Author: Sleepypete

Thanks CK !

I'm sorry to hear that. My SERIOUS condolences!

Gosh this one’s going to be a tough post to write but let’s start with a picture.

My dad passed away yesterday. I wasn’t there but mum said it was peaceful and without pain.

But this isn’t about the end, it’s about the 75 years up to that point. This will only have a little bit about how good a dad I had but I hope it paints some of that picture.

Before you ask, I’m ok. The family’s holding things together, as is our way. You have to keep on functioning, despite what you might be feeling. And that’s what we do. (Although we will go to bits when we need to and in my case, writing has always been a better way to express my feelings than anything that goes from brain to gob).

I’ve been very lucky with my parents. They’ve always supported me, my sister and my brother when he was still with us. Pretty much everything they did was to support us kids.

What did he get up to ?

He pointed the way for me to get into the cricket. He hadn’t played for a long time before I did but supported me all the way. As he did with my sister and her horse riding. He gave me my first start at work, which prepared me for going into full time work. (And it was very handy for giving me a cash injection too !).

They bought our first cars and supported us kids into getting our independence. Not as a pushing us out the door kind of independence, we were always welcome and encouraged to come back to stay. There is always a place for us to crash there. In fact, this actually extended to allowing one of my ex girlfriends (this was uni) to stay there rather longer than she ought after that incident when I rescued said ex from what could have ended up being a nasty domestic violence incident.

He was a very keen gardener (and there were very many tasty veggies coming out of that garden too !). He built a house for us in Northern Ireland. Not many people can claim to have done that ! Things were a struggle for the family quite a few times but we kids were insulated from that by remarkable parents … but not so much that we weren’t able to deal with hardship when it presented itself later.

He taught me that if you read up on how to do things, you can do anything.

Outside of what was gifted us through our genes, we’ve never been that lucky as a family. But through the inspiration of people like my mum and dad, we’ve hopefully come out ok. But that’s for you all reading out there to judge.

There’s more, like the couple of trips to Wembley to see Rotherham play plus that day when Rotherham played Swansea and the referee incited a pitch invasion. I enjoyed getting out to see Yorkshire play cricket at various grounds too. Cos that was time with my dad, which was always precious.

Proud of him … and my mum, sister, brother while he was with us. Everything he touched had its own little bit of awesome with it.

Best dad ever. I’ll miss him.

Before I head into what’ll be a rather short book review, I better say where I’ve been for the past few days … (If you want to see the short book review and skip what could be hard to read, skip to the Lego Death Star).

I’m going to mysteriously disappear again quite soon and it’s due to the family situation I’ve been alluding to over the last few weeks. My dad is very ill and we’re not expecting him to be with us for too much longer.

He’s had a few small strokes lately and the bugs that have been going around have probably been too much for him. They were tough enough for us semi-healthy people to cope with ! He was frail but mostly ok over an enjoyable Xmas but those bugs have hit everyone since then.

I’ve come back to Bristol for a few days now so I can do a little looking after of myself but I’ll be heading back to where the parents live quite soon I think. What’s happening has partially hit my emotional state but we’re a family of people who don’t let what’s troubling us appear to the outside world much. We keep it hidden from most of the world and let out the emotions in private.

He’s been hanging in there over the last few days but he is very ill and I don’t think he’ll be coming home as he’d like to. We just don’t know how much time he has left.

Seeing how he is has made it hit home. So if the following mini review of book is downbeat, my own emotional state will be contributing to that.

To the book !

The book was Rogue One : Catalyst, a companion book to the recent highly excellent Star Wars universe movie. It was penned by James Luceno who I believe is a staff writer writing Star Wars lore books.

If you’re into Star Wars lore like I used to be (before the Yuuzhan Vong New Jedi Order books soured it for me), then this is an essential book to read. It tells the story of some of the Rogue One characters, putting more flesh on the bones of what’s going on in the movie. It concentrates on Galen Erso, Orson Krennic and has a bit of Governor Tarkin there as well. It picks up around the time of Attack of the Clones and before Revenge of the Sith and goes up to perhaps a year or so before the start of Rogue One.

But it’s so drab and dreary …

The Rogue One movie is excellent, joining the latest two main movies as one of the best films I’ve seen.

This book though, unless you are interested in the lore behind the book is an …. AVOID. There are far better books to read, even the depressing Abaddon’s Gate was a far superior book. It does explain what it’s trying to tell you very well but … it’s probably too tied into the rest of the source material and that doesn’t give it the breathing space that would turn it into a compelling story in its own right. Or is that just limitations of the author.

But this could be my current state of mind dominating my feelings.

As always, look at what people say about books like this (I’ll be avoiding the Star Wars Aftermath books), borrow multiple opinions and then make your own mind up.

This is actually a build from a while ago (September !) but, somehow, pictures never happened.

I must correct this !

That’s not actually what was acquired. Although I wouldn’t mind putting that together. And to have the space to put it together. I’ve acquired more Lego tonight (of which there will be a tease later), which is the catalyst for this post. What is this new flagship of the fleet ?

It came in many bags. Oh and as per usual, click for bigger. These are actually full size from the phone camera ! Normally, I’ll post a pic to Facebook and download it from there as the easiest way of getting pictures off the phone. But actually connecting the phone up to the Macbook and copying to my desktop from there is easier.

The first bag had the keel, upon which all else is laid.

The distinctive shape of the hull emerges and the insides start to fill out.

This one is definitely an inside to out build. The control tower is taking shape there as well as a mechanism by which you can hang the finished ship when complete. If you are brave enough to have a few kilos of Lego hanging on a single hook.

A look at the insides from another angle. This is an exceptional kit by the way.

The insides are now completely fitted out. (And my phone camera starts to struggle with depth of field !)

Every space ship needs her engines.

The hull and armour starts to come together.

Can you tell what’s coming together yet ?

Can you tell what it is yet ? 😀 This is a First Order Star Destroyer from the new movies. Without giving the spoilers, it’s a bigger ship than the original Star Destroyers. I think it’s twice as long. But it still has that wonderful dagger like Star Destroyer profile which makes this one of the most iconic ships in sci fi for me.

Skipping forward a few, this is the completed flagship. It has the iconic control tower, it’s just not nearly as big as the control towers on previous Star Destroyers (it’s the different proportions).

And a better look at the box :

To reiterate, this was a wonderful Lego kit and I definitely enjoyed putting it together. Thoroughly recommended.

I mentioned a tease pic …

There may be another picture later. Not tonight though. I’m not going to put the article together tonight.

More of the Expanse !

It’s quite a big series now. I think 7 books have been released and there are two more to come. I’ve just finished book 3.

I’ve really enjoyed the series so far. It’s an excellent examination of future space politics, technology, warfare, culture and above all, keeps it about the characters.

And there are space bars too.

I wasn’t quite so impressed with Abaddon’s Gate as I was with the first two books though. Hopefully it wasn’t a sign of the series running out of steam and I’ll definitely be returning to this series soon.

The problem with it is that it goes on too long. The book tells of one catastrophe following another. Which is ok, some books work really well like that. But there comes a point where you think there should be no more and that the story should be wrapped up. Adding yet another twist in makes the book outstay its welcome.

And that’s the feeling I got with this one. Maybe lose 50 pages from it.

Or that could be my bug addled mind not having the patience for it this time around.

What’s next ? Dunno yet. We’ll see. I need to read some of my Waterways World magazines at some point too. I have those in mind for filling one of the 52 book slots. But I did want to talk about the physics of these books and why they work.

This series doesn’t indulge in inertial compensators like most scifi. It has an excellent engine …. but that’s it. Acceleration is acceleration and too much of it is deadly. How deadly ?

We’re constantly subjected to a downwards acceleration force of 9.81m/s/s. Call it 1g. We feel the world hauling down on us, we’re used to it, we kinda need it sometimes too. I just took a swig from my drink, that 1g keeps the drink in the glass until its time has come.

When we’re in the car, every acceleration is a fraction of a G … despite what it feels like if you have a crazy driver. Working the numbers …. 0 to 60 mph (100kph to make it easy) in 5 seconds works out to a steady 5.56 m/s/s or just over half a G.

Spacecraft go at much higher G accelerations during the early launch and then settle down in the later stages. Peeking at some Saturn V Apollo stats :
Liftoff – 1.25g, ramping up to a max of 3.9g just before Stage 1 shut off;
The Space Shuttle peaked at about 3g;
Soyuz is under 4g.

And a lot of that is so that they don’t break the people. Equipment can typically be subjected to much higher accelerations. So if you have something unmanned, it can be thrashed more. We’ll come back to that.

In the Expanse, the people are subject to similar g limits depending on where they come from. Earthers are more sturdy due to being used to 1g. Mars are still quite sturdy, if I remember right Mars has 0.6g. The Belters grow up in typically 0.3g or lower so if they don’t have muscle and bone supplements, they literally can’t go to Earth or they will die, muscles, bones and heart crushed by the gravity. But they can withstand acceleration for a shorter duration.

But … they can also juice up with steroids and antinausea drugs to withstand that acceleration up to maybe 15g before blood vessels start exploding in their heads. One of the core threads of Abaddon’s Gate is a Slow Zone, where they have a maximum speed … and are dead stopped when they exceed that. As in … (quick mental math) 120m/s/s or 12g minimum without juice or acceleration crash couches. OUCH.

What does that equate to in, say, Star Trek ? Let’s go to another scifi universe first … The Honorverse talks about up to 500g, with inertial compensators to stop the crew becoming embedded in the bulkheads when they step on the gas.

Let’s start with Warp 1 or lightspeed in Star Trek … Light speed is 299,792,458 m/s.

We’ll be generous and say they take 10 seconds to get there … And then divide by 10 again for 1g = 9.81m/s.

Answer – Warp 1 from stop to c in 10 seconds is …. 3,000,000 g. 3 million g.

Squish !

The Expanse is a smaller universe so far to the point that I’ve read but they make it make a huge amount of sense. Another bit of silliness is the amount of energy required. The Kinetic Energy equation is 0.5 x Mass x Velocity x Velocity. So that’s 0.5 x Mass (Enterprise D was 4.5m tonnes) x 300 million squared. That’s a lot of zeroes. I gotta work this out now 🙂

Kinetic Energy of Enterprise D at Warp 1 = 0.5 x 4,500,000 x 300,000,000 x 300,000,000 =
202,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kJ (tonnes to kg conversion balanced by J to kJ conversion)
That would be a lot of GigaWatts to get the ship to warp speed.

And I’m now looking forward to reading more Expanse ! Maybe Rogue One Catalyst first though.

PS Still bugged, so I’ll keep the physics book back a little bit.

An incident at work today gave me a very daft idea while I was milling over my lunch …

Yep. Back in work today, although the old boss was looking at me thinking that I should probably be in a coffin if not my bed still.

Shrug – I tend to keep on going and ignore when I should collapse. And then collapse later when I’m home and not obliged to do very much. I have opened a game for the first time in about a week … but that was to prepare another joke. The inspiration of that hasn’t seen it yet and the story of the Rogue Robots tasked to protect their Holy Kittens from being distracted by the Red Dot is a story for another day.

Wonder if the Rogue Robots have server hamsters too ?

And were you caught up in the Great Server Hamster Rebellion of 011111100010 ?

As usual, click for bigger and more readable text. I had fun with this one.

Oh and if anyone recognises the pictures, let me know who to give the credit to. I loved ’em but Google doesn’t love giving accreditation to pictures. I’m very happy to give a credit note and link.

I’ve been mostly powered by coffee today. I’m usually on one mug of proper coffee and then it’s fake (decaff) for the rest of the day but I stayed on the hard stuff today.

Was able to get stuff done though. My back dislikes me now though and I’ll probably pay for it later but …. I’ll disappear off to bed when that happens.

Or get caught reading to the end of Abaddon’s Gate and then order up Book 4 of the Expanse.

To the Kindle !

I’ve been having fun with my emote factory again ….

What’s the latest creation ? The brief was “ALSO, I really wanna do a Backseat Bois emote but I think it’s imposs due to the fact that the phrase is too long for the 28×28 space”.

Yep. Too many letters there and Emotes always work best as pictures. Anyway, that’s one where one idea combines with something I’ve had before to make something silly that fits what’s needed.

Something I’ve had before :

And the whole thing about people who will come into a gaming stream and attempt to tell the streamer how to play the game. It’s backseat gaming and no one likes that. Especially when there’s a 30 second or so delay on the stream that means their ever unhelpful advice appears late, usually giving an “I told you so” type impression.

Yep. No one likes a backseat gamer.

So what has the emote factory created ? Crude as per usual but I hope chuckle worthy :

That’s an intermediate size version of it, which you then gradually reduce in size (to keep the integrity of the image as much as possible) to 112×112, 56×56 and 28×28 with transparency for emotes.

Looking at it more, I’d do a global change of the car colour to blue, so that a Red X or Circle and Line “banned” could be overlaid on top. A bigger eye too. I don’t think it needs arms, nose or mouth. Less is more ?

I knew I had something convenient to illustrate that. I’ll happily have the cookies that are being given up due to that.

Except not today cos I’m still not healthy. Last time I was like this, I rushed back into properly going to work and ended up being worse over the end of that week. I was wrecked. I don’t need to be in the office tomorrow so it’ll be another day of working at home. That’s ok. I got stuff done today and it frees up space in a badly overcrowded office.

I’m targeting Wednesday for being back in but we have the tools available to allow us to work at home and have all of the information facilities available to us. It’s just tougher to walk over to someone’s desk and have a natter about the work.

My head isn’t quite back to where it should be though. There are the little errors again which shouldn’t be little errors, although I’ve actually spotted one of those and fixed it today (and almost certainly confused the people who need the info !)

I should put the dinner on. One side effect of these bugs is that I’m shying away from consuming the fluids or the food and I haven’t really been missing them. But I’m attempting to have the dinner every day. I may lose a few pounds with these bugs, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Haha – time to put the dinner on. One more pic though :

🙂

And the backseat driver emote got chuckles and a “that’s so cute!” too, so it was well worth the 30 minutes or so spent on it after turning off the work laptop.

3 Books read !

The latest is Caliban’s War by James S. A. Corey and it’s the second in their Expanse series (the name is for a pair of authors working together). I’ll come back to the book in a bit.

I should probably be heading up norf this weekend for the reasons I’ve been quiet about. Probably a good thing I haven’t this weekend though because I can feel bugs brewing again … They’re in my throat and I’ve been half asleep most of the afternoon. Hopefully dinner will perk me up a bit when it escapes the oven in another 20 minutes.

Bored of being impaired, both with the situation with my outsides and apparently getting ill more lately. And with the muscle/skeleton things that have been slowing me down. My outsides are getting much better but I’m bored of going from one set of bugs to the next set of bugs.

And I want to have the energy/lack of pain to do things that I want or need to do instead of, like today, half dozing while listening to videos and my own coughing.

Grr

Book !!!

Caliban’s War is another excellent book in the Expanse series (and I’ve grabbed the third, Abaddon’s Gate already). It picks up and carries on the story from the first book, although the threat is different this time around. The entity from the first book is still around, giving everyone who observes it the willies but this time it’s a bit more personal.

(I’m trying to avoid any spoilers).

If you’ve seen the series, season 2 goes up to about half of the book. When they pick up the series again, it should be an excellent finish and it’s good to be in New Story zone instead of catching up. There are some quite considerable divergences though between book and series this time around. The central story arc is shared, it’s just the way they go about it. It’s quite rare for me to come across books and telly stuff that diverges like this with BOTH still representing their story to the best of what the specific media can do.

The books are great at passing on what the characters really think;
The series does great things with the action and drama.

It’s like in the series you see that one of the characters is struggling seriously with what’s going on in his head and also with severe malnutrition but the why and what’s going on is explained so much better in the book.

cough-cough.

Better wrap up now because I hear that dinner bell beeping. Next book is How To Destroy The Universe (and 34 other really interesting uses of physics) and I’ll hopefully dive through that before moving back to scifi stories.

Have a great weekend people.

No book post today. Book post later.

Nah. I wanted to talk about emotions today.

Before I really kick off though, there’s something going on behind the privacy wall that has me very worried at the moment. Thoughts are with family. One thing I need to try and do is unlock feelings of stay at home and heal. I feel tired already after just a week or so back at work !

But I think most of that is from a lack of sleep. There are two reasons for that :

Reading too much and going to bed too late.
Yawning into the pillow when I actually go to bed.

Yep. I’ll be tired to the point of needing the matchsticks for the eyelids but …. I don’t fall asleep. It’s weird and confusing. I like the reading part though. I’ve enjoyed getting into reading again, especially as James S. A. Corey writes some great characters with highly amusing interplay. But I’ll save the mini-review of Expanse Book 2 for when I’ve actually finished it. It was very tempting to stay up until I’d finished Caliban’s War last night. According to Kindle there is only 7% of the book to go. I’ve rattled through it again.

The tendency I’ve been seeing lately is the tendency to tear up in certain times of watching things. Usually movies, sometimes series. It’s like the emotions are unlocking even more. I don’t like being closed in, I like to be a more open person. I think I’m better like that, it sparks my intellect to be involved in what I’m doing.

Hopefully avoiding spoilers but I’ll mention two scenes in The Expanse.

One is the end of a couple of characters story arcs and coincides with the end of Book 1. He’s given up everything, including soon to be life. He’s doing it for the love of a person and …. to save the world. It’s a perfect moment and it gets me.

The other is near the end of Season 2 (and is curiously not in the book …). The ship has to leave but doesn’t have enough air to allow everyone who will fit to survive travelling on board. So they can only take so many. They’d got a big fella guarding the door for them who was increasingly feeling betrayed and angry. When one of the core characters explains the situation to him, she’s expecting him to kill her then and there. He doesn’t. He puts his hands on her shoulders and pushes her back into the airlock to the safety of the ship.

That whole sequence is about people accepting their fate and giving up their place in safety in favour of the women and the children. Including the guy who had been asked to do crowd control in exchange for a guaranteed space on board.

That ultimate self sacrifice drew the tears, even the second time when I knew what was coming. It’s a powerful scene.

And there have been more sequences like that. Interstellar has a couple, Passengers has one. Even The Last Jedi has them. Dunkirk had a few. Self sacrifice seems to be the key.

And I’m not afraid to admit it too. Sometimes we need a hug. Sometimes we need to show that emotion. Sometimes we need to bawl our eyes out.

I don’t want to make a habit of it but I’m quite proud that those emotions are coming out to play again. It goes the other way too, although I still have trouble expressing Ultimate Happiness that comes from receiving awesome gifts or just from having people appreciate things I’ve done for them, including having a happy feeling that I’ve made someone laugh.

Right.

I think I might do after finishing Caliban’s War !