Books ! And a little bit of buggying around

Hello everyone,

I feel tired ! Dunno why, haven't exactly been doing that much. Perhaps it's lack of sleep, or my body getting used to not doing very much. I'll be out of the house soon though, for more than just stocking up the cupboards again.

Also been doing book ... Not just one book as well but two ! Let's see. It should be through the Google thing by now :

Actual paperback. Perhaps rare in this era of ebooks and Kindles ... Signed by the author too :

Big nod. (Yes, that's my thumb). This was a case of seeing a sequel to a book I'd already read and enjoyed and being content to pay a little more than e-book price in order to support that local bookshop and to get one with a little, superficial aye, extra.

What's the book about ? It's the sequel to Embers of War, which sets up this world by introducing the setting and characters which include the spaceship at the centre of this trilogy, the Trouble Dog. After being required to undertake an atrocity that ended a war, she retired from naval service and joined the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescue and preservation of life. This middle book sees the Trouble Dog and crew embark on another rescue attempt, this time to jump into the unknown to rescue a ship of salvagers who came a cropper when they attempted to do a bit of illegal salvage on a wandering generation ship.

Oh and all hell is breaking loose in the galaxy while this is going on. I don't want to say too much more about the plot cos it'll spoil both this book and the previous book but ...

I love the Trouble Dog, she's a ship with attitude and an avatar that combines smart, tough, sassy and resourcefulness. The book swaps between various characters, with its 400 pages broken up in to 83 chapters which each focus on a central character. The Trouble Dog is the star of her own chapters.
As is Nod, an alien of the Druff race which are innately brilliant engineers. Every ship has a Druff engineer that keeps the ship going. They're utterly alien, written expertly by the author and lend a welcome change of perspective to the books.
And I like the rest of the human characters too, who all have their own driving characteristics, mental flaws, issues and other quirks that make them and keep them interesting.

This one is very definitely a Middle Book and as such it moves the general plotline on considerably. It doesn't give an end, Embers of War is definitely the beginning and ... I got the last book in the queue to read. I'll be looking forwards to that one as much as I am looking forward to reading Absolution Gap.

The second book was Artificial Condition, by Martha Wells and it's book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. The first comment that always comes out about these books is ... HOW MUCH ? The price is a bit too inflated for my liking at £6 for essentially a novella. Still, this one and All Systems Red (book 1) were both captivating reads. The central character just goes by their self given name, Murderbot. They're a former SecUnit (Security Unit) that's gone rogue. Except all they want to do is have a chance to peacefully watch as many entertainment serials that they can.

It doesn't work that way though, so Murderbot ends up on adventures that have gone from pure survival and a start in figuring out the events that made them go rogue. Cos they didn't just go rogue originally, they were involved in the death of all of the humans in the place it happened.

I'll be back for more of the Murderbot Diaries. They're a fun read. Bit quick ... but that also means that it's tight writing that rattles the story along without any more padding than is necessary to tell you what's going on in Murderbot's head.

Recommended - both books.

Buggying around ? Internet Spaceships again ! Gotta admit, I'm having to be a little careful with play time because my hand and shoulders are bugging me again but it was good to get back to the populated bubble again and have a little explore. I left it last time at the Hawkins Gap Bases (the spelling is horribly inconsistent I know).

This was a good one to fly by ... It's a ringed planet lit by the local neutron star.

The end of this journey took me to Cortes Base, which has been adopted by a race circuit for intrepid fighter pilots and maybe by pilots of the little ships too. I may have to check that out. I took the buggy in there ...

I found a couple of issues along the way, This is a dome on the outside of the base where the foundations don't quite reach to the ground. I'm actually ok with this, although it reveals some of the magic around how these planetary bases are generated and built in the game. A couple of glitches are ok.

I never gave the birds eye view ! There we go, on approach.

This was the way in and ... you may be able to detect another glitch. The ramp doesn't reach quite all the way to the ground. That's ok, I had jet boosters let me jump up there :-D. Little bit of creative use of a jump ramp maybe but it was still good to get in there.

And have a little look around. Click for bigger on these by the way.

One fun thing is that the scale is all good. The bases are massive ... and in scale. Those windows up there genuinely look like a floor high each and the ground floor doors to that hangar building are scaled correctly for the rover.

Lots to explore too.

Bit quiet out there in the streets ... I might have got there a bit late, their time.

Couldn't get in to the actual base though.

Lots to see in there.

It was getting time for me to put the game to bed as well though ...

Another peek from a safe distance and then it was time to be off and make a proper landing.

Outside of the internet spaceships, I've been working on a Dwagon Alphabet. I have most of the letters now, although it'll take a fair bit of tweaking time before I'm happy with them all. People like them though. The first one was a Happy Birthday message for someone which I hope she enjoyed ... and then more Dwagon Letters have sprung up from there as I produce them. I'm a fan of the Clip Studio application that I've been using, it makes the drawing and editing with the tablet happen very easily.

I think that's it for tonight though. Stay safe, be well, steer clear of the internet if it's causing you grief (lots has been coming out into the public eye lately, much of it unhealthy).

Dwagon Alphabet will come later but for now ... out take from the excursion !

Landing Autopilot's been sniffing the rocket fuel again.

Toasty !

Summer's arrived over here ...

Yep. Check out the thermometer.

That's one of my fridge magnets, in the kitchen which is on the sun facing side of my house at this time of day. It won't be that hot in my main room but according to my graphics card, it's still about 6 degrees C above normal.

Toasty indeed !

Lots going on in the world again, after a few stories erupted over the social medias this weekend. I'm not going to go into those though, the stories of the people who have taken steps forward on social media are their stories, it's not for me to retell them.

But ... believe and support, that's what we must do.

Our virus situation over here in the UK seems to be easing and the lockdown is steadily lifting. Part of me thinks that's about a fortnight too early though. Lots of people are still getting the virus and loved ones are still being lost.

It'll be good to head out for shops, wanders, chats with friends and doing cinemas again but a lot of me thinks it's still a bit soon. I have been seeing the sights in other ways though ... but I'll get to the internet spaceships later.

I've been enjoying a new toy/tool. It's called Clip Studio, it was recommended by the lovely Tashnarr (see link in right hand column) and it's another drawing package. I seemed to get on with it far better than I do with Gimp (this one feels like it wants to fight you) and Corel Painter Essentials (this one made it awkward to do revisions). Clip Studio made it super easy to produce a reasonably complicated message for someone's birthday on Monday (happy birthday again!) and I've since embarked on a crusade to make a Dwagon Alphabet. More on that in a later post. It's a bit toasty at the moment to make an L dwagon, which is the letter I need to make a Sleepy. (need a few more too)

Internet spaceships ?

The travels at the weekend took me to a black hole ... (As always, click for bigger)

I'm a bit away from the Core now, so there aren't quite as many spectacular stars around unless ...

You find just the right angle ... That''s the nebula seen through the black hole.

I did a bit more circling ... until the galaxy ribbon was lined up.

And looking backwards towards the black hole. It wasn't just black holes though ...

Shiny planets !

More volcanoes.

Mysterious satellites ...

Are we allowed here ?

I investigated a group of 4 abandoned planetary outposts ...

With treasure ! I do like how the galactic ribbon is shooting out of that promontory in the background too. Like a Space Cannon.

It'll be good to have a look around these places when the upcoming (next year) walk on planets expansion is released.

Time to move on though. I docked up at one of the fleet carriers overnight (and accidentally repaired the paint - oops !)

Today's short session saw me checking out the Goliath moonlet ...

And landing for the night on the David moonlet. This is a pair of moons with very tall mountains ... I'll have to see if I can get a pic closer to the horizon in my next session so that the gas giant comes out a bit more from behind the two mountains in the distance.

That's it for this week though. Bit bad to leave it over a week between postings ... I got back into the Idle Champions game which I think was having an effect on my mental condition. Brain was thinking more about strategies in that game instead of looking at the more fun creativity. I've put it away again now ...

Stay safe everyone, be well. Support your friends when they need it.

Finding the Shiny Planets

Hello everyone,

People have been saying very nice things about my internet spaceship screenshots lately so I had this idea that I'd say something about how I end up at the places where they happen ... First up though, every journey has a start and this was how I logged in today :

I'm going to keep the pictures small today cos there are going to be quite a few ... As always, click for bigger. It was nice to see the planet in the background there. The first thing to do is to have a destination in mind ... and I've been using the Kamd site to give me ideas for places to go :

All those extra tabs again :-D Here's a link to Kamd. Pop in your start, drop in your intended destination (Ross 1047 has a planetary base with a buggy racing circuit apparently) and give it your ship's jump range and how far you're prepared to go off the straight course home. 20 jumps is a bit silly but I am taking a scenic route back. The button that says "EDSM Info" will tell you things about interesting places along the way. For this trip, I bypassed the Necropolis Chasm because it didn't look interesting and set a route for the Smokehole.

As you go along the route, you'll jump in at the stars along the way. A quick "honk" of the system discovery scanner and you get an idea of what's there :

Have a peek in the top right. 2 objects is barely anything, so this system saw me looping around the sun for my next hop and not bothering to check out the system any further.

The top right display says that the next system has a G class star, which means it's worth checking out. The game leans a lot on real space astronomy, with models for all of the stellar object types in our galaxy. Most of those will be Main Sequence Stars :

(Image attribution link - this came from the Wiki page)
The main sequence goes from O through to M class stars depending on their luminosity. The O end are the younger and more intense stars (My astronomy might be a bit dodgy here), the M end are stars that are nearing their old age. Saying that though, O will burn fast and bright, M burns slow and dimmer and usually outlast the more keen stars. The vertical scale there is Magnitude, big is higher up. (Best to look at the wiki page !)

What it means for planets is that stars around the middle have a greater chance of having the interesting potentially life bearing planets. Our own star is a class G2V star, which means it's in the middle of the Main Sequence and average size for its luminosity. Our planet happens to be at just about the right distance from the Sun to make conditions on the surface compatible with our kind of life.

The game knows this science too and includes it in the Stellar Forge engine it uses to turn newly discovered star systems into something that makes sense in our universe. I'll pay special attention to F, G and K type stars. Back to our G type star that we dropped in at ! What's there ?

24 objects means that it's worth checking out a bit more. To do this, you use the Full Spectrum Scanner. Think of this as a series of telescopes and sensors that take in the light coming from the objects in the system and from that, the systems can work out whether it's rocky, got metal, made of ice or something more interesting like a gas giant or the much more valuable water and earth like worlds. This owes its inspiration from a real technique called spectroscopy that astronomers use to give a crude (it's the best our instruments can do!) approximation of what planets around other stars are like.

That's what the Full Spectrum Scanner gives you - the thing to look at is the scale near the bottom. It gives you a much better idea of what's there. I have it tuned to Metal Rich bodies there, which are valuable planets to find. If there aren't any Metal Rich, High Metal, Water Worlds, Earth Likes or Ammonia Worlds present, I'll quickly move on. As it happened, this was a reasonable system to find.

One thing I'll look for are moons around planets that I can land on (the planets with the blue half circle around them). It's nice to have something in the sky in shot as well as interesting surface features. As it happened though, this was a series of junk planets (Icy moons aren't worth much) and they were too far out to check out. (The Ls is Light Seconds or distance)

On to the next system, this one only had Icy worlds. I immediately jump on if I find these.

On the other hand, jumping in to see spectral traces around there means stopping is a great idea because water worlds are pretty and shiny (and give good exploration pay out !) ...

... Especially as I was the first one there, which means I get my Commander's name on it ! So far, Elite pilots have found a little over 53 million systems, or 0.0133% of the galaxy.

This would have been a great place to stop and take pictures too, as it's close to where you come in and orbits the water world.

That's what you see if someone else found a place first.

Sometimes "LOTS of objects on scanner" can turn out to be :

Junk. Oh dear. Just icy planets again ... although icy planets can still have nice things to look at if you take the time to scan them all.

Moving swiftly on to another system ... Something that will pop up during scans is that "Refining scan..." in the top right, this means there are interesting surface features to have a look at. The various geysers and volcano things are surface geological features that will get picked up here. Something else of interest there is "Rotational Period : (Tidally Locked)". This means that the same side of the body faces its parent at all times, just like our Moon has a dark side that we can't see directly from Earth.

This is me lining up to have a closer look at my intended destination. Notice how I have the moon targeted and I'm heading straight for it (not for long!). I have the parent body vertically upwards from it. The plan is to circle the moon until the parent body is visible from the surface, it's easier to plan ahead and line up so you don't have to think about finding the parent body again.

So I've done a part orbit around the moon and I've probably got a bit lucky there with how close to the horizon the parent planet is. I'm on final landing approach here, heading for one of those interesting geological surface features. Slightly unfortunate that it's dark, so I turned the night vision feature on. it helps to pick out a good spot to land.

And here we are !

The side of a ship is better to look at than its back end or front end (depends on the ship), so I'll rotate around for a good angle before setting down. Lighting is one to think about too. The ships and SRV buggy both have headlights ... and I'll use those headlights to illuminate ship and SRV.

I'll also hunt for craters, canyons, mountains ... anything that looks interesting as I'm coming in for a landing.

The science bit helps in narrowing down the candidates a bit ... cos the Stellar Forge thing that procedurally generates what you find has the science bit as part of its rules. But sometimes it's just luckily finding something Pretty.

Gas Giants are great places to search around, because they'll often have multiple moons that you can get in to shot. A gas giant with rings is even better ... although those same planetary science rules mean that the moons are all in the same plane as the rings (zero inclination). You don't see a ring, you see a line unless you're really lucky and find a moon on an inclined orbit. The Full Spectrum Scanner will give you a preview of how a planet will look and whether or not it has anything in an inclined orbit around it.

I think that's it for me for this post. If you're an Elite Dangerous pilot reading this, good luck finding the Shiny Pretty Places to take great pictures of ! I hope this post helps you out there.

In the meantime, I'm checking out those hot things there overnight with marshmallows and popcorn :-D.

Stay safe, fly safe, be well ! And keep your eyes open for the Shiny Pretty Things.