I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
Probably a short one today again because I’m feeling struggles both within and without … What’s behind the door ?
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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 🙂
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.
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 …
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.
Bit of drama yesterday to follow a bit of a flare up on my outsides …
So I get home … and the key turns in the lock. Which is kinda what you want a key to do. Except you want it to open the latch to let you open the door. Oh well. It just turned in the lock. It let me in eventually but I took it as a sign that I needed to do something urgently. (You can get past a latch lock by means I won’t put here but it doesn’t want to become your door key).
Of course I took it apart after doing a little investigation. And changing the lock and latch over to a new one :-D.
It’s fine it’ll fix right up
It just came apart in my hands. Honest. Well, actually it kinda exploded while I was trying to remove the broken bit and parts were propelled out of my hands by the spring there. So … what’s the bits ? It’s a pretty standard night latch lock, you may have one of these on at least one door. Reasonable security but you want a second bolt type lock as well. These can be bypassed with the right implement.
Top left is the main assembly. You can just see the lever that’s on the inside of the door. That works on the greasy clip thing on the left, which has a couple of arms that engage on the plate with the latch on it. That’s the silvery thing inside that assembly. The latch wedge is hidden to the right of the assembly. The deadlock fits in to the little notch on the top of that silver latch plate. If the deadlock is engaged, the latch stays put.
The black plate to the right is the back plate and in theory, it holds it all in place. The latch plate isn’t held in by anything else and if it lifts, the arms on the rotatey arm don’t engage and move it open. On the right side of the latch plate is a circular pin thing with a couple of cut outs in it.
Bottom left and we have a circular washer type thing with a couple of triangular inserts on the inside and a couple of arms on the outside. The arms withdraw the latch plate and open the door. The inserts engage on the lock key barrel. The spring is to the bottom right and it pulls the latch out.
So … apply force on the inner handle or the outside lock, latch slides in, door opens. Release force, spring pulls out the latch, door won’t open.
However, if the circly prongy washer falls off, it will a) not let you open the door with the key and … b) will jam the lock if it goes in the wrong place.
So I now have a new lock for the front door. The last one did well, that’s probably a 30 year old lock there although I had to replace the original barrel because it rusted solid.
Oops.
One thing I’ve been appreciating about Red actually is its door locks and automatic folding mirrors. I’ve had folding mirrors on the other Lexii since I think my first IS but none of them folded the doors in when you locked the car. It’s actually a really nice feature but not for the mirrors … It’s a very easy way to check if you locked the doors :-D. Yep, there’s the indication thingy on the inner handle but you can’t see that from 20 feet away from the car.
It’s the little things. Or the things big enough to see from a distance.
Other news before I close up ? After enjoying reading the intriguing Forgotten Colony : Deliverance by M R Forbes (aliens have infested Earth, we gotta escape, intense combat action from start to finish), I’ve been cracking up to Clockwork Boys by T.Kingfisher (Amazon link). It’s in a swords and armour fantasy world where our people live in a city state threatened by unstoppable, invincible constructions known as the Clockwork Boys. Our people have to travel to their source and figure out how to stop them.
It is, of course, a suicide mission. They’re unstoppable creations that crush armies. But they’ll be eaten by a semi sentient tattoo if they don’t. Yep. After a bit of time to let the characters settle in, the author (aka Ursula Vernon) is letting us have some fun reading their antics. Another recommended one after the wonderful A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking and I need to collect and read more of her books.
Might be time to get back to that after maybe a little Motorsport Manager with dinner. There’s a new Formula 1 Manager game out but to be honest, they haven’t added enough and if they follow their form, they’ll abandon this one in November to concentrate on next year’s iteration. I’ll wait for the last one in the run.
Yeah, that was pretty much me last weekend. After finishing Dredge, last weekend’s game was One Military Camp. Another fairly new one. It’s a decent game but … maybe could have done with a little more time in the oven. Worth checking out though.
But I was hiding in the game mostly to stop me damaging myself even more. I’d been in the position where a flare up started on my arms and legs, worse than it has been previously. It got bad enough that I actually medicated it, which is something I try and avoid. The topical steroids are a quick hit to help but I think they actually extend the healing time.
Anyway, being lost in the game meant I wasn’t attacking my arms and legs, giving them a chance to heal a bit. (May have been some Skyrim played too).
Things have settled down a bit although I’m still not good yet. Getting there though. Dinner’s nearly ready so I’ll leave it there except for … Someone reminded me about the Kitten Marching Band.
Here you go. At the Youtube link lies a guaranteed dose of Happy. I bear no responsibility if you end up humming that for days. 😀
I was probably due to post something again late last week but had a little illness episode again … Seems like when I get the bugs, they blow through quick. I seem mostly back to normal now. But first … thumbnail ! What shall we have today …
Dwagon is poised for action
Isn’t it adworable ? Perhaps not the right word but I’m pleasantly surprised by how much customisation is possible with their site. I could even have Dwagon riding on a motorbike.
Disclosure note – this isn’t a paid thing, someone posted the link to the site and it went from there. I am highly tempted by Dwagon although it looks like it’d be $45 to get one (30mm scale) miniature over here in fully painted form. Crikey ! Here’s a link to the site. More disclosure stuff – they have a “(If your show/channel is not monetized in any way, you may use Hero Forge® assets without completing this form.)” note on their site so we’re good to go with posting the pic because this site isn’t monetized at all.
I’ve been watching / observing various people play Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m getting far more tempted by that one than I had been. It’s also been amazing watching Amelia Tyler’s narration outtakes on the Youtubes. (Youtube link to the latest – audo only, very NSFW) I wonder if you could make something suitably dwagony in that game. I haven’t bought it, mostly because I always seem to bounce off games like that, such as Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Solasta, Divinity Original Sins (1 and 2). They’re all there in the library waiting their chance to get played.
What I have been greatly enjoying is Dredge :
Follow the fishies
I’ve been describing this one as a cozy spooky game with excellently implemented tight and fair gameplay. And the story is (short but) good at bringing you into its world and giving you things to do. Here’s the Steam link for the game. I’d highly recommend it. Also on discount until 17 August.
I only have 3 more achievements to go before getting 100% in the game. That’s : catch all the right fish, catch all the wrong fish, get all the other achievements. It’s been a fun journey and I’ll keep going back to this one to replay it. It’s been very enjoyable and easy to play.
But about those bugs … I was in Dredge last Thursday evening when I suddenly noticed I was feeling extremely cold. As in wanting to find a blanket. And as I did more of the session, my arms went numb. Both of them. The left one too !
It’s not supposed to do that ! Going numb is the job of the right arm !
(I’m joking there of course but that was something pretty new and weird)
I’m pretty much ok now, it feels like the worse of it burned through on Thursday evening on Friday afternoon. Just waiting for my insides to return to something resembling normal as I barely ate anything until Saturday evening and that takes time to work its way through.
Last up for today is cars … which has been on the brain a little bit.
Easy dwagonin’
I’m not in danger of doing a car change any time soon. I’m very happy with Red and the more it’s driven, the more it seems to be freeing up. Red is a Lexus CT200h (aka Posh Prius) from the 2018 model year and it does what I want it to do. I like the smaller hatchbacks, they’re flexible enough to be able to support shopping, travel and occasional carrying of stuff around while being little enough to have fun throwing around the roads.
But the varied ranges of cars seem to be dying out these days in favour of SUVs. I’m not a fan, they’re higher up which makes it more difficult for my crunchy hips, they’re higher up which means they’re more awkward to through round corners. Oh and they don’t seem to be particularly Sport or Utility. I can’t see how you get the shopping in the Lexus UX without putting the back seats down.
Then I looked at the sales figures. They’re curious reading and it’s good of Lexus to make them available (Linky). What I’m getting out of them is that after being around 10k sales per year, the sales started dipping in 2007 before starting to recover in 2011 when the CT came out. It and the IS300h made the brand accessible to a new range of buyers like me. Half their sales in 2011 were CTs. The new IS joined the party in 2014 followed by the NX in 2015. (All hybrids) The ES300h came out in 2019 and stole the sales going to the IS300h (which went in the bin) and the UX came out in 2019 and immediately stole the sales from everything else in the range.
So I think that was the clear message that went out – people wanted SUVs. Or Lexus people still wanted Lexii and their options had been cut to the ES and the SUVs.
I wonder if it’s a factor of families owning multiple cars ? The small SUV becomes the flexible economical car that can take all the family, while they own a bigger car with a usable boot that gets used for the shopping or longer away trips.
I think we’ll see more trends come out in the future as a move to electrification causes a gentrification effect on car ownership. With fossil fuel cars due to go in the bin, the people being able to operate cars will be the ones who can spend the time to charge them up with them secure(ish) on the drive.
I’m not in that position, I barely have room for one car here and if I were to charge it, I’d need to stretch a cable over the public pavement. That’s not going to happen.
It’ll be curious keeping an eye on movements in the market over the coming years, with politics having its impact as well. We don’t exactly have credible or competent politicians over here at the moment.
On that note … time for me to hit post and go back to reading Deliverance, book 1 in another series by the prolific M R Forbes. I’ve been enjoying his books and the 5 Forgotten Colony book set was next up after completing the Starship For Sale series. It’s been a good, tense read so far. Would recommend.
Thought I’d talk about a few games today. Yeah, I have a fair bit of game addiction but as addictions go, it’s a fairly benign one. (Unless you have the tendency to be still playing when the sun comes up. Oops).
Yep, the 1984 one
I think that ticks off cozy and travelly game. That was a case of seeing a meme, going yoink and modifying it to something a bit more appropriate than the Tony Hawks it had been modified to when I got my mitts on it. I really got stuck in to the original Elite and we went from the cassette tape version on to the disc drive version when we got the disc system. That’s a tale actually, we started with the BBC B micro which was released in December 1981. It loaded all its games in on cassette tape at a quick 1200 baud (bits per second), so loading up a game could take a little while plus sometimes the cassettes went bad. It really limited what could go into the games, so when our BBC B died due to flood damage (burst pipes over a winter) we got an insurance upgrade to a BBC Master (released 1986) which had a built in disc interface.
The disc version of Elite added in things like music for the docking computer, a set of missions and more ships. And now we’re on the fourth Elite game (Elite Dangerous) where I’ve traveled around the galaxy several times now.
That’s the Searching for Chamomile doing a little bit of exploring while I was moving my carrier from place to place. My character is back in the populated Bubble area now, while the carrier and a few of my ships are still 20,000 light years away. The objective of the new Dungeon Food Truck is to rejoin the carrier and maybe help out with the fuelling efforts to move it back.
I haven’t actually gone back into Elite for a couple of weeks. That’s a combination of not really knowing what to do in the game at the moment plus issues with my hands that are making it a bit painful to play sometimes.
That’s actually a big factor in another couple of games … the two Truck Simulator games. I found that they were good ones to quietly chill in while having that objective of growing the truck fleet and the character by moving Stuff from place to place. I need to have those clear objectives in the games, or I lose my way in them and drift away. The way the Truck Games do that is to have a big long list of cargo you can take from where you are to somewhere else and I’d try and pick something new to look at.
That was one thing about Elite, either trading to new places or traveling to new places for screenshots. And they’re very pretty too.
But that’s not the ship game I’ve been enjoying lately. Let’s see …
It “looks” calm …
That’s Dredge, at the really early days. The premise of the game is that you’ve traveled in your boat to a remote set of islands and you wake, with little memory of who or where you are. Pretty soon, you get your mission to find fish to sell to pay off a debt, plus more side missions as you go through the story. But … don’t stay out after dark …
Eye aye
There we go … cozy game that I’ve really enjoyed. You’re not alone in its world, if you stay out at sea after dark then the scary things come out to say hi. And as the storyline proceeds, you travel to the four corners of the archipelago. I had a lot of fun with this one, I’ve finished the story (and it’s an excellent one) and I’ll hang around in there to finish the sidequests and the achievements.
Top game, would highly recommend. And for me, it guided me through its story in about 12 chilled out hours over a few sessions.
Another game I finished again just now is Deus Ex Human Revolution. I’m not sure you should really call a game where you play a cyborg soldier with swords in his arms a cozy game but this and Mankind Divided is one I keep going back to.
There’s something to be said for a really tight game that gets in, does its story and finishes off in a good amount of time. 12 to 20 hours is about right for that. Some sand box type games will see you taking far longer to play through. Mass Effect was a little cracker when it came out, with excellent gameplay, a great story and a length of around 20 hours again. Mass Effect Andromeda had improved gameplay (which worked) but fell down at being just too much, taking about 70-80 hours to play.
There’s such a thing as outstaying the welcome. The Expanse books do this a fair bit, although they are on the whole great books with lots of story and lore packed in. I’m on a quick book again now, Sons of Thor which is book 2 in the Star Breakers series by James David Victor. I rather enjoyed the really quick first book of the series of 9.
What’s next though ?
Another run through Deus Ex Mankind Divided at some point, finishing off the achievements in Dredge. I need to go back to Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077 at some point. Plus there’s the cozy taxi game of Cloudpunk. One Military Camp is a curious builder game which I’ll run through. And I bought Offroad Mechanic Simulator in its release discount, this one looks like a move on from Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 which is another I really enjoyed.
Been a busy week including an away trip where I was watching the mpg gauge in the car just go up and up, super tired now. (But mostly watching the road because that’s what we do). How did Red do ? The peak mpg was reading 61 at one point, which probably works out to an actual 59. Not bad for a petrol car.
But this isn’t going to be about that bit of tech, although I’m very happy and quietly pleased at how they’ve taken what I think are the same mechanicals from my first CT and improved them. Good times. Thumbnail ?
Protect the cookie !
Thumbnail. And it’s been too long since I’ve had a cookie that size. I do miss the Happy Cookie Place from the Xmas markets … they didn’t go even for a few years before all the lockdowns started happening.
Anyway, what’s this one about ? I like to occasionally look at the PC market, just to see what the moves are in it. What the trends are. What’s available, what’s listed for sale but isn’t actually available. Whether it’s worth me looking at investing in an upgrade or an update. The quick spoiler is that the almost 4 year old Meltdown (my desktop) is still going strong and I don’t need to replace anything significant on there any time soon.
The laptop, which found the name Dwagonsong, has been a very happy upgrade over the last almost year. It’s an Acer Swift which is much lighter than the Asus gaming laptop I had before. That’s ok, the two laptops had different purposes. Saying that though, the Asus was poor in its display and I didn’t appreciate that they tried to block the upgradeability by using threadlock on the screw that would hold in an expansion drive. That’s really poor Mr Asus. So what’s out there ?
I do like the big air coolers
So … PCs … I’m going to do two build ideas this time. The first is one which would be a mostly like for like for Meltdown, the second would be a worthwhile upgrade. They’ll both be AMD Ryzen based machines with an nVidia graphics card. The Ryzen machines are excellent for performance and I have my doubts for the Intels now, especially with the work laptop which is suffering hardware defects (although these aren’t significant enough to get it replaced). And I haven’t got that trust back in the AMD graphics yet after having a card go boom 1 month after warranty and headaches with their cards in the Radeon 1800 era. (I think they were 1800s)
Ahem. Starting out with what everything plugs in to … you have the motherboard. These look like they’ve ratcheted up in price now. You select these by checking what the processor needs and then the motherboard determines what memory is required. DDR4 memory won’t fit into a DDR5 board. Things like that.
Better machine motherboard : Asus Prime X670-P wifi with Socket AM5 – £275
Like for like : MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk MAX Wifi (they do like the long names) with Socket AM4 – £240 and these boards look like they’ve gone rare.
Processor : AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Socket AM5 for £250 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Socket AM4 for £150.
Memory : 64GB in a pair of Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR5 5600 sticks for Better one costing £210 or 32GB of Kingston Fury Beast (again with the silly name) DDR4 3200 for £87. The DDR5 is what the X670-P board needs, the X570S board needs DDR4. The X670 and X570 say what the chipset is. The motherboard is the foundation of the machine so it pays to get a good one. Meltdown has been rock solid in a Asrock X570 board, which I think cost around £180, so that £240 is a chunky increase in price.
One thing is that the stocks level seems to have mostly recovered to pre-pandemic and global electronics shortage levels and the prices are getting there. But they’re still up on the whole and some items like power supplies are still hard to get hold of.
Moving on to graphics and the equivalent to mine is the 4060Ti card (Meltdown has a last generation 3060Ti card), these will cost £400.
Powering everything is a power supply unit box, which will slot in and then you plug it in to everything. I’ve used Corsair power supplies for a long time and they’ve done me well … but the cheapest good enough one that’s available today is a 850W version for £148. That’s a bit much in both money and size. But if you find yourself needing to replace in a hurry, you work with what you can get hold of.
Disclosure note time ! I’m using prices off Overclockers UK this time just because they’re the first ones I thought of looking at. I’ve only ever had one freebie from an electronics company and that was a mouse won in a raffle. Everything else has been bought by me.
Every PC needs a bit of storage to put the Operating System on and all of the games. I’m still looking at using a Solid State Device drive to put Windows on and a selection of games, paired with a conventional hard disc to put everything else on. I like having a huge supply of memes but those don’t need to be on an SSD. So :
SSD : I’ve been very happy with Crucial again and they supply M2 NVME drives in 1TB for £48 and 4TB for £200. That’s way more than we need. An M2 drive is one that plugs into the motherboard, for extra speed and NVME means it has the electronics to fully unlock that speed.
Hard disc : Arbitrarily going for Western Digital and we have 2 7200rpm drives (they spin faster they send data out faster) for £190 for a 6TB drive and £240 for a 10TB drive. Thinking about it there, you’d be better sacrificing a bit of space and just putting the 4TB SSD in there.
I mentioned cooling earlier and this is actually one thing where I differ significantly between what I’d advise at work and at home. Water cooling is a really efficient way of taking heat away from one place and dumping it out at another. But home isn’t a place that actually benefits from that. You really don’t want fluids around your electronics if it’s not necessary. So I go for massive air coolers instead :
My usual thing with computer coolers is to go for the really big ones with a couple of huge fans. Meltdown has the Coolermaster MA610P in the picture above. It runs cool (50 degrees C on idle going up to 70 when pushed) and is super quiet. The idea is that the big fans push a lot of cooling air through and don’t need to spin fast to do that. Spinning fast leads to noise and noise is bad. So the other week when we had a power cut, I was confused why nothing happened when I turned my monitor on. Turned out that I wasn’t noticing that the PC was off. It’s that quiet. Anyway, Cooler Master MA612 Stealth cooler for £70. It’s worth investing more there so you get less noise out. Oh and add in £20 for a bit of metal to stick on that M2 drive, those get toasty.
Finally, you need something to put everything in. I’ve learned a few things with Meltdown’s box :
Not getting Bitfenix again, the quality was low and I almost needed the mendstick (big hammer) because a manufacturing defect had distorted the case almost enough to stop me getting the power supply to go in.
Drive bays are useless now, it’s easy to use a USB DVD or Bluray drive.
USB ports that are on the top of a machine are a total dust trap, including if they’re at a 45 degree angle.
I’d recommend having a look at a case before buying it, although I’ve never actually done this. The one that got the eye on OCUK was the Silverstone Fara R1 mid tower case for £65 but only because it had ports on the front instead of on top. I don’t think it’s worth spending that much on the case but you want a sizeable one that you then hide away somewhere. Big is easy and means the air can get through it easily.
Last bits – not including keyboard, mouse or screen, those are very personal preference. But you will want to do your research before going for anything there. Oh and you want Windows, which is currently £110.
How much is all that ?
The upgrade one is around £2000. The cheaper one is around £1500 with both hard discs. The only upgrade for the cheaper one which would really help Meltdown is the big SSD (currently got a slow 512GB one), so that’s £200 for the 4TB one, everything else is a small improvement. It would be around £1500 to upgrade Meltdown to the Ryzen 5 7600X machine. It’s worth noting though that PC Specialist could build something close to the £1500 machine for £1400. But … they’re putting in components like Corsair memory (like their psus, wouldn’t touch their memory) which I heavily avoid.
So … that’s not going to happen 😀 although I can’t be held responsible for the consequences if that big SSD appears with a big discount.
That’s all for today. One lesson is : if you don’t get benefit from spending the money, keep it. The laptop change was very worthwhile, especially because I’m travelling more. The desktop will hang in there for a few more years yet.
Means more money for Lego (and a bunch of house things that need doing).
While wondering what I left out of the last post, I’m currently trying to remind myself of what was in it ! I dunno, mind like a goldfish.
I wanted to have a little natter about socials and social media … There’s been an eruption of talk about these since a certain individual bought Twitter and then proceeded to set about destroying it. I’m still hanging around Twitter but I’m still very rarely posting on it. I’ll post the new blog post tweets but that’s pretty much it, unless I’m replying to someone else. There’s still a fair bit of good on there but it heavily depends on those who you’re following and therefore choosing to have fill your timeline. And you have to have a hair trigger for blocking those who you don’t want to have an interaction with.
Like the individual who picked up on me complaining at the World Endurance Championship twitter people … There were two things in that post :
Chat behaviour – didn’t care, I’d actually closed the chat the evening before because without moderation, it have gone toxic.
Stream stability – the WEC sportscar races are currently behind a paywall and as a combination of annoyance at Eurosport (they do about 25% ads to coverage) and likely covid, I signed up for the season. It let itself down badly at Le Mans by needing to have a browser reload every 90 seconds or so for a portion of the last hour of the 24 hour race.
So there I am complaining about stream stability (the “if they don’t know about a problem, they won’t fix it” theory) and someone jumps on that with a heap of venom about me complaining about chat. Ho hum, they went in the block after the second interaction, I should really have blocked them with their original snowflake comment.
Anyway – was talking socials … Twitter is really the hell site now. You have to heavily curate the feed with who you follow, which includes unfollowing those who were fun in the past … but have turned bad usually due to being tainted by their interactions with others. Like George Takei used to be the meme king but then politics happened and the tone got nasty.
Twitter has also got rid of pretty much all of the ways of reporting harassment. If you see harassment and poor behaviour on sites like Twitter, don’t call it out or interact with it, that’s what they want you to do. Interaction drives the algorithms to promoting that type of content. Just quietly report it. If you can.
The other socials I’m on are a private Facebook. It’s somewhat linked to my Instagram but I think I have that controlled so it doesn’t doxx me. I’m on a small heap of discord servers too, as the mostly anonymous Sleepydwagonman. The discord communities are really good places to be, although for all the acceptance on discord there are several where inexplicable prejudices come out and make themselves know.
Like the one which suddenly went off on one about cruise holidays, cruise ships and there’s me thinking that I’d quite like to do a cruise ship holiday at some point and oh there’s also the live on a boat plan.
I’m aware of all of the other social media exits happening at the moment, with all of those various start ups. I haven’t gone for any of them yet because they all appear to have their own particular flaws, with the worst being total security nightmares. Like Threads … That one is a hard no.
One bit of advice for everyone : let someone else be the beta tester. You don’t need to be the one to find out all of the bugs, you’re not getting paid for that. You’re not getting any incentives at all for that. There’s more to come with the social media landscape, I’m not sure that we’ll see another site pop up before the end of the year that has the reach that Twitter had. And I suspect that Twitter’s creditors will have the plug pulled before the end of the year.
What was that about send offs ?
I’ve been out amongst the stars again … And back. One of the major players was a man called Michael Brookes who set up a lot of the lore around the Elite Dangerous universe. He passed away just over a month ago and that triggered a quest to madly rush back from literally the other side of the galaxy to return for a tribute.
I’m currently using my time back in the populated Bubble region of Elite to do a little trading in the latest spaceship :
Dungeon Food Truck has food, honest
That’s the Dungeon Food Truck, callsign KN-00T. The ship is named for the lovely lady responsible for this clip about the Dungeon (twitch clips) … I don’t watch her stream enough* but when I do tune in, it’s a mad fun bunch to be involved in. She throws all her energy into the stream, giving us madcap antics for a few hours, guaranteed to bring out the grins. Would recommend adding Knightenator to your follows, here’s the Twitch link.
*I rarely swap between streams when I’m on Twitch … I’ll start watching a stream and stay with it. So if someone starts off a bit later, then I wouldn’t normally swap over to the later person. That’s the thing about Twitch, I could occasionally have two streams going at a time but it does tend to make my brain a bit too toasty if I try and do that too much. So at the moment, there’s this post happening on the desktop, Splattercat on the laptop and semi-random between album tracks from the laptop being played on the hifi.
And as yet another random – the Marantz amplifier I bought at Xmas as an emergency replacement is still doing pretty well. It’s doing exactly what I want it to do (play music), I should really watch a movie with it at some point. I dunno, at some point I just stopped watching blurays. One observation though, my Bluetooth link for the hifi was really suffering for a while. The Marantz amp can also receive via Bluetooth, which, of course, I set up. It also does Airtunes, which got disabled because it wasn’t working for me. (Probably my iTunes being ancient). I had to unlink the amp though because the Bluetooth link would break.
It’s a great protocol but seems to have issues with contention.
Don’t we all 😀
So today we had – social media, space and a little bit of techie.
More techie later probably … I started looking at PC upgrades again, mostly out of curiosity. Stocks seem to be very available again but the prices are still much higher than I’d want to pay. My old expectations would be £100 for a motherboard, £200 for a graphics card. That’s now £250 minimum for a motherboard (the thing you plug everything in to) and £400 for a graphics card.
The quotes were either £1500 for something with very similar performance to what I have now or £2000 for a somewhat worthwhile upgrade. I think that means that the 4 year old Meltdown will be the main desktop for a significant amount longer, there’s no reason to upgrade it at the moment. The laptop that appeared late last year is proving to be a really good buy. It’s really light, so it’s far kinder to travel with. It performs as I would want it to. The screen is a massive amount better than my last laptop. And Windows 11 is not a bother. The only question mark is that it might be developing dodgy wifi … Which would mean I’d get a plug in USB wifi widget.
Later. I’m more likely to invest in a dashcam for the car first.
Gosh it’s been so long the editor has changed again. I have to admit I’m not a big fan of stuff like that, especially when it’s not a change I expected to have happen. Haha, oh well. Ah ha ! I can get rid of it too. But first … thumbnail.
Yes. This is me
It’s been a decent few months actually, if pretty tiring. I’m pretty sure I put myself in another lack of essential minerals hole but I figured that one out and addressed it with another round of supplements to take every day. (Modern day scurvy exists …) But enough about that one … What did I talk about last time ?
Ahh, way back in March, I’d just picked up Red. Red’s been great actually. It doesn’t have the outright speed of the IS300h’s and the slightly less speed of the ES300h but it’s an extremely willing buggy that gives all it has if you ask it to. And that’s far more accessible in those hybrids than it ever was in a manual gearbox car. It goes round corners super quick too. Also, whereas the IS300h’s started as essentially beta test cars for that powertrain, the CT200h started off with a well proven Prius powertrain which received a good little incremental update around 2017 which I’ve been enjoying driving. Mostly for work … that’s something actually.
Something I need to do is get out and about more. I’ve been noticing an increasing possibly agoraphobic tendency. Except it’s not so much fear of the outside, it’s more like it’s easier to stay in and do stuff inside. And yet I do Need to get out and do stuff, it’s just been Easier to hang around and watch the cricket. Talking of cricket …
A sunny day in May
That’s from the Interservices T20 cricket at Lords back in May. It was a good day out although it was cut short partly because I didn’t feel comfortable there this time. My mum had a little stay in hospital, she’s ok and they figured out what put her in there but I was thinking I should have been there instead of at Lords. That’s behind the privacy wall though so that’s all I’ll put here.
The other thing that cut the day short was rain, it brought an especially dramatic but sudden end to the last game. The RAF had kept the Army to a challenging to reach score of 150 for 8 and they were keeping ahead of the required Duckworth Lewis* score, right up until the last ball. The rains came right at the end of the 5th over … which is the point where if the game’s called off, it’s considered a valid game with a winner instead of being a tie or draw. One of the RAF guys decided to go for glory, and got caught out on the boundary … And that wicket changed the result from RAF win to Army win.
*What’s Duckworth Lewis ? It’s a system invented by Mr Duckworth and Mr Lewis, which the system used to fairly resolve games of cricket that are shortened by the weather. It’s easier to score fast over a shorter time, plus the more wickets a team has left, the system allows for them taking more risks later to score faster. So if a game is shortened, the run rate needed would be 8 or 9 runs an over instead of the 7.5 runs an over that the 150 target would need. Similarly, if a wicket falls, the system ups the target to account for the batting side being able to take less risk.
Comic Con didn’t happen this time, it was back at London this year but we couldn’t make it this time. Next time ! I very nearly found a way to get myself over to Twitch Con EU over in Paris last weekend. I have to admit, I’m not a fan of high outside temperatures so Paris in July was scaring me off a bit from that side. I’ve been hugely enjoying the stories and pictures coming from the people who went though, there were a few groups and they had a fantastic time over there.
Did I mention a growing tendency to hide in the house instead of going out to see stuff ? Yep. Needs to get in the bin.
There was a work reason as well for holding off from going, which isn’t something I’ll talk about here. I’ve been enjoying the job change since it happened in Nov 2021 but there are so many reasons why I won’t talk about what the job is.
More cricket ?
How’s that !
That was picture of the day, it’s nothing more sophisticated than having my camera braced on my knee at the maximum optical zoom it can give and pressing the button at just the right time. No tripod … and I should look at selecting from a batch of pictures. You know, the mode where the camera takes a heap of pictures in quick succession and you pick the best one. I’m not as sophisticated as that with my picture taking but something they really work out well.
Cricket’s been good on the telly too lately, with 3 excellent games with the men and more excellent games with the women. Thoughts :
James Anderson has been a fantastic player for England over the years but needs a good game now, he may have had his time.
I really enjoy watching Sophia Dunkley bat but I do miss the brilliance of the legendary Sarah Taylor. Like when I quit, she’s happier away from the game now and that’s how it has to be.
I don’t like Ollie Robinson. He’s had his luck over his time in the team but he’s very Nothing Special … and also a bit of an objectionable so and so. There are better players.
Thinking of that … where’s Izzy Wong (lady fast bowler) and Matt Potts :-D. Would love to see them get a game.
And the Australians know what they did. You can’t argue to be given respect when you show no respect. They’ve been shown a lot of leniency in decisions on and off the field.
Yep. The cricket’s been attracting its controversy and it’s been extremely compelling to watch. The sportscar racing has been similarly compelling, with a very welcome win for Ferrari at Le Mans in their return to the top level of sports car racing. It’s also great to see world class drivers who became a joke in Formula 1, show what they can do in the sportscars. Like Antonio Giovinazzi turning from being dumped from F1 into a race winner for Ferrari’s sports car. In F1, it’s all about the equipment, not so much about the driver. Sports cars are subject to Balance of Performance, which makes it about driver speed and how the team supports the car.
Whereas I’m having serious thoughts about just not keeping up with F1 lately, the sports cars are still very compelling. And it does help there that we have the ladies teams and drivers showing what they can do too. They’re seriously quick. Like Lilou Wadoux who would get in the car with it trailing a bit … and then take it to the front of the class. Like the Iron Dames team who always outperform the Iron Lynx team, even when the Iron Lynx team included the ultra fast Giancarlo Fissichella. Fissichella has always been quick, if your team is quicker than his identical car, then that deserves huge respect.
I might be running out of time to talk music and books …
Lots of reading’s been happening. I’d just been about to go into Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation last time. Didn’t enjoy that one, the film is better. Mortal Engines was good … but the adaptation was better again. I enjoyed LJ Cohen’s Halcyone Space series and M.R.Forbes Starship for Sale series, they told their tale well and most important, wrapped up very satisfactorily.
Book highlights have been John Scalzi’s mad Kaiju Preservation Society. It’s a fast paced charge into a bonkers world with crazy huge monsters. I’m becoming a fan of Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe books, with the latest being the utterly charming The Red Scholar’s Wake. It’s a love story between a ship and someone who was a prisoner at the start of the book. So many AWW moments in this one. Both are well worth picking up.
Not so good : Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. There’s a decent story there but it didn’t really gel with me. And Star of Damocles from the Warhammer 40k universe, it started ok, changed tack totally in a poor middle and then stopped just as it ran off the rails. Rogue Star is good, Star of Damocles is definitely not.
I’m currently in Caliban’s War, book 2 of The Expanse. That’s a good series, with the story told over 9 fairly self contained books. One thing I like in books is where you can never tell what’s going to happen. A certain amount of plot armour is ok but when the plot armour is limited to keeping just a couple of characters alive with the rest being likely to meet their end at any moment, it adds a certain edge and tension to the book. The Expanse series has that, Gareth L Powell’s books definitely have that.
I actually need to get some reading in to preserve a reading streak that’s now at over 100 days ! So I’ll wrap up there.
Good night everyone. I’ve been in the bunker for a while as my personal burn out evolves. But I’m ok. Hope you are too.
Oh ! A couple of changes happened to the blog template while I was away too, hope they’re improvements. I might have to look at the background picture though because the sleeping dwagon is a bit too light coloured and obscures the text.
