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Book exile and music hunting

February 4, 2021

10:37 pm

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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

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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.

Defensive Baking and Speed Running

by Sleepypete

September 6, 2020

10:16 pm

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Hello everyone,

Book today ! Internet spaceships later.

It wasn’t that book. Although after seeing it in my search for a thumbnail today, I kinda want to read that now ! The pic above is The Great Dragon Bake Off by Nicola O’Byrne and here’s the Goodreads link.
Nah, this semi-review is about A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon.

After switching to this one after giving up on the tedious Existence (David Brin), this book was a wonderful breath of fresh air. It’s written in a light style and it’s always half a sentence away from an inventive bit of humour that’ll keep you laughing all the way through the book and quite often, bursting out into uncontrollable chuckles.

What’s it about ?

This book is centred around the 14 year old Mona, who lives in a feudal medieval era world blessed by a light touch of magic. Wizards are rare … and our Mona has an affinity for bread and baking. She can make gingerbread men dance and animate dough in various other ways.

However … not all is well in this world …

There’s been a Murder ! This is one of those lovely books that’s extremely well paced. You don’t get bored but happily get drawn gently into a tale of skullduggery and then heroism. It builds to a natural climactic finish too. Quite possibly a bit dark with what one of the characters gets up to … but you probably need a bit of evil to balance all that fluffy goodness.

I think I had all sorts of bread puns lined up when I was talking to someone about this the other day but the internet spaceships thing today has banished them a bit ! Let’s see …

A nice fluffy story. It rises satisfactorily throughout, it tempts with goodness and the humour and characters are the icing on the top. Oh and it’s consistent within itself too, coming out the oven with a lovely texture throughout.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) – wonderful book, will definitely be checking out what else she’s come out with. Humour throughout and delicious inventiveness.

Internet spaceships ? I may have to be a bit more careful with these because my body wasn’t liking what I was doing with them today. (Oo-er?)

I left things last time with the Hand of Caledorn doing a different type of mining … After one more quick session, I’ve switched over to Zoomnarr, aka 5K-L4H. That’s Zoomnarr in the picture above. She’s my second Krait Mk II ship, with that type selected because there hasn’t been a record run done with them yet. Mission … head to the Core.

After a little shakedown cruise first. Seen here checking a decidedly second hand science ship.

The speed run thing is to see how quickly you can get from the Sol system to Sagittarius A* at the galactic centre. It’s been done in 86 minutes 57 seconds … in a ship with greater jump range. They’re probably seeing 75-77 light year jumps there, Zoomnarr can do 61.1 light year jumps. I think they have a much craftier route as well than the ones the Spansh plotter gives me.

The things they look for to register runs are 3 screenshots … the one above which proves you started on the same day you arrived (they changed the info in the next one). The time of departure :

There we go. 12.58.00 in the top right. And time of arrival, using the Galaxy Map to prove that you’re at the Core :

This time it’s 16.08.49 in the top left, making the run time 3 hours, 10 minutes and 49 seconds for my fastest time yet. I thought I had a chance of breaking through to under 3 hours but made a few errors at neutron stars :

That was the worst, where I bumped into the exclusion zone which drops you out of hyperspace. To go really far and fast, you drop into the streamers of the neutron stars and that lets you jump 4 times the distance that you would without the boost.

One thing about the trip is that as you get closer to the centre, the star density massively increases. It’s pretty. And I’m definitely liking the new colour scheme.

And another visit to Sagittarius A* ! I think this is the fifth time I’ve been there on this character and it’s still a treat seeing the stars lensing around the monster in the middle there.

But it was time to put the ship to bed and there she is coming to rest in Explorer’s Anchorage. The trip back will be a lot slower and I’ll be checking out places to see as well with a new rover.

Next objective – to have Zoomnarr on screen with Cmdr Drew Wagar’s next Elite tour, starting in October. I should be back in the bubble for that :-).

Hopefully with limbs that have forgiven me by then too ! The speed run play style is a bit reminiscent of MMOs, where you feel pressured to keep at it when you’d normally step away for a moment or take it a bit more chill. I was feeling this trip in my hip (strange I know !) and I’ll have reminders from the arms over the next few days.

But the setting of a new time and the screenshots I’ll get on the way back will make it worth it.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Venturing Out

by Sleepypete

July 13, 2020

9:25 pm

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cars, internet spaceship, picture, stayathome

I’ve been out of the house ! Even further than the local supermarket place !

It was work though. Not sure if that really counts. It was good to see and talk to people I know in person again instead of just over the phone and Skype. Can’t say what I was getting up to though cos … work.

I’ll be ending with more Internet Spaceship pics but before I get to that :

Being out and about more ? I’ll wait a bit longer there I think. This current situation isn’t over yet. I think I may actually have been lightly touched by the virus because I wasn’t particularly well back in April. It wasn’t serious enough to think about contacting for aid but I did have numerous symptoms that I put down to other things like : April allergies, dust, bad buns from a service station and otherwise adjusting to the new situation. I’m still incredibly lacking in energy though but that could also partly due to not doing much.

But yep. I need to be getting a few things sorted out, like new glasses in particular and a few other things as well. Plus I want to do one of those city centre wanders that tends to see me going past book caves, Lego shops and places that sell music.

I think I might have to look at alternatives for my next car … I’m on my third Lexus IS300h at the moment. I’m not planning on changing it but they do keep trying to tempt me into changing. At the moment, it’s to get one of the last ones to come into the UK. They’re discontinuing it … which feels mad because it was becoming an increasingly popular car in the car park. Looks like they’re looking to move in to SUV type cars and are abandoning that particular part of the market. I’m not a fan of SUVs, I can see why people might like them but for me, all that extra metal isn’t doing anything for me so it’s just slowing things down.

What would I get if I had to change now ? It’d be between the bigger Lexus ES or quite possibly a Toyota Corolla … they have a 2.0litre hybrid which looks fast and efficient. The Prius is efficient but slow and the CT I had was a wonderful little car but … slow and less efficient.

We’ll see ! But yeah, not planning to change any time soon.

Internet spaceships ? I’ve been continuing the tour. I’m hoping to catch up to one of the live streams, which is a definite possibility and might actually lead to some hanging around not doing very much. I think I’ve been burning out on the game again, or it might be a case of needing to do something different.

I’ve actually been in different games as well, courtesy of Steam sales.

That’s Gear City, which I found while looking into a different game. This one sees you set up a car manufacturer and try to survive and thrive. I’ve been starting off in 1900, the era of vintage cars. We’ll see where it goes.

I picked up the DLC for Battletech and have an early campaign game going there … It started pretty well but then turned a bit rough. I’ve got a pretty firm handle on the tactics there now, basically speed is life and concentration of firepower is the way to go. Get guns off the field is a strong theory to run with.

I’ve also acquired Oxygen Not Included (CK loves that), Knights of Pen and Paper 2, Reassembly and Hardspace Shipbreaker. I still need to try those ones. I’ve managed to bin the Idle Champions addiction, that’s a curious one. You barely interact with the game, outside of figuring out the strategy you’re going to go with but you feel like you have to keep monitoring it.

Still doing the miles in Elite though. I left it last time at Tau Ceti. The next step in the tour was to visit Achenar, home of the Empire.

But first, that’s the latest ship in the fleet. The name is Maverick, callsign GO-05E. Some of you may catch the reference. She’s built for speed.

Speed and fly bys of towers. I built this one to go really, really fast (we’ll get to that) and to zoom around the features both in space and on planets.

Back to the tour though. The first place to visit was the Homestead, close to the home star.

I couldn’t resist a closer look at the farm.

Quick peek at one of the planets too.

The Imperials have their own capital ships. Far more stylish than the very functional Federation capital ship design.

Coming in to dock at Dawes Hub. One of the things I wanted to try out in the Achenar system was a gravity dive. This is where you start at altitude at a high gravity planet and see how fast you can go, preferably without needing to lithobrake (ground assisted braking, usually involves dents).

The dive started out at 1000km up and the gravity meter is already showing 5.94g. That’s a lot of weight. The technique is to start off at the ship’s top speed, point slightly downwards and thrust “up”. Oh and you turn the flight assist off so that you go more like Newtonian physics instead of the ship trying to keep you to your maximum speed.

After dropping around 250km, the speed is up to 3,817m/s. The ship is already a fast one, as seen in that first screenshot. The normal maximum speed is about 700m/s.

I thought about doing a tower flyby but … kinda missed it, shooting over the top at an altitude of 375km.

This is where I thought I’d just about hit the top speed I was going to get, with me pulling the brakes on at 7,500m/s. The altitude was a mere 34.7km up (I wanted to leave some room in case levelling out wasn’t simple) and the gravity at this point is 6.7g.

Pretty good for a first attempt at doing a gravity dive. Speeds of above 10km/s are possible.

I didn’t go for a landing this time (6.7g is heavy !) but it was a fun little thing to do.

Bit like getting out of the house and on the road again ! I’m still pretty tired from all that though, so gaming sessions have been short and I haven’t opened a book since finishing Murderbot 2 either.

Hope you’re all good out there as well.

Be well, stay safe, have fun !

Potato On Tour

by Sleepypete

July 5, 2020

9:25 pm

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Hello everyone,

More internet spaceships today … Perhaps while I ignore what’s happening in the world outside still ! The shops are steadily opening here but I haven’t ventured out to them yet partly because I know this crisis isn’t over yet plus I don’t think there’s actually much I want to buy at the moment !

What are things I want to pick up ?
Graphics card – I’m starting to pick up games that push past the limit of what my current card can do so I’m looking to upgrade from my 1060 3GB card to a 2060 or even up to a 2070. With a Next Gen card on the horizon, prices are finally starting to drop.
Keyboard – mine continues to have an issue or two. It’s currently repeating occasional o’s and the light up keys are stuck in set colours at the moment. (I could probably fix this by unplug / plugin).
Hotas upgrade – Not sure about this one actually but I am having increasing hand issues which might be down to my current stick and throttle.
Oven – needed one of these for a while but mine is still perfectly capable of burning food.
Glasses – these are becoming much more urgent and will require a trip out to get some more.

Internet Spaceships ?

As always, click for bigger. I left things last time at Cortes Base and have since embarked on the Drew Wagar Elite Lore Tour (youtube link), following that path and hoping to catch up before the end. The Warp Factor Potato may make an appearance on his stream at some point if I catch up.

The first stop was Mercury, closest planet to the Sun.

Venus is next up, still too hostile to land on.

And then we move on to our home and I’m pretty sure that’s Australia. One thing I’m really curious about is that while the game is on GMT, that’s the wrong side of the planet to be in the day time !

There’s Europe, with rather curious lighting if you have a closer look.

Both Earth and Mars have capital ships in orbit. Nice big chunky ships and the Federation ones look like they mean business. Earth is no longer the place where the Federation is run from in the Elite universe, massive ecological damage led to the end of most of the superpowers and then the Congress decamped to Mars.

There’s still a lot to look at though, this is one of the space stations in orbit.

Moon’s still there too, a station here is the starting point for the speed runs to the galactic centre.

Mars is the next stop, the 4th planet in our solar system. In the Elite universe, it’s been fully terraformed and is actually in better shape than Earth is. I think the pimple there is Olympus Mons.

There was a megaship to have a look at too.

A bit further out we have Jupiter in the background, with the moon Io orbiting. This is the setting for the 2001 and 2010 stories … at least as they were done in the films. In reality, this is a really unhealthy place to be because Jupiter is massively hot radioactively.

Of course I had a closer look.

I had a stop off at Europa too, which is another important part of the 2001, 2010 and 2061 stories. “All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there.” Erm …

There’s a base there too, which I mostly landed on to get a picture with Jupiter :-D. (Jupiter is at something like its highest point in the sky in the previous pic).

Saturn is the next major gas giant in our solar system. In the original 2001 book, the Incident happens at Jupiter and then after Hal is disconnected, they fly on to Saturn which is where the monolith is with the Discovery being run remotely from Earth. That’s changed for the film and subsequent books, probably for the better to be honest.

Next up is another gas giant, this is me probing Uranus. Yes, I went there. I have no shame.

Last place for the tour is Neptune, another smaller gas giant. The sun’s a bit far off in these pics hence the lack of general illumination out here.

Bit more lights in there. What are Fuel Rats ? They’re a wonderful organisation in Elite that will come out and rescue pilots who run out of fuel. I’ve never had to call on their services but they’re quite possibly the best player run organisation I know in any game.

Plenty of room in that tunnel by the way …

That’s what I flew inside …

It became time to move on though. The Voyager probes are apparently in the solar system, somewhere … I didn’t stick around to find them though. Next stop, Tau Ceti, which is the first extra solar colony in the Elite universe. There are a few more curious bits of lore to pick up on in the tourism beacons in this system too. That’s probably enough pictures for one day though …

There are a bunch more from today ! But I’ll hold those for another post.

For now, be well,

Stay safe. Have a great week everyone.

Books ! And a little bit of buggying around

by Sleepypete

June 30, 2020

10:13 pm

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Hello everyone,

I feel tired ! Dunno why, haven’t exactly been doing that much. Perhaps it’s lack of sleep, or my body getting used to not doing very much. I’ll be out of the house soon though, for more than just stocking up the cupboards again.

Also been doing book … Not just one book as well but two ! Let’s see. It should be through the Google thing by now :

Actual paperback. Perhaps rare in this era of ebooks and Kindles … Signed by the author too :

Big nod. (Yes, that’s my thumb). This was a case of seeing a sequel to a book I’d already read and enjoyed and being content to pay a little more than e-book price in order to support that local bookshop and to get one with a little, superficial aye, extra.

What’s the book about ? It’s the sequel to Embers of War, which sets up this world by introducing the setting and characters which include the spaceship at the centre of this trilogy, the Trouble Dog. After being required to undertake an atrocity that ended a war, she retired from naval service and joined the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescue and preservation of life. This middle book sees the Trouble Dog and crew embark on another rescue attempt, this time to jump into the unknown to rescue a ship of salvagers who came a cropper when they attempted to do a bit of illegal salvage on a wandering generation ship.

Oh and all hell is breaking loose in the galaxy while this is going on. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot cos it’ll spoil both this book and the previous book but …

I love the Trouble Dog, she’s a ship with attitude and an avatar that combines smart, tough, sassy and resourcefulness. The book swaps between various characters, with its 400 pages broken up in to 83 chapters which each focus on a central character. The Trouble Dog is the star of her own chapters.
As is Nod, an alien of the Druff race which are innately brilliant engineers. Every ship has a Druff engineer that keeps the ship going. They’re utterly alien, written expertly by the author and lend a welcome change of perspective to the books.
And I like the rest of the human characters too, who all have their own driving characteristics, mental flaws, issues and other quirks that make them and keep them interesting.

This one is very definitely a Middle Book and as such it moves the general plotline on considerably. It doesn’t give an end, Embers of War is definitely the beginning and … I got the last book in the queue to read. I’ll be looking forwards to that one as much as I am looking forward to reading Absolution Gap.

The second book was Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells and it’s book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. The first comment that always comes out about these books is … HOW MUCH ? The price is a bit too inflated for my liking at £6 for essentially a novella. Still, this one and All Systems Red (book 1) were both captivating reads. The central character just goes by their self given name, Murderbot. They’re a former SecUnit (Security Unit) that’s gone rogue. Except all they want to do is have a chance to peacefully watch as many entertainment serials that they can.

It doesn’t work that way though, so Murderbot ends up on adventures that have gone from pure survival and a start in figuring out the events that made them go rogue. Cos they didn’t just go rogue originally, they were involved in the death of all of the humans in the place it happened.

I’ll be back for more of the Murderbot Diaries. They’re a fun read. Bit quick … but that also means that it’s tight writing that rattles the story along without any more padding than is necessary to tell you what’s going on in Murderbot’s head.

Recommended – both books.

Buggying around ? Internet Spaceships again ! Gotta admit, I’m having to be a little careful with play time because my hand and shoulders are bugging me again but it was good to get back to the populated bubble again and have a little explore. I left it last time at the Hawkins Gap Bases (the spelling is horribly inconsistent I know).

This was a good one to fly by … It’s a ringed planet lit by the local neutron star.

The end of this journey took me to Cortes Base, which has been adopted by a race circuit for intrepid fighter pilots and maybe by pilots of the little ships too. I may have to check that out. I took the buggy in there …

I found a couple of issues along the way, This is a dome on the outside of the base where the foundations don’t quite reach to the ground. I’m actually ok with this, although it reveals some of the magic around how these planetary bases are generated and built in the game. A couple of glitches are ok.

I never gave the birds eye view ! There we go, on approach.

This was the way in and … you may be able to detect another glitch. The ramp doesn’t reach quite all the way to the ground. That’s ok, I had jet boosters let me jump up there :-D. Little bit of creative use of a jump ramp maybe but it was still good to get in there.

And have a little look around. Click for bigger on these by the way.

One fun thing is that the scale is all good. The bases are massive … and in scale. Those windows up there genuinely look like a floor high each and the ground floor doors to that hangar building are scaled correctly for the rover.

Lots to explore too.

Bit quiet out there in the streets … I might have got there a bit late, their time.

Couldn’t get in to the actual base though.

Lots to see in there.

It was getting time for me to put the game to bed as well though …

Another peek from a safe distance and then it was time to be off and make a proper landing.

Outside of the internet spaceships, I’ve been working on a Dwagon Alphabet. I have most of the letters now, although it’ll take a fair bit of tweaking time before I’m happy with them all. People like them though. The first one was a Happy Birthday message for someone which I hope she enjoyed … and then more Dwagon Letters have sprung up from there as I produce them. I’m a fan of the Clip Studio application that I’ve been using, it makes the drawing and editing with the tablet happen very easily.

I think that’s it for tonight though. Stay safe, be well, steer clear of the internet if it’s causing you grief (lots has been coming out into the public eye lately, much of it unhealthy).

Dwagon Alphabet will come later but for now … out take from the excursion !

Landing Autopilot’s been sniffing the rocket fuel again.