stayathome - Sleepypete's Pillow

Cor, toasty out

June 14, 2021

5:55 pm

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Hello everyone,

We have that traditional British thing at the moment where it’s flipped over into a bit warmer than the average and we’re suddenly all declaring that we’re melting. It’s the houses …

Meme picture. A big golden coloured dog is lying on the floor, facing us. He's one of the dogs with big jowls that flow down from his mouth and very long ears. They are folded out over the carpet. — Toasty indeed

After a few intense feeling weeks through work to make things happen, I have a week off this week. First one since early April I think. (Can’t remember, must be sign that I needed it !) The work stuff all came to its conclusion last week and while I can’t say what it was, everything worked, we got our Thing done and it actually worked a bit better than I expected. Good times.

It was really toasty though. We were in places that aren’t really designed for the conditions and they’re getting a bit old now too, so not as much ventilation as would have been ideal. It was good to have the day out of the work from home office and see things working nicely.

What am I intending to do on this week off ? I need to do a decent amount of work around the house but am waiting for it to cool off a bit before I do that. I don’t do at all well in the heat so I need it to be a bit cooler. Our places are intended to retain the heat so it’s better in the winter. As an example, my graphics card thermometer is what I tend to go by. 40 degrees C is a nice temperature where I’ll start taking the jumper off. It’s reading 50 degrees C at the moment and my latest fan is saying that the place it’s at is 27 degrees C.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our ship is facing away from camera, all engines firing. The right hand side of the image is all yellow orange sun, which reflects off our ship. There is a small dot in the upper part of the image, it is our enemy ... — Duelling by the sun

Not quite as hot as there. Mining in the Manic Minarr isn’t being too profitable at the moment, so this is me back in the fleet flagship, Tiamat’s Chariot, running cargo missions and turning the tables on wannabe pirates. It’s been good too, 2 kills gave 2.5m credits and some valuable salvage. It’s a nice supplement to trading legs which are about 4m to 8m profit at the moment.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. Our pilot is on the left in a mostly cream coloured tight fitting spacesuit with dirty yellow highlights. She has blue hair and is facing away from camera towards a small ship waiting on the landing pad. It has a mostly grey livery with blue patches and the word "APEX" in white. — Taxi !

I needed to wait for Tiamat’s Chariot to be delivered to where I was though, which meant taking a taxi ride to unlock one of the new engineers for planetary operations.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My character faces away towards a floodlit base. We see the entrance gate with a sign saying "Olowe's Workshop". We see buildings in the background, lit from inside. A thin red line of a targeting laser is going through our character. — I hope that isn’t a targeting laser

The place I randomly chose was a planetary base. I couldn’t get into most of it, didn’t have the clearances. But it was good to be out and about and looking around. Performance of the game has improved markedly since release but it’s still nowhere near what it should be. I’m getting perhaps 20 frames per second while walking around.

But I’m keeping the gaming time a bit lower for now. Pushing those pixels around makes the graphics card make heat and introducing heat into already warm rooms isn’t a good idea.

I do want to get out and about properly over this week. Like seeing something in the cinema again for the first time since Feb 2020. The offerings last year didn’t really appeal too much but there are more promising things at the moment like Godzilla vs Kong, Raya and the Last Dragon and I’d count A Quiet Place II if I’d seen the first one. Cardiff is looking like a potential place. Oh and that would mean a decent amount of time in an air conditioned car too :-).

Now that I have the reading glasses, I need to be getting back to the reading too. Reading makes no heat ! No heat is good.

I’m going to leave it there though before I dive into things like our country likely needing to put restrictions on movement back in again soon. We were doing well for a while with our case numbers going down but in the last week, they’ve started ticking up again. I was kinda surprised that crowds were allowed at the last Test Match plus I think crowded pictures at gigs from oh! 3 weeks ago has a little bit to do with the uptick in that part of the world.

Hope everyone involved in those upticks gets better soon.

I’m going to put the dinner on now and refill the glass with ice cubes before settling down to the latest edition of Sun-Kissed with Tashnarr, Tessachka and Omgvandi being storytellered by TheWanderingInn in a Vampire the Masquerade game. Is good chilled out stuff, much better than your average evening telly.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

A year of lockdown, also jabby

by Sleepypete

March 24, 2021

8:49 pm

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games, stayathome, vaccine

Hello everyone,

Last week’s been a bit weird, at least since Saturday. I got jabbed …

Picture. A green Pocket Dragon looks at you expectantly. He is wearing a disc like torch above his right eye and he's carrying an implement that looks like a stethoscope. — Doctor will see you now

Yep. Jab on Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised to get the call actually, I’m a little below the 50 year old threshold got called last week but whatever the reason, I’m glad I had it.

I think I have had side effects from it but that’s something I’ll happily accommodate if it means opening everything up again. Besides, that’s a sign that the vaccine is doing its job in getting your body’s defences ready to fight a pretty nasty virus. I’ve mostly been in a bad brain condition for the few days since, although today has been better. My muscles were complaining over the weekend as well.

If you’re hesitant about the vaccine due to a fear of needles, don’t be. I barely felt a prick as they did mine and couldn’t see the evidence of the hole it made. I’m a bit nervous about needles. I make a point of looking away, so that I don’t tense up as I see the needle going in. Being relaxed makes the job easier for the stabby person and that makes it easier on you too.

It’s been a weird year hasn’t it … I’ve barely seen anyone I know all year. I’ve seen my mum once. I’ve seen barely any of the friend people, just in random encounters in Tesco. I’ve spotted my neighbour Cyberkitten a few times. Chinese happened a couple of times. It’s good to see the lady who slips bonus prawn crackers into the bag. Pizzas have kept coming … Shopping trips were cut down to a bare minimum.

I’ve seen work people on two occasions since this time last year when we were at an away trial. Our place went work from home very early and stayed that way even over last summer.

Hmm. Must think of something to write up for April 1st. I’m short on ideas at the moment.

But yeah … this last year has been very different. Perhaps it’s indulged a reclusiveness tendency ? Yeah, I’ll need to break that.

Cartoon Picture. A cute lady is standing on her own in the middle of groups, one of which has a party hat. Caption "I could be home on the internet right now"

The internet communities have probably gotten a lot stronger over the last year, outside of a certain amount of craziness last summer when we didn’t really know what was going on. Some of the internet communities are better than others, I’ve walked away from one and I’ll walk away from another soon. Gotta look at your own mental health and if a community is bad for that, find a different one.

Oh ! This blog happened as well, in a crazy few days in October. I need to do more work on it to be honest. Things like carrying over the blogroll and the useful links from the old blog. There are a few other things too :

Alt-text – first up because I think this is really, really important ! I’ll get back to accessibility later but this one is for people who depend on screen readers. The alt-text for images is my attempt at describing them for people who can’t see them. I would have liked to go back through all the posts when I got time but it ain’t gonna work for the 1700 or so posts that were imported over from the old blog.

Dark mode / light mode – accessibility again. It’s really important that when you make a site, it’s accessible by everyone. Some people get blinded by dark text on white background. (I don’t like that on screens, it works for me in books though). I like white text on a dark background with screens. It’s kinder on my eyes.

And a few other points that are escaping my still a little addled brain at the moment.

Accessibility is absolutely key though. I’ve clicked on a few links and then immediately closed the site due to things like paywall blocking, cookie popups and other things that force you do to stuff you don’t want to agree to. Or it could be because you simply cannot read what’s on the screen.

That’s ok. If you’re affected by accessibility issues, then it’s the responsibility of the person making the site to make sure we accommodate you. We want you to stay and read, if you can’t then we lose you as a reader. Every reader is important, whatever the scale of the site.

I think I’m rambling … Screenshot time ?

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is in front, wearing metal plate armour like medieval knights would wear. It has silver patterning on a green surcoat. The helmet is metal, with the point at the front. A lady in a more revealing outfit stands to her left. This is an indoor scene. — Pointy Hat ! Errr, wait ?

Got a new hat ! And shiny armour that, contrary to fantasy game norms, actually looks protective …

I’ve been having another look at the Pathfinder Kingmaker game as well. More on that at another time, I’m barely through the prologue on that one but it is great to see that it’s grown a turn based mode. That’s a weird thing. Table top role playing games started with pen and paper systems, where everyone, player and monster, took turns to act. When Baldur’s Gate came around in the 90s, everything still took its turn but it was presented to the player as a simultaneous action thing. My brain never really got on with that. It’s funny to see things turn full circle again now, with Pathfinder growing its turn based mode and Baldur’s Gate 3 also going turn based.

It makes for more relaxing gameplay, especially when there’s a lot going on in the encounters. Like 15 characters and enemies in the encounter that Fuzzy is playing through at the moment on stream. (Twitch link)

As a weird aside, I find myself craving tomato ketchup. I haven’t had tomato ketchup in years. Wonder what reminded me of it ?

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the darkened shape of the port upper side of the spaceship, lit dimly by the glowing heatsinks at the back. Behind is the white cloud of the galaxy ribbon, lensed by a black hole in the left hand side of the image. — Thanduc’s Retreat

I’ve visited another black hole since the last post … Managed to get a great angle too.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. My ship is looking rather battered in the lower centre foreground. Behind is a very large space station type ship called a fleet carrier. There is a control tower in the middle and landing pads behind. The galactic ribbon can be seen above. — Where’s the bar ?

I wanted to see what that paint job really looks like though.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. A close up of my ship on the landing pad. The paint is perfect again, with segments of orange, grey, white and a washed out yellow. We see the port upper side. The name "Searching for Dragons" is now readable, as is the callsign "K080LD" or Kobold to the rear. — All shinied up again

Looks rather smart doesn’t it ? Happy with this one.

I better sum up here, it won’t be a week until the next post. Car’s coming on Friday and I’ll be going someplace to a) pick it up and b) get pictures. The fact that the place to get pictures will also have a farm shop is purely coincidental … honest.

Picture. Meme. A small dog is wearing a mask, looking up at someone off screen. The captions are "I can assure you, madame" and "Dogs are perfectly capable of performing a cat scan." — Believe in Dog

Stay safe everyone, be well and if you are offered a vaccination soon, please do take it. The side effects are worth the pay off we’ll all get later when shops, cinemas, restaurants and the rest are able to open up again and we’re able to go Out There again with no fear of plague.

Car’s Haunted

by Sleepypete

March 15, 2021

8:10 pm

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games, stayathome

Hello everyone,

Haha, that’s a fun title from a fun meme. But that’s a little what it felt like on Friday night when I tried to do shopping. (The TLDR is that car was resurrected, shopping happened and the ghosts are quiet again).

Picture. An old red car with chrome trim and white walled wheels. The caption is "Christine. She may weigh 3,510 pounds but, I'm sure as hell not going to call her fat." — Eek

I can’t remember watching that movie but the meme’s there. It’s from Christine, penned by Stephen King and filmed by John Carpenter, where a car is haunted, possessing a possessive personality that has taken a liking to her new owner.

There’s another meme about the Moon … This one goes like :

NASA Employee : “Hey, you guys are back early”

Astronaut : “Moon’s haunted”

NASA Employee : “What ?”

Astronaut : (loading a pistol and getting back on the rocket ship) “Moon’s haunted”

And here we come to Friday … I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth saying it again (mebbe), hybrids have 2 batteries. There’s a 12V like a normal car and a massive 220V (they vary) traction battery energy store. Whereas a normal car will start by the 12V cranking the battery and then run off the alternator, the hybrid starts up all of its electronics on the 12V and then the engine is cranked using the traction battery.

However, if the 12V battery goes flat when the car isn’t used, odd things can happen. The first sign is weird messages on start up if the charge is getting low, or a dead car if the battery’s flat. The locks work off the 12V battery (there’s a mechanical key as backup).

If the charge level is just too low to allow the car to start up, Very Strange Things Happen. Like lights flickering on and off, which steadily reduce in brightness until dead car happens. This was when all the doors were unlocked too, so it needed sorting out that night.

Thankfully, I’d made preparations and had acquired a portable jump starter thingy (A Thing With A Battery And Jump Leads), in anticipation for this kind of situation occurring again. I’d seen the process done before a couple of times on 2 Lexii by AA People but this was the first time I’ve done it myself. There’s a connector under the bonnet that you’re supposed to use, or you can attach the leads to the battery in the boot, if you can get to it (mechanical lock again). I won’t describe that too much here, there are videos that do it better.

So yep, car behaving like it was haunted, throwing up a few errors for a while after I got it going again (low battery level). But it’s all ok now, verified by taking it kebab hunting last night. (I needed to find a recycling place for bottles and needed an excuse to make sure car was still ok). The cause is consequences from driving much less these days in the situation we’re all in.

I need a name for the next car by the way … I’m drawing a blank and should move away from the Star Trek theme from the last 3.

First IS was called Grey Ghost, because it was silent and grey. The name was what they called the Enterprise in WW2. So …

Second IS was called Alpha, after NCC 1701A. And then the third one was called Stan, after NCC1701B was an Excelsior class. Stan Lee did like using the word Excelsior. Following that trend, NCC1701C was an Ambassador class, but I think I go away from Enterprises because it’ll be a different type of car.

Other travels have been occurring …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is landed on an orange/grey moon, with various smoke geysers erupting. We see the aft starboard side of the ship, pointing away from the camera. She has new colours, part yellow, part grey and dark grey. We see the planet's rings in the distance. The galactic ribbon rises from the surface and at the end of it, is a sun. — Fiery whoosh !

Shiny. That’s how I logged back in the other day and I was experimenting with trying phone aspect ratio screenshots. (I.e. tilt 90 degrees and then rotate the result in MS Paint). Sometimes the best screenshots have a bit of planning, sometimes they’re just the fortuitous result of logging in just at the right time.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship is in front of a water planet with ice at the pole. The planet is ringed with a mixture of white and black rings. The ship is above the rings and is showing off the new paint job, which is orange at the back, going into yellow, with the rest of the flank being light grey and dark grey. There is an orange tip. The top is in shadow. — Shoulda put a ring on it, oh wait !

Nice place. Can’t land on it yet.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the spaceship from the port forward quarter. The buggy is to the right. They're on a dark grey reddish moon. In the top left, we see a planet that looks like our own, blue ocean, white clouds and green land. — So close to the tea

That’s me visiting an Earth Like planet, actually one of those in the database, a planet called To Behold. A little taste of home, far from home.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the port side of the ship, with the buggy a short distance away. She's in what looks like a curved plain, with a mountain about 5 times the height of the ship in the background. There is a faint arc of another planet above the hill. — That hill fell from the sky

What looks fairly flat there is actually an impact crater on a moon … You might just be able to see the faint circle of a planet above the top left of the hill. The hill is the impactor. It felt like a good place to stop for the session …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the starboard upper side of the ship, fully lit except for the part above the engines. She is orbiting a ash coloured planet with a lot of red lava patches. The ship is above planetary rings, grey to the outer edge and white on the inside. — Firey

Not a great place to set up the summer house but a spectacular place to go by. I could have stopped there today on one of the moons of this place (for the tourist piccys) but wanted to cover a bit more distance.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The ship dominates the image. We see a bit of the upper side, with the orange wings to the right side. There are two large square engines. She is descending to a light blue coloured planet with reddish canyons that look like something huge has clawed its way across the surface. — Lovely canyons

Bit of a rushed pic, I snapped that one just as the ship was about to transition to the dive that they do between space flight and planetary flight.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the landed ship from the front port quarter, with the buggy in front again. The scene is very well lit showing a pale blue (icy?) surface and at ground level, we see a hint of the reddish canyons. A brown gas giant is in the upper left and we see a hint of its rings. — Blue campsite

This is where I stopped the session tonight, after going a little more around the north side of the galaxy. I’m definitely wanting to be back in the civilised areas of the galaxy now, although it’s good finding curious places to take hopefully great looking screenshots at.

Game Screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is on the left, looking at the mysterious fellow in a white shirt and leather overtunic who is kneeling down checking something out on the ground. — Investigating …

Final Fantasy XIV is being fun still. I’m about to move on to a place where I should be able to get my dangerous dragon lady some fancy armour too. Still a bit early days for this one but it’s a fun game to dip in and out of.

Game screenshot. Final Fantasy 14. My character is looking at the camera, wearing a metal breastplate which is bronze on the shoulders and dark grey in front. She has dark metal gauntlets and a yellow helmet. One eye has a shiny iris. — Hat needs more pointiness

I still have the pointy hat.

Hmm … I think after rambling like that, time to close ! So …

Car’s haunted (I think the dead battery before Xmas caused some permanent damage to the battery), internet spaceship travels are finding some nice places and Dangerous Dragongirl has been helping people out. There’s been a couple of physical issues as well though. I hurt my arm by playing Mars Horizon with the mouse in the wrong place, that’s mostly recovered now. Doing stuff with the car on Friday had an impact over the weekend as well but that’s mostly better as well now.

Time to catch up on today’s news … which I’ll be avoiding talking about because I’ll say things that at least a few people would spark off on ! Like appearing at a vigil with a protest shirt on, causing trouble and then getting photographed with said protest shirt. That’s not being respectful to the person the vigil was organised for, that’s being unforgiveably political. See ? In danger of being political :-D.

Stay safe, be well.

Cluttered Thoughts

by Sleepypete

February 28, 2021

4:31 pm

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games, lockdown, stayathome

Hello everyone,

I’ve been looking at the time since last post happened and wondering … what’s been happening since last time ? It’s being a weird time for things like that. We’re in our lockdown bubbles waiting for the numbers to go down, while thinking of things that will happen when we come out again.

To be honest, I thought we’d be out by now. Or at least early enough to be able to do Mothers Day type things. Perhaps in the USA where it’s in May. Our one is March in the UK. The first lockdown and all the fear around that last year was all enveloping but florist deliveries were still happening so we were able to still mark the day even if no visiting was happening.

Not sure what will happen this year. I’d rather not drive this car too much over the next month, with the next one coming “soon” (not had a date yet). Mind you, I did have to give it an extended run on Friday because the message “Hybrid System Stopped” popped up when I turned it on which I think is a confused message for “12V battery low”.

Thumbnail pic ?

Game Screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda ship is pointing towards left of screen, the two engines at the back are emitting cones of blue flame. The background is a diffuse blue, with an eye like black hole upper middle. — Very blue

I was out and about again for a couple of sessions since last post. That was the Distant View in Blue, a small nebula with a black hole in the centre. This is probably a black hole that would be actively consuming the matter around it, which would normally mean a bright accretion disc as the matter is accelerated to near the speed of light as it goes into tighter and tighter orbits. Elite doesn’t do the accretion discs, just very spectacular gravitational lensing.

Car stuff ? My car’s a hybrid, so it has two batteries. It has a small 12V battery like most cars, plus it has the 200+ V traction battery that supplies the motors. (Power is Volts x Current, high Volts means less Current means thinner wires … is a big oversimplification!) While the traction battery will come back at the same charge level after a few weeks, the 12V battery is what actually starts the car up before handing over to the big one. That drains over time and then Odd Things start happening when it’s getting to lower charge. That’s not an issue, just means you might need a jump start in order to turn the car on if you’re barely using the car.

Because you know, pandemic stuff and not going to places. The quick fix is to go up the motorway for a junction, come back and realise you forgot your wallet before you go into the supermarket for supplies … because realising you forgot your wallet while in the supermarket would have been really embarrassing. (I realised just before I got to the motorway !)

Map picture. A capture from ED Discovery, showing a map of our galaxy from above. Overlaid on it are different colour blocks for the regions of space and there is an extensive white line showing my course. — Going long distance

It’s not like you need to drive to the end of the universe to charge up the battery or anything.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. The Anaconda starship is shown from the port side, pointing towards left of shot. It is showing off the battered looking paint scheme of purple highlights over mainly grey hull. — Where are the stars ?

Literally no stars there. The ongoing travels of the Searching for Dragons has taken her to the extreme opposite end of the galaxy from us, beyond Beagle Point and on to Salome’s Reach. That’s the farthest away from Earth you can get in the game.

There are no stars there … Literally because there are no stars in the galaxy beyond that point. (Or maybe I’m hiding one behind the ship !)

Back to reality though. It’ll be good to be getting out and about again. There’s people I haven’t seen in far too long. It’d be good to see them again. It was good getting a message from someone I used to work with (ish!) who is looking at getting into making videos. About actual real life things ! With a face ! (I’d never do that … Sleepy Face is bad). Here’s a channel link. It was good watching that first video last night.

I dropped my channel fairly early. I did enjoy the learning how to do the videos, seeing the production process through from planning (yes there was a semblance of planning), to set up, into production and direction, editing and release. But I also realised that doing that along with a day job was not particularly viable. I do like watching the videos, playing the games, listening to music and hanging in with the streams … you can’t do that at the same time as recording. You need the quiet time which means none of all that other stuff.

But I can still remember a lovely HeyChrissa lady saying I need to do more videos because she liked my voice. It’s a shame she retreated from the public life and stopped doing the streaming, she was a good egg there but it was causing mental distress so she had to walk away from that life.

Gosh, this is a bit rambly isn’t it.

XCom2 is also happening on and off …

Game screenshot. XCom 2. A propaganda poster with caption "Off our planet. It shows the squad. From left to right: A buzzcutted Fuzzy Freaks in purple carrying a sniper rifle. Maggie Luperza in mostly blue, with goggles above her eyes. Cyberkitten in green with a baseball cap and shades is pointing a huge gatling cannon at the camera. Outrider in a long coat and hood is looking at the camera through a gas mask. Gamingftl looks heroically on at the right side. — The squad is growing

Fun game. Although it can quickly turn murderous if the random number generator is feeling that way. Long game though, I’ll probably still be in this campaign for a while.

Finished another Mars Horizon run. I now hold all of the achievements in that game. I’ll be back for more at some point.

I haven’t been back in the Shipbreaker game yet, I’ll hold off until the update and progression reset. There are other games to play in that time.

I’m also thinking of outside computer games … Seeing Lego bring out a Remote Control Buggy made me remember playing with those way back. I only had a cheap 2 wheel drive buggy but it was fun putting it together, taking it apart, putting it together again and driving it around the place. Good times.

I’d like to do that again, although not with the Lego one. Too heavy, delicate and slow. I’ll get a proper one when things open up again and I’ve made steps to seeing what clubs are around.

I was collecting the Nitro RC (I think that’s what it was called) magazine thing where you build up a remote controlled car every week or month. I stopped that though because it was a seriously cheap thing which meant easy cheap manufacture and an insanely difficult build. The biggest problem I hit with it was misalignment caused by the builder being expected to thread holes with self tapping screws cutting the threads into plastic, instead of the holes being pre-prepared.

More research required I think.

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We see the Anaconda starship pointing towards the right of shot, dominating the lower half of the picture. Her top side is angled towards the camera showing the colouration of purple on star bright white. The galactic ribbon of stars is in the background. — Looking back at the galaxy

Sooner or later, we’ll be able to freely and confidently go out and about again. That shot is from the other side of the ship taken from the same place as the other one. It has me looking back at the galaxy from the edge.

Last thoughts for this one … the internet is taking away some of the isolation in these times. It’s weird, I remarked over a Skype call that our little group of the team at work is probably talking even more than at the office. Because talking as much would have been disruptive in the office, the Skype chats don’t interrupt anybody.

What would we have been doing 10 or more years ago before youtube, Netflix and so on ? Probably watching a lot of dvds and reading books and overloading the texting system to stay in touch.

Anyway,

Hang in there. Be well, stay safe.

New year, new lockdown

by Sleepypete

January 5, 2021

9:20 pm

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books, internet spaceship, music, skyrim, stayathome

Hello everyone,

I know if I was to start writing about what’s happening in the UK at the moment, it would start an avalanche of ranting. So I’m going to try and avoid that :-). Yep, lockdown again … although personally, I’m not seeing much change there.

However, there are a few things that are getting more urgent that are on hold for now until it’s a bit safer to be around people. I was back on duty with work today, we have the facilities to allow us to work remotely. It did feel a bit weird though. (Could have been the lack of sleep from Brain not wanting to shut down for Land of Nod !)

Thumbnail pic ?

There we go. I haven’t been travelling too far in real life but I have done that travel to far away imaginary planets in the internet spaceship. Some are places that are recommended by the sightseeing sites (https://elite.kamd.me.uk/), some are places that I’ve run across in the travels. I have a few rules (pointers ?) there for places that should be worth a closer look. It’s good to get there in sunlight too …

Light makes the screenies more usable.

It hasn’t all been internet spaceships though, I’m having to somewhat ration the time in the more active games. The shoulder was getting more prone to pain spikes last week. Wrist actually isn’t so bad but I have to watch for unwarranted moves in the wrong angles or I get the ouchies.

I haven’t gone too much further into Per Aspera, although I’m very intrigued by that one and I have a very promising start now with an established growing colony. I had that little look into Prey and will go back when shoulder issues and time allow. I started a new Mars Horizon run as well, this time as Russia with different rockets and a higher difficulty. Mars Horizon is a game that I can see myself getting all the achievements on at some point and then I’ll keep coming back to it for some chilling out times.

I’ve also been back moseying around Skyrim …

Another case for a little bit of light going a long way.

That’s the mine side of Markarth, a towncity built into the side of one of the mountains.

And after a little raiding of the local dwemer tomb. Need to complete that armour set for Lydia there. I’m going for the heavy armoured tank with big sword approach again this time. Stealth archer is another powerful build but I get in trouble with that one as the enemies close, so it’s more a case of letting them close and then chopping them up.

It’s not just games though. I managed to finish Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds. It might be a while now before I go back to his books, although I do have Shadow Captain and Bone Silence of the Revenger series lined up. It’s not that Absolution Gap was a poor book, it was pretty well written. It’s just that over 660 pages it didn’t really go anywhere that was of interest. Kind of outstayed its welcome.

You can’t say that about the Martha Wells Murderbot series. They’re expensive … but they get in, tell their story and get out again before you can blink. Cos you’ve probably opened one of the novellas and read it in one sitting. Expensive … but more value in these ones than a lot of longer books.

Not sure what the next one will be, I think later on I’ll start Light of Impossible Stars by Gareth L. Powell to finish off that series.

One thing about Elite, the solar system generations can tend towards moons that are a bit close to each other …

That was my landing spot to finish one of the sessions … perhaps a bit of sulphur in those geysers ?

Here we had a pair of undiscovered water worlds that were orbiting each other close (the tides must have been impressive) and the Steam Horse Nebula in the background.

And that’s where I am at the moment, perched on the edge of a crater by a canyon system with the parent gas giant over there in the background.

It’s a curious counterpoint. In real life, we’re in our lockdown and we’re not supposed to be going anywhere (people are … mutter mutter mutter) and I’m pretty much just heading out for emergency stuff and restocking the food cupboards.

In the internet spaceship game, I’m off on a trip around the galaxy. But even there, it’s a kind of lockdown of its own. Normally in the game, I’d be either mining and going to the best selling station or I’d be on a trading route going from station to station. At the moment, it’s just me and the crew of the ship bouncing from star to star and the only interaction with people offboard is when I visit the fleet carriers dotted around the galaxy. Staying at home, with home doing a circuit of the galaxy.

That one had a nice perch, in the sun too.

Oh ! New music arrived as well with discount opportunities on a certain website I need to find a viable alternative to. Albums from the following have arrived and been enjoyed :

Katie Melua – Album Number 8 and her Ultimate Collection

Ellie Goulding – Brightest Blue

Lisa Hannigan with the hypnotic At Swim

Mike Oldfield with Tubular Bells II

And I thought I had the Per Aspera soundtrack, apparently not ! (I think I was going to evaluate it in game before buying).

Time to disappear into a book now for me. Be well, stay safe.

Impending New Year

by Sleepypete

December 30, 2020

10:15 pm

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games, music, stayathome

Hello everyone,

The offline time went to plan, was a good little bubbly meeting up north with the mum over Christmas. We were both in Tier 3 areas at that point so it was a case of a support bubble meet up, which is still ok at the moment. Well, for a couple of hours time and then we’re into Tier 4 due to this new more infectious variant of Bug.

Thumbnail time !

I think that’s enough about what’s happening in the world for now, although I will mention that I’m good for food again for a little while. My plan all along with this Thing has been to wait it out, reducing my chances of getting it by not being around people much. That might be leading to agoraphobic tendencies though, so I’ll need to sort that when the time comes.

It was curious coming back on Saturday. Storm Bella was predicted and I could see the signs of it on my trip back. There were warnings from quite far away saying that the older Severn Bridge (it’s the M48) was closed and the I think the newer bridge was closed overnight. I follow the traffic advice people on Twitter and they give a decent amount of info for when there were issues on the roads.

Like … the road I would normally come back on but avoided on Saturday ! I have a good option to come off the motorway early and take a more chilled out route back. The car was starting to feel a bit lively in building wind, so I took that more chilled out route instead of a section that’s very exposed to the wind. And … apparently a lorry was blown over overnight. That’s the real worry. Cars will be fine but you definitely feel the effects when you’re going past lorries and going into and out of their wind shadow.

The farm shop service station was almost deserted too, so I’m on the sherbets again :-D.

Been on the travels in the internet spaceship as well, steadily making my way around the outside of the galaxy. There’s still lots of distance to go. At my next main waypoint, I’ll be almost 66,000 light years through a 280,000 light year trip. With lots of pretty sights along the way …

And new habitable worlds which have the “Discovered by …” with my name on them now.

Still on leave at the moment, hence the internet spaceships … I’ve also been checking out Prey :

This one is a super atmospheric game, another one that leads you into what’s going on in stages. You wake in your apartment, take a helicopter to the Transtar offices for behavioural testing … and then bad things start happening. Turns out there’s a bit more going on than was apparent. I’m only 2 hours in at the moment. Looks great, the lighting there is amazing and the decor definitely goes for art deco gaudy.

There’s also the arrival of Per Aspera :

If you look closely enough there is a Beagle

This one puts you in the position of an AI, tasked to set up an initial colony on Mars and then to make the planet habitable. It’s a curious game. It has massive scope and takes on a number of the terraforming ideas from the slow and prudent approaches (greenhouse gases, melting of poles etc) to the quick rash approaches of bombarding the planet with asteroids and using nukes to speed up the process.

Yep. That’s a mine. A couple of early attempts were reset due to not knowing what was going on, or a lack of critical resources. This is one of those that takes a lot of time for things to happen, which can be good for those poorly arms of mine.

I’m not sure if it’ll be one that holds my attention for that long but it’s been good so far. (I may be heading back into Mars Horizon, that game is highly addictive !)

I managed to finish off reading Absolution Gap too … The middle book was great ! This end book was a bit meh. It felt like 500 pages of set up and no clear idea of where they were going with it, on the end book of a trilogy. The next Alastair Reynolds I’ll read will be Shadow Captain (cheers CK !), which I’m hoping will be an excellent follow up to Revenger. Not yet though, the next book is Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, the third book of the Murderbot Diaries and I highly enjoyed the first chapter.

On buying stuff … Steam sales are on at the moment and I may have had a few acquisitions … I enjoyed watching videos of XCom Chimera Squad earlier in the year, it’s a nice evolution of the usual XCom tactical action thing. I’ve also acquired the lovely pre WW2 Over The Alps. It’s a fun spy narrative adventure game. I heavily enjoyed watching the Fuzzy streams of this earlier in the year.

And I really must add a list of links in.

I also picked up Core Defense and the Hexcells series. More games may appear … I’ve also been indulging in other sales and I’ve enjoyed listening to Lisa Hannigan’s At Swim and Katie Melua’s Album No 8. More took more time to arrive, including more from Katie Melua, one from Mike Oldfield and the latest Ellie Goulding.

I must do a music post at some point.

I better leg it now though … I’m seeing more reports appearing of people I either know personally or know through forums/discord saying that they’ve tested positive. I was pretty careful with my bubble trip with self isolating, outside of the AA man thing and picking up a few things afterwards. But this new variant is pretty scary with how the numbers are exploding.

Hope everyone comes out ok.

Be well, stay safe everyone.

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.

Brave New … Keyboard ? Also lockdown again …

by Sleepypete

November 2, 2020

8:30 pm

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life stuff, stayathome

Hello everyone from the land of the impending lockdown …

(grabbed from a google search that went to something like pointywest)

I’m ok for the first bit of lockdown. My regular shopping run happened on Thursday last week, so I already had most of what I needed already and the rest I topped up with a little run out tonight.

You know … coffee …

Alas, there were no donuts. Oh, I also needed more Magnesium Citrate tablets. They’ve mostly been doing their work, although I have had a couple of incidence of the massive cramps that are why I started taking them. Still, a couple of incidences in a year are better than the near daily occurrences I was having before. Win there I think.

There was more though. I’d been steadily getting more and more frustrated with the keyboard I had before, because it was either being unresponsive or double bouncing. The problem is quite possibly dust build up inside the mechanisms … which isn’t great because it turns out that the Steelseries keyboard I had before is essentially a sealed unit. Open it up and it won’t go back together as you want it.

The one I’ve replaced it with is the own brand ADX keyboard. (Disclosure note – own money used to buy it) It felt good in the shop, although you can’t test responsiveness without it being hooked up to something. I’m using it at the moment. What it could do with is reference points so that you can touch type locate yourself on the specific keys. References like a gap between Caps and A, or between # and Enter.

I was going to check more of the keyboards again but … people again. This time a youngish fella with a little boy, both without masks. Little boy was testing out the keyboards. So I’m not touching those. Besides, most mechanical keyboards are £100+ and probably shouldn’t be. What this one does need though is more tilting scope. I like my keyboards well tilted forward and if anything, this one tilts back.

It wasn’t all buying stuff at the Mall tonight though. I walked out of Smyths before having a good look at the Lego because there were too many people in the store. Plus I had things to do, stuff to buy before shops shut and not really enough time to do it all. (Spoiler alert – had loads of time)

I kinda wanted food while I was out there but … believe it or not there was a big queue of cars wanting McD Nuggets. (It’s always the nuggets) Wagamamas was also full up. I didn’t bother looking in the Pizza Hut and didn’t fight my way back through the roads to the KFC because, to be honest, the Mall KFC probably needs its food standards looked at.

I’m watching Brave New World now while typing, nearly gave it up after half an episode. It’s another that only vaguely resembles the original book and it was struggling to hold my attention. And then it suddenly launched into action midway through the second.

Some fiction is like that.

I don’t think I’ll be gaming tonight, although I have been enjoying being in the world of Deus Ex Human Revolution again.

He’s a buddy, I pick up the guns that the bad guys carelessly leave lying around, this gentleman makes the guns go away.

More Deus Ex later. I think I’ve come to a decision on two games …

The Outer Worlds – abandon. The lovely story of Parvati doesn’t make up for being just plain bored with the rest of the game. I’ll watch the Caledorn lets play series, plus I know what happens already from another person streaming the game.

Star Trek Online – scale back. The episodes were interesting … but I was finding that I was rarely playing those. Instead, my game time was going into the repeatable multiplayer Task Force Operations and the repeatable Click Button To Pretend Done Quest stuff where it doesn’t feel like there’s much actual gameplay going on. So I think I’ll scale that one back to just playing through the pretty decent episodic content and ignore the boring stuff.

Oh ! I need another picture … I think I’m figuring something out there. Twitter uses the first picture for the thumbnail, Farcebook uses the last one. I don’t have any control over that outside of what’s in the post. So … Farcebook thumbnail ! (Maybe) (edit – nope ! Twitter used the second pic …)

Yep. Lockdown again, it’s almost certainly overdue as the later that it’s called, the higher up the scale of cases we are and therefore more people get the virus and it takes longer to damp it down again. It definitely doesn’t help when you have the irresponsibles around.

I’ll be ok with the next lockdown. I got my supplies in before the announcement so I don’t need to fight the people who are going to do the panic buying. Morrisons wasn’t actually too bad tonight to be honest.

Hopefully it’ll just be until the start of December and the cases come well under control before then.

Until then though, stay safe, be well.

Landing the Trekking

by Sleepypete

October 5, 2020

5:13 pm

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gaming, geeky, rambling, stayathome

Hello everyone,

It felt like this today when I emerged !

Although a lot of that was self inflicted wounds again after spending maybe an hour too long in Star Trek Online yesterday. I’ve been enjoying that game, despite its short comings.

Every game has shortcomings (I’ve gone from hyped to a Nope for the new Star Wars Squadrons game) but we’ll stay with our favourites because of what they do well. In Star Trek Online’s case, it’s a mix of the starship combat stuff, combined with the Star Trek stuff on the ground. They’ve managed to make it fairly star trekky too, although perhaps more in the Discovery era or DS9 rather than TNG.

However, it has that MMO playstyle again which can wreak havoc with the old injuries I carry and in particular, the shoulder. I felt twinges start up, which I should have listened to … definitely when they were becoming more intense. And then I stay 30 minutes longer than that in the game and I’m paying for that today. Oh well. It’s just moderate pain, which is ok.

I have been greatly enjoying the game though and moved on another 5 levels since that start of the session yesterday.

One thing I haven’t done is use the new Elite internet spaceship for anything more than following the start of Drew Wagar’s latest tour :

There we go. That’s the Icarus Rising, a Mamba class heavy combat ship. I like the design there, there is a huge gun amidships aft, two large guns alongside the cockpit and two little guns up front. They’re all on the top side of the ship, whereas the Fer-de-Lance has its big gun on the lower side. (It means that if you’re chasing someone in a pitching up motion, all guns can be brought to bear). There’s also a huge amount of visibility and the only angle with more than a minimal profile is the top and bottom.

It has great potential …

… to be used for shooting things as well as following Cmdr Wagar down to a planet in loose formation. That was the only time I got into the same instance as the main group though sadly.

And then there’s other ships in a universe long ago and far, far away … which I’ve been ignoring in favour of :

There we go. The ships in the spacedock looked great, no idea what they were though. The one to the lower right looks like an improved Defiant class and I think the upper one is actually two. One has a weird massive nacelle and I think the other has underslung nacelles like the Miranda and Nebula class. Looks like there’s an Ambassador class (Enterprise C) down there too. I’m current in the Constitution class Dragon Spirit :

And the game would give be another ship at level 20. (Unless I gave them money for a special ship but I don’t intend to do that). It is a bit odd though seeing that ship being a main ship in a game that has its main elements start in 2409. The old Enterprise is a bit … ancient there.

Outside of that, cricket watching was curious yesterday with it being the end of the domestic season with the T20 blast finals day, delayed from Saturday due to rain. I don’t intend to watch much IPL. It’s a predatory influence on all cricket, to the cost of the game as a whole. And some of the commentators should not be allowed behind a microphone due to their attitudes. It’s sometimes telling who gets allowed on to the Sky commentary teams here and who aren’t invited back after a guest spell. No, not impressed with much about IPL although English cricket needs to learn from the overseas leagues but not having the finals day months or so away from the main league. Get the competition done in a single block so that the specialist T20 only players can be around for the finals as well as the league, the teams that make it to the finals tend to lose their overseas stars which makes the competition be a bit false.

But there are other issues with the game as well at the moment, although the standard in general has improved since I started with a lot of innovation coming in. I was playing when KP was doing his switch hit (and could play that shot), I’d have been really tempted to try out ramp shots if I was still playing now, if only because pulling those shots off would have hugely amusing consequences for the state of mind of the opposition. If you can knock the opposition out of thinking clearly, then you have an advantage. I used to wear a floppy hat while batting, to give bowlers a target … you could say that the person encouraging bowlers to aim at his head wasn’t the one who was thinking clearly :-D.

And then you shake hands at the end of the game and step away from all the on field psychology stuff.

Landing ? I did a little bit of the Lego therapy over the weekend …

4D looking suitably impressed there.

However …. After that horrific example of shameless temptation, I better leave that series of pictures for another day as I can see from the scroll bar (it gets littler as the post gets longer) that this one has hit that Certain Length.

Obligatory Outside World Stuff :

Numbers have been going up again here, we’re in that second wave that means we should be in lockdown already … I’m ok. Put that trace app on your phone so you have a bit of warning to tell you if you’ve been around someone who’s been exposed, watch out for idiots and look after yourselves. And that can be reaching out to people, being a Good Person in the communities like I try and be at work and with the various discord communities. If you find yourself doomscrolling in Twit/Book, just step away from them. People talk about fear of missing out but I doubt whether you’ll miss out on much there and social media can and will cause a massive hit to sanity. Don’t engage with the idiots.

But if you need a bit of help, reach out. We are in extraordinary times. The last time the world saw a pandemic like this is 100 years ago with the Spanish Flu. Be well. Stay safe.

PS I think I recognised a similarity …

That’s the star fighter from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I wonder if it inspired the Mamba ? Two big engines, very slim rectangular profile, incredible visibility.