And then there was purple

So you've seen the news by now probably ...

GB effectively on lockdown, mostly due to the attitude of the Nutter Brigade who took yesterday's sunshine as an excuse to get out and about and the response is the most stringent restrictions on movement in this country in living memory.

I'll be ok. I have food for at least a week, we're still allowed to go shopping for food and I'll top up after a few days. I'm expecting the shops to be absolute mayhem tomorrow with another wave of panic buying. Nobody wants to be a part of that. Oh wait, Nutter Brigade will be out in force.

I'll be working from home for the forseeable future too. That's ok too although it's going to have an impact on what I'll be doing.

Enough of that though. I was going to add in a jokey thumbnail pic but I don't feel like this is really a joking matter any more. Despite what it might seem from the last few paragraphs, my mood is ok. I have a bunch of people who I can natter to about all this stuff, I can get on with Stuff, I have way too many books and dvds to keep my attention and I was happily going WOOOOW at the internet spaceships today ... The acid above is more a case of "I'm not mad, I'm just very, very disappointed."

Internet spaceships ! I left things yesterday on a planet with a dim sun on the horizon ... Check out how I ended up today :

Beautiful right ?

That's an Imperial Cutter named Tiamat's Chariot and I'll be finishing this route of astronomical shiny places to visit in that ship. There will be some amazing pictures to come I'm sure.

Found a ginger planet along the way too.

Went through a small nebula area ...

And then I was close enough to the populated areas and their shipyards to trade up the ship. She is really shiny isn't she ?

On the way out of the station for the first time there.

She's a pretty one but a big lumbering beastie too. Definitely not one to be going around the galaxy in either but the rest of this exploration trip is all short trips, which should be all good and then the beastie gets refitted as a heavily armed trading ship, taking supplies wherever they're needed.

That's it for tonight I think. I've vented about the new measures. I don't like 'em but the Nutter Brigade has made it happen.

Internet spaceships can be super pretty and super shiny.

Stay safe out there, be well and if anyone reading this is due to work in a food shop over the next few days, I don't envy you one bit. I hope you get the protection that I think you'll need.

See you all later in the week. Virtually :-D

A Test of Bandwidth

I thought I'd do a little bit of testing today.

Before I do though - Happy Mothers Day to all the Moms out there ! Sleepymum called earlier, she's ok and is enjoying the flowers that came through via non contact "just pop it down there please" type protocols.

Bandwidth ?

There is a story going around at the moment that an EU individual has asked the video streaming service people to tone down how much bandwidth they use ... and that they've complied (It might start tomorrow).

The idea is that people watching Prime, Netflix or The Baby Yoda Channel are soaking up the bandwidth that's needed for emergency services. I'll get back to what I think of that later.

There was another story about online gaming people taking up the bandwidth too. I thought I'd test this ...

First up is Twitch streaming and the lovely Kaeyi this morning doing a stream of the new Animal Crossing game :

This was after roughly an hour of 720p streaming, which goes at a steady 3ish Mbits/s. An hour was 1.542GB. For this activity, the compression and video encoding is done on the fly, so it isn't as effective as when the encoding has more time. Fuzzy's stream at the moment is in 720p as well and it's going at about 6Mbit/s over on the laptop.

By on the fly, we mean that it's pictures and sound being captured at the source, encoded into a video stream and sent over the internet to multiple viewers in 0.95 seconds between my laptop and Fuzzy currently. That's ... pretty impressive.

Next up was Amazon Prime, with 46 minutes of Star Trek Picard :

So that's 2.332GB in 46 minutes, correcting up to the hour makes it 3.04GB or double what Twitch were doing for that Animal Crossing stream. This is for a video on demand service and it looks like a really inefficient one too. Prime's quality isn't up to the next candidate's quality. This is shocking actually, for a service looking to send out prerecorded video to millions of people, it should be as efficient and high quality as possible.

On to Youtube and an Aavak video on his latest Rimworld colony. Youtube tends to skip up and down on quality, depending on whether you're paying attention. This was a 1080p video, running for 50 minutes :

There we go, 709MB for 50 minutes or 850.8MB per hour. Youtube video from people like Aavak looks pixel sharp, especially when compared to what Prime were pushing out. It's packaged up (rendered) for efficiency by both the viewer producer and then by Youtube as well.

And Aavak makes good videos too. He has a lovely Welsh accented voice that's a pleasure to listen to.

As does the Fuzzy One and Nerina Pallot who is playing on the iTunes at the moment.

Last one - gaming ! I did a 3 hour session on Elite earlier and the stats came out to :

There we go ... 216MB for 3 hours, or 72MB per hour. That's probably a low level in terms of what traffic gets generated by multiplayer games. As you bounce from system to system, the game and servers will figure out what's there and send the info back. The Elite Dangerous Market Connector application is also sending information back and forth on what I find. There's been minimal contact between me and other pilots though and no voice comms. That would have boosted it a fair bit.

Voice comms won't be that much higher though. Voice needs a fraction of the bandwidth that is required by video and you can chop the quality back a lot before you lose the ability to understand the person on the other end of the cable.

The big reason is that the coordination in the gaming world is done by data, not by pictures. The game system will send across detailed information on what the entities in the game are doing and then the highly detailed environment is generated from that. I'm thinking that it probably resembles a list of chess moves. Player 1 is at x, y, z pointing a certain direction going a certain speed. Update that often and that should be what's needed. You don't really need to keep sending across the detailed information on what they look like.

Just like Elite won't send across pictures of the space stations as you orbit around them, it'll send across the design info which maps to the graphics toolkit I suspect they have and then the local game does the grunt work.

And then the game makes it look super pretty.

So what's the point of the testing ?

We're in a time where we're being asked to stay at home and be isolated. We're not really that set up to do that psychologically. Humans are very definitely herd people. Even us introverts like being on the outskirts of a community. We also need things to keep our minds busy.

Sure, if the emergency services need to take control of limited bandwidth, let them do that. I suspect it would be very easy for the Netflix's, Amazons and Baby Yoda Channel people to flick a switch and stop the video watching.

But we need our entertainment to help keep us sane. Keep the tap on until it is required to turn the tap off. Say NO to people who need to look as if they are having an impact on the situation, especially when that something is ill conceived, not thought out and more than a little daft. Slowing the video feeds or turning off the online games takes away a reason for people to find their entertainment from within their little bit of isolation. People bored because they can't play FIFA over the internet are more likely to go for a kickabout in the park.

It's dangerous. And it's another precedent.

That's getting near politics though, which I try not to get in to here.

I'm preferring to do my sightseeing in game (rather than outdoors around people).

It's been interesting staying in my little isolation place.

May need to click and zoom in a bit for the name there.

And another cheeky sunrise for the landing.

To close - keep doing what keeps you sane ! As long as it's paying a healthy respect to this virus that's going around. I'm hoping not to leave the house for around a week now. I'll be doing the work from home thing, keeping on with the online games (and the offline games), watching the streams and a little bit of video watching online.

Might be an idea to keep the dvds and blurays in reserve in case they do have to cut the Net/Prime quality down a bit though.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Addon - just seen this on the Twitters :

Click for the text.

Keep playing games, dust off the dvds, stay at home, be well.

Scavenger Hunting

I acquired supplies today !

Normally that doesn't merit a headline but these are odd times we are living in.

Yeah, it's a bit modest but I'm not going to be panic buying far more than I am ever likely to use or even be able to store. My fridge is actually nigh on full at the moment.

I'm planning to be doing a fair bit of working at home over the next few weeks, which started on Wednesday. I was in today but to be honest, because most people are working at home, it was almost like an extension of the work at home isolation. I suspect there may actually have been less people per square metre than there are around me at the moment at home. (They're just in the houses of the neighbourhood, safely isolated from each other).

Anyway, Tuesday saw me do a little bit of stocking up and the Horde had already gotten there before me. Most of the shelves had been emptied and not just of the headline stuff like toilet roll, I was surprised that items like multivitamins, milk and chips had disappeared too. And lots more too. There weren't any iced buns either. Or chicken and mushroom pastry thingys. I like those. The things in the picture above were things I wanted to acquire on Tuesday but had been cleared out. Or they are things I don't usually keep in the house (bread and milk) but the being at home thing calls for them now. They had 4 pint milk things too but I didn't think I'd use all that. Responsible hoarding !

Things have hopefully settled down a bit since then, or people have already completed their panic buying sprees and are now locking themselves away. (They aren't locking themselves away - as demonstrated on mainland Europe where draconian measures are being introduced).

I could say rather a lot about the situations occurring at the moment but I suspect you don't want me joining in with that, you'll be seeing it pretty much everywhere you look at the moment.

As far as it goes for me though :

I have supplies;
I can work at home very easily;
I haven't shown any symptoms (although I am suffering from allergies and dust!);
And I'm more scared of passing on anything I get than I am of the Thing itself.

The dust inhalation is partly due to :

Hello thing. Thing is on the way, although it's an older model Technic set which means that instead of going through a numbered sequence of bags, all of the bits are in all of the bags and you have to dive through them all looking for the bit you want. I do like Lego but it seems to kick the dust up when I do it.

It has suspension, steering and a rear drive at the moment, engine might well go in next.

I know what you're thinking there - there's an easy fix to there being too much dust in the house :-D.

I've also been doing the Internet Spaceship thing again :

Black hole !

More black hole !

Doughnut aisle that got too close to a black hole !

Apparently the Horde does not have a taste for custard doughnuts.

And a little isolation in the internet spaceship. I'm getting close to civilisation again there, only about 25k light years to go and quite a few waypoints with pretty things at them.

Be well everyone :-).

Away Trip Books

Hello everyone,

Things are still being weird out there aren't they ? I'm ok but I'll be working at home for the next couple of days. I did a shop tonight and couldn't believe how much the place had been hit by the Locust Horde.

But enough about that - I bet you're seeing far too much about What's Occurring from other places and you want a place to get away from it. How about some books ?

After a good while missing diving in to the books, the Canada trip gave me lots of excuse to dive in to them again. I had finished Embers of War before the trip but not opened up another book since.

The first book to be devoured was All Systems Red, of the Murderbot Chronicles by Martha Wells.

This one is written completely from the perspective of the Murderbot, who hasn't got a name (can't remember it) outside of calling themselves Murderbot. They're a cyborg mechanism that acts as the security guard for a group of scientists surveying a planet. It sets off at a pretty smart pace and, with a few suitable interludes to let you catch your breath, keeps rocking along quite quickly too.

There is a lot of what's going on inside the Murderbot's head and you never really lose track of what's going on. Murderbot likes to think their way through the situation while the inner narration explains what's going on to the reader. That situation rapidly develops into one where Murderbot and peeps end up in extreme danger and funnily enough, what Murderbot would actually quite like to do is get back to devouring copious amounts of entertainment video.

An intriguing book and I'll definitely be back for more.

Oh - the setting is medium distant future with humanity out among the stars, attempting to not be eaten by various hostile fauna. The tech involved in the story is very believable. It's advanced enough to have artificially intelligent combat robots but it's still grounded in a certain limited reality that doesn't depend on pseudo reality stuff to make it work.

And then we have Tiamat's Wrath ...

I can't say too much about Tiamat's Wrath by the Expanse people, James S.A. Corey. It's book 8 in a series that will be 9 books long, so you can imagine how much spoiler potential there is here.

I think what I can say is that there is plenty of space based shenanigans going on. There's character development. There's new people. There's old people. There's old new people. There's new old people. And there's all the other shenanigans going on, both at the scale of people and all the way up to the scale of solar systems.

It's a spectacle of a book that bodes well for where the series continues to go and I will most definitely be coming back for book 9. I am very intrigued as to how they plan to end the series. I was most certainly glued from start to finish and it did very nicely for the second half of the flights there plus the evenings at the accommodation.

Next up was Big Ship At The End Of The Universe by Alex White.

This one most definitely dove whole heartedly into Space Magic. Indeed, it depended upon it.

It's set in the medium far future again, where humanity has well and truly spread itself around the stars and gotten comfortable enough to go racing. Somewhere along the way, humanity has evolved a whole new organ or sub organ in the brain, which is a source of magic. Mechanists can dive into machinery and computers. There are life mages, shield mages, sniper mages, analysis mages ... and more.

It was a genuinely interesting and very different world to be in, with Boots and Nilah being fun characters for the book to be centred around. There's the dashing racer and the old cynic that play off each other and it works oh so well for the book. There are a host of other characters too and you actually genuinely care about how they're getting on. At least I did when I was reading it.

It doesn't pull its punches with how hard some of the effects hit, the tech of this world is very definitely set up to win the fights and things like the Geneva Convention have been thoroughly forgotten about. There are machines that slice and dice people, neurotoxins for lunch and a massive conspiracy going on. It's a dangerous place and our heroines throw themselves at it fully as they launch in to an epic treasure hunt ...

I'll definitely be back for the next book in the series too. Alex White created a very curious place to base his stories in.

Last one for this collection is Old Man's War by John Scalzi (technically, I haven't finished it yet but there's only 3 chapters to go).

This one is set in probably more like the near future. Humanity is in the stars ... although Earth only really knows about this from a comfortable distance. As our story starts, our central character is contemplating signing up for the off world military.

There is an on planet military ... but in this story people above 75 years old get a chance to join up for the off world Colonial military, which then can lead to a life in a body freed from the ravages of their 75+ years so far. However, there is a cost ... they can never return to Earth. As soon as they leave, they are essentially dead to Earth.

How this is done is something I'll leave to readers of the book.

There is a bit of Space Magic in here but it's stuff that's done well and it makes the story rattle along nicely. Some books try to rationalise what they are doing behind the scenes. I think the best books just summarise that as a kind of Space Magic. The character chosen for the narration trick isn't going to understand, so the exposition in the novel doesn't attempt to either. It works and gets the Space Magic out of the way quickly.

What's more important are the characters, what they're going through and what they're thinking. And this is a book that's really rough on its characters. And that's done well too, with John Scalzi's trademark sense of off ball humour making them human and offsetting that roughness.

This is another one where I've bought the next book in the series (ok, it's on sale at the moment) before finishing the current book.

A good set of books ! I think the next one is likely to be a fact book, an overdue Ignition.

If you are having to face a period of being shut in for a while, I hope you have something to keep you entertained and a good book is excellent for that.

Be well everybody.

Saturday Thoughts

Hello everyone,

It's still getting scary out there isn't it ... Here's a Happy Place :

Lego Shop - Cardiff. I was over there yesterday afternoon for various reasons.

Didn't actually pick up any Lego though ...

Let's see - what's been occurring since Wednesday ?

The big reason for heading over to Cardiff yesterday was to pick up more drugs. Yeah, I could have picked them up more locally but ... local Mall's got kinda boring now hasn't it ? Cardiff has more interesting places and better shops.

It's been curious watching the news over the last few days. I have to say our government needs their collective heads examined after the reckless Thursday announcement that they were going to be happy that more people acquire this virus that's going around. It's accelerating too. And it's been curious that so many event organisers have announced postponements pretty much immediately after the government announcement. It's almost like they were waiting for official word before deciding what to do. (Liabilities will have had something to do with that).

That's about as far as I want to go in to politics though. It was distressing to see one person's story appear on a discord yesterday where his girlfriend was in the hospital and slipped in to a coma. Hopefully they pull out of it.

For me - I'm still fine ... although I'm nervous about it. We have an away meeting coming up on Wednesday next week and I don't think that's a particularly good idea as something to travel to. Maybe that's me being overcautious. Our place is a bit of a melting pot of plague as well because even though we have valid work from home facilities, people probably don't switch to them quickly enough. We haven't had an official announcement yet. Or rather we have ... but it's been another head in the sand no decision keep calm and stay as you were announcement.

I think we may have to call off the Mother's Day visit weekend too, although I'll talk to SleepyMom before making that decision. I know a few other people have called off attendance at events because they have to look after older relatives. They're essentially self isolating already so that they can stay in their smaller group of contacts.

Internet hugs are still good - right ?

So - Cardiff yesterday. The catalyst for it was my body starting to tear itself apart again. I think my external woes over the last almost decade ran down my levels of various minerals to critical levels and one thing that's manifested as is brutal cramp. As in heavy cramp in my leg that led to hobbling until yesterday. Leg's ok again now. I must have slept awkwardly on Wednesday night too because my shoulder decided to freeze up. That's mostly ok again as well now but it's kept me out of the internet spaceship pilot seat for a while.

It's been minimal gaming today as well - there's a Caledorn Pathfinder video going on another stream and I'm looking forward to lurking in Tashnarr's stream later when she starts up. The Pathfinder game feels like one I might enjoy playing, eventually. I find it confusing to play games while watching a playlist of videos of them.

Hopefully internet spaceships tomorrow. I kinda want to get back to the bubble pretty soon so I can get into different ships again. The next one is likely to be a Krait Mk II for mining ... although I might actually do mining in a smaller ship. They changed one of the mechanics of the game such that if you do industrial scale mining of the most lucrative and flood markets, the markets give you less money.

I'm missing the sport. This weekend, that would have been Formula 1 and I think it was going to be IMSA and WEC's Sebring races. But that's understandable, especially as the McLaren mechanic's catching of the virus may well have coincided with the Barcelona test and there may well be more people out there unknowingly carrying it.

So - drugs ... when my Magnesium tablets ran out, I got the wrong ones. Instead of 3 a day for 80% RRA, they were 1 a day for 67%. I think the 1 a day, taken in the morning, meant I didn't have much left while attempting to sleep ... hence cramps over night. Today was ok on the new regime.

(Don't use Dr Google as gospel, if I'd still been getting cramps, I would have gone back to a proper doctor. I was just lucky right this time).

Yesterday also saw me heading around the sweet shop - I now have emergency sherbets and kola kube supplies. I also found myself in the book cave and picked up 2 by Alastair Reynolds - Redemption Ark and Absolution Gap. Hopefully I read those in the right order. I also picked up HG Wells War of the Worlds because although I've seen a few adaptations, I've never read the originals.

I almost did cinema too but that was a victim of bad timing - Vin Diesel's Bloodshot seems to be the only semi interesting film (except 1917 - that's very good but I saw it already) on at the moment and I'd have missed the start ... and then it would have been super awkward to escape Cardiff after.

I think that's it for now and this post ...

Be well, be safe, be wary of the risks out there at the moment.

Time for book I think ! Currently in Old Man's War by John Scalzi, although that's been put aside while I've been doing other things !

Addon ... OH ! One last thing. People have been posting the "Support your local merchants" and there's another for "Support self employed con people". Special mention here for one Scorch Lady - link's over to the right.

Before the event got moved, she posted that she wasn't going to Birmingham Comic Con. Artists and traders like Scorch must get a lot of their income from events like the comic cons and that bookmark there is a lovely bit of work.

Probing in Dark Places

I've been bouncing around the Internet Spaceship galaxy again ...

That's a black hole ... and the galaxy. More of that later ...

In real life stuff, things are getting a bit more scary no ? If you are worried about what's going on, you're in a good place. It's ok. I'm right there with you on it. I think the situation will develop further as time goes on, then it'll hit a plateau and start reducing again. But in the meantime, keep being wary of it, take your precautions, don't be silly about it and I hope you and your people will come through this ok. I suspect that Comic Con Birmingham will disappear, that one is 9 days from now. I reckon London Comic Con at the end of May is probably 50:50 at the moment. I think the Lords day will still happen ... but that's an event held at a wide open stadium, not something in a closed in exhibition centre.

I had a mission accomplished last night from the shopping trip. I was out of Mini Eggs so had to indulge the panic of running out to get more. Also acquired loo roll because that was a due purchase. Looks like the locusts had hoovered up most of the loo roll but they'd rolled out a fresh pallet of the stuff ... sorted. The thing of 4 will keep me going for a bit. I was feeling as if I was being judged for having my loo roll in the trolley though.

May also have acquired more popcorn and a big Toblerone.

Internet spaceships ? As the thumbnail (and the title!) suggests, I've been getting braver with the black holes ...

That one was rather pretty. The game lets you get pretty close to them and I got curious enough to do a little research on what we're seeing there.

You'll probably already know about the Event Horizon, the point at which even light cannot escape. This is also known as the Schwarzchild radius for non rotating, uncharged black holes (simple ones). If you were to pack our Sun into a size smaller than its Schwarzchild radius (I'm just gonna call this the S Radius), it would become a black hole. Our Sun's S Radius is 2.95km. That's not very big ... (The radius of our Sun averages as 696,000 km).

The stars you see in the picture that look like an eyeball globe is the Photon Sphere. This is at 1.5x the S Radius. The game lets you approach to maybe double that. It doesn't let you get any closer than that and depending on the size of the hole, the ship starts getting hotter. The small black holes are the best because you can orbit them quicker.

This one was stunning. The orangey/yellow type thing in the background is actually the straightness of the Milky Way ribbon bent around the black hole by the gravitational lensing. You can also see the lensing within the photon sphere. At some point, I'll do a video because the screenshots don't do justice to how the lensing folds and unfolds as you approach and ...

Retreat.

I'm curious about the gravity though, so if you don't mind I'm gonna think aloud through the numbers for a minute ... The Gravity equations is :

Force = Gravitational Constant * Mass of Object 1 * Mass of Object 2

Radius ^2

The Gravitational Constant is known : 6.674 * 10 ^ -11.
Mass of Object 1 will be our black hole. For our Sun, that's 1.9884 * 10 ^ 30 kg.
And we can ignore Mass of Object 2 because :

Force = Mass x Acceleration.

To calculate the Acceleration, we divide Force by Mass, which means Mass Of Object 2 cancels out.

So big number time : Acceleration per solar mass = 13.27 * 10 ^ 19 / Radius in m squared. (1.327 * 10 ^ 20)

That makes the acceleration at the Schwarzchild Radius of a 1 Solar Mass object =
1.327 * 10 ^ 20 / (3 * 10 ^ 3) * (3 * 10 ^ 3)
By the way, you can cheat with the powers of 10. Multiplying them adds, dividing subtracts, so that works out to 1.47 * 10 ^ 13 m/s/s. Or about 1,500,000,000,000g. 1 g = about 10m/s/s (actually 9.81 but that needs a calculator and I'm lazy!)

Going out to 10km reduces that to 1.327 * 10 ^ 12 or 132,700,000,000g.
25km makes that 2.12 * 10 ^ 11 m/s/s or 21,200,000,000g.
1000km is 1.327 * 10 ^ 8 or 13,270,000g.
696,000km or the current surface of the Sun is 2.74 * 10 ^ 2 or 27.9g. Phew - wiki agrees.

I do hope this math is right. Either way, you'd want pretty strong engines or Space Magic to keep you out of the black holes at that range.

That's a considerably bigger black hole ... and my 4th trip to Sagittarius A* at the centre of the galaxy. Sagittarius A* is estimated to be 4 million Solar masses and its Schwarzchild Radius is 1.187 * 10 ^ 10 m (11.87 billion km). It's chunky.

I think that's enough math for one day.

I found this place while on the travels, attempted to join the dots. Need brighter ship lights.

If a star isn't big enough to collapse into a black hole (our Sun is not, the threshold is about 2.17 stellar masses according to Wiki) after exploding, then it may crush down into degenerate subatomic particles. As these squish together, a neutron star may form ... or pulsar. In the game, these have streamers running off of varying levels of violence. The one above was pretty gentle and the idea is to run the streamer just long enough to super charge the jump drive so you can bounce huge distances between stars. For my current ship, that takes the range from 65 light years up to 261. Neat for crossing vast distances quickly.

And they look rather pretty too.

I found some planets along the way too, here's a water world. These seem to be generated a fair amount by the game.

That one is an Ammonia world.

Another black hole, this time with a star behind it ... or maybe in front. Or behind me and the lensing has turned it all the way around. This one was from today and it's the GRS 1737-31 black hole, coming in at 48.2 solar masses giving a S Radius of 142km. The game let me approach to 185km, which was closer than I predicted, that Photon Sphere should have been at 213km.

But ... alas, my hand was starting to complain at too much probing of the dark holes so I called it a night not long after visiting GRS 1737-31. I found a curious canyon system :

And a good place to settle in.

Nite all. Apologies for me letting the geek out in the middle there :-D. Wait. Sorry not sorry ! :-D

Appreciation time !

Hello everyone,

Apparently it's International Women's Appreciation Day today. Which gives me a good excuse to say nice things about people. But first ... a thumbnail is required ...

Ladies of NASA ! Did I really never post these ? Oops. This was a good little set with some interesting history within the material that came with it.

Let's start with a few amazing people who I know. First up there is the ever wonderful LTK, who listens to the jokes, natters away and loves the various screenshots coming through. And then there's the Lark, who has been a great cinema buddy (not much lately although I really enjoyed The Handmaiden - special film), hopefully there will be another Comic Con this year although that depends on the organisers and a certain virus that's doing the rounds. They've both been amazing friends over the last few years.

As for virus stuff - I think I'm outside of the danger period that I was keeping an eye on ! The incubation period is supposed to be something like 14 days and I'm ok. It's now 14 days since getting off the flight from Canada and I was seeing that as the danger period times. Mind you, I did forgo heading into Cardiff on Friday but that was more because it was later than ideal and there was nothing interesting in the Cardiff cinemas, less due to the case of virus that's been announced for someone in Cardiff.

Still, it's ok to be cautious. (Not ok to be crazy about it though, there's too much panic buying happening at the moment).

Back to ladies ! Special mention for the Sleepymum and Sleepysister too. I'll see them again in a few weeks for the Mothers Day weekend.

Special mentions for the Purple Pixie, Snow Queen, Fork Lady, Alex, Sarai and Krinza. Especially Krinza who helped me through a few really rough times with the various Warcraft dramas that happened over the years.

Before I go any further though, if you know me and don't see your name here ... that's cos you are far more amazing than my brain is and it's full of holes due to cricket balls.

There's a few amazing ladies who have recently joined the team I'm in too, in the project, in commercial and in finance too. And then there are the Finance Angels who have been extremely patient over the years with me too and perhaps taught me a few things along the way too.

We get fantastic support from the ladies in the wider teams at work too, although we're switching teams at the moment so we're switching to different people to help us out.

Mind you, there's also a couple out in the wider world of people who make it possible for us to keep doing what we do. I've named one of my ships Strength of Atlas but these two are definitely the strength of atlas. One of them has pulled an airliner down a runway for charity ...

Where to next ? I'm definitely still well invested in the gaming world and am doing that thing again where I have two streams on. (One's on laptop). Huge shout outs for :

Fuzzyfreaks - who is always massive crazy fun watching the streams. It's always something different, something amusing, maybe shocking too, always whole hearted. May she keep streaming for many years to come. When she does role play streams, you're never bothered if the plot doesn't advance because it's just too much fun watching her character interaction.
Also Teacakes - who is as lovely as both varieties of nommy teacake.
HelloitsKolo - is on the laptop at the moment playing Breathedge, a wonderful human being who is just so nice ! She's also built a wonderful, generous community who just did wonderful things for the Special Effect charity.
HeyChrissa - wonderful Chris who has sadly walked away from the streaming scene now and we definitely miss her. But she'll move on to bigger and better things I'm sure. Chris was the one who is the reason I started talking in stream chats, to join in with her own lovely community.
Tashnarr - is a relatively new streamer for me. I never really watched while she was doing the creative streams, although those were still excellent streams. There were just other people on ! Tash is another lovely person, with a cheeky, chirpy, giggly, definitely no nonsense attitude and a pleasure to listen to.

And then there's Maggie Krohn and Random Tuesday. Plus Community Leader Susie who has been wonderful to follow on the Twitters. Oh ! Pip Warr too, previously of Rock Paper Shotgun and they lost their best, most interesting person when she disappeared from there. It was great keeping up with the adventures of Humhum, simple and excellent drawings, great character, lovely humour.

The various streams have been great to listen and lurk in. Definitely beats any telly you can think of.

Dwagon commander salutes you all.

I just had a look back through those Elitecember pictures too - varied quality but there's a few in there that I really like and I owe a lot to Steph (@sourfruitjunkie) and Aria (@genkisoda) of the Inklings for encouraging me to try drawing more by showing techniques and above all, showing Fun in drawing.

To the wider world ? Let's see :

Sarah Taylor is an inspiration in the world of cricket. Her wicket keeping (retired now) was a joy to watch. There comes along a player in every generation who is special, who does their thing in sport just so much better than everyone else. And then there are the once in a lifetime people who take it to a whole new level. I don't think I'll ever see a better wicket keeper than Sarah Taylor. She's battled the mental demons too, (the short with Katherine Brunt is pretty special there too) which is tough for anyone. She's quieter off the field but when she does post, there's someone wonderful there.

Of the twitter people I follow, Marina Sirtis is another very special one. From Star Trek TNG, to Stargate, to numerous other parts over the years, she's always bringing that presence to the screen. And she's fun (and different) to follow on Twitter.

You can't mention Stargate without talking about Amanda Tapping who is quieter on Twitter but still fun to follow. I suspect the quiet is due to busy. She's been involved with a number of fun, interesting shows, with Sanctuary being another highlight. She always seems like she has a lot of fun doing what she does. Always try to have fun with whatever you do.

Susie Goodall and Dee Caffari from the yachting world have also been inspirational. It's been great following their progress in both the Vendee Globe and Volvo Round the World race.

Yes. It felt like it was time for a gratuitous picture of a boat. It had almost gone round the world at that point, with just one more leg to go to the finish.

I think that's my brain emptied for now. These are but a selection of wonderful people. There are many more. Including those who I'll think "I should have added them too !", probably 5 minutes after posting !

See you next time. I may have pictures of black holes.

Hello again world, it's been a while again

Crikey ! Almost a month again since my last post.

I think that's the longest I've gone between posts since I had the break between 2006 and 2008. There's been a few things going on ... Let's see. But first ! Thumbnail pic. Thumbnail pic is very important.

Yep. It's a chocolate dwagonsaur and it was glorious. When I saw it in the service station on Saturday, I knew I'd seen my latest Easter Avatar. And like the marshmallow advent calendar, I got to munch him too.

This post looks like it's kinda going to go a bit backwards in time but Saturday saw me in the Gloucester services again. The one with an amazing farm shop ... Sherbets and bonbons may have jumped in to the shopping basket as well as the chocolate dwagonsaur. Oh and I suspect their canteen gave me some hidden extras that saw me going back and forward to the loo on Saturday evening. All ok now. But I'm waiting until next weekend before I attack the Pineapple chunks again.

Or it could have been that ^.

Oh - Gloucester services, on the way back from getting the car serviced and people attempting to sell me another new car. I've only had this one for a year ! To be honest, I was getting a bit irritated by it, which is a first for that place. One thing that sets Lexus apart is how they treat their customers and I thought trying to get me into another new car after just a year was a bit much.

The car they were looking to get me in to was their fairly new Lexus UX which, thinking about it, nope. It feels like they've let the designers run with ideas that shouldn't necessarily have been let out of the design school. The CT was a genuinely luxury small car that combined great practicality too. It's only real flaw is that the Prius powertrain isn't powerful enough. The IS suits me just fine, it's a comfy cruiser, fairly minimalist but that also means it's uncluttered. The UX is more compressed and a few bits of its design don't really make sense. It has more toys ... but it's also more cluttered and I think less intuitive on the inside. It also has a really high boot floor. I don't use the boot that much but I do like not having to lift things too high to get them in to the boot. Oh and I'll also change boots/shoes (work stuff) with my feet on the boot sill and I think that sill was high enough to endanger trousers.

So - Stan* is all serviced for another year, tyres are all pumped up and the pointiness is back in the steering. All good. I think the tyres were steadily going down, which led to bad fuel economy on the last few tanks. And some sponginess in the steering too, which I didn't notice until it was gone. (Small gradual changes tend not to be noticed !)

*Car names ! Not all of my cars have had names, just the well liked ones. There have been two Buggies ... The Astra and the Puma (I'll get back to the Puma) were both well loved Buggies. The CT I had was the Tardis cos it was just the right blue :

Shiny. The first IS I had was the Grey Ghost, because it was really quiet and grey. This also happened to be the nickname of USS Enterprise in World War 2. So when the next grey IS arrived, it became Alpha. Because NCC 1701A was almost identical to NCC 1701. And then following that meme, NCC 1701B was an Excelsior class Enterprise and Stan Lee (RIP) loved using the word Excelsior. NCC 1701C was an Ambassador class Enterprise, only seen for one of the best ST:TNG episodes (Yesterday's Enterprise). What ambassador could it be ?

Puma ... here's a proper Puma :

I had that car for I think 7 years. The car itself was a big upgrade from the Fiesta, built on the same chassis but given a lot of improvements. It was a lovely little sports coupe and on one occasion, pulled a "MOMMY MOMMY IT'S A SPACESHIP" from a very young passing by boy, which pulled an ear to ear grin from me hearing it. The new Puma is a small SUV. That's heresy. At least pull out a new name !

I've been recovering from jet lag too. A significant amount of the time since the last post was spent in Canada ... Yep. Different country ! (Not counting Wales and Scotland there ...) Different continent ! 3 different time zones ... Or was it 4 time zones. Might have been. I didn't switch to Toronto time on the way back although I did do Ottawa time. Or was Ottawa on the final location time.

I have to be a little careful about that final location because I've already had a "I know exactly where that is !" comment from a picture that went on a discord. A local identified pretty much the exact spot I was standing in. It didn't have anything work related on it (the pic was a moody shot towards a bridge, illuminated by the morning sun) but the Canada trip is definitely a case of potential 1+1 = 3 and you have to be really careful about that on the internet.

So what I mean there is : You know the country. If I said the city, you know the dates as well. And if you saw things in the news about unusual events going on ... then you guess what I was working on. That's not information I want aggregating up to be on the interwebs. Because once it's on the interwebs, it doesn't come off, despite what GDPR and Right to Delete would like to safeguard.

But yeah ! Canada ! Enjoyed my time there, although I did have what could be described as dislocation shock for a bit. The people are great and the reputation that Canadians have for Total Politeness is very much deserved. They're a lovely bunch. All of them ! And very patient with the Brit in town looking to not make too many mistakes and social errors.

When I arrived though, it snowed. They seem amazing about attacking the snow and clearing the roads sufficiently for driving around on them with no impact ... but the snow had just come down when I arrived and the 100km/h multi lane highways were maybe 50km/h single lane of ice. And there may have been a 4 wheel understeer skid coming out of the airport too which woke me up a bit ! Maybe "woken up" is the wrong word there, more like "made me sit up and pay attention". I don't drive on extreme ice much but it just needs an adjustment of mindset and a lot of chilling out to avoid getting in trouble on the ice. 4x4 helps too.

Curiosities about Canada :
Road signs are easier to understand, although I pretty much blanked most of the main ones due to relying on satnav.
They love their flavoured coffee. I see this as a good thing, although it has pretty much confirmed an issue I have with Ginger. It must upset a problem with my insides.
I really miss buttery popcorn. It is lush. (And 1917 is a fantastic film I got to see there in time away from work).
Pedestrians are king. People stop for you in the designated crossing areas. GB could not be more different there. I was in danger of being run over again tonight by someone who wasn't looking where she was driving in a car park.
They really love their flavoured coffee.
Biscuits come in boxes, not packets.
They have Mini Eggs too ...
4 hours of time zone difference can mess you up when you get back !
All the sidewalks and roads were clear of snow by the end of the day after it snowed. Huge amounts of snow around that mind ...

Huge pile of snow !

I've probably said this already but the people were lovely.

I'd happily recommend Canada as a place to go when it's the actual season. Maybe half the places in the more touristy area were closed, because we went there at a specific time of year to get the conditions we needed.

I was rationing my energy somewhat and attempting to avoid too much time zone shock though, so I didn't get out too much around the actual work stuff. But it was a good couple of weeks out there :-).

Last thought - I'm being slightly wary of coronavirus, although I'm not taking any precautions over and above the baseline of minding my sneezes and washing the hands. I saw a very small number of people in the airports wearing masks, plus one of the cabin crew wore a mask on the way back. I'm not sure if she was wearing the mask for protection from bugs or to stave off potential discrimination. She was a pretty Asian lady, which made me think there was potential for Bad People to think Asian = Carrier. That's bad. We should be better than that as a people. Anyway, she was lovely and got the smiles from me.

Be good to people. The Canadians are lovely. Don't trust Samsung ... but that's a different story.

(Ok, ok, I had my Galaxy S7 out there with a temporary SIM card, had to turn data off on it because it was munching my credit and ... it was still using tiny amounts of data, at a much reduced rate but still enough to trigger the minimum 7 cents charge, with the data OFF.)

I have bonbons. Cya !

PPS Books read while out there : Murderbot Chronicles 1 by Martha Wells - short, great. Much enjoyed. Tiamat's Wrath, book 8 of the Expanse by James S.A. Corey - another excellent book in the series that moved the story on in dramatic fashion. Wondering how they'll end it in the next book. A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe by Alex White - space scifi mixed in with a healthy dose of Magic. The premise was new, different, odd and ... actually worked extremely well in this book. I've wishlisted the next two in the series and will read them at some point. And I've made a start on Old Man's War by John Scalzi (mutter car mutter salesmen mutter interrupting reading mutter mutter mutter)

Long time no post

Hello everyone,

(checks clock) 2 weeks since last post ! Haven't gone anywhere ... yet. Although I will have a week and a half away on business stuff. May post things while I'm out there .... depends on data. What's been happening since I've been quiet ?

Random stuff time !

Stellaris happened. I finished off the game where I was going for the Suffer Not The Alien achievement. (Murder everything as a fanatic xenophobe). Got the target ... but not the achievement. Bit annoyed about that but it's just a game. I started up another game, just to get the achievement yesterday. Hopefully it does, it'll have to wait though until I'm back from For'n Parts. The reason the achievement didn't happen was a bug ... a remnant of an event was left over and was blocking it.


Mass Effect Andromeda is also still happening ...

Pretty.

I've been having fun with this one since coming back to it. It's perhaps a bit too long, although that means there is tonnes to do in the game. There's also lots of interpersonal chat that goes on amongst the crew.

Windy here this weekend. I really should have acquired my fuzzy goodies yesterday but wasn't feeling it, so that happened today. I now have fuzzy things that will hopefully keep the cold off next week !

Still need to switch over my memory cards and move my pictures to the new card. One drawback of the Pixel phone is that it's very generous with what it does with data. So pictures taken with it get uploaded at the moment. I'm content with that because it makes it a lot easier to publish pictures from the phone on here. Instead of Bluetooth to laptop and then network share to desktop, it's a one step action. But it does mean that I have to be more careful of what I take pictures of. The proper camera can take better pictures too.

We'll see how it goes this week and next. I may actually be trading extreme weather here for extreme weather somewhere else.

It'll be good to travel again too.

Another couple of emotes got done - can't show those here though because they're modifications of someone else's art instead of being completely my own. I'm still at that point where I can do much better by modification than by pure creation. That said, the dragon drawings were getting chuckles still.

Politics - thought I'd mention those ... I try and keep this a completely politics free zone. But that doesn't mean I'm not affected by them as well or that I don't feel affected by the various issues. I just think that this should be a safe place where people don't have to think about the nasty stuff. You get that stuff pushed at you from all the other places, it's good to have a rest once in a while ?

That goes for the posts where people go "Repost so I know you'll listen". PLEASE ! Don't do that. It's a guilt trip for everyone involved. Both from the people like me who will eagerly lend a listening ear if someone needs to talk. And the people posting the Thing who then psychologically tot up who replied, who responded.

Just because I ignore all of the posts like that, doesn't mean I won't be replying to your Skype, Messenger or other message. I'll be eager to help anyone out best I can. Sometimes I help too much. That's just me. Sometimes hyperactivity makes me blind to how people are reacting to what I say. That's me too.

But at the centre - I like to help people. Whether that's answering problems, listening to things they need to discuss with someone or .... just bringing a smile or a chuckle.

Anything else occurring ? Easter is almost upon us ! Must tidy up the avatar pic from last post.

Someone read all my posts over the last week. I've been seeing the hits on the Google hit counter and I think it's been awesome to see someone so interested in what I've been writing. Don't worry about GDPR or similar from my end, all I see on the Google thing is Operating System (or phone), browser and country. I don't get any more than that. I have the Statcounter thing as well but I'd be very surprised to see that pick up anything. It rarely does these days, I suspect it gets trapped by adblockers. Which is ok. I run adblockers too.

But ! Person who's been checking me out ! You're awesome and all those hits make me happy. Thank you.

Elite - haven't played that for a while. I think there might be a connection to my wrists feeling better ... although that could be the Magnesium citrate tablets. Since starting those, I have had zero cramp. None.

Phone stuff - if you've got my numbers ... I'll be somewhere roaming doesn't apply for a while. So hold off on the texting or phoning. I'm hoping to have wifi access and data and have an alternate sim for while I'm out there.

I better get my dinner before it burns more ! Still need to replace that cooker. Still cooks things nicely though. See you hopefully sooner rather than later.