Author: Sleepypete

I’m pondering one of those career moves again.

Except this one is both more realisable and less realistic than the Band thing from a couple of years ago. You know … the one written on April 1st 2015 (have a peek in the list on the right!) promising an album out in exactly one year to the day. Yep. Not suspicious at all right ?

Oooo – I see emoticons that I didn’t realise I had …. I promise not to abuse them … too much

You’ll have hopefully seen and enjoyed a couple more April 1st Secret Projects today. Here is my last one for this year. Of course the secret of the April 1st Secret Project is to make you wonder if the story is true or not. This one is completely about fiction. But is it actually fiction ? I’ll leave that to you to ponder … But first …. the post demands a thumbnail picture !

We need more books. Yep. This post is all about that book I’ve been talking about writing for … how long now ? I have ideas. Some of them I think are good ideas. What I really need is a plot to write around. Plus characters. One issue I’ve seen in some writing is that the characters are all the same. I’d have to base my characters partly around people I know. And me as well. Could you be a character in this book ?

Could there be inspiration coming from a couple of awesome novelist ladies. That’d be Nika Harper, who I first spotted via the name Nikasaur. She’s done some amazing short videos where she plays with words and … be still my beating heart when I watch them. Check out the first Wordplay playlist. And the amazing Thumper too (link on the right in the blog list and here!) who’s sense of humour and fun is something I marvel at.

Wait … what would it be about. Here are a few of the ideas. I’ve meant to write these down for ages now, in order to frame them into some kind of logical structure in my head.

Premise – it’s a future scifi where we have escaped Earth and are on colonies amongst the stars. Faster than Light travel is plentiful and easy to procure. It is feasible to set up new colonies without too much investment or interference. But as always …. it’s the people that dominate. Technology amongst the stars is easy, being around Good People is tough.

As it is on our Earth today. Don’t you feel like you want to escape the worst of society today and just take the Good People with you ? I feel like that a lot. It’s good being amongst the two Twitch communities of HeyChrissa and Radderss (links on the right!). They broadcast on the Twitch, let me chill out and I’ve found that hugely valuable over the past year or so. I have a small circle of friends too who are hugely valued and let me talk through thoughts that would otherwise send me barmy. Erm … make that send me “even more” barmy. But a lot of the society around me ? No. I see stuff on the news from our leaders and other people that is just horrific and appalling.

So the main premise of this book is that people on a developed world get sick of what’s going on and organise a departure. An escape. A chance to start over as they would like to have society arranged. An opportunity to leave behind the worst of the society on their developed world.

It would take a lot of inspiration from what is going on in the world today. And there’s a lot of Really Bad Stuff going on in the world at the moment. The trick in the book is to present it and the solutions like the norm.

The latest (and you’ll guess when I started writing this post from this !) is what Youtube have done to the LGBT community (basically – a complete censorship of all their material even if it has nothing to do with sexuality). Censorship is really bad but it is an extension of the abuse and prejudice aimed at the LGBT+ community today. I’m a straight bloke that way but …. I’ll defend LGBT to live the way that is right for them. And that doesn’t include censorship, prejudice or the abusive practices that some of our politicians would like to inflict on them.

No – the first group of escapees would be LGBT who just don’t feel safe in their community any more. They feel out of place. They want to be part of a community that values them for their skills and who they are, not who they sleep with. We should judge nobody for who they sleep with. (I do feel strongly about this).

But … there’s also an imperative which would mean that all colonists would need to contribute to genetic diversity (not made my mind up about this – selective breeding of people must be a last resort only). This does not mean LGBT must do the Deed with someone else, as artificial means would get around the … incompatibility ? :-). Problems with birth that require IVF today have been solved in this future society and this extends into allowing Gay Man + Gay Man or Lesbian Lady + Lesbian Lady to have a kid together. The only imperative remaining is that genetic diversity but outside of that, anything is possible and reasonable … unless societal prejudice gets in the way. And the book will present that prejudice as being an archaic legacy of societies long left behind in the dust of history.

And there are the other issues in our modern society …

Random attacks like the recent one in London, following other attacks around the world. It’s not so much the attacks (which are bad enough), it’s how our society responds to them. And if society responds with a kneejerk which is bad for our freedom, that’s another reason to move away from both the oppression and the terrorism.

Immigrants ? People who have the resources to smuggle their way into a spaceship leaving for another world would be valued … They have the motivation to want to escape and the skills to allow them to do so. That could make them Very Useful …. I’d be able to weave in the discovery of stowaways as well, because it would be trivially easy to find them on a spaceship.

Persecution of anyone “different” – like we’re seeing in a lot of societies today … needs to be excised. It would be presented as a reason for why people are wanting to abandon their safe lives where they are. As in, they want to walk away from a society that they think is going to come for them next with the prejudice and persecution.

And I would need to take inspiration from many other elements today … I might even put a streamer lady in there who entertains the colony despite being so disabled she can barely do anything else. But sitting in that streaming chair is an incredible personality who just …. entertains. People need something to relax and listen to and as I mentioned above, watching streamers on Twitch is one way I unwind at the moment.

Future tech … I’ve already mentioned light speed travel. I think this colony needs advanced 3d printing too … but I’ll rule out teleporters. Those always seem cheaty plus there is the moral black hole with teleporters of destroying the original and creating a copy. I’ll say that the technology is possible but was banned. Medicine would be very much advanced, eliminating most problems of today.

How would I start it all off ?

The Captain of the ship and organiser of the whole “Let’s get outta here!” thing would hear something and immediately go to the comms and say “Comm ? Send Lifeboat, timescale – 24 hours”. As in, an announcement has been made which will shortly lead to it being very much more difficult to up sticks and leave. The Lifeboat is the signal for everyone to drop what they’re doing and run.

And then in interludes through the book, there would be essentially minutes from meetings leading up to the departure. I’ve seen this narrative trick used before, where the book will zip forwards and back through time, with extra exposition explaining more about the world the book is set in. This would present a world getting steadily more and more scary as the departure date got nearer. Actually, I don’t think this would be a formal meeting. A conversation in the pub would work better, maybe even after one of these meetings takes place. Meetings tend to have too much talk for little actual information being passed. A pub conversation might be more … normal ? Also more compressed.

Another narrative trick is to have someone completely clueless along as a surrogate for the reader. New concepts are explained to the surrogate to develop them for the reader.

What I’m missing though is something to tie it all together.

I enjoyed a book called Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven … It was a similar tale of a new colony among the stars. They were doing pretty well until the dragons (grendels) appear and start eating people …

An unexpected threat is a great way to get your tale going. And you need drama to keep people interested.

How about some other things to think about …. how do you deal with crime ? Do the new place have capital punishment ? Corporal punishment ? Imprisonment ? Banishment ? Sometimes banishment is worse than execution …. On an untamed world, a banished citizen may slowly starve to death … or be eaten by predators. A quick end might be preferable. But no society is perfect even if its people go into it with the best of intentions.

But that’s a thought for later.

I have embryonic ideas there. Not enough to give up the Engineering Day Job for novel writing. Yet. Perhaps. I have the other idea of a close future post apocalyptic Earth, where my analogue and crew are looking to rebuild, with pretty much everything based out of a barge with the Isle of Wight being our home base.

I’m curious to know what people think about this one.

And they’re my letters now …

This is the last of my 3 April 1st Special Projects for today. I hope you enjoyed them all and in the case of this one, made you think a bit. And one last thought to leave you with :

Not all you think is fiction, is false.

Watch out for what you read today ! Hopefully you spot the false stories but I hope you get a few chuckles from them too. April Fools Day should be about poking harmless fun at the world we live in.

Second of 3 posts for today. Today is always a special day and I do like to write for it.

I’ve made a decision …

A big decision …. It will mean pain. But it will also mean lots of fun. Which will make all the pain so totally worth it.

I really miss the running around. The feeling of freedom that I got from pinning the ears back and just running. Top speed. Faster than the wind. So fast you could feel that wind blowing through the ears.

And the best I had with the running was with the cricket. I used to run so fast and needed lots of room when I hit that top speed. Something to do with having the power to go Very Fast … and no brakes ! Yep. Cricket was good for that.

And …. check out the abs on that :

Yep. Might have been making preparations for that running around again. Maybe.

What’s brought all this on ? My outsides making huge steps in improving is one trigger. One negative to all that power in my legs is that my skeleton (knees, bones) never really developed enough to contain the power. I’d run Fast, my knees would feel like they were exploding. So I wore knee pads to keep everything together. It’s been many years since I’ve been able to wear the knee pads … My knees were just too torn up and the knee pads were what initially tore them up.

The other damaged bits of me have been making big improvements as well. My ankles aren’t fixed yet but they’ve survived the walking around for work since I stopped wearing those bandages. Happy days.

The rest of me is a bit sore (I am 42 after all) but my usual pattern with the cricket has been to be sore in the early days of the season and then things get better as the match fitness improves. That’s always been the way. I’ve been blessed (or cursed?!) with a certain degree of natural fitness. The curse there is that it means I’ve been able to skip the training one would normally do for running around and other types of sports. That’s kept my bones intact but doesn’t set up the conditioning hardening or the muscle memory.

But …. it’s getting there. It used to take maybe two or three games to get up to speed again.

I think the muscle memory is still there as well. I feel my right arm itching to run through the bowling action again, even after all those years away from the bowling.

I wonder actually …

Last time I tried to bowl, there was a flaw in my shoulder from the old damage. It caused a hitch in my action that destroyed all control of length. Translation – the ball was as likely to come out arrowing in on someone’s head as it was to be aimed at the pitch. This was particularly dangerous considering that my normal bowling makes the ball swing through the air a lot. So as the batsman tries to duck backwards out of the way, the ball follows them …

Ouch ! Wonder what the early season net practice will turn out like. Looking forward to that early season stuff. New beginnings and all that.

Batting has always been a challenge and it’s what I fell back on after the bowling ran into trouble. I have unfinished business there … I could get decent starts and anchor the team while mayhem happened at the other end … but I never got the big scores or massive innings that won the game for our team.

Yep. Unfinished business there. Good … but not great. That’s something I’d like to have a chance to correct.

Fielding was always fun. When let off the leash and fielding closer in, I took it as a challenge between me and batsman. Could I anticipate where they were going to nudge the ball ? Who would win the race between getting the ball back in and the batsman getting to the other end ? Fielding rewarded perfection with results.

I liked the fielding.

Yep. Cricket again. A daunting prospect perhaps at 42 years old, an age where I’m wise (HAHAHAHA!) to remember the pain from previous cricket. But there is that instinct though. To run. To gallop. To chase that ball. To pit the wits against the opposition. To be part of a team again.

Computer games are fun and all but the multiplayer is tainted by cheating and it not being a level playing field. Cricket is totally level. It supports all shapes and sizes, it’s playable for both young and old. It rewards skill, cleverness and the ability to out think the opposition. It’s both a team game and a game for individuals. But it usually needs a team effort to win.

I like cricket. I miss the playing. I miss contributing to us winning, both by being a loud little yappy so and so constantly encouraging my team mates through shouting nonsense and by the fielding, batting and if I’m fortunate maybe … bowling !

Looking forwards to the season to come !

Especially if it looks like that. Pardon the sun glinting off the skipper’s head there. It’s blinding isn’t it. That was at my last game, played at a lovely ground in the middle of rural Bristolshire.

That too !

There is a station.

It orbits a planet around a far flung star.

To reach it, involves an epic journey.

The reward for this journey ? The almost mythical Hutton Orbital Mug.

Many Commanders aspiring to the Elite have attempted the trip. Some have even made it. You can acquire a recreation of the true Hutton Mug here (at the Redbubble shop I grabbed the pic from).

But Hutton Orbital isn’t just about the mugs … There are always rumours popping up about Hutton Orbital. Ships for free. Massive trading profits. Ultra rare and valuable goods. Missions with huge rewards. If you believe all the rumours, then Hutton would be made of pure gold.

However I did hear one rumour and it rang truly enough that I thought I had to check it out. The rumour was that if you went to Hutton on a certain day, you could pick up one of those rarer ships that ordinarily, you would have to spend a lot of time currying favour with the Federation or Empire. I do like the pretty Imperial ships, so I thought I had to check it out. And these are big ships too, that normally can’t land at Hutton.

One long trip to Hutton later in my Imperial Clipper … I have wanted one of those Cutters for a long time now. And it is a long trip, hopefully worth it ? For the non initiated in Elite, Hutton Orbital is in the Alpha Centauri system. This has 3 stars, Alpha Centauri A and B are where you enter and they’re quite close to each other. Most space stations in Elite are 50 to 1000 light seconds away, which doesn’t take much travel time at all. Hutton Orbital is at a planet around Proxima Centauri, which is 0.22 light years away from the entry point. Or 6.8 million light seconds.

That takes a while …. hence the rumours that crop up. Not many people want to make the trip to check them out, or the rumour is spread as an answer to daft questions being asked. Enough natter ! This needs pictures !!!! As per usual, click for bigger. I play the game on 1440p so there are lots of pixels to see …

Here I am on the way there in the Clipper. It takes a while and you can get up to quite a high speed. In the old Star Trek (Original Series !) warp scale, that’s warp 12.3 as the speed topped out at 1866 times the speed of light.

But I’ll fast forward all that and here I am coming out at the station.

I did spot something from the outside though. What’s this ?

For the MUG !

It looks a pretty desolate place from the outside. Coming into land …

Finally, safely inside :

And finally, looking at the station services page.

But you wanna see the big ship on the pad don’t you ? Here we are ! The Imperial Cutter as promised ! Looks like a tight fit.

There is a bit more to it than that though. You cannot go to Hutton without picking up a mug. It’ll be worth it to cover the cost of getting the hull back up to spec after the trip. The Clipper was down to 32% costing 151k to repair !

Look-at-that …. all those mugs and not enough gin to put in them all.

Make the trip ! But make sure you take something big or that offer to pick up the Cutter or Corvette won’t be available to you. Hurry though … or they won’t let you land for that Cutter or Corvette.

informative tech update, for gamer system

Factor ?

Maybe speed. Maybe age. Maybe capacity. Maybe size. Energy, tolerance ? 😀

Breaking strain of a kitkat ! Yep. That’s quite limited. Or is it breaking strain of my ability to resist the Mini Eggs …

Or how you can break up an Easter Egg before opening the foil on the outside. That’s quite satisfying in a curious way. I’ll hold the Easter Egg maybe 12 inches above my desk and let it drop. Do that a few times and it’s usually broken up enough to happily munch.

(Don’t take it out of the foil before dropping. That’ll be messy and you’ll have the crime of losing chocolate as it goes everywhere).

I do apologise. I am on the rambles …

Last weekend was a family visit weekend ! Something to do with Mothers Day. We always make the trip back, plus flowers appear. I’ll also get flowers for Craziequeen, because she’s helped me out a lot over the past 17 years. The flowers are a good thank you.

I do still miss the Ben Pup though. You hear little noises around their house and you think there’s a little Pooch Nose about to poke in, say hello and check things out. I bet he misses the steak too. I miss the steak that the mum and dad cook.

The travel still knocks me out. I’ll hang in there this week, chill out next weekend and then it’s just one more week until I have a week off. Definitely chill out time.

I’ll be ok though. What I had been very worried about was how damaged I got on Saturday. Wasn’t doing much, just driving around Lincolnshire with the mum and dad. Not really walking much, or being too strenuous but all that time inside socks, bandages and my trainers wasn’t good for my ailing feet.

Apparently not as bad as it looked though. I could probably go through tomorrow at work without the bandages. Progress ! I’ll keep them on for the rest of the week (well – when I’m wearing the socks). The bandages protect my feet and ankles against me as much as the outside world.

Limiting … speed ?

I weakened tonight and picked up a copy of Mass Effect Andromeda. I’ll be looking forward to finding a chance to play through that. It’s a great universe that they’ve made for this game and this fourth game transplants it to a whole new galaxy.

The download for it is actually limiting my internet connection ! (This doesn’t happen too often).

Run internets ! Run fast !

Yep. My network currently has 2 streams running from the internet (one to desktop, one to laptop). It has the Mass Effect download just finishing now. And my laptop is streaming audio to my hifi. I use the old Airport Express system which I think is being killed off by Apple, a pity because it’s an excellent system. With the game download, I’m actually having to reduce the speed on the streams to stop them from lagging …

Crikey … I’m using the cable internet (I’m not giving them free ads) and it’s behaving itself today. Despite the big download and streams, it’s still pulling the data in at 75Mbps. Since I ditched their awful Superhub, the network has been excellent. The Superhub means I now avoid Netgear bits, because the big problem it has is deep within the bits Netgear are responsible for (continual disconnects from WoW when I still played, plus I’d have to reset everything every night for that audio streaming).

My laptop is probably getting closer to end of life too. It’s not there yet but I did think I might have killed it on the weekend.

I have more beef with Apple. Apparently they disabled support for the network wifi widget I use to correct the problems with my laptop. I can plug it in, it’s detected but the laptop won’t allow it to turn on. This is a change that’s been made since Mac OS Sierra came in. The widget worked on 10.8.5.

Anti Owner practices like that are why I will no longer recommend anything by Apple. I can’t see the reasoning behind locking out devices like that. The rummaging around with new drivers nearly bricked the laptop. I retrieved it … but that was nervous.

No new laptop yet. The trigger will be when the hard disc runs out of space. It still has 57GB free, out of 250, so it has a while to go yet. With the high entry cost of Macs, it still owes me more than the 3.5 years it has given me so far. I’m more likely to upgrade the desktop at the moment, currently looking at AMD’s Ryzen processor and hoping it’ll give good price/performance.

Wow – tired.

I think after one stream ends tonight (feel better soon Chris – much pain with that one today and yesterday) I’ll be starting off a Sleepy Ryder character in Mass Effect Andromeda and then chilling with more videos. Tiredness is real.

If I don’t post again before, look out for the 3 posts that will drop in quick succession on Friday night (starting 12.30 on April 1st). I hope you enjoy them. In the tradition of April 1st, they’re out for laughs most of all. And to make you wonder if they’re actually true …

Let me know what you think of them !

Crikey.

That was unexpected, the events in London today. I wasn’t involved, nor I believe was anyone I know or am even loosely connected with.

It’s an odd feeling. This one is so much closer to home than the events that hit France and Belgium. It’s very much closer to home than the active terror campaigns that are the lead cause of the waves of immigrants and refugees looking to resettle in Europe.

The reactions to it are varied. There was almost some aggro today on one of the Discord chat servers due to the reaction of both me and a fella there who lives in the Ukraine. The “normal” reaction to events like this is shock, paralysis and a need to find out more information on the event. The shock is a normal reaction to knowing innocent lives have been lost.

What is different is how we react with that shock. Do we enter a paralysis, an incapacitation ? Or do we react by seeing what can be learned from the event. By asking the question – how do we make sure this does not happen to me or people I know.

The fella in the Ukraine has got used to a situation (due to the situation with Russia on the borders) where they are in a not very cold conflict. From what he says, it is almost at undeclared war status over there. He’s half expecting to have to prepare to face Crazy Russians at his doorstep. So his reaction was pretty much “Shrug, this stuff happens every day over here”. Fair enough ! But it nearly got him in deep trouble with the other people on that forum.

My own reaction is rather desensitized as well.

My early years were spent living in Northern Ireland in the late 70s, early 80s. It wasn’t at the height of the Troubles but there was still active terrorism going on. The IRA led terror was continuing even into the 90s with the 1996 bombing of Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre. Omagh was bombed in a particularly cynical and vicious attack in 1998. And that was a situation that had actually improved and settled down a bit from when I lived over there.

My mum had car tyres slashed and had been subject to attacks and near attacks while working in the hospitals and health centres. My dad doesn’t talk about it too much but being placed in a factory on the Falls Road (a no go area to the wrong religion) was a big factor in us moving back to England.

Northern Ireland was still quite a dangerous place. I was in Lisburn when 2 bombs went off. I wasn’t close, I don’t think anyone was killed in either bomb although that’s from around 35 years ago. We were caught up in several bomb threat evacuations as well.

The IRA had a certain code. They would phone in a warning of a bomb attack before it happened, although to satisfy that code the warning could be overly cryptic and too late for anything to be done about it. In the case of Omagh, there were two bombs. A first bomb drove everyone away from it to evacuation collection areas … which was where the second bomb was.

Ok.

All this terror. The world can be a genuinely scary place.

What do we do about it ?

We don’t let them win. Definitely don’t let them win.

If we change how we live, then they win. Don’t let that happen. I was extremely concerned around last year’s Comic Con because I thought that was going to be attacked. It is after all, a festival of Western (and Asian, which I think the Evil People see as Western as well) culture, with many young people clustered around. It’s a high value target and, due to cosplays too, probably a soft place to attack.

Sad to say.

I think the relief of it not happening (I’d been hiding my concern from the person I was with, I didn’t want her to pick up on me being worried) was why I drastically attacked my outsides after I got home. I survived the day but was shredded for most of the rest of the week. I had the week off but it was about the Thursday before I was starting to normalise.

That’s the lesson I would like to pass on :

Be vigilant. But do not change your intentions for how you want to live your life. At no point did the thought “Do we still go to Comic Con ?” cross my mind. Same for the Lords trip (also a high value target considering who was playing) beforehand.

We’ll be going to Comic Con again this year. It’s too much fun to miss. Especially with the company. Same with the IST20 again at Lords.

I don’t intent to change any of my plans due to the threat from Crazy Mad Evil People. But I will be more vigilant. Like this evening coming home from work, I walked on the other side of the street on the way out, the side that isn’t nearly as vulnerable to being snatched into a van before you realise what’s happening (this is a genuine threat).

There was a similar incident to today in Glasgow a few years back. An attack on an airport I used to use regularly. I’d been in there a few weeks before that attack and couldn’t believe it when I saw it on the news. A group of (actually smart) idiots had driven a 4×4 up to the airport with the intention of burning down the terminal, trapping people inside by blocking the main exit. They hadn’t considered the anti-ram bollards, which were more than a match for the 4×4. They didn’t get in and the only damage was to the idiot crazy people and burn marks on the outside of the building.

We were flying in and out of that airport a few weeks later (it happened during Xmas leave, so a couple of weeks until we were back).

These things happen. It’s by different people but there are still a lot of Crazy Evil People out there. The threat has moved from being mostly Northern Ireland groups to being global. We need to remember, we need to be more vigilant. But we must not let it paralyse us, must not let it demoralise us, must not let it affect our resolve to live our lives the way we choose.

And one last note for our communities and security forces too. There was an incident a few years ago in Bristol where a Crazy Evil Person was intending to bomb the Cabot Circus shopping area. The security people had their eye on him and stopped him but the real heroes were the Muslim community who sounded the alarm on the crazy person living among them.

I suspect we will see more of the anti-different movement that we’re all victims of. People being uncomfortable about others around them wearing traditional garb (this distrust is really bad). More prejudice against the usual targets, those who are different. Don’t fall into that trap. We’re still more likely to be hit here by Crazy Irish Separatists than by people from Asia/Middle East and they look just the same as we do.

Be vigilant;
Don’t let things like today change what you do;
Remember those who have been lost;
Avoid letting it break communities.

PS On a lighter note … I have 3 April 1st Secret Projects for you this year. I hope you enjoy them … I’m desperate to post them !!! This life should be about fun like what japes we can do for April 1st and what other ways we can brighten up people’s lives, not about our reactions to Crazy Evil People.

I’m needing (maybe!) to spend some of the money again.

Although tonight’s spend was more of an essential spend rather than an optional spend.

There are 2 techie related things that I’m looking (or have) to change. One is the desktop computer, another is my house phone …

The house phone has been eating the batteries. This seems to be a thing with cordless house phones. They’ll work ok for a few years and then you get low battery warnings after 15-30 minutes of phone call. On Sunday, it was saying low battery after 15 minutes of being on hold at Esure.

(Esure have been fired, partly due to excessive durations of on hold, mostly because they cost £150 more than who I went with).

So I have a new house phone now after that 4th set of batteries died. I think I got the 3rd and 4th sets around Xmas time and the phone has gone through both since then. Ouch.

What’s the other techie related thing ?

There is a new game incoming …

One game series I have put a LOT of time into is the Mass Effect series. It’s a trilogy where you play Commander Shepard, a space marine of the 22nd century who finds herself* on a crusade to save the galaxy from rampaging AI warships who invade every 50,000 years to purge the galaxy of technologically advanced life.

*(FemShep Best Shep. That Jennifer Hale voice brings the character and the games to life).

The next game, called Mass Effect Andromeda is nearly upon us and from what I’ve seen so far, it could be a lot of fun. I suspect though with the developer’s recent form, that it might be incredibly padded though.

But … it has 2 problems. One is price, I am certainly not prepared to drop £50 (or £42 with an online shop discount) on a game. That’s ridiculous but sadly seems to be becoming a norm now due to far too many people who get caught up in the hype and allow the publishers to think that we consumers will accept higher prices.

The other problem is the minimum spec … It calls for a minimum of i5-3570 processor, which is the next generation on from the i5-2500k that I have. It would also like more memory. My machine has 8GB, although far too much of that is used up on all the browser tabs I insist on keeping open on it.

This machine has done extremely well though. It was built in October 2011 (I had to look back really far for the post ! Here’s a link) and the central parts of it have survived ok since then. Hmm …

Except for : 1 power supply, 1 motherboard sound circuitry, 2 hard disc upgrades, 1 hard disc death, same hard disc mysteriously resurrecting, an operating systems and finally the death of 2.5 graphics cards.

So after an Intel based machine did so well for 5.5 years ? What am I looking at to replace it ?

You recognise Intel chips by their number. i3, i5 and i7 are cheap, good and performance versions. The 2500 is how good it is and how old it is. The 2000 is for 2nd generation Core, the 500 is for it being “almost best of the type”. The latest Intel chips are 7000 series, or 7th generation. To be honest though, Intel hit somewhat of a wall with performance. Whereas before, my machines might last 18 months to 2 years before the market moved on to outclass it. Now … I can still run the latest high performance stuff reasonably well, albeit with better graphics cards appearing every few years.

I don’t really need to upgrade but …. that Mass Effect game is tempting.

What am I looking at for an upgrade ?

AMD have a new chip out called Ryzen. It’s early days but it might be promising as an alternative to Intel. The chip I’d get isn’t out yet though and I’ll want to see many, many benchmark numbers before I switch back to AMD.

The new system would take a lot of parts from the old one and the specs would be :
Intel i5-7500 (ish) or AMD Ryzen 5.
16GB memory.
A suitable Asrock motherboard.
The nVidia 1060 graphics card that appeared a couple of months ago. (Time flies !)
Hard discs – 250GB SSD with Windows 10 on, 1.5TB and 250GB of normal drives.

The core upgrade would cost a little over £400, depending on how much the AMD Ryzen 5 comes out as. Only one of the good tech sites I follow has it listed and it has “Call For Prices” …

Will I upgrade and get the game ? Maybe. Maybe not. I need data before I make a decision. The long life of that Intel chip has given me the luxury of being able to make the decision when I want to, instead of rushing into a poor decision.

Try to make decisions when you have all the data you can get.

That game does look rather shiny though.

Before I kick off cataloguing what might look like a collection of whinges …

I’m actually feeling not too bad now ! Ok. I’m needing the Easter break to come for a rest and recharge but I’m actually feeling as if I’m approaching the end of that dark tunnel now.

So even though I’m about to list a bunch of ouchies, this should all be seen as positives. Yeah. I ouch. You probably ouch too ! But we keep on going. We don’t let it beat us. I gotta admit, there are days when I have retreated back home and hastily abandoned plans to head off somewhere after work. Even up to last week, where I abandoned a few scheduled trips out to top up the supplies because I wanted to tend to ailing outsides.

But … pic !

There we go. Always need something appropriate for the thumbnail pic.

Yeah. I’m battered and feel my age. But I’m in better condition now than I have been in years and that tends to lead to daft thoughts like seeing about Running Very Fast again on the way back from the Chinese. There was a time when I had to be careful, as my legs were so swollen running would have made them bleed. Ouch.

Fast forward to now and …

My feet and ankles actually survived a day today without the bandages on ! What felt weird actually is that I’ve gotten used to wearing effectively two layers of socks between my feet and my shoes. My shoes felt really loose. Must do them up more. Although …. I have always had thin feet and used to have trouble doing the laces up enough.

I feel as if I could run very fast again. I can definitely do the indefinite walking again now. I have a bad problem in my hips but that doesn’t affect the Go Forward movement. It affects going sideways and I’ll literally scream if I move the legs in the wrong direction but I have no pain or trouble when I’m up to speed. And the running very fast used the same kind of mechanics as the quick walking. The turning and running sideways which I need to do a lot in cricket … that’s another story !

One season, I played through it mostly injured. I had two major injuries that year. Quite early on, I must have torn a groin muscle that’s an old injury that never healed properly. I kept niggling it again over the years. It didn’t affect running very fast but …. I could barely turn or go sideways. That was frustrating. It started from bowling … I added a bit more length to my run up to get more speed at delivery, which was too much for my hip. Oops. (Bowling involves putting the body through some stretched stress positions and it can cause a fair bit of damage).

The other injury that year was a suspected broken/cracked shin from a heavy impact in the field. Big ouchies and it led to my first and only retired hurt while batting (Oh wait – Nose Job 1 was the first retired hurt). To be honest, that retired hurt was more down to arms that could barely lift the bat any more and I just couldn’t hit the ball far enough to score runs. But the trigger was being hit on the back of the same leg that had the heavy shin injury. I could ignore the pain before but not after the second hit in the wounded place.

That shin injury came back too … When the troubles with my outsides started, I thought it was as a consequence of the shin injury. As in, ulceration brought on by blood vessels being destroyed under that shin impact. (This is one reason it went untreated for too long).

But I am starting to feel more like my old self again with the physical stuff. It’s the little things that you hear, that you say, that you feel, that you do.

(Picture is from a site that apparently harvests and steals pictures so no credit. Unless you’re an artist who’s work you see there ! Will add credit gladly)

The thing I heard was surprise when I said I’d walked 4.5 miles home the other week. I just saw that as something I could do again now. When I did it, I managed to get my mind in the frame where I turn off thoughts of duration and just keep going at a pace that balanced energy going out with energy I could recover. (It’s maybe 75% of my maximum speed, maybe less now). Going up Snowdon was a struggle, although that was more my minerals getting imbalanced (not enough water = cramp).

Yeah, my legs hated me when I cooled down from that walk but that’s natural from muscles that haven’t been used to their potential for a while. I could do that walk again. I don’t walk in to work because it’s more convenient to take that bus in and it’s pretty quick at the moment.

I do look at other people and get inspiration from them.

Yeah, I’ve had a pretty rough few years but I think I’m coming out of that now. Other people are stuck with their conditions.

You have to count your blessings. Look to the positives instead of the negatives. (And I just remembered there a long running Alphabet of the Human Heart which I’ve left for far too long !). What do you have that makes you special ?

Everyone is special. Yes. You. You’re special. You can do things no one else can in a way that no one else would. You are unique and that uniqueness is your gift to yourself and the world.

Just believe in yourself and you can make it happen.

Yep. You too.

Yeah. I struggle to start moving due to stiffness and pain that comes from having far too much fun running around a cricket field like a mad thing or from bouncing around a badminton court. Many people inspire me to ignore pain like that.

Depression is a gathering problem now. I know of a growing number of people who suffer from it. Yet they take stock, pick themselves up and keep on fighting. Sometimes they need to unburden how they’re feeling by having a complain. If you feel you need to share a problem to help you deal with it, Go for it ! Good friends will be happy to help you out because they know you’ll return the favour when they need help.

We all need help sometimes.

And people will be overjoyed that you were the one they chose to help them with what they’ll see as a deep, dark trouble.

I will mention one person in particular though. That’d be Radderss (link on the right under the Twitch/Youtube section). She’s a lovely young lady who is cursed with many, many health issues. We see her have to disappear at very short notice midstream to be ill. Yet she’ll come back, put herself back together and be totally entertaining. And sweet.

She’s been a good find this one, streamers of that quality are extremely rare. Most streamers don’t engage with their audience or they are just annoying people that make me hit the X To Close button quickly. HeyChrissa is another excellent one. They don’t go on that list on the right hand panel if I don’t enjoy watching what they do.

It is inspirational to someone like me. My damage doesn’t compare to the health woes of people who have registered disabilities. I still have all my limbs and senses and they still work pretty well. My outsides have been nasty and my insides have betrayed me too (RIP Pizza Binges!). But my own issues are minimal compared to some.

And that’s people who keep on going, defeat their inner demons, find workarounds for their outer disabilities and LIVE.

That’s a good way to live.

LIVE ! Today. Tomorrow. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the day. But live. And live with a smile.

And …

You can do it.

I think this counts as a good weekend !

I have apparently been healing a lot this weekend … About time too if you ask me.

Not quite sure what I’ve been doing though. It’s been a chilled out weekend starting with watching Logan on Friday afternoon. It’s a great film. I’ve been watching a few films lately … On Saturday last week, it was A Cure For Wellness which was a very curious film. It had its theme running through and you never quite know whether the central character is imagining what’s going on or not. Oh and there was the now traditional smuggling in of the popcorn too.

Yep. Great company made last weekend’s film outing great fun.

Logan was good too. The highlight of it is looking at what happens to faded heroes. I identify with that a fair bit. It’s been a good long while since I’ve Run. And by Run … I mean Run Very Fast. Don’t worry, that’s not a harbinger of me coming back to cricket. At least …. it probably isn’t. We’ll see.

That might give you a clue to what’s been happening this weekend.

On Friday before Logan, I took the chance to pick up more of the Miracle Healing Gunk … (aka HC45 hydrocortisone cream). I was on the last dregs of what I had left, having been very sparing with it over the past couple of months. I’d been using Eurax cream which seemed to be helping but open wounds on my feet and ankles just weren’t healing. You have to be careful with this stuff, at least I have to be. Too much and it’ll cause problems of its own. It seems that if I keep swapping around what I use, I get the good benefits.

Guess what …

Yep. I’m going to brave going to work tomorrow without the bandages that I’ve been sporting lately. I’ll take them with me in case I have to put them on again. The worst bits of my ankles were on the place where the seam of your shoes are. I’ve been wearing my work shoes a lot lately when going out. Normally I’d only wear them for work but because my trainers are much harsher on that ankle part, I haven’t been able to wear them. Same for my boots, they press in on the bad bit and rip it up.

It feels weird. The progress over the weekend has been very encouraging (on Thursday, the left ankle was especially nasty although that sorted itself out even before the HC45 influence). Chinese was the choice on Friday after getting back from Logan and I could feel that urge to pin the ears back and go for Speed.

Not had that for a while.

It’s a good feeling. Maybe cricket ? Maybe ? The reactions are shot and I’d need new glasses but I bet that muscle memory is still there. Wonder if the arm would support bowling. Last time I tried, none of the various bowling actions I have or their variations worked. But the arm has had a few years to heal … or stiffen.

More random thoughts ?

I’ve had a few random thoughts bouncing around lately. The good ones tend to evaporate before I can write them down though.

Actually won the lottery yesterday ! No silly. Didn’t win money, just a free lucky dip entry into Wednesday’s draw. Curiously, it was on the “pick least often drawn” system. The other systems have got me nothing, although I don’t actually enter the lottery too often. It would be good to have that boost to the coffers though.

I’m watching too much telly … Too much Star Trek Voyager to rewatch ! Plus I’m watching Earth Final Conflict as a daily. (Which means I save up a few episodes and watch several in a stretch). There were a few things that I missed out on about 15 years ago when they were on first time and Earth Final Conflict was one of them. There is a tree in the back yard that blocks the satellite signal … and these shows were on satellite …

This weekend’s gaming has been a bit of Stellaris again. I started up a game which looks like it will be a rock solid foundation for rolling over the galaxy. It’s a fairly well modded game with expansions that won’t work when the next patch comes … That’s the thing with mods on these games, it can take time after a patch before the mods are available again and some mods just don’t get maintained.

I started another Motorsport Manager campaign as well … This time it’s with another weak team looking to build into a world beater. I’ll be mercilessly exploiting the lower division this time in order to farm achievements … When I press the button on going for performance, I fully expect the team to be a few seconds ahead by the time I go up the leagues.

Can’t just play the motor racing game though. I want to go through XCom 2 again at some point, especially as I bought a couple of expansions for that which I haven’t tried yet.

There’s a saying I keep coming up with though :

“If you’re not enjoying something, give it a break. Don’t do it. Do something else.”

I apply that to games most of all. Some games, I’ve sunk lots of time in and realised that … I’m not actually having fun with this game. You want to continue to see what kind of story is in there but sometimes that story is far too much effort to unlock. Stellaris gets like that. Cosmonautica definitely gets like that.

Elite is a very pretty game but … very shallow. Once you done one trading binge, exploring binge or combat binge, there isn’t very much new in there. Perhaps later when they add more to it. Multiplayer isn’t the answer. I should look at Rebel Galaxy again, I quite enjoyed that one. And then there is the temptation of Starbound and Stardew Valley.

Cricket can be a mixed bag. Some games, are over almost before they begin. Other games are far more balanced. I liked cricket because something different could happen with every ball and I could genuinely make a difference by being a Scary Person in the field, madly capering around, pouncing on the ball (and not knowing what to do with it when I got it – but the batsmen didn’t know that).

Gosh. The diminishing scroll bar tells me this post is getting long … time to close.

Gaming – is being fun. Or is it ? It’s definitely being a time filler.
Healing – is very promising …. Hopefully this week at work doesn’t do much damage. Not out of the woods yet though.
Energy levels – hmm … could do better, although that might be to do with a Stellaris induced missing of dinner last night.

Oops.

Back to listening to …. more Stellaris !!! Enter Elysium is doing a playthrough of the Star Trek total conversion for Stellaris and that mod looks pretty promising so far. The game engine seems well suited and they’ve done a good job with the mod.

PS One more wandomness ! I may need to upgrade the PC soon … and I’m torn between looking at AMD’s new processor and staying with Intel. The usual thing of : Intel expensive but better quality, AMD cheaper but dodgier … that’s turning around apparently with AMD’s new chip. But … they only have the flagship model out at the moment which is too expensive for me. Oh well.

nice post