Author: Sleepypete

I suspect a new discovery over the past few days is responsible for vastly disrupting my sleep pattern …

Actually. Not suspect. Know. What is it ?

It’s called Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.

It’s still playing through as I tap out this post. They’re up to 693 trillion gold now with the next upgrade coming at 952 trillion gold. It isn’t much of a game to be honest, which is a mystery as to why it’s so addictive ! All you do is watch them bash the monsters, with Minsc the Ranger doing sterling service bashing at many monsters at a time and you tell them which upgrades to go for when and which heroes to have in the group to make sure you have all of the skills working together.

I don’t know how long I’ll stay with it but it has me hooked so far and I haven’t resorted to the microtransactions yet. I had a dabble in Star Trek Timelines but that looks heavily dependent on microtransactions.

Games with microtransactions that I’m ok with :
The ones where it is not vital to progress that you give them money. You can shortcut the time needed in Idle Champions but the alternative is just to wait and let it play in the background while you do other things. Elite has microtransactions for paint packs and other addons … these have zero bearing on progress, although they did open up one particular system to people who backed the game pre-release.

Games where I’m not ok with microtransactions :
Where the money unbalances progress in the game or gives people an unfair advantage. I felt ST Timelines was requiring the money just to play the basic game, to get around the issue of needing Chronitons to do anything with the game and those Chronitons needing time to build up. That’s very wrong, although it does fit for occasional play Facebook or mobile type games where you have a little binge of play and then running out of credit means it’s time to go away for a while.

I’ve never really got on with that type of game, I like my time management to be down to me instead of arbitrarily enforced by a game. Perhaps with my potential for addiction, the time management is a good thing. But I don’t like it.

Besides, being stuck in a game for many hours on end is a bad thing, even if it’s a background thing to things like watching the cricket, reading a book, watching videos or other activities.

Other games have the problem of you potentially being able to buy power within the game and get an unfair advantage that way. One reason I avoid Player vs Player type activities is because they are infested with sociopaths who can invest immense amounts of time (or money) into making their avatar as powerful as possible … and these people will prey on those who just want a little fun in the games on their own terms.

I need to hit the sales as well at some point before going back to work on Thursday. Possibly Tuesday as I suspect the shops will be shut for New Years. I better check that before I repeat something from quite a few years ago !

I did wonder why I was the only person at the Mall that day ….

I really enjoyed reading this one.

It’s called Revenger, the latest novel by Alastair Reynolds and the verdict ? After not getting on too well with his Chasm City, I’ll be looking up more of his novels now.

It’s a tale of a perhaps Firefly inspired solar system with space ships being a cross between what we’d expect and sailing ships of days long gone. With treasure hunting and piracy mixed in there as well.

Good book. I’d thoroughly recommend it. The central character is Fura Ness and as a young lady new to the ways of space and baubles and treasure hunting and piracy, she’s a perfect narration character to draw you into a wonderful universe set up throughout the book.

You have technology … but it’s technology that’s been handed down. Ancient works of art, death and tools for getting the people ahead in their travel through the world. Most of the technology is found on baubles, shielded worlds with ancient troves of goodies that are only open for short bursts of time, after which they close behind impenetrable barriers again.

It’s 425 pages long and I’d quite happily still be reading it.

I think it’ll be the first Expanse novel though. I should go book hunting at some point. I’ve intentionally avoided heading out over the past couple of days mostly to avoid the snow that came down. If you have no need to head out in wintry conditions, you shouldn’t. The most important rule I’ve gone by is : Don’t become the casualty. And heading out unnecessarily in conditions of snow and ice gives you a high chance of getting damage either to yourself or to what you’re travelling in.

Oh and if you’re on other people’s transport (bus, train, air) there’s the high chance of them deciding that they aren’t going to be travelling … in which case you’re really stuck.

Nah. I may venture out tomorrow (I’m almost out of milk and have the pizza urge again …) but I’ve been quite enjoying watching the cricket during the night and day too. Maybe pizza in the evening followed by Day 5 of the cricket up until lunch if I’m feeling ok and all day if I have the acid. The pattern at the moment is to start watching at 11.30, watch the pre-lunch session up until 1.30 and then head to bed and watch the rest in the morning.

It’s been a good pattern.

But I’ve also been suffering from the insomnia again which makes me think of doing a reset in the form of an all nighter, which works out well in conjunction with pizza …

We shall see !

No Lego today sadly, although I am well overdue posting the results of a rather glorious build from a while ago.

That BB-8 is definitely tempting though. Very tempting.

I’m back home now and in probably the best time to travel back too. Here is the scene from about 2.30am last night :

(2.30am ? I have trouble sometimes cooling down after a long drive. My nerves and brain go on high alert watching out for all of the numpties who are about to do stupid things on the roads. The trick is to not be in the place where you end up being caught up in what they’re doing).

That’s maybe an inch of snow in a Bristol that rarely sees much snow, if any. The conditions travelling back were poor. Very heavy rain, continuously for the whole trip after getting to Leicester. It was a balmy 5 degrees C for the early part though, so it was coming down as rain instead of anything more slushy. It did touch 2 degrees C around Birmingham though.

I sense that if I’d attempted to travel today, then I’d have been turning around.

It’s good to be home again, although it’s also good to see the family again. We didn’t get up to nearly as much as we usually would, due to ill health. And that’s me too ! My outsides are much improved but there’s still a fair way to go with them. It does help having lots of good munchies inside me though. I have pictures … Which would probably upset all of the vegetarians who come here.

There’s more going on there than I’d ever write here though.

Sad to hear about the Kate who was the subject of the Tips and Charity link up in the top right for a while. We lost Kate to breast cancer on Christmas Eve. I hope the kids will be ok. Kate was a lovely person.

I’ve been reading again …

I’ve been meaning for ages to set up a second light in my main room, overlooking where I’m on the computer and where I’d be in my chair reading. After attempting to read in what my phone declared as 0 lux earlier (no detectable light) and just now as 2.0 lux, I figured it was time. That can’t have been doing my eyes any good.

I do have a proper ceiling light in my room but it’s never been the same since I switched it to a dimmer energy saving thing. With the extra light, I’m in a dazzling (hah yeah right) 80 lux if my head isn’t in the way of the light.

Much better for reading Revenger by Alastair Reynolds, which I’m enjoying tremendously. I sense it’s all going to come to a rapid conclusion but stories can be best if they’re not drawn out. Some of the 500-600 page (or more!) novels feel stretched, this one is moving on at pace and I think I’ll be acquiring more books from Mr Reynolds.

I still aim to hit 100 posts for the year … I’ve been a bit lazy over most of this year. 3 more to go ! So that’s …. Lego Star Destroyer, Lego BB-8 if that happens, music post ? I wonder what else.

Oh and that 2.30am was partly due to cricket watching too, which I totally intend to do again tonight :-D.

Yep.

Have a great day ! I’ll be at the mum and dad’s place still* but it’s a good place to be.

*(The usual seasonal bugs, mum’s maybe 10 days behind me in the progress of her cold and I’m still suffering a bit)

Yep. Hope you have a great day, stay warm :

Yep. They nearly escaped with me yesterday. And …

Beware …

Easter is coming.

Final day of the advent calendar ! What’s in the box …

Ok, the sleigh was yesterday but I think we found the driver.

It’s a BB-8 ! With bobble hat ! And skis ! They definitely saved the best until last. And now I’m even more … tempted? daftly curious? dangerously drawn to? the big Millennium Falcon.

The saving thing there is that the £650 Millennium Falcon is likely to be in short supply for a very long time. I must watch the build video again sometime soon.

I suspect the Lego kit that will escape at some point will be the big BB-8. I wonder if I have enough bits to make him a bobble hat as well.

I spotted something else that was close to disappearing with me from the local garden centre / farm shop place :

They’re called Warmies and they’re designed to work like hot water bottles, except they’re solid inside and you heat them up in the microwave.

They have one in dragon form that may escape with me at some point. Maybe. We shall see !

I don’t know if I’ll keep up the post-a-day now that Advent is completed but we shall see. Xmas is going to be a quiet one this year. Illness has been catching up with us all so the trip to see the sister isn’t happening now. (My back has decided it doesn’t like me at the moment as well – grr).

A quiet Christmas is still a good Christmas though. It’s a time to be around people who matter, to have a cosy relaxed time. And then you hopefully have a chance to see other friends as well afterwards too.

And maybe smuggle out Warmies for them.

Yep. To the online shop !

At least, I think it’s a sleigh …

It’s poised, ready to plough its way across the galaxy bringing presents and good cheer to all citizens, Rebel and Imperial alike.

Yep. Even smugglers.

I’m at the mum and dad’s place now, we’ve settled in for a Xmas movie after a lovely dinner. What did we have ?

Yep. The ham was as tasty as it looks. Gert lush as they say in Bristol.

It’s good to see the mum and dad again and we should be off to see the sister and her bloke and dogs tomorrow. More pictures then. If the internet cooperates. I’m a bit frustrated at the moment, this laptop is pretty good but there are a couple of flaws with it :

The keyboard is wonderful but is starting to struggle with age. It kinda needs a shake out to remove dust but … where does the dust go ? It’s a sealed case. There’s only a way in for the dust and no easy way out.

The wifi is not good. I can get around this problem at home because (techie bit …) 5 GHz wifi is perfect. 2.4GHz wifi is very poor. At home, I have different SSIDs for 2.4GHz and 5Ghz and the laptop never uses the 2.4GHz because I haven’t told the laptop about it. But I can’t split them out here like that. And the alternate solution of a Wifi USB widget has been nobbled by Apple who have deliberately stopped that 3rd party widget working.

The Macbook Air was a wonderful buy in 2013 but I won’t be buying anything else from Apple due to their attitude on software ownership and how they don’t believe in it. Nope. You’re supposed to rebuy from them regularly when they obsolete your current kit that’s still working perfectly well. Oh and they also have odd whims that are nothing to do with making the software better for users.

(It’ll be a custom laptop probably from PC Specialist likely running a tbd flavour of Linux).

The film ? It’s Battle of the Five Armies from the Hobbit sequence. A lot of spectacular, mindless action sequences sewn together by probably the last 20 odd pages of the book. A decent movie in its own way but …. too much battle, not enough story.

Still thinking about dinner the way this fella thinks about tennis balls :

Oh and tomorrow’s final Advent pic is awesome.

22nd Day of the Advent !

What’s in the box … what’s in the BOX !

Aww …

Cute little AT-ST walker. Needs to munch on some Ewoks to make him grow up big and strong. This makes me think of something I posted the other day …

I’ve quite enjoyed the post a day format so far this month, although it is becoming a bit of a pull now to figure out stuff to say.

Perhaps that’s partly down to being in the games instead of being around the people. People bring ideas, bring randomness that feed the ideas.

How is the game going ? I’m pretty sure this is a win now.

Mine are the Blood Red stain, spreading across the south side of the galaxy. I have a border to a Fallen Empire now, fighting those didn’t go too well last time. The rest of the galaxy is banding together in an alliance in a vain attempt to stand against the Berserker horde. But that’ll wait for a few days.

Back to the walkers !

I blew the dust off the big one especially. I have a mini AT-AT as well. Wouldn’t mind having a decent sized AT-ST or AT-AT walker, although I’m not too keen on the new Last Jedi walker.

Back to watching Salvation for me ! It’s a Netflix series about an asteroid threatening the Earth with extinction … and our response. Intriguing …

Another mini figure ! This time a definite follower of the fashion trend.

Yep.

Black’s in this year. I think he’s either one of the engineer type people who run the consoles or he’s a TIE fighter pilot.

Another easy day for me today. A few episodes of catch up telly in the morning and now I’m tapping this out while a few episodes of Salvation play in the background. In the middle, far too much excitement in the Stellaris game.

It’s still fairly early days in that galaxy. It’s getting into the early midgame where the wars are kicking off and federations are getting formed. The Purifiers are doing well so far (They should be, they demolished the opposition inside 50 years in the tiny galaxy game) but they have been taking a certain amount of losses which get rebuilt between wars.

What I didn’t anticipate was the outcome of a decision made much earlier. As Fanatic Purifiers, the race views all creatures unlike itself as food. They take planets, they get the dinner plates out and eat the occupants. Perhaps like the Kzin in the Larry Niven Known Space universe.

It’s a certain race style that adds its own advantages and some hefty disadvantages. The ships are better but the option to do diplomacy is totally removed. That’s probably a bigger disadvantage than it seems, as it also means that all of the other races tend to gang together to stave off the big threat that is your race.

Ok … what actually happened in that decision made earlier ?

Something they’re steadily adding into the game is a series of random events. There’s no guarantee that any of them appear in a game, in fact it’s very unlikely. This time, it turned out that some of my race got modified and made smarter. Sounded great at the time ! And the change was rolled out to all of the planets in the Empire, except a couple of planets which were being colonised at the time.

But … later on, another change got made to start the inhabitants of the Empire on their way to becoming Psionic. And they didn’t like the inhabitants which had been made smarter …

Oops. Half the Empire suddenly decides to eat the other half of the Empire.

It was a good lunch. And dinner.

Day 20 !

I think it’s a speeder !

I’m still having a real hankering for putting together a big lego set again. I like the building.

I’m watching the film Life at the moment, after breaking from Stellaris for some food. It’s a scifi movie set in space, in the International Space Station, where the astronauts on board are checking out an alien life form that’s been picked up by a space probe.

It didn’t have a great reception when it first came out but I like to make my own mind up about films. So far it’s …. ok. Not much more than that but we’ll see how it develops.

The Stellaris game is developing nicely. I’m playing my Fanatic Purifiers again who have their own special challenge due to everyone hating them. With good reason too … the Fanatic Purifiers are out to murder everyone. But they’re also a spiritualistic kind of race, with the purpose of communing with Something beyond.

And the first war is coming very soon too …

But not tonight. I’m going to attempt to keep to a fairly normal sleep schedule for the next few days, which means not speeding my brain up with gaming. Watching stuff is fine, playing stuff will mean I’m still playing the game behind my eyelids when I try to go to sleep.

And Life is building up too. Time to get the popcorn !

First up – Day 19 and what’s in the Advent calendar !

Looks like a Tie Striker to chase the rebels away.

The Special Project I mentioned yesterday involves making a new avatar or two. What goes into these ? Lots of patience and photoshopping … Here’s the starting image :

Spot the use of an envelope to act as a constant colour backdrop (it’s what I have to hand !) and a Nanoblock kit to raise the fella up a bit. In hindsight, a dotty object isn’t the best idea but with liberal use of the Magic Selector (a thing that selects a block of colour), the Free Select Tool and the delete key, you can turn that into :

And you’ll then want to trim the image down a fair bit and add an Alpha Channel to make the background transparent. This is the first layer of what I’m hoping to make.

Layers are very important. I’ll have the fella above as the main layer and I’ll add the rest as different layers. If you added everything on the same layer, then a mistake made would overwrite something you wanted to keep and then you’re at the random mercies of the Undo button.

I want to add something from :

Yep. Dwagon’s getting an Evil Cultist Snowmen jumper.

This isn’t so much of a cut and paste on top … I want to have it roughly matching the fella’s top. Let’s see …

There we go. This image is two layers, source dwagon plus source Evil Cultist snowmen. The source Evil Cultist Snowmen layer will be deleted later. I just need something to be a source for the lovely Clone Stamp tool.

Part way done. Note the imperfections on the left hand side of the jumper as we look at it. Those will disappear later. I’ve missed a trick actually as there are a few bits of source image for the jumper that I’d like to make this a high quality effort. Bits of jumper trim, things like that.

A little bit of cutting, pasting, clone tooling and rotating and the sleeves are coming together. I’m not planning to do much more than that coverage.

I think it’s almost there ? Don’t you ? As well as finishing the sleeves, I’ve done a little bit of clicking with the Erase tool on various layers. The erase will only take away from the current layer, so with every click you expose more of the source picture underneath. Less jumper, more dwagon.

He could do with a scarf I think but that’s probably beyond my photoshop skills. (Actually using the free tool GIMP).

I feel there should be a background. (It might appear overnight … I’ve actually written most of this post on Monday!)

Oh and if you’re thinking “That looks easy.” You can do it too ! Go for it. GIMP is a free tool so all it needs is the hard bit of having an idea and a little patience. The undo button is there to get rid of mistakes and the zoom thing is there to make it easier.

Go for it !