Tag: musing

Status – very sleepy

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July 28, 2025

10:21 pm

1 Comment on Status – very sleepy

musing

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Hello everyone,

Checking in again ! Has it almost been a fortnight again since last time ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a cartoon drawn computer laptop mostly hidden by a white cat lying on the laptop. The caption is "It's a laptop until it becomes a cat warmer"

Before I dive in – this is VERY important. We’ve just had a bit of dumb legislation imposed on us in the UK, which could potentially spread beyond our borders too. It’s the Online Safety Act. If you’re in the UK then you’re affected, please do hit the Petition link and add your signature. It’s a terrible law and it needs to go. Why ? It protects no one, it harms those who need the services behind a number of the adult only sites. For me, it means my protected personal information is now on several third party sites who will almost certainly get hacked and the information stolen. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg with this one, there is so much more Bad in this new law. It’s not a Safety act, it’s an Endangerment act.

I think I left the last post in a bit of a rush. I was looking to get the post out before midnight and the day ticking over. Plus I’d have been running out of the steam between the ears that powers the brain.

How have I been doing ? While I was in the last post, I was suffering from a blocked ear still … I’d had that for maybe a month … I was using ear clearing thingy drops, actually switched from one softener thing to a different softener thing and while it was making a difference, I was still down one ear. It’s quite disorientating …

That was while I was doing the Gromit Hunting at the start of the month too. Gotta do that post ! I’ve managed to see half of the Gromits so far, although that’s been held back by feeling a bit rotten at times, just simply doing other things like massively enjoying finding the lovely MissVadams on Twitch (linky). She’s got a very clear voice, which definitely helped when my ears were bad but also very friendly and just one daft comment from chat or antics in stream away from breaking into that type of laughter that will brighten anyone’s day.

Picture. Meme. An orange and white cat is looking directly at the camera, their paw is pointing at us, almost touching the camera. Captions are "You there ..." "Yes You!" "You're awesome".

Is also a new catmom having adopted Penny, joining the tortoise Billy who inspired a collection of wonderful Twitch emotes. It’s been a pleasure watching Vic since finding the channel due to a raid in by the also fun to watch FGSquared.

PC stuff ? I came unstuck (or nearly!) a few times with the new PC I talked about last time. It’s a very big unit at 13kg for the case. It’s probably more like 20kg+ now. It’s huge. Which is fairly ok because I’m not going to be moving it around very much. But while I was swapping the cooler in and out all the time in vain attempts to get the All In One Cooler working, that was taking all I had at the time, which is another reason I didn’t immediately migrate over to the new box.

I still haven’t migrated everything over properly yet either. The old PC hasn’t been booted up in a few months now but I have the old data copied over but not sorted into any real sense or order yet. Not quite had the mental spoons to do that just yet.

It has been fun seeing what the new machine can do though …

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. It's dark, we're looking at our character in the bottom left, lit by the overhead lamps from the stalls set up in the shadow of an immense vehicle. The tracks to the bottom right are perhaps twice as tall as our person.

That’s a mostly static diorama type location from Star Wars Outlaws but the detail there and how it’s brought out by the graphics card is quite incredible. What you’re seeing there is a frame of the big sand crawler vehicle, with textures spread over that frame. They’re then processed to add the depth and to make them look good as a 3d object that you can walk around and see from all angles. Plus there’s the animated characters down there too and the smaller objects in the scene as well. That’s genuinely better than what we would see on movies, such as the originals all those years ago. In earlier generations of 3d graphics, we’d have detail but if you looked close, the textures would repeat over the sides of an object as the systems didn’t have the memory to capture massive detail like what we have there.

Finished Outlaws again, although I need to go back for the second expansion. It’s a long game, fun but feels padded with lots of added optional sidequests. I’ve also been in the Elite world again …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The sky is full of stars. We're at the centre of the galaxy, where we see stars clustered around a large hole in space to the left. To the right, a blocky grey and gold space ship. Below, there is a lighter ribbon of space that curls around the hole in space.

That’s the latest antics, where I’ve taken the brand new megahauler ship and turned it into an explorer craft. That’s the Searching for Rainbows, quite possibly the first Panther Clipper Mk II to visit Sagittarius A* at the centre of the galaxy.

What I call a hole in space in the alt text is Elite’s representation of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The game might be showing its age a little there, although it probably has an easier time with this than it looks from the picture there. The game has very impressive gravity lensing effects, where the visuals of the stars wraps around the big black hole. As you move around the black hole, what you see through it changes dynamically with the angle. It’s very impressive and the static shot doesn’t really do it justice.

That’s been part of the antics in Elite. I haven’t been playing with the alt too much, outside of that speed run, but it’s been a lot of fun tagging along with Ninjaspaceunicorn and Thebigboo with the Hungry Unicorn expedition to the far side of the galaxy and back. We’re on the way back now, not actually that far from the centre of the galaxy.

Anyway, thought I’d better check in. It’s time to post now and read a bit more of book …

I’ve been running an A to Z challenge this year, where I’ve been looking to read something from all of the letters, whether that’s an author or a book title. The latest is The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear, as the F book. It’s the third in the author’s White Space universe, a future science fiction universe where AIs run spaceships that go all across the galaxy. There are pilots, a lot of mindfulness, very relatable people and stories that keep you wondering what’s coming next. I didn’t enjoy Hammered that much (different universe, near future Earth) but I would happily recommend Ancestral Night and Machine.

And I think that’s me about out of batteries for tonight. Not sure what’s been happening there, so many people have been commenting that they’re incredibly tired, far more tired than they think they should be or even would have been a few years ago. I think my tiredness starts from burn out over covid times but it’s gotten worse since.

Perhaps it’s worry about loved ones or could be socio-economic pressures. Covid seemed like a scary time but the world seems a lot less settled now. Like things got a lot more dangerous for everyone while we were distracted by a pandemic.

Who knows. All we can do is look after our people. Be kind. Send a little bit of love out there. Be good to people, don’t default to trying to exploit them. Communities of good, nice, wonderful people are out there, I hope you find yours.

And have yourselves a wonderful day.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Advent day 23 and we’re speeding along

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December 23, 2024

10:00 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

I’m having a bit of a curl up and not be particularly human day today, so I’ve pretty much hidden in Little Big Workshop and quietly lurked in a couple of streams with not too much source of input going on.

Hold up, what’s behind the door today ?

Picture. We're looking at most of the advent collection again. Our dwagon is on the right, the new model is on the left on top of the d20. It's an open top hover vehicle, with a sandy colour curved front and darker brown at the back. Two dots for figures are behind an aero screen. At the back, three engine pods to left, right and upper.

There we are, it’s the speeder from the first Star Wars movie. And today’s dodgy shift from picture to text is … (drumroll)

This year feels like it’s been speeding along … The time seems to have flown by but it’s also felt like an exceptionally draining year. A lot of that is stuff from behind the wall. Some of it is, you know I’m very wrapped up in the streaming and gaming community world and consider a lot of them friends. Insomnia was a brilliant event at the start of the year and the failure of the company that ran Insomnia hit especially hard, I think because the discontinuation of the event had a massive impact on the lives of those friends from the online communities.

That’s from the people who ran the event (hello Tashnarr), the people who were employed on stands at the event, the people (hello Billietrixx) who were the core of bringing us such a massive highlight in the Session Zero live dungeons and dragons show, people like Aby of Trayed and Tested who … I bought dice at Trayed and Tested and nowhere else at Insomnia because Aby was such a lovely person on the day (link to Etsy on the right).

I think I’ve mentioned before that I tend to mirror people when they interact. If they are lovely people, I find it much easier to engage with them. If they’re … not nice, I’ll find myself somewhere else to be. I’ll enjoy staying around people with the good vibes.

And the interesting people too. Interesting people are fun to be around. What defines interesting ? Not sure there. It’ll be something unique to that individual.

I think that’s enough from me for today. Not quite sure what I’ll be up to over the next few days, we’ll take it one day as a time and hopefully have a little fun family gathering. And then I’m back to trying to disconnect and chill out before we all head back to work in a week and a bit.

Have a lovely evening everyone 🙂

Oh ! Back to events for an epilogue … I somewhat decided last year that I probably wouldn’t be going back to Boatlife in 2025 but I did peek at what was happening yesterday, to discover that it too was an event that had gone in the bin. Not sure about the circumstances there, it felt like it could have been a really good event. Although the reason I thought I wouldn’t be back was because I thought the exhibitors had evolved into overgrown tenders and away from the workhorse liveaboards that I’m interested in.

I think that if Boatlife can fail as well, with it being run by NEC’s own events company, then it shows how rough the events world is at the moment. Which makes the very promising Creator Events group even more important for keeping the fun alive.

Definitely that’s it for me now – have a great rest of your day and if you’re out of contact for whatever reasons (good and bad things happen this time of year), I hope it’s a positive time for you.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Cruising and a ramble

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November 7, 2023

9:30 pm

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musing

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Hello everyone,

I did a thing …

Picture. We're looking at a couple of little models. The first is a wooden longboat with a red and white vertical striped sail full of wind. The boat has 5 shields on the side with a blue cross on a red background. Inside the boat sits a goofy looking red dwagon.

Yep. After a lot of procrastination, including completely scrapping some plans and starting again with a different cruise experience, cruise is booked. The picture will give a clue as to where I’ll be headed. (Clue – I’m hoping for clear skies and lights in them)

So the first attempt at booking was with Ambassador and they were increasingly looking like Butlins at Sea, which isn’t really my vibe. I can appreciate dressing up but I’d like to keep that for people I care about, not so much a dress code imposed from outside. Plus there are other things that made me uncomfortable about them in the various reviews. And then I started looking more seriously at the Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise and found this review at Danielle the Cruisemiss’s site (linky). Lovely post, would recommend giving it a read.

Anyway, that’s booked. I’ll be away for a while inabit and I’ll definitely be collecting a lot of pictures on this new experience.

I did need to be getting away from things for a little while now. I’m still feeling that burn out creeping up on me. It feels fairly ever present, although a few of the daft ideas have been coming back. I might even finish up that Dwagon Alphabet I started up 3 years ago before slamming into a massive burn out wall. That’s something for home though as it needs the software on the desktop that won’t be coming with me. I have had enough letters to make a few names for people and the recipients have absolutely loved them.

But one thing I should do is bring the old neglected sketch pad with me and see about doing some drawings again. It should be a good couple of weeks varying between relaxed and chilled out vs however many expeditions my body can support. I did manage 16k steps around MCM Comic Con but also paid for that. I’ll be better anticipating what my body needs next time and look to head off the leg cramps before they happen. The last thing I ever want to have happen is for someone to be forced to help me because of daftness on my part.

And I think I said last time that we should be helping people wherever we can, within the limits that we have. We do need to look after ourselves as well but if you have a chance to do something nice for someone that we care about, you go ahead and do that something nice. Although …

Picture. We looking downwards at 4 kittens sitting on a wooden floor. A fifth kitten is jumping at the camera, with the following captions around them : "I must go" "My people need me"

And this is the serious part of the post … There is a thing about being too nice. Or the wrong kind of nice. It’s only a nice comment, a nice thing to say or a nice thing to do if the recipient appreciates it. We had another reminder about behaviour today. It was directed at the organisation as a whole and it’s about terrible trends that my organisation is still afflicted with, hopefully from a shrinking group of people although I see it in other areas of life too. Like I no longer listen to Radio 5 in the car because I was driving at the same time as the football people were on and the frat boy changing room vibe was definitely not for me.

Everyone should be comfortable around everyone else. There shouldn’t need to be a vital requirement to protect your self or your details. One online person I know describes it (with a certain hidden terror) as “I don’t want to die”.

This world shouldn’t be like that and personally, I hate that it’s been that way for I think my entire life on this planet.

I don’t see it myself that much but that’s because of the whole white male thing. I’m not targeted that much because the bullies target other groups and genders. And I hate that bit of the world too. More in a bit. I do, however, see the intimidation that’s increasingly present on the roads. Whether that’s from people who get really upset that you actually stick to the speed limit or those wannabe racing drivers who think it’s ok to dangerously attempt to get to their destination 10 seconds earlier. They’re usually the ones sitting at the traffic lights first.

Even before pandemic times, I really disliked being around big crowds. One of the London trips involved going through a change at Baker Street station … it’s cramped, dimly lit and a major line changing station. I felt deeply threatened in that crowd and I’ll hopefully never be in there again.

Flip that round though and think what someone in the more vulnerable groups is going to be thinking in that same space. Instead of being scared of being pickpocketed, they’re being scared that they’re going to be attacked. They don’t want to die because they had to venture down a road alone at night or a different place made scary by the people around them.

I did give a warning that Heavy Stuff might happen in this post ? I hope I did 😀

It stretches into comments on people’s appearances as well. You may think it’s a nice comment but you need to heavily consider how the comment is going to be received. “Hey you look cute” “Err I’m a completely random stranger you’re creepy go away”. And other scenarios.

When I mention the various streamer people who I watch, I try and keep it about the content not about what the person looks like. You can get that from looking at the content, you don’t need that from me. What I concentrate on is the person beneath the outsides. I enjoy talking to people who are beautiful, lovely people on the inside. It doesn’t matter what they’re like on the outside when they’re a kind heart. And the opposite can often be true as well, where they’d be considered classically beautiful on the outside but the inside is nasty. I don’t like those people.

This post is also partly coming from where someone’s repeatedly asked the chat to not mention what she looks like, yet the chat keeps on coming with the comments on appearance.

Gotta respect what people want. It’s not a nice comment if the recipient doesn’t perceive it that way. And far too often, where someone thinks it’s a “nice” comment or (the way the work article described it) the imposition of an individual on someone else’s world and space … it’s perceived as threat instead of “nice”.

We also need to be respecting the “no” as an answer too, which includes if we’re looking for someone’s attention. I do send messages over to a small group of lovely people and I’m really happy when they send a message back. But the mistake I made and lesson I learned a few years ago* is that if you start chasing for responses, the chasing is going to be perceived as a threat and it doesn’t do your own mental state any good.

*The posts are still there on the other blog. I was chasing for replies, opinions, responses from the other person and was probably on the verge of getting too insistent. At the same time, they and others in their group were talking about dangerous stalkers (not me) which were very definitely scaring them. Two things then happened. 1st, that inner monitor made me realise what I was doing and I stopped chasing for those responses. 2nd, a few other wonderful people came into my Bunch Of Friends and I was enjoying talking to them instead.

The takeaway from that is – it’s ok to make mistakes. But you also have to own those mistakes, realise what you did, figure out how to be a better person. Make that improvement. And so I’m still welcome in the community of the person above. I figured out what I was doing early enough to back off when it was pretty plain that I wasn’t going to be getting a response. Gotta respect what the other person wants. If I write something nice about someone here and then send the link over, they’re under no obligation to read it. It took a while to start owning that and I’ll honestly say I’m not all the way there on it yet.

Too much heavy for one day ?

Maybe. I do get worried about people though. There’s a very small number of people who I really, deeply care about and if they get quiet for a while then I get hoping that they’re ok. If you’ve got this far in the post, you might well be on that list :-).

It’s a much better world with the lovely people being confident enough to be living fully in it and not needing to hide away.

So while I’m off enjoying some time away from the world, be good to everyone hanging around in it.

One thing I said to someone is that we make the offer to help and be prepared to accept that the offer is turned down. The other half of that is that if the offer is accepted, we back it up with our action. I don’t always make the offer to help but I’ll always come through if the offer is taken up, even if I’m fully expecting that the offer will be turned down.

It has to be an offer that respects the other person though, one of the things in the work thing was that offers were being made that were disrespectful, harassing and threatening. Don’t do that. Think of how the offer is going to be viewed before you let it out of your head. Same goes for comments. It’s ok to think someone’s cute or pretty … it can be the worst thing to actually say that, especially if the person has asked you not to comment on appearance.

Time to pull this post to a close I think, I’ll come back before I disappear with something a bit happier 🙂 If I get that idea popping in to the Brain 😀 I just needed to get some “the world is not ok and I’m unhappy about that” feelings out of the head.

PS I’ll be over the moon if there’s someone on that cruise who ends up seeing what the dwagon’s up to and figuring that they’d like to get talking to them 😀

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?