travel - Sleepypete's Pillow

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 😀 )

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.)

Tag: travel

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