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Lording it …

June 20, 2022

10:05 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again hasn’t it. I think I was getting ready to post something up again and then bugs hit … Thumbnail ?

Picture. Cartoon. A grizzled cowboy is lurking behind a bush holding a rope that is connected to a plank of wood holding up a big box. The box is poised to drop over a book case. An unsuspecting stick man approaches ... — Yep, this would work

So … what’s been happening ? Bugs, books and … there’s gotta be another B word in there. Nope, not coming … Went to Lords as well for the Interservices T20. More on that later and pictures for another post. Le Mans watching happened as well, plus I had last week off work. Timed that to coincide with a couple of recovery days after Le Mans and the Interservices cricket.

What’s first – games are always up there … Looking backwards, I’ve indulged in another run through Deus Ex Human Revolution and the sequel Mankind Divided will follow. I dunno quite what it is I like about those games. They don’t do everything that other fps do but what they get absolutely right is the core gameplay. They’re very solid games and have a good story running through them.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Human Revolution. We're looking at a holographic display. It looks like a series of hexagonal dot lights on a hemisphere. Inside, we see a globe that could be the Moon. To the right, we see a big wall mounted display with a prospective Moon Base. — May not contain actual moon base

(Spoiler – not been to the Moon in game but there will hopefully be a third game made to finish off this story properly, it might go to the Moon).

I really enjoy these games and while the 2012 Human Revolution does look dated if you know what to look for (the polygon maps are pretty blocky), it still looks the part and plays great. Looking forwards to moving on to Mankind Divided again. While I kinda bounced off Horizon Zero Dawn (also a first person role playing game shooter), I happily go back to the newer Deus Ex games as comfort games. I dunno, it’s kinda, I know what to do, how to play them so I can enjoy the game without needing to learn new systems for how to play it.

Motorsport Manager has also been happening … with a tendency to have sore wrists and arms, having a hands off game that’s still very engaging has been very valuable. That’s why it’s hit 1844 hours played since being released in Nov 2016 … I hit the end of Phase 3 of my self made challenge there, thought about restarting but have gone into a Phase 4 instead. Phases ?

Phase 1 – win the championship with the F1 style car.

Phase 2 – win the next championship with GT racing cars.

Phase 3 – win the last championship with the 6 hour race endurance cars.

And now I’m back to Phase 1 in the F1 style cars with the worst team I could join and I’ll build that up to where it beats the first team I built.

It’s a fairly hands off game, where you directly do the setups (this can be modded out) and the race strategy. The AI does a good job on its end too although changes from wet to dry weather catch it out.

And I can happily play it too whereas I haven’t opened Truck Game since 1st June because I was getting frustrated with road traffic accidents from murderous AI and it was hurting my wrist and arm.

Bugs … Yep. Had bugs. Pretty sure these were from a work reconnect event, the boss had the bugs as well at pretty much the same time. And there was someone who almost certainly brought in the fast flu that did the rounds around then. Anyway, that affected me for about a week, at which point I was in need of some downtime anyway. Pretty sure it wasn’t anything more sinister than a fast flu. I’m double vaccinated and boosted against the Plague plus I’m pretty sure I had it two years ago. This flu was affecting me but it wasn’t nearly as bad as probable covid with its coughing so much I think I blacked out a couple of times and assorted other symptoms.

Lords happened last week. I’ve been noticing increasing reclusiveness tendencies where I’ll take an excuse to stay in and do stuff indoors instead of heading out. So I haven’t been to the cinema much at all lately because I’ve been either bugged or enjoying the cricket on the telly. Wouldn’t mind seeing Everything Everywhere All At Once, that’s top of the list. Also Top Gun 2, maybe Doctor Strange but with what I’ve heard about Jurassic World 3, maybe not that one.

Lords ?

Picture. We're looking at a wide expanse of green cricket field, with the cut strips in the middle. The grass is cut as a checkerboard grid of various greens. 2 players wear red, the rest wear blue. In the background, the light red of the Lords Pavilion and to the right is the white double decker Warner stand. — Lovely day for it

Lords was splendidly turned out as usual. It’s a really old stadium now (opened in 1814) and they’ve steadily rebuilt, maintained and upgraded it over the years. It still has the signature slope (look at the advertising boards in front of the Pavilion) and the Old Father Time weathervane is still hanging out. I was a little disappointed that the big shop is gone and replaced with a smaller one. That’s part of the redevelopment of two of the stands (out of shot) which have been rebuilt into double decker stands now with shade. I sat in the old version for a session one year and I was absolutely baking and had to retreat to shade. One curiosity was that there was a big toilet area behind the old stands, that’s gone now. (Replaced by more loos under the stands).

It was a bit of a wrench to get away from the house but I enjoyed the day thoroughly. I might have to look into overnight stopping in the future though, leaving the house at before 7am and returning at past 11pm makes for a very long day even with most of it being chilling out in the stands watching the game and occasionally trying to capture the good bits.

Picture. We're zoomed in on the big green cricket field from before. In the centre, we see the 3 dark blue stumps of the wicket. To the right is a man in blue with batting pads, gloves and helmet. The bat has gone through a shot. To the left is a man in red and black wearing keeping pads and the gloves. He is clutching the ball in his hands. There is another man in red and black in the foreground looking away from us. — Disappointed batter, happy keeper

That’s me with the normal compact digital camera (Canon Ixus 265, disclosure note : all bits bought by me) with it zoomed in to its optical limit. I have it braced on my knee for the shots. Most of them turned out pretty well and have the action centred although there were a number of junk ones where I moved the camera off target. I need to see what I have, you can’t see much on the mobile phone screen. I was happy with the picture above, it’s from the instant that the keeper held on to a thin edge from the batsman for another wicket.

Last bit for today – I’ve been going through some books lately …

Not sure if I said anything about A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy (Alex White). It’s book 2 of a space opera series set in a universe where magic and technology intermingle. He’s done a cracking job with the two books so far and I’ll go back to the conclusion soon. I’d thoroughly recommend them as something different. First book is A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe.

Read Dune again. Honestly didn’t enjoy that. It feels somewhat dated now. The pacing is mixed, so some parts feel like they stall while he’s world building, some parts with the big story moments feel very rushed. I like the idea of the personal shields … but the interaction with the lasguns feels very wrong to me. (They go boom spectacularly). That felt like a Plot Hammer that just didn’t make sense to me. And those go pretty much all the way through the book.

Dune is a great story … I’d recommend watching any of the movies. Yep. Even the David Lynch one. Especially the SyFy miniseries. And even the new half a movie. They all tell the story in a far more active way than in the rather drawn out book. I’ll go back to books 2 and 3 at some point but I’m expecting another grind. I won’t go further into Dune than that.

Next up was Machine by Elizabeth Bear. A curious book. It has a great mystery in it that’s set up by a space trauma rescue specialising doctor in a space ambulance heading off to check out a historic generation ship that’s mysteriously appeared going too fast in the wrong place. Oh and there’s another modern ship in trouble next to it. The generation ship people are in cryosleep, everything’s abandoned. And our trauma rescue doctor lady is trying to figure out what’s happened. I really enjoyed the mystery unfolding through the book.

What I didn’t enjoy was the “woke” nature running all the way through. The author is very big on right minding and makes it a core theme of the book. I’d very happily live in her world. It’s a great world and I heartily agree with the principles. They’re just laid on very thick, they’re constantly there and it’s just a little too much and I thought it became a distraction. But I was highly enjoying the various AI, human and other species characters Elizabeth Bear creates for the book and as said, it’s a scifi universe I’d love to live in. Compare that to the seductive Starship Troopers, which sucks you in to Yay! Heinlein! until you ask whether you’d want to live in that world. Even without the Bugs, that’s a nope.

Next up is The Last Colony by John Scalzi, it’s book 3 in the Old Man’s War series. Now there’s a universe you’d think twice about living in. It’s very deathy :-D. And I’m enjoying it so far. Scalzi has a fun writing style that keeps me amused.

I think that’s enough for today. I’ll almost certainly develop a few more of these later.

Oh ! Lego happened too.

Seeya ! Be safe, stay well.

Watching racing, thinking cars

by Sleepypete

May 30, 2022

3:35 pm

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cars, racing

Hello everyone,

I enjoyed watching quite a bit of the Nurburgring 24 hours race this weekend …

Picture. We're looking at the tarmac of a racetack snaking a route through grassy banks to the sides. There are quite a few race cars in diverse colours making their way through, all with headlights on. We can see a few spots of rain on the camera. The caption to the top right is "Total 24 Nurburgring Formation Lap". — Brrrmm

This was actually from the race held in September 2020. It’s normally held a couple of weeks before the Le Mans 24 hour race which aims for the longest days of the year with a little bit of separation to allow drivers and cars to compete in both if able to. The weather this year was far better … previous years have seen the race suspended overnight due to fog or just too dangerous conditions but they got a full uninterrupted 24 hours of running in this year.

It’s a classic race, I enjoyed watching it a lot this time around. And there’s something I find way too fascinating about having the timing screen up instead of the actual cars and watching the sector time numbers steadily collect there. Especially if a faster car has had a problem, got repaired and is catching up through the field again. Or a slower car is steadily gobbling up fast cars that have retired from the race several hours before.

Stats ! It’s run on the Nurburgring Nordschlieffe course which is in the various racing games. I tried it when I played Forza Motorsport way back. Here’s a wiki link. The 24 hour race is held on a layout that includes the 3.2 mile (5.1km) Grand Prix circuit for a total of 15.77 miles or 25.378km. It’ll take the fast GT3 cars 8 minutes 15 seconds to cover that on a fastest lap, or the Dacia Logan taking 11 minutes 46 seconds on their fastest lap.

I like it more when I can adopt? a car to follow for the race and see how its doing throughout the race. Sure, the racing at the top is pretty close and spectacular, like when the Van Thoor Manthey Porsche slightly tapped another car on a fast part of the circuit and pirouetted itself a heap of times before hammering into the barriers. It bounced off a car driven by the other Van Thoor brother too so the commentators were speculating for a while about christmas card lists in the Van Thoor family :-D. But I think I connect more with the little guys, the underdogs, the ones that people write off as having no chance but they’ll keep on punching on reminding you that they’re there waiting to slip ahead when you make a mistake.

And the little Dacia Logan outdid super fast cars like this :

Picture. We're looking at the grass run off area beside a race track on the left edge of the screen. There is a car, stopped, with the back end engulfed in flame with black smoke rising to the left. The caption is "KTM X-Bow GTX". — Toast is good. Toasty cars … not so much

This was one of the oddest things I’ve seen in racing for quite a few years. Before I go on – driver escaped fine and the only things hurt were the grass, several bits of barrier and the car itself. What happened ? The cameras caught the KTM car on fire with the driver looking for a good spot to abandon it. The flames were pretty much out as the car was stopped and the driver jumped out. However … this is where the weird comes in.

Apparently the car wanted to continue racing and set off again, sans driver, down the steep hill. The flames then reignited … Several more cars came through and avoided the fireball before it took an early left and embedded itself in a roadside barrier. The marshals quickly got the fire under control again and the incident was pretty much done again.

Most races would see this being handled under a full course yellow or safety car but this isn’t really practical or sensible for a nearly 16 mile race track. So what they do instead is to have the area with marshals under a Code 60 protocol with a strict 60km/h speed limit. They’ll have a Slow Zone before with a strict 120km/h limit and waved yellow flags before to make it safe for the track marshals to work and return the track to a safe state for racing. I.e. a small portion of the track under a local speed control with the rest of the track under green flag unrestricted racing.

Yep. Enjoyed the race again this year and it was good to see excellent conditions throughout with occasional rain to add even more interesting times for the teams during the second half.

Post Part 2 time !

One thing about the race is the variation in cars taking place. The fastest cars are GT3 standard, so road going race cars like the Porsche cars, the fast Mercs, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and even the hideous BMW M4. Hopefully the Lexus cars will be back as well, they’ve brought the RC F variant of the IS cars I had before. That’s like … a 2 door coupe version of this car :

Picture. We're looking at two saloon cars with swept back aerodynamic roofs. The one behind is red, the foreground and to the right one is silver grey. — Yesterday’s Shinies

Whereas those had 220bhp and a hybrid electric drive, the RC F loses a couple of doors, goes a bit lower, they swap out the powertrain for a 460hp V8 cylinder 5 litre engine and send it round a racetrack. Bit like what BMW will do with their higher spec M cars. The N24 race also includes cars more like what we’d have though, like Hyundai i30N’s, Toyota Corollas, there were a collection of VW Golfs of various ages, Opel Astras and … the Dacia Logan. The Dacia was being a bit of a running joke because it was taking 50% longer to go round the course than the fast cars but … it kept going and came 98th out of the 135 cars taking part despite losing about 90 minutes that would have kept it competitive with the other 4 cars in its class. The two Corolla Altis were doing better than the GT86 car that was also in their class.

So … post part 2 ? I’m warming up the thinking to what the next car I get will be. It’ll be a Toyota again for a bit because I put myself on a multi year servicing deal (might have oopsed there) but Lexus don’t make a car I want to buy any more so I’ll be moving away from that brand. The UX is their small car now and its SUV doesn’t have much sport and little utility. The ES that I have now is too big, as are the other cars in their range since they put the CT/Prius and the IS in the bin.

To be honest though, I’d rather drop a size and cost level and go for the highest spec in a cheaper range than read the manual, see shiny features (even down to a kick open boot release) that aren’t included in the car I get.

Because I like shiny things and I was sad when nothing happened when I waved my foot under the back of the car as well as other things in the manual that weren’t in my car this time. So one thing that might happen next is go for a top spec Lexus CT from the last year they were sold, instead of having something new.

One thing I find odd though is that manufacturers look as if they’re tuning their ranges … SUVs are taking over (I’m not a fan of SUVs) and car makers are either going small or big. Vauxhall don’t sell the Cavalier any more. The Dacia Logan from N24 isn’t for sale any more. Honda aren’t bringing the Integra to the UK.

It feels like an odd trend. Perhaps they’re looking forwards in time to when petrol and diesel cars are stopped from sales. Or they’re recovering from the Dieselgate scandals. One huge consideration for me though is what car I’ll find myself in at the end of the decade … because unless politics change, it’ll be the last car I get due to electric not being a good option for me. I’d have to charge it on a public road with a cable going across a pavement – that ain’t an option and I bet I’m pretty common with that consideration. If you live in a flat, where are you supposed to charge the car up ?

What am I looking at as the options at the moment ? Considerations are : Speed but economical. Toys. Comfort. Size bracket. Being able to put shopping supplies in the boot. The Lexus UX fails utterly on the boot.

I’m actually looking at the latest Puma, even if it is an SUV style. It would feel weird to be back in a Ford after the horrid 2002 Focus ST … but I wouldn’t be captive to an emergency buy this time. The original Puma sports coupe was a lovely little car.

There’s also the latest Corolla hybrid, Lexus should really be looking at bringing a posh version of this out like they did with the CT / Prius. They did a wonderful job with the CT, delivering a solid ultra high quality conversion of the Prius which had them break through into the UK market which was continued with the faster IS300h that I was seeing in work’s car park a lot. It’s weird that they discontinued both CT and IS.

Audi looked ok until you started adding in the options. Similar with BMW and Merc. Vauxhall were a nope (plug in hybrid isn’t an option). And I wouldn’t touch a French car unless thoroughly convinced otherwise. Mazda are a curious one. I wonder why the MX-5 Miata isn’t at Nurburgring … perhaps they can’t fit the safety stuff into them.

Volvo are off the list because their cars are too big. Will have to expand the research a bit while being careful about what any magazines I get say.

Last bit – we had a work trip last week that allowed a bit more research … I’ve enjoyed having decent satnavs in the Lexii, although the last two have had deficiencies come in. (The last IS was an utter failure at last mile navigation, i.e. the most important bit, the destination point can be difficult to set on the ES satnav). This time, we used Android Auto as the satnav. It actually worked really well, with two phones connected to the car quickly and the signal staying good throughout.

However … the reason we used two phones is that sending the signal continuously through Bluetooth murders the battery and we didn’t have charging facilities. My impression was that Android Auto is very viable as a satnav … but I won’t be using it because it connects to one phone only, so I’d have to think of something to allow my music to be used. I wonder if I’d be able to satnav off the old iPodPhone I have, that might sort out that one.

(My main phone is a Pixel 4. Is good phone. My music comes off an iPhone 5, which is staying on an ancient version of iOS so that it talks to an equally ancient version of iTunes. I can’t update them. Similarly, I can’t allow the iPodPhone to connect to the internet because it’s hilariously exposed on security.)

So there’s another big consideration – getting satnav and music via two different devices.

I think that’s it for now though. Time to have a little diversion looking at Mazda’s site to see what they got :-D.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Thinking about tech …

by Sleepypete

May 22, 2022

10:30 pm

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computer building, geeky

Hello everyone,

After seeing a few people talk in the discords about getting tech upgrades, I thought I’d check out the market again. I’m highly unlikely to get any tech for me but it’s good to keep an eye on the market to see how it’s doing. Especially as we seem to be coming out of a period of extreme scarcity where components like graphics cards just haven’t been available to buy. But first ! Thumbnail pic.

Picture. A black dog and a shaggy brown coated dog are looking up at a grid of cookies. The captions are "We are from Tech Support." "We are here to delete your cookies" — I too, have cookies

I am starting to look into laptops but to be honest, my current one is still above what I needed it to do. The trigger point for the laptop will be when I want something smaller (it’s a chunky 15″ gaming laptop), when the battery fails (it’s lost 25% of its capacity) or when Windows 10 goes out of support and they stop releasing patches for it. Because cyber security is a much bigger thing now, the cyber threat is not something to be taken lightly. Case in point, 2 laptops ago when being infected with a keylogger led to my Eve Online accounts getting hijacked. I think the keylogger came from a 3rd party advert on the Eve site as doing a bit of dual boxing in Eve was literally the first thing I did on that laptop … and it was only Eve that got hacked. (Maybe GoG too but that was years later)

We’ve got until October 2025 by the way for the shuttering of Windows 10 support, so there’s lots of time to go. My desktop may have an easy route to go for a Windows 11 upgrade but the processor in my laptop isn’t supported and I don’t want to bother fighting that, the laptop will need replacing by 2025 anyway. Maybe. A memory just reactivated about me replacing the Macbook Air that I had before due to its keyboard failing … that Macbook Air bore the brunt of my outsides being in terrible condition and it would have been bits of Me going in the keyboard which made it bad. I’m healthier now. I’ll see what happens with my desktop Meltdown.

Picture. A wizard with a grey cloak and a very white beard (Ian McKellen's Gandalf) is sitting behind a laptop computer that's on a desk. The captions are "Please Wait" and "While the wizard installs the software." — Me, yesterday

The one thing I might do with Meltdown is to give it another Solid State Device disk drive. There’s 120GB of space on my current SSD which is about the kind of space something like Star Citizen would want to consume. I looked at that yesterday in a very rapid peek and a conclusion was to believe their strong recommendation to put it on a SSD instead of a conventional hard disc. (An SSD is much faster at loading in the textures that get painted on the structures of the walls). Specs !

Cookie Monster (laptop) has an i5-7300Hq laptop processor, with a 1050Ti graphics chip and 8GB of RAM. I’ve never played games on this gaming laptop :-D. It seemed like a good idea at the time, plus that class of laptop was the only one that allowed easy installation of 2 hard discs, which was a hard requirement at the time because SSDs weren’t big enough or cheap enough and my iTunes library is too big to fit. When I go away, I’m rarely thinking about doing gaming. I’m usually too tired from the day’s activities or I’m watching stream or video and generally chilling out instead.

If I were to replace Cookie Monster tomorrow, I’d get something like this (at the link) from PC Specialist. I’d change the spec there to 16GB of memory (in 2x8GB because that works better) and I’d increase the SSD to 1TB for an overall cost of £675. I’m not convinced increasing the price for a Quad Core chip is worth it for my use case. One thing extra I would acquire is a memory card reader. My digital camera uses a full size SD card and it’s just easier to import the pictures across by using a memory card reader. Oh, I’m a little uncomfortable about the PC Specialist link as I’ve never seen any of their hardware … I picked the one at the link to show because it’s slimline and it has an IPS (In Plane Switching) screen, which gives better and more consistent viewing angles.

Picture. A sad looking dog is on a sofa. The captions are "Someone figured out my password." and "Now I have to rename my dog" — See earlier about stolen game accounts …

What’s Meltdown got ? My desktop Meltdown was built in July 2019 and it has a Ryzen 5 3600 6 core processor, 32 GB of memory and it now has a 3060Ti graphics card. I upgraded its data drive to a 3TB and it runs off a 500GB SSD. Those specs are still pretty good now, which is another reason for not needing to look at upgrades for a while. (Except for maybe a big SSD because I made an error with the 500GB one).

Looking at Overclockers, I’d pick out these bits. I’m going to zoom over the logic here because I’ve covered the what everything is in previous posts …

You start with a processor and then the other bits follow from there. I’d go for an AMD Ryzen 5 5600 for £190, which is an upgraded newer version of what I have. (Worth noting that the faster 5600X is on offerr at the moment for £210, down from £300). The processor goes in an AM4 socket and wants 3200 to 3600 MHz DDR4 memory. The Asus TUF Gaming X570 Plus is a compatible board in stock for £210. It’s a standard sized ATX board so it needs a full sized case, which you’d want anyway for the graphics card. Add in 32GB of DDR4 3200 Kingston memory for £140, that’s what Meltdown has and it’s been a rock solid machine.

With graphics, it looks like there’s a lot more stock now although it’s starting at £500 for a 3060Ti which is still higher than the £470 that I paid for mine last September (I think it was September!). The 3060Ti isn’t in the same league as something like a 3080Ti … but those are £1200 and I’ll never spend that on a graphics card.

Picture. Two kittens are sitting in front of a laptop computer with a third kitten behind. The caption is "Ok, just one more click and the dog is sold!" — That’ll help

What’s next – storage. The mistake I made with Meltdown was to buy the wrong type of drive. The key thing to look for is “PCIe 4.0 NVME SSD”, these are a thin strip of board with memory chips mounted on them. The form factor is called “M2”, however there are slower SATA drives and the faster NVME drives. If price is equal, buy faster. I’ve been very happy with the series of drives I’ve bought from Crucial and they do a 1TB one for £113. (That feels a bit high). The conventional drive that I’d pair with that is the 3TB Blue drive from Western Digital for £75. No need to go fancy, if something needs outright speed in this machine, it goes on the SSD.

Last up is the more mundane stuff – it’s wise to go for a named brand assured power supply because they do break … and when they fail you want them to fail in a way that doesn’t damage anything else. I’ve been happy with power supplies from Corsair and they have a 750W one for £92. That feels high too. It’s also wise to over spec the power supply, so it isn’t being strained and therefore lasts longer.

That’s a theme in the PCs I build, I don’t overclock any more and I run them within their capabilities. I like them to last a long time, like the 8 years that the i5-2500k based Pumpkin lasted. (And it could have run longer too). Everything needs to go in a box, this is one where I’d go to Currys and inspect a couple before picking one up. Things I’m looking for include access, general size and quality of build. I wouldn’t get another Bitfenix case again, it was awkward to put the power supply in due to a small dint distortion. (OCUK have a bunch of suitable looking cases for £35). I don’t think it’s worth requiring the case to have drive bays to put CD/DVD/Bluray drives in now, as it’s very simple and viable to run these drives off USB now and the need for these drives is much less now due to streaming services.

Last bit – it’s advisable to get an uprated cooler for the processor as well, although the AMD chip has an acceptable one included. Around £60 is about right for what I’d get. You’re looking for a big lump of a cooler with a 120mm or 140mm fan, the bigger the better. Fans make more noise when they’re spinning faster and the big fans can run much slower for the same effect. The Coolermaster that went in Meltdown is essentially silent … but I learned with this one that it’s well worth seeing if you can find the instructions first. It was a lot more Interesting Times to install than was desirable, due to needing to unclip and clip leads on it in extremely limited space.

So that’s all the bits ! How much is all that ?

Picture. Two cats are on a blanket looking at each other. The captions are "Oh, No." "Too expensive" — And there’s the rub

All those bits come out at £1415 and that’s before you add in the Windows license, monitor and keyboard and mouse.

That’s the real reason for holding off … gradual inflation in prices and a hefty entry price for graphics cards have pushed that price up to where it’s something you want to do like the 8 years that Pumpkin gave me instead of the older days where technology would demand an upgrade every 3. Hopefully the prices will settle down again and reduce to more affordable levels. For the moment though, we’re being rather priced out of the market.

I’ll be ok with Meltdown for a good few more years yet. The lesson from this little excursion into the price sites is that it would be far more than I’d want to pay for something that would be pretty much the same level as what I have now.

So I’ll close with – getting shiny new things is great but … ask if you need to spend the money on that, or whether it can go to other things instead. (Like an RC car!)

See you all next time, be well.

Mining for bugs, chaotically

by Sleepypete

May 16, 2022

9:36 pm

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cars, games, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

I need to hit that “Add post” button more often ! Things are in my head that aren’t getting chance to escape. First though, one of my more weird thumbnail pics …

Picture. There is a blue implement with handles at the top and some black fittings between. There are a pair of arms below a hinge in the centre. The arms curl round to a couple of yellow pads facing each other. (It's a clamp) Two green dragons with flying goggles are on either side of the handles. — Get it good and tight boys

I got that a few weeks ago but hadn’t applied it to its given purpose since acquiring it. What’s it for ? My flightstick and throttle are a bit chunky … Let’s see :

Picture. We're looking at my red fluffy dwagon sitting on a very chunky joystick. The stick itself is about 8 inches tall, slightly taller than the dragon. It is covered in switches, most of which have lights. — Dwagon at 9 o’clock !

If you pull back on that, you’re giving it a fair bit of leverage. I had the joystick and throttle on a wooden (chopping!) board to extend the reach on my desk so that I could push the throttle all the way forwards without it clashing on the upper deck of my desk. Trouble was, pulling back on the stick put in all that leverage which made the board come with the stick. The clamp stops that.

Which means …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the back of a spaceship with several engines firing away. The paint scheme is dark purple at the back, light blue at the front. We're in the midst of a dimly lit rock field and above the ship and to the left, we see a light orange yellow planet which the ring system is orbiting. — Awaiting an unsuspecting asteroid

Yep. Been back in Elite Dangerous again, with a new ship. This one is another tribute ship, the Dances with Snowmen. The callsign there is -K1R1-, for 2dKiri, who is a lovely Austrian lady who streams games in the afternoon. A happy soul who will make you feel better as she’s playing through the games. And I managed to catch up with one of the names on my ever expanding names list there with a miner. The Dancer has just been molesting rock type rocks so far but I think I’ll take it into ice belts at some point to do core mining. That’s where you blow up ice balls to get the very precious Void Opals inside.

It was good being back in … although Elite is a hard game to love at the moment. There are a few too many bugs in the game right now that just aren’t being fixed. So on Saturday, the bugs list started at not being able to see the good bits of the belt (didn’t matter), through to the market bug and topping off with my first trip through hyperspace from the carrier bridge ending up with :

Screenshot. We're looking at a Crash Reporting dialogue window with a browser window hiding behind it. — Yep. It’s the crash reporting tool

Yep. Crash to desktop. Everything was ok when I logged back in again and I got enough mining done to pay for the new ship and a selection of new services that went to the carrier. That is, before another bug stopped me checking out any rocks for the remainder of that session. (You use a prospector to see what’s in the rock and then mine the best ones – the prospector bugged out).

But yeah. First time back in for a while, I enjoyed chilling out blasting at the rocks for a while.

Keep ‘er warm, back soon

Today’s jump through hyperspace actually worked ok as well. Ok so … explanation time – Elite does its travel between stars using hyperspace. The main ships you fly typically make jumps of 20 light years or so, although you can shove that up to 75 or more light years with special stripped down fits. But 20 light years is good for a fully laden trading ship. It takes them about 50 seconds to go from star to star. (4th wall explanation – it’s taking that time to load in the info for the system you’re jumping to). The fleet carriers can jump 500 light years at a time … but it’s a special system that takes 15 minutes from command to execution and you need to specially mine the fuel.

Yep. Good being back in, there are a few too many bugs still in the game though that should have been eliminated by now.

Going from one Frontier developed game and a Frontier published game, you can tell the difference with the new Chaos Gate game. I’ve enjoyed 6 hours of that so far, although I think I’m going to restart a bit easier with lessons from the first play through. Oh, the developers have been listening to the player base and actively adjusting the game to the feedback since launch. What’s Chaos Gate ? I think it’s a remake but I didn’t play the original so I have no knowledge there.

It’s been described as an XCom game with Space Marines. You have your 4 high powered super human marines, being sent into missions against followers of Nurgle. That’s the Chaos God for plagues. Nurgle is looking to eat a sector with a plague and your people are recruited by an Inquisitor lady to stop it. Easy to play, really tough to win.

Last thought before today’s closing picture … I mentioned small cars last time. Not got one of those yet although this vintage Escort Mk II rally car is very promising. (Modelsport link) (Tamiya Link).

Nah. This time it’s big cars. I’ll need to make a Decision there in the somewhat near future. What’s next ? Lexus aren’t selling a car I want any more, plus I’ve kinda fallen out of love with their offerings due to the quirkiness and other issues. When the carpocalypse comes around 2030 and petrol cars stop getting made (I honestly don’t think this will happen then), I’ll need to find a petrol car to keep around. That is, unless I move to a place that’s compatible with electric charging or electric car charging becomes actually convenient.

What’s the thinking at the moment ? There are 3 cars on the radar … first is the Ford Puma hybrid. Yep, a return to the cars I used to own quite a bit. Calling the SUV a Puma is a bit of an abomination to this previous owner of the old Puma sports car but it feels like this one is a good balanced car worth checking out.

Second up is the Toyota Corolla 2.0 hybrid. It’s back to a smaller car (the ES300h is way too big) with a good balance between going quick, having space and being frugal. The last one would be going backwards a bit … the blue 2011 Lexus CT I had is quite probably the best car I’ve owned. The build quality was stunningly good, it had bundles of space inside, it just wasn’t as fast as I’d have liked. But if you just go for chilled out motoring, the CT was an incredible car for that. And going used (they stopped importing them to UK a few years ago), you could get a top of the range version with more toys than mine had for an acceptable cost. (Linky)

Time to close up, one more Elite picture … Found this guy on the carrier.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're inside a spaceship, looking at a couch against the wall. 2 people are sitting on the couch, on the right is a fella in a green and grey uniform suit. One the left, is a fella in a blue uniform. He is asleep. There is also a potted plant to the left. — Bosun ! Prepare the airlock

Yep. Totally going out the airlock. Crime – drooling on the upholstery. Sleeping on board is indeed, permitted. We have cabins. Sleeping in front of the command deck door … No. Drooling on the upholstery, you know what’s coming …

😀

Stay safe, be well, don’t drool on upholstery that isn’t yours.

May the Fourth Cup be Earl Gray Hot

by Sleepypete

May 4, 2022

10:54 pm

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games, geeky, RC car

Hello everyone,

Oops, I blinked and another fortnight went by since the last post. What’s been happening ?

Picture. It's a meme picture of two Ewoks (about 3 foot tall bipedal bears) wearing hoods and a tie. One is holding an open book, the other a picture of a golden bipedal robot. The captions are "Excuse me sir ...." and "Do you have time to talk about our Lord and Saviour C3PO ??" — Not now Goldenrod

No remote control car yet, although I found a different site that seems cheaper, has a wider choice and also gives very clear advice on what’s needed to have a complete thing at the end of it. What’s stopping me ? Firstly, no idea where to put it, I need to rouse myself from eternal tiredness and do a number of jobs around here, not least of which is clearing out some of the clutter.

Oh and also, none of the normal car type models really speaks to me in a “I connect with that model” kind of way. I’m not that interested in the Porsche, Ford GT and Merc models ? Maybe the Toyota Supra, maybe the Miata / MX-5. Here’s a car I was close to going for back in the day :

Picture. A mostly white coupe car with flashes of red and grey paint. It has an aggressive body kit with widened wheels and spoiler wings front and back. — Yep. It’s a Capri

When I was looking to move on from the Astra Mk1 I had, the Ford Capri was one of the cars on the radar. It never happened, partly due to the possibility of finding one. Also because … the Capri was a little bit rubbish and things worked out to put me in the rather spicy and much superior Belmont SRi instead. There’s another bit of Stuff’s Gone Weird here too. I just looked at Autotrader to see what Capri’s are going for now, here’s a link to the cheapest. Yep. That’s a 2 litre Ford Capri going for £12,000. It’s not even one of the good ones ! It does look good though. Crazy things have happened to the classic car market now, there’s been hefty increases in prices happening. Perhaps it’s because all the not so good ones have rusted away and only the excellent and looked after ones are left.

Remote control cars ? Here’s a link to the Zakspeed Capri model page, the model from the picture. That’s Modelsport’s pages and I do like that they give the Bundle things as an option for getting the bits. Without clicking, it would be £222 for car, radio gear, batteries and charger. Not bad and probably a good kit for a learner person.

Time seems to be going whooshing by at the moment doesn’t it ? Perhaps it’s because what we do isn’t being broken up as much as it used to be due to the working from home pattern. Or it might be a much better state at work because what I know is being properly utilised instead of being shunted aside and pretty much ignored. That got grating after a while and it’s been good to have the old knowledge reactivating again. It’s kinda like doors in my mind reopening.

Gaming has been happening too, which might be a reason why the time is whooshing by. The Motorsport Manager campaign was completed tonight. It’s been an epic run going over I think 35 seasons and finishing in game year 2049. The target was to win the championships in all 3 of its single seater, GT and endurance racing. It’s a cracking game, it’s certainly kept me interested and engaged for (uhoh) 1795 gameplay hours since picking it up pretty much on release in November 2016.

There’s another motor racing manager game coming, this time by Frontier. I have my doubts over this one. The genre is horrendously difficult to make a good game for. I’ve previously played Grand Prix Manager 2, GP World and F1 Manager … and bounced off them because they were either annoying (GPM2) or fatally bugged. I can’t even remember what was wrong with the original F1 Manager. One issue with GP World is that campaigns could only last a couple of seasons before inflation made it impossible to run a team, plus it had fatal bugs. Hopefully the Frontier one is a good game, they certainly need to reverse their fortunes after the disasters of Elite Odyssey (still bugged) and Lemnis Gate (meh and ignored). Chaos Gate is looking good on stream, although that’s published by Frontier, not developed by Frontier.

Other gaming ? I just installed Mass Effect again … This is the Remastered version, so it’ll have all sorts of graphical updates, including better lighting so you can see their world better. That’ll be good to play again, although I suspect I may drift away from it during Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect games tell a terrific story and there’s a wonderful fresh new world to explore during the first two games but … I do like a happy ending and ME3 is anything but that. It’s one reason why I’ll enjoy reading The Expanse novels again, they pulled off an excellent ending there.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Simulator 2. We're looking at our truck on a 2 lane motorway. The camera is looking from behind and from the right. The truck is green and towing a flatbed that has an orange tracked digger on it. There are tall wind turbines to the left and right of the road which curves gently to the left. In the distance there are blue skies and pretty clouds. — Keep on truckin’

I’m still playing the Truck Game, although the addiction isn’t quite as strong as it was. It’s a good chilled out game when you’re on your own on the road, going from place to place and delivering varied things. Especially with a graphical mod or two installed like improved headlights so you can see more than a little postage stamp of screen when it gets dark. I looked at trying modding to put in a custom paint job, that needs a bit more brain cell activity than I was willing to give though. I’ll attack it again at some point.

Other stuff :

Netflix is gone now. I just wasn’t using the subscription and their output isn’t that interesting any more. It’s part annoyance at them setting up good series like The Expanse and Cowboy Bebop and then letting them go. At least The Expanse got rescued by Prime (need to watch s6) but it’s sad that Bebop was ended early. It was its own story inspired by the anime and was building in a rather promising fashion. It’s a shame Faye wasn’t in more, I liked the live action character more than the anime version and she didn’t really get enough episodes to have fun in.

There’s a few too many streaming services out there now. I haven’t watched any of the new Star Wars stuff, or the various Marvel series. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything there. So that’s Netflix, Disney, Apple and I dunno how many more. It’s a lot … The fear of missing out is quite active. Oh ! Paramount+ coming soon here for Star Trek. I’d very much like to watch Strange New Worlds, the Enterprise crew that was in Discovery season 2 was excellent, especially Anson Mount being a very charismatic and commanding Captain Pike.

But I’m not wanting to sign up to a I dunno how much a month service just to watch one series.

Oh ! Getting late. Time to get the Tashnarr Chaos Gate stream centre stage again and I left A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy at a rather delicate cliff hanger yesterday.

Be well everyone !

Late Easter

by Sleepypete

April 22, 2022

10:57 pm

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games, geeky, out and about, RC car

Hello everyone, a belated Happy Easter to you all. Gosh it’s been a while again. I have had a few ideas simmering on the brain for a post but the “New Post” button wasn’t getting pressed to initiate them … However, one thing I did manage to do was break the sketch block that had been going for about 18 months …

Picture. A rough sketch of a dwagon. He's standing with his feet pointing to his right (our left) in black strokes intended to be shoes. His right paw is raised above his head, his left paw is on his hip. He is winking his left eye. — Friday? Night Fever ?

I probably gave away the muse but hopefully you recognise the pose from the movie. The inspiration was Knightenator, who I just recently started watching on Twitch (link) after she was raided again by the ever lovely Tashnarr (link). Raiding is where a stream takes their viewers over to another streamer when the time comes to shut down their stream and it’s fantastic for discoverability of streamers similar to who you were watching. It gives you an immediate suggestion for “If you like me then you should like this person too who is continuing after I go offline”.

Hmm. This could be a randomised post. I can see it coming :-). Knight was on earlier playing more multiplayer Apex Legends (not something I play but she makes it curious to watch) and is another one who indulges in the Truck Game, European Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying that game a lot although I think I might take a break from it for a bit because they’ve tweaked the AI and made them pretty dangerous (which has been annoying me).

So … what have I been up to ? The post ideas in my head are things like : Truck Game and how it relates to modern day logistics. You know, things like when you click the button to order something online, what’s involved in getting it to your door. Or to the shop you get the thing from. That’ll be for a later post I think. I think I’m due a music post at some point too. I was in Cardiff on Wednesday and picked up some more cd’s, 3 from Morcheeba, 1 from Enya, a Nerina Pallot cd and something speculative from Beverley Craven. Haven’t listened to them yet, I’ll weave the new tracks in between the other music I listen to and gradually figure out what I think of them like that. And then I’ll weave in the whole album along the way too.

I had this week off work, which has allowed for :

A bit too much Truck Game time;

Indulging in Skyrim again. I have a heavily modded playthrough going …

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back of our heroine. She's wearing heavy iron armour and is on a ledge looking down at a valley filled with thin tall trees. — A snowy view

It still looks good, it’s an easy game to play and the ease of modding it enhances it even more. That’s a curious one though, it’s an easy one to lose yourself in because they’ve buried stuff to find everywhere and the gameplay style I prefer of a big sword and heavy armour means I’m not having to think too much about hitting things.

The Motorsport Manager campaign continues and still provides interesting racing. As in, the team is winning races now but I’m having to work hard to get the wins or we’re getting advantage from being able to handle changeable weather better than the AI.

And a trip to Cardiff happened on Wednesday.

Picture. We're looking over a balcony with a golden railing at a clock in a steeple. It's in a wooden building above a row of market stalls underneath. There are more shops on a far balcony over to the other side. — Lunch with a different view

That’s the indoor market area in Cardiff and I discovered a bacon sandwich shop and a cd shop next door to it. One pondering after though is, places like the cd shop and the book shop don’t seem to change their offerings too much … I haven’t registered too much change to that Picture Of How Things Are in the book shop lately. How often do they get new stuff in ? A curiosity …

I’m mostly going to wrap up there though but one thing I did want to think out loud on was remote control cars again. I didn’t get one on Wednesday because homing instinct was kicking in (apparently I tweaked my knee again and couldn’t feel the pain from it yet) and I don’t like to make money decisions when my head’s not right. When I do get one, I want to make sure I get all the right things … What’s needed ?

Picture. We're looking at a remote control car. It has two thing wheels at the front and we see one (of two) wheels at the back, with a spiked rubber tyre. The shell is white plastic with stickers above a black plastic tub. — Ah ! Grasshopper

So – things you need include : The Car ! Batteries. These come in packs of 6 in a moulded casing. It takes about 15 minutes to fast charge (which you don’t want to do too much due to damage) and they give about 15 minutes run time. So you want two battery packs. You want AA batteries for the receiver and transmitter. The remote control part is a 2.4GHz pair. You need a motor, a speed controller and a servo for the steering. Oh and you probably want a toolkit if what you have isn’t up to what you want.

One thing I’m confused about is what’s actually in the box … The couple I have my eye on are the racing car style Porsche 911 kit (link) and the more buggy style 4 wheel drive Thunder Dragon (link). Yep. Dragon pulled it out of the pack. They’re both Tamiya kits. You can get “Ready to Race” kits as well which are fully assembled but I’d want to put it together so I can understand how all of the parts work together.

Both kits take the standard 7.2V battery module, both have a motor (RS540 is a standard size for pretty much all electric remote control cars) but whereas the buggy has a speed controller, the Porsche kit doesn’t.

Antics supply a collected kit for most of the bits : Carson 2.4GHz radio and receiver. That’s got the transmitter and receiver pair, a battery pack for the car, AA batteries, a servo that does the steering and a trickle charger for the battery pack. The Porsche would need a speed controller as well. Which might mean a different type of motor as well … Choices :-D.

Motors ? There’s lots of different types that run on different types of power. The ones that go in your vacuum cleaner or mower will be Alternating Current (AC) Induction motors. They rely on the waveform of mains power to work. It’s a wiggly (sine wave) waveform and the motor rotor (the bit that spins) basically follows the electromagnetic field in the stator (the shell) windings that have the power. These motors just keep going because there are very few contact points outside of the bearings that hold the rotor where it should be.

Direct Current (DC) motors that run off batteries can’t do that. Instead of the power waveform being wiggly, it’s a straight line of constant voltage. A brushed motor has contact points that connect the electricity to the spinning part. As the motor spins, the connection swaps over and the motor keeps turning. However, the brushes wear out over time and need to be cleaned and ultimately replaced to keep the motor working. Brushless motors are kind of a mix between DC motors and AC Induction motors, they rely on a speed controller to turn the power on and off at specific points in the rotation of the motor. (Is too complex to describe here but was probably inspired by how 4 stroke combustion engines work)

The speed controllers work by chopping up the power going to the motor. If the power is only turned on for 10% of the cycle, the car being driven by the motor goes slower. The brushless speed controllers apply the power so that the rotor follows the electromagnetic field.

Oops. Digression and nerdiness happened … Bits list ! I did say I’d be thinking aloud … If I was to go for the Porsche, the bill from Antics would be :

The car – £129.

Carson Reflex pro radio kit, 7.2V battery, charger, servo – £80

Etronix ET0103 electronic speed controller – £20

(A brushless motor and controller starts around £80)

Extra 7.2V 5300mAh battery – £35

Fast charger Perkins GTP0166 – £28

Mini toolkit for £20.

So … that all works out to £312 to get in to the hobby and that’s going cheap on a few items. One thing I have already is the boost starter for the car. That has a 12V car battery in it that can also do 240V mains power so it can feed the charger.

It’s a fair bit to get in there isn’t it ? One thing I’m very conscious of is there’s a big gap between what I currently know and what the magazines assume that you know. And the only way to bridge that gap is by diving in. Although i have just looked at the Ready to Go cars and there’s a buggy car for £125 which includes the radio kit. Maybe it’s all what you pay for again, like that extra battery is 4 times the capacity of the one in the £125 kit.

We’ll see. I think that’s enough thinking aloud for now. Book time ! I enjoyed reading Light Chaser by Gareth L Powell and Peter F Hamilton. A bit short again maybe but there’s a lot to be said for a story that gets in, tells its thing and gets out again fast instead of indulging in repetition of what you already read or having a promising beginning that dribbles out into a tame end. Worth the cash and well worth a read.

Good night everyone, I must post more !

April goes Fourth

by Sleepypete

April 4, 2022

10:09 pm

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gaming, life

Hello everyone,

Yep. The “I’m gonna be an Aussie Outback Bush Pilot” was the April fool post for this year. I do enjoy crafting those. Sometimes there’s more production involved for some years posts than others. This year, I kinda got a bit too addicted to Euro Truck Sim 2 so the thoughts of putting a Dwagon in the seat of the truck didn’t happen. More on that in a bit …

Picture. A pocket dragon is on the left looking up. It's the one wearing "Feed Me" on a bib. He's amongst a collection of small chocolate mini eggs. To his right, a yellow packet with Mini Eggs written in blue. — Hashtag New Profile Picture

Normal blog stuff – really tired tonight. Had a day in the office, followed by wandering around the Mall. Successful for one thing (Magnesium tablet resupply). Didn’t get the other thing, need bathroom DIY supplies. May need new plan seeing as I couldn’t see where what I needed was in the only the biggest DIY store surviving at the local Mall. (Wickes had them. Wickes moved out).

In other news, I got a parcel today (which is why the bin moved). I wasn’t expecting an Amazon parcel … It has my address but someone else’s name on it. Apparently there’s no way to report this to Amazon except by negotiating the customer service bot long enough to get to a number where they call you.

(I’ll hold on to it, hopefully get a knock on the door when they see “delivered to” with a different address on it but if I still have it next week, it’ll go back).

Oh yeah ! Really tired. That’s probably down to hitting the Truck Game a bit too hard lately. Nice things about people time ! I’m glad I had the excuse to watch a ttrpg show (it’s just ending, sadface). It’s being hosted by TheWanderingInn (twitch link). The rest of the cast are :

Amelia Tyler (twitch). Lady of many wonderful voices. You’ve probably heard her around somewhere. She’s the narrator on Baldur’s Gate 3.

PeachyPixel8 (twitch), I don’t watch him much but he brought us a wonderful short and different cyberpunk series called Glitch starring all of the people here plus Valenvain. Less guns, more brain. It was a great little series, hopefully we’ll see a series 2.

Saffypie (twitch). Similar here, not watched much (discoverability can be an issue with Twitch) but her Queen Bitch in Glitch was absolutely stunning and I’m enchanted by her Astrid in Drifting. Great faces, brilliant characters.

Tessachka (twitch). Tess builds custom keeb keyboards when she’s not having fun bringing us the games she can play through a long term hand injury. Lovely lady, check her out. Last seen having fun in Tiny Tina’s Wonderland.

And then there’s the ever lovely Tashnarr (twitch) who guested on today’s episode. She’s been on the Final Fantasy XIV gaming lately and we’ve been enjoying her moving through the story together.

But anyway, on an evening where I was feeling blasted and need something to make me NOT play the truck game (sore arm and elbow too), it was great tuning into Drifting today. Wait, what’s Drifting ? (And Glitch). Gonna have to tune in to The Wandering Inn’s channels to find out :-D.

Ok. April 1st aftermath time. Actually most of that post is true, probably a surprising amount of it. I’m not leaving the UK any time soon, although … the UK isn’t a particularly brilliant country at the moment. The overall Class of the place has definitely gone down. That’s a curious thing actually, we’ve somewhat left the rampant homophobia and racism of the 70s and 80s behind (look up Alan Turing’s fate for worse crimes done by society back then). It’s still there but it’s not quite as bad as then. It’s been replaced with other nasty elements and just Not Smart Stuff. That’s probably the best description of it I have. People got dumb. And rude. And they have new targets for their Different From Us prejudices. We should celebrate differences, not have them as a trigger for abusive behaviour.

I’m not leaving the UK any time soon though. Not leaving the job either and it’s been great being back in a project world I was in about a decade ago. The old knowledge has been reawakening. It’s Pretty Darn Cool Stuff that I won’t talk about here. And it feels like a genuine contribution. I’m not going to say anything about contrast to what was happening before but you can probably guess from my mental state picking up that there is indeed, quite a contrast.

Picture. A green pocket dragon is holding a paw to his face in a shush gesture. It seems a bit, let's say, conspiratorial. — Less about the past, look to the future

You do have to learn from the past but it’s best not to live there. Be in the present … but spend your energy turning that present into a great future. How can you turn your present into a future you’re going to enjoy being a part of ? The answer there is different for everyone. I hope you all find a fun future to be part of.

That’s been a recurring theme for the April 1st posts. Whether it’s being taken away by aliens, being a Men In Black alien police, coming back to cricket (alas, too broken now) and oh no, I better not check back in the archive for all the April 1st posts … It was fun doing the Elite one. That had my ~~Photoshop~~ GIMP skills from a few years ago, which held up for that one just about. An idea I had for Friday’s post was to add the Dragon in to the truck or plane screenshots. I’m not sure if I could have managed that to satisfaction, it can be really tough to match the insertion to the original especially when one source is computer graphics and the other source is a photograph.

I think the photos and screenshots in there worked for what I wanted. The little pocket LED torch I have is proving its worth … My reading light has yellowed as its burned itself in, which taints pictures. The LED torch is white and I can juggle it as a spotlight and the phone camera (on a timer) to get acceptable pictures.

A light box would be better … but you work with what you have available.

Enjoying games where you trade stuff from place to place – I find myself really enjoying these. There’s a sense of progress and progression from earning the moneys and building up the fleets. The Elite spaceship empire has one of every ship now, so that’s complete. I don’t feel like I have any real objectives or reason to play Elite at the moment. The truck fleet is up to 5 now and that’ll just build and build. One of the achievements requires you to have 20 employees at maximum level, all with their own trucks. So I’m 25% to having the trucks and people for that so far and then they need to learn all the skills. Another achievement sees you needing 10 garages with 5 trucks each and I can totally see me meandering through the game until I get that.

It’s chilled out, mostly non stress (the AI drivers that you share the road with can be a bit nuts) and the visuals are nice. But it was taking a toll on my arms so I’m glad that I had Drifting to watch tonight instead of being in the game. Book later.

Middlesborough – yep. Been there. It was not for the faint hearted like a number of British towns I’ve been through. But it was a while ago so it may have perked up since. Nottingham was where I did university and not feeling safe when walking through the city centre in daylight was a very real feeling. It’s weird that … I’m fortunate that my white male genes make me mostly immune to the abuse and issues that people who aren’t white males get but when people say that they don’t feel safe in the world, I hear you. I don’t necessarily understand wholly due to not being exposed to it as much but : I hear you, I believe you and I’ll look out for you if I can. And sometimes that’s staying up and active on a discord channel when a very scared lady is finding her way home after dark (this happened, she had scare paralysis but we all helped her find the confidence to get home safe).

If you can help someone like that, please do. If only for the “yay me, I did a good thing today” feeling. Although I’ll understand if you have to retreat from it. I’ve been there too, especially over the past few years when the world started going even more scary.

Crewing on a ship – interesting prospect. The physicality of it would need a huge amount of getting used to though. I could probably regain some of what I had when I was legging it around a cricket field but the long term illness I had in the last decade has left a mark on me. Now if I were to win a lottery though, cruising in a barge around Europe is an enticing prospect.

Reality shows like Deadliest Catch, Ice Pilots and Ice Road Truckers – love these. Deadliest Catch might have gone on a few seasons too long though, it’s become very samey over the last few seasons. Ice Road Truckers definitely went on too long, it was good seeing the stories of truckers like Lisa Kelly, Art Burke, Alex Deborgorski, Darrell Ward, Jack Jesse and Todd Dewey unfold. (There’s a big name from the show missing there, it’s deliberately skipped). I gather that the production company upset the trucking companies though, which meant they had to find new places to cover. A pity, because the Alaska Dalton Highway years were the best years of the show.

I would like to learn Flight again though. As mentioned on Friday, space sims have it easy. The flight model is usually translated into gameplay with cheats. Definitely in the case of Elite. And you have full 6 axis control which makes landings and manoeuvres trivial. By the way, 6 axis control is : 3 for moving … Forward and Back. Left and Right. Up and Down. 3 for rotation : Pitch up and down, roll left and right, plus yaw which is turning in place. The trucks are an education because in 30 years of driving cars, I’ve never used a trailer. Trailers turn according to the force put on the trailer by the hook up.

Flight is a whole other order of complication. You have control over the 3 axes for pitch, roll and yaw and the engine applies force in the forwards direction. The wings provide lift to counter gravity … but only if sufficient air is moving over them, that’s the extent of your control over up and down. It’s pretty tough to move a plane left and right though. So flight is a huge challenge, you can’t really brute force it, you have to live within the limitations of the control surfaces having to interact with the air and the physics of drag. So the more you deflect the air, the more drag happens and if you lose more energy than the engine can put in, the wings stall, the plane falls out of the sky and that doesn’t tend to end well.

I’d like to learn it again though, so at some point a dive into MS Flight Sim will happen.

But I’m not about to move to the other side of the world and become a bush pilot any time soon, although … There is a game called Deadstick which is a Bush Flight Simulator game. Looks pretty dead though with the publisher dropping it and development hitting a wall. We’ll see !

For now though, I have that curious contrast between being very tired and being very buzzed. The buzz is partly down to being fully engaged and interested in cool stuff happening at work. Purpose is good. And it’s also partly down to tonight’s Drifting episode being super fun.

Book time now though – it’s an Alex White book, the second in the A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe trilogy. More on that at some point.

Later everyone ! Be well.

Live the Dream

by Sleepypete

April 1, 2022

12:09 am

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april fool, picture, travel

Hello everyone,

I know I’m slipping on the posting lately again but this could be one of the last posts …. from the UK ! More on that later.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon facing the camera. He's looking upwards. He has a walking cane in his right hand and we can see the traps of the backpack he's wearing. — Bags packed, time to be on the road again

Yep. The wanderlust has hit. It kinda started with the space trucking in Elite, being guided by either the trades in the big ship …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our big spaceship is landed on the left, with a small planetary settlement spreading out to the right. The sun can just be seen poking above the horizon, so everything is in silhouette with long shadows. The moon's surface is dirt brown and there is a ringed gas giant in the sky. — To the moon !

It’s interesting going to new places and seeing new things. Everywhere is different and it has its own charm. Even Middlesborough. Been there. Escaped and survived. (It’s ok, it’s just one of those towns without enough investment to make it a more tourist trap location like Warwick). Where did the Middlesborough reference come from ? That was weird, sorry people who live there and love their town.

But yeah, I did enjoy the traveling aspect of Elite. Trading was a good guide there, to go from port to port sampling the scenery and bringing the goods to those who need them. A few years ago, I was seriously thinking about checking out work as a person working in a Harbourmaster Office. They’re the people who run the access to ports and marinas and now the world is opening up again, there will be an increasing amount of traffic coming by sea to and from those ports. So, new ships, new crews, new cargos coming and going.

That’s kinda fascinating. I was wondering if I’d be able to visit some of the ships too, as either a formal type inspection or just being welcoming. Getting a reputation for being friendly and welcoming brings the people back for more later.

No smuggling though. Cos smuggling is bad. Wonder what’ll be a good opportunity for going across the border to Cardiff again.

I haven’t been playing Elite much lately though, I’ve had the attention drawn more by virtual trucks instead and quietly become addicted to European Truck Simulator 2.

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're looking at a 3 lane motorway stretching to the top left. Our green truck is towing a red flatbed trailor with a yellow digger on the top. To the right, is farmland and in the distance is a building with a pointy top. The sky is blue with scattered clouds. — Tractor tractoring truck tractor

ETS2 is built around you doing contracts and taking cargo ferrying jobs. So you’re going from place to place on the compressed map of Europe, visiting the cities as you’re delivering items like the digger in the picture. The current Steam sale means that I acquired the expansions that make the map stretch to pretty much all of Europe now (except Spain because not much discount yet) and there are some lovely sights along the way. It is game-ified though, so lots of time and distance compression. Traveling 1600 miles from Zurich to Istanbul took 2 and a half hours real time. Going into and out of places like London is kinda blink and you miss it.

But (oh no cliche time) it’s also about the journey. There are 81 achievements for the game, I have 14 so far and I’m pretty sure it’s one of those games where I’m going to try for the completing the achievements. I’ve been enjoying (and being a bit addicted to) the chilled out journeying to all the places. After visiting virtual Istanbul, I’m going up the coast to hunt another of those achievements, finding places I never knew existed.

Crewing on a ship doing the trades would be a curious proposition. Ships are a bit slow though, you’d go from place to place but it takes a good while in between. Same for barges. Canals used to be the arteries of trade in the 18th and 19th centuries before the internal combustion engine was a thing … but they’ve been supplanted by the ease and speed of trucks now.

So … abandon ship and become a truck driver ? Maybe not. It’d be good to satisfy the wanderlust but trucks still go on the road which means having to interact with other drivers. And ETS2 is very good at simulating the limitations that trucks have. I’ve never towed a real trailer before, so that was an education … And the power to weight is vastly different. It takes a while for 20 tonnes of truck to get up to speed.

Give trucks (and buses!) more space ! It’s a tough job in the cabin there. We car people need to make it easy for them.

About those bags though … I occasionally watch the reality TV things like Deadliest Catch (Bering Sea conditions would eat me alive) and Ice Road Truckers but some that really caught my eye were shows like Ice Pilots which had small planes keeping the trade and travel going in the frozen areas of Canada or Alaska.

Game screenshot. MS Flight Simulator. We're looking at a small white with red trim propeller plane sitting on a runway. There are mountains in the background. — Am leaving, on a prop plane …

Must listen to that song again, it’s a great song.

Yep. Not Alaska (bit cold there). It’ll be Australia for me. The language is just about right, I reckon I could fit in pretty easily down there. Just gotta wear the hats, adopt the accent and be prepared for a lot of Pom jokes. Do they drive on the correct side of the road ? Must add Outback Truckers to that reality show catch up thing.

Anyway, the picture is from Microsoft Flight Simulator and it’ll be a great initial training aid for …

BECOMING AN AUSSIE OUTBACK BUSH PILOT !

Talk about getting out there, going from trade to trade, passenger flight to destination and seeing that wonderful country from the air. I haven’t done much in Flight Sim so far (fired it up yesterday, was too tired to do much with it though …) but flying is a really enjoyable sensation.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon who is looking left. He has his arms out like wings and is leaning forward. He's wearing a pilot hat and goggles. The background is sky blue (and he's on my pale wooden keyboard tray) — Feel that breeze

Space sims have it easy, 6 axis control makes landing trivial. Atmospheric flight though, needs the wings to interact with the air in order to make the lift. So unless it’s a special aircraft like the Harrier which overcomes gravity by brute force, the aircraft needs to be going forwards to make the lift to make it not drop from the sky.

It’s a special, interesting kind of challenge which I want to relearn again. I used to play flight sims a good while ago, the last good one was Falcon 4.0 from the mid 2000s.

And as an outback bush pilot, you get to go from place to place, seeing new things, meeting new people and experiencing what’s out there from the most spectacular viewpoint.

Should be fun.

Fly safe everyone !

(Post April 1st addendum – this is of course, an April 1st post and you should always be wary of what you read on this day. However … most of this is true ! Except for the emigrating to Australia to be a bush pilot.)

Been Truckin’

by Sleepypete

March 19, 2022

9:54 pm

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games, skyrim, trucks

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again ! I really must get back into the habit of posting reasonably regularly again. I may have been diving into some game addictions again … Oh and cricket’s been on (it hasn’t been great to be honest) and I’ve been diving into the work stuff.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking up at our character. She's pretty much just a silhouette against a sky which has orange aurorae fading to yellow and green. There is also a ribbon of stars to the top right. We can see a few tree tops as well. — Head in the skies ?

Yep. The new Skyrim save happened and I’ve been collecting mods again. I’ll never share the full collection of mods (most modded Skyrim installs will have a LOT of mods) but some of the big ones are Caliente’s Beautiful Bodies Enhancer which makes everyone prettier. Apachii Sky Hair adds great hair styles. There’s a map enhancer, some quality of life type things like the achievement re-enabler and a thing that tells you what books you haven’t read yet. Realistic water, weather and better road signs amongst other texture improvements.

There’s a Death Alternative mod in there which changes what happens when your character is defeated. Normally, you just reload a save. But with mods like Death Alternative Your Money Or Your Life, things happen like being ransomed off, robbed, left for dead and other things that you can actually recover from. Sounds odd doesn’t it ? But it does let you recover from a situation without the reload and another mod sets up having to rescue the people who were with you which gives a reason to explore more. Oh and there’s an Alternate Perspective thing, which alters the cliched start.

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back left of our character. She's wearing an orange dress top above a light green skirt. Behind, is a medieval city type scene with stone brick buildings to left and right. A sign to the top left says "Winking Skeever" — Solitude in Solitude

In my case, I started my character as someone stepping off a boat at the Solitude docks and we’ll see where it goes from there. You can even go into the main story if you choose to. What adventures will she have ? She’s already in the garb of one who likes to hit things with a big sword. I haven’t got the mod set complete yet though. Seems like most of the time I spend in Skyrim isn’t so much the adventuring, it’s checking whether mods do what they’re supposed to do and sorting out incompatibilities.

It’s a game I’ll keep coming back to. It’s very easy to play, they’ve scattered interesting things to do all over the rather extensive map and the mods just add more to that. Oh and I’m being very curious about Elden Ring as well because a lot of people are really enjoying that. It’s another open world adventuring while bashing things with pointy things game.

There hasn’t been much Elite lately. To be honest, it’s an extremely pretty game but the hold there isn’t as much as it was. I do enjoy the space trucking though, which brings me to …

Don’t mind me, being on the hard shoulder

Since acquiring another gamepad controller, I’ve been enjoying the driving games again. Forza Horizon 5 is one, I’m a bit relieved that I got that on Game Pass instead of shelling out the £50 for it. It can be a hugely fun game … but it also has a lot of annoyance and shallowness to it. I think I’m getting bored with what it wants you to do already. Fun while it lasted but shortlived fun. The screenshot above is from Euro Truck Simulator 2 which I’m being very happily addicted to. Just one more run … honest. Oh and it’s also from the early days where I was getting used to the actual driving on a controller.

I do like games that have a story unfold as you play them. The story this time is starting as a journeyman driver who does jobs in other people’s trucks. After a while, you earn enough to buy your own truck …

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're sitting in a left hand drive truck, looking left our of the driver's window. We're currently going over a bridge and we can see a wide river channel stretch out into the distance. — Pretty river

Not actually my truck. I couldn’t resist taking that screenshot though. The map is very extensive, potentially covering all of Europe. I started off in Cardiff but the character hasn’t been back there for a while. As you do more runs, you get more experience which lets you carry more varied cargo and go longer distances.

It’s been compelling so far and I’ve enjoyed going from place to place across Europe. I said “potentially”, because a decent amount of the map is hidden behind expansion downloadable content which you have to pay for. So that’s half of France, all of Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, part of Turkey, Scandinavia and other parts of Eastern Europe. There’s a huge map there and I’m invested enough so far that when the game goes on sale again, I’ll buy more of the DLC and roam to more places.

Oh and this is perhaps going too much into the geeky but you can link up your game to a World of Trucks service and have your progress logged and jobs given via there. Here’s my link and I’ll pop it in the links to the right as well.

That’s the thing. There’s games that you enjoy for a few hours, there’s games you can get really invested in. There’s games that transport you to somewhere else for a while. Games that have a story open up as you play them. I like the story games, whether that’s a finite scripted story like Horizon Zero Dawn (must go back to that), the building up of the Sleepy Star Fleet in Elite or starting from nothing and building up a trucking company. Or being a tough lady with a sword sorting out the bad people in Skyrim.

Tonight though, it’s watching the ever lovely Tashnarr in another story game, Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve played that a bit … but I kinda bounce off the massive multiplayer game playstyle now. It’s fun watching though. Especially if you have a good book to dive in to as well.

Time for the Armageddon Inheritance !

Carrier, Book, Printer, Meme

by Sleepypete

March 6, 2022

9:55 pm

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books, internet spaceship, picture

Has it been a week again since last time ? Time’s flying by at the moment isn’t it …

I’ve actually been out amongst people, although it was just a run into the centre of Bristol after a necessary trip to do some recycling. (Too many plastic bottles) A Lego McLaren nearly came back with me … although at £160, it feels a bit pricey for me. That’s one thing about watching the build videos, you get an impression of what’s in the box before laying out the money. It has some smart bits in there for the suspension but … I think it’s a hype kit more than a wow kit to be honest. I also had my eye on the Globe but at £175, that’s a bit rich for me too.

Thumbnail for post ?

Picture. We see three pocket dragons in a line. On the left, he's sniffing the air. The centre one has a bib with "Feed me" written on it. The one on the right has a slice of pepperoni pizza almost as tall as he is. The caption on top is "The three types of dwagon". From left to right at the base it's "Smells Pizza" "Wants Pizza" and "Has Pizza". — Someone mention pizza ?

There’s been a 3 types of Pokemon meme going round at the moment which people have been borrowing and adopting and that creativity part of my brain sparked into making the picture above. It’s felt good that those creativity ideas have been coming back in and I’ve mostly had the physical stuff to make them happen. 2 things there :

I think my creativity was being heavily damped down by the Work Stuff that was going on last year. It was a rough year, despite getting stuff done. Or perhaps we were getting stuff done despite the new guy who came in. That’s in the past now though, the new role has been building into something that should also be getting Stuff done while being enjoyable. But I won’t talk about that too much here.

I’ve been having physical issues again … It’s part shoulder, part arm plus some digestion issues in there as well. Nom trouble aside, the physical issues have been limiting game time at the same time as that more active creativity side wants to do gaming. I think I’m finding somewhat of a balance with it and using a controller for driving games will help. I managed to do a fair bit of Elite flying again since Thursday … Let’s see :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at two starships, with the lower segment of a brown moon above. The closest ship is all curves and purple at the back fading to white at the front, with two engines coming out of the sides of the centre fuselage. She's perhaps a third of the screen wide. Behind her is a much larger ship in a mixed livery of blue and white. There is a flat section near the front. This ship is perhaps 80% of the picture width. — Behold the Herald

Thanks to lucrative trading opportunities in Elite, I had just about enough to cover the acquisition of one of the big Fleet Carriers. These aren’t ships you fly about in direct control like the rest of the ships, they’re more like small mobile starbases. The flat section disappearing off to the right has the landing bays. It has 8 big enough to accept the big Tiamat’s Chariot, 4 medium sized and 4 small. One of the opportunities with these ships is to make it far quicker to haul the commodities needed for the community goals. So instead of making 5-6 jumps to go from place to place (maybe 30 minutes round trip), I could park it near a station and just have about 5 minutes round trip instead if that. They’re a pretty powerful tool but they cost 5billion credits to buy and have a steady upkeep.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The off-brown moon dominates the upper part of the picture, with the ribbon of the Milky Way stretched across the lower half. Our ship is pointed away from camera, engines flaring purple as she heads towards the Herald floating in the distance with all of the rectangular landing pads illuminated. — Tiamat arriving

That’s Tiamat’s Chariot heading into the Herald of Bakunawa (that’s the name of the carrier). Where did the name come from ? I figured it had to be something suitably epic and I wanted the dragon theme to continue as well, so I went to a name list for mythical dragons. The name Bakunawa stood out (wiki link). Bakunawa is a Philippine Dragon God, believed to be responsible for eclipses. I.e. a dragon god that eats the Moon. Perfect. And Herald seemed right because the fleet carriers mostly spend their time hovering in orbit around moons.

A good few sessions in Elite over the past few days. It has massive flaws and I keep spotting more (like terrain errors around an engineer base and shadow errors) but it’s been good to have there as a chill out space trucking game. It does help that Tiamat’s Chariot is an after end game level ship that combines massive cargo capacity with defences and armament that can take on nearly all comers. (I run if a fighter gets involved).

Picture. It's a print out of my reading dwagon. He's sitting on his bottom pointed towards the right of shot. His tail is up in the air, the wings are taut as if he's enwrapped in the book that he's holding. There is also a pair of glasses perched in front of his eyes. The dwagon is mostly green, however there are regular vertical bands of yellow throughout. — Ermm …

When you see something like that coming out of an inkjet printer, it’s usually followed by an “oh bugger” because it’s the main sign that you haven’t been using it enough, the jets have clogged up and that’s usually terminal for the printer. What makes it worse is if the built in cleaning processes kick out a test page which has pretty much nothing on it. However …

Picture. We have a good quality version of the one above (with the reading dragon). There is a book on the right by David Weber titled "The Armageddon inheritance" and above the book, there is a tan leather bookmark with a line picture of a dragon burned into it. — I think he’s eyeing up that book

Ahhh the relief that I hadn’t killed a printer that’s just 6 months old :-D. The book on the right is the next book. It’s the second of three in the Dahak sequence, which starts with Mutineer’s Moon where Colin the astronaut finding himself in the middle of a 51,000 year mutiny where the mutineers have been exiled to Earth from a starship that’s actually Earth’s Moon. Oh and the ship has become sentient over that time as well.

Armageddon Inheritance starts up straight after Mutineer’s Moon and covers the other threat … There’s an apocalyptic sized battle fleet that circles the galaxy wiping out all intelligent life in its path and it’s almost back to Earth. And so Colin, Dahak the Moonship and the collective resources of Earth have to try and survive in the face of that threat. There’s some epic stuff in the book, like the aliens getting so fed up with how resilient Earth’s defenders are that they essentially give up on conquest and just throw one of Jupiter’s Moons at the planet.

I thought it was good enough for a re-read. That Moon thing was a big a OMGWOW book moment as the Project Orion starship reveal in another book. That’s not the lander type ship which is the current Orion starship. It’s the cruiser propelled by nuclear bombs. Super cool concept, achievable (maybe) with current technology, incredibly nuts. Here’s the wiki page. Hell of a concept.

Anything else ? I enjoyed a little more Forza. I have a Pikachu Lexus in that game now and I was enjoying the dirt racing far more than I thought I would. I was even getting smooth and fast race driving going on my flawed (50% travel gives 100% output) controller.

Time for book now though. I try not to game too late in the evening nowadays … although Skyrim mod testing happened yesterday. I’ll be restarting my game again there as the last character was saddled with mods that aren’t completed and have a fair few issues. So I’ll reset with the defeat mod replaced by another that ties into a mod called Caged Followers. It’s a curious one, if your party is defeated then instead of Game Over, stuff happens to your character like being ransomed for money or becoming a prisoner of vampires. With Caged Followers, your companion gets taken off somewhere and you have to rescue them. That’s going to be an excellent excuse for exploring the Skyrim world more …

Must go back to Horizon Zero Dawn, finish off the Car Mechanic Simulator achievements and enjoy the other games too. They’re a good chill out and let me block out the world for a little while. Like books !

Stay safe everyone, be well.