Back to work ?

Yep.

Back in tomorrow after a very restful week.

I didn't actually end up doing much, although I did escape the house (ha, I knew someone would ask that !). Needed supplies. Probably needed less supplies because I need to lose weight ... The snacking isn't being balanced by running around a cricket field any more so it's just ... accumulating. I'm not a fan of that. Especially as it means I'm having to search hard to find shirts for normal people, most of what I see available is an abomination known as Slim Fit.

Nah. This week was intended to be a recharging of batteries by not doing much and listening to lots of music. Oh and game playing too. Plus reading. I must write that post about The Martian before it all slips out of my head ...

What have I been up to ?

Stellaris ate the first weekend. I may have to look into game addiction again because Stellaris has steered me towards a phase where I'll open a game of that style in the morning/afternoon and still be playing it way after I should have at least broken for dinner. That's not healthy and it'll be a miracle if my sleep pattern resets to what it should be for catching the bus tomorrow. I think it'll be ok.

I almost stayed up for the 6 hours of Fuji race last weekend which started at 3am our time. I managed until 6am before deciding I needed to actually sleep ... It was a good race, as was the Formula 1 from this evening. Mind you, not much overtaking was actually happening again at the front. Some of the new circuits tend to cancel out the potential to overtake, although that's also down to the aerodynamics of the cars which suffer when they get close to the car in front.

Been playing lots of Motorsport Manager too ... I think it has a bug. It's been setting the AI of the car drivers down to very easy, when I actually want it neutral. It's been crashing a few times as well, which is annoying. My team survived their first season in the middle league, doing well in a couple of races to give them the points to not be last (the bottom team gets relegated and you waste a year). They'll challenge for promotion next season.

I quite enjoy that game, I know the Metagame technique to build the team up to beat everyone else but it rewards good strategy decisions in the races.

I had a little dabble in Planetbase yesterday too. Enjoyed that ... Here is the Clear Skies base about halfway to the 300 people goal :

The name comes from the planet type, which in this case was a Barren airless moon. The challenges on this one include no wind, so no wind power. The base gets bombarded by meteors and there are occasional solar flares which quite quickly irradiate colonists who get caught outdoors. This was the 3rd attempt yesterday, after the first couple died quickly to unfortunate solar flares (the exposed colonists die quickly if not treated).

Yep. Enjoyed that one. Tried Skyrim again today ...

The main reason I've been avoiding the more first person action type of game is because I've been having a lot of pain in my shoulder area and my right wrist .... and Skyrim brought that pain back. I'll give it a bit more time and see if that pain happens again.

Reading ? I completed The Martian again ... next one I'm reading is actually fanfic of the Stargate variety ... It's about what happened if Britain found and used the Stargate instead of allowing it to get shipped off to the USA. It's a curious read ... but more of that in a future post again. I have a few other books lined up in the queue :

Wraith Squadron book 3
The Expanse book 7 (Persepolis Rising) now that it's down in price from the rip off £10 for an electronic copy.
Need to watch The Expanse season 3 as well, which I believe finishes book 2 and then does book 3.
2x Jack Campbell Lost Fleet books - Steadfast and Leviathan. I started Steadfast a long time ago but stopped for one reason and another (think this was when I was so ill, I stopped reading because I didn't want to damage the books).
Children of Time has been recommended.
(Plus there are another bunch of books on the wish list)

XCom 2 is on the list to be replayed as well, it has had a mini expansion to fill in the gap between XCom 1 and the sequel. In the first game, you're fighting off the alien invaders from a secret location. In XCom 2, it turns out that you lost really badly and Earth is now in the hands of the aliens. You lead the resistance. The new mini expansion fills the gaps between the two games.

Perhaps when I've finished watching the Aavak playthrough of XCom 2. I try and avoid playing games that I'm also watching (so no buying Rimworld for a while) because that gets really confusing.

Music ? Tonnes of music has been listened to. Of 16.5k tracks in the library, I've listened to 5790 since getting the laptop a couple of months ago. I've listened to 1387 since going on leave.

Lots of music.

I haven't gone into the old pattern yet of Album -> good tunes -> semi random stuff yet ... The choices are pretty much all down to iTunes so far and I've been enjoying listening to everything with a fresh pair of ears again. I'll be curious to see what gets picked more often, at the moment it's a track from a game called AI War, which is another game I kinda collected, looked at and barely played.

Oops.

I have a few too many of those. I'm attempting to rein in that tendency somewhat now by asking myself it I'll really play it rather than just look at it in the library.

Time to get back to that Stargate fanfic now ! While an episode of Stargate Horizons plays on the Roll4it channel.

See you later in the week !