I like exploring in computer games, music, cricket, drawing and pizza and sharing those with people. Oh and I also inherited the name Sleepydwagonman too ! The site is a work in progress at the moment but it's getting there, features will come in over time !
Just a very quick one today because I’m still feeling very strained … What’s behind the door today ?
There we are, another minifigure today and a Luke Skywalker. Complete with gloved hand there and remembering the moisture farm on Tatooine with the jumper there.
I think that’s about all I have for today, although it was good seeing the Xmas vibes in a very short Truck Game session earlier.
I didn’t have much more available in me than just a fairly quick there and back to the seasonal event zone to do a couple of deliveries. Wasn’t feeling the vibes due to the exhaustion and being concerned about people.
Back tomorrow and I’ll summon some good vibes into another cruise port post. Be well everyone, have a good evening.
Still in the struggle but seeing what we can do to work through it … What’s behind door 16 ?
Yep. Still in that state of exhaustion, although I think I did actually get some sleep last night. Soreness is still in there though, looking forwards to the winter break.
Ferrol ? Time for more cruise …
Friday saw us docked up in Al Ferrol, on the Northern coast of Spain. I might have to bang out fairly quickly and do simpler alt-text because my right arm is not particularly happy with me today.
Very pleasant chill city. One thing I did notice there were the wind turbines … and there was a lot more of that on the way out of the city. It’s missing on the alt text but there are is a big array of very long blades, all stacked up with each other. Beside those, are the box sections of the actual generators and there are what I think are the bits that link the generators to the blades. There were huge stacks of these all around the port, as well as that not so little collection there.
To the port ! I had a little wander but didn’t really know what I was seeing but … I was drawn inevitably to their naval museum.
Complete with scalped aircraft carrier. Not something you see every day. If you’re in the area, I’d thoroughly recommend going to see the Naval Museum there. It starts through the Spanish Navy ships in the age of sail, goes through the early 20th century warships and goes right through to a model of their latest destroyer.
The pennant number in the middle there is F105 and tells us that this is a model of the Spanish Navy ship Cristóbal Colón. More at the wiki. She was commissioned in 2012. Part of me automatically critiques the design of these ships (see various comments ref ship nerd) but it looks like that ship could do a seriously good job as part of a fleet. Good to see these on our side.
Oops. Lost a bit there as I was rudely interrupted by needing to log in again. Not sure why Bluehost is doing that every two days at the moment. I should probably log in around lunchtime sometime so the timer is set different.
Anyway ! Two early century navy ships, where the engines were taking up quite a bit of the ship and they were limited to just a small number of not too effective guns.
They must have done well though, look at all the trophy anchors in the collection ! This was also the port that serenaded us on the way out with the bagpipe band. That was a lovely way to prepare for the day’s sailaway from a pretty coastal city.
Good to see all that greenery in there around the buildings. This sailaway saw me starting to watch on the Promenade deck …
We were heading off down that channel there. Here’s our pilot boat.
Must have been pushing it a bit with the wake that they’re generating there.
This is where I found myself up on the Foredeck part of the ship (wasn’t open much) and as the ship turned, we had a chance to see back the way we’d come. Good place to be, nice and chill which was what I was needing at that point.
Oh ! This was where I was attempting to get pictures of a cooperative flag as well :-D. This is about as good as it got …
That’ll do :-).
Time to hit post though and ration out what remains of my typing time. Have a good evening everyone, see you tomorrow.
Probably a short one today again because I’m feeling struggles both within and without … What’s behind the door ?
There we go, stormtrooper today.
Why the struggles ? It does feel like it’s coming from all sides at the moment, with work and family stuff that will definitely not be going here.
It’s definitely coming from within, because I’ve been feeling that I’m nearing the end of a very long and very frayed rope. I think the big part of it is psychological, because I’m finding it very hard to find joy in things. Perhaps that’s a sign of a depression creeping in there ? Maybe.
What I have been finding cheering me up is how people were finding things like the Dwagon on Tour pictures. It was really lovely seeing the various interactions popping up with those with people giving the hearts, the likes, the occasional omgs and general seeing that other people were really enjoying seeing what I’d been posting. Kinda makes you want to disappear out of the world again for a little while and go some place to let me send out more Dwagon on Tour pictures.
Hopefully at some point next year, I’ve run the annual leave down to about the minimum I can carry over. That refreshes at the end of April, so it needs to cover Xmas, Easter and I’ll need to disappear from work for a week around Feb as well due to …
I’ve been in burn out for a very long time now. The first symptoms really kicked in around covid times, with things like the sketching just ending. I haven’t sketched in years now, although a couple of emotes happened when idea plus can I do it combined at just the right time.
At the moment, it’s manifesting both mentally and physically. It doesn’t feel like my brain’s running on all of its cores at the moment, plus I’m even more absent minded than usual. Physically, I’m having increasingly sore hips, what feels like a void in my lower back and the injury I did to my right knee during the cruise hasn’t recovered yet. Add to that, the shoulder joining in and an elbow that’s making me shy away from losing myself in games like the Truck games.
And all that together means that while I look at the new games and think I’d maybe enjoy playing them, I’m not at a spot where I want to learn those games.
It’s not at a point where I would consider myself physically disabled, plus I was able to walk for around 15,000 step days during the cruise. But that constant low level pain does get to you after a while.
Last bit before I fetch my dinner which has the timer bell starting to go …
Any more of you feeling especially exhausted at the moment ? I’ve had that for quite a long of time. I keep hearing it from so many people as well. It doesn’t feel like it’s just me at the moment. It feels like a more generalised malaise has settled in where everyone is struggling to find the energy to do even just those basic tasks. And that’s not just for me in too many years to count, it’s younger people in their 20s and 30s as well.
If you recognise that in yourself, then I hope you can find that energy to get at least some of the things done that your brain is telling you needs to get done.
Another aspect of it for me is that I find it very difficult asking for help. I don’t take time off sick, I haven’t been back to a doctors in years and I probably need to do that for both an allergy test to finally confirm what I can and cannot have and to see if there’s an answer for why I’m so exhausted so much of the time. I can still start doing something and keep going until it’s done … but when that need to finish is over, I’ll go splat.
This isn’t intended as me reaching out and asking for help. I don’t like to impose like that on other people. But what I will say there is … whenever I see an interaction with something I’ve done, it gives me that little bit of Happy that I struggle to generate from within. It tells me that I do things that people like, that people want to engage with what I do and that people care.
If you’re reading this and are wondering if that means you – DEFINITELY YES it does.
I hope you have people looking out for you as well. Hopefully back with a happier post tomorrow but I think I needed to safety valve out some of my feelings like this tonight.
I kinda wanted to end on a cheery happy meme but that counts I think. Where to for Dwagon on Tour 2025 ? We shall see.
I may have got a bit distracted by doing some more Euro Truck Sim 2 and left it a little late :-D. What’s behind door number 14 ?
Apparently the latest one is a Mandalorian Fighter spaceship. See earlier comments about not having seen any of the latest Star Wars output on the telly :-D. I’ve been missing a few other things as well, like the various new Star Trek (to be honest I was put off that a little by Picard season 1) and I’d like to see For All Mankind at some point.
Port visit ?
Thursday saw us come in to …
Gijon ! This was about the point where I was starting to call the trip Dwagon On Tour and I picked up from ideas from not quite sure where else to sneak the little fellow into pictures wherever I could.
Slightly awkward start because there was unexpected traffic slowing down the buses that were taking us from the ship to the city centre (some ports don’t allow people to wander around in them) but it was really good getting ashore for a wander after being a bit wobbly during the Bay of Biscay crossing the day before.
First order of business was to find somewhere with a good vantage point. Gijon is built on the north coast of Spain, so because the world is how it is, it has coastal fortifications to defend it. Definite wake up call for my level of unfitness to leg it up to the top of that hill :-D. But I did get my first good picture of the outsides of Borealis.
Wonder what those spheres were on top of the hill.
This saw our first taste of the architecture style as well, with those old castle style roofed buildings there in the older style, with the modern look creeping in there to the right too. And a statued person giving a greeting. I think that’s a greeting.
Also the England in New Zealand test match cricket just swapped over to England batting and I’m struggling to shift my “yay he’s out!” over to “yay our guy just hit a boundary”.
You could have a game of cricket in that space
They do like their open areas with the pedestrians well isolated from the traffic. Possibly because the Spanish drivers didn’t seem too averse to adding a little blood red to their car paint, although I don’t think they’re quite as bad as Bristol drivers who will back up to make sure after running you over.
I like my city, honest. (No I don’t 😀 )
I was still feeling a little delicate so I didn’t stay out that long but it was good finding the marina again after having a little walk through the city shopping area.
There we go. Little Red Dwagon enjoying me enjoying see all the boats. It was a good city for boats. And it was a lot more sheltered in that marina than it was outside …
Bit wild and I wouldn’t have been wanting to be leaning over that wall without a raincoat :-D.
I also hadn’t eaten anything for almost all of the day before so it was good to get back on board for a bit to eat. I hadn’t been actually sick with my sea sickness, just wanting to completely avoid food so that I could stay fairly horizontal and eating isn’t exactly compatible with that.
Back to the port ? It would have been good to explore for a little bit longer but …
Back to the ship and preparing for a night time departure. And incidentally, a first really good chance to play with my new 50mm large aperture lens … the one I bought for looking at stars, where it’s been continual cloud since !
It was doing super well at picking out the detail too. I could barely see any of that breakwater there with Mk1 Eyeball.
(looks at time) I better hit post ! More tomorrow.
That’s Ahsoka Tano’s Jedi shuttle there. Not from a Star Wars thing I’ve watched, it’s from one of the Disney series. I have to admit shifting from being a total Star Wars addict to being completely out of touch now with what’s on the streaming services. I saw those as another unnecessary expense that I didn’t have the time to actually get the value out of. I’ll catch up on series telly but I’m a bit behind on the recorded stuff.
I think my losing touch started with the deletion of the Expanded Universe books from the established canon, with those being swept aside in favour of movies that turned out to be … a bit awful, especially when episode 8 ignored a lot of the established Star Wars universe rules (gotta be consistent with how your universe works, even in fantasy) and then episode 9 deleted a lot of the promising threads from the movie before. I was unimpressed and they didn’t exactly make me interested in signing up to the streaming service to watch more.
However, after bouncing off the Jedi Outcast due to having fundamental personal conflict with its control mechanism and experiencing bugs I didn’t want to troubleshoot, I massively enjoyed Star Wars Outlaws. It was a wonderful little bit of Star Wars to experience, wander around in, do crimes and have fun with the story. I’ll buy it when it gets a tempting enough discount on Steam.
Wait ! Today’s post concept was supposed to be a bit of a music party 🙂 It’s been a little while since I’ve gone down the Youtube recommendations and let them do impromptu karaoke to the videos (sorry neighbours). One remembering from Steelpanda aka Nikki’s lovely chill Lego building stream (Twitch link) was Floppotron … She’d played a weird synth version of Last Christmas, so I had to check if there’d been a Floppotron version. Answer – yes, here’s a link :-D.
It’s … different.
What’s a Floppotron ? It takes hardware from the Dawn Of IT Time and uses in ways that were never envisioned by the designers. We used to depend on floppy drives of 3.5 inches, 5.25 inches and 8 inches. And then there were the printers … All of them have motors that would make a hell of a racket. And Mr Paweł Zadrożniak gave us the Floppotron. It looks like it’s evolved over the years since the (here’s the Star Wars link!) Floppy Duo playing an absolutely brilliant for what it’s on version of the Imperial March.
They don’t make the hardware like they used to. But my headache is increasing listening to that so time for less grating music.
Something I’ve thought absolutely magical since I first saw it was this animated video to Goldfrapp’s sublime cover of It’s Not Over Yet. That song may have started me on listening to Goldfrapp and led to me buying all their albums. And then there’s the animation which is beautiful and heartbreaking.
Next up is going to another animation, this time of Communication by The Cardigans. They said on a collection album that they like to write lyrics that are subtle until they come up and hit you on the head with an axe. And Communication is another very thoughtful, maybe not so much with the axes, song.
Going back to another song on in the background of stream today, I’ve always been a huge fan of the incredible voice that Kate Bush has and she was always massively ahead of her time with the music that she gave us. And it’s still popular with tunes like Running Up That Hill. And she made brilliant albums too that would run the songs in together.
Talking of brilliant albums, there’s always Pink Floyd and Wish You Were Here is always a favourite. Maybe not so much for the middle tracks but oh so definitely for Shine On You Crazy Diamond and the title track, Wish You Were Here which started on the album as someone tuning the radio to find something they liked before starting to play along to what they found on their guitar.
A much more recent discovery for me has been Metric, here they are with IOU. They have a different sound that caught the ear with Gold Guns Girls and a definite catchy energy.
Talking of catchy energy, another fairly recent vibe has been The Veronicas with the sexy energy throbbing through their Untouched, which I’m selecting on the youtubes while chair dancing to Gold Guns Girls.
Back to a couple of favourites from when I was growing up, plus one a little later. All About Eve were a big part of my listening when I was a kid, here’s their breakthrough hit Martha’s Harbour. And one from a bit more recently, Blue Sonic Boy for the Doctor Who fans. I love how she just wanders off into the back of the set for a little while to let the guitar soloists have their moment, with the wander timed just so to have her back in time for more singing.
I nearly reposted another thing there but that feels better :-D. I kinda miss sketching, although my head isn’t quite ready to return to that yet.
Next up in this musical mystery tour is something from Chris Rea (I was looking for a bloke singer to post a link to, it’s almost all been ladies so far). It’s not one of his Christmas songs, it’s the bright and happy Loving You Again.
I feel like I need a bit of cute and there’s Lisa Hannigan waiting there to brighten up this particular pub’s evening with I Don’t Know. Must look up to see if there’s anything new from this lady.
Last few ? Here we go. Gotta pick up the iPad soon so I can get that at least one chapter in before bedtime. Talking of books … sometimes they’re awesome in the first draft, sometimes they need a : Rewrite. There’s Sia.
And here I am tempted to go on listening to the great music on the youtubes. Maybe one day I’ll find my way to Mexico ? (Maybe not, bit toasty there). Anyway, that’s a lovely song by The Staves, who do have an album out that I need to get.
Penultimate song for this post – if you’re sad and need a cheering up, one thing is guaranteed to give you some happy feelings, a Kitten Marching Band.
Last one for tonight – I’ll be setting the recording thing tonight so I can Wake Up (wonderful happy track from Sakura Girl) to the cricket that’s on too late for me to watch before going to bed.
Night all, sleep well have a lovely day.
PS The security oopsie was me leaving my bag in a coffee shop after having lunch. Unattended suspicious bag left under a table ? Eeek ! But courtesy of a guy (who I was watching because he was tripping the threat warnings talking to someone on the next table) was watching me a bit too close as I left, I picked up bag before getting too far. Kinda indicative of bad brain times though !
Bit of a bad body and brain day today so I’m going to attempt to pay attention to that and do a quick post … What’s behind the door today ?
There we go. I’m attempting something new today with using numbers on the dice for the days. Does that work ? I’ll keep at it although I’ll need to improvise when the dice run out of numbers.
Today’s new figure is the Emperor’s Shuttle, which has the little central pod with two long wings either side that fold up for landing. The prompt there could be to talk about the evil overlords or modern day who’s in charge. But you know me, I don’t like to bring that in to here. You get enough of that from all of the other sources of media. I’d prefer to be a bit of an island away from all that stuff.
(Wonder how much that sea castle from the other post would be and what it would be like to live there 😀 )
I think it’s updates about me time – I mentioned bad brain bad body day above … I think that’s mostly down to the time of year and it being close to the winter break. I don’t think I saw the sun today (work from home all day plus Big Cloud) and that probably has something to do with how awake I’m feeling. The winter break will be good for getting away from Stuff and generally being able to chill out.
I’m struggling a bit physically, with an ongoing back issue and issues in my hips. I should probably replace my chair again because it’s almost certainly contributing heavily to those issues. Oh and the 3? (could be 2 and a bit) year old chair is already falling apart. I’m also having cramping issues in my legs, which are slowing me down a little bit.
Yep. Tired and sore but still mostly functional, so I’ll get by on that. I know a lot of people are worse off than that, hope they can get by on what spoons they have available as well. That’s the thing, we throw everything into things like the day job and don’t have much left for later.
Other stuff ?
I think the day is imminent where I retire the phone … my mobile is with the Three company and it’s over a year out of contract. They’ve just announced an imminent merger with another big company which means … no idea on what’s going to happen with the prices ! So a Cunning Plan could be to upgrade the phone so I get an upgrade for the phone and at the same time, tie in the monthly cost for the length of a new contract.
I’m also heavily considering upgrading Meltdown (desktop PC) a bit early … because this could be a good time to do that. Except I think I’ll do it the economical way and defer getting a new graphics card for a few months. Oh it looks like the ones I’d get are largely out of stock at the moment anyway. I’m looking at going to a 16GB 4060Ti card. The one in stock is £464, the ones on “pre-order” start at £390. Pre-order on a card that’s been released for a while usually means that the website doesn’t know what to do about cards that aren’t in stock.
I think that’s it for now. If you’re struggling, hang in there. Hope you get a good chance to rest and recharge soon. Nite all !
Today’s model on top of the d20 there is a Venator class Star Destroyer. It’s the ship that made a debut in the Episode 2 movie, Attack of the Clones and it was the precursor ship for the iconic Imperial Star Destroyers from the original movies. The basic shape is of a triangular wedge, with further triangular sections at the back before the engines come in. The actual ship has two control towers, although the tiny model can only add one.
It’s a pretty good shape for a space battleship, as having the triangle like that means that all of the guns on the sides can be pointed forwards for lots of firepower. The Venator’s thing was to be a fighter carrier as well, so that red stripe in the middle covers a huge hangar.
With today’s model being a big ship, I thought I’d go back to the cruise :-). And bring out the ship pictures ! I saw a few on the cruise this year and some last year too, from grey ships to cargo ships to ferries and cruise ships. First up …
Yep, gotta be Borealis. This was from the final port, where we stopped in at Lisbon and another moment spotting a place where I could set up a good picture. I like this one (Although Ellardy could have done with more light there ! Maybe need to grab a friend with a torch next time)
Sharing the port with us was the big P&O cruise ship Iona. Whereas Borealis is 231m long and 65,000 tonne, Iona is 344m long and 184,000 tonnes. That’s a similar step up to the difference between Borealis and last year’s ship, MS Maud at 136m long and 16,000 tonnes. Maud (now Midnatsol again) is a small and very cozy ship where you could happily wander through the decks and chill out. Borealis is a bit bigger again and it was still lovely to wander through her decks and go outside on the Promenade areas and generally chill out either inside or outside. And we were looked after very well by excellent crews on both ships.
Would Iona be a similar experience ? I’ll just have to check that out at a later date :-D. One thing I want to try and avoid is being on a party boat and Iona is listed on the P&O site as being Family Friendly. Could be a bit too young a catchment. Will have to do more research ahead of the next cruise. I’d happily go on Hurtigruten (either ferry or Expedition) and Fred Olsen’s ships again but I’m wanting to go to varied places and see what it’s like on the various ships. (That’s a couple of recommendations by the way!)
Going back a year …
That’s HNoMS Maud, taken from cruise ship MS Maud. She’s a fleet tanker in the Norwegian Navy auxiliary fleet and is very similar to Britain’s Tide class tankers. It was a fun spot seeing that ship from across the harbour in Stavanger. You can pick up exactly what ship this one is by that A530 on the stern, that’s the pennant number. Like …
That’s the US Navy ship USS Oak Hill, you can just about pick out the pennant number on the front there. She’s LSD-51, a landing ship dock where landing craft (holding troops and tanks and trucks) go into an open area at the back of the ship. We have some of these as well, similar ships called the Bay Class LSDA (Landing Ship Dock Auxiliary). Oak Hill docked up a little bit of time after we did and was still there when we sailed away.
It was fun seeing the smaller ships around as well. In Norway, the ports would typically have a collection of offshore support vessels looking to supply the oil rigs. They weren’t in Spain and Portugal but we did see …
That’s the research ship Odon de Buen (name’s up front). Definitely wondering what that ship would be up to. I think she’s either running underwater vehicles on tethers for survey work or could have been doing seabed cable laying. Maybe she’s looking for oil to open up a new gold rush for Portugal or Spain.
That’s the Portugese frigate F333 NRP Bartolomeu Dias, which started out life as HNLMS Van Nes in the Dutch Navy before being sold to Portugal. That’s about the best angle I could get there, although I could have maybe gone to the top of the nearby bridge … maybe next time :-D.
I think I need to hit the lifeboat in search of snacks soon, a couple more ?
Can’t forget the pilots. The big ships wouldn’t get into port without incident as regularly as they do without the Pilots and the Tugboats to help them in and out again without bumping into things.
Time to grab an excuse to mention someone 🙂 I have a Curlylocksgamer stream on in the background for the desktop and am enjoying listening in to chill pirate vibes as she’s playing Sea Of Thieves. I’ve met Curly twice at the two Creator North meet ups, she’s fun, good to watch. Struggles with disability issues though, so it’s been wonderful to see her being able to have fun with us on the streams again lately. Lovely lady.
That’s the smaller of the two ferries that was in Portsmouth when we got back home, the bigger one is off to the left of picture. The other one was a Brittany Ferries roll on roll off ship. And on the other side …
We could see into the Navy Yard over there … with Wave Knight (another older fleet tanker) in front of one of the Type 45 Destroyers (dunno which one) behind getting some work done. Always good to see the ships.
Time to hit post I think, it’s been fun doing the cruise posts a little bit differently to last year. I’ll talk about the ports at some point as well :-D.
Ellardy had to hide today, they’re mirroring me by not having the best skeleton day today. (Joints are bad, there are ouchies)
Today’s figure is Ahsoka Tano, who first appeared as a raw padawan student in the animated Clone Wars series. We saw her grow from that raw new warrior into a seasoned Jedi and she’s got her own series now (haven’t watched it).
After yesterday’s post on hero ships, the idea for today went over to heroes. As Ahsoka is one of the heroes that grew through the newest Star Wars stories. As mentioned, I haven’t watched much at all of modern Star Wars stuff. I enjoyed (most of) the Expanded Universe books a lot and the modern stuff is all locked behind a streaming paywall that I haven’t invested in and don’t have the time to watch it.
Too much gaming.
But then I thought … there are heroes all around us. All of you reading this, you’re a hero to me. Even you, the person who just randomly found the site and has read this far. YOU’RE AWESOME. Thank you, hope you read some more, it’s wonderful to think people might want to have a read of my rambles.
And there’s special mentions to come there of the two likely readers who are associated with work. One’s retired now, one is still in the organisation and helps keep me sane by being an awesome person to natter to. And tempt with Lego and tea.
There’s Comic Con Friend, who’s going through her struggles at the moment. It’s always a pleasure to see this one have a little peek into my life, either through enjoying sharing the Comic Con experience or those messages coming in.
Lots of other people too, including family. The streaming community has a lot of amazing people who share their lives, share their time with us and just generally make the days better and provide spaces that are just lovely to chill out in.
I have two of them on screens at the moment. Billietrixx is on the desktop and Norina1 is on the laptop. They’re both lovely people who provide fun, chill, cozy spaces to relax in.
Caustic Phoenix will probably be doing a co-working stream tomorrow on Twitch, I don’t get to see all of these due to being occasionally in the office when those happen. Caustic was very lovely in having a look at this site, which led to a few improvements. Caustic’s got a natural sense of fun, is another good one to watch.
It’s not just the streamers though, it’s the lovely communities they gather around them. So accepting, so generous. They’re heroes too.
I should hit post soon so I can take care of the poorly muscles and bones but one last mention for a truly wonderful person … Tashnarr has been treating us to (mostly) daily advent calendar posts over on the Instagram. They’re a little dose of Daily Happy.
There we go. The thought from during the day at work was that I’d talk about gaming and fiction heroes to follow the hero ships from yesterday. But they’re not actually real, just fiction.
You’re real heroes. Thank you all, you make life that bit better.
Nite all, have a wonderful rest of timezone wherever you are 🙂 <3
We have the Millennium Falcon today. That iconic ship for the whole series of Star Wars movies and one that helped define the term Hero Ship. These aren’t the biggest ships, they’re the ones that the heroes of a show or movie depend on. The Enterprise is a hero ship, in whichever series its in, although the Enterprise is on the big size for your usual hero ship.
A hero ship is usually something smaller, which can do everything the crew need it to do but with that sense of danger that comes from being completely outgunned by the big navy ships. And they’ll usually have a decent crew on board as well to keep them running because that gives the basis for a decent amount of cast and crew to keep the series going.
Can’t talk about hero ships without mentioning Serenity, this one’s from the Firefly series which really deserved to tell a lot more of its story. This particular ship was centred around a main cast which had Captain Mal, pilot Wash, XO Zoe, Meathead Jayne (the actor is responsible for dumb attitudes and that pretty much sums up the character too) and lovely Kaylee as the savant ships engineer. Joining the crew for a fare and an escape were Shepherd Book and Simon and River Tam, with the final spot being Inara who would join for a while as a guest and ambassador.
The ship itself was a small tramp freighter, with living quarters and galley living area towards the front, with the central box section being where the cargo would be and the main engine being to the rear of the ship. Because the ship was so small, it could get into and out of places fast for … shenanigans, jobs other ships couldn’t do and the occasional bit of crimes, while still being so vulnerable that it would add in its own contribution to the drama.
If you haven’t seen Firefly and the follow on movie, Serenity, I’d massively recommend trying to catch it.
The Mass Effect series has had a collection of hero ships, starting with the SSV Normandy of the first game. This one was a small frigate, a stealth ship that could get in anywhere, go anywhere and was that game’s vehicle (literally) for getting the main character travelling between the various locations. There was another, bigger, Normandy later and the ship in the picture is the Tempest from Mass Effect Andromeda. The Tempest was more a very light scout ship with just about enough room to accommodate all of the crew.
And that’s the main role of the hero ship, it’s usually the home of the main characters of the series. It’ll tell its own part of the story. Like Serenity being a little bit unreliable at the most convenient times for the story. It’s there to enable the story to move along and to enable the main characters to get up to shenanigans.
We’ve got some more from the world of books … Like :
Trouble Dog from Gareth L Powell’s excellent Embers of War trilogy. This is a Carnivore class ex warship, which has an embodied AI which is a fully fledged and key character in the series. Trouble Dog is a quite powerful ship, although nowhere near invincible. She’s small enough to get in where the story needs to go and has her own past and personality, plus a fantastic crew to look after.
(Embers of War is another series I’d thoroughly recommend, although a little warning – it does get a bit dark and grisly)
Another I can’t go without mentioning is the Rocinante from The Expanse …
This ship is at the core of The Expanse novels starting with Leviathan Wakes. As your typical hero ship, it goes anywhere and this one fights hard too, being an ex warship. It’s a frigate, out of the box coming with 6 rapid fire guns covering all angles. But at the start, it’s outclassed by bigger ships that have railguns that can punch huge holes in other ships. The Rocinante is the home of the crew for these novels and while the ship doesn’t have an AI or distinct personality, it’s a solid and dependable core base for the main characters of the series.
Any more ? There’s a whole bunch more, like Moya from Farscape. Moya is a Leviathan class transport, a big living ship that becomes the home for Crichton, Aeryn, Dargo, Rigel, Chiana, Zhaan and Pilot with a few more characters occasionally living on board for periods.
And I think I’m running out of steam there. Let’s finish with a blast from the past …
That’s the Liberator, from Blake’s Seven and the hero ship I grew up with. The series was probably not something a 4 year old should have been watching but that was ok because I was just looking for the spaceship and couldn’t understand the absolutely nuts 70s era weird writing that was going on. We had some very odd stuff going on the telly back then and when you rewatch it now, stuff like Space 1999 (and Blake’s Seven) make you wonder what non-prescription pharmeuticals were going through the heads of the writers, aided and abetted by actors completely going ham with what they were given.
(I’ve just done the alt text for the picture – hover to see – and I think my brain is melted, I do apologise for people who depend on that for this particular crime to alt text!)
Fun to watch though and Blake’s Seven probably has the best and most nonsense hero ship for that time. It makes absolutely no sense, although that design is literally for space and only space. Like the Enterprise where it was an absolute crime seeing it being built on the ground in the Kelvin Timeline movie. NOPE. The Liberator was thought to be a derelict, found in space. Our characters get sent aboard as expendable prisoners and … manage to reactivate the ship and make off with it. The series sees them being fugitives from an overpowering Federation and … takes them from place to place enabling shenanigans along the way.
Would I recommend watching Blake’s Seven now, almost 50 years after it was made ? Maybe. If you can watch it on a streaming service or similar, go for it. It was a good series for its time, although you will wonder what on earth is going on at times. Don’t touch the Paul Darrow (RIP) book, it has the Blake’s Seven name but it’s not in the same universe. Afterlife is a far better sequel.
Back to Star Wars for the finish and that’s the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels and an advent series from a long time ago on a sofa not that far away from where I am right now.
Gotta go, brain empty, have a lovely rest of evening 🙂
Sail barge today, from Return of the Jedi. I have to admit to a bit of an oops I’m late because I opened up Little Big Workshop again yesterday and yep, that’s where my weekend went. It’s a good little game :-).
I’m a little short on ideas, which could be part of “just came out of game” brain :-D. How about some sail aways to go with the sail barge ? One thing I noticed about Borealis was how smooth she was when getting moving. There was barely any sign that we were on the way. I’d look towards shore and see that we were on the way.
Let’s start with the first day. We actually sailed at night but were treated to a lovely sunset over Southampton before we all got moving.
Thursday saw us visiting Gijon, with another night time exit and me playing with the new 50mm large aperture lens I acquired before the cruise. It was doing really well picking up lots of detail out of the darkness there. We couldn’t see very much with Mk1 Eyeball (well used, bit down on new performance), so the camera was bringing out a lot more. I was amusing myself at some points by attempting to capture the beam of light houses.
Some sailaways have a bit of a difference too, like at Ferrol where we were treated to bagpipe music from the locals. That’s one thing about cruises, the local people are usually quite happy with the tourists coming through. Definitely enjoyed listening in to the pipers.
Saturday saw us visiting Porto, with me finding the outside observation area on Deck 6 for this port exit. Good view.
Monday had us visiting Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. I think this one was taken from the inside of the ship (there are window reflections) but there were some lovely lights at play with the night time sail away this time. Another pretty cruise ship there, sailing away first before our departure.
Not as pretty a ship but I’m really happy I captured all the pretty lights like that. Ships like this are the workhorses of the world, they get our stuff from where it’s made to where the trucks can take over and deliver it to our doors (or shops, I prefer shops).
This is us heading away from Tuesday’s port, Cadiz. One thing about the sailaways is the feeling as you’re heading away. I’ll be outside in the open decks areas and we were blessed with sunny, clear, calm conditions on all of the port exit days. The open sea air is lovely to bask in plus … that view.
Last couple for today. This is Lisbon, brilliantly lit by the evening sun on our way out of the city.
Lisbon was a particularly pretty sail away, with us heading under one of the large bridges there and seeing features like a few sea castles on the way out. The local sailors are usually out as well and the sailboats kept us company for a while.
Sea castle ! And a little sailboat there as well. I think this was the day when I was watching some very feisty clouds occasionally berating the sea with thunder and lightning.
I think it’s the sense of “where to next ?” with the sailaways as well. I think they’re magic and it’s one reason I went back to doing a cruise again this year. Wonder what it would be like on a river cruise ?
Will have to see where I go next year. But before I lose myself in checking out offers, I need to do my chapter and a bit tonight … Still in Aftershocks by Marko Kloos, I’ll finish that tonight and wonder how the author will develop the story in the next one.
Nite all, have a lovely rest of evening and a good day tomorrow.