Trick or Treat or Space Aliens

Could be a busy week this week.

It's trick or treat night tomorrow which means I either close all the doors and go dark to suggest there's nobody home or .... I don't pretend there's nobody home and actually head on out.

The plan is to actually head on out, I need new work trousers as mine are developing holes in the pockets and need new shoes as I think mine will literally fall apart in a few months.

(I tend to use things until they break)

As excuses to head out go, it's a good one. And then there's Thor Ragnarok to watch on Wednesday, which I'm expecting to be fairly brainless action fun.

It's a genuinely fun event, Halloween. But .... there is that problem of unsupervised children who have got big enough to cause problems. Trick or treat translates into demanding sweets with menaces and not complying can lead to eggs thrown at your door, other vandalism and damage and worse. Like having flammable things used or criminal damage to cars. And fireworks are widely (too widely?) available at this time of year too.

Yep. There are elements out there in Britain that aren't what you'd really call savoury or neighbourly.

The other thing I'd be doing if hiding is quite possibly to bury my head in Stellaris. It's a grand space strategy game where the end goal is to take over the galaxy. And it's a cracking example of the genre too. For many years, I'd check out newer space strategy games and keep going back to the now ancient Master of Orion 2. I think there's a few people at work who were born after Master of Orion 2 was released.

They seem to have upped their game as well with the latest release. It's definitely been a more intense game this time around with the AI races declaring war at the drop of a hat, mostly targeting their wrath at my race.

So what am I playing this time around ? There's a lot of variation in Stellaris now, from warlike to peaceloving, spiritual to materialistic and more. I like playing the hive mind races but there are also Machine empires in the game now, which are curious but I think need a little balancing. You can be the Borg now.

(click for bigger and readable text)

We are the Domanna Horde. Or cute cuddly space snails. But beware, these space snails are the devouring swarm. The plague to devour everything. They like trick or treat but they have it turned around. Small children knocking on the doors of these snails saying "Treat" will soon find that they are the treat.

It is rumoured that at the last diplomatic council involving the Domanna, the Horde ate all of the other delegates. But they didn't stop there. They then ate the chairs. They ate the tables. They ate the curtains. Even the paint on the walls was not safe.

Or the carpets.

The last communication from the Horde was "Next time use Axminster and you must introduce us to the dog in the paint advert.". They ate the loo roll as well.

The space snails are voracious and insatiable. Also cute and not so fluffy.

(And I'm having a lot of fun around the intenseness of the current campaign. It's being a challenge, which is what I want from a game like this).

What's the situation at the moment ? I may not play again until the weekend due to being busy ... and avoiding having the intensity of the campaign tire me out in the week but :

We're the green patch in the North, with some empires around that are getting uncomfortably bigger. The last wars were won against the Zelvans to the south east and the Sintomoroi to the south but we had to give ground to the Spuxulac to the south west. Their fleet was twice the power of mine, which is a little deceptive because the way I have my fleet set up, it can murder fleets about 50% bigger.

Part of the attraction is that the game allows for you to counter an enemy's fleet design, so in this case I'm using an antimissile set up in response to the enemy using mostly missile ships. And it works. The small bubble of an empire to the North is what's known as a Fallen Empire, a race with massively superior technology that is almost suicidal to attack. Unless you plan well and have a fleet to counter their strengths. The Forerunners shall also be devoured by the Horde.

Not tonight though, I throw everything I have into work during the day and like to just chill out in the evenings. And Stellaris with its grabbiness doesn't really allow time for chill out.

Hmm ... NaNoWriMo starts on Wednesday ! I want to do this at some point but I don't think this year is going to be the year. I must write down a few of the various ideas that pop into the head though before they evaporate.

Films, fun, pain, phone .... stars !

Hello again. I'm not posting as much as I'd usually do am I !

Stellaris has something to do with that. It's a very addictive space strategy game that draws you in with the openness of its strategic situation and the randomness of what's likely to come next. Recommended if it's the type of game you're likely to enjoy. Very addictive though, if I start a session it'll be hours before I prise myself away.

And that does mean that I get distracted away from tapping the keyboard to let my thoughts escape my head.

Films !

I used up my last Avonmeads voucher to watch Geostorm on Friday. Avonmeads is a bit dated now compared to the other cinemas around but the cinemas it has are spacious and it's a fairly quiet cinema .... Which means less distraction around while you're trying to watch the film. I'm likely to get one or two more vouchers for there and use it as a Friday pm chill out.

Geostorm ? Enjoyable rubbish. It's a science fiction movie about a global weather control system that's going wrong. Cue disasters of epic scale and our heroes going off to fix it. The science of its fiction is awful. A space station that's spinning for artificial gravity .... but the floors are the wrong orientation.

(The idea with centripetal AG is that you spin up a cylinder ... and because objects keep moving until a force acts on them, they move such that you'd be standing on the inside surface of the cylinder. This had actual floors)

But this is the scifi nerd part of me talking there. The have fun watching a movie part of me loved it. As I similarly love The Expanse with its magnetic boots and artificial gravity both by spin and by thrust acceleration.

Last word on Geostorm - if you are flash sensitive, AVOID this movie. There is an extended sequence with very frequent lightning flashes and other sequences with alarm flashers going. It's highly likely to trigger people who are photo/flash sensitive.

Fun ?

Been back in Stellaris and it's a hell of a game. My Thargoid Hive were doing extremely well, getting further than I've gone in the game so far. They're a hive race which .... like my usual race, attempts to eat everyone else. Not quite full Devouring Swarm (mebbe next time) but yep. It's simpler when you eat your enemies in this game. The current game is with a Fanatic Pacifist race which might not go too much further because it's just so difficult to get in a fight with them. I can't declare war, just respond if people declare on me. And I can't trick my way into wars because the race is very limited in options to ally with neighbours and like .... protect them against the other bullying races around them.

Yep. Enjoying Stellaris again.

Pain .....

Yep. Body's not liking me too much at the moment. I'm repairing at last ! It could easily go backwards but my outsides are definitely improving. Slowly but yeah. Definitely better every day. Hopefully all fixed soon ? I hope so because I need new trousers, new shoes and don't particularly want to try shoes until I'm not wearing the bandages on my ankles.

Because the bandages are essentially a second layer and if I size shoes for them, the shoes will be too loose on my already thin feet.

Nah. Pain is because my body is not liking my mineral balance at the moment. The cramp is happening again (partly because Stellaris puts me in a tunnel of focus where I don't realise I need to drink enough!) and it attacks my legs and my side. If the leg cramps .... that's ok. Unless it happens while I'm sleeping and tears the muscle. Yep. No tear today but a fairly severe strain. Oops. I can manage that. But what tends to be total agony is when my side decides to join in .... not much way of breaking that cramp.

I know how to deal with that though. And ... my ideas for mitigating the acid trouble I have seem to be working. Idea 1 - try to avoid snacking too much in the evening, if I fill up my tummy the tummy goes to work making the acid to deal with what's in it. Idea 2 - minty things.

Phone :-)

It's good to have the reliable text messages again. My Samsung Galaxy S7 has issues with receiving text messages. I thought this was fixed by clearing the cache memory but this is only a temporary fix. I'm suspecting that one of the built in Samsung bloatware apps is responsible for intercepting messages. When the warranty expires, I'll root the phone and remove the bloatware. Besides, I don't particularly want Samsung tracking my movements with the phone.

The second phone is a Nokia 125 and .... cheap and cheerful. It does what I want it to do - text messages with the special lovely person. But it seems to have trouble with other things like a Bluetooth connection to the car. It doesn't want to know there. Just means I wait until I'm stopped before reading the message instead of having it pop up on screen. Oh and I took it off charge last Tuesday and one week later, it's just gone down a notch on its battery meter. I'm curious to see how long the battery will last.

Stars !

Gotta admit I haven't been back into Elite since doing a couple more legs on the rares trading route. I should abandon rares trading completely, something about it kills my enthusiasm for the game. Probably the 10 minute wait for the board to refresh and on a lot of stops, you only get a single figure amount of rare goods. Not worth it. I should explore for :

Pretty stars !

The latest expedition will be departing imminently. I think I've missed that but .... I wouldn't want to be part of an exploring group yesterday. I just want the route for seeing the stars.

Enough rabbiting on for now.

I'm looking forward to :
More Stellaris ! Being more aware of how to counter the enemies and going further in the game is .... awakening the interest. Great depth here.
Christmas market. Looks like the German market is back this year after a low rent pretender company last year. Happy Cookie Place returns !

Cookies are awesome.

Thoughts about the writing again ... and phone issues !

Phone first ...

I like my latest phone but it has a massive problem. There's a bug somewhere in the software that means I randomly don't receive text messages. Or rather, the message will be received and a delivery receipt will go back but it gets lost somewhere between receipt and inbox. The thought was that the cache memory (where the message goes between receipt and inbox) is having trouble but the fix for that hasn't proved particularly constant.

So if you've sent me a message and I haven't replied, this is why ! I only know about this problem because my close friend has been upset at messages being lost.

I'll be fixing the problem by getting a second phone for texts and emergency calls only (it just so happens that Vodafone apparently do a pay-as-you-go with unlimited texts ... bargain !) (essential disclosure note - I have nothing to do with Vodafone and they ain't paying me ! But I do have a very good and close friend who's messages have been going astray who is on that network.) That'll be tomorrow evening's job after work and before replenishing some very slim munchie stocks here ...

Back to work tomorrow, which I'm not particularly looking forwards to. I really should have gone to the doctor this week. In hindsight of course. Healing has been steady .... but I'll be back to wearing protective bandages tomorrow because my legs are still bad. Very frustrating.

On that writing though .... I have clearer ideas.

And a potential front runner character for the story. That's always a good thing to have, especially if you can use that front runner character as a means of drawing the reader into the world that you're setting up.

I'm still looking at the new colony story thing. And a potential borrowing of the TV series Arrow's tendency to have parallel timelines going in its narrative. So one timeline would be increasing tension as the colony group departs the world, the other timeline would be the first steps on the new planet. Terra Nova did this very well too, although in that case the parallel timelines were literal. Part of the story was set in our future, part of it was set in our distant past .... with dinosaurs.

And this story would be all set up around the idea : This world is turning into a terrible place while we watch and no one is doing anything about it. How about we leave ?

That's fairly familiar sounding isn't it ?

I guess I'm getting somewhat cynical about our leaders and their increasingly destructive tendencies. I've always tried to live my life with as little interference as possible from the idiots in charge but you can't avoid all that they do. And this story would be about those who have the opportunity to quietly slip away from the increasing hell they are a part of.

Wouldn't that be great if we could do that ?

Well, apart from Elon Musk and his plans to go to Mars, there sadly aren't all that many opportunities to do that with the technology we have. Well, outside of finding some place to go off the grid but that isn't really getting away from the core problem, it's hiding from it. You can isolate but not really get away that far. But I still would like to retire to that boat and live on that away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. I would miss my uncapped internet data though.

This story ... who's the main character ?

Well, the people I want to appear being collected up by this rogue group are the unwanted. The people who want to leave. The disadvantaged. The ones subject to prejudice. I suspect you're seeing a theme there, I see the reports in media and social media about the persecuted groups and can't see a way to help them.

So my main character is likely to be a homeless person, picked up from the streets of the main city of the world this will initially be set on. And like probably all of the homeless here, he's not there of his own choosing. He's educated, smart and has been picked out for potential. This means he's especially useful to me as the one writing, as I can explain the concepts as if to an intelligent person and through that, treat the reader with the respect of thinking they're intelligent people too.

And I'll pick up on the concepts from today's scenarios of Twit/Book and Discord chat servers too. Except definitely better run because Twit/Book has major issues with the sites (especially Twitter) allowing toxic users to run rampant. Also streaming .... because people need their news and entertainment.

But you also need an adversary. And this one will have that as another echo to our present - terror groups getting increasingly bold with the reaction from uninformed leaders being ever more trigger happy, leading to a situation that our rogue group eventually have to react to before it's too late. I'm unsure about the adversary for where they're going though. I sense it might be a reaction to the first major crime, where an exile suddenly .... disappears. Mysteriously.

Or maybe not so mysteriously, just messily. Nothing messes with the mind more than the impression of being totally safe being turned into sudden mortal danger !

I need to get more thoughts in my head though. Perhaps something for NaNoWriMo which is just coming up ...

There are a number of inspirations for this though. From The Expanse, which I hugely enjoyed watching. To Elysium, a scifi movie vehicle for Matt Damon which was showing off all sorts of tech that was handy for its narrative. Over to the two Heorot books by Larry Niven, Steven Barnes and the dearly departed Jerry Pournelle. And all that inspiration from real life and what I come into contact with.

It should be fun to write, it'll definitely be an outlet for many ideas I've wanted to write about as well as being an outlet for what I think of what I see around me in this world !

Back to work tomorrow though, definitely not looking forward to the wrestling with the beard. It's got fuzzy and needs to be annihilated ...

Netflix and .... hunting the aliens

Gosh, XCom 2 was addictive before .... and they've expanded it making it even more addictive.

Quite.

One of the rather daft novelty features of the expansion is that they've added in a photobooth feature. Soldier gets promoted ? Snap. Finish a mission ? Snap. In this case, it was the team hunting down one of the alien boss creatures in its lair.

I've been enjoying being back in the game. I haven't been rushing it but this play through has already been almost the same length as my last two non-expanded playthroughs already. Enjoying it enough to not bother going into the other games in the queue - Elite, Deus Ex Mankind Divided and Mass Effect Andromeda. Oh and it's also kept me away from the Stellaris playthrough I was doing (although I think that one's off anyway due to the robot races needing a patch apparently)

It also kinda fits the playthrough style, with it being point, click, tell soldiers what to shoot at. And I'm good with that.

I'm off work at the moment, using up some of my annual leave to get a break before the Xmas mayhem properly kicks off. It was a good time too as a little bit of manic rushing around cleared off most of the urgent outstanding stuff. Just in time for the next batch of urgent outstanding stuff to pile up this week.

I'm hoping to avoid being a house hostage this time around. One reason for sticking around the house is for my tortured outsides to get a chance to heal up. I think they just need better protection and then they'll have a chance to heal up on their own. There is good signs of healing ... my ankles are back to the proper colour again (instead of being reddened and wounded). The usual trouble is though that if I attempt to clean it up at all, the removal of the bad bits is too much for the rest of the good bits.

There I go again with the mucky details that people would rather not know about.

I went to see the new Bladerunner movie on Friday ! I was underwhelmed. I sense this might have been mostly due to me being at about the end of my energy and otherwise in the depressive turn of my own personal cycle. A very well made film again, fantastic visuals, great characters, oppressive music and a story that kept you well guessing. My mirror tendency may have fired though and reflected the lack of emotion on the main character, which led to me coming out with a bit of a Meh feeling.

Good film though.

And I've seen a couple of poor ones since !

If I'm watching science fiction, the science has to be decent. Just passable will do if the story is good enough. One thing I'm looking for from Netflix is the chance to watch those films I am curious about but don't want to pay any money for. (The sub doesn't count because I'm paying that for things like Star Trek Discovery and The Expanse anyway). Tonight's was Mechanic Resurrection - don't watch it. It's a routine action movie with nothing really special about it. Your time would be better spent doing something like .... watching cricket as a non cricket fan.

Cricket's worth it - honest.

The other one was a TV movie about the first man to be going to Mars (fictional). This had so much wrong with it .... I wouldn't really know where to start or end. Let's just say that if there were two people on a space station (the only two) as depressed as those two were, there would be an emergency rescue trip before they blew each other out of the airlocks. And you don't simply turn around in space and come back, with our technology level you're going where you're going no matter what. We don't have the fuel to spare to stop and return like they were suggesting. We do the stop and return at the destination by using the gravity of the planet or moon we're going to in order to get what is called a Free Return Trajectory.

There's some complicated/not complicated mechanics around that which I may talk about if I start doing videos again with Kerbal Space Program ! I don't have a legitimate key to a video editing program now though (my trial has expired), so no new videos until I pay someone money.

The Expanse is well worth watching though. It has some magic science in terms of the propulsion that makes it possible but even that is limited to sensible levels. As in, accelerate the human body too much and it'll crush all the blood vessels in our brains .... which doesn't tend to end well. I may have to watch this series again soon.

But before then .... I want to read the books. I need to get reading again actually, it'll give me more ideas to add to those from the outside world for the book or two that are in my head wanting to get out.

And that may well be tomorrow's plan .... if I'm feeling up to it, then it'll be a run to the Book Barn, maybe Forbidden Planet too.

Mind you, last thought for today - there is that growing conflict between the amount of Stuff I have and the space I have to put the Stuff in. Digital is looking better in that way, as it shrinks the space that Stuff needs down to very manageable levels.

And that means more room for more Stuff !

Expansive Discovery Netflix ...

Hello,

Still here. Although it feels like I'm still under the influence of some of those bugs from last week. I only had Monday as working from home (bug quarantine), although I did also take Friday off to burn some of my flexi leave credit and to get some overdue chill out.

It's not been a properly serious bug, actually quite mild outside of the broken voice, chesty cough and bunged up nose but I suspect it's hit harder because I'm lacking energy again. I plan to do something about that with a pre Xmas break not this week but the week after. Should be good.

I suspect there might be a lot of Netflix watching while I chill out .... (Yes, I know what Netflix and Chill is ! This will be just chilling out with me and my pooter and various things on the Netflix).

Yep. I've signed up to it, tempted in by the new Star Trek Discovery series. I'm going to be very careful what I say about Discovery because there is massive potential for spoilers but I'm intrigued. What they've done with the Klingons is a disgrace though and it almost sucked all of the life out of the pilot episodes. Klingons are supposed to be pure fire. These were on tranquilizers and perhaps filmed with the speed turned down. They were rather different to the Klingons we know and almost wrecked the pilot.

Yep. Still intrigued by where they plan to go with it though. I'm a sucker for everything Trek or space scifi related, as long as it's done decently. (It was a real struggle to finish Independence Day 2 and I've turned off scifi B-movies before due to them being properly dire). The effects were definitely done well.

However .... I've been watching another series called The Expanse and that series definitely has my attention. I've watched up to season 2 episode 4 now and I'm very impressed with both the quality of the writing (I'll be checking out the James S A Corey books soon) and the effects on screen. When they do space battles, it's utterly gripping.

It's a near future book without many silly scifi tricks up its sleeve. There are no inertial compensators for G forces and they're throwing bits of metal at each other at speeds that easily puncture spaceship hulls ... and then go all the way through and out the other side. Yep. I'll be keeping watching this one. Might even watch it again from the start.

So that Netflix sign up has already been worth it for me, not for the Star Trek but for The Expanse.

It hasn't all been that though. I was thoroughly crashed out (and with poorly feet again) on Friday so thoughts of heading to the cinema to watch Kingsman and after, to stock up on munchies were shelved. (I had enough to last until ... erm ... tomorrow !) Instead, The Expanse and Stellaris.

Opening Stellaris yesterday might have been a mistake. And starting a war with a neighbour at midnight was definitely another mistake. (Cue a 4am session) But I did manage to not stay in there too much today. Just a couple of wars.

That's where we are at the moment and my machine race of exterminators (I'm playing with the new expansion) is steadily spreading its red mist across the galaxy. It's difficult playing as the single minded purpose destroyer races like that .... you can't be a friend to anybody. And everyone knows you're out to get them. It's a good start though.

I haven't been in Elite much lately. Just a couple of sessions trading the rare goods. Going for the rares might have been an error because I think it was killing my enthusiasm for the game with my previous character. I may go back to the old way of letting missions guide my path instead. Missions are a bit odd at the moment though, it keeps trying to give you missions to go to Colonia, 22,000 light years away. I'm not planning to do that again for a while.

Keeping myself busy though in my diminished state. Hopefully I won't be diminished for too much longer though, it seems like these latest bugs have really kicked me in the energy centre. I think it's connected to the state of my outsides (which have been better today as I've left them alone). The damage there can be really draining, in a fashion that it's a struggle to understand.

Low level pain can be very draining but that's not it in this case. It's more the constant sensation of Stuff coming from the bad areas. The feeling akin to a spider walking over the skin. The knowledge that a small flaw in your outsides is just itching (so to speak) to turn into much wider damage. The frustration when damage that should heal in a few days just .... lingers. It doesn't help there when I redamage it constantly by attempting to tidy it up.

I'm doing better than my TV remote though. It ded.

It ded past the ability of new batteries to cure it too. I'll have to take it apart at some point to see which part is ded but ... For now I'm using my amplifier's all in one remote to do the limited amount of TV control I need.

So :

Discovering Netflix, discovering Discovery on Netflix, looking into the Expanse and liking what I see and occasionally losing time into games like it was a time dilating black hole.

Back to work next week, hopefully with my voice back to how it should be !