More views from lockdown and beyond

Hello everyone,

2020’s going on for a while isn’t it ? I’ve been doing birthday things (not much), advent things (some), gaming things and … working from home things. So nothing unusual there then.

I had cake. It was a couple of lemon cheesecake slices. Plus I also acquired lemon slices that came in packets of two. That’s almost an obligation isn’t it …

One thing that changed from previous years is that I actually had my birthday day off. I haven’t done that since I can remember. It’s a bit different with it being in lockdown. I’d usually nip off at some strategic time in the morning and acquire cakes and other munchies from the supermarkets next door to where I worked prior to this year.

And then I’d hugely enjoy people coming up to the desk in search of cake. Good times. Hopefully that tradition will be back next year. And if the birthday was on a weekend, I’d just bring them in for the sister’s birthday which is actually today (two days after mine).

Happy birthday sister !

Cake is good. I’ve probably been spending too much time in the games too … Let’s see. It’s been :

Cluster of Gas Giants

Kamd told me about a nice little cluster of gas giants, all within visual range of each other.

Dances with giants

Kamd also told me about this place, a moon with geysers orbiting an Earth like planet. Kamd is a site that lets you know if anyone has reported things worth taking a closer look at. When I acquire a links list widget (it doesn’t come as standard with WordPress), I’ll add Kamd to the list. In the meantime, Linky !

Oh, I’m also trying something new with the images that will hopefully make them open in new tabs so you can have a better look at them. I wanted to get a bit more traveling in and along the way was a neutron star :

That was the first megajump in this ship. In the early days of the game, 35 light year jumps were about the limit. That jump was 289 …

Searching for Water Worlds

One thing about getting away from the established areas is the chance of finding something new, like the water world above. Only 0.05% of the galaxy has been visited by players yet …

Nestling in

Including this, which was my stopping point for that leg of the journey. I have to say, the purple highlights on the grey hull works really well, especially with the yellow / orange highlights.

One thing players like to do is to customise the head up display colours away from orange. I actually like the orange … it’s easy for me to read. I like it in the Deus Ex games too … I’m still working my way through the first Adam Jensen game. The last time I left it, we were through the first visit to Detroit of the near future. I’ve moved on a fair bit since then.

Impending Shenanigans

Turns out the people who attacked your company were working out of a government facility and you find yourself going on in there to get more answers.

Nice sniping spot

Steadily made my way through there. One odd thing is that I know in previous run throughs, I was able to clear the areas completely through stealth and non lethal takedowns. I’m having to resort to leaving a few of the enemies up this time. I’ve probably forgotten the optimum routes through, it’s been 8 years since I played this one last.

He has to know I’m there, right ?

Some of the AI visual lines of sight have always been a bit odd though. One of the criticisms of the game when it came out was that your hand was forced when it came to the boss characters. There was no way to win the fights while leaving them alive.

Where did he go ?

There wasn’t much left of that one. Still, they did tell me where to go :

Yep. Multistorey

Yes, that’s a city on top of a city. More about that in a later post. I’m actually a fair bit behind, I’m on the last set piece area before leaving Hengsha for the second time. There was a DLC expansion pack called The Missing Link with another small chapter but I don’t think I’ll do that one this time.

As well as Deus Ex Human Revolution, there has been more Motorsport Manager. It’s an easy game to play as it’s mostly hands off with only a few interventions needed. And it manages to do that while still being compelling. My team is winning everything at the moment but the strength of this game is that you have to get the right strategy still to make that happen. And you can affect that by intervening with early out of sequence pit stops to get your driver out of traffic that’s slowing them down.

I haven’t done much at all in Star Trek Online lately, although I’ll go back there for more of the episodes. I think I realised that I wasn’t enjoying doing the daily mayhem mission every day and as soon as you find that you don’t have to do that, it’s easier to just stop grinding and do something enjoyable. There has been Stellaris happening as well, a brief abandoned game with the Nomnivorian Swarm (was hemmed in) and the current one sees me looking for the Mechanist achievement. I’m not enjoying that one though so I’ll close it as soon as I get big enough for the achievement.

One thing I do need to do more is the drawing. The only things I’ve done lately are modifications. I still have that Dwagon Rock Band to finish. And the alphabet too.

Back to work tomorrow though. Or rather, back online tomorrow. But … Farcebook demands tribute in the means of a thumbnail pic at the end so :

CAKE !

Cake ! Stay safe everyone, be well.

Round the world, round the galaxy ?

Hello everyone,

Me stuff first … I think I’m in one of those slumps at the moment. You know, where you think you should be doing things but the things end up not happening and then you get more disappointed in yourself due to not doing the things and it becomes a self reinforcing issue.

My psychology tends to be like that. I’ll enjoy the times when I’m flying but people with this issue can’t really control when they’re in the slump and it’s really tough to get yourself out of said slump.

Don’t worry about me too much though. I’ve got a good bunch of people around who I can natter to. I’ve got a good focus of things to aim on at work. Having focus is good. It gives you a steer and a direction to go in when your mind thinks you should be doing Things but doesn’t think much of the options on hand. The thing with work is that you’ll usually have a series of things that you absolutely must get done, which leads to that focus.

Yep. Still working. UK has gone into lockdown again but the circumstances for me and my team haven’t really changed. We’ve been working from home, taking advantage of remote working connectivity and skype to stay in touch and keep things rattling along. That’s been happening since the original lockdown in March. The only thing that has changed is that we won’t be doing an away trip this month. The activity is still happening but less of us are going due to the lockdown.

Talking of going places …

It was the start of the Vendee Globe round the world single handed yacht race today. I’ve been looking forward to this since the end of the last one.

Sam Davies, Initiative Coeur

That’s Sam Davies of Initiative Coeur waving farewell. The next time we’ll see them will be in about 2.5 months. May they have fair winds and swift, safe sailing.

This is one of those ultimate sporting events. Yep, there’s a lot of technology involved that makes the boats fast but the sailors are all at the mercy of the weather and random objects in the water. Technology like foils to lift the boats out of the water (makes them go FAST) helps but it’s the better sailors who will go out in front. And then there’s no small amount of luck too with the weather and those objects in the water. I follow the Brits especially closely and the site I’ll be following the race on is Alex Thomson’s site (linky).

It’s early days so far and apart from one, they’re all within 23nm of each other. Hopefully that lasts for as long as possible. I’m sure we’ll get an exciting race.

Looking forwards to it.

Part of that slump has involved the internet spaceships as well. I really don’t like the combat in the game and definitely didn’t enjoy the conflict zone community goals. I nearly did a bit more mining but was finding other things to do that were more enjoyable. Like …

That’s Cloudpunk, a game with a very Bladerunner-esque vibe where you play a delivery driver in a futuristic city. There’s an exaggerated pixelated look to the graphics which I think works nicely.

The soundtrack is excellent too. It’s had me chair dancing a couple of times.

And there is a dog AI. I definitely enjoyed my first little session in the game last night. However …

New ship ! And a new mission. She’s the Searching for Dragons, callsign K080LD and her mission is to circumnavigate the galaxy.

There was a bit of preparation work to do first though, including visits to a couple of engineer bases.

Trying out the new paint job there. Looks good. This is a free gift to everyone who owned the Horizons expansion that enabled planetary landings, the expansion has been rolled back into the main game in preparation for the next one coming early next year. It’s an interesting move. I like it, it’s a nice gesture plus it collapses the code base down to one variant which should make for easier and more reliable coding. Or less bugs for us players.

Curious shape of underside

My engineer sense getting the better of me there. One fun thing of the game is looking at the detail aspects. How are the ships put together to make them work as spaceships. So on the Anaconda above, there’s a command area up top, weapons below and it looks like big box shaped areas which will be where the cargo would go. I’m always curious about the landing gear too and how people are expected to embark and disembark. I’ll have a closer look at that at some point when I find interesting planets to land on.

Or you lighten the ship up, put in the big hyperdrive and zoom off around the galaxy. That shot is in the livery I picked out a while ago. Looks good, hopefully there will be a good few screenshots coming in the next couple of months.

Last one coming in a bit … Other things I’m looking at currently are :

Advent stuff – I missed the boat with the marshmallow advent calendar (all sold out) but I have a list of games to talk about with the Advent things. There are many games on the list. I will need to play some of them to get screenshots. I know, tragic.

More upgrades – I’ll probably be upgrading to a nVidia 3070 based card when stocks become available and the price gouging relents. (They’ve gone up 10%+ since announcement). Or I wait for the rumoured but not announced 3060 card. Either one will be a massive upgrade on my 1060 card. I won’t be waiting for the AMD graphics cards.

And house stuff that I should be doing.

Last picture for tonight. That was stopping off at the Iris Nebula Visitor Centre. Found base, not found nebula. Yet.

It was good being back in the game. I dropped The Outer Worlds due to being bored with the story and the gameplay. Star Trek Online has been scaled back to me just playing the episodes occasionally. I’m thinking about going back into Final Fantasy XIV, I need to see how my arms decide to behave.

I am still having to limit things though. I was feeling tightness in my arm earlier which I need to monitor.

Probably need to add mattress to that House List. And a chair ! Mine is getting old and rocks more than it should in angles that it shouldn’t.

Oh well. Getting old, like me. Birthday soon !

And on that note, goodnight everyone, stay safe, be well.

Felt like starships

Hello everyone,

Been back among those stars again. I had more thoughts too but first … will this be the thumbnail !

Game screenshot. A spaceship with a tubular main hull is coming towards the camera. It has a pair of engines on outriggers at the back. In the background is a small bright white star with two cones emerging.
Tiamat’s Chariot at a White Dwarf star

The pondering is because the thumbnail system seems to have a few Interesting Quirk things to it. Last time, it showed the Star Trek Online pic as the thumbnail, instead of it being the first pic. But I think that was down to the first two not coming out of my Google Photo bank properly. I wonder …

Game screenshot. The Imperial Cutter starship from before is landed on a pad. It has a copper hull and is catching the light from spotlights at the corners of the pad.
Landing at Black Hide

Nope. Didn’t work that time. I added in another widget that lets me choose pictures from that Google Photo Bank without intermediary steps. Looks like it might need more work.

I need to add in a lists widget too so that I can copy over the lists from Blog Mk 1. And I need to tidy up all of the extra things added in with the import. Later 🙂

There may also have been Star Trek happening. I left it last time with the Sylvia Tilly … Since then there’s been the Amna Patel :

Game screenshot. A Star Trek ship is coming towards the camera to exit off the right side of the screen. It has an elongated triangular main hull with 4 warp nacelles at the back.

Watchers of Voyager may recognise that as a Prometheus class ship. The name comes from one of the earlier episodes of Star Trek Online, Amna Patel appears in (spoiler deleted). The latest ship is the Drake :

Game Screenshot from Star Trek Online. A small but powerful looking ship with 4 engines has a large starbase behind it.

Looks a bit ugly doesn’t it … Should be pretty punchy though. This one arrived yesterday and because I’m having to heavily ration my game time at the moment, not much happened with this one.

What’s happening outside of the games ? Bit of catching up with series like Away, The Witcher. Actually watched Avengers Endgame again tonight, it’s just finishing up at the moment. A suitable conclusion to that particular saga.

Plus I’m making my way through Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds as well. That future universe has spaceships too and the biggest ones belonging to humans are the lighthuggers, starships that cross the interstellar gaps at near light speed (faster than light isn’t something they do in that universe). Objectively, it takes years but subjectively, only weeks or months. Hopefully that’s the right way round for the way that works.

Anyway, the lighthuggers feel like they’d look like massively scaled up versions of the Imperial Cutter … a cylinder, tapering at the ends, with a pair of engines mounted on spars to each side of the hull.

Game Screenshot - Elite Dangerous. The Imperial Cutter starship is on the landing pad. We are viewing it from the port side. The ship has a long mostly circular fuselage with two engines aft, extending from the hull to the sides on outriggers. The ship is in the copper colouration and is catching the light from pad spotlights.

There we go from another angle. It’s a pretty ship. The lighthuggers would be scaled up considerably from there. The Elite Imperial Cutter is a chunky 192.6m long. The lighthuggers would vary in size but would typically be 3-4km long, with space for crew, weapons, cargo, parasitic craft (bigger than the Cutter) and room for all sorts of other shenanigans in there too. Way too big for landing on planets like the Elite ships.

One random thought that got in though would be … if I were actually living in these science fiction universes, what would I be doing ?

If it were Elite, I’d follow the player path and start in the cheap loaned ship before making my way up the scale. I’d be living by my wits, travelling from place to place, following the trade and missions. I’d be chief engineer, pilot, captain, CEO. Unless someone came along who would share that captain, CEO role.

It feels kinda like it might if I switched to living on a Dutch Barge here, although I don’t think going from place to place, trading out of a Barge is particularly viable economically any more. Perhaps you might get some niche out of videoing trips and monetising that … but I’m not convinced that would gain a significant enough audience.

In the Alastair Reynolds universe, I’d probably end up as a starship mechanic. I’d be quite happy with that. Same for Elite too, it’d be good working on the various spaceships out there.

Star Trek ? Probably an engineer on a starship again.

One difference would be the connectivity. We benefit hugely in our time from the internet, although even that is perhaps in the last 10, maybe 12 years or so. The internet in its current shape has been around for decades now but the big change for me has been the increase in video and streaming media. Youtube took a while to take off, the oldest subscriptions I tend to see on Twitch go back about a little over 6 years. Netflix didn’t start streaming until maybe 2007.

Things have changed a fair bit. The internet model works for our planet, as lightspeed delay isn’t a factor. But when you have an interstellar civilisation, or even interplanetary, that light speed delay would cut into the immediacy of communications. If the Netflix server were on Earth and you were on Mars, it would be between 3 and 22 minutes for the “I want to watch The Witcher!” command to be received and the same time for the signal to come back, depending on whether Earth and Mars are on the same or different sides of the Sun. Or it would be years for a lightspeed message to go between stars.

Maybe that pilot, chief engineer, captain, CEO set of roles would expand to become interstellar postman.

You’d file a flight plan to say that you’re going through a sequence of interstellar jumps and they’d load you up with the mail, to be sent on at each jump.

Might well work too ! Back to an interstellar equivalent of the Stagecoaches.

On that note, time to dive into book again after hitting publish and doing the necessary on the various sites. (Actually – time to dip into Star Trek Online to do today’s daily mission !)

Away in a Seaquest

Hello everyone,

I was about to say “good week off last week” but suddenly I’m not entirely sure about that ! Not something I can put my finger on there, perhaps it’s something more than me, perhaps it’s a world situation thing.

Still, I wasn’t in the house all week last week, not quite.

Picture. A rural scene. In the foreground, an empty weather beaten bleached wooden table. It's mostly covering a stone path. Beyond are trees and green covered hills in the background.

I wonder if that’ll work. I’m attempting something with Google Photos … My phone will upload the pictures it takes to Google and in theory, they should be accessible from there. (If it doesn’t work, I’ll go to a Plan B and reupload the post !) (Update – I went to Plan B !)

I disappeared off to the Mall to pick up this year’s Star Wars Lego Advent Calendar. I also had a look in PC World for keyboards as I think the patience is running out with this one. (Keyboards on display but none of the ones I wanted were in sale boxes)

I also took a trip to the Bookbarn …

Picture. Loot from the farm shop, plus books. The books are the old Battlestar Galactica novel, plus Bill the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison. Sweets include a tasty brownie block, a large chocolate teacake and packets of strawberry bonbons, lemon sherbets, kola kubes and fudge.

Books happened … also more loot later when I went up the motorway to the farm shop place. Some of the loot has already disappeared … Oh and I don’t think I’ll be going back to the Bookbarn in the near future. It’s a shame really, there just aren’t enough books on display there ! There are actually more books packed into the Cardiff Market book stall than there might be on display at the Bookbarn.

I’ll hope to be able to make another trip into Cardiff at some point, although that’s heavily dependent on the world situation at the moment.

We shall see.

I’ve been watching some more of those stories lately … When I was at university, one of the things I’d watch when back for the weekends was Seaquest DSV … Whereas most of the scifi programmes were going into outer space, Seaquest was going under the sea with a hyper advanced submarine. The first series was ok, within the limits of its production values. I’m kinda glad I missed the second series when it came out because it was … a bit rubbish. The writing suffered tremendously.

And then it was rebooted for a third series, where Seaquest returned 10 years after they’d been abducted by aliens. Did I mention bad writing ?

The third series actually isn’t that bad. I was surprised to recognise the name of Naren Shankar on the opening credits (in big letters of importance too). He is the co-showrunner of The Expanse series and they’re doing a fantastic job of converting the books to the television format. I’d highly recommend watching The Expanse.

I may have found myself binge watching the second half of the series of Away too, where a group of 5 astronauts are looking to find their way to Mars. The intent was to stop at 3 episodes and leave the last 2 for later in the week but I just wanted to know what happened.

I’m finding that with Star Trek Online at the moment …

Game screenshot from Star Trek Online. A chaotic scene around a mushroom shaped starbase. Explosions are going off everywhere.

Looks a bit hectic doesn’t it …

The gaming might be why I’m having the not so good week feelings from last week. I’d like to be able to dive into seeing what they’ve written in to Star Trek Online (plus I’d like to finish The Outer Worlds too) but my body isn’t cooperating there.

I’m having to strictly limit the time in game due to my arm and shoulder looking to erupt in pain if I’m in there too long. At the moment, it’s just the scenario in the screenshot above, where you’re looking to scramble to rescue civilians by beaming them up and on to transports. It’s very hectic. There should be loot at the end, although I need to stay with the scenario for another 11 days I think to get that loot.

It is ouchy though and I’ll have to a) look more at why and b) consider if it’s a game I want to continue playing. I haven’t actually been back into Final Fantasy XIV for about a month now as it was causing similar shoulder issues.

It’s annoying.

But it’s not stopping me diving into books at the moment :-). The two that appeared from Book Barn were :

Battlestar Galactica – the novelisation from the original film. I’ve read this one before (a couple of decades ago probably !) and while it followed the film fairly closely, it added in its own bits of detail too. I liked the original film, it kept a fun aspect and it wasn’t part of the whole depressing grimdark aesthetic that the new series pioneered.

Harry Harrison’s book – never read any of his books, saw it, thought I needed more book !

So – didn’t do much in the week off. Thought about work a little but managed to not open the laptop up. Set this new page up ! Needs more work. Hurt shoulder … oops.

Got to the point in Absolution Gap (Alastair Reynolds) where it’s starting to pick up momentum.

Time to hit post I think ! Have a great week everyone, stay safe, be well.

Smuggling Cigars and Otherwise Trekking

Hello again,

It’s been a week again ! Must post more often. Noot that sure why I’m not, perhaps it’s a sense of wanting to isolate from the world, even more than just staying inside.

Lots of nasty news out there at the moment, whether it’s the virus situation or the various political situations. I’ve been steadily unfollowing a few people who I’ve kept an eye on for a little while. The world’s changed and they’ve changed with it. People write about doomscrolling and if all the people posting do is post Doom, that can be really bad for your mental health.

If it’s getting you down, cut it out of your feed and your life. We see that sort of stuff from all over the place, so Fear Off Missing Out doesn’t really apply. I’ve temporarily muted a couple of the Farcebook people, especially when they go overboard with the political stuff and into broken record territory. I used to follow George Takei on the Twitter, he was legendary for jokes and memes … now totally overly political.

That’s not to say that people shouldn’t use their voice … but if they become the cause, they’re not what made them fun to follow any more. Authors like James S.A. Corey and John Scalzi definitely have a great balance there. They’ll occasionally talk about the world situation but they’re more about their work and keeping to Fun Stuff.

Apart from that … Nurburgring 24 hours motor race was last weekend ! I got set up to watch the whole race this time, with pizza … And then rain happened ! The two 24 hour races got shifted from June to September this year. Le Mans got away with it, the threatened rain never erupted and it was a dry race, despite some juicy footage of lightning from near the venue. Nurburgring Nordschlieffe was another story though. They got some dry running in but they had to red flag the race overnight, calling a pause due to fog and heavy rain.

There had been a couple of damaging crashes for the leading cars in the half hour or so leading up to the red flag, so it was a good decision.

Only 1 Lexus in the race this year. I like following the RC F’s because they’re reasonably similar to what I have. Except for the coupe bodyshell, strengthened chassis, uprating all round and … oh … 5 litre engine. They were doing ok overnight, although I didn’t see what happened to them in the morning after the restart.

The coverage up the field is good, via youtube and there’s a good timing site which lets you track all of the cars … but the coverage isn’t great at keeping up with perhaps 2 thirds of the 97 car field for this year.

Still, it was good to watch and the treacherous conditions were keeping the result in doubt all the way to the end.

In real life stuff, I got me some ear drops … which have somewhat brought my head state back a bit ! I think the ear got so blocked, it was causing pressure on the rest of my head along with the tinnitus and one ear only hearing. But the ear drops have been improving.

Spaceships ? I’ve been enjoying the X52 Pro stick. It feels easier to use compared to the old one. I’m not too sure why, I think the action might be a little damped so instead of you putting a force in to move it and stop it, the damping stops it. I could do with the throttle being looser though.

I completed the trip back last weekend and along the way, visited one of the Guardian sites which have been left behind by a long dead race. Was that their high street ?

Is that a way in ?

This was a fairly extensive site, although I didn’t find a puzzle here. I must come back and do the Ram Tah mission chain, which apparently tells you much more about the Guardians.

I didn’t do the trip all at once, this was a stop off at the Eagle Nebula facility.

It was good to be back in civilisation though and Tiamat’s Chariot looks great in her new livery.

Someone mentioned that they needed a zebra prop though, which gave me a demonic idea … That’s photoshopped Gimp’d, although there is a Dazzle Camo paint scheme for one of the smaller Imperial ships.

That’s a fun thing that the stick can do. It’s a bit limited by the display size (3 addressable lines in the middle, that’s it for such a big area) and I needed third party software to make it do anything but having the landing pad instructions was cute. And about the most useful thing I’ve managed to get out of it so far. Maybe combat will be different.

The Community Goal for this week is one that deals in small quantities of good though, so as Tiamat’s Chariot isn’t really suited for that, Zoomnarr gets a little more flight time. There’s an Imperial shipyard near the collection site too with a couple of capital ships …

Also, some rare goods may give you more than you bargained for. They’re actually looking for beer, caviar, cigarettes and shiny fire opals.

Outside of Elite though, I was checking out other internet spaceships last night …

That’s from Star Trek Online. A curious mix of ground pounding combat like other MMOs and space based combat. It felt like Star Trek should feel, with phasers on the ground and something that feels similar to the Starfleet Command games in space.

But … it’s a 10 year old game that looks like while it’s had lots of story content for it over that period, it looks like a 10 year old game. It was making me think of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and the other games of that era.

A promising start though. That I might not be able to continue for the same reason as FFXIV ! My hand and arm aren’t a fan of me today after a couple of hours in STO last night.

A pity.

I’ve also been in Motorsport Manager 🙂 Sleepy Dwagon Racing were smashing the competition in the lowest league, so it was time to promote and they’ve got the points they should need to stay in that league already … after 3 races. I’ve got a definite formula for How To Win in that game, which makes it pretty much a certainty that I’ll eventually get them winning in the next league up … but you have to be on your game in order to keep winning. The AI doesn’t handle transitions between wet, dry and back to wet, which is a weakness that can be exploited.

I must get some screenshots from MM.

Oh, techie buying may well be adding another thing to the list … a keyboard ! The Steelseries M800 that I got 4 years ago was a wonderful keyboard for feel … but is feeling increasingly prone to mis-keying and double tapping of the keys. I’ll be looking at Logitech, Corsair or … (shock horror), the cheapie own brand one from PC World that actually felt really nice to type on.

Although that would mean going outside more …

That too.

Top of the Galaxy and other news

Hello everyone,

There may be lots of screenshots tonight …

There’s one. I followed the speed run to the galactic centre with a trip to the top of the galaxy. There will be a certain amount of cheating* going on with how it shows the galaxy but it does still look pretty.

*(that isn’t several billion entities being simulated, that’s a skybox generated from a prediction, the skybox background is then oriented according to how the camera is looking at it) TLDR – looks pretty.

I think I’ve caught a cold … hopefully not anything more sinister than that. I have no idea how catching a cold could happen, although I definitely have the sneezing, runny nose and blocked ears. Odd. Could be hay fever, probably is hay fever because I’m very susceptible to that and can’t take anything for it for various reasons.

Looking forwards to watching Le Mans this weekend, although I won’t try staying up for the whole 24 hours. Same with Nurburgring the week after. I like to watch teams that are a little way down the field, or teams that have suffered some kind of misfortune and are fighting back. That’s usually far more interesting than boringness that can happen up front.

I need to get out and about some too, despite the hayfever and apparent cold. But I won’t be going anywhere while I have cold symptoms (I have supplies until at least the weekend, am ok).

Apart from that, I’m managing hands issues again … The internet spaceships seem to be reasonably neutral with it but more traditional first person shooter type games may be causing issues. So no more Final Fantasy XIV yet but I did have a look at The Outer Worlds.

I’m not sure about this one, it isn’t holding me in like I thought it would. I’m actually feeling like diving into a fresh Mass Effect Andromeda playthrough instead (that’ll be Fuzzyfreaks and her return to Mass Effect) and there’s also the Deus Ex Adam Jensen games (Human Revolution, Mankind Divided).

But there’s also the internet spaceships. Depending on how I play, these are better and worse for my hands. I didn’t cause that dent by the way, it was there before I landed, not when I landed.

Honest.

Time to come back down though and that was another pointer from Kamd, a moon with just the right amount of inclination in orbit above its parent planet to really show off those rings. Also geysers …

And what I could only describe as pipe trees. Tight landing too …

On to a system called the Eye of Fire, with lovely copper coloured gas giants and rings. But … there was more …

I travelled round a little more until the planet was giving me an eclipse and there’s a second gas giant there that can be seen through the rings.

Moving on again though and nebulae are pretty. As must be the view from this science station :

At some point, I’ll watch the movie The Black Hole again which has the research ship Cygnus perched on the edge of a black hole. It’s a Disney scifi movie from December 1979 and as such, there’s a lot of silly about it. But I can remember enjoying watching it.

My stopping point for the evening was a place called the Dryau Awesomes … There’s a white dwarf star shining out there and in the lower centre right, you’ll see the telltale whorl of a black hole lensing the background.

But that’s not where the Awesomes come from :

That’s a bit close isn’t it …

There’s a fleet carrier nestled in there too, the Buurian Anchorage. I stopped off here to repair the hyperdrive and hand in my exploration data before attempting what’s said to be a very hazardous landing. I think I was ok, although landing on that smaller planet there so close to the big one could be a bit hairy.

There we are, perched on a ledge looking at the big planet.

But I moved on a bit from there because I wanted a picture with the star in the background.

Back later in the week. It’s been good to see the galactic news service make a return as well. It’s back with a bang … literally … as several space stations have been attacked.

It’s a good alternate world to fly around in, definitely a rather pretty escape from what’s happening in this one !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Defensive Baking and Speed Running

Hello everyone,

Book today ! Internet spaceships later.

It wasn’t that book. Although after seeing it in my search for a thumbnail today, I kinda want to read that now ! The pic above is The Great Dragon Bake Off by Nicola O’Byrne and here’s the Goodreads link.
Nah, this semi-review is about A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon.

After switching to this one after giving up on the tedious Existence (David Brin), this book was a wonderful breath of fresh air. It’s written in a light style and it’s always half a sentence away from an inventive bit of humour that’ll keep you laughing all the way through the book and quite often, bursting out into uncontrollable chuckles.

What’s it about ?

This book is centred around the 14 year old Mona, who lives in a feudal medieval era world blessed by a light touch of magic. Wizards are rare … and our Mona has an affinity for bread and baking. She can make gingerbread men dance and animate dough in various other ways.

However … not all is well in this world …

There’s been a Murder ! This is one of those lovely books that’s extremely well paced. You don’t get bored but happily get drawn gently into a tale of skullduggery and then heroism. It builds to a natural climactic finish too. Quite possibly a bit dark with what one of the characters gets up to … but you probably need a bit of evil to balance all that fluffy goodness.

I think I had all sorts of bread puns lined up when I was talking to someone about this the other day but the internet spaceships thing today has banished them a bit ! Let’s see …

A nice fluffy story. It rises satisfactorily throughout, it tempts with goodness and the humour and characters are the icing on the top. Oh and it’s consistent within itself too, coming out the oven with a lovely texture throughout.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) – wonderful book, will definitely be checking out what else she’s come out with. Humour throughout and delicious inventiveness.

Internet spaceships ? I may have to be a bit more careful with these because my body wasn’t liking what I was doing with them today. (Oo-er?)

I left things last time with the Hand of Caledorn doing a different type of mining … After one more quick session, I’ve switched over to Zoomnarr, aka 5K-L4H. That’s Zoomnarr in the picture above. She’s my second Krait Mk II ship, with that type selected because there hasn’t been a record run done with them yet. Mission … head to the Core.

After a little shakedown cruise first. Seen here checking a decidedly second hand science ship.

The speed run thing is to see how quickly you can get from the Sol system to Sagittarius A* at the galactic centre. It’s been done in 86 minutes 57 seconds … in a ship with greater jump range. They’re probably seeing 75-77 light year jumps there, Zoomnarr can do 61.1 light year jumps. I think they have a much craftier route as well than the ones the Spansh plotter gives me.

The things they look for to register runs are 3 screenshots … the one above which proves you started on the same day you arrived (they changed the info in the next one). The time of departure :

There we go. 12.58.00 in the top right. And time of arrival, using the Galaxy Map to prove that you’re at the Core :

This time it’s 16.08.49 in the top left, making the run time 3 hours, 10 minutes and 49 seconds for my fastest time yet. I thought I had a chance of breaking through to under 3 hours but made a few errors at neutron stars :

That was the worst, where I bumped into the exclusion zone which drops you out of hyperspace. To go really far and fast, you drop into the streamers of the neutron stars and that lets you jump 4 times the distance that you would without the boost.

One thing about the trip is that as you get closer to the centre, the star density massively increases. It’s pretty. And I’m definitely liking the new colour scheme.

And another visit to Sagittarius A* ! I think this is the fifth time I’ve been there on this character and it’s still a treat seeing the stars lensing around the monster in the middle there.

But it was time to put the ship to bed and there she is coming to rest in Explorer’s Anchorage. The trip back will be a lot slower and I’ll be checking out places to see as well with a new rover.

Next objective – to have Zoomnarr on screen with Cmdr Drew Wagar’s next Elite tour, starting in October. I should be back in the bubble for that :-).

Hopefully with limbs that have forgiven me by then too ! The speed run play style is a bit reminiscent of MMOs, where you feel pressured to keep at it when you’d normally step away for a moment or take it a bit more chill. I was feeling this trip in my hip (strange I know !) and I’ll have reminders from the arms over the next few days.

But the setting of a new time and the screenshots I’ll get on the way back will make it worth it.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Mining, Reading, Working

Hello everyone,

What have I been up to for the week ? Feels like time is flying by still at the moment.

I’ve actually turned the Seti sums back on again, because it’s cooled down enough here to be putting the jumpers back on.

Let’s see. Work’s been fairly intense lately and it really should have been a bit more intense. I should actually be in a different country at the moment under quarantine ahead of a little period away. But I’m not, partly due to physical condition, partly due to mental condition.

My head’s ok now, my mental state picked up considerably after I was stood down from going away. But there is that nagging sense that I’ve let the mental issues win this time. Some of those issues come from the frustration I was having with arranging my end of the trip. (Arranging for me seemed to be much more of an unknown than the other people – can’t go in to why here) A big one was the prospect of over a month away from home. I get anxiety when I’m away. Some of it was the conditions I’d be going into. Again, can’t say why here.

What caused the decision to be made though was that the mental issues were causing tensions that were manifesting in physical conditions. My back has mostly repaired itself now from when it tried to decouple itself and I’ve been back in the internet spaceship piloting seat as well (more later). Mining has been a good activity there, feels productive. I haven’t attempted a shooter or MMO style game for a good while though, if the spaceships are close to aggravating the wrist, then the shooter / MMO games are likely to activate that issue again.

Oh and I also needed to take a moment when I was picking up shopping last week and my hips were  getting crunchy …

Things do feel a little like making excuses though and I’m not sure if I like that. That’s one thing about mental issues, the person with them will feel as if they’ve let themselves down … which just acts as negative reinforcement.

It’s ok to talk about the mental issues. In fact, I’d heavily encourage it. In being able to express those issues with a few people, it’s let me bounce back quite a bit from when they were affecting me so much that the tension was manifesting as the physical issues.

Reading ?

After abandoning David Brin’s Existence after 100 tedious pages, I’ve been reading A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. More to come about that in a later post (when I’ve finished reading it !) but I enjoyed its first 36 pages so much, I had to share part of why I was finding it a fun read :

It’s been light hearted fun so far, very readable and the early parts quite happily drew me in to the story and I was wanting to continue despite it getting late.

Existence was a bit different. The first couple of chapters were ok … and then we hit one with a travel journalist experiencing the Mixed Reality rich areas. That was tough to read, not for subject but for readability. I don’t like the Wall of Text tendency that I can have, this was Wall of Text to the extreme. And then it goes into intermission sections between chapters, some of which were a talk show type set up that I was essentially just skipping over. There’s a lot of self indulgent stuff in there, it was distracting heavily away from any semblance of plot and I gave up on it after 100 pages, perhaps 15/20 of which felt plot related.

Internet spaceships ? I’ve been mining again …

Mining is a bit broken though, so fairly soon I’ll be switching ship again. ZoomNarr is potentially next, although I’d like to open up a little more engineering first for weight savings …

That’ll be what Zoomnarr looks like and I’ll be aiming at around 3 hours to get to the Galactic Core in this one. My record is 3 hours 6 minutes …

I’m not switching ships due to a lithobraking incident though … honest. (All the dents came out from this planetary approach).

Gotta say, the colour scheme of Hand of Caledorn was fitting in rather nicely with the surroundings she was mining in. However, mining has suffered a little lately in the metagame area. Low Temperature Diamonds were the main highly lucrative item, these are now scarcer than scarce. As a knock on to that, the Painite I’ve been mining has lessened in value as the market saturates. So … time to test something new :

Mining with explosives ! Charges set …

BOOM TODAY ! (Well. Yesterday.)

Hmm. More boom needed.

That’s better. The idea is that you use the seismic charge launcher to embed explosives into the rock and then …

Pick up the goodies exposed from the insides, find the high buyers and profit. I cut the session short a little because I was struggling to fill the hold … and also because the wrist issues were threatening again. Still, it was a nice 128m credits from the session although that took 4 hours to get, rather than the 2 hours that a Painite session currently netting 121m would take.

So I think I’ll leave the mining aside for a little bit. Next up will be a brief combat session again in a Mamba. Not the best ship but the only useful role I can see for it is mining. A Beluga Passenger Liner will happen at some point … and also the Anaconda class explorer ship Searching For Dragons will go round the galaxy. That’ll be all of the ships owned at the that point, although the Admiral Luperza hasn’t been out of the hangar yet.

We’ll see. Perhaps even a little FFXIV as well, although that was a catalyst for the wrist issues so I may have to just cold turkey drop that game.

We shall see ! Apart from that, Le Mans is coming up, having been moved to September. Nurburgring 24 hour is the week after. I’ll be watching someone down the field and hoping they do well. It’s boring to support the winners. Better to urge on the cars that have had terrible luck at some point and you can watch them battle back through the field after repairs. I was doing that with the Lexus cars last year, sadly they won’t be at the Nurburgring even this year. But there’s a custom sports car, several GT86s and some Aston Martins to keep an eye on.

Should be good.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Spaceships, a little racing, a little rescue and back to work

Hello everyone,

One week since my last, feels like it’s flown past ! It’s been one of those weeks too where I can’t really remember what I was getting up to either. (Yes I can, cracking on with work stuff and doing spaceship mining in evenings)

It’s a bit warm here at the moment …

I was looking for the melted dog pic but that’ll do as well. I struggle in the heat. Probably a lot of that is a metabolism that tends to the hyperactive states but I’m also carrying too much weight and British houses are set up to be heat traps. It’s not been quite as hot as previous years but it’s still been pretty toasty.

Internet spaceships ? I’ve been doing more of the mining …

As usual, click for bigger. I’m playing in 1440p, so there’s lots more detail available than is in the thumbnails. Here we have the good ship Towel of Space, hard at work again amongst the asteroids. The little lights there are collector drones that go out to fetch the bits you blast off the asteroids.

The good stuff is in the rings around planets.

Loads of asteroids to have a look at in there.

It speeds things up if you get close, although you’re probably not supposed to get that close. Spot the shields activating to stop an impact from the rotating asteroid !

But something unusual happened yesterday. One of the pilots on the Kolo discord reported that they were in deep fuel trouble, as they’d been disadvantaged by getting moved by the game and got stuck without a fuel scoop or a station to refuel at. So off I pop to a station to get a small module refit …

And we’re off to the rescue. There’s an organisation called the Fuel Rats which does this as their thing that they do in the game. It’s the first time I’ve run a rescue like this.

Felt good too. And apparently the people on the discord liked catching up on the story as it was unfolding last night (we were using the discord to coordinate before getting online).

I’ve been in the Motorsport Manager game too, starting again with an open cockpit racing team (think F1). I’ve been curious about the mods for that game which essentially do a total conversion. I haven’t gone for those yet. There are a heap of mods that are essentially massive cheats for the game, I avoid those as well because I’ve figured out how to win at the game without that kind of assistance. My team was up to 5th in the lowest (of 3) championship in the third season and the races are being enjoyable to run the strategy on.

I had another little look at FFXIV again today. It has an effect on my neck and shoulder, so I haven’t been quite as addicted to it as I could have been. But it has a certain draw that’s kept me coming back. I’d rate it as being well worth a play if you enjoyed your levelling time in games like WoW.

And my little punchy catgirl has outfits that I can show off on camera again !

This is checking out Gridania.

Looking at the scenery around the town.

And being taught new dances by the locals. Need to get more outfit though. That one was provided by a quest again.

That’s one of the things about this game, there’s a certain joy that comes over in the actions of the characters that come up on screen.

Both this one and Elite have been good ones to disappear in this week. I’m finding the mining in the internet spaceship to be a calming experience that I’m enjoying. It was great to run the rescue last night. And FFXIV’s Eorzea was being charming again today.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Quiet week with spaceships and Lego

Hello everyone,

I’ve been having a quiet week … a bit of time away from the work stuff and to see about catching up on sleep and other non stressy things.

Cardiff happened on Wednesday, more about that in a bit (but the thumbnail will give some away!). Shopping has happened today, although it included what’s probably best described as a milk mishap. Not quite a disaster, although I was mopping up milk from the boot of the car and my kitchen floor. Looks like only a little bit escaped, which was good. (It got squeezed in the shopping bag enough to pop the seal).

There we go. More of that box in the background in a bit. (More Lego may have escaped as well …)

Been watching the cricket too, there’s been a fair bit of that this week … rain permitting.

Cardiff was ok on Wednesday. I feel it’s probably inevitable that we’re about to see a second wave of Covid cases coming in now in the UK. We never properly got close to eliminating it (getting a below 100 case in a day level), it’s trending slightly upwards again and mask discipline was shocking on Wednesday. Perhaps 1 in 3, maybe 1 in 4 people were in masks. I didn’t stick around for munchies like I would normally have done, although that was partly due to wanting to get back for more of the Kim & Becky crafting stream. It’s a good chilled out stream to listen in to as Kim facilitates and Becky produces magic.

Lots of games have been occurring this week, although I’ve been a little limited by my shoulder … I think I may have actually popped it out slightly this week, although it has improved again today. There’s been a load of music listening too :-).

I played a little Final Fantasy XIV last weekend, although that’s suffered a bit with the shoulder. I can’t show to latest screenshot because the gear system has given my poor punchy catgirl something nearly indecent.

I’ve skipped ahead a little with the Internet Spaceships and I may come back to those but this was Tea-89 on her way back to the bubble, this one is a slightly processed image by the way with “Auto White Balance” picked to make everything more visible. Looks great.

I did want to be doing something different to exploration though and this is Tea-89 returning to the hangars at Jameson Memorial.

I had a chance to give the Admiral Luperza an updated paint scheme, although the shoulder meant I didn’t want to indulge in combat just yet …

So the Towel of Space made her debut. The name and colour scheme are in honour of the wonderful Katherine of Sky (youtube link), another lady of the videos who has a lovely voice with great intelligence and style behind it. When she does streaming, she has a strict no face camera policy but did start up a Cat Cam, with a towel bed for her kitties to lie on while the camera pointed at them.

The kitties appeared to know when the camera was on …

So chat started up the cult of the Towel Of Sky and a new meme was born. The callsign for this ship is CAT404, or Cat Not Found. I’ll name one in honour of the other Lord Of Sky, Caledorn (youtube link) at some point. He hasn’t been making many videos lately but I’ve been enjoying listening to him as I catch up on other series.

There’s Towel of Space hard at work amongst the asteroids, collecting Painite which can fetch prices of around 630,000-700,000 credits per tonne. That’s not as much as it used to be but it’s still probably the most profitable activity in the game at the moment. Plus I think it’s ok for my hands too as there is less interaction with the controls.

The other high value methods are either broken (Low Temperature Diamonds are extremely rare at the moment due to a bug) or very fussy in their mechanics. I mine by finding good asteroids and blasting at them with lasers (very simple), the game now includes methods for drilling into asteroids and blowing them apart for shinies hidden inside. That seems very fussy and I haven’t tried it yet.

I’ve actually enjoyed the mining, it’s been a different activity than the exploring and is definitely easier than the combat.

I mentioned pictures of Lego though … That’s what was in the box.

It was fun to see a picture frame take shape, including having a prop at the back.

A shape steadily takes …. shape.

More detail appears …

And I suspect you know what this soon became …

There we go. This was one of the new Brick Sketches that have just been released. I enjoyed putting this one together last night when I was a bit too warm to do much else.

And 2d vs 3d !

I’ve been eyeing up the LED light up kits as well. One or more of those may appear at some point.

I’ve also still got my eye on a Hotas upgrade, I’ve enjoyed taking an early look at Automation :

Nice little Triumph Spitfire analogue there. It doesn’t have quite the body customisation options that I was looking for but the engine and mechanicals customisation is incredible even if it isn’t going to go as far as doing Hybrids, Diesels or Rotary/Wankel engines. I may well acquire the BeanNG.Drive application that lets you drive your creations around.

Anyway, back to a bit more chillout for me this evening.

Nite all, stay safe, be well.