Author: Sleepypete

Day 14 !

Another stormtrooper emerges. This one looks well geared up.

Where could they be sending him ? What threat has the Empire discerned ?

I think we know what it is. He is being sent into the domain of the :

Evil Cultist Snowmen.

Just look at them. Turn your back on them for a second and they’ll steal the buttons off your shirt and the carrots off your plate.

Just look at the Happy one ! Far too happy. Definitely planning something.

Today was our work’s Christmas do, which was good. Good food, good company, lovely wine (happily had help this time so I didn’t have too much). I tend to disappear from these events fairly early these days though.

Watching Star Wars movies after seems to be becoming a tradition as well. It was unplanned last year with Rogue One, bit more planned this year with The Last Jedi.

What did I think of the film ? I’m not going to spoil, don’t worry about that.

It keeps you wondering all the way through as to what direction it’s going to go. Good film. Definitely enjoyed it. Whereas The Force Awakens was more about fan service and reawakening the franchise, this definitely marched the story on.

Spectacular action sequences, Leia being the heart as always and a tough character too. There’s a new character brought in who is adorable, while other characters stir the emotions in different ways.

Great film. Will definitely see about finding an excuse to watch it again in the cinema.

Those snowmen though.

I think they have some form of mind control. It seems to be a very popular jumper. It was drawing all of the looks as I was walking through town today and a few comments too. The girls on the concession stand in the cinema loved it and wanted to know where I got it. I think the Evil Cultist Snowmen will be gathering an army of thralls to bear them.

In fact the voices are telling me I must wear this jumper tomorrow as well.

Day 13. Unlucky ? Maybe.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX !

The latest door in the calendar held a speeder. A lone speeder.

What could it be waiting for ? Is there more to this scene ? Perhaps. Let’s draw the camera back a bit.

It’s the unlucky Stormtrooper again !

Has he been distracted by Ewoks while a Rebel jumps in and nicks his ride ? And what is the enigmatic wanderer doing back there.

Will we ever find out the purposes hidden behind that mask. How long will it stay a mystery ?

The luck has been a little odd today. And yesterday.

While I was walking home, I was feeling my shoes get ever worse … Yep. The new ones that were acquired only a month ago. When I got home, had a look inside, discovered … they are ex-shoes. The heels on both sides have been thoroughly destroyed. I don’t think I give my shoes a particular pounding … Yet they only lasted a month where I’d expect a few years.

I’m due to be in town on Friday so after enjoying meeting up with someone lovely there, I’ll be hunting refunds and new shoes.

Today was the turn of electronic things … And a little work but I keep work away from here. The score, if you could call it that was 4-1. 4 major tasks complete, 1 major task frustrated. I like to have it at the 5-0 end. Failing at anything is something I find annoying, especially when it isn’t due to anything I’ve done. If I fail, I can own that failure and figure out how to not fail next time.

Electronics ? Beware the new Windows 10 update. Hey wait ! ALWAYS beware the new Windows update. This time it stopped BOINC from letting SETI and Milkyway run sums with my graphics card (it helps add heat to the room). And broke the sidebar gadgets … again.

All hopefully fixed now, although I haven’t opened any games since letting it update this evening.

Fingers crossed it’s all ok …

Day 12 and an old favourite !

I suspect it’s the Falcon today due to a connection with a certain number of parsecs.

Parsecs are a measure of distance and the saying in Star Wars has already attracted a certain amount of ridicule because it’s taken as a “The Falcon did this quickly !” thing. And a race is over a set distance isn’t it ?

I’m on the non-ridicule side of the argument. They’re talking about the Kessel Run, which is to a spice mining outpost that’s near a cluster of black holes. To get through safely, you’d need to plot a circuitous course through all of the black holes. You couldn’t go direct cos you’d get caught in the event horizons. But you could get close …. closer depending on how quick you were going and whether the engines gave the thrust to mass to let you escape.

So saying that a ship could do the run in less distance in this case is a valid boast.

Although saying that, I firmly believe that the writers of the boast know very little about why it might be a valid boast and were just thinking “Parsecs ! That sounds cool. We’ll use it.” A lot of Star Wars dialogue is insanely dumb like that.

But they do have cool ships and the Falcon is perhaps the coolest of the lot.

I now have 3x Falcons … The tiny one above;

A slightly bigger one that indulges in extreme manoeuvres occasionally (not any more, the advent calendar door holding it there gave up the fight and let it fall). This one is my oldest Falcon.

And ….

A somewhat larger Falcon that I thoroughly enjoyed building.

There is another Falcon that isn’t in my collection yet.

Did I say yet ? Hmm. I did say yet. Ominous ….

Anyone wanna get me this ? See something marvellous at the link. Yep. That would be particularly awesome.

I shall now go away and dream of the largest lego set.

What was that old saying ?

A horse ! A horse ! My kingdom for a horse !

I think he’s in the wrong universe, unless he has an empire to give away.

I watched the Force Awakens again tonight. The two newest Star Wars films are amazing, in different ways. It’s maybe the 5th time I’ve watched this one ? It’s still an excellent film.

It starts out slowly, gently, steadily drawing the viewer back into the universe. You have the pilot, you have the stormtrooper, you have the scavenger. Gotta say I love the character of Rey. The basis of the character had its criticisms (mainly in the minds of backwards people who balk at a girl being able to do all that) but for me she makes sense.

The character is a scavenger, growing up amongst strange machines, unusual equipment and harsh conditions. So she’s learned how to make starships work and how to look out for herself.

It’s a great character.

Looking forwards to seeing more of the new Star Wars, possibly on Thursday if things work out in town.

One thing about the cinema, it is definitely far more plug n play than home entertainment can be. I may have to look more at upgrading the telly … I have :

Samsung telly. Bit crude but still does the job with showing the pictures. Bit small though at I think 32″, I’d like something bigger.
Panasonic bluray player. A very competent device.
Onkyo AV amplifier connecting them together and doing the sound.

I think the amplifier has had issues since I got it, or it could be the telly confusing the link between the three items. They all hook up via HDMI, which has trust issues … All those copying pirates led to copy protection going into systems where it doesn’t belong and I think the telly confuses that copy protection trust link. Anyway. It had trouble with those trust issues tonight but I fixed it with the simple thing of taking the lead out and putting it back in again.

The amp is happily playing music now that the film is finished. It makes excellent music. Can’t remember when I bought it …. years ago ! It has definitely given its money’s worth.

May all our devices do that !

Day 10 sees a wanderer arrive.

Or is he travelling. Where is he headed ? Is it even a male wanderer under that garb and mask ? Does their species even have male and female ?

So many assumptions, so many questions.

It’s snowing here at the moment. Actually coming down reasonably snowy but the ground is far too wet for it to stick. Could be an icy walk to the bus stop tomorrow and I’ll have to make a sleepy assessment as to whether I walk over there in my boots or normal shoes. It’s turning to something closer to icy rain at the moment. Not too good to be out in, it’s weather to guarantee misery and wet.

My work shoes are fairly decent for grip on the soles, now that I’ve mostly worn them flat. That was odd … when I got them, the grips were uneven, it felt like half the sole was a few millimeters different from the rest, which was leading to odd balancing being needed. Apart from that, I like these shoes. My ankles normally get shredded by new shoes, these have been ok and my ankles have been allowed to continue healing. There’s still damage to repair though.

Today will be another day of chilling out and occasionally looking out the window to see if things have gone white yet. Other parts of the country have had serious snowfall. I’ve seen a pic of a place near where my sister lives and it’s a traffic pile up on one of the major roads. It never usually gets that bad here.

But there is a group of intrepid sailors who are sailing into even worse conditions :

This is from the inshore leg as the fleet was leaving Cape Town this morning. Fairly close racing but I suspect they didn’t want to get too crazy considering that they’ll be heading for the Southern Ocean where there is no land mass to act as a break on the seas down there. Reports are of 12m waves, which will dwarf these racing yachts. And …

That’s where they’re headed and that angry red circle of a weather depression will lead to very challenging conditions.

I’ll be following the racing again and two boats in particular. Turn The Tide On Plastic (TTOP) is skippered by Dee Caffari who I was listening to for the start of the last Vendee Globe and she had a gift there of explaining everything that was going on in a style that made it easy for this novice to understand. And the other boat I’m following is Scallywag (SHKS) skippered by another Brit.

May the Brits rule the waves again !

Day 9 sees a transport arrive. Or go zoom.

Where is it headed I wonder ? What could it have seen ? Is it being chased by the Stormtrooper ?

A mystery of ages.

Today’s post is a bit of a cautionary note … If you see something appear on your computer like “YOUR MAC IS INFECTED CLICK HERE TO SORT!” … don’t click on any of the links on the page. They will likely infect your computer with something horrific.

Instead, note down stuff on the page if you think it’ll do any good later, check the web address as well. If it’s something sensible like Something.Apple.Com, then think about checking it out. And then don’t.

I saw a web address of lots of numbers and then something unpronouncable.com (I can remember the letters but I’m not posting them here) and hit the back button on the machine. And then installed Malwarebytes and asked it to do a scan.

(No threats found happily)

I’ll look into using one of my Bitdefender licences on there as well but I really want to avoid using Bitdefender. I’ll definitely not be renewing the licence when it expires in half a year. Why ? Because I bought it in the hope of getting antivirus without having constant pop ups and entreatings to send money their way and …. after only about a month I was being asked to upgrade and it has interrupted what I’ve been doing several times since with more unwanted ads.

I’ll send the money elsewhere next time around.

By the way, the site I clicked on was Statcounter and I think it was an advert that redirected the browser to the page with the infection warning. I’ve turned Adblock back on now for Statcounter. It won’t be turned off again.

So by allowing an infected ad through, Statcounter have lost their ad revenue from me.
For giving me advertising popups, Bitdefender lose their business from me next year.

Be careful on the internet folks ! And don’t panic if something unexpected happens.

There may be stormtroopers out there with guns and you might get shot while they’re aiming at something completely different.

Day 8 has arrived …. and I think we know why Stormie was so angry …

His gun has been locked away in the Basket of Things That Fix Stuff and he has to fix all the damage to the shooting range before he gets it back.

Stormtroopers and their guns. No self control. Like people in bathrooms. How do they arrange things in those suits of armour anyway ? And …

Darth Vader has a volcano lair … Beware !

I can’t remember where I got that photo. I have a funny feeling it’s a good friend on that selfie and it’s from their facebook. Great sense of humour to it anyway.

I’m hoping for a quiet start of the weekend to regain some energy before some fun on Sunday cruising round the Bristol Harbourside market. Should be good. Not many more working days now until Xmas leave begins ! I’m actually contemplating starting that a bit sooner but we shall see. Almost all of the tasks that need to be done this year are sorted, which means we’ll get cracking on next year’s stuff a bit earlier.

There will be some Motorsport Manager, my team has won its first race … We won’t win the championship this year, I’m still building the team up. But they’ll hopefully be near the front consistently next year. 2 more races to go.

I will be flying amongst the distant stars in Elite … it’s a good chill out game.

And I have a game started in Stellaris too …

Chill out commences imminently with Return of the Jedi !

Another mini figure today :

The stormtrooper stands. Arms, upraised.

What could have attracted his ire ? Are the arms raised in anger ? Or in a plea ? Could this be the stormtrooper who did not find the droids he was looking for ?

Did he have ex squadmates on the battlestation ? Family even ?

Could it be …. he is cursing his luck at his chosen career and just wants some sleep ?

No. I know what it is.

Stormie wants my pizza. Those arms are not raised in outrage, they are a sign of extreme hunger.

Yep. Pizza today. It was lush.

At least I think it’s a tiny transport …

There was a time when I would have known a significant amount of the Star Wars lore. Before the Disney times when they ripped up the stories from the books and replaced it with new lore from series like Rebels and Clone Wars.

I enjoyed a fair few of the older Star Wars books, although some of the others earned their authors a case of eternal contempt (deserved) and the New Jedi Order Yuuzhan Vong books wrecked the series for me.

Let’s see :
Timothy Zahn – Heir to the Empire trilogy – smart stories, good characters, an amazing villain. Just happened to be set in the Star Wars universe.
Michael Stackpole – the XWing Rogue Squadron series were fantastic books that slotted in during the years after Return of the Jedi. These were all about the characters, who were led by a minor character from the films, Wedge Antilles. I really enjoyed reading these books although …
Aaron Allston – he wrote a follow up series of XWing books based around a different squadron, Wraith squadron. These were the dirty dozen of the Star Wars universe and the stories were even more compelling than those from Michael Stackpole.

Some of these authors deliver stellar work when allowed to play in other people’s universes. Other authors, not so much. I felt like the Kevin J Anderson Star Wars books were pointless and went as far as insulting the reader.

I’ve just rewatched Empire Strikes Back tonight. It’s a good film, many Star Wars fans think that it’s the best of the series. Me ? Not so much. The action set piece of the Battle of Hoth is incredible. The soundtrack is phenomenal. But I didn’t feel it really went anywhere ? Definitely a middle film introducing more flesh on the bones of the universe.

I think Rogue One is one of the great films. It’s a war story that just happens to be set in the SW universe. And the core characters draw that emotional response too.

I’m looking forward to watching Force Awakens again (soon). I like the Rey character. She’s a tough smart kid who can stand up for herself. I’m very curious to see where that goes. And then there’s Leia providing the heart at the centre. We’ll definitely miss Carrie Fisher.

I must look into having another go at the old games too. I’m ignoring the new Battlefront game. Something orientated to multiplayer while only having a very short single player is something that definitely doesn’t interest me. Nah. Tie Fighter was the game that caught me many years ago and I enjoyed the old Pod Racer game too.

For another evening though, gotta wrest me rist. Or rest me wrist.

Cya tomorrow for more advent !

Day 5 and another Minifigure :

I wonder what he’s aiming at ? Are there Imperials in the ceiling ? Can he see Imperials in space ?

There is a Star Destroyer occupying space on one of my chairs, in a bubble wrap dry dock. Could be that.

I headed off to the Mall tonight. I’ve been wanting to escape the house in the evening for a while, although there isn’t actually that much I’m interested in hunting for at the Mall now. I am hankering for more Lego though. (I think I’ve mined out the Lego sets I want to get, although I do have an eye on the Explorer ship).

I did acquire a couple of items tonight, it is December after all and Xmas is coming :-).

Oh and there was the Sausage-Inna-Bun from the market stall too.

The Mall does look pretty when the lights get turned on.

Very pretty !

I’m tired after the walking around though. Time to chill out to videos, streams and music.