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Round the world, round the galaxy ?

by Sleepypete

November 8, 2020

8:37 pm

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futuristic, games, internet spaceship, mental health, picture, sailing, stayathome

Hello everyone,

Me stuff first … I think I’m in one of those slumps at the moment. You know, where you think you should be doing things but the things end up not happening and then you get more disappointed in yourself due to not doing the things and it becomes a self reinforcing issue.

My psychology tends to be like that. I’ll enjoy the times when I’m flying but people with this issue can’t really control when they’re in the slump and it’s really tough to get yourself out of said slump.

Don’t worry about me too much though. I’ve got a good bunch of people around who I can natter to. I’ve got a good focus of things to aim on at work. Having focus is good. It gives you a steer and a direction to go in when your mind thinks you should be doing Things but doesn’t think much of the options on hand. The thing with work is that you’ll usually have a series of things that you absolutely must get done, which leads to that focus.

Yep. Still working. UK has gone into lockdown again but the circumstances for me and my team haven’t really changed. We’ve been working from home, taking advantage of remote working connectivity and skype to stay in touch and keep things rattling along. That’s been happening since the original lockdown in March. The only thing that has changed is that we won’t be doing an away trip this month. The activity is still happening but less of us are going due to the lockdown.

Talking of going places …

It was the start of the Vendee Globe round the world single handed yacht race today. I’ve been looking forward to this since the end of the last one.

That’s Sam Davies of Initiative Coeur waving farewell. The next time we’ll see them will be in about 2.5 months. May they have fair winds and swift, safe sailing.

This is one of those ultimate sporting events. Yep, there’s a lot of technology involved that makes the boats fast but the sailors are all at the mercy of the weather and random objects in the water. Technology like foils to lift the boats out of the water (makes them go FAST) helps but it’s the better sailors who will go out in front. And then there’s no small amount of luck too with the weather and those objects in the water. I follow the Brits especially closely and the site I’ll be following the race on is Alex Thomson’s site (linky).

It’s early days so far and apart from one, they’re all within 23nm of each other. Hopefully that lasts for as long as possible. I’m sure we’ll get an exciting race.

Looking forwards to it.

Part of that slump has involved the internet spaceships as well. I really don’t like the combat in the game and definitely didn’t enjoy the conflict zone community goals. I nearly did a bit more mining but was finding other things to do that were more enjoyable. Like …

That’s Cloudpunk, a game with a very Bladerunner-esque vibe where you play a delivery driver in a futuristic city. There’s an exaggerated pixelated look to the graphics which I think works nicely.

The soundtrack is excellent too. It’s had me chair dancing a couple of times.

And there is a dog AI. I definitely enjoyed my first little session in the game last night. However …

New ship ! And a new mission. She’s the Searching for Dragons, callsign K080LD and her mission is to circumnavigate the galaxy.

There was a bit of preparation work to do first though, including visits to a couple of engineer bases.

Trying out the new paint job there. Looks good. This is a free gift to everyone who owned the Horizons expansion that enabled planetary landings, the expansion has been rolled back into the main game in preparation for the next one coming early next year. It’s an interesting move. I like it, it’s a nice gesture plus it collapses the code base down to one variant which should make for easier and more reliable coding. Or less bugs for us players.

My engineer sense getting the better of me there. One fun thing of the game is looking at the detail aspects. How are the ships put together to make them work as spaceships. So on the Anaconda above, there’s a command area up top, weapons below and it looks like big box shaped areas which will be where the cargo would go. I’m always curious about the landing gear too and how people are expected to embark and disembark. I’ll have a closer look at that at some point when I find interesting planets to land on.

Or you lighten the ship up, put in the big hyperdrive and zoom off around the galaxy. That shot is in the livery I picked out a while ago. Looks good, hopefully there will be a good few screenshots coming in the next couple of months.

Last one coming in a bit … Other things I’m looking at currently are :

Advent stuff – I missed the boat with the marshmallow advent calendar (all sold out) but I have a list of games to talk about with the Advent things. There are many games on the list. I will need to play some of them to get screenshots. I know, tragic.

More upgrades – I’ll probably be upgrading to a nVidia 3070 based card when stocks become available and the price gouging relents. (They’ve gone up 10%+ since announcement). Or I wait for the rumoured but not announced 3060 card. Either one will be a massive upgrade on my 1060 card. I won’t be waiting for the AMD graphics cards.

And house stuff that I should be doing.

Last picture for tonight. That was stopping off at the Iris Nebula Visitor Centre. Found base, not found nebula. Yet.

It was good being back in the game. I dropped The Outer Worlds due to being bored with the story and the gameplay. Star Trek Online has been scaled back to me just playing the episodes occasionally. I’m thinking about going back into Final Fantasy XIV, I need to see how my arms decide to behave.

I am still having to limit things though. I was feeling tightness in my arm earlier which I need to monitor.

Probably need to add mattress to that House List. And a chair ! Mine is getting old and rocks more than it should in angles that it shouldn’t.

Oh well. Getting old, like me. Birthday soon !

And on that note, goodnight everyone, stay safe, be well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Brave New … Keyboard ? Also lockdown again …

by Sleepypete

November 2, 2020

8:30 pm

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life stuff, stayathome

Hello everyone from the land of the impending lockdown …

(grabbed from a google search that went to something like pointywest)

I’m ok for the first bit of lockdown. My regular shopping run happened on Thursday last week, so I already had most of what I needed already and the rest I topped up with a little run out tonight.

You know … coffee …

Alas, there were no donuts. Oh, I also needed more Magnesium Citrate tablets. They’ve mostly been doing their work, although I have had a couple of incidence of the massive cramps that are why I started taking them. Still, a couple of incidences in a year are better than the near daily occurrences I was having before. Win there I think.

There was more though. I’d been steadily getting more and more frustrated with the keyboard I had before, because it was either being unresponsive or double bouncing. The problem is quite possibly dust build up inside the mechanisms … which isn’t great because it turns out that the Steelseries keyboard I had before is essentially a sealed unit. Open it up and it won’t go back together as you want it.

The one I’ve replaced it with is the own brand ADX keyboard. (Disclosure note – own money used to buy it) It felt good in the shop, although you can’t test responsiveness without it being hooked up to something. I’m using it at the moment. What it could do with is reference points so that you can touch type locate yourself on the specific keys. References like a gap between Caps and A, or between # and Enter.

I was going to check more of the keyboards again but … people again. This time a youngish fella with a little boy, both without masks. Little boy was testing out the keyboards. So I’m not touching those. Besides, most mechanical keyboards are £100+ and probably shouldn’t be. What this one does need though is more tilting scope. I like my keyboards well tilted forward and if anything, this one tilts back.

It wasn’t all buying stuff at the Mall tonight though. I walked out of Smyths before having a good look at the Lego because there were too many people in the store. Plus I had things to do, stuff to buy before shops shut and not really enough time to do it all. (Spoiler alert – had loads of time)

I kinda wanted food while I was out there but … believe it or not there was a big queue of cars wanting McD Nuggets. (It’s always the nuggets) Wagamamas was also full up. I didn’t bother looking in the Pizza Hut and didn’t fight my way back through the roads to the KFC because, to be honest, the Mall KFC probably needs its food standards looked at.

I’m watching Brave New World now while typing, nearly gave it up after half an episode. It’s another that only vaguely resembles the original book and it was struggling to hold my attention. And then it suddenly launched into action midway through the second.

Some fiction is like that.

I don’t think I’ll be gaming tonight, although I have been enjoying being in the world of Deus Ex Human Revolution again.

He’s a buddy, I pick up the guns that the bad guys carelessly leave lying around, this gentleman makes the guns go away.

More Deus Ex later. I think I’ve come to a decision on two games …

The Outer Worlds – abandon. The lovely story of Parvati doesn’t make up for being just plain bored with the rest of the game. I’ll watch the Caledorn lets play series, plus I know what happens already from another person streaming the game.

Star Trek Online – scale back. The episodes were interesting … but I was finding that I was rarely playing those. Instead, my game time was going into the repeatable multiplayer Task Force Operations and the repeatable Click Button To Pretend Done Quest stuff where it doesn’t feel like there’s much actual gameplay going on. So I think I’ll scale that one back to just playing through the pretty decent episodic content and ignore the boring stuff.

Oh ! I need another picture … I think I’m figuring something out there. Twitter uses the first picture for the thumbnail, Farcebook uses the last one. I don’t have any control over that outside of what’s in the post. So … Farcebook thumbnail ! (Maybe) (edit – nope ! Twitter used the second pic …)

Yep. Lockdown again, it’s almost certainly overdue as the later that it’s called, the higher up the scale of cases we are and therefore more people get the virus and it takes longer to damp it down again. It definitely doesn’t help when you have the irresponsibles around.

I’ll be ok with the next lockdown. I got my supplies in before the announcement so I don’t need to fight the people who are going to do the panic buying. Morrisons wasn’t actually too bad tonight to be honest.

Hopefully it’ll just be until the start of December and the cases come well under control before then.

Until then though, stay safe, be well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Bionic Near Future Conspiracy, very orange

by Sleepypete

October 30, 2020

10:24 pm

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gaming, picture

Hello everyone,

I’d been thinking about going back to an older game again, after enjoying Deus Ex Mankind Divided far more than I thought I would earlier in the year. Oh and I’m also enjoying watching Rythian’s playthrough of Deus Ex as well. So … picture journey ! What’s first …

Oh, there are going to be spoilers in here so if you don’t want those for an 8 year old shooty game, look away now :-D.

That’s actually an older one, although I think I was still playing the game maxed out back then. Or maybe not because I’ve gone through a few video cards since then. This was back in 2012 and a return to the Deus Ex franchise with Deus Ex Human Revolution. It was perhaps limited in what it tried to do but what it attempted, it pulled off supremely well. It’s one of only two games that I played enough to acquire all of the Steam achievements.

That’s from the prologue. Armed invaders have erm … invaded the company building that you’re responsible for providing the security for and you go in there to sort them out. I was enjoying the gunplay, very smooth. There are achievements to do with Pacifist playthroughs where you leave every opponent alive (apart from the bosses which you have to kill). I’ve already got that one so I wasn’t too bothered about it this time. Besides, there are bugs in the game which mean that if you shoot bad guys with tranquilizer darts, sometimes they die. Had that happen twice tonight.

Yep. Will be going after that one too later.

Our protagonist, Adam Jensen, is fully meat and bone human at this point … but not for too much longer. You see, repelling the invasion doesn’t go so well and it’s not long before we come back to Mr Jensen after he’s had his arms and legs chopped off and exchanged for bionic replacements. I’m not entirely sure how much of the original meat and bone fella is left but there’s some fairly heavy augmentations going on. One thread running through is that not all of these augmentations and amputations were strictly necessary but his boss had them put in anyway.

Curious ethics there. The ethics around augmentation is a running theme through the two games (DXHR and the sequel, Deus Ex Mankind Divided). One issue is rejection syndrome, which will come up more in the Hong Kong sections. There’s also an identity issue …

Home sweet home … but …

Definite identity issues there. While our Mr Jensen has been able to physically integrate with his new limbs, he’s struggling to do so mentally. When playing the game originally, the thought hit about my wonky shoulder. Perhaps from the I, Robot film as well where the main character had his arm replaced. Would I want to have my shoulder and arm replaced if it meant having full or even enhanced movement plus no pain ? It’s a curious thought. What do you think ? I actually think I’d prefer to stay 100% meat and bone. While my arm and shoulder are a bit broken, they still safely repair up to a certain point. Mechanical stuff needs maintenance.

Oh, it’s not just bad guys. There are also robotic enemies. Some are easier to deal with than others …

Yep. The old boxes in front of the cameras trick. They’ll never suspect me if there’s a bucket on their head. (Oh wait, that’s Skyrim).

The game is split up into a few areas, starting you off in Detroit of 2027. There’s a certain amount of orange and the near future is a bit bleak …

The environments looked great for their time, although there is a decent amount of simplification going on there which is somewhat hidden away from the gamer. It’s to make sure that the game looks great while still being as playable as possible.

There’s some fun bugs in there too :-D. I think that bug is fixed but I’ll be looking for them later.

It’s probably fairly clear that this is one of my favourite games and one of the reasons for that is the characters. Even when I go Pacifist, there’s one particular section that I break out the more dangerous toys … and it’s this lady :

That’s Faridah Malik, pilot for the Sarif Industries company that our Adam Jensen works for. I like Malik, definitely not one to be taken lightly. We see more of that in the first Hong Kong sidequests. Looks good there too, although those crinkles in the flightsuit aren’t crinkles … they’re texture work. That’s one difference between 2011/2012 games and 2020 games, the models are so much more detailed. But the cleverness from 10 years ago meant that you’d only see that difference if you looked real close.

And Malik would slap you if you tried that.

One slightly sad thing is that even if you refrain from going through the vents and raiding the offices at Sarif Industries, there are emails when you come back that suggest you did. You can opt not to do the larceny but the game still thinks you did the deed.

I left that office alone … Couple more and then that’s it for this post … One achievement involved getting a ball through a hoop, I kinda overdid it. Oops.

Oh and …

There will be more later …

Oh, I’ve also been trying out a new position for my desktop mouse. With it on the upper deck of my desk, I was playing games with a locked straight arm which was causing stress on my shoulder. I’ve rerouted things so that I can easily move it to the same level as my keyboard and I’m trying that out in games. It’s promising so far. Instead of a straight arm, the arm is bent and more relaxed and supported more by the armrest of my chair.

Hopefully that leads to less pain later. And less :

We shall see !

There’s my ride. Gotta go. Stay safe, be well !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Felt like starships

by Sleepypete

October 26, 2020

7:46 pm

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games, internet spaceship, star trek

Hello everyone,

Been back among those stars again. I had more thoughts too but first … will this be the thumbnail !

Game screenshot. A spaceship with a tubular main hull is coming towards the camera. It has a pair of engines on outriggers at the back. In the background is a small bright white star with two cones emerging. — Tiamat’s Chariot at a White Dwarf star

The pondering is because the thumbnail system seems to have a few Interesting Quirk things to it. Last time, it showed the Star Trek Online pic as the thumbnail, instead of it being the first pic. But I think that was down to the first two not coming out of my Google Photo bank properly. I wonder …

Game screenshot. The Imperial Cutter starship from before is landed on a pad. It has a copper hull and is catching the light from spotlights at the corners of the pad. — Landing at Black Hide

Nope. Didn’t work that time. I added in another widget that lets me choose pictures from that Google Photo Bank without intermediary steps. Looks like it might need more work.

I need to add in a lists widget too so that I can copy over the lists from Blog Mk 1. And I need to tidy up all of the extra things added in with the import. Later 🙂

There may also have been Star Trek happening. I left it last time with the Sylvia Tilly … Since then there’s been the Amna Patel :

Game screenshot. A Star Trek ship is coming towards the camera to exit off the right side of the screen. It has an elongated triangular main hull with 4 warp nacelles at the back.

Watchers of Voyager may recognise that as a Prometheus class ship. The name comes from one of the earlier episodes of Star Trek Online, Amna Patel appears in (spoiler deleted). The latest ship is the Drake :

Game Screenshot from Star Trek Online. A small but powerful looking ship with 4 engines has a large starbase behind it.

Looks a bit ugly doesn’t it … Should be pretty punchy though. This one arrived yesterday and because I’m having to heavily ration my game time at the moment, not much happened with this one.

What’s happening outside of the games ? Bit of catching up with series like Away, The Witcher. Actually watched Avengers Endgame again tonight, it’s just finishing up at the moment. A suitable conclusion to that particular saga.

Plus I’m making my way through Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds as well. That future universe has spaceships too and the biggest ones belonging to humans are the lighthuggers, starships that cross the interstellar gaps at near light speed (faster than light isn’t something they do in that universe). Objectively, it takes years but subjectively, only weeks or months. Hopefully that’s the right way round for the way that works.

Anyway, the lighthuggers feel like they’d look like massively scaled up versions of the Imperial Cutter … a cylinder, tapering at the ends, with a pair of engines mounted on spars to each side of the hull.

Game Screenshot - Elite Dangerous. The Imperial Cutter starship is on the landing pad. We are viewing it from the port side. The ship has a long mostly circular fuselage with two engines aft, extending from the hull to the sides on outriggers. The ship is in the copper colouration and is catching the light from pad spotlights.

There we go from another angle. It’s a pretty ship. The lighthuggers would be scaled up considerably from there. The Elite Imperial Cutter is a chunky 192.6m long. The lighthuggers would vary in size but would typically be 3-4km long, with space for crew, weapons, cargo, parasitic craft (bigger than the Cutter) and room for all sorts of other shenanigans in there too. Way too big for landing on planets like the Elite ships.

One random thought that got in though would be … if I were actually living in these science fiction universes, what would I be doing ?

If it were Elite, I’d follow the player path and start in the cheap loaned ship before making my way up the scale. I’d be living by my wits, travelling from place to place, following the trade and missions. I’d be chief engineer, pilot, captain, CEO. Unless someone came along who would share that captain, CEO role.

It feels kinda like it might if I switched to living on a Dutch Barge here, although I don’t think going from place to place, trading out of a Barge is particularly viable economically any more. Perhaps you might get some niche out of videoing trips and monetising that … but I’m not convinced that would gain a significant enough audience.

In the Alastair Reynolds universe, I’d probably end up as a starship mechanic. I’d be quite happy with that. Same for Elite too, it’d be good working on the various spaceships out there.

Star Trek ? Probably an engineer on a starship again.

One difference would be the connectivity. We benefit hugely in our time from the internet, although even that is perhaps in the last 10, maybe 12 years or so. The internet in its current shape has been around for decades now but the big change for me has been the increase in video and streaming media. Youtube took a while to take off, the oldest subscriptions I tend to see on Twitch go back about a little over 6 years. Netflix didn’t start streaming until maybe 2007.

Things have changed a fair bit. The internet model works for our planet, as lightspeed delay isn’t a factor. But when you have an interstellar civilisation, or even interplanetary, that light speed delay would cut into the immediacy of communications. If the Netflix server were on Earth and you were on Mars, it would be between 3 and 22 minutes for the “I want to watch The Witcher!” command to be received and the same time for the signal to come back, depending on whether Earth and Mars are on the same or different sides of the Sun. Or it would be years for a lightspeed message to go between stars.

Maybe that pilot, chief engineer, captain, CEO set of roles would expand to become interstellar postman.

You’d file a flight plan to say that you’re going through a sequence of interstellar jumps and they’d load you up with the mail, to be sent on at each jump.

Might well work too ! Back to an interstellar equivalent of the Stagecoaches.

On that note, time to dive into book again after hitting publish and doing the necessary on the various sites. (Actually – time to dip into Star Trek Online to do today’s daily mission !)

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Away in a Seaquest

by Sleepypete

October 19, 2020

9:01 pm

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book, games, holiday, ouch

Hello everyone,

I was about to say “good week off last week” but suddenly I’m not entirely sure about that ! Not something I can put my finger on there, perhaps it’s something more than me, perhaps it’s a world situation thing.

Still, I wasn’t in the house all week last week, not quite.

Picture. A rural scene. In the foreground, an empty weather beaten bleached wooden table. It's mostly covering a stone path. Beyond are trees and green covered hills in the background.

I wonder if that’ll work. I’m attempting something with Google Photos … My phone will upload the pictures it takes to Google and in theory, they should be accessible from there. (If it doesn’t work, I’ll go to a Plan B and reupload the post !) (Update – I went to Plan B !)

I disappeared off to the Mall to pick up this year’s Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar. I also had a look in PC World for keyboards as I think the patience is running out with this one. (Keyboards on display but none of the ones I wanted were in sale boxes)

I also took a trip to the Bookbarn …

Picture. Loot from the farm shop, plus books. The books are the old Battlestar Galactica novel, plus Bill the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison. Sweets include a tasty brownie block, a large chocolate teacake and packets of strawberry bonbons, lemon sherbets, kola kubes and fudge.

Books happened … also more loot later when I went up the motorway to the farm shop place. Some of the loot has already disappeared … Oh and I don’t think I’ll be going back to the Bookbarn in the near future. It’s a shame really, there just aren’t enough books on display there ! There are actually more books packed into the Cardiff Market book stall than there might be on display at the Bookbarn.

I’ll hope to be able to make another trip into Cardiff at some point, although that’s heavily dependent on the world situation at the moment.

We shall see.

I’ve been watching some more of those stories lately … When I was at university, one of the things I’d watch when back for the weekends was Seaquest DSV … Whereas most of the scifi programmes were going into outer space, Seaquest was going under the sea with a hyper advanced submarine. The first series was ok, within the limits of its production values. I’m kinda glad I missed the second series when it came out because it was … a bit rubbish. The writing suffered tremendously.

And then it was rebooted for a third series, where Seaquest returned 10 years after they’d been abducted by aliens. Did I mention bad writing ?

The third series actually isn’t that bad. I was surprised to recognise the name of Naren Shankar on the opening credits (in big letters of importance too). He is the co-showrunner of The Expanse series and they’re doing a fantastic job of converting the books to the television format. I’d highly recommend watching The Expanse.

I may have found myself binge watching the second half of the series of Away too, where a group of 5 astronauts are looking to find their way to Mars. The intent was to stop at 3 episodes and leave the last 2 for later in the week but I just wanted to know what happened.

I’m finding that with Star Trek Online at the moment …

Game screenshot from Star Trek Online. A chaotic scene around a mushroom shaped starbase. Explosions are going off everywhere.

Looks a bit hectic doesn’t it …

The gaming might be why I’m having the not so good week feelings from last week. I’d like to be able to dive into seeing what they’ve written in to Star Trek Online (plus I’d like to finish The Outer Worlds too) but my body isn’t cooperating there.

I’m having to strictly limit the time in game due to my arm and shoulder looking to erupt in pain if I’m in there too long. At the moment, it’s just the scenario in the screenshot above, where you’re looking to scramble to rescue civilians by beaming them up and on to transports. It’s very hectic. There should be loot at the end, although I need to stay with the scenario for another 11 days I think to get that loot.

It is ouchy though and I’ll have to a) look more at why and b) consider if it’s a game I want to continue playing. I haven’t actually been back into Final Fantasy XIV for about a month now as it was causing similar shoulder issues.

It’s annoying.

But it’s not stopping me diving into books at the moment :-). The two that appeared from Book Barn were :

Battlestar Galactica – the novelisation from the original film. I’ve read this one before (a couple of decades ago probably !) and while it followed the film fairly closely, it added in its own bits of detail too. I liked the original film, it kept a fun aspect and it wasn’t part of the whole depressing grimdark aesthetic that the new series pioneered.

Harry Harrison’s book – never read any of his books, saw it, thought I needed more book !

So – didn’t do much in the week off. Thought about work a little but managed to not open the laptop up. Set this new page up ! Needs more work. Hurt shoulder … oops.

Got to the point in Absolution Gap (Alastair Reynolds) where it’s starting to pick up momentum.

Time to hit post I think ! Have a great week everyone, stay safe, be well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Is this thing dusty yet ?

by Sleepypete

October 15, 2020

9:45 pm

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dwagon, gaming, New, picture, rambling, ship

Probably 🙂

Oh ! Just spotted that WordPress allows captions on images. That’s new … never had that on Blogger. And there I go with the opening up a post and goi…. SQUIRREL !

To be honest though, I should probably have what amounts to the Cone of Shame from the same movie that made the Squirrel joke thing popular. Up was a remarkable film, one of the best to come out from Pixar. Going from heartwarming to heart breaking, all in the intro before the main body of the movie kicked off. I should watch it again some day.

Some of you may be coming here via a Work Thing that’s probably been published by now. HI THERE ! And welcome. I try to keep this as a place where I talk about what I’m thinking and things I’ve been doing. Like the internet spaceships :

There we go. New toy played with.

If I’ve been someplace, I’ll usually talk about that as well although I do notice that I didn’t put anything on the old blog about a trip around SS Great Britain that happened almost two years ago now. That was a good little walk around the ship and I’d thoroughly recommend people going for a look when things are less scary out there than they are now.

I’ll have to post the rest of those pictures some day. And then there’s the Lego and other building things I’ll do. I like how they steadily come together. Sometimes the designers of the model will hide little Easter Eggs away inside as well, which is something I like a lot.

The art is something that’ll appear when it’s done as well, although there are limits on what I can post here. Some of what I do is modifications made to other people’s work. Typically emotes … those will appear on their discord servers and I’ll send them on to other people I know as well. But it’s a Really Bad Thing to essentially copy someone else’s art and take it as your own. That’s one reason I’ve been looking to acquire an art style of my own, that way I own more of I post here. (I note that WordPress has added a (C) to the bottom of the page too !)

I try to keep this space relatively free of current events and what’s happening in the world. You’ll see far too much about what’s happening in other spaces and I find it a massive drag on the psyche … especially as you have to apply a heavy quality filter to everything you see because pretty much everything posted is bent one way or another. But yeah, there’s far too much of the bad stuff out there, I like to keep this space free of it unless there’s something I really have to get out of my mind and into typed in thoughts.

The blog template as a whole is something that still needs more work. The blogger version has a couple of lists of links and I want to bring that back too. It also has a blogroll where I can see if people have posted new stuff recently. That’s an excellent thing to have. But I’ll look to keep the white text on black basic format. Heavily contrasting colours aid readability and dark mode is easier on the eyes, it means you don’t have Big White Background blaring out at you. Black text on white paper works for books but I’m a convert to dark mode for screens.

I haven’t done anything really new lately with the art (outside of posing screenshots), it’s all been modifications. Spooky emotes are in and I’ve spookified three of them. One got adopted and is on the lovely Margaret Krohn’s discord (website link). I didn’t like the middle one and I don’t know whether the recipient of the third liked her one. But I was very happy that the animation conversion of another thing for Maggie K’s discord got adopted.

It’s one thing getting positive feedback, that’s always awesome especially to someone who lives on that like me. It’s a whole other thing having your art adopted for someone else’s posts or pages. That goes far beyond “I like your stuff”. People from work may vaguely recognise another one :

That was a fun little one that I did a little while ago. I’ve been finding that taking of pictures of what’s on the paper using a camera does odd things to the colour balance and it can turn the paper into grey, which the image disappears into.

That’s my current avatar, edited and updated to bring him out of the page some more. I left the grey down at the bottom to show him sitting on something. Oh and I still have the awkward feelings about how his knee is bending the wrong way :-D. The book needs tidying as well, I deleted too much when removing the grey.

That’s the kind of style I’m aiming for with my own drawings. I was a big fan of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes as a kiddie. Those were very simply drawn cartoons that were absolute genius. If you look up close at a lot of drawn cartoons or animations, it’ll probably surprise you how simple they actually are. Simple works !

But simple also needs precision that I don’t have yet. The artists I like tend to have very precise lines and curves, which they then fill with colour. I’m sure the process behind the image is a bit more complex than that.

I’m a bit limited though by my body … I’m having a fair few upper body issues at the moment. My neck and shoulders are suffering in particular from stiffness that’s getting more and more uncomfortable. The shoulder issues extend down my arm into my right wrist as well. It was with a fair bit of relief at work when I was able to shift from doing written meeting notes and into things I’d type into a Word document or a draft email. Typing is way easier for me than writing or … drawing.

That said, the graphics tablet I have is great for doing those sketches. And I need to draw more of my dwagon alphabet and the dwagon rock band. Maybe next year’s April Fool will be setting up a rock band, although I did that already in 2015. Gosh, that’s longer ago than I thought.

And this post has gone on a bit longer than I thought it might too !

Physically – struggling. I need to greatly reduce how much of certain games I play. I haven’t been back to Final Fantasy XIV and may have to add Star Trek Online to that danger list as well. Elite has been on a bit of a break due to being disillusioned with the combat side of it.

Motorsport Manager has been a great one as it’s mostly hands off with occasional intervention for tactics. I may well see if I can lead 3 teams to success this time around, swapping from single seaters to GT cars and then into Endurance, with the switch happening when the team wins.

I haven’t written about music for a while either, that’s overdue ! I can happily report that my ears are back to normal again, which came as a bit of a surprise because I didn’t get that POP feeling from them. I suffer with tinnitus as a baseline (which is probably why I like multiple sound sources going on) but had a blocked ear for a few weeks too which was affecting me more than I’d like (headaches as well).

Wrap up time I think … for any new people, this is a fairly typical post where I’ll start out with one idea, go SQUIRREL, talk about something else for a bit and maybe, just maybe get back to the original theme.

I’ll hopefully see you next time !

PS There’s a few extra posts around in that archive too, I need to delete them ! The proper import tool didn’t work, so I had to use a messier alternate. Instead of a little over 1650 posts, it added in 2841 … I need to get deleting !

PS2 I just had a mental image of a Dwagon holding a big eraser too. So that may happen if my hands are up to it.

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Over to WordPress ! Migration Time

by Sleepypete

October 13, 2020

7:21 pm

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Site

Gosh,

That was a bit of a strain today. I decided to make the switch to WordPress today due to the changes that Blogger is introducing to their interface. And this means …

Shiny new domain name and a new format for the blog. Actually, the blog will evolve over probably the next month or so until I’m happy with it and then I’ll undoubtedly play with it even more as I find new things to add in.

I’ll have to see how it works out. Thoughts so far :

I’m using Bluehost on the recommendation of various sites. The site hosting looks good but their onboarding process is very broken at the moment. It hangs at the initial step and doesn’t believe it’s actually done when it has set the site up, so it tries to bring you round to the start again. The site is good … but Bluehost’s systems don’t think it is. You have to go in through the page admin in order to set things up.

But you don’t really want the set up process to be good (if you can pick 1 good 1 bad), you want the hosting to be up to the mark. Oh and it’s a paid thing as well, so that’s something new.

The new edition is working on WordPress, which seems ok. Editor is looking ok so far (and categories / tags are back).

The blogger import/export feature is broken, or it could be that I have too many posts. I’ve used the WP All Import plug in to make the transfer happen. It’s not for the faint hearted or techie averse. There’s another tool out there but it got bought by people who want £15 for essentially a 1 time use. Nope.

There are a few things I want to transfer over from the old blog as well. I’ve used “Collapsing Archives” to get an acceptable archive list again but I need to rebuild the blogrolls and the other lists.

But hopefully it’ll get there over time. I’ll also be looking to add back in the ability to pull in images from the phone because that became very useful.

In other news … I’m on leave this week ! Needed it after going a few months without a break. I don’t think I’ll be going too far, pandemic second wave and all. But I should look to escape the house at least once this week.

Outside (inside?) of that, Star Trek is happening :

That’s the Ellen Landry, an Akira class escort. The origin starter levels story for my character included an episode with a couple of the characters from Star Trek Discovery, which is where that name comes from. I’ll need to look up the other characters from that episode because they need to go shippy as well.

Star Trek Online is the only internet spaceship this week though. This week’s Community Goal has gone to Conflict Zone combat again, which … I’m steering well clear of. It’s not game play that I find either fun or productive.

There’s also Motorsport Manager things happening. I’ve pretty much got that game figured out now in terms of how to build a team to win. But I do enjoy the path to getting there.

And it’s ok for my body too ! Motorsport Manager is fairly hands off, whereas other games like Star Trek Online tend to really aggravate the various issues with my body. I can feel tight shoulders and poorly wrist at the moment.

But I am enjoying the game.

Time to hit post for the first new entry for this WordPress blog ? Here goes !

PS Stay safe everyone. Be well.

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Hello world!

by Sleepypete

October 13, 2020

1:59 pm

1 Comment on Hello world!

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

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Black Music Matters Too

by Sleepypete

June 8, 2020

9:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been thinking about doing another music post for a little while and the current events have given me a bit of a theme to work with ! But first … thumbnail pic …

The formerly unnamed Dwagon Rock Band has another member. Actually it’s had another member for almost two weeks now but I haven’t felt up to doing any more on that project just yet. The name is likely to be Chromatic Fever, cos you know … metal and dragons ! May need to draw more colours of dragons and not just the green ones.

Actually, that digression takes me to mention another fella who uses dragons for his avatars, Aavak of the lovely voice that owes a lot to Welsh heritage. Great voice, lovely fella. Here’s a link to his Youtube, which will take you to the rest of his accounts.

But this isn’t supposed to be about streaming people, it’s about the great music. One issue I’ve always had with my music posts is that they always go to the same groups and singers. Like The Cardigans, All About Eve, Bat For Lashes, Tori Amos. Let’s have some different people who are just as awesome.

First up is Seal, who’s song Future Love Paradise was essentially the catalyst for this post when it took its turn on my iTunes. Seal has an amazing voice and he’s an expert at using it. This song is one of his best.

Next up is Massive Attack, a local band to the Bristol area. When I first heard Teardrop as a song (I think I’d heard it on adverts), I thought it was amazing. Pure magic.

Morcheeba’s been a fun band to listen to as well. Sometimes it’s ballad type songs, sometimes it’s more like rap, sometimes it’s lyrics that are there for fun. It’s diverse, it’s interesting. Here’s The Sea, sung by a wonderful Skye Edwards.

You can’t discuss artists of colour without going back to the classics and the originals. Nina Simone’s music will be unforgettable, timeless and always guaranteed to draw on the emotions. And get you singing along to songs like Here Comes The Sun.

And then there’s Aretha Franklin with Respect.

(Are you chair dancing while listening yet ? I am)

Ella Fitzgerald with another classic, Lets Fall In Love.

We have Nat King Cole with more Unforgettable songs. The older singers had a wonderful way of standing there and letting that music flow out for them in just a wave of beauty.

You’re probably noticing that these are tending to be older songs instead of current artists – that’s just me and the style of songs I like. Am old and like the older styles :-D. Nicki Minaj has added a lot to some recent Madonna albums but her usual stuff is too fast, too attack, not calming. So while I have some Beyonce in the library, she’s not someone I listen to much.

Not forgetting those utter wizards with their instruments, Lenny Kravitz had a string of amazing songs on Are You Gonna Go My Way and then there’s the legend that is Jimi Hendrix with my favourite of his, Voodoo Child.

I’m a lucky owner of a Sammy Davis Jr collection as well, now there is an incredible voice and apparently an even better dancer. This legend’s song can only be Mr Bojangles. Oh and The Impossible Dream which I remember first from when it was adopted for a fantastic Honda advert.

You have to mention Michael Jackson here too for his innovative contributions to dance and dance music. Smooth Criminal is a classic.

Moving on to Prince, who was a brilliant singer and an even better songwriter. You’ll have heard his songs sung by other bands and singers including Sinead O’Connor, The Bangles, Kiss, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Kate Bush … Here’s When Doves Cry.

I love Roberta Flack’s voice as well, here is the original Killing Me Softly With His Song.

I’m gonna finish on Seal again because he’s just so good. Another topical one to end on, Don’t Cry.

Actually no – this is the perfect song to close on. It’s Louis Armstrong with What A Wonderful World. Because despite all the trouble and strife, this is a wonderful world to have you, yes you reading this, in it.

Stay safe, be well and I hope you enjoyed these wonderful songs as much as I have while collecting them together. There are so many more songs too … but only so much room in a post. Find them, enjoy them !

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Wanderlust to the Core again

by Sleepypete

June 7, 2020

3:05 pm

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Hello again,

I’m in a bit of a “not quite sure which game” at the moment. Sometimes that’s because I’m not getting on with how some of the games play, sometimes it’s due to the latent RSI injuries that have been with me for a while now.

And then other times it’s because I get mysterious sudden twinges in my upper body ! Some definite random ouchies happening lately. Need to get out and about when conditions are right again. I need a thumbnail pic …

There we go. I did a Space again. I’m figuring out ways and means to get the better screenshots again. Some of the EDSM waypoints will take you into the heart of nebulae like the one above … but in that case you’re surrounded by colour or the nebula is too big to take in on screen. So what I was doing yesterday was seeing how far off the nebula I should be to get it all in one shot. I think that one worked.

Before I go much further though, check out this video from Wanderbots : Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The bundle itself is at Itch.io at this link. There are only 9 days to go on it so it’ll be gone around 16th June (for those reading this later wondering why the link doesn’t work!). It’s a bundle for 742 games at a minimum of $5 cost. And from a quick scan, there are some crackers on there like Oxenfree, heard lots about Night In The Woods, Overland, games that catch the eye like 2000:1 A Space Felony.

I’ll probably sign up for that bundle as well over the next week.

To the spaceships ! I mentioned setting up for another Core speed run earlier in the week and on Friday afternoon/evening, I thought I’d go for it. Probably a good thing too because I’ve had a weekend of not feeling great mentally. I dunno, a mixture of tired (which doesn’t feel like it makes sense) and a lak of focus with not feeling like I want to throw myself into doing Stuff like doing a little more in The Outer Worlds.

So … to the Core ! The competition rules say that they want a picture at the start with the system clock on it :

There we go. A start time of 14.48.00 GMT. The challenge was to try and get there in time for ordering pizza, so a target of under 4 hours to get me there before 7pm server, 8pm UK. Pizza didn’t happen though because I didn’t feel like ordering it after I finished ! (Quick addon – here’s a link to the Frontier Forum post with more details)

One thing I noticed quickly was that Tea and Medals was running not just cool but downright cold ! Apparently the Dolphin ships are a bit unbalanced there. It meant I could start the hyperspace charging extraordinarily quickly which chopped some time off the run.

A big difference this time around was that I was using the Neutron Star Highway and the jump plotter at Spansh (link). What that gives you is a set of waypoints to follow on your way there :

(click for more readability and oh look more tabs in my secondary browser window …)

You pop in your origin and your destination, give it your jump range and how far off a direct line you want to go and it’ll give you the list of waypoints. Sometimes going off the straight lets you take advantage of more neutron boosts, which is important because a boosted jump takes you 4x the distance of a normal jump and you’re not always jumping the full distance because you can only jump from star to star. So if there aren’t stars conveniently placed apart at your jump range, you have to take more hops.

A couple of stats :
80% in the Dolphin plotted to 167 jumps and the other ranges were 152 jumps at 50%, 163 jumps at 60%, 154 jumps at 70%, 184 jumps at 90% and 476 jumps without deviating from straight (100%).
I think Warp Factor Potato (aka Tea-89) was capable of 51ly jumps, which worked out to 229 jumps at 80%.
Tea and Medals did the run in 3 hours 19 minutes 36 seconds (including a game crash in the middle!) and 183 jumps at an average of (25,900ly / 183) 141.5 light years per jump. You have to add a few extra jumps and pauses in to fill up the tanks because you can’t refuel at the neutron stars as well as on the spot repairs.
Warp Factor Potato took 6 hours 7 minutes over 411 jumps at an average of 63 light years per jump.

Being able to take longer hops leads to less jumps than you’d expect, although the Potato’s run was using the in game jump plotter with barely any reference to the Spansh plotter.

Enough stats, back to the pictures !

I may have been taking a few more liberties as well … If you look in the bottom right, there are two lines under “Fuel 1.61/h”. The top one is a reserve fuel tank for in system travel, the bottom one is fuel for the hyperdrive. You really shouldn’t be getting that low … With that amount remaining, I probably wouldn’t have been able to jump to a different star. This just needs a little planning though … In this case, after jumping through a series of neutron boosts, I selected a star to jump to that I knew I could fuel at.

Another condition is that you do the run in Open Play, where you’re in with all of the other players. I’m normally sticking to Solo.

And there we go ! Dropping out of hyperspace at the entry to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. You should be able to make out the edge of the photon sphere eye around the blackness. One of the other conditions for the race is that you take a picture of the galaxy map when you arrive. This has a system clock time on it :

There we go. And …

A little bit of posing that’s gone on my Inara page. I didn’t stick around though, I still had ponderings of pizza.

Stopped at Explorer’s Anchorage overnight, which is just a couple of lightyears out from Sagittarius A*. I could pick up a planetary rover here for the trip back. I didn’t have one for the trip there because it drops a whole light year off your jump range, which is a big hit.

First stop was a system only 0.79 light years away from the big black hole. It’s the white fuzzy dot above my ship’s nose. (Not that one, it’s just above the top of the ship). I had a call for more math … what’s the gravity there ?

From a previous post, acceleration per solar mass is 1.327 * 10 ^ 20 / distance in metres squared.
(the 10 ^ 20 is how many zeroes are added – in this case, 20)
Sagittarius A* is 4 million solar masses so that pops the number up to 5.308 * 10 ^ 26.
You pop in to the system at 61 light seconds, or about 1.8 * 10 ^ 10m.
That makes the gravitational attraction at that point equal to 160,000 g. (divide acceleration in m/s/s by 10 to get g)
0.79 light years is (0.79 * 9.46 * 10 ^ 15m) 7.47 * 10 ^ 15.
So the gravitational attraction at my landing spot is a fairly minute 7.1 * 10 ^ -5 m/s/s or 7.1 micro g. That’s just under 1000 times of the Moon’s gravity on the surface of the moon. But ! Depending how I read what I’m looking at now, it’s either double or 20% of the Moon’s gravitational influence on Earth. If that planet rotates and had water, it would have tides from Sagittarius A*.

Just wanted to work that one out :-D. Science is fun.

Finding Pretty Space Things is also fun. This is the Hypio Orb Nebula. I’ve started naming the screenshots immediately so I have a reminder of where they came from.

One of the ongoing memes with Kolo is the tendency for the surface scanner to stop at 89% (if it hits 90%, that counts the whole planetoid as being mapped).

And there we go, view from the surface.

That’s it for me for today. Not sure if I’ll be gaming (I’ll open up The Outer Worlds shortly I think) much or just enjoying more of Fleet of Knives in a series by Gareth L Powell.

Stay safe, be well.

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