Tag: games

Top of the Galaxy and other news

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September 14, 2020

8:49 pm

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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

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September 6, 2020

10:16 pm

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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

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August 31, 2020

10:35 pm

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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

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August 9, 2020

10:48 pm

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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

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August 1, 2020

11:10 pm

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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.

Final Step, New Journey

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July 24, 2020

10:21 pm

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Hello everyone,

I have masks !

They’re from a small scale supplier called Beverley’s Masks (linky), which I found via one of the discords. I like the designs, they’re cheap (£5 inc postage to UK) and they arrived on Wednesday after I ordered them on Sunday evening. Very happy with that. Would definitely recommend. I have my new Elite t-shirt as well, which was ordered as a second item to an Elite themed mask … I haven’t got the mask yet.

Three cheers for Beverley’s Masks, a hearty BOO HISS for Frontier’s suppliers.

I’ve been trying out a new game … I might well be in there a fair bit over the next week (hands permitting) because I’ve been enjoying it so far.

That’s Bashara Dannalae and she has a Pointy Hat. And an outfit that she’ll catch her death of cold in. (A better one will appear later).

The game is Final Fantasy XIV and it’s started out as a massively charming massive multiplayer game so far. They must have done a huge amount of work getting the facial expressions and emotes just absolutely perfect. It’s a very pretty game and I’ve been enjoying my time in it so far.

Bashara ventures forth … to adventure !

An upgrade later and she’s visiting the housing district. I haven’t checked this aspect of the game out much so far. I’m only on the free trial at the moment although I get the feeling that I might race through the content on offer and get to the free trial level cap before the game goes on sale again. We shall see !

And that’s Bashara as I left her this evening. Better armour, a hat with Two Pointy Things and an eagerness to punch lots of things while in search of more story to play through.

But I needed to break for munchies and I have to manage my hands these days.

I’m on leave next week though ! So lots more time available. I’m not planning on going too far although I think I’ll venture out at some point (with my masks!) when the latest cricket finishes.

So if Final Fantasy XIV is the new journey, what’s the Final Step ? The Drew Wagar Elite Lore Tour came to a close yesterday evening and I had the privilege of being involved in the final stream. Fun times, quite probably the coolest thing I’ve been involved in with a game.

Let’s see if this works … oh well, (the movie clip thing only does Youtube) … This link will take you to a 53 ship mass hyperspace jump at the end of yesterday’s stream. It was pretty awesome to have my little ship along for the ride.

As usual, click for bigger. Spot little Tea-89 creeping in to the shot there showing off her markings.

It was great to see so many ships in one place.

There was a decent variety of pretty ships to look at too, most pilots had gone for the more long ranged ships but there were some of the different types too. That shot includes a Beluga Liner, several Anacondas, a couple of Imperial Cutters, Asp Explorers, Krait Phantoms, a Dolphin,, an Orca, an Imperial fighter, a Federal Corvette and a couple of Cobra Mk3’s.

Time for a better look. Up in the top right is the megaship Zurara, which I’ll talk about later.

It’s been great listening in to Cmdr Wagar’s Lore Tour. He’s got a very listenable to voice and is massively keen for the Lore that’s gone through the 4 major Elite games. (Curiously, he shares my frustration at the development of the lore dying a death since the start of the year).

But all good things come to an end and there was no more Lore for now to tell. This is just before the final gathering for a formation flight past the Zurara …

Setting up for a spectacular mass hyperspace jump out of the system. It was great to see and I think Cmdr Wagar got a massive kick out of it during the livestream. It’s always good to see a big grin. (Link to clip again)

As for me with the Internet Spaceships, I’ll be making my way back more slowly … hopefully visiting some places along the way. But a bit slower because I think I’m a bit burned out on the game. There are more pictures to come though !

Time to say good night though and I think … open up Existence by David Brin.

We’re not out of the woods yet with what’s going on outside. Looks like there’s still a lot of dangerous people out there who aren’t taking the corona seriously enough. Live how you want to, if you don’t feel safe in a particular situation, get out of there.

Be safe, be well, enjoy what you’re getting up to.

Books ! And a little bit of buggying around

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June 30, 2020

10:13 pm

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Hello everyone,

I feel tired ! Dunno why, haven’t exactly been doing that much. Perhaps it’s lack of sleep, or my body getting used to not doing very much. I’ll be out of the house soon though, for more than just stocking up the cupboards again.

Also been doing book … Not just one book as well but two ! Let’s see. It should be through the Google thing by now :

Actual paperback. Perhaps rare in this era of ebooks and Kindles … Signed by the author too :

Big nod. (Yes, that’s my thumb). This was a case of seeing a sequel to a book I’d already read and enjoyed and being content to pay a little more than e-book price in order to support that local bookshop and to get one with a little, superficial aye, extra.

What’s the book about ? It’s the sequel to Embers of War, which sets up this world by introducing the setting and characters which include the spaceship at the centre of this trilogy, the Trouble Dog. After being required to undertake an atrocity that ended a war, she retired from naval service and joined the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescue and preservation of life. This middle book sees the Trouble Dog and crew embark on another rescue attempt, this time to jump into the unknown to rescue a ship of salvagers who came a cropper when they attempted to do a bit of illegal salvage on a wandering generation ship.

Oh and all hell is breaking loose in the galaxy while this is going on. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot cos it’ll spoil both this book and the previous book but …

I love the Trouble Dog, she’s a ship with attitude and an avatar that combines smart, tough, sassy and resourcefulness. The book swaps between various characters, with its 400 pages broken up in to 83 chapters which each focus on a central character. The Trouble Dog is the star of her own chapters.
As is Nod, an alien of the Druff race which are innately brilliant engineers. Every ship has a Druff engineer that keeps the ship going. They’re utterly alien, written expertly by the author and lend a welcome change of perspective to the books.
And I like the rest of the human characters too, who all have their own driving characteristics, mental flaws, issues and other quirks that make them and keep them interesting.

This one is very definitely a Middle Book and as such it moves the general plotline on considerably. It doesn’t give an end, Embers of War is definitely the beginning and … I got the last book in the queue to read. I’ll be looking forwards to that one as much as I am looking forward to reading Absolution Gap.

The second book was Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells and it’s book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. The first comment that always comes out about these books is … HOW MUCH ? The price is a bit too inflated for my liking at £6 for essentially a novella. Still, this one and All Systems Red (book 1) were both captivating reads. The central character just goes by their self given name, Murderbot. They’re a former SecUnit (Security Unit) that’s gone rogue. Except all they want to do is have a chance to peacefully watch as many entertainment serials that they can.

It doesn’t work that way though, so Murderbot ends up on adventures that have gone from pure survival and a start in figuring out the events that made them go rogue. Cos they didn’t just go rogue originally, they were involved in the death of all of the humans in the place it happened.

I’ll be back for more of the Murderbot Diaries. They’re a fun read. Bit quick … but that also means that it’s tight writing that rattles the story along without any more padding than is necessary to tell you what’s going on in Murderbot’s head.

Recommended – both books.

Buggying around ? Internet Spaceships again ! Gotta admit, I’m having to be a little careful with play time because my hand and shoulders are bugging me again but it was good to get back to the populated bubble again and have a little explore. I left it last time at the Hawkins Gap Bases (the spelling is horribly inconsistent I know).

This was a good one to fly by … It’s a ringed planet lit by the local neutron star.

The end of this journey took me to Cortes Base, which has been adopted by a race circuit for intrepid fighter pilots and maybe by pilots of the little ships too. I may have to check that out. I took the buggy in there …

I found a couple of issues along the way, This is a dome on the outside of the base where the foundations don’t quite reach to the ground. I’m actually ok with this, although it reveals some of the magic around how these planetary bases are generated and built in the game. A couple of glitches are ok.

I never gave the birds eye view ! There we go, on approach.

This was the way in and … you may be able to detect another glitch. The ramp doesn’t reach quite all the way to the ground. That’s ok, I had jet boosters let me jump up there :-D. Little bit of creative use of a jump ramp maybe but it was still good to get in there.

And have a little look around. Click for bigger on these by the way.

One fun thing is that the scale is all good. The bases are massive … and in scale. Those windows up there genuinely look like a floor high each and the ground floor doors to that hangar building are scaled correctly for the rover.

Lots to explore too.

Bit quiet out there in the streets … I might have got there a bit late, their time.

Couldn’t get in to the actual base though.

Lots to see in there.

It was getting time for me to put the game to bed as well though …

Another peek from a safe distance and then it was time to be off and make a proper landing.

Outside of the internet spaceships, I’ve been working on a Dwagon Alphabet. I have most of the letters now, although it’ll take a fair bit of tweaking time before I’m happy with them all. People like them though. The first one was a Happy Birthday message for someone which I hope she enjoyed … and then more Dwagon Letters have sprung up from there as I produce them. I’m a fan of the Clip Studio application that I’ve been using, it makes the drawing and editing with the tablet happen very easily.

I think that’s it for tonight though. Stay safe, be well, steer clear of the internet if it’s causing you grief (lots has been coming out into the public eye lately, much of it unhealthy).

Dwagon Alphabet will come later but for now … out take from the excursion !

Landing Autopilot’s been sniffing the rocket fuel again.