Author: Sleepypete

A dwagon went to see a boat

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February 21, 2024

8:20 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

Actually – lots of boats. Found a dwagon there too …

Picture. We're looking at a collection of carved wooden objects, resting on a blue carpet. In the background is a large white and lime green speed boat. There are a couple of tables behind the wooden objects, the closest of which is a small horned wooden dragon, sitting on his haunches.

Gosh, it’s been over a week again since the last post. I do need to keep posting more often, although that’s tempered by what my own state can support. So last week, I was getting affected by a certain amount of brain fog. Maybe I’d picked up a cold again, more likely it’s that seasonal affective thing where people don’t do so well with cold weather and lack of sunlight.

Not sure there, I was doing ok with that kind of conditions on the cruise, where going North meant the days got really short and the outside temperatures were pretty cold. Mind you, I always had the option to retreat inside to the warm where the coffee was on tap, the cookies were available. That might be part of the difference between cruise and now.

Here and now – the responsibilities are there and to be honest, my current chair is pretty bad. It was a good idea at the time to get that one but a seat with bucket seat type bolsters is not healthy. You learn :-D. I can disappear into the games as well, although that’s also tempered by physical condition where I’m currently having trouble with the arms again. And that means no space piloting for a bit and I’m holding off on going back into games like Skyrim, Bannerlord and a replay of Deus Ex Mankind Divided.

Back on the cruise – it was a curious state where I completely set aside my usual stimulation of keeping up with the social media (except the Discord communities). I didn’t put the music on in the cabin either. I was attempting to watch streams in the evenings, but that’s mostly about the communities there. The streams I’m usually in are wonderful for the communities.

(aside – currently tapping this out while Caustic Phoenix is doing a work stream in the background – HI CAUSTIC)

The cruise swapped one set of stimulation for another and it was a wonderful thing to be learning so much about Norway, as well as seeing new parts of the country every day as the ship moved from location to location.

Picture. We're looking at a table set for one diner. There is a rectangular plate in front of us with very tasty chips and a slide of orange topped salmon waiting for us. There is a milkshake streaked with chocolate behind the plate.

Oh and I was greatly enjoying the food and the milkshakes.

Back to littler boats ?

Picture. We're looking at a long thin barge. The top half is a blue, with silver porthole windows and white edging. The lower half is black. We're looking at the front right of the barge. There is a collection of people to the back (left of shot).

Talking of dinner, I should put mine on. That boat in the picture is a 60 foot narrowboat. It’s probably the most common type of barge on the British inland waterways. In there is a self contained package of kitchen galley, fully featured bath/shower room, I think that’s a 4 berth as well (possibly 6) and there will be the saloon area for chilling out in. Oh and there’s also a little engine at the back. These boats don’t go too quick, anything more than about 6 knots is bad for the canals. The wake causes damage to the banks if the barge goes too fast. So it’s a chilled out way of getting around.

I’ve got another link for you there, one of the youtube channels I’ve found recently is The Mindful Narrowboat. The lady who runs that channel is absolutely lovely, has a keen eye for the nature by the canals and a wise head for poetry. The artwork is wonderful too. Check out the channel, it’s one where I’m going to go back to the start to see all of the waterway adventure.

Picture. We're looking at another barge, this time at the front left side. The lower half is black again, the top half is a creamy white with black detail and the round portholes again. We're in an exhibition hall and there is a series of chairs (with people) alongside the barge.

That’s the other type of canal barge. It’s a widebeam by Collingwood boat builders. While the narrowboats are a bit too cosy (i.e. tight) for me, widebeams have a lot more room inside. But … that also limits how much access they have to the canal network, as the canals around Birmingham in the centre of the UK aren’t navigable by the widebeam barges.

As for the show, I don’t think I’ll be back next year. It was worth going there again but … apart from the barges, it doesn’t really feel a useful show at the moment. The dominant vessel type there is the tender, with a small number of liveaboard capable boats.

Picture. We're looking at a little boat in the foreground, with more boats behind. It's a small white boat with black trim, it's about wide enough for 3 people and there is a sitting area in front.

That’s your typical tender. They’re smaller boats, intended to allow crew or owners of larger boats the ability to do a quick run ashore to pick up supplies or do other things you’d want to do ashore. (Like dining out etc).

That kind of boat isn’t any use to me (unless I win the lottery big – the ticket is in again). Even the smaller boat shaped boats aren’t too good, because the living area isn’t suitable for … living in. The show this year seemed mostly about these little boats, either outright tenders or bigger boats that also would not be suitable as a living place. They were more for going at outrageous speed on the water or for showing off.

Oh well, it was good getting out and about again and it gave me the chance to do a few other things like go to the place on the motorway with the great snacks. We like snacks.

I have an events list as well now … it’s because there’s likely to be a few things colliding in the summer and there won’t be enough time to do it all. Let’s see : next up is Mother’s Day, it’s March in the UK. Insomnia gaming festival #72 is at the end of March, I haven’t been to one of these yet and it should be really good. Last year, covid intervened and I don’t think I was healthy for the second half of the year either.

Interservices T20 is in May this year, I want to get my new camera well before then and that’ll be a good chance to give it a good day out. I’m pretty much settled on the Canon R50. It’s a mirrorless camera that’s a step up from what I was first looking at, that’s the choice because there is better tech built in. It’s worth going up to that step, anything more is too expensive.

MCM London is at the end of May. That’s a maybe … We’ll see who’s going to that. Then it’s into the great 24 hour motor races at Nurburgring (1-2 June) and Le Mans (15-16 June). Le Mans clashes with a very promising cruise to south Scandinavia from 13-27 June. I don’t think I’m doing that one because it’s too close to Twitch Con EU in Rotterdam on 29-30 June. But I think I do have the cruise bug now and definitely want to make time for another one this year.

I’m hoping for another Creator North as well, that was a fun cosy event last year run and set up by wonderful people.

Ok, time to put the dinner on and hit the post button. One question before I go, it’s from Caustic Phoenix’s stream earlier. What would be your walk in song to accompany you if you were walking up to a stage ? I just thought of one for me … Here’s a bit of KT Tunstall singing Still A Weirdo to close out the post with.

Nite all, have a great rest of the week.

PS Ok maybe not as a walk in song but it’s still a fantastic song.

Where I let the geek out with cameras

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February 9, 2024

6:20 pm

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technology

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Hang on, I haven’t done anything rash with money … yet …

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat, with paw held up to their mouth in a thoughtful looking pose. The caption is "What if that red dot is both particle and a wave?"

We might hit that as we go into what I’m about to launch into … Hopefully not that deep but let’s see how far it goes.

One thing wasn’t making sense to me yesterday with the camera specifications. If a lower f number for the aperture is better, what’s the advantage of getting a mirrorless camera with a lens that goes down to f4.0 over a mobile phone camera that was taking pictures at f1.7 aperture and the little Ixus that was going to f3.6 aperture. Lower number better right ?

And then I realised that I wasn’t talking like for like. The phone camera is the smallest, the Ixus camera is in the middle and the mirrorless camera is a bit of a whopper. Time to look at numbers :

Pixel 4 has 2 main cameras. Camera 1 is 12.2 megapixels with aperture f1.7 and the metadata told me it was a focal length of 4mm with a 35mm number of 27mm (I think they compare everything to a 35mm camera standard). Camera 2 is 16 MP over a 50mm telephoto sensor with aperture f2.4 and a 2x optical zoom. The Northern Light pic would have been with the Camera 1. Oh and the resolution is 96 dots per inch with each pixel being 1 micrometer (0.000001m) so the sensor will be 4mm across.

(note to geeky tendency readers – run a check over numbers as you do them to see if they make sense. A 27mm sensor in a phone doesn’t feel right, a 4mm sensor feels right)

The Ixus 265 has a 15.2MP sensor with 180 dots per inch resolution. The focal length is quoted as 4.5mm to 54mm (the lens comes in and out on a motor) for 35mm numbers of 25-300mm. The f numbers for the aperture go from f3.6 to f7.0. It does actually have 2.5 stop image stabilisation … (Spec sheet link) The sensor is 1/2.3 inches which is apparently 6.16mm across making it 50% bigger than the phone sensor. (Dunno about the sums there, feels about right again).

Let’s see what the chonky camera has …

Canon EOS R100 has a 24MP effective pixel sensor that’s 22.3mm by 14.9mm. So that’s 5.5 times the size of the phone camera. Peek back at yesterday and the focal length is 18-45mm for a 35mm equivalent of 29-72mm. The f numbers on the lens go from f4.5 to f6.3.

Picture. Meme. A very confused looking little grey cat with a white chest is looking at us. The captions are "What did the confused cat say?" and "I'm purr-plexed"

What do all those numbers really mean though ? Let’s look at the sensor first. The bigger the sensor, the more light can hit it in a set amount of time. So the mirrorless would bring in over 5 times the light information in a given amount of time, compared to the Pixel 4 camera. The little Ixus sensor brings in 1.5 times the information of the Pixel 4 sensor but …

The Pixel 4 won with the Northern Lights pictures because the Pixel could be set for a far longer exposure time. Yesterday’s picture was over a 16 second exposure, the best I could get from the Ixus was a surprisingly short 1 second. Let’s invent a unit called the Light Wibbly, the Ixus pulled in 6 LWsecs (Light Wibbly Seconds), the Pixel 4 pulled in 16LWsecs with the 4 second exposure pictures. Result, you can see Northern Lights in one camera and can’t in the other. The EOS R100 can do shutter speeds as fast as 1/4000 seconds up to an exposure of 30 seconds. So, bigger sensor, more light getting in per second, much bigger range of how long it’ll take the light in for. The R100s would pull in 22LWsecs with a 1 second exposure, which is how people can get those time lapse videos of the Northern Lights.

And that all adds up to me looking at future Google searches for “star seeing viewpoints Bristol” :-D. The Pixel was just starting to pick up galaxy background pictures … I really, really want to see those. But I’d need to be somewhere relatively remote with minimal light pollution and those areas are tough to find in the UK.

On to the focal length – a big number means that distant objects can be brought much closer. That’s how I get the really zoomed in pictures of the cricketers at Lords, the camera is operating at a really high zoom level. I’m curious as to how the 25-300mm numbers of the Ixus 265 compare to what could be gotten out of the starter 29-72mm lens of the R100 pack. But … that’s one other reason you get the cameras with interchangeable lenses. There’s a lens that goes to 800mm for being able to read the road signs in London from Bristol but that’s also £1100 so maybe not. There’s also a more affordable high aperture one for low light photography which I might have to check out (£200).

Oh gosh. Big yawn. It’s Friday afternoon / early evening and I’m going to be catching up on sleep all weekend. Time for a sum up ? First another link for some optics theories, it’ll help peeking here (linky).

Mobile phone camera – they’re doing an AMAZING job with these. They only have a tiny amount of real estate to work with in terms of space for the sensor and the depth to turn the picture from light into 1’s and 0’s. As you’ll see from the Visual Education link above, cameras benefit from having a lot of depth to focus up the image. Mobiles do a fantastic job with the space they have available and the software is incredible at making the great pictures happen. Cost is minimal because they come with the smart phone you likely have already.

Compact digital camera – they do the best they can with the package available and the little Ixus is a really flexible device. It has massive zoom capability and it fits inside a small pocket. Portability is a wonderful thing but … you have to be really careful about keeping the camera steady and it’s almost useless in minimal light conditions. The latest Ixus 285 is £270 but it looks like they’re being phased out for Powershot cameras.

Mirrorless / DSLR modular camera – they have the size and versatility to get professional level amazing photography but … they’re also way more expensive. I’m still going to get one though because I do enjoy taking pictures of Stuff and sharing them with people. The pack I’m looking at is currently £650 or you could win the lottery and get the R3 camera body for £5500 and multipurpose RF28-70mm f2L lens for £3400.

No I’m not going to be spending nearly £10k on a camera system :-D. That’s actually double what you could get a Rolls-Royce for. (True statement ! Autotrader has a 1976 Silver Shadow for £4,675) I’d actually save a few pennies more for the pretty Mk3 Spitfire going for £16k.

Oh there I go dreaming again. I wouldn’t actually want to drive a Triumph Spitfire (horrifically dangerous suspension set up) but they are a very pretty old car.

Picture meme. A red squirrel is standing on their back legs, reaching their front paws to the sky. The captions are "Stop Typing" "Stop Typing" (there was a repeat)

Ok ! have a great weekend everyone.

Insuring Pictures

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February 8, 2024

10:28 pm

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technology

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a Week again … Mostly about stuff at work where we’re trying to do lots in a very short time, without enough in the way of resources. So, situation normal there then. It means we focus in on what we can do and defer plans for what we can’t. But getting there can be pretty exhausting, so I’ve been hitting the napping hard after the work laptop gets closed up.

Picture. We're looking at the white armour of a Star Wars Stormtrooper. They're holding up a phone in their right hand and a bag in their left. The captions are "Buys iPhone" "Because couldn't find the droid he was looking for."

Enough about work though. I’ve got some purchases / upgrades coming up. Let’s get the rant out of the way first 😀

So it came round to car insurance renewal time and it looks like the insurance company (Axa – don’t go to them) has decided to get in on the 2020s trend with hiking prices. For my 2018 Lexus CT (aka Posh Prius), they upped the premium from £350 to just over £600. Wowser. The reasoning when I gave them one of those unhappy emails “How did we do” “I will never do business with you again” was :

A rise in the claims for this type of car – I have over 20 years of no claims, how other people drive is up to them.

A rise in the cost of parts for cars – it’s a 2018 car that only just went out of manufacture.

An increase in the amount of technology in cars – it’s a 2018 car that has the same amount of technology in it as it did last year. (Although I have considered getting a dashcam)

An increase in injury compensation and medical costs – I have over 20 years of no claims and have no intention of getting involved in other people’s injury claims.

Incidentally, Axa had good financial results last year with steady growth (I checked them out), decent profits and I think dividends for the shareholders too. It’s not a savage raise in charges because they’re short of money, it’s pure greed.

So … another of those customer disservice emails that acts clever but the only thing it achieves is to lodge a last impression memory in an ex customer who will remember that the next time it comes to do any business that might involve them. In short, it’s one of those emails that should never have escaped the company, like when Novotel nickel and dimed me on a hotel last year. (Incidentally, Novotel denied me access to the car that weekend, the locked secure garage was also locked to me due to me not being provided with the code until check out)

I’m with eSure this year thanks to the meerkats for £360 again. Disclosure note – I went to them, I’ve never had approaches from insurance companies apart from where I’ve had to check a “yes you can contact me” as part of the normal business with them.

Picture. A cute puppy dog is sitting to the right, with jaws firmly clamped around a laptop computer to the left. The caption is "When your laptop is running low on space But your pupper helps by giving it a megabite"

Next up is phone – I should be doing the mobile phone update soon. The one I have is a Pixel 4, which has done well over the last 4 years. It’s paid off now though, so I can go for the upgrade with not much cost. Highlights are the camera, which brought those Northern Lights pictures, battery life has been good and it’s blissfully free of the spyware and annoyanceware garbage that was on my Galaxy S7. So I’ll go for a Pixel 8 “soon”. I could hold on to the Pixel 4 but it’s been showing odd behaviour on failed incoming calls and there’s awkwardness on using its hotspot for my second work laptop.

Picture. A lady is lying down on grass dotted with yellow flowers. She's holding a camera with a long lens, pointing to the right. She's looking down and to her right where there's a fluffy grey wolf. There is a baby deer standing on her back. The caption is "A photographer is approached by a baby deer and baby wolf while out in the field."

I’m looking more seriously at cameras … I don’t think I’ll have it before Boat Life 2024 in just over a week but I’ll definitely have it for the Lords cricket in May. What am I looking at getting ?

The Canon Ixus has done well, although it has its flaws in poor image stabilisation. The upgrade would be a Canon EOS R100 mirrorless camera. These are a new type, where the mirror that sends part of the image light up to a viewfinder isn’t included in the camera. Means more light goes to the sensor but you lose the optical viewfinder. Which is fine because I haven’t used a camera viewfinder in decades, I just take the pictures using the rear display.

Here come the links ! This one is for Canon’s page with the camera, memory card, lens and bag. (Linky) Disclosure note again – I’ll go Canon because the little Ixus 265 has done very well (except needing to keep it really steady) with excellent battery life and reliability. I’ve not had any approaches from any camera makers. (Us content people have to put these disclosure notes in so we’re not hiding an inducement or ad)

The specifications on the cameras look very much of a muchness. That’s the cheaper Canon mirrorless camera, which means cheaper plastic materials used to put it together. The sensor looks like it’s the same. The trick seems to be in the lens and one thing impressing me about Canon is that they put that little bit of extra effort in to make it easier to spend your money with them. Things like a guide to what all the letters and numbers in the lens mean. (Linky again for the full how to read those numbers guide). I need to get my knowledge up to speed on why all these matter but here goes for the numpty view :

Canon RF-S lens – this is the attachment type, means it’s designed for the mirrorless cameras.

18-45mm – this is the focal length. Two numbers mean you can zoom in and out. Lower number means everything is smaller. Bigger number happens for when you zoom in. (The linky above has pictures included in the guide, well worth a peek)

F4.5-6.3 – this is the aperture size. A smaller number means a bigger aperture, which lets more light in.

IS – this is for Image Stabilisation, so the camera should still get fairly sharp pictures if you’re moving it around. This one has a 4 step image stabiliser.

STM – this stands for Stepping Motor Technology. Most motors will be designed to keep spinning. Stepper motors are designed to go direct to a position and hold there until they need to move again.

Pulling something out of the Northern Lights set :

Picture. We're looking at a dark scene. We can see some vague people shapes in the lower segment. The scene is dominated by a sky full of the eerie green and some red glow from the Northern Lights.

That’s one of the ones from the Pixel 4. It’s taken from the ship flight deck, looking out aft. You’ll be able to see some light lines to the lower left and in the stars, where the exposure time has combined with a bit of ship movement. For partially sighted readers who depend on the alt-text being read out, the light lines are perhaps about 1cm as I see them on the editing screen, going horizontally and they’re curiously only visible on a small number of the visible stars.

Good to see stars in there too. The ISO level isn’t actually too high in this one. ISO being the exposure sensitivity. The file metadata is telling me the Pixel 4 chose settings of focal length 4mm (so it’s looking at the sky as intended), F1.7 for the aperture, a whopping 16 seconds of exposure time and ISO 695. The phone was on the tripod at the time. Looks like the little Ixus was able to get down to F3.6 aperture and I got a maximum of 1s exposure time out of it.

Being able to get into the detailed settings helps a lot and the little Ixus couldn’t really give those options.

I’d add a remote trigger, for the camera being on a tripod, and a spare battery to that camera, lens, memory card and backpack package.

One thing I’d say though – if you’re doing a big purchase, like a phone, or a camera, or something bigger like a car or a house, be an Intelligent Customer. Research what you’re buying before you commit any money. Sometimes the people with the products make it easy to find out what you’re buying. Sometimes they’ll hide why their product is cheaper than the alternatives.

But the thing to take away is that it’s Your Money you’re spending. It’s only the sales person’s when they’ve done a good enough job of parting you with the money.

And enjoy what you buy ! See you next time folks 🙂

Still here just in the bunker

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January 29, 2024

9:16 pm

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cars

,

Hello everyone,

Been thinking for a while that I should resurface for a bit and say hi … I have to admit to being rather in the bunker at the moment. It’s a combination of things. Most of it is IRL worries, not so much with me (because I don’t do that), more with family. But that’s not something I’ll put here except saying that I’m very worried about someone/somepeople.

Yeah, I do that, I worry more about other people than I do me. And that little monitor voice is telling me I’m getting close to hitting that wall again. That’s perhaps my biggest fear. I keep on going, whatever. But I know that at some point, I’ll deplete all of the reserves and be forced to stop. I have that feeling that the stop is approaching. So I’ll attempt to look after myself so I can look out for others, as limited as that might be.

It does feel more often now that I need to do a change of life style. The barge plan is one of those ideas. It would be a reset, a chance to start fresh. The job is another, I’ve been working for who I work for since the end of 1997. That’s a long time – 26 years ? I’m still committed to getting stuff done … but I’ve been at it for a long time. Perhaps that’s another symptom of being closer to that stop wall.

So that’s me in the bunker again, trying to hang in there again. Being able to escape for another cruise or similar getaway would be good, although the amount of leave I have remaining means that won’t happen until after Easter.

Gosh, that’s more than I intended to go into when I hit Add New Post, this was supposed to be a quiet one about :

Picture. We're looking at a box of Lego. The picture on the front is of a yellow and black sleek sports car. The red dwagon plushie is on top of the box, looking down at it from above.
What’s in the box !

Something from the Xmas break.

Picture. We're looking down from above at a desk with multiple assorted pieces of Lego of all sizes.

This was bag 1 of 4. Lots of little components to pin together, what will they make ?

Picture. More Lego ! Assembled into a rectangularish frame with more parts dotted around on the desk. A dwagon looks over it from the left.

The rear frame starts coming together.

Picture. We're looking at the lower frame of the Lego car. Not much to it yet but at the back (left of shot) is an engine with 2 rows of 4 brown pin things pointing up at us, with another set of those on the other side of the car. The frame is grey lego. We can see the black and yellow at the top.

There we are with the engine in the back and the start of the steering rack up front. The cog up top is how you steer the wheels. The back wheels are directly connected to the representation of the engine. This time, it’s 4 cams that rotate, which push the brown things up and down. The model is of a Bugatti Bolide, which has a highly unusual W16 engine (wiki linky) which is a pair of V8 (2 banks of 4 cylinders in a V) engines smashed together. I’ve been hunting for a diagram of how it is inside. Nada. Techie geek needs the info !

Picture. Lego car. We're looking at the front of the car, which is hiding all of the bits to the back. The black sills are on each side. The front is being held up on the head of a sturdy green dwagon.

Another peek with the sills and body frame coming together.

Picture. Lego Car. The car is more complete, with yellow bodywork at the back. We're looking at the left side with the car pointing left. At the front, we can see a short axle to a slight angle due to the steering being completed.

More progress, now with the steering in place at the front and some of the yellow bodywork at the back behind the engine.

Picture. Lego car. More pieces are being added. We're looking down at the front of the car again, with the front now having yellow pieces for aerodynamic wings.

More bodywork appears, including the Bugatti signature bumper grille. Nice detail in the pieces representing aerodynamic devices.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking down at it from directly above. There is bodywork covering the engine at the back. We can see the cog on top which is how we turn the steering.

Now with engine cover.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking down at the right front of the car. Yellow bodywork has been added above the front. We can't really see the doors but they're black with yellow doors that lift up to open. The red dwagon plushie is underneath holding the car at a good angle.

Almost there, that’s the front hood bodywork been added and the gull wing doors are on there as well. Last one coming up.

Picture. Lego Car. We're looking at the side of the completed car, pointing right towards a dwagon looking over the front of the car. Behind, we see the Lego book with the real yellow and black car on the left and the similar looking Lego car on the right.

There we go. Last one. They actually look more similar than you’d think you could get with Lego. Nice job by them and a good little kit to put together.

That’s it for me for now. I’ll be hanging in there, although that IRL stress is manifesting in increased levels of pain. I was able to disappear into Little Big Workshop and a couple of others (like the Motorsport Manager mega campaign) but I haven’t done much flying lately. Too much soreness from the shoulder, which is another indication of hidden tension.

We’ll be ok, I suspect you’ll be putting me in your thoughts after reading this, that’s appreciated. I’ll pass them on to the people I’m worried about.

Thanks for reading, back later 🙂

Happy New Year

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January 9, 2024

7:44 pm

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musing

Hello everyone,

I went quiet for a bit again there, I think I needed a little hibernation time.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a sleepy grey cat with paws on top of a light orange blanket. The captions are "I can't get out of bed..." "These blankets have accepted me as one of their own and if I leave now I might lose their trust."

Quite.

Let’s see what happened up to the end of last year ? A games post happened. Lots of gaming happened over the Winter break, I kinda disappeared into those … Cruising got as far as Red Island, so I have a few more posts to go there. Plus a bit more about the ship because drama happened on there just before Xmas …

I did have a quick trip up to see the mum, sister and future brother in law. That’ll be good later in the year. And dogs !

Picture. We're looking downwards at three dogs. Bottom right is a big German Shepherd type dog. He's looking up and right. Back and middle is a golden retriever. Left is the Cloud As Dog which is the Icebear
Multidog

It was good to see everyone, even if just a short time. I need to make the trip up there a bit more, instead of staying inside what feels like an increasing shell. I’ve come away with some Lego too which will make an appearance in a later post.

That’s a weird increasing feeling that I need to address … the tendency to stay inside the easy zone instead of taking a few steps to get out and about and enjoy things more. There’s a few things to talk about there too … (this post has gone random now, let’s see where it goes !)

I was really glad I managed to get out of the comfort zone to disappear on the cruise for a fortnight. It was a wonderful experience, I learned a fair bit, experienced stuff well out of the zone, had a chance to relax and talk with lovely people among guests and crew.

Picture. We're looking at a close up of a small model of a longboat. It's in the Viking style with each end going up into spirals. The wood is dark. There are five shields on the side with a blue cross on red. The sail is red and white vertical stripes on a single mast. There is a blue cross on red Norwegian flat at the top. There is a small red dwagon sitting in the boat.

And then Stuff Happened on the ship just before Xmas. On my cruise, we had a bonus day where we did a boat cruise up and down one of the fjords. It was to delay our North Sea crossing to allow several storm systems to dissipate and the decision worked very well for us. The cruise just before Xmas wasn’t so lucky, the info I’ve picked up from the various sources tells :

There was a sudden rogue wave that built up about as tall as the ship. (MS Maud is 30m above the water). The water was high enough and powerful enough to smash windows on the Bridge :

Picture. We're looking at the front of the ship Maud from the shore. The lower part is black, with a red stripe before a white upper deck. We can see the glass of the windows high up. It's a snowy scene, with a thick covering for the side of the dock and clouds obscuring what's behind the ship.

The Bridge of the ship is the sticky out bit above the letters “MAUD”, with wings that extend out to the full width of the ship (it’s so they can see the full width for docking). It looks like what happened is that the wave smashed the windows, the water got in and wiped out the electronics on the Bridge. (Someone sent a video from the webcam to one of the UK papers, I’m not linking to them). The emergency signal sounded immediately (the water would have tripped main power off) which would have had people rushing to the muster stations where they were in the survival suits for several hours.

Loss of power would have meant the sea determining what happened to the ship, although rescue ships were on the scene to help out and stabilise the situation. Power was restored, ship was able to make her way to Bremerhaven port where they’ll have everything fixed up by the end of the month. Happily no serious injuries reported and it sounds like everyone was well taken care of by the crew.

There are probably a bunch of lessons for Hurtigruten to take out of this, like having an emergency navigation facility available. We can do this ourselves, the geek in me was running through what I’d look to set up : Laptop with basic map software (i.e. Google maps), all smart phones have at least GPS and probably access to the other positioning systems as well and remote desktop to allow what’s on that laptop to be seen from where the emergency controls would be. The difficulty is that the reversionary controls down near the engines are would be inside the ship and phones can’t see GPS signals through all that metal.

I think that would work as a minimum to build on … but it’s something you’d want to have set up prior to going to sea, all that stuff would want licensing and downloads to set up. It’s an In Case thing, not a Response thing. (Like when I downloaded Canada map to the phone ahead of going out there because I would have heavy data restrictions !)

But that’s me going into back up plans mode. What’s important is that everyone among passengers and crew are ok.

After seeing what happened to the ship, would I personally do anything different ? I’d definitely do cruising again. It was a great experience and it was fun to see different places every day. That’s not a thing that happens with hotels, unless you’re traveling between each. The ship did the travel overnight for us.

What I’d change is the time of year. With climate change becoming an increasing factor, the seas are only going to get wilder. It’s pretty much guaranteed that a North Sea cruise in Winter is going to be subject to disruption. So I’d be looking to do something in the Summer instead. Snow is good though. There’s a cruise to south Scandinavia in June that looks tempting.

The “who with?” is a curious question. I like variation and seeing how different companies do things. So on the one hand, I’d do a cruise with a different company to see what the other side is like. But on the other, I’d totally go with Hurtigruten again and the Xmas incident does nothing to change that.

Did I mention random ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a dog wrapped up in a light blanket with dark stripes. The captions are "The voices can't get to me" "when I'm cosy in the blankey"

Games happened over the break too. I did fall backwards to an old favourite, Little Big Workshop and therefore my sleep schedule is now a myth.

I picked up Jagged Alliance 3 (tactical battle, strategic liberate a country game) and Star Valor (space thing), which I need to actually play. Rogue Station is a quick one where you build up a little space station and attempt to fend off the enemies. I went back to Aliens Dark Descent which I would thoroughly recommend. It’s a tough tactical game set in the universe of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies. It’s atmospheric, dark and implemented extremely well as a game. Take a peek !

City Game Studio was one that the streamer Shenryyr was enjoying, so I figured I’d look at that one too. And then there’s Seaorama, which has you running a shipping company. I’ve been enjoying that one but have stepped away for a bit because it needs patching. Oh and occasional Motorsport Manager where I’m about to finish one phase of the long campaign because my team is winning all of the races this year, so I’ll swap to another team.

Game screenshot. Aliens Dark Descent. We're looking at a dark scene from above, lit by the flashlights of soldiers in the bottom right. A man is illuminated, he's upright with knees on the floor. Something is coming out of his chest

Is he ok ? I don’t think he’s ok.

Yep. Good game, very challenging (even on Normal difficulty) and at times very frustrating. But I’m also enjoying the story and want to know where it goes.

Books also happened over the break, with me finishing the James David Victor series of 9 Star Breaker books. It had a great start building its world … but I don’t think I’ll be back for more. The overarching story kinda fizzled for me towards the end. But it’s always worth reading these to see how the story goes. And it was still a better than what I consistently see from other authors. I wouldn’t count Fuzzy Nation in that, that was another excellent novel by John Scalzi.

(Checks size of scrollbar) Uhoh, post is going on a while so I’ll save some for other posts.

It was a very quiet Xmas period. I’ve been back at work for a bit and diving back into things. Games were good, sleep is a myth, pain levels are … up and down at the moment, enjoyed the books, was great to see the people. Oh and a little Cardiff trip happened where I managed to not spend money on a DSLR or mirrorless camera or on a remote control car.

Happy New Year everyone !

A year in (Steam) games

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December 18, 2023

10:15 pm

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games

Hello everyone,

There’s been a couple of year recap things come out lately, the one from today is from the Steam games store showing what I’ve been up to this year. I figured, hey, let’s share this one.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a non plussed looking black dog with a grey muzzle looking to the right. The dog is wearing a flat cap. The captions are "When I was a pup" and "I had one toy and it was a stick"

Games have come a fair way since the early days. The days (hushed voice) of 8 bit microcomputers. I started my gaming on a BBC Micro. Yep, last century, I am old. Oh ! I even did a meme for that a little while ago.

Picture. Cartoon meme. There are 4 panels with a pink figure on a bed talking to a blue figure with a lab coat and glasses. The captions go "Doc, I feel like I'm getting old" "Hmmm, tell me, did you play Elite when it first came out?" "Yeah, I played it as a kid". Last panel, the Doc writes "Patient is basically dead"

Yep. That fits. Elite Dangerous doesn’t appear in the list because I play it through the Frontier launcher but it would have a position high up here as well. I had a peek at a port of Frontier Elite 2 from 1993 too, might go back to that. What’s Steam say about me ? Here we are :

Picture. We're looking at a panel with my gaming statistics for 2023. It says 33 games played, 306 achievements, 787 sessions, 16 new games. My most played games are shown with their store pictures and they are Idle Champions, Little Big Workshop, Motorsport Manager, One Military Camp and Trans Road USA.

There’s a bit more detail on the Steam page itself. The stats are heavily dominated by Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms, which is an idler game that you just set up and it runs itself. So that’ll be running on the machine for many hours at a stretch and it’ll be running in the background of other games too. (For some of the stats, the game has to be running). A good few of those sessions will be from troubleshooting mods for games like Skyrim, where the game is launched, has a crash, the mods are tweaked and we try again. The others in that panel are :

Little Big Workshop – it’s a cute factory game where your little gnomeployees will set about building toys with the workshop tools you provide for them. It’s a lovely little game and I’d thoroughly recommend it. It’s a game I keep going back to.

Motorsport Manager – should really have had its time by now with the release of the frankly not good enough F1 Manager games but I still keep going back to this one. It’s a low interaction game, so I can do a race with the tactics and stuff while I’m munching my dinner.

One Military Camp – this one came out this year and it’s a fun little camp building thing, where you manage the one military camp to survive an invasion. It’s your job to set up the army to push back the evil dictator guy.

Trans Road USA – hmm, an ok game, probably not one I’d recommend. It has nice mechanics for setting up the trucking company but the campaign mode gets very silly. Still, I got my value out of it and it kept me amused for a long time.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a dark area of space, lit by scattered stars. Our ship is lower left in the foreground. It's facing away, pointing upwards. We can see engines on outriggers to the left and right, the hull is lit by lines of red. Top left is a small dark moon. Top right is a ball of a space station, with a ringed section behind.

Like the space trucking game. That one’s from Elite Dangerous, which I have connected to Steam but I just play it through the separate Frontier launcher.

My games seem to have gone more recent than the average, with 70% of them being released in the last 1 to 7 years. The average of that is 52%. Forgetting Idle Champs, the most played style is Management Games, i.e. games where I can mostly sit back and watch and occasionally intervene. 146 of the 306 achievements were from Idle Champions.

Highlights of the year were :

Dredge – a charming little game where you’re a ship captain of a little fishing boat. I’ve mentioned this one before. If you like the spooky vibes from the trailer, it’s definitely worth a look. I enjoyed it.

Skyrim – for the endless variety of mods you can add to it. Plus I like the vibe of being able to set out in a direction and find something new. I still need to finish it.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Mankind Divided – the pair of Adam Jensen games that leaves everyone who plays them pining for a sequel to finish off the trilogy. They’re set in the grim near future, where cyborg augmentations are being added to our bodies. They’re a good pair of shooter stealth story type games, maybe ageing now but good story games don’t really lose their appeal. I’ll mention another of these in a bit.

Battletech – oh there’s one. Harebrained Schemes (the devs) did a great job with this one and I keep going back to it.

Mars Horizon – was one I played to death and I’ll keep occasionally going back to it. It puts you in charge of a space agency. The sequel due in 2024 will hopefully be a great game.

Old classics – Stellaris and Knights of the Old Republic. I feel these games have aged badly. Kotor was an early game of its type, newer games have made a lot of improvements. Stellaris started great but it lost me along the way with too many patches and gameplay changes. Master of Magic had a good remake but I think it’s stuck too much in the past. I miss the old wizard avatars too.

Fun but I’ve finished with them – Tavern Master, nice little pub builder but I’ve seen all it has. Euro Truck Sim 2 and American Truck Sim, I did enjoy taking the loads to the varied places but … it was hurting my hands to play it. Airport CEO is one where I’ve seen all it has again.

Promising but could be much better – Farm Manager 2021, I got annoyed by the restrictions of a seemingly endless campaign. Pegasus Expedition, this story based strategy game has an interesting take on space Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate but the mechanics let it down. I might go back to it. Final Upgrade, a factory builder but … was finding it a bit tedious.

Mechanic games – Rover Mechanic Simulator is an occasional pleasure where you take Mars rovers apart and fix them. Offroad Mechanic Simulator is a successor to the car mechanic sim games.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're looking at the concrete outside a garage with the road in the distance. The foreground has a sleek purple open top car with lots of chrome trim. The background has a bright green little pick up truck.

What’s left ? Lots !

Games I bounced off but need to give more of a chance to : Solasta, a table top style role playing game. Just can’t get into these. Cyberpunk 2077, a future shooter role player. Mount and Blade II Bannerlord is another new one for me. Sky Haven is an airport manager builder game that I tried the other week but Brain said NOPE. Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries is like Battletech with the big war robots but this one puts you in the pilot seat. Dorf Romantik and Rogue Tower are both fun little additions.

Stuff I completely and totally bounced off : Ticket to Ride, would be a fun board game with friends, very meh solo. War for the Overworld, Game Dev Tycoon, Two Point Campus (on a free trial).

And that’s them all ! Highlight of the year is definitely Dredge.

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking towards a deserted looking island with pine trees and huts. In the foreground, a shaggy skinny looking orange furred dog which is looking our way. The options to the right are "Pet the Dog" and "Leave". We of course made the following caption happen "You reach out and gently pat the dog. Its eyes follow your hand, and it seems to understand you're not a threat."
YOU CAN PET THE DOG

Quest of the year, game of the year. (Haven’t bought Baldur’s Gate 3 yet)

Hope you enjoyed this little peek into my gaming life for 2023. Back to cruising next post probably 😀

Island excursions

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December 12, 2023

10:36 pm

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Hello everyone,

Apologies, been quiet for a while … I managed to pick up bugs that affected me all last week and instead of knocking the bad vibes post off quickly (last post was a grumble and not great vibes), it’s taken a bit of time to summon the finger tapping. Back to cruise stuff !

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a sandy beach, in shadow. The calm sea is to the left, in the background is rock with a square mountain top in the background. The mountain is half in shadow, half lit orange by the morning sun. On the beach, we see a boat coming to shore with a small number of people on board. More people in red jackets are off on the high part of the beach to the right.

The middle Monday of the cruise saw us heading off to explore Rødøya island, as we headed back down south again. (Rødøya is going to be a stretch for the old copy/paste so I’m going to call it Red Island from now on !)

Red Island is one of the landmarks going up the Norwegian coast. We went from the ship to the shore in the Zodiac boats as there is no dock or jetty here :

Picture. Photograph. We're on a boat, looking backwards. The black plastic of the engine is lower middle and there is a square metal frame with rounded corners above. Within the frame, we see our ship. The lower part is black, with "Hurtigruten Expeditions" in writing at the back (left). There is a red band and the upper part with portholes and windows is in white. We can see a black funnel and assorted radio antennae on top of the ship.

There’s our ship, MS Maud, resting at anchor while we were off having a wander around the island. We got ashore in the small Zodiac boats and I was really impressed with the systems in place to get the guests transferred ashore. In the picture, you’ll see some platforms coming out from the middle of the ship at the waterline. These are tender pits. The boats are driven up alongside the tender pits and you literally step straight from ship to boat, with very little hassle or difficulty.

It’s a system that seems extremely well practiced, it’s secure and safe, with assistance from the crew all the way. Very impressive, especially when you consider that the average age going on the boats is 60+, probably 65+ and I’d include myself in the groups that have some mobility issues. (Getting older)

When we got to shore, it was a similar operation :

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at one of the Zodiac boats. It has black rubber sides and a grey plinth and coxswain at the back with a 12 on it. The metal frame is at the back to the left, the front of the boat is to the right with netting. 7 people in red jackets are on board. 1 is being assisted off the boat by one of two ladies wearing yellow and black waterproof outfits.

Yep, steps ! We went from ship to boat by stepping over the side of the boat, for shore side we went over the bow. The two ladies in yellow and black you see there are Maeva and Holly of the Expeditions team, who were absolute legends tirelessly pulling the boats in and making sure everyone got to the dry bit of the island.

While we were all off taking in the scenery, Holly and Maeva were non stop on the boats pulling them in and helping everyone off. We had some amazing people looking after us on the cruise and these two were brilliant throughout.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a small snow covered hill, in shadow. The mountain is to the left, half lit by morning sun. Standing above us in traditional tunic is the blond haired Magnus, mid exultation of his latest story about trolls.
Norwegian man tells stories

That’s Magnus, telling us about the mountain. It’s actually one of the trolls, who was too busy arguing to see the sun come up … and now the troll is one of the navigation landmarks on the coast. Magnus was great, he’d tell us about the myths and legends and totally true stories about Norwegian history.

It’s a rich country for culture and they’ll surprise you. They’ve been a subject nation to one of Denmark, Sweden or Finland for so much of their history but now, with North Sea oil bolstering them, they’re fully independent. The country doesn’t actually need the oil for energy, they have ample hydroelectric power from the landscape. They’ve been very smart in turning the proceeds into a rainy day bank and it’s made sure they can stand on their own. And they’re also extremely humble with it too, they haven’t been changed by the oil wealth.

I’d thoroughly recommend visiting, it’s a lovely country and the people are very welcoming.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a snow covered hillside that's about 10 feet away. There is a hollow in the rocks, with a small but cozy looking camp fire waiting to grow. Beside, looking proud of the fire, is Peter the Norwegian standing tall with an arm resting on the rocks.
Norwegian man makes fire

And that’s Peter, who was really fun to listen to when he was telling us about his country. Very proud fellow, lovely guy, with a great humility. It was a pleasure to be around Peter, Magnus, Holly and Maeva and the others in the team, Geraldine the photographer, Fran the antarctic scientist, Emile the organiser and all of the others who were a bit more background but who made sure everything went incredibly smoothly.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out over a rippled sea towards the rocks of the island. The sun can just be seen on the horizon, it's about to disappear below. There is a long ray of sun reflection on the sea.

After a little wander, it was time to head off again as the sun was setting. It was about this time in the cruise that we were starting to get warnings of very heavy weather coming through with multiple storm systems starting to gather together to have a fight where we were looking to pass through the North Sea on our way home.

(I can feel my shoulder getting a bit sore again so just Red Island today)

Red Island was a lovely little interlude on the trip, away from civilisation. I had big feelings of trepidation about going on the boat transfer but a big part of me was going “You will not get the opportunity to do this again for a long time, DO IT” and that part won. Just like booking the cruise in the first place, I’m very glad I let that part of me win over the overcautious side that likes to hide away a bit too much.

This was also when we came back across the Arctic Circle, pretty much exactly at sunset.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking through one of the ship windows to a slightly choppy sea with islands in the background. The sun is all but disappeared over the horizon to the left. There are a few wisps of cloud in the sky above. To the right is another ship, with lights blazing away.

There was a bit of a race to get there, with a German cruise ship steaming across a bit faster than us. Bit too much of a hurry, needs to chill out and enjoy the milkshakes some more :-D. We got to the landmark just as the sun was fully going down.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a small island in the sea with a plinth and a metal frame globe on top. The globe is lit from below and by the ship with white lights. In the background, the rocky outcropping of islands and above that, a red glow of a sunset.

Not a great picture but the best of the series. That’s the monument which marks the boundary of the Arctic Circle. We didn’t see it on the way up (passed in the night I think) but it was good to see it at dusk with the fading light.

And that’s where we’ll leave Norway for this post.

I mentioned bugs … I also fell up the stairs (oops). The bugs weren’t too serious but I stayed working from home with sniffles on Monday and by Tuesday, didn’t have much of a voice available. But they’re mostly gone now, pretty much all better. I’m feeling the aftermath of tripping up the stairs though. I basically missed the last step and almost faceplanted myself on the landing. Oh well.

I’ve been feeling the damage in my wrists and shoulder. They basically took the brunt of me going thud at the top of the stairs. Didn’t feel it much at the time (was about to sleep half the weekend to get rid of the bugs) but the wrist is a bit sore now. But it still works so I don’t think there’s any permanent damage.

Time to hit post, listen to Tashnarr learning guitar Rocksmith (linky) and head back into the latest book. It’s The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher, not too sure what to make of it so far but T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) does write lovely, very readable books that steadily draw you in with the characters, style and steadily unfolding story.

Laters 😀

Cruising car

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November 30, 2023

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

I kinda got out of the habit with the blogging since I got back on shore ! Don’t worry, the cruise posts will start up again next time, I just need to talk about some after cruise stuff … and maybe get back to a little cruisey summary too for some good vibes at the end.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little green dragon, curled up asleep with head resting on their front paws.

This is skipping ahead a little bit with cruise stuff but the not too spoilery summary is : storms happened ! They were looking pretty serious, so our return was delayed a day with that day being spent sheltering in a fjord. More on that in a future post. But it did mean that instead of me returning on Saturday and having a sleep day on the Sunday, we got back on Sunday and then I was up the road again for a car service on Monday before restarting work on Tuesday.

I’ll be either for a bit of quiet over the coming weekend.

The car service is drawing a bit of a rant actually … It could well be Strike 3 for the Lexus organisation. They make wonderful cars but I’ve had them delivered with pre-delivery defects that in two cases, should have been picked up in the 150 point pre delivery quality and safety inspections they talk about for the used cars.

The least bad one was the IS with the battery terminal that popped off leaving me with a dead car incident. I think this would have happened as a consequence of the cars probably being shipped (by ship) with the batteries disconnected … and then all the predelivery configuration gets done and the battery’s connected. It was just bad luck that it wasn’t tightened up enough, but also careless.

The serious one was my last car, I think it was shipped with a fault in the back suspension which led to massive understeer and excessive body roll. This would have been picked up in a test drive and it would have been a factory defect. It also wasn’t picked up in two services.

And I got a £700 service bill for my latest car. The extra cost was for wheel alignment and a new tyre because the old one had excessive wear due to the poor wheel alignment. Red’s a 68 plate car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2018. When a UK car is 3 years old, it has to start having annual road worthiness checks, which is how stuff like bald tyres and faulty wheel alignment get discovered.

So when it comes to having a car delivered 3 months after one of these checks, with faults like that … you could call me rather ticked off about it. I don’t think it was anything I’d done post delivery, I can’t remember whacking anything. (Although I had another bout of covid not long after getting the car) Especially as it had the wobble vibration kicking in between 35 and 50mph which is indicative of either alignment or balancing. (Or a faulty wheel bearing)

Yeah, I’m decidedly unhappy about it. But it’s not something to immediately change the car about, like what it was with the Blue car with suspected suspension fault and the Silver one which had a power steering fault which was also skipped over in a service. My impression of both those was pretty much “Ok, you’re not finding and discovering these obvious faults, so I’m not going to tell you about them as part of the negotiations for me changing to the next car.”

This might be giving a bad impression of the brand though … The 6 Lexii I’ve had so far have been fantastic cars. Their drive by wire behaviour fits exactly the behaviour I want from the cars I drive. I like to be able to settle into a chilled out essentially autopilot for cruising, with the option of going very quick when I need to. The CT200h (aka Posh Prius) is on the low side for power for me (10 sec to 60, 134bhp system power) but when you ask it to, it cheerfully gives you everything it’s got. And what it had was far more effective at getting down the road quickly than the performance Focus ST170 I had before.

The toys are great too. I’d like to keep going with the brand, except they’ve caught the marketing urge to move everyone into SUVs … which is not something that I can support. They get a lot of things right though, with no design stupidity like you’d get with Ford or dodgy electronics which you’d have with the French cars. Or cars which just disintegrate like certain other EU cars, cars which have special modes to cheat emissions and economy figures, or cars which are excessively difficult to repair by design.

Toyota (and Lexus) make excellent cars. Maybe it’s a Corolla next.

Book stuff ! I read two books while off on the holiday :

Erebus by Michael Palin. It’s tagline is that it’s the story of a ship. Essentially, two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They were special Napoleonic War ships, with the war ending before they could actually do their purpose. So after being mothballed for a while, visionary people saw their potential as extreme exploration ships with them being dispatched to the Antarctic and later the Northwest Passage. This book is the story of the ships and what we know of their expeditions. It’s well worth a peek as a look into life on the ships and the discoveries that were made when so much of the map was Terra Incognita with “Here Be Dragons” labels on it.

It was a bit of a slow one though, perhaps a bit too much in there and it felt like a bit of a slog. Still worth checking out though.

Next up was Winter World by A G Riddle. This one’s set in a near future Earth, which is becoming steadily colder. It’s like an Ice Age is coming but it’s not from planetary conditions, it’s ALIENS blocking out the sun. Good book too and it sets up a trilogy. I’ll be looking forward to reading the next two in a while when the book 2 is on offer. (Bought book 3 in a 99p offer)

Ref the cruise though, there will be more posts with pictures to come there but the quick summary is :

It was a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise on MS Maud. She’s a small cruise ship accommodating around 300 guests. Cozy. The crew were amazing, making it a lovely experience from start to finish. The expeditions team were fun, super motivated, friendly people with an infectious spirit that got us massively looking forwards to what was coming up to see. And Norway supremely delivered on that promise of good things to see.

I’d thoroughly recommend them, when I do more cruising (and that’s a definite), I’ll be looking at Hurtigruten again. You see cruise ship and you think Party Boat. It was a fun atmosphere but it was much more about the getting out there and seeing great things than a dress up for dinner party ship. Just what I wanted and what I didn’t realise I needed.

Economical too, I was able to book less than 5 days before the sailing date with a nice little discount and … there is no solo traveller supplement like pretty much everything else applies to the cost of going away. The atmosphere on board totally supported solo travelling as well. You’d be placed with other people in the main restaurant for food but the guests were lovely too and meal conversations were very pleasant. I could have picked up a collection of great new friends on the trip. (I hope some of you remember me and are reading this – you’re amazing and made the trip much better !)

Disclosure note time – I paid fully for the cruise, the only freebies were what every traveller with them gets : free coffee, cookies, wifi, food, selected expedition things. There was absolutely no nickel and dime behaviour here (like you might remember me complaining about with Novotel)

It was a very rewarding, informative, pleasant, educational (camera, science, people) trip. And it was the getting away from the world that I desperately needed, even though I didn’t know ho much I needed it.

Last message ? Sometimes we need to get away from the world for a little while and do something different. The world can get you down. I hope you all get that chance to escape from it for a little while. I was having lots of fun out there and I hope the posts here about the trip and the pictures I was sending around the various parts of the internet brought out smiles.

Land ? Huskies Ahoy, Lights Ahoy

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November 26, 2023

1:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Last post from on board ship today. It’s a case of LAND AHOY on each side of the ship as we start making our way up the Thames. But that’s something for a later post. It’s been a wonderful cruise, talking to the other guests has been lovely and we’ve been incredibly well looked after by the crew. I’ll definitely be doing another cruise holiday at some point when I can see how to fit it in and it’s almost certain to be with Hurtigruten again.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a snowy scene, with a lady and a dog standing on a platform. The dog is a white furry Husky coming up to between her knees and hips. Husky is looking over to the right, surveying all. The lady is reaching down to give Husky a bit of stroking.

Saturday saw us heading into Tromsø, which is a larger Norwegian city set on an island in the fjord, with additional settlement spreading into the mainland on either side. We had a little look around the city itself with a little bit of scouting in the local souvenir shops. But it was a little limited for me because ….

HUSKIES

Yep. I didn’t sign up for many of the additional trips but I didn’t want to miss the visit to the Huskies. And it was a magical couple of days too. The Huskies were just one evening, we’ll get back to Sunday later. We visited a farm where they breed and train up the dogs, taking the best ones into the racing team and looking after the rest of them. Whether that’s using them as sled dogs or looking after them until they can be adopted by loving homes.

And they’re lovely dogs too.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a man standing up, holding a dog in his arms. There are more people in the background, everyone is wrapped up warm with coats and woolly hats. The dog is looking directly towards us, with a curious white and grey face as he's enjoying a view from higher up than usual.

That’s one of the puppies. Very curious, very bouncy, totally acclimatised to the conditions. Ready for running across the snow, very happy to have all of the attention they can get.

Picture. Photograph. The foreground is lit, showing a snow covered field extending into darker fields in the background. We see a wooden snow topped dog kennel in the lower right with the names Fjord and Katla. In the background, a series of sleds with dogs harnessed eager to run.

And there they are, ready to run. And run fast. No rides for us because the snow isn’t old enough yet to support guest safety but it was a definite case of feeling the excitement in the air as the dogs were getting ready to do what they were born and bred for.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a wood fire in the centre of 4 posts. In the background, is a table with cups and a kettle. Everything is lit by a faint purple.

And then we disappear back inside a hut and enjoy a warm fire, a bit of cake and some hot chocolate. Best trip of the cruise. And I have a few more pictures too, including a couple that went to Geraldine, expedition photographer. We’ll be getting all of her stunning photographs later (I’m in some !) and I’ll be sure to drop the link when we get it.

And then there was Sunday. The morning was in Narvik and one thing about this trip has been educational about Second World War history. Terrible things happened all of the world, Norway definitely wasn’t spared. We don’t hear enough about it … The northern parts of Norway above Narvik were essentially Scorched Earthed as the Germans made their way out and that’s just one of the terrible things. It’s well worth educating about it, more than I’d want to go into here. And it does make you ask the question : we seemed to be winning the Battles of Narvik and pushing out the Germans. And then we abandoned the town to try and protect France. What would have changed if we’d held that northern flank of Norway ? That’s a definite one for the alternate historians.

Yep. Check out the Norwegian side of the WW2 story, it’ll be illuminating.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out over a faintly lit ship deck, with the railing on the right and chairs stacked in front. In the sky, there are a couple of dark clouds but behind them, a band of green glow in the sky going from centre bottom to up and left.

And then there was the continuing transit south … With a break in the overhead conditions too ! I have to admit, the pictures are much better than I could see. The assembled Northern Light Hunters were limited to seeing a grey on the horizon as our eyes couldn’t make out the lights.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across the deck of the ship towards the rail. Above the horizon, there is a patterning of dark clouds with a green aurora glow behind them. You can perhaps make out bands in the green. Oh and in the centre foreground, a grinning idiot in a bright yellow hat, a dark jacket and a blue and white scarf.

I’d mostly figured out how to get good pictures out of the Pixel 4 camera by this stage and then had a bright idea involving the camera timer … A guess at a good spot, a tap of the timer, a gentle saunter across to the rail and there we go.

This was about the last chance we got (except maybe last night, faintly) to see the Northern Lights, the remaining nights saw the clouds coming in a bit too much. It was an amazing sight to see though, definitely a Bucket List thing if you do those.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across to the ships rail again. Clouds are on the horizon but above, we see the green bands of aurora stretching across and upwards. Quite pretty. Oh and there's the grinning idiot in yellow hat, dark jacket and white and blue scarf over in the bottom right.

There we go. Last one for now, this was just after midnight on the same day. It’s the Pixel 4 camera again on a tripod, with me gently sauntering over to the rail to do the timer selfie. This was the best spot on board for these, there wasn’t enough incidental light on the flight deck to pick up the grinning idiot.

I should probably hit post now and start to pay more attention, docking soon !

I’ll do more steady catching up later. Tilbury Docks are very nearly in sight …

Orcas and Alta

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November 21, 2023

1:47 pm

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Hello everyone,

We spent Friday last week at the top of the world. Well, nearly 😀 The northernmost point of this cruise is Alta, at 69 degrees 58 minutes North. It’s quite far North. Sadly not much in the way of Northern Lights for most of us (too cloudy) but the group that went out and about did catch some good lights. There will be more about that in a later post …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out across a dark metal deck. In the foreground are two balls of snow, forming a tiny snow person. Behind, we see a group of people around a growing mound of snow.

More about that little one later. Actually, let’s rewind a bit further and give another special mention to photographer Geraldine, who is part of the expedition crew. I mentioned Orcas earlier, let’s see if this Facebook Post Linky works … Hopefully that’ll take you to a page with pictures of whales on.

It was good seeing the pod of Orca swimming alongside us for a little while. I was able to catch sight of them but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get the camera up in time for a picture. However, there should be plenty behind that link. Plus the MS Maud page has more of the various pictures from this fortnight’s cruise. Go take a peek :-D.

Norway has waters that are warmed up by the same Gulf Stream that keeps Britain warm, so the Orca and other whales like to visit.

(Note – there’s a very sleepy vibe going on in the Explorer Lounge at the moment …)

So – Alta !

Picture. Photograph. We're looking up and over a snow covered walking bridge, lit regularly on each side. Behind that, is a sloping building made up of cylindrical floors of decreasing radius as we go upwards.

Alta grew into a city a few years ago, which also meant they needed a bigger church too. Cue the Northern Lights Cathedral of the picture. Good place, it also serves as a community centre as well.

The textured sides that you might be able to make out in that picture are actually titanium plates, which are slotted together to provide the shell of the building. They reflect the mood of the environment around the building. For our visit … that meant grey and cloudy :-D. Oh well, no Northern Lights for the town that day. But there are several microclimates around Alta, so the group that went out and about hunting for clear skies were given a treat.

However, we had a treat of a different kind … With the explorer group going for a building of an impromptu snow person. Norway doesn’t seem to go in for building snow people. Perhaps it’s because the trolls don’t like the snow people and bop them all on the head while everyone is sleeping. It’s another curious difference between Norway and the UK.

Picture. Photograph. A group of very happily smiling people are gathered around a tall and thin mound of snow, steadily resembling a snow person. A lady with long blond hair carries a snow ball about twice as large as her hands, she's about to place the ball on top of the mound.

There we go. Almost complete. I’ve been staying quite wary of my back and legs, so I was just doing the spectating thing and taking pictures. (it’s a bit cold, I’ve been needing to defrost a lot and conditions were treacherous)

Picture. Photograph. A cheery snow person looks as us in front of a gathering of 9 assorted people standing and kneeling behind. The lights of the harbour can be seen behind them.

And there we go ! The members of the expedition crew (not searching for Northern Lights) proudly presenting their new snow person. I think it might be still there too (this was from Fri 17th) and also gained a friend.

As I type though, I’m really struggling to stay awake 😀 (It’s a very quiet, chill, sleepy vibe up here in the Explorer lounge) So it’s time for me to retreat to the cabin after taking just one more picture of a lovely sunset.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out across a fairly calm sea towards a horizon with low hills and islands. The sky is clear blue with a milky haze at the horizon. To the middle right, we see the sun about touching the horizon, with a reflection on the water.

(I’m cheating this was Monday 20th). Later everyone, have a wonderful rest of the day.