Outside Context and Spaceships and Boats

What's been happening since last time ?

Can't believe I didn't say anything about the Le Mans weekend the other week. It was a decent race again this time, although the overall winner hasn't been in doubt much for a few years now. The Toyota's pretty much walked away with it although they did have their scares throughout the race. It was a shame that the Aston Martins got hit with a Balance of Performance nerfbat (slight reduction in horsepower and fuel capacity) but their latest car hasn't been particularly good lately anyway.

Oh ... if I'm never seen from again :

I for one welcome our new green glowy overlords.

Elite has been a little grindy at the moment .... but that's partly intentional and there's an objective to it (getting stuff to modify the ships). Another phase in the game and actual progress in getting stuff for a rather long shopping list and seeing curious places.

That's Site 426, happily pictured with the sun up this time. The Elite universe can be really harsh. In this case, the workers at this manufacturing site had a rebellion, took charge and ... in something between normal and verging more on Warhammer 40k Dark, were brutally put down. (Link for more). What this means for the player is an abandoned settlement with plenty of goodies around the place for looting.

And back to the mothership sCRUFFY nEIGHBOURHOOD afterwards for tea as well. This one may have been named in an unfortunate caps lock incident. Oops ...

Another site is the crashed ship, Bug Killer. This isn't my ship ... honest. I did manage to crash the buggy though but forgot to take a screenshot of the upside down buggy.

I have regrets.

Perhaps not as much as this fella though ... I have his escape pod and may well be selling him to the highest bidder turning it in to the search and rescue people.

I watched a fair bit of the Nurburgring 24 hour race as well last weekend. This one is run over the Nordschliffe course, which is much longer distance than the Le Mans track, taking about 8 and a half minutes for the fastest cars to do a lap. A curious race. It's a bit more chaotic than most other races, with course vehicles going around the track as they recover stricken vehicles. It was actually getting quite dangerous towards the fall of darkness and I actually stopped watching for a while.

And then tuned in again later to see how the Lexus cars were doing. Looks like they had problems. The 19 and 20 cars, both RCFs, tripped up over each other during the early stages of the race which took them out of contention. There was also a Lexus LC race car there which I was urging on as it too was recovering from earlier issues.

(The RC F is a race car variant of my IS. Same basic chassis, a coupe body shell and the hybrid bits are replaced with a chunky 5 litre V8).

It's nice to have an underdog team to cheer on and the RCs have been doing well in the American IMSA series too. Hopefully the next Aston Martin car becomes quick enough to win races too.

Outside of that, loads of work stuff has been happening which I can't talk about here. But it does mean I get out of the office, see interesting things, figure out what they do and what they're capable of and carry the lessons back to feed into the next steps of what we're doing.

It's fascinating to see the differences coming in between theoretical performance of equipment and what happens when that kit is put into the real world. Is there a suitable analogy ? Maybe 2 laptops ago, where I had one that couldn't keep its cool. It was advertised as a 2GHz laptop but when you asked it to do work, it would overheat and downgrade itself to 800MHz. So it could run itself at the top speed but when you needed performance (even just telly programme streaming), you'd actually own a much worse laptop.

I may also have had a day trip up to Gloucester last week (got caught in nasty traffic on the way back - oops). I saw boats ....

Oh and big long poles by boats. But also boats.

Quite lovely boats actually but this one was the most gorgeous of them all :

That's the Isabella and she was looking amazing last week. A really pretty Dutch Barge.

Want one :-).

Songs that bring out the singing

Tonight's album coming through on the iTunes has been the Let It Roll collection by George Harrison and ... I've been singing along to some of the tracks again.

Can't remember when I did that last ! Which means it's been too long.

(Picture credit - Theresa Snyder on Pinterest)

About those songs though !

The first one up for this list is that George Harrison opener to his Let It Roll collection, Got My Mind Set On You. A great post Beatles song, not sure about those lyrics now though ...

A lot of Cardigans tracks get me like this too, countless of them indeed. But the track I seem to keep coming back to is Algebra, from the first of the two A Camp albums and it was borrowed at one point for the tv series Haven. Oh ... here's another one ! I started this post with the intention of just one song per group but ... Communication is an awesome song that speaks to people like me on many levels. And the animated video is excellent.

A quick aside into instrumental music. This'll get you humming along too and the last track up was from the 90s game, Master of Magic. This was a game heavily inspired by Civilisation but was transplanted to a fantasy and magic world with great variation in the races and the addition of a tactical battle layer. It also had a fantastic set of music in there, albeit usually transmitted over crude FM synthesisers in the sound cards. (not finding a worthwhile link to the music though)

Another instrumental that's guaranteed to get me doing the chair bopping is Candyland by Tobu. One from the Non Copyrighted Sounds collection which are handy for streaming people, which is how I first heard it.

Going back a bit to the yoof days, we have the singers of groups like All About Eve and I'll always join in with Martha's Harbour. I grew up with the Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books and Julianne Regan of AAE has always had the voice of one of the best characters of those books, Menolly. (The link is to the bonus version that has Apple Tree Man on it as well, another wonderful song from their first album)

I also grew up with Kate Bush, who can be tough to sing along to because of her incredible vocal range. But you gotta have a go anyway. I think the song for this collection is going to be Oh England, My Lionheart. A haunting song.

Talking of having a go, Alison Goldfrapp has as remarkable a voice as Kate Bush and uses it to devastating effect for Utopia. I think that's inspired by the Fritz Lang Metropolis movie.

After those years, I dived into an Alisha's Attic addiction and perhaps because the two sisters had diverse voices, it made it easier to sing along ? Maybe. The Incidentals is a really happy song to sing along to.

The Only Exception is a great one too, on a similar theme by Paramore.

One of the random tracks that popped up in the car on one of the trips lately was Fernando by Abba. Can you hear the drums ?

Hopefully we'll never get Stuck on one of those trips (Caro Emerald at her best).

I did catch the boss man quietly murmuring away to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd on our last trip ... I especially like how on the album, the transition from the previous track is a listener changing the stations on the radio, finding a thread of music and then joining in.

And then there are the powerful songs like Laura by Bat For Lashes. I've known a few people called Laura and they've been wonderful people. I wonder who Natasha Khan's Laura was ?

Edie Brickell was another one I grew up with and Ghost Of A Dog was an especially poignant song. (No video because I'm not going to link to a rampant copyright thief !)

Something from way long ago which we've pretty much just rediscovered is the Jesus Christ Superstar album penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It's an excellent album, the bible story set to 80s rock music. Hosanna tempts you in ....


The weather here at the moment is pretty shocking but you shouldn't Blame It On The Weatherman. (B*witched)

What's next ? Garbage are still going strong, making mayhem and taking names. One of my favourites of their songs is Cherry Lips from the Beautiful album.

You shouldn't be Super Critical though, which is a great album from the Ting Tings. Best track and a definite one to join in on is Wrong Club.

I bet that club never plays Moves Like Jagger (Maroon 5)

This collection wouldn't be complete without something from the infectious, impish Little Boots and I'll go to Remedy from her first album. (note - video needs a flashies warning)

Another impish songstress is Norah Jones, latest of the tracks to play on my iTunes ... Let's see ... Oh yes. Man Of The Hour is a fun song.

Mindy Gledhill's songs have a definite joy that lifts the heart and makes you grin as you listen, like I Do Adore.

Last one. Ours was another car where Queen Greatest Hits tended to rule the popularity and ... Yep. You're about to be singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody again.

Nope. I have better. Yes. Better ! Star Trekkin' ... Across The Universe ... Best music video ever.

Character quiz fun (And spaceships)

So I spotted another of those quiz things online and it caught my eye ...

There are a couple of quizzes in this list actually. The first is a D&D stats quiz ... Here's the result :

Your stats are:
  STR:11
  INT:15
  WIS:17
  DEX:14
  CON:10
  CHR:15
The usual logic for D&D stats is that they go from 3 to 18, with 9 being the average. They're usually rolled from 3x 6 sided dice, although there are rules like roll 4, pick the best 3. For the really special characters, the score can exceed 18.

Oh ! Here's the link for the quiz.

I think on those stats, I'd be some kind of lightly armoured cleric. They do well from high wisdom, are helped by charisma, although the typical D&D cleric will be operating in heavy armour which favours the strength over dexterity.

How about Alignment though ... there's another quiz for that over at the Wizards of the Coast site (link). That one's coming out as Neutral Good, which I'm comfortable with. The alignments in D&D work on a 9 box grid, with one side going Lawful to Neutral to Chaos and the other going Good to Neutral to Evil.

Neutral Good means that you're basically a good person and like to help out but you're flexible about authority. It's the alignment I'm most comfortable with in games because it gives lots of choice over the actions you do.

I've been back in the Internet Spaceships over the last few days. There's no alignment in that outside of whether you do piracy or do bounty hunting. That's a curious one because you could be hunting down pirates so that they don't hurt anyone innocent or you can be doing it for the money ... My character's doing it for the money. Gotta fund those bigger ships !

Talking of ships ... I left the last Internet Spaceship post with the Tortoise Beats Hare on the pad of a planetary base. It had more of a run later.

The main job of this ship was to get me into the Sirius system so that I could unlock another engineer. (Oh and as per always, click for bigger in the pics). But along the way, a visit to somewhere familiar ...

Mission was accomplished :

That's after switching into an Asp Scout, which was called the Niki and Charlie. At this point, I'd been making a few tribute names, with this one joining the fleet not too long after the death of Formula 1 legend, Niki Lauda. Charlie was for Charlie Whiting, who was the technical director of the sport for a long time, essentially acting as referee between the teams to ensure they had as level a playing field as reasonably practicable without any really dangerous ideas being allowed.

I went to one of the other engineer planets with this ship too to improve the shield generator.

The next ship was a specialist medium fighter called the Rage of Kashyyyk for Peter Mayhew, better known as Chewbacca. I didn't run this ship around too much (wasn't feeling the joy of combat at the time) but this was definitely an effectively punchy ship.

But I wanted to get back to easier times and mission running, so I jumped into the Type 7 freighter called Kerr Avon Forever. Another tribute name, this time for Paul Darrow best known as Kerr Avon in the legendary series, Blakes 7. This one actually generated a nice bit of funding for the fleet, although it did spark off that post about Joy.

The freighters aren't particularly nimble beasts, which is actually good for the game. There needs to be clear differences between the various ships available. Each ship needs strengths, weaknesses and character. The Type freighters have massive cargo capacity, the largest capacity of ships of comparable size. But they're very weakly armed and manoeuvre like bricks, whereas the Vulture class Rage of Kashyyyk is overgunned massively for its size, has great shielding and can keep its guns on target.

No docking computer in the Vulture either.

The freighter gave more than enough float money to acquire the next ship, also a handy bit of Federation ranks. I'll save the flight to Rear Admiral for the forthcoming Black Sheep ship, that might be a while. I have a plan ...

From last post, that's the current ship. She's the Commander Fuzzy, a Federal Dropship named after one of the better streamer people. Very nicely armed with a good bit of staying power too. It's very odd though when you whip the nose around to track the target and it takes a while for the engines to catch up and get you moving towards them. The game makes a bit of a nod to Newtonian physics.

This ship is doing pretty well actually. One of those differences is the sound design, which is excellent. It's a little daft that you can hear the other spaceships whizzing by in the depths of airless space but that does add a little atmosphere so to speak. This ship moans and grrs through its motions in a way I haven't heard from the other ships.

I like it. Looking forward to stepping on to the other Federation ships in time now. Next up is an Alliance ship. I don't have a good name idea for that yet, although the best names seem to come without really thinking about it. In the meantime though ...

The Fuzzy has terrorised the pirates of Lodemovoi and 7 Andromedae and fed upon the broken wrecks of their ships.

Good times.

Oh and ... a potato shaped highly misshapen planet caught the eye.

Thoughts of Joy

That's a weird title isn't it ...

Actually this post could go absolutely anywhere. It's mostly inspired by the memes that have sprung up around Marie Kondo and her KonMari method. If something does not bring you joy, remove it from your life. Perhaps a bit extreme when taken to ... extremes but I can see the logic in it. The method is mostly about how to declutter your space but I think it could be applied to other areas as well.

For me, I have a massive amount of clutter in my house. Most of it is Lego. A lot of it is books and cds. There are quite a few movies and magazines too.

I look over at the collection of Lego, dragons and other assorted cute objects in front of the telly and it brings me joy. I look at the set of game boxes to my right and remember the joy of playing (most of) those games in their day. Behind me are the books and the cds. Gotta admit, the cd collection is a bit redundant now and could be hidden away somewhere. The ones I want to keep listening to got copied over to the latest laptop and the albums I don't listen to ... didn't.

So in a sense, I have eliminated those albums that no longer bring joy from the collection. There's a good few games too which I stay away from temporarily or permanently because they do not bring joy, either in that instant or because it's a more fundamental thing. I'm currently in a campaign of XCom and there is definitely more a sense of terror than joy from that at the moment. I've been sticking with it though for ... just ... one ... more ... mission.

Oh and Bradford got a bit old between the two games :

I'm still fully engaged in that XCom campaign but I think I could quickly drop it and go straight into the next one. There are some big flaws in the core of the strategic gameplay which make it unnecessarily harder than it should be. A lot of that is fixed in XCom 2 which is a much more satisfying game to play.

Sometimes we hang around in patterns or in books even or experiences that as the nice Japanese lady might say, do not bring joy.

So why do we do it ? Why do we slog through the book that we're not enjoying, the course that we're training on or the game that feels far more grind than fun ? A lot of it is that we're looking for the payoff at the end. We want to know the end of the story, we want those new skills or we want to experience all that the game has to offer.

I had a similar question with the cricket all those years ago. I was still having fun running full pelt around the place like a madman and contributing with the batting too. But it hit home when I was having to leave the running around to the fielders further out because I knew I wouldn't be able to do much with the ball if I did catch up with it. Plus I had the whole concussion thing that heavily damaged my reactions in that final year. The first two games of that season were played in poor conditions as well, which prompted "Why am I still playing this ?" that combined with the muscular pain lasting for about a week after games by that point.

It was a lovely game to finish on though. Plus the decision to quit was kinda forced by my legs becoming much worse soon after the game making it impossible to play.

However, even without that serious illness with my outsides, I think I'd have been calling time on the cricket. At the time, my confidence in my coordination had been shattered by the affects of the concussion suffered in the nets before the season started, although I did not connect that until much later.

I'm (half!) watching an episode of Stargate SG-1 at the moment and ... this series still brings joy. This is the first episode of season 9, where they kinda reboot it after what feels now like a heavily rushed season 8 where a huge amount happens in that series. An influx of new characters led by Ben Browder and Claudia Black joining up again after Farscape leads to a much needed freshness to the season. (The less said about the enemy the better !)

I'm happy to watch that again, with the counterpoint being the various DC universe programmes which got deleted earlier in the year. They no longer brought joy. I was grinding through them out of a sense of getting to the end. I figured it wasn't worth grinding through to the end of those stories any more. I've also just dropped NCIS but that's for different reasons.

We have limited time. If you are not enjoying the activity you are involved in, ask why you are doing that. Is there a better use of your time ?

And I do enjoy a good bit of chilling out and just relaxing these days.

Chat with good people is good too, although I tend to drift away from groups and conversations that are not Joy. Some people give me joy to be around, some do not. I prefer to talk to the people that bring joy. I also like to do things for those people too, like sending fun pictures, sending daft comments, other stuff like that.

If the people who give joy get joy from what I do, that makes me happy too.

I'm not sure if the latest book I'm reading is giving joy (Kim Stanley Robinson 2312) but it is giving a promising, intriguing start so far. I'm not so sure about The Expanse books. They had a brilliant start but I'm not sure where they're going. Book 7 definitely struggled to Bring Joy, as did Book 3. It was notable that Book 3 was savagely cut down for the tv series.

I'll stick with The Expanse series but I don't think I'll be rereading them like I have done with books like The Martian several times. That book definitely does Bring Joy.

I hope this post and the others you've hopefully read from me bring you joy in their own way. I think I've taken up enough of your time for today though, go do something fun !

Oh and .... catalyst for post. The old ship, the Kerr Avon Forever, did not bring joy. Although it was very profitable. That ship is the Commander Fuzzy, the smallest of the Federation ships and it has already fed upon the broken wrecks of many (several) enemy starships. It has definitely brought joy.

Although not tonight, cos I went to the Mall, had joy from wandering around the newly reopened HMV, remembered the joy from watching Michael Palin's series on seeing his book about a ship called the Erebus. Nearly bought that too.

Tired now, watching Stargates, about to dive into the music and then it'll be chilling out to video watching :-D.

Have a great evening everyone.

A Meme of Questions

Another meme spotted ! And I can usually not resist these. This is the internet though, so I can't give exact answers for a few of them. Here goes !

* How old are you: Older than the stars, younger than their planets. Or is that the other way around. Either way, indeterminate age. People seem to think I'm younger than I am, which probably comes from me looking to go for the fun stuff instead of boring stuff.

* Surgeries: Just the one, the second nose job.

* Tattoos: None. I do get curious about the art that people cover themselves with but if they have the attitude of "You have no tattoos, you are weird." then I'll find other people to talk to. We shouldn't be preaching to others how they should live their life. Have tattoos if you want them, make them awesome ones if you do. I've just never had that urge to get one.

* Broken a bone: Several, just a couple (wrist and nose) properly diagnosed but the cricket definitely took its toll in bones over the years.

* Ridden in an ambulance: Actually no ...

* police car: Yep, I got invited to see how fast they recorded me going but they let me off with a "We can't caution you this time".

* Ice skated: Yes. Several times, didn't get on with it and the ice wasn't a fan of me either. Or maybe it was, judging on how it seemed to have an uncontrollable attraction for me.

* Ridden on a motorcycle: No. Curious about it but not enough to let the curiosity override the fear of loss of life or limb.

* Stayed in hospital: Yes, see Nose Job 2. It was just overnight though.

* Skipped School: Don't think so. Can't remember. Skipped various classes at uni though, to a cost.

* Watched someone die: Nope. Seen the lead up but never the actual end. What you see in the last days stays with you, although it's better to remember the times when people are much more alive than to remember the end. Remember their best times.

* Pepsi or Coke: Depends really. I will have either and will aim for the variety Diet. However, can't tell a difference between Fat Pepsi and Thin Pepsi but there's definitely something I don't like about Fat Coke. Whatever one I get will depend on a) whether it's being sold and b) which is cheaper.

* Favorite season: Summer. As in cricket season. Bit hot though.

* Received a ticket? No. I was literally 0.04mph away from one. Although I did get the car towed away once to an impound because the people who the tow truck was really called for were taking up the parking spaces.

* Favorite Colour: It varies. Blue is good. I choose red as in the Blood Red Banner often for strategy games, which kinda reflects the way I intend to play the game. But I do like the green of the Pocket Dragons.

* Sunset or sunrise: Sunset is pretty. Although both are things to be watched instead of driving into them.

* Beach or mountains : Mountains I think, although I think I'd really prefer somewhere quiet, chill, flat with lots of fresh air and peace ...

* Who will play this with you: The person I nicked this from put "Who cares?" and .... same !

* Cat or dog: Dog. WOOF.

* Watch someone give birth? No

* kids: None.

* Samsung or iPhone: Samsung for phone ... but it's crap as a phone and the Android software is just not dialled in perfectly as it should be. There are lots of silly daft things that are off, or interactions in the phone like Bluetooth vs Power Management or the bloatware that just spoil it. I still use an iPhone 5 for the car music, it still works so I've never seen a reason to pay money to move the music to the Android phone.

* Favourite alcohol: I rarely have alcohol but when I do, I do like white wine.

Comic Con fun

It was Comic Con already last weekend !

Time is marching on fast. A good day out with a great friend. I'll have another post coming up later for the cricket at Lords, no friend at that one but I did get hugs. More for the other post ...

There seemed to be more cosplay on show this year. Some of it fun like the one above, some amazing;

Hello Queenie

Some furry ... they must have been cooking in those ! The Excel arena by London's docklands isn't the most hospitable arena place. The air systems really can't cope with so many people inside and it gets a bit steamy. You'd think they'd do something about that !

Lots to see though. From the Pikachu and Team Rocket, Detective Pikachu is definitely a movie I want to see.

Great chocobo.

Love the attitude on this one.

Definitely attitude there. Dunno about the fella behind though. Maybe he's just been told that this Dalek just incinerated his ride home. Love the Alice here too. Oh ... I've been in the Stellaris too and just completed the Determined Exterminator part of the achievement quest ...

This is Comic Con though, so the merch game is strong. There's one that I suspect my neighbour will be acquiring ... Genki Gear has awesome stuff !

All of these were tempting but I managed to escape with just the "Dice are not your friends" t-shirt.

More there from Teeturtle.

Amazing models there.

And I was so close to acquiring one of these to put together.

I'll have a picture coming soon for Team Donut day. Check out Rekha Sharma on the Twitters. She's awesome and has been a great part of shows like Battlestar Galactica and lately on Star Trek Discovery.

But eventually it comes round to time to seek out that home in a galaxy far far away.

We hear you roar Mr Mayhew and we salute you.

It's almost time to get back to the Pew Pew but not before :

A cute cheery wave for an Until Next Year.

A good show again. My friend and I weren't feeling that great on the Sunday so we had a relaxed start and cruise around the show. A lot more cosplay was on show, from the hired outfits to full on custom specials. It all looked amazing and we definitely appreciated seeing it all.