Mouse, Ouch, Glasses, Trekking

Hello everyone,

I need to get back into the habit of posting more often again ! I’ve won something …

Picture. On a cream fabric jumper there is a box and a computer mouse. The word Corsair is on the top left of the box. Bottom of the box says "Sabre RGB Pro Champion Series". The mouse is black with a rubberised wheel. Standing on the cable in front of the mouse is a little dwagon with an apron. The apron has a cartoon style drawing of a pretty blonde lady going Yay.
Mouse acquired !

I won it in a giveaway run on Tashnarr’s channel (Twitch link). Tash is a lovely lady and I’ve been watching her streams for a couple of years now. She rapidly became one of those people who I’d switch over to her stream as soon as she comes on. She has a blast playing the games and it’s infectious chilled out fun that brings a great community along as she goes. And Tash has fantastic engagement with that community. It’s not just Tash having fun with the games, it’s Tash enjoying us having fun watching too and joining in with daft things in the chat.

Mouse ? I set it up this evening after closing the work laptop down before having a play with a little photo editing there. So what I did for this one was :

Set up the jumper (including attempting to remove all wrinkles and folds for this mark 2 version !)

Make the pose happen. The mark 1 had the dwagon too low, hence propping him up on the mouse cable this time.

Tricky bit … Set phone camera to a 10 second delay …

Hold a pen light in a suitable place to banish the shadows from the sun coming in the window …

Juggle phone camera and pen light while the countdown is happening.

Sorted ! I think it came out ok. Oh and don’t worry about the framing when juggling the pictures like this. Modern cameras have a ridiculous amount of pixels so if you capture stuff outside the border you want, just crop it to size. (Also rotate and scale). I use GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), it’s free and does what I need on the photo editing, although it does have its usability quirks.

The ouchie though is one reason why I’m not doing any gaming tonight. (That’s ok, am enjoying the Tashnarr stream). My shoulder was starting to complain through yesterday’s Elite internet spaceship travel session so I wasn’t going to be in there today. But my back has apparently decided to join in as well today. Not as in big pain but more like that promise of deep pain and being on the floor after an injudicious movement. So I’m being careful in how I move again and how I’m sitting. (Probably perversely brought on by sitting more normally this afternoon !)

Spaceship ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a brown coloured moon. The ship is to the right of scene, we're seeing her port side. The buggy is in front, pointing to the right. We see the milky way galaxy ribbon stretching out left to right above the horizon.
Shadow camp

This is me starting off from the Fire and Ice system over in galactic south east. There’s been some epic trekking going on …

Picture. Galactic map for Elite Dangerous. We see the map of the galaxy from above, with the spiral arms stretching out. Earth starts in the lower centre. A line of white dots goes to the centre and back. It then stretches to the west and around clockwise to the top, curling round to the right and stops at the south.
Almost there !

That’s the latest travel map from yesterday, which saw me reach the furthest extent of the Outer Arm Vacuus. That’s the spiral arm that’s next out from the one we’re on. There’s a curling back of the line again where I had to circle around in order to find a region of stars that were navigable between the two spiral arms. Limited hop range and all that and not enough stars to hop between. Next stop will be to the south with the faint green line showing the intended course. Oh and ignore the red line, that’s from the map software picking up a hop done in the Elite Odyssey alpha. Definitely ignore the faint spreadsheet type thing over to the left hand side … Caught out by a partially transparent map !

Glasses ? Yep. New glasses coming. I had the eyes tested on Friday and they both went back in ok. I need to switch to two pairs of glasses, one set for reading and one for more normal long distance but I was expecting that. I’m getting to That Age you know. It’s a shame to lose the magnetic clip on shades thing but no one seems to do those frames any more. A pity because it made it far easier to choose new frames. Instead of looking at a whole wall of frames, all I needed to look at were the ones with built in shades. I’ll go reactalite adaptive instead because I don’t really need to control the shades/no shades like in the cricketing days.

I’ll do a suitable picture at some point when they arrive. I was already having thoughts about how I could get the dragons involved in that.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. This is the Australis Ferris Wheel. We see the ship landed on a brown dirt moon, port side towards the camera with the buggy in front. Top left sees a dark perhaps violet planet and stretching out from it is a white ring system that goes to the horizon of our moon.
Australis Ferris Wheel

That’s the Australis Ferris Wheel and was well worth a stop on the way. The planet in the background has a moon that has just enough inclination in its orbit to put it above the ring system. So instead of seeing a thin line of a ring, it stretches out before you like in the picture. Is pretty.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Same planet as before. We're landed on the dirt moon looking at the back of the ship. The curved end of the ring is in sight at the horizon. We see two huge rectangular engines with the upper hull places above. There is a flash of orange hull with the landing legs behind.
Does my ship’s bum look big in this ?

After taking a similar picture from the Odyssey alpha, I had the idea to do this one as well. You can’t walk around in the main game yet but if you could, the pilot could walk under the gap in the middle of the aft landing legs and reach up on tiptoes to touch the underside. Scale is a fun thing :-).

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the upper portside of the ship facing towards the camera. Above is the ribbon of the milky way galaxy finishing at the right just before a bright yellow orange sun.
Playing interstellar fireworks again ?

That’s the view back from the Semotus Beacon, which is the furthest point reachable at the end of the Outer Arm Vacuus. No more traveling away, it’s all towards home now. (Shoulder and back permitting !)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is in the centre, pointing downwards. Colours are all washed out by the power of two suns. Up and right is a white/blue star. To the left is an orange star.
Sun bathing

This is Red vs Blue, a pair of stars of which one is a Herbig Ae/Be star. That’s a protostar, very early in its life. The game representation is probably not too correct, they’re supposed to have gas dust envelopes for formation or discs of matter. They look great though in game, although I was nervous about coming out of the jump around a twin star. Too many stars close up lead to the ship getting too hot.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed, with portside towards camera. The illumination is showing off the colour scheme of orange at the back, ochre yellow in the middle and grey towards the front. The buggy is peeking out of the ship's shadow towards the front. There is a shallow impact crater behind the ship. Above the horizon is a gas giant mostly in shadow with an arc of the sun visible on the right. We see the rings going from the tip of the horizon up and right. Above the gas giant is a smaller looking gas giant.
An Eock Hypue campsite

This is where I left it yesterday after probably too long a run. Maybe. 🙂 (I was close to the next waypoint and wasn’t finding any promising candidates to stop at).

Oh and then we go figuring out the way to the next waypoint, which needs a couple more boosts to get there. The route I’m following was intended for people with Fleet Carrier support, those can go 500 light years in a single jump. Searching for Dragons currently does 73 light years to a jump, with options for 91 and 109.5 light year jumps. (I don’t have the bits for the longer jump). So I’m a little restricted compared to that. It’s felt like an achievement being able to get to the places I probably shouldn’t have been able to get to … but it’ll be good to get back to doing something different in game.

That’s what the spreadsheet behind the galaxy map was for, it’s my route to Amundsen’s Star at the southern tip of the galaxy.

But that’s for another day, hopefully when my back has settled down a bit !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Away in a Seaquest

Hello everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

I also took a trip to the Bookbarn …

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

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

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

We shall see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looks a bit hectic doesn’t it …

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

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

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

It’s annoying.

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

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

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

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

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

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