The word of the day is .... fish ?

I'll explain that title in a bit.

Checking in again with some randomness ... I keep getting ideas to write posts around but by the time I get home and near the keyboard, they have escaped. Fleeting ideas that taunt me with their promise.

Something else that's taunting me in the corner at the moment is an advent calendar. A Star Wars Lego advent calendar to be precise. I'm quite looking forward to going through the calendar and I'll share the pics as the doors get opened and the Lego gets put together.

I'd be quite tempted to acquire some more Lego .... although I don't know what I'd actually get. I think I've mined out the Star Wars kits. There are some very interesting Technic kits but .... I don't really want to build trucks ? I did enjoy putting this together :

The Lego Le Mans car was a good kit. And it's now discontinued alas (in other words, it'll be available at 3 times its value from Ebay sellers). I'd have been miffed if I had missed out on this one.

The motor racing has finished for the year now. I dunno what to think about the motor racing actually, it's good to have on in the background but ... not much actually happens during the racing in Formula 1 ? Ok, there's usually mayhem at the start or at some random point in the race but the aerodynamics of the cars works against them having close, exciting battles and the result is usually ... yawning procession. The World Endurance Championship races are better. At some point, I'll watch a whole Le Mans 24 hour, either at home on the telly or by actually heading over to France to watch the race.

That's getting closer as a possibility. Hurrah ! Need a passport though.

My outsides are finally deciding to get better ... There are still some hold out areas but I've had 3 good weeks so far. And good days are when the condition doesn't worsen, allowing steady healing to happen. My feet and legs are still messy but they're steadily getting back to normality and .... I didn't wear my ankle bandages today.

I'm in two minds about those ankle bandages. On one hand, they protect the bad areas and in these colder months, they add a bit more insulation too. On the other, they are really irritating to put on and there is a big chance that they'll double up and wrap over, causing more pressure on the areas they're intended to protect.

I won't miss putting those bandages on. Partly because it means my feet are mending.

Back to that motor racing - I'm enjoying having another look at Motorsport Manager. I'd gone away from it after winning one of the achievements and completing that particular goal of building a weak team up to become the champions. I might go back to that game because it might feed in a few other achievements.

But I've actually gone over to a new set of DLC, an Endurance Championship (disclosure note - bought by me ! Not provided by devs). It allows for races up to 6 hours long ... The idea being that you spend maybe 2 hours in the race with most of the time spent at 12x fast forward. I'm enjoying it so far but I'm actually about to cheat the save by adding a couple of zeroes to the amount of money. There are two reasons for this :

1 - I don't think it's balanced at the moment. With some reasonable sponsors and 1 pay driver, the team is losing 500k per race. So it isn't looking likely to be profitable over the season and be able to build up.
2 - It lets me skip about 5 seasons of building and boring races coming last all of the time.

So it won't be cheating on the core mechanics of the game, the racing ... but it will let me skip a few boring years of building the team up.

I've also been playing Stellaris and got my first win in the game. It took just less than 50 years in the tiniest galaxy. My mob only needed to own 21 planets to win and had beaten up 2 of the 3 competitor races in the game. I'll throw the same race into a properly big game at some point. I've changed the mods around to have a different set of expanded ship classes and I've been playing with a fleet of :

Imperial designs. Spot the Victory class Star Destroyers making the core of the fleet. There should be a few Nebulon B frigates in there too.

And I should really acquire the Magic Vegas video editing package while it's on discount at Steam ! That would be £25 for the middle package. I'd like to make some more videos (and should really add my channel link on the right).

One last word about the cricket. It was good to be watching the games again over the weekend but I was very disappointed in the performance. The big difference between the teams was in the bowling. The Australian bowlers had real threat and menace, the English bowlers just didn't turn up. They can bowl at 90mph+ and our spinner can turn the ball square but in this game .... just didn't.

Hopefully they'll do better in the next game.

Come on the England cricket !

PS Word of the day is from the bus tickets. I've moved to electronic ticketing to save 50p per ticket and ... each day there is a random word. Today, fish. Last week, girl and toad. Tomorrow ? I dunno cos I'm thinking I should quarantine bugs at home. I did feel steadily stronger and stronger as today at work went on though. We shall see !

Checking in

Just checking in, it's been a while since I posted again.

I have ideas that pop into my head for posting but they tend to flee before I get back to my keyboard.

It was the birthday this week and this fella arrived :

Awesome isn't it ? Love him.

There he is, poking his head out of the bag so he can watch Thor Ragnarok. If you haven't seen that film yet, go see it. It goes out of its way to not take itself seriously and I think it's accessible too for those who haven't seen all of the Marvel movies. Like I have. It's huge fun. Thor, that is, some of the Marvel movies have been a bit poor and lose their fun.

Yep. Monday was a great evening.

Should be a good weekend too.

It'll take a certain toll on my outsides but I've had a couple of good weeks there. Not great weeks because I have a few delicate areas on my legs that are remarkably easy to redamage but good consistent healing is happening.

I need to read more actually. I have Leviathan Wakes (Book 1 of the Expanse) by James S A Corey on the iPad/Kindle and Revenger by Alastair Reynolds in paperback. And that's just the newest books.

Games and game watching are still how I occupy most of my time. Monday was busy but Tuesday and Wednesday were game watching instead of playing. Tireds are catching up to me at the moment. The main game at the moment is Stellaris ... still :-).

I may have broken myself on Stellaris though by reverting to Corvette swarms. Maybe not though. The latest game has come to a conclusion though. My race of spiritualist warrior psychics were quite happily taking over the parts of the galaxy they wanted to. They were having trouble taking on the ancient Fallen Empires but that was going to come in time. I made a mistake with one of my traps, so that big engagement didn't go as it should have.

However ... on came the Unbidden. And the Contingency.

The game has what Iain M Banks called Outside Context Problems. In the late game, it can spice things up by bringing out an End Game Crisis. The Unbidden are invaders from another dimension and the Contingency is where rogue AIs attempt to wipe out all life in the galaxy. There is also the Prethoryn Scourge.

It turns the end game away from effectively a mopping up operation into an actual challenge. It's the first time I've taken the game far enough to run into a crisis. I'm usually far more interested in the early building phase although in this game, I was getting a lot of enjoyment from having the AI fall into traps that I'd set for them. Using the noggin to turn engagements the way of my people, things like that.

As someone once said : If it's a case of dying for your country, make the other guy die for his country, the one you're fighting. Or something like that.

Anyway, the Unbidden came and started obliterating everything. I think part of the problem is a balance mod I was using, which also made the Fallen Empires too strong. I have a different mod in mind this time which alters the ship types.

But I should really play some other games before diving back into Stellaris. I haven't been back in Elite for a while, I'm currently listening to a Zombie Defence strategy game called They Are Billions which sounds amazing and there are a few more that are coming soon which sound great.

Like the Surviving Mars. I'm expecting this to be something better than the game Planetbase, which I enjoyed chilling out to as the colony grew. And Astrobase Command, which looked promising enough to join in with the kickstarter. And I expect I will acquire the space crime game, Heat Signature, in the sales. Frostpunk is a post apocalyptic survive the deep freeze game.

And I'd like to record some more gameplay videos too.

Yep. Tired. But still enjoying. And it was a :

:-)

Timewarping again

It definitely feels like there's something messing with time at the moment.

Oh and ...

It's almost that time again ...

Nooo ! I don't mean Xmas. Nope. Birthday season again. I'm not telling how old I'll be. Let's just say that if you count the age on fingers, I need lots of help. That's not so bad though. Or is it ? (Haha)

I do feel more and more these days that my body is my enemy. My outsides are steadily improving, very slowly but definitely improving. That's a combination of leaving it alone a little more and figuring out adequate ways of protecting it. The biggest issue is that one of the damaged bits will hit a threshold where it is just damaged enough .... and then it'll get worse very quickly. The protection helps to put a brake on it getting worse. Most of the time. Perversely though, the usual advice of "put pressure on the leaking bit" is bad ... as pressure can actually make my damaged bits worse.

But it is getting better. It would be good to be finally rid of this malaise that's slowed me down far too much over recent years.

It's not just my outsides though. My leg muscles were my biggest asset when playing cricket, now they feel like they're out to get me. Lots of cramp and that cramp leading to painful minitears in those muscles that get hugely sore.

My ouchies at the moment are those legs that are out to get me, a side that is suffering from strain and/or more cramp and a shoulder that periodically feels disconnected again.

And then an energy state that is ... somewhat lacking too.

I did ponder doing the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year but quickly abandoned those plans, partly due to what I was getting up to last week ... My week pattern is usually throw myself into work, tire myself out and chill out in the evenings. On Nov 1, it was a cinema run ... can't remember what I was doing on Friday.

(Thor Ragnarok - go see it, it's huge fun).

No. Ideas are there and I should really write up a few of them but when I get home in the evenings, I want to chill out. I suspect that's showing in the much lower frequency of posts lately. More ideas are coming actually from watching things like Ice Road Truckers, where they struggle to deliver loads via roads that are only passable when there is ice to even them out. And then there's Stellaris ...

The latest game sees me trying out the new rules coming about faster than light travel between stars. I have a warrior monk race that's been a bit slow starting up. The first war against the neighbours ended in disaster. But they're a challenger now after 3 wars that very definitely went our way. I'm curious as to where this game goes, it's good in a strategy game when you can reverse a bad start and come out ahead through better strategy.

Stellaris is responsible for a bit of timewarping too. I can start it up in the afternoon on a weekend and before I know it, it's dark and I'm late getting my tea.

But back to good times.

Yep. Birthday next week, Xmas markets open before then. I have plans ....

Friday pm should see me checking out the Xmas market here in Bristol. I miss the old Sausage-Inna-Bun. And I need shoes. My feet will hopefully be improved again to let me do the shoe shopping thing. I wasn't impressed with the shoe shopping potential up at the Mall last week. How can they justify £100 for a pair of shoes !! Crikey. I needs the sales and the bargains.

Next week will have a very fun evening watching Thor Ragnarok again.

It's worth it, honest and the company will be better than the film. And it's a great film too. Looking forward to it.

That's next week though, not many more to go until the Winter Break ! Gonna need it.

Me tired.