Sleepypete's Pillow

No Lego today sadly, although I am well overdue posting the results of a rather glorious build from a while ago.

That BB-8 is definitely tempting though. Very tempting.

I’m back home now and in probably the best time to travel back too. Here is the scene from about 2.30am last night :

(2.30am ? I have trouble sometimes cooling down after a long drive. My nerves and brain go on high alert watching out for all of the numpties who are about to do stupid things on the roads. The trick is to not be in the place where you end up being caught up in what they’re doing).

That’s maybe an inch of snow in a Bristol that rarely sees much snow, if any. The conditions travelling back were poor. Very heavy rain, continuously for the whole trip after getting to Leicester. It was a balmy 5 degrees C for the early part though, so it was coming down as rain instead of anything more slushy. It did touch 2 degrees C around Birmingham though.

I sense that if I’d attempted to travel today, then I’d have been turning around.

It’s good to be home again, although it’s also good to see the family again. We didn’t get up to nearly as much as we usually would, due to ill health. And that’s me too ! My outsides are much improved but there’s still a fair way to go with them. It does help having lots of good munchies inside me though. I have pictures … Which would probably upset all of the vegetarians who come here.

There’s more going on there than I’d ever write here though.

Sad to hear about the Kate who was the subject of the Tips and Charity link up in the top right for a while. We lost Kate to breast cancer on Christmas Eve. I hope the kids will be ok. Kate was a lovely person.

I’ve been reading again …

I’ve been meaning for ages to set up a second light in my main room, overlooking where I’m on the computer and where I’d be in my chair reading. After attempting to read in what my phone declared as 0 lux earlier (no detectable light) and just now as 2.0 lux, I figured it was time. That can’t have been doing my eyes any good.

I do have a proper ceiling light in my room but it’s never been the same since I switched it to a dimmer energy saving thing. With the extra light, I’m in a dazzling (hah yeah right) 80 lux if my head isn’t in the way of the light.

Much better for reading Revenger by Alastair Reynolds, which I’m enjoying tremendously. I sense it’s all going to come to a rapid conclusion but stories can be best if they’re not drawn out. Some of the 500-600 page (or more!) novels feel stretched, this one is moving on at pace and I think I’ll be acquiring more books from Mr Reynolds.

I still aim to hit 100 posts for the year … I’ve been a bit lazy over most of this year. 3 more to go ! So that’s …. Lego Star Destroyer, Lego BB-8 if that happens, music post ? I wonder what else.

Oh and that 2.30am was partly due to cricket watching too, which I totally intend to do again tonight :-D.

Yep.

Have a great day ! I’ll be at the mum and dad’s place still* but it’s a good place to be.

*(The usual seasonal bugs, mum’s maybe 10 days behind me in the progress of her cold and I’m still suffering a bit)

Yep. Hope you have a great day, stay warm :

Yep. They nearly escaped with me yesterday. And …

Beware …

Easter is coming.

Final day of the advent calendar ! What’s in the box …

Ok, the sleigh was yesterday but I think we found the driver.

It’s a BB-8 ! With bobble hat ! And skis ! They definitely saved the best until last. And now I’m even more … tempted? daftly curious? dangerously drawn to? the big Millennium Falcon.

The saving thing there is that the £650 Millennium Falcon is likely to be in short supply for a very long time. I must watch the build video again sometime soon.

I suspect the Lego kit that will escape at some point will be the big BB-8. I wonder if I have enough bits to make him a bobble hat as well.

I spotted something else that was close to disappearing with me from the local garden centre / farm shop place :

They’re called Warmies and they’re designed to work like hot water bottles, except they’re solid inside and you heat them up in the microwave.

They have one in dragon form that may escape with me at some point. Maybe. We shall see !

I don’t know if I’ll keep up the post-a-day now that Advent is completed but we shall see. Xmas is going to be a quiet one this year. Illness has been catching up with us all so the trip to see the sister isn’t happening now. (My back has decided it doesn’t like me at the moment as well – grr).

A quiet Christmas is still a good Christmas though. It’s a time to be around people who matter, to have a cosy relaxed time. And then you hopefully have a chance to see other friends as well afterwards too.

And maybe smuggle out Warmies for them.

Yep. To the online shop !

At least, I think it’s a sleigh …

It’s poised, ready to plough its way across the galaxy bringing presents and good cheer to all citizens, Rebel and Imperial alike.

Yep. Even smugglers.

I’m at the mum and dad’s place now, we’ve settled in for a Xmas movie after a lovely dinner. What did we have ?

Yep. The ham was as tasty as it looks. Gert lush as they say in Bristol.

It’s good to see the mum and dad again and we should be off to see the sister and her bloke and dogs tomorrow. More pictures then. If the internet cooperates. I’m a bit frustrated at the moment, this laptop is pretty good but there are a couple of flaws with it :

The keyboard is wonderful but is starting to struggle with age. It kinda needs a shake out to remove dust but … where does the dust go ? It’s a sealed case. There’s only a way in for the dust and no easy way out.

The wifi is not good. I can get around this problem at home because (techie bit …) 5 GHz wifi is perfect. 2.4GHz wifi is very poor. At home, I have different SSIDs for 2.4GHz and 5Ghz and the laptop never uses the 2.4GHz because I haven’t told the laptop about it. But I can’t split them out here like that. And the alternate solution of a Wifi USB widget has been nobbled by Apple who have deliberately stopped that 3rd party widget working.

The Macbook Air was a wonderful buy in 2013 but I won’t be buying anything else from Apple due to their attitude on software ownership and how they don’t believe in it. Nope. You’re supposed to rebuy from them regularly when they obsolete your current kit that’s still working perfectly well. Oh and they also have odd whims that are nothing to do with making the software better for users.

(It’ll be a custom laptop probably from PC Specialist likely running a tbd flavour of Linux).

The film ? It’s Battle of the Five Armies from the Hobbit sequence. A lot of spectacular, mindless action sequences sewn together by probably the last 20 odd pages of the book. A decent movie in its own way but …. too much battle, not enough story.

Still thinking about dinner the way this fella thinks about tennis balls :

Oh and tomorrow’s final Advent pic is awesome.

22nd Day of the Advent !

What’s in the box … what’s in the BOX !

Aww …

Cute little AT-ST walker. Needs to munch on some Ewoks to make him grow up big and strong. This makes me think of something I posted the other day …

I’ve quite enjoyed the post a day format so far this month, although it is becoming a bit of a pull now to figure out stuff to say.

Perhaps that’s partly down to being in the games instead of being around the people. People bring ideas, bring randomness that feed the ideas.

How is the game going ? I’m pretty sure this is a win now.

Mine are the Blood Red stain, spreading across the south side of the galaxy. I have a border to a Fallen Empire now, fighting those didn’t go too well last time. The rest of the galaxy is banding together in an alliance in a vain attempt to stand against the Berserker horde. But that’ll wait for a few days.

Back to the walkers !

I blew the dust off the big one especially. I have a mini AT-AT as well. Wouldn’t mind having a decent sized AT-ST or AT-AT walker, although I’m not too keen on the new Last Jedi walker.

Back to watching Salvation for me ! It’s a Netflix series about an asteroid threatening the Earth with extinction … and our response. Intriguing …

Another mini figure ! This time a definite follower of the fashion trend.

Yep.

Black’s in this year. I think he’s either one of the engineer type people who run the consoles or he’s a TIE fighter pilot.

Another easy day for me today. A few episodes of catch up telly in the morning and now I’m tapping this out while a few episodes of Salvation play in the background. In the middle, far too much excitement in the Stellaris game.

It’s still fairly early days in that galaxy. It’s getting into the early midgame where the wars are kicking off and federations are getting formed. The Purifiers are doing well so far (They should be, they demolished the opposition inside 50 years in the tiny galaxy game) but they have been taking a certain amount of losses which get rebuilt between wars.

What I didn’t anticipate was the outcome of a decision made much earlier. As Fanatic Purifiers, the race views all creatures unlike itself as food. They take planets, they get the dinner plates out and eat the occupants. Perhaps like the Kzin in the Larry Niven Known Space universe.

It’s a certain race style that adds its own advantages and some hefty disadvantages. The ships are better but the option to do diplomacy is totally removed. That’s probably a bigger disadvantage than it seems, as it also means that all of the other races tend to gang together to stave off the big threat that is your race.

Ok … what actually happened in that decision made earlier ?

Something they’re steadily adding into the game is a series of random events. There’s no guarantee that any of them appear in a game, in fact it’s very unlikely. This time, it turned out that some of my race got modified and made smarter. Sounded great at the time ! And the change was rolled out to all of the planets in the Empire, except a couple of planets which were being colonised at the time.

But … later on, another change got made to start the inhabitants of the Empire on their way to becoming Psionic. And they didn’t like the inhabitants which had been made smarter …

Oops. Half the Empire suddenly decides to eat the other half of the Empire.

It was a good lunch. And dinner.

Day 20 !

I think it’s a speeder !

I’m still having a real hankering for putting together a big lego set again. I like the building.

I’m watching the film Life at the moment, after breaking from Stellaris for some food. It’s a scifi movie set in space, in the International Space Station, where the astronauts on board are checking out an alien life form that’s been picked up by a space probe.

It didn’t have a great reception when it first came out but I like to make my own mind up about films. So far it’s …. ok. Not much more than that but we’ll see how it develops.

The Stellaris game is developing nicely. I’m playing my Fanatic Purifiers again who have their own special challenge due to everyone hating them. With good reason too … the Fanatic Purifiers are out to murder everyone. But they’re also a spiritualistic kind of race, with the purpose of communing with Something beyond.

And the first war is coming very soon too …

But not tonight. I’m going to attempt to keep to a fairly normal sleep schedule for the next few days, which means not speeding my brain up with gaming. Watching stuff is fine, playing stuff will mean I’m still playing the game behind my eyelids when I try to go to sleep.

And Life is building up too. Time to get the popcorn !

First up – Day 19 and what’s in the Advent calendar !

Looks like a Tie Striker to chase the rebels away.

The Special Project I mentioned yesterday involves making a new avatar or two. What goes into these ? Lots of patience and photoshopping … Here’s the starting image :

Spot the use of an envelope to act as a constant colour backdrop (it’s what I have to hand !) and a Nanoblock kit to raise the fella up a bit. In hindsight, a dotty object isn’t the best idea but with liberal use of the Magic Selector (a thing that selects a block of colour), the Free Select Tool and the delete key, you can turn that into :

And you’ll then want to trim the image down a fair bit and add an Alpha Channel to make the background transparent. This is the first layer of what I’m hoping to make.

Layers are very important. I’ll have the fella above as the main layer and I’ll add the rest as different layers. If you added everything on the same layer, then a mistake made would overwrite something you wanted to keep and then you’re at the random mercies of the Undo button.

I want to add something from :

Yep. Dwagon’s getting an Evil Cultist Snowmen jumper.

This isn’t so much of a cut and paste on top … I want to have it roughly matching the fella’s top. Let’s see …

There we go. This image is two layers, source dwagon plus source Evil Cultist snowmen. The source Evil Cultist Snowmen layer will be deleted later. I just need something to be a source for the lovely Clone Stamp tool.

Part way done. Note the imperfections on the left hand side of the jumper as we look at it. Those will disappear later. I’ve missed a trick actually as there are a few bits of source image for the jumper that I’d like to make this a high quality effort. Bits of jumper trim, things like that.

A little bit of cutting, pasting, clone tooling and rotating and the sleeves are coming together. I’m not planning to do much more than that coverage.

I think it’s almost there ? Don’t you ? As well as finishing the sleeves, I’ve done a little bit of clicking with the Erase tool on various layers. The erase will only take away from the current layer, so with every click you expose more of the source picture underneath. Less jumper, more dwagon.

He could do with a scarf I think but that’s probably beyond my photoshop skills. (Actually using the free tool GIMP).

I feel there should be a background. (It might appear overnight … I’ve actually written most of this post on Monday!)

Oh and if you’re thinking “That looks easy.” You can do it too ! Go for it. GIMP is a free tool so all it needs is the hard bit of having an idea and a little patience. The undo button is there to get rid of mistakes and the zoom thing is there to make it easier.

Go for it !

I think Day 18 is showing us who shot up the space station …

It’s a Y Wing bomber … lurking over the surface …

Mall run for me tonight. I have a Special Project coming soon hopefully, if my creative skills are up to it. I actually have 2 Special Projects in mind and the one inspired the other.

We shall see what the result will be !

No help at the Mall tonight though. Bit disappointing actually … The Bear workshop didn’t seem to have much in the way of Xmas gear for bears. They had a little but … not a great effort. I think they’re missing out there.

My own Xmas jumper has been getting lots of admirers lately. People like the Evil Cultist Snowmen for some reason. Or is there a pattern in the flashing lights which is … mesmerising them …

No decent cards either, which was disappointing. I will see what the supermarket has to offer tomorrow evening. And then there’s Bristol again as an ultimate fallback ! I know where there are good cards. Bit of a walk again maybe but that’s ok. I need to go back in to return those destroyed shoes anyway.

I did get my sausage-inna-bun though. It’s terrible for me but … I like ’em. And there are more in the centre of Bristol !

Yep. Yet more motivation to head in there on Wednesday or Thursday.

Right – not much more of the Orville left. It’s a fun start to what’s been described as the eighth season of Star Trek Next Generation and I’ve been enjoying it so far.

And then … what to have on in the background while I embark on the Special Projects …

Day 17 of Advent sees a hero arrive for an urgent mission :

Yesterday saw a shuttle arrive, today sees an officer of the Empire ready to be a keen pilot. What is his mission ? We shall see.

Feels odd at the moment. I think I’m partly in holiday mode, kicked off by a good afternoon in town on Friday. Only two more days at work to go until freedom for a little while. Looking forward to it ! (Although there is some stuff going on in the private side which has my thoughts but isn’t going to be added here).

The current Elite storyline is progressing as well. We’ve seen the return of the Thargoids, an ancient alien menace. They were content for a while to just disable our ships and take a look before letting us go on our way again. More recently though, they’ve turned more aggressive and have started making a mess :

That’s one of three stations that have been attacked and there are missions up to go and rescue as many people from them as can fit in your passenger cabins.

The damage is quite spectacular. If I’m feeling up to it (haven’t yet and yesterday’s session didn’t last that long) then I’ll make a video …

It’s even messier inside :

The station is in emergency mode, with lots of debris floating around inside (curiously rotating with the station but we’ll not say too much about that). Also very hot in there so you have to be quick about getting in there and out again. It’s a good little variation on what you can do in the game if you go looking for it.

Today has been mostly Motorsport Manager though. I’ve got my new team through a whole season now, possibly looking to get promoted this year but that’ll need a bit of luck. It’s kind of a rush to go up the division, as that lets me hire better drivers and designers. It also means my team won’t fall too far behind the teams in that higher division.

I’ve been enjoying the two games over the weekend. Both Motorsport Manager as it takes a bit of thought and planning through the races to get your team winning (not just a good car) and in seeing new things in Elite.

Wonder if there is something interesting to discover in today’s unveiling in the Humble bundle …