Tag: picture

Insuring Pictures

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February 8, 2024

10:28 pm

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technology

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a Week again … Mostly about stuff at work where we’re trying to do lots in a very short time, without enough in the way of resources. So, situation normal there then. It means we focus in on what we can do and defer plans for what we can’t. But getting there can be pretty exhausting, so I’ve been hitting the napping hard after the work laptop gets closed up.

Picture. We're looking at the white armour of a Star Wars Stormtrooper. They're holding up a phone in their right hand and a bag in their left. The captions are "Buys iPhone" "Because couldn't find the droid he was looking for."

Enough about work though. I’ve got some purchases / upgrades coming up. Let’s get the rant out of the way first 😀

So it came round to car insurance renewal time and it looks like the insurance company (Axa – don’t go to them) has decided to get in on the 2020s trend with hiking prices. For my 2018 Lexus CT (aka Posh Prius), they upped the premium from £350 to just over £600. Wowser. The reasoning when I gave them one of those unhappy emails “How did we do” “I will never do business with you again” was :

A rise in the claims for this type of car – I have over 20 years of no claims, how other people drive is up to them.

A rise in the cost of parts for cars – it’s a 2018 car that only just went out of manufacture.

An increase in the amount of technology in cars – it’s a 2018 car that has the same amount of technology in it as it did last year. (Although I have considered getting a dashcam)

An increase in injury compensation and medical costs – I have over 20 years of no claims and have no intention of getting involved in other people’s injury claims.

Incidentally, Axa had good financial results last year with steady growth (I checked them out), decent profits and I think dividends for the shareholders too. It’s not a savage raise in charges because they’re short of money, it’s pure greed.

So … another of those customer disservice emails that acts clever but the only thing it achieves is to lodge a last impression memory in an ex customer who will remember that the next time it comes to do any business that might involve them. In short, it’s one of those emails that should never have escaped the company, like when Novotel nickel and dimed me on a hotel last year. (Incidentally, Novotel denied me access to the car that weekend, the locked secure garage was also locked to me due to me not being provided with the code until check out)

I’m with eSure this year thanks to the meerkats for £360 again. Disclosure note – I went to them, I’ve never had approaches from insurance companies apart from where I’ve had to check a “yes you can contact me” as part of the normal business with them.

Picture. A cute puppy dog is sitting to the right, with jaws firmly clamped around a laptop computer to the left. The caption is "When your laptop is running low on space But your pupper helps by giving it a megabite"

Next up is phone – I should be doing the mobile phone update soon. The one I have is a Pixel 4, which has done well over the last 4 years. It’s paid off now though, so I can go for the upgrade with not much cost. Highlights are the camera, which brought those Northern Lights pictures, battery life has been good and it’s blissfully free of the spyware and annoyanceware garbage that was on my Galaxy S7. So I’ll go for a Pixel 8 “soon”. I could hold on to the Pixel 4 but it’s been showing odd behaviour on failed incoming calls and there’s awkwardness on using its hotspot for my second work laptop.

Picture. A lady is lying down on grass dotted with yellow flowers. She's holding a camera with a long lens, pointing to the right. She's looking down and to her right where there's a fluffy grey wolf. There is a baby deer standing on her back. The caption is "A photographer is approached by a baby deer and baby wolf while out in the field."

I’m looking more seriously at cameras … I don’t think I’ll have it before Boat Life 2024 in just over a week but I’ll definitely have it for the Lords cricket in May. What am I looking at getting ?

The Canon Ixus has done well, although it has its flaws in poor image stabilisation. The upgrade would be a Canon EOS R100 mirrorless camera. These are a new type, where the mirror that sends part of the image light up to a viewfinder isn’t included in the camera. Means more light goes to the sensor but you lose the optical viewfinder. Which is fine because I haven’t used a camera viewfinder in decades, I just take the pictures using the rear display.

Here come the links ! This one is for Canon’s page with the camera, memory card, lens and bag. (Linky) Disclosure note again – I’ll go Canon because the little Ixus 265 has done very well (except needing to keep it really steady) with excellent battery life and reliability. I’ve not had any approaches from any camera makers. (Us content people have to put these disclosure notes in so we’re not hiding an inducement or ad)

The specifications on the cameras look very much of a muchness. That’s the cheaper Canon mirrorless camera, which means cheaper plastic materials used to put it together. The sensor looks like it’s the same. The trick seems to be in the lens and one thing impressing me about Canon is that they put that little bit of extra effort in to make it easier to spend your money with them. Things like a guide to what all the letters and numbers in the lens mean. (Linky again for the full how to read those numbers guide). I need to get my knowledge up to speed on why all these matter but here goes for the numpty view :

Canon RF-S lens – this is the attachment type, means it’s designed for the mirrorless cameras.

18-45mm – this is the focal length. Two numbers mean you can zoom in and out. Lower number means everything is smaller. Bigger number happens for when you zoom in. (The linky above has pictures included in the guide, well worth a peek)

F4.5-6.3 – this is the aperture size. A smaller number means a bigger aperture, which lets more light in.

IS – this is for Image Stabilisation, so the camera should still get fairly sharp pictures if you’re moving it around. This one has a 4 step image stabiliser.

STM – this stands for Stepping Motor Technology. Most motors will be designed to keep spinning. Stepper motors are designed to go direct to a position and hold there until they need to move again.

Pulling something out of the Northern Lights set :

Picture. We're looking at a dark scene. We can see some vague people shapes in the lower segment. The scene is dominated by a sky full of the eerie green and some red glow from the Northern Lights.

That’s one of the ones from the Pixel 4. It’s taken from the ship flight deck, looking out aft. You’ll be able to see some light lines to the lower left and in the stars, where the exposure time has combined with a bit of ship movement. For partially sighted readers who depend on the alt-text being read out, the light lines are perhaps about 1cm as I see them on the editing screen, going horizontally and they’re curiously only visible on a small number of the visible stars.

Good to see stars in there too. The ISO level isn’t actually too high in this one. ISO being the exposure sensitivity. The file metadata is telling me the Pixel 4 chose settings of focal length 4mm (so it’s looking at the sky as intended), F1.7 for the aperture, a whopping 16 seconds of exposure time and ISO 695. The phone was on the tripod at the time. Looks like the little Ixus was able to get down to F3.6 aperture and I got a maximum of 1s exposure time out of it.

Being able to get into the detailed settings helps a lot and the little Ixus couldn’t really give those options.

I’d add a remote trigger, for the camera being on a tripod, and a spare battery to that camera, lens, memory card and backpack package.

One thing I’d say though – if you’re doing a big purchase, like a phone, or a camera, or something bigger like a car or a house, be an Intelligent Customer. Research what you’re buying before you commit any money. Sometimes the people with the products make it easy to find out what you’re buying. Sometimes they’ll hide why their product is cheaper than the alternatives.

But the thing to take away is that it’s Your Money you’re spending. It’s only the sales person’s when they’ve done a good enough job of parting you with the money.

And enjoy what you buy ! See you next time folks 🙂

Land ? Huskies Ahoy, Lights Ahoy

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November 26, 2023

1:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Last post from on board ship today. It’s a case of LAND AHOY on each side of the ship as we start making our way up the Thames. But that’s something for a later post. It’s been a wonderful cruise, talking to the other guests has been lovely and we’ve been incredibly well looked after by the crew. I’ll definitely be doing another cruise holiday at some point when I can see how to fit it in and it’s almost certain to be with Hurtigruten again.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a snowy scene, with a lady and a dog standing on a platform. The dog is a white furry Husky coming up to between her knees and hips. Husky is looking over to the right, surveying all. The lady is reaching down to give Husky a bit of stroking.

Saturday saw us heading into Tromsø, which is a larger Norwegian city set on an island in the fjord, with additional settlement spreading into the mainland on either side. We had a little look around the city itself with a little bit of scouting in the local souvenir shops. But it was a little limited for me because ….

HUSKIES

Yep. I didn’t sign up for many of the additional trips but I didn’t want to miss the visit to the Huskies. And it was a magical couple of days too. The Huskies were just one evening, we’ll get back to Sunday later. We visited a farm where they breed and train up the dogs, taking the best ones into the racing team and looking after the rest of them. Whether that’s using them as sled dogs or looking after them until they can be adopted by loving homes.

And they’re lovely dogs too.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a man standing up, holding a dog in his arms. There are more people in the background, everyone is wrapped up warm with coats and woolly hats. The dog is looking directly towards us, with a curious white and grey face as he's enjoying a view from higher up than usual.

That’s one of the puppies. Very curious, very bouncy, totally acclimatised to the conditions. Ready for running across the snow, very happy to have all of the attention they can get.

Picture. Photograph. The foreground is lit, showing a snow covered field extending into darker fields in the background. We see a wooden snow topped dog kennel in the lower right with the names Fjord and Katla. In the background, a series of sleds with dogs harnessed eager to run.

And there they are, ready to run. And run fast. No rides for us because the snow isn’t old enough yet to support guest safety but it was a definite case of feeling the excitement in the air as the dogs were getting ready to do what they were born and bred for.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking at a wood fire in the centre of 4 posts. In the background, is a table with cups and a kettle. Everything is lit by a faint purple.

And then we disappear back inside a hut and enjoy a warm fire, a bit of cake and some hot chocolate. Best trip of the cruise. And I have a few more pictures too, including a couple that went to Geraldine, expedition photographer. We’ll be getting all of her stunning photographs later (I’m in some !) and I’ll be sure to drop the link when we get it.

And then there was Sunday. The morning was in Narvik and one thing about this trip has been educational about Second World War history. Terrible things happened all of the world, Norway definitely wasn’t spared. We don’t hear enough about it … The northern parts of Norway above Narvik were essentially Scorched Earthed as the Germans made their way out and that’s just one of the terrible things. It’s well worth educating about it, more than I’d want to go into here. And it does make you ask the question : we seemed to be winning the Battles of Narvik and pushing out the Germans. And then we abandoned the town to try and protect France. What would have changed if we’d held that northern flank of Norway ? That’s a definite one for the alternate historians.

Yep. Check out the Norwegian side of the WW2 story, it’ll be illuminating.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out over a faintly lit ship deck, with the railing on the right and chairs stacked in front. In the sky, there are a couple of dark clouds but behind them, a band of green glow in the sky going from centre bottom to up and left.

And then there was the continuing transit south … With a break in the overhead conditions too ! I have to admit, the pictures are much better than I could see. The assembled Northern Light Hunters were limited to seeing a grey on the horizon as our eyes couldn’t make out the lights.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across the deck of the ship towards the rail. Above the horizon, there is a patterning of dark clouds with a green aurora glow behind them. You can perhaps make out bands in the green. Oh and in the centre foreground, a grinning idiot in a bright yellow hat, a dark jacket and a blue and white scarf.

I’d mostly figured out how to get good pictures out of the Pixel 4 camera by this stage and then had a bright idea involving the camera timer … A guess at a good spot, a tap of the timer, a gentle saunter across to the rail and there we go.

This was about the last chance we got (except maybe last night, faintly) to see the Northern Lights, the remaining nights saw the clouds coming in a bit too much. It was an amazing sight to see though, definitely a Bucket List thing if you do those.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking across to the ships rail again. Clouds are on the horizon but above, we see the green bands of aurora stretching across and upwards. Quite pretty. Oh and there's the grinning idiot in yellow hat, dark jacket and white and blue scarf over in the bottom right.

There we go. Last one for now, this was just after midnight on the same day. It’s the Pixel 4 camera again on a tripod, with me gently sauntering over to the rail to do the timer selfie. This was the best spot on board for these, there wasn’t enough incidental light on the flight deck to pick up the grinning idiot.

I should probably hit post now and start to pay more attention, docking soon !

I’ll do more steady catching up later. Tilbury Docks are very nearly in sight …

Orcas and Alta

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November 21, 2023

1:47 pm

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travel

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Hello everyone,

We spent Friday last week at the top of the world. Well, nearly 😀 The northernmost point of this cruise is Alta, at 69 degrees 58 minutes North. It’s quite far North. Sadly not much in the way of Northern Lights for most of us (too cloudy) but the group that went out and about did catch some good lights. There will be more about that in a later post …

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out across a dark metal deck. In the foreground are two balls of snow, forming a tiny snow person. Behind, we see a group of people around a growing mound of snow.

More about that little one later. Actually, let’s rewind a bit further and give another special mention to photographer Geraldine, who is part of the expedition crew. I mentioned Orcas earlier, let’s see if this Facebook Post Linky works … Hopefully that’ll take you to a page with pictures of whales on.

It was good seeing the pod of Orca swimming alongside us for a little while. I was able to catch sight of them but wasn’t anywhere near fast enough to get the camera up in time for a picture. However, there should be plenty behind that link. Plus the MS Maud page has more of the various pictures from this fortnight’s cruise. Go take a peek :-D.

Norway has waters that are warmed up by the same Gulf Stream that keeps Britain warm, so the Orca and other whales like to visit.

(Note – there’s a very sleepy vibe going on in the Explorer Lounge at the moment …)

So – Alta !

Picture. Photograph. We're looking up and over a snow covered walking bridge, lit regularly on each side. Behind that, is a sloping building made up of cylindrical floors of decreasing radius as we go upwards.

Alta grew into a city a few years ago, which also meant they needed a bigger church too. Cue the Northern Lights Cathedral of the picture. Good place, it also serves as a community centre as well.

The textured sides that you might be able to make out in that picture are actually titanium plates, which are slotted together to provide the shell of the building. They reflect the mood of the environment around the building. For our visit … that meant grey and cloudy :-D. Oh well, no Northern Lights for the town that day. But there are several microclimates around Alta, so the group that went out and about hunting for clear skies were given a treat.

However, we had a treat of a different kind … With the explorer group going for a building of an impromptu snow person. Norway doesn’t seem to go in for building snow people. Perhaps it’s because the trolls don’t like the snow people and bop them all on the head while everyone is sleeping. It’s another curious difference between Norway and the UK.

Picture. Photograph. A group of very happily smiling people are gathered around a tall and thin mound of snow, steadily resembling a snow person. A lady with long blond hair carries a snow ball about twice as large as her hands, she's about to place the ball on top of the mound.

There we go. Almost complete. I’ve been staying quite wary of my back and legs, so I was just doing the spectating thing and taking pictures. (it’s a bit cold, I’ve been needing to defrost a lot and conditions were treacherous)

Picture. Photograph. A cheery snow person looks as us in front of a gathering of 9 assorted people standing and kneeling behind. The lights of the harbour can be seen behind them.

And there we go ! The members of the expedition crew (not searching for Northern Lights) proudly presenting their new snow person. I think it might be still there too (this was from Fri 17th) and also gained a friend.

As I type though, I’m really struggling to stay awake 😀 (It’s a very quiet, chill, sleepy vibe up here in the Explorer lounge) So it’s time for me to retreat to the cabin after taking just one more picture of a lovely sunset.

Picture. Photograph. We're looking out across a fairly calm sea towards a horizon with low hills and islands. The sky is clear blue with a milky haze at the horizon. To the middle right, we see the sun about touching the horizon, with a reflection on the water.

(I’m cheating this was Monday 20th). Later everyone, have a wonderful rest of the day.

Live the Dream

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April 1, 2022

12:09 am

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Hello everyone,

I know I’m slipping on the posting lately again but this could be one of the last posts …. from the UK ! More on that later.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon facing the camera. He's looking upwards. He has a walking cane in his right hand and we can see the traps of the backpack he's wearing.
Bags packed, time to be on the road again

Yep. The wanderlust has hit. It kinda started with the space trucking in Elite, being guided by either the trades in the big ship …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our big spaceship is landed on the left, with a small planetary settlement spreading out to the right. The sun can just be seen poking above the horizon, so everything is in silhouette with long shadows. The moon's surface is dirt brown and there is a ringed gas giant in the sky.
To the moon !

It’s interesting going to new places and seeing new things. Everywhere is different and it has its own charm. Even Middlesborough. Been there. Escaped and survived. (It’s ok, it’s just one of those towns without enough investment to make it a more tourist trap location like Warwick). Where did the Middlesborough reference come from ? That was weird, sorry people who live there and love their town.

But yeah, I did enjoy the traveling aspect of Elite. Trading was a good guide there, to go from port to port sampling the scenery and bringing the goods to those who need them. A few years ago, I was seriously thinking about checking out work as a person working in a Harbourmaster Office. They’re the people who run the access to ports and marinas and now the world is opening up again, there will be an increasing amount of traffic coming by sea to and from those ports. So, new ships, new crews, new cargos coming and going.

That’s kinda fascinating. I was wondering if I’d be able to visit some of the ships too, as either a formal type inspection or just being welcoming. Getting a reputation for being friendly and welcoming brings the people back for more later.

No smuggling though. Cos smuggling is bad. Wonder what’ll be a good opportunity for going across the border to Cardiff again.

I haven’t been playing Elite much lately though, I’ve had the attention drawn more by virtual trucks instead and quietly become addicted to European Truck Simulator 2.

Game screenshot. ETS2. We're looking at a 3 lane motorway stretching to the top left. Our green truck is towing a red flatbed trailor with a yellow digger on the top. To the right, is farmland and in the distance is a building with a pointy top. The sky is blue with scattered clouds.
Tractor tractoring truck tractor

ETS2 is built around you doing contracts and taking cargo ferrying jobs. So you’re going from place to place on the compressed map of Europe, visiting the cities as you’re delivering items like the digger in the picture. The current Steam sale means that I acquired the expansions that make the map stretch to pretty much all of Europe now (except Spain because not much discount yet) and there are some lovely sights along the way. It is game-ified though, so lots of time and distance compression. Traveling 1600 miles from Zurich to Istanbul took 2 and a half hours real time. Going into and out of places like London is kinda blink and you miss it.

But (oh no cliche time) it’s also about the journey. There are 81 achievements for the game, I have 14 so far and I’m pretty sure it’s one of those games where I’m going to try for the completing the achievements. I’ve been enjoying (and being a bit addicted to) the chilled out journeying to all the places. After visiting virtual Istanbul, I’m going up the coast to hunt another of those achievements, finding places I never knew existed.

Crewing on a ship doing the trades would be a curious proposition. Ships are a bit slow though, you’d go from place to place but it takes a good while in between. Same for barges. Canals used to be the arteries of trade in the 18th and 19th centuries before the internal combustion engine was a thing … but they’ve been supplanted by the ease and speed of trucks now.

So … abandon ship and become a truck driver ? Maybe not. It’d be good to satisfy the wanderlust but trucks still go on the road which means having to interact with other drivers. And ETS2 is very good at simulating the limitations that trucks have. I’ve never towed a real trailer before, so that was an education … And the power to weight is vastly different. It takes a while for 20 tonnes of truck to get up to speed.

Give trucks (and buses!) more space ! It’s a tough job in the cabin there. We car people need to make it easy for them.

About those bags though … I occasionally watch the reality TV things like Deadliest Catch (Bering Sea conditions would eat me alive) and Ice Road Truckers but some that really caught my eye were shows like Ice Pilots which had small planes keeping the trade and travel going in the frozen areas of Canada or Alaska.

Game screenshot. MS Flight Simulator. We're looking at a small white with red trim propeller plane sitting on a runway. There are mountains in the background.
Am leaving, on a prop plane …

Must listen to that song again, it’s a great song.

Yep. Not Alaska (bit cold there). It’ll be Australia for me. The language is just about right, I reckon I could fit in pretty easily down there. Just gotta wear the hats, adopt the accent and be prepared for a lot of Pom jokes. Do they drive on the correct side of the road ? Must add Outback Truckers to that reality show catch up thing.

Anyway, the picture is from Microsoft Flight Simulator and it’ll be a great initial training aid for …

BECOMING AN AUSSIE OUTBACK BUSH PILOT !

Talk about getting out there, going from trade to trade, passenger flight to destination and seeing that wonderful country from the air. I haven’t done much in Flight Sim so far (fired it up yesterday, was too tired to do much with it though …) but flying is a really enjoyable sensation.

Picture. We're looking at a Pocket Dragon who is looking left. He has his arms out like wings and is leaning forward. He's wearing a pilot hat and goggles. The background is sky blue (and he's on my pale wooden keyboard tray)
Feel that breeze

Space sims have it easy, 6 axis control makes landing trivial. Atmospheric flight though, needs the wings to interact with the air in order to make the lift. So unless it’s a special aircraft like the Harrier which overcomes gravity by brute force, the aircraft needs to be going forwards to make the lift to make it not drop from the sky.

It’s a special, interesting kind of challenge which I want to relearn again. I used to play flight sims a good while ago, the last good one was Falcon 4.0 from the mid 2000s.

And as an outback bush pilot, you get to go from place to place, seeing new things, meeting new people and experiencing what’s out there from the most spectacular viewpoint.

Should be fun.

Fly safe everyone !

(Post April 1st addendum – this is of course, an April 1st post and you should always be wary of what you read on this day. However … most of this is true ! Except for the emigrating to Australia to be a bush pilot.)

Carrier, Book, Printer, Meme

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March 6, 2022

9:55 pm

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Has it been a week again since last time ? Time’s flying by at the moment isn’t it …

I’ve actually been out amongst people, although it was just a run into the centre of Bristol after a necessary trip to do some recycling. (Too many plastic bottles) A Lego McLaren nearly came back with me … although at £160, it feels a bit pricey for me. That’s one thing about watching the build videos, you get an impression of what’s in the box before laying out the money. It has some smart bits in there for the suspension but … I think it’s a hype kit more than a wow kit to be honest. I also had my eye on the Globe but at £175, that’s a bit rich for me too.

Thumbnail for post ?

Picture. We see three pocket dragons in a line. On the left, he's sniffing the air. The centre one has a bib with "Feed me" written on it. The one on the right has a slice of pepperoni pizza almost as tall as he is. The caption on top is "The three types of dwagon". From left to right at the base it's "Smells Pizza" "Wants Pizza" and "Has Pizza".
Someone mention pizza ?

There’s been a 3 types of Pokemon meme going round at the moment which people have been borrowing and adopting and that creativity part of my brain sparked into making the picture above. It’s felt good that those creativity ideas have been coming back in and I’ve mostly had the physical stuff to make them happen. 2 things there :

I think my creativity was being heavily damped down by the Work Stuff that was going on last year. It was a rough year, despite getting stuff done. Or perhaps we were getting stuff done despite the new guy who came in. That’s in the past now though, the new role has been building into something that should also be getting Stuff done while being enjoyable. But I won’t talk about that too much here.

I’ve been having physical issues again … It’s part shoulder, part arm plus some digestion issues in there as well. Nom trouble aside, the physical issues have been limiting game time at the same time as that more active creativity side wants to do gaming. I think I’m finding somewhat of a balance with it and using a controller for driving games will help. I managed to do a fair bit of Elite flying again since Thursday … Let’s see :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at two starships, with the lower segment of a brown moon above. The closest ship is all curves and purple at the back fading to white at the front, with two engines coming out of the sides of the centre fuselage. She's perhaps a third of the screen wide. Behind her is a much larger ship in a mixed livery of blue and white. There is a flat section near the front. This ship is perhaps 80% of the picture width.
Behold the Herald

Thanks to lucrative trading opportunities in Elite, I had just about enough to cover the acquisition of one of the big Fleet Carriers. These aren’t ships you fly about in direct control like the rest of the ships, they’re more like small mobile starbases. The flat section disappearing off to the right has the landing bays. It has 8 big enough to accept the big Tiamat’s Chariot, 4 medium sized and 4 small. One of the opportunities with these ships is to make it far quicker to haul the commodities needed for the community goals. So instead of making 5-6 jumps to go from place to place (maybe 30 minutes round trip), I could park it near a station and just have about 5 minutes round trip instead if that. They’re a pretty powerful tool but they cost 5billion credits to buy and have a steady upkeep.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The off-brown moon dominates the upper part of the picture, with the ribbon of the Milky Way stretched across the lower half. Our ship is pointed away from camera, engines flaring purple as she heads towards the Herald floating in the distance with all of the rectangular landing pads illuminated.
Tiamat arriving

That’s Tiamat’s Chariot heading into the Herald of Bakunawa (that’s the name of the carrier). Where did the name come from ? I figured it had to be something suitably epic and I wanted the dragon theme to continue as well, so I went to a name list for mythical dragons. The name Bakunawa stood out (wiki link). Bakunawa is a Philippine Dragon God, believed to be responsible for eclipses. I.e. a dragon god that eats the Moon. Perfect. And Herald seemed right because the fleet carriers mostly spend their time hovering in orbit around moons.

A good few sessions in Elite over the past few days. It has massive flaws and I keep spotting more (like terrain errors around an engineer base and shadow errors) but it’s been good to have there as a chill out space trucking game. It does help that Tiamat’s Chariot is an after end game level ship that combines massive cargo capacity with defences and armament that can take on nearly all comers. (I run if a fighter gets involved).

Picture. It's a print out of my reading dwagon. He's sitting on his bottom pointed towards the right of shot. His tail is up in the air, the wings are taut as if he's enwrapped in the book that he's holding. There is also a pair of glasses perched in front of his eyes. The dwagon is mostly green, however there are regular vertical bands of yellow throughout.
Ermm …

When you see something like that coming out of an inkjet printer, it’s usually followed by an “oh bugger” because it’s the main sign that you haven’t been using it enough, the jets have clogged up and that’s usually terminal for the printer. What makes it worse is if the built in cleaning processes kick out a test page which has pretty much nothing on it. However …

Picture. We have a good quality version of the one above (with the reading dragon). There is a book on the right by David Weber titled "The Armageddon inheritance" and above the book, there is a tan leather bookmark with a line picture of a dragon burned into it.
I think he’s eyeing up that book

Ahhh the relief that I hadn’t killed a printer that’s just 6 months old :-D. The book on the right is the next book. It’s the second of three in the Dahak sequence, which starts with Mutineer’s Moon where Colin the astronaut finding himself in the middle of a 51,000 year mutiny where the mutineers have been exiled to Earth from a starship that’s actually Earth’s Moon. Oh and the ship has become sentient over that time as well.

Armageddon Inheritance starts up straight after Mutineer’s Moon and covers the other threat … There’s an apocalyptic sized battle fleet that circles the galaxy wiping out all intelligent life in its path and it’s almost back to Earth. And so Colin, Dahak the Moonship and the collective resources of Earth have to try and survive in the face of that threat. There’s some epic stuff in the book, like the aliens getting so fed up with how resilient Earth’s defenders are that they essentially give up on conquest and just throw one of Jupiter’s Moons at the planet.

I thought it was good enough for a re-read. That Moon thing was a big a OMGWOW book moment as the Project Orion starship reveal in another book. That’s not the lander type ship which is the current Orion starship. It’s the cruiser propelled by nuclear bombs. Super cool concept, achievable (maybe) with current technology, incredibly nuts. Here’s the wiki page. Hell of a concept.

Anything else ? I enjoyed a little more Forza. I have a Pikachu Lexus in that game now and I was enjoying the dirt racing far more than I thought I would. I was even getting smooth and fast race driving going on my flawed (50% travel gives 100% output) controller.

Time for book now though. I try not to game too late in the evening nowadays … although Skyrim mod testing happened yesterday. I’ll be restarting my game again there as the last character was saddled with mods that aren’t completed and have a fair few issues. So I’ll reset with the defeat mod replaced by another that ties into a mod called Caged Followers. It’s a curious one, if your party is defeated then instead of Game Over, stuff happens to your character like being ransomed for money or becoming a prisoner of vampires. With Caged Followers, your companion gets taken off somewhere and you have to rescue them. That’s going to be an excellent excuse for exploring the Skyrim world more …

Must go back to Horizon Zero Dawn, finish off the Car Mechanic Simulator achievements and enjoy the other games too. They’re a good chill out and let me block out the world for a little while. Like books !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Upgrades and adventures …

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September 25, 2021

10:51 am

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Hello everyone,

I thought I’d been back to posting more ! Oh well. Been a bit distracted by seeing what the new graphics card can do and going back to Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Prague has got prettier …

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're looking down a city street with high sided buildings on either side. The buildings have railed balconies looking out over adverts on the lower walls. A Police van is on the left with a few other vehicles parked. In the distance is a pedestrian bridge with a person looking out from the centre. They are framed in the centre of a sharply triangular roof of the distant train station.
Prague by day

I’ve never been to Prague so I don’t know how real the map of the city we have in game is or how it compares to the real thing but … the architecture they show off in the game is super pretty. The police get a bit of a drubbing in comparison but they’re a hostage to the increasing rhetoric the game has about prejudice against augmented people.

I’ve taken the opportunity with the new graphics card to turn the pretty options up to maximum (with two exceptions …) So with the not long ago rained level of water on the tarmac, there are all sorts of amazing reflection and even better lighting.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're inside a building. 3 people are dancing in the background, with a DJ dancing away behind a mixer desk festooned with switches and sliders. A 5th person is leaning on the mixer desk. The walls in the background are covered in graffiti and we see the blue lines of light projected on the wall behind and the mixer desk.
5 Ravers raving ?

This is one of the side quests where you’re investigating a drug that kills augmented people. Side quests in these games usually involve getting loot and experience which makes your character more powerful in the long run. I’m playing a permadeath run where if my character dies, it tags the save game file so that it can’t be opened again. I’ll get all but 1 remaining achievement for the main game in this run, the bank robbery mission lets you save your boss later but you can’t do that and the mission for the achievement I’m missing.

It’s always good being back in these games. Instead of being all guns blazing, you can tackle the game in super stealth mode, slipping through unnoticed and leaving no trace. (Which gets you bonus experience as well). It’s possible to go all the way through the game without firing a shot, although it’s much easier to just knock people out so they don’t raise the alarm while you’re grabbing their stuff.

There are issues though … I had a false start where the game was crashing quickly when I had all of the graphics turned up to maximum. Here goes – search engine optimisation bit :

If Deus Ex Mankind Divided is crashing your graphics card driver, turn off the MSAA and VSync. The MSAA is an Anti-aliasing technique that smooths out any jagged lines and VSync stops the image tearing as you move around. Since turning those off, I’ve only had one crash to desktop during this playthrough, which I’ll put down to the game being slightly less robust than the first Adam Jensen game.

In terms of what’ll come next after Deus Ex Mankind Divided, I have a couple of options.

It’s highly likely to be Mass Effect Andromeda, as I like Sara Ryder as a character and it’ll let me push those graphics options up to maximum as well. This one can be a really pretty game although there is literally too much you need to do in a single playthrough.

The Outer Worlds is another one that has more to give than I’ve seen before … I bounced off this game though without finishing it. Got bored, didn’t like the characters except for Parvati.

Control is a more recent one that has a lot of new graphics techniques that have come to the new cards. But … I look at it and then back to Deus Ex MD and the older game is just a far pretty game compared to Control’s drab environments and repeated enemies. Yep, Control has some incredibly daft full motion video flavour stuff around its story but … while I own it courtesy of Humblebundle (didn’t buy it, just did the old sub), I have no interest in playing it.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking down on the front of our ship from slightly above, as she has her stern to a black hole. We see the black hole as a globe of clustered stars, with a clear opening in the centre, like an eye. A cloud is lensed around that spherical not-object in the centre.
Engines to maximum

This was me checking out the Tartarus black hole and having the happy sight that black holes, were indeed not broken in the latest expansion to the game. I’d visited another one and didn’t have all the lovely lensing that you see in the picture there, where the extreme gravity bends the light in wonderful and weird ways. You don’t get the full splendour of it from the static shot, when you’re moving around the black holes you get the stars in the background dancing around.

I’m still on and off in Elite. It’s a sad case where the game is perfectly playable now, although frame rates are really bad when you get close to the surface. The performance is far better since my new card arrived but it’s the 5th best nVidia card you can buy right now. It should be good. However I know that the performance will drop off again when I get back to the populated areas … as that’s what people have been reporting.

It’s gone to a “we’re not angry, we’re just incredibly disappointed”. The latest attempt at a fix came out on Thursday and it apparently brought a bunch of fixes with the logic that runs missions and other things in the game but … it’s done nothing to fix the graphical bugs. Those are the ones that cause the really bad frame rates that make it dangerous to fly low level, the ones that cause massive pop in of terrain* and the one that really frustrates me, the massive change in lighting as you near the surface of planets which turns Pretty And Interesting Screenshot into either bleached out white or everything’s lost in the dark.

*Terrain popup is where you’re flying towards a mountain range or a cliff and what you see of the ground keeps rising in front of you. It’s where you thought you were heading just above the crest of a cliff but instead, more ground pops up and you’re heading for the cliff.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're landed on a dark moon, we're just lit up by a dim sun off to right of shot. Our pilot is centre bottom looking at the camera in a white flightsuit. The purple bodied buggy is just behind and our pink spaceship is landed in the distance behind them. Over to the left, a dark grey planetoid is on the horizon. Behind all that at centre top is one of the neon green gas giants, we can just see the planet's rings.
Camping at Abeonas Blessing

It’s still a pretty game though and the Kamd site is giving me some tasty waypoints to check out, although not all of those are actually translating to the features still being available to look at in the game. I’m also using my own rules to find nice places to stop at. I’ll be looking for ringed gas giants with moons orbiting them that you can land on. Planets you can land on with thin atmospheres are a particular favourite for stopping at. But it’s mostly a question of whether I can set up a pretty screenshot with something interesting to look at.

Oh and they’re going on to Instagram as well now. The world needs more pretty pictures to look at.

I am suffering a little though … My dodgy right arm has been complaining again both from the shoulder end and the wrist is giving me the messages as well on a “be careful” level rather than the actual real pain level. It’s one of those cases where the pain signals I get from it are ignorable without painkiller support but it’s a warning that if I keep going with the piloting and the spy games, I’ll have trouble.

You know what that means …. less game more book !

I think that’s enough for today.

PC upgrades are working nicely – temperatures are well under control, the graphics are pretty and I’ve been enjoying visiting an old friend again.

Game screenshot. Deus Ex Mankind Divided. We're standing in front of a shop area. The lighting is subdued but there are a few brighter point light sources dotted around, plus a sigh above the entrance that spells out "Entity" with an arrow in those dot lights again. A masked bodyguard stands outside the entrance.
Shop !

Yep. Visited Entity again. She isn’t in the game very much, with her appearance being limited to a shop in a location you only travel through once. I adore the character though. She doesn’t have much to say but she’s fun and very realistic in what her situation is. She’s in the ghetto because she couldn’t do her old job any more and she knows that it could either be running the shop or being in a brothel. It gives her a flirty attitude which also reflects the “need money by any means in order to live” situation.

I like the character, she’s a fun addition.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Trauma but Chill

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September 14, 2021

9:13 pm

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Hello everyone,

I managed to get an opportunity buy in at lunchtime today … There I was, finished with the usual Twit/book scan and there’s a little bit of time left before switching the work brain back on again. And one of the vendors has a 3060Ti card for £470. They didn’t last long, disappearing within about 10 minutes … but I’ve got one coming tomorrow. £470 is more than double what I thought was an acceptable price for a graphics card 2 years ago but things have changed there. I’m hoping for a good few years out of this one.

Picture. A cute green pocket dragon is standing on a red button labelled "PANIC". His forepaws are on the button, his back paws are behind and in the air. His mouth is open in alarm.
Don’t panic !

The picture is from someone else but the Pocket Dragons copyright has always belonged to Real Musgrave and co so that’s who I always credit when I nab a Pocket Dragon picture.

Anyway … upgrades have happened today in preparation for the graphics card arriving. I’ve had a couple of components for a good long while but have held off on fitting them for a few reasons. I’d always been able to get by on hard disc space with the 1.5TB drive that was in there before. It’s split 1TB for a data drive that has my games and more on it and 500GB for what got used for video creation. The new drive that’s gone in is a 3TB drive, so I’ll be able to fit in more than double the space for the games drive.

This is kinda important when being able to go for the newer, flashier games because they take up a huge amount more space … I’ve had to manage how much they take up by uninstalling a few as I go for different games. One I’ve had my eye on for a while is Horizon Zero Dawn, a game set in a future with a mix of bows and arrows and machine animals. It’s a fantastic game … and Meltdown hasn’t had the graphical power to handle it until the 3060Ti comes. But it also takes up 100GB on the hard disc which is a lot.

Meltdown is the name of the PC by the way, after it was being rather too hot when it was built on what felt like the hottest day of 2019. And it was getting pretty toasty … This was the situation in February this year when it had been running science sums for a while.

Screenshot. The box is titled "Core Temp" and below is "AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core" followed by 3599MHz (100x36.0). There are 6 full bars underneath of varying colour from yellow to violet. A temperature of 88 degrees C is displayed.
Toasty

That was getting a bit too warm and I was getting concerned enough to stop the machine running the Asteroids at Home software which for some reason I haven’t figured out, makes the processor 10 degrees C hotter than the other science sums. 88 degrees C is getting close to the thermal limits and it’s one reason why I stop the machine doing sums over the summer. I don’t need that kind of heat in the room.

Anyway, that’s with the stock cooler that comes with the processor. How about an upgrade ?

Screenshot as before. The box is titled "Core Temp" and below is "AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core" followed by 3599MHz (100x36.0). There are 6 empty bars underneath. A temperature of 33 degrees C is displayed.
What name now for Meltdown ?

The new cooler that’s gone in is a Coolermaster MA610P. It’s a hefty lump, almost too big for my case and it comes with a pair of fans blowing air through it. 33 degrees C for an idle temperature is really good. It’s around 20-25 degrees cooler than the stock cooler was on idle. I haven’t worked the system hard much yet. Not feeling like gaming this evening so I’m watching FuzzyFreaks play Deathloop (Twitch Link stream’s finishing now though). Back to reading after I publish this post. I did do a quick test though :

Screenshot. The box is titled "Core Temp" and below is "AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core" followed by 3599MHz (100x36.0). There are 6 full bars underneath of varying colour from yellow to violet. A temperature of 52 degrees C is displayed.
What do you call something that ain’t melting ?

I have to say here that the AMD processor isn’t as clever with showing temperatures as the Intel processors. I’m currently on a chip that has 2 compute units, each with 3 cores within that can run 2 threads each. Whereas the Intel processors show you the temperature on each core, the AMD processor only shows one temperature for the whole chip. It’s not a big difference but the Intel way would tell you if one part of the chip was running hotter than the rest, which would tell you perhaps if the thermal paste was missing. (Thermal paste connects the chip to the cooler)

That 52 degrees C temperature is from Climateprediction’s set of sums. They have a nice long deadline on their sums, the rest of the sums people only give a week or two to get results back, so when you download the work you’re kind of obliged to send it back. That temperature will probably go up to 60 ish with Asteroids at Home. But that’s a test for another day.

One thing the graphics card change will do is let me turn the graphics options up again … Shinier pictures !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our diamond shaped ship is silhouetted, with a bright white neutron star hidden behind it. We see the streamers from the star going up and left and down and right. In the background, a sea of stars with a mottled greenish with orange clouding.
Ride the light

There we go. Searching for Pixels, visiting a nebula with a neutron star at the centre. Another stop on the way to the Core regions where the stars like to come out to play.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. It's night time on a planet. The flat outline of our pink spaceship can be seen on a landing pad to the lower left. Spires can be seen above and behind to the left. Top right, we see a reddish planet with lovely brown rings around it..
Stopping at Sacaqawae

Nice random assignment of landing pad there with the 07. That’s become text code for a salute around the internet. Picture the o as someone’s head the the 7 being an arm bent in salute. People like the symbology so if I get given pad o7, I’ll usually take a screenshot opportunity. This is one of the planetary bases between our bit of space and the Colonia region, which is 21,000 light years away and a bit West of the galactic core.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship can be dimly seen, with her lights illuminating small parts of a pink hull. Behind and to the left is a circle of a planet with part of a ring system visible. The planet is an odd black in the centre with a light blue circle near the edge tending to white at the outside.
No idea what’s happening there!

As the caption says, I have no idea what’s going on here :-). I think it might well be another of the lighting bugs that are still in the game. One of those times where you see something odd so you stop and take a picture.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink diamond shaped ship is on a rough landing pad at the bottom centre of the picture. The terrain is a light grey/orange. Hills rise in the distance behind the base. In the distance, before the hills, are a set of greenhouse type complexes. We're in the day time and the shadow is on our side of the ship.
Is there tea over there ?

This is where I stopped in this particular session. It wasn’t a main base but one of the additional settlements that have popped up with the Odyssey expansion. It’s good to see a bit more variation coming in. I think this was a Biological site with the buildings in the distance there being greenhouses. Perhaps they were growing tea for the local bases. Or coffee. Coffee is life.

I think that’s it for me for tonight, struggling to put the new cooler in, taking it out to connect the fans, putting it back in again has wiped me out. The thing gave me a scare because I dropped it but all seems good still. It’ll be good to be able to turn the graphics options up with the internet spaceships. I’ve been on a hybrid of medium and high settings, dialing it back from the Ultra that it was on before Odyssey. There will still be frame rate issues in places but the new card has around 4 times the parallel processing capacity of the last one and over double the memory. That means it can handle more complex environments and the parallel processing all goes towards creating the images.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Taps screen – is this on ?

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September 8, 2021

11:01 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since the last post ! I’ve had a couple of weeks away with work up in Scotland. Somewhere pretty :

Photograph. We're looking out to sea, there is a pebbly beach in front of us. The sun is high in the sky and reflecting off calm waters. A small triangle of a sailboat is near the horizon. There are a couple of occasional clouds visible.
No one prepared me for this

The usual rule applies with work related stuff, I don’t say what I work on here or what it’s about. Which also means being careful where the camera is allowed to point cos when it’s on the internet, there’s no control over it whatsoever. I’ve got a couple of pictures with features that would localise where I was to very little margin of error and from there, you just align it with the dates and you get what I was working on and who I work for.

Always have to be careful with that kind of thing because it can attract attention from people you don’t want attention from.

Suffice to say though, great bunch of people up there for the fortnight. Enjoyed it, got stuff done, learned new things. And it was incredibly sunny too ! We were really lucky to have such lovely benign conditions for our testing.

Oh ! I also injured my knee right at the start, twisting it as I was getting into my seat on the plane up. And then I did 80k steps on it over the fortnight. That’s down to an emergency buy of a knee support and being ultra careful not to aggravate it. I had visions of the knee snapping out sideways if I put too much power through it or if I landed on the leg the wrong way.

Almost better now though. It was good to be out and about though.

I did nearly post while I was out there, even going as far as copying over some Elite screenshots to the laptop. It was definitely a case of throwing everything into the daytime stuff though, not leaving much energy over for the evenings.

(Looks at last post) Erm, yep. Been travelling since that last post there …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. On the left, is a pin sized bright white star, throwing off curly streamers above and below. Our diamond shaped ship is on the right, hull part lit and part in shadow.
Basking in starlight

It’s always curious seeing new things too. Like comparing what I have in the internet spaceship to what we have in reality. I have a pretty decent control thingy now in the X52 Pro. Could be better, could be worse. (It’s a bit too sensitive around the middle due to game settings I can’t influence). It’s things like I have full 6 axis control in the spaceship. That’s pitch, roll and yaw that rotate you around the 3 axes. And a throttle for forward and back plus an up, down, left and right thing for translating around the 3 axes. So 6 axis – 3 see you turning in place, 3 see you moving around. The spaceship doesn’t interact with its environment as atmospherics are minimal in the game, although you do have to fight gravity.

Think of a car though and you don’t go up or down and you’re constrained by where the wheels want to go. An aircraft has to keep moving forward to make lift or it falls out of the sky. Unless it’s a special one like the Harrier or F35 Lightning II that can do Vertical Landing. (Or helicopters). Sea side stuff saw me around boats, which have their own special way of interacting with the environment to make them move around.

I still want to do that thing where I move away from the house and on to a boat. Lots of work to do on the house before I can even contemplate that though.

That’s one thing about the away trip, it forced me out of what feels like it’s become a comfort zone into a far more active mode. And I enjoyed that, partly due to a sense that we were getting stuff done. I’ve gone right back into that comfort zone since coming back though and need to break out of it again. Cos, you know, running low on snacks.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink spaceship is landed on a very bleached white planet. Our purple buggy is parked in front, with my pilot standing in front of both. Everything is pointing to the right. In the background, we can see half a neon green banded with brown planet. It's just peeping above the horizon.
Mint Choc ahoy !

The voyage of the Searching For Pixels continues, looking for the special sights around the galaxy to see if there’s been much change since the Odyssey expansion. That’s one of the ultra rare glowing green gas giants, with this one being the Viridian Dreams system. One sad thing about this picture is that as I was descending from orbit, the planet was a gorgeous sapphire blue. That would have made for an amazing contrast. Sadly though, when I got much closer to the ground, the Odyssey graphics took over and bleached out the planet. Oh well. It does still make a nice piccy though doesn’t it ?

I got to another one of these as well later, which I’ll pop into a future post. It’s actually where I am at the moment and there’s a few more screenies to come first.

Oh, one casualty of the fortnight is one of the hard discs in Meltdown. It’s the ancient 250GB conventional drive that’s been grimly hanging on for the last couple of years. I turned Meltdown back on when I came back on the middle Friday to have a surprise of “it’s been a while, no Windows yet?” and it’s checking the drive for errors. I guess it probably couldn’t handle that time of not spinning and when the time came to reactivate, it couldn’t spin up. It’s no real loss, I’d pulled the data off a while ago because I knew the drive was failing. I do need to transplant in a new 3GB drive though.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see our spaceship from underneath. We're looking at the gently curving horizon of a pinkish planet, with a thin atmosphere at that horizon. The sun is at the top centre.
Pixels on approach

Looks pretty, this was checking out a planet in the Conflux area. It’s a few thousand light years out and there are some abandoned settlements here.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pilot is standing at the lower right, outside an airlock beyond which are corridors of a planetary base with a couple of dome like constructions behind. Our buggy is to the left by a gate and the spaceship is further off and behind. The planet surface varies between green and rusty red.
Anyone home ?

Now that we can walk around, I had to check. Nobody home this time and the doors were locked. I wonder if they left any tea or biscuits ?

I need to go shopping real soon. I’m running low on biscuits !

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pink spaceship is lower centre, pointing left. To the left side, there is a red orange nebula that looks a bit like spread wings. Under or behind our ship are a set of very fine black rings with the occasional white ring stripe. In the distance to the right is a dark blue planet with tight white rings.
They put a ring on this one I think they liked it

I think that’s it for screenshots for tonight. I need to post more and catch up !

Good couple of weeks away. There’s a few completely unconnected things that were bubbling up in the mind too about things that have been happening in the world. Like seeing the racism feature around the cricket. There’s an increasing problem in the English game with racism. Yorkshire are getting the headlines at the moment but it’s wider than that. People of Colour aren’t getting the opportunities at the higher levels of the game that they used to. We need them in the game. Personally, I love cricket and want more people to enjoy the game, which means getting the opportunities to play it at the level they’ll enjoy and succeed at.

It’s fantastic to see Haseeb Hameed back in the England side and it’s always great to see Moeen Ali in the team. For Hameed, it’s part because he’s come through a trial in his game worse than pretty much anyone who plays the game. It’s great to see him beat that. It was even better to see his joy at being back around the England team. Like how Monty Panesar would celebrate when he got a wicket, it was pure absolute joy.

It’s great to see people like that enjoying the game. (I want to see Jofra Archer back in too, he’d be playing if not for his poorly elbow). But it’s becoming rarer now and a lot of that must be down to something filtering the players who make it to the higher levels. We had it in Lincolnshire where I played my earlier cricket. No one scouted our team. Ever, even when there was this young tearaway guy (me!) taking more wickets than anyone else in the team in just half a season, getting my name in the paper every week and contributing to a side that was winning most of the games and climbing up to second in our league. No scouting.

That’s not an axe being ground away by the way, I got a back injury that season too which restricted my bowling for the next year or so and then the shoulder injury came in a couple of years after that. The real axe to grind would be the university team. Performance in the bar was far more important there than performance in the nets.

I don’t want to be grinding axes though.

Good couple of weeks away. Great people. Good to be back and letting the leg heal up. Need to get out and about again and not just in the internet spaceship !

Photograph. We can see part of the brim of a straw type hat. Sitting on the hat is a blue fridge magnet, with "SCOTLA" visible, with the full word being Scotland. Above that, is a green serpent creature with coils coming in and out of the water behind a face with a cap. The creature is wearing a red and yellow scarf.
NESSY !

Yep. Couldn’t resist bringing this home with me.

Zoom Zoom and Alien Hunting

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April 26, 2021

8:28 pm

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Immediate squirrel moment after realising that when one of the standy up legs fell off the keyboard, I put it back in the wrong way. It wobbled. It doesn’t wobble now that I’ve fixed that.

Hmm. Curious way to start ? Just a random squirrel moment. Keyboard’s doing fine actually. It’s a little stiffer than I got used to with the Steelseries keyboard but it’s been good since I got it. One big advantage is that whereas the Steelseries keyboard was essentially a closed unit, the ADX keyboard has unenclosed keyswitches so you could clean the dust out with an air blaster.

Outside of the work, I’ve been enjoying a few games … Elite is still a big one :

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. we see the port side of our ship from the rear. The two engines shine bright with a bluish white trail behind and a couple of X's of light flare coming from the engines. Across the top of the picture we see the Milky Way ribbon of stars and there is a small part of a yellow star above that.
Set the controls for just around the sun

That was me setting off from the extreme Eastern Edge of the galaxy. I’ve set course for the south now, reaching the end of the white dotted line below.

Picture. We see a map of our galaxy from above, with the bright central core in the middle with the spiral arms coming out from that centre. There is a white line showing my course and a thin green line showing my planned route.
Helm ! Follow the green course

The white dots are where I’ve been. It still includes an earlier trip to the Galactic Core and a couple of speed runs there. Those are the white lines to the centre of the map, plus another going off to the East a bit where I wanted to see some different things on the way back. My galactic circumnavigation course started by going to the West, diverting off a couple of times where the Kamd site told me there would be fun things to look at. It then goes North, following a spiral arm, while diverting off a couple of times to see more fun stuff. Up at the top is Galactic North and the systems Beagle Point and Salome’s Reach, which are the most northern stars that can be visited in the game. Off to the East is Magellan’s Point, the most Eastern star we can visit in the game. I had to divert around the end of the spiral arms to a point where there are enough stars to jump around. And then the green line shows where I’m needing to divert around another gap between spiral arms.

More pictures to come later and Yay ! Managed to figure out how to get ED Discovery to present this as a good looking map instead of the colour regions that it defaults to.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is landed and we are viewing it from the port side rear. There's a lovely shadow under the ship on a pink-ish looking surface. Up in the sky is a large dark moon with a wrinkly surface and in the background and farther away is a smaller looking but actually much larger gas giant.
Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear

That was where I started off on Thursday, on a mad dash to fix something I’ve been missing for a little while.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is in shadow and we view her from below her port side, looking slightly from the front. The buggy is back and in the shadow of the ship, towards the front. In the sky there is a dark moon. On the left there is a yellow star shining bright, with a tiny blue one directly underneath. The blue one is throwing off streamers in a thin cone to the left and right.
The Nye’s Bow Tie System

This is one of the systems on the way, the Nye’s Bow Tie system, so named after a celebrity scientist who likes his bow ties. There are two close entry stars here that we see on the left. The yellow one is a normal main sequence star (Our star is a main sequence G class star) like our’s. The blue dot underneath with the streamers is a neutron star, a star that has exploded and collapsed into the smallest stellar object, but without the extra mass to collapse it further into becoming a black hole. We use these in game to jump longer distances, my jump record is now 304 light years in one hop. I used a Star Trek calculator to work that out (curiosity and geekiness) and apparently it is around Warp Factor 570 on the old The Original Series scale. (I don’t like the new scale, it doesn’t make sense to me).

But on we go again, I’ve kinda entered crazy travel mode in Elite now. I’ve been on this trip since November and want to do something else in game now, especially with the walk on planets expansion coming relatively soon.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship from the starboard side, lit by the headlights of the buggy to the bottom left of shot. Buggy and ship are landed on a dark shadowed planetoid. To the right, there is a purple-ish gas giant with rings going upwards and a little to the right.
Camping by the stars again

This is where I left things on Sunday, having remembered to give the buggy the neon red paint pack again :-D.

There has also been Motorsport Manager going, I’m closing in on winning the GT car championship which will be the point where I jump into the Endurance racing championship. It’s a great game, development stopped on it a few years ago and they’ve gone back to making mobile games. It’s a shame there hasn’t been a Motorsport Manager 2 on PC, although they did such a good job on this one that it is still an incredibly good game of its rather unique type. It’s my go to game for when I’m not feeling great and want a game I watch more than play.

XCom2 has been a fun one, although I think I’ve hit a point where the challenge is going out of that campaign. I haven’t hit the end stage main campaign enemies yet but I’ve eliminated all but one of the specials from the expansions. And those special characters are pretty silly, unless you know what to do and what not to do. Games like XCom tend to be a bit chess like, especially since the remakes came out. There are timers to speed you up on the missions but you need to apply a fair bit of patience, or your people get caught out and then bad things happen.

Game screenshot. XCom 2. We see the walls still standing of a futuristic looking but devastated interior of a facility building. Bottom left is "Katie Petersplays" for our currently selected character and there is a yellow outline traced in a rough circle.
Mission : Destroy Base. Almost there !

The aim of this mission was to destroy the alien facility … I think we were mostly there already. Grenades are fun in this game, although you get moaned at for using them because it means less loot to carry away. The currently selected character is Katie Petersplays, another one named after a streamer I started watching about a month ago. Her specialism is mind powers.

Game screenshot. XCom 2. In the background is a landed air vehicle which has just dropped off six soldiers who line up in front of the camera. Below that, are boxes with their names and statistics from the campaign.
The A Team

That’s the top team that will build into being the end of game team. I’ll do a full roll call when I finish the campaign but from left to right, we see :

Colonel Luperza, Spaceviking. This one is modelled on the lovely Margaret Krohn who is making the Ashes of Creation game as well as being one of the driving forces behind Roll4it and all round lovely person who I had the pleasure of meeting at Roll4itCon 2018. Oh ! Luperza’s job in this team is to run around and chop things up with a sword.

Colonel Crendor, Skittles in the bright yellow beanie and blue armour. Crendor’s job is to be the team medic. I’ve been enjoying watching his various Blood Bowl 2 games.

Colonel FTL, Dr Feelgood. This character is for Josh aka GamingFtl, who I also met at Roll4itCon 2018. Lovely fella, with a great voice that he can turn into Deep Evil at the drop of a hat or turn of a tache. Specialist FTL’s role is master hacker. If the enemies turn up with robots, he’ll hack them and turn them over to our side. The nickname this time was randomly applied by the game and it just felt perfect. Oh ! When he’s not being at the centre of chaos in tabletop games, Josh is helping create the game Clone Drone in the Danger Zone.

Colonel Freaks, aka Spiderqueen. FuzzyFreaks is our sniper on the team, a crack shot with the long rifle and the pistols. She’s also one of two streamers who I will watch whenever she’s on, whatever she’s playing. She’s a fun one and also lovely person (Another meeting at Roll4itCon 2018!)

Magus Petersplays, aka Shark. Katie is a pretty new addition to the team, joining as the psionics expert. I picked up on watching Katie as part of a Roll4it table top show and have been having huge fun watching her streams as well. (She’s west coast US though I think which means late late streams for us in the UK)

Major Cyberkitten, Truthseeker. Probably a Colonel in the game by now. Truthseeker is the grenadier, who will make the aliens pay if they cluster together at all by sending little packets of Boom over. Also has a very large gun. Cyberkitten has been a very good friend for a couple of decades now.

All the links there will take you to their Twitch channels (not CK!) which should point you to more of what they do. Cyberkitten’s link will take you to his blog, which is always good to catch up on. They’re all fantastic people, which is one reason Brain went towards customising a character for them. Check ’em out.

Yeah ! XCom 2 definitely still has that “Just one more mission” factor still. It’s a tough game, it can really punish when you leave a person exposed. It’s a long game though, so I won’t play it again for a while after this campaign.

You’re probably thinking – isn’t it a little weird to name the characters that way ? I find it actually makes me enjoy the game more. I’ve got a selection of name lists that I’ve acquired from places, like Mass Effect names, Yogscast names, Totalbiscuit’s old name list … It’s good to see the names pop up and the interpretations from other people. I’m also running a decent amount of mods in there for more customisation. I’d rather have Colonel Luperza or Colonel Tashnarr (another sword character) than the randomly generated names. There’s more of a connection to the characters, albeit you have to remember that it’s a completely artificial connection.

It’s been fun making up the character bio stories too and there has been a few chuckles when I’ve posted them. I’ll put out a full roll call at some point.

How have I been doing ? Weekend was rough honestly. I think my brain was steadily frying towards the end of last week and then on Saturday, I moved a few things around in the house which I think led directly to massive dust inhalation and trouble breathing. Saturday’s sleep was Real Bad. Sunday’s sleep was better.

I’m out and about tomorrow though, which should mean lots of fresh air hopefully. It’ll be good to head out again.

And I’d better hit post and sign off there !

Be well everyone, stay safe. Enjoy what you’re getting up to !

PS I just started my pre-publish check, saw the galaxy map picture again and thought “It would be a great idea to go up one spiral arm, cross over to the next and return on that one.” Hmm.

Sleepy time

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April 11, 2021

7:47 pm

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Gosh,

Didn’t really mean for it to be a week and a bit since the last post but there we are ! Oh well. A couple of things to mention from the last post … it was one of the more obvious April Fools posts but I had enjoyment typing it up and doing the simple (and not so simple) modification for the Dwagon in Black pictures. I did do the thing you’re not supposed to do and cut a watermark off one of the pictures … But that was someone claiming a copyright they don’t own. The Pocket Dragons are the copyright of Real Musgrave and their now defunct organisation (link to wiki), so someone else putting a watermark on them is the equivalent of the people stealing art for the new Non Fungible Token fad.

Credit your artists wherever you can, hopefully that means they get a little bit more back for their art which means they can afford the expenses that goes into making that art which means they make more art.

I’ve been off work this week, needed a break and some time away from it. I’ve been mostly in the games although I am enjoying watching the end of the Masters today. There’s also been lots of stream watching … a lot of it blurring into the early morning. Oops. Mind you, there’s been a bit of Mars Horizon addiction feeding into that too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda ship from above and behind the right side. An orange rear flank is looking precisely painted. She is pointing towards a blue water planet with an orange red moon. A grey red planetoid is below.
Will this be the thumbnail today ?

Yep, Elite’s happened as I steadily make my way around the galaxy. I’m in a curious spot at the moment where I need to make my way around a gap between the spiral arms of the galaxy …

Picture. Web browser. We see a clip of the Eastern edge of the galaxy, black background with increasing white to show where there are more stars. Two circles are present, I was at the left circle. The right circle is my destination. There is a straight line between them and a more jagged line showing the required route going down, right and then up and right.
Helm, Set the Satnav

That’s the path needed to get where I’m headed … You can’t bridge the gap between galactic arms by going direct because there aren’t enough stars there, so I started picking up the advanced planning at the left circle. The map above is from the Neutron Star Route Planner, which is giving lots of waypoints to go between. I’m mostly not going by that … although I have been using it as a guide. There’s another change coming as well because I’ll stop off at another carrier along the way. (The other tabs there are EDSM Elite Dangerous Star Map pages with my waypoints plus there is one for the Neutron Star Plotter, EDDB’s Stations page and my current location)

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship from her starboard upper side, showing off the K08oLD callsign. A grey gas giant dominates the background with grey brown, white and darker grey rings surrounding the planet. The ship is above the rings and we are looking down on them. In the background are two much smaller ringed planets.
Putting a ring on it

Seeing the sights along the way too, although I kinda want to be doing other things in the game now instead of travelling. I’ve been doing that in the game for quite a while. Oh and there’s an expansion coming soon as well, I have very little interest in the Scifi Space Shooter aspects that have been brought in (more on that later) but it will be good to get out and walk on planets instead of just taking the buggy.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the ship landed on a dark planet. The port side of the ship faces the camera and she is lit by the headlights of the rover. The galactic ribbon of stars is in the background.
A quiet campsite

That’s where I left things yesterday. Still lots of travel to do, this is at the lower part of that path where it started going to the right.

Talking of satnav … I did a bit more out and about in the car on Thursday. The main objective was to do something about the empty plastic bottles that have been getting out of hand … I take these to recycling bins but the usual one got taken away. (There’s another one, sorted !) And I wanted to get hold of a magazine about remote control cars too, to learn a bit more about those before I look into actually shelling out cash on them. You know, figure out what you should put the money towards and learn what to avoid spending money on.

That’s a future likely hobby again. I could do with having a place to work on them (too much junk taking up space that I need to throw out !). This is kinda sparked off by the new Lego remote control buggy … Lego’s great but I don’t have much confidence in it staying together as a buggy going over jumps. It’s time to go for something a bit more sturdy there. But which one ?

One thing I did see on the roundabout route back was an empty skating park … Brain saw that and thought it would be ideal place to play with a remote control buggy at. Will have to do more research there.

It was good to be out and about in the car, learning more about it. Handles nice, although I did manage to wake up the traction control on there. (I was behaving … mostly) The mpgs were going up steadily too. I’ll look to be out and about more as the lockdowns steadily lift. One curious thing, it’s odd to be hearing the rattles of the bus in front (it had a badly malfunctioning turbo I think) as you’re going along at a little under 40mph.

Game screenshot. Mars Horizon. We're on the orange/red planet of Mars. A number of assorted pop up orange constructions are in the background. We see a module on legs with round windows to the right. A six axle rover is in the centre and a red Chinese flag is in the foreground.
To Mars !

Yep. Been playing Mars Horizon again. It’s still a wonderfully addictive simple game to play and I hugely enjoy it.

Game screenshot. Planetbase. We see a dark airless moon and an orange giant planet in the background. The surface is littered with solar panels, cylindrical power batteries and many small domes of living space with connection corridors between them.
The colony grows

I had a little look at Planetbase again last week too. This is one of only a few games where I have all of the achievements. It’s a simple one to play, with external objects like power generators (solar panels and wind turbines), power batteries, water collectors and landing pads. Inside the base are botany farm domes for food, production domes, sleeping domes, canteens and exercise areas, labs and medical domes. It’s strength is also a weakness … if you can see the signs, then you can make the decision to stop the colony dying out due to lack of food or other crisis. But you can also have things happen like all your medics die because they were going outside in a solar flare storm which leads to radiation poisoning which doesn’t end well if you aren’t making the medicine because that’s coded out of the AI.

Yep. Game has issues … but I could understand them, play within those issues and still enjoy the game. Whereas something like Banished would suddenly murder your colony in a death spiral for which you would have no understanding of the cause. (May need to look at Banished again).

Colony builders are usually nice chilled out games and good for a bit of relaxation. I should get back to Per Aspera and Surviving Mars at some point, plus Aven Colony was on my wish list for a while, I now own that courtesy of Humble Bundle.

Talking of more travel …

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Two characters are standing near a cliff ledge. In the distance we see floating rocks and a mountain. There are faint planetary rings in the cloudy blue sky.
It’s one small step for gaming …

I’ve been enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda again, in its early stages. It’s a fun game, probably goes on a bit too long though and I’m a little frustrated that it gates your progress. The reason for that is in spoiler space but the brief summary is that as you go on, the planets become more habitable and you can reach places you couldn’t before. Like quest markers that are literally 10 feet beyond where you can go. That’s frustrating …

But as said, it’s also a huge fun game and I like the various characters. Especially Sara Ryder. It’s a much more fun themed game than the earlier Mass Effect games, definitely not taking itself particularly seriously. The Mass Effect trilogy remake is coming later in the year. I have mixed feelings about that but might well get it anyway. I hugely enjoyed the world set up in the first two Mass Effect Games, I didn’t enjoy seeing that get torn down in Mass Effect 3.

Game screenshot. Mass Effect Andromeda. Our character is standing on a platform beside container boxes. The landscape is orange, arid and rocky. There are boxy colony building modules to the left and the ship is to the rear of shot.
Anyone seen my ship ?

Early days. Looking to enjoy the game more. The graphics can be better … I’ve been kinda holding off on playing the prettier games like this until I could put a graphics card upgrade in. Those are in incredibly short supply at the moment as demand has vastly outstripped supply. As in, you cannot get graphics cards of any kind at the moment outside of paying massively over the odds to people who lurk in the supplier websites and then resell for a profit.

Other games have included :

Stellaris – I’m nowhere near as much a fan of this as in the early days. Not sure. It’s got too many bugs in there now and I just find other games more satisfying and enjoyable to play.

Motorsport Manager – I’m closing in on winning Phase 2 of my Win Every Championship campaign. My manager is 61 years old though, I wonder if there is an upper enforced retirement age limit.

XCom 2 – a little … a couple of fights happened but I’ve been in Motorsport Manager and Mars Horizon more.

Music has happened with a Morcheeba album, an old All About Eve concert cd and Christine and the Queens appearing. I’ve been enjoying those.

But I can hear that dinner bell going off now so I think it’s time to (check what I’ve written for a change) hit post.

Good restful week off, there’s been a few headaches along the way (probably need more fresh air), did get out and about … missed the cheap leftover Easter Eggs, lots of games, lots of stream watching to enjoy.

Hope you all had a great week, stay safe, be well.