !)

Spaceship ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a brown coloured moon. The ship is to the right of scene, we're seeing her port side. The buggy is in front, pointing to the right. We see the milky way galaxy ribbon stretching out left to right above the horizon. — Shadow camp

This is me starting off from the Fire and Ice system over in galactic south east. There’s been some epic trekking going on …

Picture. Galactic map for Elite Dangerous. We see the map of the galaxy from above, with the spiral arms stretching out. Earth starts in the lower centre. A line of white dots goes to the centre and back. It then stretches to the west and around clockwise to the top, curling round to the right and stops at the south. — Almost there !

That’s the latest travel map from yesterday, which saw me reach the furthest extent of the Outer Arm Vacuus. That’s the spiral arm that’s next out from the one we’re on. There’s a curling back of the line again where I had to circle around in order to find a region of stars that were navigable between the two spiral arms. Limited hop range and all that and not enough stars to hop between. Next stop will be to the south with the faint green line showing the intended course. Oh and ignore the red line, that’s from the map software picking up a hop done in the Elite Odyssey alpha. Definitely ignore the faint spreadsheet type thing over to the left hand side … Caught out by a partially transparent map !

Glasses ? Yep. New glasses coming. I had the eyes tested on Friday and they both went back in ok. I need to switch to two pairs of glasses, one set for reading and one for more normal long distance but I was expecting that. I’m getting to That Age you know. It’s a shame to lose the magnetic clip on shades thing but no one seems to do those frames any more. A pity because it made it far easier to choose new frames. Instead of looking at a whole wall of frames, all I needed to look at were the ones with built in shades. I’ll go reactalite adaptive instead because I don’t really need to control the shades/no shades like in the cricketing days.

I’ll do a suitable picture at some point when they arrive. I was already having thoughts about how I could get the dragons involved in that.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. This is the Australis Ferris Wheel. We see the ship landed on a brown dirt moon, port side towards the camera with the buggy in front. Top left sees a dark perhaps violet planet and stretching out from it is a white ring system that goes to the horizon of our moon. — Australis Ferris Wheel

That’s the Australis Ferris Wheel and was well worth a stop on the way. The planet in the background has a moon that has just enough inclination in its orbit to put it above the ring system. So instead of seeing a thin line of a ring, it stretches out before you like in the picture. Is pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Same planet as before. We're landed on the dirt moon looking at the back of the ship. The curved end of the ring is in sight at the horizon. We see two huge rectangular engines with the upper hull places above. There is a flash of orange hull with the landing legs behind. — Does my ship’s bum look big in this ?

After taking a similar picture from the Odyssey alpha, I had the idea to do this one as well. You can’t walk around in the main game yet but if you could, the pilot could walk under the gap in the middle of the aft landing legs and reach up on tiptoes to touch the underside. Scale is a fun thing :-).

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the upper portside of the ship facing towards the camera. Above is the ribbon of the milky way galaxy finishing at the right just before a bright yellow orange sun. — Playing interstellar fireworks again ?

That’s the view back from the Semotus Beacon, which is the furthest point reachable at the end of the Outer Arm Vacuus. No more traveling away, it’s all towards home now. (Shoulder and back permitting !)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is in the centre, pointing downwards. Colours are all washed out by the power of two suns. Up and right is a white/blue star. To the left is an orange star. — Sun bathing

This is Red vs Blue, a pair of stars of which one is a Herbig Ae/Be star. That’s a protostar, very early in its life. The game representation is probably not too correct, they’re supposed to have gas dust envelopes for formation or discs of matter. They look great though in game, although I was nervous about coming out of the jump around a twin star. Too many stars close up lead to the ship getting too hot.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed, with portside towards camera. The illumination is showing off the colour scheme of orange at the back, ochre yellow in the middle and grey towards the front. The buggy is peeking out of the ship's shadow towards the front. There is a shallow impact crater behind the ship. Above the horizon is a gas giant mostly in shadow with an arc of the sun visible on the right. We see the rings going from the tip of the horizon up and right. Above the gas giant is a smaller looking gas giant. — An Eock Hypue campsite

This is where I left it yesterday after probably too long a run. Maybe. 🙂 (I was close to the next waypoint and wasn’t finding any promising candidates to stop at).

Oh and then we go figuring out the way to the next waypoint, which needs a couple more boosts to get there. The route I’m following was intended for people with Fleet Carrier support, those can go 500 light years in a single jump. Searching for Dragons currently does 73 light years to a jump, with options for 91 and 109.5 light year jumps. (I don’t have the bits for the longer jump). So I’m a little restricted compared to that. It’s felt like an achievement being able to get to the places I probably shouldn’t have been able to get to … but it’ll be good to get back to doing something different in game.

That’s what the spreadsheet behind the galaxy map was for, it’s my route to Amundsen’s Star at the southern tip of the galaxy.

But that’s for another day, hopefully when my back has settled down a bit !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Walking, racing, jumping … skating ?

by Sleepypete

May 3, 2021

8:29 pm

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games, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

We just had our May Bank Holiday weekend, which meant … more time off work ! I spent mine variously looking at the Elite Odyssey Alpha and motor racing. There was nearly a peek at more remote control car models but that can wait a little bit and I don’t think I know enough about them yet. Oh ! I have an eye test booked in for next week, which is massively overdue.

First … thumbnail pic ? Hope it works this time !

Picture. This is a Lego model of a pair of figures dancing on an ice rink. The rink is circular and shaded in clear light blue flats, with most of the model being in white. There are two trees and a drinks stand over to the right. One model is a blonde lady with a red scarf, the other is a chap with a blue beanie hat. A dwagon looks on from the left side. — Dwagon does not know how to skate

It’s one of the Lego VIP models that came with the Space Shuttle. A smart little construction underneath there too. There are another set of cogs underneath, so if you turn the lower cog that’s sticking out, the dancers go around the rink and twirl around.

I did the deed with the Elite Odyssey expansion and bought into the Alpha … I’ve had a little look at it over the weekend but honestly, I don’t see how much is there for me plus it needs a massive amount of work before it can be considered for release. Hopefully that’s already been done because apparently the build we’re playing on is at least a month behind the one the devs have. (They must be testing the netcode out)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see our pilot there, in front of an immense landing leg (with a pair of pads) that she could walk under. The bulk of the ship is to the upper left. The scene is inside a landing area with a roof. — Mustn’t bump my head

The scale of the ships is impressive. This is the latest expansion and the Alpha allows us to walk on planets, space stations, landing pads but not inside the ships yet. The game didn’t let me walk under that landing leg but it was fun seeing that the gap there meant I should have been able to stand under it. The detail is curious. Some of the Alpha stuff has incredible detail, some is …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. In the background is a white gas giant with brown/orange highlights. It has burnt orange rings. Our ship is in the foreground and we see it from behind and above. The ship is mostly trapezoidal, with the side parts being orange and the middle stripe in white. — Tea 89 on an Odyssey

The quality is still amazing but the ship should be better … and you see the difference in levels of detail when you’re close up. Could be bugs, it’s probably me having special livery items that aren’t properly in the alpha version yet. Like the “TEA-89” identification labels that should be very visible. I tried a couple of missions involving retrieving an item from a base (no screenie apparently, game must have lagged out the pressing of Button.) and getting into a wrecked thingy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We are landed on a moon with a white surface. Our little pilot stands in front of the ship that dominates the right side of the image. (Orange wings, white stripe, we see the ship from the port side). There is a moon just above the horizon and a small wrecked object to the left. — Time for salvage !

This was me looking to retrieve an item from a crashed satellite and running into one of the issues … Cut off the access panel and the access panel falls into the hole and you can’t get it out. Oops. There’s also terrible performance which is apparently down to the game attempting to render too much, although it felt like that improved when I turned supersampling* down in the second session. Oh, the thing to look for in the detail is the edging between ships surfaces. It looks positively crude compared to what’s in the current state of the game.

*Supersampling – creating the image at a higher resolution than it is displayed at. This leads to better detail at a cost of performance. I play at 2560×1440 pixels. Supersampling at 1.25x means the game creates (renders) the image at 3200×1800 pixels.

So that’s me walking …

He’s missing the action !

One thing that’s caught attention is this fella, dubbed Peter the Sleeper, which makes me a little more relieved again about the choice to move my name on from Sleepypete and make Sleepydwagonman the more consistent online name. (Plus there are a bunch of Sleepypetes and only one Sleepydwagonman).

More stuff that was going on was the return of World Endurance Championship racing. It feels like this series might be dying off, although it was good to see the debut of the hypercars. The race had interest all the way through, although the organisers are probably contributing to the series dying by locking the coverage of it behind paywalls. IMSA provides a superior product with better racing across all classes, better commentary and you can actually watch all of it, rather than the paltry amount that the Eurosp…. people deign to show. It’s sad because it’s selling short the efforts of the people bringing the cars to make the races happen.

Oh and then there’s F1, which had a decent race this weekend too. I’m looking forward to the Nurburgring 24 hour race coming up in a month. That’s always got interest going all the way through the field as cars fall back for repairs and then come back through.

Jumping ? I carried on with the quest to circle the galaxy, today’s trip was a bit more convoluted because it needed a bit of careful navigating and boosted jumps to hop across the gap between spiral arms. Back to the main game !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see a wedge shaped warship in a Shipyard selection screen. The ship is mostly white, with purple shapes painted on towards the forward end. — Admiral Luperza in the Odyssey shipyard

That’s the Admiral Luperza (named for Maggie Krohn) in the Odyssey shipyard ship selection screen …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Federal Corvette ship on a landing pad from port side and above. Same colour scheme as previous but with additional grey black detail present and much more detail seen on the hull. — Admiral Luperza awaits

If the Odyssey release sees the ships having the detail of the one in the Shipyard picture, instead of the detail that’s in the main game, something will have gone seriously wrong. Still, it’ll be nice to have another dimension to the game and I’m anticipating fun being the getaway pilot with a little ship that’s set up to get into places and then quickly make an escape, while the people keen on the ground stuff have their larcenous fun in bases.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in the shadow of the planet in the background. We can see the dawn rise arc to the right. Our ship is lower centre, seen from port side. A cluster of engines above and small patterns of lights betrays the presence of a carrier ship. — Visiting the Reginleif

Stopped off and repaired at the DSSA Reginleif carrier today, before heading on to :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a grey surfaced moon. We see the ship from the forward starboard quarter and can read the name "Searching for Dragons". The buggy is below the ship and a small blue planet is just peeking above the horizon. — Earthrise ?

That’s where I stopped tonight, a surprise Earthlike planet to check out a couple of jumps away from the carrier.

Hope you all had great weekends !

Stay safe, be well.

Zoom Zoom and Alien Hunting

by Sleepypete

April 26, 2021

8:28 pm

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gaming, internet spaceship, picture

Immediate squirrel moment after realising that when one of the standy up legs fell off the keyboard, I put it back in the wrong way. It wobbled. It doesn’t wobble now that I’ve fixed that.

Hmm. Curious way to start ? Just a random squirrel moment. Keyboard’s doing fine actually. It’s a little stiffer than I got used to with the Steelseries keyboard but it’s been good since I got it. One big advantage is that whereas the Steelseries keyboard was essentially a closed unit, the ADX keyboard has unenclosed keyswitches so you could clean the dust out with an air blaster.

Outside of the work, I’ve been enjoying a few games … Elite is still a big one :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. we see the port side of our ship from the rear. The two engines shine bright with a bluish white trail behind and a couple of X's of light flare coming from the engines. Across the top of the picture we see the Milky Way ribbon of stars and there is a small part of a yellow star above that. — Set the controls for just around the sun

That was me setting off from the extreme Eastern Edge of the galaxy. I’ve set course for the south now, reaching the end of the white dotted line below.

Picture. We see a map of our galaxy from above, with the bright central core in the middle with the spiral arms coming out from that centre. There is a white line showing my course and a thin green line showing my planned route. — Helm ! Follow the green course

The white dots are where I’ve been. It still includes an earlier trip to the Galactic Core and a couple of speed runs there. Those are the white lines to the centre of the map, plus another going off to the East a bit where I wanted to see some different things on the way back. My galactic circumnavigation course started by going to the West, diverting off a couple of times where the Kamd site told me there would be fun things to look at. It then goes North, following a spiral arm, while diverting off a couple of times to see more fun stuff. Up at the top is Galactic North and the systems Beagle Point and Salome’s Reach, which are the most northern stars that can be visited in the game. Off to the East is Magellan’s Point, the most Eastern star we can visit in the game. I had to divert around the end of the spiral arms to a point where there are enough stars to jump around. And then the green line shows where I’m needing to divert around another gap between spiral arms.

More pictures to come later and Yay ! Managed to figure out how to get ED Discovery to present this as a good looking map instead of the colour regions that it defaults to.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed and we are viewing it from the port side rear. There's a lovely shadow under the ship on a pink-ish looking surface. Up in the sky is a large dark moon with a wrinkly surface and in the background and farther away is a smaller looking but actually much larger gas giant. — Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear

That was where I started off on Thursday, on a mad dash to fix something I’ve been missing for a little while.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is in shadow and we view her from below her port side, looking slightly from the front. The buggy is back and in the shadow of the ship, towards the front. In the sky there is a dark moon. On the left there is a yellow star shining bright, with a tiny blue one directly underneath. The blue one is throwing off streamers in a thin cone to the left and right. — The Nye’s Bow Tie System

This is one of the systems on the way, the Nye’s Bow Tie system, so named after a celebrity scientist who likes his bow ties. There are two close entry stars here that we see on the left. The yellow one is a normal main sequence star (Our star is a main sequence G class star) like our’s. The blue dot underneath with the streamers is a neutron star, a star that has exploded and collapsed into the smallest stellar object, but without the extra mass to collapse it further into becoming a black hole. We use these in game to jump longer distances, my jump record is now 304 light years in one hop. I used a Star Trek calculator to work that out (curiosity and geekiness) and apparently it is around Warp Factor 570 on the old The Original Series scale. (I don’t like the new scale, it doesn’t make sense to me).

But on we go again, I’ve kinda entered crazy travel mode in Elite now. I’ve been on this trip since November and want to do something else in game now, especially with the walk on planets expansion coming relatively soon.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship from the starboard side, lit by the headlights of the buggy to the bottom left of shot. Buggy and ship are landed on a dark shadowed planetoid. To the right, there is a purple-ish gas giant with rings going upwards and a little to the right. — Camping by the stars again

This is where I left things on Sunday, having remembered to give the buggy the neon red paint pack again :-D.

There has also been Motorsport Manager going, I’m closing in on winning the GT car championship which will be the point where I jump into the Endurance racing championship. It’s a great game, development stopped on it a few years ago and they’ve gone back to making mobile games. It’s a shame there hasn’t been a Motorsport Manager 2 on PC, although they did such a good job on this one that it is still an incredibly good game of its rather unique type. It’s my go to game for when I’m not feeling great and want a game I watch more than play.

XCom2 has been a fun one, although I think I’ve hit a point where the challenge is going out of that campaign. I haven’t hit the end stage main campaign enemies yet but I’ve eliminated all but one of the specials from the expansions. And those special characters are pretty silly, unless you know what to do and what not to do. Games like XCom tend to be a bit chess like, especially since the remakes came out. There are timers to speed you up on the missions but you need to apply a fair bit of patience, or your people get caught out and then bad things happen.

Game screenshot. XCom 2. We see the walls still standing of a futuristic looking but devastated interior of a facility building. Bottom left is "Katie Petersplays" for our currently selected character and there is a yellow outline traced in a rough circle. — Mission : Destroy Base. Almost there !

The aim of this mission was to destroy the alien facility … I think we were mostly there already. Grenades are fun in this game, although you get moaned at for using them because it means less loot to carry away. The currently selected character is Katie Petersplays, another one named after a streamer I started watching about a month ago. Her specialism is mind powers.

Game screenshot. XCom 2. In the background is a landed air vehicle which has just dropped off six soldiers who line up in front of the camera. Below that, are boxes with their names and statistics from the campaign. — The A Team

That’s the top team that will build into being the end of game team. I’ll do a full roll call when I finish the campaign but from left to right, we see :

Colonel Luperza, Spaceviking. This one is modelled on the lovely Margaret Krohn who is making the Ashes of Creation game as well as being one of the driving forces behind Roll4it and all round lovely person who I had the pleasure of meeting at Roll4itCon 2018. Oh ! Luperza’s job in this team is to run around and chop things up with a sword.

Colonel Crendor, Skittles in the bright yellow beanie and blue armour. Crendor’s job is to be the team medic. I’ve been enjoying watching his various Blood Bowl 2 games.

Colonel FTL, Dr Feelgood. This character is for Josh aka GamingFtl, who I also met at Roll4itCon 2018. Lovely fella, with a great voice that he can turn into Deep Evil at the drop of a hat or turn of a tache. Specialist FTL’s role is master hacker. If the enemies turn up with robots, he’ll hack them and turn them over to our side. The nickname this time was randomly applied by the game and it just felt perfect. Oh ! When he’s not being at the centre of chaos in tabletop games, Josh is helping create the game Clone Drone in the Danger Zone.

Colonel Freaks, aka Spiderqueen. FuzzyFreaks is our sniper on the team, a crack shot with the long rifle and the pistols. She’s also one of two streamers who I will watch whenever she’s on, whatever she’s playing. She’s a fun one and also lovely person (Another meeting at Roll4itCon 2018!)

Magus Petersplays, aka Shark. Katie is a pretty new addition to the team, joining as the psionics expert. I picked up on watching Katie as part of a Roll4it table top show and have been having huge fun watching her streams as well. (She’s west coast US though I think which means late late streams for us in the UK)

Major Cyberkitten, Truthseeker. Probably a Colonel in the game by now. Truthseeker is the grenadier, who will make the aliens pay if they cluster together at all by sending little packets of Boom over. Also has a very large gun. Cyberkitten has been a very good friend for a couple of decades now.

All the links there will take you to their Twitch channels (not CK!) which should point you to more of what they do. Cyberkitten’s link will take you to his blog, which is always good to catch up on. They’re all fantastic people, which is one reason Brain went towards customising a character for them. Check ’em out.

Yeah ! XCom 2 definitely still has that “Just one more mission” factor still. It’s a tough game, it can really punish when you leave a person exposed. It’s a long game though, so I won’t play it again for a while after this campaign.

You’re probably thinking – isn’t it a little weird to name the characters that way ? I find it actually makes me enjoy the game more. I’ve got a selection of name lists that I’ve acquired from places, like Mass Effect names, Yogscast names, Totalbiscuit’s old name list … It’s good to see the names pop up and the interpretations from other people. I’m also running a decent amount of mods in there for more customisation. I’d rather have Colonel Luperza or Colonel Tashnarr (another sword character) than the randomly generated names. There’s more of a connection to the characters, albeit you have to remember that it’s a completely artificial connection.

It’s been fun making up the character bio stories too and there has been a few chuckles when I’ve posted them. I’ll put out a full roll call at some point.

How have I been doing ? Weekend was rough honestly. I think my brain was steadily frying towards the end of last week and then on Saturday, I moved a few things around in the house which I think led directly to massive dust inhalation and trouble breathing. Saturday’s sleep was Real Bad. Sunday’s sleep was better.

I’m out and about tomorrow though, which should mean lots of fresh air hopefully. It’ll be good to head out again.

And I’d better hit post and sign off there !

Be well everyone, stay safe. Enjoy what you’re getting up to !

PS I just started my pre-publish check, saw the galaxy map picture again and thought “It would be a great idea to go up one spiral arm, cross over to the next and return on that one.” Hmm.

Quick ! Escape across the border

by Sleepypete

April 18, 2021

8:10 pm

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cardiff, internet spaceship, lego

TLDR – I came back again.

As the general plague situation around here improves with the numbers going down, we’ve got more options to get out and about again … So last Monday, the various shops opened up again, as did the border across to Wales.

I like Cardiff. It’s got a lot more interesting places to look in than Bristol does. Oh and there’s the sweet shop and …

Picture. A shop front seen from the outside. It's the Lego shop with boxes of wares stacking the shelves and a selection of completed models (2 Porsche cars, tree house, blacksmith house) in the shop window. — Happy Place

Yep. Found myself outside the Lego shop again but there were a few more places on my list of shops to visit.

The trip happened on Friday, for a few reasons … Work’s one of the big ones. We’ve been busily sorting things out plus I was in catch up mode after having the previous week off. So I held off until Friday mostly for that. Friday tends to be a half day, balancing the extra hours spent logged online during the week. I have lots of flexi credit to burn at the moment …

There were other reasons too. If the cabin fever was getting to me, it was going to be affecting all the other people too. Apparently Cardiff was busy on Monday and Tuesday (Lego Shop Lady was chatty). Things had a chance to calm down a bit by Friday.

There’s also a factor of wanting to have a decent amount of time to wander and see the various shops. Kinda failed on that one on Friday. You really want to be disappearing from Cardiff around 4pm at the latest on a Friday and earlier is better. Even 3.40pm was starting to push it. There’s a good motorway going by Cardiff, the issue is getting to it. The roads out aren’t great and get clogged up very easily. (I need to find another way out of the city instead of the one the satnav likes !)

Oh ! Reasons for going into Cardiff :

Antics Model shop – I’m highly likely to get a radio control car before the Summer really kicks off. The trick will be what to get and I need a lot more knowledge and information before I commit any money there.

Wally’s Delicatessen – has sweeties … more later.

Music shops when I find then – I’m always on the lookout for more albums to add to the collection. There is an HMV in Cardiff but it’s a bit out of the way. I’m still hunting for places to browse though.

Troutmark Books – found them again ! They were open. Happy feels. I didn’t buy any books on Friday though. The foggy mask tends to put a dampener on the book browsing but they do have a great selection there.

Oh and the Lego shop too. Loot happened …

Picture. An assorted selection on top of a rather large box of Lego including yellow and pink bonbons, lemon sherbets, candy mice, pineapple cubes, kola kubes and all butter fudge. Plus Lego (in the main text) — Much loot

The assorted sweetie supplies will hopefully last a little while again. I couldn’t resist the thing in the big box at the back (Lego Space Shuttle) and my eyes were gradually increasingly opening up as Lego Shop Lady kept getting more things out of the cupboard. Yep, the ice scene, plane, helicopter bag and boat bag are all freebies. They’ll take a fair while to put together :-D.

One has already come together. I quite enjoyed this one last night.

Picture. An old red plane is on a stand. It has a single wing above a circular (for Lego!) fuselage with a single propeller up front with two blades. A Lego figure in on the stand wearing a brown flightsuit, holding a map. A dragon is to the left, wearing a flight cap and goggles. — Chocks away !

That’s the Amelia Earhart model that was available to Lego VIPs. Nice model, the VIP and Creator kits have lots of nice touches and a great finish.

It was good taking the car out and about too. I’m learning its quirks and what it can do. The voice command thing feels like it has improved, although I have no idea how much I’ll use that. It also logs the journeys and uploads them to a server, which I can check to see how I drove. (Although it has a km/h vs mph bug that I’ve reported back on).

I have an idea for a place to take the car too that’s away from the beaten track. This one comes from Friend BionicDwarf who takes fantastic pictures of the sky. Yep, place is well away from overhead lights that hide the stars. I’ve been making progress in Game too, heading round the galaxy … Leg 3 is complete, next direction is towards the south of the galaxy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the port side of the ship, above an Earth like planet to the bottom right. Above the ship, we see the ribbon of the Milky Way galaxy. — On galaxy’s edge

That’s Searching for Dragons looking back from the galaxy’s edge. There’s a system tagged Void’s Brink there, which has a single Earth Like planet about as far out as you can get. We can see the Milky Way galaxy stretching out before us there. But it’s not quite as far East on the galaxy as you can get … I had to give up on this trip before because I didn’t have the range or materials to get me out there. However …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is on the left, we're looking from behind at the top of the ship. On the right and further away is a larger ship, with a blue nose and yellow landing pads on her main hull. — Put the kettle on please !

That’s Magellan’s Pub, a fleet carrier that someone has based out at the most eastern star we can get to in our galaxy. A good place to stop off and …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the forward starboard quarter of the ship, landed on a dark brown planet. Above the ship there is a formation that looks like a white cloud. — Next stop, Magellanic Cloud

That’s me stopped at a planet at the edge. I think that white smudge thing is one of the Magellanic Clouds, a sub galaxy off the edge of our one. But I need to know more about the geography of our local galaxies to know that for sure. I couldn’t get the info from asking Google yesterday.

It’ll be good to head back and see the stars.

Time to hit post though. Keep your guard up against this plague (maybe 50:50 of the people out on Friday were Special People who don’t believe in keeping their mask on) and hopefully soon we’ll see each other out and about and at places like cinemas again.

I miss cinemas. Not been to one in 14 months.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Sleepy time

by Sleepypete

April 11, 2021

7:47 pm

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games, picture, rest

Gosh,

Didn’t really mean for it to be a week and a bit since the last post but there we are ! Oh well. A couple of things to mention from the last post … it was one of the more obvious April Fools posts but I had enjoyment typing it up and doing the simple (and not so simple) modification for the Dwagon in Black pictures. I did do the thing you’re not supposed to do and cut a watermark off one of the pictures … But that was someone claiming a copyright they don’t own. The Pocket Dragons are the copyright of Real Musgrave and their now defunct organisation (link to wiki), so someone else putting a watermark on them is the equivalent of the people stealing art for the new Non Fungible Token fad.

Credit your artists wherever you can, hopefully that means they get a little bit more back for their art which means they can afford the expenses that goes into making that art which means they make more art.

I’ve been off work this week, needed a break and some time away from it. I’ve been mostly in the games although I am enjoying watching the end of the Masters today. There’s also been lots of stream watching … a lot of it blurring into the early morning. Oops. Mind you, there’s been a bit of Mars Horizon addiction feeding into that too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda ship from above and behind the right side. An orange rear flank is looking precisely painted. She is pointing towards a blue water planet with an orange red moon. A grey red planetoid is below. — Will this be the thumbnail today ?

Yep, Elite’s happened as I steadily make my way around the galaxy. I’m in a curious spot at the moment where I need to make my way around a gap between the spiral arms of the galaxy …

Picture. Web browser. We see a clip of the Eastern edge of the galaxy, black background with increasing white to show where there are more stars. Two circles are present, I was at the left circle. The right circle is my destination. There is a straight line between them and a more jagged line showing the required route going down, right and then up and right. — Helm, Set the Satnav

That’s the path needed to get where I’m headed … You can’t bridge the gap between galactic arms by going direct because there aren’t enough stars there, so I started picking up the advanced planning at the left circle. The map above is from the Neutron Star Route Planner, which is giving lots of waypoints to go between. I’m mostly not going by that … although I have been using it as a guide. There’s another change coming as well because I’ll stop off at another carrier along the way. (The other tabs there are EDSM Elite Dangerous Star Map pages with my waypoints plus there is one for the Neutron Star Plotter, EDDB’s Stations page and my current location)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship from her starboard upper side, showing off the K08oLD callsign. A grey gas giant dominates the background with grey brown, white and darker grey rings surrounding the planet. The ship is above the rings and we are looking down on them. In the background are two much smaller ringed planets. — Putting a ring on it

Seeing the sights along the way too, although I kinda want to be doing other things in the game now instead of travelling. I’ve been doing that in the game for quite a while. Oh and there’s an expansion coming soon as well, I have very little interest in the Scifi Space Shooter aspects that have been brought in (more on that later) but it will be good to get out and walk on planets instead of just taking the buggy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship landed on a dark planet. The port side of the ship faces the camera and she is lit by the headlights of the rover. The galactic ribbon of stars is in the background. — A quiet campsite

That’s where I left things yesterday. Still lots of travel to do, this is at the lower part of that path where it started going to the right.

Talking of satnav … I did a bit more out and about in the car on Thursday. The main objective was to do something about the empty plastic bottles that have been getting out of hand … I take these to recycling bins but the usual one got taken away. (There’s another one, sorted !) And I wanted to get hold of a magazine about remote control cars too, to learn a bit more about those before I look into actually shelling out cash on them. You know, figure out what you should put the money towards and learn what to avoid spending money on.

That’s a future likely hobby again. I could do with having a place to work on them (too much junk taking up space that I need to throw out !). This is kinda sparked off by the new Lego remote control buggy … Lego’s great but I don’t have much confidence in it staying together as a buggy going over jumps. It’s time to go for something a bit more sturdy there. But which one ?

One thing I did see on the roundabout route back was an empty skating park … Brain saw that and thought it would be ideal place to play with a remote control buggy at. Will have to do more research there.

It was good to be out and about in the car, learning more about it. Handles nice, although I did manage to wake up the traction control on there. (I was behaving … mostly) The mpgs were going up steadily too. I’ll look to be out and about more as the lockdowns steadily lift. One curious thing, it’s odd to be hearing the rattles of the bus in front (it had a badly malfunctioning turbo I think) as you’re going along at a little under 40mph.

Game screenshot. Mars Horizon. We're on the orange/red planet of Mars. A number of assorted pop up orange constructions are in the background. We see a module on legs with round windows to the right. A six axle rover is in the centre and a red Chinese flag is in the foreground. — To Mars !

Yep. Been playing Mars Horizon again. It’s still a wonderfully addictive simple game to play and I hugely enjoy it.

Game screenshot. Planetbase. We see a dark airless moon and an orange giant planet in the background. The surface is littered with solar panels, cylindrical power batteries and many small domes of living space with connection corridors between them. — The colony grows

I had a little look at Planetbase again last week too. This is one of only a few games where I have all of the achievements. It’s a simple one to play, with external objects like power generators (solar panels and wind turbines), power batteries, water collectors and landing pads. Inside the base are botany farm domes for food, production domes, sleeping domes, canteens and exercise areas, labs and medical domes. It’s strength is also a weakness … if you can see the signs, then you can make the decision to stop the colony dying out due to lack of food or other crisis. But you can also have things happen like all your medics die because they were going outside in a solar flare storm which leads to radiation poisoning which doesn’t end well if you aren’t making the medicine because that’s coded out of the AI.

Yep. Game has issues … but I could understand them, play within those issues and still enjoy the game. Whereas something like Banished would suddenly murder your colony in a death spiral for which you would have no understanding of the cause. (May need to look at Banished again).

Colony builders are usually nice chilled out games and good for a bit of relaxation. I should get back to Per Aspera and Surviving Mars at some point, plus Aven Colony was on my wish list for a while, I now own that courtesy of Humble Bundle.

Talking of more travel …

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Two characters are standing near a cliff ledge. In the distance we see floating rocks and a mountain. There are faint planetary rings in the cloudy blue sky. — It’s one small step for gaming …

I’ve been enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda again, in its early stages. It’s a fun game, probably goes on a bit too long though and I’m a little frustrated that it gates your progress. The reason for that is in spoiler space but the brief summary is that as you go on, the planets become more habitable and you can reach places you couldn’t before. Like quest markers that are literally 10 feet beyond where you can go. That’s frustrating …

But as said, it’s also a huge fun game and I like the various characters. Especially Sara Ryder. It’s a much more fun themed game than the earlier Mass Effect games, definitely not taking itself particularly seriously. The Mass Effect trilogy remake is coming later in the year. I have mixed feelings about that but might well get it anyway. I hugely enjoyed the world set up in the first two Mass Effect Games, I didn’t enjoy seeing that get torn down in Mass Effect 3.

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Our character is standing on a platform beside container boxes. The landscape is orange, arid and rocky. There are boxy colony building modules to the left and the ship is to the rear of shot. — Anyone seen my ship ?

Early days. Looking to enjoy the game more. The graphics can be better … I’ve been kinda holding off on playing the prettier games like this until I could put a graphics card upgrade in. Those are in incredibly short supply at the moment as demand has vastly outstripped supply. As in, you cannot get graphics cards of any kind at the moment outside of paying massively over the odds to people who lurk in the supplier websites and then resell for a profit.

Other games have included :

Stellaris – I’m nowhere near as much a fan of this as in the early days. Not sure. It’s got too many bugs in there now and I just find other games more satisfying and enjoyable to play.

Motorsport Manager – I’m closing in on winning Phase 2 of my Win Every Championship campaign. My manager is 61 years old though, I wonder if there is an upper enforced retirement age limit.

XCom 2 – a little … a couple of fights happened but I’ve been in Motorsport Manager and Mars Horizon more.

Music has happened with a Morcheeba album, an old All About Eve concert cd and Christine and the Queens appearing. I’ve been enjoying those.

But I can hear that dinner bell going off now so I think it’s time to (check what I’ve written for a change) hit post.

Good restful week off, there’s been a few headaches along the way (probably need more fresh air), did get out and about … missed the cheap leftover Easter Eggs, lots of games, lots of stream watching to enjoy.

Hope you all had a great week, stay safe, be well.

I’ve been recruited …

by Sleepypete

April 1, 2021

4:30 am

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april fool

Yep.

A highly secretive organisation got in touch and they want me doing things for them. Not quite sure what yet but it’s going to involve a pretty sharp new suit.

Picture. A green dragon stands before the camera with arms folded. I have drawn a black tuxedo and shoes on to him. He is also wearing a white shirt and a black tie. — Proudly reporting for duty

Apparently they’re into a diversity kick at the moment and want to bring in all sorts of talent (yes, they said talent!) from outside the normal places. People who would look beyond the normal and see the actual situation, despite what the conditioning and prejudice tells them they’re seeing.

Someone who hears a fellow alien say “It’s not easy being green” and go “Yeah dude, I been there too.” And then go do the obvious thing :

Picture. A cute young looking tortoise is sitting down, eating a slice of pepperoni pizza. The caption is "I'm on the ninja diet." — I got the t-shirt

(Picture credit – Teeturtle and there’s ninja diet t-shirt)

Wonder what kind of weird and wonderful pizzas they have ? But yeah, a couple of people appeared a few weeks ago with the offer. They kinda looked like this :

Picture. A man and a woman are in a dark, misty urban scene standing in front of a car illuminating the scene with its headlights. They are both wearing black tuxedo suits with white shirts and black ties. — Ooo, mysterious

See the familiar car marquee sign there ? Yeah, the latest car is one of their training cars. It’s to get new recruits used to the systems inside the equipment without it having the daft levels of wonderful imported alien technology that the front line agents have access to. Yep. My latest one looks the part but it’s a bit more modest.

Although … they have let me take a spin on one of the rocket bikes …

Picture. A dwagon in the black tuxedo, wearing a black mask across his eyes is sitting in a black and silver rocket ship. The letters "DIB" are on the base. — Let ‘er ride !

It went whoosh, which made me happy (see that smile? Happy).

They’ve taken me on the tour already, Jay said hi. I was starstruck. The Worm Guys are back and are being the Worm Guys. Frank the Pug is getting older but still hanging in there (although he said that if we called him adorable, he would bite us). It was a little surprising that things seemed to be business as usual with no immense crisis going on. (A quiet day, although there was a vague memory of a pen and a red light).

I’m wondering how soon it will be before I get given an assignment that sees me out in the field as Agent S, alongside one of the more experienced agents learning the trade from them. Defending the Earth against those who threaten our peace and way of life.

Oh and also keeping the secret safe.

On that note …

Picture. The dwagon from before is standing before us in his tuxedo again. However, this time he is also wearing a stylish pair of black framed, black lensed sunglasses. — Don’t worry about the shades

I was bursting to tell you all the news, hence writing this post for this special day of the year. But one of my new colleagues is tapping his hand on my wing. He needs you to look into this pen type object and look out for the red light.

Picture. A white man faces the camera. We just see his gently smiling face and his dark sunglasses. His right hand holds a silver device towards the camera. It has a red light on top. — Just look right here at the light please

FLASH

Really enjoying the car everyone, it’s great ! Oh and I have next week off work too, which should be great. I need to find some excuses to get out and about around the galaxy seeing the sights, taking in the atmosphere, bathing in that purple sunlight.

See you around. In the meantime,

Stay safe, be well and treat everyone as you would want to be treated, whether they be as you are or a little bit different. Oh and watch out for tentacles, they’re really sensitive you know.

New arrival, more zoom

by Sleepypete

March 28, 2021

3:29 pm

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car

Hello everyone,

This post probably should have come out a bit sooner ! It’s been a weird weekend, definitely haven’t been feeling particularly great over the last couple of days. That might be more fallout from vaccine but it’s probably more cumulative effect from getting close to needing more time offline.

Still, the deed is done, wrapped up the second last loose end today (the last one is getting the work related stuff updated but that’s fairly trivial), just need some excuses to get out and about in it.

Erm … what am I talking about ?

Picture. New car. We see it from the left side looking at the front. It is a saloon car with a swept back. Thin headlights form a line that goes in towards a chrome rimmed grille. The car is a very dark colour, very reflective with hints of dark blue. — New blue shiny

There we go. That’s Car as it was when I picked it up at the garage on Friday. Curious to see an electric charger point on the wall behind … That’s for their UX electric cars. This one is an ES300h hybrid. The power train is essentially the same as the IS300h’s I had before, except that it’s been turned through 90 degrees (I think !) and powers the front wheels instead of the back wheels. There’s a 2.5 litre long stroke* engine again with a couple of electric motor generators providing the hybrid bits and acting as a pseudogearbox.

*Engines are normally very similar bore and stroke. The bore is the diameter of each cylinder, the stroke is how much the cylinder goes up and down. That all calculates together to give the cubic capacity of the engine. More capacity, more power. What Lexus have done with their engines is to make the stroke a bit longer than usual, it doesn’t give as much power but it does extract more energy out of each boom that happens as the engine fires. And then there are a couple of big motors there to supplement the power.

This one is a little longer than my last few, which kinda takes them in a direction that I don’t want to go as I prefer smaller, nippier cars. I haven’t tested it round corners yet, outside of choosing the off motorway stretch I can go to when coming home. Felt good on that.

There’s more toys on this one, including a nicely chunky 12.3″ display in the centre. The music sounded great on the way back too. I’ve lost the seat coolers from the previous car but there’s a Climate Concierge thingy that apparently automatically blows cold air up from your feet if the temperature gradient suggests that should be a Thing. Hopefully the seats will be an improvement, the old ones weren’t bad but I am being more prone to cramping and hip issues as I get older.

Picture. The car as before from the right front side. The clouds in the sky behind are sharply reflecting in the bonnet cover. We can see more of the hint of blue in the colour. My red dwagon and green dwagon are tucked in there above the driver's dashboard. — The dwagons seem to like it

I had to stop off at the farm shop on the way back, partly because of LOOT, partly due to wanting a couple more pictures and a little reset before the rest of the trip home.

The toys are a little different on this one. Low level autonomy is still in the car in the shape of radar assisted cruise control and lane keeping cameras. I don’t think I’ll be using the lane keeping assistance because it feels a lot fiercer than the last car and it felt like I was fighting the car instead of relaxing into the cruise. The road sign cameras can apparently pass the message on to the cruise control now, must try that. When the speed limit changes, I usually take back control and do the change in advance and more smoothly than cruise control does it, so it’ll be curious to see what the electronics do.

I need to read the book more to see how to get the best out of the satnav. The idea is to get the technology making things easy for you, instead of you having to interact with it to show you what you want to see.

As an aside, I can still vaguely remember the old days where I’d have an A4 sheet of paper that would have the big directions elements written down on it, from planning ahead with a road atlas. It’s like … remembering but I don’t miss that at all. I’ll come back to satnav later.

I don’t have all the toys on this one (like the automatic boot opener alas!) but I do have many, many toys to take advantage of and get used to. Like a blind spot manager that lights something up in the wing mirrors when someone is coming alongside. And the ones from before like the darkener for the mirrors that stops you getting dazzled when someone comes up behind with bad lights. I would definitely miss parking sensors and the reversing camera, they help out massively.

Picture. Much sweeties type loot, arranged on my black bedsheet, I'll pop a listing in the paragraph to follow. — Loot !

I’ve broken from tradition a little there by taking the description out of the alt-text and into the main text. I couldn’t go past the farm shop service station without bringing some things back with me. Here’s the list … In a box in front is a salted caramel chocolate brownie. To the left and right in front are a couple of bags of strawberry bonbons. On top of the box is a Chocolate Dwagonsaur and Chocolate Bunny (I oopsed! It should have been 2 Dwagonsaurs!) and lemon sherbets. Behind is an (empty) box with a large chocolate mint choc teacake (chocolate dome with marshmallow inside) on top, flanked by a bag of chocolate brownies on the left and all butter fudge on the right. On top of the box, there are 2 bags of Kola Kubes and a bag of candy mice. Behind, there is a blue box from the garage (which holds a bottle of Prosecco) upon which sit my Red Dwagon and my Green Dwagon. On top of the blue box sits a smaller black box with a brown case on top (which holds the spare car key).

Gosh, that’s a lot. That’s the kind of description I’m attempting to put in my alt-text for screen readers, it just felt like I needed to have that in the main text this time because there’s a lot going on there and some hidden things.

That loot should last me a good few weeks.

Gosh. Running out of speed. (Plus the F1 has started and I’m watching that live with time delayed cricket on the telly)

As to why I changed, there were a few issues with the last car which prompted changing away from it.

1 – annoying and embarrassing … the centre compartment lid liked to open at random, especially when the car was at rest. Probably expansion of air in the heat. This would make the alarm go off …

2 – annoying but mostly manageable – a change happened in the satnav which meant it just gave up before the crucial Last Mile.

3 – worrying … On one of the last pre-covid business trips in late 2019, I was driving back with colleagues when on the motorway, a large sturdy canvas bag came bouncing down the road towards us. I couldn’t avoid it due to cars to left and right, I had to drive through it with it going under the right side of the car and past. I never felt any effects after like the car pulling to one side but the mpgs were down by 10-20% since. Instead of getting 50+, I was getting 43-45. Car drove fine, nothing was spotted on 2 services since but I think there was damage there.

Oh and I think the dead car incident at the end of last year might have damaged the 12V battery.

So it will seem very extravagant making the change again but I think my reasons were good.

I’d better sign off there cos the F1 and cricket are kicking off 😀 … One last pic :

Picture. It's the same one as before at the farm shop car park but I added a little something to the reflections. The original Star Trek Enterprise is reflected in the hood. — Is that something in the sky ?

Did something strange appear in the sky between going into the farm shop and coming out again ? Hope they make it back to their time safely.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

PS A little covid related addendum … the garage adapted to the new situation we find ourselves in pretty well. Everything was done online, including digital signatures for finance documents and sending the other documents through via email. The only face to face meeting requirement was right at the end, where we did the handover and this was done outside the showroom with us being masked up.

A year of lockdown, also jabby

by Sleepypete

March 24, 2021

8:49 pm

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games, stayathome, vaccine

Hello everyone,

Last week’s been a bit weird, at least since Saturday. I got jabbed …

Picture. A green Pocket Dragon looks at you expectantly. He is wearing a disc like torch above his right eye and he's carrying an implement that looks like a stethoscope. — Doctor will see you now

Yep. Jab on Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised to get the call actually, I’m a little below the 50 year old threshold got called last week but whatever the reason, I’m glad I had it.

I think I have had side effects from it but that’s something I’ll happily accommodate if it means opening everything up again. Besides, that’s a sign that the vaccine is doing its job in getting your body’s defences ready to fight a pretty nasty virus. I’ve mostly been in a bad brain condition for the few days since, although today has been better. My muscles were complaining over the weekend as well.

If you’re hesitant about the vaccine due to a fear of needles, don’t be. I barely felt a prick as they did mine and couldn’t see the evidence of the hole it made. I’m a bit nervous about needles. I make a point of looking away, so that I don’t tense up as I see the needle going in. Being relaxed makes the job easier for the stabby person and that makes it easier on you too.

It’s been a weird year hasn’t it … I’ve barely seen anyone I know all year. I’ve seen my mum once. I’ve seen barely any of the friend people, just in random encounters in Tesco. I’ve spotted my neighbour Cyberkitten a few times. Chinese happened a couple of times. It’s good to see the lady who slips bonus prawn crackers into the bag. Pizzas have kept coming … Shopping trips were cut down to a bare minimum.

I’ve seen work people on two occasions since this time last year when we were at an away trial. Our place went work from home very early and stayed that way even over last summer.

Hmm. Must think of something to write up for April 1st. I’m short on ideas at the moment.

But yeah … this last year has been very different. Perhaps it’s indulged a reclusiveness tendency ? Yeah, I’ll need to break that.

Cartoon Picture. A cute lady is standing on her own in the middle of groups, one of which has a party hat. Caption "I could be home on the internet right now"

The internet communities have probably gotten a lot stronger over the last year, outside of a certain amount of craziness last summer when we didn’t really know what was going on. Some of the internet communities are better than others, I’ve walked away from one and I’ll walk away from another soon. Gotta look at your own mental health and if a community is bad for that, find a different one.

Oh ! This blog happened as well, in a crazy few days in October. I need to do more work on it to be honest. Things like carrying over the blogroll and the useful links from the old blog. There are a few other things too :

Alt-text – first up because I think this is really, really important ! I’ll get back to accessibility later but this one is for people who depend on screen readers. The alt-text for images is my attempt at describing them for people who can’t see them. I would have liked to go back through all the posts when I got time but it ain’t gonna work for the 1700 or so posts that were imported over from the old blog.

Dark mode / light mode – accessibility again. It’s really important that when you make a site, it’s accessible by everyone. Some people get blinded by dark text on white background. (I don’t like that on screens, it works for me in books though). I like white text on a dark background with screens. It’s kinder on my eyes.

And a few other points that are escaping my still a little addled brain at the moment.

Accessibility is absolutely key though. I’ve clicked on a few links and then immediately closed the site due to things like paywall blocking, cookie popups and other things that force you do to stuff you don’t want to agree to. Or it could be because you simply cannot read what’s on the screen.

That’s ok. If you’re affected by accessibility issues, then it’s the responsibility of the person making the site to make sure we accommodate you. We want you to stay and read, if you can’t then we lose you as a reader. Every reader is important, whatever the scale of the site.

I think I’m rambling … Screenshot time ?

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is in front, wearing metal plate armour like medieval knights would wear. It has silver patterning on a green surcoat. The helmet is metal, with the point at the front. A lady in a more revealing outfit stands to her left. This is an indoor scene. — Pointy Hat ! Errr, wait ?

Got a new hat ! And shiny armour that, contrary to fantasy game norms, actually looks protective …

I’ve been having another look at the Pathfinder Kingmaker game as well. More on that at another time, I’m barely through the prologue on that one but it is great to see that it’s grown a turn based mode. That’s a weird thing. Table top role playing games started with pen and paper systems, where everyone, player and monster, took turns to act. When Baldur’s Gate came around in the 90s, everything still took its turn but it was presented to the player as a simultaneous action thing. My brain never really got on with that. It’s funny to see things turn full circle again now, with Pathfinder growing its turn based mode and Baldur’s Gate 3 also going turn based.

It makes for more relaxing gameplay, especially when there’s a lot going on in the encounters. Like 15 characters and enemies in the encounter that Fuzzy is playing through at the moment on stream. (Twitch link)

As a weird aside, I find myself craving tomato ketchup. I haven’t had tomato ketchup in years. Wonder what reminded me of it ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the darkened shape of the port upper side of the spaceship, lit dimly by the glowing heatsinks at the back. Behind is the white cloud of the galaxy ribbon, lensed by a black hole in the left hand side of the image. — Thanduc’s Retreat

I’ve visited another black hole since the last post … Managed to get a great angle too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My ship is looking rather battered in the lower centre foreground. Behind is a very large space station type ship called a fleet carrier. There is a control tower in the middle and landing pads behind. The galactic ribbon can be seen above. — Where’s the bar ?

I wanted to see what that paint job really looks like though.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A close up of my ship on the landing pad. The paint is perfect again, with segments of orange, grey, white and a washed out yellow. We see the port upper side. The name "Searching for Dragons" is now readable, as is the callsign "K080LD" or Kobold to the rear. — All shinied up again

Looks rather smart doesn’t it ? Happy with this one.

I better sum up here, it won’t be a week until the next post. Car’s coming on Friday and I’ll be going someplace to a) pick it up and b) get pictures. The fact that the place to get pictures will also have a farm shop is purely coincidental … honest.

Picture. Meme. A small dog is wearing a mask, looking up at someone off screen. The captions are "I can assure you, madame" and "Dogs are perfectly capable of performing a cat scan." — Believe in Dog

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you are offered a vaccination soon, please do take it. The side effects are worth the pay off we’ll all get later when shops, cinemas, restaurants and the rest are able to open up again and we’re able to go Out There again with no fear of plague.

Car’s Haunted

by Sleepypete

March 15, 2021

8:10 pm

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games, stayathome

Hello everyone,

Haha, that’s a fun title from a fun meme. But that’s a little what it felt like on Friday night when I tried to do shopping. (The TLDR is that car was resurrected, shopping happened and the ghosts are quiet again).

Picture. An old red car with chrome trim and white walled wheels. The caption is "Christine. She may weigh 3,510 pounds but, I'm sure as hell not going to call her fat." — Eek

I can’t remember watching that movie but the meme’s there. It’s from Christine, penned by Stephen King and filmed by John Carpenter, where a car is haunted, possessing a possessive personality that has taken a liking to her new owner.

There’s another meme about the Moon … This one goes like :

NASA Employee : “Hey, you guys are back early”

Astronaut : “Moon’s haunted”

NASA Employee : “What ?”

Astronaut : (loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket ship) “Moon’s haunted”

And here we come to Friday … I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth saying it again (mebbe), hybrids have 2 batteries. There’s a 12V like a normal car and a massive 220V (they vary) traction battery energy store. Whereas a normal car will start by the 12V cranking the battery and then run off the alternator, the hybrid starts up all of its electronics on the 12V and then the engine is cranked using the traction battery.

However, if the 12V battery goes flat when the car isn’t used, odd things can happen. The first sign is weird messages on start up if the charge is getting low, or a dead car if the battery’s flat. The locks work off the 12V battery (there’s a mechanical key as backup).

If the charge level is just too low to allow the car to start up, Very Strange Things Happen. Like lights flickering on and off, which steadily reduce in brightness until dead car happens. This was when all the doors were unlocked too, so it needed sorting out that night.

Thankfully, I’d made preparations and had acquired a portable jump starter thingy (A Thing With A Battery And Jump Leads), in anticipation for this kind of situation occurring again. I’d seen the process done before a couple of times on 2 Lexii by AA People but this was the first time I’ve done it myself. There’s a connector under the bonnet that you’re supposed to use, or you can attach the leads to the battery in the boot, if you can get to it (mechanical lock again). I won’t describe that too much here, there are videos that do it better.

So yep, car behaving like it was haunted, throwing up a few errors for a while after I got it going again (low battery level). But it’s all ok now, verified by taking it kebab hunting last night. (I needed to find a recycling place for bottles and needed an excuse to make sure car was still ok). The cause is consequences from driving much less these days in the situation we’re all in.

I need a name for the next car by the way … I’m drawing a blank and should move away from the Star Trek theme from the last 3.

First IS was called Grey Ghost, because it was silent and grey. The name was what they called the Enterprise in WW2. So …

Second IS was called Alpha, after NCC 1701A. And then the third one was called Stan, after NCC1701B was an Excelsior class. Stan Lee did like using the word Excelsior. Following that trend, NCC1701C was an Ambassador class, but I think I go away from Enterprises because it’ll be a different type of car.

Other travels have been occurring …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is landed on an orange/grey moon, with various smoke geysers erupting. We see the aft starboard side of the ship, pointing away from the camera. She has new colours, part yellow, part grey and dark grey. We see the planet's rings in the distance. The galactic ribbon rises from the surface and at the end of it, is a sun. — Fiery whoosh !

Shiny. That’s how I logged back in the other day and I was experimenting with trying phone aspect ratio screenshots. (I.e. tilt 90 degrees and then rotate the result in MS Paint). Sometimes the best screenshots have a bit of planning, sometimes they’re just the fortuitous result of logging in just at the right time.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is in front of a water planet with ice at the pole. The planet is ringed with a mixture of white and black rings. The ship is above the rings and is showing off the new paint job, which is orange at the back, going into yellow, with the rest of the flank being light grey and dark grey. There is an orange tip. The top is in shadow. — Shoulda put a ring on it, oh wait !

Nice place. Can’t land on it yet.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the spaceship from the port forward quarter. The buggy is to the right. They're on a dark grey reddish moon. In the top left, we see a planet that looks like our own, blue ocean, white clouds and green land. — So close to the tea

That’s me visiting an Earth Like planet, actually one of those in the database, a planet called To Behold. A little taste of home, far from home.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the port side of the ship, with the buggy a short distance away. She's in what looks like a curved plain, with a mountain about 5 times the height of the ship in the background. There is a faint arc of another planet above the hill. — That hill fell from the sky

What looks fairly flat there is actually an impact crater on a moon … You might just be able to see the faint circle of a planet above the top left of the hill. The hill is the impactor. It felt like a good place to stop for the session …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the starboard upper side of the ship, fully lit except for the part above the engines. She is orbiting a ash coloured planet with a lot of red lava patches. The ship is above planetary rings, grey to the outer edge and white on the inside. — Firey

Not a great place to set up the summer house but a spectacular place to go by. I could have stopped there today on one of the moons of this place (for the tourist piccys) but wanted to cover a bit more distance.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship dominates the image. We see a bit of the upper side, with the orange wings to the right side. There are two large square engines. She is descending to a light blue coloured planet with reddish canyons that look like something huge has clawed its way across the surface. — Lovely canyons

Bit of a rushed pic, I snapped that one just as the ship was about to transition to the dive that they do between space flight and planetary flight.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the landed ship from the front port quarter, with the buggy in front again. The scene is very well lit showing a pale blue (icy?) surface and at ground level, we see a hint of the reddish canyons. A brown gas giant is in the upper left and we see a hint of its rings. — Blue campsite

This is where I stopped the session tonight, after going a little more around the north side of the galaxy. I’m definitely wanting to be back in the civilised areas of the galaxy now, although it’s good finding curious places to take hopefully great looking screenshots at.

Game Screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is on the left, looking at the mysterious fellow in a white shirt and leather overtunic who is kneeling down checking something out on the ground. — Investigating …

Final Fantasy XIV is being fun still. I’m about to move on to a place where I should be able to get my dangerous dragon lady some fancy armour too. Still a bit early days for this one but it’s a fun game to dip in and out of.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is looking at the camera, wearing a metal breastplate which is bronze on the shoulders and dark grey in front. She has dark metal gauntlets and a yellow helmet. One eye has a shiny iris. — Hat needs more pointiness

I still have the pointy hat.

Hmm … I think after rambling like that, time to close ! So …

Car’s haunted (I think the dead battery before Xmas caused some permanent damage to the battery), internet spaceship travels are finding some nice places and Dangerous Dragongirl has been helping people out. There’s been a couple of physical issues as well though. I hurt my arm by playing Mars Horizon with the mouse in the wrong place, that’s mostly recovered now. Doing stuff with the car on Friday had an impact over the weekend as well but that’s mostly better as well now.

Time to catch up on today’s news … which I’ll be avoiding talking about because I’ll say things that at least a few people would spark off on ! Like appearing at a vigil with a protest shirt on, causing trouble and then getting photographed with said protest shirt. That’s not being respectful to the person the vigil was organised for, that’s being unforgiveably political. See ? In danger of being political :-D.

Stay safe, be well.

Final Doxx Fantasy and (Spaceships)

by Sleepypete

March 6, 2021

10:44 pm

Comments Off on Final Doxx Fantasy and (Spaceships)

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ffxiv, games

Hello everyone,

Another week in the books … Getting closer to Easter ! I’m enjoying the Mini Eggs while we have them. Hmm, maybe it’s find for the Mini Eggs avatar …

Picture. A small packet of chocolate Mini Eggs beside a Pocket Dragon sniffing the air. The Pocket Dragon is wearing a chest tabard that says "Feed Me" — Tasty Things

It’s the usual things this week. Work, which I don’t talk about much here (it’s a separate thing). Relaxing in the evenings, I’ve been enjoying watching Fringe again, it’s been getting repeated on SyFy channel over the last month or so. It was a cracking series in its day and still stands up really well. It felt like there was a plan going through its arcs.

I’ve abandoned a book ! I’d been attempting to get into the 1978 novelisation of the original Battlestar Galactica. From the book, it’s obvious that there was a lot more thought gone into the backstory of that earlier version than went into the new one. I think that’s what soured me on the new series. The space scifi action stuff was amazing but it fell apart for me with the psychological aspects and … a lot of it just didn’t make sense. It hit a pinnacle with the storming of New Caprica episode and dived down a tunnel from there.

The next book is going to be Shadow Captain, book 2 of the Revenger series by Alastair Reynolds. Haven’t quite opened it yet. Later :-D.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda from her starboard bow pointing right. In the background is a white planet with surface features that look like scarring. There are delicate rings around the planet. The galactic ribbon is in the background. — Ringy Loveliness

A little bit of internet spaceship happened, to be honest though I wasn’t feeling the spaceship thing much this week so I only did a short hop. Still 64,000 light years from home. I ended up pitching up the tents in a canyon …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda is landed, we see her port side. The buggy is to the lower right, in front of the back end of the ship. There is an icy looking canyon wall to the right. A very faint dark gas giant can be seen in the background. — A restful stop

XCom 2 has had another little look and I’ve figured out how to the get the old mods loading …

Game screenshot. Xcom 2. Character customisation. We see Natasha Bambam, in plated armour with blue fabric underneath. She has long blonde hair with eye shades. She wields a gun that looks like an elongated Corgi. — Let Slip the Dog Of War

That’s one of the silly ones, called the Acorg-47 mod. I won’t be using that one much (the other weapons are better and this mod is funny but silly) but it was a good test case to get things working again. Anyway, this was a semi frenzied thing today before stream watching started up. More XCom 2 at some point when I’ve done more customisation. It’s a good challenging strategy game and it’s great to see your people progressing through.

Oh and this also means that the Hello Kitty armour and weapon pattern mods are working again.

Talking of overwhelming wholesomeness …

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. A dazzlingly cute young lady stands in a city scene. She is in front of a cherry blossom tree with silvery pink/purple leaves that almost match her silver hair. — Baby Dragon Girl

I opened up Final Fantasy XIV again. I went away from this partly because my shoulder was giving me trouble but mostly because I got heavily distracted into Star Trek Online. I kicked the ST Online habit, mostly because I was getting bored with where its stories were going as well as the game mechanics at maximum level. It felt like you were doing the busywork that increases as you level more instead of enjoying the storylines.

Final Fantasy XIV is definitely an incredibly cute game. It’s engineered that way. I’m mostly retracing steps from my first character, albeit with a tank class instead of a damage class. Definitely enjoying it though.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is standing up straight in a soft lit dream sequence. She wears a bronze metal chestplate with shoulder pauldrons, otherwise it's black leather gloves and black fabric trousers. She has a red Pointy Hat. — POINTY HAT

It’s going to take something good to pry that hat out of her hands. As Keldra Gondanne is a tank character, I’m looking forwards to finding some super shiny armour for this dangerous dragonlady. Maybe when I get to the part of the game where she can learn blacksmithing and armour crafting.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is in the centre of shot in the background. 4 men are pictured left to right. A to be recurring character stands to the right with white hair and a black outfit with white sleeves. The dialogue says "Thank you. If you hadn't come along, those bastards would surely have slaughtered us all" — One merchant at a time

Just helping out there.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. Interior scene. My character and another lady are standing at a pedestal. A small robot thing is also there. — Beware the little guy

Game pops up fun stuff and definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously, which just adds to the charm. It’s pretty free with what you can do in game as well. Now my character has gotten to level 15 in the main “job”, she’s free to join other guilds too. So there’s the crafting guild, in this case jewelcrafting, gathering guilds … and other classes too. If you put enough time into the game, you could have one character that could be tank, melee damage, ranged damage, caster damage, healer … There’s lots of potential there.

And a storyline I’m looking forwards to playing.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character (in pointy hat), is standing by a balcony. There are bushes in pots to her left and right. In the background is a cityscape. There is a waterfall to the right and a set of domed buildings in the background. — City Housing Area

Some day, I’ll investigate the housing.

It’s been good being back in the game and being charmed by the characters and the story quests.

Did I mention doxxing above somewhere ? There’s something I really want to whinge about. But I can’t because if I do, you can find out stuff about me that I’d rather remain confidential. That’s so annoying isn’t it ? Venting denied on this occasion.

There’s also been the inevitable Mars Horizon (I have all the achievements now!) and Motorsport Manager. I’m close to the final phase of the GT car part of my current campaign. When they’re built up to maximum, I’ll quit that team and move on to the endurance racing.

Right ! To the book.

Have a great rest of weekend everyone, back soon.

Stay safe, be well.