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Status – very sleepy

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July 28, 2025

10:21 pm

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Hello everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And have yourselves a wonderful day.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

I think I need a duster

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June 17, 2025

10:08 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while ! Again !

Picture. We're looking at a square white board with black edges. The black writing inside says "You can touch the dust but please don't write in it."

Apologies, it’s been a little too long since I wrote anything here last. Now that I’m starting up a post again, it’s feeling good to be tapping the words out again. How come there hasn’t been a post for a while ? Probably a lot of exhaustion there. I realised that instead of being on the recovery from the massive burn out (and probably very long covid) from a few years ago, I’m probably even deeper in that burn out.

Not quite sure how I pull out of that burn out, it might need some more bigger lifestyle changes. We’ll see there. So what’s been happening while I’ve been away ? What’s at risk of disappearing into lost memory because I didn’t write it down somewhere ? Here goes !

Last time I wrote that new PC bits were going to happen. This post is being written on the BunnyBox PC, so called because it was (mostly!) built at Easter this year. I’ve just done a Partpicker list of the bits. There we go. It was a bit more eventful than it really should have been, let’s just say that it’s on :

Its second Operating System;

Its second cpu cooler …

Yep. There was some light drama there … Only light drama though because nothing actually exploded. The Bunny actually benchmarked the same in a game called Horizon Zero Dawn with the non functioning original cooler as well as the massive lump that’s in there now. But I’m getting ahead of things there …

Picture. We're looking inside a PC box. There are three blue lit fans below. One blue list fan to the left. Two to the back and right. In the centre, a couple of big lumps of heatsink metal sandwiching a big fan.

There we go. That’s the gubbins with the big lump of an air cooler in there. Bunny’s story needs its own post really but the TLDR is that I experimented with going with Linux first. That didn’t work out because the performance in games was pretty nasty, probably because the system was working off older drivers that didn’t fully support the brand new to market 5060Ti 16GB card that’s in there. And I couldn’t see how to quickly and efficiently update them. So Linux came off and my 2019 copy Windows 10 went on. And then that updated to current Windows 10 … and finally I’m running on Windows 11.

Actually this really needs its own post before I tell everything in geek level detail here ! The cooler in the picture there is the replacement for an All In One cooler which … didn’t work. Those are a waterblock to take heat off the cpu. Pipes to circulate that heat around, with a pump. And a big radiator and fans to dissipate that heat. It wasn’t taking the heat away from the cpu.

I now have a failed All in One cooler to disassemble so I can see how it works.

Picture, meme. We're looking at a small red car broken down into all of its component parts (there are too many to count) all set out in orderly rows. The captions are "Car by IKEA, Allen Wrench included."

I could attempt to return it but … it has 3 good 120mm (big but not biggest) fans on there which I can harvest for the top of Bunny PC. Plus I’ve never had an All in One cooler to take apart before.

What else have I been up to ?

Picture. We're looking out over a cricket field with players in mostly dark blue outfits and a couple with red tops. In the foreground, there are rows of seats with a small number of people scattered in them.

That’s from Lords again and we had a full day’s play in the Interservices T20 games this year. I managed to get there super early, pretty much as the games opened. I got there before the tea selling people were selling tea ! There should be a post about the cricket day as well at some point. We’ll see about translating the “want to post need to post” into having the energy left over to actually get posting. I think we’re doing ok here at the moment. Again, the cricket day is one that should get its own post soon.

Following the cricket was a day spent at UK Games Expo. This was a fun Saturday. I stopped overnight on the Friday but just did the one day and night there. Hotels be pricey. Looking back at it, the event is big enough and crowded enough that it could do with a second day there.

Picture. We're looking at a pink and bronze dwagon sitting on a wooden counter top. They're holding a zen pose with palms resting on crossed knees. Behind them is a wood framed dice tray with a picture of a sailing ship and a sea map. Surrounding the dwagon are blue dice with white numbers.

I got loot too ! The dice and tray there are from Trayed and Tested (Etsy link), which is run by the lovely Aby. Good to see them again at UK Games Expo. I also ran into Curlylocksgamer who is enjoying farming in Stardew Valley as I type. Good to meet them too.

And the afternoon was spent with Andy of Billietrixx‘s (Twitch link) community and Billie, browsing the rest of the Expo. Was a very enjoyable bimble with great company. These shows are always best with friends to share the experience with and to point towards the things we may have missed.

No Comic Con this year sadly, Comic Con Friend wasn’t feeling so good so we’ll pick another one to go to. I wasn’t that great either, I probably well overdid it for the Lords trip (Thursday before Comic Con weekend) and needed that weekend to recover as well.

Feel better soon Comic Con Friend !

Game screenshot. Star Wars Outlaws. We're looking at a dry arid scene with light colour sandstone buildings and desert off in the distance. Our character is in front facing away wearing a light tan jacket and dark trousers. She's looking at a row of 3 white armoured stormtroopers shooting at targets. They hit everything but the targets.

Better close out now. I’ve been enjoying being able to slam the graphics options up with the new PC. It’s definitely a bit of a beast compared to the last one, which was still going pretty strong. That’s Star Wars Outlaws again, I just ran across this little vignette of Stormtroopers being set the task of target practice. Someone spotted the little critter there looking like it was wondering if it was safer in front of the stormies instead of off to the side.

The game is full of little moments like that. They did a good job with it, although combining the story with randomly generated heist or fetch or elimination missions may extend or pad the game out a bit too much. I’m kinda wanting to be done with it again now. Fun game, maybe feels too long to get everything done. The buildings will be a frame covered by a texture but there is so much detail now in both frame and texture and the graphics cards have the sheer power to turn that complex structure frame and texture picture into a super realistic convincing 3d environment. Says me who will drop 40 hours into a Little Big Workshop run over a couple of real time days. It’s amazing the level of detail in there as well now. The characters will all have full animated skeletons.

Oh I’m not the healthiest with my gaming play profiles ! Little Big Workshop does look much better with the graphics turned up in that too.

It’s been good to pop up again and drop a post in. I have that little few lined up that I need to write words for so that helps preserve them in the memory banks. But for now, back to book. I’m in Off Midway Station by Marc Alan Edelheit at the moment. New author for me, it’s taken half a book to set up his universe but it feels like it’s lighting that blue touch paper to ignite a story that’s going to take off.

To the stars ! Until next time, thanks for reading 🙂

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Winter wonderland, for a day

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January 11, 2025

10:15 pm

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Hello everyone,

We had snow ! It’s always a big event that in UK because it’s quite rare. Although maybe it’s increasing as the weather gets wilder ? It didn’t last long but it was good to have a little wander in it while it lasted. Still chilly here … but the occasional clouds aren’t turning to rain or snow.

Thumbnail pic ?

Picture. Meme. We're looking at 4 panels all of a black cat with large eyes. The panels steadily get closer to the cat. The captions together say "I wish your year is full of nice things"

There we go. Purr.in.ink are good people and I must check that I’m following them on Bluesky if they’re over there yet.

Uhoh this could be a random post – quickly on the social media stuff … I’ve given up on trying to keep up with Facebook and Twixxer. I’ll occasionally scroll through the Facebook stuff but it is very occasional. Their algorithm is complete garbage now and hides things. I don’t bother scrolling Twixxer any more, definitely not on mobile due to how advert heavy it is. Plus both Facebook and Twixxer are run by … well you’ll have your own opinions there and I probably agree with most of them. It doesn’t help that both of these sites are now deeply problematic with who runs them.

Bluesky is great for keeping up with that selective curated group of people that I follow, as is Instagram. Plus I’ve trained Instagram to mostly suggest cute dog meme videos that it shows me when the people I follow haven’t posted an update. Good times.

Snow ?

Picture. We're looking at a snowy scene towards a road curving around a roundabout in the centre. We can see the patterning of the snow coming down. It's at night and there is light from streetlights and a car negotiating the roundabout.

We didn’t get much, although it was enough to cover up the roads with a light layer that was giving some people a few issues.

Picture. We're standing on a lightly snow covered pavement looking down a long straight road lined with lit streetlights on the other side. The road is covered in snow with ruts cut into it by the cars.

About enough snow there to make things interesting on the roads but it was a Saturday evening, so not many people were needing to head out to go to work or get supplies. Roads were pretty quiet actually and I think one of the local chippies were closing up early.

It was nice having the little walkabout. Not too cold and the snow was easy to walk through in the boots. I didn’t see any snow people about though and I didn’t stay out for that long.

Picture. Snow scene again. We're looking towards a small bridge. There is a wooden fence on each side, going up to about hip height. Beyond, the leafless branches of a layer of trees.

We did have the last remnants of the Christmas lights though.

Picture. Snow scene. We're looking down a lightly snow covered lane between houses, some of which we can see on the right with cars parked in short driveways in front. The screen is lit by streetlights and light blue white dot lights on the trees.

Pretty.

It’s taken me a few more days than I wanted to post this one ! Back at work this week and that usually leads to me being absolutely wiped out by the time it gets to the evening. (Especially as I did Mall on Monday evening and got back a bit late) So I’ve been gaming, with the trucks and a bit of Mass Effect, chilling out with the stream watching and enjoying the reading.

First book read of 2025 was Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s the last of his Architects trilogy, set in a fairly near future universe where humanity reached the stars only to find monsters lurking in Unspace* which would come out and remake planets as works of grotesque art. *(Unspace is this universe’s faster than light travel mechanism). It was a great trilogy with lots of shenanigans and characters to enjoy and the author pulled off the ending really well.

Next up is Colony Mars Four Jezero City by Gerald M Kilby. It’s started out as a murder mystery set on near future Mars. They’re not as well written as the Lords of Uncreation trilogy but they’re still an enjoyable tale. We need these books as well as the masterpieces. And some of the really well written books can be really boring and dreary to read.

I’d prefer to dive through a bunch of great stories that pull me in quickly, than to slog through something I’m not enjoying. And I’m looking at the Peter F Hamilton book from last year there, I enjoyed part of that set up but could tell it was about to go into very dark places with very little narrative support for it going to even deeper dark places.

Oh ! Gotta get back to the book (and the ShoxxyQT* stream) so I can keep a Kindle reading streak going that’s over 400 days now. The last time I missed a day was on the return home day of the Norway cruise, which had a nightmare drive home through almost central London on a really bad traffic day.

*Shoxxy is a new find in the streaming world, she’s a Scottish streamer lady who I’ve seen a small number of streams from so far. Lovely person, has very cosy chill vibes and it makes me happy hanging out in streams like that. Here’s a Twitch link. Although it’s more disturbing horror vibes from the game she has at the moment :-D.

Back to the book ! Nite all, have a lovely rest of the weekend.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Happy New Year everyone

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December 31, 2024

9:54 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a week since the last post already ? Gosh, kinda lost a few days there maybe :-). I thought I’d do a review of the year today, which has been inspired by something that the lovely Batkitto put on her discord (there’s a Twitch link there which has the rest of her links)

This year started as it finished, with us being a bit worried about the old mum. She’s doing ok and it was good to get up there for a couple of days over Xmas.

Bats’s post was about pictures, so let’s see … what’s our thumbnail today ?

Picture. We're on the cruise ship, in an open area. We're looking across the deck towards the horizon. The sun is setting behind a bank of cloud, giving off a lovely yellow glow. Our red dwagon is looking at it from a position on stacked sunbeds.

There we go. Kinda the wrong end of the year to start with but it was an excellent pick of a pic for the thumbnail. The cruise was good fun, relaxing, healing and I think it was just what I needed for that time of the year. I’d had a break previously into Wales but lost the benefit of that due to probable covid. I actually had a few away breaks through the year too, with occasional days at things like Insomnia and Creator North and Wales. More on those later. And more for the cruise in later posts too, I still owe three port visit posts there :-D. It was a wonderful time (except the Bay of Biscay crossings!) and we were looked after really well by the crew.

And there were day trips too …

Picture. We're looking over a metal fence towards a castle. On the right is a wooden bridge ending at a gatehouse flanked by two thick round towers.

I did a big camera upgrade this year to the Canon R50 :-D. And then proceeded to take it to various castles to have a nosey around and get loads of pictures of castles for people. The one above is White Castle in the midsts of hilly Wales. I’ve also been across to Chepstow, Caerphilly, Cardiff castle, the remaining wall of Carmarthen (which also saw me acquire a tripod upgrade) and then the North Wales trip took me to Conwy and Caernarfon.

It was good to be out and about taking pictures and seeing what it could do. Time for an honest opinion … Is it worth spending all that money on a fancy camera these days ? It all you’re looking to do is take selfies and relatively close range shots, no. Mobile phone cameras these days are filled with incredible optics for their size, it’s easier to get the pictures out of them (the R50 is easy but it’s still an extra step) and the software in the phone allows for incredible performance in unexpected ways. Like I left the good camera in the cabin later on in the cruise because the phone in night mode is fantastic for astro photography … with the software making a tripod kinda redundant.

Picture. We're looking towards a red dragon perched on a low wall. A medieval building is in the background.

Castle ! This time in Cardiff with the dragon there. I’ll look to find myself in Cardiff at some point this week, probably Thursday because everything will be closed up tomorrow. It was nearly today, although that went out for two reasons – I couldn’t get to sleep last night which meant I didn’t wake up and be active early enough today and the other reason is that my eyes are bad again … I might need to invest in new pillows and pillowcases there because I think those might be causing me problems.

One road trip that did happen was the yearly pilgrimage over to Lords for the Interservices T20 cricket. We lost half of the play to rain but the games we had were fun to watch. It’s not the best standard of cricket but the players put everything they have into the games and they’re well matched even games that could go either way, often hinging on really close moments in the game.

Pictures. We're looking a 2 stacked pictures, one above the other. Both pictures have a batsman in light blue top, black trousers and a fielder in red top black trousers and an umpire in black and dark blue, with a hat and green shoulders and arms. The two pics are as the ball is hitting the stumps and the fielder reacting below.

That was me playing with the longer lens I have, plus also playing with some of the options in the camera. The above had it in continuous shots and it let me capture the run out. Really happy with how that one turned out, not so happy with the editing I did 😀 (There’s a rogue line upper right). This is where the expensive camera comes in handy, it allows for much longer zoom lengths with different lenses.

But a huge highlight for me this year was the events that I was at with other people … Starting with Insomnia :

Picture. We're looking upwards at two people on a stage. The one on the left is a gentleman in white shirt, grey waistcoat and dark trousers, holding up a microphone in his right hand. To the left is a powerful looking lady barbarian with red hair, holding up her right hand in a fist, with a huge hammer in her left.

That’s Ragedarling, of Session Zero, playing as her barbarian character in the live action D&D show run by Josh Strife Hayes there in the picture. I massively enjoyed Insomnia back in March, it was lovely to run into Miyukipanda touring the halls, to watch the highly entertaining Session Zero show with Ragedarling and …

Picture. We're looking up at the stage again. The gentleman is on the left, Rage the barbarian is sitting on a couch behind and the new character being introduced is Sorceress Trixx. She's a tall, thin lady in a flowing black and purple dress with a fancy bodice. She's holding a staff with her right hand while holding up her left hand in a wave.

… There’s Billietrixx there playing Sorceress Trixx in the show. Twitch link there again. It’s been fun catching Billie’s streams and it’s been lovely being part of that community over this year and last since … finding Billie through the wonderful Tashnarr, who was a big part of making Insomnia such a wonderful experience.

They come together to be the faces of the Creator North events as well and it was good to be able to get up to Sheffield for the second of these in September this year. Looking forward to the next one of those already. It’s run by the remarkable LookItsTilly who moderates in the background for Billietrixx and Tashnarr with Maddog there being the final member of the organising crew. It was lovely being adopted by NinjaSpaceUnicorn’s little posse for the day too, that made it all the sweeter.

Picture. We're looking at a white saucer with an appetising looking brownie on it. Behind and right is a dwagon with an apron saying "Feed Me". In front there is a blue ribbon with white and orange lettering saying "Creator North 2024".

It was fun times, although I was suffering at the time with the extreme tiredness which was shared by a lot of people there plus I may well have done a minor dislocation on the shoulder again at the start and … probably picked up covid again. The shoulder is still attached, although I don’t think it went back in right, it’s still sore. What happened ? Someone got my attention to my left, so I turned … or at least my body turned and the arm stayed behind. Ouch.

Picture. We're looking out from the top of Mount Snowdon in Wales. There is a rocky, grassy outcropping in front of us and beyond that, valleys and hills covered in wisps of mist.

And then I have a little away time in North Wales with trips to Conwy Castle (where Ellardy the Little Red Dwagon happened), Caernarfon Castle and up Mount Snowdon by the railway.

I missed an event ! (Translation – got sidetracked). It’s always a highlight getting to MCM Comic Con in May with Comic Con Friend. It was the first time we’re been able to go to this since 2019 and a pandemic happened. There are more pictures from Comic Con in the post (linky). It was lovely to see Comic Con Friend again, we had a great day out there with lots of wonderful cosplay to see and loot to check out and it was awesome to catch up again. And I think CCF appreciated having a chance to catch up with the messages while we were on the way to/from London too while listening in to the playlist I’d hastily popped together (and then ran out of !) before.

Events are a little congested in May next year but MCM is something that’s on the definite list. I picked up a couple more ideas from peeking at Trayed and Tested‘s update on their Etsy site, like Megacon (London in Jan) and UK Games Expo (end May – NEC). Wait, didn’t I mention loot ?

Picture. We're looking at a crystalline rainbow coloured dwagon wrapped around a large dark green d20. The background is light blue, they're on a pine colour wooden desk.

Gosh, this is turning into a long one. It felt good to be blogging regularly again through December with advent, you’ll see the picture I posted into Batkitto’s discord in the post before this one. I’d missed the posting but with the burn out continuing, plus putting everything into work … I wasn’t feeling like opening the writing up again in the evening. Kinda like I’d spent the brain power through the day and wanted to be robot in a game or soaking up a good book while watching a stream in the evening. So the blogging went by the wayside there.

There have been many books ready too this year, Kindle tells me that I read 32 books this year although it only counts multibook packs as 1 each for the whole series. So the actual is probably 40. I think I’ll summarise those in another post. Games have been fun this year too, I’m close to picking up Star Wars Outlaws in the Steam sale, that was an excellent game.

Picture. We're on the ship, looking out over the side. The sky is mostly clear, with cloud to the left. Brilliant sunshine comes from near the horizon. We can see the rail of the ship below. We're looking out over the sea, broken up by light waves.

Time to wrap up though, on this post and on the year. It’s been an odd year. There’s been the massive highlights from the events and seeing much loved people again or for the first time. It’ll be good to continue that into 2025 and see about getting to more events. It’s been a rough year on that front too, with events closing down and jobs in the gaming industry going that the streaming people depend on.

Hopefully you’re all back here reading a similar post at the end of 2025. What adventures will we get up to ?

I hope to share at least a few of mine with you, either on here … or maybe in person ? We’ll see. Looking forward to seeing you <3.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Advent day 8 and a sail away

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December 8, 2024

10:55 pm

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Hello everyone, what’s behind door number 8 ?

Picture. We're looking at our advent scene, with the addition of a brown vehicle with a pair of orange sails.

Sail barge today, from Return of the Jedi. I have to admit to a bit of an oops I’m late because I opened up Little Big Workshop again yesterday and yep, that’s where my weekend went. It’s a good little game :-).

I’m a little short on ideas, which could be part of “just came out of game” brain :-D. How about some sail aways to go with the sail barge ? One thing I noticed about Borealis was how smooth she was when getting moving. There was barely any sign that we were on the way. I’d look towards shore and see that we were on the way.

Picture. We're looking out over the water, towards a series of thin towers or cranes on the horizon. The water is dark and rippled by the wind. Upper left, we have the sun, with the reflection on the water. The sky is blue with some thin clouds.

Let’s start with the first day. We actually sailed at night but were treated to a lovely sunset over Southampton before we all got moving.

Picture. It's very dark, we can just see water in the lower part, with sky up above. In the centre, we see cranes and tall buildings brilliantly lit by various colour, mostly white, lights. There is the beam of a searchlight in the centre.

Thursday saw us visiting Gijon, with another night time exit and me playing with the new 50mm large aperture lens I acquired before the cruise. It was doing really well picking up lots of detail out of the darkness there. We couldn’t see very much with Mk1 Eyeball (well used, bit down on new performance), so the camera was bringing out a lot more. I was amusing myself at some points by attempting to capture the beam of light houses.

Picture. We're looking downwards towards a small group of pipers on the dockside. One is hidden but there are 5 pipers and drummers in black and white outfits visible (plus one hidden) being led by a lady in a mostly black dress outfit with red trim.

Some sailaways have a bit of a difference too, like at Ferrol where we were treated to bagpipe music from the locals. That’s one thing about cruises, the local people are usually quite happy with the tourists coming through. Definitely enjoyed listening in to the pipers.

Picture. We're looking out to sea over the foredeck of the ship. We can see a couple of benches right up forward before the bowsprit mast. To the right, the breakwater extends in front of us with a selection of cranes. The sea is a little rippled, there is a small sailboat ahead. It's day time and the sky is mostly hidden in cloud.

Saturday saw us visiting Porto, with me finding the outside observation area on Deck 6 for this port exit. Good view.

Picture. It's dark. We're looking out over a slightly rippled sea. Centre stage, we see another cruise ship sailing away. She is wonderfully lit over all areas, with a row of lights going over the masts from bow to stern. We see her from the side, she's heading left. The lights reflect off the sea.

Monday had us visiting Malaga on the southern coast of Spain. I think this one was taken from the inside of the ship (there are window reflections) but there were some lovely lights at play with the night time sail away this time. Another pretty cruise ship there, sailing away first before our departure.

Picture. It's dark again, we're looking out over the rippled surface of the sea towards a long, low container ship. She has a flat deck and a tall wheelhouse aft. The deck is being loaded with assorted containers by a lit up crane to the left. Orange and which lights reflect off the water.

Not as pretty a ship but I’m really happy I captured all the pretty lights like that. Ships like this are the workhorses of the world, they get our stuff from where it’s made to where the trucks can take over and deliver it to our doors (or shops, I prefer shops).

Picture. We're looking out over the water towards the outer areas of Cadiz, just visible on the horizon there. The sea is calm but rippled again, with traces of blue sky interrupted by thin white clouds over the central area of the sky.

This is us heading away from Tuesday’s port, Cadiz. One thing about the sailaways is the feeling as you’re heading away. I’ll be outside in the open decks areas and we were blessed with sunny, clear, calm conditions on all of the port exit days. The open sea air is lovely to bask in plus … that view.

Picture. We're looking towards a city on a hill. The buildings give that clean meditteranean architecture feel. We can see a large building to the right with a domed turret which is catching and reflecting the sun.

Last couple for today. This is Lisbon, brilliantly lit by the evening sun on our way out of the city.

Lisbon was a particularly pretty sail away, with us heading under one of the large bridges there and seeing features like a few sea castles on the way out. The local sailors are usually out as well and the sailboats kept us company for a while.

Picture. We're looking out over the sea again towards a round castle in the middle of the sea with a small tower poking up above. There are rocks surrounding the castle and a small white sailed boat is in front.

Sea castle ! And a little sailboat there as well. I think this was the day when I was watching some very feisty clouds occasionally berating the sea with thunder and lightning.

I think it’s the sense of “where to next ?” with the sailaways as well. I think they’re magic and it’s one reason I went back to doing a cruise again this year. Wonder what it would be like on a river cruise ?

Will have to see where I go next year. But before I lose myself in checking out offers, I need to do my chapter and a bit tonight … Still in Aftershocks by Marko Kloos, I’ll finish that tonight and wonder how the author will develop the story in the next one.

Nite all, have a lovely rest of evening and a good day tomorrow.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

Talking cameras …

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July 9, 2024

10:30 pm

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Hello everyone,

I’m just looking at that title again and am now wondering about cameras that talk. Would they look at the picture you just took and start describing it like alt text ? Would they critique your style or make suggestions ? Could it say “Bright light bright light” if the exposure is too much ?

I think we need a picture …

Picture. We're looking at a brown dog, lying down on a sofa. He's looking up and left, with a very greying muzzle.

Aww. That’s lovely dear heart Ben who was with us for quite a few years. Always a little bundle of staffy bull terrier love, very inquisitive and deeply protective of his people. And the perfect model to start off the post with. Good to see the old chap again.

I was wondering about cameras and what to recommend people get. That picture above is with the ancient iPhone 5 camera, apparently downscaled to 960×720 from the camera’s native resolution. Bit fuzzy but still a nice picture there, if you ignore the crack in the lens :-D. The crack was actually the catalyst to me changing phones over to the Samsung Galaxy S7 which kept me going until I switched to the exceptional Pixel 4.

(side note – gotta admit I’m struggling for mental batteries at the moment although I was able to demolish a couple of books over the weekend, we’ll see where this post goes).

I didn’t have the Pixel 4 for that long before disappearing over to Canada for work … and then a pandemic broke out and I wasn’t taking pictures of much except for apparently my old sketch art.

Picture. We're looking at a fairly rough sketch of a green dwagon sitting on his butt. He's wearing a pair of glasses and has a book held open in front of him.

Hopefully the more processed version of that is visible at the top of the page. I should probably attempt the sketching again, I kinda moved back to more digital art and the photography stuff in particular.

Picture. We're looking at an enormous dark green 20 sided dice. Around it is curled the 3d printed rainbow crystal dwagon.

That’s a more recent one, taken on my desk. Yep, looks like I was using my little pen torch for extra illumination too. This actually gets me to a first point about mobiles vs cameras … usability !

I knew we’d accidentally stumble upon the purpose of this post eventually :-D.

I’d been thinking about whether it’s worth people getting a full sized camera these days, or if it’s ok to stay with a mobile phone. The phone cameras have come a long way since those early days. Ignore the number of pixels (although I’ll come back to that), just think about usability and how much the camera does for you.

In the case of the dwagon dice, that could have needed 3 hands because a phone is actually a bit awkward to hold as a camera. There’s no strap with them usually and you can’t be touching the screen. So you have to hold them by the edge and with a spare finger for the shutter button. Add a third hand if you’re using a separate light. However, you can get round that by using the timer. Sorted !

Depth of field can be a curious thing to play with as well … For this close work, I’ll traditionally hold the camera away from the thing I’m taking the picture of and cut it to size. Try it with your own cameras … see what you think. If the camera is close, it’ll all go a bit fish eye. If you hold it back a bit, then it’s a flatter image. Check it out ! Experiment, see what happens and enjoy learning how to get the best out of what you have. And there are so many pixels in our cameras now that we can easily crop out the extras (no one sees my desk 😀 ) and still have an amazing image.

I could use the R50 for these but … is it necessary ? One big difference is that with the strap to hold it normally, I can quickly pull that camera up with one hand and tap the shutter button. Maybe the left hand is operating the in and out of the zoom lens. The Ixus was a bit different there, as the zoom was on a ring around the shutter button. Actually physically moving the lens works better.

Proper camera time ?

Picture. We're looking out over a cricket field with the stumps in the centre. A wicket keeper is standing behind the stumps, gloves ready for the ball. The batsman has his bat held in front and they're about to set off to the right. The white ball can be faintly seen in front of the stumps.

There’s a cricket one taken by the Ixus a few years ago. One thing here is that the picture is taken with the camera braced on my knee, with it maybe being a bit too small to comfortably sit in an exact position. The picture isn’t quite centred there because it would move on the shutter. If you’re able to zoom in there, it’s a bit more mushy than …

Picture. We're looking at the cricket field again, with two players in the centre and a third player looking on behind. The white ball can be seen slightly behind the batsman.

That’s from the R50, taken this summer. It’s kinda night and day there with the sharpness, especially when you consider that it looks like the Ixus picture was taken in much better light conditions.

That gets me to another point ! Is it worth buying a cheaper digital camera in this technological age when mobile phone cameras are so incredibly good ? I don’t honestly think it is.

Let’s see :

Mobile phone camera – easy, portable, maybe a bit difficult to use one handed but includes a timer function that helps there. Huge amount of intelligence in the software tools to help make a perfect image. (Except for that tool that picks out different faces for people – I think that’s a bit of an abomination). You can take selfies with them.

Cheaper digital camera – don’t bother, they’re too compromised. It was exceptionally difficult to reliably get a good picture with the Ixus, although the image stabilisation has hopefully been improved. However, you can’t change the lens, you can only work with what’s been provided. Selfies were impossible with the Ixus (too blurry).

DSLR or Mirrorless camera – if you can afford them (and I got the second cheapest Canon), then they are massively worth the investment. The R50 has made it ridiculously easy to take snapshot pictures that have all turned out really well. Another one ?

Picture. We're looking across the central hall of the Excel Exhibition arena at a motley collection of 5 characters in assorted fantasy style outfits.

That’s actually a resurrected one from Comic Con. The original saw the people there in silhouette due to the lighting behind them. You couldn’t really see their outfits. This is with a basic Auto – Equalise filter in GIMP which has started bringing out the colour again.

Whereas I’ve done that in post processing in GIMP, a recent mobile (my Pixel 4 is from 2020) will include similar enhancement abilities.

One issue though is the battery. I did a precautionary change of the R50 battery on the Lords day with over 294 pictures taken with it on the day with a bunch deleted because they weren’t interesting. If you’re looking to use a mobile phone as a camera, you’ll need a couple of power bank things to take with you and that leads to awkward when you need to charge them up.

So …

Cheap camera like the Ixus’s and Powershots – don’t bother, use a mobile phone instead (with a powerbank to feed the battery regularly). It’s just so much easier to do stuff with the pictures via the mobile, you can upload them direct to where you want to show them off.

Mobile phone – I’m really impressed with how much they can do now. However … they do have their limits imposed with the space they have to fit in to. It’s pushing the boundaries of the physics of how the light travels around. (And battery life is nasty)

DSLR or Mirrorless camera – I think they’re worth the investment if you’re going places with a camera and want to share what you’re seeing with people. The ability to swap over lenses adds a lot of flexibility there. The bigger R50 (compared to the tiny Ixus) is a lot easier for my suffering eyes to set up a shot.

I think that’s it for my brain for tonight. Hope this was useful for anyone thinking about cameras.

Just remember, it’s your money to spend, you don’t have any obligation to spend it if you’re not comfortable that it’s going to the right place. Check out what you’re looking at via independent reviews. I don’t count me as independent, even if I’ve had no freebies, I only have recent knowledge of the Canon cameras (haha, no free samples to test the opposition with!) and older knowledge of a massively battery hungry Nikon.

And if you do go to fun places and want to share, enjoy the day out, capture the memories and share the best ones.

Goodnight everyone, have a great rest of the week.

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

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 !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

A rainy day at the cricket

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May 19, 2024

2:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

Time seems to be going whoosh at the moment ! Maybe that’s a sign that I need to step away and slow down for a bit. Maybe 😀 I do have a plan forming for that … Hopefully you’ll see some of that later in the year. The current plan involves a large island, a ferry and maybe even … beach.

First up – a review ? Devastating news for the gaming communities this week with the Insomnia gaming festival. I’m glad I got to one of these in March because it could well be the last one as the company running it collapsed. Hopefully all the people affected find places that will take full advantage of what they have to offer. Especially the ever lovely Tashnarr and her colleagues who would come in to her streams, join in the fun and be part of that community which, with Tashnarr being the focus, is one of the most chill, relaxing and great vibes communities on Twitch.

Work has been as busy as usual, not much to be said about that apart from it being one of those things. Would you prefer work to be busy and you’re getting things done, or would you rather it be too quiet ? Can’t talk about the work stuff much though, it’s not something for the internet.

In books, I enjoyed reading through Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a future space scifi where a near invincible enemy is menacing humanity. There’s an excellent variation of characters in there and the interplay between them is a highlight. I’m looking forwards to seeing how this trilogy unfolds. Latest book is A Fire Born Of Exile by Aliette De Bodard, which is the latest in her fantastic Xuya Universe. Well written, intriguing and huge intensity of emotions in the characters. Much recommend for both of these books.

But wait, where’s that traditional opening thumbnail pic ?

Picture. We're at ground level looking out over a green playing field, with white grey rain covers in a band in the centre. In the background, the orange brick and white balconies of the Lords pavilion. Gray skies are above.

Thursday saw me heading off to Lords for the 2024 Interservices T20 day. I’d thoroughly recommend this event if you’re a cricket fan. The historic Lords stadium is always a great place to visit (although a bit lacking on concessions hospitality this time), you get a great view and they steadily improve the facilities. There’s been a number of changes since I started coming. Plus the cricket is usually ultra competitive with all the skills on show and the games are balanced. It’s always best watching a game or sport where you have no idea as to who is going to win, right up to the end.

But …

Picture. We're at mouse level looking at the concrete outsides of the stadium. There are a couple of manhole covers to the right. The outer wall is to the left with a black iron gate close and black bins in the background. The stadium hangs over on the right and a van is parked in the far centre. There is a puddle in front of us.

We did lose the morning game and half of the afternoon game to rain. Bit damp but it cleared later. Today was a day of playing with the new camera too, to see what it could do and how it would work. The angle above is courtesy of Geraldine, official photographer from the cruise, who challenged us to try and get interesting and unusual angles to take pictures from. How’d that one do ? I’m maybe 6 inches off the floor there. Maybe a bit more looking at the Shutter Priority mode it has to catch more of the rain.

Pictures. A block of 4, all in a watercolour effect filter. We're looking out over the ground, with the top two showing the far stands. Bottom left is the white and glass lozenge of the Media Centre. Bottom right is the ground with the Pavilion to the right and occasional people close in our stand.
It all went a bit watercolour

Spot me checking out more of the options that the camera has for taking the pictures. This is the watercolour effect, which adds a post processing effect. There is also a monochrome, fisheye, vivid, toy camera and a miniatures filter which I need to figure out how to use. Fun while waiting for …

Picture. We're looking over the lush green grass of the Lords playing surface, with the light brown of the cut surface in the middle. We have a scattering of players in red and light blue tops plus dark trousers. The red shirted bowler is at the end of his action and the light blue shirted batter to the right has just hit the ball.

Play on !

We lost the ladies’ game due to the rain, this was RAF in the light blue batting and Army in the red fielding. I started out playing with a Continuous Low Speed shooting option, where it was taking a picture maybe every half a second after pressing the shutter button. Here’s a great one :

Picture. We're looking at 2 pictures up and lower. At the top, a red shirted fielder is part crouched over dark blue stumps. The blue shirted batter is stretching out with his bat. An umpire in a hat is standing to the right. Lower, it's a frame on and the red shirted fielder is jubiliant as the stretching batsman failed to beat the ball to the stumps.

Happy with that :-D. One thing about the new camera is that with it having more megapixels in its sensor and the different way the lens works, it’s much easier to get shots like that going. So that’s … with the 55-210mm lens and the original was taken at the 135mm setting, so about the middle of the range. I’m not zooming all the way in that I can, so I have the option of cutting the outsides down if appropriate. And then I’ll take the resulting picture down from a potential 6000×4000 before cropping and scale it to 2000 pixels wide for the blog. Hopefully that works for viewers without losing detail.

(This is going to sound like a Canon ad ! Disclosure note – I bought all the bits in use here, nothing free by Canon) You change the zoom on the 18-45 and 55-210 lenses by twisting the outside of the whole lens, whereas the zoom on the Ixus is by a tiny addition to the shutter wheel. The R50 is bulkier but it’s far easier to handle. The response time on the shutter feels massively better, with a lot of the unused shots (can only show so many 😀 ) having the ball in shot still. And the image stabilisation is proper excellent.

I did have the usual buyers remorse after spending all the money but I think it’s worth it. The R50 is proving to be an incredibly massive upgrade over the Ixus and the various features included make Every picture good and usable, whereas I had to be very careful with the Ixus to get something usable.

Looking forward to trying it out at Comic Con next week. Actually really looking forward to Comic Con next week because Comic Con Friend will be there too this time and these things are much better in company. Still got the good memories from last time too with the smuggle for Tashnarr, it’s good seeing the FFXIV flower appearing occasionally.

More cricket ?

Picture. We're looking at two players. The red shirted batsman has bat in the air and is leaning forwards through his shot. The blue player is behind the stumps waiting for the ball with the big keeping gloves. 2 stumps are vertical, the third is bent backwards with the white ball in front. Two orange bails are in the air above the stumps.

I always loved seeing things like that as a bowler. Ball, stumps and bails in the air. The first game finished with a tight win by the Army, with it going to the final over.

Picture. We're looking at a bowler in a dark blue shirt, he's running through and his right arm is stretched out at the end of sending the ball to the other end. We see the umpire to the left, a fielder half crouched in the background and a light blue shirted batter.

Over to Navy vs RAF. This was a full 20 over game. It was getting dark towards the end but the umpires managed to keep the players on all the way. A good game too, the Navy batters were led by one of the guys getting the first 50 of the day with unorthodox …

Picture. We're looking at our dark blue shirted batter again as he has turned his bat around the wrong way to hit the ball to an unexpected part of the ground. The ball is above the stumps on the left. A light blue shirted fielder is in the background.

And orthodox hitting …

Picture. We're looking at the dark blue shirted batter stretched in mid shot. The ball is in the centre lower part of his bat, about to come my way in the stands. A light blue shirted fielder looks on behind.

When the RAF came in to bat, they started making the Navy score look small with some excellent hitting. I nearly touched a cricket match ball again for the first time in over 10 years as one of the ball in the stands moments ended up pretty close to my little corner of the ground. (I got beaten to it by a more nimble guy speeding across 😀 ).

But cricket has a habit of making games closer than they really should be and a spirited performance by several of the Navy bowlers led to a succession of wickets that nearly turned the result around. Fun game to watch.

The RAF won the last game narrowly but because all three teams won 1 game each of the tournament and Navy had the better overall run rate, the tournament went to the Navy this time. With a finish past 7pm, I didn’t go anywhere else in London for the day but well satisfied with a good day out at the cricket again.

Last thing … I may have resubscribed to an older game again … there’s a new Iceangel on World of Warcraft. We’ll see how that goes :-D. I did look at Star Trek Online again but while that game has the Star Trek setting, WoW is just a more charming accessible game.

Later everyone !

Thanks for reading, would you like to share ?

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.

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A life of pane ?

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April 21, 2024

5:54 pm

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photography

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Hello everyone,

Picture. Meme. A tortoiseshell coloured cat wearing glasses. The cat is in a sitting down pose on a chair, with paws up on a folded newspaper. The captions are "The face is like a work of art." "It deserves a great frame."

I meant to do a post last week but something happened which meant having to ration the rational thought for a while :

Picture. We're looking at a pair of broken glasses and a dwagon. We see one half of the glasses, with the dwagon in the background holding up the disconnected glasses leg in outstretched paws.

Eek. That happened while I was cleaning the reading glasses while at an off site meeting a couple of Thursdays ago. The optician and me didn’t think it was fixable but they were able to pop me in for a rather emergency appointment on the Friday. And the new pairs arrived Friday two days ago. I could have done with an upgrade anyway, that pair were done during covid times and the mask was making the machine fog up … so the prescription was a bit off.

So what happened there ? The learn from experience wise after the event thing points me towards that join there. Most of the frames in the shop look like they’re made with a bend in the metal or plastic to make that 90 degrees between the lenses part and the legs part. A bend means the metal is somewhat gently formed through that 90 degrees and it’ll keep the bonds between the atoms intact. Those frames were made with a fold, which will break the bonds between the atoms and introduce a weakness that’ll lead to cracking and the fairly clean break you see there.

If you see the metal formed into a U shape throughout the bend, that makes it still more stronger.

So I have new glasses now but for a week I’d gone back to an ancient maybe 25 year old pair which were before my broken nose. I think they’re actually the pair that mean I still have 2 intact eyes, because they withstood the impact of a cricket ball. And I can still read in them ! The misalignment (my nose is still 2mm off centre) leads to headaches though and a rationing of that rational thought.

Pictures. A set of 4, top left showing my red plushie dwagon looking at a comprehensively wrapped and taped cuboid box. Top right, the outside is off and we see dwagon looking at clear white bubble wrap. Bottom left, dwagon is looking at a white box, with a tall camera lens on top. Bottom right. Dwagon is beside camera, with the new long lens fitted pointing upwards and the shorter lens in front.

I’ve had another couple of arrivals and deliveries as well since last time. The Canon R50 did remarkably well at Insomnia, with all of the pictures coming out looking great and most importantly … properly sharp. Love that, people were loving the pictures I was sending out as well.

That’s a big thanks to Geraldine of the MS Maud cruise too, Geraldine was the ship’s photographer and part of the expedition team. Early on in the cruise, Geraldine was leading workshops on how to get great photography pictures out of the cruise. Because it’s not just about the time on the ship, it’s about getting those memories to look at afterwards as well. There were separate workshops for those with DSLR and Mirrorless (like the R50) cameras which I didn’t go to but a couple of tips from the main presentation are things I’ve tried to keep with me … So that’s :

Be selective about the pictures you send to the world. The Insomnia day collected 109 pictures, of which 18 went to the bigger collection on Facebook. That might still be too many for a day :-D. That’s the thing though – people will turn off their attention by picture 25, if they even get that far. With this age of digital photography and big memory cards, take lots of pictures but just show off the best ones. Hold back the mediocre ones or the ones that didn’t quite work.

Composition – it helps a lot to turn on the 3 x 3 grid facility that’ll be in any camera (if you can find it!) Our brains like to see things in certain places in the pictures. The 3 x 3 box grid helps to set everything up for best effect. Maybe that works here …

Picture. We're looking out across a dark grey sea, rippled by waves. Above is a light blue sky, with white clouds dominating. At the horizon, we see the two vertical towers of a bridge that marks the horizon. A faint rainbow can be seen to the right.

Or maybe I need to upgrade my tripod :-). That was from the first little field test of the new lens. It’s a 55-210mm lens to fit the R50 camera. That means it picks up from the maximum zoom of the lens I got with the camera and extends all the way out to get pictures like that of the nearer Severn Bridge between England and Wales. That first bridge is 10km away and you can (on the native resolution ! This is 1/3 height and width) electronically zoom in to see individual suspension bridge cables.

Happy with that, looking forwards to seeing how it does in the cricket at Lords. I took that picture at Portishead’s Battery Point, which has the advantages of 24 hour parking, easy roads to get there and great access to cafes.

Picture. We're looking at the assorted building of a town, clinging to the side of a hill overlooking a very stony beach, with the tide and sea approaching from the lower right.

Good little trip to the sea side, with it taking about an hour for my fingers and eyes to thaw out again. Shoulda brought my scarf :-).

Not sure whether the bridge pic was on the tripod or not but it was a good trip out and test of the new lens. Found some wildlife too :

Picture. We're looking out over a field of light green grass, with centre stage being taken by a black and white bird, looking right. Hedges make up the background.

That’s something we can all do with our cameras as well, with modern ones with so many pixels in the sensors. The native resolution is 6000×4000, that little cut is just the 1078×768 pixels in the middle with it mostly arranged to have Birdy in the centre of the 3×3 grid. The rest of the pictures from the R50 here are the 6000×4000 reduced to 2000×1333.

I might be looking at my tripod though because it was being very awkward to adjust it to the optimal angle. It’s gone a bit stiff and there’s a huge change in angle when you tighten it all up. Perhaps fixable by taking it apart, might be looking at one with a ball joint instead though. That’s one for when I go hunting for pictures of the stars again though, wonder when I’ll get that chance ? (It’ll need a late night trip now – lots of daylight)

Thinking of late night trips …

Picture. We're looking at a collection of five boxes, all different colours with Naked Marshmallow banners and the flavours marked. In the centre, the head of our red plushie dwagon is poking out.

Last delivery – a consignment of goodies from the Naked Marshmallow Co. At the back, there are Chocolate Orange and Mini Egg marshmallows. In front, Vanilla Bean, Candy Floss and Salted Caramel. I’ve gone through the Candy Floss and Mini Egg marshmallows already, on to the Salted Caramel and they are as lush as you can imagine them being. More from Naked Marshmallow, thoroughly recommend them and they still have some last chance sales going.

Link to camping ? I knew I wasn’t going to be in so I opted for the “deliver to pick up”, with the chosen spot being the camping place. (I’m not going to give them free advertising this time). A wonderful recent video discovery has been Wildbeare (youtube link). She’s a lovely person who goes off for camping expeditions and comes out with fun, quick videos to capture the adventures. Hugely recommend giving her a watch, both for the lovely chilled out vibes and also for very honest and open opinions on how the gear does in the conditions she takes the gear into.

They’re inspiring stuff and picking stuff up from the camping place let me evaluate with my own eyes what’s available and what kind of size and weight it might be. Cos chasing those stars is looking like it might need an overnight in a tent in a place where Dodgy People won’t be.

I think I need to change car though again before I think of doing that … as my current physical condition (aka potato from legacies of the condition of my outsides and pandemic living conditions) would mean I wouldn’t want to be too far from transport. And while Red is a lovely little car, it also suffers from only having 140mm of ground clearance and I’m worried I might tear something off the bottom of it on the more rugged roads and tracks.

Time to close out though (10 minutes left in the Imola World Endurance Champ race). Time for pre dinner noms ?

Picture. Our green dwagon is on the right, adorning an apron with "feed me" written on it. To the left, a faintly pink cube of a fluffy looking marshmallow.

Have a lovely evening everyone.

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