Category: musing

Cruising and a ramble

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November 7, 2023

9:30 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

I did a thing …

Picture. We're looking at a couple of little models. The first is a wooden longboat with a red and white vertical striped sail full of wind. The boat has 5 shields on the side with a blue cross on a red background. Inside the boat sits a goofy looking red dwagon.

Yep. After a lot of procrastination, including completely scrapping some plans and starting again with a different cruise experience, cruise is booked. The picture will give a clue as to where I’ll be headed. (Clue – I’m hoping for clear skies and lights in them)

So the first attempt at booking was with Ambassador and they were increasingly looking like Butlins at Sea, which isn’t really my vibe. I can appreciate dressing up but I’d like to keep that for people I care about, not so much a dress code imposed from outside. Plus there are other things that made me uncomfortable about them in the various reviews. And then I started looking more seriously at the Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise and found this review at Danielle the Cruisemiss’s site (linky). Lovely post, would recommend giving it a read.

Anyway, that’s booked. I’ll be away for a while inabit and I’ll definitely be collecting a lot of pictures on this new experience.

I did need to be getting away from things for a little while now. I’m still feeling that burn out creeping up on me. It feels fairly ever present, although a few of the daft ideas have been coming back. I might even finish up that Dwagon Alphabet I started up 3 years ago before slamming into a massive burn out wall. That’s something for home though as it needs the software on the desktop that won’t be coming with me. I have had enough letters to make a few names for people and the recipients have absolutely loved them.

But one thing I should do is bring the old neglected sketch pad with me and see about doing some drawings again. It should be a good couple of weeks varying between relaxed and chilled out vs however many expeditions my body can support. I did manage 16k steps around MCM Comic Con but also paid for that. I’ll be better anticipating what my body needs next time and look to head off the leg cramps before they happen. The last thing I ever want to have happen is for someone to be forced to help me because of daftness on my part.

And I think I said last time that we should be helping people wherever we can, within the limits that we have. We do need to look after ourselves as well but if you have a chance to do something nice for someone that we care about, you go ahead and do that something nice. Although …

Picture. We looking downwards at 4 kittens sitting on a wooden floor. A fifth kitten is jumping at the camera, with the following captions around them : "I must go" "My people need me"

And this is the serious part of the post … There is a thing about being too nice. Or the wrong kind of nice. It’s only a nice comment, a nice thing to say or a nice thing to do if the recipient appreciates it. We had another reminder about behaviour today. It was directed at the organisation as a whole and it’s about terrible trends that my organisation is still afflicted with, hopefully from a shrinking group of people although I see it in other areas of life too. Like I no longer listen to Radio 5 in the car because I was driving at the same time as the football people were on and the frat boy changing room vibe was definitely not for me.

Everyone should be comfortable around everyone else. There shouldn’t need to be a vital requirement to protect your self or your details. One online person I know describes it (with a certain hidden terror) as “I don’t want to die”.

This world shouldn’t be like that and personally, I hate that it’s been that way for I think my entire life on this planet.

I don’t see it myself that much but that’s because of the whole white male thing. I’m not targeted that much because the bullies target other groups and genders. And I hate that bit of the world too. More in a bit. I do, however, see the intimidation that’s increasingly present on the roads. Whether that’s from people who get really upset that you actually stick to the speed limit or those wannabe racing drivers who think it’s ok to dangerously attempt to get to their destination 10 seconds earlier. They’re usually the ones sitting at the traffic lights first.

Even before pandemic times, I really disliked being around big crowds. One of the London trips involved going through a change at Baker Street station … it’s cramped, dimly lit and a major line changing station. I felt deeply threatened in that crowd and I’ll hopefully never be in there again.

Flip that round though and think what someone in the more vulnerable groups is going to be thinking in that same space. Instead of being scared of being pickpocketed, they’re being scared that they’re going to be attacked. They don’t want to die because they had to venture down a road alone at night or a different place made scary by the people around them.

I did give a warning that Heavy Stuff might happen in this post ? I hope I did 😀

It stretches into comments on people’s appearances as well. You may think it’s a nice comment but you need to heavily consider how the comment is going to be received. “Hey you look cute” “Err I’m a completely random stranger you’re creepy go away”. And other scenarios.

When I mention the various streamer people who I watch, I try and keep it about the content not about what the person looks like. You can get that from looking at the content, you don’t need that from me. What I concentrate on is the person beneath the outsides. I enjoy talking to people who are beautiful, lovely people on the inside. It doesn’t matter what they’re like on the outside when they’re a kind heart. And the opposite can often be true as well, where they’d be considered classically beautiful on the outside but the inside is nasty. I don’t like those people.

This post is also partly coming from where someone’s repeatedly asked the chat to not mention what she looks like, yet the chat keeps on coming with the comments on appearance.

Gotta respect what people want. It’s not a nice comment if the recipient doesn’t perceive it that way. And far too often, where someone thinks it’s a “nice” comment or (the way the work article described it) the imposition of an individual on someone else’s world and space … it’s perceived as threat instead of “nice”.

We also need to be respecting the “no” as an answer too, which includes if we’re looking for someone’s attention. I do send messages over to a small group of lovely people and I’m really happy when they send a message back. But the mistake I made and lesson I learned a few years ago* is that if you start chasing for responses, the chasing is going to be perceived as a threat and it doesn’t do your own mental state any good.

*The posts are still there on the other blog. I was chasing for replies, opinions, responses from the other person and was probably on the verge of getting too insistent. At the same time, they and others in their group were talking about dangerous stalkers (not me) which were very definitely scaring them. Two things then happened. 1st, that inner monitor made me realise what I was doing and I stopped chasing for those responses. 2nd, a few other wonderful people came into my Bunch Of Friends and I was enjoying talking to them instead.

The takeaway from that is – it’s ok to make mistakes. But you also have to own those mistakes, realise what you did, figure out how to be a better person. Make that improvement. And so I’m still welcome in the community of the person above. I figured out what I was doing early enough to back off when it was pretty plain that I wasn’t going to be getting a response. Gotta respect what the other person wants. If I write something nice about someone here and then send the link over, they’re under no obligation to read it. It took a while to start owning that and I’ll honestly say I’m not all the way there on it yet.

Too much heavy for one day ?

Maybe. I do get worried about people though. There’s a very small number of people who I really, deeply care about and if they get quiet for a while then I get hoping that they’re ok. If you’ve got this far in the post, you might well be on that list :-).

It’s a much better world with the lovely people being confident enough to be living fully in it and not needing to hide away.

So while I’m off enjoying some time away from the world, be good to everyone hanging around in it.

One thing I said to someone is that we make the offer to help and be prepared to accept that the offer is turned down. The other half of that is that if the offer is accepted, we back it up with our action. I don’t always make the offer to help but I’ll always come through if the offer is taken up, even if I’m fully expecting that the offer will be turned down.

It has to be an offer that respects the other person though, one of the things in the work thing was that offers were being made that were disrespectful, harassing and threatening. Don’t do that. Think of how the offer is going to be viewed before you let it out of your head. Same goes for comments. It’s ok to think someone’s cute or pretty … it can be the worst thing to actually say that, especially if the person has asked you not to comment on appearance.

Time to pull this post to a close I think, I’ll come back before I disappear with something a bit happier 🙂 If I get that idea popping in to the Brain 😀 I just needed to get some “the world is not ok and I’m unhappy about that” feelings out of the head.

PS I’ll be over the moon if there’s someone on that cruise who ends up seeing what the dwagon’s up to and figuring that they’d like to get talking to them 😀

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Where would you be in a science fiction universe ?

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October 23, 2023

9:44 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

Yep. Odd thought, it got into my head last night when I was trying to get to sleep. I don’t think I did actually sleep last night, hopefully better today. I suspect it’s been showing in what I’ve been saying about certain groups at work. Like the one who’s head should be on a pike in front of the offices (there’s a few of those) and I was saying I wanted to burn some people’s houses down last week.

Still kinda feel like that. Maybe I need another break again, burn out can creep up on people without them realising and it leads to being intolerant where you should be more ready to retreat, reset and try again from a different angle.

Picture. We're looking at the face of a brown and white cat. It's looking directly at the camera, resting on a blanket. The caption is "I let my mind wander. It never came back"

Quite. Where did the last fortnight go ? Feels like it’s gone by in an absolute blur. A couple of books have been demolished since then too, with Illuminations by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon, Hugo Winner) being a highlight. Maybe not as good as the two Clocktaur War books but those were for a more adult audience and could be a lot edgier, grittier and had a definite sexual tension running through both books.

Good stories too. T Kingfisher books are very inventive in how they keep the story unfolding before you and they surprise you too. Great books can tell their story in the perfect time. They’re not too short, not too padded or drawn out. They’re just right. And that’s how I’ve found the T Kingfisher books … and a little mention for Aliette de Bodard there too.

I didn’t think so much with Wool, the first book in the Silo trilogy. It felt padded and a bit too drawn out. The one I’m reading at the moment is book 6 in a series of 9 by James David Victor. They’re good … but they’re also so fast that I’m reading them 2 at a time.

Science fiction universe ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, with occasional stars dotting the background. In the bottom right foreground, we're looking at a red and white blocky spaceship flying away from us with two engines flaring purple exhaust. A ball like space station is in the distance, with white and black sections. Solar panels can be seen behind.
Dungeon Food Truck, departing

That’s the Dungeon Food Truck, callsign KN-00T after the lovely Knightenator (Twitch link). I don’t watch enough Knightenator, it can be a bit much sometimes for my brain, bit too much anarchy. Lovely lady though, well worth a watch and I couldn’t resist the meme this time with this particular ship. It’s a Type 9 Freighter Explorer, with the prime mission being to go out among the stars …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed on a reddish brown plain, with several sharp mountains behind, casting their shadows. To the upper right, we see the black, grey and white rings of the planet we are on. Above and behind, we see a small globe of a planet in eclipse shadow, with a set of rings surrounding it.

I was in pretty much full on Travel Mode (Honk, Scoop, Jump, Repeat sometimes scan the good systems) with a mission. Yep. Get to a far flung station …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship can be faintly seen lower centre, lost in shadow. On the left, the circular shape of a space station with the lit up rectangular docking entrance in the middle. On the right, a white moon pockmarked with small craters. Behind that, a faint blue planet with the line of a planetary ring.

I’ll come back to the mission later.

That question though, if you found yourself in a science fiction universe, what would you want it to be ? We can draw on any of the settings, either our universe or something different. Near future or far off ?

The Star Wars universe is an obvious setting to look at. There’s so much variety here and it’s absolutely full of life. This is a good choice as well, I could see myself being a Han Solo type, with a spaceship traveling between the planets being led by the next big score. Or getting by with simpler cargoes to pay the bills.

Elite Dangerous has a similar spread of life throughout its little populated bubble of stars. It doesn’t have the variety of Star Wars though, with just humans and badly handled Thargoids who won’t be buying you a drink in a bar.

Star Trek is the other huge one, with it close(ish) future of warp drives, impossible science and more great variety of alien life. Star Trek would be a great universe to live in, although it does seem a little limited for starfarers outside the Federation and other Empires. The ships seem a bit big for independent traders, compared to the little ships of Elite and Star Wars.

And then there’s Warhammer 40,000 … Oh my. In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, you’ll be dead before you hit the “May …” of the “May you live in Interesting Times” curse. It’s a bit too much of a stratified society for me, with very few people having any chance of an independent life.

It hasn’t really worked out that way for me (been held back by the health issues of the last 10 years and generalised inertia) but if I could be a ship captain visiting a different port with different cargo every run, yeah I’d quite like that. And the Elite and Star Wars universes both appeal to that with opportunities for the small traders. But you have to stay ahead of the criminal element.

Fun times.

Not so sure about the near future Earth universes. I think we’re exhausting what this planet has to offer, I’d rather be out in the stars seeing new things. I should book one of those cruise holidays though, so I can see a bit more of this planet.

(Back to reality) That’s one thing that has gone whoosh – a bit of a break out with my outsides with the usual thing of quick damage being slow to repair. But it’s getting there. Although I’ve had to add Lemon Sherbets to the suspicion list. Bad snacks. But I wouldn’t want to go away for that long without being able to use the healing gunk.

(Back to unreality) I do like playing in the near future universe of Deus Ex, although that might be more character than setting. Must go back to the Mankind Divided game soon. I don’t think I want to live in that world though, doesn’t seem that much future in it.

Big honourable mention to the Gareth L Powell universes too. He’s very inventive with his world building and can establish his worlds very quickly with the tight narrative. Another recent read was Descendant Machine, which is set in the Continuance series (2 so far hopefully more coming) where humanity has been banished from the Earth for being naughty with nukes. I’ve enjoyed both Descendant Machine and Stars And Bones. Without giving too much of the building away, humanity now lives on starship Arks, with smaller Vanguard scout ships investigating the space they go through. I’d see me being a Vanguard agent.

Yep. Put me in a spaceship and let me chart my own course and I’ll be happy. Journeying is better with a crew though.

Oh ! Here we are …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, our white and red spaceship is to the bottom left. We can just see part of a planet coloured white with thin dark bads. A couple of small interstellar clouds are to top left and between those, we see the lights of our fleet carrier emerging from a black cloud.

(That’s a little bit enhanced, the original was very poorly lit and Gimp has very effectively balanced it there)

That was journey’s end yesterday, with me meeting up with the fleet carrier for the first time in months.

Mission accomplished, carrier crew needed a consignment of Party Rings. (So good). Also needed to bring carrier fuel. But it was mostly about the Party Rings.

Time to post and enjoy more of a Tashnarr stream (Twitchy link). Have a good evening everyone, find snack, enjoy snack, be happy.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?