Author: Sleepypete

Hello everyone !

Still tired today so I haven’t ventured out to Bath Xmas Market … although that will mean some more time for Internet Spaceships and shooting things in the Fer-De-Lance, amongst other things.

What’s in the box today ?

There we go. It’s a New Republic / Resistance transport ship, as seen in The Force Awakens. I suspect we’ll see these again in Rise of Skywalker.

I’ve tried something else today … a stage ! Yes. It’s a D&D 4th edition expansion book. The Mass Effect book is pretty large, so I thought I needed something to lift everything up so that I could easily get everything in shot.

I think it’ll evolve into having something larger as my stage in the days to come. The underside of a Star Wars Advent Calendar box (I think last year’s !) may well do nicely.

But wait … there is something missing in that picture.

Hmm.

What was that again ?

Today’s marshmallow was a Milk and Cookies marshmallow and it may have disappeared (mysteriously) before even getting to the stairs that lead to where I’m taking the pictures.

How about the internet spaceships ? No drawing today sadly. Not really feeling it and I’ll take the next couple of days off drawing too unless a daft idea pops into the head. I’d like to try drawing faces again, perhaps looking to keep it simple too. Some of the best drawings I see are really simple coloured line art that just rely on precision and a good idea.

The other thing about taking a couple of days out of the drawing practice is the themes … I could echo a picture of today’s theme (Anaconda) but I’m not convinced for White Dwarf and Orrery. But … I do have screenshots !

I went off investigating again, at hearing the rumour of another crashed ship with potential TREASURE. Alas, it looked like the site had been picked fairly clean already but there was a little more to the tale to see.

The stern actually looked fairly undamaged.

And the rear section of this Anaconda looked fairly ok too.

Erm … that doesn’t look right. I think it’s missing something. Like half the bow section.

I’d just like it to be known at this point that I wasn’t the pilot. Honest.

And a better view of the port side. That one left a mark ! Looks like something impacted and then punched right through the side of the ship. No wonder it went down hard.

I’ve found a few more of these mighty ships along the journeys into the beyond …

Yep. Didn’t crash that one either.

I haven’t owned an Anaconda in Elite for quite some time. I stopped playing my second commander before getting there and I think I didn’t own one for long with my first. It’s a great all rounder but a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none only one.

Let’s see – at that level of end game ship, the alternatives are :
Type 9 freighter – biggest cargo capacity (756t in mine)
Federal Corvette – best combat going on warship level (but needs unlocking)
Imperial Cutter – best trader, taking over from the Type 9 when you unlock it
Type 10 – dunno what anyone would use this for
Beluga – built to be a passenger liner
The Anaconda holds maybe 450t as a cargo ship but …

It’s an awesome exploration ship. The one I eventually have will have a 70ly jump range, even with an extra fuel tank, which makes it quite superior to the 65ly jump range Krait Phantom I’ll use next.

But there’s a little while and a few ships to go through before then.

Cya tomorrow !

PS And I got the day wrong again. Oops ! Fixed.

Hello everyone,

Work Xmas Munchie thing today. It was good.

Instead of the typical thing where a heap (think 100+) people head off for the end of year munchie meal, my team has been doing a smaller one for the last couple of years. It’s worked pretty well, we went to a place called 3 Brothers Burgers again today. Instead of the usual one bite feeds all (no it doesn’t) sheep dip quality meal that you get from the big places, proper burger and tasty. I did take a pic but I’ll hold it back until later.

(Erm – post ed – it’s really badly affected by motion blurring so … no pic)

It was a good burger, with great company from the team too. They’re probably still going at it too in town. I’ve been feeling like I’ve been bouncing on the reserves point of my personal batteries though, so I headed off home between meal and inevitable pubcrawl.

What’s behind the door today ?

I do like the X Wing starfighter. It’s a good design (although it’s done for looks more than what they actually do with the design). That’s the thing with Star Wars stuff, it tends to look great … but the actual functionality rarely makes sense. That’s overthinking things though, they’re still fun movies to watch.

Anyway – X Wing starfighter … the wings allow for atmospheric flight, if a canny designer was involved there would be reaction control (roll and pitch) thrusters at the end of the wings and the pilot is smack bang in the middle. Having the thrusters far out means they’re more effective. And the wings give a good spread for the laser blasters. If the pilot is at the middle of the craft at the centre of rotation, it means they are more or less immune to the forces involved when spinning, when yawing, pitching and rolling.

Yep. I like the X Wing … and may have (counts on fingers) … I think it’s 5 Lego ones now.

The marshmallow it’s sitting on is Salted Caramel flavour, which is one of the more subtle ones. Still a favourite and I’ll pick up a packet of that flavour when I get chance.

The Mass Effect picture of the day is Liara T’Soni :

She’s one of the favourite Non Player Characters from the series. You pick her up on a planet in the first game and she has a combination of soft, smart, innocent, gritty. The Mass Effect series was blessed with many great characters and Liara was one of the best.

The Elite prompt for the day was stars … I was wondering how I’d do this one and then thought I’d try replicating a chalkboard picture style today. I’m still coming to terms with the tools on offer and instead of a Chalk style painting tool, I was using GIMP’s airbrush on a black background. This was the first time I’ve used the graphics tablet in GIMP, so far I’ve only been using it in Painter Essentials.

I couldn’t resist a couple of easter eggs again.

Here’s one I screenshotted a while ago :

Hmm …

Hopefully my sun came out ok. Ship’s dodgy but I can live with that.

I think that’s the one where I started looking for a place to hide from the sun.

That one was a pretty place.

Tired now. Off work tomorrow burning up that flexi credit (and replenishing the batteries).

Cya !

PS Actually need to open up the game again ! Haven’t played since last week and I have a couple of screenshots I need to set up and collect …

Day 5 !

What’s in the box … or behind the doors :

A gun emplacement for the stormtrooper today. The marshmallow is Gingerbread flavoured, not so good as the previous days, still tasty.

Over to the Elitecember challenge !

It’s Guardians today and my brain went somewhere odd with the drawn picture :

Hopefully that one is fairly recognisable, even without the words making it more obvious. Mantis is a favourite of mine from the Guardians but I’m not keen on that mouth.

I think I’m learning …. very, very slowly :-D. I should draw other things than dwagons, one reason being is that their lower halves feel very difficult to draw.

Talking of drawing other things, here is another Guardian :

People love the little guy. Although instead of Baby Yoda, I think that’s more like Middle Aged Yoda.

How about these Elite Guardians though ? The lore has them being a precursor empire race, which has disappeared from our section of the galaxy, leaving behind ruins, secrets and mysteries to uncover. I haven’t gone into the Guardians too much, outside of acquiring the widget that boosts your hyperspace jumping range … but I do have some screenies :

I have to admit, these are from a post from a little while ago. Here I am in the rover, checking out an artifact.

The mystery involves running around, unlocking the pillars, completing the puzzle …

Avoiding the automated defences, including the occasional missile that gets thrown your way … Here is the ship providing an umbrella of anti air defence. The light show was pretty spectacular in game.

And then you get the prize at the end. Totally not getting shot at from off screen there.

And then there’s the final one of the collection.

I’ll have to go back at some point and find one of these locations in daylight. The lighting works pretty well in game but it’s also quite dark. It’s nice to have a bit of light there to show off what’s around in the landscape.

More tomorrow ! Let’s see … “Star”. Off out tomorrow, so I may not have time for a quick sketch plus I’m not sure what I’d draw for Star too. I think it’ll be screenshots when I get home tomorrow.

Day 3 !

Been a busy day today, with an away trip for a meeting away from where I normally work and then back to do shopping on the way home before settling in now to watch a few more episodes of the Mars series.

Oh – never go shopping while hungry. I now have donuts. And lots more stuff.

What’s behind the doors today ?

A stormtrooper and a Butterscotch marshmallow. Lush again. The butterscotch taste kicks in a second or so after that first bite. Good times.

Oh and don’t worry about the stormtrooper aiming at it like he thinks it needs shooting … they never hit.

In the background is another theme I’ll be running for as long as it lasts, that’s Femshep from the Mass Effect games. She’s a space marine who runs headlong into a quest to save the galaxy from mysterious unstoppable machine intelligences who come back every few 10,000 years to eradicate all life from the galaxy that has progressed past a certain technology level. Mass Effect gave us a wonderful series of games and I must play it again.

Oh and Femshep, best shep. One reason I tend to play female characters in games is because I like the voice acting more and Jennifer Hale (who voices Femshep) is one of the very best voice actors.

What’s the Elite theme for today ? It’s the iconic Cobra Mk3, star of the original game going back to 1984. I may have attempted a real drawing with a pen on paper. Check this out :

Couldn’t resist adding the mini dwagon.

Anyway, how does it compare to the original ?

There we go. The ships to bottom left and in the centre are Cobras, the little ones are Sidewinders, centre right is a Python and I think the bottom right is a Fer-de-Lance.

The original game, released in 1984, was a complete marvel. It fit into the 32kbytes of memory that the BBC B microcomputer contained and pushed the limits of what was possible with those machines by presenting a fully 3d environment with wireframe 3d graphics.

Computers and graphics have come a long way since then though :

That’s the Cobra Mk3 Keelas Wings, approaching an engineers base for a landing and a souping up of the hyperdrive.

It’s good too that the new game went back to some of the gameplay systems of the original game. The two games in the middle (Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier 2) went for a fully Newtonian physics model which … didn’t really work for gameplay. Instead of close, exciting dogfighting, combat was either at slow speeds at stations or an exercise in high speed jousting which just wasn’t fun. But in going back to a … funsized? flight model that’s a bit like how Star Wars treats physics, the space flying is a lot more engaging and fun.

Good times indeed.

When kicking off this month’s worth of postings, I’d intended to only do maybe 4 drawings but … I think I’ll try for more. You only get better at something if you practice and I’m not really at the Getting Better stage of practice, I’m more at the Learning The Tools level of practice.

The pictures by the end won’t be masterpieces but … hopefully people will like them !

Cya tomorrow.

Advent Day 2 !

And a sketchy sketchy of a space station. But first … What’s behind the doors ?

We have a Mint Choc Chip marshmallow, which was delicious and is making me want to order some online right now. Here you go – a link ! (Not Sponsored) That temptation is a very tempting temptation.

Oh and there’s Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle there as well, a very mean looking craft when it appears on screen. Bigger than your average shuttle to be sure and well armed as well.

Elite theme of the day is Stations and I have a few of those to have a natter about. Let’s start with a loose sketch :

I’ll get to some more later but that’s my thought. The designs of space stations are heavily wrapped up in gravity and how you deal with that, how you use it, how you are bound by it and how the physics of the universe interact with the components. So what we have there is a station with concentric rings, with a pair of modules on the spindle in the middle.

This is a spin gravity station, where the whole thing depends on varying levels of centripetal force. That is, it is bound by Newton’s 3 Laws :
1 – An object in motion will remain in motion unless an external force acts on it.
If you whack a puck across ice, it’ll keep going … only slowing due to the friction forces acting on it.
2 – Force equals mass times acceleration
We’ll come back to that one later. It rules the Weight equation.
3 – For every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction.
If you catch a cricket ball, then your hand exerts a force stopping the ball and the ball exerts a force on your hand.

So with space stations with spin gravity, every object will head off in a line straight in to space … unless something exerts a force. The outer side of each ring becomes the floor and exerts a force on everything on it, which replicates gravity. The greater diameter of the circle, the more linear velocity and the more force exerted to accelerate objects around in the circle.

Aside – gravity is a different type of force where heavy stuff exerts a force on other stuff with mass. However, it takes a lot of mass (like a planet) to make it have any significant force to stop things flying off it in to space. That kind of mass isn’t practical to put in to a space station and might well attract the planet your station is orbiting or at the least, affect its weather like our Moon (with 1/6 G) affects our tides.

What it means for Stuff On Your Station is :
Things towards the centre have low gravity. Rings towards the outsides have higher gravity.

Everything we do depends more or less on gravity. Our bodies degrade in low and micro gravity, while industrial processes can work better without the influence of gravity. It’s all much of a muchness there. The Expanse covers the medical side of this extremely well. Low gravity medicine is good for relieving the stress on the body … however zero gravity is critically bad for injured parties because our bodies depend on our circulation system being able to pump fluid around and generally remove the Bad Stuff.

There’s a lot more to it than that and that’s without going into things like Fission Power, where our nuclear reactors mostly depend on a hot/cold convection circle that needs gravity to operate.

Enough science ? One more thing …

Weight and gravity aren’t all of the story. Everything has mass. (Weight is Mass times Gravitational Acceleration – see Newton’s 2nd Law). One thing I think the Elite stations are missing is warehousing for cargo … this is moved best in microgravity. The cargo still has mass and inertia … but a person who could move 1 tonne (slowly) in zero gravity would have minimal chance of lifting it even in 0.1g (100kg).

Gravity is the key to everything. Shall we look at some stations ? Here goes !

That’s a Coriolis fly by in Elite, with the Needs More Pew Pew Cobra Mk4. This is a tribute back to the original game, which was heavily into geometric wireframe shapes. There is a “trench” around the face with the docking envelope on these stations that I’ll try to fly around at some point. One issue with these stations is that because they have flat sides, the Coriolis Effect kicks in. Unless you’re in the centre of a face, Up from the floor is not necessarily Up as spin gravity would have it … Which would have some nasty effects on your balance !

There’s an Elite station from a little while ago. Bit damaged but a nice example of a spin gravity station. One issue I have with these is the legs that go to the outsides, why are they bent ? Plus there isn’t usually too much outside the spine that connects everything together, so transit up and down the station is always in changing gravitational conditions. I.e. no spin gravity, just acceleration from the transit cart stopping and starting meaning that the floor and roof interchange.

Elite also has Outposts, which are essentially modules welded together with no main docking bay. These make sense with the other type of gravity – technological gravity. Grav plating in the floor of the type Star Trek and most other scifi like to use.

Moving swiftly on from that one :-D. Gravity makes absolutely no sense on that.

There’s an awesome space station. It’s Babylon 5 and this one uses spin gravity where that makes sense … and grav plate cheating for where it’s convenient for the story.

This one has a central cylinder with the habitation decks inside and a fantastic park / passive oxygen generation in the cylinder as well. This even becomes a plot point as a character leaps out of a transit cart to avoid a bomb, to realise that when he reaches the other side of the cylinder, it’s going to hurt a lot. The spin gravity turns people around as well, so if you’re going 50m/s right at the top, you’re going 50m/s left at the bottom. If you take a short cut across the middle, you’ll hit the bottom at 100m/s. OUCH.

The docking bay is at the top on this station, between the forks. The ships are then moved around to their berths, which is only shown a couple of times in the series. The curious thing is how Stuff is moved from the zero g docking bay sections to the sections in spin gravity. Newton’s Third Law will also make the stationary part tend to spin.

Actually that’s another thing – there is a gyroscopic effect as well, aka precession. A force on one side of the rotating wheel will make the wheel turn in another direction. Mixing spinning things with stationary things can mean awkwardness. (Which you’d manage with thrusters and reaction wheels).

One more station ? Here’s an iconic one :

As space stations go, this one is particularly good. It’s a technological gravity station, which means it doesn’t need to spin at all.

One issue with spinning stations is that the really big ships will be limited. They’ll have to stay outside and use shuttles to transfer people and cargo around. With Deep Space Nine, the big ships can dock up to the pylons with other ships connecting to the outer docking ring which also has the warehousing facilities.

It’s a lovely station and makes a great setting for a Star Trek show that consistently delivered massively high quality. And we hadn’t seen much like it before.

That’s one thing that keeps me flying around the Elite universe, all of the variation ! Difference is good.

More tomorrow. Dunno if I’ll be drawing a Cobra Mk3 though :-D. Definitely less of a science bomb tomorrow :-D.

Hello everyone,

Advent day 1 ! It feels like this year has gone around at a massive rush. Other people have said that too but for me, I think it’s because I’ve been a lot busier at work with trips out of the office to see things that I can’t talk about here :-D.

So here I am, on the Sunday morning, writing up post number 1 of Advent and December ! What’s on the menu for today :

I have to admit, I had my doubts when opening the tin foil packaging. Had the rolling of time gotten to my marshmallow like it gets to many things ? Had the bugs beaten me to it ?

Today it was a S’mores marshmallow and the description is “A S’mores gourmet marshmallow, embedded with finest milk chocolate chunks and rolled generously in caramelised biscuit crumb.” Haha, that sorts that out !

It was as gorgeous as it looks there. I.e. very tasty and I’m looking forward to the rest now. I do like the stuff from Naked Marshmallow Company (not sponsored). The marshmallows have a lovely texture and the flavours they add in are above subtle but not overpowering. Much better than the bland stuff you get in supermarkets where you can’t tell any difference between the pink ones and the white ones.

What’s the Lego bit ? I think it’s one of the ships, probably from the Star Wars Resistance animations. But I don’t watch those. Wonder if anything from The Mandalorian will sneak in to the advent calendar this year ? Maybe. That’s another one I’m not watching because I really don’t want to be paying for multiple subscribed streaming channels.

There’s another thing happening this advent too, as promised in the last post. Elitecember ! Today’s post was “Commander” and the idea was probably that you take a picture of your current commander and draw something around that. The pilots in game look like this :

There we go, on the right. That’s Commander Keela from just before the character reset. The 5 weeks play time is across both of the characters I had at the time and I’m now at (quick check) 6 weeks 6 hours played. I’ve enjoyed coming back in to the game for that extra week and it feels like the character has achieved much more. Like … having a credit balance of 830million and higher ranks across the board.

I have to admit that I don’t actually have a screenshot of my current commander. You set them up in character generation and … never look at them again. Although you can just about see Cmdr Ice if you zoom in close to the Gingery Nonsense :

I had to go to the high res version of that because the reduced size pic from Thursday was about 6 pixels high.

So … no official commander pic. That can only mean … Here we go :

There we go. Zoom in close for the details.

There’s hopefully a few details you can pick out in there like a modified Royal Navy Commander insignia (that’s a Sidewinder on top), the RN salute and the headset. Have a peek at the medals too. I think this one has turned out better than some of the others, although I felt really out of practice when creating this one yesterday. Need more practice. Most of the Elitecember pics are going to be screenshots from the game but I’ll be drawing some of them.

A pilot needs a ship though :

Cmdr Dwagon would like to welcome you aboard the Dragonbug, to take you where you need to go, to haul your valuables or … to see the pretty sights :

Fly safe and have a great December.

Advent is almost here !

This year seems to have flown by. It’s been a very busy year, definitely busier than it usually has been for me. Definitely looking forwards to the winter break.

But first … I haven’t been posting nearly as regularly or often as I usually do. I have a target or guide of 100 posts in the year and I’ll definitely miss that. Only 56 so far, so with this one and 31 over December, that’ll make 87.

But …. what’s coming ? Sneak preview first and it’s an internet spaceship :

She’s the Gingery Nonsense, named after one of the streamer ladies that I’ve been enjoying watching : HelloItsKolo. Link on the right. She plays Elite Dangerous (looks amazing), Planet Zoo (looks tempting) and assorted other games too but those have been the main ones and she’s been a joy to watch since I was steered her way by the lovely HeyChrissa.

But … meme ! What’s coming in December :

Yep. One of those too.

Also posh marshmallows. Will have to give you a taste report for every day of those.

Don’t think I’ll be toasting them though. It feels a bit of a shame to toast the posh marshmallows because they taste so good.

But what’s the meme ?

There we go. It was originally intended for Inktober … but I missed that so here we go for something inspired by that coming through December.

A lot of those are Elite references that will definitely not mean much to people who don’t play the game. I’ll write things about them for each day. Although …. not all the pics will be from Elite.

Yep. Gonna have some fun with that.

I’ll need to draw though ! I have in mind drawings that will need to be done for at least 4 of those. Gotta get drawing again. I tend to rush through the finish of the drawings but people seem to like the results.

Or is it the cake.

Still, it’ll be good to draw again. And hopefully to bring forth a few chuckles too :-).

And the Elitecember thing gives me an excuse to buy chocolate coins ! Result.

Are they ?

Yep. Pop ups are annoying but … bear with me on this one.

But first … birthday stuff ! I have new books. Especially looking forward to reading Ignition! (An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants) and I also have Ready Player One and Armada from Ernest Cline. Cheers CK !

Can you tell what it is yet ? As always with these, click for bigger and I really must put my seat cover through the washing machine soon.

A small beginning.

It grows …

4D can barely see over the top of it. Oh and … reflections … don’t look in the reflections :-D.

A couple of bags later. And even more reflections.

What is this ? Something that opens ? Also lurking dragon inside.

Shiny ….

Is it a house ? Looks dragon sized.

Or maybe just Pizza Delivery DwagonBoy sized.

Job done. 4D looks suitably impressed.

Looks cosy in there.

A view from above. A curious one with this piece is that it’s kinda double sided. On the other side of the chimney, a fireplace.

And fully opened up. 4D helping out like the trooper he is. It’s missing something though …

Dwagons ! There are also mini figures in there too. There’s a Little Red Riding Hood, a Granny and a Werewolf. With big teeth.

A very tidy build and as is normal for Creator and Ideas kits, it ends up in a very polished, finished result. The simple mechanism for the pop up works extremely smoothly as well.

Enjoyed this one :-).

Hmm, I don’t usually leave it this long between posts !

Thumbnail first … someone found this one and posted it on one of the discords. I may stand accused :

Credit to the artist as always, although I don’t have a link as I usually like to put on.

I sadly haven’t put any Lego together since the last post but I do have that Porsche sitting waiting. Sometime … soon.

It’s been a pretty busy fortnight at work, with a couple of away trips. So last weekend was very definitely a recovery/breather as was this weekend (and I’m missing words again which is another sign of tiredness with me). I was away for the first Wednesday and Thursday and also for the Monday and Tuesday of this week just gone.

I have good pictures too … which I can’t show here because they give too much idea of work away. Locations and places, things like that. However, one of the trips did see me near one of the hardware techie stockists and I acquired the latest techie morsel that will go in to Meltdown at some point :

There we go. More examples of my techie graveyard of bits that are scattered around the house.

From left to right, we have :
Seagate ST32130A 2GB conventional hard drive
Western Digital Caviar 60GB
Toshiba P300 3TB

I’ve long since discontinued the use of the 2 on the left but the one on the right is an upgrade that will be swapped in for a 1.5TB drive that’s being pretty pushed for space with some of the newer games with more pictures, textures and data. The 1.5TB drive is 8 years old now, I think the one on the left might be around 20 years old, maybe more.

The 60GB drive probably belonged to Godzilla, which was a couple of machines ago and had a companion iPaq called Godzookie, which I used as a satnav for a few years. They’ve kept the same package over the years, with all 3 of those being in a standard 3.5″ box. The interface has changed though, with the 2GB drive needing some special measures to access the whole of it. Those special measures were unnecessary for the 60GB and the 3TB uses a different type of cable.

Be careful taking your Godzillas on the ice.

Yep. Busy couple of weeks, with even a couple of overnights in a hotel. Mustn’t forget the chargers next time though. Oops ! It was ok, I have an iPhone and Android charger lead in the car so I was able to charge everything up off my home laptop.

Hotel internet is pants. As was the attempt at doing internet off the 3 mobile hotspot. Oh and then there’s Microsoft stealing your bandwidth for windows updates first chance it gets. You can set your connection to metered which means it holds off a little but … new internet connections default to unmetered which means Windows thinks it’s time to grab the stuff.

Talking of trying to watch stuff … I tried to start watching someone new on the Hotel Wednesday, 3 internet couldn’t cope. She’s “HelloitsKolo” on the twitch and there’s a link over to the right. Another person who plays a lot of Elite Dangerous. I haven’t done much in that over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling a bit too blasted to play. However …

That’s coming in to land at Fowler Legacy, picking up supplies to help out the latest Generation Ship to be found and added to the game. More pics of that one when I pay it a visit.

One thing I’ve learned …

Some of these logs (not this one apparently !) have audio attached to them too … I shall have to go back and revisit some places I’ve been to already.

Other stuff …

I’ve kicked off another Motorsport Manager campaign again, this time in the endurance racing category. I’d achieved what I could with the sportscars and the endurance racing is more of a challenge. There’s been a couple of races so far and my people are doing ok. I’m in the process of changing around the drivers at the moment, as there is a Fitness attribute that matters a lot more in the endurance racing because it determines how long each driver can stay in the car. More fitness, more time in each stint, less time lost in the pits.

And there may well have been Stellaris happening again. Patches have been coming thick and fast lately. I have a Fanatic Purifier race that’s going to destroy the galaxy (may well do that as something spectacular in the end) and I’d quite like to complete that game before the next expansion hits because it could well shake things up again.

Other news – birthday happened again !

I didn’t travel like I usually do because I needed a quiet weekend this weekend. It even got to me thinking that Friday morning was actually Saturday due to a little confusion. Oops. Managed to get in to work for 9.15am (almost an hour later than usual) and I have 3 days worth of flexi credit to use up so … didn’t matter in the end.

There’s also the Xmas market opening up in Bristol again … last week. No cookies !

Alas.

May have to go farther afield for cookies.

Yep.

Hectic week last week, first one back after my mini break. I didn’t go too far, outside of what ended up being a several day Stellaris bender …. oops. Enjoyed it though and it got me further on my quest to get all the achievements. It was a good game too, lost the homeworld at one point, got it back. Then went to take several homeworlds of other empires. That feels like a long time ago now !

Hectic week next week too, definitely Interesting Times at the moment. Lots of Internet Spaceships too, although there’s other things going on than internet spaceships :

Glasses – had a wander in town on Friday, didn’t see a place to get the new glasses from though, may have to go to Mall.
Phone – gonna replace the phone with a Pixel 3 XL as I’ve had enough of Samsung’s burned in malware. Looks like you can get the Pixel 3 XL online still but not in store, which is a shame. I’m not convinced the newer one is worth £10 a month more.
General wander – I do like wandering around the city centre, although I didn’t get that far this time. Wiped out after the week at work !
Terminator Dark Fate – watched this on Thursday with the boys. Very watchable, Linda Hamilton and Arnie are definitely the class of the movie. The backstory is completely …. terminated now with all the holes shot through it but they still keep coming out with very watchable action movies.

There’s gonna be a tonne of pictures appearing today, click for bigger as always. That ship’s the Commodore Tuesday, named after the Random Tuesday who should be in a link over to the right. The ship didn’t do so well, although that’s me fighting in conflict zones, which are really dangerous places. I’ll bring it out of the hangar again at some point with a better fit.

Back to exploring though, although before then it was a matter of getting to the place I’d left the Biscuits. Here is the Strength of Atlas, coming out of hyperspace by a neutron star.

And off on a little jaunt again. This is the Crumb, by an abandoned Thargoid wreck site. What happened here ? Looks old.

Betelgeuse is a big place. This was taken from 5 times the orbit distance of Earth from our sun.

The exploration expedition runs are usually guaranteed to find you some amazing screenshots. This is a nebula from inside another nebula.

There is a science ship inside as well.

And a very colourful planet in that same system too.

I found a base, last known location of an explorer who mysteriously … vanished. As did the rescuer sent to find them. (You find this stuff in logs scattered around the base).

A blue star this time …. and an updated paint job.

This ship had seen better days …

This trip saw a few excuses to dock up and fill up on tea and coffee from local stations too. This is a Coriolis station, a design which harkens back to the original game, updated for this iteration. There is a trench that runs around the face with the docking bay entrance, I must get a little ship and try a trench run around it at some point.

Oops. Left the headlights on again.

Dreaming of the California Nebula.

One of those discoverable logs. I wonder if they escaped ?

It’s always a little nervous when you drop out and there are two stars close by, although it hasn’t caught me out yet.

This White Dwarf star may have been a bit tricky to get a boost from. No gentle streamers here … just a rapidly vibrating pair of cones.

Another find, this time a generation ship which had to be abandoned by the crew.

The black hole effects in this game are very pretty. In this case, I flew around until the black hole was between me and the galactic ribbon and you can see some of the lensing effects. It’s most apparent where there are irregularities in the ribbon, with a false lensed image coming from the other side of the black hole.

The trip was not without mishap. This landing was on a 2.8g planet, which was a bit too much for the thrusters on this one. May have bounced. I’m sure all the dents will come out.

Almost the last stop. Here, we see a science ship. The science ship had holes :

I was tempted to try and fly all the way through …

However, it was time to return eventually though. This particular ship has been a joy to fly around some shorter distance expeditions but here is Jameson Memorial, the eventual home of the Searching For Biscuits. I’m back now to doing missions for the Federation to unlock another ship.

Although not so much today, sore wrist meant a halt to gaming for today !