Tag: health

Changes, updates and kinda hanging in there

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October 8, 2025

5:37 pm

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games, health, technology

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Hello everyone,

How are things going with you all ? Hope you’re doing ok. As for me, I’ve had another couple of runs to the hospitals (routine stuff) and I’m getting started on the rehab. Life’s had to change a little bit down here, as you’d expect from being mostly down an arm. I should get most of the mobility back, although I can feel that the left wrist is still quite delicate. Oh and I’ve been told that playing games can also be a decent part of rehab activity.

How’s that ! Not sure if I quite believe that but I’ll go with it. Talking of the games, I got a care package through …

Picture. We're looking at a selection of goodies. In the background, there is a square shaped light green coloured plushie with Intel written on it on a white patch. It has a pair of small white arms. To the left, a Get Well Soon card. My large red dwagon is to the right propping up a circular Creator Meetups UK coaster with their orange and white arrow and blue and white arrow.

That’s a plushie from the Intel people who were a key sponsor for the September Creator Meetups event. There’s a get well soon card with a lovely message. A Creator Meetups coaster and my red dwagon there is sporting a event sash (actually wristband, don’t tell the dwagon). There’s also a t-shirt, although that’s not in the picture.

The care package was a lovely thing to open today. I’ll talk more about the event some time but for now, I’ll keep it to just mentioning the Intel part … they were one of the main sponsors, which helps to make events like the last Creator North happen. We need their support and it’s hugely appreciated. I think they (could have been Asus too) were running the PC speed build thing at the latest event which was fun to keep an eye on. I didn’t take part in that … I’m excessively careful when I’m building my PCs so speed running them isn’t something I’d do but it was good to peek at.

Talking of PC building … it’s shameless shill time ! Bunny is an AMD build but I figured I owe Intel a mention, both due to the care package and for them supporting the events that they do. Disclosure note – the care package is a gift, attendance of the event was paid for by me, Pumpkin PC (about to mention) was fully bought by me, no other compensation has been received. I.e. this is an unprompted post.

Picture, cartoon. We're looking at an L shaped desk with two computer monitors and keyboard on it. The monitors have faces. The left one says "It's new year's, what's your resolution", the right one says "Same as always 1024 by 768"

So I mentioned that my current build is AMD, my longest serving PC is still Pumpkin built Oct 31 2011, going until July 2019. Pumpkin did really well and was super reliable. I don’t look for extreme speed in a PC, that tends to double the price for not really that much extra speed. I look for a build that I can put together, set up and then forget about for years while I watch videos and game on it. And Pumpkin excelled at that. The only technical issues it had was a Corsair power supply popping and the motherboard sound hardware popping.

And that was the trend with Intel for a very long time. They had a performance edge on AMD until recently but what they excelled at was lazy reliable performance. They could do what they do incredibly reliably and without fuss. Hassle free computing is exactly what I go for. So why did I go away from the Sandy Bridge i5-2500k powered Pumpkin ? It was struggling for performance in games due to only having 8GB of system memory. It was approaching time to change in 2019 and I’m glad I did because we all know what happened in 2020. Almost 8 years service is a phenomenal amount of time for a PC to be properly good for.

Picture. A small kitten is stretched across a laptop keyboard. The captions are "Ctrl Alt Delete Cat" "needs someone to hold alt"

What would I get if I went Intel now ? Here’s a Partpicker link. That’s pretty much the same bits as the new Bunny PC except for the Intel core in there. The prices are about the same too. The Intel chip has a lot more cores than my AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3d at a count of 16+8 vs 8 doubling to 16 threads for the AMD. Not entirely sure what the 24+8 means …

That’s another thing actually … The Partpicker list there is fairly arbitrary although I can vouch for case, RAM, psu, graphics and SSD. I’d need to know the difference between the P and E cores. And that’s where the research comes in. It’s a lot of money to invest, gotta be sure you’re investing in the right bits.

How about me though ?

The hospital visit last week was to get an initial follow up and they changed my cast as well. Oh and I may have hit a food allergy event too. So … good visit, bad consequences for me because I didn’t realise that the cookies I’d been munching and the giant Twix all had soya within and I can’t tolerate soya. Oh well. But I did get a slightly lighter cast, some basic physio exercises and advice that playing computer games on controllers would help with the rehab. Oh and I don’t need the arm sling any more.

Good results both there and a local hospital visit with a very lovely physio who gave me a few more exercises for the rehab and an injection of hope in getting all better. Having a little hope is ultra valuable.

How about that gaming though ?

Game screenshot. Euro Truck Sim 2. We're looking out from inside a truck cab, over the top of the dashboard and steering wheel. We're on a straight road with grass and fence to the sides with buildings and another truck ahead. A satnav panel is to bottom right.

I’ve had a couple of Truck Game sessions so far. It’s a little awkward because I use a Xbox style controller. The left hand needs to cover the d-pad for set and forget options like lights and wipers. The middle finger does the brakes, first finger is left indicator and thumb does steering. Awkward but possible. The drawback with the two Truck Games is that when you start a run, you really need to finish it and my State of Being at the moment means that when I hit a certain point, I will need to STOP pretty much immediately which isn’t compatible with having to finish the runs off.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're in the green ship with two prongs overflying a pink ish planet. We've just overflown and are looking back at an enormous crater. On the horizon is another planet, we can just see its rings. The sky is dominated by purple nebula and stars.

And then there’s Elite Dangerous, which actually got me started doing two handed typing again.

I use a Thrustmaster Hotas X for Elite (linky). It’s a basic Hotas as they go. You can get a lot fancier and expensive than that (search VKB and Virpil) but the Hotas X has been solid, reliable and above all comforyable for me to play Elite with. The pitch, roll and yaw are all done on the right hand stick. The left hand throttle has the forward and back and a rocker arm I use for left and right. My left thumb uses buttons for up, down and boost.

I’m not fluent with the Hotas yet in Elite but I had enough for a short(ish) travel session of 54 jumps (a session would normally be around 200 jumps). I can’t fully grip the throttle side yet, just half of it. It’s enough for travel where you can’t go up/down/left/right, not for more fine control although I could manage the external camera which is how I get all the screenies.

Oh and the big bonus …. because I do a few things very quickly, like renaming screenshots, I started two handed typing again. Big result there. Oh and Elite offers up interesting places to land at where you can often set up a good view.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at out green spaceship landed on a stark white planet. Above right is a small looking grey white gas giant planet with bands of dark colour. To the left, the sky is dominated by the dusty brown of the stars of the galactic disc.

I better close up there …

I’m having to do a few changes. My snacking is much reduced (which is good) and I’m adjusting to having less in my left hand. I’ve been ticking off a few IRL achievements like being able to lace up the boots, although I still have very little grip strength and even less carrying strength. Haven’t attempted long sleeves yet or the laundry (weekend thing). I need to do more of the physio exercises to get mobility back.

I’m doing ok and am fully independent here in the house, within my limits. I’m very low on energy still but it has been good being in some of the games again.

Oh and the online communities I hang around have been wonderful and have sent a lot of love my way. It’s vastly appreciated.

Pictures meme. We're looking at 4 cartoon panels steadily getting closer to a fuzzy black cat. The captions read "I wish your year is full of nice things"

Credit to Purr.In.Ink there, they’re always coming out with these cute little cartoons with the best vibes.

Have a lovely day everyone :-).

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Back from an unscheduled medical emergency

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September 27, 2025

8:55 pm

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health

Hello everyone,

Checks last post date … 20 August ! Oops. I should have posted before going up to the Creator North meet up on 13 September.

I … got badly hurt and I’m not long back in the world after nearly a fortnight i hospital with a shattered wrist and broken shoulder. I’ve had 2 operations and was very well looked after up in Manchester, so the long term prognosis is good but it might take a while to get there. Hopefully by the end of the year. I’ll hopefully be able to get a decent amount into this post but I am on one handed typing and my body and mind are overdrawn on reserves.

So what happened ? Short form is that the meet up was held at a skate park, there was an introduction session and I found out the hard way that skateboarding is not for 50 year old me.

Caution warning medical injury details follow but what I’m going to do is surround that by a couple of pictures. So if you find that kind of thing upsetting, PLEASE skip to the picture after the one below that will become the thumbnail to this post. I’m not out to upset anyone here with details that could cause someone nightmares. With that, here goes !

Picture of a green skinned dwagon model, standing up. They're dressed in a blue robe with long red coat over. The left arm is pulled into their belly and has a blue cast on it. The right arm holds a crutch. They wear a wide brimmed red hat.

Right, so I fell off a skateboard at low speed pretty much on to my bum. My left wrist broke the fall and shock went into my left shoulder. I felt no pain at this point (I’m weird like that) but reaching over with my right hand, I realized that both bones of my forearm were broken just before the wrist. I could also feel that my left shoulder felt very wrong. I could barely bend or lean over later with waves of excruciating pain.

I was then very well looked after by the instructor and then one of the park’s first aid people before being taken to the local hospital’s Accident and Emergency by the very lovely Billietrixx (will link later) who is one of the organisers. At 4am and about 5 hours of feeling grating bones and increasing pain post adrenaline and shock in my wrist and my shoulder with my left arm locked to my side, initial treatment was complete, I could move the arm slightly, my wrist was in a cast and sling and I was off to the ward.

The damage was a broken shoulder, with the ball broken off the end of the humerus bone. Both my wrist bones were badly fractured in patterns that were giving the medics quite a bit of concern.

On Thursday 18th, I had the operation to sort out the shoulder, enabling enough movement to allow an operation on the wrist. The operation went well although there was concern about loss of feeling on the front of the shoulder.

On Monday 22nd, I had a second operation to sort out my wrist which had had complex fractures of both radius and ulna. This operation feels like it went well too although there is uncomfortable swelling still.

Both ops were under general anaesthetic, the initial reduction was in A&E with me having eyes firmly closed puffing on the anti pain vape. That’s hopefully enough of the detail bit … I have some movement (it’s restricted by a heavy cast and sling) but the bones aren’t grating inside any more. The ops installed plates and screws to stabilise everything. It’ll make things interesting around metal detector scanners.

Picture. Meme. A light colour fur kitten is sitting and looking directly up at us with lovely blue eyes. The captions are "At teh first sign ov teh blues, pick up and rub face in teh fuzzies. Apply as needed.

It should be safe to read again if you are sensitive to the caution warning stuff. I did an escape on Thursday 25th, so I’m back home currently. The trip back was by train, the first half was comfy and smooth, the second half past Birmingham south was a rollercoaster. I felt heavily battered by the end and I also picked up a complex cramp in my left leg which felt like I’d turned the ankle.

So how about now ? I’m pretty much able to look after myself at home one handed. I have maybe 5% function in my left hand which will get back to … let’s see. Lots of healing to do. A lot of the restriction is in a very heavy cast which interferes with gripping things. Did you realise that putting on a headset is pretty much a two handed action ? Possible but tricky to do that one handed.

My energy is extremely low. I was able to crack open the work laptop on Friday to do some essential things. It was great to see the people on our weekly team call too. My mental state is … interesting. My emotions are wide open at the moment, so I’m going to concentrate on positive vibes (catching up on videos and streams there). I need to avoid negativity (while not pushing a very worrying family situation away that I’m not going to talk about here).

I have what’s called a Fit Note which states that I’m unfit to work for a while, that leaves an option to still work at the discretion of the injured person so I’ll continue to be on the work laptop. I just need to understand that it’s going to take much longer to do tasks and there are going to be other restrictions.

It’s not just the left arm that I need to look after, it’s my other 3 limbs and my head too. I get mental zoomies which I need to direct into things that keep me happy and/or productive. Can’t help that. I can’t just rot more and play one hand compatible games for the next few months. My right arm is already complaining at the extra awkward work it’s doing too. Legs are ok now after the cramps.

I’m running out of energy so I need to close out, quick stuff :

Billietrixx (twitch link) and Lookitstilly (twitch link) looked after me so well by first taking me to the hospital and staying there until having to go back to the event. And then by rescuing my stuff from the hotel room. I owe a huge debt to these two incredible ladies.

There was also an incredible amount of kindness and positive vibes coming from the online communities and friends that carried me through too. If you’re reading this and helped or thought of me in any way, you are an absolute LEGEND to me. Thank you so much.

Thanks to the gentlemen with me on the ward, there was a little core of lovely guys there who made it a very chill healing place to be for the almost fortnight. Get well soon guys. I think the staff appreciated our bay being a chill place to be too.

The doctors who patched me up. I’m restricted in movement still just two weeks after the severe injuries but it’s with huge thanks to them that the ops went well and I’ll hopefully get most of my left arm function back, if not all of it.

MASSIVE thanks to the nursing staff up in Manchester who looked after us so well providing a wonderful safe healing environment.

A to Z challenge for pointing me at most of the books read. I read no less than 7 while I was there : The Last Emperox by John Scalzi (recommended but it be book 3 of 3, Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell (good book to start a series), Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings (interesting but long), The Twisted Ones by T Kingfisher (good, not her best), The Year Stardust Fell by Raymond F Jones (reads old but story is good), Status Quo by Drew Wagar (fast start to series needs better edits) and Star Centurion by Miles Rozak (pulpy sci fi adventure fun). I’ll talk about these more some time, they all deserve more words.

As for me, it’s going to take time to heal but I am ok now. I hope to heal up well, I realize that it’ll take a while and I need to put limits on myself to keep myself safe and so I don’t set my healing back. These injuries are the worst I’ve had out of a long list of damage I carry.

Right – my right shoulder is screaming at me now, time to say goodnight.

Be well everyone, live your life to the full but keep an eye on the risks you take. Don’t be scared of them, be honest with yourself with them. I found out that skateboarding wasn’t for me the hard way but if I hadn’t taken the session, I would be left wondering what might have been.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

You can pet the “dog”

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August 29, 2024

10:46 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again … Time for a little check from last time :-D. Ah ha ! The Olympics had just started up. It was a good games again too, I quite enjoyed watching what I was seeing there. I haven’t posted in a little while because to be honest, the burn out was hitting again. Thumbnail first ?

Picture. We're looking at a blue poster with the title "I'm going to Creator North". It has the date September 14and the location Kommune, Sheffield. In the centre, is a small green dwagon holding a red heart shape in front of him.

There we go, that’ll do.

Really looking forward to that event, it’s coming up in a few weeks and it’ll involve a weekend trip. It’s the second time it’s been run after a fun first event last year. Here’s the link to what I wrote after last time. This year’s event is going to be a bit bigger. I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a chance to meet up again with friends from last year, friends from streams going back a long time and friends from new streams that I haven’t seen in person before.

It’ll hopefully grow even more, especially in the wake of the Insomnia Gaming Festival disappearing earlier this year. We’ll see. Fingers crossed. We do have MCM Comic Con as well and various other Comic Cons but it would be good to see the seed started by some very lovely people running the Creator events continue to grow.

I do sometimes wonder where I fit in with events like this one though. I do Create, although I do skip from thing to thing. The blogs have been a mostly continuous thing going back 19 years now over the two sites. There was a quick look at seeing what was needed to do Youtube videos (link to channel for those curious) but I didn’t continue that because it would have taken a lot of time to grow into something that would provide a return on the time. Plus it would have needed sacrifices including giving up listening to copyrighted music all the time (it’d be picked up on the mic and detected) and the stream watching. There was the sketching, although that stopped 4 years ago when I think that’s when I slammed into the burn out wall.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cute sleeping grey and white kitten on a white blanket. The captions are "I would be unstoppable" "If not for the tired sleepy"

I’m still in that burn out now, it doesn’t feel like it has eased at all. Maybe even deeper. I’m ok, hanging in there but it definitely feels like I’ll need to be taking care of myself a bit better. Maybe even doing more stuff out of the ordinary like the cruise last year. I think I really needed that removal from the normal for a while. That’s odd isn’t it … deal with tiredness by going off and doing something.

I don’t think I’ve ever been normal there in how I react to stuff. When I do take time off and do the restful thing of staying at home, I won’t exactly do very much (apart from gaming and listening to stuff). And I’ll be thinking throughout that I should be getting out and about and having that hit my mental state in a negative way. And my mental state is, to be honest, not that great at the moment.

There’s a lot of things to that, a lot of things pulling that mental state downwards. And I wouldn’t want to talk about too many of those here. (Some are work, some are definitely behind the personal stuff wall). Some of it is down to the state of my outsides, where I’ll slowly heal up (my arms are actually mostly ok now) and then over a single event, that healing will go dramatically backwards again. That’s part stress, a little bit of what I might have eaten or just attacking stuff when my guard’s down when I’m attempting to sleep.

And, being honest again, I’m not seeing the way out of the burn out at the moment.

But … I’m getting a bit of time off into the books after the Creator North event. I do need to get a trip booked in for some of that time and a return to Legoland is definitely looking tempting. I would like to find some chances to get myself somewhere to see the stars. That could have happened last weekend but my arms had just stabilised again after doing even more damage to them.

(if you’re reading this and thinking that there’s self harm going on, that’s kinda true. But it’s because my skin went super delicate after all the issues over the last decade. But it’s not self harm that would see me going into an ambulance, it’s more like if I scratch too much, I do a lot of damage. My mental health isn’t great but it’s not down at That Place).

Just a note on that above – it’s ok to not be ok, just please give yourself a chance to climb out if you’re in that pit. And that can be just being around communities like the discords. It might not be sharing your difficulties but even just popping up every once in a while and saying hi is great for the soul. And when you can’t see your own worth, there will be a bunch of people who will be really happy to see that you’ve popped up and that you’re still around. And sometimes, putting up a paw and saying hi is all we have the energy to do. It definitely makes me smile when I put a hello emote into a stream chat and a “SLEEPY” or “DWAGON” comes back from the person streaming.

“Can we pet the dog?”

I’ve been in the games again, with me enjoying running a few more factories in Little Big Workshop to conclusion. It’s a fun, cute little honest factory building game and I just keep going back to it. There’s a progression to it and I like to see the cute little idiot (the game can have some issues with priorities) gnomes go about building stuff.

Motorsport Manager has finished another segment of the latest megacampaign, so I’ve switched teams again after winning again. It’s a game where you can just keep on going with it, I’m in the year 2052 now. Inflation isn’t a thing in the game, outside of people wanting more money as they get better. Old drivers retire and get replaced by newly generated 18-20 year old drivers. It works well for a megacampaign where as you go on, it’s still all new.

Picture. We're looking at a heap of snacks arranged on a light blue bed sheet in front of a box of Lego. The Lego box has the word Jaws on it and has a picture of a black and yellow trawler boat being chased by a shark. We also see the red dwagon plush to the left.

Dredge came out with a new DLC, with an Iron Rig, I enjoyed playing through that after it released. And I managed to get to Cardiff as well to grab the unofficial Lego tie in. Comes with free shark, does not include game. Gonna need bigger shelf. (And steadily making a dent in the snacks)

And the latest one is Star Wars Outlaws …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at a dark scene inside a cavern of orange rock. In the centre, a starfighter is being disassembled and we see other mechanical debris scattered around. Our character is bottom left, hiding behind a barrier.

This one is a sneaky game and I’ve really enjoyed dipping into it for the last couple of evenings after closing up the work laptop. It places you in the Star Wars universe as a smuggler scoundrel lady with an adorable companion. Instead of lightsabers and the Force, it sees you relying on stealth and guile and a reliable blaster at your side. It is very expensive (£75 for the equivalent of what I’m playing) but I’m actually kinda just renting it on the monthly subscription (£15) so I’m looking at crashing through the game so I can drop that sub again. I don’t think I’ll have a problem doing that :-D.

Oh and you have a companion too, a little adorable doglike critter who you can send off to do stuff like :

Distract – it’ll go off and dramatically play dead in front of guards, so you can sneak past them while they’re looking the other way.

Steal – little dude is an arch thief.

Hit switches – like turning power off for a camera

And probably more too. I dunno, it feels like whereas I bounced off Starfield pretty hard (just didn’t engage with that future humanity thing), I’m quite engaged with the early days of Star Wars Outlaws.

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at scenes from a city street, with our character in white tunic and dark trousers leaning over to scratch the little blue critter on the head.

And you can pet the “dog”.

I think I need to disappear now (2240 and I want to get some reading in !). Look after yourselves, have a lovely weekend. One way I look out for my mental state is doing things for other people, although that kinda depends on other people to do the nice things for. Hope you find your way too. Time to open up Seventh Bride by T Kingfisher again after enjoying Michael Palin’s Pole to Pole.

🙂

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Disc trials

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September 22, 2023

10:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Gosh where did those two weeks go. I know where the first one went when I was on leave, I kinda disappeared into a Little Big Workshop addiction (again) followed by opening up Trans Road USA again and disappearing into that. And then this week at work pretty much disappeared in a flash.

Picture meme. A small grey cat is looking at the back of a television. There are three wires plugged in, with yellow, red and white plugs. The caption is "Wait I'll fix it"

So after writing last time about having a flare up and that I was upgrading the desktop with a new SSD, there was a bit more drama there last week …

So the flare up continues, my arms are less scary now than they were last week which is good. They’re still scaring people and I’ve been putting them under tubigrip to protect them but there has been at least some improvement this week. Slow and steady repairs are what I’ve been used to. It’s the quick setbacks that are why I still have the problems.

I think I have more of an answer though. I had a suspicion about garlic bread last week, still got that but I think I have another one about tomato. Yep. That’s a new mystery one connected to me enjoying tomato cup-a-soups more lately. Ah well, looks like I can’t have nice things so much. I’ve had one minor reversal since stopping the tomato cup-a-soups and I think that was from a chicken arabiatta which had tomato in it. We’ll see. The pattern has been a few good slow repair days followed by a quick set back, possibly coinciding with tomato stuff.

Talking about nice things …

Picture meme. A kitten is looking at a monitor. There is a progress bar on the screen. The captions are "my eevilll plan ... iz 7% compleet!!"

The new Solid State Device disc drive arrived. It’s a 2TB nVME unit from Crucial and it fits into one of those m2 slots. (nVME stands for nonvolatile memory express) M2 is a credit card type thing, it’s an edge connector about an inch across and the drives are about 4 inches long. Yep. I use inches.

So I look in the motherboard manual (before buying) and it’s a good modern board with a current chipset, so it should support the drive properly. It even says it in there : 2x m2 slots and “Supports nVME SSD as boot discs”. That means I could put my current m2 SSD into one slot, the new one into another and then transfer Windows from one drive to the other. The software to do that comes with the drive, they give you a limited use copy of Acronis True Image, which is excellent software to do the job hassle free. The idea is that the copy is done and then you swap the drives over in the machine. Job done, easy.

(Disclosure note is appropriate at this point – I bought the drive myself, nothing was provided apart from that free limited use copy of the drive copy software, I recommend it because it works)

Does it work out like that ?

No.

Problem one – with the 2x m2 slots in use, the machine doesn’t go into the BIOS. That’s where you do the basic setting up of the machine, tell it what drive to load off and then it hands over to Windows. If you can’t get into the BIOS, then you’re pretty much stuffed.

I even tried swapping the graphics card over (electronic connections are somewhat shared between the graphics and the second m2 slot), this resulted in the board doing nothing but beeping in distress. Which was … not good.

Answer – I have a USB enclosure which the new drive is currently in. This happily proved that the problem wasn’t with the new drive … always gotta be wary of stuff being dead on arrival.

The USB enclosure is a bit slow though, so it took 3 hours for the Windows drive to get copied over and then you swap the drives over and boom, you’ve got the system running on the new drive.

No.

Where the manual says “nVME SSD as boot discs”, it means in a special RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Discs) set up which has to be carefully set up. It wouldn’t let me select the new drive as something to boot off. Without changing a setting to do that RAID thing, it wouldn’t allow me to go into the BIOS. So there’s no way to boot off that new disc (at the moment) and setting it up as a RAID array stopped Windows from being able to work with the drive.

The temporary answer, which has happily worked is :

Old SATA m2 SSD is back in there as the boot drive that the machine primarily works from. New nVME M2 SSD is in the USB enclosure plugged in at the back of the machine, whirring away as a data drive. And that works too, albeit with some issues. The drive access is nice and fast, Starfield plays very nicely but instead of giving 4000MB/s data rates, it’s limited to 40MB/s. I’m not seeing this as a significant issue but I am going to address it.

The permanent solution will be to acquire another expansion card to put in the machine and then the new drive goes into that, hopefully being pretty quick again too.

So drama on my outsides, drama with that new bit for the computer.

I did a quick test in Starfield and then promptly didn’t open the game again. Gaming habits be like that :-D.

Oh and look ! A power blip (that’s rare here) and it repeated another thing I said this week about systems reacting to power interruptions : Computer rides through it, lights flicker, telly was fine but the modem reset so I’m now waiting for it to connect again.

Time for a quiet finish to the evening watching Tashnarr play a bit of Apex Legends plus a bit of book. Current one is Descendant Machine by Gareth L Powell, he writes great books. They’re always intriguing, gritty and with interesting and varied characters. It’s in his Continuance series, where humanity has been evicted from the Earth and now wander the galaxy in a fleet of Arks. Part of the set up is that substrate (hyperspace equivalent) is dependant on a human navigator and machine AI ship combination. It feels inspired by The Culture from Iain M Banks but it’s its own unique universe. Well worth checking out, as are the rest of the books that Gareth L Powell has given us.

To the book !

PS I’m on Bluesky as well now, with the revelation that Twixxer might be going behind a paywall being a catalyst for some including me. Just look for Sleepydwagonman, that’ll be me.

PS2 I now need to reset the clocks on cooker, microwave, alarm clock … Oh well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Locking in the drama

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August 15, 2023

8:06 pm

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,

Hello everyone,

Bit of drama yesterday to follow a bit of a flare up on my outsides …

Game screenshot. World of Warcraft. We're looking at an old and low quality picture of a group of characters. A couple are on this side of a lowered portcullis on a brown stone floor. One is shouting "let me out"

So I get home … and the key turns in the lock. Which is kinda what you want a key to do. Except you want it to open the latch to let you open the door. Oh well. It just turned in the lock. It let me in eventually but I took it as a sign that I needed to do something urgently. (You can get past a latch lock by means I won’t put here but it doesn’t want to become your door key).

Of course I took it apart after doing a little investigation. And changing the lock and latch over to a new one :-D.

Picture. We're looking at several lock components on my desk. A dwagon is looking on from the top right. More description to come in the text.
It’s fine it’ll fix right up

It just came apart in my hands. Honest. Well, actually it kinda exploded while I was trying to remove the broken bit and parts were propelled out of my hands by the spring there. So … what’s the bits ? It’s a pretty standard night latch lock, you may have one of these on at least one door. Reasonable security but you want a second bolt type lock as well. These can be bypassed with the right implement.

Top left is the main assembly. You can just see the lever that’s on the inside of the door. That works on the greasy clip thing on the left, which has a couple of arms that engage on the plate with the latch on it. That’s the silvery thing inside that assembly. The latch wedge is hidden to the right of the assembly. The deadlock fits in to the little notch on the top of that silver latch plate. If the deadlock is engaged, the latch stays put.

The black plate to the right is the back plate and in theory, it holds it all in place. The latch plate isn’t held in by anything else and if it lifts, the arms on the rotatey arm don’t engage and move it open. On the right side of the latch plate is a circular pin thing with a couple of cut outs in it.

Bottom left and we have a circular washer type thing with a couple of triangular inserts on the inside and a couple of arms on the outside. The arms withdraw the latch plate and open the door. The inserts engage on the lock key barrel. The spring is to the bottom right and it pulls the latch out.

So … apply force on the inner handle or the outside lock, latch slides in, door opens. Release force, spring pulls out the latch, door won’t open.

However, if the circly prongy washer falls off, it will a) not let you open the door with the key and … b) will jam the lock if it goes in the wrong place.

So I now have a new lock for the front door. The last one did well, that’s probably a 30 year old lock there although I had to replace the original barrel because it rusted solid.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little dog standing on a car seat (we're in the car) looking out the window. The caption is "Mom left me in the car alone. So I locked the doors. When she was writing an 80 dollar check to the locksmith I rolled down the window to get a better look at what they were doing."

Oops.

One thing I’ve been appreciating about Red actually is its door locks and automatic folding mirrors. I’ve had folding mirrors on the other Lexii since I think my first IS but none of them folded the doors in when you locked the car. It’s actually a really nice feature but not for the mirrors … It’s a very easy way to check if you locked the doors :-D. Yep, there’s the indication thingy on the inner handle but you can’t see that from 20 feet away from the car.

It’s the little things. Or the things big enough to see from a distance.

Other news before I close up ? After enjoying reading the intriguing Forgotten Colony : Deliverance by M R Forbes (aliens have infested Earth, we gotta escape, intense combat action from start to finish), I’ve been cracking up to Clockwork Boys by T.Kingfisher (Amazon link). It’s in a swords and armour fantasy world where our people live in a city state threatened by unstoppable, invincible constructions known as the Clockwork Boys. Our people have to travel to their source and figure out how to stop them.

It is, of course, a suicide mission. They’re unstoppable creations that crush armies. But they’ll be eaten by a semi sentient tattoo if they don’t. Yep. After a bit of time to let the characters settle in, the author (aka Ursula Vernon) is letting us have some fun reading their antics. Another recommended one after the wonderful A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking and I need to collect and read more of her books.

Might be time to get back to that after maybe a little Motorsport Manager with dinner. There’s a new Formula 1 Manager game out but to be honest, they haven’t added enough and if they follow their form, they’ll abandon this one in November to concentrate on next year’s iteration. I’ll wait for the last one in the run.

Picture, comic meme. There are 3 panels. The top sees 3 figures kicking and laughing at a sad figure. They have the words "problems, stress and pain" on them. The middle panel adds a new figure, reaching out to the sad figure. The bottom panel sees the new one hugging the sad figure. Their words are "Video games"

Yeah, that was pretty much me last weekend. After finishing Dredge, last weekend’s game was One Military Camp. Another fairly new one. It’s a decent game but … maybe could have done with a little more time in the oven. Worth checking out though.

But I was hiding in the game mostly to stop me damaging myself even more. I’d been in the position where a flare up started on my arms and legs, worse than it has been previously. It got bad enough that I actually medicated it, which is something I try and avoid. The topical steroids are a quick hit to help but I think they actually extend the healing time.

Anyway, being lost in the game meant I wasn’t attacking my arms and legs, giving them a chance to heal a bit. (May have been some Skyrim played too).

Things have settled down a bit although I’m still not good yet. Getting there though. Dinner’s nearly ready so I’ll leave it there except for … Someone reminded me about the Kitten Marching Band.

Here you go. At the Youtube link lies a guaranteed dose of Happy. I bear no responsibility if you end up humming that for days. 😀

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Techie Space

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October 25, 2022

11:00 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while again. I think that might be partly down to burn out that I realised might have been going on for perhaps 2 and a half years now. It’s an insidious thing, burn out, you know something’s going on because your patterns change but it tends to creep in and make those changes to your behaviours without you realising.

So for me, it probably started at the beginning of the covid period and there were a few work things that really brought it out. Yep, even more than the extreme skin condition that I had for too many years before that. Perhaps that just wore down the reserves so that the anxiety of the first lockdown periods (and probable covid around March to June 2020) coupled with the work stuff activated the burn out. One symptom may actually have been the creation of this blog, as a knock on to getting annoyed with how Google/Blogger were changing how you use that system. I think that’s been a positive change overall though as it’s let me learn a few things that I took for granted with Blogger. Oh wait ! Caption.

Meme picture. A contented looking sleeping cat is resting underneath blankets. The captions are "I can't get out of bed..." "These blankets have accepted me as one of their own and if I leave now I might lose their trust."
Trust in the blankets

I’m off work this week, it felt like I’d been running backwards and went straight into a wall. Some of that is increasing anxiety about things I should be getting sorted out but don’t have the energy to attempt to start. Which is its own feedback loop as well. Because the job isn’t started, the anxiety increases. I need to look into other ways of getting that sorted out.

What has been going on ? Been doing space again …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a small trapezoid shaped spacecraft on a landing pad. It is green on the outside with a yellow circle in the centre. The circle has a demonic grin and eyes in black.
Tea 89 is after your Tea

That’s my old Cobra Mk3 again from Elite Dangerous, with one of the free paint packs from the latest drops campaign. Good seasonal paint job although I think when Tea 89 comes out again, I’ll put it back to the orange and white livery. There wasn’t a special paint job for Tiamat’s Chariot :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a star filled area of space. To the lower left, we see our spaceship with purple flame coming from a series of engines. The ship is mostly hidden in silhouette with a small sun in the centre. There is a planet in dark eclipse to the right, we can see the city lights.
A trading we will go

There’s actually a bit of unfinished business there with a Community Goal in progress. With today’s activities, I haven’t had a chance to drop off the cargo I collected on the weekend. Oh and I had a look at another space game too :

Game screenshot. Eve Online. We're looking at a starfield with cloudy backdrops. There are user interface features to the right, a ship status display at bottom centre and our little ship is in the middle of the screen.
Humble beginnings

It was good to have another look at Eve Online. It’s a persistent online universe space game, where you fly with I think it’s 10,000 other pilots. The large battles can have 1000’s of players on multiple sides with everything from little tackle frigates to titan super capital ships. Around that, there are epic battles for territory and industrialists supplying the ships to fuel those battles. Everything in the game is player built or supplied. Oh and the game is (in)famous for its espionage as well.

I got curious so I installed the game again but it’s one game I’m going to have to stay well clear on lest I do get drawn into it. Too many games, not enough time and Eve has heavy expectations on player time.

I’ve also completed the achievements on Little Big Workshop. Indeed, this might be another sign of the burn out. While I’ve dived into games like LBW, I’ve been very wary about going back into games like Elite which take a bit more energy and effort to play.

But … there is a new toy here that has taken a fair bit of mental effort today …

Meme picture. A cat is sitting on a laptop computer. They're both on a table with chairs tucked in. The caption is "To unlock your computer turn on the electric can opener"
But ! There is still food in the bowl

I splurged on a laptop … The motivating factor was with me traveling more for work, the old laptop is a bit too chonky. It’s a 2.6kg lump, the new one is a 1.2kg light 14″ screen laptop. There were other motivations as well, the screen on the old laptop is pretty poor.

What didn’t I get – HP and Dell because their performance and reliability in the work laptops is nasty. The work Dell I have now struggles to interface with the screens. It’ll sometimes refuse to connect to a screen when it’s plugged back in and suffers from worrying graphical corruption if that interface is stretched a little. I avoided getting another Asus due to the screen quality of the last one, plus I think they charge for the name as well as the equipment. Lenovo … weren’t offering the spec I wanted plus I didn’t get good vibes.

So I went with Acer again, the family has had a string of these machines and they’ve all done really well for us up to the point where they ran out of capability due to the software moving on. (Disclosure note – I bought and paid for laptop 100% although they do run fairly substantial discounts on the Acer website).

Today’s activity has been figuring out the differences with Windows 11 and starting to get everything copied over. I got worried early on because the laptop was showing signs of being unresponsive due to hardware issues but those went away as soon as I switched wifi. (Oh and after ripping Norton out). So I have the old laptop, new laptop and desktop talking to each other over the network now. It connects to the various bluetooth devices ok too.

iTunes is being more of an issue, because I’m having to authorise the computer and copy the library via Homeshare in iTunes 12 before I downgrade that back to the usable iTunes 10.7. I’ll have to look at that issue again because the Apple ecosystem isn’t sustainable there. I use iTunes 10.7 for the DJ feature, which is the only way I listen to music on it. The issue with switching laptop is that 10.7 isn’t allowed to sign in to Apple store stuff now which means alternate means required for copying the library over. Only 7000 more tracks to go (it’ll be running overnight).

Another issue I’ll be looking to sort is the sound again. Windows and laptops (especially Realtek hardware) seem to really suffer for loudness, although that might be down to me having them fight for dominance among music, stream and desktop. But Chrome does always feel quieter than the audio test and the levels from Chrome never seem particularly high. I’ll be looking into this more. One really happy thing is that Chrome has pulled my settings and tabs across from old laptop to new laptop, although the various cookies needed to be set up again.

What I do need to do is get myself out of the house. Maybe Thursday ? I think tomorrow will involve attempting to get better sleep tonight (it’s been at a premium lately) and then doing the Elite Community Goal stuff tomorrow afternoon. But I do need to get out and about because being in the house too much isn’t particularly healthy.

So … am suffering with the burn out, not really seeing an end to that at the moment but I’ll keep monitoring and attempting to look after myself better than I have been doing. The last couple of months feel like they’ve been rough too, with me going from a tummy issue on the away trip, into ginger poisoning, into probable covid again and then physical issues with a cramp tear in my leg and the shoulder coming out again.

And in the meantime, people seem to think I’m doing all right with the work now which helps a lot. The last post descended into feeling utterly devalued due to a management chain that went pretty weird. I’ve been doing better since getting out of that atmosphere.

And I’m looking forward to listening to all that music again with a fresh ear. That’s one thing proven, laptop can talk to hifi ! Hurrah. And the physical issues were starting to relent at the end of last week. Just need a proper sleep pattern again now.

Sleep well everyone, be well. And there are only 6500 tracks to copy over now.

Addendum – I was having problems getting into the laptop BIOS to reverse the rather offensive reversed Function key behaviour (where F2 does airplane mode instead of F2). You’re supposed to press F2 or something while the laptop is starting to be able to get in. This wasn’t working. However ! These people at Tenforums (link) have a very comprehensive and helpful answer. Sorted !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

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.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Health and …. Spaceships ?

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August 16, 2020

9:53 pm

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Hello everyone,

Another week ! And it’s been a hot one this week, changing into heavy thunderstorms … They hit here on Thursday evening (I think) and they were shaking the windows …

I was rather relieved when the weather did break, because the heat was being a massive struggle. I don’t handle heat particularly well, probably a symptom of tending more to the hyperactive side (although I’ve been really struggling for energy as well lately).

That drawing above happened rather quickly on Wednesday over a lunchtime when I was really feeling the heat. My temperature gauge is back down to 46 degrees C now, it was hitting 49 earlier in the week and it’s still feeling a little warm to wear more than shorts and a t-shirt. The usual comfy temperature is about 43 degrees C.

That’s not the actual room temperature, it’s the readout from the graphics card so it’s a little above ambient. It’s a decent readout though. Most of the time, the card is sitting idle and isn’t doing much so it steadies out to something indicative of how relatively warm it is. When it’s working for games, it’ll go up to the 70s. The processor temperature isn’t a good indicator, it goes up and down quite a lot as the processor suddenly switches into doing work.

It was good seeing England turn the cricket around last week, although this week’s game will go to a draw tomorrow because most of the available time has been lost to rain.

Back to health – I’m struggling a bit at the moment. Some of that is down to work and reasons I won’t go in to here. We’re still working from home by the way, we have been since the situation erupted in March. Apart from printing, we have the facilities we need and the network has held up pretty much all the time. Switching to working from home hasn’t affected us that much. But the situation as a whole at the moment is interfering with getting things done, which is contributing to stress levels.

I don’t like expressing when I’m in the struggle mode, although sometimes you do have to just say “I am really stressed at the moment” so that it’s registered when all other signals are normal. And the struggle signals don’t translate very well over the computer screen.

I’m struggling in other ways as well :
Not much internet spaceships happened this weekend because I’ve been suffering not just from wrist pain but also spasms. That’s not a good sign. So the last time I flew was Thursday. I’ve opened up Battletech again and have been enjoying the tactical battles in that.
My back has decided to come out on strike as well. I have an old injury from cricket which never properly healed. It’s in my left lumbar area and affects my left leg. So after that flared on Friday, I’ve been slightly restricted in movement and I’m attempting to not aggravate it further by keeping twisting movements to a minimum.
I’ve been getting pins and needles and numbness in my right arm too with some activities, which is usually a sign that my shoulder isn’t in the right place.

And there’s probably a few more issues as well. The back isn’t critical at the moment but you have to listen to those warning signs. The wrist is probably critical and I need to actually pay heed to those warning signs. I haven’t been in Final Fantasy XIV since last week, not sure when I can go back in.

I have a Lego Lunar Lander as well which hasn’t gone together yet. The hot weather would have been a good excuse there as it doesn’t include making heat like the games do. But it involves twisting (to get stuff out of bags) and fine hand movements … so it’ll stay in the box for a bit.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. I do have a few screenshots to show this week (plus there’s the dwagon up above) …

Towel of Space was still doing well but I’ve switched to another ship now. A mining session with Towel of Space needed about 4 hours to pull in 256t plus another 10 in the refinery. Here is the new one :

She’s the Hand of Caledorn. The new plan was a smaller ship, with more collectors to speed things up. A mining session is about 2 hours in this one, bringing in 192t plus the 10 in the refinery. The quicker mining rate is an answer to the problem of the wrist … and because 4 hour sessions after putting the work laptop away were making dinner be a bit late :-D.

There we go … mining collectors at work. It’s a very compromised fit for a number of reasons but it’s doing the job pretty well.

Looks good in the dark too.

Still enjoying the game … plus mining is being a somewhat cathartic activity with a definite result at the end of it. Lots of money coming in. Battletech has been good too and Motorsport Manager. I have a Horizon Zero Dawn video on in another tab at the moment and that one is incredibly tempting … but I’ll save acquiring that for when I’ve finished The Outer Worlds (on break due to wrist), played Prey and maybe looked at Alien Isolation.

And when I’m looking to give the back issues and wrist issues a rest, I have the streams and videos to watch. Plus scifi stuff to watch too :
Star Trek Discovery – I enjoyed watching season 1 again as much as the first time, including looking for things they set up early that had big payoffs later.
Lost In Space – watching s2. Interesting … not the best stuff but it’s been holding the attention.
Umbrella Academy – watching s1. Curious again. It indulges in Netflix’s tendencies to make things a bit bloody though.

Hope you’ve all been having great weekends. Mine has mostly been looking outside to see if it’s raining, keeping an eye on the lightning tracker, watching Stuff. It was good to see World Endurance Championship back on again, although there’s little doubt in who wins there at the moment.

Before I close up this post which discloses some of my struggles, my message is :

It’s ok to struggle. Especially at the moment. These are extraordinary times. The equivalences would be the two World Wars (ok, not that bad) and the Spanish Flu pandemic. It’s not over yet, not by a long shot. The long term effects on we who live through it won’t be apparent for a long time.

I’ve got a few communities and people that I can reach out to and talk about my issues. Hopefully you have those outlets as well and that you can pay it forward by helping out other people as well.

We can get through this … perhaps not together in person but we have this virtual world now that comes to us over the internet. It’s a big help.

Hang in there everyone. Stay safe, be well.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?