Boats, Worry, Wind, Break, Monster

Hello everyone,

I’ve been a bit quiet – it’s a worrying time at the moment. I’ve been on a break from work this week, I usually struggle to go straight through from Xmas to Easter without a little time off and this week felt convenient. Especially with a boat show on at the NEC last weekend. I figured I could go on the Friday …

Picture. We're looking at a rain soaked tarmac path going directly ahead of us. Either side is a drenched grassy area with occasional trees.
Bit nautical …

However … Worry part 1 was the big storms that happened last weekend. I’d originally planned to go to see boats on the Friday and I’d have been travelling at Peak Storm Time. So I chose life and went on Saturday instead. It was a good day out. I didn’t see much damage from wind to be honest, although the worst of it was to the South West of where I am and I was heading North. One of the Severn Bridge crossings was closed again though and I suspect that Avonmouth Bridge would have been pretty nasty too. I left the motorway early again on the way back, the last little bit is pretty exposed and can catch the wind. Boats ?

Picture. We're looking at a black and dark blue barge from its left hand side. There is a queue of people waiting to go on there. The entrance is at the back, with a set of stairs going up to a canvas roof.
It’s a big one

It’s a big one isn’t it ? That’s a widebeam barge, I think it was a 72ft boat. Note the flat bottom. This one is a river cruising widebeam barge suitable for living on. The inside looked nice but to be honest, I really dislike that colour combination. I had a walk through a narrowbeam barge as well, it was really cramped.

Picture. We're looking into a narrowbeam barge. There is red painted wood forming the door and roof above. The wood inside is pale pine type wood. Inside the boat there is a cooker to the left and a sink to the right. Two people give a sense of scale. The gap between the two worktops is about the size of one person.
A tight fit ?

I don’t think I could live on that. It was very cramped. There are narrower barges than others though. That seemed extraordinarily tight … Of the two though, I liked the colour of the narrowbeam with the red setting off its green pretty well. I didn’t like the colour of the dark blue one. That didn’t work for me. What colour would I want on a barge ? I think a green shade with wooden trim. That would work well. There’s something about a rich well varnished shiny wood finish. White is a good colour for them as well but I’d be wary about how grimy those would get.

Picture. We're looking at a small wooden motorboat on top of a stand. It has a small cuddly bear in the pilot area. He's wearing goggles and a flying hat.
Bear ! On a boat !

I hope he packed his essentials.

It was good heading out to see the boats. A decent amount to see, although I’d exhausted it fairly quickly (About 3/4 of a Hall of the NEC) and the homing signal was kicking in again to get me away from that amount of People.

The wind came back on the Sunday and I think it may actually have been worse than on the Friday. I spent most of my Friday afternoon being another person watching the Big Jet TV guy. That was good. And scary at the same time as the wind was demonstrating its power over our feeble constructions that we send into the skies. It reminded me of what was happening when I was coming back from Canada, where I think my plane had to do a crabbed landing. There was definite sense of the plane having to do that reorientation to straight as it landed.

I could actually try flying planes again … I’ve signed up for Game Pass. Mostly for Forza Horizon 5 …

Game screenshot. Forza Horizon 5. We're looking down a road that's gently curving to the left. Our car is a silver sports car, there is a black sports car a little up the road. One the right is a desert type landscape dotted heavily with greenery. A huge dust storm threatens at the horizon.
Do you feel the need for speed ?

Well. Maybe not Need For Speed, although I did enjoy playing Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit in its 1998 incarnation. That was a very fun arcade driving game. It was early days in Forza H 5 for me but it was gratifying when it suggested Extreme (pretty) graphics settings for me and great when the system had good frame rates with that. I should go back to it. I’m playing on a cheap controller which might actually hit that “cheap is more expensive” thing because I’m either going to take it apart to modify or replace it already with something better.

How come ? It’s a console style controller with the analogue sticks, with the value of 100% coming at maybe 50% of travel. That’s making the driving particularly difficult. Forza was well behaved but the Automation cars weren’t … Talking of that,

Game screenshot. BeamNG Drive. We're looking at a monster truck parked on top of a slightly banked concrete area. It's green with big black wheels. The front grille is triangles facing each other like teeth. It has two spotlights in front of the cab like eyes and red triangles attempting to look like spines.
Gets you anywhere, if you can climb in

Conedodger’s Automation build off challenge this week was Monster Trucks. It was the first I’ve joined in on and that truck above is the result of 11 hours in Automation and about 3 hours in BeamNG.Drive. (Automation is an early access game that lets you build custom cars, BeamNG Drive imports what you make and lets you drive them in a full physics simulation). People seemed to like what I’d put together and Mr Cone seemed to enjoy driving it round the Monster Truck arena built to test them all out. Not the best, not the worst. Happy with how it came out. It drove well around the test track above but it (and the other trucks) tended to explode when landing on jumps. It made for a hilarious stream. And then there’s Truckball (twitch clip link)

I think I need to hit post now though (and my shoulder is approaching pain point). I do intend to post more often. Bit worried about the world at the moment and it’s affecting the want to share anything at the moment.

One thing I have noticed though – since changing job my mental state seems to be recovering to the point where the daft creative ideas are coming out again. Which is really good. I’m looking forwards to being more involved again going forwards. But enough about work :-D. I’d like to get back to the drawing again. It was good creating a couple of memes for the Tashnarr/Sheepy 40k layers miniature painting show which had a special episode with KatiePetersPlays on Friday. People seemed to love them but I think it used up all my brain wanted to give on Friday. (Not posting them here, ask if wanting to see them)

Time to hit post. Stay safe everyone, be well, hopefully the world sorts itself out soon.

Browser, Moon, Horizon, Film

Hello everyone,

Missed posting again ! I must post more regularly again. At least I’m able to post on the main browser again. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first … Been checking out a sale acquired game. It’s pretty.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Our heroine is standing on a hill, looking towards the lower left. Behind her is a fog filled valley with a scattering of thin, tall trees plus a couple of wooden tower buildings. In the background, there are mountains. Our character Aloy, is in the foreground. She has braided ginger hair and is an athletic built lady wearing light leather garb and boots.
Hey ! Horizon’s over there

The game is Horizon Zero Dawn and while it came out on console in 2017, it came to PC in 2020. It’s pretty demanding on the graphics too, so I had my eye on it partly from acquiring something super pretty to see what the graphics card could do but also because it’s got a renowned story. It’s one of the best games of its type in the 2010s. The graphics do help there but graphics aren’t everything. Where it really scores is the story, the world they’ve built and how that fits into the story and just how everything in the game works. I’m in the early days so far but something I was really enjoying was even just how the foliage reacts to your presence.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. We're looking out towards a grassy area sloping up to the left. On the left, there are a series of light orange coloured rocks. We can just see Aloy's head lurking in a patch of long grass with red leaves, at the bottom of the shot. In the distance are the tall thin trees and we can see a two legged mechanical beastie a little way down the road.
The Whistle Bush Awaits

So without giving too much away, we’re in an environment that feels a lot like Earth but there are no buildings or signs of our current civilisation. At least that we can see on the surface. Our heroine, Aloy, starts off as a child in the care of a fellow called Rost. They’re both outcasts for (redacted story reasons) and the child phase gives a chance for the game to pass on a few of its gameplay systems. There’s one there up on screen, where there are a series of faint purple triangles that show where the robot’s going to go.

Yep. Game has robots. They start small, resembling predator animals but they’ll get a tad bigger too as the game goes on.

I’m not too far in to the game, I’m barely past the prologue. But I have been taken by what they’ve built here. The terrain feels crafted, in a way that procedural generation cannot do. Even Skyrim, which is a crafted world too, shows signs where they’ve been needing to cheat with terrain textures that repeat in a pattern you can easily see. I haven’t seen that so much in Horizon Zero Dawn, it feels very real. Oh and that foliage will move with you as you pass through it. It’s a stealth action game, so hiding in those red leafed bushes can let you entice over an unsuspecting enemy or mechanical beastie so you can quietly stab them with the big spear.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy sits with back to camera at the bottom left. On the right is a platform made of wooden logs tied together. There are three slim ladies in assorted tan leather garb standing on the platform. One is arching her self backwards with both hands in the air. The platform is in front of a building built from more wooden logs.
Party time !

I was really enjoying this little celebration, with the three ladies on the stage there singing away in something traditional. These are the Nora and they call their warriors Braves, so you can probably guess that the world borrows a lot from Native American culture. And I was loving it in the bits of the game I’ve gotten to so far. The animation of the world is top notch. From the foliage, to the people having a little dance, to the main character reacting to your inputs.

I should say though that I’m running this gorgeous game on a Ryzen 5 3600 machine with 32GB and through a 3060Ti graphics card. That’s Meltdown and it’s turned into a machine that can handle everything it gets given now. It’s a pretty powerful machine, especially in these days of not being able to get hardware due to the shortages that are going on. I was very lucky to get the 3060Ti card when I did, it was literally an offer available for 10 minutes before they were all gone.

Other stuff ? I was actually in work again a couple of times … Once was to rescue the stuff from the locker. The second was to meet the team I’ve been in for a few months now. They’re a good bunch. As per tradition for here, I’m not going to be mentioning the work too much though.

Browser – I’m typing this on a new browser, having had to change because the Waterfox classic was getting too annoying and limited. So I’m on the better Waterfox now that is actually supported. It got to the point where Classic wasn’t allowing me to edit here, didn’t support Netflix, was critically slow in Twitter … etc.

Thursday’s work at work day also gave the excuse to head over to the Mall after, so of course cd’s happened. They’re : Morcheeba’s Blackest Blue, Taylor Swift’s Folklore and a double concert cd from Jean-Michel Jarre.

I’ve also picked up albums from Metric, check out Gold Guns Girls. They got Energy. I’m way overdue a music post so that’s going to happen at some point too. Need to get the Ting Tings latest too, I’m missing an album that they only released on a limited circulation for some reason. The Ting Tings have Energy too.

Game screenshot. Horizon Zero Dawn. It's dark and we're looking up at the sky from boot level on our heroine, Aloy. She's looking off to the right of shot. We can see the top of a broad branched tree to the left. Left half of the sky is cloudy, with a full moon. Right side is clear and we can see the stars. Everything is a tint of green.
Horizon Zero Moon ?

Yep. Game is pretty. I watched another film on Friday at my favoured (empty) local cinema. It was Moonfall. What can I say about Moonfall ? The visuals are done incredibly well. As in, stunning, epic cinematography. The story though … oh dear. Ouch. It’s so bad, it’s actually pretty bad.

The premise is that people on Earth have suddenly discovered that the Moon is dropping out of orbit, with dire consequences for everyone on Earth. There’s not much science in its fiction, which is most of the problem with the movie. There’s a lot of set pieces stitched together with the barest minimum of science to back them up.

I still somewhat enjoyed watching it … but the story is mockbuster quality with top standard visual effects.

One comment on it though – it’s got me wondering about doing a re-read of David Weber’s Dahak series of books. It felt like one of the core premises of Moonfall may have been inspired by what goes on in Mutineer’s Moon and the Armageddon Inheritance in that the Moon may not actually be a big ball of rock …

Anyone else feel like time is zipping along at the moment ? Like you realise that several days have whooshed by without you really registering them ? I have that. I think that’s one contributor to me not posting so much here lately. I need to get some build pics transferring from the phone camera into the PCs so I can post those. Oh and music posts, I’ve still been steadily picking up new stuff.

I think that’s it for me now though. 2 streams on, music on and Olympics to enjoy at some point. And more reading, I’ve been away from the Expanse finale for a little while now.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

New Year’s Here

Hello everyone,

It’s been a good break … Back to work tomorrow but it’s been a good time away. I have to admit, I haven’t been getting out much outside of visiting family. There’s been a lot of indoor time happening. I’ll talk more about what that’s been in a bit. (I’m ok, just avoiding the outside world !)

So, what’s been happening … Thumbnail first.

Photo. We see the heads of two dogs (the rest is hidden behind them). One dog is white haired with ears pricked behind her head, the other dog is golden haired with a whitening muzzle. His ears are resting downwards.
Hello, We Are The Bacon Sandwich Inspection Patrol

That’s Icey and Murph again, being very attentive. Yep, was off to the mum’s and sister’s places this holiday. Mum’s first, then sister’s place for Xmas day. I last saw my mum last Xmas as part of the support bubbles we were allowed to have. This year is rather more open (I’ll rant on that in a bit). It was a good little visit. I hadn’t seen the sister, the dogs or the D boys for a couple of years now. Xmas 2020 even. Murph is still the sweetie that he’s always been, perhaps a little too slurpy still :-D. That’s not a bad thing in a dog. I do seem to get a lot of attention from them both. I wonder why that is.

Icey’s improved a hell of a lot. They’ve done a lot of good work helping her be more relaxed around people she doesn’t encounter much, even accepting (and maybe encouraging) random pats. She’s actually more accepting of some of those than Ben the Staffy was. Ben was a little ball of love but he’d shy away and leg it if you tried to reach over his head to give him scritches. Almost as if he thought you were going to poke him in the eye. Icey was fine with that.

Oh and there was very definitely an ulterior motive behind the attention in the picture above …

Photo. Murph the golden lab dog is sitting and giving paw to my mum who is just out of shot to the right. Icey is sitting in the doorway looking away from us into the kitchen. In the foreground, the real subject of Murph's attention ... a bacon sandwich.
If I is Good Boi Can I Haz Bacon ?

Yep. It was breakfast time. They did get a little bit of that sandwich. A definite case of inhalation and the bacon not touching the sides. We haven’t been doing presents for a few years now but I did take something away with me :

Photo. Our red fluffy dragon is mostly in shot to the right. To the left, a flat pack consisting of wooden sheets. We can see the front page, which is mostly green with a wooden owl model printed on it.
Owl Be Assembling That Later

I’ve got a couple of model assembly posts to bring you all now. I’ve been slipping on that. The owl came together fairly well and is now inhabiting a perch on top of my book cases. May need to acquire some wood glue though.

Yep. Good trip away, actually one of the first times I’ve had a chance to play properly with the latest car too. It is rather too big, but that doesn’t get in the way of it being a nicely handling car outside of where the road surface is a bit broken up. That confuses the traction control and other driver aids built in.

I’ll get something different next time though. I haven’t been enjoying manoeuvring such a big car around car parks and it would be good to get back to hatchbacks instead of the booted saloons. Trouble is, Lexus aren’t currently making a suitable car available in the UK. The IS and CT’s have both been discontinued and they’ve pinned their banner to SUVs. I’m not interested in owning an SUV. (Although the NX that the sister has is a perfect fit for their different requirements).

It is curious looking back into that world, where I know very little about the cars available on the market. Toyota’s 2 litre Corolla hybrid looks absolutely ideal, with enough speed and practicality. I’ll have to take a peek next time I’m around one of their garages. (Service due around March). I would like to know what else is out there though. I have been enjoying driving the hybrids and the effortless nature of their electric drive. It makes for pretty impressive acceleration too when you ask it to go fast in an overtaking move.

Been thinking about getting back into the racing games too, although I haven’t pressed the button on buying one yet. The closest I have is American Truck Simulator (courtesy of Humble Bundle a while ago). I acquired a controller not long ago, with one of the things putting me off trying the racing games being the set up needed to get my racing wheel back in commission again. (Heavy desk clearance). Thinking about that though, I need to do some desk clearance anyway because a combination of a high monitor and a chair that (needs replacing) is too low is leading to neck ache.

Things I’ve been playing on the time off :

Idle Champions – a bit too much of this. It’s an idler game, where you set up the adventuring party and they’ll battle against increasing waves of enemies. There’s a bit of story in there too, which is usually amusing. Oh and there’s a little group of us on EnterElysium’s discord server who have gotten each other addicted to the game.

Motorsport Manager – it’s gotten interesting again because I accepted the promotion for the team and getting good results has become a challenge instead of a Press Fast Forward Until Win. I wonder how long it will be until the team is the front runner again and the long running challenge of winning all three racing types comes to a finish.

Solasta – is a computer role playing game based on the 5th edition D&D rules set.

Game screenshot. Solasta. We're in a wooded landscape with our heroes standing on copper coloured rock. From left to right we have a dark skinned pointy eared fellow in scale mail. Then a lady wizard in a white top and long dark blue skirt. Then it's a light skinned lady in half plate mail with light green cloth cape covering. On the right is a short dark skinned rogueish looking fellow.
Heroes, fresh out of the wrapper

That’s the group I’ve restarted the game with. From left to right, we have ranger, wizard, cleric and rogue. It’s a decent mix, although it’s curious seeing some of the restrictions come in to play. The cleric has the biggest restriction. She’s supposed to be up front taking the hits … but has a choice between using a shield and being able to cast spells. She can’t do both. The ranger can poke things with swords or shoot from range with a bow. The wizard stands back and casts spells at everything and the halfling rogue is there to do damage where he can and to pick all of the locks and defuse all of the traps. It’s been a curious start to the game, I’ll have to look into the campaign some more. That said, the first attempt was a false start because I put a druid in there instead of the ranger and it felt like he wasn’t achieving very much.

Trans Road USA had my attention day – this is a company game, where you’re running a haulage company. The aim is to build a firm of truckers spanning the USA. Could be a good one to relax to, although I am nursing a sore neck now after losing some time to it today.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided – I do enjoy these games and the world they’re set in. Especially meeting Entity again. This run has reached Prague 2, where the sun has set into the night time period. I’ll pick up the last remaining main game achievement in this run, although I’ll make a save before because that achievement is incompatible with my preferred ending where you save everyone.

A little Plague Inc has happened too … it’s a curious catharsis that game and very easy to play.

Talking of plague …. the reason I haven’t been out at all (1 shopping run and alarm clock buy – lost mine) is plague … I’m in the thought space now of if I don’t have to be out and about amongst all of the new cases that are happening, I’ll stay in. It’s an incredible number of cases at the moment in the UK, yet no restrictions on movement have been announced. What I would like to have done is to do a run over to Cardiff (getting closer to remote control car acquisition) for Lego shop, sweet shop, book cave and general wander. There’s a couple of interesting films out there at the moment too. The quiet Showcase is still quiet and worth a shot. Maybe Friday, pending work :-D.

Yeah, too much going on out there in the world at the moment. I need to get a couple of small dents in the car looked at too.

But for now, Fuzzy’s streaming, I’ve posted enough and I’m going to head back into reading more of Leviathan Falls. That’s the 9th book in The Expanse series. I was worried before starting about whether they’d be able to wrap it all up neatly but their traditional prologue start kicked it all off in the right direction. Looking forward to finishing it in the next week.

That’s it for now though. It was a good break, lots of time off. Visiting great people, indulging in steam sales acquisitions … Like Beam.NG Drive, which takes cars from the game Automation and makes them driveable.

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you do need to be out and about among People, be wiser than our politicians are being at the moment …

Happy Holiday Everyone !

Hi there,

It’s been a while again. I usually aim for a target of 100 posts a year and the advent posts of recent years have vastly helped out with that goal. It’s been another rough seeming year though and I think I’ve been heavily burnt out by what’s happening in the outside world and also what’s been happening at work over this past year.

I’ve been able to change the work thing but the outside world situation isn’t going away any time soon, mostly due to People. It would be good to get outside in the world again, amongst friends and to do things that have been held off on for far too long. But with things occurring like Omicron, I really don’t know who to trust. I certainly don’t trust the people who have started knocking on the door asking for money for services, without a mask on. They’re going round the neighbourhood doing that, talking to all the people, in proximity, how do they know that they haven’t picked up the latest nasty ?

Nope. If they can’t offer that small show, then it’s an automatic sending away. But that’s me getting into ranting again … I had deliveries yesterday and the other day … Today it was :

Picture. My Pocket Dragon with "Feed Me" on an apron is standing next to a sackcloth style white bag with a drawstring top. The bag has the words "Naked Marshmallow Co. Sack of Coal. Cookies and Cream Marshmallow. On The Naughty List."
Naughty and nice ?

Inside there are cookies and cream marshmallows, with a special black as coal coating. I haven’t opened the sealed bag that they’re in yet (more marshmallows arrived and I’m in the salted caramel ones) but I can report fluffiness inside the bag and they don’t photograph well against that black chair.

They’ve closed their doors for a Xmas break now but I’d highly recommend Naked Marshmallow Co (not sponsored). They make tasty things, they also have a toasty thingy which is something that would give health and safety people a nightmare or two. The other delivery is for something that is around my age …

Picture. A pocket dragon is standing in front of a large orange hard back book with a white header. It's titled "Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual."
Life on Mars ?

This was one of those random things I saw advertised and I was a huge fan of the setting that the series Space 1999 was in, I couldn’t resist this one. (Setting was incredible, the scripts were awful). This is an extensive technical manual with descriptions of the moon base, the ships, the technology, the people. I’m 74 pages in, which is most of the bit about the base and I’ve been loving that so far. Next section is about the ships. It’s from the Gerry Anderson store … but I’m not going to provide a link there because their marketing emails are a bit too incessant.

There was also an event a couple of weeks ago now …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A motley selection of spaceships (I think there's just over 40) of all sizes and colours can be seen. We're looking at the fleet from the front. Over to the right is a blazing orange sun.
Assemble the Fleet !

That was the Drew Wagar farewell to Elite event and it could well be the last time a lot of those pilots appear in the game. I might not go back in either (having bought X4 and wanting to check that one out). It’s not so much a matter of being mad about what they’ve done to the game, it’s more like severe disappointment.

We’re all looking for a great space game … but what they did in April was to give us a really poor first person shooter style thing tacked on to the space stuff. They broke some of the space stuff along the way, the big thing for me was them breaking the lighting and to some extent, the different possibilities we had for finding varied and interesting places to land in. Places seemed all the same after the expansion, with the light either being washed out white or just invisible in black. But the worst aspect is that screenshot above needed to be done in the old version of the game, the expansion still hasn’t been rolled out to consoles and the player base is split between those who log in to the Odyssey expansion not being able to instance and fly together with the pilots who are still on what’s now the base game.

So all in all, the experience became a bit meh and it came time to look to different things. Like setting up an interstellar pizza delivery service in X4. You can’t do that in Elite, even with a fleet that reached 47 ships, I can only control or use one at a time. Whatever you do in the game just doesn’t matter. In Eve, you can set up a spaceship manufacturing base … indeed most of the Eve ships are player built. Player interaction matters. In Elite, it just spawns it in when you buy or deletes it when you sell. Doesn’t feel right. In X4, you can hire pilots who then use your ships to mine, trade, escort or other things.

I do need to be a bit better physically though before really diving in to X4. I remember having issues last year as well, where I had an extended time away from Elite again. Currently it’s build up of damage in my shoulder, which has got fairly sure. The Idle Champions game hasn’t helped there …

Game screenshot. Idle Champions. The main part of the screen is a hallway. A total of 10 people are on the left, with a single creature and a few piles of gold on the right. At the bottom, we see 10 portraits for the characters and on top the headers are for damage and gold totals, with top right showing where we are.
Festively idle ?

Idle Champions is an idling game … where you have the game going in a window and it pretty much does its own thing while you’re doing other things. So it’s been active for a considerable amount of time since I went back into it last week. The longer it’s active, the more monsters are mown down by your people and all of the monsters drop gold. The gold goes to upgrades for your characters. The characters have a variety of equipment as well which helps in various ways. My latest character is Shandie, in a festive outfit in the centre of the formation. She’s all about speeding up the game so you get to the objectives quicker.

The game is built up around stories which have chapters of 50 areas at a time and when you’ve completed a chapter, you can go through again in free play or a number of variants which add conditions like faster monsters, less champions or randomised events. It’s curious for me due to the theorycrafting that goes into where everyone is in the formations you select plus I want to see the stories. Oh and when the chapter of 50 areas is complete, the characters go back to the start and do it again with monsters that are harder to mow down. When you hit the “complete” button and reset, the gold earned goes towards a Favour score, with that determining how fast you get gold in the next runs.

It’s a curious and odd game. It’s also free, although you can buy power by spending money on crates with them. You could get the same items by playing the game for a (very very) long time too. Anyway, the theorycrafting aspect has drawn me in again. The formation above is a bit of a mess but there’s a lot of room for picking different champions that work with each other for synergies.

Anyway, been in that one a bit too much over the last week.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're in the city, with buildings to the right and building over an arch in the background. A tree with protective concrete bollards is to the left. A police car with lights flashing it to the right. Two more trees with orange leaves are in the background. A police van is under the archway.
Just another day in Future Prague

I started up another Deus Ex Mankind Divided run, just before the Idle Champions addiction hit again. It’s a good game, it would be great to see a third title with the protagonist Adam Jensen. It feels like they left it with a bit of unfinished business that could do with closing out.

I think that’s it for me for tonight though. Have a great winter break everyone, hopefully you get to see people, stay well, have lots of food, relax and come back in the new year stronger and happier.

Stay safe, be well.

PS Addon – had my booster jab. Hurrah ! It took a couple of days for a headache to go away afterwards but that could have been headaches I’ve been having anyway (don’t think my two pairs of glasses are fully aligned). Get your booster if you can !

Where was I again ?

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.

Back to the car gang

Hello everyone,

I may have gotten slightly addicted to a game. Yep. Another game.

Picture. A black Sausage dog is sitting by a car being worked on by a mechanic. The dog is wearing a jacket with various spanners in pockets. The caption is "Mechanic: I can get you back on the road but it's gonna cost you some chicken nuggos sir"
Will work for noms

The latest curiosity is Car Mechanic Simulator 2021. It’s the latest in a series of games where you take a car, light truck or van in various states of repair and your job is to fix them up to an acceptable state. That is, acceptable to the customer … You know car repairs … you don’t get a car back that’s absolutely perfect, that would cost a lot of money. Especially if there’s like 20,000 miles left on the cambelt or the tyres. They can wait for the next service.

I digress :-D. The idea is to take something like this :

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're looking at a stripped chassis of a car. There's literally no components left on. The basic shell is that of a powerful convertible.
Erm, may have to order in a few parts for this one

That’s after I got it home and stripped everything off the car to see what could be salvaged. Because, even the junkyard parts can be repaired sometimes. And then you put it back together and resurrect it into something like :

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're looking at the same car as before but it is now complete. It's a stunning looking convertible, sitting in a spray painting room. The colour is a metallic purple, with a black stripe down the centre.
Yep. I chose that colour willingly

That’s after completing the rebuild and renovation and perhaps even popping in a little upgrade too with that supercharger popping out of the hood. Looks nice, they did a good one with the graphics. It continues under the skin too although you start seeing the short cuts that turn it from something annoying and into a playable, addictive game.

And by that, I mean commonality of parts. The suspension and engine parts on the car above are the same as in the rest of the cars. Mostly. There’s a little bit of variation in layout but a front spring for the sports car is the same as the spring that goes into the McPherson struts for a Fiesta type car. There are just 3 types of alternator and only 1 type of battery. I’m very ok with that kind of simplification, it’s a huge difference from what a real car mechanic will have to cope with but the simplification makes for a better game. In my opinion :-D.

And there’s some lovely variation in the cars that go into the shop too.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. An old design pick up truck is sitting in front of garage doors. It looks like the suspension is lowered and it has a winch crane arm on the back. The truck is painted in metallic green.
There are many like it but this is mine

Have truck, will travel etc. Every garage needs a shop truck, so this is the first of the rebuilt cars that I kept. I’ll keep the next one too when it’s complete. A game like this tends to go for lookalike type cars due to licensing issues, unless they can cover that through paid DLC. I’ll be looking for the old classic Jaguar E-Type to put in the collection. The current project car is a Ferrari which is in there courtesy of a mod.

That’s one weird thing. With the mods and the gamification, you can find the Ferraris and the McLaren F1’s in the junkyard or barn, waiting to be found and done up. I have been enjoying it though and it’s got me caught enough to keep going back in for more cars to fix. While the variation is limited, it does show you things around getting to the parts to be taken apart and the components needed for the cars to go. Like not forgetting to put the wheel bearings in and that you need to take the caps off the bottom of the pistons before taking the pistons out.

Found this too …

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're in a junkyard looking at piles of derelict, rusting cars. In front of us, there is a vague promise of a wedge shaped sporty looking car.
It’s been a while since this has done 88mph

Anyone recognise what that is yet ? It’s from another mod and I had to take it home with me.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're looking at the underneath back end of the car, raised up in the garage on the lifters. We're seeing an engine at the back, with drive gear, suspension and brake parts on the right.
All shiny new bits

Steadily coming together here. This one has the engine in the back, just like the real version of the car which was only made for a couple of years. I’ve seen two of them in the wild over the last 35 years so that’s actually, more common than Ferraris or Rolls Royces.

Ok, here’s the end result with a few special modifications.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're outside the garage, looking at a DeLorean. It's an 80s wedge shaped two seat sports car, in the metallic silvery livery, with a few curious objects on the bonnet and trunk.
Set the time controls Doc

Looking shiny. This one is a DeLorean from a mod as well, with the mod including some very special modifications from a classic movie.

Game screenshot. Car Mechanic Simulator. We're looking at the inside of the Delorean. It's normal at the driver's position but on the centre console is a display with 3 sets of dates and time on it.
Bring back the future lottery numbers please

Yep. I was having fun putting this one back together.

Apart from that, I’ve been enjoying watching the cricket T20 world cup games so far. There’s been some good games and a couple of teams have been surprised already. The saying in cricket is “you are only as good as your last game”. I think more than a few players forget that and turn up with their self proclaimed legend status and assume they’ll have another great game. And then they meet a team working hard to stay at their highest level and get murdered. We saw that with West Indies vs England the other day where it was a rather one sided game. Hopefully West Indies will pick up their game against the other teams. I’m firmly on the Support England side with cricket but I do like to see good games, like the India vs Pakistan game where Pakistan broke a jinx by turning over a record where they’d always lost to India in world cups.

I think it’s time for me to hit post now though and stop typing. My shoulder wasn’t happy with me yesterday or today (too much car poking ?) and it’s really reminding me about that at the moment. Possibly down to also doing piloting earlier. I’m at the opposite end of the galaxy now …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink and white checkered ship is flying towards the right side of shot. Beyond, is a large vessel with glowing green engines. We'll be headed for the landing platforms on her top side.
Tower request permission to land

I’m at Beagle Point at the moment, which is on the far side of the galaxy. One thought is to try and get home for a player driven event on the 18th of November. I might have to use my second account as an imposter, this one is courtesy of a freebie week on the Epic store and I’ve never used the account.

One last picture though …

Picture. A black and white cat is on a car, with its paw leaning into the engine bay. The caption is split in two "No, duct tape won't fix this." and "Fetch me some bubble gum and a stapler." At the top "We need this type of mechanic".
Cat Mechanic knows best

Both the meme pics from today were raided from a site with “interest” in its name, so who knows there with copyright ! Although that last one retained its tag.

That’s it for me for now – have fun everyone. Stay safe, be well.

Time off, Time out

Hello everyone,

I’ve been in the downtime phase again. I usually look to grab a week off around October, it’s good to have that little bit of downtime before heading into the Xmas things. One thing I’ve noticed this time around, I think the nighttimes drawing in has affected me more this year, although you wouldn’t know that from some of the bed times that have happened this week :-D.

What’s been happening ? I saw a friend on Friday evening, we met up for board games. It was a fun evening and good to be out and about like that again. That’s a curious thing here in the UK at the moment though. The plague stuff hasn’t gone away. People are just ignoring it. At least that’s the feeling in England anyway. Scotland was a bit more aware and militant about it in the eateries I was in while I was up there. Wales is somewhere in the middle.

Picture. A small castle on a mound is in the centre of shot. A curtain wall can be seen to the right in the distance and the foreground is a mix of stone, paved and grass. Occasional people dot the scene.
Castle !

Yep. Been the Cardiff again. It’s a good city centre but it can be a bit of a pain to get in and out of, mostly due to the roads just before the trunk road start. But … it has :

Antics model shop.

Wally’s Delicatessen.

Troutmark Books

Lego Shop.

Yep. Lots of good things there. I would like to find some music shops to browse in for when I’m there. There’s a decent sized HMV but it’s in a separate area of the city to the St David’s (Dewi Saint) area where I park up and there’s a question between the time taken to walk over there and getting away early enough to beat the worst of the traffic.

I didn’t acquire anything from the Lego shop this time (Ice Penguin was tempting) but there was loot from the other places.

Picture. 4 bags of sweets, the book Lost World by Michael Cricton and a flat pack wooden kit dragon are lying on a black sheet.
Loot ! And dust !

Yep. Is dusty. I’ll be enjoying the bonbons, fudge and sherbets later. And that is an actual kit wooden dragon. I haven’t started it yet, got a space shuttle to finish first.

It was a good little loot haul yesterday, although I have to admit I was looking for Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. My copy has gone somewhere and I’d like to read that one again. I’ve commented before about how that author tends to not really know how to finish off a story and that’s the case here with the Mars trilogy. They start great, with KSR’s always wonderful world building continuing through the next books … but the story fizzles out along the way. Red Mars is a good one though and I liked Nadia’s story.

The book I’m in at the moment is The Recollection by Gareth L. Powell. Great local author, check him out. His Embers of War trilogy is fantastic and Silversands was pretty good as well. I suspect I’ll end up collecting his various books. The Recollection is set across a whole heap of time zones and it has a good little twist on what we usually take as read from travel across the stars. Without diving too deep into spoiler space, the hyperspace engines that jump the ships across the stars can’t beat light speed. The people inside will zap across in a subjective instant for them but in reality, it’s taken 7 years to jump 7 light years.

And as per usual, he’s dropped some rather interesting characters and situations into that mix as well. Looking forwards to diving through it.

The last book was Network Effect by Martha Wells, 5th in the Murderbot series and another series I’d recommend heavily. I need to read Jurassic Park actually. It was bought at Troutmark Books again, same as the sequel. I just haven’t got round to giving it a read yet.

There has been a lot of gaming happening this week as well.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're on a dusty moon. Our pilot in her white flightsuit is to the left, pointing a device at some purple and cream stalks growing out of the ground. The purple buggy is off to the right and we can see half of the ship further right. A dim planet can be seen to the left.
Odd looking trees

Apparently I haven’t been in Elite since the 5th. It’s struggling for me as a game. The Odyssey expansion was a disaster in terms of performance in the game combined with a lot of promises that just fell incredibly flat. People are now wondering if Elite has a future as a game past the next couple of years. It’s a multiplayer online game that currently has the player base fractured between Odyssey gaming and Horizon gaming (new expansion, previous expansion). The multiplayer was borderline whether it worked before the latest expansion, with trouble getting into the same instance as other players. The big issue there is that the servers are over at Frontier’s place and when the game becomes uneconomic to run, they’ll turn off the servers. So Elite probably has a limited life span at this point.

Oh and there’s a small matter of it causing me arm issues when I play it for too long as well.

Outside of the internet spaceships, there’s been Humankind. That’s a pretty new civilisation type game, although one difference it has it that you’re supposed to change the civilisation you play as you progress through the eras. So, start as the Egyptians, progress through being the Celts and end up as the Italians. Each civilisation has their own special units and buildings. It’s an interesting take on the game system and I’ve been enjoying learning what it’s got.

An older one that I still enjoy is Motorsport Manager.

Game screenshot. Motorsport Manager. It's the end of a race. We see the finishing straight with one of our cars. Status displays are bottom left and bottom right. Other displays are at the top. The race positions are to the left.
That’s not supposed to be a thing …

I’ve been continuing my run going through the different types of racing with this being endurance racing. The intention was to keep the team in the lower category, farming the sponsor money until we could afford the Headquarters upgrades that allow better parts to be made. The two categories race together and the lower category is supposed to be outclassed by the higher category. Yet … first race of a season and we’re in front and winning the race … This isn’t really supposed to happen :-D. I think it’s probably down to the higher category having a performance reset which has slowed them down but I also know how to optimise my people getting the best upgrades and there’s an Energy Recovery System speed boost thing that’s very open to abuse where the AI doesn’t realise it should be speed boosting and not fuel saving.

Motorsport Manager is still a great game though, there’s been nothing of its type on PC for far too long.

I may have disappeared down a bit of a XCom Enemy Within Long War rabbit hole as well today. Enemy Within is an expanded version of the first XCom remake, where the aliens are invading and your job is to repel them with your soldiers. Long War is a fan made expansion / conversion which takes a lot of the systems and alters them for a longer and I think more balanced game. I was enjoying playing the early days of it today.

Oh and I reset my Mars Horizon spacepedia as well so I’ll be going through unlocking everything there again.

So … enjoying having the downtime from work. Getting my sleep at the wrong times (need to go back to a more normal sleep pattern again!)

Cardiff was a good wander yesterday, enjoyed the board games. Oh and I got a little bit of research in yesterday. After finishing Deus Ex Mankind Divided, I went back to another fairly recent game :

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. We're on an arid, desert planet looking down from a hill at an outpost base. Hill walls are in the distance behind the base. There is a huge wheel like object. Our spaceship is off to the right.
Outpost !

That’s Mass Effect Andromeda with the graphics options turned up to the maximum. The biggest thing to notice is how much better the shadows are. Texture quality feels better as well. Textures start as a flat image that are mapped on to the objects in the 3d world. That causes loss of quality, so techniques like anisotropic filtering help to get that detail back. The better graphics card lets me turn up those settings, due to more memory and more processing capability and it makes those textures look much better, crisper and more distinct. It also allows huge improvements for reflections and shadows. The earlier version of this screenshot from Jan 2020 has a very indistinct shadow for the spaceship to the right, instead of the crisp one in this screenshot.

I’ve been enjoying the Andromeda story again. Time to hit post though and go back to watching Tashnarr play another game legendary for its graphics … she’s in a Crysis …

Stay safe, be well everyone.

Bonding around

I’ve been out and about again …

I’m still pretty nervous about being around People at the moment. The pandemic hasn’t gone away, it’s just been masked (so to speak) by the lessened effect on those who have been able to get vaccinated. The cases per day are still pretty high here (around 30,000 a day) but less people are needing to be hospitalised.

Still, it hasn’t gone away. And a lot of that is down to people largely abandoning anti plague precautions. I don’t wear a mask around people for me. I wear it for the people who I’m around. I firmly believe I had Covid around April 2020 and probably passed it around to a few people while I was doing shopping before the mask mandate came out.

Oh I’m also wearing the mask and vaccinated for the people who can’t do either of those. I wouldn’t want to harm anyone as a result of my actions or inactions there. I abandoned plans for having take out after my outing on Friday. Reason 1 was the first place being packed out, people queuing to park. Nah. Worse than the petrol stations ! Reason 2 was the only person wearing a mask around the kebab shop was me. So no kebab. Reason 3 is me being perfectly capable of sticking something in the oven for half an hour and it being edible when it comes out.

So … Friday adventure and that title ?

Picture. An assortment of sweet edible objects are in bags on a black chair. My red fluffy dwagon and one of my pocket dragons are in attendance as well.
Nom

I had a little collection of objectives for the outing … First was recycling the plastic bottles, which is conveniently by a petrol station that usually isn’t too busy, especially at lunchtime on a Friday afternoon. So I managed to fill the car up as well, then promptly doing 80 miles there and back to get sweeties. I’m not using the car really enough at the moment because of the whole avoiding people thing, so it’s good to give it a bit of a run occasionally. I’ve still got at least 440 miles in the tank, so no need to go near the places where muppets are panic buying petrol.

I skipped it from the alt text because I was intending to put it here but the loot haul was : 2 packets of soft strawberry bonbons. 1 packet of lemon sherbets. 1 plain chocolate brownie. 1 packet of 4 small chocolate brownies. A packet of 8 blocks of shortbread. A packet of chocolate mice. And a packet of all butter fudge as well. Gloucester farm shop services does good loot … but don’t eat anything out of their quick kitchen. It’s bit me in the behind most of the times I have.

And after collecting loot, I was back in the city at an appropriate time for …

Picture. 6 elevated rows of cushioned seats can be seen. The scene is dimly lit, save for a bright light at the centre back. The seats are all empty.
Cue the movie !

There’s a reason why I’ll happily go to this cinema rather than the ones which are slightly more accessible or have better eating facilities around them. It’s empty ! No one goes there ! I like this. I watched the latest James Bond film and it was just me and 2 other people in the theatre.

Good times. Although as you’ll see from the picture, the seats don’t have headrests, which is an improvement I’d like them to make.

Good film by the way. If you’re interested in the Bond daft action movie genre, go for it. It works well as a Bond movie and a daft popcorn movie. And that’s all I’ll say about it except that I think we’ll miss Daniel Craig as Bond, he did a great job of it. Wonder who will be 007 in the next Bond movie ?

I’ve been back in the books as well, with Murderbot 5 being the last book, Streams of Silver before then and Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi before then. I’m up and down with the books. I do enough heavy reading at work that I shy away from continuing it after hours. But Martha Wells’ Murderbot series has been excellent and compelling. They’re short novellas (Network Effect is full length) but I think that somewhat works for them. The books kick off at a fast pace, don’t waste any time and rattle through their story while putting you in the space that Murderbot lives in.

I got far more enjoyment out of each Murderbot book than I did out of Rama II or Existence (didn’t finish either, abandoned them as tedium). Oh and I’ll be rereading them at some point too, which is always a good sign that a book was worth acquiring if it’s one you like going back to. Like The Martian, I read that again recently and enjoyed it just as much this time as the other times I’ve read it.

Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore is another re-read. Not so good this time but I remember it being a weaker book the first time I read it. Ghost Brigades was a good sequel, that opened up and developed that particular series.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. A night time scene. Buildings dominate the left and right side as we're looking down a street towards a bridge. The white paint of a crossing is in front of us and we can see triangular lighting in the upper distance.
Prague by night

I finished off my Deus Ex Mankind Divided run as well. It was the permadeath achievement run this time and I managed it with only two occasions where I needed to restore the save file. Oh and there was a bit of reloading as well where fights may have started by accident. This is the same location as a screenshot in the last post by the way. The main part of the game is based in a fictional version of Prague. You visit Prague 3 times and the time and situation shifts a little each time. I won’t go into that much for spoiler reasons but it’s as pretty at night as it is in the daytime. The advanced graphics options allow for far prettier effects and the reflections and lighting are a highlight.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're looking towards a square apartment building. Above the ground, the building is shrouded by green panels that obscure the image. The building is reflected in a watery road surface which shows the windows of the building.
Reflecting on things

It’s pretty but not perfect … I don’t think we should be seeing the windows of the building reflected on the road there with them being shrouded by the green display screens. I did enjoy playing through the game again and appreciating the improved graphics capabilities.

I would thoroughly recommend the 2 Adam Jensen Deus Ex games, if you like story based first person shooter type games.

Oh and I’ve been piloting the internet spaceship as well, being in a bit of travel mode lately.

I’m having to be somewhat careful with my gaming activities at the moment. It’s turned a little colder here, which has been attacking my weakened shoulder. A consequence of that has been a sore elbow (that’s new) and dodginess in the wrist as well. So I have to listen to the signs, find a place to land and put the flightstick away when the pain starts surfacing.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink spaceship is landed on a white icy moon. Traces of an atmosphere are shading the horizon in the distance. Our buggy is in the lower left, pointing towards the camera with headlights on. A very faint arc of the planet this moon orbits can be almost seen above the nose of the ship, to right of shot.
Trees in the distance

This was tonight’s landing spot and I was lucky enough to find a suitable place fairly quickly. The criteria is a moon around a planet with rings, preferably with some surface features to look at as well. This time, a suitable moon appeared on the plot quickly, with an atmosphere as well. When I landed, I could see the tree like objects that can be just about seen below the ship’s engines (left of shot).

Another bug in the game at the moment is that the system that’s supposed to tell you where planetary surfaces are … isn’t working. So it’s pot luck as to whether you find anything in your chosen spot. This time, as per usual it was a case of looking for a landing spot in the sun with the parent plan above the horizon. Sadly the parent planet is a bit dark and hidden in the atmosphere trace here.

Oh ! Job stuff is happening too. No change in the organisation I work for, just a move to a different part of it. Soon.

Looking forward to it.

I think that’s enough for me for a bit – stay safe, be well. Have fun.

Quiet Staycation Times

Hello everyone,

Picture. A cute red dragon is curled up, asleep on grass. A little bit of drool is coming out of his maw, which is cradled on his front paws. The letters "Zzzz" are above.
Indeed

(Picture credit – Anthony Peltier at the Artstation link. I can’t see anything about copyright there but do check out the link, there’s more than a few lovely pieces there)

Checking in again. I’m off work this week, which currently means trying to chill out as much as I can and generally regain a bit of energy. I’m not sure how much I managed to recover from the long term effects of the extended period of the skin condition that I had which built up a legacy of minimal sleep plus I think my internal resources got depleted while battling that.

And then there’s the suspicion of long covid effects from I heavily believe that I had it around April last year. The trigger for that is someone coming into work with something that would leave him hospitalised with severe pneumonia for a couple of weeks. This is at the start of the lockdowns, before effective testing was developed so we’ll never really know either way, especially with me being double vaccinated now.

Why do I think I had a light touch of it ? Any … and I do mean any above normal physical exercise or exertion would see me retreating to my chair for a lie down, while I waited for my temperature to come down and my breathing to stabilise. Shopping was ok but a bit of a push. I was having breathing difficulties for a few weeks, adopting the lie on your front strategy that I was hearing about (means the nasties come out of your lungs instead of settling within). I definitely had brain fog, plus a few more symptoms that I won’t go into.

I’m still here though, which is what counts, although I feel rather more limited than I think I should be. That might be a long term effect of living with a few problems though.

Enough about that though, what have I been getting up to ?

Enjoying a lot of Olympics for a start. It’s been a great games again, with a rather different atmosphere to normal. There were some crowds and support there, although it was mostly friends and coaches. It was great to see the competitors giving it their all in all of the sports.

I’m a bit mixed though on some of them though … BBC (providers of our coverage) tend to go heavily on Athletics and Cycling, which reflects where most of their presenters and expert summarisers came from. They’ll neglect the more fun and spectacular events to show stuff that I quite frankly, find really boring. I prefer skill in the sports I watch and … athletics and cycling don’t have that. It’s just about the physical prowess or in cycling, it’s about the technology a bit too much.

Sport shouldn’t depend on technology, outside of events like Formula 1 where they’re supposed to be leading the way in technologies that then filter down to the products that we will use. There shouldn’t be a gateway to entry like having a super high technology bike or outfit to use. Gatekeeping is bad in all of its various forms.

In contrast, cricket has an active development going on with the various gear but it’s kept mostly under control, the clubs will help out considerably with making gear available to new players and the better gear is just a minor help, it’s the skill of the players that makes the difference. Joe Root would still score hundreds with a £50 Kashmir Willow bat, I still wouldn’t be scoring hundreds with Millichamp & Hall’s best £700 English Willow bat. (English Willow hits the ball better but it adds a zero to the price). Anyway, if cricket were to come into a future Olympics, you could see teams competing on a tiny budget with shared gear and they’d have a chance to win, whereas you need megabucks to compete in cycling.

Yep. I have opinions on gatekeeping in general and especially in sport. When I was learning the game, I was using the pads and gloves provided by the club. I inherited a pair of old bowling boots from my dad, which did me until I could invest in spikes. That old pink box protector from a couple of posts ago must be over 50 years old. I started collecting my own gear later but that’s because you really don’t want to be sharing boots or gloves from a hygiene point of view (eww sweaty hands) and having all the gear meant I could practice more efficiently. But you could get involved with a club and have fun without having to invest in the gear.

It’s not just the gear though. Watching the Olympics, I was enjoying watching the competitors perform and how they reacted to their own great performances and also how they congratulated their competitors. Especially people like Sky Brown of the skateboarding, being the first to dash over and hug a competitor who had put in a winning routine. It’s great to see. Sometimes you don’t win, despite doing your best, because someone simply did even better. (And then there’s the cycling, which was marred by crashes and terrible behaviour)

Wait. Staycation stuff ?

I had thoughts of heading out again to Cardiff for a little wander around. I might still do that but I’m not sure how much I’d actually pick up there ? Maybe a better thing would be to find a castle to wander around. Fresh air and all that. I’m thinking aloud there … I’m also pondering heading to the cinema again, last time I did that it was in a different country on another continent.

There has been a lot of gaming going on …

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're in Prague by night. The sky is clouded over and we're looking down a quiet street with a single car parked. To the right, the street continues through an arch. On the left, a building front is lit by a series of spotlights shining through the red leaves of a tree.
All quiet

I did manage to finish Deus Ex Mankind Divided again, unlocking the Foxiest of the Hounds (go through the game without triggering alarms) achievement to go with the rest of them. It’s still a great game, I’m glad I went back to it again early. It initially feels a bit clunky in comparison to its predecessor due to changes in the cover and creeping system but once you get used to that, it works well. This is one I’ll keep coming back to. Hopefully the story of Adam Jensen gets a third instalment. Maybe that’s the super secret Elias Toufexis (voice of Jensen) project is that’s due in 2024 …

One thing I had held off on playing because I didn’t think my graphics card was up to it is Alien Isolation :

Game screenshot. Alien Isolation. We're in a spaceship, looking at a lady sitting at a circular messy mess table. A passageway heads off to the top left. The scene looks very lived in with a pack of cards on the table, discarded cigarette ends in an ashtray and discarded drink containers.
A quiet beginning

You may recognise the ascetic there if you’re a fan of the Alien movies. You start off in the Torrens, a sister ship to the Nostromo in the first Alien movie. I’d held off on playing this one for a while, because I remembered how good the graphics looked in the videos. But I’m surprised at how good this actually is for a 2014 game. It’s actually older than my graphics card, which came out in 2016, when the pace of change in graphics hardware was still quite rapid.

I’m a couple of hours in and I’ve already gone into 100% stealthy crouch mode. This is another one that’s all about avoiding getting hit as Amanda Ripley, protagonist of this game (daughter of Ellen), is pretty squishy.

Game screenshot. Alien Isolation. We're in a control room, with angular shaped consoles in front of us, including a green screen monitor. Beyond, a dimly lit room has a model of a structure in the centre, the structure has several towers on top of a flatter base.
We are there

After the introduction, the game is set on the Sevastopol space station and you gradually learn about the near abandoned station and what happened there. It makes for a super tense situation and game, where you’re never sure if you should be talking to people or hiding from them or maybe even tempting them towards the hungry alien thing. Yep. There’s a Xenomorph on the loose …

It does look incredible though, especially for a 2014 game. That might well be a triumph of scale over ambition. What they’ve been able to do is focus the game into very small tiny areas which they can display in fantastic detail, instead of attempting to do the same in much larger areas.

Which brings me to internet spaceships … I’ve kinda had enough already of grinding through in Elite Dangerous, especially with the horrors of the Odyssey game performance. From what I’m seeing of various, even a graphics card upgrade wouldn’t assist there, as the performance is still terrible on higher end cards than I would actually acquire. It’s almost as if the game hits a cap in how fast it can update its environment. The ambition trying to go for far too high a scale than the game can deliver.

Whereas Elite is attempting to render a world as far as we can see, Alien Isolation’s levels don’t exist outside of the walls that we can see. That lessens the load considerably. That said, you’ve also got MS’s new Flight Simulator which does a fantastic job of showing us landscapes on Earth, which puts Elite’s efforts to shame.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're heading towards the circular docking entrance end of a space station. Various adverts flank either side of us on the way to a rectangular shaped docking port. Our Cutter ship is heading in, with purple flares from the engines and the occasional purple tint caught in the metal.
Tiamat arriving

This is me heading in to Newholm station in the Sothis system, with the intention of finishing off the steps towards getting the maximum Federation ranking. There’s no real point to that and no real reward, just another thing to tick off in the game. Oh and the missions will allow more gathering of the unique materials needed to engineer modifications and improvements to spaceships.

But there is that thought that the grinding for that, plus grinding for the top combat ranking plus grinding for the money for a Fleet Carrier ship starts making the game feel more like a kind of work instead of something fun and enjoyable. One thing I like doing in the game is bouncing around the galaxy seeing new places and new things. I get some of that with the Community Goals that are happening again and going for optimal trade routes to semi random locations is good too. But the best thing is finding pretty places in the galaxy to look at. I might well switch to that again and the ship would be the Searching for Pixels, callsign FUZZ3H. Yep, another tribute name again for Fuzzyfreaks who seeded that idea of having an offensively hot pink spaceship.

Game picture. Elite Dangerous. We're looking down from above on a vaguely diamond shaped ship. There is a notch in the nose for the cockpit plus the aft end is squared off for the engines. There are two line shaped constructions pointing forwards from the winds. The ship is mostly pink, with chequerboard white patterns aft and central.
Pink enough ?

That should look good in the screenshots. That’s the thing with the paint jobs I tend to go for … there’s usually a theme behind it (like the blue and yellow of Zoomnarr) but it’s mostly about having a paint job that will show up in the pictures. And light colours are better for that against the black of the void. This one might well see me jetting around the galaxy again.

Oh and there’s been a lot of Mars Horizon and Motorsport Manager happening as well…

About that graphics card … I thought I might be doing some upgrades this week. Graphics cards are steadily coming back on the market and into easy availability again. I had a 3060 Ti in the cart last night for £620. I could get a 3060 card for £480. BUT ! That 3060 Ti card came in at a recommended retail price of £370 and the 360 card should be nearer to £300. Some of those increases are down to cryptocurrency miners driving the price up, some is Brexit, some is Covid but far too much of it is the greed of the OEMs mandating higher prices for their cards to take advantage of that high demand compared to the available supply.

The £620 card (and the £40 sound card) disappeared from the cart. I don’t actually need it, outside of games like Horizon Zero Dawn and Deus Ex Mankind Divided which push my current card beyond what it’s comfortable at.

That’s the thing … if you don’t need to spend the money, keep hold of it. Other things may come along later and need the money instead. Like the series of jobs that need to be done around the house which I’ll need to get outside assistance in to help with.

That’s it for me for today. I might well do a couple of overdue upgrades on the desktop over the next few days when the cricket’s on. I need to get outside the house a bit too !

For now though, stay safe everyone, be well.

Upgrades

Hello everyone,

I’ve been jabbed ! Again ! Yesterday was my second shot. Last time, I had the bad muscles for a day or so and then Brain definitely wasn’t operating to usual standards for the rest of that week. I might have a repeat of that coming, we’ll see over the next few days, although bad brain today might partly be down to taking a hayfever tablet for the first time in I dunno how long. I have sensitivities to hayfever tablets … but figured it was better to brave those and give my watering eyes a chance to rest up.

Eyes ?

Picture. My red fluffy dwagon is sitting on a wooden nightstand. He has two pairs of apparently identical metal rimmed glasses propped up on him. Both have a small reflection of a window, the lower one is blue tinted.
Eye see an upgrade

So, 5g upgrade yesterday and second pair of glasses appeared on (gosh, think brain is starting to suffer!) Thursday and yes I did need to look that up. The top pair are normal glasses, the lower pair are reading glasses. One of the catalysts for changing eventually was that I was having a lot of trouble reading books with my old glasses, beyond what will become apparent in a picture I’ll show later. The reading glasses have a blue tint on them which, in theory if I use them more, should help with getting to sleep more as Brain thinks it’s night time instead of being confused by monitor light.

Would I go for the same choice again ? No, after the need for masks drops (needed to wear one during the eye exam and fogginess happened), I’ll get some variofocals so I can swap between book reading and watching stream chat.

It’s been a very welcome change … here are the old ones.

Picture. My red fluffy dwagon is in the background, with a black glasses cleaning cloth draped over him. My green pocket dragon with his arms held out like wings is sitting in front and I am holding my old glasses up in front of him. Semi opaque shapes are on part of both lenses.
Danger fingers

There we go. That’s the old pair. You can hopefully see the discolouration and semi-opaque patterning on both lenses near the bridge. These are delamination of the lenses which was steadily getting worse and worse each time the glasses were cleaned. I could still see properly with these but I had found myself looking around the bad patches. It’s good to be able to look straight ahead clearly again.

One thing I do still need to acquire is a pair of shades to attach. One reason I’d held off so long to replace my old glasses was that I wanted to get a pair of the magnet shades that are tailored to the frames. Those disappeared from the shops a long time ago … For those who don’t have to wear glasses much (and can therefore adopt non-prescription sunglasses !) there are three main choices.

Bridge clip ons – these have little arms that grip on to the lenses around the bridge. They take ages to put on and take off the glasses so these are definitely a Really Bad Option for when you’re on the road. (Flip up shades are an option)

Lens clip ons – these have little arms that go on the outside of the lenses and they’re held in place by a springy attachment between the lenses. These are a pretty good option and you can flip them on and off with one hand.

Magnetic clip ons – these have magnets in the frames and shades which are fantastic for pulling on and off with one hand.

I.e. one hand is on the wheel, the other hand is quickly taking the shades on and off. Vision is uninterrupted. Bridge clip ons would mean a certain amount of time when You Cannot See The Road. This is bad.

So yep, one more upgrade to get. Maybe the shades will act as a good antenna for the 5g. And I’m mixing my words up which could bode well for next week at work.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My mining ship is in the foreground. She is roughly diamond shaped, squared off at the back with a pair of engines. The ship is mostly red with gold highlights and we see the top pointing to the right. In the background is a blue giant planet. The top right half of the image (diagonal split) is a white ring with clusters of dark brown rocks. The white ring is shading the obscured part of the gas giant.
Manic Minarr about to get to work

Elite spaceshipping happened last week, with a couple of mining sessions so far in Manic Minarr. They’ve put out a couple of hotfixes so far which improved the performance a bit but it is still way below what I would want for the trickier docking manoeuvre times. I was cheerfully falling in love with the graphics again but the performance of the game and the attitude of the company (as mentioned in last post) leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s as if they, on seeing that their customer relations hit rock bottom, decided to start digging. My blood was boiling this morning when I found out that the Issue that I’d contributed to complaining that I (and many others) couldn’t download the soundtrack had been closed as “Fixed”. It ain’t fixed, we still get the same error and so another cluster of issues have been raised which are getting more names behind them.

Advice – don’t buy any products from Frontier Developments. This includes Elite as well as the Park games (Jurassic Work Evolution, Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster). There have been a number of shady companies involved in the gaming market and Frontier seem to be competing heavily for that crown at the moment. (They need to go a long way to beat the Star Citizen company)

That said, game is pretty. I just think people like Egosoft who make the X games have massively missed a trick by not seeing the Odyssey launch disaster and continuing the discount of the week before. I think I might have skipped internet spaceship games …

Gosh. What else has been going on … XCom 2 campaign finished ! More screenshots at a later date. Maybe. I’ve been playing the Legacy Hub stuff that got added to cover the time between the XCom 1 and XCom 2 games. Oh ! What’s XCom ? It’s an alien invasion game where the aliens have arrived and are attempting to subvert the world’s governments into submitting to them. XCom 1 is set in contemporary times, with you commanding a hidden mountain base. The stakes steadily rise in step with the research into better weaponry for your small squads of soldiers. It either ends with you storming their temple ship and beating them back, or the aliens subverting enough governments to cause XCom to get abandoned.

And so XCom 2 opens up with you as the Commander being rescued from alien captivity. 20 odd years have passed since the first game and in this version, humanity lost badly. The aliens are in total control, as Advent, and they are going forward with something sinister called the Avatar Project. Of course you have to stop them, operating out of a captured alien UFO that becomes your mobile base.

They are legendary games and a fantastic update to the first series of XCom games from the 90s. The movement and actions system got changed from Time Units controlling everything into characters being allowed 2 actions, either a double move or a move and fire. They’re the benchmark games of this type. I wonder if there will be an XCom 3 ?

Hope so. They’re great games and Firaxis make good stuff, including having their games open totally to modding although that’s been marred a little lately by the publisher putting an unnecessary loader in that has adverts and breaks a lot of the mods.

I appear to be a little sparky about some things in today’s post …

More games have arrived ! There was a little steam sale last week which led to the 2 Divinity Original Sin role playing games arriving. Now that XCom 2 is complete, it’ll let me uninstall that and free up space for Divinity. Or I could just install the big hard disc that’s been waiting for a long time. Perhaps next weekend when the cricket is on and Nurburgring isn’t …

That was a bit of a disappointment this year. The 24 hour race ended up being about 6 hours at the start before fog set in and stopped the racing and then it resumed for about a 4 hour sprint this morning. Still good to watch, would be better if the climate around those mountains allowed for the full 24 hours. They have to keep it safe though, so stopping for the fog is a mixed feelings contrast. On one hand, wanna see more racing ! On the other, I remember a couple of years ago where I stopped watching and went to bed because I could see an even more horrendous crash than had happened already coming …

Still, it’s good that they could hold it despite our current pandemic conditions.

I better post and leg it, Tashnarr’s on and I need to rest my brain before it melts more.

Stay safe everyone, be well !