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Trauma but Chill

September 14, 2021

9:13 pm

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computer, geeky, internet spaceship, picture

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 :

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 ?

by Sleepypete

September 8, 2021

11:01 pm

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away trip, internet spaceship, picture

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

by Sleepypete

April 26, 2021

8:28 pm

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gaming, internet spaceship, picture

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

by Sleepypete

April 11, 2021

7:47 pm

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games, picture, rest

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.

Book exile and music hunting

by Sleepypete

February 4, 2021

10:37 pm

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music, picture

Hello everyone,

This last week seems to have gone in a bit of a blur ! Let’s see … the Daytona 24 hour IMSA motor race happened, that was a good one to have on in the background. The IMSA racing series is pretty strong because they have a nicely varied set of fields and they get their balance of performance spot on. There’s also been book, lots of Mars Horizon and as always, music on in the background.

Picture. A small green pocket dragon is driving a small red clockwork car. The dragon barely fits in the car. — Zoom

I caused some amusement at work this week by saying that my car is in some ways, on a par with the racing cars … The IMSA series has a couple of Lexus RC F’s entered and they were doing pretty well in the races that happened last year. The RC is a coupe conversion of my IS but the RC has a much bigger 5 litre V8 engine giving 472bhp. Mine has a much more modest 2.5 litre straight 4 engine plus the hybrid bits giving a combined power of 220bhp. However, the motors mean it has much more torque than that suggests.

Wot dat mean ?

Maximum theoretical speed is much lower in mine, 125mph ish compared to probably limited 160mph ish (the Lexus site isn’t cooperating in my data mining efforts). Plus when the hybrid batteries drain, it won’t be able to sustain that 125mph.

Acceleration is much closer … because that depends on torque. Plus the way the transmission works, it holds the engine at the most effective revs for what you’re wanting to do. Acceleration holds the engine at max torque, cruising holds it at just above idle developing just enough power to counteract 70mph drag.

I then caused much more hilarity by saying that the high spec race bred cars you can buy are actually more powerful than the cars in the races … This sounds weird doesn’t it ?

One of the changes that will happen between a Porsche 911 RSR coming out of the factory and being race prepped is that they’ll strip the nice bits out of the inside and reduce the weight as much as they can. Safety features will be added, as will the mandatory systems that the race organisers demand. That’s including things like race information displays, numbering systems, transponders, radios … However there is also the Balance of Performance.

That’s how the races end up being so close. The organisers will continually look at how well each car is doing and required adjustments are made in order to even everyone up. An inlet for the supercharger or pressure for the turbo will be limited to cut power slightly. Aerodynamics will be adjusted to even the cars out in the corners.

It doesn’t lead to “My car is better than your car” type stuff but it does make the racing incredibly interesting. Although the scrutineers can get it wrong sometimes like when the Aston Martins qualified unexpectedly well and the Balance of Performance adjustment meant they were maybe 10mph down on top speed compared to the others … at Le Mans with the super long Mulsanne Straight. Oops.

Picture. A happy looking dog is sitting on a sofa with a stash of tennis balls. The caption is "I'm rich!" — Yay poochie !

Oh to have the kind of cash that would see me being able to get one of the more powerful cars. Although, to be honest, I’m happy with the level of power in my current car and more power is kinda wasted on UK roads. We’re limited to 70mph on the fastest roads and slow people spoil the fun on the twisty roads. There are also insurance conditions which restrict using the cars on track days.

It is good to watch the racing though.

I was going to write about more stuff ! Listening to a Cardigans song followed by a The Staves song popped a thought into my head that I should do a music post sometime. Book first …

Book 5 of the year was Exile by R.A. Salvatore, the second in the origins of Drizzt series. These three books suffer somewhat in that being released after the Crystal Shard book which introduced him, that backstory is already known. The author does a good job of fleshing it out in the books. I’m currently at the beginnings of the third book, Sojourn. I’ll read something different before diving into the next in the series.

Picture. A dog is standing up to a table, his paws are just clinging on. He is looking pleadingly at a tennis ball. The caption : "My god... it's beautiful!" — Down boy !

I’ve actually listened to all the songs in my library again and I’m hungrily looking for more again … A couple of those albums are (with lots of youtube links) :

The Staves – Wisely and Slow has wonderful harmonies in it.

I talk about The Cardigans a lot but it’s tough to call up songs from them because a lot of them are really, really dark … Algebra is a good one and it got included at an especially apt moment in the series Haven.

And then there’s also Communication with a wonderful animated video. The internet is being a very helpful thing at the moment, keeping us in touch with each other.

Oh dear. I’m singing along again. The neighbours will be worried … This calls for … Run To The Hills !

Another one who I think I need more from is Lisa Miskovsky. I have her Falling Water album which has wonderful songs in like A Brand New Day but there are several more albums I don’t have.

Thinking of Algebra, one thing about Mars Horizon is that success, failure or better success in that game is determined by mathematical counter based puzzle games. Little Boots did a song about Mathematics …

Next album up is one by Norah Jones, she has an album out as well that I don’t have yet. This lady has done some wonderful songs over the years too. Here’s one that makes me chuckle, Man Of The Hour.

Picture. A very old dog called Scruff. He's got black fur, a bit unkempt and a while chest. He's lying down but his face is looking towards the camera. He had very big paws. — Lovely Scruff

I do miss the dogs. That’s Old Man Scruff from half a lifetime ago. A very faithful companion. Edie Brickell sang about a few dogs too … here is the joyful Woyaho! (looks like the only links are copyright theft links, not posting that)

It’s probably getting near time to wrap up and post though but there’s a couple more songs that want out … Agnes Obel surprised me with a lovely voice and haunting songs, her albums are on the list too. Here is Close Watch.

Oh ! I also managed to watch all of Star Trek Lower Decks. Rather funny, most definitely the consistently craziest that Trek has ever done. I’d give it a try.

I think that’s it for now. Couple more ? Kate Bush has always been a favourite, here is Wow.

Oh and I also acquired Katie Melua’s Ultimate Collection pretty cheap … Here’s Nine Million Bicycles.

Have a great rest of evening everyone. Stay safe, be well.

To Mars … and beyond ?

by Sleepypete

November 22, 2020

2:13 pm

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gaming, internet spaceship, picture, skyrim, space, website

Hello everyone,

I found a new spaceships game … More like rockets perhaps though.

Before that though … today seems to be not such a great day today. I was having trouble getting to sleep last night (probably dust inhalation affecting my breathing) and I’ve emerged today with a headache. So it’ll probably be a quieter day today with less sources of input. Maybe.

Before I dive into rockets – a small thing about being cautious about how you market … The new blog came with a few things that are either useful or I’m steadily disabling as the truth of what they are reveals itself. The latest is OptInMonster. From its blurb :

“Instantly grow your email list, get more leads and increase sales with the #1 most powerful conversion optimisation toolkit in the world.” and they do this through popups, popouts, annoying things on the site (like an abandonment thing when I clicked on another window). Oh and they want money to do this, even for the free trial. They also appear to be heavily involved in botting, even with one of their bots writing in the name of their CEO.

Anyway, I started going through the “free” sign up suggested by their plugin and hit the close tab button as soon as it demanded a credit card number for the free trial. I then get an email purporting to be from their CEO (the bot) with the details that were in the form but not committed to be sent. If you are not recoiling in horror at that, then you should be. Oh and I couldn’t reply to the bot’s email because their reply-to address was a bad redirect and the content of their email was being flagged by the spam filters. I could not demand a deletion of my data on their system without deleting their email text in my reply.

It’s not a particularly rosy look there. If you’re getting someone to do your marketing for you, think very carefully about the image they are going to give you. You don’t want them to give you an image that you find abhorrent.

TLDR – OptinMonster bad, addon now removed from the site.

New game what’s this ? I’ve gone a little further in the Elite Galactic Circumnavigation quest but that one’s suffering a little due to the pain spikes (and Elite needs a little set up so I can’t munch dinner while playing). I went a little further in Deus Ex Human Revolution too and I’m at the point where the DLC comes in. Still not sure if I’ll play that DLC. Another Skyrim character got started …

There’s my warrior lady in front of the next place she’s going to raid. Skyrim is a beautiful game even after 9 years after release. It’s had some work though, I’m now on the Special Edition rerelease that came out in October 2016 and that’s got improved texture packs and weather mods that make it prettier still.

But that’s not the game that has got me addicted since it came out …

You may need to zoom in a bit to find the thing on the pad. One very nice feature I spotted follows on from something I said about Elite in one of the discords :

The comment on Elite was about some of the neutron stars that are epilepsy inducing. Their rate of rotation is incredibly fast, which means they become nasty flicker on screen. While I don’t have the epilepsy triggers to make me react dangerously to those, it’s still a very unpleasant surprise to come out of a jump at something I find difficult to look at due to the violent flickering. It was good to see options like these in an Accessibility section, even in a game where these effects are very minor.

Disclosure note – before I go on, I would HEAVILY recommend this game with the obligatory disclosure thing being that it is a copy I paid money for on Steam.

So what’s the game about ?

You start off in the late 1950s, as one of 5 space agencies and the aim is to get a manned base on Mars. It’s fairly open ended, although you want to get to the milestones along the way quicker. Cos it’s a game and you want to win, having fun along the way. The agencies involved are USA, Russia, ESA, China and Japan, although you can customise one of those to your liking with boosts and handicaps. My agency is the Dragon Space agency.

You start with sounding rockets and then move on to bigger and bigger things. It feels like it follows other games like the Buzz Aldrin game but it has its own very easy and simple gaming loop. Every spacecraft has an upper stage and booster below and each need to be beefy enough for the job in hand.

This was the first attempt at going to the Moon. The rockets have scaled up a bit since the sounding rocket. Sadly despite the great conditions, this one was also my first rocket to go boom (screenshot above). RIP Computer Astronauts.

One more thing about this game, it’s also teaching the resource management. You have Science, Money and Support as the aspects that let you advance faster. Science leads to newer and better facilities, missions and rockets. You need Money to build the rocket. And increased Support leads to more monthly funding, although you can’t rely on the monthly funding alone.

One thing that the original XCom game and others taught me was that if you spend all the money early on frivolous items, you have to wait longer to do more fun things and waiting is no fun. So my people were a couple of years behind history in getting people on the Moon.

But they made it in the end. One curiosity …

I wonder if the licensing fell through there. As Japan, I’m seeing familiar rocket names appear like Atlas, Titan, Delta. Ariane is available for ESA and I suspect China and Russia have their own distinctive names. That’s something for a later run. There is no Wyvern Heavy by the way and the space shuttle has a different set up.

If you’d like to watch more, what sold me on the game was Aavak’s livestream which he’s uploaded to his second channel (playlist link). He’s a lovely chilled out guy to watch with a very relaxing voice too. Nice fella. Beware, watching those videos may lead to buying of game.

But yeah ! Highly enjoying that one, learning its systems, going through the missions, figuring out optimal play. I’ll definitely be back for further runs because it’s one of those where you can play in a more relaxed style and those fit well with me when my arms aren’t happy.

It’s one that should be a cracker educationally as well for :

The resource management aspects I mentioned before. A close resemblance to historical space programmes. Easy to figure out gameplay loops. A wealth of Spacepedia information that I haven’t looked through properly yet. And it looks nice too.

The same publisher also has a Bush Flight Simulator game coming which I’m going to keep a very close eye on. There’s actually a few really promising looking games coming. Per Aspera will follow on from Mars Horizon by setting you as an AI building the first colony on Mars. Flight of Nova is an aerospace flight sim and there are a couple more I have my eyes on.

Actually feeling a little better now that I’ve done a bit of typing ! Hope you all have a great day, stay safe, be well.

More views from lockdown and beyond

by Sleepypete

November 15, 2020

10:36 pm

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birthday, games, picture, stayathome

Hello everyone,

2020’s going on for a while isn’t it ? I’ve been doing birthday things (not much), advent things (some), gaming things and … working from home things. So nothing unusual there then.

I had cake. It was a couple of lemon cheesecake slices. Plus I also acquired lemon slices that came in packets of two. That’s almost an obligation isn’t it …

One thing that changed from previous years is that I actually had my birthday day off. I haven’t done that since I can remember. It’s a bit different with it being in lockdown. I’d usually nip off at some strategic time in the morning and acquire cakes and other munchies from the supermarkets next door to where I worked prior to this year.

And then I’d hugely enjoy people coming up to the desk in search of cake. Good times. Hopefully that tradition will be back next year. And if the birthday was on a weekend, I’d just bring them in for the sister’s birthday which is actually today (two days after mine).

Happy birthday sister !

Cake is good. I’ve probably been spending too much time in the games too … Let’s see. It’s been :

Kamd told me about a nice little cluster of gas giants, all within visual range of each other.

Kamd also told me about this place, a moon with geysers orbiting an Earth like planet. Kamd is a site that lets you know if anyone has reported things worth taking a closer look at. When I acquire a links list widget (it doesn’t come as standard with WordPress), I’ll add Kamd to the list. In the meantime, Linky !

Oh, I’m also trying something new with the images that will hopefully make them open in new tabs so you can have a better look at them. I wanted to get a bit more traveling in and along the way was a neutron star :

That was the first megajump in this ship. In the early days of the game, 35 light year jumps were about the limit. That jump was 289 …

One thing about getting away from the established areas is the chance of finding something new, like the water world above. Only 0.05% of the galaxy has been visited by players yet …

Including this, which was my stopping point for that leg of the journey. I have to say, the purple highlights on the grey hull works really well, especially with the yellow / orange highlights.

One thing players like to do is to customise the head up display colours away from orange. I actually like the orange … it’s easy for me to read. I like it in the Deus Ex games too … I’m still working my way through the first Adam Jensen game. The last time I left it, we were through the first visit to Detroit of the near future. I’ve moved on a fair bit since then.

Turns out the people who attacked your company were working out of a government facility and you find yourself going on in there to get more answers.

Steadily made my way through there. One odd thing is that I know in previous run throughs, I was able to clear the areas completely through stealth and non lethal takedowns. I’m having to resort to leaving a few of the enemies up this time. I’ve probably forgotten the optimum routes through, it’s been 8 years since I played this one last.

Some of the AI visual lines of sight have always been a bit odd though. One of the criticisms of the game when it came out was that your hand was forced when it came to the boss characters. There was no way to win the fights while leaving them alive.

There wasn’t much left of that one. Still, they did tell me where to go :

Yes, that’s a city on top of a city. More about that in a later post. I’m actually a fair bit behind, I’m on the last set piece area before leaving Hengsha for the second time. There was a DLC expansion pack called The Missing Link with another small chapter but I don’t think I’ll do that one this time.

As well as Deus Ex Human Revolution, there has been more Motorsport Manager. It’s an easy game to play as it’s mostly hands off with only a few interventions needed. And it manages to do that while still being compelling. My team is winning everything at the moment but the strength of this game is that you have to get the right strategy still to make that happen. And you can affect that by intervening with early out of sequence pit stops to get your driver out of traffic that’s slowing them down.

I haven’t done much at all in Star Trek Online lately, although I’ll go back there for more of the episodes. I think I realised that I wasn’t enjoying doing the daily mayhem mission every day and as soon as you find that you don’t have to do that, it’s easier to just stop grinding and do something enjoyable. There has been Stellaris happening as well, a brief abandoned game with the Nomnivorian Swarm (was hemmed in) and the current one sees me looking for the Mechanist achievement. I’m not enjoying that one though so I’ll close it as soon as I get big enough for the achievement.

One thing I do need to do more is the drawing. The only things I’ve done lately are modifications. I still have that Dwagon Rock Band to finish. And the alphabet too.

Back to work tomorrow though. Or rather, back online tomorrow. But … Farcebook demands tribute in the means of a thumbnail pic at the end so :

Cake ! Stay safe everyone, be well.

Round the world, round the galaxy ?

by Sleepypete

November 8, 2020

8:37 pm

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futuristic, games, internet spaceship, mental health, picture, sailing, stayathome

Hello everyone,

Me stuff first … I think I’m in one of those slumps at the moment. You know, where you think you should be doing things but the things end up not happening and then you get more disappointed in yourself due to not doing the things and it becomes a self reinforcing issue.

My psychology tends to be like that. I’ll enjoy the times when I’m flying but people with this issue can’t really control when they’re in the slump and it’s really tough to get yourself out of said slump.

Don’t worry about me too much though. I’ve got a good bunch of people around who I can natter to. I’ve got a good focus of things to aim on at work. Having focus is good. It gives you a steer and a direction to go in when your mind thinks you should be doing Things but doesn’t think much of the options on hand. The thing with work is that you’ll usually have a series of things that you absolutely must get done, which leads to that focus.

Yep. Still working. UK has gone into lockdown again but the circumstances for me and my team haven’t really changed. We’ve been working from home, taking advantage of remote working connectivity and skype to stay in touch and keep things rattling along. That’s been happening since the original lockdown in March. The only thing that has changed is that we won’t be doing an away trip this month. The activity is still happening but less of us are going due to the lockdown.

Talking of going places …

It was the start of the Vendee Globe round the world single handed yacht race today. I’ve been looking forward to this since the end of the last one.

That’s Sam Davies of Initiative Coeur waving farewell. The next time we’ll see them will be in about 2.5 months. May they have fair winds and swift, safe sailing.

This is one of those ultimate sporting events. Yep, there’s a lot of technology involved that makes the boats fast but the sailors are all at the mercy of the weather and random objects in the water. Technology like foils to lift the boats out of the water (makes them go FAST) helps but it’s the better sailors who will go out in front. And then there’s no small amount of luck too with the weather and those objects in the water. I follow the Brits especially closely and the site I’ll be following the race on is Alex Thomson’s site (linky).

It’s early days so far and apart from one, they’re all within 23nm of each other. Hopefully that lasts for as long as possible. I’m sure we’ll get an exciting race.

Looking forwards to it.

Part of that slump has involved the internet spaceships as well. I really don’t like the combat in the game and definitely didn’t enjoy the conflict zone community goals. I nearly did a bit more mining but was finding other things to do that were more enjoyable. Like …

That’s Cloudpunk, a game with a very Bladerunner-esque vibe where you play a delivery driver in a futuristic city. There’s an exaggerated pixelated look to the graphics which I think works nicely.

The soundtrack is excellent too. It’s had me chair dancing a couple of times.

And there is a dog AI. I definitely enjoyed my first little session in the game last night. However …

New ship ! And a new mission. She’s the Searching for Dragons, callsign K080LD and her mission is to circumnavigate the galaxy.

There was a bit of preparation work to do first though, including visits to a couple of engineer bases.

Trying out the new paint job there. Looks good. This is a free gift to everyone who owned the Horizons expansion that enabled planetary landings, the expansion has been rolled back into the main game in preparation for the next one coming early next year. It’s an interesting move. I like it, it’s a nice gesture plus it collapses the code base down to one variant which should make for easier and more reliable coding. Or less bugs for us players.

My engineer sense getting the better of me there. One fun thing of the game is looking at the detail aspects. How are the ships put together to make them work as spaceships. So on the Anaconda above, there’s a command area up top, weapons below and it looks like big box shaped areas which will be where the cargo would go. I’m always curious about the landing gear too and how people are expected to embark and disembark. I’ll have a closer look at that at some point when I find interesting planets to land on.

Or you lighten the ship up, put in the big hyperdrive and zoom off around the galaxy. That shot is in the livery I picked out a while ago. Looks good, hopefully there will be a good few screenshots coming in the next couple of months.

Last one coming in a bit … Other things I’m looking at currently are :

Advent stuff – I missed the boat with the marshmallow advent calendar (all sold out) but I have a list of games to talk about with the Advent things. There are many games on the list. I will need to play some of them to get screenshots. I know, tragic.

More upgrades – I’ll probably be upgrading to a nVidia 3070 based card when stocks become available and the price gouging relents. (They’ve gone up 10%+ since announcement). Or I wait for the rumoured but not announced 3060 card. Either one will be a massive upgrade on my 1060 card. I won’t be waiting for the AMD graphics cards.

And house stuff that I should be doing.

Last picture for tonight. That was stopping off at the Iris Nebula Visitor Centre. Found base, not found nebula. Yet.

It was good being back in the game. I dropped The Outer Worlds due to being bored with the story and the gameplay. Star Trek Online has been scaled back to me just playing the episodes occasionally. I’m thinking about going back into Final Fantasy XIV, I need to see how my arms decide to behave.

I am still having to limit things though. I was feeling tightness in my arm earlier which I need to monitor.

Probably need to add mattress to that House List. And a chair ! Mine is getting old and rocks more than it should in angles that it shouldn’t.

Oh well. Getting old, like me. Birthday soon !

And on that note, goodnight everyone, stay safe, be well.

Bionic Near Future Conspiracy, very orange

by Sleepypete

October 30, 2020

10:24 pm

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gaming, picture

Hello everyone,

I’d been thinking about going back to an older game again, after enjoying Deus Ex Mankind Divided far more than I thought I would earlier in the year. Oh and I’m also enjoying watching Rythian’s playthrough of Deus Ex as well. So … picture journey ! What’s first …

Oh, there are going to be spoilers in here so if you don’t want those for an 8 year old shooty game, look away now :-D.

That’s actually an older one, although I think I was still playing the game maxed out back then. Or maybe not because I’ve gone through a few video cards since then. This was back in 2012 and a return to the Deus Ex franchise with Deus Ex Human Revolution. It was perhaps limited in what it tried to do but what it attempted, it pulled off supremely well. It’s one of only two games that I played enough to acquire all of the Steam achievements.

That’s from the prologue. Armed invaders have erm … invaded the company building that you’re responsible for providing the security for and you go in there to sort them out. I was enjoying the gunplay, very smooth. There are achievements to do with Pacifist playthroughs where you leave every opponent alive (apart from the bosses which you have to kill). I’ve already got that one so I wasn’t too bothered about it this time. Besides, there are bugs in the game which mean that if you shoot bad guys with tranquilizer darts, sometimes they die. Had that happen twice tonight.

Yep. Will be going after that one too later.

Our protagonist, Adam Jensen, is fully meat and bone human at this point … but not for too much longer. You see, repelling the invasion doesn’t go so well and it’s not long before we come back to Mr Jensen after he’s had his arms and legs chopped off and exchanged for bionic replacements. I’m not entirely sure how much of the original meat and bone fella is left but there’s some fairly heavy augmentations going on. One thread running through is that not all of these augmentations and amputations were strictly necessary but his boss had them put in anyway.

Curious ethics there. The ethics around augmentation is a running theme through the two games (DXHR and the sequel, Deus Ex Mankind Divided). One issue is rejection syndrome, which will come up more in the Hong Kong sections. There’s also an identity issue …

Home sweet home … but …

Definite identity issues there. While our Mr Jensen has been able to physically integrate with his new limbs, he’s struggling to do so mentally. When playing the game originally, the thought hit about my wonky shoulder. Perhaps from the I, Robot film as well where the main character had his arm replaced. Would I want to have my shoulder and arm replaced if it meant having full or even enhanced movement plus no pain ? It’s a curious thought. What do you think ? I actually think I’d prefer to stay 100% meat and bone. While my arm and shoulder are a bit broken, they still safely repair up to a certain point. Mechanical stuff needs maintenance.

Oh, it’s not just bad guys. There are also robotic enemies. Some are easier to deal with than others …

Yep. The old boxes in front of the cameras trick. They’ll never suspect me if there’s a bucket on their head. (Oh wait, that’s Skyrim).

The game is split up into a few areas, starting you off in Detroit of 2027. There’s a certain amount of orange and the near future is a bit bleak …

The environments looked great for their time, although there is a decent amount of simplification going on there which is somewhat hidden away from the gamer. It’s to make sure that the game looks great while still being as playable as possible.

There’s some fun bugs in there too :-D. I think that bug is fixed but I’ll be looking for them later.

It’s probably fairly clear that this is one of my favourite games and one of the reasons for that is the characters. Even when I go Pacifist, there’s one particular section that I break out the more dangerous toys … and it’s this lady :

That’s Faridah Malik, pilot for the Sarif Industries company that our Adam Jensen works for. I like Malik, definitely not one to be taken lightly. We see more of that in the first Hong Kong sidequests. Looks good there too, although those crinkles in the flightsuit aren’t crinkles … they’re texture work. That’s one difference between 2011/2012 games and 2020 games, the models are so much more detailed. But the cleverness from 10 years ago meant that you’d only see that difference if you looked real close.

And Malik would slap you if you tried that.

One slightly sad thing is that even if you refrain from going through the vents and raiding the offices at Sarif Industries, there are emails when you come back that suggest you did. You can opt not to do the larceny but the game still thinks you did the deed.

I left that office alone … Couple more and then that’s it for this post … One achievement involved getting a ball through a hoop, I kinda overdid it. Oops.

Oh and …

There will be more later …

Oh, I’ve also been trying out a new position for my desktop mouse. With it on the upper deck of my desk, I was playing games with a locked straight arm which was causing stress on my shoulder. I’ve rerouted things so that I can easily move it to the same level as my keyboard and I’m trying that out in games. It’s promising so far. Instead of a straight arm, the arm is bent and more relaxed and supported more by the armrest of my chair.

Hopefully that leads to less pain later. And less :

We shall see !

There’s my ride. Gotta go. Stay safe, be well !

Is this thing dusty yet ?

by Sleepypete

October 15, 2020

9:45 pm

Comments Off on Is this thing dusty yet ?

Uncategorized

dwagon, gaming, New, picture, rambling, ship

Probably 🙂

Oh ! Just spotted that WordPress allows captions on images. That’s new … never had that on Blogger. And there I go with the opening up a post and goi…. SQUIRREL !

To be honest though, I should probably have what amounts to the Cone of Shame from the same movie that made the Squirrel joke thing popular. Up was a remarkable film, one of the best to come out from Pixar. Going from heartwarming to heart breaking, all in the intro before the main body of the movie kicked off. I should watch it again some day.

Some of you may be coming here via a Work Thing that’s probably been published by now. HI THERE ! And welcome. I try to keep this as a place where I talk about what I’m thinking and things I’ve been doing. Like the internet spaceships :

There we go. New toy played with.

If I’ve been someplace, I’ll usually talk about that as well although I do notice that I didn’t put anything on the old blog about a trip around SS Great Britain that happened almost two years ago now. That was a good little walk around the ship and I’d thoroughly recommend people going for a look when things are less scary out there than they are now.

I’ll have to post the rest of those pictures some day. And then there’s the Lego and other building things I’ll do. I like how they steadily come together. Sometimes the designers of the model will hide little Easter Eggs away inside as well, which is something I like a lot.

The art is something that’ll appear when it’s done as well, although there are limits on what I can post here. Some of what I do is modifications made to other people’s work. Typically emotes … those will appear on their discord servers and I’ll send them on to other people I know as well. But it’s a Really Bad Thing to essentially copy someone else’s art and take it as your own. That’s one reason I’ve been looking to acquire an art style of my own, that way I own more of I post here. (I note that WordPress has added a (C) to the bottom of the page too !)

I try to keep this space relatively free of current events and what’s happening in the world. You’ll see far too much about what’s happening in other spaces and I find it a massive drag on the psyche … especially as you have to apply a heavy quality filter to everything you see because pretty much everything posted is bent one way or another. But yeah, there’s far too much of the bad stuff out there, I like to keep this space free of it unless there’s something I really have to get out of my mind and into typed in thoughts.

The blog template as a whole is something that still needs more work. The blogger version has a couple of lists of links and I want to bring that back too. It also has a blogroll where I can see if people have posted new stuff recently. That’s an excellent thing to have. But I’ll look to keep the white text on black basic format. Heavily contrasting colours aid readability and dark mode is easier on the eyes, it means you don’t have Big White Background blaring out at you. Black text on white paper works for books but I’m a convert to dark mode for screens.

I haven’t done anything really new lately with the art (outside of posing screenshots), it’s all been modifications. Spooky emotes are in and I’ve spookified three of them. One got adopted and is on the lovely Margaret Krohn’s discord (website link). I didn’t like the middle one and I don’t know whether the recipient of the third liked her one. But I was very happy that the animation conversion of another thing for Maggie K’s discord got adopted.

It’s one thing getting positive feedback, that’s always awesome especially to someone who lives on that like me. It’s a whole other thing having your art adopted for someone else’s posts or pages. That goes far beyond “I like your stuff”. People from work may vaguely recognise another one :

That was a fun little one that I did a little while ago. I’ve been finding that taking of pictures of what’s on the paper using a camera does odd things to the colour balance and it can turn the paper into grey, which the image disappears into.

That’s my current avatar, edited and updated to bring him out of the page some more. I left the grey down at the bottom to show him sitting on something. Oh and I still have the awkward feelings about how his knee is bending the wrong way :-D. The book needs tidying as well, I deleted too much when removing the grey.

That’s the kind of style I’m aiming for with my own drawings. I was a big fan of Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes as a kiddie. Those were very simply drawn cartoons that were absolute genius. If you look up close at a lot of drawn cartoons or animations, it’ll probably surprise you how simple they actually are. Simple works !

But simple also needs precision that I don’t have yet. The artists I like tend to have very precise lines and curves, which they then fill with colour. I’m sure the process behind the image is a bit more complex than that.

I’m a bit limited though by my body … I’m having a fair few upper body issues at the moment. My neck and shoulders are suffering in particular from stiffness that’s getting more and more uncomfortable. The shoulder issues extend down my arm into my right wrist as well. It was with a fair bit of relief at work when I was able to shift from doing written meeting notes and into things I’d type into a Word document or a draft email. Typing is way easier for me than writing or … drawing.

That said, the graphics tablet I have is great for doing those sketches. And I need to draw more of my dwagon alphabet and the dwagon rock band. Maybe next year’s April Fool will be setting up a rock band, although I did that already in 2015. Gosh, that’s longer ago than I thought.

And this post has gone on a bit longer than I thought it might too !

Physically – struggling. I need to greatly reduce how much of certain games I play. I haven’t been back to Final Fantasy XIV and may have to add Star Trek Online to that danger list as well. Elite has been on a bit of a break due to being disillusioned with the combat side of it.

Motorsport Manager has been a great one as it’s mostly hands off with occasional intervention for tactics. I may well see if I can lead 3 teams to success this time around, swapping from single seaters to GT cars and then into Endurance, with the switch happening when the team wins.

I haven’t written about music for a while either, that’s overdue ! I can happily report that my ears are back to normal again, which came as a bit of a surprise because I didn’t get that POP feeling from them. I suffer with tinnitus as a baseline (which is probably why I like multiple sound sources going on) but had a blocked ear for a few weeks too which was affecting me more than I’d like (headaches as well).

Wrap up time I think … for any new people, this is a fairly typical post where I’ll start out with one idea, go SQUIRREL, talk about something else for a bit and maybe, just maybe get back to the original theme.

I’ll hopefully see you next time !

PS There’s a few extra posts around in that archive too, I need to delete them ! The proper import tool didn’t work, so I had to use a messier alternate. Instead of a little over 1650 posts, it added in 2841 … I need to get deleting !

PS2 I just had a mental image of a Dwagon holding a big eraser too. So that may happen if my hands are up to it.