Advent Planning

Advent is almost here !

This year seems to have flown by. It's been a very busy year, definitely busier than it usually has been for me. Definitely looking forwards to the winter break.

But first ... I haven't been posting nearly as regularly or often as I usually do. I have a target or guide of 100 posts in the year and I'll definitely miss that. Only 56 so far, so with this one and 31 over December, that'll make 87.

But .... what's coming ? Sneak preview first and it's an internet spaceship :

She's the Gingery Nonsense, named after one of the streamer ladies that I've been enjoying watching : HelloItsKolo. Link on the right. She plays Elite Dangerous (looks amazing), Planet Zoo (looks tempting) and assorted other games too but those have been the main ones and she's been a joy to watch since I was steered her way by the lovely HeyChrissa.

But ... meme ! What's coming in December :

Yep. One of those too.

Also posh marshmallows. Will have to give you a taste report for every day of those.

Don't think I'll be toasting them though. It feels a bit of a shame to toast the posh marshmallows because they taste so good.

But what's the meme ?

There we go. It was originally intended for Inktober ... but I missed that so here we go for something inspired by that coming through December.

A lot of those are Elite references that will definitely not mean much to people who don't play the game. I'll write things about them for each day. Although .... not all the pics will be from Elite.

Yep. Gonna have some fun with that.

I'll need to draw though ! I have in mind drawings that will need to be done for at least 4 of those. Gotta get drawing again. I tend to rush through the finish of the drawings but people seem to like the results.

Or is it the cake.

Still, it'll be good to draw again. And hopefully to bring forth a few chuckles too :-).

And the Elitecember thing gives me an excuse to buy chocolate coins ! Result.

Not All Pop Ups On Websites Are Bad

Are they ?

Yep. Pop ups are annoying but ... bear with me on this one.

But first ... birthday stuff ! I have new books. Especially looking forward to reading Ignition! (An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants) and I also have Ready Player One and Armada from Ernest Cline. Cheers CK !

Can you tell what it is yet ? As always with these, click for bigger and I really must put my seat cover through the washing machine soon.

A small beginning.

It grows ...

4D can barely see over the top of it. Oh and ... reflections ... don't look in the reflections :-D.

A couple of bags later. And even more reflections.

What is this ? Something that opens ? Also lurking dragon inside.

Shiny ....

Is it a house ? Looks dragon sized.

Or maybe just Pizza Delivery DwagonBoy sized.

Job done. 4D looks suitably impressed.

Looks cosy in there.

A view from above. A curious one with this piece is that it's kinda double sided. On the other side of the chimney, a fireplace.

And fully opened up. 4D helping out like the trooper he is. It's missing something though ...

Dwagons ! There are also mini figures in there too. There's a Little Red Riding Hood, a Granny and a Werewolf. With big teeth.

A very tidy build and as is normal for Creator and Ideas kits, it ends up in a very polished, finished result. The simple mechanism for the pop up works extremely smoothly as well.

Enjoyed this one :-).

Fortnight since last post ? What's occurring ...

Hmm, I don't usually leave it this long between posts !

Thumbnail first ... someone found this one and posted it on one of the discords. I may stand accused :

Credit to the artist as always, although I don't have a link as I usually like to put on.

I sadly haven't put any Lego together since the last post but I do have that Porsche sitting waiting. Sometime ... soon.

It's been a pretty busy fortnight at work, with a couple of away trips. So last weekend was very definitely a recovery/breather as was this weekend (and I'm missing words again which is another sign of tiredness with me). I was away for the first Wednesday and Thursday and also for the Monday and Tuesday of this week just gone.

I have good pictures too ... which I can't show here because they give too much idea of work away. Locations and places, things like that. However, one of the trips did see me near one of the hardware techie stockists and I acquired the latest techie morsel that will go in to Meltdown at some point :

There we go. More examples of my techie graveyard of bits that are scattered around the house.

From left to right, we have :
Seagate ST32130A 2GB conventional hard drive
Western Digital Caviar 60GB
Toshiba P300 3TB

I've long since discontinued the use of the 2 on the left but the one on the right is an upgrade that will be swapped in for a 1.5TB drive that's being pretty pushed for space with some of the newer games with more pictures, textures and data. The 1.5TB drive is 8 years old now, I think the one on the left might be around 20 years old, maybe more.

The 60GB drive probably belonged to Godzilla, which was a couple of machines ago and had a companion iPaq called Godzookie, which I used as a satnav for a few years. They've kept the same package over the years, with all 3 of those being in a standard 3.5" box. The interface has changed though, with the 2GB drive needing some special measures to access the whole of it. Those special measures were unnecessary for the 60GB and the 3TB uses a different type of cable.

Be careful taking your Godzillas on the ice.

Yep. Busy couple of weeks, with even a couple of overnights in a hotel. Mustn't forget the chargers next time though. Oops ! It was ok, I have an iPhone and Android charger lead in the car so I was able to charge everything up off my home laptop.

Hotel internet is pants. As was the attempt at doing internet off the 3 mobile hotspot. Oh and then there's Microsoft stealing your bandwidth for windows updates first chance it gets. You can set your connection to metered which means it holds off a little but ... new internet connections default to unmetered which means Windows thinks it's time to grab the stuff.

Talking of trying to watch stuff ... I tried to start watching someone new on the Hotel Wednesday, 3 internet couldn't cope. She's "HelloitsKolo" on the twitch and there's a link over to the right. Another person who plays a lot of Elite Dangerous. I haven't done much in that over the last couple of weeks, I've been feeling a bit too blasted to play. However ...

That's coming in to land at Fowler Legacy, picking up supplies to help out the latest Generation Ship to be found and added to the game. More pics of that one when I pay it a visit.

One thing I've learned ...

Some of these logs (not this one apparently !) have audio attached to them too ... I shall have to go back and revisit some places I've been to already.

Other stuff ...

I've kicked off another Motorsport Manager campaign again, this time in the endurance racing category. I'd achieved what I could with the sportscars and the endurance racing is more of a challenge. There's been a couple of races so far and my people are doing ok. I'm in the process of changing around the drivers at the moment, as there is a Fitness attribute that matters a lot more in the endurance racing because it determines how long each driver can stay in the car. More fitness, more time in each stint, less time lost in the pits.

And there may well have been Stellaris happening again. Patches have been coming thick and fast lately. I have a Fanatic Purifier race that's going to destroy the galaxy (may well do that as something spectacular in the end) and I'd quite like to complete that game before the next expansion hits because it could well shake things up again.

Other news - birthday happened again !

I didn't travel like I usually do because I needed a quiet weekend this weekend. It even got to me thinking that Friday morning was actually Saturday due to a little confusion. Oops. Managed to get in to work for 9.15am (almost an hour later than usual) and I have 3 days worth of flexi credit to use up so ... didn't matter in the end.

There's also the Xmas market opening up in Bristol again ... last week. No cookies !

Alas.

May have to go farther afield for cookies.

Hectic week finished, how about next week ?

Yep.

Hectic week last week, first one back after my mini break. I didn't go too far, outside of what ended up being a several day Stellaris bender .... oops. Enjoyed it though and it got me further on my quest to get all the achievements. It was a good game too, lost the homeworld at one point, got it back. Then went to take several homeworlds of other empires. That feels like a long time ago now !

Hectic week next week too, definitely Interesting Times at the moment. Lots of Internet Spaceships too, although there's other things going on than internet spaceships :

Glasses - had a wander in town on Friday, didn't see a place to get the new glasses from though, may have to go to Mall.
Phone - gonna replace the phone with a Pixel 3 XL as I've had enough of Samsung's burned in malware. Looks like you can get the Pixel 3 XL online still but not in store, which is a shame. I'm not convinced the newer one is worth £10 a month more.
General wander - I do like wandering around the city centre, although I didn't get that far this time. Wiped out after the week at work !
Terminator Dark Fate - watched this on Thursday with the boys. Very watchable, Linda Hamilton and Arnie are definitely the class of the movie. The backstory is completely .... terminated now with all the holes shot through it but they still keep coming out with very watchable action movies.

There's gonna be a tonne of pictures appearing today, click for bigger as always. That ship's the Commodore Tuesday, named after the Random Tuesday who should be in a link over to the right. The ship didn't do so well, although that's me fighting in conflict zones, which are really dangerous places. I'll bring it out of the hangar again at some point with a better fit.

Back to exploring though, although before then it was a matter of getting to the place I'd left the Biscuits. Here is the Strength of Atlas, coming out of hyperspace by a neutron star.

And off on a little jaunt again. This is the Crumb, by an abandoned Thargoid wreck site. What happened here ? Looks old.

Betelgeuse is a big place. This was taken from 5 times the orbit distance of Earth from our sun.

The exploration expedition runs are usually guaranteed to find you some amazing screenshots. This is a nebula from inside another nebula.

There is a science ship inside as well.

And a very colourful planet in that same system too.

I found a base, last known location of an explorer who mysteriously ... vanished. As did the rescuer sent to find them. (You find this stuff in logs scattered around the base).

A blue star this time .... and an updated paint job.

This ship had seen better days ...

This trip saw a few excuses to dock up and fill up on tea and coffee from local stations too. This is a Coriolis station, a design which harkens back to the original game, updated for this iteration. There is a trench that runs around the face with the docking bay entrance, I must get a little ship and try a trench run around it at some point.

Oops. Left the headlights on again.

Dreaming of the California Nebula.

One of those discoverable logs. I wonder if they escaped ?

It's always a little nervous when you drop out and there are two stars close by, although it hasn't caught me out yet.

This White Dwarf star may have been a bit tricky to get a boost from. No gentle streamers here ... just a rapidly vibrating pair of cones.

Another find, this time a generation ship which had to be abandoned by the crew.

The black hole effects in this game are very pretty. In this case, I flew around until the black hole was between me and the galactic ribbon and you can see some of the lensing effects. It's most apparent where there are irregularities in the ribbon, with a false lensed image coming from the other side of the black hole.

The trip was not without mishap. This landing was on a 2.8g planet, which was a bit too much for the thrusters on this one. May have bounced. I'm sure all the dents will come out.

Almost the last stop. Here, we see a science ship. The science ship had holes :

I was tempted to try and fly all the way through ...

However, it was time to return eventually though. This particular ship has been a joy to fly around some shorter distance expeditions but here is Jameson Memorial, the eventual home of the Searching For Biscuits. I'm back now to doing missions for the Federation to unlock another ship.

Although not so much today, sore wrist meant a halt to gaming for today !