Tag: out and about

Up and Down week, plus castle

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June 25, 2024

9:17 pm

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Hello everyone,

Back at work after a week off last week, including a different castle to today’s castle … Where did I leave it last time ?

Picture. We're looking in to the back of my car, with a sad looking red plushie dwagon sitting on the rear parcel shelf above the boot.

After talking about the Nurburgring not-quite 24 hour race last time, weekend before last was the Le Mans 24 hours. We got a full 24 hour race in this time ! Hurrah. Whereas the Nurburgring circuit is up in the Eiffel Mountains, the Le Mans track is in a region of France with a kinder climate for racing … Good race, actually had Racing Dwagon there too.

Picture. We're looking at a screenshot from a web browser with the selected tab showing a purple racing car stopped outside its pit garage. It's taking on fuel via a couple of mechanics on the far side of the car.

There we are. That’s Spike the racing car dragon from the AO racing team. They did good this year, getting on the podium for the LMP2 class.

Whereas the Nurburgring race has a multitude of classes, Le Mans under World Endurance Championship rules has 3 … Fastest are the hypercars, which look like Spike above but a little bigger and with more power. That’s an LMP2 car above, or Le Mans Prototype class 2 which have open rules for the body and aerodynamics but a fixed engine and gearbox powertrain. We also see the GT3 cars racing here, which meant following the Iron Dames Lamborghini Huracan again. They did pretty well, staying up with the leading group and finishing 5th in class. I think they may have had a great chance for a podium here but I think they were suffering from one of the LMP2s attempting to demolish their car before nightfall on the Saturday.

I didn’t stay awake for the full thing this time, abandoning the screen for a nap after things got dark. Which was probably a wise decision because they were running for about 4 hours behind the safety car due to heavy rain. Not much to see there.

Castle ?

Picture. We're looking at an old castle on top of a grassy mound. The entrance way is to the right, with a larger tower to the left. A path is in front of us, going from left to right.

That’s me going back in time a bit to the start of June and me paying a visit to Chepstow Castle. Quite a bit surviving of this one as well. The upper levels of the gatehouse there were closed off but I was able to explore the ramparts and see what was left of the rest of the castle.

(Side note – I’ve developed extreme soreness and stiffness in my shoulders after a WoW session earlier and may have to bomb out of post quickly … let’s see how much I manage)

Pictures. This is a collection of 4 displays of the castle from just a rectangular building on the left, with further walls and towers being added on as we go from left to right.

That’s how Chepstow castle had evolved in its early years from the original Keep on the left, to the more extensive grounds on the right. There’s a decent amount to see at this castle and a collection of informative educational displays there too, so it’s well worth a visit to check it out. I’m not going to put the full info here but from left to right there we see :

1067-1087 (old!) The Original Great Tower standing on its own.

What’s not really shown too well there is the river to the right of the castle, forming natural defences for that side. Joining those was the Great Tower Surround, with curtain walls and a gate house surrounding a fairly extensive courtyard.

1189-1245 saw William Marshal and sons expand the castle further, with a bit more land grabbed plus defensive towers.

1270-1306 saw further expansion to the far end, enclosing a little bit more private area.

That’s all to protect the town, with Chepstow being close to the mouth of the Severn Estuary on the border between England and Wales. Just had a curious thought there … nowadays, we have two Bridges that make the crossing between England and Wales there quite trivial. It’s a couple of minutes driving to cross the newer bridge. When these castles were built, there were no bridges that long and it would have been 1 or 2 miles (depending on where you’d cross) by boat to go from England to Wales.

Picture. We're looking out over a wide very brown looking river. In the distance, a far bank that is dominated by trees. There is a white painted bridge with stone pillars crossing the river. To the right, we see the walls of the castle extending down to a vertical rock that goes down to the river.

That’s from quite high up in the castle. As well as having that excellent natural barrier with the river, there are commanding views as well.

Good little wander at the start of the month. (May have been combined with stocking up on snacks too)

Picture. We're on the stone ramparts of the castle, with the walkway heading off on the left side towards a stone tower. To the right, an expanse of green countryside with a little bit of town visible around the trees. The sky is covered with light white cloud.

Great views too. I have to admit, when I went out there I wasn’t prepared for the day being a bit warmer than anticipated. I may have ended up getting a bit cooked due to forgetting to take a water bottle. So perhaps not quite as much wander as there might have been.

(I’m running out of steam and need to retreat into book, Batkitto streaming and not moving my arms much – ouchie!)

Other stuff as well as castle trip ? I’ve been struggling with a skin break out for about a month now. I was just about ok at Comic Con still but things were declining after that. I’m pretty sure it’s stabilised now and is recovering but as always with this thing, it always takes far longer to recover than it took to erupt. And I’m part of the problem there because I’ll set back the healing by attacking the damaged areas.

Warcraft has been happening … it’s been good being back in the game again, with my time so far being spent doing the quest running with 4 characters so far doing different stories. More on that in a later post probably.

I think I’ve done a little more damage to the car as well … the low tyre pressure light came on and I think that might be due to an altercation with a kerb in a car park. It’s the correct tyre. Only a slow leak but … gotta watch those kerbs cos they bite.

Picture. We're inside the castle looking towards a sunlit window. The walls are stone brick, with lovely arches above.

Last one. That’s one from the larder area of the castle and I’ve picked this one out due to how the camera has done with it. The R50 is being a lovely camera from just being able to be super lazy with setting up the pictures with it. I’ve been remembering things like rule of 3 (the 9 box grid for spacing) and trying to get myself into good places for taking the picture. But the camera is doing the rest with flawless detailed pictures on automatic all the way.

The pictures here (except sad dwagon!) are all reduced from the native 6000×4000 to 2000×1333 but the detail is still all there and I’m really happy with how the R50 is pulling all that detail into the pictures. And it’s on snapshot style picture taking too where I’m not doing things like bracing the camera at all.

I’ll leave it there so I can grab a snack, some more water (it be warm!), pay the lovely Batkitto the full attention this lovely Scottish lady streamer deserves while disappearing into book. I’m in book 3 of The Belt series (not the Expanse) which is a curious space scifi set of books. I’m curious as to where they will go.

Later everyone.

A Dwagon and Friend go to Comic Con

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June 7, 2024

7:49 pm

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Hello everyone,

I was thinking that it’s been a while but actually just a few weeks. I’m actually a couple of posts behind, even after this one. It’s been a good but draining month or so, I’m definitely in need of taking a break from things for a while. (Don’t worry, I’m working next week then have next week off). So, what happened on the May Bank Holiday weekend ?

Picture. We're looking at a gathering of lovely looking people people dressed in elaborate and very cute anime character style outfits.

We haven’t been able to get to a Comic Con since before the pandemic, so it was a lovely day to be able to make that trip with Comic Con Friend. It’s been 5 years since we’ve been able to make that trip together (there was the Oct Comic Con trip too but that was just me.). And there was another smuggle again 🙂 It was a good smuggle.

So, what happens at Comic Con ? Lots of merch, lots of stands with things to see. Comics, anime, very creative art of all different kinds. Wonderful cosplay like what we see in the picture above, from all genres.

Picture. We're looking at two people standing side by side. One is in t-shirt and trousers. The other is ... on bladed stilts, has a pair of bladed poles as arm extensions and a helmet with an extremely long proboscis.

I have no idea what genre that’s from but the amount of work that’s gone into making something that good is incredible. Top job, totally salute you there. I definitely haven’t done it justice with the alt-text.

There’s always lots to see and it’s much better to experience it with a friend coming along too. I like seeing the different artists work, especially the stuff that comes from their own imaginations instead of being inspired by the other media out there. That’s the best thing, seeing what everyone has to say and produce to show us. Be that super cute cards, detailed art to go with stories, quick funny cartoons or stunningly well realised artwork that needs to be seen.

Picture. We're looking at a Doctor Who Dalek, gliding through a crowd of amused looking people. The dalek is a grey pepper pot style machine, with gun and manipulator stalks in front (left of picture). The lower half is ringed by black hemispheres.

There was a small cadre of Daleks patrolling the show, possibly in search of the Tenth Doctor who was there in the very tight blue suit outfit. I saw him there (perfect cosplay down to the appearance and body language) but he zipped away too fast for a picture.

Picture. We're looking at a statue of a dragon, sitting on its haunches. The dragon is perhaps 8 foot tall. Their scales are dark green, with a yellow belly stretching from neck to paws. The inside of their wings is blue.

Also dragon.

Talking of dragons, I haven’t got to the loot yet … Scorch’s Pyrography was there and it was great to see her making it to the show. She’s been in the wars recently breaking all four limbs in a bus related accident (ambushed by pavement) so it was good to see her recovered enough to make the show. There was also Ocean City Crafts … They do wonderful things with 3d printing :

Picture. We're looking at a trader's stall. A black cloth is covering a table which is absolutely covered with mythical creatures of all kinds and colours.

That’s all 3d printed creatures, including multiple types of dragon and all different colours too. They’re fully articulated as well, with the resin segments linked together. I was a little doubtful but bought one (will show pic later) and I’m rather impressed. Well worth checking them out, hopefully we’ll see them going to more shows.

Gosh, think I’m running out of steam. I did get bitten mildly by something while at Comic Con (was ok, just a little out of sorts for the week after!) and I’m heading towards the end of the energies so I’ll close up soon. My outsides have considerably worsened as well, hopefully that’s turned the corner now into actively healing.

There are more pictures than I’ll show here, mostly because I’m very careful about putting pictures of me or friend people on the blog. When something’s on the internet, it’s very difficult to take it back again. So while selfie pictures of the shoulder dwagon are on Facebook and various Discords, they won’t go here. Same as there are a few lovely pictures of Comic Con Friend from the Sunday and other people which I’m careful about where they go to.

Shoulder dwagon ?

Picture. We're looking downwards at 3 objects on a dark table. On the left, a blue green dwagon made up of crystal like spines, with orange paws. Lower right, a chocolate chip cookie. Behind, a large green 20 sided dice with gold coloured numbers.

There we go. Possible deceptive sizes there 😀 The dwagon is the perfect size to sit on a shoulder, the d20 there is HUGE and that’s a decent size cookie there too.

Lovely day out, really enjoyed catching up with the wonderful Comic Con Friend (it’s been a while!) and sharing in seeing all of the wonderful things at the convention. Time for me to sign off now I think and pop the dinner on but … one last loot ?

Picture. We're looking down at out blue green crystal dwagon on the right, a green dwagon behind, the large d20 in the centre and a collection of black dice with lit up numbers on to the left. A dice box is behind and to the left.

I got shiny light up dice too 🙂 And t-shirts from Teeturtle. This was also the first Comic Con with the new camera, I think it’s done a wonderful job. (Some of the pics are from the mobile 😀 )

Have a lovely weekend everyone, see you all next time. Wait … one more ?

Picture. We're looking at a collection of dice. From left to right - a red six sided dice. The rest are 20 sided, with a small grey shiny one, a normal sized red one, a larger green one and the very large dark green one that's almost as tall as the green dwagon to the right. In the background, our blue green crystal dwagon.

I needed to show just how big the dice was :-D. The d6 and the red d20 to the left are normal sized.

Later everyone !

A castle for squirrels ?

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May 6, 2024

4:47 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve just been trying to figure out what I’ve been doing for the last fortnight … Yep, it does feel a bit like that :-D. I think it sums up as a lot of late finishing days in the office and topped off with a castles trip and a very late night research run.

Picture. We're looking at a red dragon, standing on 3 paws with the 4th front paw raised in front of them with outstretched claws. They are on a stone wall, with an old looking castle house behind to the left, with trees to the right.

Oh ! I was trying out another game …

Picture and game screenshot. We're looking at a photo of a computer screen with a fridge magnet held up in front. We see two characters. The magnet is a lady with straggly hair, staring eyes and a very wide jaw. The computer character resembles. Both are wearing viking style armour.

I’ve had the daft idea for a while to make a game character inspired by the fridge magnet character I got from Norway and Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord has what you could call the ideal character creator for the purpose.

And by that I mean it’s pretty crude and excels at making characters that most people would call cursed. But there she is, my latest Bashara character, all set up for forming a warband that will hopefully grow into an army fit to conquer nations. I think I got the eyes right ? (Unfortunately 😀 ).

Outside of that, another Deus Ex Mankind Divided run is finished, I think I lost part of a weekend by falling off the Little Big Workshop wagon again (great game, very cute much addictive). And I’ve been looking at Star Trek Online again. While enjoying reading Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Maybe a few starts of plans appearing as well too. Since the cruise, I’ve been actively wanting to take better pictures and the current thing is the night sky. A separate inspiration there is Wildbeare (youtube link) and how she goes out into the wilds and comes out with lovely stories for her watchers. And being out in the wilds away from city lights seems ideal for being able to see the night sky. I’ll come back to that.

In the mean time though, I was picking up some gear again with a side trip to see castles on Friday.

Picture. We're looking out over a wet paved part of Carmarthen town towards a castle gateway. Part of the castle wall goes to the left. A newer building is to the right. Wood benches with white umbrellas are scattered in front of the castle gate.

That’s the gatehouse of Carmarthen castle, which is sadly mostly just what’s left of Carmarthen castle. The main castle part has been displaced by the council buildings. There is a little bit left of the outer wall but no access to the top of those gatehouse towers. (More pictures on my Facebook than I’ll put here)

A side reason for going to Carmarthen outside of Somewhere New and castle was because they have what turns out to be an excellent camera shop there. Things may have been acquired … Picture later but I now have the bluetooth remote trigger (will be handy for star pics and tripod pics) and a way better tripod than the one I got last year. This one is articulated with a ball joint, the old one was on a couple of hinges which got incredibly stiff and seized. It was nearly impossible to point the camera accurately at the bridge when I took the old tripod to Portishead’s Battery Point in the last post.

2 pictures. Above, is a noticeboard showing historic Carmarthen with small buildings alongside a river curving off with sailboats on the river and fields to the bottom right. Lower, same thing with larger buildings on our side hiding the river. There is a line of cars where the field was. Sky is very cloudy.

Classic now and then shot. Carmarthen is on quite a wide river there, so when river and sea traffic was the main option it was a very prosperous market town. As trade moved to the roads and larger ports, everything moved to where things were a bit closer. Carmarthen is 100 miles away from where I live, which would have been even more of a factor in the days of sail.

So, tripod acquired, remote clicker acquired, tasty brownie acquired, off again. It was Star Wars day so I was drawn to Cardiff …

Picture. We're looking at a small old castle on top of a mostly conical hill. There are steps leading up to the castle tower. A white and green flag is flying, the flag has a red dragon flying on it. The sky behind is full of cloud.

That’s Cardiff castle. I went to Cardiff because it has the Lego shop (with offers for Star Wars day) and the Snack shop. At some point, I’ll go to more of the Welsh castles … although it was getting late on Friday and I just about only made it for both the snack shop (close at 5.30pm) and the castle (close at 5pm). There’s a bit more leeway for the Lego shop (close at 8pm).

Cardiff castle is one of very few to remain mostly intact, with the small bailey castle inside the surrounding curtain walls. It was too late for me to visit the museum part (again) but I’ll make it there some day.

Castle for squirrels ?

Picture. We're looking into the distance at the slim towers and spires of a church, which are just visible above the much closer trees. It was a grim day so the background is grey with cloud.

They were clever centuries ago, being able to build miniature castles on top of the trees for the guard squirrels to help in the defence of the realm. (I swapped to the longer lens for this one).

Before I close up, this wasn’t the only trip of the weekend … The skies cleared on Saturday night and I had (somehow) enough leftover energy to try and indulge that need? to try and see the galaxy. I do enjoy doing that in Elite, although that’s suffered due to my arms being poorly and sore. So if I can’t go to the stars, can I get pictures of them ?

I didn’t get any usable pictures from Saturday night but I took away a good number of learning points …

First was – there are very few parking places open or accessible after dark around Bristol, located in places away from the city. I think I know why but won’t go into it here (they’re over wary about people setting up semi permanent camp). I think I have one now. The main criteria is that it has to have an open view to the South because that’s the part of the sky with the galaxy in it.

Second – need a good view of the sky with a parking place that you can get in and out of. The place I did take (bad) pics from has a car park resembling a moon crater. So I won’t go there again.

Third – bring Stuff. And by Stuff I mean light. And probably more things as well to add to the list which would strongly resemble things people would take when camping. That’s one reason why the camping option is really strong, because it means everything is set up well in time for the stars to show themselves.

Four – I learned more about the camera ! I did manage to take some pics but I hadn’t bothered setting up the tripod so they’re unusable. But what it’ll do when you persuade it to take a long exposure shot is turn off the display, have one ominous red light and be unresponsive. Cue me thinking that I broke it. Oops. But it was actually just taking a long 8 second exposure shot. So I have success there, switching it to Manual Focus is how you get those night sky pics.

Will have to be back for another attempt when timings allow and the skies are clear. The Lords trip could actually be a good option there. It’s not something I can really attempt with work the next day as it involves getting back in at 3.30 or 4am. I’d recommend a phone app called Stellarium there, it’ll show you the night sky wherever you are and show you what stars you are looking at.

Any more from Cardiff ?

Picture. We're looking at ... Lego box in the background with a couple of Star Wars things visible. On top, Lego box with red dragon and Lego bad with tank. To the left, a metal tripod folded up. In front, our red dwagon plushie and assorted snacks.

There was, of course, plunder. In the form of nice snacks, the Lego Pod Racing diorama, the tripod over to the left there and a Lego Dwagon. I’ll show the dwagon build at some point, although I do know that I’m way behind on a few build type posts (and the rest of the cruise) and actually putting some things together as well.

I think that’s my cue to disappear from this post though, have a lovely week everyone.

A dwagon gets a case of Insomnia

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April 7, 2024

7:36 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been off to another of those gaming festival thingys … This time it was a fun weekend in Birmingham at the Insomnia Gaming Festival. It’s been going a few years now, starting form humble beginnings of a LAN* party, growing a bit by happening out of I think it was Coventry football stadium and they now run the show out of the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a white dog and a black dog, in an inflatable red car floating in the sea. The captions are "In life it's not where you go" and "It's who you travel with"

(Urg – looks like they’ve changed the image linking / insertion thing, if it goes funny I’ll fix)

* A LAN is a local area network, it’s a term from the olden days where we’d need to bring computers together in the same location and wire them all together with cables in order to play the multiplayer games. That’s like … before broadband internet, before wifi, before online servers. Insomnia still does the LAN area, it’s their own dedicated area off to the side of the main show where people can take their gaming rigs and play together. You can read more about Insomnia on their site (Linky), next show is in September.

I was hoping to meet up with a few more people in the streaming world in and around the show (spoiler – that happened, made me happy) plus there’s usually lots more to see around shows like this.

Picture. We're looking out from a hotel room over the car park half in shadow. There are trees with brown leaves below a horizon filled with dark cloud, with a double rainbow emerging from the centre

Friday saw me settling into the hotel before planning munchies … One thing I’d like to do with these events is to link up with more people for dinner afterwards but for this one, it was good to take myself off somewhere on my own around Birmingham. (The Fort shopping centre has some good eating places) And … Barr Beacon gave potential for testing the camera out at night, which was maybe a bit too much adventure. Let’s see :

Picture. It's full night time and we're looking out over the varied coloured dots and lights of Birmingham. Above, we see a dark night sky with a few white clouds

That’s a … handheld shot. At night. The camera was saying no to taking pictures of the stars (think I know why) but on the way out of Barr Beacon, I thought I’d try seeing what one of the automatic settings could do. And there we go. Even on the full resolution, the dots are pretty sharp. Happy with that. The adventure was supposed to see me drive all the way up to the war memorial up there but, the gate was shut (it shouldn’t have been) and I only walked a little way up there. There was one car parked off the path, plus more vehicles active further up too. I didn’t want to get anywhere near them cos I like life, so I set up with the tripod safely away from them.

A good little adventure but it seems quite tough to get to places with a good view of the sky at night, partly due to the parking areas being closed off, partly due to Safety. I didn’t go all the way up to the war memorial due to feeling unsafe and this was repeated by tales from one of the streamer people trying to get to their hotel. Gotta take care where you’re going in the cities these days.

Picture. We're looking between two leaf less trees at a lake. There is a fountain between the two trees, with a dark green lawn in front.

My Insomnia day was the Saturday, lovely sunny day too. I was on a priority ticket as a bit of learning from MCM – priority entry means less queue, which gave lots of time to wander around the show. And there was a little chilled out munchie before going in. One side note there, it’s really important to have your fluids with you at shows like this. The atmosphere can be really hot so it’s important to stay hydrated. I must have gotten through at least 3 refills of the bottle that my Comic Con friend bought me (more than!) a few years ago. My legs survived too (after extreme bad cramp at Comic Con) and I’d note that there were very visible first aiders standing by in case people got into trouble, that’s definitely appreciated.

Picture. We're looking out over a crowd of people inside the hall. In the centre, a lovely smiling lady in a red apron representing Yorkshire Tea.

Yorkshire Tea brought the sustenance. Free tea ! Much appreciated. My highlights of the day were getting to meet Tashnarr (twitch link) again, not just once but three times ! One of which included a lovely natter from this wonderful individual. She is working for the people who organise Insomnia now, so was being a busy bee on the day.

The other massive highlight was seeing Session Zero on the main stage doing a live Dungeons and Dragons style role play show. They are Josh Strife Hayes as the Game Master, plus Ragedarling playing a barbarian and Billietrixx as a sorceror. Pictures ?

Picture. We're looking at the Insomnia stage with two people with right arms raised exhorting the crowd with their fists. Josh is in a white shirt, light blue waistcoat. Rage is in boots, with exposed thighs below a belt with a red cloth with a waistcoatted top below bright red hair. She has a massive war hammer

There’s Josh and Ragedarling …

Picture. We're looking at the Insomnia stage again. Back and right is Josh again, Ragedarling is on a sofa in the background. Centre stage is Billietrixx looking down at the crowd with left hand outstretched, with a staff held in her right hand. She has a full length dress, with a superb bodice completing the look.

And there’s sorceress Billietrixx looking resplendent (with shiny new outfit upgrade too).

There were too many pictures to post here but the better ones are all on the Session Zero Twixxer thread (Linky). It was a massively fun show to watch, there was massive audience involvement, much daft, much enjoyment and I’ll definitely be looking out for when they’re doing more shows.

Picture. This is the meet and greet area of Insomnia, with the Session Zero people posing for pictures. Left to right is Ragedarling, hefting her hammer, Special Guest, Josh and Billie is on the right.

And after the show and a lovely little natter with Tashnarr on the way (there is a selfie, it’s not for the internet :-D), I had a chance to say hi to them after their Meet and Greet. There’s a fourth person there, their name didn’t lodge in my head but they were a wonderful special guest for the show. I’ve met Billie before at Creator North, was great to see them here again.

And they all loved the pictures too. That gives me a happy buzz too. This was the first time I’d taken the new R50 camera out to a show like this and I think it did really well. It’s almost an entry level for the higher class of cameras (it’s a mirrorless) but what it gave me on the automatic settings and mostly handheld (or braced on the knee) were an absolute revelation compared to what I was getting from the Ixus. I think the pictures look amazing, hopefully I’ll see them again if people think they’re good enough to use for later material.

But … my social batteries were hitting their limits later on in the day so I disappeared before the end. It was a lovely weekend. I’ve been struggling with my mental health lately (mostly from being worn down) and meeting the following gave me a very happy buzz that kicked me back off into having a much more positive mental state :

Tashnarr – as always, lovely bean. She helped organise a wonderful show and I should be back for the next Insomnia.

Billietrixx & Ragedarling (and Josh!) off Session Zero – the show was huge fun to watch. I’ve been watching Billie for about a year, Rage for about a month or so. They have a lovely energy that comes through their streams and it’s infectious. They’re good people to watch.

MiyukiPanda – a first surprise running into. Miyuki is a huge fan of racing and will often be seen streaming games like the F1 games or there was also the Lego racing game. Miyuki has a selfie of me too which is on her discord but I got this pic of Miyuki with the show mascot :

Picture. We're looking at the Insomnia show floor. Standing on a blue carpet is a very cute lady with red/brown hair with a yellow cap, smiling off to my right. She's standing beside a purple hexagon character with a bit eye.

I also ran into Saffypie, Peachypixel8, Josh aka Gamingftl and Bentham aka Mangledpork after the show. I’d met Josh and Bentham before but this was first time seeing Saffy and Peachy. And got hugs. They gave me the idea of heading to Nandos … Hope they enjoyed their dinner as much as I did mine :-D.

I did miss running into one little group though, which was Dontrachquit heading round the show with a few of her community. There will be a next time there :-D. Rach is another fun streamer lady from Scotland who I’ve been enjoying watching again lately. I missed spotting her at the show but was enjoying seeing the little updates that were popping up on discord.

I’m now looking ahead to the Summer events … I’ll be taking the camera to Lords for the Interservices T20 in May, looking forward to that, plus maybe MCM Comic Con at the end of May too. However, the general buzz from enjoying Insomnia has me turning the maybe maybe not for Twitch Con is turning into a lot more interest. Hopefully I’ll be able to tag along with some of the communities for that, as that would make that experience so much better. We’ll see. Current plans are a road trip and a ferry. I’m not a fan of air travel, seems like a lot of restrictions and a definite too many people in the airport. Ferry would allow for a nice bit of chill out time in the middle with more room and very few restrictions.

Loot ? I did take away a bit of loot …

Picture. We're looking at a shop window. In the centre, there is a metal dragon figurine sitting on a shelf. He has his front paws folded in front of his chest and is wearing an expression translating as "Humph"

Not that fella, although it was a very close run thing. (Too late in the day so Brain was a bit fried, plus I don’t know where I’d put something that size) Nah, I came away with these :

Picture. We're looking at a set of pink orange dice, on top of a presentation box. A card saying "Trayed and Tested" is to the left, our dwagon is to the right. The background is light blue above my wooden desk.

The dice are from Trayed and Tested and there’s a link to their Etsy shop. So all in all, wonderful weekend. It was great to get away for the Insomnia show and I’ll definitely be looking to do that again. It would be good to be in with more community next time but it was lovely seeing the shows and meeting up with the people I did see (including a random oneOnline!)

And it gave me a reset for my mental state leading to a very happy buzzing, especially hearing that all the people got home ok ! I do worry about the good people and it was good to hear they all returned safe and sound.

I’ll leave it there, I dropped more pictures on the Session Zero Twixxer link above. Time for me to put some dinner on while enjoying chilling to Tashnarr painting a miniature (Peachy is on as well at the moment, in Cities Skylines).

Late Easter

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April 22, 2022

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone, a belated Happy Easter to you all. Gosh it’s been a while again. I have had a few ideas simmering on the brain for a post but the “New Post” button wasn’t getting pressed to initiate them … However, one thing I did manage to do was break the sketch block that had been going for about 18 months …

Picture. A rough sketch of a dwagon. He's standing with his feet pointing to his right (our left) in black strokes intended to be shoes. His right paw is raised above his head, his left paw is on his hip. He is winking his left eye.
Friday? Night Fever ?

I probably gave away the muse but hopefully you recognise the pose from the movie. The inspiration was Knightenator, who I just recently started watching on Twitch (link) after she was raided again by the ever lovely Tashnarr (link). Raiding is where a stream takes their viewers over to another streamer when the time comes to shut down their stream and it’s fantastic for discoverability of streamers similar to who you were watching. It gives you an immediate suggestion for “If you like me then you should like this person too who is continuing after I go offline”.

Hmm. This could be a randomised post. I can see it coming :-). Knight was on earlier playing more multiplayer Apex Legends (not something I play but she makes it curious to watch) and is another one who indulges in the Truck Game, European Truck Simulator 2. I’ve been enjoying that game a lot although I think I might take a break from it for a bit because they’ve tweaked the AI and made them pretty dangerous (which has been annoying me).

So … what have I been up to ? The post ideas in my head are things like : Truck Game and how it relates to modern day logistics. You know, things like when you click the button to order something online, what’s involved in getting it to your door. Or to the shop you get the thing from. That’ll be for a later post I think. I think I’m due a music post at some point too. I was in Cardiff on Wednesday and picked up some more cd’s, 3 from Morcheeba, 1 from Enya, a Nerina Pallot cd and something speculative from Beverley Craven. Haven’t listened to them yet, I’ll weave the new tracks in between the other music I listen to and gradually figure out what I think of them like that. And then I’ll weave in the whole album along the way too.

I had this week off work, which has allowed for :

A bit too much Truck Game time;

Indulging in Skyrim again. I have a heavily modded playthrough going …

Game screenshot. Skyrim. We're looking at the back of our heroine. She's wearing heavy iron armour and is on a ledge looking down at a valley filled with thin tall trees.
A snowy view

It still looks good, it’s an easy game to play and the ease of modding it enhances it even more. That’s a curious one though, it’s an easy one to lose yourself in because they’ve buried stuff to find everywhere and the gameplay style I prefer of a big sword and heavy armour means I’m not having to think too much about hitting things.

The Motorsport Manager campaign continues and still provides interesting racing. As in, the team is winning races now but I’m having to work hard to get the wins or we’re getting advantage from being able to handle changeable weather better than the AI.

And a trip to Cardiff happened on Wednesday.

Picture. We're looking over a balcony with a golden railing at a clock in a steeple. It's in a wooden building above a row of market stalls underneath. There are more shops on a far balcony over to the other side.
Lunch with a different view

That’s the indoor market area in Cardiff and I discovered a bacon sandwich shop and a cd shop next door to it. One pondering after though is, places like the cd shop and the book shop don’t seem to change their offerings too much … I haven’t registered too much change to that Picture Of How Things Are in the book shop lately. How often do they get new stuff in ? A curiosity …

I’m mostly going to wrap up there though but one thing I did want to think out loud on was remote control cars again. I didn’t get one on Wednesday because homing instinct was kicking in (apparently I tweaked my knee again and couldn’t feel the pain from it yet) and I don’t like to make money decisions when my head’s not right. When I do get one, I want to make sure I get all the right things … What’s needed ?

Picture. We're looking at a remote control car. It has two thing wheels at the front and we see one (of two) wheels at the back, with a spiked rubber tyre. The shell is white plastic with stickers above a black plastic tub.
Ah ! Grasshopper

So – things you need include : The Car ! Batteries. These come in packs of 6 in a moulded casing. It takes about 15 minutes to fast charge (which you don’t want to do too much due to damage) and they give about 15 minutes run time. So you want two battery packs. You want AA batteries for the receiver and transmitter. The remote control part is a 2.4GHz pair. You need a motor, a speed controller and a servo for the steering. Oh and you probably want a toolkit if what you have isn’t up to what you want.

One thing I’m confused about is what’s actually in the box … The couple I have my eye on are the racing car style Porsche 911 kit (link) and the more buggy style 4 wheel drive Thunder Dragon (link). Yep. Dragon pulled it out of the pack. They’re both Tamiya kits. You can get “Ready to Race” kits as well which are fully assembled but I’d want to put it together so I can understand how all of the parts work together.

Both kits take the standard 7.2V battery module, both have a motor (RS540 is a standard size for pretty much all electric remote control cars) but whereas the buggy has a speed controller, the Porsche kit doesn’t.

Antics supply a collected kit for most of the bits : Carson 2.4GHz radio and receiver. That’s got the transmitter and receiver pair, a battery pack for the car, AA batteries, a servo that does the steering and a trickle charger for the battery pack. The Porsche would need a speed controller as well. Which might mean a different type of motor as well … Choices :-D.

Motors ? There’s lots of different types that run on different types of power. The ones that go in your vacuum cleaner or mower will be Alternating Current (AC) Induction motors. They rely on the waveform of mains power to work. It’s a wiggly (sine wave) waveform and the motor rotor (the bit that spins) basically follows the electromagnetic field in the stator (the shell) windings that have the power. These motors just keep going because there are very few contact points outside of the bearings that hold the rotor where it should be.

Direct Current (DC) motors that run off batteries can’t do that. Instead of the power waveform being wiggly, it’s a straight line of constant voltage. A brushed motor has contact points that connect the electricity to the spinning part. As the motor spins, the connection swaps over and the motor keeps turning. However, the brushes wear out over time and need to be cleaned and ultimately replaced to keep the motor working. Brushless motors are kind of a mix between DC motors and AC Induction motors, they rely on a speed controller to turn the power on and off at specific points in the rotation of the motor. (Is too complex to describe here but was probably inspired by how 4 stroke combustion engines work)

The speed controllers work by chopping up the power going to the motor. If the power is only turned on for 10% of the cycle, the car being driven by the motor goes slower. The brushless speed controllers apply the power so that the rotor follows the electromagnetic field.

Oops. Digression and nerdiness happened … Bits list ! I did say I’d be thinking aloud … If I was to go for the Porsche, the bill from Antics would be :

The car – £129.

Carson Reflex pro radio kit, 7.2V battery, charger, servo – £80

Etronix ET0103 electronic speed controller – £20

(A brushless motor and controller starts around £80)

Extra 7.2V 5300mAh battery – £35

Fast charger Perkins GTP0166 – £28

Mini toolkit for £20.

So … that all works out to £312 to get in to the hobby and that’s going cheap on a few items. One thing I have already is the boost starter for the car. That has a 12V car battery in it that can also do 240V mains power so it can feed the charger.

It’s a fair bit to get in there isn’t it ? One thing I’m very conscious of is there’s a big gap between what I currently know and what the magazines assume that you know. And the only way to bridge that gap is by diving in. Although i have just looked at the Ready to Go cars and there’s a buggy car for £125 which includes the radio kit. Maybe it’s all what you pay for again, like that extra battery is 4 times the capacity of the one in the £125 kit.

We’ll see. I think that’s enough thinking aloud for now. Book time ! I enjoyed reading Light Chaser by Gareth L Powell and Peter F Hamilton. A bit short again maybe but there’s a lot to be said for a story that gets in, tells its thing and gets out again fast instead of indulging in repetition of what you already read or having a promising beginning that dribbles out into a tame end. Worth the cash and well worth a read.

Good night everyone, I must post more !

Time off, Time out

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October 15, 2021

8:59 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’ve been in the downtime phase again. I usually look to grab a week off around October, it’s good to have that little bit of downtime before heading into the Xmas things. One thing I’ve noticed this time around, I think the nighttimes drawing in has affected me more this year, although you wouldn’t know that from some of the bed times that have happened this week :-D.

What’s been happening ? I saw a friend on Friday evening, we met up for board games. It was a fun evening and good to be out and about like that again. That’s a curious thing here in the UK at the moment though. The plague stuff hasn’t gone away. People are just ignoring it. At least that’s the feeling in England anyway. Scotland was a bit more aware and militant about it in the eateries I was in while I was up there. Wales is somewhere in the middle.

Picture. A small castle on a mound is in the centre of shot. A curtain wall can be seen to the right in the distance and the foreground is a mix of stone, paved and grass. Occasional people dot the scene.
Castle !

Yep. Been the Cardiff again. It’s a good city centre but it can be a bit of a pain to get in and out of, mostly due to the roads just before the trunk road start. But … it has :

Antics model shop.

Wally’s Delicatessen.

Troutmark Books

Lego Shop.

Yep. Lots of good things there. I would like to find some music shops to browse in for when I’m there. There’s a decent sized HMV but it’s in a separate area of the city to the St David’s (Dewi Saint) area where I park up and there’s a question between the time taken to walk over there and getting away early enough to beat the worst of the traffic.

I didn’t acquire anything from the Lego shop this time (Ice Penguin was tempting) but there was loot from the other places.

Picture. 4 bags of sweets, the book Lost World by Michael Cricton and a flat pack wooden kit dragon are lying on a black sheet.
Loot ! And dust !

Yep. Is dusty. I’ll be enjoying the bonbons, fudge and sherbets later. And that is an actual kit wooden dragon. I haven’t started it yet, got a space shuttle to finish first.

It was a good little loot haul yesterday, although I have to admit I was looking for Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. My copy has gone somewhere and I’d like to read that one again. I’ve commented before about how that author tends to not really know how to finish off a story and that’s the case here with the Mars trilogy. They start great, with KSR’s always wonderful world building continuing through the next books … but the story fizzles out along the way. Red Mars is a good one though and I liked Nadia’s story.

The book I’m in at the moment is The Recollection by Gareth L. Powell. Great local author, check him out. His Embers of War trilogy is fantastic and Silversands was pretty good as well. I suspect I’ll end up collecting his various books. The Recollection is set across a whole heap of time zones and it has a good little twist on what we usually take as read from travel across the stars. Without diving too deep into spoiler space, the hyperspace engines that jump the ships across the stars can’t beat light speed. The people inside will zap across in a subjective instant for them but in reality, it’s taken 7 years to jump 7 light years.

And as per usual, he’s dropped some rather interesting characters and situations into that mix as well. Looking forwards to diving through it.

The last book was Network Effect by Martha Wells, 5th in the Murderbot series and another series I’d recommend heavily. I need to read Jurassic Park actually. It was bought at Troutmark Books again, same as the sequel. I just haven’t got round to giving it a read yet.

There has been a lot of gaming happening this week as well.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're on a dusty moon. Our pilot in her white flightsuit is to the left, pointing a device at some purple and cream stalks growing out of the ground. The purple buggy is off to the right and we can see half of the ship further right. A dim planet can be seen to the left.
Odd looking trees

Apparently I haven’t been in Elite since the 5th. It’s struggling for me as a game. The Odyssey expansion was a disaster in terms of performance in the game combined with a lot of promises that just fell incredibly flat. People are now wondering if Elite has a future as a game past the next couple of years. It’s a multiplayer online game that currently has the player base fractured between Odyssey gaming and Horizon gaming (new expansion, previous expansion). The multiplayer was borderline whether it worked before the latest expansion, with trouble getting into the same instance as other players. The big issue there is that the servers are over at Frontier’s place and when the game becomes uneconomic to run, they’ll turn off the servers. So Elite probably has a limited life span at this point.

Oh and there’s a small matter of it causing me arm issues when I play it for too long as well.

Outside of the internet spaceships, there’s been Humankind. That’s a pretty new civilisation type game, although one difference it has it that you’re supposed to change the civilisation you play as you progress through the eras. So, start as the Egyptians, progress through being the Celts and end up as the Italians. Each civilisation has their own special units and buildings. It’s an interesting take on the game system and I’ve been enjoying learning what it’s got.

An older one that I still enjoy is Motorsport Manager.

Game screenshot. Motorsport Manager. It's the end of a race. We see the finishing straight with one of our cars. Status displays are bottom left and bottom right. Other displays are at the top. The race positions are to the left.
That’s not supposed to be a thing …

I’ve been continuing my run going through the different types of racing with this being endurance racing. The intention was to keep the team in the lower category, farming the sponsor money until we could afford the Headquarters upgrades that allow better parts to be made. The two categories race together and the lower category is supposed to be outclassed by the higher category. Yet … first race of a season and we’re in front and winning the race … This isn’t really supposed to happen :-D. I think it’s probably down to the higher category having a performance reset which has slowed them down but I also know how to optimise my people getting the best upgrades and there’s an Energy Recovery System speed boost thing that’s very open to abuse where the AI doesn’t realise it should be speed boosting and not fuel saving.

Motorsport Manager is still a great game though, there’s been nothing of its type on PC for far too long.

I may have disappeared down a bit of a XCom Enemy Within Long War rabbit hole as well today. Enemy Within is an expanded version of the first XCom remake, where the aliens are invading and your job is to repel them with your soldiers. Long War is a fan made expansion / conversion which takes a lot of the systems and alters them for a longer and I think more balanced game. I was enjoying playing the early days of it today.

Oh and I reset my Mars Horizon spacepedia as well so I’ll be going through unlocking everything there again.

So … enjoying having the downtime from work. Getting my sleep at the wrong times (need to go back to a more normal sleep pattern again!)

Cardiff was a good wander yesterday, enjoyed the board games. Oh and I got a little bit of research in yesterday. After finishing Deus Ex Mankind Divided, I went back to another fairly recent game :

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. We're on an arid, desert planet looking down from a hill at an outpost base. Hill walls are in the distance behind the base. There is a huge wheel like object. Our spaceship is off to the right.
Outpost !

That’s Mass Effect Andromeda with the graphics options turned up to the maximum. The biggest thing to notice is how much better the shadows are. Texture quality feels better as well. Textures start as a flat image that are mapped on to the objects in the 3d world. That causes loss of quality, so techniques like anisotropic filtering help to get that detail back. The better graphics card lets me turn up those settings, due to more memory and more processing capability and it makes those textures look much better, crisper and more distinct. It also allows huge improvements for reflections and shadows. The earlier version of this screenshot from Jan 2020 has a very indistinct shadow for the spaceship to the right, instead of the crisp one in this screenshot.

I’ve been enjoying the Andromeda story again. Time to hit post though and go back to watching Tashnarr play another game legendary for its graphics … she’s in a Crysis …

Stay safe, be well everyone.