Author: Sleepypete

Birthday again earlier in the week !

Yes I am even older now.

I’ve been kinda neglecting this place lately …. I’m one of those people who can blast through things up to a certain point but when I get a chance to relax, the energy will go and I’ll be in recovery mode. So everything’s been going into work at the moment and then I need to crash out later.

And I’m definitely tending to the crashing out rather than feeling like posting things.

I’m behind on posts like :

2x Lego builds
Yesterday’s ship visit.

Ok, here’s a pic from yesterday :

Pretty ship is shiny. She’s the SS Great Britain, a revolutionary steam sailing ship that rewrote the book on how ships are powered by being the first propeller driven ship. I had an enjoyable wandering around this lovely ship. But that’s for another post …..

We had a work meet up in town, which was very enjoyable and I also tried out the Christmas Market in town last Friday.

Yep. Christmas is coming …. A sausage-inna-bun was devoured and I’ve been making my way through the special fudge that appeared from the market. I’ve also been getting quietly addicted to Kola Kubes again. I’m looking to check out the Cardiff and Bath Xmas markets this year.

There is no Happy Cookie Place again this year ! NOOOO ! Hopefully cookies will appear at Cardiff or Bath.

There was a Flake Break meet up last weekend, which was good fun. I was a bit nonplussed by the tribute band though, he was enthusiastic but with him covering Olly Mars and Bruno Murs, I don’t know either of them. It was great to meet up with people again, first time I’ve seen them since the last one 5 years ago … and I was suffering from a concussion then which was affecting me more than I realised.

Birthday Tuesday ! I acquired the cakes on Monday and was highly enjoying exhorting people passing my desk to raid the cakes. I was in a better position this year to do that. And then yesterday involved wandering around the great ship until I felt the crash starting to creep up on me.

I’m also enjoying the women’s cricket world cup. There are more close games now in the women’s game as the lesser nations are catching up to England, India, Aussie and South Africa. At the moment, it’s New Zealand vs Pakistan and it’s looking like New Zealand’s bowlers will quite comfortably see them through to a win. 5 wickets down already ….

Not much gaming happening, as a combination of that crashing out plus a poorly wrist. Lots of gaming being watched and enjoyed though.

Looking forward to the Xmas break. Especially as following it will be :

Soon.

I appear to be struggling for subjects again, which is a little odd because there are two Lego builds waiting to be posted.

Sometime. Soon.

Or something ate the ideas when I wasn’t looking. Maybe.

I did read something today though which made me think back to why I was looking to retire my old Macbook and replace it with something newer. It was an overly techie story about people installing Linux on their Macbooks, apparently the security on the newer Macs don’t let you do that. The daft question from me is : Why would any sane person want to do that ? I get the “Because I can” reason … but still. Apple hardware is excellent but you can get non Apple laptops that are better and cheaper to put Linux on. Linux on Apple hardware feels like a special kind of heresy.

Yep.

Anyway – the story made me remember some of the reasons why I stepped away from Apple. The big one is their attitude to customers. It feels as though you don’t buy your Apple kit, you lease it until such a time as they see fit to disable it or disable features that you depended on.

For me, I couldn’t go past iTunes 10.7 because it has a feature I use exclusively for my music listening. The iTunes DJ feature was replaced by a totally inadequate feature in iTunes 11. Because Apple then decided to make newer iOS versions not talk to iTunes 10.7, I had to retire my iPhone as a phone because I couldn’t keep it secure. Trust me on : you don’t want your phone to have security holes.

There was also the thing where I couldn’t use a USB wifi widget (to get around partly broken wifi on the laptop) because Apple disabled the support for third party widgets as well. And I think there were a few other issues as well. I haven’t actually turned on the Macbook since getting its replacement, not even to copy the pictures and other documents over. Oops.

That’s enough whinging about the tech though.

Sleeping better at the moment, which might be due to increased tiredness. The acid that was troubling me has been more controllable, although I need to delete the tendency to attack my legs. They’re not quite healed yet but they are much closer. There is that conditioned tendency to do more damage though. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

I had donuts earlier. The aftermath involved someone telling me I’d had too many donuts. I can’t remember what I’d said now to invoke that. It may well have involved ruff jokes.

Donuts earlier, quite possibly popcorn in a few minutes after I hit the post button.

No gaming today though. My wrist doesn’t like me very much at the moment so it’ll be watching gaming while leafing through Persepolis Rising. That’s book 7 of The Expanse while I take a little break from the British Stargate story.

Oh – birthday soon ! Not long to go. I’ll be acquiring things. Edible things mostly. But we shall see what we find as well. I’ll be raiding the Bristol Xmas market on Friday afternoon …

Oh wait. I think I just said a taboo word.

HAPPY COOKIE PLACE RETURNS IN A COUPLE OF DAYS !!!!

I hope. See ya !

Feels a little weird at the moment.

Before laptop, I’d look up the laptop and tech prices if I got bored and wanted to look something up. Like if it were a slow news day and I’d run out of interesting things to read.

Now that I have the laptop, there’s not really much point in me looking for tech. Indeed, when you buy anything computerish, it’s a good idea to NOT look at anything tech for at least 6 months because the price has inevitably dropped and you’ll make yourself depressed thinking that you could have saved a little cash if you’d waited.

The trick is to wait until there are discounts and buy at that point. Because if you buy discounted, it’ll take even longer for the price to drop below what you paid.

With regards my laptop, it’s still there at Scan for £680 which is £80 above what I paid. (Link to Scan). It’s good when your discount is still a great discount even a couple of months after the event. The other item was a 250GB SSD from Crucial via Novatech, which is now £5 more than what I paid (Novatech link).

Haha, I’m used to things being the other way around there and things getting cheaper/better. The way it usually works is that you change the spec and end up spending about the same amount of money.

How about a homebrew machine though ? I used to amuse myself by making a daft wish list of the more expensive items to see what the possibilities were. Let’s see how much a video editing and producing rig would cost :

Processor : AMD Threadripper 32 core – £1706. (Yep. This is a daft one)
Whereas the laptop with an i5-7300HQ chip renders in just under 3x the run time, this would probably render much faster than run time. That means less downtime between videos as well as higher quality going into the render.
Motherboard : Asrock Fatality X399 board for £445. The processor has to fit into a specific socket on the motherboard, which drives what you choose. And Asrock made the board that has glued Pumpkin together for 7 years now so I’d be happy to stick with them.
Memory : 32GB DDR4-28800 rated at 3.6GHz. This is driven by the processor, which demands at least 3GHz. Corsair memory is blacklisted so Kingston win this one. 32GB is £401.
Graphics : There are new 2080 cards out now and this is the daft machine so …. Gigabyte 2080Ti card for £1200.

Pretty much all of the above would have me going NOPENOPENOPENOPE in a machine I’d build for myself but … this is a silly one. Indeed, the processor and graphics card on their own cost more than the £800 ish that I’d be looking to lay out.

You need stuff to make that hardware go, so here comes the :
Power supply : Corsair make good power supplies (although I’ve had one go pop on Pumpkin) and there’s a 1000W fully modular Gold rated one for £170. This machine has a couple of graphics cards and I’ll add a few hard discs soon, so you need a beefy power supply to keep those happy. If the machine is running close to maximum capacity, something will go Pop and might take another component with it.
This demands a shiny case with bags of room so : Riotoro full tower for £110.
You need to keep it cool (and apparently AMD Threadripper chips need a special cooler) : £75 for an air cooler. I’m not an advocate of water cooling in the domestic environment, although in other environments ? Ok.

Storage ?
Normal hard discs : let’s have a pair of Western Digital (another one that’s done well in Pumpkin) 8TB drives. These would be in a RAID pair with the data copied to both, so if one drive breaks … you still have your data. An 8TB drive is £235 each, so add on £470.
SSD fast hard discs : another pair but this time from Crucial (more trust from Pumpkin). 2x 2TB drives for £331 each.
Oh and a bluray drive for £25.

Peripherals ? Gotta have those.
Keyboard – I love my mechanical keyboard. Indeed I feel a bit spoiled by it when I move back to conventional membrane keyboards. The current offering is a Steelseries M750 for £130. Mine is a Steelseries M800 which (through discounts and vouchers) cost me £30.
Mouse – I’m calling Logitech for this one with £35 for an M500.
Monitor – I like my AOC monitor so a couple of 24″ ones please. Why not bigger ? Big is nice but if the monitor is too big, I can’t see the sides when I’m in tunnel vision mode in a game. £232 each for a 25″ G2590PX. Looks like my G2577 has been discontinued (it’s a couple of years old).

One thing about monitors …. it might well be worth sticking to 1080p for the gaming monitor and then the working monitor can be any size. It’s probably not worth creating videos above 1080p because who’s going to watch them at that resolution ? And while going above 1080p is nice for image editing, I’ve found that it’s actually a pain for gaming.

How much is all that ?

Processor and other engine bits : £3702
Box and cooling : £355
Storage : £1157
Peripherals : £629
Add on Windows for £80 and you have a grand total of £5,923. OUCH ! Enough even to inspire the old :

Haha, I think those kitties are from the days when I could spec up a £10,000+ PC fairly easily by going to SCSI devices which are now pretty much extinct.

A Pumpkin Mk2 would be significantly cheaper if I did one tomorrow.
Engine bits : AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (£157) in an Asus B450 AM4 motherboard (£98) which would be fed by 16GB of DDR4-2400 costing £127 and I’d reuse my relatively recent nVidia 1060 for £190.
Case, power and cooling : A nothing special case by BitFenix for £27, Corsair 650W Bronze power supply for £72 and a cpu cooler with 2x 120mm fans (big fans run slower and quieter, this is good) for £40.
Storage would be a 250GB SSD by Corsair in either SATA or M2 variety (depends on motherboard, M2 is preferred) for £55 and a single 3TB drive for £86
I’d be buying Windows again but I wouldn’t refresh keyboard, monitor or mouse.

All together ? £932 to upgrade to a Pumpkin Mk2 (less £190 for the graphics card). I could also reuse my case and power supply and quite possibly the cooler too but … Better to have shiny and new and undusted there.

I’m not going to upgrade Pumpkin this year. It’s actually handling a heavily modded Skyrim very smoothly, with Skyrim being the game I’m playing at the moment that demands more performance.

You buy your PC stuff for a purpose at the end of the day. You could get the ultimate but … if you’re not going to use the performance then it’s a waste of money that could have gone on lots of Lego. Lego is shiny. I’d rather have a mid range PC and a laptop (AND LEGO) than just an exotic PC that I wouldn’t actually use to capacity.

Oh and look out for discounts too … Buy when you want to, instead of when the shops want you to !

PS Missed off speakers, I’m using a set that cost me about £40 that are good. Also video editing software, when I make videos I use Magix Vegas which was acquired via a discount on the Steam store. I’d recommend it, although look at the newer versions that support the graphics card being able to boost the rendering performance.

I love my scifi. I really do. It’s the genre I tend to go to most of all.

(There’s usually a “but” here isn’t there …. not today !)

Book 28 is The Martian. I’ve already read this book a few times and it’s a testament to how good I think it is that I keep going back to enjoy it again. This time, I reversed the order and watched the film before reading the book.

They are essentially the same story, although some of the scenes occur out of order and there are scenes that are in the book but not film and vice versa.

It’s a consequence of a film having between 2 hours and 3 hours to tell its story. A book like the Martian is more like 8 to 10 hours. There’s a lot more scope in there to explain and just add more content.

One huge criticism I have of the film, after reading the book, is that elements of it just don’t make sense. The trek in the rover is the biggest example here. 100+ days cooped up in that rover ? Won’t work. Plus where does the extra kit go. The life support equipment. Where does it go ? It’s touched on in the movie but so much is glossed over.

Other scenes are added into the movie which are either just plain bad (the explanation of the slingshot) or are unnecessary (the metaphorical “let’s kill Sean Bean’s character again”). I did think that the movie’s Watney teaching scene at the end was an excellent addition though, I’ll say more about that in a bit.

What is The Martian ?

The book opens with astronaut and botanist, Mark Watney, writing his log on Mars, a sol or so after being left behind during an emergency evacuation and stranded on our neighbour planet. It’s an inhospitable place, with barely any atmosphere and extreme cold. All he has to survive with are the rations left behind, the equipment in place and his wits. The communications with Earth are cut off and it will take 2 years for any assistance to arrive.

The book swaps between the point of view of Watney, as he writes about his escapades in his log, the mission controllers and administrators back at NASA, the rest of his crew and a selection of other places. But it’s mostly about Watney.

He’s a likeable character with his most important resource being his brain. He’ll look up answers and figure things out through science before getting stuck in to sort out the issues he’s facing. From food, to life support, to communications, to driving a few thousand miles across a desolate planet, away from his base of security.

There is a lot of humour in the book and it takes the time to explain what’s going on in terms that I hope everyone reading can understand. I’m cheating there because I’m an engineering graduate with interest in the other sciences on show in the book and I’ve been reading fiction about space since I was a kid, so I probably understood the engineering and technology a bit quicker than most. With the language and prose in this book though, I don’t think anyone will be left behind by it.

And the science bits are wrapped up in that humour that runs all the way through the book. You can figure out what’s going on before the reveals, which just makes it all the better.

There is some unnecessary drama plopped into the story but … if the author didn’t do that, you’d have an Arthur C Clarke lecture. (Legendary author … but I found his books to be a bit lectury) And the drama causing scenes are very plausible.

As a scifi story goes, this is utterly rock solid in its plotline, the technology and science on show. This is in contrast to a story like Interstellar, where it has an amazing storyline but the technology, science and stuff around that plotline is so bad it’s insulting to the space geek. The Martian has an excellent story, supported by accurate science and the characters are varied and charming.

I loved this book. I’ve already read it a few times and I enjoyed reading it this last time just as much as the first.

Highly recommended.

Yep.

Back in tomorrow after a very restful week.

I didn’t actually end up doing much, although I did escape the house (ha, I knew someone would ask that !). Needed supplies. Probably needed less supplies because I need to lose weight … The snacking isn’t being balanced by running around a cricket field any more so it’s just … accumulating. I’m not a fan of that. Especially as it means I’m having to search hard to find shirts for normal people, most of what I see available is an abomination known as Slim Fit.

Nah. This week was intended to be a recharging of batteries by not doing much and listening to lots of music. Oh and game playing too. Plus reading. I must write that post about The Martian before it all slips out of my head …

What have I been up to ?

Stellaris ate the first weekend. I may have to look into game addiction again because Stellaris has steered me towards a phase where I’ll open a game of that style in the morning/afternoon and still be playing it way after I should have at least broken for dinner. That’s not healthy and it’ll be a miracle if my sleep pattern resets to what it should be for catching the bus tomorrow. I think it’ll be ok.

I almost stayed up for the 6 hours of Fuji race last weekend which started at 3am our time. I managed until 6am before deciding I needed to actually sleep … It was a good race, as was the Formula 1 from this evening. Mind you, not much overtaking was actually happening again at the front. Some of the new circuits tend to cancel out the potential to overtake, although that’s also down to the aerodynamics of the cars which suffer when they get close to the car in front.

Been playing lots of Motorsport Manager too … I think it has a bug. It’s been setting the AI of the car drivers down to very easy, when I actually want it neutral. It’s been crashing a few times as well, which is annoying. My team survived their first season in the middle league, doing well in a couple of races to give them the points to not be last (the bottom team gets relegated and you waste a year). They’ll challenge for promotion next season.

I quite enjoy that game, I know the Metagame technique to build the team up to beat everyone else but it rewards good strategy decisions in the races.

I had a little dabble in Planetbase yesterday too. Enjoyed that … Here is the Clear Skies base about halfway to the 300 people goal :

The name comes from the planet type, which in this case was a Barren airless moon. The challenges on this one include no wind, so no wind power. The base gets bombarded by meteors and there are occasional solar flares which quite quickly irradiate colonists who get caught outdoors. This was the 3rd attempt yesterday, after the first couple died quickly to unfortunate solar flares (the exposed colonists die quickly if not treated).

Yep. Enjoyed that one. Tried Skyrim again today …

The main reason I’ve been avoiding the more first person action type of game is because I’ve been having a lot of pain in my shoulder area and my right wrist …. and Skyrim brought that pain back. I’ll give it a bit more time and see if that pain happens again.

Reading ? I completed The Martian again … next one I’m reading is actually fanfic of the Stargate variety … It’s about what happened if Britain found and used the Stargate instead of allowing it to get shipped off to the USA. It’s a curious read … but more of that in a future post again. I have a few other books lined up in the queue :

Wraith Squadron book 3
The Expanse book 7 (Persepolis Rising) now that it’s down in price from the rip off £10 for an electronic copy.
Need to watch The Expanse season 3 as well, which I believe finishes book 2 and then does book 3.
2x Jack Campbell Lost Fleet books – Steadfast and Leviathan. I started Steadfast a long time ago but stopped for one reason and another (think this was when I was so ill, I stopped reading because I didn’t want to damage the books).
Children of Time has been recommended.
(Plus there are another bunch of books on the wish list)

XCom 2 is on the list to be replayed as well, it has had a mini expansion to fill in the gap between XCom 1 and the sequel. In the first game, you’re fighting off the alien invaders from a secret location. In XCom 2, it turns out that you lost really badly and Earth is now in the hands of the aliens. You lead the resistance. The new mini expansion fills the gaps between the two games.

Perhaps when I’ve finished watching the Aavak playthrough of XCom 2. I try and avoid playing games that I’m also watching (so no buying Rimworld for a while) because that gets really confusing.

Music ? Tonnes of music has been listened to. Of 16.5k tracks in the library, I’ve listened to 5790 since getting the laptop a couple of months ago. I’ve listened to 1387 since going on leave.

Lots of music.

I haven’t gone into the old pattern yet of Album -> good tunes -> semi random stuff yet … The choices are pretty much all down to iTunes so far and I’ve been enjoying listening to everything with a fresh pair of ears again. I’ll be curious to see what gets picked more often, at the moment it’s a track from a game called AI War, which is another game I kinda collected, looked at and barely played.

Oops.

I have a few too many of those. I’m attempting to rein in that tendency somewhat now by asking myself it I’ll really play it rather than just look at it in the library.

Time to get back to that Stargate fanfic now ! While an episode of Stargate Horizons plays on the Roll4it channel.

See you later in the week !

Holidays for me at the moment !

Holidays usually mean indulging in the pizza so I can enjoy it while getting away with the cheese = acid effects it usually gives me. I haven’t actually gone for the pizza yet ! I must rectify this at some point.

I haven’t gone too far yet. Although I was pondering a wander into Bristol to check out attractions like SS Great Britain. I want to see that at some point. Also the Planetarium, want to see that as well. Sometime. Soon. Maybe.

This week is more about rest and recuperation though. I was feeling the burn out creeping up behind me and tapping me on the shoulder. Plus I was getting increasing pain from my neck and both shoulders. (The right shoulder is a known injury … but it’s rarer for the left shoulder to join in too)

Time to take a break to recharge before Xmas kicks off.

Yep. I brought out the C word :-D.

What have I been up to ?

Definitely enjoyed the Nomnivorian Swarm and their fleet of Star Destroyers. That’s in Stellaris, which has a nasty habit of making a day totally disappear once you open the game.

Talking of beings that eat everything in sight, especially their enemies, I should put the dinner on. Oops. Eating late again.

Watching the endurance racing cars on Sunday was good again, wonder if Toyota will keep their win this time. That’s a bit sad, they’ve been disqualified from the last couple of races for breaking the rules. Which is really bad because they have a massive performance advantage over the other LMP1 cars.

Cricket has been good to watch as well, with a few wins for England despite the rain over in Sri Lanka.

I read the Martian again, more on that to come in a later post. This is the first time I watched the movie and then read the book. If you enjoyed the movie, definitely read the book. There is so much more in the book that was chopped out of the film. But that’s stealing from the Book post.

The current read is essentially fanfic … A Roll4it series just started with them playing in the Stargate universe, which has me wanting to watch the Stargate series (all 3 of them !) again. The fanfic is “What happened if Britain kept the Stargate and found out how to use it in the 1930s ?” More on that in a later post too. I’ll be picking up Book 7 in the Expanse series too, now that it has reduced in price from the £10 they were asking until recently.

Motorsport Manager is still a game I’ll keep going back to. It has a very hands off, strategic gameplay style that is very nicely fitting with me wanting to let the shoulders and wrists recover. The decisions you make definitely matter during the game. Ok, maybe not all of the decisions :

Glorious isn’t it. Nope, the livery doesn’t affect car performance. There is sadly no secret +1 to all performance if you paint the car red.

I have ventured out of the house, honest ! (Needed supplies …)

Lego is tempting.

Hmm.

FOOD ! Back again soon !

PS There’s also been lots of music listening to happening. iTunes tells me I’ve listened to 846 different tracks so far since Friday … May get the chance of Repeat Track Since Laptop Bought Randomly Chosen down to 1 in 3 very soon.

I’ve had my laptop a couple of months (almost) now so it’s probably a good time to let people know what I think of it.

Overall, I’m very happy with it and I’m glad I took the plunge when I did instead of waiting for one of the models from this year which sees an Important Feature disappear.

So …. laptop critique and buyers hints if you’re looking into laptops.

I acquired an Asus FX503VD-DM080T 15.3″ laptop, at the time with a rather hefty discount. (Apparently it’s selling without discount at the moment and for much more than I paid ! Woo hoo !) I may have made a slight error because I suspect it has a less good screen than I was expecting. But I’m getting ahead of myself there. Specs ?

As delivered, it has an Intel i5-7300HQ processor. The only things worth knowing there is that when pushed, it’s nice and fast … but not so fast as to be a waste of cash owning something more than you need. Most of the time, a laptop processor won’t be doing much. The “HQ” means that it can slow itself down when not doing much in order to give you more battery time.

Other specs – 8GB memory (this should be seen as an absolute minimum)
nVidia 1050 graphics (gotta admit, not actually used this yet !)
A battery that gave about 4 hours of life … or probably 1 hour if I’d used it for gaming.
A 1 TB conventional disk drive. More on this later.
A camera memory card slot. The newer model doesn’t have one of these and I need one to get pictures off my camera. You could do the deed with a USB widget but … better built in.
No cd/dvd/bluray drive. These are getting pretty optional now and you’re honestly better getting a USB drive.

Out of the box, the performance was severely disappointing. As in … nasty. The problem was that conventional hard disk. I was attempting to copy over the music from the old Macbook Air while the laptop was doing its setting up and updating. Conventional hard discs are a fairly archaic device now which excel in holding lots of data cheaply … but they’re rubbish at getting to that data. They will severely hamper the performance of a machine when you’re attempting to do several things at once (or if the machine it attempting to multitask with data).

The answer is to add a Solid State Device drive, which is essentially a few memory chips that still hold data when the power is off. These are lightning fast and totally solve the performance issues. With the addition of a 256GB SSD, the machine is very smooth and I don’t notice any slowdowns at all.

Yes computer. Yes you. You’re a good boy. (So is my desktop which incidentally is the machine I’m writing this post on !)

Buyer’s Tip – do not buy a Windows PC unless you’re going to run Windows off an SSD. Running Windows on a conventional drive is pain you don’t deserve having inflicted upon you. (Yes our machines at work don’t have SSDs – it’s nasty).

Buyer’s Tip number 2 – you may be able to add an aftermarket SSD (I recommend Crucial SSDs and this one came with a free utility to transfer Windows over) but check the (ALL IMPORTANT) warranty and check whether the laptop supports adding the extra drive. The Asus laptop does but strangely, the retaining screw looks like it’s been threadlocked in. Shame on you Asus. The SSD hasn’t fallen out yet in two months so …

Anyway. Super smooth laptop now.

Keyboard is good, although the trackpad suffers when confronted with multiple input. I’ve disabled tap click because it was being annoying and you have to give it a hand wipe if it gets electrostatic charge.

iTunes runs very nicely, although I’ve had to adopt a hack application to separate the sound from the laptop from the music that goes to the hifi. The laptop is quieter than I’d like … but that’s a fact of life of laptops. Still, you’d expect to be able to run with the volume not quite at 100%, which is not loud enough. For the music, I’m using a free open source audio routing app to throw the sound over to the hifi via Bluetooth. I’m using a cheap Logitech device that isn’t perfect (I can hear occasional break up) but it recovers nicely when disrupted.

What else ?

It’s much heavier than the Macbook Air …. but you’re comparing an ultralight laptop to a multipurpose gaming laptop. The weight means that it’s solidly built. I boycotted HP and Acer because I expected them to have quality control issues. Dell was boycotted due to quality control issues with the screen, which was apparent on the display model at That Computer Store Not-to-be-named.

Windows is annoying. But then you knew that already. Apparently file sharing across the network is broken again. It worked for a little while but I suspect Microsoft have broken something again. What does work is Bluetooth transfer from the phone, this never worked on the Macbook because of … Apple being Apple.

Think that’s it for this totally unstructured laptop review ! It was a worthy upgrade from what I had before and I must check out what its gaming performance is like some time.

Actually after dinner time now !

Another book complete !

This one is Titanicus by Dan Abnett, set in the very dark future of Warhammer 40,000. (Attribution for a splendid picture must go to AmazingTrout at the link)

What is Warhammer 40,000 ? For the uninitiated, it is an incredibly dark gaming universe set 38,000 years in our future. When I left it, the Immortal Emperor had been encased for 10,000 years in his Golden Throne on Earth/Terra ever since his body was broken as part of the Horus Heresy which split humanity between the Imperium of Man and the corruption of Chaos.

As a gaming setting, it has everything going for it. Faster than light travel through the warp, which is also where the demons live. Humanity encompasses large areas of the galaxy, although areas are off limits due to the incursions of Chaos, predations of the Orks or the mystery of the Eldar. I gather that there are a few more races joining in now like the Tau, Necrons and they’ve always had the Tyranids (who ended up owning the Genestealers too for some reason) who are your classic Devouring Swarm.

(The place I got this pic from don’t own the copyright, so no attribution for them. This time it’s from Pacific Rim)

Oh ! The setting. The Warhammer 40k universe has many worlds, from agricultural, to backwater, to trade to …. industrial hive world. Worlds like Orestes, the setting for Titanicus, have been overtaken by industry. The atmosphere is polluted and everyone clusters together in huge city hives holding millions. The hive spires are above the clouds.

Orestes has several hives, however there are also the slum areas outside the hives. Areas left behind. Areas where the dispossessed and evicted live. The book does a wonderful job of painting all of this, as well as the interaction between the unaltered Imperium society and the mechanically enhanced Mechanicus who work the machines, build the machines, repair the machines.

And this book is all about the machines. And they’re big ones ….

Way bigger than that one. (Again, no attribution cos the site I got it from doesn’t own the copyright, that’d be the movie, toys and comics people).

Titanicus unleashes the Titans. They are the masters of the WH40k battlefield, standing between 10 metres tall for the scouts, to 23 metres tall for the mainstay Warlords, to even bigger for the Emperor Titans. (I think that scale is wrong but there’s wikis for you !)

Picture ? Actual Titans this time ?

There we go. It’s from the wiki.

The book does a fantastic job of dramatising an incursion by Chaos Titans onto the world of Orestes. The defenders are vastly outmanned and outgunned, having had their strength drawn away by the eternal wars. To their aid rides the Legio Invictus with their Titans.

The best parts of this book bring out the contrast between the ordinary infantry soldier or tank drivers, going up to the scale of the massive Titans. It’s a vastly uneven fight and, be warned, the book does not hold back on the descriptions of what Titan scale weaponry can do to ordinary humans, while the Titan shields barely notice the impact of human scale rifles, with the Titans casually sweeping aside even formations of vehicles.

You feel the terror of the characters involved in the fights and are riding along with them as the explosions and impact of the battles. Dan Abnett is very good at drawing that out in his book. And alongside that, there is the battle going on at home inside the main hive city.

Will Cally and her crew survive ? What will become of the remnants of the tank formation ? How about the engines (Titans) and their crews ? Will the Imperium hold off the forces of Chaos this time ? What will become of the Mechanicus ?

It’s an excellent book, although I have to say at least 100 of its 600 pages are lost to a sub plot which distracts away from the main action a little too much. Apart from that and to borrow a phrase from Cyberkitten about the film Battle: Los Angeles, this book is start to finish : Pure unrelenting combat.

Would recommend if you’re interested in the Wh40k universe, although probably not for the faint hearted. I read it before a few years ago and enjoyed it as much this time, getting caught up in the ride not knowing whether the characters would survive or if they would face sudden annihilation at the hands on the God Machines.

Next up is The Martian, which I’m enjoying just as much this time as the other times I’ve read it.

Thursday saw me heading East. I’d accumulated almost 3 days worth of flexi working credit, so it was time to burn some of that down a bit.

I had an ideal location picked out.

Hello Legoland. I’m going to keep the pictures smaller because there are rather a lot of them (Facebook got 126. Yep. 3 figures worth. Not gonna post ’em all here !), as always …. click for bigger. All of these are taken with my proper camera so there are lots of pixels to see.

Lots of bricks too. The first main ride type area you get to on site is Star Wars and these two are outside. Inside, there are incredible dioramas depicting scenes from the first 6 movies.

They look amazing. And in fact a couple of messages sent to people quite early were along those lines. I was pretty blown away by the dioramas. The site is chock full of them. Some, you might not notice so much.

Check out the fella on top looking to nab your snacks.

Some are a lot more impressive. This fella is highly likely to become an avatar at some point.

And pirates. Quite a few pirates as well. And a Mariachi band. The lunchtime show involved pirates too. Most of the site is targeted at 6 to 12 year old kiddies and their parents but this lunchtime show was fun to watch for me too. Perhaps I am that 6 to 12 year old kiddie in a somewhat older body.

Hell, you should indulge yourself in some harmless fun if you can get away with it. Good for the soul.

Although don’t swim. Swimmers might get eaten. Those dragons looked peckish.

Especially that one. Burger Dragon will definitely be an avatar at some point. Lego creations like this were all over the site. Most of the place was theme park, which didn’t impress me too much. Too much roller coaster, not enough brick. Saying that though, I didn’t actually partake in the roller coaster thing, maybe next time.

Humour too. As I walked past these fellas (and there were more of them), Queen’s We Will Rock You was playing.

The really massive treat for me on the site though was Miniland. This had intricate statues inspired by places from all around the globe. USA, Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Russia, China, India and quite probably a few more too. Need to go back to refresh the memory.

We have lift off ? Yep. That is a giant Lego Space Shuttle and launch gantry. There’s a crawler transport vehicle too and models representing the rest of Kennedy Space Centre. Definitely fanboyed over that.

Had great weather too, check out that sunshine.

Enough sun for crisp, clear shadows. Erm … Totally didn’t intend for my own shadow to be in shot ! Wear hats if the sun is as powerful as this folks.

The amount of detail was amazing, as was the number of different landmarks. Quite a few from London and beyond.

Wonder if they move the stones when the clocks change ? Couple more before I close ?

If you haven’t watched The Mole sketch by Jasper Carrott, you’ve heavily missed out.

I loved this scene hidden outside the Atlantis aquarium area. That’s definitely better visited than on camera (the low light wasn’t so good for camera).

Just one more ! Star Wars again, this … was larger than me.

Here’s a video of them building it and … those are small Lego star fighters dotted around the outside.

Great day. Had fun, enjoyed the visit, when can I go again ?

Back to books !

It feels like it’s been a long time. Quite spookily coinciding with the cricket season and the reactivation of the Warcraft sub.

(Picture unattributed – it’s from Pinterest and they don’t play nice at all with attribution. Let me know if it’s yours, if you’ll let me keep it there and it you want a note/link).

To the book ! More natter later.

This one was Iron Fist, the second in the X Wing Wraith Squadron books by Aaron Allston. It picks up on an excellent start from the first book and runs from there. There are new characters to replace those lost in the first book. Not all of the squadron survives this book either … It’s part of why these books have a certain compelling factor to them, you don’t know who is going to survive out of the characters that don’t have Plot Armour*.

*Plot Armour – a device where certain things have to happen, certain characters have to be in one piece for later. Like Picard could get captured (multiple times actually), Data could have his head blown off … but they’ll be back for the next episode.

Anyway. The story in this one follows the first, where the Republic born from Rebellion is trying to track down and deal with the Warlord Zsinj. He’s an elusive one …. with a very powerful and nigh on unchallengeable Super Star Destroyer, the Iron Fist of the title of the book.

Just for chuckles … Lego Super Star Destroyer build video ! I’d love to put one of these together but … It’s still £550+ for an unopened one on That Auction Site Everyone Knows About.

To the book !

Yep. The Wraiths are set up this time as a pirate band, with them even stealing the fighters they use to prey on a star system. The hallmark of these books is clever tactics and strategy, where it’s believable that the squad have everything in hand for the plan …. and then react as the plan falls apart around them.

Oh and the characters have a lot of fun throughout the books and you, the reader, are invited to share in that totally free form fun.

I won’t put too much more but I’m looking forward to reading the last book of this three and then there’s Isard’s Revenge if I can find where I buried it in the mountain of books.

I’d say that’s me but ….. I suspect Cyberkitten got there first and stole the chair.

Actually no ! The shadow off to the left is Cyberkitten’s mountain of books … towering over mine.

I may acquire more Stuff tomorrow. Legoland ! Looking forward to it. On a school day too. (I have tonnes of flexi credit built up and I need to burn some of it down).

I haven’t been posting much lately, the ideas haven’t been flowing like they can do. Hopefully another post soon !

Haha, I suspect a Legoland post may appear over the weekend.