Sleepypete - Sleepypete's Pillow

Back, Boat, Controller, Drive, Meme

February 14, 2022

10:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

I had a bit of a blur of a weekend which followed something daft that happened on Thursday. Let’s just say I had a daft idea and the means to make it happen.

Picture. A short green pocket dragon is standing in the middle of a 5 pointed pentagram star made of Smarties sweets of varying colours. The dragon wears a bib with "Feed Me" on it. The scene is lit with a white pen light, with ominous shadows ... — That’ll do it

People seemed to like that one, it didn’t take much time for me to make it happen. I think the juggle of phone camera and my pen torch light helped add a little spooky. (Timers are super handy for when you need a hand to hold the phone and a finger to press the picture button). Oh and I like Smarties too. It’s drawn a few lovely reactions which made my day when I saw them. I get the ideas in my head for pictures like that and it feels good when I can make them happen.

And then I hurt my back on Friday afternoon and that was Brain in a cloud of subconscious pain for the weekend. That’s a weird Me thing apparently. I wasn’t getting much actual pain from my back, so I must have just come short of seriously hurting it. But I could feel something pretty Wrong back there and I was getting the warnings. It’s like my subconscious could feel the issues from it and natural painkilling was stopping me from properly feeling it. But it was clouding my thinking.

It’s started to improve today, which is good. Plus my mental state at work is far better than it was last year. Mental state is pretty critical to the rest of your well being. (But I’m sure everyone knows that !) Mine goes up and down, I’m completely driven by confidence and that feels like it’s got some rungs to climb back up on.

Oh and boat show on Friday. That should be good. I just have to get myself over to it. Pictures will most definitely happen. The Brain Fog over the weekend led to me retreating into the shell a little bit, although I have finished off The Expanse series and the Space 1999 Technical manual. I did try something new though … How it started :

Game screenshot. Automation. We see two cars on a coppery sea side scene with flat rock among puddles. The nearer car is a small modern red convertible with a slot grille. Behind is is a dark blue classic car convertible with more curves and round headlights. — Party on the beach ?

Those come from the in development game, Automation. It’s a car building game where you can get in to pretty detailed and well modeled parameters for the engines, gearboxes, chassis and suspension layouts. And on top, you can fiddle with the body options with a huge range of basic shells to work with which you add the features like headlights, mirrors, vents and door handles to. Anyway, that’s my first couple of cars. It made them pretty.

It has a companion simulator application called BeamNG.Drive, which lets you transfer over the cars from Automation so you can drive them around. Because what could make looking at a pretty car better than actually driving the car around and it has a number of tracks to test out your cars on, with the parameters that you designed into them. The two cars in the picture are pretty modest affairs though. The blue one is modeled on the old Triumph Spitfire Mk3, which was a 1960s era cheap sports car. The car started with an 1147cc engine and the Mk3 has a 1.3 litre engine. Small … but these cars were tiny without the modern features that add to the weight, so they were still quite sprightly. (The Spitfire competed with the Austin Sprite too).

The red one is a more modern interpretation, still a 1.3 litre but with a turbo attached for more power and other features included like fuel injection over the dual carburettors of the old Spitfire. Oh and a sensible suspension set up because I added in an interpretation of the rather dangerous rear suspension of the Spitfire.

This is probably the time for the “How it finished” …

Game screenshot. BeamNG Drive. We see the blue car from before. We're looking at its front left quarter with it straddling the kerb on the inside of a bend. The front right corner is showing major damage. — Oops

Oh well. That’s from one of my early attempts at driving in BeamNG Drive. I’m using a controller because setting up the steering wheel takes a bit of an effort and I need to clean some of the built up Stuff on my desk in order to accommodate it. I needed to tame the controller a bit too, plus it’s about 10 years since I tried to drive with a controller and I had a concussion at the time :-D.

It was curious though, the game/app drove pretty much how I expected at lower speeds … and then bit back pretty nastily at over 100mph. I haven’t driven over 100mph in real life, (stick to 70mph yes guvnor honest) so I don’t have a valid comparison. But I think about it and without any aerodynamic devices like spoilers, splitters or diffusers, the car body will start to act like a lifting body with enough speed which means … unstable. And crashes.

I quite enjoyed that little look at driving games again and was starting to get the hang of it again after a few attempts at doing laps. I’ve been looking at Game Pass and Forza Horizon. I’d quite like to try getting into driving games again, they were fun.

I mentioned book !

The Expanse is finished, long live the Expanse. I still need to watch series 6 but I saw the books through to the end at the weekend. I’m not going to say anything about the content or storyline except that they end it well. There’s a satisfying conclusion and the last page gave a “YEY that’s a great way to finish it”. Which is about all you can ask from a series of this type. Let it tell its story … and then finish on its own terms. That’s how it should be. I was a big fan of the Honorverse series, which I gather were supposed to end at a Point … but they lost their way badly after they continued after that particular point.

It was similar with Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War series, those ended well too. I’d recommend giving those books a read. I’ll reread both the Embers of War series and The Expanse series at some point, which is perhaps the best recommendation you can give a series of books.

I’ve also finished reading the Space 1999 Technical Manual too. I have to say the writing in the technical manual was far superior to the writing in the series. If you were to use it as source material for a role playing game, it would be top notch. The Moonbase Alpha setting was very well visualised and set up, it and the characters deserved better stories.

Next up is Mutineer’s Moon, which is another series re-read. Except in this case, I only re-read the first two books and don’t bother with the third.

Have you read any great books lately ? See you around, stay safe, be well, don’t be a lunatic in the car.

Browser, Moon, Horizon, Film

by Sleepypete

February 6, 2022

8:51 pm

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games, geeky

Hello everyone,

Missed posting again ! I must post more regularly again. At least I’m able to post on the main browser again. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first … Been checking out a sale acquired game. It’s pretty.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Our heroine is standing on a hill, looking towards the lower left. Behind her is a fog filled valley with a scattering of thin, tall trees plus a couple of wooden tower buildings. In the background, there are mountains. Our character Aloy, is in the foreground. She has braided ginger hair and is an athletic built lady wearing light leather garb and boots. — Hey ! Horizon’s over there

The game is Horizon Zero Dawn and while it came out on console in 2017, it came to PC in 2020. It’s pretty demanding on the graphics too, so I had my eye on it partly from acquiring something super pretty to see what the graphics card could do but also because it’s got a renowned story. It’s one of the best games of its type in the 2010s. The graphics do help there but graphics aren’t everything. Where it really scores is the story, the world they’ve built and how that fits into the story and just how everything in the game works. I’m in the early days so far but something I was really enjoying was even just how the foliage reacts to your presence.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. We're looking out towards a grassy area sloping up to the left. On the left, there are a series of light orange coloured rocks. We can just see Aloy's head lurking in a patch of long grass with red leaves, at the bottom of the shot. In the distance are the tall thin trees and we can see a two legged mechanical beastie a little way down the road. — The Whistle Bush Awaits

So without giving too much away, we’re in an environment that feels a lot like Earth but there are no buildings or signs of our current civilisation. At least that we can see on the surface. Our heroine, Aloy, starts off as a child in the care of a fellow called Rost. They’re both outcasts for (redacted story reasons) and the child phase gives a chance for the game to pass on a few of its gameplay systems. There’s one there up on screen, where there are a series of faint purple triangles that show where the robot’s going to go.

Yep. Game has robots. They start small, resembling predator animals but they’ll get a tad bigger too as the game goes on.

I’m not too far in to the game, I’m barely past the prologue. But I have been taken by what they’ve built here. The terrain feels crafted, in a way that procedural generation cannot do. Even Skyrim, which is a crafted world too, shows signs where they’ve been needing to cheat with terrain textures that repeat in a pattern you can easily see. I haven’t seen that so much in Horizon Zero Dawn, it feels very real. Oh and that foliage will move with you as you pass through it. It’s a stealth action game, so hiding in those red leafed bushes can let you entice over an unsuspecting enemy or mechanical beastie so you can quietly stab them with the big spear.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy sits with back to camera at the bottom left. On the right is a platform made of wooden logs tied together. There are three slim ladies in assorted tan leather garb standing on the platform. One is arching her self backwards with both hands in the air. The platform is in front of a building built from more wooden logs. — Party time !

I was really enjoying this little celebration, with the three ladies on the stage there singing away in something traditional. These are the Nora and they call their warriors Braves, so you can probably guess that the world borrows a lot from Native American culture. And I was loving it in the bits of the game I’ve gotten to so far. The animation of the world is top notch. From the foliage, to the people having a little dance, to the main character reacting to your inputs.

I should say though that I’m running this gorgeous game on a Ryzen 5 3600 machine with 32GB and through a 3060Ti graphics card. That’s Meltdown and it’s turned into a machine that can handle everything it gets given now. It’s a pretty powerful machine, especially in these days of not being able to get hardware due to the shortages that are going on. I was very lucky to get the 3060Ti card when I did, it was literally an offer available for 10 minutes before they were all gone.

Other stuff ? I was actually in work again a couple of times … Once was to rescue the stuff from the locker. The second was to meet the team I’ve been in for a few months now. They’re a good bunch. As per tradition for here, I’m not going to be mentioning the work too much though.

Browser – I’m typing this on a new browser, having had to change because the Waterfox classic was getting too annoying and limited. So I’m on the better Waterfox now that is actually supported. It got to the point where Classic wasn’t allowing me to edit here, didn’t support Netflix, was critically slow in Twitter … etc.

Thursday’s work at work day also gave the excuse to head over to the Mall after, so of course cd’s happened. They’re : Morcheeba’s Blackest Blue, Taylor Swift’s Folklore and a double concert cd from Jean-Michel Jarre.

I’ve also picked up albums from Metric, check out Gold Guns Girls. They got Energy. I’m way overdue a music post so that’s going to happen at some point too. Need to get the Ting Tings latest too, I’m missing an album that they only released on a limited circulation for some reason. The Ting Tings have Energy too.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. It's dark and we're looking up at the sky from boot level on our heroine, Aloy. She's looking off to the right of shot. We can see the top of a broad branched tree to the left. Left half of the sky is cloudy, with a full moon. Right side is clear and we can see the stars. Everything is a tint of green. — Horizon Zero Moon ?

Yep. Game is pretty. I watched another film on Friday at my favoured (empty) local cinema. It was Moonfall. What can I say about Moonfall ? The visuals are done incredibly well. As in, stunning, epic cinematography. The story though … oh dear. Ouch. It’s so bad, it’s actually pretty bad.

The premise is that people on Earth have suddenly discovered that the Moon is dropping out of orbit, with dire consequences for everyone on Earth. There’s not much science in its fiction, which is most of the problem with the movie. There’s a lot of set pieces stitched together with the barest minimum of science to back them up.

I still somewhat enjoyed watching it … but the story is mockbuster quality with top standard visual effects.

One comment on it though – it’s got me wondering about doing a re-read of David Weber’s Dahak series of books. It felt like one of the core premises of Moonfall may have been inspired by what goes on in Mutineer’s Moon and the Armageddon Inheritance in that the Moon may not actually be a big ball of rock …

Anyone else feel like time is zipping along at the moment ? Like you realise that several days have whooshed by without you really registering them ? I have that. I think that’s one contributor to me not posting so much here lately. I need to get some build pics transferring from the phone camera into the PCs so I can post those. Oh and music posts, I’ve still been steadily picking up new stuff.

I think that’s it for me now though. 2 streams on, music on and Olympics to enjoy at some point. And more reading, I’ve been away from the Expanse finale for a little while now.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Out and About and Spiders

by Sleepypete

January 24, 2022

9:16 pm

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geeky, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I’ve been People-ing since the last post … Several times ! And not just for the usual reason of resupplying the food cupboards.

Photo. On the right, we see the arches of a shopping arcade with varied signs in front of the shops. The only readable one says "Bird Blend Tea Co". The arcade is lit throughout by hanging lights and we can see sunshine at the far end. On the left is a shop window with many packets of tea on the shelves. — Anyone for tea ?

That’s Cardiff and I had another run over there a couple of Fridays ago. I like Cardiff, there’s a good selection of varied shops to wander around over there (although I don’t actually go in many of them !). In particular, there’s Troutmark Books which can kinda be seen in that picture. The Bird Blend Tea Co is just a couple of doors up from Troutmark. Wearing a mask does kinda complicate book shopping due to the glasses steaming up but that’s no actual hardship. I was tempted to look at the tea, although I usually have coffee or hot chocolate instead.

The other shops I usually head into are Wally’s Delicatessen for their bonbon sweets selection. Those seem to be suffering at the moment, the selection’s been a bit limited both here and at the Farm Shop service station. Wonder what that’s about … Hopefully it gets back to normal, I’m a bit partial to chocolate mice :-D.

A shop that’s come into the rotation is Antics models. At some point, a remote control car will appear … In kit form of course. Remote control cars come in two types at the moment. There’s pre-built ready to race versions and the older form of cars that come in kits. I’ve had a remote control car before, a Tamiya Grasshopper 2. I was continually taking it apart and rebuilding it. I have this thing where I can look at a mechanical object and visualise how everything works on it, how everything moves and interacts but there’s no substitute for actually taking it apart and seeing how the various components play with each other. So I’d want to have a kit in order to properly understand how it all goes together.

Picture. This is a Grasshopper 2 remote control buggy made by Tamiya. It has a white bodyshell with stickers above a black plastic underbody or chassis. It has two thin wheels at the front and two fatter spiked tyres at the back. Suspension springs are visible. — Ahhh Grasshopper

That’s the Grasshopper 2 I had a few decades ago. It’s powered by an electric motor at the back, with radio gear and the battery in the middle. The radio I had was an old 26MHz radio with 2 channels. One channel does the steering, one tells the motor how much power it’s allowed to use. Each transmitter and receiver pair had a couple of crystals that governed the channel used and there were 6 of these available. Looks like that’s changed now, with the radios working at 2.4GHz, which is an open band which your wifi is highly likely to be using. Trouble is, it’s also becoming a bit of a congested band (because it’s open, everyone uses it) which is why your wifi might drop out. But for the purposes of a remote control car, it should be good … (Uhoh, I’m descending to geeky) Your home wifi would drop out because it wants to push lots of data around and that high bandwidth application is more susceptible to interference. When it’s down to just sending Channel A value, Channel B value, that’ll be a lot more resilient. I’ll have to see how it goes when I get one.

There’s a lot more research to come though, including looking at which type I’d get. There’s a few main types. The buggies like the Grasshopper 2 still exist and they’re ideal for buzzing round a grassy field and tracks will be built up with jumps and obstacles that the buggies would eat up. The other main type is more like a tarmac racing car …

Picture. On the lower half, we see a medium sized red hatchback car. Above, we're looking down from above at the chassis. I'll put a description in the main body but the basics are fairly normal. 2 wheels at each end, a red tub with components in the middle and suspension components for each paid of wheels. — Zoom zoom

Attribution notice – both of the pictures of remote control cars are for Tamiya models.

That’s the type I’m looking at currently. Tamiya do a whole series of cars based on their TT-02 chassis, with different bodies that clip on top. The chassis itself has all the electronics in that central red tub. Above shot, right side of car, there is a servo that links to the steering. Central, that box is an electronic speed controller that is a cleverer version of the simple resistor thing in the Grasshopper. These do power and regenerative braking for the car. (Actually looking again, not so sure ! I think it’s an integrated receiver and servo with separate speed controller – look at the wires). There’s a motor in there as well, driving a 4 wheel drive transfer box at the back of the red tub. In the centre of the tub, that’s a propeller shaft that connects the front axle to the transfer box. In the left side of the tub we see the battery. These cars work off 7.2V, which usually comes from 6 1.2V rechargeable cells in a sealed pack.

Each end has double wishbone suspension for the wheels to let the car cope with the bumps. All sorts of improvement parts are available for these little cars. My Grasshopper 2 just had springs and friction dampers but you can go all the way to miniaturised versions of the coil over dampers that you’ll have on a road car. (A suspension spring to cope with the bumps and an oil filled damper to stop bounciness). Oh and there are also miniaturised bearings all over the place too going from simple nylon toruses up to ball bearings.

Yep. Wanting to build one of these again, race it and then take it apart and rebuild it multiple times.

There are more types of remote control cars too … You have the dedicated flat surface racers that’ll look like F1 cars or Sportscar prototypes. These tend to have minimal suspension and are stripped for speed. And there are the Nitro cars which have tiny engines inside like the FTX Force Pull 18 (link). The 18 is for the size, or 0.18 cubic inches / 3.0cc. Pretty tiny ? It’ll send a remote control car above 50mph. But I don’t want to be messing around with nitro fuelled cars, I’ll stay to electric only for the time being. It’s cleaner …

Where would I get one ? Antics (link) have a few local stockists … I’d go through them first and then there’s a few local clubs around that will hopefully be able to open up again fully soon. But I do need to learn more first though so that when I do spend money, I avoid mistakes through having a bit more knowledge.

Oh ! Cardiff also has a Lego shop, which tends to get a visit.

Photo. Standing on top of two books is one of my pocket dragons. We see him from the side, looking up at a penguin adorning the front of a lego box. The red fluffy dragon can just be seen to the right. — Loot happened

Yep, a couple of escapes … The books are Titan by Stephen Baxter and Eon by Greg Bear. I’ve had my eye on these authors for a while and the thing about cheap book stores is that they make you more likely to spend a little bit in there speculatively … (I keep looking for another copy of Red Mars though).

One place I would like to find in Cardiff is a good music shop … There’s an Oxfam with charity shop second hand cds and another shop with cds. The Oxfam shop is worth a peek but the other shop makes it quite tough to actually browse what they’ve got, so I don’t go to that one.

Note to shops – make it easy for us to buy stuff from you. Make it easy for us to spend our money. If I have to flick through every cd on the shelf to see what’s there, I’ll walk away.

Talking of music, a track from The Outer Wilds just came on. It has a wonderful chilled out soundtrack with a few recurring themes. The game itself is … worth a peek. I don’t own it but I’ve watched a couple of playthroughs of it. I’m being light on description because even a small description is a big spoiler, I can probably say that it’s a mystery adventure where you need to figure out what’s happened and what’s going on in order to fix it all.

Maybe when I get Game Pass, which is definitely going to be a thing … sometime. I haven’t been too great over the past week. I dunno, loss of appetite and still general total lack of energy although it’s somewhat there when I need to draw on it. Why Game Pass ? Since getting the 3060Ti upgrade, I haven’t really pushed its limits to see how pretty it can get. Elite is still a great screenshot generator and I did enjoy heading back in there to get a hyperspace upgrade (not yet delivered!).

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our Imperial Cutter starship can be seen descending to a rugged planetary surface. We're looking over the ship from behind and the starboard side. Purple engine exhaust is flaring from a wing engine and several central engines. The ship is white at the front and on the two wings, blending to purple at the back. — Tiamat arriving

That’s my flagship, Tiamat’s Chariot, descending to another planetary base on a trading mission. I’ll have a Fleet Carrier at some point to make it easier to get silly amounts of contributions for the community goals. The carrier needs a name though … I haven’t had the appropriate idea hit yet.

Yep. Elite’s pretty but it only pushes the graphics card because the Odyssey expansion is an unoptimised mess that should be better. I do own Control courtesy of Humble Monthly, this is apparently a benchmark game for graphics but … I find it drab, dull and uninteresting, so I won’t be playing that. Outer Worlds might be worth another look. But the thing I’m likely to indulge in is the racing game, Forza Horizon 5. I haven’t played racing games since 2013 ish, when I was unknowingly suffering from a concussion which meant I just couldn’t play those games. Better now.

And there’s a few more interesting titles on Game Pass too. It would have to shove Idle Champions aside though, yep, still addicted to going through the stories in that one :-D.

My shoulder is starting to rebel though at all this typing. Dunno why there, my posture’s ok. I have People’d more over the past week. I’ve actually been in to work instead of working from home all the time. I needed to pick up a replacement car pass and to remove the stuff from my locker before those go away. Including a set of coffee mugs that surprisingly didn’t say hi let us out when I opened the locker for the first time in almost 2 years.

Spiderman No Way Home happened on Friday too, in a completely empty similar. I’m not sure how that particular cinema stays operating but I have no complaints. Apart from lacking headrests for the seats, the food’s good, the films are good and it’s totally quiet. So I keep going there when I’m on a solo cinema run.

I’ve also been researching the road cars too … but I think that’s one for another post, especially as that’s likely to be for 2 years time. The ES I have now is a great car, it’s just way too big and the smaller, cheaper ~~toys~~ cars pack in more toys.

See you all next time, stay safe out there.

Randomised Thoughts

by Sleepypete

January 11, 2022

12:27 am

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boat

Hello again,

I have that “I need to write a post!” feeling, which usually connects to Brain having thoughts that it needs to extract from the grey matter and put somewhere else. And then I ask Brain what I should be writing about and Brain goes :

Picture. A green Pocket Dragon is standing up, looking toward us with a slight lean forwards. The left paw is off to his side, his right paw is to his face with one digit extended in a "Shushing" gesture. — Don’t tell anyone !

Yep. Brain goes : nope, not giving a solid idea to write about.

There’s a few random real world stuff things at the moment that have caught the attention … Couple of those are in Australia at the moment ! Firstly, it was good to see a better result for England in the last cricket Test Match, although it was a bit more tense than it probably needed to be. England’s cricket is in a bit of a bother at the moment in all departments. It’ll definitely help if all of the various injury struggles sort themselves out. It would be great to see Jofra Archer being able to bowl again, he’s been out of the game for far too long with an elbow injury. Cricket puts either a huge amount of stress on the body for bowling or a high amount of risk of broken bones when they’re batting. Or you can be like me and combine both of those.

I mention Jofra Archer in particular there because he’s one where he’s just really unlucky that his elbow has reacted like this. In all other respects, he’s perfectly suited for the fast bowling that instills terror into everyone at the other end. He’s tall, properly shaped (not too thin, not too beefy, just right) and on the outside, has the perfect physique for it. Fast bowling is what he was born to do and he clearly enjoyed doing that a huge amount. It’s just sad that he’s being prevented from doing that by this long running injury.

There’s a parallel to me there too, I recovered initially from the dislocated shoulder and rotator cuff tear that stopped me bowling for a couple of years but had to give up bowling about 10 years later. Two reasons there, time away from the game (to get my head right, plus management change in the work team) led to the shoulder stiffening up more plus I think I got a secondary injury in my side from lifting a heavy old CRT telly on my own. The result was a hitch in my bowling action that wasn’t particularly painful (although i could feel it) but it was very dangerous to the person at the other end. I’ve talked about that too much in the past though.

That’s a thought about the current England team though. It feels like they aren’t enjoying the game very much at all at the moment and only part of that is down to coming a distant second to a thoroughly on top Australia. It’s not like seeing Trent Boult (New Zealand fast bowler) who gives me the impression of relishing the challenge of bowling at international players and thoroughly enjoys his work. There’s a certain confidence there too that’s completely gone from the English players. It doesn’t help that proper technique seems to have disappeared from being instilled into the batsmen. It is good to see Haseeb Hameed back in the side though, he looked thrilled to be a part of the England team again, hopefully he can make his place in the team stick this time.

But I wanted to talk about something else too …

Picture. On a blue table and cloudlike backdrop, we see a model of a small sailboat. Within sit 3 green pocket dragons. One is hugging a little teddy bear, one is sniffing the breeze while wearing a red and blue woolly pointy hat and the other is holding a rod (for fishing?) over the stern of the boat. — Don’t breathe one the sails boys

Both pictures so far have come from Google, along the Pocket Dragon theme. The copyright for these resides with Real Musgrave, the creator of the Pocket Dragons. They retired from creating these gorgeous figurines many years ago but they’re still available second hand on places like Ebay.

Anyway – boats ! I’ve been greatly enjoying watching a fellow with a youtube channel called Aquaholic. He does short tours of boats and yachts which can be anything from under 10 minutes to over 30 depending on how much there is to look at. He covers big boats as well as small going from owner operator boats suitable for day trips and overnight trips up to palatial super yachts that are more full blown ship instead of yacht. And it’s got me thinking more about my own ambitions to up sticks from brick and mortar housing towards living on a barge as well as opening my mind to the possibilities, the realities and the opportunities that it could present.

The realities are things like the amount of space available on board. The facilities available are comparable to what you’d have in any house, although things like the plumbing take a bit more thought. I.e. houses have permanent connections going two ways for all things water related … boat connections are temporary, I’ll leave it to the reader to think of what that means. Power is easy, it either comes from shore supply at a marina or from on board generators. These don’t have to be particularly big either, this house is typically consuming well under 500W and that could be reduced if the computer wasn’t on all the time. I’m using more at the moment but that’s because the heater’s on. Internet could be Interesting Times … it would require something something mobile internet. Taking on supplies while away from a marina could be needing a bit of thought.

There I am looking at the realities … there’s some great opportunities though. Like if you’re not happy with where you are, there’s the option to up sticks to a different marina while keeping the same living space around you. Or (maybe one for retirement which is a long time away) steadily cruising around the UK or Europe if we’ll still be allowed over there. There is a limit there though, the type of barge I’d be looking at would have difficulty fitting down the canals around the centre of the UK because it would be too wide.

Picture. We see a long barge type boat pointing to the left. The lower hull is black and there is a gentle curve from a high bow to low midships and up a little again to the back which divides off a creamy yellow upper hull. There is a wheelhouse aft and windows down the side of the boat. There is a lovely reflection off an almost millpond surface of the water. — Have boat will travel maybe later

That’s a dutch barge, the most posh of the various options for canal and river cruising (and I now know why sea is not really an option for these boats). Barges are available in narrowbeam, which go up to 7 feet wide. Any wider and they don’t fit into all of the locks and tunnels. (Locks are water gate facilities that allow boats to go up and down in height). Widebeam barges go from 7 feet 1 inch up to whatever will fit into the locks, that’s around 14 feet for some locations. (7 feet = 2.13m, 14 feet = 4.26m) The other restriction is length, the maximum is 72feet (22.2m). Narrowboat and Widebeam barges tend to be pretty low as well, with the boats being steered from the stern instead of having the raised wheelhouse of the Dutch Barge style. Bigger boats have more space inside but also cost more.

What can I say, I like the wheel house style, I think it looks great and also provides that functional separate space to run the boat from. The internal space is also comparable to the amount of space in this house too. What would need a bit of thought though is things like working and living spaces. Cabling isn’t an issue these days with wireless becoming far more of a thing, although I would want to have part of the boat built around something that could be a movie theatre type style. So instead of the usual thing of a large TV that hides in a cupboard (or lowers itself away) when not in use, I see a projector in the ceiling with a drop down screen. Yep. I think that would work pretty nice although you’d want a low power consumption projector because …

I’d want to pack in more tech too … Like solar panels combined with sizeable batteries and hybrid electric drive. If not cruising, the idea would be that the solar panels would give the excess power for chilling out overnight. That theatre set up would need sound as well. It could be really really cool to have that built in to the boat though.

Oh – barges vs boats … Have a look at the picture again and especially the shape of the bow (front end). Apparently because it’s vertical, that means that this boat shouldn’t go to sea as the bow will pitch into the water with the effect of the waves and the boat sinks … unless you try the transit on especially calm days. That’s not an issue on canals because the only waves are from the motion of other boats. Sea going boats have their pointy end at an angle, which pushes the front end upwards all the time and if the boat’s going fast enough, it starts coming out of the water and planing for even more speed.

So yeah, watching more, learning more, getting more excited about the prospect of doing it although it might take a lottery win or similar. I’d definitely need to sort the house out (the house would part fund the boat).

Gosh – is it midnight ? I had a few more random thoughts but it seems to have been taken over by boats.

Things about dutch barge – I like the style with the wheel house. I like the flowing lines around the sides of the boat. I’m not so keen on the centre part though, which looks a bit like a box in the middle. I like the flowing curves. It’d be curious to see how those could be worked into the design, especially with solar panels coming in to the roof. And possibly even a navigation kit (radar and AIS) and VHF radio as well if sea travel was to be a thing.

Things about the yachts – so many of these are built around multiple decks on board … This gives them more available space but also means steps and stairs, which I’d want to avoid for reasons not for here. (Not to do with me, I’m still very ok with stairs 😀 ).

I mentioned “a couple of things in Australia” and then only talked cricket … The other is Tennis, I don’t think it’s really worth any more time than a brief mention but … I think he should have been deported, they’re setting a dangerous precedent for themselves by prioritising the show over their health rules and apparently it’s also walking into an impression where the government down there seem to have one rule for the rich people and much stricter rules for everyone else. That’s dangerous … and it’s also happening over here too.

And … I better hit post before I go too much into politics or other things like that.

Night all, stay safe be well.

New Year’s Here

by Sleepypete

January 4, 2022

11:05 pm

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family, games, xmas

Hello everyone,

It’s been a good break … Back to work tomorrow but it’s been a good time away. I have to admit, I haven’t been getting out much outside of visiting family. There’s been a lot of indoor time happening. I’ll talk more about what that’s been in a bit. (I’m ok, just avoiding the outside world !)

So, what’s been happening … Thumbnail first.

Photo. We see the heads of two dogs (the rest is hidden behind them). One dog is white haired with ears pricked behind her head, the other dog is golden haired with a whitening muzzle. His ears are resting downwards. — Hello, We Are The Bacon Sandwich Inspection Patrol

That’s Icey and Murph again, being very attentive. Yep, was off to the mum’s and sister’s places this holiday. Mum’s first, then sister’s place for Xmas day. I last saw my mum last Xmas as part of the support bubbles we were allowed to have. This year is rather more open (I’ll rant on that in a bit). It was a good little visit. I hadn’t seen the sister, the dogs or the D boys for a couple of years now. Xmas 2020 even. Murph is still the sweetie that he’s always been, perhaps a little too slurpy still :-D. That’s not a bad thing in a dog. I do seem to get a lot of attention from them both. I wonder why that is.

Icey’s improved a hell of a lot. They’ve done a lot of good work helping her be more relaxed around people she doesn’t encounter much, even accepting (and maybe encouraging) random pats. She’s actually more accepting of some of those than Ben the Staffy was. Ben was a little ball of love but he’d shy away and leg it if you tried to reach over his head to give him scritches. Almost as if he thought you were going to poke him in the eye. Icey was fine with that.

Oh and there was very definitely an ulterior motive behind the attention in the picture above …

Photo. Murph the golden lab dog is sitting and giving paw to my mum who is just out of shot to the right. Icey is sitting in the doorway looking away from us into the kitchen. In the foreground, the real subject of Murph's attention ... a bacon sandwich. — If I is Good Boi Can I Haz Bacon ?

Yep. It was breakfast time. They did get a little bit of that sandwich. A definite case of inhalation and the bacon not touching the sides. We haven’t been doing presents for a few years now but I did take something away with me :

Photo. Our red fluffy dragon is mostly in shot to the right. To the left, a flat pack consisting of wooden sheets. We can see the front page, which is mostly green with a wooden owl model printed on it. — Owl Be Assembling That Later

I’ve got a couple of model assembly posts to bring you all now. I’ve been slipping on that. The owl came together fairly well and is now inhabiting a perch on top of my book cases. May need to acquire some wood glue though.

Yep. Good trip away, actually one of the first times I’ve had a chance to play properly with the latest car too. It is rather too big, but that doesn’t get in the way of it being a nicely handling car outside of where the road surface is a bit broken up. That confuses the traction control and other driver aids built in.

I’ll get something different next time though. I haven’t been enjoying manoeuvring such a big car around car parks and it would be good to get back to hatchbacks instead of the booted saloons. Trouble is, Lexus aren’t currently making a suitable car available in the UK. The IS and CT’s have both been discontinued and they’ve pinned their banner to SUVs. I’m not interested in owning an SUV. (Although the NX that the sister has is a perfect fit for their different requirements).

It is curious looking back into that world, where I know very little about the cars available on the market. Toyota’s 2 litre Corolla hybrid looks absolutely ideal, with enough speed and practicality. I’ll have to take a peek next time I’m around one of their garages. (Service due around March). I would like to know what else is out there though. I have been enjoying driving the hybrids and the effortless nature of their electric drive. It makes for pretty impressive acceleration too when you ask it to go fast in an overtaking move.

Been thinking about getting back into the racing games too, although I haven’t pressed the button on buying one yet. The closest I have is American Truck Simulator (courtesy of Humble Bundle a while ago). I acquired a controller not long ago, with one of the things putting me off trying the racing games being the set up needed to get my racing wheel back in commission again. (Heavy desk clearance). Thinking about that though, I need to do some desk clearance anyway because a combination of a high monitor and a chair that (needs replacing) is too low is leading to neck ache.

Things I’ve been playing on the time off :

Idle Champions – a bit too much of this. It’s an idler game, where you set up the adventuring party and they’ll battle against increasing waves of enemies. There’s a bit of story in there too, which is usually amusing. Oh and there’s a little group of us on EnterElysium’s discord server who have gotten each other addicted to the game.

Motorsport Manager – it’s gotten interesting again because I accepted the promotion for the team and getting good results has become a challenge instead of a Press Fast Forward Until Win. I wonder how long it will be until the team is the front runner again and the long running challenge of winning all three racing types comes to a finish.

Solasta – is a computer role playing game based on the 5th edition D&D rules set.

Game screenshot. Solasta. We're in a wooded landscape with our heroes standing on copper coloured rock. From left to right we have a dark skinned pointy eared fellow in scale mail. Then a lady wizard in a white top and long dark blue skirt. Then it's a light skinned lady in half plate mail with light green cloth cape covering. On the right is a short dark skinned rogueish looking fellow. — Heroes, fresh out of the wrapper

That’s the group I’ve restarted the game with. From left to right, we have ranger, wizard, cleric and rogue. It’s a decent mix, although it’s curious seeing some of the restrictions come in to play. The cleric has the biggest restriction. She’s supposed to be up front taking the hits … but has a choice between using a shield and being able to cast spells. She can’t do both. The ranger can poke things with swords or shoot from range with a bow. The wizard stands back and casts spells at everything and the halfling rogue is there to do damage where he can and to pick all of the locks and defuse all of the traps. It’s been a curious start to the game, I’ll have to look into the campaign some more. That said, the first attempt was a false start because I put a druid in there instead of the ranger and it felt like he wasn’t achieving very much.

Trans Road USA had my attention day – this is a company game, where you’re running a haulage company. The aim is to build a firm of truckers spanning the USA. Could be a good one to relax to, although I am nursing a sore neck now after losing some time to it today.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided – I do enjoy these games and the world they’re set in. Especially meeting Entity again. This run has reached Prague 2, where the sun has set into the night time period. I’ll pick up the last remaining main game achievement in this run, although I’ll make a save before because that achievement is incompatible with my preferred ending where you save everyone.

A little Plague Inc has happened too … it’s a curious catharsis that game and very easy to play.

Talking of plague …. the reason I haven’t been out at all (1 shopping run and alarm clock buy – lost mine) is plague … I’m in the thought space now of if I don’t have to be out and about amongst all of the new cases that are happening, I’ll stay in. It’s an incredible number of cases at the moment in the UK, yet no restrictions on movement have been announced. What I would like to have done is to do a run over to Cardiff (getting closer to remote control car acquisition) for Lego shop, sweet shop, book cave and general wander. There’s a couple of interesting films out there at the moment too. The quiet Showcase is still quiet and worth a shot. Maybe Friday, pending work :-D.

Yeah, too much going on out there in the world at the moment. I need to get a couple of small dents in the car looked at too.

But for now, Fuzzy’s streaming, I’ve posted enough and I’m going to head back into reading more of Leviathan Falls. That’s the 9th book in The Expanse series. I was worried before starting about whether they’d be able to wrap it all up neatly but their traditional prologue start kicked it all off in the right direction. Looking forward to finishing it in the next week.

That’s it for now though. It was a good break, lots of time off. Visiting great people, indulging in steam sales acquisitions … Like Beam.NG Drive, which takes cars from the game Automation and makes them driveable.

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you do need to be out and about among People, be wiser than our politicians are being at the moment …

Happy Holiday Everyone !

by Sleepypete

December 22, 2021

9:29 pm

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games, geeky, internet spaceship

Hi there,

It’s been a while again. I usually aim for a target of 100 posts a year and the advent posts of recent years have vastly helped out with that goal. It’s been another rough seeming year though and I think I’ve been heavily burnt out by what’s happening in the outside world and also what’s been happening at work over this past year.

I’ve been able to change the work thing but the outside world situation isn’t going away any time soon, mostly due to People. It would be good to get outside in the world again, amongst friends and to do things that have been held off on for far too long. But with things occurring like Omicron, I really don’t know who to trust. I certainly don’t trust the people who have started knocking on the door asking for money for services, without a mask on. They’re going round the neighbourhood doing that, talking to all the people, in proximity, how do they know that they haven’t picked up the latest nasty ?

Nope. If they can’t offer that small show, then it’s an automatic sending away. But that’s me getting into ranting again … I had deliveries yesterday and the other day … Today it was :

Picture. My Pocket Dragon with "Feed Me" on an apron is standing next to a sackcloth style white bag with a drawstring top. The bag has the words "Naked Marshmallow Co. Sack of Coal. Cookies and Cream Marshmallow. On The Naughty List." — Naughty and nice ?

Inside there are cookies and cream marshmallows, with a special black as coal coating. I haven’t opened the sealed bag that they’re in yet (more marshmallows arrived and I’m in the salted caramel ones) but I can report fluffiness inside the bag and they don’t photograph well against that black chair.

They’ve closed their doors for a Xmas break now but I’d highly recommend Naked Marshmallow Co (not sponsored). They make tasty things, they also have a toasty thingy which is something that would give health and safety people a nightmare or two. The other delivery is for something that is around my age …

Picture. A pocket dragon is standing in front of a large orange hard back book with a white header. It's titled "Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual." — Life on Mars ?

This was one of those random things I saw advertised and I was a huge fan of the setting that the series Space 1999 was in, I couldn’t resist this one. (Setting was incredible, the scripts were awful). This is an extensive technical manual with descriptions of the moon base, the ships, the technology, the people. I’m 74 pages in, which is most of the bit about the base and I’ve been loving that so far. Next section is about the ships. It’s from the Gerry Anderson store … but I’m not going to provide a link there because their marketing emails are a bit too incessant.

There was also an event a couple of weeks ago now …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A motley selection of spaceships (I think there's just over 40) of all sizes and colours can be seen. We're looking at the fleet from the front. Over to the right is a blazing orange sun. — Assemble the Fleet !

That was the Drew Wagar farewell to Elite event and it could well be the last time a lot of those pilots appear in the game. I might not go back in either (having bought X4 and wanting to check that one out). It’s not so much a matter of being mad about what they’ve done to the game, it’s more like severe disappointment.

We’re all looking for a great space game … but what they did in April was to give us a really poor first person shooter style thing tacked on to the space stuff. They broke some of the space stuff along the way, the big thing for me was them breaking the lighting and to some extent, the different possibilities we had for finding varied and interesting places to land in. Places seemed all the same after the expansion, with the light either being washed out white or just invisible in black. But the worst aspect is that screenshot above needed to be done in the old version of the game, the expansion still hasn’t been rolled out to consoles and the player base is split between those who log in to the Odyssey expansion not being able to instance and fly together with the pilots who are still on what’s now the base game.

So all in all, the experience became a bit meh and it came time to look to different things. Like setting up an interstellar pizza delivery service in X4. You can’t do that in Elite, even with a fleet that reached 47 ships, I can only control or use one at a time. Whatever you do in the game just doesn’t matter. In Eve, you can set up a spaceship manufacturing base … indeed most of the Eve ships are player built. Player interaction matters. In Elite, it just spawns it in when you buy or deletes it when you sell. Doesn’t feel right. In X4, you can hire pilots who then use your ships to mine, trade, escort or other things.

I do need to be a bit better physically though before really diving in to X4. I remember having issues last year as well, where I had an extended time away from Elite again. Currently it’s build up of damage in my shoulder, which has got fairly sure. The Idle Champions game hasn’t helped there …

Game screenshot. Idle Champions. The main part of the screen is a hallway. A total of 10 people are on the left, with a single creature and a few piles of gold on the right. At the bottom, we see 10 portraits for the characters and on top the headers are for damage and gold totals, with top right showing where we are. — Festively idle ?

Idle Champions is an idling game … where you have the game going in a window and it pretty much does its own thing while you’re doing other things. So it’s been active for a considerable amount of time since I went back into it last week. The longer it’s active, the more monsters are mown down by your people and all of the monsters drop gold. The gold goes to upgrades for your characters. The characters have a variety of equipment as well which helps in various ways. My latest character is Shandie, in a festive outfit in the centre of the formation. She’s all about speeding up the game so you get to the objectives quicker.

The game is built up around stories which have chapters of 50 areas at a time and when you’ve completed a chapter, you can go through again in free play or a number of variants which add conditions like faster monsters, less champions or randomised events. It’s curious for me due to the theorycrafting that goes into where everyone is in the formations you select plus I want to see the stories. Oh and when the chapter of 50 areas is complete, the characters go back to the start and do it again with monsters that are harder to mow down. When you hit the “complete” button and reset, the gold earned goes towards a Favour score, with that determining how fast you get gold in the next runs.

It’s a curious and odd game. It’s also free, although you can buy power by spending money on crates with them. You could get the same items by playing the game for a (very very) long time too. Anyway, the theorycrafting aspect has drawn me in again. The formation above is a bit of a mess but there’s a lot of room for picking different champions that work with each other for synergies.

Anyway, been in that one a bit too much over the last week.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're in the city, with buildings to the right and building over an arch in the background. A tree with protective concrete bollards is to the left. A police car with lights flashing it to the right. Two more trees with orange leaves are in the background. A police van is under the archway. — Just another day in Future Prague

I started up another Deus Ex Mankind Divided run, just before the Idle Champions addiction hit again. It’s a good game, it would be great to see a third title with the protagonist Adam Jensen. It feels like they left it with a bit of unfinished business that could do with closing out.

I think that’s it for me for tonight though. Have a great winter break everyone, hopefully you get to see people, stay well, have lots of food, relax and come back in the new year stronger and happier.

Stay safe, be well.

PS Addon – had my booster jab. Hurrah ! It took a couple of days for a headache to go away afterwards but that could have been headaches I’ve been having anyway (don’t think my two pairs of glasses are fully aligned). Get your booster if you can !

X, Advent, Racing

by Sleepypete

December 6, 2021

9:40 pm

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internet spaceship, lego, racing

Hello everyone,

I’ve missed posting again ! To be honest, I’m pretty burned out at the moment and I’m really looking forward to having the Xmas break off to try and recharge the brain a bit. Perhaps I actually need (hushed voice) an actual away from home holiday. I don’t think I’ve had something that counts like that since (checks photos) 2013. I was suffering from the issues with my outsides then but it was before it turned really bad. I’d been avoiding going to hotels since it went really bad until around 2019 ish. (I was leaking a bit too much).

Haha, that might have been a bit oversharing for the starting paragraph 🙂 But I think it’s part of why I’m suffering mentally at the moment. When I’m active, I can shift into that faster thinking gear, it’s just taking more of a kick to get me in that at the moment and I’m exhausted as soon as I close up the work laptop every day. Wait … thumbnail pic ?

Interstellar pizza delivery anyone ?

That’s from X4:Foundations and … the dwagon on there isn’t a photoshopping. I’ve not looked at this game too much so far due to a couple of reasons but I couldn’t resist making something Very Me after seeing a custom logo option in the various menus. Elite only has a small selection of decal logos that you can add to ships and I wouldn’t want to have any of them on the ships.

I might brighten it up a bit though. The default logos in game are all white monochrome, which I tried to follow with the edit of the Pizza Dwagon but I think it’s ended up more as shades of grey instead of a proud logo that stands out to be recognised by people trying out the interstellar pizza delivery service.

Picture. We see a Pocket Dragon standing on a plinth, holding a sign that says "Have I enough shades to audition plz?". The pocket dragon is in grey scale. — Don’t tell him …

Moving swiftly on …

I acquired X4 because of a rising dissatisfaction with Elite Dangerous. Elite is a wonderful screenshot generator but it needs a lot of issues fixing, issues that were introduced as part of the Odyssey update. I can’t see much point in playing the earlier Horizons edition any more, I’d rather stick to the new version. One of the issues is the lighting … I’d find a promising place to make camp at the end of a session, arrive and find that the lighting issue kicks in and you can’t actually see anything.

The criteria is : Find a gas giant with rings and a landable moon. If the moon has an atmosphere, that’s a bonus. And then I’ll head over there and try to land so the gas giant is on the horizon.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a rusty red barren moon. Our pilot is standing in the bottom right, behind her is the purple moon buggy. Behind there is a rock and landed behind the rock is our ship. In the background, there is a partly illuminated grey brown planet and the rings circle the planet disappearing under the horizon. — Camping at the Grand Rings

The pictures look great when you can find them … but when new bugs come into the game faster than the old bugs get fixed, you have to wonder whether it’s worth spending more time in the game, especially when all of the objectives I have (but one) in the game are completed. The only remaining thing to do that I’m bothered about is to own one of the Fleet Carriers as a mobile base …. but those require a decent investment of time in order to fund them. (Although apparently you can sit in an asteroid belt having an autobattling ship that earns credits at a happy rate – that’s not the kind of gameplay I’m interested in though).

X4 is the fourth game in a sequence of space flight games. It’s always been a very arcadey style of space combat sim, which isn’t a bad thing as far as gameplay goes. One thing it does have as well as the blasting is a more evolved economic model. So whereas Elite only has you flying one of the spaceships around, with the rest in the hangar, you can build up a business empire in X4. When you move up to a bigger or different ship, you can assign a non player character pilot to the old one and send it out to do more trading, mining or have them around to run shotgun on your freighters. Oh and you can build your space stations as well and manufacturing. Kinda like a friendlier and single player version of Eve Online.

I’ve bounced off the X series continually in the past though for multiple reasons, hopefully I can adapt more to X4. That said, the new little ship (unnamed so far) hasn’t left the pad yet partly because I’m still figuring out what you do in the game, mostly due to Pain.

Ouchies hit last week … I think the cold snap is one factor but I was also using the desktop mouse in the wrong position for an extended amount of time last week and that’s apparently wrecked me. Oops. If it’s on the upper deck, I use it with a straight arm which puts a lot of stress on my shoulder, putting an upwards and outwards pressure on it. And that’s still stiff after last week.

So I’ve been on the more hands off games with less movement of the mouse, like Motorsport Manager. Oh and perhaps a bit of Skyrim and Mars Horizon too as well as continuing the repairing things catharsis that Car Mechanic Simulator offers.

Advent ? No advent this year. It was a great theme to have over the last few years, with the themes giving me stuff to write about every day. But … the Lego models take up a decent amount of space, the advent calendar wasn’t particularly interesting this year (unlike the Xmas jumpers from last year) and I was definitely feeling that burn out.

Picture. Front and centre are two lego figurines. One is Darth Vader in his black helmet cape and a red Xmas jumper with a death star ball on it. On the right is a angry looking fellow with a green jumper with a white droid on it. There's a marshmallow to the left and more lego figures in the background. — It’s that time again

Yep. Almost the time of year for Mini Eggs to be back in the shops.

Haven’t had snow yet here, unless it happened in a weekend morning and I completely missed it.

Racing ? I’ve been following the Grand Prix racing still. Something has to change there. At the front, you have a driver apparently hell bent on having people run into him and throughout the field you have them slowing to make space for fast runs, which is going to lead to a massive accident at some point. I think it’ll be a close finish at the end of this season and there will definitely be more controversy happening. And at some point, the patience has to run out with a driver who is definitely incredibly talented but has also been incredibly dangerous on the race track ever since he came into the sport.

I suspect you know which driver I mean there. I think it’ll be different again next year, with George Russell coming into the Mercedes team. Whereas Lewis Hamilton has the skill to avoid car damage when he’s been getting run off the road, I don’t think Russell does. There will be more accidents happening next year. But we’ll see there. Hopefully the new regulations next year improve the racing, although Formula 1 has usually been a processional activity where the cars can get close but not overtake on a lot of the tracks. It should be the fastest car and driver that wins and often that isn’t the case.

Something for those who say – “I watch it for the crashes”. Take a look at yourselves please. Those are real people in the cars. Hopefully the two Formula 2 drivers who were injured yesterday make full recoveries. Other drivers have not. Your entertainment should not come at the cost of those bringing it to you. I was wondering when the big crash would happen yesterday. The new Saudi circuit is the second fastest … with many blind corners. It’s not a question of if an accident will happen, it’s when.

I have a vague memory of Frank Williams and Patrick Head having to avoid traveling to Italy for a few years because they’d have been arrested on manslaughter charges (later cleared) in the aftermath of the Ayrton Senna death. I can see the new Saudi traffic as being a track that could potentially kill someone.

And that’s not what I call entertainment. I genuinely thought we’d lost a driver last year with Romain Grosjean’s miraculous escape from a fireball. Seeing that again on Drive to Survive brought out the feels again.

I’ll say it again there – our entertainment shouldn’t come at a cost to other people.

Haha, he says thinking of the Pixel People in the games. Perhaps we’re Pixel People in someone else’s game ?

Anyway, I think that’s more than enough metaphysics for my head tonight. Time to disappear back into book with the music on. It’s currently Bone Silence by Alastair Reynolds and then I’ll be buying Leviathan Falls by James S. A. Corey, last of the Expanse books.

Have a great advent everyone, be well.

Cricket Bebop Shuttle

by Sleepypete

November 23, 2021

9:42 pm

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internet spaceship, real life

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again since posting – must get back in the habit of posting more regularly. I keep saying that don’t I :-). Things have been occurring since the last post. Bit of healing maybe, bit of hanging in there until we all get a chance to relax over Xmas. It does feel a bit like we’re getting a little wrung out lately. I’ve definitely been feeling that on this end and a good number of the people I interact with seem like it’s sinking in on them as well. Perhaps it’s plague related stuff … we have fatigue over being cautious mixed in with disbelief at people just forgetting that it’s still a thing.

Oh wait – forgot something … Thumbnail pic !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the aft end of our pink space ship, mostly hidden in shadow but with a row of 9 engines blazing away as the ship flies towards the opening of a circular space station. — Pixels returns …

Game wise, I feel like I’m between games at the moment. Sometimes, I’ll look at the games list and think I want to play some of them … but I don’t want to put the mental effort into learning them. Car Mechanic Simulator is cool and cathartic but I’m not sure how long I’ll continue with it. I have enjoyed my time in there though.

A definite head turner

The mods are fun though. I think one thing I’d like to try is another driving simulator type game. You can drive the cars in Car Mechanic Simulator around the track but the driving model is poor* and the driving is limited to a single race track, a drag strip and a test track.

*Or the Jaguar E-Type might have been undriveable because it was fitted with upgraded everything giving it way more power at the rear wheels than it could handle :-D.

I’ve been looking at the Truck Simulator games. I actually own the base American Truck Simulator, courtesy of Humble Bundle way back. Never played it. One thing I like in games is progression, where you can build up your character as you go or build up your empire … or build a fleet of starships. Or trucks. With the entrance of Thunderdwagon 2 :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a docking bay, with our ship on a rectangular landing pad illuminated by spotlights at the corners. It's a dark green ship, with sleek lines and 2 wings in the middle and 4 wings at the stern. — To the rescue !

This is the ship that completes the fleet in Elite for me … I own them all now and have used them for a genuine purpose, even if that purpose was swiftly cut short when the gameplay loop involved got boring or the ship proved inadequate for the job. In this case, the ship was built to dash in to damaged burning space stations and pull as many people out as possible. Hence the meme of the ship resembling a ship you may recognise … That gameplay loop is deeply unsatisfying though (and doesn’t pay much), so I’m back to mining again.

But apart from a Fleet Carrier, that is the end of that gameplay objective for me in Elite, unless I reset the save again and start afresh.

Other stuff – I mentioned the Cricket T20 World Cup … turned out I didn’t actually watch the final there. The wrong teams got to the final and the team that won it definitely did not deserve to. They were poor throughout, including getting murdered by England in the early stages. Perhaps there’s a bit of sour grapes there, because England got knocked out in the semi final due to a statistic I’ll get to. Mind you, England started strong and I think they were running out of steam towards the end with a few injuries taking key players out of the tournament.

Statistic ? The toss was key to the tournament … mostly because at the halfway point in the later games, the dew would come up and soak the ball making it an uneven contest. You want to have a chance at being surprised by the result … I had a sinking feeling for England’s semi because New Zealand won the toss and bowled first. Same happened for Pakistan’s game and the toss determined the order for the final too. All 3 games went with the toss. 30 games out of 45 were won by the team who won the toss. In Dubai, 12 out of 13 games were won by the team batting second with conditions in their favour.

That’s not something that makes for a tournament I’m interested in watching. The better side should win, not the side that was lucky with the coin toss at the start of the game.

Cricket’s another sport that has trouble actually, especially in England and Wales. At the moment, that’s a very well publicised case of racism at one county but the stories are coming out at the other counties as well.

I’ll make one thing clear there – I love cricket. I love to see people enjoying cricket. It doesn’t matter who they are, the colour of their skin, their ethnicity or the religion they follow. I just want to see people enjoying playing that game I love. And it turns out that too many people are turning away from playing the game due to the attitudes of those already there. That kind of attitude takes a lot to root out. It has an insidious approach as well. When I was learning the game myself, my idol was a fella called Devon Malcolm.

He was a tall, beefy fast bowler of West Indian descent. Couldn’t bat, bowled really fast (if a bit erratic). Wore glasses too for a while. I wanted to bowl like him. And he was one of a long line of players following people like Philip Defreitas, Gladstone Small, Syd Laurence, Chris Lewis, Alex Tudor and a bunch of others who’s names aren’t coming to memory right now. (I had a quiet migraine yesterday – no real headache but definite brain fog – not quite right yet)

When I saw Yorkshire playing at the start of the last season, they were all white men. And I knew back then that there was a problem. They’re based out of Leeds, with that area being a heavily BAME populated area. Even by averages, there should have been at least one BAME player in the team. And yet there were none. I think we know why now, with Yorkshire being the centre of the racism scandal hitting the English game at the moment.

I hope it sorts out. It needs to. I’m not that bothered about it making England a better side by having these guys to choose from, I just want to see more people enjoying playing the game. Oh and the more great players to see, the better the games are. I want to be guessing about the results all the way to the end, not see “Team A won the toss and bowl” and know the result from there.

I think I needed to get that particular rant out for a while. It’s not just colour though. It’s about sexuality and religion as well. I am in that privileged position of being a white straight guy. I don’t like it. It means that others are being dismissed because they’re different. Our differences make us stronger. They make us interesting. The most interesting character I saw on the series Another Life was Zayn.

The most fun character on the new Cowboy Bebop was Faye Valentine. I think the actress had a lot of fun bringing that character to life. I’d thoroughly recommend giving that show a look by the way and then watch the anime as well. It’s a quirky silly daft show set in space with a definite trend of smooth jazz style running through it.

Oh and it’s totally polarised the opinions about it as well, which amuses me.

Summary and other stuff :

Lego Space Shuttle is complete ! Need to arrange taking some decent pictures of it. It’s a chunky unit, big enough to take 5 pocket dragons in the back.

Cowboy Bebop is silly stylish fun, go watch it. Another Life is another one definitely worth watching. Paramount need a kick up the backside for taking ST Discovery off air days before it was to be released.

Internet spaceships good … disappointing implementation bad.

Racism – ugh.

Boats – yay. I’ve been watching a channel called Aquaholic. It’s run by a guy who takes a GoPro camera on to boats and does tours for us. They’re pretty special now, although we are talking multi million pound yachts here. It may be reawakening the thoughts about living on a Dutch Barge. Wonder if you could make those properly seaworthy ? One thing needed there is a radar and those go on the roof. That conflicts with barges needing to be able to fit into tunnels and under bridges.

Stream watching is good. Currently got Fuzzyfreaks on the laptop and Fallenshogun on the desktop. They’re good people to listen to. May they be able to continue entertaining us for as long as they can.

Last one – new job happened. Same organisation, different part of it. I’m learning the new basics at the moment but it’s in an area that I’m already very familiar with. It’ll see me getting out and about more too, which is great. One reason for switching is the trips in April and May reminded me of something (that I can’t put here) and this new post gets me closer to those. There are other reasons too but those aren’t going to be written here. Let’s just say healing is required …

Games can be pretty good for the healing. Whether it’s bringing the cars back to life, or flitting into an alternate universe where you can go from port to port as a space trucker.

I like being a space trucker :-).

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Have names, need ships !

by Sleepypete

November 10, 2021

10:11 pm

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internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I’ve been meaning to post more often but time feels like it’s whooshing by again :-D. I did have one idea of a Thing to write about though. (And there’s a Lego Space Shuttle that I’ll get back to after finishing this). This is going to be an Internet Spaceship post. As per usual, they’re all Elite Dangerous again, which is something I’m obliged to mention due to their picture use terms.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Out pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower half. We're looking at the back end, with a row of 9 engines flaring away. In the top half is a round space station that we're heading towards. The backdrop is the black of space with occasional starry dots. — Pixels returning to hangar

There’s stuff been going on at work which I’m not going to mention too much here but it does mean new opportunities to look at different things. Should be a good move.

In the internet spaceship domain though, I took the ship home early after quite a decent trip out there. The sightseeing tool that I have wasn’t showing any promising things to look at and there was a community goal thing that looked interesting … (The goal got completed before I got there !)

Screen capture. We're looking at a map of our galaxy from the top down. Our path is mapped out by a white trace which roughly circles the galaxy. — Have spaceship will travel

That’s the travel map as of a stop at the centre of the galaxy on 3rd November. Since then, it’s pretty much a straight line back to our part of space at the bottom. I was following a set of expedition waypoints which I would usually finish … except that apart from someone who absolutely blitzed it (their flight log on EDSM is crazy!), it looks like I’m the only one running it. I did run across the organisers’ carrier along the way but it was pretty early on in the route. So I came back early. I could go back out again … probably not though.

Elite’s on borrowed time for me. The Odyssey disaster broke a lot of the appeal for me. It’s still a very pretty game … but the flaws are raw and exposed and there’s even new bugs coming in as well now. Like a thing where it takes about 5 seconds for the stations to appear when you drop out of FTL at their location. The game needs time to load in the textures so it can show us the station. Performance has improved though, although my system is not a fair test there because it’s gone from a fairly recent but struggling 1060 3GB card to a brand new 3060 Ti card with 8GB of memory. That’s going from a card with 1000ish parallel processing things to one with just under 5000 and far better memory infrastructure on it. (Without being geeky – it’s possibly 5-6 times as powerful and has other advantages).

Wait ! I had an idea for this post. I have a bunch of names for ships … and I don’t think I’ll be expanding the fleet any more past :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in an enclosed ship hangar with dim overhead lighting and adverts and struts to the sides. Our ship stands proud on the pad. It's a big green smooth sided ship that we're looking at from the front. It dwarfs our pilot, standing below the nose. — Waiting to rescue

That’s Thunderdwagon 2, callsign IR1965. People may recognise where that comes from :-D. The purpose of this ship was to run rescue missions to evacuate people from damaged space stations. But I didn’t last long with that because that particular gameplay loop is boring and doesn’t pay at all well. I may well reconfigure this one for spaceship rescues and press CAT404 back into service as a miner. That’s another tribute name :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A blue and white angular and blocky spaceship is pointing down and towards the right of shot. We're in a field of space rocks. — Prepare the mining lasers !

That’s the Towel of Space, aka CAT404. This is another tribute name for Katherine Of Sky, who is one of those lovely voices I enjoy listening to. Here’s a link to her youtube channel and the first of a few links for today. The problem with this ship is that because it’s bigger, mining sessions were taking too long and pushing my arms to the point of pain but different mining might mean shorter sessions.

I have all the ships now … and still have a bunch of names I want to use ! Which is conflicting with a wanting to say nice things about people. So I thought, do I need the ships to say the nice things ? Nope. Here goes. On the ship list is :

Searching For Pixels, callsign FUZZ3H. I do actually have the ship, this is the pink with white checkerboard one that I’ve been dashing round the galaxy in. The name was for the mission of the ship, to see how the Odyssey expansion affected exploration. (Lighting is terrible) The callsign is for Fuzzyfreaks, who is a delight to watch. Her eyes just got drawn to the game Kenshi again, so she’s been playing that.

The next one is the Bringer of Nuggets, callsign V4N-D1 and there is definitely some meme-age going on there. OMGVandi is one of those fiery passionate people who catches you up totally in what she’s doing. I first caught sight of this lovely Canadian lady from the Moonkissed and Sunkissed role play shows but she also has way too much fun playing Among Us with friends as well as Grand Theft Auto V role play. A definite force and one hell of a personality. She enjoys what she does so much and is very happy to bring viewers along for a wild and exciting ride. OH ! Check out her artwork too, there’s a collection here (Linky)

If I was to build a new ship for Drew Wagar’s farewell tour, it would be Acolyte of Wagar, callsign F3D0R4. Drew Wager (Twitch link) is one of the authors who wrote in the Elite universe as well as universes of his own creating. He does several streams with games like No Mans Sky or retro games, plus a writing stream. He’s a chilled out English gent who is another pleasure to listen to, although he’s usually on when there’s other people I’ll watch instead who are also streaming. And there’s only so many people you can watch at once. His youtube channel has the videos for his previous Lore tour, which I enjoyed catching up with. There’s another event coming up but I’ll bring out the old Cobra, Tea-89 for that as a nod back to the original Elite game.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a spaceship within a hangar. This is a small ship with cockpit window in the centre. The outer wing sections are orange, the centre is white. — At rest, for now

Next up is the Searching For Dynamite, callsign SH4RK5. This is for the wonderful KatiePetersPlays, (Twitch link) who streams all sorts of games, appears on role playing shows and has a couple of podcasts too. She’s a lovely person, is the centre of an incredibly welcoming wholesome community and the anarchy around what she does is massive fun to be around. Her discord server is the Space Sharks, most of her twitch emotes are sharks, which will tell you where that comes from. And then there’s also a fun alert that she has where in totally serious mode says “And the dynamite goes boom”. It’s one of those things that makes me laugh and watching her stuff is great for the soul. On a bit late for UK viewers though :-D.

I had a little series of potential names for a ship named for Enter Elysium but didn’t settle on one I was happy with. The theme was generally around robbing banks, after this became a bit of a meme in his channel following the disappointing follow on to the original Evil Genius game. EE doesn’t make much content now but when he does, I try and tune in when he does, plus the old videos are still there on his youtube channel. He’s a fun one to watch and the old content is still good.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in the in game paint job store, looking at a ship labelled "Cobra Mk III Festive Red". The ship is roughly half a hexagon, chopped in half and we're looking down on it from above. The ship is painted red, with some white snowflakes. — It’s almost that time folks …

This one would be Dances with Snowmen, callsign -K1R1-. I haven’t been watching 2dKiri for long and she starts a bit early for me too, with streams starting up at lunchtime. But I’ll tune in after closing up the work laptop. She’s another lovely chilled out person who is a pleasure to watch. You know, calming and enjoyable around that too with great chat interaction (she doesn’t miss much at all) and is very happy to join in with chat’s odd sense of humour. Youtube link this time because the highlight shows are on there plus links to Twitch. There’s also a snow meme that runs throughout her content and I especially love the dancing snowman emote, so 2dKiri’s ship would have to have something snow related. (And I got this one free!)

However, if I used this for Drew Wagar’s farewell tour, then it would be somewhat along the way to advertising another streamer in his stream, which is really bad etiquette. So it’ll be the Tea-89 Cobra instead.

Last one for today is the wonderful person I’m listening to at the moment … Tashnarr (Twitchy link). I missed out on so much of Tash’s content, mostly because Twitch is a thing where you can only really watch one person at a time. If I’m watching Tash, that means I’m not watching Shenryyr (great guy, another really chilled out fun one) or a different one. So it took a while before I started watching Tash as much as I do now. And she is definitely that person that I’ll switch over to as soon as she comes online, disappearing quietly from the person I was watching before. Definite character, cheeky, chirpy, sassy, lovely person on screen, very emotive, smart, great voice and I’m running out of adequate words … I think she has a lot of fun with what we come up with in chat too.

This is Tash’s latest tribute ship :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A blue gas giant can be seen in the background. A ring system of rocks is in the upper right half, starting diagonally across the picture. Our ship is a crimson and orange diamond shaped ship, with 2 clusters of 6 engines at the back. — Ready to mine

That’s the Manic Minarr and I’ll go back into that one at some point soon. Back to Tash’s stream now though ! Although I’m now wondering about what a tribute name for Becca Godsey, aka Caustic Phoenix would be. She’s another fun passionate lady to watch (on late again 😀 ) and is a fantastic host for the Pink Pixels weekly podcast on TheGameHers channel.

Stay safe, be well everyone.

Where was I again ?

by Sleepypete

November 3, 2021

9:09 pm

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cricket, games, internet spaceship

Been meaning to post for a bit 🙂 Subjects have been escaping my head though :-D.

I do enjoy talking about the computer games but it does feel sometimes like it’s a one track thing for here and I do like the variation. I haven’t done a music post for a good long while, so that’s due as well. I’ll go on to the cricket world cup, which I’ve been enjoying having on in the background or time delayed for after I close the work laptop down.

Cartoon picture. A T-Rex dinosaur is stretching their little arms towards a big red button on the wall. A sign above says "Push button if you're sick of cartoonists making fun of short T-Rex arms." — Needed thumbnail tribute, randomness selected

Credit to the Roguesymmetry link and signature in the picture. I have been pretty tired lately, although the body is somewhat cooperating. I do have issues sometimes reaching for things with my right arm though. That’s the arm with the weak shoulder, so stretching out the arm can push it beyond a certain limit and then I go ouch. I am really struggling for energy at the moment though.

Internet spaceship has been busy … and surprisingly ok on the arm. Although there are limits there as well. I’ve had a couple of days off the crazy travel mode flying but :

Screen capture picture. We see a map of our solar system, seen from above. Where we live is down in the lower part. A thick white trace shows my travel path over the last 12 months. — Zoom zoom space ship

That’s my Elite travel map over the last 12 months. There’s a lot of light years been travelled, although that includes the more epic round the galaxy to its extreme extents trip that finished around May this year. This one has been a bit more modest, starting out around our area of space down the bottom and sightseeing my way up and left (North Northwest) and around to the top end of the galaxy. Since then, it’s following a set of waypoints back into the Galactic Core and the way back will follow the faint green line on that map which starts off going to the right a bit.

I should get back well in time for a planned rendezvous and meet up with other Elite people on the 18th. And then I’m honestly not sure what will happen with Elite. The Odyssey expansion was such a disappointment. It is still a very pretty game though and I did like wandering around space. Some of the new minigames and mechanics though like the exobiology exploration are just really, really bad though. I’ve seen only minor variations on the new foliage on the atmospheric planets and the stuff you need to do to collect the required information to log them is … No. I’m not sure who in the dev team thought that was a good idea.

Oh as an aside, the thing behind the map there is from the podcast type stream I’m watching/listening to at the moment. It’s Sheepy’s aka TheWanderingInn (Twitch link) regular weekly Bar Brawl where he gets a guest in and talks about Stuff. Often it’s about the role playing shows that he runs and the guest’s part in that. And then they’ll go into the mayhem of an arbitrary Tier List. Chaos usually ensues with the tier list. Today’s guest is the ever wonderful Tashnarr (Twitch link again). They’re a good couple of streamer community people and I really enjoy the Tash streams.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower centre of screen. The left hand side is dominated by a round space station with a rectangular entrance in the centre. It is lit by a series of red lights. A planet is to the top right. The sky behind is clustered with a busy field of stars. — A home away from home

That’s Explorer’s Anchorage, a quick hop away from Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. I’m docked up there until resuming the journey back in, which will be at the weekend. (Combination of resting the arms and maxing out the funny internet currency earning that goes towards in game cosmetics).

Oh I’ve also been highly enjoying tearing cars apart and rebuilding them in Car Mechanic Simulator. It’s a satisfying thing. Perhaps I might be coming to the end of the big interest in that but it has been oddly cathartic. Dyson Sphere Programme appeared in the last steam sale as well.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're inside a white walled paint shop area. In the centre, a green Jaguar E Type convertible with super sleek classic lines. — Now with Jaguars

Cricket ? World Cup’s been pretty good so far, although there has been a definite pattern appear where the team batting second has been winning a disproportionate number of games. One reason for this is that with the games being played on the transition to night time, heavy dew comes down which affects the ability of the bowlers to grip the ball. This gives an advantage to the team batting first. I don’t think it’s actually changed the results much though, a lot of them have gone with the expected form.

England have been doing remarkably winning 2 very one sided games and then met Sri Lanka raised their game a lot from previous form and were unlucky to come second in that game. It’s mostly been down to just how good England have been all the way through the side. All of the players have been stepping up with great performances and while a few of the sides have been not great in the field, England have been nigh on perfect.

There’s a cricket saying which is “Catches win matches” and it’s massively true. Cricket sides tend to build a momentum, which can get unstoppable. A wicket usually slams a brake on that momentum, so missing that chance for a wicket by dropping an easy catch has a big impact on the game. Like in the Sri Lanka game, where it looked like Sri Lanka would get over the line for the win until England started taking wickets, with the wickets making the momentum of the game swing the other way.

Another one is the attitude that the teams show on the field as well. I used to really enjoy fielding closer in within the ring. It kept me involved in the game. I’d be noisy and constantly encouraging the other players in the team. Clapping a lot, bringing that noise, trying to terrify the batsmen into hesitating with over enthusiastic fielding. That’s really important too as if a side goes quiet, they drift and it allows the batting to build that momentum. I’d get bored when dispatched to the outer areas of the field. I was away from the people I’d be interacting with and generally less involved in the game. It was tough to maintain the focus out there. The huge thing though was what happens when something doesn’t go to plan, like a catch dropped or a bowler losing their focus. You can respond to that either by attacking your own team, or by upping the encouragement again with a “Next time!” or similar. Some of the teams in the World Cup have been going down the attacking the team route. You have to get your own game spot on there if you do that or it just brings down the team.

One of my later seasons saw a bowler come in after a long time off, including surgery. The tiredness was settling in and getting to him. So I walk back with him to his bowling mark, give him a bit of gentle encouragement, slow his walk down a little and give him a “Take your time, you got this”. Kinda like letting him borrow a bit of confidence back again by showing him that his fielding team mate had confidence in him. Took a wicket that over. Good times. That’s one I still remember :-D.

Anyway – England are doing great in the World Cup. It’s been great to see some of the newer sides come in as well. Like Afghanistan, who must terrify the major teams. They have a great side. Oman were wonderful hosts, it was sad that they didn’t win through.

What else to talk about ? Job change next week, looking forward to it.

Back to the Bar Brawl now though. Stay safe, be well, stay warm everyone.