Sleepypete's Pillow - 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 !

New Things Lead To Happy Thoughts

by Sleepypete

October 11, 2023

8:38 pm

Comments Off on New Things Lead To Happy Thoughts

technology

geeky

Hello everyone,

What’s this ? Two posts in a couple of days ? I’m ok, honest. Well, mostly but I’ll get back to that later.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute grey and white kitten, sitting upright. Their back leg is in a long plaster cast. The caption is "My plan to dominate the world has been put on hold for *now*"

The widget I ordered yesterday arrived and it didn’t take too long (and one lost screw, I had a spare) to transfer my recent buy of a 2TB SSD from its USB enclosure into the widget that’ll see it living inside the case with a much better interface. The old performance numbers are in the last post (haha, that’s me shamelessly digging for an extra click for yesterday’s post!) and I’m happy to see a few orders of magnitude increase in performance. Numbers ?

Picture. We're looking at a series of benchmark numbers again for a solid state hard disc. More coming in the text. — Set speed to Zoom

So, looking at the numbers and comparing to last time …

Sequential read rates have gone up from the 40MB/s (megabyte per second) hard limit of the USB cable to 2765MB/s on reads and 4345MB/s on writes. That’s much closer to the theoretical performance of the drive, so I’m happy there.

The Randoms haven’t seen as similarly dramatic an improvement but I’m still very happy with 17 and 20 going up to 53 and 170. That’s still a significant improvement.

The Input/Output Operations Per Second have gone up from 4258 and 4913 to a massively impressive 13495 and 41717. That means it can zap backwards and forwards to find the right data before you’ve realised that the system has gone to the drive to acquire it.

The microsecond timer was good already at 234 and 203 latencys and is up an order of magnitude to 23 on the second number (74 on the first). So compare that to the conventional hard disc and it shows that the old system belongs in the last century.

The conclusion I take is that while you wouldn’t get the full performance out of the drive, putting an SSD into a USB enclosure is a perfectly acceptable way of adding a lot of space to a PC gasping for room. I was (mostly) happily running Starfield off the SSD-ina-box and Starfield will be notorious for demanding an SSD and not an older hard disc.

Jargon busty time … The newer solid state device drives are pretty much just memory chips, of the type that hold their state when the power is taken off. They’re ultra fast. The older ones are :

Picture. Technology. We're looking at the rectangular shape of an old style hard disc. There's a circular platter in the centre, with an arm reaching over. The "head" is on the end of the arm. The connectors are on the bottom.

The data is stored on a cylinder of round platters, which have coatings on top that are sensitive to the magnets in the end of the head. The head is on the end of an arm that will move to allow the head access to the full width of the discs. The thing is called a disc drive because the platters are shaped like discs. They’re spun up to usually 5400 revs per minute with faster ones going at 7200 revs per minute. The more revs, the faster the drive can get to the data and the quicker it can pull the data off the drive.

They were fantastic for the early days of computing but … there are a lot of drawbacks to this technology. Earlier drives would suffer from crashes, where the arm and head could contact the platter. That would dig a trench and pretty much wreck the drive. It didn’t happen too much though after the drives would park the head somewhere off the platters when the drive was powered down. It takes time for the arm to move, which means latencies on these drives are measured in milliseconds instead of microseconds. That makes a massive difference, especially with modern PCs.

And they’re pretty slow in pulling the data off too. That didn’t matter too much until around 10 years ago when improvements in processing speed meant we hit the limitations of how we stored data. (And perhaps some shenanigans by Microsoft too around the Vista times, which broke caching of data).

They did see us through a lot of decades though, going from the IDE drive in the picture through to EIDE, SCSI and into the SATA era. Lots of acronyms there …

IDE – Integrated Drive Electronics – the bits that make it go are on the drive and they’re connected up with a 40 wire ribbon cable. You could have two of these on a cable and the “Jump Block” would select between Master and Slave. There needed to be 1 Master on a cable. One really silly drawback here was that the Heads, Cylinders and Sectors values were mismatched between the various parts of the electronics which put an artificial (528MB) limit on the size of the drives.

EIDE – Extended Integrated Drive Electronics – saw an end to that limit through some nifty translation. It also saw 80 wire ribbon cables come in to the same connector. The extra wires provided shielding to stop the signals in each wire transferring over to their neighbours. IDE and EIDE both used parallel or many wires to make them quicker, which was ok up to a point.

SCSI – Small Computer System Interface – was a competing and much superior interface from around the time of IDE. If I remember right, it could handle 8 drives on a chain, was much quicker and because it didn’t have that Head, Cylinder and Sector limit, could handle much bigger drives. But it also needed an expensive controller card at a time when we needed the scarce room and resources for sound cards and graphics and a SCSI set up would add a zero to the cost of a machine. SCSI died out when SATA appeared.

ATA and ATAPI – was the logical side of the interface. It stands for AT Attachment, with AT being the original IBM PCs. From the 80s. ATAPI stands for ATA Packet Interface, where the blobs of data would be parceled up into packets to bounce around the system. Here’s a link about ATA. We’re still using this original system for modern SATA drives.

SATA – Serial ATA – saw the 40 and 80 wire ribbon cables thrown in the bin in favour of one wire to rule them all. Ok more than one wire but instead of all the signals chattering to each other in the parallel wires, there’s just one signal wire. It meant they could crank up the speed significantly. EIDE was limited to 33MB/s with “Ultra DMA” (Direct Memory Access), my SATA SSD goes at between 300 and 500MB/s. SATA was also much easier to wire up than the PATA, the cables go round corners much better than those 40 and 80 wire ribbons.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a chubby animal I think sitting in a tree. It's holding up a paw, with the captions being "WHOA !! Now that's too much information"

I’m probably letting the geek out a bit too much there. I did mean to drop a link to the site I stole the hard disc picture from though. Here we are, I’d be curious to hear which you think is more understandable, this site (linky) or my ramblings above.

There is another drive type, the nVME or non-Volatile Memory Express. This was an interface designed for how SSDs, instead of SSDs being shackled to the ATA system from last century. It’s much quicker. But apparently it’s also too new for my desktop machine to handle so the new drive is going to be just games and data. I’m ok with that.

To other things !

I mentioned I’m only “mostly” ok above … What’s up at the moment ? Headaches and a poorly back this week. I think I have answers for my outsides, I apparently have a light tomato sensitivity. Too many cup-a-soups, or pizza and I’ll see the impact on my healing outsides. But it’s not a serious one, I should be able to have the tomato soup or pizza in moderation.

I think the headaches are resulting from my latest pair of glasses. The test was done with a mask on in pandemic conditions, so there’s going to be alignment issues there. I’m sensitive to those, they cause headaches. It’s sad to have to retire glasses that cost £500 (two pairs, distance and reader) but I think I’m going to have to retire them early.

And the poorly back is just … a reminder of an older injury. It should improve but I’ll probably have to look after it for a while. I have the poorly wrist as well at the moment, which means I shouldn’t be testing the Starfield out on the new SSD arrangements … Conveniently, there’s good streams on at the moment so those have my attention.

On that note … to the streams ! Nite all. Hope the geekiness isn’t too weird and obscure this time.

Tech, feedback and there must be a third thing

by Sleepypete

October 10, 2023

9:45 pm

Comments Off on Tech, feedback and there must be a third thing

technology

computer, geeky

Hello everyone,

I had the idea to look at tech again.

Picture. Meme. We're looking downwards at a black dog and a shaggy brown haired dog. Their mouths are open. They are eager. They are looking directly at a grille with cookies on. The caption "We are here to delete your cookies". — Do they mean Deleat ?

I’m not in danger of going for any serious PC upgrades any time soon, although I did acquire a nVME solid state device disc drive that caused me a little bit of grief. If you remember back a couple of posts, my desktop PC has the following disc drives lurking inside :

It boots off a 500GB SATA m2 SSD, which works very nicely. It just doesn’t have the space for games like Starfield and now Forza Motorsport which each take 120GB. Yep. Chonky.

There’s a smaller SSD in there as well but I don’t use that one any more, just haven’t removed it.

I have two active conventional hard discs, an older 1.5TB drive and a newer 3TB drive. That’s where the games and the multitude of memes go. It’s actually a bit of an accident that they’re both active, I copied the contents over but forgot to update the linking of one of the drive partitions.

(A partition is where you split up the drive into sections. It used to be handy in older times, not so useful now, plus it’s how you would split up Windows and Linux installations)

And then there’s the 2TB fast SSD hanging out the back of the machine inside a USB enclosure. It works much better for Starfield, which is much more playable on that drive. It’s still got issues but not nearly as many as if you try and play it on a conventional hard disc. What’s the issue there ?

Picture. We're looking at a benchmark result for a hard disc. It's showing the Read and Write speeds and a mixture of both. More info coming in the text. — For a 3TB conventional hard disc

These will be results taken last month. That first one is for my 3TB conventional drive. The things to look at there are the 158ish for the SEQ1M (sequential access?). That’s how quickly the machine is pulling the data off the drive. The IOPS is for Input/Output Operations Per Second, giving 166 on reads and 423 on writes. The RND4K is the time in microseconds it takes the drive to start doing its thing. The read is higher on almost 6000 microseconds, the write is quicker at 2356 microseconds. I think the difference there is because on a read, the drive has to find exactly what you want. On a write, it’s just looking for spare space. It doesn’t care what’s in the empty space.

Picture. We're looking at another benchmark output for a hard disc, this time it's for a solid state device drive. More info coming in the text. — Results for my older SSD

Those are the numbers for my older SSD, which is installed in the correct slot in the motherboard. It’s a SATA disc, which is why the numbers for Read (516) and Write (442) aren’t particularly high. Where all SSDs shine is in the IOPS, where it’s doing almost 10,000 reads per second and 16,646 writes per second. It’s taking 103 microseconds to find everything you want. That’s important if all of your information is either spread into many little files or if you need to find just the right bit of information. Starfield is crippled when it comes to the voice acting, it needs that fast to find thing in order to do voices without massive pauses.

Picture. Another hard disc benchmark result. This time for the new drive that's installed in a USB enclosure. More coming in the text. — Results for my new SSD that’s in the wrong place

And last one, that’s the results for my nVME SSD that’s currently in an external USB enclosure. It’s doing fairly ok in that box to be honest. It’s seriously crippled by the USB interface (it’s not the fast one) but the 234 microseconds for the Random Read is still exceptional compared to the old style hard disc. The 40MB/s read and write is showing where everything is limited by the cable it’s squeezing the data through. I suspect the data flooding the cable is also why the Random Input/Output Operations Per Second is only around the 4000s as well.

I’ll be curious to see how the new drive does when it’s installed in a widget that’ll let it go full speed. That’ll arrive tomorrow for installation in the evening after I finish up work.

As for curiosity, I did a check on PC prices again last night. But instead of looking at similar devices to what’s in Meltdown, I looked at the Intel options instead. What I noticed surprised me a fair bit but it backed up something I noticed with the AMD machines.

(Jargon busting – there are two competing computer processor makers at the moment, they cost about the same but I went with AMD because they are apparently technically superior now, that’ll vary over time)

The surprise comes from the hardware makers moving on really quickly from older technology. Meltdown is based on a 4 year old Ryzen 5 3600 processor that fits into a X570 chipset motherboard. What’s a chipset ?

Picture. We're looking at a block diagram of a computer architecture. More coming in the text again. — UNLEASH THE NERDISM

What are we looking at there ? The green blob is the processor and the chipset’s job is to martial all of the data going around the system. To the left, we have 3 orange blobs talking directly to the processor. That’s for PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express lanes that couple the processor to the graphics card. There’s a huge amount of data going through that link. There’s also huge amount of data going to hard discs and USB devices. The chipset comes in over to the right, it handles everything else like your keyboard, mouse and any controllers. It also gives access for the other drives in the system or in the olden days, things like dvd decoder cards or sound cards. Oh ! Chipset is how the sound chips in the system connect up.

Each type of processor has a specific set of chipsets designed for it, usually a good one and a budget one. The good one for my Ryzen 5 3600 third generation of that type is the X570 chipset. I could put a newer 5th gen Ryzen 5 5600 processor in there if I wished to. But … there are only 3 of those listed on Scan today. That means the manufacturers have effectively put it in the bin for the newer model.

It’s the same with Intel, there are only two of the older Socket 1200 Z590 boards available (ok there are more but they are double the price). There are 64 (sixty four) of the current Socket 1700 boards available.

So yeah, the old systems have gone in the bin even though the processors for them are still very available.

It was a curious and a little bit eye opening check realising that yesterday. What does it mean though ? Firstly, you have to be really careful about what you buy. Going for that slightly older 2 year old Socket 1200 cpu will give a massive problem in finding something for it to fit into. It’s been put in the bin for the 13th gen Socket 1700 chips released in October last year.

That’s a fun one for anyone thinking about obsolescence by the way … I might know some of them :-D.

Secondly … if you don’t care about obsolescence issues, then it can mean that it’s a PERFECT time to buy. The processor in my one year old laptop is an 11th gen laptop chip. Acer could well have been giving the big discounts because they needed to dump the stock while they thought they could.

So that’s the lesson I picked up … keep an eye on the market, sometimes opportunities come up because the people who make stuff are shifting from one product to the next and they want to dump the old stuff. Meltdown got put together when it did because AMD had just come out with a very superior product. The Dwagonsong laptop was bought because product change had led to huge discounts.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute little white dog on a sofa, with paws on a laptop. The dog is wearing a sweater and a red and white bobble hat. The caption is "If you don't want me to shop online, you really shouldn't use my name for all of your passwords."

Quite. I think that’s enough for me for today, back to watching Billietrixx (Twitchy link) while she’s still on and then I’m somewhat grinding through the first book in the Silo series. I’m not quite sure what to make of that, the pacing feels off compared to the other books I’ve been enjoying far more. It feels hugely padded with a lot of character introspection which I don’t think exactly adds much.

We’ll see. Good night everyone, enjoy your books, your music (Dire Straits Making Movies track now – Expresso Love) and the rest of your evening.

And there’s a thought … (adds Dire Straits Alchemy to the wish list)

PS Forgot the feedback thing … The Novotel from Sheffield started badgering me for feedback … so they got feedback. It wasn’t the feedback they wanted. (TLDR – got nickel and dimed on extra charges, go with the competition instead)

In the North, with creators

by Sleepypete

October 3, 2023

8:29 pm

Comments Off on In the North, with creators

events

events, travel

Hello everyone,

I had an away trip over the weekend … It was for an event called Creator North, run by the ever bouncy adorable bundle of fun that is Tashnarr, the effervescent Billietrixx, the lovely LookitsTilly and Maddog, assisted with the cameras by Brookie.

I don’t have many pictures of the event itself (was enjoying talking to people a bit too much) but … the weekend involved a bit of wander around Sheffield and this fella happened :

Picture. We're looking at a small red dwagon with a white chest sitting on a laptop keyboard, with a screen behind showing a chat window. The dwagon is made out of thread, woven into life. — Yep. I did a rescue

Links time ? Lots of links. The event itself has a home here : https://creatornorth.uk/#page-top

It’s an event that came about to be a gathering point for creators who weren’t able to make it to other events. Almost all of the creator events that happen in the UK are concentrated around London, or maybe a bit of Scotland’s two cities too. There are events at Birmingham NEC but most of them, like the Twitch events and the EGX gaming expo have moved to London. That’s less than ideal for a lot of people. Actually including me and I live in the South too. So our fab foursome set up Creator North as a meet up for creators living in the North of the UK.

And although I’m South and it was 180 miles away for me, I thought I’d take the chance to meet these wonderful people and add that little bit of support to the day. I’m really glad I did too, it was a very enjoyable little event. Cozy and still with a lot of lovely people.

So who were the organisers ?

There’s Tashnarr (Twitch link), who doesn’t stream so much now but it’s always fun when she can find the time outside of organising other events. Tashnarr is an adorable little bean and it’s been a treat to be able to follow those streams. Although there is that … guilt? feeling (not sure it’s guilt) where you missed out on so much of their earlier content due to just simply not knowing about them. You might also recognise the name from such things as …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a somewhat diamond shaped spaceship. There are two engine pods at the back (top of shot), a notch where the pilot is at the front and two long antenna like things at the corners. The ship is dominated by the reflection of a sun but we can see blue with yellow highlight colouration. In the background, the disc of the galaxy.

That’s Zoomnarr, the ship which was my third attempt at speed running to the Galactic Core in Elite Dangerous. I do like to do tribute names for people with my spaceships (it gives me an excuse to say nice things about them). Zoomnarr was the second ship named for Tashnarr after the rather weakly named Grabnarr and then the rather better named Manic Minarr followed. It’s a sign of how high I regard this lovely one that three tribute ships happened 😀 (Oh and I thought of Manic Minarr and that pun had to happen).

Next one up is Billietrixx (twitch link again), I’ve only been following Billie for apparently 9 months now (that’s how long the Twitch sub has run) and found her through raiding into Tashnarr’s channel and Tash raiding into Billie. That’s how most of the cross connections happen, people you like raiding other people that they like. (When a streamer finishes, they’ll raid over to another channel to give their audience someone fun to continue watching) Billie another one who brings her own special energy to the streams, it’s mad, maybe a little manic but always passionate about the game and enjoying the game with chat. Pleasure to watch, fun to natter to via stream chat. And a lovely one to introduce the event to everyone on Saturday.

It was a pleasure chatting with Billie, Tashnarr and we need to mention LookitsTilly (Twixxer link) who organises events, is a lovely Twitch mod and was also a pleasure to talk to on Saturday. And then there’s Maddog (Twixxer link), if you play any of the Guitar Hero type games, you may be using his song request bot …

And I also got to meet Bentham again, aka Mangledpork (here’s his Twitch). He’s a lovely gent, I’ve been steadily realising that me and him resemble each other a lot (if not in appearance, there’s a picture on the Creator North discord of Bentham accidentally looking way more dapper than I ever will). Bentham likes his factory and crafting games. He’s currently playing Valheim and I so nearly would be watching now if not for another new person to me from Creator North called Curlylocks.

When CausticPhoenix finishes up (hi Caustic!) in a minute, I’ll head over to the Curly one. Who’s Caustic ? Here’s the old Twixxer link. Most of the time I see Caustic, she’ll be hosting a working stream but Caustic will also get super passionate and drawn into gameplay streams. So passionate it leads to super excitable (and hilarious) clip moments for victories, scares and the unexpected. Caustic has a few fingerprints on this blog too after dropping in a few comments, hugely appreciated. I need to get back to applying some more of those comments too. Constant improvement is always good.

So, that was Creator North ! Lovely meet up, very glad I went up there to Sheffield for it. Would totally do it again. Hopefully they can put another one on soon.

Other things about the trip ? I could do without the behaviour on the roads at the moment, Friday saw a lot of inexplicable stop start traffic. Like the outside lane suddenly just stopping … That’s supposed to be the fast lane. Other drivers will also make it awkward for you to get past, by speeding up as you’re going past them. They’ll be doing (I’m being charitable) 60, you’re going past at the 70 speed limit, they’ll speed up to match you. And worse behaviour. I don’t get it, drivers shouldn’t get involved with other drivers like that. I like to think of my awareness as a box of 9 (3 by 3, you’re in the centre) when I’m driving. When people go outside of that box, I don’t care about them any more unless they’ve identified themselves for special attention. And then I’ll keep an eye out for shenanigans.

But yeah, behaviour on the roads is poor, mostly because other drivers seem to insist on getting the better of other drivers. I really don’t get it.

Hotel for the weekend was Novotel. It was a nice room with all the facilities (that I don’t use, just had water) plus secure parking. Staff were nice, full of smiles. But … I think I got overcharged for breakfast and parking (double charge for 2 nights stay), which is what I’ll remember of Novotel. There are other chains, I’ve never been overcharged on the work trips with the other chains.

Sheffield was a good city to have a wander around. It’s a little odd in that the main shopping areas are split. Most cities have their shopping area all clustered around one place. Moor Market was a good one to check out, plus there was a festival with a stand with the Rescue Dwagon you can see up top.

So that was my weekend ! It was lovely to see everyone at Creator North. Little events are just right for me. Too many people trip something that might be social anxiety ? Dunno there, perhaps it’s splitting attention between so many people.

Anyway, Creator North was great. Oh ! I haven’t mentioned yet ! There was cake.

Drawing. One of mine so it's a bit crude. A large cup cake is on a table to the right. To the left, a forlorn looking green dwagon is standing on tip toes with chin and paws resting on the table. The cake is out of reach. The dwagon is thinking "Caaaaaake"

The cake was lush. The people were lovely. And it was great to meet a bunch of people that I’ve only known from the other side of the screen.

Disc trials

by Sleepypete

September 22, 2023

10:16 pm

Comments Off on Disc trials

Uncategorized

health, technology

Hello everyone,

Gosh where did those two weeks go. I know where the first one went when I was on leave, I kinda disappeared into a Little Big Workshop addiction (again) followed by opening up Trans Road USA again and disappearing into that. And then this week at work pretty much disappeared in a flash.

Picture meme. A small grey cat is looking at the back of a television. There are three wires plugged in, with yellow, red and white plugs. The caption is "Wait I'll fix it"

So after writing last time about having a flare up and that I was upgrading the desktop with a new SSD, there was a bit more drama there last week …

So the flare up continues, my arms are less scary now than they were last week which is good. They’re still scaring people and I’ve been putting them under tubigrip to protect them but there has been at least some improvement this week. Slow and steady repairs are what I’ve been used to. It’s the quick setbacks that are why I still have the problems.

I think I have more of an answer though. I had a suspicion about garlic bread last week, still got that but I think I have another one about tomato. Yep. That’s a new mystery one connected to me enjoying tomato cup-a-soups more lately. Ah well, looks like I can’t have nice things so much. I’ve had one minor reversal since stopping the tomato cup-a-soups and I think that was from a chicken arabiatta which had tomato in it. We’ll see. The pattern has been a few good slow repair days followed by a quick set back, possibly coinciding with tomato stuff.

Talking about nice things …

Picture meme. A kitten is looking at a monitor. There is a progress bar on the screen. The captions are "my eevilll plan ... iz 7% compleet!!"

The new Solid State Device disc drive arrived. It’s a 2TB nVME unit from Crucial and it fits into one of those m2 slots. (nVME stands for nonvolatile memory express) M2 is a credit card type thing, it’s an edge connector about an inch across and the drives are about 4 inches long. Yep. I use inches.

So I look in the motherboard manual (before buying) and it’s a good modern board with a current chipset, so it should support the drive properly. It even says it in there : 2x m2 slots and “Supports nVME SSD as boot discs”. That means I could put my current m2 SSD into one slot, the new one into another and then transfer Windows from one drive to the other. The software to do that comes with the drive, they give you a limited use copy of Acronis True Image, which is excellent software to do the job hassle free. The idea is that the copy is done and then you swap the drives over in the machine. Job done, easy.

(Disclosure note is appropriate at this point – I bought the drive myself, nothing was provided apart from that free limited use copy of the drive copy software, I recommend it because it works)

Does it work out like that ?

No.

Problem one – with the 2x m2 slots in use, the machine doesn’t go into the BIOS. That’s where you do the basic setting up of the machine, tell it what drive to load off and then it hands over to Windows. If you can’t get into the BIOS, then you’re pretty much stuffed.

I even tried swapping the graphics card over (electronic connections are somewhat shared between the graphics and the second m2 slot), this resulted in the board doing nothing but beeping in distress. Which was … not good.

Answer – I have a USB enclosure which the new drive is currently in. This happily proved that the problem wasn’t with the new drive … always gotta be wary of stuff being dead on arrival.

The USB enclosure is a bit slow though, so it took 3 hours for the Windows drive to get copied over and then you swap the drives over and boom, you’ve got the system running on the new drive.

No.

Where the manual says “nVME SSD as boot discs”, it means in a special RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Discs) set up which has to be carefully set up. It wouldn’t let me select the new drive as something to boot off. Without changing a setting to do that RAID thing, it wouldn’t allow me to go into the BIOS. So there’s no way to boot off that new disc (at the moment) and setting it up as a RAID array stopped Windows from being able to work with the drive.

The temporary answer, which has happily worked is :

Old SATA m2 SSD is back in there as the boot drive that the machine primarily works from. New nVME M2 SSD is in the USB enclosure plugged in at the back of the machine, whirring away as a data drive. And that works too, albeit with some issues. The drive access is nice and fast, Starfield plays very nicely but instead of giving 4000MB/s data rates, it’s limited to 40MB/s. I’m not seeing this as a significant issue but I am going to address it.

The permanent solution will be to acquire another expansion card to put in the machine and then the new drive goes into that, hopefully being pretty quick again too.

So drama on my outsides, drama with that new bit for the computer.

I did a quick test in Starfield and then promptly didn’t open the game again. Gaming habits be like that :-D.

Oh and look ! A power blip (that’s rare here) and it repeated another thing I said this week about systems reacting to power interruptions : Computer rides through it, lights flicker, telly was fine but the modem reset so I’m now waiting for it to connect again.

Time for a quiet finish to the evening watching Tashnarr play a bit of Apex Legends plus a bit of book. Current one is Descendant Machine by Gareth L Powell, he writes great books. They’re always intriguing, gritty and with interesting and varied characters. It’s in his Continuance series, where humanity has been evicted from the Earth and now wander the galaxy in a fleet of Arks. Part of the set up is that substrate (hyperspace equivalent) is dependant on a human navigator and machine AI ship combination. It feels inspired by The Culture from Iain M Banks but it’s its own unique universe. Well worth checking out, as are the rest of the books that Gareth L Powell has given us.

To the book !

PS I’m on Bluesky as well now, with the revelation that Twixxer might be going behind a paywall being a catalyst for some including me. Just look for Sleepydwagonman, that’ll be me.

PS2 I now need to reset the clocks on cooker, microwave, alarm clock … Oh well.

Technical Difficulties May Delay Cruise

by Sleepypete

September 11, 2023

11:02 pm

Comments Off on Technical Difficulties May Delay Cruise

games

cruise, games, geeky, holiday

Hello everyone,

It’s been a curious few weeks since I posted last time. (I do like that word, “curious”, it covers a lot of meanings.) I’m on leave for a week now, it’s been delayed a little bit by me doing Work Stuff but I’m in chill out mode at the moment.

Cartoon picture, credit to "Regan". We're looking at two dinosaurs sitting on a rock jutting out of a rising ocean, there is the top of a tree to the left. In the background, a ship with pairs of animals on board. The caption "Oh crap! Was that TODAY?"

Yep. Could have been on a cruise this week. The why not is because I’ve been dealing with another flare up with my outsides again. The pattern there seems to be about a week of slow healing followed by a day where it’ll suddenly reset back to the start of that again. I think it’s steadily improving but I’m not wanting to be too far away from the gunk I’m using to medicate it at the moment. Including an overnight away for work last week … It was threatening again on that.

How come it’s bad ? To be honest, not sure. I think I’m reacting to something I’ve been eating again but I can’t localise what it could be. Outside of maybe something garlic related. I know, weird thought. But I did get a reset this weekend after garlic butter infused bread with my dinner on Thursday and pizza garlic bread on Saturday. Need more data.

After living with this condition for over 10 years now, it’s something I have to keep a very close eye on. The psychologically damaging thought is “will it ever get better ?” And that thought does keep running through my mind. That’s partially answered by “It has got a lot better” because I can somewhat remember what it was like over 5 years ago when it was at its worst. I’m not going to go into too much details but one curiosity is that a large amount of my legs is smooth now, hairless. The hair didn’t come back.

Try not to think too deeply about that !

I do need to get myself out of the house for a decent amount of time though. I really need a good holiday I think, not just one spent being lazy in the house.

Picture. Meme. A cute little mostly white with black patches is sitting up on a tiny boat floating on calm water. The scene is just lit by the moon. The caption is "When you're just a cute dog on a boat, looking for a tennis ball"

There were a couple of cruise options I’ve been looking at. The main criteria are : not too far away, not hot, good places. I did enjoy the flying trips in and out of Norway and would like to see more. So … Option 1 :

Picture. We're looking at a map of the coast of Norway. There is a thin black line, joined with many red dots. It's the route of a cruise ship from Bergen in the South, to Kirkenes in the North.

That’s from Hurtigruten cruises (link) although I found that one from one of the cruise search sites. This looks like a very interesting cruise, especially in the shorter one way trip. Must research it a lot more to see if it could be made to work. The problem, is getting to or from Kirkenes in the North. You can fly there … from Oslo. So the travel around the cruise would be Gatwick to Bergen, then on the way back it would be Kirkenes to Oslo to Heathrow. I couldn’t see how I’d make that work. The there and back option would work a lot better.

Picture. We're looking at a map of Northern Europe. It's zoomed in a lot, showing just southern Norway and Sweden, Denmark, the top of Germany and a slice of the UK to the left. There's another route marked for the ship journey.

That’s another, much easier option going from Copenhagen to Molde Fjord and then back again with a side hop to Kiel in Germany. I think the flights worked out to going from Heathrow to Copenhagen, which makes it far easier for things like where do you leave the car. It’s a little awkward getting across from Gatwick to Heathrow, especially after being tired for travel. Better just to pile into the car and then use the remaining energy to cruise back down a hopefully quiet motorway.

Anyway, cruise didn’t happen this time because I was a bit too concerned about going away from home for an extended period where I wouldn’t be able to pop the medication to attack this ongoing skin condition.

Another option is a narrowboat cruise in the UK. This would be really valuable for informing the choices about the off in the future plan to get out of here and live on a boat. But I think I’d need to have a friend along for a narrowboat cruise for a) company and b) assistance with the locks and tying up the boat.

What’s these technical difficulties from the title ? I’ve had a look at another new game …

Picture. Meme. We're looking at an otter, swimming underwater. He's gripping a pair of water pipes quite tightly. The caption is "he needs those parts for his space ship, he's going to otter space" — It’s an older meme but it still checks out

The game I’ve been trying out is the brand new just released Starfield. I’ve been enjoying half watching a series of streams on it and it’s been intriguing up to what I’ve seen on it. I’d quite like to lose myself in it but … and this is a big but. It’s not unplayable when not installed on an SSD but the play experience definitely suffers to the point where I don’t want to open it again until I’ve migrated my system across to a bigger and better SSD.

Jargon buster – SSD is a Solid State Device storage thing. Whereas the older Hard Discs worked by having spinning discs with material that stored what was saved to them, Solid State Devices do that with electronic memory devices instead. Hard Discs take a lot of time to find what’s needed, SSDs just zap over to the data. They’re much faster in both finding stuff and retrieving stuff. But they were also subject to a massive premium on price, such that when Meltdown was built, it got a big for the time 500GB drive. I’ve now acquired a faster 2TB drive, I just need to install it.

The technical difficulties is definitely a TLDR. Basically, I have two suitable slots in my machine but one of them isn’t working. I think I know why … but available mental effort isn’t wanting to fix it that way. I’m having to ration that a bit at the moment. Anyway, instead of trying to make the dodgy slot work, I’m just going to acquire another slot. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, Starfield ?

Game screenshot. Starfield. We're looking at the side of a spaceship with all sorts of protrusions coming out of the sides. An orange planet is above us, half in shadow. — I did a space

It’s an intriguing game so far. It’s been heavily described as Skyrim in Space, which is a blessing and a curse. Skyrim was such a successful game with a go anywhere, do anything format. Translating that formula across to space makes for a very promising game from my point of view. Curse ? It looks like it’s inherited some of the user interface awkwardness from vanilla Skyrim. But … this is a Bethesda game, there are already mods out there to improve the user interface.

Game screenshot. Starfield. Our pilot is standing in front of a futuristic city. She's of medium skin tone, with faint blue hints in tied back hair. She's wearing a dark grey jumpsuit. In the background is a selection of people, standing around having a chat. — I did a ground

The thing I noticed a bit later there is the group of non player characters in the background. They’re all in different but lifelike poses. I walked past a different scripted conversation on my way out of the spaceport too. It’s a nice touch, whereas less technically complex games will quite happily do limited, unnatural poses, it looks like there’s more life in the background this time.

It’s a little thing but it’s tickled the geek in me.

Either way, I’m quite looking forward to going back into Starfield, hopefully I’ll be all up and running with the PC upgrade soon.

Time to sign off though – Hoping to enjoy a quiet week off work, it’s been a while coming. No sea cruise this time, I’ll keep that for later.

Talking about hybrids again

by Sleepypete

August 29, 2023

9:38 pm

Comments Off on Talking about hybrids again

cars

cars, geeky

Hello everyone,

Oops I blinked and a couple of weeks went by again. I think I nearly posted a week or so ago but may have got distracted by a) a flare up and b) a game again. Oh well.

Picture. We're looking at a white fluffy dog that's looking at the camera with an open mouth. They're riding in a small red fire truck model. The caption is "No time to explain just get in."

Yep. Had a flare up again, which got my legs a bit miffed with me (but not badly) and my arms quite angry with me. Enough for me to get a bit worried about it, sufficient that if the measures taken hadn’t addressed it I might have actually gone to the doctor. But using a tubigrip to protect it at night and more of the topical steroid gunk helped it out a huge amount and it quickly turned course into becoming much better almost immediately. It isn’t fixed yet but it’s not uncontrolled leaking now. (Too much info ? Maybe !)

I’ve been wanting to talk about cars for a while and specifically, developments with the hybrids and electric cars … Actually electric cars is a new one on that and it’s come from watching a The Car Care Nut video looking at a Tesla (youtube link). They have some stunningly amazing tech in those cars. And apparently atrocious build quality. I’d recommend that Car Care Nut video, he talks a huge amount of sense and can explain everything in a way that’s very easy to understand.

He’s mostly about Toyotas, from learning his trade in the Toyota system looking after their cars. As regular readers will know, I’m a firm convert to the Posh Toyotas aka Lexus cars. I like their hybrid system, the tech appeals to the geek in me and the way they drive aligns with how I want to drive instead of taking a few minutes to figure out what you want to have happen like that one Volvo.

So … Hybrids. When I started driving them in 2011, it was pretty much a choice between Toyota and Honda with a bunch of other expensive ones in the Coming Soon bracket. There are a lot more now … I’m back in a similar car to the 2011 one now with Red being a Lexus CT200h. A few of the myths and legends are things like they weigh more so they can’t be as good. Reliability is in question as well. The truth there is that they’re Different, some of those reliability and weight things just don’t apply. I’ve had multiple alternators and starter motors die on cars over the years, there is no alternator or starter on the Toyota system. There’s no gearbox, no clutch. The air con pump doesn’t work off the engine, so it doesn’t take 10% of your engine power when you turn on the chill.

Instead of alternator, starter and gearbox, you’ve got the two motor generators that work together to make the car go. Plus an invertor and battery placed around the centre of gravity of the car. (Which means it makes the weight balance better). The electric part is also pretty well balanced. The 1.8 litre engine gives 97bhp and the electric gives 71bhp for a combined total of 134bhp (they don’t add), so the electric can easily take the car up to 40mph on its own. The torque combines to give the car 300Nm of torque. The 0 to 60 is slower at 10secs but the car is much more flexible than the performance orientated Focus ST170 I had before (170bhp/195Nm torque). The driveability in traffic is outstanding.

So how come this idea popped into the head ? Mostly because an advert from another car company was annoying me enough to check out what they have.

(Ok it’s the Renault)

What are Renault doing now ? It takes a bit of digging to get to their actual tech specs but they’re saying 96kW for the engine (128bhp) and 50kW (67bhp) and claiming 200bhp for the advert. Oh dear, that’s a red flag. Firstly because you can’t add the power together because the power doesn’t come at the same time (motor power is max at 0rpm, engine power is max at high rpm) but they got their sums wrong there. Most people would call that misrepresentation. The torque is actually really good at 205+205.

On the surface, that looks like a pretty decent combination, with a turbo charged petrol engine combining with the motors for good performance (as good as my IS300h’s) and economy.

A very good friend is getting a Hyundai hybrid soon, that’s got a 105bhp engine and a 44bhp motor. Not so sure about that one, the motor might be a bit small. But … I’m not sure that my bigger motor combination is being driven at 71bhp all the time, I’m very curious to see what she thinks of the Hyundai set up. I hope it works out well. One thing about the CT hybrid is that it gives you everything it has when you ask it to, so a 10 second to 60 time works out similarly rapid to the 9 second to 60 time of the old Puma sport coupe.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at several dogs looking out of a car window. One is looking very shocked at us. The caption is "It was then that Carl realised they were going to the vet." — It’s ok Carl

Talking of vets … or mechanics … and Pumas. What’s Ford giving us now with the Abomination Puma ? Firstly, don’t buy one. The engine has so much designed in self detonation potential I’d be surprised if one lasted 50,000 miles. Nice range of engines and specs though but I’m not seeing anything about how big the electric part is outside of it being 48V. The Lexus system is a 220V battery that runs the motors at up to 650V. Higher volts are a good thing, they mean less Amps for the same Power. Less amps means less heat and less losses in the cables. Low volts is bad. 😀 It’s why a kettle takes twice as long to boil in a 115V country compared to how quick we can make tea with 230V kettles.

Don’t buy the Ford. (Also, don’t buy the Renault but I’ll come back to that).

I’ve had several Vauxhalls before but I’m not counting them or the other Plug in Hybrids here because I’ve got no way to support plugging in a car.

I’m struggling to think of more though (bit out of touch with the market) but Auto Express has an article recommending the Kia hybrids. No idea on the motor size again but it’s another 48V system. Sure, if they’ve made it work … that’s great but the numbers work against it. Heat is very much the enemy in electrics and lower volts means higher amps means heat.

Picture. We're looking at the front dashboard area of a car. There's a big screen area, except we can't see the screen, it's being used as a bed by a cute fluffy doggo. — Sleep well Fido

I better close up there … The specifications aren’t important though at the end of the day. What’s really important is what you think of the car on the test drive. How does it handle ? Is it comfortable ? Does it have the speed and flexibility you want in a car ? Does it have enough space ? What toys does it have and are you ok with how you can interact with them on the road ?

There are cars that have gone through the family which I’ve refused to drive more than once. Like the VW Golf TDI which had its weight distribution so bad, it would plough straight on instead of rotating through corners. Like the Volvo which had the complete opposite vibe to how I wanted to drive a car. We didn’t get on.

The IS300h powertrains were great in specification but it took a few iterations before Toyota/Lexus got it right. And the software in the car felt like it was constantly being tweaked between versions of the car with varying levels of success. The mouse like pointer in the CT looks like a great idea but the dial selector in the IS was actually easier and quicker to use. The ES didn’t have a pause button for the hifi. This doesn’t feel like much but when you’re pulling up to a gate person who you need to talk to, it’s really handy to have an actual pause button.

And that’s without getting into reliability. Toyota and Lexus built their brand on reliability and outside of damage (stone in the power steering pump, pandemic induced 12V battery death and a couple of on build defects), the 6 Lexus so far have been top notch reliability. I wouldn’t trust a Renault for electrics … even before considering the extra complexity of drive by wire hybridness. I wouldn’t trust anything in the Ford.

I’m very curious about that Hyundai though, I hope they’ve cracked it with the car my friend is getting.

I haven’t looked back since getting the hybrids, they work extremely well for how I want to drive. (50+mpg is great too) One legacy from the cricket is a lower back injury which affects my left leg. Driving the ST170 in traffic with its clutch would lead to actual high degrees of pain. That’s completely gone with the hybrid autos.

I’d definitely recommend the hybrids. But … as always with cars, make sure you know what you’re getting. If they’re being cagey about specs, like with the Kia and the Ford, then walk away. If you don’t like the driving experience, then walk away. If you’re suspicious about certain “CVTs are the bane of car existence” reviewers, pay attention to different ones. Yep, CVTs send the engine revs up high when you ask for speed … they’ll also send the revs high on part throttle, which those reviewers know full well about and they post the footage to let them grind their axes. How good the electronic brain is determines how quickly the CVT figures out that you want to go fast, you’ll be able to check that on a test drive.

What’s under the hood is pretty irrelevant. What really matters is whether you connect with the car, in all facets of how you interact with it. I like little cars that go round corners quick and quickly go fast with a nice noise when you ask them to. I like good sounds from the sound system too.

But that’s just me, other people want different things from their cars, like being able to freely rev the engine or make the gearbox go crunch. I prefer seat heaters and the simplicity of Left Pedal Made Stop, Right Pedal Make Go.

Must check under the hood some time.

PS The game was called One Military Camp, nice little base builder game with a strategic aspect to it as well. Would recommend.

Locking in the drama

by Sleepypete

August 15, 2023

8:06 pm

Comments Off on Locking in the drama

Uncategorized

domestic, health

Hello everyone,

Bit of drama yesterday to follow a bit of a flare up on my outsides …

Game screenshot. World of Warcraft. We're looking at an old and low quality picture of a group of characters. A couple are on this side of a lowered portcullis on a brown stone floor. One is shouting "let me out"

So I get home … and the key turns in the lock. Which is kinda what you want a key to do. Except you want it to open the latch to let you open the door. Oh well. It just turned in the lock. It let me in eventually but I took it as a sign that I needed to do something urgently. (You can get past a latch lock by means I won’t put here but it doesn’t want to become your door key).

Of course I took it apart after doing a little investigation. And changing the lock and latch over to a new one :-D.

Picture. We're looking at several lock components on my desk. A dwagon is looking on from the top right. More description to come in the text. — It’s fine it’ll fix right up

It just came apart in my hands. Honest. Well, actually it kinda exploded while I was trying to remove the broken bit and parts were propelled out of my hands by the spring there. So … what’s the bits ? It’s a pretty standard night latch lock, you may have one of these on at least one door. Reasonable security but you want a second bolt type lock as well. These can be bypassed with the right implement.

Top left is the main assembly. You can just see the lever that’s on the inside of the door. That works on the greasy clip thing on the left, which has a couple of arms that engage on the plate with the latch on it. That’s the silvery thing inside that assembly. The latch wedge is hidden to the right of the assembly. The deadlock fits in to the little notch on the top of that silver latch plate. If the deadlock is engaged, the latch stays put.

The black plate to the right is the back plate and in theory, it holds it all in place. The latch plate isn’t held in by anything else and if it lifts, the arms on the rotatey arm don’t engage and move it open. On the right side of the latch plate is a circular pin thing with a couple of cut outs in it.

Bottom left and we have a circular washer type thing with a couple of triangular inserts on the inside and a couple of arms on the outside. The arms withdraw the latch plate and open the door. The inserts engage on the lock key barrel. The spring is to the bottom right and it pulls the latch out.

So … apply force on the inner handle or the outside lock, latch slides in, door opens. Release force, spring pulls out the latch, door won’t open.

However, if the circly prongy washer falls off, it will a) not let you open the door with the key and … b) will jam the lock if it goes in the wrong place.

So I now have a new lock for the front door. The last one did well, that’s probably a 30 year old lock there although I had to replace the original barrel because it rusted solid.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little dog standing on a car seat (we're in the car) looking out the window. The caption is "Mom left me in the car alone. So I locked the doors. When she was writing an 80 dollar check to the locksmith I rolled down the window to get a better look at what they were doing."

Oops.

One thing I’ve been appreciating about Red actually is its door locks and automatic folding mirrors. I’ve had folding mirrors on the other Lexii since I think my first IS but none of them folded the doors in when you locked the car. It’s actually a really nice feature but not for the mirrors … It’s a very easy way to check if you locked the doors :-D. Yep, there’s the indication thingy on the inner handle but you can’t see that from 20 feet away from the car.

It’s the little things. Or the things big enough to see from a distance.

Other news before I close up ? After enjoying reading the intriguing Forgotten Colony : Deliverance by M R Forbes (aliens have infested Earth, we gotta escape, intense combat action from start to finish), I’ve been cracking up to Clockwork Boys by T.Kingfisher (Amazon link). It’s in a swords and armour fantasy world where our people live in a city state threatened by unstoppable, invincible constructions known as the Clockwork Boys. Our people have to travel to their source and figure out how to stop them.

It is, of course, a suicide mission. They’re unstoppable creations that crush armies. But they’ll be eaten by a semi sentient tattoo if they don’t. Yep. After a bit of time to let the characters settle in, the author (aka Ursula Vernon) is letting us have some fun reading their antics. Another recommended one after the wonderful A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking and I need to collect and read more of her books.

Might be time to get back to that after maybe a little Motorsport Manager with dinner. There’s a new Formula 1 Manager game out but to be honest, they haven’t added enough and if they follow their form, they’ll abandon this one in November to concentrate on next year’s iteration. I’ll wait for the last one in the run.

Picture, comic meme. There are 3 panels. The top sees 3 figures kicking and laughing at a sad figure. They have the words "problems, stress and pain" on them. The middle panel adds a new figure, reaching out to the sad figure. The bottom panel sees the new one hugging the sad figure. Their words are "Video games"

Yeah, that was pretty much me last weekend. After finishing Dredge, last weekend’s game was One Military Camp. Another fairly new one. It’s a decent game but … maybe could have done with a little more time in the oven. Worth checking out though.

But I was hiding in the game mostly to stop me damaging myself even more. I’d been in the position where a flare up started on my arms and legs, worse than it has been previously. It got bad enough that I actually medicated it, which is something I try and avoid. The topical steroids are a quick hit to help but I think they actually extend the healing time.

Anyway, being lost in the game meant I wasn’t attacking my arms and legs, giving them a chance to heal a bit. (May have been some Skyrim played too).

Things have settled down a bit although I’m still not good yet. Getting there though. Dinner’s nearly ready so I’ll leave it there except for … Someone reminded me about the Kitten Marching Band.

Here you go. At the Youtube link lies a guaranteed dose of Happy. I bear no responsibility if you end up humming that for days. 😀

Thinking cars, fishing, bugs and … miniature ?

by Sleepypete

August 8, 2023

10:04 pm

Comments Off on Thinking cars, fishing, bugs and … miniature ?

Uncategorized

rambling

Hello everyone,

I was probably due to post something again late last week but had a little illness episode again … Seems like when I get the bugs, they blow through quick. I seem mostly back to normal now. But first … thumbnail ! What shall we have today …

Picture. We're looking at the Hero Forge website with the header at the top. In the centre, we see a green skinned Dwagon figure, standing up wearing blue robes with red trim, holding a staff and adorned with a skull helmet. On the left, are a series of options for customising. An information panel is to the right. — Dwagon is poised for action

Isn’t it adworable ? Perhaps not the right word but I’m pleasantly surprised by how much customisation is possible with their site. I could even have Dwagon riding on a motorbike.

Disclosure note – this isn’t a paid thing, someone posted the link to the site and it went from there. I am highly tempted by Dwagon although it looks like it’d be $45 to get one (30mm scale) miniature over here in fully painted form. Crikey ! Here’s a link to the site. More disclosure stuff – they have a “(If your show/channel is not monetized in any way, you may use Hero Forge® assets without completing this form.)” note on their site so we’re good to go with posting the pic because this site isn’t monetized at all.

I’ve been watching / observing various people play Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m getting far more tempted by that one than I had been. It’s also been amazing watching Amelia Tyler’s narration outtakes on the Youtubes. (Youtube link to the latest – audo only, very NSFW) I wonder if you could make something suitably dwagony in that game. I haven’t bought it, mostly because I always seem to bounce off games like that, such as Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Solasta, Divinity Original Sins (1 and 2). They’re all there in the library waiting their chance to get played.

What I have been greatly enjoying is Dredge :

Game screenshot from Dredge. We're looking at the back of our boat which is in the middle of the ocean. In front and to the portside (left) are a pair of huge fish, under the water except for their tall fins. Lost in the fog in the distance in front of us looms an array of land features. — Follow the fishies

I’ve been describing this one as a cozy spooky game with excellently implemented tight and fair gameplay. And the story is (short but) good at bringing you into its world and giving you things to do. Here’s the Steam link for the game. I’d highly recommend it. Also on discount until 17 August.

I only have 3 more achievements to go before getting 100% in the game. That’s : catch all the right fish, catch all the wrong fish, get all the other achievements. It’s been a fun journey and I’ll keep going back to this one to replay it. It’s been very enjoyable and easy to play.

But about those bugs … I was in Dredge last Thursday evening when I suddenly noticed I was feeling extremely cold. As in wanting to find a blanket. And as I did more of the session, my arms went numb. Both of them. The left one too !

It’s not supposed to do that ! Going numb is the job of the right arm !

(I’m joking there of course but that was something pretty new and weird)

I’m pretty much ok now, it feels like the worse of it burned through on Thursday evening on Friday afternoon. Just waiting for my insides to return to something resembling normal as I barely ate anything until Saturday evening and that takes time to work its way through.

Last up for today is cars … which has been on the brain a little bit.

Picture. We're looking at the Hero Forge site again, with the same header and customisation parts as above. Our Dwagon is riding on a silver motorbike with blue wheels. They're headed off to the left of screen. — Easy dwagonin’

I’m not in danger of doing a car change any time soon. I’m very happy with Red and the more it’s driven, the more it seems to be freeing up. Red is a Lexus CT200h (aka Posh Prius) from the 2018 model year and it does what I want it to do. I like the smaller hatchbacks, they’re flexible enough to be able to support shopping, travel and occasional carrying of stuff around while being little enough to have fun throwing around the roads.

But the varied ranges of cars seem to be dying out these days in favour of SUVs. I’m not a fan, they’re higher up which makes it more difficult for my crunchy hips, they’re higher up which means they’re more awkward to through round corners. Oh and they don’t seem to be particularly Sport or Utility. I can’t see how you get the shopping in the Lexus UX without putting the back seats down.

Then I looked at the sales figures. They’re curious reading and it’s good of Lexus to make them available (Linky). What I’m getting out of them is that after being around 10k sales per year, the sales started dipping in 2007 before starting to recover in 2011 when the CT came out. It and the IS300h made the brand accessible to a new range of buyers like me. Half their sales in 2011 were CTs. The new IS joined the party in 2014 followed by the NX in 2015. (All hybrids) The ES300h came out in 2019 and stole the sales going to the IS300h (which went in the bin) and the UX came out in 2019 and immediately stole the sales from everything else in the range.

So I think that was the clear message that went out – people wanted SUVs. Or Lexus people still wanted Lexii and their options had been cut to the ES and the SUVs.

I wonder if it’s a factor of families owning multiple cars ? The small SUV becomes the flexible economical car that can take all the family, while they own a bigger car with a usable boot that gets used for the shopping or longer away trips.

I think we’ll see more trends come out in the future as a move to electrification causes a gentrification effect on car ownership. With fossil fuel cars due to go in the bin, the people being able to operate cars will be the ones who can spend the time to charge them up with them secure(ish) on the drive.

I’m not in that position, I barely have room for one car here and if I were to charge it, I’d need to stretch a cable over the public pavement. That’s not going to happen.

It’ll be curious keeping an eye on movements in the market over the coming years, with politics having its impact as well. We don’t exactly have credible or competent politicians over here at the moment.

On that note … time for me to hit post and go back to reading Deliverance, book 1 in another series by the prolific M R Forbes. I’ve been enjoying his books and the 5 Forgotten Colony book set was next up after completing the Starship For Sale series. It’s been a good, tense read so far. Would recommend.

Later everyone !

Cozy game, fun game, scary game, travelly game

by Sleepypete

July 30, 2023

10:14 pm

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games, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

Thought I’d talk about a few games today. Yeah, I have a fair bit of game addiction but as addictions go, it’s a fairly benign one. (Unless you have the tendency to be still playing when the sun comes up. Oops).

Picture, meme. We're looking at four cartoon pictures of a pink person sitting on a couch, with a blue doctor with specs looking at them with a notepad. The captions are "Doc, I feel like I'm getting old", "Hmmm... tell me, did you play Elite when it first came out?" "Yeah I played it as a kid. It's my favourite game" and lastly a scribble on the notepad "Patient is basically dead." — Yep, the 1984 one

I think that ticks off cozy and travelly game. That was a case of seeing a meme, going yoink and modifying it to something a bit more appropriate than the Tony Hawks it had been modified to when I got my mitts on it. I really got stuck in to the original Elite and we went from the cassette tape version on to the disc drive version when we got the disc system. That’s a tale actually, we started with the BBC B micro which was released in December 1981. It loaded all its games in on cassette tape at a quick 1200 baud (bits per second), so loading up a game could take a little while plus sometimes the cassettes went bad. It really limited what could go into the games, so when our BBC B died due to flood damage (burst pipes over a winter) we got an insurance upgrade to a BBC Master (released 1986) which had a built in disc interface.

The disc version of Elite added in things like music for the docking computer, a set of missions and more ships. And now we’re on the fourth Elite game (Elite Dangerous) where I’ve traveled around the galaxy several times now.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at the top of a spaceship in silhouette, there is a long central body with an engine on each of a pair of thick outriggers coming from the back of the ship. Behind the ship is a purple wispy stream. Behind that is a dense starfield with the Milky Way ribbon to the left of the wispy stream.

That’s the Searching for Chamomile doing a little bit of exploring while I was moving my carrier from place to place. My character is back in the populated Bubble area now, while the carrier and a few of my ships are still 20,000 light years away. The objective of the new Dungeon Food Truck is to rejoin the carrier and maybe help out with the fuelling efforts to move it back.

I haven’t actually gone back into Elite for a couple of weeks. That’s a combination of not really knowing what to do in the game at the moment plus issues with my hands that are making it a bit painful to play sometimes.

That’s actually a big factor in another couple of games … the two Truck Simulator games. I found that they were good ones to quietly chill in while having that objective of growing the truck fleet and the character by moving Stuff from place to place. I need to have those clear objectives in the games, or I lose my way in them and drift away. The way the Truck Games do that is to have a big long list of cargo you can take from where you are to somewhere else and I’d try and pick something new to look at.

That was one thing about Elite, either trading to new places or traveling to new places for screenshots. And they’re very pretty too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a space scene, with our blue and orange diamond shaped ship on the left. In the centre and right hand side, there are a pair of stripy, banded white and dark planets. In the centre and above them, is a bright white star. The starfield is very dense again.

But that’s not the ship game I’ve been enjoying lately. Let’s see …

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at a daytime ocean with a gently rippling surface. Our little fishing boat is in the bottom centre. We can see outcroppings of land to the left and an islet to the right plus more land hidden in fog ahead of us. We've also got some of the game features on screen. — It “looks” calm …

That’s Dredge, at the really early days. The premise of the game is that you’ve traveled in your boat to a remote set of islands and you wake, with little memory of who or where you are. Pretty soon, you get your mission to find fish to sell to pay off a debt, plus more side missions as you go through the story. But … don’t stay out after dark …

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at the ocean scene again but this time it's in the dark. The fog is close in, we can't see very much except the distant lights of a town and ... a collection of disembodied eyes on the water. — Eye aye

There we go … cozy game that I’ve really enjoyed. You’re not alone in its world, if you stay out at sea after dark then the scary things come out to say hi. And as the storyline proceeds, you travel to the four corners of the archipelago. I had a lot of fun with this one, I’ve finished the story (and it’s an excellent one) and I’ll hang around in there to finish the sidequests and the achievements.

Top game, would highly recommend. And for me, it guided me through its story in about 12 chilled out hours over a few sessions.

Another game I finished again just now is Deus Ex Human Revolution. I’m not sure you should really call a game where you play a cyborg soldier with swords in his arms a cozy game but this and Mankind Divided is one I keep going back to.

There’s something to be said for a really tight game that gets in, does its story and finishes off in a good amount of time. 12 to 20 hours is about right for that. Some sand box type games will see you taking far longer to play through. Mass Effect was a little cracker when it came out, with excellent gameplay, a great story and a length of around 20 hours again. Mass Effect Andromeda had improved gameplay (which worked) but fell down at being just too much, taking about 70-80 hours to play.

There’s such a thing as outstaying the welcome. The Expanse books do this a fair bit, although they are on the whole great books with lots of story and lore packed in. I’m on a quick book again now, Sons of Thor which is book 2 in the Star Breakers series by James David Victor. I rather enjoyed the really quick first book of the series of 9.

What’s next though ?

Another run through Deus Ex Mankind Divided at some point, finishing off the achievements in Dredge. I need to go back to Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077 at some point. Plus there’s the cozy taxi game of Cloudpunk. One Military Camp is a curious builder game which I’ll run through. And I bought Offroad Mechanic Simulator in its release discount, this one looks like a move on from Car Mechanic Simulator 2021 which is another I really enjoyed.

One last pic before bed time ?

Game screenshot. Dredge. We're looking at a deserted island with a series of small houses and huts. Deserted, except for a scraggly rough looking dog that's looking hopefully at us. The caption starts "You reach out and gently pat the dog. Its eyes follow your hand, and it seems to understand you're not a threat." — Yes, you can pet the dog

Best sidequest ever.

Good night everyone.

Looking at the tech again

by Sleepypete

July 22, 2023

10:17 pm

Comments Off on Looking at the tech again

Uncategorized

geeky, technology

Hello everyone,

Been a busy week including an away trip where I was watching the mpg gauge in the car just go up and up, super tired now. (But mostly watching the road because that’s what we do). How did Red do ? The peak mpg was reading 61 at one point, which probably works out to an actual 59. Not bad for a petrol car.

But this isn’t going to be about that bit of tech, although I’m very happy and quietly pleased at how they’ve taken what I think are the same mechanicals from my first CT and improved them. Good times. Thumbnail ?

Picture. We're looking at one of the green dwagons, It's on a cookie that's about 3 times its size. — Protect the cookie !

Thumbnail. And it’s been too long since I’ve had a cookie that size. I do miss the Happy Cookie Place from the Xmas markets … they didn’t go even for a few years before all the lockdowns started happening.

Anyway, what’s this one about ? I like to occasionally look at the PC market, just to see what the moves are in it. What the trends are. What’s available, what’s listed for sale but isn’t actually available. Whether it’s worth me looking at investing in an upgrade or an update. The quick spoiler is that the almost 4 year old Meltdown (my desktop) is still going strong and I don’t need to replace anything significant on there any time soon.

The laptop, which found the name Dwagonsong, has been a very happy upgrade over the last almost year. It’s an Acer Swift which is much lighter than the Asus gaming laptop I had before. That’s ok, the two laptops had different purposes. Saying that though, the Asus was poor in its display and I didn’t appreciate that they tried to block the upgradeability by using threadlock on the screw that would hold in an expansion drive. That’s really poor Mr Asus. So what’s out there ?

Picture. A cat is sitting in front of a very large fan. The caption is "Using technology to efficiently and evenly distribute cat hairs around your home. — I do like the big air coolers

So … PCs … I’m going to do two build ideas this time. The first is one which would be a mostly like for like for Meltdown, the second would be a worthwhile upgrade. They’ll both be AMD Ryzen based machines with an nVidia graphics card. The Ryzen machines are excellent for performance and I have my doubts for the Intels now, especially with the work laptop which is suffering hardware defects (although these aren’t significant enough to get it replaced). And I haven’t got that trust back in the AMD graphics yet after having a card go boom 1 month after warranty and headaches with their cards in the Radeon 1800 era. (I think they were 1800s)

Ahem. Starting out with what everything plugs in to … you have the motherboard. These look like they’ve ratcheted up in price now. You select these by checking what the processor needs and then the motherboard determines what memory is required. DDR4 memory won’t fit into a DDR5 board. Things like that.

Better machine motherboard : Asus Prime X670-P wifi with Socket AM5 – £275

Like for like : MSI MAG X570S Tomahawk MAX Wifi (they do like the long names) with Socket AM4 – £240 and these boards look like they’ve gone rare.

Processor : AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Socket AM5 for £250 or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Socket AM4 for £150.

Memory : 64GB in a pair of Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR5 5600 sticks for Better one costing £210 or 32GB of Kingston Fury Beast (again with the silly name) DDR4 3200 for £87. The DDR5 is what the X670-P board needs, the X570S board needs DDR4. The X670 and X570 say what the chipset is. The motherboard is the foundation of the machine so it pays to get a good one. Meltdown has been rock solid in a Asrock X570 board, which I think cost around £180, so that £240 is a chunky increase in price.

One thing is that the stocks level seems to have mostly recovered to pre-pandemic and global electronics shortage levels and the prices are getting there. But they’re still up on the whole and some items like power supplies are still hard to get hold of.

Moving on to graphics and the equivalent to mine is the 4060Ti card (Meltdown has a last generation 3060Ti card), these will cost £400.

Powering everything is a power supply unit box, which will slot in and then you plug it in to everything. I’ve used Corsair power supplies for a long time and they’ve done me well … but the cheapest good enough one that’s available today is a 850W version for £148. That’s a bit much in both money and size. But if you find yourself needing to replace in a hurry, you work with what you can get hold of.

Disclosure note time ! I’m using prices off Overclockers UK this time just because they’re the first ones I thought of looking at. I’ve only ever had one freebie from an electronics company and that was a mouse won in a raffle. Everything else has been bought by me.

Every PC needs a bit of storage to put the Operating System on and all of the games. I’m still looking at using a Solid State Device drive to put Windows on and a selection of games, paired with a conventional hard disc to put everything else on. I like having a huge supply of memes but those don’t need to be on an SSD. So :

SSD : I’ve been very happy with Crucial again and they supply M2 NVME drives in 1TB for £48 and 4TB for £200. That’s way more than we need. An M2 drive is one that plugs into the motherboard, for extra speed and NVME means it has the electronics to fully unlock that speed.

Hard disc : Arbitrarily going for Western Digital and we have 2 7200rpm drives (they spin faster they send data out faster) for £190 for a 6TB drive and £240 for a 10TB drive. Thinking about it there, you’d be better sacrificing a bit of space and just putting the 4TB SSD in there.

I mentioned cooling earlier and this is actually one thing where I differ significantly between what I’d advise at work and at home. Water cooling is a really efficient way of taking heat away from one place and dumping it out at another. But home isn’t a place that actually benefits from that. You really don’t want fluids around your electronics if it’s not necessary. So I go for massive air coolers instead :

Picture. We're looking at a box with a computer cooler on the front. It's bigger than my red plushie dwagon which is to the right of shot. Both are resting on a dark blue towel.

My usual thing with computer coolers is to go for the really big ones with a couple of huge fans. Meltdown has the Coolermaster MA610P in the picture above. It runs cool (50 degrees C on idle going up to 70 when pushed) and is super quiet. The idea is that the big fans push a lot of cooling air through and don’t need to spin fast to do that. Spinning fast leads to noise and noise is bad. So the other week when we had a power cut, I was confused why nothing happened when I turned my monitor on. Turned out that I wasn’t noticing that the PC was off. It’s that quiet. Anyway, Cooler Master MA612 Stealth cooler for £70. It’s worth investing more there so you get less noise out. Oh and add in £20 for a bit of metal to stick on that M2 drive, those get toasty.

Finally, you need something to put everything in. I’ve learned a few things with Meltdown’s box :

Not getting Bitfenix again, the quality was low and I almost needed the mendstick (big hammer) because a manufacturing defect had distorted the case almost enough to stop me getting the power supply to go in.

Drive bays are useless now, it’s easy to use a USB DVD or Bluray drive.

USB ports that are on the top of a machine are a total dust trap, including if they’re at a 45 degree angle.

I’d recommend having a look at a case before buying it, although I’ve never actually done this. The one that got the eye on OCUK was the Silverstone Fara R1 mid tower case for £65 but only because it had ports on the front instead of on top. I don’t think it’s worth spending that much on the case but you want a sizeable one that you then hide away somewhere. Big is easy and means the air can get through it easily.

Last bits – not including keyboard, mouse or screen, those are very personal preference. But you will want to do your research before going for anything there. Oh and you want Windows, which is currently £110.

How much is all that ?

The upgrade one is around £2000. The cheaper one is around £1500 with both hard discs. The only upgrade for the cheaper one which would really help Meltdown is the big SSD (currently got a slow 512GB one), so that’s £200 for the 4TB one, everything else is a small improvement. It would be around £1500 to upgrade Meltdown to the Ryzen 5 7600X machine. It’s worth noting though that PC Specialist could build something close to the £1500 machine for £1400. But … they’re putting in components like Corsair memory (like their psus, wouldn’t touch their memory) which I heavily avoid.

So … that’s not going to happen 😀 although I can’t be held responsible for the consequences if that big SSD appears with a big discount.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a note for 50 something folded in half. At the fold is an electric wire. The captions are "Have been charging it since yesterday. Still not 100".

That’s all for today. One lesson is : if you don’t get benefit from spending the money, keep it. The laptop change was very worthwhile, especially because I’m travelling more. The desktop will hang in there for a few more years yet.

Means more money for Lego (and a bunch of house things that need doing).

Nite all !