Top of the Galaxy and other news

Hello everyone,

There may be lots of screenshots tonight ...

There's one. I followed the speed run to the galactic centre with a trip to the top of the galaxy. There will be a certain amount of cheating* going on with how it shows the galaxy but it does still look pretty.

*(that isn't several billion entities being simulated, that's a skybox generated from a prediction, the skybox background is then oriented according to how the camera is looking at it) TLDR - looks pretty.

I think I've caught a cold ... hopefully not anything more sinister than that. I have no idea how catching a cold could happen, although I definitely have the sneezing, runny nose and blocked ears. Odd. Could be hay fever, probably is hay fever because I'm very susceptible to that and can't take anything for it for various reasons.

Looking forwards to watching Le Mans this weekend, although I won't try staying up for the whole 24 hours. Same with Nurburgring the week after. I like to watch teams that are a little way down the field, or teams that have suffered some kind of misfortune and are fighting back. That's usually far more interesting than boringness that can happen up front.

I need to get out and about some too, despite the hayfever and apparent cold. But I won't be going anywhere while I have cold symptoms (I have supplies until at least the weekend, am ok).

Apart from that, I'm managing hands issues again ... The internet spaceships seem to be reasonably neutral with it but more traditional first person shooter type games may be causing issues. So no more Final Fantasy XIV yet but I did have a look at The Outer Worlds.

I'm not sure about this one, it isn't holding me in like I thought it would. I'm actually feeling like diving into a fresh Mass Effect Andromeda playthrough instead (that'll be Fuzzyfreaks and her return to Mass Effect) and there's also the Deus Ex Adam Jensen games (Human Revolution, Mankind Divided).

But there's also the internet spaceships. Depending on how I play, these are better and worse for my hands. I didn't cause that dent by the way, it was there before I landed, not when I landed.

Honest.

Time to come back down though and that was another pointer from Kamd, a moon with just the right amount of inclination in orbit above its parent planet to really show off those rings. Also geysers ...

And what I could only describe as pipe trees. Tight landing too ...

On to a system called the Eye of Fire, with lovely copper coloured gas giants and rings. But ... there was more ...

I travelled round a little more until the planet was giving me an eclipse and there's a second gas giant there that can be seen through the rings.

Moving on again though and nebulae are pretty. As must be the view from this science station :

At some point, I'll watch the movie The Black Hole again which has the research ship Cygnus perched on the edge of a black hole. It's a Disney scifi movie from December 1979 and as such, there's a lot of silly about it. But I can remember enjoying watching it.

My stopping point for the evening was a place called the Dryau Awesomes ... There's a white dwarf star shining out there and in the lower centre right, you'll see the telltale whorl of a black hole lensing the background.

But that's not where the Awesomes come from :

That's a bit close isn't it ...

There's a fleet carrier nestled in there too, the Buurian Anchorage. I stopped off here to repair the hyperdrive and hand in my exploration data before attempting what's said to be a very hazardous landing. I think I was ok, although landing on that smaller planet there so close to the big one could be a bit hairy.

There we are, perched on a ledge looking at the big planet.

But I moved on a bit from there because I wanted a picture with the star in the background.

Back later in the week. It's been good to see the galactic news service make a return as well. It's back with a bang ... literally ... as several space stations have been attacked.

It's a good alternate world to fly around in, definitely a rather pretty escape from what's happening in this one !

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Bugs ! And more spaceships

I gotta find more things to write about !

Feels a bit like things are going whoosh by at the moment, although I am looking forward to another MCM Comic Con in London and the Lords T20 day at the end of the month. Oh and the annual Le Mans 24 hours watching.

Actually, I'm not that sure about Le Mans these days. It's great to cheer on the Aston Martins but they are really boring races in the prototype classes. The Toyotas have so much more performance than the other prototypes and they are so reliable that they don't make the mistakes or have the breakdowns that would let the competitors in. It is good to cheer on the Aston Martins though. I've actually been preferring to watch the Imsa series where there is much better competition in the prototype bracket and there are also a couple of Lexus cars to watch in the GT class.

Fun stuff. Oh and there's Formula 1 as well, although that has its own frustrations due to races being affected by the very poor quality of some of the cars and about half of the drivers.

Bugs ? Yep. Bugs erupted on Sunday, I probably should have dipped out of doing a business road trip on Monday and have been keeping the bugs at home today and yesterday. It's only light manflu. Notdedyet.

Still bugs though. I've been putting a dent in the coffee supply ...

Internet spaceships ! I had a session on Sunday (and very nearly put big dents in the ship with a rather too rapid landing at the end ...) but stayed out cos of those bugs yesterday and Monday. That's after pretty much being in there for sessions all last week. What's the pilot been up to ?

I'll come back to this one. (Wanted a good thumbnail pic !)

Let's see. I left the last post with pictures of the Needs More PewPew. It was unarmed, like all of my trading ships up to now. It's not really worth arming them because it puts too much of a dent in the jump range and cargo capacity. With the class of ship I've gotten up to so far it's better to run than fight. But I'll be showing those random pirates what for soon.

The Empire's Bounty followed the Needs More PewPew. This is a Type 6 freighter and it allowed a little more cargo room enabling faster progress through the missions. My character is now Baron iceangel of the Empire, which lets me own the Imperial Clipper. Here's the last one I had :

A little photoshopped in that pic. The next one will be in a black paint job, be called Black Sheep and do missions for the Federation, enemy of the Empire. That's in a little while though.

Next up after the freighter was the Dolphin class Porpoise Prospector, seen there looking at the abandoned Dav's Hope settlement. The lore says that it was a mining settlement abandoned after the tunnels collapsed in on themselves, the settlement was then evacuated in a hurry with the inhabitants leaving all sorts of goodies behind. Stuff that's good for modifying your ship for things like extended jump range.

That let me pick up this one, the Searching For Tea :

I'm off on a little jaunt with that one at the moment. I'll update the link on the right with this EDSM link to my commander, which has a track of where I'm at currently in the game. The plan is to follow the route given by the Norma Arm Expedition, which will see me get most of the way to the galactic core. I'll then head East for a while and then return in a generally triangular pattern. I'll do the Galactic Core later in a different ship. Oh and Beagle Point too, which is the given name for the furthest point from Earth you can get to.

It's good to have plans for the various ships. Like I intend to never to passenger carrying in the specialist passenger ships. They complain too much :-D. Exploring is good though and they've massively improved the exploration tool. Previously, you had to fly to each planetoid individually to scan them. Now, you can fire up the discovery tool and instantly see if there's anything worth hanging around for. Like metal rich planets, earthlike planets, water worlds, ammonia worlds. Stuff that we'd be interested in knowing about as a culture looking to expand throughout the galaxy. Places with materials, places with life.

Places with an amazing view. They call that place "The View" in game and it's an incredible sight with those rings illuminated purple by a dwarf star combined with the funnels of the neutron star in the distance. This is the place from the first picture from a little further away. I didn't land at this one because even in low orbit, the gravity was cranking up to 3g+ and .... that old saying of "Any landing you can walk away from is a good one" doesn't really apply in 3g when you'd be having issues breathing let alone walking !

The commander is currently sampling the tea at Eagle's Landing :

A place with another pretty nebula view.

I've definitely been enjoying being back in the game since restarting. Going up the ships without cheating by skipping ahead with a few of them has been really good. In games like this that can get really grindy, it's good to have goals along the way that break up that grind. Next ship will be a little combat racing ship, after that it'll be a Keelback armed freighter that I'll use for a spell of mining.

And there will be a few ships after that which my pilot should already have the credits for. Good times. That's after I get back from the jaunt in Searching For Tea.

Maybe another explorer ship will be called Searching for Coffee. Or ... I got one ! Searching For Mini Eggs.

Searching For Lego ?

Book 5 - Catalyst for Bad News

Before I head into what'll be a rather short book review, I better say where I've been for the past few days ... (If you want to see the short book review and skip what could be hard to read, skip to the Lego Death Star).

I'm going to mysteriously disappear again quite soon and it's due to the family situation I've been alluding to over the last few weeks. My dad is very ill and we're not expecting him to be with us for too much longer.

He's had a few small strokes lately and the bugs that have been going around have probably been too much for him. They were tough enough for us semi-healthy people to cope with ! He was frail but mostly ok over an enjoyable Xmas but those bugs have hit everyone since then.

I've come back to Bristol for a few days now so I can do a little looking after of myself but I'll be heading back to where the parents live quite soon I think. What's happening has partially hit my emotional state but we're a family of people who don't let what's troubling us appear to the outside world much. We keep it hidden from most of the world and let out the emotions in private.

He's been hanging in there over the last few days but he is very ill and I don't think he'll be coming home as he'd like to. We just don't know how much time he has left.

Seeing how he is has made it hit home. So if the following mini review of book is downbeat, my own emotional state will be contributing to that.

To the book !

The book was Rogue One : Catalyst, a companion book to the recent highly excellent Star Wars universe movie. It was penned by James Luceno who I believe is a staff writer writing Star Wars lore books.

If you're into Star Wars lore like I used to be (before the Yuuzhan Vong New Jedi Order books soured it for me), then this is an essential book to read. It tells the story of some of the Rogue One characters, putting more flesh on the bones of what's going on in the movie. It concentrates on Galen Erso, Orson Krennic and has a bit of Governor Tarkin there as well. It picks up around the time of Attack of the Clones and before Revenge of the Sith and goes up to perhaps a year or so before the start of Rogue One.

But it's so drab and dreary ...

The Rogue One movie is excellent, joining the latest two main movies as one of the best films I've seen.

This book though, unless you are interested in the lore behind the book is an .... AVOID. There are far better books to read, even the depressing Abaddon's Gate was a far superior book. It does explain what it's trying to tell you very well but ... it's probably too tied into the rest of the source material and that doesn't give it the breathing space that would turn it into a compelling story in its own right. Or is that just limitations of the author.

But this could be my current state of mind dominating my feelings.

As always, look at what people say about books like this (I'll be avoiding the Star Wars Aftermath books), borrow multiple opinions and then make your own mind up.

Great Server Hamster Rebellion

An incident at work today gave me a very daft idea while I was milling over my lunch ...

Yep. Back in work today, although the old boss was looking at me thinking that I should probably be in a coffin if not my bed still.

Shrug - I tend to keep on going and ignore when I should collapse. And then collapse later when I'm home and not obliged to do very much. I have opened a game for the first time in about a week ... but that was to prepare another joke. The inspiration of that hasn't seen it yet and the story of the Rogue Robots tasked to protect their Holy Kittens from being distracted by the Red Dot is a story for another day.

Wonder if the Rogue Robots have server hamsters too ?

And were you caught up in the Great Server Hamster Rebellion of 011111100010 ?

As usual, click for bigger and more readable text. I had fun with this one.

Oh and if anyone recognises the pictures, let me know who to give the credit to. I loved 'em but Google doesn't love giving accreditation to pictures. I'm very happy to give a credit note and link.

I've been mostly powered by coffee today. I'm usually on one mug of proper coffee and then it's fake (decaff) for the rest of the day but I stayed on the hard stuff today.

Was able to get stuff done though. My back dislikes me now though and I'll probably pay for it later but .... I'll disappear off to bed when that happens.

Or get caught reading to the end of Abaddon's Gate and then order up Book 4 of the Expanse.

To the Kindle !

Emote Factory is still ill

I've been having fun with my emote factory again ....

What's the latest creation ? The brief was "ALSO, I really wanna do a Backseat Bois emote but I think it's imposs due to the fact that the phrase is too long for the 28x28 space".

Yep. Too many letters there and Emotes always work best as pictures. Anyway, that's one where one idea combines with something I've had before to make something silly that fits what's needed.

Something I've had before :

And the whole thing about people who will come into a gaming stream and attempt to tell the streamer how to play the game. It's backseat gaming and no one likes that. Especially when there's a 30 second or so delay on the stream that means their ever unhelpful advice appears late, usually giving an "I told you so" type impression.

Yep. No one likes a backseat gamer.

So what has the emote factory created ? Crude as per usual but I hope chuckle worthy :

That's an intermediate size version of it, which you then gradually reduce in size (to keep the integrity of the image as much as possible) to 112x112, 56x56 and 28x28 with transparency for emotes.

Looking at it more, I'd do a global change of the car colour to blue, so that a Red X or Circle and Line "banned" could be overlaid on top. A bigger eye too. I don't think it needs arms, nose or mouth. Less is more ?

I knew I had something convenient to illustrate that. I'll happily have the cookies that are being given up due to that.

Except not today cos I'm still not healthy. Last time I was like this, I rushed back into properly going to work and ended up being worse over the end of that week. I was wrecked. I don't need to be in the office tomorrow so it'll be another day of working at home. That's ok. I got stuff done today and it frees up space in a badly overcrowded office.

I'm targeting Wednesday for being back in but we have the tools available to allow us to work at home and have all of the information facilities available to us. It's just tougher to walk over to someone's desk and have a natter about the work.

My head isn't quite back to where it should be though. There are the little errors again which shouldn't be little errors, although I've actually spotted one of those and fixed it today (and almost certainly confused the people who need the info !)

I should put the dinner on. One side effect of these bugs is that I'm shying away from consuming the fluids or the food and I haven't really been missing them. But I'm attempting to have the dinner every day. I may lose a few pounds with these bugs, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Haha - time to put the dinner on. One more pic though :

:-)

And the backseat driver emote got chuckles and a "that's so cute!" too, so it was well worth the 30 minutes or so spent on it after turning off the work laptop.

Book 3 - Caliban's War

3 Books read !

The latest is Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey and it's the second in their Expanse series (the name is for a pair of authors working together). I'll come back to the book in a bit.

I should probably be heading up norf this weekend for the reasons I've been quiet about. Probably a good thing I haven't this weekend though because I can feel bugs brewing again ... They're in my throat and I've been half asleep most of the afternoon. Hopefully dinner will perk me up a bit when it escapes the oven in another 20 minutes.

Bored of being impaired, both with the situation with my outsides and apparently getting ill more lately. And with the muscle/skeleton things that have been slowing me down. My outsides are getting much better but I'm bored of going from one set of bugs to the next set of bugs.

And I want to have the energy/lack of pain to do things that I want or need to do instead of, like today, half dozing while listening to videos and my own coughing.

Grr

Book !!!

Caliban's War is another excellent book in the Expanse series (and I've grabbed the third, Abaddon's Gate already). It picks up and carries on the story from the first book, although the threat is different this time around. The entity from the first book is still around, giving everyone who observes it the willies but this time it's a bit more personal.

(I'm trying to avoid any spoilers).

If you've seen the series, season 2 goes up to about half of the book. When they pick up the series again, it should be an excellent finish and it's good to be in New Story zone instead of catching up. There are some quite considerable divergences though between book and series this time around. The central story arc is shared, it's just the way they go about it. It's quite rare for me to come across books and telly stuff that diverges like this with BOTH still representing their story to the best of what the specific media can do.

The books are great at passing on what the characters really think;
The series does great things with the action and drama.

It's like in the series you see that one of the characters is struggling seriously with what's going on in his head and also with severe malnutrition but the why and what's going on is explained so much better in the book.

cough-cough.

Better wrap up now because I hear that dinner bell beeping. Next book is How To Destroy The Universe (and 34 other really interesting uses of physics) and I'll hopefully dive through that before moving back to scifi stories.

Have a great weekend people.

Interwebs and the Ills

I have Plague.

It's not bad manfluplague. It's a chesty cough and general ugh feeling. Light bugs not major bugs but whenever I go upstairs or attempt to do anything semi active, that's when I really feel it. I'm not just mixing up words like I usually do, I'm mixing up the letters too.

Hopefully it'll blow itself out over the weekend and I fully intend to not do very much in the active activities type of activity tomorrow. Nope. Tomorrow is cricket watching, chilling out and catching up on more gaming videos. I did start a new Stellaris playthrough last night, I've started an XCom 2 run as well plus there's more Elites too and getting achievements that I shouldn't have got on Motorsport Manager too !

Haven't been in Elite for a week. I've been staying away from stuff that uses too much internet while without a working cable modem. I have a 30GB contract (not as extravagant as it sounds as there was an offer going to give 30GB for the price of 8GB) and was using about 1GB a day apparently. Not quite sure what on, although I did note that the GoG client was doing very strange things moving a lot of data around the hard discs earlier. (I have monitors that keep an eye on activity on my main computer).

I've survived the lack of a modem by attaching both computers to my mobile phone with the hotspot feature. Actually surprisingly quick:

Ping of 35ms is actually pretty good and the download speeds are a bonus. I think it was consistent with that as well, although I think there were a few instances of lag. That might have been my pooter being loaded up. With the weather turning colder, I've turned the science sums back on so the pooter's busy again.

It does drain the battery though so the phone has gone straight on charge after getting home and turning the hotspot on.

The other limitation is that with the laptop connected to the phone for internet, it isn't connected to my main router. The one that my network audio streamer is connected to ... So for the first part of the week, I was listening to music via the laptop speakers (they're rubbish) and from a couple of days ago, via my portable Bluetooth speakers (decent, not as good as hifi).

So I'm back listening to the main hifi, which is great. I do like my music.

And I've been catching up on the youtubes today while feeling under the influence of bugs that will hopefully blow out before Monday.

PS The less said about VirginMedia the better ... When I called on Monday, I think the girl on the phone did everything but order the new modem. So I waited until Wednesday, no modem, called back again. This one was given the instruction "Don't deliver until Friday afternoon" and ... yep. Had to go to the collection place this morning because they delivered early, when I wasn't in.

Beware Patient Zero

So I picked up a ManFluPlague again ...

It's not too bad. Certainly not something that'll keep me away from work tomorrow.

I'm actually far more worried about a friend at the moment. They've been out of contact for a little while now. Hope they're ok. If you're that friend and you're reading this, drop us a text or a FB message (my phone has been reluctant to receive texts ...), let us know you're ok.

As for me .... ManFluPlague started to make itself felt on Wednesday and I kept my bugs home on the Thursday with a first spell of working at home for a while. I got away with it on Friday before going splat when I got home. Saturday had the Radderss 12 hour charity stream going and now back to regular streaming today. I'll be back at work tomorrow.

I have my work laptop again now .... although it's actually stationed at work again due to a daft desk sharing policy we're starting next week. Yep. Even dafter than cramming a team that needs maybe 20% more desks than we have allocated to us into the space we have. Tomorrow morning could be mayhem.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Yep. That ManFluPlague isn't too bad. I don't tend to get sick too often, at least I don't usually notice it when sniffles are actually sniffles and not the ever present allergies. This time, it's a bunged up nose, stuff in my lungs, a distant lack of energy and focus that's going missing.

The energy debt is what leads to the lack of focus though. I did manage to put the washing in the machine yesterday but that took pretty much all I had. It took a while before I could summon up the energy to take it out of the machine. (I did and it'll be good for work tomorrow).

It did mean that while I did dive into the games, I found myself making the daft errors that tend to be costly in the games I'm playing at the moment :

Darkest Dungeon - maybe I'll see this one through into a campaign playthrough again ? Maybe :-).
XCom 2 - this can be brutally unforgiving. Run a soldier too far ahead of support and they'll activate a group of enemies with murder on their minds. I'm making excellent progress on the current play through. I have a group of soldiers with the skills and gear to complete the final mission now but I'm farming as many Steam Achievements as I can get.

And I didn't even think of going back into Elite or Mass Effect Andromeda. Elite wants focus and shooter games like the Mass Effect series wind me up to a level that demands energy that I don't have at the moment.

I think I'm coming out of the bugs at the moment though.

It was good on Thursday to listen/halfwatch into a stream by Kim, who I used to talk about a fair bit here. I'd lost touch because the videos had gone away from what I'd been interested in. She's best with indie style games with a story, where she can ramble on around the story and genuinely include the viewer in what she's playing and talking about. And that came through very strongly on stream too.

I'd originally tuned in to have acceptable background noise (I'm not inflicting daytime TV on me) on while doing the working at home thing. I find silence to be intensely distracting and need something in the background. I'm glad I tuned into Kim again and it's got me talking to some of the great people in her Discord chat server too.

So yeah - ManFluPlague and the continuing effects of the damage to my outsides (it is gradually repairing still ... gradually) but hanging on in there.

Good people to chat to;
Fun people to watch live;
Warm feelings from having people say "Get well soon";
(in person behind a breath mask and online!)
A lot of worry about a missing friend;
(she'll just be busy - I hope!)
A steady supply of tissues (for the nose);

And hopefully not too much longer until the bugs are gone.

Be well everyone ! Which probably means not being near me until I'm no longer contagious.

Can't promise anything about those smiles though :-D.

Bring on the Mini Eggs

Think I need 'em.

This is going to be one of those "How did your day go dear ?" posts where the person asking the question instantly regrets having asked it ...

Phew ! Found a thumbnail pic which was better than what I nearly used :

It has been that kind of a week so far since coming back into work. Work's been fine, it's just :

Bugs;
Recovering from bugs;
Really unhappy ankles from breaking in new shoes;
Super unhappy legs that are complaining at me for walking them around;
(the muscles think they're being overworked - it's a symptom of bugs)
Silly day today.

I had to take a day off work today to support a visit from the electric people who wanted to switch me over to smart meters. Good idea for them, totally ambivalent to it from my point of view.

So today was pretty much wasted due to waiting for someone who turned up at about 4pm in a window of 12pm to 6pm. And I needed to be around. I wouldn't even have been able to do ballcock fixing because with me up in the attic doing that, I'd never hear the guy tapping on the door. (B+Q didn't appear to want to sell me what I needed anyway, still need parts).

Ok - stress.

These bugs have been way more noticeable this week than last. Perhaps because when I was being lazy, I wasn't pushing for strength that wasn't there cos of the bugs. Back at work tomorrow again and I have two secret weapons ... Coffee and Mini Eggs !

Yep. A fix for anything.

Including disasters happening at the same time as the meters were being changed ...

Disaster number 2 is easier - I need to stop procrastinating and get the boiler man in ! It won't relight after the pilot light was extinguished for the meter change. Urg. It's done this before, I suspect the thermocouple that tells the boiler that it's safe to light (not overheated) has burned up again. Had that boiler for a while.

Disaster number 1 is fixed but it'll get me talking about PC bits and pieces. Tonight's disaster was the power supply to my desktop going *pop* almost as soon as it was turned back on. It was a Corsair CX600 (600W capacity, decent for budget, good make) that was 4 years and a couple of months old. I don't think it was being particularly stressed. My desktop now has three hard discs and just one moderate power graphics card. Yet the power supply goes bang anyway.

When stuff goes Bang inside a PC, it can be tough to figure out what. The first thing to do is see if anything twitches, anything at all. That means fans trying to start up, lights on the mainboard, things like that. In this case, it was stone dead. (I was also able to test it on an older PC which made noises and shone lights with its own supply).

I've had to buy another Corsair supply (a 750W which may support a second graphics card if I ever do that) because that's all PC World have but they're definitely off the recommended list now*. When there's equally high quality competition, you can afford to blacklist certain suppliers if they let you down. And a power supply should not go bang after just over 4 years.

*(a day later and a correction - I'd still buy a Corsair supply, this one failed gracefully. I've had 2.5** power supplies fail including the Corsair. A no name one went *pop* and took down several other components with it. The protection circuits in the Corsair apparently kept the other bits in my desktop ok. Thumbs up)
**(the 0.5 was where a fan failed and stuck. These things happen ... I resurrected that supply ... but would definitely not recommend opening up a power supply to fix it unless you know the big dangers of electrocution that it exposes you to.)

I'm also blacklisting Roccat. I bought a new mouse from them sometime last year to replace one which was wearing out. I think this one is failing already ... the middle mouse button (the wheel) seems to be loosening up, I suspect I'll be mouse shopping again this year.

The last of the current blacklist is Saitek, these people make flightsticks. Trouble is, their quality has declined severely over recent years. That seems to be the way, a company gets a great reputation and then trades on it for years after while quality declines. I used a Fly.5 from Saitek, which inherited the unwanted yaw problem too many people suffer (It turns hard right when you want to go straight). Other people complain about buttons falling off and throttles failing. The Fly.5 was also very difficult to handle precisely around the middle.

Yep. Today has been way tougher than it should have been. But ...

Desktop PC is now resurrected with a new power supply;
A few regiments of the Dust Bunny army have been exiled from said desktop PC;
Boilerman visit was overdue anyway;
I have Mini Eggs.

PS It's always a wise idea to start up a PC somewhere accessible before closing it all up. Guess who had to pull it out of its hole again in order to put in a power lead that had come out ...

It's the plague ! For reals !

Ok. Maybe not but we did get some advice this morning over the interwebs at work which could be scary, if you trust Dr Google.

It wasn't that but with some of the behaviour around the loos, there would be less people around. (There's a telltale opening of the stall door followed by the closing of the outer door, without a tap running or hand dryer in between. I know. Throw 'em in the lava.)

The advice was actually about someone having bacterial meningitis in my building (it's a big building) and the things they tell us to look out for are below. Let's take them in turn and say why Dr Google is a Bad Thing.

a fever, with cold hands and feet

Yep. I been hot over the past week, although it's been a fever-chill type hot as my body fights off the nose/throat cold I've had.

vomiting 

Not had this to that extent, thankfully but I have been having nausea when looking to eat. I've been putting this down to the heat. I don't do too well in the heat.

drowsiness and difficulty waking up 

Yep. Got this but it's primarily down to the long term effects of my condition. I had a very long time of sleeplessness and my body is still catching up. That said, when I get moving, I wake up very quickly.

confusion and irritability

Had this a little, see tiredness comment. And irritability can be put down to fighting off that bug, the hidden effects of the skin condition and situations in and around work.

severe muscle pain

Haha. Yep. I have lots of these although it's possibly more skeleton than muscle. Dehydration tendencies manifest in my oversize leg muscles wanting to cramp and there are the problems around my hips.

pale, blotchy skin, and a distinctive rash (although not everyone will have this)

Lol. Lol. Rofl. And more lol. Anyone who's read some of the posts over the past few years will know I've been fighting off blotchy skin, lots of rash and my geek tendencies keep me away from the sun. I joke about returning to a Healthy Pasty White.

a severe headache

I'm lucky that I'm not a migraine sufferer but I have been having more headaches lately. I get them from dehydration. And it's hot at the moment which is drying me out.

stiff neck

Oh definitely. My shoulders and neck dislike me at the moment. I may need to look into my work posture again because that made it settle down a couple of months ago. But my sore neck is down to work posture and connected effects from my shoulder injuries.

sensitivity to light (photophobia) 

Always had this. I go for the shades quite quickly and it's one reason I wear the hat.

convulsion or seizures
Nah. Not had these. Phew !

Point is. You tot all that up and ask Dr Google what's wrong and you'll suddenly jump to the conclusion that you too, have the Dreaded Plaguelurgy and you're going to die in a week. I have most of those symptoms above but I'm pretty sure I don't have the bacterial meningitis we've been warned about. All of the symptoms can be explained away in various ways.

So the advice is - yeah. Do some research. Try to find out what is causing you to have problems. And then ... go see professionals. See a proper Doctor. They know way more than Dr Google. And if you had the problems Dr Google tells you about, you should be seeing a doctor anyway.

I don't think I have Psoriatic Arthritis, although many of the symptoms match that. And I've discussed that with the doctor too. I just think I got an infected bite which then got spread around my body due to disastrous diet decisions. (Am mostly carnivore, being veggy might kill me !) And then it's taken years for all the damage to recede (But I'm seeing the end of it).

Serious note though - I hope the guy with the bacterial meningitis makes a full recovery. It's a serious one and can have nasty after effects for years afterwards.

I hope you escape the nasty bugs. Be well and I hope you have the strength for :

Unless ...

Cya !

PS Actually - I'm looking at that pic again. Did I steal it from a close friend ? I can't remember but that haircut looks very familiar ...

Strange thoughts

I had some strange thoughts surface last night in the sawdust that makes up my brain ...

The thoughts were popping up while I was watching England in the cricket. We were doing ok, if not spectacularly in the first half. We were batting and didn't quite get enough runs to put enough pressure on the opposition. In the end, our bowlers were a bit too toothless to get the wickets that would have made the game anywhere near tight.

Strange thoughts ?

Seeing them run around the field and seeing how my arms and legs have improved (and continue to improve now I'm through the course of antibiotics) awoke thoughts of "Maybe I can play again ?"

Yep. I'm really close to being clear enough again to do running around type activities. I dunno how long it is since I've been able to say that.

So those crazy thoughts are starting to come out again. Perhaps I could play again this summer ? I wouldn't want to be a full time player, I'd certainly not be playing in the longer games on the weekends.

The reality of it is though, that I've been past the point where I'm useful on the field. I can still run reasonably quickly (not tried that for a while actually) but my failing reactions are why I have the big doubts. Plus cricket is a much tougher game than it looks, if you slightly misfield, it hurts more than you think.

Case in point today - Herath got his hand to a ball hit back at him really firmly. He got a cut on his bowling finger, may well have broken the finger. That'll be him out of the World Cup if it's broken. My hands and fingers are covered in old injuries caused by slightly getting it wrong while fielding.

I would be forced into getting new glasses, although that's been due for a few years now. And I should really go on a fitness regime to get my body into some kind of condition ready for the season.

I'm nowhere near perfect yet. There's still damage that needs repairing. But ... it is steadily repairing now. Good skin is becoming predominant again and it has that creamy smooth feeling that's going to really annoy my boss when I rub at it next week. Not in a "worry at the damaged bits" rubbing, more an unaccustomed "wow that's smooth" way. Hopefully it continues now that I'm off the antibiotics. Hopefully the nasties have all been cleared out. I still have an absolute tonne of the White Gunk (Fucibet) that has been a major help with sorting out the bad bits.

Coming back to cricket is a very daft thought though. When I tally up the current damage I get :

Sore left calf - it doesn't like the walk in from the bus, especially when it's cold. I suspect more use would help it but there is a little strain there.
Shoulder - bowling is still impossible and it's still stiff. No power throwing for me ...
Hips - still make me want to scream if I move my legs the wrong way.
Back - is still stiff. ALthough I suspect again, if I ran around it would free up.
General tiredness - hopefully this will come good as the days brighten and I catch up on sleep.

So yeah, I have that curious blend of feeling frisky and feeling old. There's that feeling of knowing how much I enjoyed scampering around the closer areas in the cricket and wondering if I could still do a job there.

We'll see.

Cross fingers that the bad stuff stays away this time. It's been a long time coming ...

PS Other news - my hearing's back to perfect again ! Must have had an infection in there that's got sorted out by the antibiotics. Hurrah - means I'll be back to watching movies tonight. Let's see ... Divergent perhaps ahead of Insurgent coming to cinemas ?

Strange eating habits

I mentioned on Thursday that I was back on the antibiotics again.

I jokingly call them "diet pills" because they demaand a no eating window around taking them. The recommendation is :

No food 2 hours before
No food 1 hour after (it's an either or but I take it as a both)
Take 4 a day

If you take that literally, it's one every six hours and 3 hours of no munchies around each one. No snacking for 12 hours a day ! Someone like me might fade away with a diet like that.

It's good actually. It's a discipline that forces you to arrange your munching around the recommended 3 meals a day, with the fourth gap being sleepy time. So the ideal pattern for pill taking time is :

6am - pill - this actually happens when I wake up, which is usually about 7.30 am.
I usually get in to work around 9.00 to 9.15 depending on traffic which gives loads of time to hunt and devour a teacake before 10am, which is the next cut off time.
12noon - pill. Add an hour for a lunch at about 1pm.
3.15ish - sneaky afternoon munchie + hot chocolate at work. It gives me an excuse to walk away from the desk for a few minutes, which lets me restore a bit of focus. I can work straight for many hours but I find it best if I have a break for more calories at a certain time.
6pm - pill. Hopefully taking the pill at this time will let me avoid diving into the chippie or chinese on the way home from work. Although one plan was to raid Sainsburys on Tuesday (I'm travelling again, coming back early so I'll have the car) and pill time will mean forgoing visiting the Frankie and Bennys next to work.
12midnight - pill before bedtime. The 2 hours before mean no snacktime before bedtime.

It's a good discipline to have, even if you're not taking pills. Grazing is really bad for the waistline.

Hopefully it'll get my weight trend back on the right track, it's been going up for a little while and I need to arrest that and turn it round. But in the meantime :

Yep. It's tempting. And I do love my pizzas.

So much for the habits, how about the effect ?

I'm seeing nicely dramatic improvements. Most of my skin is back to silky smooth although the damaged bits are still evident. They are, however, repairing nicely. The progress is delightful. In a few days, my knees may be clear enough to allow me to wear the knee pads which are a vital pre-requisite to me doing physical exercise. I'm going to walk before I do the running thing though.

Yeah - the antibiotics (not had to use much of the gunk outside of the first day) have had a greatly appreciated effect. I'm not celebrating just yet though. I've had similar improvements before which fade away again after the course of drugs finishes. It's as if some of the pernicious infection finds a place to hide until it's safe to come out again.

I'm somewhat cautious there, by ensuring I only wear stuff that I've washed since starting on the course of drugs. And I have my washing machine set to 60 degrees, which should hopefully deal with a few of those nasties. That should isolate one vector for the nasties to hide in. Hopefully the bugs will stay away this time.

It'll take some time for the bad bits to repair. Typically it takes 3 days for cuts on me to heal. But it'll take maybe a month for wounds to disappear completely.

I have my fingers crossed, it's good progress so far, long may it continue.

I'm a little sad though - it's been a relaxing weekend but I've missed a couple of opportunities again. It was the local reenactor's market, this would have been an interesting day out. A friend went and I was genuinely curious about coming along. But - still tired and lacking the energy levels for the wander. That's the same with the other thing this weekend, Chinese New Year celebrations. I was genuinely curious about that too. I opted for restorative sleep time instead. I'm needing to ration the energy somewhat at the moment.

That goes a bit for the gaming too - I'm concentrating on games that don't need much interaction at the moment. I have a few games that have my attention at the moment :

Elite Dangerous - not playing this at the moment. It needs active piloting and some degree of concentration. I'm usually too tired in the week for this and have avoided it this weekend. But ... at some point I want to upgrade that Cobra to a spec that'll let me head off and explore the galaxy. And you can do that in this game, explore the known galaxy.

Sid Meier's Ace Patrol - it's a WW1 fighter pilot game. It's very simple and reasonably complex at the same time. It's very reminiscent of a card game I played with the gaming group a good few years ago. Interesting, well presented and gives a little challenge too.

Sunless Sea - a new one where you're the captain of a steamship in a cyberpunk world. The tagline is "Lose your mind, eat your crew". It models hunger, fuel and terror. Interesting game again, interesting enough for me to pick it up after watching the Totalbiscuit and Kim videos on it. I enjoyed my first look at this one today.

This War Of Mine - difficult subject, your game characters are people attempting to survive in a war torn city, under siege from snipers during the day. You have to collect sufficient material, food and supplies to allow them to survive. It's difficult, somewhat depressing too. I suspect I'll only do a couple of playthroughs of this one.

And then there's Moo2 as well. I've been winning a few of these games, although I've not taken one to the grindy conclusion for a while. There comes a tipping point where you become unstoppable, if you're not attacked up to that point.

Yep. Good times, although I'm not really feeling that.

It's welcome seeing and feeling the improvements in my outsides but it's the nature of depression that your mental state tends to hide any improvements that happen.

I'm not in a depressive cycle as such, although it has been a few days since I got a message from Cupid's Gift. Those have been a real lift.

Before I go - a suggestion for the Elite devs, they really need to implement those as an addition to the game !

50 Shades of ... Dragon ?

I had one of those daft ideas today.

I thought I'd share it with you :

I'm not quite sure if the little fella knows what he's auditioning for. We better not tell him, Pocket Dragons are fragile things and are embarassed easily.

It's something that certainly is grabbing more than it's fair share of attention at the moment. The movie that is. (And the books when they were all the rage).

Am I going to go see it ? No. Unless that is, I get one of those offers I can't possibly refuse. Yep. If a Pretty Lady asks me to spend time with her, then I'll do anything to make it happen. I think that's the only way I'll watch this particular movie though. From what I've read about it, the subject matter is twisted and make invoke the part of me that likes to throw stuff.

We shall see. Opinions are mixed :

There are the people who want it banned and all copies burned;
There are the curious;
There are the ones looking for a cheap thrill, no matter the ethics;
There are the people who have seen it and enjoyed it.

My opinion ? Make your own minds up about it. Go see if you're curious, tell people what you thought. One reason I'm avoiding it is because there are plenty more films out there at the moment, excellent and good films. And there's only so much time to watch them all.

If you're only able to watch one cinema film over the next few weeks, watch Big Hero 6. Don't waste your time on anything else. The Craziemob watched Big Hero 6 on Tuesday and it's ... outstanding. Definitely the best film of 2015 so far.

Other news ...

I've finally had that doctor's appointment ! She was surprised when I told her it's been worse. And it has been worse. I've been at "steadily improving, never getting better" for quite a few months now as my outsides improve a bit and then worsen again.

Result from the appointment - more antibiotics, some anti-histamines, good gunk and nuke standard gunk. The nuke standard gunk (Betnovate Valerate) is amazing. My ankles were shredded (nasty yep) on Monday and an application of the nuke-gunk sorted that out enough for 3 good days. So that stuff should help out a lot over the next little while.

Hopefully the stuff from this last visit will polish off the healing and get me back to All Fixed Proper Job. We'll see.

I've also been away to the Mall tonight. I felt the need for a wander :-) What did I get ?

Thorntons is still very dangerous. Haha. I have sweeties.

HMV got raided too. I spotted a couple in 2 for £10 and that kinda cascaded :

Echosmith - Talking Dreams. Heard one track a while ago, thought it was pretty cool.
Linda Rondstadt collection - legend singer.
Meghan Trainor - Title - loved All About That Bass when I heard it.
Taylor Swift - Fearless. Expecting more pleasant stuff here.

See ? I couldn't go without new music to listen to for long !

One last pic before I go :

That made me chuckle when I spotted it the other day :-) Thought it was appropriate for the post-doctor post :-).

If you go see Fifty Shades, lemme know what you think of it. I'm curious :-)

Struggles

Oh my

I think my body is trying to tell me something.

But the stubbornness is keeping me grimly hobbling along.

Yep. Could do with a break - apologies if this turns out to be another of those Sleepy Is Struggling posts but I need to express it so I can deal with it.

So what's up ?

Me tired. Very tired.

I think that's going to be me on Saturday and Sunday. The way I'm feeling at the moment, I may submerge under those covers on Friday and stay there until Monday morning. But not yet.

Travel tomorrow, meetings on Friday. So I'll keep myself going for those. Incidentally, that's why I've not bothered the doctor about it yet although I really should check if there's something available on Friday pm after those meetings.

What do I need ?
Another course of antibiotics - to clear out the last of the infection problems and to sort out a cold I seem to have had since before Xmas. I think that last leftover infection nasties is why my skin is getting to like 90% sorted and no further. It's frustrating because some of the patches that were the most awful have healed to invisibility.

That skin problem is also exacerbating a dehydration problem that's really biting at the moment. Most of the fluids I'm taking in are going into repairs. But ... my muscles complain when they're not being fed enough water.

So I'm having to deal with cramps as well as managing the other problems.

Yep. Pain at the moment. Lots of pain.

But not unmanageable.

I'm looking to try and maintain a positive attitude.

Even when that seems harder than reasonably expectable.

I am struggling at the moment. But I compare to how I was a couple of years ago and ... I'm doing better than I was back then.

I'll go see the doctor when I next get the chance, which should help my body get over the last of the infection problems. In the meantime - lots of water to drink. And rest always helps. Well, usually.

I'll survive.

And to all those who are reading this and getting worried, I'll seek a bit of help soon. When I can.

Next post will be brighter - promise :-) And I'll hopefully have a doctor's report to pass on too. Cya !

Not dead yet ...

Ok, that title's a bit dramatic.

I was just thinking that I've not posted anything since saying I'd picked up a tummy bug. Bugs down there are rare for me. If I do get them, they only last a day or so until the Nasties are out of my system.

I have two theories right now :

It's something I ate (definitely !) - chief subject is a flapjack
It's something I cook with (it fits cos I tend to cook with the same implements)

The Nasties should have been out of my system by now - they're not. Oh well. It's not too bad - you can probably guess the symptoms so I won't describe them here. (Someone at work today asked and he was definitely getting that "Too Much Information !!" look). They're not getting in the way of what I want to do.

I'm testing that second theory by having take out as much as I can this week and seeing what happens. If I recover, I'll bin the cooking implements and get some new ones.

Lesson - work the problem to get your answer. The plan will actually work out a little - chippie tonight. Chinese tomorrow (they have a day off on Monday's). KFC possibly Wednesday - I'm expecting to have to go to that Post Office pick up place again which will put me in the vicinity of the Mall. Something Different on Thursday (thinking about watching Hunger Games 2 - anyone join me ?)

We'll see how that goes.

Skin's giving mixed signals. I think the infection has pretty much gone but my arms haven't recovered as much as my legs have. The legs are doing pretty well actually but the arms are a bit too much in range when my guard's down when trying to get to sleep. But ... it's coming ...

Ok. Change of subject.

Watched the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special on Saturday. They've been hyping this mercilessly, so much that it was a relief when the show actually came around. Hype is a strange thing. It can give all sorts of expectations. The fans get all sorts of expectations. Star Wars had this in spades with the prequel sequels and a lot of the fans think they were failed by those prequel sequels. (I think they're decent action movies but crippled by Lucas's hamfisted treatment of his own universe)

Doctor Who ? Awesome. After just 5 minutes I'd navigated to the Amazon page to check out the bluray and I almost preordered it.

It was a pretty special show. It had everything, humour, drama, emotion, mystery, silliness. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the only reason I haven't preordered it is because BBC have a habit of not giving you bluray quality on blurays (Sherlock didn't have bluray quality sound, so I can't watch it without risking the sound skip problem). I'll get it when I can be assured of no frustration with the sound (picture doesn't mean much to me but sound ? crucial).

Matt Smith has been a very worthy Doctor. I've been watching Doctor Who since a babe and he's one of the best. That's always going to be the utterly mad Tom Baker but Matt Smith is right up there too. He can snap from one aspect of the Doctor's personality to another in a split second in a way that instantly grabs the attention.

He was supported by a couple of the better companions too in Rory Pond and Clara. Amy Pond started well but just ran out of good writing.

You're probably guessing that I'm a huge Doctor Who fan. You'd be right. It's consistently been good quality scifi (ok, the Sylvester McCoy times were cursed by awful writing) and it's always been entertaining. That's the key for me, stories on telly have to be entertaining. Things like Stargate Universe forgot that. The new Battlestar Galactica got lost in thinking it had a clever plan (it didn't, they started making it up as they went along).

I hope I keep things entertaining here. That's enough for tonight ! I'm going to watch the first episode of Britain By The Sea (oh look ! Pendennis Castle, home of Mr Cuddles !) and then it's back to Azeroth for my latest mage. She's searing the Searing Gorge tonight.

PS If there's any rumours that the 50th special almost did a Bolt on me and drew tears near the end, I'll utterly deny them. However, I will confirm there was an Oh My God during the epilogue.

Happy scatteryness

I went to the doc's again yesterday.

I know, I know, it was much overdue. But I am terrible at doing things that benefit my own health.

The result (and without going into too many details !) was :
More diet* pills
More goop
Even more goop
Less messiness on my legs
And more pasty-white goodness coming back

Yep. As is usual for going on the diet* pills, I've seen instant improvement in my condition. Trouble is though, every other time I've been on them, the condition worsens again after I run out. We shall see this time around, I'm looking more into tracking the allergies this time around. I have a blood test coming there too, will be curious to see what the result is.

It's just in time too, the weather here has turned colder ...

* They're not actually diet pills. They're antibiotics. However ... with a 4 times a day, 3 hours no food each time pattern, they may as well be diet pills. Hey, it's a good discipline to have, it works out to 3 meals a day (with the 4th being while you're asleep) and a cutting down on the all hours grazing on junk.

So that's me improving, hopefully it'll stick this time.

Next up - work. Oh dear. We've been "tech refreshed". Note they don't say "upgrade". The base units seem ok at the moment but when they change our systems to Windows 7, as is threatened, they will struggle for memory. This laptop has 3GB of memory and is sitting at 930MB free with Firefox, Outlook, Skype, iTunes and Steam running. If that hits 500MB, Windows complains bitterly and I have to close applications. That shouldn't happen, there's a technique called "Virtual memory", where the memory available to Windows is expanded virtually with applications getting put on the hard disc instead of in actual memory. The new machines have just 2GB.

The big awful though is the screen. We've been inflicted with HP Elitemonitor 201s, which have a multitude of flaws :

Widescreen - this is an entertainment setup, not a business setup. Widescreen means less height to work with. For business, a 17" 4:3 is more useful than a 20" widescreen, it has more useful area.
Resolution - if it's a 20" screen, it should be able to do 1080p. That's 1080 vertical lines. These can only do 900.
Pixel bleed - this is the really crippling thing. It's where coloured, lit pixels bleed into the ones next door. We're usually working with black text on white, so those white pixels bleed onto the black and make the text unreadable.
Update rate - this is where you move things around on the screen and have disorienting effects from the after images.

I'll see how it goes before seeing if I need a replacement screen. My eyes were misbehaving today, probably due to it being hayfever season still.

I ended up at the Mall yesterday after a day working at home (around the doctor visit). Firstly, if you liked the first 2 Riddick films, the third is worth watching. It starts slow but accelerates into something very, very good. Almost as if they needed to dump baggage from Chronicles (good film, bad endgame). I'd already arranged to see Riddick and wanted to put a couple of fingers up to my condition by getting out of the house (I wasn't great yesterday, much improved today).

I am sooo close to getting a Macbook. It'll be a Macbook Air, 13" refurbished last generation Macbook Air. It just ticks all the boxes :
Enough resolution on the screen
iTunes compatibility
SSD hard disc as a massive bonus
Avoidance of the abomination that is Windows 8

Just one problem - £869. I'd prefer not to spend half that on a laptop.

But ... with laptop prices going up in general, it may happen. Especially as the keyboard on this one is getting so much worse.

Boom ! Recovery

I've been writing a lot lately about the infection that had hold of my legs and various bits of the rest of me ...

Hopefully that little segment of my life is coming to a close :-)

Since the doctor trip on Wednesday there's been some quite dramatic improvement. I'm not clear of signs of inflammation yet but it's getting so close that I'll soon have difficulty picking places to put the medicine cream. It's improved that much and that's coming from it affecting maybe 20-30% of me.

I hadn't said exactly how much it had affected me had I ? Well, as well as the big patches on my legs being joined by patches around my elbows, the infection had spread to my hip, ribs area, bum, ears, a patch under my eye. Probably about 20-30% of me, some bits worse than others.

But it's now considerably better. I'm hoping that when I next see the doctor in 9 days, I can walk into her office with a big grin and show completely healed legs and arms. But I'm not counting my chickens just yet, it's improved before and then come right back. Hopefully I've identified why with thinking that I'm allergic to a few things :

Orange Juice - think I have a citrus allergy which was setting off bad breathing and the excema.
White bread - I can mostly avoid this because brown bread seems fine. Pizza's a problem but as long as I keep that in moderation I'll be fine :-)
Office - dry air is promoting the excema I think. Can't do much about that except try and get moisture in to me.

So yeah - I'm hoping this little chapter is coming to a close so I can concentrate on getting things done and moving forward again :-) I've let a lot of things drift lately because I've had my whole essence focused on trying to get healthy again.

BOOM !

We had our annual Crazie Fireworks combined with birthdays last night, hosted by the BionicDwarf. I'll hopefully get this house in order for a bit of hosting soon, that's another thing put on hold by the infection.

I have to say, Sainsburys rockets are much better than Tescos rockets although we did get one "interesting" rocket which hangfired. And we had one of the mortar boxes decide to start shooting sideways.

Great little display though, CK, BD and I chipped in with £270 worth of fireworks which gave us just over half an hour of :

Cracking fireworks too.

We followed that with pizza (yey!) and a couple of movies after handing out of a decent selection of birthday presents. Tis birthday season at the moment, with BD, CQ and mine coming in quick succession. Mine's not until the 13th (born on a Wednesday). Oh - movies, I'm watching one of my new ones at the moment : Beastmaster. Old classic.

After that - Strictly results. Yep. I watch Strictly Come Dancing. First year watching it as a regular and I'm quite enjoying it.

And with that admission (coinciding with the dinner gong from the kitchen), time to sign off with the shreds of leftover dignity :-)