Mining, Reading, Working

Hello everyone,

What have I been up to for the week ? Feels like time is flying by still at the moment.

I've actually turned the Seti sums back on again, because it's cooled down enough here to be putting the jumpers back on.

Let's see. Work's been fairly intense lately and it really should have been a bit more intense. I should actually be in a different country at the moment under quarantine ahead of a little period away. But I'm not, partly due to physical condition, partly due to mental condition.

My head's ok now, my mental state picked up considerably after I was stood down from going away. But there is that nagging sense that I've let the mental issues win this time. Some of those issues come from the frustration I was having with arranging my end of the trip. (Arranging for me seemed to be much more of an unknown than the other people - can't go in to why here) A big one was the prospect of over a month away from home. I get anxiety when I'm away. Some of it was the conditions I'd be going into. Again, can't say why here.

What caused the decision to be made though was that the mental issues were causing tensions that were manifesting in physical conditions. My back has mostly repaired itself now from when it tried to decouple itself and I've been back in the internet spaceship piloting seat as well (more later). Mining has been a good activity there, feels productive. I haven't attempted a shooter or MMO style game for a good while though, if the spaceships are close to aggravating the wrist, then the shooter / MMO games are likely to activate that issue again.

Oh and I also needed to take a moment when I was picking up shopping last week and my hips were  getting crunchy ...

Things do feel a little like making excuses though and I'm not sure if I like that. That's one thing about mental issues, the person with them will feel as if they've let themselves down ... which just acts as negative reinforcement.

It's ok to talk about the mental issues. In fact, I'd heavily encourage it. In being able to express those issues with a few people, it's let me bounce back quite a bit from when they were affecting me so much that the tension was manifesting as the physical issues.

Reading ?

After abandoning David Brin's Existence after 100 tedious pages, I've been reading A Wizard's Guide To Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. More to come about that in a later post (when I've finished reading it !) but I enjoyed its first 36 pages so much, I had to share part of why I was finding it a fun read :

It's been light hearted fun so far, very readable and the early parts quite happily drew me in to the story and I was wanting to continue despite it getting late.

Existence was a bit different. The first couple of chapters were ok ... and then we hit one with a travel journalist experiencing the Mixed Reality rich areas. That was tough to read, not for subject but for readability. I don't like the Wall of Text tendency that I can have, this was Wall of Text to the extreme. And then it goes into intermission sections between chapters, some of which were a talk show type set up that I was essentially just skipping over. There's a lot of self indulgent stuff in there, it was distracting heavily away from any semblance of plot and I gave up on it after 100 pages, perhaps 15/20 of which felt plot related.

Internet spaceships ? I've been mining again ...

Mining is a bit broken though, so fairly soon I'll be switching ship again. ZoomNarr is potentially next, although I'd like to open up a little more engineering first for weight savings ...

That'll be what Zoomnarr looks like and I'll be aiming at around 3 hours to get to the Galactic Core in this one. My record is 3 hours 6 minutes ...

I'm not switching ships due to a lithobraking incident though ... honest. (All the dents came out from this planetary approach).

Gotta say, the colour scheme of Hand of Caledorn was fitting in rather nicely with the surroundings she was mining in. However, mining has suffered a little lately in the metagame area. Low Temperature Diamonds were the main highly lucrative item, these are now scarcer than scarce. As a knock on to that, the Painite I've been mining has lessened in value as the market saturates. So ... time to test something new :

Mining with explosives ! Charges set ...

BOOM TODAY ! (Well. Yesterday.)

Hmm. More boom needed.

That's better. The idea is that you use the seismic charge launcher to embed explosives into the rock and then ...

Pick up the goodies exposed from the insides, find the high buyers and profit. I cut the session short a little because I was struggling to fill the hold ... and also because the wrist issues were threatening again. Still, it was a nice 128m credits from the session although that took 4 hours to get, rather than the 2 hours that a Painite session currently netting 121m would take.

So I think I'll leave the mining aside for a little bit. Next up will be a brief combat session again in a Mamba. Not the best ship but the only useful role I can see for it is mining. A Beluga Passenger Liner will happen at some point ... and also the Anaconda class explorer ship Searching For Dragons will go round the galaxy. That'll be all of the ships owned at the that point, although the Admiral Luperza hasn't been out of the hangar yet.

We'll see. Perhaps even a little FFXIV as well, although that was a catalyst for the wrist issues so I may have to just cold turkey drop that game.

We shall see ! Apart from that, Le Mans is coming up, having been moved to September. Nurburgring 24 hour is the week after. I'll be watching someone down the field and hoping they do well. It's boring to support the winners. Better to urge on the cars that have had terrible luck at some point and you can watch them battle back through the field after repairs. I was doing that with the Lexus cars last year, sadly they won't be at the Nurburgring even this year. But there's a custom sports car, several GT86s and some Aston Martins to keep an eye on.

Should be good.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

20 Bookish Questions

Hello everyone,

I just spotted something over at Cyberkitten's blog and thought I'd join in too. Here's the link to CK's answers.

20 Bookish Questions :
One: How many books is too many books in a book series ?
The book after the series ran out of steam. A few cases here ... Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books were excellent ... up until the main story was told and the direction was lost. It was flogging the dead horse after that. With David Weber's Honor Harrington books, these were fantastic in their earlier days when it was all about the space navy action. Where these ran off the rails was the steady escalation into a more political sphere. The politics and espionage were boring and it dragged the stories out way too much.

But with James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series, I'm wondering if they can finish off their story in the last book ... Could be a big book. They've been clever with that series too, with it feeling like a trilogy of trilogies, where there's a time step between books 3 and 4 and another skip between books 6 and 7. The authors will finish The Expanse on Book 9, even though there's a lot of fan desire to have more books in that universe. I think they have the right of it.

Two: How do you feel about cliffhangers ?
The best cliffhangers are the ones that provide a step or a break between books. The previous book tells its own story to completion and then sets up the scenario for the next book. Done well, a cliffhanger leaves you satisfied and hungry for more. The Expanse books have done this pretty well. Another of Anne McCaffrey's though (the Freedom's Landing ending) felt like a padded first book of a set of 4 that could have been just one book.
(Translation - it's all about the book and the narrative)

Three: Hard cover or paperbacks ?
Paperbacks because they are cheaper and lighter. But ... if I'm in a book cave and they have a hard cover copy of a book I'm interested in, I won't pass up doing the collecting thing just because it's hardback.

Four: What is your favourite book ?
While it wouldn't be my Favourite, I keep going back to The Martian. It combines the space scifi that I love with a joyful style. It's fun to read. The books I've enjoyed most over the past year are the first two Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells and Fleet of Knives by Gareth L. Powell. Now those two books set up cliffhangers well.

Five: What is your least favourite book ?
Farnham's Freehold by Heinlein. There are probably others (Rama II) but this one came to mind recently. It's about a family who dive into their nuclear shelter and find themselves transported to the far future. And then the racism starts ... This is possibly the most racist thing I've ever read. Heinlein has his great moments ... but he also let the fascism out a bit too much and it's joined here by really offensive racism too.

Six: Love Triangles - Yes or No ?
If it's good drama, go for it. However, if the book gets mired in the love triangle to the distraction of everything else then I'll get bored. This is one of the things that drove me away from Rama II. Too much bad interpersonal drama between poor characters. But there's also a lot of potential for interesting drama here too.

Seven: What was the most recent book you could never finish ?
Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke Gentry Lee. Rendezvous with Rama was an excellent book. It had mystery, it rattled through its story, it kept you interested ... and it was over in a flash. 10/10 would consider reading again. However, I abandoned Rama II after over a third of it was tied up in tedium before they set foot on the artifact. I then did a bit of research, finding out about the Gentry Lee thing where someone else wrote it under essentially endorsement.

Eight: What is the book you're currently reading ?
Existence by David Brin. I'm not too far in so far. Tiredness and the recent heat were keeping me away from reading. But I've also not really been engaged with the writing style so far. Early days, must get back to it.

Nine: What is the last book you recommended to someone ?
I think I'll say "A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe" by Alex White here. I really enjoyed this one too. It's space fiction again but the New Thing here is that while science is in play, this book is all about the magic in the universe. Oh and motor racing too, plus fun characters. Angry characters, evil ones, good ones, naive ones. I'd definitely recommend this one.

Ten: What is the oldest book you've ever read ?
Not sure here. I think it'll be an H.G. Wells, although I'm having trouble remembering there. H.G. had a gift of writing in such a style as to avoid the danger of having their books appear dated, even now.

Eleven: What is the newest book you've read ?
I wonder actually, could be A Big Ship At The End Of The Universe, could be Embers of War. I tend to wait a little until the price has come down. I've got a big list of unread books, so it's rare that I feel that need to immediately pay full price for the newest book. Thinking about it, this could be Tiamat's Wrath, book 8 in the Expanse series.

Twelve: Who is your favourite author ?
Hmm ... I think I'll put Timothy Zahn here, for what he did for the Star Wars Expanded Universe by giving us a much better set of sequels to the movies than we got in cinema ... Oh and there's also Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston for their XWing books, James S. A. Corey for their Expanse books, Gareth L. Powell and Martha Wells. There are too many books to lock it down to just one author :-).

Thirteen: Buying or Borrowing Books ?
I'll happily borrow a book, dive through it and hand it back but I do like to own my own books. It helps the author, probably doesn't give them much cash but the more people buy their books, the more likely we are to get more books from the author. And more people support artists, the better.

Fourteen: What is the book you dislike that everyone seems to love ?
Hmm ... Ignoring that the author seems bent on destroying her own reputation at the moment and intent on turning herself into a pariah, I'd pick Harry Potter. Yep, went there. I couldn't finish the first book. Perhaps I'd been seeing the issues inherent in her universe before they were brought out and highlighted. Maybe it was thinking Diagon Alley was a name completely lacking in originality rather than something clever or cool. And while I liked the character Luna Lovegood because she was an interesting character, I don't think the name Lovegood was an appropriate name for a child character in what's supposed to be a kid's book. Another one that may have sounded "cool" but ... pick something else. It sounded like it was inspired by the names given to Bond Ladies.

Fifteen: Bookmarks or dog ears ?

Thou shalt not dog ear.

Sixteen: What's a book you can always re-read ?
The Martian, due to the sense of fun running all the way through it. The simple intelligence in how the author develops his character and his answers to the problems he faces. It's a very enjoyable book to read through.

Seventeen: Can you read and listen to music ?
It's very rare that I don't have music on ... However, depending on the book, I might not be paying much attention to the music while being enthralled by the book !

Eighteen: One PoV or multiple PoVs ?
This can work really well either way. In The Expanse and Fleet of Knives books, the PoV changes between chapters as the book wraps together threads as seen from the different characters. It works extremely well for those books. However, others work very well from a single PoV, like Starship Troopers or Old Man's War by John Scalzi.

Nineteen: Do you read a book in one sitting or over multiple days ?
I don't read fast enough to read a 600 page book in one sitting :-D.

Twenty: Who do you tag ?
Nope. I don't do that. If you enjoyed reading this as I did with CK's version, feel free to grab the questions and tag yourself in. But I don't tag people like that :-).

PS In other news, I did the internet spaceship thing today ... I think there's mixed feelings there. I didn't have any wrist spasms but I have more stiffness in my shoulder now. Curious ...

A Cause, Some Pain And a Relic

Hello everyone,

I'm a little overdue about promoting a cause !

There we go.

Long time readers will recognise the little lady on the left there. She'll be taking part in a stream on Friday 21st August that's dedicated to a fundraiser for ending the virus of racism. In this case, it's focusing on the endemic racism we've been seeing directed towards pretty much anyone of Asian descent.

Here's the fundraiser link : https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/endthevirusofracism

This isn't just about the plague that's out there at the moment either. The racism has been out there a lot longer than that. It's a fear of Different.

Sod that. Difference is good. Difference is strength. Difference is interesting. Difference gives us new perspectives, new stories, new things to learn. New ways to do things. It should be a positive, not something to bully people with.

If you're a regular reader, you should know me well enough to know that I hate it when people can't fight back. This particular cause has roots in how the media is presenting the Coronavirus. Even our BBC pretty much always has the Asian person in a mask as a symbol for the virus.

That's wrong. It promotes a stereotype that gets people hurt. It's rare that I get angry about things but I'm angry when I know that people I know and care about are facing abuse born from the ignorance of others. And I'm even more incensed because the people triggering this abuse are the media, who are the voice that dominates opinion.

It's tough to fight a message if the abusers have all of the megaphones.

They'll be on Kim's channel at 2pm BST (GMT+1) tomorrow, which is really convenient cos that's around the time I'll close the work laptop up (I work longer in the week so I can wrap up early on the Friday). Here's the link : https://www.twitch.tv/nanokim

I can guarantee it'll be emotional. There will be many stories that will hopefully open your eyes. It'll be powerful.

How about me and the Some Pain ?

(credits in the picture)
I'm still struggling at the moment. The perverse thing is that the pain I have in my arm and wrist is ok for working at home but is likely to be very bad in games. I've been in games only a couple of times in the evening this week, once for a Battletech session, once for Motorsport Manager. They're both fairly hands off games.

I may have to abandon Final Fantasy XIV early. I've been liking it ! But that MMO playstyle seems to be really bad for my wrist.
I'm looking at alternate control methods for the internet spaceship because the yaw mechanism is triggering occasional spasms.

The issues I'm coping with at the moment are mainly :
Back - the lower lumbar area that I hurt when I was 17 never really fully healed and occasionally flares again. I think it got activated by stress tension and the muscles reacted. Anyway, that one can give the "My Strings Got Cut" feeling that I guess people with a bad back all know about. It also causes soreness in my left leg, as the damaged area impacts the nerves going into the leg.
Shoulder and arm - I think I said something about this a few weeks ago. I think the joint moved again and the arm settled into the Not Quite Right place which means I get numbness in the arm and the impacted circulation will amplify that RSI tendency.
Hips - this problem started with the cricket again but massively increased in the worst days of my skin condition (99% fixed now) when I was sitting on the floor. My hips are wrecked ... I can walk around ok when I can actively control the movements but standing and turning can lead to screaming.

But apart from that, I'm ok. As long as I'm managing the issues and avoiding the activities that make them worse, I'm not needing painkiller assistance to cope with them.

I'm in a far better position than a lot of people there and I have to remember that because if I have the pain now, it'll inevitable worsen when I'm even older.

On another note though ... Relic ? Nah. That's not me. Check this out :

Perhaps a preview of something I have in mind for December's Advent series ...

The game is Neverwinter Nights, which originally came out in June 2002. This was a quite flawed but brilliant game. It had many critics who came from the Baldur's Gate series and they were upset because it appeared dumbed down with only a couple of characters in the party, compared to the 6 of the earlier Baldur's Gate Infinity Engine games.

My response to that is that while I bounced off all of the Baldur's Gate games (and the new Pathfinder Kingmaker game) due to the micromanagement you had to do in those, I took to the simpler Neverwinter Nights and played the hell out of it.

The big step onwards that it took between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and Neverwinter Nights was to turn the play area from 2d predrawn backgrounds into a mostly 3d environment. that had its critics too because the environments and models were pretty crude.

But that was the technology we had at the time. I think I'd have been playing this on either a 450MHz machine or a 2GHz Athlon XP and a distant ancestor of the graphics cards we have now. (Probably a 3dfx Voodoo2 with a whopping 8MB of memory)

I didn't particularly care about the graphics though. They tended to be a bit fuzzy anyway because that's how cheaper cathode ray tube monitors were. LED/LCD monitors are so much better.

Nope. I was drawn into the story much more and massively enjoyed it. I even have the walkthrough book somewhere. So I just had to go a bit further and acquire the two expansions when they came out in 2003.

This was a game from the days when they came in boxes with goodies too. In this case, a manual, 3 dvds and that map you see in the background as well.

Good times. (Although these goodies pale in comparison to what came with Falcon 4. Hopefully I can find that before December !)

People still play Neverwinter Nights too. The stream I have on the laptop is Distracted Elf (Twitch link) playing on a multiplayer Neverwinter Nights server. They made an excellent platform here.

Hopefully Kim's platform tomorrow will be super successful too. I'll bid you good night there, one more linkage !
Twitch stream : https://www.twitch.tv/nanokim
Crowdfunder : https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/endthevirusofracism

Good night everyone, stay safe, be nice to people you meet.

Health and .... Spaceships ?

Hello everyone,

Another week ! And it's been a hot one this week, changing into heavy thunderstorms ... They hit here on Thursday evening (I think) and they were shaking the windows ...

I was rather relieved when the weather did break, because the heat was being a massive struggle. I don't handle heat particularly well, probably a symptom of tending more to the hyperactive side (although I've been really struggling for energy as well lately).

That drawing above happened rather quickly on Wednesday over a lunchtime when I was really feeling the heat. My temperature gauge is back down to 46 degrees C now, it was hitting 49 earlier in the week and it's still feeling a little warm to wear more than shorts and a t-shirt. The usual comfy temperature is about 43 degrees C.

That's not the actual room temperature, it's the readout from the graphics card so it's a little above ambient. It's a decent readout though. Most of the time, the card is sitting idle and isn't doing much so it steadies out to something indicative of how relatively warm it is. When it's working for games, it'll go up to the 70s. The processor temperature isn't a good indicator, it goes up and down quite a lot as the processor suddenly switches into doing work.

It was good seeing England turn the cricket around last week, although this week's game will go to a draw tomorrow because most of the available time has been lost to rain.

Back to health - I'm struggling a bit at the moment. Some of that is down to work and reasons I won't go in to here. We're still working from home by the way, we have been since the situation erupted in March. Apart from printing, we have the facilities we need and the network has held up pretty much all the time. Switching to working from home hasn't affected us that much. But the situation as a whole at the moment is interfering with getting things done, which is contributing to stress levels.

I don't like expressing when I'm in the struggle mode, although sometimes you do have to just say "I am really stressed at the moment" so that it's registered when all other signals are normal. And the struggle signals don't translate very well over the computer screen.

I'm struggling in other ways as well :
Not much internet spaceships happened this weekend because I've been suffering not just from wrist pain but also spasms. That's not a good sign. So the last time I flew was Thursday. I've opened up Battletech again and have been enjoying the tactical battles in that.
My back has decided to come out on strike as well. I have an old injury from cricket which never properly healed. It's in my left lumbar area and affects my left leg. So after that flared on Friday, I've been slightly restricted in movement and I'm attempting to not aggravate it further by keeping twisting movements to a minimum.
I've been getting pins and needles and numbness in my right arm too with some activities, which is usually a sign that my shoulder isn't in the right place.

And there's probably a few more issues as well. The back isn't critical at the moment but you have to listen to those warning signs. The wrist is probably critical and I need to actually pay heed to those warning signs. I haven't been in Final Fantasy XIV since last week, not sure when I can go back in.

I have a Lego Lunar Lander as well which hasn't gone together yet. The hot weather would have been a good excuse there as it doesn't include making heat like the games do. But it involves twisting (to get stuff out of bags) and fine hand movements ... so it'll stay in the box for a bit.

But it's not all doom and gloom. I do have a few screenshots to show this week (plus there's the dwagon up above) ...

Towel of Space was still doing well but I've switched to another ship now. A mining session with Towel of Space needed about 4 hours to pull in 256t plus another 10 in the refinery. Here is the new one :

She's the Hand of Caledorn. The new plan was a smaller ship, with more collectors to speed things up. A mining session is about 2 hours in this one, bringing in 192t plus the 10 in the refinery. The quicker mining rate is an answer to the problem of the wrist ... and because 4 hour sessions after putting the work laptop away were making dinner be a bit late :-D.

There we go ... mining collectors at work. It's a very compromised fit for a number of reasons but it's doing the job pretty well.

Looks good in the dark too.

Still enjoying the game ... plus mining is being a somewhat cathartic activity with a definite result at the end of it. Lots of money coming in. Battletech has been good too and Motorsport Manager. I have a Horizon Zero Dawn video on in another tab at the moment and that one is incredibly tempting ... but I'll save acquiring that for when I've finished The Outer Worlds (on break due to wrist), played Prey and maybe looked at Alien Isolation.

And when I'm looking to give the back issues and wrist issues a rest, I have the streams and videos to watch. Plus scifi stuff to watch too :
Star Trek Discovery - I enjoyed watching season 1 again as much as the first time, including looking for things they set up early that had big payoffs later.
Lost In Space - watching s2. Interesting ... not the best stuff but it's been holding the attention.
Umbrella Academy - watching s1. Curious again. It indulges in Netflix's tendencies to make things a bit bloody though.

Hope you've all been having great weekends. Mine has mostly been looking outside to see if it's raining, keeping an eye on the lightning tracker, watching Stuff. It was good to see World Endurance Championship back on again, although there's little doubt in who wins there at the moment.

Before I close up this post which discloses some of my struggles, my message is :

It's ok to struggle. Especially at the moment. These are extraordinary times. The equivalences would be the two World Wars (ok, not that bad) and the Spanish Flu pandemic. It's not over yet, not by a long shot. The long term effects on we who live through it won't be apparent for a long time.

I've got a few communities and people that I can reach out to and talk about my issues. Hopefully you have those outlets as well and that you can pay it forward by helping out other people as well.

We can get through this ... perhaps not together in person but we have this virtual world now that comes to us over the internet. It's a big help.

Hang in there everyone. Stay safe, be well.

Spaceships, a little racing, a little rescue and back to work

Hello everyone,

One week since my last, feels like it's flown past ! It's been one of those weeks too where I can't really remember what I was getting up to either. (Yes I can, cracking on with work stuff and doing spaceship mining in evenings)

It's a bit warm here at the moment ...

I was looking for the melted dog pic but that'll do as well. I struggle in the heat. Probably a lot of that is a metabolism that tends to the hyperactive states but I'm also carrying too much weight and British houses are set up to be heat traps. It's not been quite as hot as previous years but it's still been pretty toasty.

Internet spaceships ? I've been doing more of the mining ...

As usual, click for bigger. I'm playing in 1440p, so there's lots more detail available than is in the thumbnails. Here we have the good ship Towel of Space, hard at work again amongst the asteroids. The little lights there are collector drones that go out to fetch the bits you blast off the asteroids.

The good stuff is in the rings around planets.

Loads of asteroids to have a look at in there.

It speeds things up if you get close, although you're probably not supposed to get that close. Spot the shields activating to stop an impact from the rotating asteroid !

But something unusual happened yesterday. One of the pilots on the Kolo discord reported that they were in deep fuel trouble, as they'd been disadvantaged by getting moved by the game and got stuck without a fuel scoop or a station to refuel at. So off I pop to a station to get a small module refit ...

And we're off to the rescue. There's an organisation called the Fuel Rats which does this as their thing that they do in the game. It's the first time I've run a rescue like this.

Felt good too. And apparently the people on the discord liked catching up on the story as it was unfolding last night (we were using the discord to coordinate before getting online).

I've been in the Motorsport Manager game too, starting again with an open cockpit racing team (think F1). I've been curious about the mods for that game which essentially do a total conversion. I haven't gone for those yet. There are a heap of mods that are essentially massive cheats for the game, I avoid those as well because I've figured out how to win at the game without that kind of assistance. My team was up to 5th in the lowest (of 3) championship in the third season and the races are being enjoyable to run the strategy on.

I had another little look at FFXIV again today. It has an effect on my neck and shoulder, so I haven't been quite as addicted to it as I could have been. But it has a certain draw that's kept me coming back. I'd rate it as being well worth a play if you enjoyed your levelling time in games like WoW.

And my little punchy catgirl has outfits that I can show off on camera again !

This is checking out Gridania.

Looking at the scenery around the town.

And being taught new dances by the locals. Need to get more outfit though. That one was provided by a quest again.

That's one of the things about this game, there's a certain joy that comes over in the actions of the characters that come up on screen.

Both this one and Elite have been good ones to disappear in this week. I'm finding the mining in the internet spaceship to be a calming experience that I'm enjoying. It was great to run the rescue last night. And FFXIV's Eorzea was being charming again today.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Quiet week with spaceships and Lego

Hello everyone,

I've been having a quiet week ... a bit of time away from the work stuff and to see about catching up on sleep and other non stressy things.

Cardiff happened on Wednesday, more about that in a bit (but the thumbnail will give some away!). Shopping has happened today, although it included what's probably best described as a milk mishap. Not quite a disaster, although I was mopping up milk from the boot of the car and my kitchen floor. Looks like only a little bit escaped, which was good. (It got squeezed in the shopping bag enough to pop the seal).

There we go. More of that box in the background in a bit. (More Lego may have escaped as well ...)

Been watching the cricket too, there's been a fair bit of that this week ... rain permitting.

Cardiff was ok on Wednesday. I feel it's probably inevitable that we're about to see a second wave of Covid cases coming in now in the UK. We never properly got close to eliminating it (getting a below 100 case in a day level), it's trending slightly upwards again and mask discipline was shocking on Wednesday. Perhaps 1 in 3, maybe 1 in 4 people were in masks. I didn't stick around for munchies like I would normally have done, although that was partly due to wanting to get back for more of the Kim & Becky crafting stream. It's a good chilled out stream to listen in to as Kim facilitates and Becky produces magic.

Lots of games have been occurring this week, although I've been a little limited by my shoulder ... I think I may have actually popped it out slightly this week, although it has improved again today. There's been a load of music listening too :-).

I played a little Final Fantasy XIV last weekend, although that's suffered a bit with the shoulder. I can't show to latest screenshot because the gear system has given my poor punchy catgirl something nearly indecent.

I've skipped ahead a little with the Internet Spaceships and I may come back to those but this was Tea-89 on her way back to the bubble, this one is a slightly processed image by the way with "Auto White Balance" picked to make everything more visible. Looks great.

I did want to be doing something different to exploration though and this is Tea-89 returning to the hangars at Jameson Memorial.

I had a chance to give the Admiral Luperza an updated paint scheme, although the shoulder meant I didn't want to indulge in combat just yet ...

So the Towel of Space made her debut. The name and colour scheme are in honour of the wonderful Katherine of Sky (youtube link), another lady of the videos who has a lovely voice with great intelligence and style behind it. When she does streaming, she has a strict no face camera policy but did start up a Cat Cam, with a towel bed for her kitties to lie on while the camera pointed at them.

The kitties appeared to know when the camera was on ...

So chat started up the cult of the Towel Of Sky and a new meme was born. The callsign for this ship is CAT404, or Cat Not Found. I'll name one in honour of the other Lord Of Sky, Caledorn (youtube link) at some point. He hasn't been making many videos lately but I've been enjoying listening to him as I catch up on other series.

There's Towel of Space hard at work amongst the asteroids, collecting Painite which can fetch prices of around 630,000-700,000 credits per tonne. That's not as much as it used to be but it's still probably the most profitable activity in the game at the moment. Plus I think it's ok for my hands too as there is less interaction with the controls.

The other high value methods are either broken (Low Temperature Diamonds are extremely rare at the moment due to a bug) or very fussy in their mechanics. I mine by finding good asteroids and blasting at them with lasers (very simple), the game now includes methods for drilling into asteroids and blowing them apart for shinies hidden inside. That seems very fussy and I haven't tried it yet.

I've actually enjoyed the mining, it's been a different activity than the exploring and is definitely easier than the combat.

I mentioned pictures of Lego though ... That's what was in the box.

It was fun to see a picture frame take shape, including having a prop at the back.

A shape steadily takes .... shape.

More detail appears ...

And I suspect you know what this soon became ...

There we go. This was one of the new Brick Sketches that have just been released. I enjoyed putting this one together last night when I was a bit too warm to do much else.

And 2d vs 3d !

I've been eyeing up the LED light up kits as well. One or more of those may appear at some point.

I've also still got my eye on a Hotas upgrade, I've enjoyed taking an early look at Automation :

Nice little Triumph Spitfire analogue there. It doesn't have quite the body customisation options that I was looking for but the engine and mechanicals customisation is incredible even if it isn't going to go as far as doing Hybrids, Diesels or Rotary/Wankel engines. I may well acquire the BeanNG.Drive application that lets you drive your creations around.

Anyway, back to a bit more chillout for me this evening.

Nite all, stay safe, be well.