cricket - Sleepypete's Pillow

A rainy day at the cricket

May 19, 2024

2:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

Time seems to be going whoosh at the moment ! Maybe that’s a sign that I need to step away and slow down for a bit. Maybe 😀 I do have a plan forming for that … Hopefully you’ll see some of that later in the year. The current plan involves a large island, a ferry and maybe even … beach.

First up – a review ? Devastating news for the gaming communities this week with the Insomnia gaming festival. I’m glad I got to one of these in March because it could well be the last one as the company running it collapsed. Hopefully all the people affected find places that will take full advantage of what they have to offer. Especially the ever lovely Tashnarr and her colleagues who would come in to her streams, join in the fun and be part of that community which, with Tashnarr being the focus, is one of the most chill, relaxing and great vibes communities on Twitch.

Work has been as busy as usual, not much to be said about that apart from it being one of those things. Would you prefer work to be busy and you’re getting things done, or would you rather it be too quiet ? Can’t talk about the work stuff much though, it’s not something for the internet.

In books, I enjoyed reading through Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a future space scifi where a near invincible enemy is menacing humanity. There’s an excellent variation of characters in there and the interplay between them is a highlight. I’m looking forwards to seeing how this trilogy unfolds. Latest book is A Fire Born Of Exile by Aliette De Bodard, which is the latest in her fantastic Xuya Universe. Well written, intriguing and huge intensity of emotions in the characters. Much recommend for both of these books.

But wait, where’s that traditional opening thumbnail pic ?

Picture. We're at ground level looking out over a green playing field, with white grey rain covers in a band in the centre. In the background, the orange brick and white balconies of the Lords pavilion. Gray skies are above.

Thursday saw me heading off to Lords for the 2024 Interservices T20 day. I’d thoroughly recommend this event if you’re a cricket fan. The historic Lords stadium is always a great place to visit (although a bit lacking on concessions hospitality this time), you get a great view and they steadily improve the facilities. There’s been a number of changes since I started coming. Plus the cricket is usually ultra competitive with all the skills on show and the games are balanced. It’s always best watching a game or sport where you have no idea as to who is going to win, right up to the end.

But …

Picture. We're at mouse level looking at the concrete outsides of the stadium. There are a couple of manhole covers to the right. The outer wall is to the left with a black iron gate close and black bins in the background. The stadium hangs over on the right and a van is parked in the far centre. There is a puddle in front of us.

We did lose the morning game and half of the afternoon game to rain. Bit damp but it cleared later. Today was a day of playing with the new camera too, to see what it could do and how it would work. The angle above is courtesy of Geraldine, official photographer from the cruise, who challenged us to try and get interesting and unusual angles to take pictures from. How’d that one do ? I’m maybe 6 inches off the floor there. Maybe a bit more looking at the Shutter Priority mode it has to catch more of the rain.

Pictures. A block of 4, all in a watercolour effect filter. We're looking out over the ground, with the top two showing the far stands. Bottom left is the white and glass lozenge of the Media Centre. Bottom right is the ground with the Pavilion to the right and occasional people close in our stand. — It all went a bit watercolour

Spot me checking out more of the options that the camera has for taking the pictures. This is the watercolour effect, which adds a post processing effect. There is also a monochrome, fisheye, vivid, toy camera and a miniatures filter which I need to figure out how to use. Fun while waiting for …

Picture. We're looking over the lush green grass of the Lords playing surface, with the light brown of the cut surface in the middle. We have a scattering of players in red and light blue tops plus dark trousers. The red shirted bowler is at the end of his action and the light blue shirted batter to the right has just hit the ball.

Play on !

We lost the ladies’ game due to the rain, this was RAF in the light blue batting and Army in the red fielding. I started out playing with a Continuous Low Speed shooting option, where it was taking a picture maybe every half a second after pressing the shutter button. Here’s a great one :

Picture. We're looking at 2 pictures up and lower. At the top, a red shirted fielder is part crouched over dark blue stumps. The blue shirted batter is stretching out with his bat. An umpire in a hat is standing to the right. Lower, it's a frame on and the red shirted fielder is jubiliant as the stretching batsman failed to beat the ball to the stumps.

Happy with that :-D. One thing about the new camera is that with it having more megapixels in its sensor and the different way the lens works, it’s much easier to get shots like that going. So that’s … with the 55-210mm lens and the original was taken at the 135mm setting, so about the middle of the range. I’m not zooming all the way in that I can, so I have the option of cutting the outsides down if appropriate. And then I’ll take the resulting picture down from a potential 6000×4000 before cropping and scale it to 2000 pixels wide for the blog. Hopefully that works for viewers without losing detail.

(This is going to sound like a Canon ad ! Disclosure note – I bought all the bits in use here, nothing free by Canon) You change the zoom on the 18-45 and 55-210 lenses by twisting the outside of the whole lens, whereas the zoom on the Ixus is by a tiny addition to the shutter wheel. The R50 is bulkier but it’s far easier to handle. The response time on the shutter feels massively better, with a lot of the unused shots (can only show so many 😀 ) having the ball in shot still. And the image stabilisation is proper excellent.

I did have the usual buyers remorse after spending all the money but I think it’s worth it. The R50 is proving to be an incredibly massive upgrade over the Ixus and the various features included make Every picture good and usable, whereas I had to be very careful with the Ixus to get something usable.

Looking forward to trying it out at Comic Con next week. Actually really looking forward to Comic Con next week because Comic Con Friend will be there too this time and these things are much better in company. Still got the good memories from last time too with the smuggle for Tashnarr, it’s good seeing the FFXIV flower appearing occasionally.

More cricket ?

Picture. We're looking at two players. The red shirted batsman has bat in the air and is leaning forwards through his shot. The blue player is behind the stumps waiting for the ball with the big keeping gloves. 2 stumps are vertical, the third is bent backwards with the white ball in front. Two orange bails are in the air above the stumps.

I always loved seeing things like that as a bowler. Ball, stumps and bails in the air. The first game finished with a tight win by the Army, with it going to the final over.

Picture. We're looking at a bowler in a dark blue shirt, he's running through and his right arm is stretched out at the end of sending the ball to the other end. We see the umpire to the left, a fielder half crouched in the background and a light blue shirted batter.

Over to Navy vs RAF. This was a full 20 over game. It was getting dark towards the end but the umpires managed to keep the players on all the way. A good game too, the Navy batters were led by one of the guys getting the first 50 of the day with unorthodox …

Picture. We're looking at our dark blue shirted batter again as he has turned his bat around the wrong way to hit the ball to an unexpected part of the ground. The ball is above the stumps on the left. A light blue shirted fielder is in the background.

And orthodox hitting …

Picture. We're looking at the dark blue shirted batter stretched in mid shot. The ball is in the centre lower part of his bat, about to come my way in the stands. A light blue shirted fielder looks on behind.

When the RAF came in to bat, they started making the Navy score look small with some excellent hitting. I nearly touched a cricket match ball again for the first time in over 10 years as one of the ball in the stands moments ended up pretty close to my little corner of the ground. (I got beaten to it by a more nimble guy speeding across 😀 ).

But cricket has a habit of making games closer than they really should be and a spirited performance by several of the Navy bowlers led to a succession of wickets that nearly turned the result around. Fun game to watch.

The RAF won the last game narrowly but because all three teams won 1 game each of the tournament and Navy had the better overall run rate, the tournament went to the Navy this time. With a finish past 7pm, I didn’t go anywhere else in London for the day but well satisfied with a good day out at the cricket again.

Last thing … I may have resubscribed to an older game again … there’s a new Iceangel on World of Warcraft. We’ll see how that goes :-D. I did look at Star Trek Online again but while that game has the Star Trek setting, WoW is just a more charming accessible game.

Later everyone !

Lost in a Workshop

by Sleepypete

October 5, 2022

10:49 pm

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bugs, cricket, games

Hello everyone,

Gosh it’s been a bit of time again since the last post. I may have gotten myself quietly addicted to another game. Also got bugs and other issues again because of course I did !

Picture. We're looking at a sleepy dragon, curled up with his head resting on his front paws. — Zzzz

May also be struggling for energy. I might have mentioned bugs already :-D. One reason I didn’t post was because I wanted to stay away from posting during the Queen’s mourning period. Which might seem a little odd ? Seemed right to me.

There’s a weird one there actually. I adopted a special tribute picture on Facebook and Twitter for the period. I usually echo my picture on to Discord as well but it didn’t feel safe to do so. That’s very weird, as the Discord communities are the “safe” place usually, Facebook and Twitter are definitely not. And I did get a couple of people attempting to engage with me on an incident in the cricket … They’re blocked now. No hesitation, just block the idiots who you don’t know who are trying to endanger your mental health. Curate your space, it might make it a bit of an echo chamber but you really, really have to look after your own mental health and that means not giving the idiots a chance to affect that.

What happened in the cricket ? It’s a complex one, around the practice of Mankadding. This is when a batter is repeatedly getting a head start in attempts to get a run down to the other end. If the fielding side has enough, they can run them out if the batter has gone marching off before the bowler has completed the delivery. Note, it’s really difficult to stop in your stride as a bowler. The stealing of a few yards is called backing up and it’s something players are coached to do.

I call it cheating.

At the time, it finished off a game that England had salvaged into what was turning into an incredibly tense finish. Bit of an anticlimax and it took the attention away from Jhulan Goswani’s (wiki link) final game. The various commentators were saying it was legal but against the spirit of the game and it polarised the cricketing world into Everyone objecting, India people saying “well it’s in the laws”. So’s certain forms of tax evasion and other bits of cheating.

And then we find out a couple of days later that the England player had been repeatedly warned and the umpires informed about what was about to happen. I was much relieved when I heard that. Mankadding without a warning is really poor behaviour. Warning the cheating player is how it should be done and then yeah, full support for what the fielding side did.

A certain England non-playing captain has come out and said he’d call a Mankadded batter back … this is the same player who I think has been run out in this way several times. Good on the fielding side for calling him on the cheating. I don’t think he should have been allowed to remain as captain of the England side after saying that. (Moeen Ali is a far better person to run that side)

I don’t really think the player is at fault. It’s the coaching. The backing up had become part of the game, with it being ingrained into the behaviour on the field. I didn’t do it, partly because I was fast enough that I didn’t need to.

Enough for that rant – go by the facts. If someone comes out with “but it’s within the rules of the game”, so is most of what happens in football and that game is a mess for cheating. It happens in rugby too and that game is a bit too heavy in its rules, the rules can bog down the game and make it difficult to watch.

Oh ! That wasn’t why the tribute picture didn’t go on Discord. It feels odd that I considered Twit/book safe for it but not Discord. The communities I’m still in on Discord are good but whereas people in them will be inclusive in certain ways, they are very critical in others. And I wasn’t comfortable with having a monarchy related picture on there, which says really bad things about those communities. If you’re going to say you’re inclusive, you have to respect everyone … and that’s not consistent.

Game ?

That’s from F1 Manager 22, which isn’t the game I’m quite addicted to at the moment. It looks stunning, probably with assistance coming from the F1 racing sim game. The pit garage people look appalling, some of the worst people models seen since before the last decade. They’re nasty and indicative of how lumpy in quality this game is.

On one hand, it offers a curious strategic management layer which I’d like to get in to more. And the races are surprisingly compelling.

On the other hand, the F1 licence aspects are a complete mess and a waste of what the game should be. They shackle it down in ways including extremely limited variation in the canned commentary (anything leads to “That’s a terrible blow for the team!” and it’s also shackled to the current 10 teams in F1. There are numerous bugs in the race gameplay, although some of these are being addressed.

It is still a quite compelling game though. Mind you, I’ve spent more time in the old Motorsport Manager than F1 Manager 22 over the last couple of weeks, having restarted with a new team in a non-F1 style of racing.

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at a tabletop, which has various objects on the edges like a coffee cup, pencils and glue. In the centre there's a cutaway view of a building with 5 rooms with machines and tiny people within. — A humble beginning

That’s Little Big Workshop and I got instantly addicted to it. It’s cute, has pretty good consistent gameplay and it’s one where you can set things up and watch them run. A chilled out kind of game play. And the factory steadily expands as you make more stuff, sell more stuff and can buy more machines. So by the end, I had this :

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking at a sky eye view of the factory. There are a bunch more rooms, filled with either machines or place to put materials to put in the machines. — Busy bees

That was in the run up to completing the achievements on the base game. It’s a curious, fun little game filled with cuteness. Even down to what you have your people put together, like the bongos, skateboards, pedal cars, cute robots and …

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking at a zoomed in view of one of the rooms which is a stock room. The room is filled with big two legged mechs sized for one of the little people to ride in. — Behold my Cat Mech Army

Yep. Built a lot of those. I really enjoyed my time in this one, definitely enough to buy the DLC for it when it went on discount last night. I’ll save that one for later. it did have an issue though …

Game screenshot. Little Big Workshop. We're looking down at the rooms and machines again but this time, there is graphical corruption in the form of lines and an overlay. — That doesn’t look right …

I’ve mostly sorted it now by reducing the graphics quality and applying some out of game options but I was having to restart it every few hours due to increasing graphical corruption mayhem. What’s in the picture above was pretty mild. It got to heavy headache inducing flickering and became unplayable until a restart. I think my hardware is ok because other games aren’t affected plus the temperatures were good and it opened back up ok on an immediate restart. But …

I’ve had bugs over the past week. I should get tested but don’t have testing kits. I’ve been picking up a smell I’ve been interpreting as burnt or melted solder …

So the 1+1= has been happening and making me wonder if the game is leading up to an expensive graphics card failure. Or whether it’s just a coincidence and I’ve interpreted it wrong.

Yep, bugged again with another cold like thing which hasn’t gone away yet. And that’s on top of being affected by ginger poisoning again. I think that was contaminated ice cream although it could have been something from the foreign trip a month ago. The ginger is out of my system now, phew !

Hopefully not as long again before the next post, there’s been enough in here for several I think. I’ve just been distracted by game and lacking energy again.

Stay safe everyone, be well !

Lording it …

by Sleepypete

June 20, 2022

10:05 pm

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books, cricket, games

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again hasn’t it. I think I was getting ready to post something up again and then bugs hit … Thumbnail ?

Picture. Cartoon. A grizzled cowboy is lurking behind a bush holding a rope that is connected to a plank of wood holding up a big box. The box is poised to drop over a book case. An unsuspecting stick man approaches ... — Yep, this would work

So … what’s been happening ? Bugs, books and … there’s gotta be another B word in there. Nope, not coming … Went to Lords as well for the Interservices T20. More on that later and pictures for another post. Le Mans watching happened as well, plus I had last week off work. Timed that to coincide with a couple of recovery days after Le Mans and the Interservices cricket.

What’s first – games are always up there … Looking backwards, I’ve indulged in another run through Deus Ex Human Revolution and the sequel Mankind Divided will follow. I dunno quite what it is I like about those games. They don’t do everything that other fps do but what they get absolutely right is the core gameplay. They’re very solid games and have a good story running through them.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Human Revolution. We're looking at a holographic display. It looks like a series of hexagonal dot lights on a hemisphere. Inside, we see a globe that could be the Moon. To the right, we see a big wall mounted display with a prospective Moon Base. — May not contain actual moon base

(Spoiler – not been to the Moon in game but there will hopefully be a third game made to finish off this story properly, it might go to the Moon).

I really enjoy these games and while the 2012 Human Revolution does look dated if you know what to look for (the polygon maps are pretty blocky), it still looks the part and plays great. Looking forwards to moving on to Mankind Divided again. While I kinda bounced off Horizon Zero Dawn (also a first person role playing game shooter), I happily go back to the newer Deus Ex games as comfort games. I dunno, it’s kinda, I know what to do, how to play them so I can enjoy the game without needing to learn new systems for how to play it.

Motorsport Manager has also been happening … with a tendency to have sore wrists and arms, having a hands off game that’s still very engaging has been very valuable. That’s why it’s hit 1844 hours played since being released in Nov 2016 … I hit the end of Phase 3 of my self made challenge there, thought about restarting but have gone into a Phase 4 instead. Phases ?

Phase 1 – win the championship with the F1 style car.

Phase 2 – win the next championship with GT racing cars.

Phase 3 – win the last championship with the 6 hour race endurance cars.

And now I’m back to Phase 1 in the F1 style cars with the worst team I could join and I’ll build that up to where it beats the first team I built.

It’s a fairly hands off game, where you directly do the setups (this can be modded out) and the race strategy. The AI does a good job on its end too although changes from wet to dry weather catch it out.

And I can happily play it too whereas I haven’t opened Truck Game since 1st June because I was getting frustrated with road traffic accidents from murderous AI and it was hurting my wrist and arm.

Bugs … Yep. Had bugs. Pretty sure these were from a work reconnect event, the boss had the bugs as well at pretty much the same time. And there was someone who almost certainly brought in the fast flu that did the rounds around then. Anyway, that affected me for about a week, at which point I was in need of some downtime anyway. Pretty sure it wasn’t anything more sinister than a fast flu. I’m double vaccinated and boosted against the Plague plus I’m pretty sure I had it two years ago. This flu was affecting me but it wasn’t nearly as bad as probable covid with its coughing so much I think I blacked out a couple of times and assorted other symptoms.

Lords happened last week. I’ve been noticing increasing reclusiveness tendencies where I’ll take an excuse to stay in and do stuff indoors instead of heading out. So I haven’t been to the cinema much at all lately because I’ve been either bugged or enjoying the cricket on the telly. Wouldn’t mind seeing Everything Everywhere All At Once, that’s top of the list. Also Top Gun 2, maybe Doctor Strange but with what I’ve heard about Jurassic World 3, maybe not that one.

Lords ?

Picture. We're looking at a wide expanse of green cricket field, with the cut strips in the middle. The grass is cut as a checkerboard grid of various greens. 2 players wear red, the rest wear blue. In the background, the light red of the Lords Pavilion and to the right is the white double decker Warner stand. — Lovely day for it

Lords was splendidly turned out as usual. It’s a really old stadium now (opened in 1814) and they’ve steadily rebuilt, maintained and upgraded it over the years. It still has the signature slope (look at the advertising boards in front of the Pavilion) and the Old Father Time weathervane is still hanging out. I was a little disappointed that the big shop is gone and replaced with a smaller one. That’s part of the redevelopment of two of the stands (out of shot) which have been rebuilt into double decker stands now with shade. I sat in the old version for a session one year and I was absolutely baking and had to retreat to shade. One curiosity was that there was a big toilet area behind the old stands, that’s gone now. (Replaced by more loos under the stands).

It was a bit of a wrench to get away from the house but I enjoyed the day thoroughly. I might have to look into overnight stopping in the future though, leaving the house at before 7am and returning at past 11pm makes for a very long day even with most of it being chilling out in the stands watching the game and occasionally trying to capture the good bits.

Picture. We're zoomed in on the big green cricket field from before. In the centre, we see the 3 dark blue stumps of the wicket. To the right is a man in blue with batting pads, gloves and helmet. The bat has gone through a shot. To the left is a man in red and black wearing keeping pads and the gloves. He is clutching the ball in his hands. There is another man in red and black in the foreground looking away from us. — Disappointed batter, happy keeper

That’s me with the normal compact digital camera (Canon Ixus 265, disclosure note : all bits bought by me) with it zoomed in to its optical limit. I have it braced on my knee for the shots. Most of them turned out pretty well and have the action centred although there were a number of junk ones where I moved the camera off target. I need to see what I have, you can’t see much on the mobile phone screen. I was happy with the picture above, it’s from the instant that the keeper held on to a thin edge from the batsman for another wicket.

Last bit for today – I’ve been going through some books lately …

Not sure if I said anything about A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy (Alex White). It’s book 2 of a space opera series set in a universe where magic and technology intermingle. He’s done a cracking job with the two books so far and I’ll go back to the conclusion soon. I’d thoroughly recommend them as something different. First book is A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe.

Read Dune again. Honestly didn’t enjoy that. It feels somewhat dated now. The pacing is mixed, so some parts feel like they stall while he’s world building, some parts with the big story moments feel very rushed. I like the idea of the personal shields … but the interaction with the lasguns feels very wrong to me. (They go boom spectacularly). That felt like a Plot Hammer that just didn’t make sense to me. And those go pretty much all the way through the book.

Dune is a great story … I’d recommend watching any of the movies. Yep. Even the David Lynch one. Especially the SyFy miniseries. And even the new half a movie. They all tell the story in a far more active way than in the rather drawn out book. I’ll go back to books 2 and 3 at some point but I’m expecting another grind. I won’t go further into Dune than that.

Next up was Machine by Elizabeth Bear. A curious book. It has a great mystery in it that’s set up by a space trauma rescue specialising doctor in a space ambulance heading off to check out a historic generation ship that’s mysteriously appeared going too fast in the wrong place. Oh and there’s another modern ship in trouble next to it. The generation ship people are in cryosleep, everything’s abandoned. And our trauma rescue doctor lady is trying to figure out what’s happened. I really enjoyed the mystery unfolding through the book.

What I didn’t enjoy was the “woke” nature running all the way through. The author is very big on right minding and makes it a core theme of the book. I’d very happily live in her world. It’s a great world and I heartily agree with the principles. They’re just laid on very thick, they’re constantly there and it’s just a little too much and I thought it became a distraction. But I was highly enjoying the various AI, human and other species characters Elizabeth Bear creates for the book and as said, it’s a scifi universe I’d love to live in. Compare that to the seductive Starship Troopers, which sucks you in to Yay! Heinlein! until you ask whether you’d want to live in that world. Even without the Bugs, that’s a nope.

Next up is The Last Colony by John Scalzi, it’s book 3 in the Old Man’s War series. Now there’s a universe you’d think twice about living in. It’s very deathy :-D. And I’m enjoying it so far. Scalzi has a fun writing style that keeps me amused.

I think that’s enough for today. I’ll almost certainly develop a few more of these later.

Oh ! Lego happened too.

Seeya ! Be safe, stay well.

Where was I again ?

by Sleepypete

November 3, 2021

9:09 pm

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cricket, games, internet spaceship

Been meaning to post for a bit 🙂 Subjects have been escaping my head though :-D.

I do enjoy talking about the computer games but it does feel sometimes like it’s a one track thing for here and I do like the variation. I haven’t done a music post for a good long while, so that’s due as well. I’ll go on to the cricket world cup, which I’ve been enjoying having on in the background or time delayed for after I close the work laptop down.

Cartoon picture. A T-Rex dinosaur is stretching their little arms towards a big red button on the wall. A sign above says "Push button if you're sick of cartoonists making fun of short T-Rex arms." — Needed thumbnail tribute, randomness selected

Credit to the Roguesymmetry link and signature in the picture. I have been pretty tired lately, although the body is somewhat cooperating. I do have issues sometimes reaching for things with my right arm though. That’s the arm with the weak shoulder, so stretching out the arm can push it beyond a certain limit and then I go ouch. I am really struggling for energy at the moment though.

Internet spaceship has been busy … and surprisingly ok on the arm. Although there are limits there as well. I’ve had a couple of days off the crazy travel mode flying but :

Screen capture picture. We see a map of our solar system, seen from above. Where we live is down in the lower part. A thick white trace shows my travel path over the last 12 months. — Zoom zoom space ship

That’s my Elite travel map over the last 12 months. There’s a lot of light years been travelled, although that includes the more epic round the galaxy to its extreme extents trip that finished around May this year. This one has been a bit more modest, starting out around our area of space down the bottom and sightseeing my way up and left (North Northwest) and around to the top end of the galaxy. Since then, it’s following a set of waypoints back into the Galactic Core and the way back will follow the faint green line on that map which starts off going to the right a bit.

I should get back well in time for a planned rendezvous and meet up with other Elite people on the 18th. And then I’m honestly not sure what will happen with Elite. The Odyssey expansion was such a disappointment. It is still a very pretty game though and I did like wandering around space. Some of the new minigames and mechanics though like the exobiology exploration are just really, really bad though. I’ve seen only minor variations on the new foliage on the atmospheric planets and the stuff you need to do to collect the required information to log them is … No. I’m not sure who in the dev team thought that was a good idea.

Oh as an aside, the thing behind the map there is from the podcast type stream I’m watching/listening to at the moment. It’s Sheepy’s aka TheWanderingInn (Twitch link) regular weekly Bar Brawl where he gets a guest in and talks about Stuff. Often it’s about the role playing shows that he runs and the guest’s part in that. And then they’ll go into the mayhem of an arbitrary Tier List. Chaos usually ensues with the tier list. Today’s guest is the ever wonderful Tashnarr (Twitch link again). They’re a good couple of streamer community people and I really enjoy the Tash streams.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink diamond shaped ship is in the lower centre of screen. The left hand side is dominated by a round space station with a rectangular entrance in the centre. It is lit by a series of red lights. A planet is to the top right. The sky behind is clustered with a busy field of stars. — A home away from home

That’s Explorer’s Anchorage, a quick hop away from Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy. I’m docked up there until resuming the journey back in, which will be at the weekend. (Combination of resting the arms and maxing out the funny internet currency earning that goes towards in game cosmetics).

Oh I’ve also been highly enjoying tearing cars apart and rebuilding them in Car Mechanic Simulator. It’s a satisfying thing. Perhaps I might be coming to the end of the big interest in that but it has been oddly cathartic. Dyson Sphere Programme appeared in the last steam sale as well.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. We're inside a white walled paint shop area. In the centre, a green Jaguar E Type convertible with super sleek classic lines. — Now with Jaguars

Cricket ? World Cup’s been pretty good so far, although there has been a definite pattern appear where the team batting second has been winning a disproportionate number of games. One reason for this is that with the games being played on the transition to night time, heavy dew comes down which affects the ability of the bowlers to grip the ball. This gives an advantage to the team batting first. I don’t think it’s actually changed the results much though, a lot of them have gone with the expected form.

England have been doing remarkably winning 2 very one sided games and then met Sri Lanka raised their game a lot from previous form and were unlucky to come second in that game. It’s mostly been down to just how good England have been all the way through the side. All of the players have been stepping up with great performances and while a few of the sides have been not great in the field, England have been nigh on perfect.

There’s a cricket saying which is “Catches win matches” and it’s massively true. Cricket sides tend to build a momentum, which can get unstoppable. A wicket usually slams a brake on that momentum, so missing that chance for a wicket by dropping an easy catch has a big impact on the game. Like in the Sri Lanka game, where it looked like Sri Lanka would get over the line for the win until England started taking wickets, with the wickets making the momentum of the game swing the other way.

Another one is the attitude that the teams show on the field as well. I used to really enjoy fielding closer in within the ring. It kept me involved in the game. I’d be noisy and constantly encouraging the other players in the team. Clapping a lot, bringing that noise, trying to terrify the batsmen into hesitating with over enthusiastic fielding. That’s really important too as if a side goes quiet, they drift and it allows the batting to build that momentum. I’d get bored when dispatched to the outer areas of the field. I was away from the people I’d be interacting with and generally less involved in the game. It was tough to maintain the focus out there. The huge thing though was what happens when something doesn’t go to plan, like a catch dropped or a bowler losing their focus. You can respond to that either by attacking your own team, or by upping the encouragement again with a “Next time!” or similar. Some of the teams in the World Cup have been going down the attacking the team route. You have to get your own game spot on there if you do that or it just brings down the team.

One of my later seasons saw a bowler come in after a long time off, including surgery. The tiredness was settling in and getting to him. So I walk back with him to his bowling mark, give him a bit of gentle encouragement, slow his walk down a little and give him a “Take your time, you got this”. Kinda like letting him borrow a bit of confidence back again by showing him that his fielding team mate had confidence in him. Took a wicket that over. Good times. That’s one I still remember :-D.

Anyway – England are doing great in the World Cup. It’s been great to see some of the newer sides come in as well. Like Afghanistan, who must terrify the major teams. They have a great side. Oman were wonderful hosts, it was sad that they didn’t win through.

What else to talk about ? Job change next week, looking forward to it.

Back to the Bar Brawl now though. Stay safe, be well, stay warm everyone.

Cricket and the Covid Post

by Sleepypete

February 8, 2021

10:09 pm

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cricket, plague

Hello everyone,

I’ve had thoughts bubbling up in the head for a bit that were threatening to emerge into a post some day. It’s going to be about Covid so conveniently, there’s a bit of cricket before so people who want to filter Covid out can quietly step away …

Picture. A dwagon model is holding up a sign saying "Ready For Cricket!". On the base of the model is "Pray for Sunshine!" The background is Lords cricket ground. The pavilion is in the background and we can see the lush green playing area. It's overcast and threatening rain ... — Gosh that one’s got a lot of flaws in it

One thought that cropped up again while watching the India vs England Test Match was the old adage : “Would you rather bowl 20 overs for 100 taking 5 wickets or bowl 20 overs for 20 taking 1 wicket.” 100 off 20 is expensive but those wickets change the game.

The answer, of course, is “did we win ?” Cricket isn’t an individual game, it’s a team game. There are occasions where that 100 for 5 off 20 would have lost the game because the other team might have only been chasing 150 and the other bowlers couldn’t get wickets or pressure.

One of the cricket memories is when we won by I think 6 runs with about 5 overs left in the game. We only had 3 regular bowlers that day, so the playing conditions meant we had to make up 10 of the 40 overs (max 10 overs each) with part time bowlers. We started my last over with the other team needing that 7 runs to win, with 3 wickets left and the batsman at the other end on 48 not out. The game was petering out into a reasonably comfortable win for them. It didn’t.

We won. I took 3 wickets in 4 balls to finish with 9.4 overs, 24 runs, 6 wickets in the game. However, we wouldn’t have won without Big Dave getting the top 3 batsmen out and the captain and spin bowler creating pressure at his end for no wickets. And there were other games where I didn’t give many runs away (10 overs 19 runs 1 wicket was my most economical) but I saw those games as failures for me because my job was to get people out.

It’s like yeah, I liked taking the wickets. But I liked winning games even more and the best way of stopping people scoring was to get them out and back in the pavilion.

Picture. The Another Monday Dwagon is walking towards the camera, holding his paws out in front as if to show steady, nerveless hands. I've drawn on gloves on his paws, cricket pads on his legs, a cricket bat and a helmet with a grille. Caption "Tail End Dwagon ... Showing not nervous about fast bowler. — Totally not scared of Jofra Archer

Looking forward to another good day of cricket from India tomorrow.

Covid ? I think I had it last year around March / April time, perhaps going into May as well. I might still have some of the effects.

However, I will never know for sure. I don’t know if it’s hypochondria either … I definitely had something up with me around that time. Going through the symptoms everyone knows about :

Cough – Definitely. I had a very serious cough around March / April. It was bad enough that I was having that vision going dark think that happens when you’re coughing for too long. My voice was off as well, with feelings that if I tried to use it too much, more coughing would happen. It was quite some time before I could attempt to sing along to the music again.

Nose being yucky – Oh yes. But it’s only been around that time. Could have been a cold.

Diarrhea – yes. And this is one area where you want to be careful when looking back at symptoms after the event.

Picture. Sitting on top of a cardboard box is a chocolate teacake (a dome of chocolate shell with marshmallow inside). There are green mint chips on top. — Yummy and not the culprit (I think)

Looking at the timeline again, I arrived back in the UK from Canada on Sunday 23 Feb. The car service was the next weekend (Saturday 29 Feb) and I stopped at the Gloucester Services farm shop on the way back. I think the bun I had there was then responsible for me running to and from the loo for the rest of the day. So, an example of memory joining dots that are unconnected.

I was then in work, with an away trip to a contractor sometime around then, until everyone started breaking up. My last day in office was Friday 20 March (I have a pic of a topping up shop run !). I think I had an extended number of meetings with my potential carrier vector person the week before. A few days later, he ended up in hospital with acute pneumonia and it was bad enough that I didn’t know whether or not he’d be coming back to fulfil his temporary contract.

What we never found out was whether that pneumonia was just very serious pneumonia or the more sinister thing. Testing wasn’t a common thing back then.

But anyway, my worst times were in that week or several after we all broke up from work. It could have been burn out, I hadn’t had a break since Xmas and there had been the Canada work trip.

Another timeline marker is actually a game I don’t own ! Mount and Blade II came out on 30 March last year and I’d been watching the Fuzzy and Co multiplayer streams. Or rather, I was attempting to, because half the time I was lying back in the chair trying not to overheat and overstress.

Again, could be a coincidence because my brand of hayfever sensitivity kicks off around that time of year as well. I can’t remember it ever being that bad though. Attempting to vacuum the house would lead to perhaps a couple of minutes of exerting and then I’d need to lie down in the chair and cool off.

So that’s symptoms including : difficulty breathing, extended coughing, overheating and since then, extreme tiredness. I think I also had the brain fog affecting me through April and May. This happened last year :

Picture. A Lego Porsche racing car in white, with a red feature at the front and a black bumper. The red 4D fuzzy dwagon is looking at it from behind and a Pocket Dwagon is leaning towards the driver door. — Shiny

It was a real effort to put that together. I’d intended to write a “Sleepy’s going racing !” April Fools post but I didn’t know if I’d be able to finish the model in time. What would previously have been easy, became a real effort to push through. I was also having difficulty framing the thoughts that go behind posts like that. Oh and with the plague situation erupting, I didn’t think it was appropriate to do an April Fools post that year.

I think that mental side is part of it as well. This time last year, Covid was just coming on the scene. We didn’t know what it was, we didn’t understand it, there was no testing for it, we didn’t know what palliative care was appropriate to help people through the worst of it. We thought it could end the world. Or at least, I did cos I can be a pessimist like that.

Is there any more to tell ? Can’t remember that much of it. It took several months for my voice to recover. I didn’t get the altered sense of taste or smell. I could deal with higher summer temperatures ok. I’m still pretty tired, although the controls I’ve built up over the years usually help me counter tiredness until it builds up too much and I burn out.

Those memories do mean I take absolutely no chances with Covid, with my best means of defense against it being a very simple : Don’t People. I do miss people a lot … but I may also have passed on what I had in March last year to others. That’s the thing with this, the asymptomatic people don’t know they have it so they don’t take the precautions that could protect others. I even developed a habit where if I was talking to someone, I’d point my mouth away from them so I wasn’t breathing on them.

I think that’s my tale done. The conclusion is :

What do you think ? Do you think I had covid last year ? Or could it have been something different. Without any testing on the person who was my potential vector of infection, I’ll never know.

Stay safe everyone, be well and …

Picture. 4D the fuzzy red dwagon is sitting on a chair, wearing a mask with sailboats on. In front of him is a second mask with various cricket related pictures on it. — Masks are good

Masks save lives.