Happy New Year - Sleepypete's Pillow

Hello everyone,

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

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

Quite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did I mention random ?

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

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

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

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

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

Is he ok ? I don’t think he’s ok.

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year everyone !

Share this: