Category: musing

Hello again, it’s been a while

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July 5, 2026

9:39 pm

Leave a comment on Hello again, it’s been a while

musing

Hi all,

Picture. We're looking at an adorable green clay dwagon with purple highlights curled around a purple d20 with just the number 20 showing. They're on a dice tray made up of simple gaming related objects on a white background.

Oh gosh things have changed a little round here as well on the back end since I was last here. Looks like my hosting service has gone all in on AI so I might have to go all in on somewhere else.

Picture. We're looking at a row of 4 dwagons standing up. Left is a sad one with a single tear, with caption "GenAI pictures make us sad.", next up is one holding a sign "So you won't find any of that here", then it's "If you see intelligence here it's an accident." and the last one is shouting "HEY !"

I think the rise of GenAI and the rampant uncontrolled harvesting it does has contributed a lot to me staying away here but there’s been more going on there. This is a very quiet site, there aren’t that many real people visitors and I’ve contributed to that state lately by this being the first post of the year. Content brings traffic. I’m getting sidetracked but the way I’m seeing it on this site is that in the first 6 months of 2025, this site got 325 views. In the first 6 months of this year, there have been 18.1k views. That doesn’t make sense with the lack of content, it can only be explained by this site being used for active harvesting of what I write for presumably GenAI large language models.

Not a fan of that. Something I’ve attempted to develop in myself for both home stuff and work stuff is a writing style that’s genuinely me. If people see my writing or my emails, they’re more encouraged to read, they can hopefully follow along with me (something I’ve really had to work hard to develop) and they respond. That’s especially important at work when you don’t get that much time to keep people’s attention with everything that goes on.

Never mind that though, how have I been, how am I getting on ?

Physically, my arm with the scaffolding in there is mostly good again now. It’ll never be perfect again because I’m getting old and I did a horrendous amount of damage to the two forearm bones. But I have pretty much full use of the fingers again now, feeling is back to perhaps 99% so the nerve damage is pretty good now and the shoulder is strong enough now to allow me to pick heavy things up again. I can clasp my hands behind my back again, which I could barely do at the start of the year. That’s what hurts now of what’s left with the movements, the rest is fine (pretty much)

Mental side is … different. I feel as if I’ve been in a slump for most of the year to date and have been putting that brave face on it. I can continue doing stuff I’ve started but it’s been really difficult starting doing stuff. Like I should have done a shopping run this weekend, that’s been deferred to tomorrow evening. I’ve been able to do a few things so far this year but that stay in it’s easier has been winning too much.

Picture. We're looking at a grey cat with their eyes closed. They're tucked up on an orange or cream coloured blanket. The captions are "I can't get out of bed..." "These blankets have accepted me as their own and if I leave now I might lose their trust."

Quite.

Things that have happened this year and I’ll do these in their own posts in due course have been :

Dreamhack came to Birmingham for the first time in March. It was a chance to meet some wonderful people for the first time, some wonderful people for another catch up and a fairly chill and not so busy exhibition with lots of things to see and shinies to play with. It was great meeting people including the wonderful MissVadams and September Duck (and friends) with FGSquared coming in for a lunch meet up. They’re all people from the streaming community who are just awesome people and will brighten anyone’s day. LookitsTilly and Madddog were cruising for all the goodies, Curlylocksgamer didn’t quite run me over in the motorchair and it was fun running into kayPOWXD and very tall significant other after enjoying MiyukiPanda’s stage show.

I was able to catch up with Miyuki as well, there’s been a sense of catharsis running into and chatting to people from the Creator North event last year. Panda was about 10 feet away from me when I shattered the arm and was perhaps the one who sent the absolute most of anyone of the positive vibes that came my way after that accident. I had a lot of those come my way from all of the online communities and they massively helped last year with my state of mind. Anyway, it was good having a quick natter with MiyukiPanda after the event, she’s a lovely person plus one thing I’ve been concerned about is letting all the people who have been super worried about me see that I’m ok now.

And the arm is pretty much ok now. I was discharged from the need to go to the physio a while ago, I got a clean prognosis from the bone people who have been doing the x-rays. It’s not healed perfectly but … I still got 2 working arms. I’ll accept that 1% nerve loss for having 2 working arms again. I’m in a better place than a lot of other people there.

Ok ! Dreamhack led to an acquisition …

Picture. We're looking at two very smart, very high quality flight sticks. On our left, is a throttle unit with a big control arm hiding a lot of buttons and switches behind. On our right, is a conventional joystick style thing also with buttons. My little red dwagon sits behind the throttle, my big red dwagon sits behind the flightstick.

That’s a pair of Virpil Controls bits and pieces. I had a chance to try these out at Dreamhack and was very impressed with how they felt and the absolute highest level of quality in how they were put together. I went back to my previous Thrustmaster Hotas X after disappointment with (shockingly) poor build Saitek / Logitech X52 Pro sticks and while the Hotas X was still good for Elite, it was suffering from age with drift and buttons that were giving up. The Virpil Controls gear took a month to arrive after ordering but they’re incredibly good in use and they’ll support me looking to learn proper flight sims again with the extra controls they have.

Dreamhack has been the highlight of the year so far, that lunchtime meet up was a wonderful time.

I also did the Lords Interservices T20 day again, this was early this year being held at the end of April. It actually worked out very well for us, there was no rain on the day and I found a quiet perch with a great view. People were loving the Dwagon On Tour pictures that I’ve been posting from places too, my current avatar around the places is the Little Red Dwagon sat behind my good R50 camera.

Modelling … not so much this year. I have the finger dexterity but not the energy or inclination. That should come back at some point.

Oh there’s also been meet ups at Thorpe Park with the Creator Meetups people (good chill day out) and I acquired lots of shiny things at UK Games Expo. I won’t go to UKGE on a Saturday again, it was too much … too many people, too hot, too much crowd. But good loot and a good lunch escape with Andy of Billietrixx’s community.

Lots of reading’s been happening as well with the usual highlights being T Kingfisher’s novels and continuing the Share series by Nathan Lowell following his Ishmail Wang character who had to run off to be a merchant spaceman.

And of course the gaming … I enjoyed the Star Trek Voyager game that came out this year. They did well with this one, it’s like a greatest hits of the Voyager series but sticking to the stories from the show that were the most key and most achievable to put in the game. So the Seska series is in, Endgame is in, Year of Hell is not …

Last bit before I use up my hand points – Forza Horizon 6 has been huge fun getting into this one (with MiyukiPanda’s community!). Last time I did a lot of racing, I had a concussion that was putting a little bit of lag into my reactions. So I basically couldn’t do racing games. They’re a lot more fun without that particular concussion :-D.

Thanks for reading if you’ve got this far – I’m ok. I’m not the best mentally for a whole heap of reasons but I’m doing ok there. I’m in a bunch of fantastic communities online who are lovely to drift in, centred around the excellent streams to vibe in. I’ve got a few wonderful friends down here to talk to as well.

It’s good to have posted again – see you all next time !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Status – very sleepy

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July 28, 2025

10:21 pm

1 Comment on Status – very sleepy

musing

, , ,

Hello everyone,

Checking in again ! Has it almost been a fortnight again since last time ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cartoon drawn computer laptop mostly hidden by a white cat lying on the laptop. The caption is "It's a laptop until it becomes a cat warmer"

Before I dive in – this is VERY important. We’ve just had a bit of dumb legislation imposed on us in the UK, which could potentially spread beyond our borders too. It’s the Online Safety Act. If you’re in the UK then you’re affected, please do hit the Petition link and add your signature. It’s a terrible law and it needs to go. Why ? It protects no one, it harms those who need the services behind a number of the adult only sites. For me, it means my protected personal information is now on several third party sites who will almost certainly get hacked and the information stolen. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg with this one, there is so much more Bad in this new law. It’s not a Safety act, it’s an Endangerment act.

I think I left the last post in a bit of a rush. I was looking to get the post out before midnight and the day ticking over. Plus I’d have been running out of the steam between the ears that powers the brain.

How have I been doing ? While I was in the last post, I was suffering from a blocked ear still … I’d had that for maybe a month … I was using ear clearing thingy drops, actually switched from one softener thing to a different softener thing and while it was making a difference, I was still down one ear. It’s quite disorientating …

That was while I was doing the Gromit Hunting at the start of the month too. Gotta do that post ! I’ve managed to see half of the Gromits so far, although that’s been held back by feeling a bit rotten at times, just simply doing other things like massively enjoying finding the lovely MissVadams on Twitch (linky). She’s got a very clear voice, which definitely helped when my ears were bad but also very friendly and just one daft comment from chat or antics in stream away from breaking into that type of laughter that will brighten anyone’s day.

Picture. Meme. An orange and white cat is looking directly at the camera, their paw is pointing at us, almost touching the camera. Captions are "You there ..." "Yes You!" "You're awesome".

Is also a new catmom having adopted Penny, joining the tortoise Billy who inspired a collection of wonderful Twitch emotes. It’s been a pleasure watching Vic since finding the channel due to a raid in by the also fun to watch FGSquared.

PC stuff ? I came unstuck (or nearly!) a few times with the new PC I talked about last time. It’s a very big unit at 13kg for the case. It’s probably more like 20kg+ now. It’s huge. Which is fairly ok because I’m not going to be moving it around very much. But while I was swapping the cooler in and out all the time in vain attempts to get the All In One Cooler working, that was taking all I had at the time, which is another reason I didn’t immediately migrate over to the new box.

I still haven’t migrated everything over properly yet either. The old PC hasn’t been booted up in a few months now but I have the old data copied over but not sorted into any real sense or order yet. Not quite had the mental spoons to do that just yet.

It has been fun seeing what the new machine can do though …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. It's dark, we're looking at our character in the bottom left, lit by the overhead lamps from the stalls set up in the shadow of an immense vehicle. The tracks to the bottom right are perhaps twice as tall as our person.

That’s a mostly static diorama type location from Star Wars Outlaws but the detail there and how it’s brought out by the graphics card is quite incredible. What you’re seeing there is a frame of the big sand crawler vehicle, with textures spread over that frame. They’re then processed to add the depth and to make them look good as a 3d object that you can walk around and see from all angles. Plus there’s the animated characters down there too and the smaller objects in the scene as well. That’s genuinely better than what we would see on movies, such as the originals all those years ago. In earlier generations of 3d graphics, we’d have detail but if you looked close, the textures would repeat over the sides of an object as the systems didn’t have the memory to capture massive detail like what we have there.

Finished Outlaws again, although I need to go back for the second expansion. It’s a long game, fun but feels padded with lots of added optional sidequests. I’ve also been in the Elite world again …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The sky is full of stars. We're at the centre of the galaxy, where we see stars clustered around a large hole in space to the left. To the right, a blocky grey and gold space ship. Below, there is a lighter ribbon of space that curls around the hole in space.

That’s the latest antics, where I’ve taken the brand new megahauler ship and turned it into an explorer craft. That’s the Searching for Rainbows, quite possibly the first Panther Clipper Mk II to visit Sagittarius A* at the centre of the galaxy.

What I call a hole in space in the alt text is Elite’s representation of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The game might be showing its age a little there, although it probably has an easier time with this than it looks from the picture there. The game has very impressive gravity lensing effects, where the visuals of the stars wraps around the big black hole. As you move around the black hole, what you see through it changes dynamically with the angle. It’s very impressive and the static shot doesn’t really do it justice.

That’s been part of the antics in Elite. I haven’t been playing with the alt too much, outside of that speed run, but it’s been a lot of fun tagging along with Ninjaspaceunicorn and Thebigboo with the Hungry Unicorn expedition to the far side of the galaxy and back. We’re on the way back now, not actually that far from the centre of the galaxy.

Anyway, thought I’d better check in. It’s time to post now and read a bit more of book …

I’ve been running an A to Z challenge this year, where I’ve been looking to read something from all of the letters, whether that’s an author or a book title. The latest is The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear, as the F book. It’s the third in the author’s White Space universe, a future science fiction universe where AIs run spaceships that go all across the galaxy. There are pilots, a lot of mindfulness, very relatable people and stories that keep you wondering what’s coming next. I didn’t enjoy Hammered that much (different universe, near future Earth) but I would happily recommend Ancestral Night and Machine.

And I think that’s me about out of batteries for tonight. Not sure what’s been happening there, so many people have been commenting that they’re incredibly tired, far more tired than they think they should be or even would have been a few years ago. I think my tiredness starts from burn out over covid times but it’s gotten worse since.

Perhaps it’s worry about loved ones or could be socio-economic pressures. Covid seemed like a scary time but the world seems a lot less settled now. Like things got a lot more dangerous for everyone while we were distracted by a pandemic.

Who knows. All we can do is look after our people. Be kind. Send a little bit of love out there. Be good to people, don’t default to trying to exploit them. Communities of good, nice, wonderful people are out there, I hope you find yours.

And have yourselves a wonderful day.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Time to resurface

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March 31, 2025

9:32 pm

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events, games, musing

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while ! I think I needed to dive under the covers for a little while. But first ! We need that thumbnail …

Picture. We're looking at two dinosaurs perched on the only part of a mountain still above water. They're looking over towards a wooden boat sailing away. The captions are "Oh crap was that today?" and "The first senior moment"

I think the big reason it’s been so long is a steady realisation that I’m probably descending deeper into the burn out, instead of thinking that I’d hit as far as I could go down and therefore the only way was to improve. Nah. I think the burn out is getting worse, if that’s possible. I’m hanging in there but there’s a general shell shocked feeling where I think I’ve retreated back within myself somewhat. Will have to see what I need to change to start recovering and improving. But first, what’s been happening outside of going into the shell for a couple of months ?

We left things last time in the middle of January. A massive highlight for this year was heading off to Megacon at the end of January. This was over in London at the Excel arena and I’d thoroughly recommend checking out this particular convention.

Picture. We're looking at a green haired lady in a yellow dress with black trim and white boots dancing in the middle of a square. She's facing us, holding up a purple fan in her right hand. In the background, a multitude of people looking at stands.

It’s a smaller convention than Comic Con, covering a lot of the same things. It’s perhaps a third of the size, so I was able to get around there a few times as well as just enjoy and soak up the vibes coming from the anime dancing ladies at the Performance Square. There was a lot of joy coming from watching them bounce around their stage. And wonderful vibes coming from the other dancing ladies off to the side, who were bouncing around as well.

It was just a wonderful, happy thing. And then there was what looked like an impromptu mass dance party later on. Amazing lovely happy vibes and it was wonderful to see.

I came away with some awesome loot too. The main reason I knew about Megacon was because I’d seen it on the wonderful Aby of Trayed and Tested‘s (Etsy link) Etsy page that’s at the link there. It’s always lovely to be recognised and a surprise too considering I’d only met Aby once before, at Insomnia 2024. Good to see them again and have a little natter.

Picture. We're looking at two red dragons, with a dice tray in the background and two sets of dice in the foreground. More info follows in the text.

The bits there include (there’s too much for alt-text there so here’s the list) :

A dice tray with rainbow coloured dragons flying.

A set of mostly transparent dice with real clouds inside (the d6 was hiding under Eeyore)

A set of larger green dice with yellow patterns and numbers on them.

A leather pouch to hold the dice tray and I keep the dice in there too.

A pink 3d printed dragon from Printing Like Rabbits.

And the Eeyore dragon that I picked up at one of the Welsh castles last year.

I’m definitely a person that mirrors the vibes of the people that I’m around, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. (Happy people make me happy, toxicity frustrates me) It’s why I went back to Trayed and Tested at Insomnia last year and why Megacon caught the eye as somewhere to go. Looking forward to Comic Con later in the year, plus there will be the UK Games Expo the weekend after.

Picture. We're looking at a cute white kitten with orange fur on the top of their head. The captions are "I need" "Hugs"

And then there was the day after … I had what I’ll call a health event. I won’t go into details except that there was a decent amount of blood escaping, I should have taken myself off to hospital to get seen to. I’m ok, it was messy but was under control quickly, hasn’t recurred since and I still have all the bits we should have.

But whereas I’d have quite liked to get the Megacon details locked in to memory with a post, that health event is something I’d quite like to delete from the memory. It rattled me for a little while that one.

Gosh, what else has been going on apart from that ? I haven’t been getting out much. I think that’s part of the burn out. I did take a week off a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about going up to the Lake District for a few days. Kinda like the Conwy Castle trip up to North Wales last year, except doing all of the arrangements myself this time.

Is it bad when you’re too mentally done to arrange stuff to help recover from being too mentally done ? Probably.

One thing that has happened since the last post is me doing the Space thing again …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at four buggies on an airless rocky planet. The buggies are parked looking away from us, in a line left to right. In the sky, we see dots of stars plus a small white blue sun.

The interest happened again due to the lovely Ninja Space Unicorn (Twitch link) kicking off an expedition in Elite Dangerous to head off to the far side of the galaxy and back. It caught the interest and so I’ve joined in with the streams so far. And they’ve been fun too, including the picture above where the 4 of us that day were all set up to do a buggy race around our landed space ships.

The expedition has been paused for a few weeks now due to IRL Stuff (we lost a friend far too soon) but having fun on the expedition made me look again at the second account I had from a giveaway from a different distributor (Ok it was Epic) … so I’m playing Elite on two accounts now. My main account is still 1000 light years above the centre of the galaxy but their carrier is supporting the alt account build up a star system.

That’s been another big draw, there were rumours at the start of the year that colonisation was coming to Elite. We could claim a system for our own and build stuff in there. Mine’s the Col 285 Sector ZU-L B9-2 gosh that’s a mouthful here’s an Inara link system. There are just two installations completed so far but I should be able to finish two more this week with what’s in the carrier … and then it goes faster from there for a little bit with smaller bases. And if you’ve had a look at that link and noticed something …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a spaceship mostly in shadow lower left. The engines are flaring out a white exhaust as the ship heads towards the opening into a cubical space station. The name "Here be Dwagons" is emblazoned below the entrance.

Yep. My home station is called Here Be Dwagons. It had to be :-D. And it’s been making me grin every time I go past the name in the list of things in the system. I do have a few more names in the Book Of Names. One will come soon because I have a farm station quite early in the build list. The other big name needs to wait until a medical facility is built. Other than that, looking for some really good names. There could well be a Space Unicorn themed name in there at some point.

Other stuff ? It’s April Fools Day tomorrow, I don’t have anything planned for that … although I did go back to childhood times by acquiring a game called Derail Valley. It’s a train driver simulator. It’s really early days in there for me but I’d point you towards Squirrel’s playlist of the game over on Youtube. He’ll tell you more about an interesting curious game with that progression system inside that you know I go for.

I think I better hit the post and publish button in a moment though … I’ve been keeping the reading going, I lost the reading streak again (oops) but I’ll be looking to do an A to Z of books thing this year. It’s supposed to be authors but I don’t think I’ll find enough variety there for all of the letters, so I’ll go with authors and titles.

Good to post again, I’ll try and not make it two months until the next one !

Have a great evening everyone.

PS Social media stuff ! I’ve abandoned Twixxer (the owner), I keep up to date on Bluesky (the author / creator communities are barmy wonderful fun) and most of the discords I’m in … I’ll post to Farcebook but I don’t keep up to date with what gets posted there (bad algorithm, too much).

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Insert Meme Title Here

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January 16, 2025

10:54 pm

1 Comment on Insert Meme Title Here

musing

,

Hello everyone 🙂

Oh dear that’s a bit of a weak title innit … Couple of memes caught the eye this week that I thought would make an excellent theme for things to have a natter about. But first … thumbnail !

Picture meme. We're looking at a black and white cat that is sitting up. There is a loading wheel above their head and the caption is "Pls be patient, his brain cell is loading."

I think I broke my brain a little bit today. It’s a work related thing where we’re looking how we can add one bit of equipment to a bigger bit of equipment but it’s not entirely obvious how best to do it. So I started thinking about the problem in an abstract way. Ask not what the obvious solution is, ask what the problems actually are and what you’re trying to achieve. And you may end up with a completely different answer to what everyone has assumed the answer should be.

Actually that cues me up for a mini rant … I bet you’ve all been subjected to websites that are massively overkeen to get you to sign up for their cookies and especially their surveys or their newsletters. I had a suggestion to do that here, where one of the third party people were recommending I use that newsletter popup.

Nope. I hate that. It’ll never appear here.

You know the one I mean, where you’ve mostly randomly found a news site (often techie geeky stuff) and as soon as you move the mouse off the window, you get a popover that obscures the article that’s demanding you sigh up for a newsletter. If any website owners are reading this, PLEASE don’t do that. It’ll make random readers annoyed with you for having to dismiss the newsletter pop up and if they’re annoyed, they won’t ever sign up for updates. Whether or not someone signs up for a newsletter depends entirely on the quality of your content. If their first impressions are tainted by having to click too many links to dismiss cookies, or by a newsletter popup, then that first impression is pure annoyance and the first impressions stick.

Think of how you see the websites you look at, then apply what your impressions are to creating the style of your own site. And I have to admit to being a little bit lazy there myself with how I’ve got this site set up. It could be better, at least I hope it’s not annoying.

Because annoyance overrides being interesting. Put that newsletter or subscribe link at the end of your post. If someone’s enjoyed reading what you’ve contributed, that’s the point where you want them to see the “would you like to see more?”

Rant complete 🙂 First meme of the day is a question that a good friend on Bluesky asked. What would the title of your autobiography be ? I had a ponder on this for a minute, looked away for a second, had a random moment of inspiration and …

Picture. Cartoon strips. Top left, a red dragon is saying "Here to slay me? With that little thing". Top right, an armoured man holds up a sword saying "Oh, no I needed this to get here." Bottom left, a conical mountain with captions "I thought you'd be lonely up here so I'm here to sit with you, if you'd like". Bottom right sees man and dragon sitting quietly beside each other looking at the sunset.

I got that from Google images from probably a collections site but I might look up @Beardedhorse there for more. Ah ha ! Cool, they’re on Bluesky.

ADHD Brain says “stay on topic”, the daft idea I had was that my autobiography would be titled “Here be dwagons.” What would yours be ?

Next meme … if video games cause violence, what would you be going to prison for based on the last game you played. I’m not counting Idle Champions there, I’ve played Motorsport Manager today but when I answered that meme, the answer was “Running a sweatshop style factory impriso—- employing hordes of adorable little gnomes to build products with no thought for safety”. Yep, it’s the rather special Little Big Workshop.

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We can see the rooms of our factory laid out before us, filled with little machines and small gnome people with Xmas hats. In the centre, a box with a bearded fellow in red hat and blue waistcoat thanking us for delivering items to make the festive season happen.

There we go, that’s from the end of the Xmas event that the game has at a particular time of the real world calendar year. It’s a cracking game, very addictive with definite “one more job” tendencies to keep you sucked in playing the game.

Last meme was about games that you have and own in the Steam library but have never played … I have to admit to having more than a few of these. Sometimes it’s because I just haven’t gotten round to trying to learn them. Let’s see a few of these highly regarded games that I really need to have a good look at :

Puffin Planes has 5 minutes – it’s an airline management game where you’re looking to encompass the globe with your airline taking people from place to place. Just haven’t felt the Brain to learn to play it.

Sky Haven is an airport management game where you build your airport. I did enjoy setting up Airport CEO but didn’t have Brain to learn this one at the time.

Dustland Delivery – post apocalyptic truck game. You’re not driving the truck like the Euro Truck Sim / American Truck Sim games, it’s more a strategic transport game.

Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper – they’re both farm type games, with Graveyard Keeper having you manage sending the dead off. And harvesting them for bits to make other things. These are both legendary standard games that I really should invest some time in to learn.

Space Crew was a freebie and I added it to the library for the soundtrack. It’s a follow on to Bomber Crew (which I did own and look at) but didn’t play it because the gameplay videos and reviews I saw for it suggested that it was a bit of a soulless grindy hard for the sake of it game that I wouldn’t enjoy. And it doesn’t have the nostalgic connection to WW2 that Bomber Crew has.

Kenshi – is a post apocalyptic wasteland game where you roam with a small band of warriors trying to carve out your place in the world. I really should play this one, it’s a unique one with its own special character.

Papers Please – another legendary one where you play the part of an Immigration and Passport Control Agent in the totalitarian authoritarian country of Arstotzka. You decide whether people are allowed in or not and they’ve included enough weird character to make this an interesting cult classic.

Parkitect, Project Hospital and Model Builder – these all arrived in the same bundle as Little Big Workshop.

Humble is responsible for a lot of the unplayed games in my library, because I’d add the games I acquired as part of a bundle but wasn’t actually interested in.

Last one for today – Disco Elysium is another legendary game. It’s a mostly text adventure game set in a future scifi world that’s descended into neglect and dystopia. There’s a lot that’s very familiar to what we have in our 21st century world, with more advanced technology mixed in. But it’s not about the technology, it’s about a murder, an uncaring city, a long suffering partner and a cop charged with figuring out what’s going on at the same time as piecing together who they are from the fragments of extreme amnesia.

It’s another classic. I really must find the time to play it !

I need to get my daily at least one chapter read now though, so I’ll bid you goodnight, have a wonderful timezone everyone.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Advent day 23 and we’re speeding along

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December 23, 2024

10:00 pm

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musing

,

Hello everyone,

I’m having a bit of a curl up and not be particularly human day today, so I’ve pretty much hidden in Little Big Workshop and quietly lurked in a couple of streams with not too much source of input going on.

Hold up, what’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at most of the advent collection again. Our dwagon is on the right, the new model is on the left on top of the d20. It's an open top hover vehicle, with a sandy colour curved front and darker brown at the back. Two dots for figures are behind an aero screen. At the back, three engine pods to left, right and upper.

There we are, it’s the speeder from the first Star Wars movie. And today’s dodgy shift from picture to text is … (drumroll)

This year feels like it’s been speeding along … The time seems to have flown by but it’s also felt like an exceptionally draining year. A lot of that is stuff from behind the wall. Some of it is, you know I’m very wrapped up in the streaming and gaming community world and consider a lot of them friends. Insomnia was a brilliant event at the start of the year and the failure of the company that ran Insomnia hit especially hard, I think because the discontinuation of the event had a massive impact on the lives of those friends from the online communities.

That’s from the people who ran the event (hello Tashnarr), the people who were employed on stands at the event, the people (hello Billietrixx) who were the core of bringing us such a massive highlight in the Session Zero live dungeons and dragons show, people like Aby of Trayed and Tested who … I bought dice at Trayed and Tested and nowhere else at Insomnia because Aby was such a lovely person on the day (link to Etsy on the right).

I think I’ve mentioned before that I tend to mirror people when they interact. If they are lovely people, I find it much easier to engage with them. If they’re … not nice, I’ll find myself somewhere else to be. I’ll enjoy staying around people with the good vibes.

And the interesting people too. Interesting people are fun to be around. What defines interesting ? Not sure there. It’ll be something unique to that individual.

I think that’s enough from me for today. Not quite sure what I’ll be up to over the next few days, we’ll take it one day as a time and hopefully have a little fun family gathering. And then I’m back to trying to disconnect and chill out before we all head back to work in a week and a bit.

Have a lovely evening everyone 🙂

Oh ! Back to events for an epilogue … I somewhat decided last year that I probably wouldn’t be going back to Boatlife in 2025 but I did peek at what was happening yesterday, to discover that it too was an event that had gone in the bin. Not sure about the circumstances there, it felt like it could have been a really good event. Although the reason I thought I wouldn’t be back was because I thought the exhibitors had evolved into overgrown tenders and away from the workhorse liveaboards that I’m interested in.

I think that if Boatlife can fail as well, with it being run by NEC’s own events company, then it shows how rough the events world is at the moment. Which makes the very promising Creator Events group even more important for keeping the fun alive.

Definitely that’s it for me now – have a great rest of your day and if you’re out of contact for whatever reasons (good and bad things happen this time of year), I hope it’s a positive time for you.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Day 10 and a hero emerges

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December 10, 2024

10:16 pm

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musing

,

Hello everyone, what’s behind the door today ?

Picture. A little variation in the advent scene today. Behind, my iPad is showing a fierce looking lady with an orange face with a white and blue tentacle on either side of her head. She's wearing a grey cloak and is wielding two light swords. Today's model is a minifigure of the same character.
Yep. Ipad is dusty.

Ellardy had to hide today, they’re mirroring me by not having the best skeleton day today. (Joints are bad, there are ouchies)

Today’s figure is Ahsoka Tano, who first appeared as a raw padawan student in the animated Clone Wars series. We saw her grow from that raw new warrior into a seasoned Jedi and she’s got her own series now (haven’t watched it).

After yesterday’s post on hero ships, the idea for today went over to heroes. As Ahsoka is one of the heroes that grew through the newest Star Wars stories. As mentioned, I haven’t watched much at all of modern Star Wars stuff. I enjoyed (most of) the Expanded Universe books a lot and the modern stuff is all locked behind a streaming paywall that I haven’t invested in and don’t have the time to watch it.

Too much gaming.

But then I thought … there are heroes all around us. All of you reading this, you’re a hero to me. Even you, the person who just randomly found the site and has read this far. YOU’RE AWESOME. Thank you, hope you read some more, it’s wonderful to think people might want to have a read of my rambles.

And there’s special mentions to come there of the two likely readers who are associated with work. One’s retired now, one is still in the organisation and helps keep me sane by being an awesome person to natter to. And tempt with Lego and tea.

There’s Comic Con Friend, who’s going through her struggles at the moment. It’s always a pleasure to see this one have a little peek into my life, either through enjoying sharing the Comic Con experience or those messages coming in.

Lots of other people too, including family. The streaming community has a lot of amazing people who share their lives, share their time with us and just generally make the days better and provide spaces that are just lovely to chill out in.

I have two of them on screens at the moment. Billietrixx is on the desktop and Norina1 is on the laptop. They’re both lovely people who provide fun, chill, cozy spaces to relax in.

Caustic Phoenix will probably be doing a co-working stream tomorrow on Twitch, I don’t get to see all of these due to being occasionally in the office when those happen. Caustic was very lovely in having a look at this site, which led to a few improvements. Caustic’s got a natural sense of fun, is another good one to watch.

It’s not just the streamers though, it’s the lovely communities they gather around them. So accepting, so generous. They’re heroes too.

I should hit post soon so I can take care of the poorly muscles and bones but one last mention for a truly wonderful person … Tashnarr has been treating us to (mostly) daily advent calendar posts over on the Instagram. They’re a little dose of Daily Happy.

There we go. The thought from during the day at work was that I’d talk about gaming and fiction heroes to follow the hero ships from yesterday. But they’re not actually real, just fiction.

You’re real heroes. Thank you all, you make life that bit better.

Picture. We're looking at an orange cat, which is gripping a person's finger between their front paws. The caption is "When ur havin a hard time but ur best friend is there for u"

Nite all, have a wonderful rest of timezone wherever you are 🙂 <3

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Advent day 5 walking today, not running

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December 5, 2024

7:04 pm

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musing

Hello everyone,

Picture. Our advent scene is growing. The XWing is now on the head of the dwagon, the droid, Leia and TIE fighter are towards the back. In front, a mostly grey 4 legged vehicle with a central box body on top and smaller head to the front.

Not feeling so good this evening, so it’ll be a short one from me today and generally keeping the lights lower and the sound deadened. Might even go to bed before the cricket starts ! (England in New Zealand at 10pm UK).

I’ll be ok, I just felt like I got hit in the head with a bat after completing doing a presentation thing for work earlier. So instead of heading into town to have a Xmas munchie with the team, I’m staying away from bright lights, noises and overstimulation.

I suspect a good few people reading will fully understand the effects when that happens.

Just gotta avoid that brain temptation of wanting to dive into a game again. I did start a new journey yesterday …

Game screenshot. Mass Effect. We see the back of our character, wearing black armour covered with guns on the back. The sun is shining through just to her right, with a selection of towers and spires on the horizon. To the right, a huge metal long diamond shape in the sky with what looks like ... fingers.

Err yeah, I shouldn’t continue with that tonight ! It’s the prologue mission from Mass Effect and that’s become a legendary game series from the last couple of decades … but it does go for the flashing lights and some strobe effects.

If you somehow haven’t played Mass Effect, I’d thoroughly recommend taking a look at it. The game series is regularly given massive (90% off) discounts as well. The first person cover shooter style gameplay is very tight and it carries an excellent story through pretty much to the end.

For now though, dinner’s on the way, Woahhjess is doing a chill Rimworld stream over on Twitch and I’ll be looking forwards to seeing what Tashnarr has for us today over on the Instagrams.

I should improve again tomorrow, I’m able to turn on what I call a survival mode which gets me home in cases where the lights are starting to swim in front of my eyes or if I’m in an overstimulation. Plus I closed my eyes earlier and opened them again after 2dKiri (a lovely Austrian chill gaming streamer) had switched over to someone else.

And I’m rambling again – enjoy your evenings everyone ! See you tomorrow 🙂

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You can pet the “dog”

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August 29, 2024

10:46 pm

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musing

,

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again … Time for a little check from last time :-D. Ah ha ! The Olympics had just started up. It was a good games again too, I quite enjoyed watching what I was seeing there. I haven’t posted in a little while because to be honest, the burn out was hitting again. Thumbnail first ?

Picture. We're looking at a blue poster with the title "I'm going to Creator North". It has the date September 14and the location Kommune, Sheffield. In the centre, is a small green dwagon holding a red heart shape in front of him.

There we go, that’ll do.

Really looking forward to that event, it’s coming up in a few weeks and it’ll involve a weekend trip. It’s the second time it’s been run after a fun first event last year. Here’s the link to what I wrote after last time. This year’s event is going to be a bit bigger. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a chance to meet up again with friends from last year, friends from streams going back a long time and friends from new streams that I haven’t seen in person before.

It’ll hopefully grow even more, especially in the wake of the Insomnia Gaming Festival disappearing earlier this year. We’ll see. Fingers crossed. We do have MCM Comic Con as well and various other Comic Cons but it would be good to see the seed started by some very lovely people running the Creator events continue to grow.

I do sometimes wonder where I fit in with events like this one though. I do Create, although I do skip from thing to thing. The blogs have been a mostly continuous thing going back 19 years now over the two sites. There was a quick look at seeing what was needed to do Youtube videos (link to channel for those curious) but I didn’t continue that because it would have taken a lot of time to grow into something that would provide a return on the time. Plus it would have needed sacrifices including giving up listening to copyrighted music all the time (it’d be picked up on the mic and detected) and the stream watching. There was the sketching, although that stopped 4 years ago when I think that’s when I slammed into the burn out wall.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute sleeping grey and white kitten on a white blanket. The captions are "I would be unstoppable" "If not for the tired sleepy"

I’m still in that burn out now, it doesn’t feel like it has eased at all. Maybe even deeper. I’m ok, hanging in there but it definitely feels like I’ll need to be taking care of myself a bit better. Maybe even doing more stuff out of the ordinary like the cruise last year. I think I really needed that removal from the normal for a while. That’s odd isn’t it … deal with tiredness by going off and doing something.

I don’t think I’ve ever been normal there in how I react to stuff. When I do take time off and do the restful thing of staying at home, I won’t exactly do very much (apart from gaming and listening to stuff). And I’ll be thinking throughout that I should be getting out and about and having that hit my mental state in a negative way. And my mental state is, to be honest, not that great at the moment.

There’s a lot of things to that, a lot of things pulling that mental state downwards. And I wouldn’t want to talk about too many of those here. (Some are work, some are definitely behind the personal stuff wall). Some of it is down to the state of my outsides, where I’ll slowly heal up (my arms are actually mostly ok now) and then over a single event, that healing will go dramatically backwards again. That’s part stress, a little bit of what I might have eaten or just attacking stuff when my guard’s down when I’m attempting to sleep.

And, being honest again, I’m not seeing the way out of the burn out at the moment.

But … I’m getting a bit of time off into the books after the Creator North event. I do need to get a trip booked in for some of that time and a return to Legoland is definitely looking tempting. I would like to find some chances to get myself somewhere to see the stars. That could have happened last weekend but my arms had just stabilised again after doing even more damage to them.

(if you’re reading this and thinking that there’s self harm going on, that’s kinda true. But it’s because my skin went super delicate after all the issues over the last decade. But it’s not self harm that would see me going into an ambulance, it’s more like if I scratch too much, I do a lot of damage. My mental health isn’t great but it’s not down at That Place).

Just a note on that above – it’s ok to not be ok, just please give yourself a chance to climb out if you’re in that pit. And that can be just being around communities like the discords. It might not be sharing your difficulties but even just popping up every once in a while and saying hi is great for the soul. And when you can’t see your own worth, there will be a bunch of people who will be really happy to see that you’ve popped up and that you’re still around. And sometimes, putting up a paw and saying hi is all we have the energy to do. It definitely makes me smile when I put a hello emote into a stream chat and a “SLEEPY” or “DWAGON” comes back from the person streaming.

“Can we pet the dog?”

I’ve been in the games again, with me enjoying running a few more factories in Little Big Workshop to conclusion. It’s a fun, cute little honest factory building game and I just keep going back to it. There’s a progression to it and I like to see the cute little idiot (the game can have some issues with priorities) gnomes go about building stuff.

Motorsport Manager has finished another segment of the latest megacampaign, so I’ve switched teams again after winning again. It’s a game where you can just keep on going with it, I’m in the year 2052 now. Inflation isn’t a thing in the game, outside of people wanting more money as they get better. Old drivers retire and get replaced by newly generated 18-20 year old drivers. It works well for a megacampaign where as you go on, it’s still all new.

Picture. We're looking at a heap of snacks arranged on a light blue bed sheet in front of a box of Lego. The Lego box has the word Jaws on it and has a picture of a black and yellow trawler boat being chased by a shark. We also see the red dwagon plush to the left.

Dredge came out with a new DLC, with an Iron Rig, I enjoyed playing through that after it released. And I managed to get to Cardiff as well to grab the unofficial Lego tie in. Comes with free shark, does not include game. Gonna need bigger shelf. (And steadily making a dent in the snacks)

And the latest one is Star Wars Outlaws …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at a dark scene inside a cavern of orange rock. In the centre, a starfighter is being disassembled and we see other mechanical debris scattered around. Our character is bottom left, hiding behind a barrier.

This one is a sneaky game and I’ve really enjoyed dipping into it for the last couple of evenings after closing up the work laptop. It places you in the Star Wars universe as a smuggler scoundrel lady with an adorable companion. Instead of lightsabers and the Force, it sees you relying on stealth and guile and a reliable blaster at your side. It is very expensive (£75 for the equivalent of what I’m playing) but I’m actually kinda just renting it on the monthly subscription (£15) so I’m looking at crashing through the game so I can drop that sub again. I don’t think I’ll have a problem doing that :-D.

Oh and you have a companion too, a little adorable doglike critter who you can send off to do stuff like :

Distract – it’ll go off and dramatically play dead in front of guards, so you can sneak past them while they’re looking the other way.

Steal – little dude is an arch thief.

Hit switches – like turning power off for a camera

And probably more too. I dunno, it feels like whereas I bounced off Starfield pretty hard (just didn’t engage with that future humanity thing), I’m quite engaged with the early days of Star Wars Outlaws.

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at scenes from a city street, with our character in white tunic and dark trousers leaning over to scratch the little blue critter on the head.

And you can pet the “dog”.

I think I need to disappear now (2240 and I want to get some reading in !). Look after yourselves, have a lovely weekend. One way I look out for my mental state is doing things for other people, although that kinda depends on other people to do the nice things for. Hope you find your way too. Time to open up Seventh Bride by T Kingfisher again after enjoying Michael Palin’s Pole to Pole.

🙂

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A dwagon went to see a boat

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February 21, 2024

8:20 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to littler boats ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nite all, have a great rest of the week.

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

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Happy New Year

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January 9, 2024

7:44 pm

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musing

Hello everyone,

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

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

Quite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did I mention random ?

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

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

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

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

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

Is he ok ? I don’t think he’s ok.

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year everyone !

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