Tag: out and about

A dwagon gets a case of Insomnia

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April 7, 2024

7:36 pm

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events, photography

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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.