Winter wonderland, for a day

Hello everyone,

We had snow ! It’s always a big event that in UK because it’s quite rare. Although maybe it’s increasing as the weather gets wilder ? It didn’t last long but it was good to have a little wander in it while it lasted. Still chilly here … but the occasional clouds aren’t turning to rain or snow.

Thumbnail pic ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at 4 panels all of a black cat with large eyes. The panels steadily get closer to the cat. The captions together say "I wish your year is full of nice things"

There we go. Purr.in.ink are good people and I must check that I’m following them on Bluesky if they’re over there yet.

Uhoh this could be a random post – quickly on the social media stuff … I’ve given up on trying to keep up with Facebook and Twixxer. I’ll occasionally scroll through the Facebook stuff but it is very occasional. Their algorithm is complete garbage now and hides things. I don’t bother scrolling Twixxer any more, definitely not on mobile due to how advert heavy it is. Plus both Facebook and Twixxer are run by … well you’ll have your own opinions there and I probably agree with most of them. It doesn’t help that both of these sites are now deeply problematic with who runs them.

Bluesky is great for keeping up with that selective curated group of people that I follow, as is Instagram. Plus I’ve trained Instagram to mostly suggest cute dog meme videos that it shows me when the people I follow haven’t posted an update. Good times.

Snow ?

Picture. We're looking at a snowy scene towards a road curving around a roundabout in the centre. We can see the patterning of the snow coming down. It's at night and there is light from streetlights and a car negotiating the roundabout.

We didn’t get much, although it was enough to cover up the roads with a light layer that was giving some people a few issues.

Picture. We're standing on a lightly snow covered pavement looking down a long straight road lined with lit streetlights on the other side. The road is covered in snow with ruts cut into it by the cars.

About enough snow there to make things interesting on the roads but it was a Saturday evening, so not many people were needing to head out to go to work or get supplies. Roads were pretty quiet actually and I think one of the local chippies were closing up early.

It was nice having the little walkabout. Not too cold and the snow was easy to walk through in the boots. I didn’t see any snow people about though and I didn’t stay out for that long.

Picture. Snow scene again. We're looking towards a small bridge. There is a wooden fence on each side, going up to about hip height. Beyond, the leafless branches of a layer of trees.

We did have the last remnants of the Christmas lights though.

Picture. Snow scene. We're looking down a lightly snow covered lane between houses, some of which we can see on the right with cars parked in short driveways in front. The screen is lit by streetlights and light blue white dot lights on the trees.

Pretty.

It’s taken me a few more days than I wanted to post this one ! Back at work this week and that usually leads to me being absolutely wiped out by the time it gets to the evening. (Especially as I did Mall on Monday evening and got back a bit late) So I’ve been gaming, with the trucks and a bit of Mass Effect, chilling out with the stream watching and enjoying the reading.

First book read of 2025 was Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s the last of his Architects trilogy, set in a fairly near future universe where humanity reached the stars only to find monsters lurking in Unspace* which would come out and remake planets as works of grotesque art. *(Unspace is this universe’s faster than light travel mechanism). It was a great trilogy with lots of shenanigans and characters to enjoy and the author pulled off the ending really well.

Next up is Colony Mars Four Jezero City by Gerald M Kilby. It’s started out as a murder mystery set on near future Mars. They’re not as well written as the Lords of Uncreation trilogy but they’re still an enjoyable tale. We need these books as well as the masterpieces. And some of the really well written books can be really boring and dreary to read.

I’d prefer to dive through a bunch of great stories that pull me in quickly, than to slog through something I’m not enjoying. And I’m looking at the Peter F Hamilton book from last year there, I enjoyed part of that set up but could tell it was about to go into very dark places with very little narrative support for it going to even deeper dark places.

Oh ! Gotta get back to the book (and the ShoxxyQT* stream) so I can keep a Kindle reading streak going that’s over 400 days now. The last time I missed a day was on the return home day of the Norway cruise, which had a nightmare drive home through almost central London on a really bad traffic day.

*Shoxxy is a new find in the streaming world, she’s a Scottish streamer lady who I’ve seen a small number of streams from so far. Lovely person, has very cosy chill vibes and it makes me happy hanging out in streams like that. Here’s a Twitch link. Although it’s more disturbing horror vibes from the game she has at the moment :-D.

Back to the book ! Nite all, have a lovely rest of the weekend.

Happy New Year everyone

Hello everyone,

It’s been a week since the last post already ? Gosh, kinda lost a few days there maybe :-). I thought I’d do a review of the year today, which has been inspired by something that the lovely Batkitto put on her discord (there’s a Twitch link there which has the rest of her links)

This year started as it finished, with us being a bit worried about the old mum. She’s doing ok and it was good to get up there for a couple of days over Xmas.

Bats’s post was about pictures, so let’s see … what’s our thumbnail today ?

Picture. We're on the cruise ship, in an open area. We're looking across the deck towards the horizon. The sun is setting behind a bank of cloud, giving off a lovely yellow glow. Our red dwagon is looking at it from a position on stacked sunbeds.

There we go. Kinda the wrong end of the year to start with but it was an excellent pick of a pic for the thumbnail. The cruise was good fun, relaxing, healing and I think it was just what I needed for that time of the year. I’d had a break previously into Wales but lost the benefit of that due to probable covid. I actually had a few away breaks through the year too, with occasional days at things like Insomnia and Creator North and Wales. More on those later. And more for the cruise in later posts too, I still owe three port visit posts there :-D. It was a wonderful time (except the Bay of Biscay crossings!) and we were looked after really well by the crew.

And there were day trips too …

Picture. We're looking over a metal fence towards a castle. On the right is a wooden bridge ending at a gatehouse flanked by two thick round towers.

I did a big camera upgrade this year to the Canon R50 :-D. And then proceeded to take it to various castles to have a nosey around and get loads of pictures of castles for people. The one above is White Castle in the midsts of hilly Wales. I’ve also been across to Chepstow, Caerphilly, Cardiff castle, the remaining wall of Carmarthen (which also saw me acquire a tripod upgrade) and then the North Wales trip took me to Conwy and Caernarfon.

It was good to be out and about taking pictures and seeing what it could do. Time for an honest opinion … Is it worth spending all that money on a fancy camera these days ? It all you’re looking to do is take selfies and relatively close range shots, no. Mobile phone cameras these days are filled with incredible optics for their size, it’s easier to get the pictures out of them (the R50 is easy but it’s still an extra step) and the software in the phone allows for incredible performance in unexpected ways. Like I left the good camera in the cabin later on in the cruise because the phone in night mode is fantastic for astro photography … with the software making a tripod kinda redundant.

Picture. We're looking towards a red dragon perched on a low wall. A medieval building is in the background.

Castle ! This time in Cardiff with the dragon there. I’ll look to find myself in Cardiff at some point this week, probably Thursday because everything will be closed up tomorrow. It was nearly today, although that went out for two reasons – I couldn’t get to sleep last night which meant I didn’t wake up and be active early enough today and the other reason is that my eyes are bad again … I might need to invest in new pillows and pillowcases there because I think those might be causing me problems.

One road trip that did happen was the yearly pilgrimage over to Lords for the Interservices T20 cricket. We lost half of the play to rain but the games we had were fun to watch. It’s not the best standard of cricket but the players put everything they have into the games and they’re well matched even games that could go either way, often hinging on really close moments in the game.

Pictures. We're looking a 2 stacked pictures, one above the other. Both pictures have a batsman in light blue top, black trousers and a fielder in red top black trousers and an umpire in black and dark blue, with a hat and green shoulders and arms. The two pics are as the ball is hitting the stumps and the fielder reacting below.

That was me playing with the longer lens I have, plus also playing with some of the options in the camera. The above had it in continuous shots and it let me capture the run out. Really happy with how that one turned out, not so happy with the editing I did 😀 (There’s a rogue line upper right). This is where the expensive camera comes in handy, it allows for much longer zoom lengths with different lenses.

But a huge highlight for me this year was the events that I was at with other people … Starting with Insomnia :

Picture. We're looking upwards at two people on a stage. The one on the left is a gentleman in white shirt, grey waistcoat and dark trousers, holding up a microphone in his right hand. To the left is a powerful looking lady barbarian with red hair, holding up her right hand in a fist, with a huge hammer in her left.

That’s Ragedarling, of Session Zero, playing as her barbarian character in the live action D&D show run by Josh Strife Hayes there in the picture. I massively enjoyed Insomnia back in March, it was lovely to run into Miyukipanda touring the halls, to watch the highly entertaining Session Zero show with Ragedarling and …

Picture. We're looking up at the stage again. The gentleman is on the left, Rage the barbarian is sitting on a couch behind and the new character being introduced is Sorceress Trixx. She's a tall, thin lady in a flowing black and purple dress with a fancy bodice. She's holding a staff with her right hand while holding up her left hand in a wave.

… There’s Billietrixx there playing Sorceress Trixx in the show. Twitch link there again. It’s been fun catching Billie’s streams and it’s been lovely being part of that community over this year and last since … finding Billie through the wonderful Tashnarr, who was a big part of making Insomnia such a wonderful experience.

They come together to be the faces of the Creator North events as well and it was good to be able to get up to Sheffield for the second of these in September this year. Looking forward to the next one of those already. It’s run by the remarkable LookItsTilly who moderates in the background for Billietrixx and Tashnarr with Maddog there being the final member of the organising crew. It was lovely being adopted by NinjaSpaceUnicorn’s little posse for the day too, that made it all the sweeter.

Picture. We're looking at a white saucer with an appetising looking brownie on it. Behind and right is a dwagon with an apron saying "Feed Me". In front there is a blue ribbon with white and orange lettering saying "Creator North 2024".

It was fun times, although I was suffering at the time with the extreme tiredness which was shared by a lot of people there plus I may well have done a minor dislocation on the shoulder again at the start and … probably picked up covid again. The shoulder is still attached, although I don’t think it went back in right, it’s still sore. What happened ? Someone got my attention to my left, so I turned … or at least my body turned and the arm stayed behind. Ouch.

Picture. We're looking out from the top of Mount Snowdon in Wales. There is a rocky, grassy outcropping in front of us and beyond that, valleys and hills covered in wisps of mist.

And then I have a little away time in North Wales with trips to Conwy Castle (where Ellardy the Little Red Dwagon happened), Caernarfon Castle and up Mount Snowdon by the railway.

I missed an event ! (Translation – got sidetracked). It’s always a highlight getting to MCM Comic Con in May with Comic Con Friend. It was the first time we’re been able to go to this since 2019 and a pandemic happened. There are more pictures from Comic Con in the post (linky). It was lovely to see Comic Con Friend again, we had a great day out there with lots of wonderful cosplay to see and loot to check out and it was awesome to catch up again. And I think CCF appreciated having a chance to catch up with the messages while we were on the way to/from London too while listening in to the playlist I’d hastily popped together (and then ran out of !) before.

Events are a little congested in May next year but MCM is something that’s on the definite list. I picked up a couple more ideas from peeking at Trayed and Tested‘s update on their Etsy site, like Megacon (London in Jan) and UK Games Expo (end May – NEC). Wait, didn’t I mention loot ?

Picture. We're looking at a crystalline rainbow coloured dwagon wrapped around a large dark green d20. The background is light blue, they're on a pine colour wooden desk.

Gosh, this is turning into a long one. It felt good to be blogging regularly again through December with advent, you’ll see the picture I posted into Batkitto’s discord in the post before this one. I’d missed the posting but with the burn out continuing, plus putting everything into work … I wasn’t feeling like opening the writing up again in the evening. Kinda like I’d spent the brain power through the day and wanted to be robot in a game or soaking up a good book while watching a stream in the evening. So the blogging went by the wayside there.

There have been many books ready too this year, Kindle tells me that I read 32 books this year although it only counts multibook packs as 1 each for the whole series. So the actual is probably 40. I think I’ll summarise those in another post. Games have been fun this year too, I’m close to picking up Star Wars Outlaws in the Steam sale, that was an excellent game.

Picture. We're on the ship, looking out over the side. The sky is mostly clear, with cloud to the left. Brilliant sunshine comes from near the horizon. We can see the rail of the ship below. We're looking out over the sea, broken up by light waves.

Time to wrap up though, on this post and on the year. It’s been an odd year. There’s been the massive highlights from the events and seeing much loved people again or for the first time. It’ll be good to continue that into 2025 and see about getting to more events. It’s been a rough year on that front too, with events closing down and jobs in the gaming industry going that the streaming people depend on.

Hopefully you’re all back here reading a similar post at the end of 2025. What adventures will we get up to ?

I hope to share at least a few of mine with you, either on here … or maybe in person ? We’ll see. Looking forward to seeing you <3.

Advent day 24 just checking in

Hello everyone,

Just another quick one today. I’ve made the trip up to see family … good to see people again, although bugs are going around again so won’t be able to see everyone this time around.

What’s behind the door ?

Picture, we're looking at the complete advent collection with the snow scene in the background. The latest one is at the back on top of the d20. It's a flat spaceship with a red body and large wings, with white trim.

I’m just snatching the chance to pop in this last of the advent series posts while the dinner prep is starting. Great to see sister again, mum is back home as well which is a big relief.

(The model is from the obscure Young Jedi Adventures series, bit of an odd choice for the finale model of this set but it’s a decent looking ship)

Time to hit the post button but not before acknowledging that it’s felt good to be blogging so regularly again, even if a few of the evenings have seen the post rather forced out from behind a wall of worry and or just basic pain and sometimes both over the last week.

I haven’t preplanned how the posts will go this time, it’s just been a fairly random choice of subject from what’s been happening on the day or evening. Or it just lurches sideways from the first intent to something rather different. Just remembering back to a series on the old site at least 4 years ago, the Elitecember series was a good one and did see me preplanning lots for it (part because I needed to be in game to acquire screenshots where required) but I think that time it rather burned me out on both sketching and blogging.

I’ll attempt to avoid that burn out again, while posting a bit more regularly. It was a really good habit to be in and I hope people have enjoyed the happier posts, sympathised with the unhappy ones and that you’ve liked the pictures coming through.

Have a lovely festive time everyone !

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a close up of the head of a dog. They're a white dog with a dark nose that is absolutely covered with little dots of hundreds and thousands cake ornamentation. The captions are "Christmas Cookies?" "No, I haven't seen any Christmas cookies"

See you in a few days.

Advent day 21 and we’re in the lair

Hello everyone,

I think I’ve pretty much crashed today ! Not felt like I’ve had the energy to do much today, which has seen me just watching videos (still catching up) and then be enjoying watching the ever lovely and fun Tashnarr as she’s been streaming for us all day.

She’s hunting dinosaurs in the ARK Survival Evolved game. What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent calendar collection again at now 21 models plus dwagon. The latest is on top of a d20 showing 20 and a black d6 showing 1. The model is on top, it's a black edifice with 2 triangular black sections pointing up and a red bit in the middle.

There we go. It’s Mr Darth’s fortress, as seen in the Rogue One movie. Must watch that again.

I’ve had some more news, after having decision paralysis all day ref attempting to contact. News is ok, although I’m still very unsure about what’s going to be happening over the next week. We’ll have a gathering but I’ve been feeling so burned out that I don’t feel I have the energy to look after myself, let alone help anyone else. And my psychology meaning that I have a deep need to help people out works against me as well there, because it adds some weight on to that depression when I have to withdraw from helping people out.

This is in danger of extending a bit past the quick in and out I thought it might be but I think I needed to get those thoughts down in some sort of order.

The general exhaustion is why I haven’t been getting out and about as much as I’d have liked to. I’ve been a bit starved for star gazing opportunities (bought lens, permanent cloud since) plus I’m that deep in that burn out hole that I’ve been needing rest time after a trip.

The cruises have been great for that, because you get to the ship and then it’s completely just chill out time and they do everything for you. North Wales was a good trip (probable covid not included) for the castles but I could have done without the mayhem of the one car park, being around British drivers and especially not the drive back … which took 7 hours instead of 4. (Oh and I was also in trouble with a poorly tooth)

Anyway, I’m missing out on the last little bits of Tashnarr streaming. Time to hit post and go back to stream. There’s the link to Twitch again and there are links to her Instagram and other socials over there too. She doesn’t stream so much now but it’s been lovely keeping up with the Instagram updates, especially with the advent calendar series. She had a delicious looking chocolate one from work and the dice from the Trayed and Tested advent calendar are turning out even better than expected. It’s cheered me up seeing the delight when the doors have been getting opened. Trayed and Tested are over on Etsy via the link there (and in the links list). I’d thoroughly recommend checking them out too.

Picture. We're looking at a black leather pattern box, on top of which is an array of dice plus a green dwagon. The dice are sharp edged and a mix of pink and off-white. The card behind says Trayed and Tested.

There we go, picked up at a show I greatly enjoyed earlier this year.

Time to disappear again now, have a lovely rest of evening.

Advent day 19 and it’s crowded in the hangar bay

Hello everyone,

Quick one again – internet feels better but I’ve had the old warning sign from my hand which means I probably shouldn’t type much … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene again, with 18 models and dwagon scattered on the snow scene. On top of a red d6 on top of the big green d20 is a small fighter ship model. It has a central pilot pod, with a grey and green wing on each side.

Oops. Learning again not to press ctrl+v instead of ctrl+c when copying out the alt-text. (Random aside time!) It’s been a pretty useful skill to learn that, making the alt-text. The intention is to make the site more inclusive to people who can’t make out the detail in the pictures. Alt-text is descriptive words that you add, which gets picked up by screen reader software that’ll read out the text on the page. You’ll see it if you hover over the picture.

Why has it been more useful ?

Often, you’re not supposed to or aren’t allowed to take pictures of things. I mentioned spyware on mobiles last time, it extends to the phone providers insisting that you really want to upload all of your pictures to their servers. Ok, so what if you point the camera at something and capture something sensitive ? Oops. It’s now on Google’s or Apple’s servers too. The trick is to not point the camera at the sensitive things. But … when you’re the one person sent to look at something and you need to fully report back what you’ve seen to the others who aren’t able to go ? That’s the other way alt-text comes in really handy.

It lets you paint that picture of what you’re seeing in a concise descriptive language to pass on to those who can’t see what you’re seeing. But … it also trains you in observation to have you pick up the detail that you might have otherwise passed over with your eyes.

Anyway, it does mean that I need to pop the alt-text here in two places to make it work.

It’s a really valuable habit to pick up, because it really does help people out although I have been getting a bit lazy with the advent scene alt-text lately.

Other news before I disappear today …

Game screenshot. Truck Simulator. Our green truck is parked up off the side of a snow covered road curling off to the left. It has a trailer with pictures of letters on it. In the distance are tree covered hills, there are snow covered buildings of a village at the base of the hills.

Truck Game is doing a winter event at the moment, where you do short trips to and from the Winter Wonderland zone, added in for the season. It’s a good little variation in to the game, including having driving on snow effects.

And I think I need to rest that hand and disappear into book again. After enjoying A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher, I’m on a John Scalzi book again now. It’s The Collapsing Empire and it’s got a promising introduction to its space opera universe told in Mr Scalzi’s easy to read and very enjoyable style.

Later everyone, have a great rest of evening.

Advent Day 17 and just a Jedi today

Hello everyone,

Just a very quick one today because I’m still feeling very strained … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection. The addition today is a minifigure with wavy brown hair. He's wearing a green jumper wit ha low domed building on it and two red suns in the sky.

There we are, another minifigure today and a Luke Skywalker. Complete with gloved hand there and remembering the moisture farm on Tatooine with the jumper there.

I think that’s about all I have for today, although it was good seeing the Xmas vibes in a very short Truck Game session earlier.

Game screenshot. Truck Game. We're looking at a night time scene into a town centre. Buildings flank the outside of the square. There is a lit up and decorated tree at the far end. The ground is snow covered with low hut buildings in the square. Our truck is in the lower right.

I didn’t have much more available in me than just a fairly quick there and back to the seasonal event zone to do a couple of deliveries. Wasn’t feeling the vibes due to the exhaustion and being concerned about people.

Back tomorrow and I’ll summon some good vibes into another cruise port post. Be well everyone, have a good evening.

Advent Day 15 and it’s a struggle again

Hello everyone,

Probably a short one today again because I’m feeling struggles both within and without … What’s behind the door ?

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection again, this time to addition is a fellow in white body armour and white helmet, both armour and helmet have a blue stripe of trim.

There we go, stormtrooper today.

Why the struggles ? It does feel like it’s coming from all sides at the moment, with work and family stuff that will definitely not be going here.

It’s definitely coming from within, because I’ve been feeling that I’m nearing the end of a very long and very frayed rope. I think the big part of it is psychological, because I’m finding it very hard to find joy in things. Perhaps that’s a sign of a depression creeping in there ? Maybe.

What I have been finding cheering me up is how people were finding things like the Dwagon on Tour pictures. It was really lovely seeing the various interactions popping up with those with people giving the hearts, the likes, the occasional omgs and general seeing that other people were really enjoying seeing what I’d been posting. Kinda makes you want to disappear out of the world again for a little while and go some place to let me send out more Dwagon on Tour pictures.

Hopefully at some point next year, I’ve run the annual leave down to about the minimum I can carry over. That refreshes at the end of April, so it needs to cover Xmas, Easter and I’ll need to disappear from work for a week around Feb as well due to …

I’ve been in burn out for a very long time now. The first symptoms really kicked in around covid times, with things like the sketching just ending. I haven’t sketched in years now, although a couple of emotes happened when idea plus can I do it combined at just the right time.

At the moment, it’s manifesting both mentally and physically. It doesn’t feel like my brain’s running on all of its cores at the moment, plus I’m even more absent minded than usual. Physically, I’m having increasingly sore hips, what feels like a void in my lower back and the injury I did to my right knee during the cruise hasn’t recovered yet. Add to that, the shoulder joining in and an elbow that’s making me shy away from losing myself in games like the Truck games.

And all that together means that while I look at the new games and think I’d maybe enjoy playing them, I’m not at a spot where I want to learn those games.

It’s not at a point where I would consider myself physically disabled, plus I was able to walk for around 15,000 step days during the cruise. But that constant low level pain does get to you after a while.

Last bit before I fetch my dinner which has the timer bell starting to go …

Any more of you feeling especially exhausted at the moment ? I’ve had that for quite a long of time. I keep hearing it from so many people as well. It doesn’t feel like it’s just me at the moment. It feels like a more generalised malaise has settled in where everyone is struggling to find the energy to do even just those basic tasks. And that’s not just for me in too many years to count, it’s younger people in their 20s and 30s as well.

If you recognise that in yourself, then I hope you can find that energy to get at least some of the things done that your brain is telling you needs to get done.

Another aspect of it for me is that I find it very difficult asking for help. I don’t take time off sick, I haven’t been back to a doctors in years and I probably need to do that for both an allergy test to finally confirm what I can and cannot have and to see if there’s an answer for why I’m so exhausted so much of the time. I can still start doing something and keep going until it’s done … but when that need to finish is over, I’ll go splat.

This isn’t intended as me reaching out and asking for help. I don’t like to impose like that on other people. But what I will say there is … whenever I see an interaction with something I’ve done, it gives me that little bit of Happy that I struggle to generate from within. It tells me that I do things that people like, that people want to engage with what I do and that people care.

If you’re reading this and are wondering if that means you – DEFINITELY YES it does.

I hope you have people looking out for you as well. Hopefully back with a happier post tomorrow but I think I needed to safety valve out some of my feelings like this tonight.

Picture. A grumpy looking small cute red dragon is sitting down looking at us. The captions are "I'm done adulting, let's be dragons"

I kinda wanted to end on a cheery happy meme but that counts I think. Where to for Dwagon on Tour 2025 ? We shall see.

Advent day 12 and the Emperor is on the way

Hello everyone,

Bit of a bad body and brain day today so I’m going to attempt to pay attention to that and do a quick post … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. Advent scene again, the model collection grows against the snow scene. Red Dwagon is to the left and the models are scattered. The new one is a dark shuttle with two grey wings extending to the sides. It's on top of a 20 sided dice with two more 10 sided dice in front set to 10 and 2.

There we go. I’m attempting something new today with using numbers on the dice for the days. Does that work ? I’ll keep at it although I’ll need to improvise when the dice run out of numbers.

Today’s new figure is the Emperor’s Shuttle, which has the little central pod with two long wings either side that fold up for landing. The prompt there could be to talk about the evil overlords or modern day who’s in charge. But you know me, I don’t like to bring that in to here. You get enough of that from all of the other sources of media. I’d prefer to be a bit of an island away from all that stuff.

(Wonder how much that sea castle from the other post would be and what it would be like to live there 😀 )

I think it’s updates about me time – I mentioned bad brain bad body day above … I think that’s mostly down to the time of year and it being close to the winter break. I don’t think I saw the sun today (work from home all day plus Big Cloud) and that probably has something to do with how awake I’m feeling. The winter break will be good for getting away from Stuff and generally being able to chill out.

I’m struggling a bit physically, with an ongoing back issue and issues in my hips. I should probably replace my chair again because it’s almost certainly contributing heavily to those issues. Oh and the 3? (could be 2 and a bit) year old chair is already falling apart. I’m also having cramping issues in my legs, which are slowing me down a little bit.

Picture. We're looking at a projection of a lady in a full length robe with a hood. She's looking to the left, holding a mug and the captions are "Help me caffeine, you're my only hope"

Yep. Tired and sore but still mostly functional, so I’ll get by on that. I know a lot of people are worse off than that, hope they can get by on what spoons they have available as well. That’s the thing, we throw everything into things like the day job and don’t have much left for later.

Other stuff ?

I think the day is imminent where I retire the phone … my mobile is with the Three company and it’s over a year out of contract. They’ve just announced an imminent merger with another big company which means … no idea on what’s going to happen with the prices ! So a Cunning Plan could be to upgrade the phone so I get an upgrade for the phone and at the same time, tie in the monthly cost for the length of a new contract.

I’m also heavily considering upgrading Meltdown (desktop PC) a bit early … because this could be a good time to do that. Except I think I’ll do it the economical way and defer getting a new graphics card for a few months. Oh it looks like the ones I’d get are largely out of stock at the moment anyway. I’m looking at going to a 16GB 4060Ti card. The one in stock is £464, the ones on “pre-order” start at £390. Pre-order on a card that’s been released for a while usually means that the website doesn’t know what to do about cards that aren’t in stock.

I think that’s it for now. If you’re struggling, hang in there. Hope you get a good chance to rest and recharge soon. Nite all !

Advent Day 9 and the Hero Ship

Hello everyone,

Day 9 sees a favourite appear …

Picture. We're looking at the advent collection. In a semi circle above the middle we see from the left - Y Wing, X Wing, Super Battle Droid, Leia, AT-AT Walker, Sail Barge, Minikit and Tie Fighter. The Dwagon is lying down in front and in centre, the Falcon. This is a mostly round ship, with two prongs up front and a pilot area sticking out to its right hand side.

We have the Millennium Falcon today. That iconic ship for the whole series of Star Wars movies and one that helped define the term Hero Ship. These aren’t the biggest ships, they’re the ones that the heroes of a show or movie depend on. The Enterprise is a hero ship, in whichever series its in, although the Enterprise is on the big size for your usual hero ship.

A hero ship is usually something smaller, which can do everything the crew need it to do but with that sense of danger that comes from being completely outgunned by the big navy ships. And they’ll usually have a decent crew on board as well to keep them running because that gives the basis for a decent amount of cast and crew to keep the series going.

Picture. We're looking at a spaceship being held up by a piece of string. It's bare metal unpainted, there is a cockpit with windows up front, a centre box section with a large engines to each side (total two) and a cylindrical tapered section to the back.

Can’t talk about hero ships without mentioning Serenity, this one’s from the Firefly series which really deserved to tell a lot more of its story. This particular ship was centred around a main cast which had Captain Mal, pilot Wash, XO Zoe, Meathead Jayne (the actor is responsible for dumb attitudes and that pretty much sums up the character too) and lovely Kaylee as the savant ships engineer. Joining the crew for a fare and an escape were Shepherd Book and Simon and River Tam, with the final spot being Inara who would join for a while as a guest and ambassador.

The ship itself was a small tramp freighter, with living quarters and galley living area towards the front, with the central box section being where the cargo would be and the main engine being to the rear of the ship. Because the ship was so small, it could get into and out of places fast for … shenanigans, jobs other ships couldn’t do and the occasional bit of crimes, while still being so vulnerable that it would add in its own contribution to the drama.

If you haven’t seen Firefly and the follow on movie, Serenity, I’d massively recommend trying to catch it.

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Our hero character is standing on a balcony, she has brown hair in a ponytail and is wearing a blue jacket with white sleeves. In the distance, we see a long, sleek ship with wings at the back. It's perched on a landing pad.

The Mass Effect series has had a collection of hero ships, starting with the SSV Normandy of the first game. This one was a small frigate, a stealth ship that could get in anywhere, go anywhere and was that game’s vehicle (literally) for getting the main character travelling between the various locations. There was another, bigger, Normandy later and the ship in the picture is the Tempest from Mass Effect Andromeda. The Tempest was more a very light scout ship with just about enough room to accommodate all of the crew.

And that’s the main role of the hero ship, it’s usually the home of the main characters of the series. It’ll tell its own part of the story. Like Serenity being a little bit unreliable at the most convenient times for the story. It’s there to enable the story to move along and to enable the main characters to get up to shenanigans.

We’ve got some more from the world of books … Like :

Trouble Dog from Gareth L Powell’s excellent Embers of War trilogy. This is a Carnivore class ex warship, which has an embodied AI which is a fully fledged and key character in the series. Trouble Dog is a quite powerful ship, although nowhere near invincible. She’s small enough to get in where the story needs to go and has her own past and personality, plus a fantastic crew to look after.

(Embers of War is another series I’d thoroughly recommend, although a little warning – it does get a bit dark and grisly)

Another I can’t go without mentioning is the Rocinante from The Expanse …

Picture. We're looking at a black spaceship with occasional red highlights. We see it from three angles, side, top and landed upright on legs.

This ship is at the core of The Expanse novels starting with Leviathan Wakes. As your typical hero ship, it goes anywhere and this one fights hard too, being an ex warship. It’s a frigate, out of the box coming with 6 rapid fire guns covering all angles. But at the start, it’s outclassed by bigger ships that have railguns that can punch huge holes in other ships. The Rocinante is the home of the crew for these novels and while the ship doesn’t have an AI or distinct personality, it’s a solid and dependable core base for the main characters of the series.

Any more ? There’s a whole bunch more, like Moya from Farscape. Moya is a Leviathan class transport, a big living ship that becomes the home for Crichton, Aeryn, Dargo, Rigel, Chiana, Zhaan and Pilot with a few more characters occasionally living on board for periods.

And I think I’m running out of steam there. Let’s finish with a blast from the past …

Picture. We're looking at an empty starfield, with a spaceship lower right. The ship is in light colour metal. There is a central spine, with turbine like vanes around the centre. There's a glowy green ball at the back. On three spines, there are big cylinders with pointy bits out front.

That’s the Liberator, from Blake’s Seven and the hero ship I grew up with. The series was probably not something a 4 year old should have been watching but that was ok because I was just looking for the spaceship and couldn’t understand the absolutely nuts 70s era weird writing that was going on. We had some very odd stuff going on the telly back then and when you rewatch it now, stuff like Space 1999 (and Blake’s Seven) make you wonder what non-prescription pharmeuticals were going through the heads of the writers, aided and abetted by actors completely going ham with what they were given.

(I’ve just done the alt text for the picture – hover to see – and I think my brain is melted, I do apologise for people who depend on that for this particular crime to alt text!)

Fun to watch though and Blake’s Seven probably has the best and most nonsense hero ship for that time. It makes absolutely no sense, although that design is literally for space and only space. Like the Enterprise where it was an absolute crime seeing it being built on the ground in the Kelvin Timeline movie. NOPE. The Liberator was thought to be a derelict, found in space. Our characters get sent aboard as expendable prisoners and … manage to reactivate the ship and make off with it. The series sees them being fugitives from an overpowering Federation and … takes them from place to place enabling shenanigans along the way.

Would I recommend watching Blake’s Seven now, almost 50 years after it was made ? Maybe. If you can watch it on a streaming service or similar, go for it. It was a good series for its time, although you will wonder what on earth is going on at times. Don’t touch the Paul Darrow (RIP) book, it has the Blake’s Seven name but it’s not in the same universe. Afterlife is a far better sequel.

Picture. We're looking at a tiny diamond shaped white spaceship with yellow and red trim. We're looking at the cockpit up front, there are docking circles to left and right and engines at the back.

Back to Star Wars for the finish and that’s the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and an advent series from a long time ago on a sofa not that far away from where I am right now.

Gotta go, brain empty, have a lovely rest of evening 🙂

Disc trials

Hello everyone,

Gosh where did those two weeks go. I know where the first one went when I was on leave, I kinda disappeared into a Little Big Workshop addiction (again) followed by opening up Trans Road USA again and disappearing into that. And then this week at work pretty much disappeared in a flash.

Picture meme. A small grey cat is looking at the back of a television. There are three wires plugged in, with yellow, red and white plugs. The caption is "Wait I'll fix it"

So after writing last time about having a flare up and that I was upgrading the desktop with a new SSD, there was a bit more drama there last week …

So the flare up continues, my arms are less scary now than they were last week which is good. They’re still scaring people and I’ve been putting them under tubigrip to protect them but there has been at least some improvement this week. Slow and steady repairs are what I’ve been used to. It’s the quick setbacks that are why I still have the problems.

I think I have more of an answer though. I had a suspicion about garlic bread last week, still got that but I think I have another one about tomato. Yep. That’s a new mystery one connected to me enjoying tomato cup-a-soups more lately. Ah well, looks like I can’t have nice things so much. I’ve had one minor reversal since stopping the tomato cup-a-soups and I think that was from a chicken arabiatta which had tomato in it. We’ll see. The pattern has been a few good slow repair days followed by a quick set back, possibly coinciding with tomato stuff.

Talking about nice things …

Picture meme. A kitten is looking at a monitor. There is a progress bar on the screen. The captions are "my eevilll plan ... iz 7% compleet!!"

The new Solid State Device disc drive arrived. It’s a 2TB nVME unit from Crucial and it fits into one of those m2 slots. (nVME stands for nonvolatile memory express) M2 is a credit card type thing, it’s an edge connector about an inch across and the drives are about 4 inches long. Yep. I use inches.

So I look in the motherboard manual (before buying) and it’s a good modern board with a current chipset, so it should support the drive properly. It even says it in there : 2x m2 slots and “Supports nVME SSD as boot discs”. That means I could put my current m2 SSD into one slot, the new one into another and then transfer Windows from one drive to the other. The software to do that comes with the drive, they give you a limited use copy of Acronis True Image, which is excellent software to do the job hassle free. The idea is that the copy is done and then you swap the drives over in the machine. Job done, easy.

(Disclosure note is appropriate at this point – I bought the drive myself, nothing was provided apart from that free limited use copy of the drive copy software, I recommend it because it works)

Does it work out like that ?

No.

Problem one – with the 2x m2 slots in use, the machine doesn’t go into the BIOS. That’s where you do the basic setting up of the machine, tell it what drive to load off and then it hands over to Windows. If you can’t get into the BIOS, then you’re pretty much stuffed.

I even tried swapping the graphics card over (electronic connections are somewhat shared between the graphics and the second m2 slot), this resulted in the board doing nothing but beeping in distress. Which was … not good.

Answer – I have a USB enclosure which the new drive is currently in. This happily proved that the problem wasn’t with the new drive … always gotta be wary of stuff being dead on arrival.

The USB enclosure is a bit slow though, so it took 3 hours for the Windows drive to get copied over and then you swap the drives over and boom, you’ve got the system running on the new drive.

No.

Where the manual says “nVME SSD as boot discs”, it means in a special RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Discs) set up which has to be carefully set up. It wouldn’t let me select the new drive as something to boot off. Without changing a setting to do that RAID thing, it wouldn’t allow me to go into the BIOS. So there’s no way to boot off that new disc (at the moment) and setting it up as a RAID array stopped Windows from being able to work with the drive.

The temporary answer, which has happily worked is :

Old SATA m2 SSD is back in there as the boot drive that the machine primarily works from. New nVME M2 SSD is in the USB enclosure plugged in at the back of the machine, whirring away as a data drive. And that works too, albeit with some issues. The drive access is nice and fast, Starfield plays very nicely but instead of giving 4000MB/s data rates, it’s limited to 40MB/s. I’m not seeing this as a significant issue but I am going to address it.

The permanent solution will be to acquire another expansion card to put in the machine and then the new drive goes into that, hopefully being pretty quick again too.

So drama on my outsides, drama with that new bit for the computer.

I did a quick test in Starfield and then promptly didn’t open the game again. Gaming habits be like that :-D.

Oh and look ! A power blip (that’s rare here) and it repeated another thing I said this week about systems reacting to power interruptions : Computer rides through it, lights flicker, telly was fine but the modem reset so I’m now waiting for it to connect again.

Time for a quiet finish to the evening watching Tashnarr play a bit of Apex Legends plus a bit of book. Current one is Descendant Machine by Gareth L Powell, he writes great books. They’re always intriguing, gritty and with interesting and varied characters. It’s in his Continuance series, where humanity has been evicted from the Earth and now wander the galaxy in a fleet of Arks. Part of the set up is that substrate (hyperspace equivalent) is dependant on a human navigator and machine AI ship combination. It feels inspired by The Culture from Iain M Banks but it’s its own unique universe. Well worth checking out, as are the rest of the books that Gareth L Powell has given us.

To the book !

PS I’m on Bluesky as well now, with the revelation that Twixxer might be going behind a paywall being a catalyst for some including me. Just look for Sleepydwagonman, that’ll be me.

PS2 I now need to reset the clocks on cooker, microwave, alarm clock … Oh well.