Tag: travel

Cruise last, cruise next ?

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November 8, 2024

8:44 pm

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travel

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Hello everyone,

I’m on leave again ! Not sure if I mentioned it (probably did but memory is goldfish) but I’m disappearing out of the world again for a little while. I’ll hopefully be able to post while I’m out there but I did think I should probably finish up posting what happened on the last cruise before the next one starts.

Picture. We're looking at a little red dragon figure sitting in a Norwegian Viking style longboat. There are 5 shields on the side of the boat with Norway flags, the red and white striped sail is full and there is a Norway flag at the top of the mast.

This next one came about from a fairly random asking of the Google for “cruise November 2024”. I’ll post more about that later. Gotta wrap up the last one first ! I left it last time with the visit to Rødøya Island on the middle Monday, after a magical trip to the top of Norway where we saw the huskies and got the selfies with the aurora. If you click on the “travel” label then that will be the easiest way of taking you to the Northern Lights cruise posts.

Tuesday saw us visiting the little coastal community of Bessaker, we might have tripled the population for the day. Charming place, absolutely lovely people, very tasty noms there, coziness and a very friendly representative of the natives :

Picture. We're looking downwards at a road. A large dark curly haired poodle is looking back at us from down the road. There are three people there, two in the red Hurtigruten coats, one in normal cold gear.

They also have a wall of trolls there. I didn’t manage to bring back any goodies though because I’d been forgetting to put my wallet in my coat (oops). They have a big staircase up to a view point as well here which I have to admit to chickening out on because my back started turning even more to glass around this kind of time. (Spoiler, it’s still glass)

Next up on the Wednesday was Loen, which has a cable car lift up to the top of the mountain. We were being menaced by multiple storm systems in the North Sea and North Atlantic around this time, so the weather wasn’t great …

Picture. We're looking at a fog bound scene. To the left is the fences for the mountain top facility. There is a cleared path on the left and a snow covered side of the mountain to the right. We can just about make out an orange wind sock in the centre.

Yep. We in the clouds.

There was also a bit of excitement caused by a power failure, so we were a little delayed going up the mountain. However, there was consolation in a hot chocolate and a delicious cookie in the shop at the top of the mountain with a lovely lady behind the counter with a charming sidekick.

Picture. We're looking down at the bits and bobs on a shop counter. On top of a black box, we can see a black rubber vampire duck with bat wings and fangs

Best shop mascot ever.

Thursday saw us sheltering from the storms in Hardangerfjord, with a quiet chilled out day that included the expedition team taking us for a rigid inflatable boat ride up and down the fjord. I didn’t get many pictures to share but it was going being out and about there. There is one picture that I’ll save to close out the post on.

The Friday was a trip to Stavanger, which became the oil capital of Norway. The geology of the North Sea meant that Norway got a big prize in terms of being able to control the oil reserves off the coast and Stavanger was the city that sprung up to feed the exploitation industry. The petroleum museum is well worth a visit, although I do regret being a bit too low on batteries that day to seek out the more tourist areas.

Picture. We're looking at a building by the dockside to the left. The building has a magnificent mural painted on it. On the right, an astronaut holding painted letters spelling out "Stavanger Houston".

The Saturday was a sea day as we made our way back across the North Sea to England, with us arriving back in Tilbury a day later than scheduled on the Sunday. It was an incredible trip, a good one to have as my first cruise holiday. It’ll be interesting to see what the contrast is for the next cruise. The ship I’ll be on is more a purpose built cruise holiday ship that’s more than 3 times the size of MS Maud (now back in service after the incident in Dec 2024 and renamed back to Midnatsol).

We were really well looked after on Maud. A small cruise ship but very cozy, relaxed and it was a fantastic holiday. I’d thoroughly recommend the cruising. On a normal hotel holiday, you’re based around the same place and explore under your own power. On a cruise holiday, there will be stuff to be enjoying on the ship and the ship will be moving from port to port (usually while you’re sleeping) giving you a new place to explore.

Picture. It's the morning before sun up. We're looking out from the ship towards the shore. On the left, the bulwarks of the ship and a Norway flag hanging down from a pole. In the distance, the town of Loen in the gap between hills to the left and right. It's a very cloudy sky.

This was the port entry to Loen on the Wednesday morning. The Loen visit was another where the tender boats were required to get us to shore. This was a very well practiced, well grooved and above all safe exercise for guests not particularly used to being at sea.

Last one for this series before signing off :

Picture. We're looking out from the windows of the ship towards the V of the Hardangerfjord closing towards a bridge at the end. To the left are hills, with more terrain at the end. We can see 3 boats full with people with red jackets. The boats are moving away from us, down the fjord.

There we go. It was a great experience, actually economical and affordable too and I’d thoroughly recommend looking at cruises as a way to experience something different. You are a bit at the mercy of the weather. 15 minutes later, the fog had come in and you couldn’t see the terrain at the end of the fjord there.

See you all next time, hopefully it won’t take me nearly a year to finish off the next series !

Mountains, bugs, plans

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October 25, 2024

10:48 pm

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Hello everyone,

It’s been a little while ! I needed to go under the covers for a little while to attempt to rest up and recuperate. I’m reasonably sure I had another round of covid … But first, thumbnail ?

Picture. We're looking at a black train with the wheelhouse to the left, the train is pointing to the right. We can see the train's engine. The train is parked at a platform on our side of the train.

Wales trip may have involved a train.

I was being very aware while writing the last post that I was increasingly struggling for brain power as the post was going on and it was a bit of a squeeze getting it out. I didn’t get hit badly physically by the bugs this time, I just got very heavy brain fog from it. It will have been picked up from the Creator North event, with a cluster of people reporting getting bugs not long after. (Wonderful event, have enjoyed the two so far) Some got hit pretty hard and were pretty much bedridden. Whereas I head off to North Wales feeling just mildly off. And then the weekend came and being able to turn off after Wales meant that I very definitely switched off for the weekend. (And had very crunchy upper body too).

It felt like I was working off only less then half the usual amount of brain power and even there, only had brain batteries for like half a day. It hit work quite a bit, although that’s part rationing out what you apply the brain cells to. Some stuff needs doing but doesn’t need that deep thought ? Not quite sure how to say that without saying that I may have been slacking. Sometimes stuff needs the deep thought, sometimes it’s just stuff that can be done on near automatic. Both types of work are needed to get everything done.

Yeah, that affected me for far longer than it should have done. I could still function physically (as far as I can these days) but everything mentally was a big effort. So I stayed away a little bit and also just stayed to familiar games that I didn’t need to learn.

Snowdon ?

Picture. We're looking out of a window at a set of train tracks going into the distance. On the windowshelf in front are three more little train models. We can see the platforms to the left and right.

I’ve been up Snowdon before, a little over ten years ago. We took one of the walking trails that time. I’m not close to that level of fitness these days, plus I fancied looking at the train ride this time. Link there to the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which is 1 hour up, half an hour there, 1 hour back. A leisurely train ride.

Picture. We're looking out of a train window, over a deep valley cut into the hills. We can see a road winding its way through the valley from lower left to middle right.

And a wonderful view out of the side windows (pardon the reflection!)

Picture. We're looking out from the top of Mount Snowdon at the countryside rolling out in front of us. There are several small lakes visible as the valleys connect. The sky is full of thin white cloud, some of which is faintly obscuring the distant view.

And a great view at the summit. I have to admit to struggling a bit at this point. Perhaps the bugs were affecting my lungs a little bit. I didn’t go all the way up to the summit as I was feeling a bit off, light headed and unsteady at the 1085m up that is the Snowdon Mountain Railway station, cafe and shop. Half the pictures are looking at the sky thinking that the clouds were the valleys !

Picture. Another view from the top of Snowdon. We're looking out over the craggy stone path at the rolling countryside of North Wales. It's good weather again, with wispy thin cloud in the sky, covering the landscape in increasing mist.

More view ? Spot the hair between the lens and the camera sensor ! That’s something I’m learning about the mirrorless fancy camera, because you can change the lenses dust and obstructions can get in. Will bear that in mind in future :-D.

Picture. We're looking downwards out of the train window towards a trail cutting its way through the hillside. There is a small building halfway up. The ground is tinged with the green of parched grass that needs a bit of water to waken it up.

There’s people on that there trail … Well worth going up there. Maybe could do with a bit more time up there before the call comes to come back again ? There is a canteen cafe down at the bottom of the hill though.

Picture. We're looking at the railway as it curves to the right. A train is side on to us, ascending the mountain. There is a stony walking trail to the top left, with a small collection of people scattered around it.

Also train, with assorted people dotted around above, descending. It’s a single track railway with a few passing points, which dictates the schedule with trains needing to pause to allow the up train to pass the down train.

What goes up has to come down some time though, so it was back down to Llanberis (home of this railway) and back home again. I could feel the bugs getting in (hope I didn’t pass them on to too many people, I know some people got the bugs from me) and I had 200 miles to go home. It should have taken 4 hours plus a stop or two. It took 7 hours on the road as a couple of incidents on the M6 motorway led to standstill traffic. I did trust the satnav this time, which got me in range of those incident points. I’d gone a different way, more cross country, on the way up. I like to vary the routes I go on.

Mentioning that … there has been some gaming going on in the last month :

Well and truly fell off the Little Big Workshop wheel again with a series of completed runs on that. I’ve been doing challenge runs and making up challenge runs for that. It’s a lovely cute little factory building game where I can set up things for the delightful little idiots (their AI can be a bit flawed and awkward) to assemble to sell.

Star Wars Outlaws took a bit longer than intended (2 months of Ubi+ renting) to finish. I’d thoroughly recommend this one, I really enjoyed running around that world for a while. It has a sizeable Tatooine area around Mos Eisley and other areas of the first films. It’s actually set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi and there are a couple of cameos in there from the films.

I’ve also gone back to the two Truck Simulator games this week, with a restart in Euro Truck Sim 2 (to get explorer achievements0 and continuing American Truck Sim. They’re good ones to turn the brain off to again and I’ve been needing to ration the rational thought. Need a new controller though, my one is failing.

I had a look at Shapez 2 and Production Line (car building game) but brain was giving me the nope on those.

There’s also been a bit of reading, maybe more about that in a later post. Highlight of the books was Deep Black by Miles Cameron, continuing on from the very well done space thriller Artifact Space. He’s made a wonderful universe there. Also Thornhedge by T Kingfisher, a very sweet short tale with a twist on Rapunzel and other maiden in the tower stories.

I better hit post there again. Apologies for it being a while again, I wasn’t feeling too well and it took a while to shake it this time. It has been good looking at the pictures again.

I have something special lined up next month too, it’s a … mystery. But it brings me back to last year as well, I need to finish off the cruise posts !

Cruising car

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November 30, 2023

10:57 pm

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Hello everyone,

I kinda got out of the habit with the blogging since I got back on shore ! Don’t worry, the cruise posts will start up again next time, I just need to talk about some after cruise stuff … and maybe get back to a little cruisey summary too for some good vibes at the end.

Picture. We're looking at a cute little green dragon, curled up asleep with head resting on their front paws.

This is skipping ahead a little bit with cruise stuff but the not too spoilery summary is : storms happened ! They were looking pretty serious, so our return was delayed a day with that day being spent sheltering in a fjord. More on that in a future post. But it did mean that instead of me returning on Saturday and having a sleep day on the Sunday, we got back on Sunday and then I was up the road again for a car service on Monday before restarting work on Tuesday.

I’ll be either for a bit of quiet over the coming weekend.

The car service is drawing a bit of a rant actually … It could well be Strike 3 for the Lexus organisation. They make wonderful cars but I’ve had them delivered with pre-delivery defects that in two cases, should have been picked up in the 150 point pre delivery quality and safety inspections they talk about for the used cars.

The least bad one was the IS with the battery terminal that popped off leaving me with a dead car incident. I think this would have happened as a consequence of the cars probably being shipped (by ship) with the batteries disconnected … and then all the predelivery configuration gets done and the battery’s connected. It was just bad luck that it wasn’t tightened up enough, but also careless.

The serious one was my last car, I think it was shipped with a fault in the back suspension which led to massive understeer and excessive body roll. This would have been picked up in a test drive and it would have been a factory defect. It also wasn’t picked up in two services.

And I got a £700 service bill for my latest car. The extra cost was for wheel alignment and a new tyre because the old one had excessive wear due to the poor wheel alignment. Red’s a 68 plate car, which means it was registered in the second half of 2018. When a UK car is 3 years old, it has to start having annual road worthiness checks, which is how stuff like bald tyres and faulty wheel alignment get discovered.

So when it comes to having a car delivered 3 months after one of these checks, with faults like that … you could call me rather ticked off about it. I don’t think it was anything I’d done post delivery, I can’t remember whacking anything. (Although I had another bout of covid not long after getting the car) Especially as it had the wobble vibration kicking in between 35 and 50mph which is indicative of either alignment or balancing. (Or a faulty wheel bearing)

Yeah, I’m decidedly unhappy about it. But it’s not something to immediately change the car about, like what it was with the Blue car with suspected suspension fault and the Silver one which had a power steering fault which was also skipped over in a service. My impression of both those was pretty much “Ok, you’re not finding and discovering these obvious faults, so I’m not going to tell you about them as part of the negotiations for me changing to the next car.”

This might be giving a bad impression of the brand though … The 6 Lexii I’ve had so far have been fantastic cars. Their drive by wire behaviour fits exactly the behaviour I want from the cars I drive. I like to be able to settle into a chilled out essentially autopilot for cruising, with the option of going very quick when I need to. The CT200h (aka Posh Prius) is on the low side for power for me (10 sec to 60, 134bhp system power) but when you ask it to, it cheerfully gives you everything it’s got. And what it had was far more effective at getting down the road quickly than the performance Focus ST170 I had before.

The toys are great too. I’d like to keep going with the brand, except they’ve caught the marketing urge to move everyone into SUVs … which is not something that I can support. They get a lot of things right though, with no design stupidity like you’d get with Ford or dodgy electronics which you’d have with the French cars. Or cars which just disintegrate like certain other EU cars, cars which have special modes to cheat emissions and economy figures, or cars which are excessively difficult to repair by design.

Toyota (and Lexus) make excellent cars. Maybe it’s a Corolla next.

Book stuff ! I read two books while off on the holiday :

Erebus by Michael Palin. It’s tagline is that it’s the story of a ship. Essentially, two ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. They were special Napoleonic War ships, with the war ending before they could actually do their purpose. So after being mothballed for a while, visionary people saw their potential as extreme exploration ships with them being dispatched to the Antarctic and later the Northwest Passage. This book is the story of the ships and what we know of their expeditions. It’s well worth a peek as a look into life on the ships and the discoveries that were made when so much of the map was Terra Incognita with “Here Be Dragons” labels on it.

It was a bit of a slow one though, perhaps a bit too much in there and it felt like a bit of a slog. Still worth checking out though.

Next up was Winter World by A G Riddle. This one’s set in a near future Earth, which is becoming steadily colder. It’s like an Ice Age is coming but it’s not from planetary conditions, it’s ALIENS blocking out the sun. Good book too and it sets up a trilogy. I’ll be looking forward to reading the next two in a while when the book 2 is on offer. (Bought book 3 in a 99p offer)

Ref the cruise though, there will be more posts with pictures to come there but the quick summary is :

It was a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise on MS Maud. She’s a small cruise ship accommodating around 300 guests. Cozy. The crew were amazing, making it a lovely experience from start to finish. The expeditions team were fun, super motivated, friendly people with an infectious spirit that got us massively looking forwards to what was coming up to see. And Norway supremely delivered on that promise of good things to see.

I’d thoroughly recommend them, when I do more cruising (and that’s a definite), I’ll be looking at Hurtigruten again. You see cruise ship and you think Party Boat. It was a fun atmosphere but it was much more about the getting out there and seeing great things than a dress up for dinner party ship. Just what I wanted and what I didn’t realise I needed.

Economical too, I was able to book less than 5 days before the sailing date with a nice little discount and … there is no solo traveller supplement like pretty much everything else applies to the cost of going away. The atmosphere on board totally supported solo travelling as well. You’d be placed with other people in the main restaurant for food but the guests were lovely too and meal conversations were very pleasant. I could have picked up a collection of great new friends on the trip. (I hope some of you remember me and are reading this – you’re amazing and made the trip much better !)

Disclosure note time – I paid fully for the cruise, the only freebies were what every traveller with them gets : free coffee, cookies, wifi, food, selected expedition things. There was absolutely no nickel and dime behaviour here (like you might remember me complaining about with Novotel)

It was a very rewarding, informative, pleasant, educational (camera, science, people) trip. And it was the getting away from the world that I desperately needed, even though I didn’t know ho much I needed it.

Last message ? Sometimes we need to get away from the world for a little while and do something different. The world can get you down. I hope you all get that chance to escape from it for a little while. I was having lots of fun out there and I hope the posts here about the trip and the pictures I was sending around the various parts of the internet brought out smiles.

Preparations for being a chilly bean

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November 9, 2023

8:17 pm

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Hello everyone,

What’s this ? 2 in a week ? Better watch that, could be habit forming 😀

Picture. First caption is "5 year old me when it's cold outside." We see two cats side by side. One has its mouth closed, one has its mouth wide open with a cloud coming out. Second caption is "30 year old me when it's cold outside". Same picture
I’m in this picture and I like it

I’m feeling glad that I looked at the departure date again … I’d convinced myself that it was Sunday for some reason, might have ended up arriving only to be told the boat had sailed the day before. That would have been a bit tragic !

I’ve actually been a little more organised too. My latest car got delivered to its first owner in Dec 2018, which means it’s due for the annual service and MoT roadworthiness check. Sorted for the Monday after I get back.

Time for a momentary rollback to last post though, I think I got a little emotional there. Which is ok, because I take that as a sign that I’m caring about the other people in the world. One extra comment for last post would be that we need to read the room when we’re doing the nice things. Something we perceive as nice might not be the right thing to do or say. Like our lovely streamer lady having to repeatedly remind chat that she didn’t want to have comments about what she looked like, because the stream chat kept going back to that subject.

So – be kind to others but read the room before that comment pops out of your head. I naturally have a thought about what the people that I see I are like. But I’m not going to let that opinion out of my head unless I know how it will be received. And that’s not just by the person the comment it’s about, it’s about everyone else around them too.

Picture. Meme. We're looking at a tiny penguin, determinedly heading off to the right. On the left, a raised foot. In the centre, the Penguin has a wing raised as if leading a person by their hand. The caption "Come wiht me, Human. I'll show you how to penguin."

Quite. I’ve been thinking about cold, with a few looks ahead at the weather for a couple of the places I’m going. One of them has a minus 9 degrees C day before the temperature pops up a little bit there. I’m actually ok with that, I’d rather be in extra layers in the cold than struggling desperately to stay cool when it’s too hot outside.

But … if you haven’t experienced that level of cold, or know what to expect, it’s very dangerous in its own way. Having suitable gear is really important. Being aware of the conditions and what they’ll do is absolutely critical. Hypothermia will kick in … and you won’t notice. Mind you, heat is similar … both extremes of temperature will mess up your thinking and stop you extracting from the situation before it becomes dangerous.

If you’re heading into cold conditions, I’d very much recommend taking a course or watching videos about what to expect. However, it’ll likely go into things like frostbite injuries which can get graphic. Still, it’s good to have a little bit of scare in you when going into situations, it means you’re taking them seriously.

A little bit of fear can be a good thing.

So lessons from a few years ago ?

Great socks are really helpful. I had cheap but decent fuzzy boots too. They took about 5 minutes to get them on in the mornings but when the feet were in them, they were super comfy. I could easily drive the 4×4 in them too (I can technically drive in safety boots but it’s not … safe). They kept my feet warm and kept me upright too.

Good gear counts, the boots that the other guys had were standard issue boots and they were having to monitor their time outside and come in when they were starting to feel the cold in their toes. (That said, I was doing very similar things, I’m chubby but not that well extra insulated).

Did I mention that we had a minus 16 degrees C day when we were out there ? Yep. Brr.

It also affects equipment. Funny things happen around the freezing point of water. If you have an air pump, like for car tyres, then if isn’t working off dry air it’s likely to fail due to freezing droplets. The water droplets will go around the system until they hit a valve, then contact with the cold parts will make the droplet freeze, it blocks the valve and pump no work. Similar for cable and pipe joins. Contraction and expansion will loosen connections and make pipes pop off.

And that’s the stuff we don’t often think about. We actually had a good time out there, early teething troubles with getting up to speed with the cold were quickly sorted out and we could get on with rattling through the programme of work we had. Lots done, much data acquired, good times. And that’s about all I can talk about the work :-D.

More stuff :

Windchill is nasty. It makes even a mild minus 5 feel at least 10 degrees colder. A good scarf to cover up exposed skin is a very handy thing. I ditched the thermal lined hat I bought early on (still got it, just don’t use it) in favour of the bright yellow Atomic Hat. It’s a thermal lined beanie which I can’t wear too much because anything above freezing and it’s too toasty. Good hat.

Everything is more brittle, so keep your footing and don’t slip.

Hands and fingers will numb. Fast. I like my digital camera (Canon Ixus 265) but … while the take photo button is accessible with gloves on, the power button is recessed. It’s not particularly usable even with the light gloves on. So, you need to have exposed skin in order to turn the camera on. (Probably not really a problem, it’ll standby to save power and wake up again when you press button).

My fingers were numbed and losing dexterity in under 10 seconds in the below minus 10 C conditions and didn’t start reactivating until I was inside in the warm again. Cold be dangerous …

Meme picture. We're looking at a white cat with pointy pink ears, standing up and looking at the camera. They're on a chair, with more chairs in the background. The caption is "Do you have treats? Treats are my favourite"

Looking forward to the trip. There are excursions off the ship, which I’ll indulge in as much as my body lets me. (I’m fully expecting to be stiff as a board for a bit and to have the leg cramps continue). But when I get cold, I’ll be able to retreat inside and continue looking at what I’m expecting to be a very pretty world. Maybe even get sketching. We’ll see.

And I’ve been finding it to be a liberating feeling at work to be saying “I’ll be disappearing from the planet for a couple of weeks”. I think I’ve needed to do an escape like this for a long time now, after finding a taste with it with the cold weather trip (just before covid happened) and several other work away trips.

Should be good. And I’m hoping to be paying the snow pictures tax for people too :-D.

Picture. We're looking at the back of a silver white car. The glass at the back has a fairly thin covering of snow but you can see a smiley emote face drawn in it just below the brake lights.

I’ll hopefully get chance to get some posts out in the next couple of weeks. See you around, be good to people, have fun, be well.

In the North, with creators

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October 3, 2023

8:29 pm

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events

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Hello everyone,

I had an away trip over the weekend … It was for an event called Creator North, run by the ever bouncy adorable bundle of fun that is Tashnarr, the effervescent Billietrixx, the lovely LookitsTilly and Maddog, assisted with the cameras by Brookie.

I don’t have many pictures of the event itself (was enjoying talking to people a bit too much) but … the weekend involved a bit of wander around Sheffield and this fella happened :

Picture. We're looking at a small red dwagon with a white chest sitting on a laptop keyboard, with a screen behind showing a chat window. The dwagon is made out of thread, woven into life.
Yep. I did a rescue

Links time ? Lots of links. The event itself has a home here : https://creatornorth.uk/#page-top

It’s an event that came about to be a gathering point for creators who weren’t able to make it to other events. Almost all of the creator events that happen in the UK are concentrated around London, or maybe a bit of Scotland’s two cities too. There are events at Birmingham NEC but most of them, like the Twitch events and the EGX gaming expo have moved to London. That’s less than ideal for a lot of people. Actually including me and I live in the South too. So our fab foursome set up Creator North as a meet up for creators living in the North of the UK.

And although I’m South and it was 180 miles away for me, I thought I’d take the chance to meet these wonderful people and add that little bit of support to the day. I’m really glad I did too, it was a very enjoyable little event. Cozy and still with a lot of lovely people.

So who were the organisers ?

There’s Tashnarr (Twitch link), who doesn’t stream so much now but it’s always fun when she can find the time outside of organising other events. Tashnarr is an adorable little bean and it’s been a treat to be able to follow those streams. Although there is that … guilt? feeling (not sure it’s guilt) where you missed out on so much of their earlier content due to just simply not knowing about them. You might also recognise the name from such things as …

Game screenshot. Elite Dangerous. We're looking at a somewhat diamond shaped spaceship. There are two engine pods at the back (top of shot), a notch where the pilot is at the front and two long antenna like things at the corners. The ship is dominated by the reflection of a sun but we can see blue with yellow highlight colouration. In the background, the disc of the galaxy.

That’s Zoomnarr, the ship which was my third attempt at speed running to the Galactic Core in Elite Dangerous. I do like to do tribute names for people with my spaceships (it gives me an excuse to say nice things about them). Zoomnarr was the second ship named for Tashnarr after the rather weakly named Grabnarr and then the rather better named Manic Minarr followed. It’s a sign of how high I regard this lovely one that three tribute ships happened 😀 (Oh and I thought of Manic Minarr and that pun had to happen).

Next one up is Billietrixx (twitch link again), I’ve only been following Billie for apparently 9 months now (that’s how long the Twitch sub has run) and found her through raiding into Tashnarr’s channel and Tash raiding into Billie. That’s how most of the cross connections happen, people you like raiding other people that they like. (When a streamer finishes, they’ll raid over to another channel to give their audience someone fun to continue watching) Billie another one who brings her own special energy to the streams, it’s mad, maybe a little manic but always passionate about the game and enjoying the game with chat. Pleasure to watch, fun to natter to via stream chat. And a lovely one to introduce the event to everyone on Saturday.

It was a pleasure chatting with Billie, Tashnarr and we need to mention LookitsTilly (Twixxer link) who organises events, is a lovely Twitch mod and was also a pleasure to talk to on Saturday. And then there’s Maddog (Twixxer link), if you play any of the Guitar Hero type games, you may be using his song request bot …

And I also got to meet Bentham again, aka Mangledpork (here’s his Twitch). He’s a lovely gent, I’ve been steadily realising that me and him resemble each other a lot (if not in appearance, there’s a picture on the Creator North discord of Bentham accidentally looking way more dapper than I ever will). Bentham likes his factory and crafting games. He’s currently playing Valheim and I so nearly would be watching now if not for another new person to me from Creator North called Curlylocks.

When CausticPhoenix finishes up (hi Caustic!) in a minute, I’ll head over to the Curly one. Who’s Caustic ? Here’s the old Twixxer link. Most of the time I see Caustic, she’ll be hosting a working stream but Caustic will also get super passionate and drawn into gameplay streams. So passionate it leads to super excitable (and hilarious) clip moments for victories, scares and the unexpected. Caustic has a few fingerprints on this blog too after dropping in a few comments, hugely appreciated. I need to get back to applying some more of those comments too. Constant improvement is always good.

So, that was Creator North ! Lovely meet up, very glad I went up there to Sheffield for it. Would totally do it again. Hopefully they can put another one on soon.

Other things about the trip ? I could do without the behaviour on the roads at the moment, Friday saw a lot of inexplicable stop start traffic. Like the outside lane suddenly just stopping … That’s supposed to be the fast lane. Other drivers will also make it awkward for you to get past, by speeding up as you’re going past them. They’ll be doing (I’m being charitable) 60, you’re going past at the 70 speed limit, they’ll speed up to match you. And worse behaviour. I don’t get it, drivers shouldn’t get involved with other drivers like that. I like to think of my awareness as a box of 9 (3 by 3, you’re in the centre) when I’m driving. When people go outside of that box, I don’t care about them any more unless they’ve identified themselves for special attention. And then I’ll keep an eye out for shenanigans.

But yeah, behaviour on the roads is poor, mostly because other drivers seem to insist on getting the better of other drivers. I really don’t get it.

Hotel for the weekend was Novotel. It was a nice room with all the facilities (that I don’t use, just had water) plus secure parking. Staff were nice, full of smiles. But … I think I got overcharged for breakfast and parking (double charge for 2 nights stay), which is what I’ll remember of Novotel. There are other chains, I’ve never been overcharged on the work trips with the other chains.

Sheffield was a good city to have a wander around. It’s a little odd in that the main shopping areas are split. Most cities have their shopping area all clustered around one place. Moor Market was a good one to check out, plus there was a festival with a stand with the Rescue Dwagon you can see up top.

So that was my weekend ! It was lovely to see everyone at Creator North. Little events are just right for me. Too many people trip something that might be social anxiety ? Dunno there, perhaps it’s splitting attention between so many people.

Anyway, Creator North was great. Oh ! I haven’t mentioned yet ! There was cake.

Drawing. One of mine so it's a bit crude. A large cup cake is on a table to the right. To the left, a forlorn looking green dwagon is standing on tip toes with chin and paws resting on the table. The cake is out of reach. The dwagon is thinking "Caaaaaake"

The cake was lush. The people were lovely. And it was great to meet a bunch of people that I’ve only known from the other side of the screen.

To zoom or not to zoom ?

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August 29, 2022

9:32 pm

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Hello everyone,

A fortnight has gone by again ! It’s been eventful. Kinda. Perhaps not quite as eventful as some weeks but let’s see … 2 parts to this post again today, update first then a bit of game related musing later …

Meme picture. We're looking at two cats, a grey one and an orange one, apparently frozen in mid air, jumping from right to left. The caption is "Hover Cat to Base ... Requesting Purrmission to land."
Safe landings kitties

So … stuff happened – One of the things on my lengthening list of stuff I need to sort out has been to replace my computer chair. My hand kinda got forced there. I’d been managing it being down to 4 legs instead of 5 for a while but hadn’t taken the hint that I should be kinda urgently replacing it before another leg disappeared and I couldn’t manage the balance. (It was also partly down to unfamiliarity with what the local tip takes – gotta clear space before getting new stuff at the moment).

So after a second leg broke at about 11.30 pm on a Monday night, I had a moderately uncomfortable half day working from my sofa followed by quickly acquiring another chair. I bought an ADX Firebird 21 from the local computer place. It’s ok but I now know a little bit more about what to get in a comfortable chair. The good is that it’s comfortable to sit in with a normal posture and the cushions are firm but comfortable. That’s in contrast to the Razer chair which felt like an unpadded bench. It’s also got arms that go up and down, which I need to support my arms. What it also has though, which causes awkwardness, is bucket seat style high side bolsters which aren’t good if you like to fold your legs on the chair.

I’ll adjust to that :-D. I nearly bought the Corsair chair (thinking that they didn’t have the ADX one) but they didn’t have one in stock. This is where not having it end up being an urgent buy would have been handy …

Oh – there was more drama involved … When the last leg broke, I got pitched sideways into a set of shelves which have my printer on top. My printer landed on my head … softly because it was being suspended by its power cable. Still a bit of a struggle though trying to remove it in a compromised position with arms in angles that don’t support having any leverage to move stuff.

I think I also have a compromised thyroid, which I need to talk to a doctor about. The symptoms lining up include extreme tiredness, no control over internal temperature (building the new chair was a sweat drenched trial!) and there’s a few more which could explain why I have on / off struggles with swallowing food. (I’m ok, I just need to actually see a doctor for a change).

Meme picture. We're looking at a dog, sitting up with paws on a table. The dog is wearing a blue shirt with a stethoscope. The caption is "The good news is I was able to reset his broken leg." "The bad news is I buried it somewhere in the back yard."
Oh no Rover !

The other news is that I’ve been out of the country again … Can’t say anything about where because it was work related. But it was a good successful trip with good people meeting lovely people. Bit short though, in the notice given and the days away. Like, we found out on the Thursday before traveling out on the Wednesday. That’s not many working days to sort it out but our travel system and people are pretty good. Travel is easier if you set everything up before hand so you don’t need to wing it so much while you’re on the way. That was one thing that annoyed me two years ago because there were important variables with that which the people on the other end should have been sorting out. Pandemic and quarantine related things. (I didn’t do that trip two years ago for a bunch of reasons)

Yep ! Good trip, good place, would totally go there again, can’t say anything about it.

I hope there isn’t a repeat of the travel back though. Getting to UK was fine, they’re very efficient over where we went. However, taking 5.5 hours (including about an hour for lunch stop) to get from London to Bristol is not fun. There was an accident on the M25 motorway around London so everyone’s satnavs was diverting them into clogged up roads.

Meme picture. We're looking at an orange and white cat who is looking at us with intense eyes. He has his paws up as if gripping an invisible steering wheel. The caption is "Invisible race car"
Zoom zoom

I have a gaming quandary at the moment … There’s a new motor racing manager game out. After a long sequence of jumping from game to game in this genre, when Motorsport Manager came out it was a game I stuck to. I have 2035 hours in Motorsport Manager now and still enjoying it. However, I am getting to the end of a fourth phase in a campaign that’s been going for I think 46 in game years now. (Each phase is winning the top championship with a team built up from being last). So the arrival of a new game in the genre is being something of a big temptation right now.

Let’s see – it’s F1 Manager 22 and the early impressions from watching people’s gameplay streams and from browsing the forums is that it may well be a Motorsport Manager 2 by another name. A lot of the bugs and issues are familiar from Motorsport Manager. What I think may have happened is that in the genesis of the development, Frontier (the publishers) went on a hiring spree bringing in devs who previously worked on Motorsport Manager.

I don’t have any issues with this. They had a proven track record with MM and it’s given them well earned employment working on a game that they were being denied working on at Playsport, who brought us Motorsport Manager. And it looks like they’ve brought us a very promising, superbly presented game in F1 Manager 22.

So why don’t I own it yet ?

There’s a bunch of reasons. The big one is that it’s shackled to the F1 licence, which limits it in a bunch of ways. It’s limited to the 10 teams with their 20 cars that are in current F1. There apparently isn’t a Create Your Own Team option and the thoughts of F2 and F3 to climb through haven’t made their way into the game. One thing I like about Motorsport Manager is starting with a rubbish team anchored to the back of the grid and building them up into being winners. In a strategy game like this, your input has to matter. Hopefully it’s possible to get Williams to the front in this game.

Oh and it also has commentary in there from a person I can’t stand from the Sky team, so that would be getting turned off. Annoyance from hearing it live (and varied) would lead to NOPE if the commentary is drawn from an apparently very limited selection of massively repeated soundbites. Yeah, mute that rubbish. It’s part of the price though, which brings me to :

Motorsport Manager was I think £20 on release and had expansions come out later for GT and Endurance racing costing £6 each. That makes a 3 tier league for open wheel and 2 tier leagues for GT and Endurance each. F1 Manager 22 only has one tier and it’s costing £45 (currently has a 10% discount).

I’m very tempted by the game … but not at that price. I can keep playing Motorsport Manager for a while, soak up more opinion about F1M22, see if the people streaming it now are still playing it in a month and wait for a price point that I’m happy to dive in to. That’s the beauty about having lots of viable games around, we don’t have to obey that temptation to go for the new shiny just as it comes out.

I can very happily afford it. I just don’t want to early adopt at a higher price than I think it’s worth. It does make me think back to when Elite Dangerous came out. I was being very wary about the track record of the devs, due to how many bugs and issues were in Frontier Elite 2 (way back in the 90s!). Reports from the beta of the latest Elite were very promising, so I dived in to buy it on release. A key difference there is that it hit a gap in the market, offering a very playable space game hitting a gap in the market. (The X games have been there, I just immediately bounce off them for some reason).

There isn’t a gap in the market this time, Motorsport Manager is old now with a release in Nov 2016 and the last update being in Nov 2017. But it’s one of those rare ones that delivered what it did superbly and it still works incredibly well as a game now. It would be nice to have new features and new tracks but it still stands up very well now.

Not so sure about the new one, although I see its acquisition as an inevitability come sales time.

For now though … back to stream watching and continuing a reading streak that’s nearing 90 days now with John Scalzi’s The End Of All Things. I wonder if there was a book after this one …

Stay safe, be well !

(Addon – Green Man Gaming had the F1 Manager 22 game on a 35% discount, so I own it now. Not played it yet 😀 )

Live the Dream

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April 1, 2022

12:09 am

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Hello everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BECOMING AN AUSSIE OUTBACK BUSH PILOT !

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

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

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

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

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

Should be fun.

Fly safe everyone !

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