books - Sleepypete's Pillow

A to Z of Cookies and Books – A to G

August 20, 2025

9:18 pm

Leave a comment on A to Z of Cookies and Books – A to G

Hello everyone,

I’ve been shaking up my reading habit a little bit this year. I saw a challenge near the start of the year involving looking at reading a book involving every letter of the alphabet. The original challenge was about author names but I didn’t think I could fill all the letters there, so I’ve cheated a little bit (lots) by including book titles as well. I’m up to 19 read so far out of the 26. It’ll be a huge post though writing about all 26 in one go so … here’s a bite size one !

Picture. We're looking at a green dwagon looking at us. They're wearing a yellow apron with "Feed Me" written on it. To their left, a chocolate chip cookie that's larger than the dwagon is propped up on an equally large 20 sided dice.

First up though, admin note … I had a “you need to install this plugin to comply with GDPR and the rest” thing appear so I’ve added the cookie notice that you probably see appear. Click what you want there, whether you accept cookies is very definitely up to YOU. I’d like you to accept, because I like to see where my few visitors come from. WordPress is a very money oriented service for the content creator, you get what you pay for and I’m not willing to pay someone for any more than the free stuff. So the only info I see is Country, Pages visited, Referrer clicks and maybe, just maybe … city if I’m quick enough to look at things on Google Analytics.

Hopefully if you accept the cookie, you only need to click the pop up once. Books ?

I actually have to report an abandon. First of the year too. The A to Z has been opening my eyes to new authors as I attempt to fill the various letters up. Some are outstanding, on a level where you find yourself adding the sequels to the wish list for later when you’re part way through the first book. Others are … ok, enjoyed the book but not likely to come back. Some of stinkers.

And I have a cautionary note about reviews too. (Actually as I look at Amazon, I’m seeing different reviews info to what I saw the other day). Low reviews get deleted, high reviews get added out of laziness. Reviews on distribution sites (like Amazon) will be geared towards you buying stuff on their site. I.e. they want you to spend money. I think I’ll be looking at sites like Goodreads as well as Amazon when things catch my eye from the “Hey here’s the list of books we sent you last week, wanna buy them this time?” emails I get.

Oh look, here’s a Goodreads link :-D. That’s for a review of I, Starship by Scott Bartlett which was going to be the I book. However, it became the first abandon of the year because while the central premise of the book looked pretty good and I was vibing with the main character, the selections of secondary characters is bizarre, nonsensical and geared towards conflict that is inexplicable in the set up of that central premise. There’s more info behind the Goodreads link. Oh, it also was getting too close to a few gaslighting incidents I’ve had from previous managers and bosses, which I didn’t want to be reminded about.

I.e. if you’re not enjoying the book you’re reading, definitely move on to the next. I waited to see if one character was ok (at which point the Ship Captain started bullying the MC again), checked to see if it improved via Goodreads and then abandoned … after checking the synopses of the next 4 books in the series. It wasn’t worth sticking with it.

A to Z ?

Picture. Cartoon. We're looking at two frames. A lady with brown hair up in a bun is looking at books on shelves in the left panel. The right panel has a caption "Later" on it, showing the lady adding the book to a huge pile of books labelled "Books to read"

First up is Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky, as book A. In this one, humanity have started spreading out to the stars and have 3 off world colonies, all of them really harsh and one step off being Death Worlds. (A habitable world where everything is out to kill the colonists). This one is heavily about the politics and organisations of revolution, a thread that runs throughout the book. You see, the colonies are essentially prison camps where those who speak out against the totalitarian regime are sent. It’s one of those fictional universes you really don’t want to live in. But I did enjoy this one. It didn’t have the madcap humour of the time travelling “One Day All This Will Be Yours” but I enjoyed seeing where the story was going to go. Whether the protagonists would come out on top, how they would achieve that.

A good read. Not his best, not the worst. But one thing you can expect from Adrian Tchaikovsky is something new and different with every one of his books. And I do like my variation in my content. (Goodreads link)

My B and I books could actually swap around (including the abandon!). For B, it’s Indomitable by Jonathan P Brazee (Goodreads link actually for book 1). This is book 5 in a series that starts with Fire Ant, the book that the Goodreads link will take you to. This one finishes off the series. It’s not super cerebral deep thought scifi. It doesn’t ask philosophical questions about the universe. It’s fast, pulpy, well written action science fiction set around a main character who is part of a pathfinding group of space starfighter pilots as they attempt to defend humanity from an implacable, enigmatic enemy who always seems to be one step ahead.

It’s inventive. It sucks you in. I loved the main characters. And I bought the series before I got halfway through the first book because I was so invested in what was happening. Sometimes you want philosophy. Sometimes you want to enjoy something where you can turn the brain off a bit and not need to think too much about deciphering what’s on the page.

Fire Ant series – heavily recommend. One thing that’s always worth knowing when you start a series is whether it improves or fizzles as the series progresses. Some fizzle out (like KSR’s Mars books), some build as they develop their universe and story. Indomitable tops off a very satisfying conclusion to this arc in Jonathan Brazee’s universe.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat with a paw on an open book. They're reading intently. The caption is "Life is just a series of obstacles that keep you from reading books."

Coming up next we C Beyond the Fringe by Miles Cameron. This is an accompanying book to Artifact Space and Deep Black. These are the two main books in the series, following Marca Nbaro’s adventures from escaping a horrible situation by running off to space. Beyond The Fringe expands the universe by including a series of short stories based around the events of the two main books. Miles Cameron very quickly became a highly rated author for me, as I read through Artifact Space and was drawn into that universe and the characters. Beyond The Fringe was a very interesting second look at that universe from a completely different angle to shipboard life aboard the Greatship.

You’d need to have read Artifact Space and Deep Black really before opening this one but it’s definitely worth a look. And there’s a sense of fun throughout too, which definitely helps me enjoy a book.

One of the objectives of this series / challenge is to find new voices to listen to. D could have been a really lazy pick of Roald Dahl but then Stranded by A K (Amy) Duboff popped up on one of those Amazon emails and it caught the eye enough to check it out more. This one is centred around a pairing of characters who immediately find themselves falling out of space in evacuation pods that have just been ejected from a colony ship that just went boom. They’re landing on what looks like a paradise planet but … it’s also got big scary monsters. And rogue humans too. Will they survive ? What’s on the planet that’s worth blowing up the colony ship for ?

This one kept me guessing to the end and I’m looking forward to steadily reading through this series as books get added to it. Stranded is book 1 and came out in February, book 2 is available and there’s more to come.

That’s one of the strengths of reading and the author community. I follow a bunch of authors on Bluesky and they’re lovely people who are always supporting each other. Us readers will devour a book far faster than an author will write said book. So we need a community of authors writing so we can have enough books to keep our reading habit going. And that author community are always cheering each other on. They understand that they’re not really in competition with each other, they love chilling out with each other and egging each other on with ridiculous memes.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at the pages of an open book. There is a pink bookmark keeping the place. There is a screaming animal, could be a cat. The caption is "Mom she's reading porn again"

Next up is F for The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear. This one starts off fairly gently, with our protagonist and main character, Dr Sunyata Song, being transported to the edge of the galaxy where there is an impossibly ancient and immense computer construct called the Baomind in a system with a star that’s approaching the end of its existence as a star. Our people need to figure out how to communicate with the Baomind, so they can best establish how to rescue as much of it as possible and relocate it to a star that’ll last a while longer.

It’s the third in the Synarche White Space universe, which is set a fair bit off in the future with sentient AIs, faster than light space ships, lots of mindfulness, a huge variety in alien beings and a lot of mystery along the way. Oh and a sassy lesbian wife, space pirates, teenagers, a space dragon dinosaur … cats and lots of drama going on. You’d need to have read either or both Machine or Ancestral Night, also by Elizabeth Bear, to fully understand what’s going on in here but it’s a worthy addition to the universe.

A safe choice again because I’d enjoyed the other two books in the series. The Folded Sky just came out, if you act fast then you might still be able to get hold of it on a discounted to 99p price …

For G, we have Girl on Fire by Gemma Amor. This one is a new one to me for reading, although I’ve been following along her posts on the various social medias. She’s nice, has struggles but also has the good vibes to pass on. Girl on Fire though is a very angry book. The main character has so much anger inside, she literally becomes a phoenix like person and spontaneously combusts. Not the kind of vibe I’d usually go for due to how I mirror emotions but I was invested in this contemporary fiction book. I wanted to see how the story was going to go and how it would finish.

Worth checking out a new author. I’m not sure that I’ll be back for more due to that anger vibe but this one pulled me in.

Observant people will have noticed I missed a letter … It’s E-zy to do sometimes. The E book amongst all of the other e-books is Off Midway Station by Marc Alan Edelheit. This one is the first in a new series. It’s set in future space and opens with a main character who’s faced with an impossible situation of surviving a surprise attack which has devastated his ship, only for his mortally wounded commanding officer to order an attack which would slaughter thousands of civilian bystanders. And we move on from there to have the first half of this one setting up the universe and the scifi rules of the setting before launching into a battle for survival.

Oh and surprises too for everyone. I’ll be looking forward to checking out Off Javelin Station when it comes out in October.

That’s the thing you really want in a book. To be sucked in and engaged in a developing story with interesting characters and to not really know what’s coming next.

Like I haven’t completely fixed what books L to N are going to be ! Could be Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell, another new author. Could be Last Emperox by John Scalzi. I’d like to go back to Elizabeth Moon, not read one of hers in ages. And then there’s A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nicholls. Or it could be a Larry Niven.

And that’s the thing. There’s a huge amount of stories out there. There are all of the genres, all of the styles, there’s the deep novels and the shallow novels. And they’re all waiting for us to lose ourselves in them for a while.

Time for me to dive into the replacement I book, it’s In The Shadow Of The Ship, a novella set in Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe.

Good night everyone.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

When to read the history and why we shouldn’t gatekeep

by Sleepypete

August 11, 2025

9:42 pm

Leave a comment on When to read the history and why we shouldn’t gatekeep

books

books, ramble

Hello everyone,

I saw something on Bluesky earlier / overnight that resonated with me … Let’s see. There was someone suggesting that Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein needed to be required reading for anyone getting info science fiction. And I think a bit of saying people didn’t count as being into science fiction if they hadn’t read those particular authors.

Oh ! We need a thumbnail ! Here’s one of mine :

Picture. Sketch. We're looking at a rough sketch of a green dwagon, sitting on his haunches. He's wearing glasses and is intent on reading a book that he's holding up to the right of screen.

There we go. Good old reading dwagon. (Yes, the knees bend the wrong way. He’s adaptable 😀 )

The most important thing is – reading is a thing we do for pleasure, for learning, for self improvement, for enjoyment. And that goes for fiction, non-fiction, news, reviews, timeline doomscrolling … all of the things. If you’re not enjoying it, find something else to do. I’m in danger of skipping to the close out here too 😀 because I wanna mention the gatekeeping before talking about some very special authors.

There’s an extreme danger in gatekeeping. Like pointing new readers towards the so-called classics like the books from Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. I’ve actually read most of Heinlein’s books. There is some incredible stuff in there, plus there’s also some absolute stinkers. Stranger in a Strange Land is one that gets the attention … I didn’t finish it. I was turned off by the attitude of the characters and the message that’s in there completely washed over me. Yet, I’ve read Starship Troopers maybe 3 times. I read Time Enough For Love quite young … and was unimpressed. Then I read it again later and the characters got to me. It’s a very poignant book.

Oh and then there’s Starship Troopers which is extremely seductive in its message … If you’ve seen any of the films, you’ll see all of the fascist imagery in there, where it’s a satire dressed up as a science fiction alien shooting spectacular.

Things all went a bit weird though with Heinlein as he started weaving together all of his separate stories into an all encompassing multiverse. There are some great books in there, some trash, some you’ll react to with absolute disgust.

Picture. Meme. We're looking over the shoulder of a white and tortoiseshell cat reading a book. The captions are "Thanks to this book." "I now have proper grammer"

Arthur C Clarke was a remarkable visionary but I really struggled with his books. There was a kind of detached sense akin to a lecture. There was a wonderful story and concept going on under there but the writing style was disinterested. And then there was the absolute crime of stuff like Rama II which wasn’t an Arthur C Clarke book, it was ghost written. I managed only 100 pages of Rama II, it just never got anywhere.

I should read some more Asimov. I do have I, Robot somewhere and I enjoyed Foundation a few decades ago when I read that. And then there was Nemesis as a far more recent exploring scifi book.

They’re all very well worth checking out but … they should never be seen as an essential, an entry gate, or anything to with “if you haven’t read these authors you don’t count as a serious fan of scifi”. There should never be a cause for gatekeeping like that. If you like the premise of a book, if the synopsis catches your eye, if a bunch of people give a recommendation, have a look at it. That’s how I’ve selected a few books in my A to Z and it’s been enjoyable finding new voices to read.

The old authors have their place. They’re remembered because they were that first wave of super successful authors (don’t forget Mary Shelley) and were successful because they wrote stories that caught the attention. In their time. We’re in a different time now, things have changed a lot. Those older books haven’t. Some of them pass the test of time, some don’t. But you’ll only know that if you check them out.

Get reading ! That’s the important thing. Lose yourself in those stories. Expand your mind a bit, see if you can learn something new, whether that’s something about people, something about society, something about dreams. Cos we do like to (and should) go for an escape every once in a while.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat reading over the shoulder of a bronze statue, behind a bronze book. The caption is "For the love of God, turn the page. You are like the slowest reader ever."

I’m currently 18 books into an A to Z challenge thing, where I’m looking to fill out the alphabet with books read with a connection to each letter. I’m cheating a bit with author names and title names counting for the letter, the pure form of it just goes for authors. There are a few old classic authors in there, there are some from the last few decades, there are books that have just come out this year.

The key thing is … open your mind up to new things. Go for those new authors. Check out what catches your fancy. Dig into it a bit more.

So if you’ve been enjoying the new Dune movies (I need to watch Part 2), or Dune Awakening, check out the Dune books by Frank Herbert. I don’t consider these the best books (he gets a bit too into his deeper lore) but I think the underlying Dune story is fantastic even if I think the writing is terrible.

If you’ve been enjoying the Foundation series, check out the ancient Asimov books. (I haven’t seen Foundation but have noticed that it’s very well liked).

If you enjoy Andor, consider checking out the old legacy Expanded Universe Star Wars books. There are some crackers in there, especially from Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole.

If you like Star Trek, check out Red Shirts by John Scalzi. It was the first book I read from John Scalzi and it’s excellent. He’s consistently fun and entertaining to read, with a great story popped in there along the way.

I was going to mentioned quite a few more people too. Let’s see !

One of the things you notice from the author community on Bluesky is that they’re all incredibly supportive of each other. They love seeing other authors doing well. And I think a lot of that comes from knowing that us readers can devour books so much faster than they can be written. So us readers can support a whole heap of different authors by buying, reading and enjoying their books.

And it’s wonderful that there are so many varied authors out there who are sharing their vision with us.

We don’t need to go back to the past, there are so many current, recent and new authors who have wonderful stories to tell us. Maybe there’s some in this head as well that want to come out. I wrote a preview chapter a few years ago on the old place … That concept is still in there, it does need time, a story and me being less burned out to make it happen. (Yep, the burn out is still very severe and very real).

There’s also the factory that every time we look back at those old classic authors, we see something problematic emerge from their time as well. It can be very deeply problematic as well. I won’t go into that here (not my vibe) but it can also mark their books, such as what I mentioned with Heinlein’s books occasionally provoking feelings of deep disgust (Farnham’s Freehold). There’s an alternate script for The Motion Picture from the creator of Star Trek which sounds like it was deeply repulsive in how it treated the characters.

There’s some dark stuff back there. And it marks them as a bit “Yep, they had their time. But we don’t go to that place any more because they’re either horrifically dated or … very deeply problematic.”

Picture. Meme. A panicked looking mostly white kitten is looking lost, looking up at us with big wide open eyes. The captions are "When the book you're reading is almost over and there's too many problems that need to be solved and you just have a mini panic attack like" "How in the world is the author going to sum all this up ?"

How am I going to close out this one 😀

The big thing is to keep on reading. Be selective too. If something catches your eye, check it out. Add it to your wishlist, grab it later and see what You think of it. Because that’s what matters at the end of the day. How did You find the experience ? Did You enjoy it ? Because that’s not the same set as the stuff I would enjoy, or what the person next to me or you will enjoy.

Sometimes I like to read something super fast and pulpy like the Jonathan Brazee Fire Ant series. Sometimes I’ll be enjoying something gritty and serious like your typical Gareth L Powell. I’ll go for the whimsical fun of a T Kingfisher. There would be the irreverent stories coming from John Scalzi which are absolute fun. I’ll dive into that very different Vietnamese inspired space society of Aliette de Bodard.

I’m currently in the opening parts of Stranded by A K Duboff, which will fill up the D spot which could easily have been a look back to an enjoyable Roald Dahl. But I’m not seeing anything new with Roald Dahl, I’m checking out a new voice with Stranded. I just finished enjoying reading The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear which is the third in a future centuries space society series.

And then there’s Drew Wagar, who’s stream I’ve got in the background at the moment ! If you like the screenshots and the universe of Elite and Elite Dangerous, Drew’s books add much needed meat to the bones in the games.

I better leave it there :-D.

Read what You want to read. Take the recommendations from people. If you’re struggling and not enjoying the story, don’t feel like you need to finish it, swap to something you’ll enjoy. Maybe even cheat with spoilers too, I’ve made more than one Abandon / Not Abandon decision on stuff in spoiler space. Like the David Weber Honor Harrington books which started in fantastic Hornblower action style but then disappeared into boring espionage as the setting developed. I’d still recommend that series but with the “when the books get boring, stop” health warning to it.

And then there’s Larry Niven ! So many classic books there with that random looking shift coming from the Ringworld saga. That ended very nicely.

Eek ! Like this post hopefully. See you around, back to enjoying Mr Wagar’s stream, with Batkitto building Lego on the laptop, music on the hifi and I’ll crack open Stranded again in a few minutes.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Advent day 19 and it’s crowded in the hangar bay

by Sleepypete

December 19, 2024

10:15 pm

Comments Off on Advent day 19 and it’s crowded in the hangar bay

Uncategorized

advent, books, games

Hello everyone,

Quick one again – internet feels better but I’ve had the old warning sign from my hand which means I probably shouldn’t type much … What’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene again, with 18 models and dwagon scattered on the snow scene. On top of a red d6 on top of the big green d20 is a small fighter ship model. It has a central pilot pod, with a grey and green wing on each side.

Oops. Learning again not to press ctrl+v instead of ctrl+c when copying out the alt-text. (Random aside time!) It’s been a pretty useful skill to learn that, making the alt-text. The intention is to make the site more inclusive to people who can’t make out the detail in the pictures. Alt-text is descriptive words that you add, which gets picked up by screen reader software that’ll read out the text on the page. You’ll see it if you hover over the picture.

Why has it been more useful ?

Often, you’re not supposed to or aren’t allowed to take pictures of things. I mentioned spyware on mobiles last time, it extends to the phone providers insisting that you really want to upload all of your pictures to their servers. Ok, so what if you point the camera at something and capture something sensitive ? Oops. It’s now on Google’s or Apple’s servers too. The trick is to not point the camera at the sensitive things. But … when you’re the one person sent to look at something and you need to fully report back what you’ve seen to the others who aren’t able to go ? That’s the other way alt-text comes in really handy.

It lets you paint that picture of what you’re seeing in a concise descriptive language to pass on to those who can’t see what you’re seeing. But … it also trains you in observation to have you pick up the detail that you might have otherwise passed over with your eyes.

Anyway, it does mean that I need to pop the alt-text here in two places to make it work.

It’s a really valuable habit to pick up, because it really does help people out although I have been getting a bit lazy with the advent scene alt-text lately.

Other news before I disappear today …

Game screenshot. Truck Simulator. Our green truck is parked up off the side of a snow covered road curling off to the left. It has a trailer with pictures of letters on it. In the distance are tree covered hills, there are snow covered buildings of a village at the base of the hills.

Truck Game is doing a winter event at the moment, where you do short trips to and from the Winter Wonderland zone, added in for the season. It’s a good little variation in to the game, including having driving on snow effects.

And I think I need to rest that hand and disappear into book again. After enjoying A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher, I’m on a John Scalzi book again now. It’s The Collapsing Empire and it’s got a promising introduction to its space opera universe told in Mr Scalzi’s easy to read and very enjoyable style.

Later everyone, have a great rest of evening.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Advent Day 2 and a little … reading ?

by Sleepypete

December 2, 2024

9:15 pm

Comments Off on Advent Day 2 and a little … reading ?

books

advent, books

Hello everyone,

What’s behind door number 2 ?

Picture. We're looking at the snow planet scene on the advent calendar box. The small space fighter ship is to the right, to the left is our (big) little red dwagon and in the centre, a Lego figure. She's got the dark hair in the circular bun style of the Princess Leia from the first movie. She's wearing white on her legs and a blue jumper with a scene from the second movie.

Good jumper, also lots of alt text that time. I do like the jumper there, I’d wear one of those IRL. (Blue with a walker vehicle to the right, a defence laser lower left and a snow speeder attack craft in the sky)

I thought I’d talk books today … I’ll be back with more Cruise Things later but I’m trying to space things out a bit. Space ?

That’s what I’m reading at the moment, with Aftershocks by Marko Kloos. It’s the first of a set of 4, which was a bit of an impulse buy with all 4 books on offer for 99p each. Can’t resist a bargain like that and the reader reviews were really good. I’m enjoying it so far, it’s set in the aftermath of a huge system wide war five years after peace was declared or rather imposed on the people who started it. It’s being an intriguing set up so far, it feels like there’s a lot going on. With a lot of hints about how the situation is being steadily developed from people behind the scenes who we haven’t met yet.

Worth checking out.

Picture, meme. We're looking at an orange and white cat, with their head resting on a closed book. The captions are "I finished my book" "And now I don't know what to do with myself"

Solution … buy another book !

I actually went through 3 on the cruise. I finished off the excellent Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s someone I had a bit of a rough start with on his books because I didn’t gel with Children of Time much at all (too much swapping between viewpoints and timelines) but Eyes of The Void is a really good continuation of what started with Shards of Earth. It’s post apocalyptic scifi, where just as humanity was getting started with expansion into the universe, moon sized alien things appeared and started reworking planets into artworks. With the people on. Eyes of the Void is a really good middle book, building on how the characters and universe got established in the first book and moving on the story at pace. I’m curious to see how the author finishes off the story.

Much recommend. I’ve enjoyed all of the Adrian Tchaikovsky books since going back to them with Dogs of War.

Before then was Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Another fun romp, where you’re drawn into the world that the main character has suddenly found themselves dropped into. John Scalzi has a wonderful, easy to read style, with fun varied characters that get the chance to breathe. Oh and surprises along the way, you can see some of the bits of the end coming but it’ll be a fun surprise all the way. I started reading John Scalzi’s books with Redshirts, which is an essential if you’re interested in the Star Trek universe.

Oh and he’s a standard bearer over on Bluesky too, showing the way to go to have a good time over there and generally make it a fun chilled out space to keep up with.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cat, sitting on a wooden bench, with a towel on their legs. They have a book open in front of them and they are reading, intently. The caption is "Oh Tigger, I enjoy your crazy antics."

Suitably for cruise times, I chose Michael Palin’s Around the World in 80 Days. It dates back to a journey made well back in 1988, when the world and the technology with us was a very different place. I think mobile phones existed ! But they were massive chunky things with battery packs, not exactly like the massively portable, massively capable things we have now. And the political situation evolves too, including how open the travel is. I think this was in the days before travellers in the Suez Canal area needed to be as wary of pirates, plus the world was as dangerous in places for all the different reasons.

Michael Palin has a dry humour running through his books and it’s an honest commentary often showing and explaining things that we didn’t see on the series. I’ll keep collecting and reading his books. Oh ! One fun coincidence was seeing someone on the cruise bring Michael Palin’s Erebus to breakfast with him one morning. Cue a little natter about books while ignoring the 3 other people at that table who switched from speaking English to speaking French as soon as we arrived. (Almost all of the other guests were lovely and not like that)

Picture, meme. We're looking down at the open pages of a book. Looking over the top of the page, a curious orange cat. The caption is "Hey Man What Ya Reading?"

Yes. Meme game is strong tonight.

I’ve finished off a series called The Belt by Gerald M Kilby. It’s the last of a set of 6, set in a future solar system where humanity has spread out as far as the gas giants. They’re quite short books, not much to them to be honest but they have a decent story running through them and I’m glad I saw them through to the finish. All I ask for in a book or a series is that the end either wraps everything up really well … or it leaves it at a place that is satisfying yet leaves you hoping there will be more. The Expanse worked well for that, it wrapped up its major story arc while leaving lots of room for more stories in that universe.

And that’s all you can ask, that you enjoy what you’re reading. I’ve seen comments on the socials that people think that authors are all in competition with each other. It actually works as completely the opposite. The authors encourage each other to do the best they can and keep on writing. They’ll understand that what they take months to write, us dedicated avid readers could demolish in less than a day (I’m not that quick). That just means …

More authors is great ! We’ll happily buy all of the books from the people we enjoy reading. And the more authors in the game, the more there is for us to enjoy. We need all the authors so that we have something new and fun to read while we’re waiting for that most favourite author to give us something new and wonderful. One day we’ll be in a Gareth L Powell, then an Aliette de Bodard, over to John Scalzi, following an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel, enjoying not feeling smart enough for the John D. Clark science book (rocket fuel, very complex) or even going back in time for a bit of Heinlein.

Sketch. We're looking at one of my rough sketches. It's a green dragon sitting on his butt, looking to the right. He's holding up a book, which he's examining with his bespectacled eyes.

Enjoy your reading, have a wonderful day. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Lunch is an illusion, time doubly so

by Sleepypete

March 26, 2024

7:40 pm

Comments Off on Lunch is an illusion, time doubly so

photography

books, picture, plans, shoutouts

Is that how that one goes ?

Picture. We're looking at a cat, absolutely flag on a white rug with an electric fire behind. The cat has their legs out to the side. The captions are "I didn't choose the rug life", "The rug life chose me"

As it always seems, it feels like it’s been a long time since being off at Xmas. I’m off on leave for the pre Easter week at the moment, definitely need it, the tiredness has been sinking in for a little while now. And that manifests in not posting so much here. And I still have the rest of the cruise things to catch up on !

What’s been happening ?

Slowly finishing the last book – Velocity Weapon by Megan O’Keefe. I’ll be back for more there, the author set up a pretty decent space scifi universe. There’s some handwavingism in there but that lets them concentrate on a story that promises to develop nicely over the second and third books in the trilogy. Next up is Declaration by M R Forbes. It’s the last of a series of 5 books which haven’t grabbed me nearly as much as the Starship for Sale series. This one is darker, much less fun. But I want to know how it ends, so I’m back in there for the last one of the series.

Camera stuff – I haven’t had a chance or energy to do much more scouting with the camera yet. Part of that is the weather around here, things are warming up towards spring but … almost constant rain. No stars !

I have a new thing coming there. Soon. Hopefully. I’ve ordered a 55-210 lens to supplement the 18-45mm lens I got with the camera. What’s that for ? Let’s see if something will work …

Picture. We're looking at the Severn Bridge, from two zoom levels. The bridge looks further away in the upper shot. We can see two vertical spars in the centre. It's a grim, rainy day. In the foreground, is a circular stone seat.

Picture. Same as the first one, we're looking at the Severn Bridge from two different zooms. Top has the Bridge just about visible in the distance. Lower is a close up, we can see a tiny bus driving over the bridge.

One of those pairs is from the Ixus 265, one is from the R50. The zoom kinda gives it away :-D.

It’s curious seeing the pics side by side like that. This was from my first attempts with the R50. It definitely shows in me not getting the focus on the Bridge, the camera was wanting to focus on the foliage on the fence. Also curious seeing the difference in colour balance between the two. The mud path is much more mud like from the R50.

These were all taken with the cameras on the tripod, although I knew very little about the R50 at this point so it was on fully automatic settings and a focus that liked the foliage. I’ve reduced the quality as well there, so they’re a bit more bandwidth friendly. The R50 has just under 50% more pixels in there than the Ixus.

The Ixus was showing off its zoom range there though, with that being at its full 54mm extension which is equivalent to 300mm on the 35mm scale. The 45mm on the R50’s lens is equivalent to 72mm on that scale. It’s a nice range on the lens but I’ll be looking for a bit more when I go to Lords for the cricket. I do like to zoom all the way into the play. The 55-210mm lens goes out to an equivalent 336mm, so hopefully I won’t need all of that for Lords.

I definitely won’t need all of it for where I’m going at the weekend :-).

It’s Insomnia gaming festival. I haven’t been to one of these yet, looking forward to it. It’ll be a chance to meet a couple of creators I’ve met before … The wonderful Tashnarr and Billietrixx. I’ve enjoyed watching Tashnarr for (gosh) almost 5 years now. Lovely person, doesn’t stream as much now as before because a full time job happened but it’s a pleasure catching the streams when they happen. Same with Billie who is definitely a fun one to keep an eye on. Looking forward to seeing if I can say hi again this weekend. Tashnarr helps set up and run the events, Billie is going to be there as part of the Session Zero RPG group.

Also looking forward to bumping into DontRachQuit, Knightenator, Saffypie, Miyukipanda and I think there are some more I’m missing there too. Plus there will definitely be a few community meet ups as well. It’ll be a fun weekend.

Picture. Meme. It's a bright sunny day. We're looking at an orange triangular tent on a green ground sheet. I dog on a leash is in the tent, with their cage. The captions are "Relax", "And just camp!"

One of the things I want to see about seeing more and getting pictures of is the sky. And by sky, I mean the night sky and the stars. That’s coming partly from the cruise and finding out that the little Ixus wasn’t really equipped for taking pictures of the night sky. (There might be a setting I haven’t found yet). So that’s one thing I want to do with the R50. I think it’ll mean getting a decent distance away from civilisation though. Which is never a bad thing.

One new channel I’ve found over the weekend actually is Wildbeare’s youtube channel. I would thoroughly recommend checking out what she does. And that’s go off into the wilderness with a tent for the weekends, have a wander around and come out with simply wonderful videos of the adventure. She’s in her element as she shows off what’s out there and how she connects totally with that world of the wilderness. And I’m recognising the occasional “hello fren” “hello mushroom” as she spots something to show us. Yep, I think that’d be me doing that too and showing the pictures :-D.

I’d massively recommend checking that one out, it might ignite a little wanderlust as well as a healthy bit of respect for the conditions especially in the less hospitable times of year. It’s been a genuine pleasure finding Wildbeare, watching the adventures, listening to the lovely voice and how she perceives the world.

How do I perceive the world ? I think I’d like to get out there as well, although I have none of the equipment required and nowhere to store it. But I’ll look into that some more, maybe even come up with a Plan.

Tonight’s plan though is food :-). Gotta put the dinner on. Nite all, have a great Easter weekend if you celebrate that. I might be back later in the week with more castle pics.

Gotta go visit castle though …

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Coming back from a little hiatus

by Sleepypete

February 14, 2023

10:21 pm

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books, hiatus, internet spaceship

Hello everyone,

It’s about time I posted again ! Let’s see. It’s been November since the last post and a few things have happened since then / are happening soon. First of all :

I’m ok. Just felt a bit burned out at the end of year and maybe a thinking that the posts I was writing were a bit all the same thing just minor variations ? Maybe. Oh ! Thumbnail pic.

A small pocket dragon standing on a cabinet top. He's holding up a heart almost as tall as he is. — Very 14 Feb appropriate ?

There we go. Very 14 Feb appropriate and it goes for all of you who are still around and reading this after the big long gap.

I think one reason for hiatus was being pretty burned out on Advent posts too, I think the Elitecember series was probably the last of those that I’ll do. (Plus the advent calendars haven’t been so good). Enough about hiatus, what’s been happening ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our spaceship is in front of the sphere of stars that marks what we can see of a black hole in the upper right. There is a tiny bright star with purple white streamer cones going left and right. The background is a creamy white. Our spaceship is in the foreground. It is black, with an engine to each side near the back. It is streaked with red lighting in lines. — Tiamat visits an impossible star

I’ve been doing the Space thing again. I’m off around the galaxy but this time I’m taking the big fleet carrier with a selection of ships. So Tiamat’s Chariot is along for the ride and had a little run out for a short 700 or so light year hop.

Christmas has been and gone during the break, it was great seeing family and dogs again. Perhaps a quicker run than it could have been ? I think that’s part of feeling run down, wanting to escape back to the sanctum to be able to fully switch off. Work’s driven part of that, it’s been busy but also rewarding. We’ve been getting Stuff done and the feedback I get is the polar opposite of what was happening in my last team.

Yep. Good seeing the family again.

Last time in the current car too … Yep. That’s one of the bigger news things from the break. I’d been steadily getting more and more unhappy with the current car. The main issue is that it’s too long and therefore really tough to manoeuvre. It also suffers from the Lexus apparent tendency to beta test their cars before settling on a Good car, which is weird because they got it bang on correct with the CT. Issues with the current one include that it’ll go Wibble as soon as you drive over a broken up road surface. Apparently the back suspension is completely revised on the facelifted model.

Which car is next ?

Picture. We're looking at a blue hatchback car parked up. Not much more to say there, it's a pretty standard box of a car ! — The original Tardis Blue Car

That car was number one in google search results for Tardis Blue Car for a good while. I was happy with that. The next one will be in red and has more toys. More pictures in a few weeks.

Oh – one crazy thing with the current car is that it literally got lost. I’d broken a work journey up to get a leg stretch and coffee. When I started up again, the GPS track was steadily diverging from the actual road, until it found a side road and merrily thought it was heading down that. And then that got worse as the car literally got more and more lost. I was fine. I was on the A road heading to where I needed to be. (And I switched over to Android Auto as a fix) It’ll be good being in a smaller car again, although I am sacrificing power for the size.

I’ve been devouring books again. Figuratively, not so much literally. (Ipads are crunchy). I’m going to see if I can read through a 52 book year this year. I’m already at a reading streak approaching 100 days now on the Kindle app. The year started out with 2 Starship for Sale books by M R Forbes. Blue Burn finished on such a cliff hanger that I had to go straight into the next book, Eight Ball. I’ve since read book 7 of the series, Kill Spree. They’re good fluffy space sci fi books that speed through a story. They’re pretty pulpy but I’ve been enjoying them.

L J Cohen’s Halcyone Space books are a little more serious and have had an interesting universe and story developing. I enjoyed book 4, Parallax, and I’ll be back for the concluding book in a few weeks. I’m properly engaged in the characters and will be looking for more from the author.

Maybe dipping a bit was the third Thrawn book by Timothy Zahn, Thrawn Treason. It held the attention, including shining more of a spotlight on how the Chiss (a Timothy Zahn introduction into Star Wars) do their space war business. It did feel perhaps a bit contrived though.

The dip continued with Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds. This is a collection of stories in the Revelation Space universe and to be honest, I could have done without reading this one. The stories aren’t great and I actually skipped one of them after giving it the chance of a few pages.

Another book I grinded through was The Satan Bug by Alastair MacLean. That’s a weird thing to say isn’t it. A renowned author who’s books I’ve enjoyed previously. The film and others including Where Eagles Dare and Guns of Navarone are legendary suspense stories. The Satan Bug sets up a super scary premise …. and then flip flops between investigation elements that never feel as if they’re going anywhere solid. A disappointment but I’ll go back for others of his books when I find them cheap. Santorini is one I’d highly recommend, HMS Ulysses is an incredible WW2 naval war story.

And then there’s the huge highlight of the year so far : Artifact Space by Miles Cameron. This was the most I’ve enjoyed a book for a Very Long Time. It’s a space sci fi again, with the central character being a young lady who has had to run away from a terrible situation and finds herself heading off round the galaxy with a huge conspiracy erupting around her.

It’s a curious mix of space navy procedure and character development. I hugely enjoyed Artifact Space and I’m looking forward to when the story is continued.

Other stuff ? I got back into the Idle Champions game. And space has been happening again too. The laptop continues to go through the music in there, I’m approaching having listened to half the library now.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous,. We're landed on a sandy looking orange planet. It's daylight and we can see the blueish atmosphere in the background. Our small orange ship is parked on craggy ground, with a stony looking plant in the foreground which is twice the height of our astronaut. — Tea 89 finds a rather large plant

That was a different part of the trip. One of the additions to the game has been planets with thin atmospheres which you can land on. Here’s me checking out an Osseus plant with the little Warp Factor Potato. Not so good an experience because it lands very close to the ground, which makes it difficult to get the buggy out.

I think I’m running out of things that want to come out of my brain. Time to close off with … 14 Feb is for very good friends and … I found a frond.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're on the sandy orangey planet again. Our astronaut is in the foreground, looking at a cluster of fern like plants. The buggy is behind and to the left and in the background, the rear of our spaceship with the engine outlets glowing orange and blue. — Iceangel finds a frond

I’ll leave it there. It feels good to be writing a post again, there’s like a pressure that steadily increases when you have a hiatus like this. You want to write but there’s also “I haven’t written for a while, a bit more break is ok”.

Definitely be back with pics of the car when it arrives and I need to figure out a photoshoot location. Sainsburys car park isn’t the best place :-D.

Last thing ! Current book : Leviathan Wakes by James S A Corey. First book in the Expanse series. They did an overall good job with this series. Bits are great, bits are poor. But they set up their world building in the books incredibly well and they pull off a very fitting ending.

Laters everyone !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Back from a little hiatus

by Sleepypete

September 20, 2022

9:22 pm

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away time, books

Hi everyone,

18 days again since last post … I thought I should have a little hiatus while the whole UK in mourning thing was going on. It partly didn’t feel right, partly because I wanted to keep the profile lower. Back again now though.

Picture. We're looking at a very sad looking pocket dragon wearing an apron and yellow gloves holding a washing brush. — Good god the dust

Things have been continuing on here. Stuff’s been happening like more gaming (of course!), perhaps a little dose of ginger poisoning (gotta watch for that ginger) and a lot of reading. Let’s see if I left a clue in the last post …

I finished Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I have to admit, I didn’t get on with his Children of Time, partly because I found the switching between viewpoints quite jarring. Dogs of War swaps between viewpoints as well but instead of them being different stories that intertwined later, they’re a lot more tied in with each other in Dogs of War. Interesting book. Loved Rex, he’s a very Good Boy.

What’s it about ? In the near future, we’ve moved past robots as our agents of war, because they had a tendency to go nuts and run amok out of control. So they moved back to organics, first building dog soldiers for their loyalty and ferocity. They then move into the combat multiforms in the book, with Rex and his squad tearing their way through what Master points them at. An interesting book, considering morality and ethics as well as what’s going on in the head of our faithful big as a house and armed with cannons war dog. After being discouraged by Children of Time, I’ll be back for more from Adrian Tchaikovsky after Dogs of War.

Picture. We're looking at a tiny kitten sitting in a square of copper plumbing pipes. There is a valve on one end. The captions are "Steampunk Bazooka Goes Pew Pew Pew Pew" — No Felix No !

Due to a bit of an addiction to Airport CEO, I lost my 90 day Kindle reading streak … alas. (Game was worth it). So I went back into finishing off Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, this one had taken a while because my copy is a paperback and therefore doesn’t contribute to that reading streak … It’s a Warhammer 40k book set on the forgeworld of Armageddon, centred around the spire hive city of Helsreach. It’s a forbidding place, corrupted and spoiled by this being a major industrial centre. And that’s before the Orks turn up in vast numbers to destroy everything. It’s an ok book as 40k books go. Dan Abnett’s books are better but this one does a pretty decent job of showing the differences between normal humans, enhanced Space Marines, has cameos from the people in Titans and then the rest of the Imperial Guard. Worth a read … but these books tend to depend on the hubris of the setting. You’d have to be a 40k fan to enjoy this one but if you are, it’s one of the better ones.

The next book was a rare abandon from me. It was Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear and a speculative buy from either Bookbarn or Troutmark in Cardiff. I was struggling up to page 50 or so. The writing was awkward and confused and the setting just wasn’t making sense at all. Perhaps that was the intention, with this being set on a generation colony ship on a mission that had gone desperately wrong. But it didn’t draw in my attention at all and I was ready to abandon based on what I was seeing about it on Goodreads. (So that adds Greg Bear to the list that has David Brin on it as authors with a great reputation where I just don’t get on with their books).

Next up was Derelict: Halcyone Space book 1 by LJ Cohen. I really enjoyed this one. It’s a Young Adult scifi book and you have to prepare yourself for what that means but if you can get past that, it was a great tale. What do I mean by that ? Young Adult tends to be about precocious but utterly brilliant 15 to 20 year olds being the centre of the story. Their brilliance will see them do unfeasible things with what they have available, the precocious nature means lots of bickering. The adults will be dull, boring and occasionally murderously evil.

What that does open up is the possibility for character interactions and they tend to get to what they’re doing fast. Yep, enjoyed Derelict enough that I’ve bought the remaining 4 books in the series. What’s this one about ? It’s set on a backwater asteroid base which has a ship connected which crashed there 40 years before the story. Conspiracy stuff erupts … around the kids who are using it, one to grow drugs, one as a science project to reactivate the ship, one to hide in and another who wants to help the young lady reactivate the ship. Bit of a crush maybe that the young lady wants nothing to do with.

After an accident which sees them zooming off into space, with varying degrees of injury, they’re in need of rescue and help with the asteroid base (and a warship) looking for them in the void. I’m curious to see where this series goes. The first book rattled along nicely.

Next up is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, I’ve just read the opening blurb on that so far. And it’s starting me wondering if I need to upgrade my ageing iPad Mini 2 because the ebook was making it crash. (Dogs of War was misbehaving too – very odd).

Picture. We're looking at the edge of a laptop on the left and a puppy to the right. The puppy has his mouth wide open, with as big a bite as he can muster on the laptop. The caption is "When your laptop is running low on space" "But your pupper helps by giving it a megabite" — Time to download more treats !

I’ve been looking at the tech again … Today it was the iPads. There’s apparently a 10th gen iPad coming this week which would be a substantial update. I’m not sure what I’d go for between the iPad and the iPad Mini. I’ve been ok with my little mini for I forget how many years I’ve owned it for. But a full size iPad would work well for the reading. I haven’t gamed on my iPad Mini for a long time now. Gaming’s better on the desktop.

I’ve also been increasingly having thoughts about changing the laptop. It’s still very capable of doing what I ask it to do but there are a couple of things that would trigger a change. 1 – it’s chonky. If I’m doing more away trips then I’d like something lighter to take with me especially as work trips mean I’m taking two laptops. 2 – it isn’t Windows 11 compatible … but this is something that will only become important when Windows 10 stops getting updates in a few years time. Oh and the third is that part of me that wants new toys.

It might well be a return to Acer, these have always been solid and reliable if not as shiny as laptops from Asus, Dell and HP. But … that impression might have come from what’s on show at the shops … and they don’t tend have the higher end Acers that are available direct from the company.

Picture. A dragon with an orange mask is sitting in a blue and silver rocket ship, ready and waiting to take him away in a whoosh. — Set thrusters to whoosh

I may have gotten addicted to another game … It’s called Airport CEO and it’s about building an airport of increasing size. I may have put 39 hours into this one already since acquiring it via a Humble bundle bundle. It’s got a lot of the foundations right and the gameplay of setting up the airport right has properly drawn me in. One issue it has is that the tutorials are confusing and don’t adequately cover what you need to do to make the game’s systems work properly. Little things can stop the airport working and it’s not obvious what you did, how to fix it or how to get it right in the first place and you find yourself resorting to wikis and videos to see how it should be set up. But I think I have it mostly sorted now.

Next step for my airport is to go international with the big aircraft.

But not tonight because it’s getting late, I want to read more book and I know that if I open Airport CEO again, it’ll capture my attention for hours again. It’s a game without the natural break points of the race weekends of Motorsport Manager (restarted, still great) and F1 Manager 22 (still playing but it desperately needs patching to salvage it).

Yep, still playing F1 Manager 22 although that’s kinda on hiatus as well until the next patch arrives.

I think that’s it for me … I did mention ginger poisoning. Ginger proper messes me up. I can still function but it explains a certain amount of brain fog and cuts where my skin thins up (and other bleeding). I think it was from a certain company’s ice cream. I might have accidentally picked the flavours with ginger in … or they have a contamination problem. Either way, no ice cream for a while, I’ll try again with a different ice cream maker at some point when I’m confident the ginger is out of my system.

I did enjoy the ice cream though in a “stuff bad for you tastes great” way.

Later everyone ! Be well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

A Game of Sadness

by Sleepypete

September 2, 2022

9:01 pm

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books, gaming

Cor, that’s a downer of a title isn’t it ?

I bought the F1 Manager 22 game in the end. Green Man Gaming were doing a tempting enough discount and while Motorsport Manager is a hell of a game, I’m at that point in the current campaign where I really need to either start it again or look at something rather different. And F1M22 came along at a very convenient time.

Meme picture. We're looking at a row of 7 boxes, numbered 1 to 7. Each has a cat sitting inside looking rather comfortable in their boxes. The caption is "The reason why humans don't race cats." — Number 5 looks keen

I’m going to talk about books in a bit but I think I need to get the moan out of my system first. If you get bored of the sad rant, skip to the picture with the coffee mug. Ok, here goes ! The sad thing about the F1M22 game is that while it looks really good and has excellent presentation, the underlying game just isn’t very good. So far at least. I’ve only done 4 races so the strategic layer hasn’t had a chance to show what it does yet. It’s inevitable that you compare games in a genre and this time it’s the 2016 Motorsport Manager to the 2022 game.

I thought, watching pre-release streams, that it looked like the developer Frontier had been hiring people who worked on Motorsport Manager. MM turned back to the mobile games domain but haven’t released much recently. So it made sense that MM’s output had declined because their people had joined Frontier’s project. And they do seem to share some characteristics outside of just the racing, like AI that doesn’t really understand transition between wet and dry conditions.

Why is the new one the Game of Sadness ?

Because it wastes its opportunity with the licence and so far, it’s completely missed its mark on being a better game than Motorsport Manager. It has a whole heap of flaws with its race weekend engine and they make you think that you should just be skipping the practice and qualifying and just rattling through the calendar between races. That’s not what games like this should be about, they’re racing management games. Let’s see :

Minimal difference between tyres and a very obnoxious mechanism that bans you from reusing tyres previously used in the race weekend. This is kinda in F1 already but it’s badly explained in the game and implemented very poorly. It’s confusing.

Drivers need about 18 laps to tell you whether or not they like the set up and that’ll reset on the slightest change. In real life, they’ll give an impression on the set up during an installation lap where they’ll come back to the garage after just a lap. This is over 3x 1 hour sessions so there is time to get the set up sorted out. That’s in contrast to MM which has a much more gameplay friendly system to set up the car, including the adjustments you can make. It’s like the F1M22 people took MM as a template but didn’t understand how it contributed to good gameplay.

Yep. There are shortcuts and simplifications in MM which make it a hell of a lot better game, I’ll rattle through a couple of F1 style races in MM in a shorter session than a single race weekend in F1M22 will take up. That’s a big reason why I’ve only done 4 races so far in F1M22.

Apparently the tyre balancing is to mask a broken driver AI, haven’t tried that myself so I’m going on forum words. But it isn’t reflective of F1 and this should have been sorted out in play testing.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been playtested prior to release. One reason I got very excited about Surviving Mars was because there were weekly hour long streams with the community manager playing alongside one of the producers of the game. They were playing on live code which was seeing weekly updates on the run up to release and it was looking like a fun experience with excellent gameplay backing it up. (And then I bounced off it at launch mostly due to getting annoyed with the modding system).

I’ll probably keep plugging away with F1M22, alongside Motorsport Manager. But if you’re interested in the genre, avoid F1M22 at the moment. There might be a good game to be salvaged from the admittedly very pretty bones but Motorsport Manager is infinitely more than twice the game at less than half the price.

What else ? Cars will crash, hit the barriers, cause a safety car … and keep on rolling. IRL F1 cars are a bit fragile. If there’s a hit hard enough to trigger the safety procedures then the car will almost certainly be a retirement. Not in the game … And there are other issues like DRS trains that are a bit too strong. The terrible practice and set up mechanics are about the worst of it though. I was actually enjoying the races through the issues.

Meme picture. We're looking at a fairly monochrome picture of a simple coffee mug on what I think is a mat. The caption is "When you're having a problem, remember that technically, coffee IS a solution." Attribution "Sweatpants and Coffee" — Need more milk !

Outside of games, I’ve been enjoying rattling through the books. I finished John Scalzi’s The End Of All Things and moved on rapidly through On A Red Station, Drifting. The latest is Dogs of War. About the books ?

The End of All Things is the last book in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series. It wraps up a sequence where Earth has gone to the stars … and found a lot of competition for room out there with a lot of hostile races who want to kill us or eat us or often, both. Oh and humanity being humanity, the Colonial Union that runs Humans In Space is not a particularly pleasant organisation both to its people and everyone else in the galaxy. It’s a great series from an author I enjoy reading a lot. I can’t say much about the final book due to spoilers but I’d definitely recommend picking up and having a read of the first book, Old Man’s War. It’s a tale of a 75 year old gent who leaves the Earth to become a Colonial Union soldier, with a very special new green body. Yep. Green. It makes sense.

Next up was On A Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard. She’s been promoting the cover for her upcoming book involving Lesbian Space Pirates which I’ll almost certainly pick up after it comes out in November. On A Red Station, Drifting is set on a future space station run by a Vietnamese family which is part of a future Empire. It’s an interesting set up, with an Honoured Ancestor being the overseeing Mind for the station and a newly arrived refugee adding extra chaos into the situation. It’s a very interesting peek into the world of a different but still familiar culture. I enjoyed following its story and seeing where it was going to go. Another one I’d recommend and I’ll definitely be checking out more from the author.

Oh and she laughed and said the reading dwagon was cute when I sent it over after seeing “Tea Space Dragons” on her Twitter header. (Here’s a Twitter link).

Next up is Dogs of War, seeing me go back to Adrian Tchaikovsky for the first time since Children of Time. Not sure now why I didn’t get on with Children of TIme, it was probably the skipping between spider perspective and human perspective. Dogs of War has had an interesting start, with the intro being very Dog Brain focused and the next couple of chapters being from the perspective of the humans.

More about Dogs of War when I’ve finished it.

Hope you all have a great weekend, be well 🙂

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Reading, Gaming, Thinking Diverse

by Sleepypete

August 9, 2022

12:12 am

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books, games, geeky

Hello everyone,

Had a quiet week off last week, which was pretty much the plan. I did think I’d find my way over to Cardiff or otherwise out of the house. I’m a little disappointed in myself that didn’t happen, although when I think about going to places like Cardiff, I’ll go to regular haunts, see what I didn’t buy before and … don’t buy it again. It would have been good to get out and about though.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a sad grey cat with blue eyes looking over the top of a sofa to left of picture. The caption is "I spent all day sleeping ... Now I'm tired." — Why does this always happen ?

So what did I get up to outside of hiding indoors all the time ? Lots of gaming. Lots of reading. Lots of music listening. Thinking about the next laptop, although the trojan scare I talked about last post is resolved. The warning popups haven’t been back. Phew ! So the laptop will hang in there for another little while. It’s let me catch up a bit on the new music, which includes acquisitions from a recent steam sale in the Skyrim, Rimworld and Fermi Paradox soundtracks.

Still not played Rimworld.

I did have a look at this one though :

Game screenshot. Frostpunk. We're looking at a dark scene where snow covers a barren land except for a circle in the centre which is bare and thawed. In the centre, there is a tall cylinder structure with a fire coming out of the top. There are tents clustered in a circle at its base. The words are "Our city. Day 1. Population 80." — Chilly out

That’s Frostpunk, which is a survival base builder strategy game. A new ice age has hit the Earth and your ragged band of survivors are huddled around a steam generator that is the only thing between them and a frostbitten demise. It’s a hell of a game, superbly balanced (I’ve watched a few playthroughs of the scenarios) and really, really hard. I got my city up to about 300 people and almost the end of the Londoners storyline before abandoning that run. I couldn’t get them harvesting coal fast enough to keep the generator running and could see the inevitable death spiral coming.

I’ll probably be back in this one. Other first looks for me include Fermi Paradox, which is a very simplified thing where you have a cluster of star systems that independently evolve intelligent life. Will they survive ? Will they thrive ? Will they embark on conquests of the stars ? A curious game, maybe not ready for a recommendation though.

I also completed the last achievements on Car Mechanic Simulator 2021, so I’ve been looking at CMC 2018. It’s ok, the newer game is better in pretty much every way and it has mouse acceleration which can’t be turned off. Never put mouse acceleration in your games people … I’ve also been looking at Rover Mechanic Simulator, which is the same thing with a limited number of rovers that you rebuild from your pod on Mars.

There’s something about the mechanic games … and other simulator type games have carved out their own little niche too. With the car one, it’s that feeling of progress as you tear down a car and rebuild it into something shiny.

Sacrificed some of the life in my neck to Rogue Tower – I could do with looking at my chair and replacing it with one that still allows it to raise. That’s an odd thing that … The posture I’m in at the moment is ok for eye height with my eyes being roughly level to the top half of the screen. That’s ideal … But when I’m in a game like Rogue Tower, I’ll lean forwards which lowers my head so I’m looking up and wrecking my neck. Oops.

Oh and there’s the truck games too. I’m enjoying these again now having recognised and gotten used to some of the irritations with the AI of the other vehicles.

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're in the cabin of a lorry, looking right towards our passenger. He's the yellow of a Pikachu (small cute animal with a lightning shaped tail). — Where to Pikachu ?

I’m doing that thing again … Where I thought I’d rattle through some stuff fast and not have that much to talk about :-D. Reading ?

Finished The Human Division by John Scalzi, it’s book 5 in the Old Man’s War series that I would happily recommend. It’s like an inspired by Starship Troopers book, where the lead character in the first 3 books finds himself leaving Earth as a 75 year old to be reborn into a super starship trooper body that’s then thrown at Humanity’s enemies. Of which there are many. Yet there’s more nuance here, as they’ll talk about what’s actually going on in the universe. And you steadily get a feeling of “Are we the baddies ?” I’m curious as to where it’ll go in the last book, with its foreboding title of The End Of All Things. But not yet, because I’m indulging the diverse reading thing by going into Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night.

I mentioned diversity … a comment in a conversation got me thinking about the people I follow and support through things like twitch subscriptions. I like to try and keep myself honest there with a little bit of internal watchdogging. I have a little concern about what I’ve spotted there …

First up is the subscriptions – I’ve moved these around a little bit. I’m down to 9 Twitch subscriptions now, they’re all actually women now. I was actively subscribing to a bloke but ended that because he wasn’t doing the interesting content any more. Similar with another lady streamer. And the other bloke streamer lost my sub due to behaviour in his community. They’re all white too, none are people of colour. Not sure what that says about me to be honest. There are a couple of threads there :

The streamer communities I’m involved with don’t raid into people of colour streams much at all, so the exposure to hook me in doesn’t happen. However, I will mention Nathan Whatiskiss who I know as a wonderful roleplayer (but I haven’t seen his gaming content) and TrooperSJP who is another wonderful roleplayer. I don’t follow Trooper because he misbehaves with how he self promotes his own streams (he breaches rules on discords that aren’t his).

I think that’s the main reason why my follows are missing the people of colour, because the rare times people raid into them, I’ll quickly skip into a stream done by someone I do actively follow. Maybe I should give the raided a bit of a chance more often. Perhaps it’s a problem more on Twitch’s end, where people of colour might not be getting the same exposure.

The male female split is slightly deceptive too, as I actively maintain Patreon subs to 1.5 men. (The 0.5 is shared between Tashnarr and TheWanderingInn for the 40k layers model painting show).

The question someone asked was actually more about LGBTQIA+. The split on there for my subs is 3 straight, 1 bi, 1 pan, 2 lesbian and 2 where I have no idea. And that last ? is something I’m very ok with because we should only know where people are on those categories if they want to tell us, it’s not something that really should matter. Oh and there’s a trans person in that list too. And a person who would quite happily be first in the queue for the Probing when the aliens land.

Personally, where people place themselves on the LGBTQIA+ doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll go back to the series Another Life there (scifi series, in space, very tense and atmospheric, dramatic) where the character I was most interested in was Zayn who is played by the non-binary JayR Tinaco (imdb link). The character was interesting from an intelligence and challenging dialogue point of view. They also came over as knowing what they were doing, which was key in this particular series.

That’s the thing about diversity – our differences make us strong. And interesting. They give different perspectives on how to live, laugh and love. And what people get up to in the bedroom and with whom really isn’t any of our concern. If people love each other, they should have the chance to explore that without prejudice.

What really matters is (easy geek points on offer here) being excellent to each other, in all ways.

Picture. Meme. A sad looking cat with big eyes is laying down looking at us. The caption is "It hurts when someone you love says mean things like..." "It's time to wake up" — One more minute ?

It was definitely a bit of a wrench this morning switching from the time off timescales to a work from home timescale where I’m actively working from 7.50am.

I think I’ll leave this one there. I’m a little concerned as to whether a bit of prejudice has crept in with the stream watching, although that’s mostly down to who I get raided into (A stream raid is where a person finishes and takes their audience over to another person to watch). I should give the raided a bit more of a chance, it’s how you find fun people to watch. That said though, of the channels that twitch is showing in the shortcut list at the moment, none of them look like people of colour. (Oh wait, there’s Caustic Phoenix coming in with the Pink Pixels show – there’s one !). There are none being promoted on Twitch’s front page at the moment. I’m not watching the lovely Caustic because I was watching Tashnarr already and Ashlinaa (new name !) on the laptop and the Pink Pixels show will run on too late.

Perhaps it’s twitch that has the problem.

Stay safe everyone, be well, be good to each other.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Hello it’s toasty

by Sleepypete

July 9, 2022

11:07 pm

Comments Off on Hello it’s toasty

Uncategorized

books, games, geeky

Hello again,

Me again – I think I’ve needed a bit of a rest from writing things. Could be because I’m diving more into the work stuff again, where I put the energy into what I’m doing in working hours and feel more like chilling out with reading or games in the evening with that resulting in me not really wanting to write stuff. But it’s more like having trouble hitting the Add New Post button despite having things to talk about.

Picture. An orange dog is lying down in a big collection of ice cubes. The caption is "It's too bloody hot today" — Yes I know. I have summoned the spelling bees

It has gone very warm here … I last did spaceships on the 12th of June and there’s no way I’ll go back until things cool down a bit. Elite pushes the graphics card really hard (because it’s an unoptimised mess) and that turns into heat going into the room. So no space ship for a bit. That said though … it’s still pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at an icy white planet marred only by the tyre tracks of our buggy. Our pilot is standing on a rock to the bottom left. Our buggy is parked behind, with 6 red lit wheels. A spaceship is parked beyond. The sky is a lovely pink on the left transitioning to purple on the right. — Preparing to scout

This is the latest ship in the fleet, the Searching for Chamomile. The callsign is T-CK13 after the lovely Teacakes 13 (Twitch link) who battles various health issues (don’t we all !) and time availability (same again – day job!) to bring us no commentary gameplay streams of No Mans Sky. That’s another space game which I should have a look at but I keep bouncing off it for some reason.

Anyway, I thought I’d make my latest objective be one of exploring planets again and checking out the wildlife. All my scout ships (well, most of them 😀 ) are named Searching For … things and this time Chamomile came up as a hardy plant. Haven’t done much in that quest yet, I’ll wait for things to cool down a bit.

One thing spaceship related that I have been enjoying is watching Psyche’s streams. She’s a bubbly bundle of chaos from Northern Ireland who likes streaming the space games and there’s also been lots of Rimworld chaos too. Well worth checking out. Here’s the old twitch linky thing. I haven’t been watching long at all but with me rearranging who some of my Twitch subscriptions go to, she’ll be getting one of the ones that have been cancelled.

So – Twitch subs … what’s that mean ? The benefits include little emote pictures that you can use across Twitch chats. Plus it gives a bit of money to the streamer which means they can continue entertaining us on the screen instead of having to … quit that and get an actual job in order to afford rent, food and electricity and the other things.

Twitch is feeling like a rough place for streamers. The organisation takes way too high a cut of the money that viewers send in, plus because it’s live, you pretty much have to choose one (or maybe two) only to watch at once. So at the moment, it’s having fun watching Tashnarr playing Subnautica. She’s doing hard core runs where if you die, it’s new save time. Not dead yet tonight but there’s been a couple of close calls. Tash is always great fun to watch and put daftness into chat with.

Oh and sometimes the Twitch people will play a game you’re interested in and give you an idea of whether you’d want to buy it. Or they play games like No Mans Sky where you enjoy other people playing more than you enjoy the game itself.

Game screenshot. American Truck Simulator. We're looking at a roadway on a small bridge. In the distance we can see a shallow waterfall. Our green truck is on the right. — Water … falling

I’ve been enjoying switching from the European roads over to American Truck Simulator with map packs appearing courtesy of the Steam sale that’s just finished. It’s curious seeing the differences between the two games. Both ATS and European Truck Sim 2 use the same underlying engine, the trucks and roads are different. American trucks have the long noses, European trucks are more of a slab front with the engine underneath. It feels like the loads are heavier in the US trucks, although that could be what the World of Trucks service offers. The US roads are definitely more forgiving than the occasionally very tight European roads. But the European maps have more features in them and things to look at.

Whereas I was feeling frustrated in the Euro game, I’ve been enjoying playing with the American trucks.

Oh ! Did I get anything in the Steam sale ? I bought Fermi Paradox and Disco Elysium plus soundtracks for Skyrim, Rimworld and the two games above. Fermi Paradox is a game about development of alien civilisations, Disco Elysium is a role playing adventure game where you’re a cop who’s lost his memory and he has to investigate a rather curious murder. But not all is as it seems.

I’d better wrap up soon so I can dive into book … Reading has been happening, much reading. Completed books from the last few weeks are :

Dune – think I mentioned that. I’m not sure if I’ll even go into Dune Messiah to be honest.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear was an interesting one. Perhaps a bit too much in the psychology side but I was kept in there by a highly intriguing unfolding mystery.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi was book 3 in his Old Man’s War series. This is in a developing universe of his where humanity goes to the stars, to find that they’re pretty crowded with alien races. Most of whom don’t like humans much, mostly due to how humans treat them. Nothing new there, good commentary :-D. I’ll be curious to see how this moves on in Book 5 (book 4 is an alternate perspective retelling of book 3). J.Scalzi is a good author to keep coming back to.

Current books are Starship for Sale by M.R.Forbes. It’s heavy on the world building with it being the first book in a series but that’s ok. It’s good world building. Our two friends start out going to a Virtual Reality games place and before they know it, they’re being hustled into buying an odd starship with a very curious occupant. I’m enjoying it, will come back for more in the series. Oh and “books” is Helsreach from the 40k universe. I have a 30+ day reading streak going in Kindle at the moment and Helsreach is a paper back. So I’m in two books to keep that Kindle streak.

Nearly went to see cinema things yesterday, chose chilling out instead. It’s been a while …

Picture. A hopefully looking dog is looking up directly at the camera. The captions are "I see you haz a hot dog ..." and "I too like hot dogs" — Hmmm. Hot dogs

I like hot dogs, good cinema munchie. Oh, another reason I didn’t go is because Everything Everywhere has pushed out and while the latest Thor and Top Gun sequel have potential, wasn’t feeling it yesterday. Maybe next Friday. I was feeling a bit blasted yesterday after I closed up the work laptop.

Work’s been going well after I switched late last year. It was good catching up with one of the people from the old team too when being in the office on Wednesday this week. But if you know what I mean by Spoons, I throw all my spoons at the work stuff at the moment and it doesn’t leave that many over for home stuff. That’s one reason why I like the Truck Games, they don’t need much real thought while giving a definite sense of Progress happening.

Motorsport Manager is another I’m continuing to enjoy, after almost 1900 hours now. But that one needs a bit more thought.

Time to devote some of those thoughts to enjoying Tashnarr (still not dead yet) and Starship for Sale.

Be well everyone ! Stay Safe. Try not to let what’s happening in the world (it crazy innit) get you down.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?