Gaming in the near future

New post in the other place !

Bionic Near Future Conspiracy, very orange https://sleepydwagonman.com/bionic-near-future-conspiracy-very-orange/

Gaming in the near future.

 

There we go. I been playing Deus Ex Human Revolution again ... Pictures may have occurred.

Felt like starships

Another new post on the new place !

Here we go :

Felt like starships https://sleepydwagonman.com/felt-like-starships/

Internet spaceships and musing about life in a science fiction universe

Yep. More internet spaceships there again. I dipped back into Elite again, plus I've (mostly) enjoying Star Trek Online still.

Oh - one note ... the new site has started showing up in search engine results but it's still being blocked at work. Something to do with Newly Registered Sites. I wonder how long that block runs for ? It'll be a fortnight tomorrow.

Away in a Seaquest

Hello everyone,

New post :

Away in a Seaquest https://sleepydwagonman.com/away-in-a-seaquest/

Telly, book, outside, ouch

I noticed something with the other two posts that I've fixed ... Apparently another change with the new blogger editor is that it doesn't automatically make links into links any more. Fixed it !

New post at the new place !

Here we are, this is the little summary thing I started doing :

Is this thing dusty yet ? https://sleepydwagonman.com/is-this-thing-dusty-yet/

Writing, Intros, Pictures and a little pain

 

Still a lot of work to do there, I'll get back at it when I'm feeling a bit more willing to fight the IT.

New site !

Hello everyone,

I have a new site ... First post is here:

https://sleepydwagonman.com/over-to-wordpress-migration-time/

It's as a direct result of the changes Blogger is now enforcing on users. I'll post all new content there and post links back to it here. Site still needs a lot of shining up though, so bear with me while I work through those issues.

Possible Drastic Change Coming. And the Lander

Hello everyone,

There might be a very drastic change coming here very soon, as in a change of host, change of address and change of platform.

You see, Blogger's been threatening for a few months now to change the interface for Something New and, in short, it's an abomination. Apparently it's due to the technical infrastructure that it runs on needing to be retired and turned off. I wonder if that means, like Farcebook, it's going to be subject to massive slowdowns like what's happened with that interface change. I have access to the old interface with my desktop but as soon as I reload the web page, it'll be gone.

It's actually such an abomination that you can't put feedback in about it when you look at the site on a mobile. And that would be a Google Pixel 4 running Google Chrome on a Google site. Shocking. I'm testing out what the interface is like with this post and my opinion about it is still pretty bad and declining. I await to see the results on posting ... (Line spacing is wrong and I'm not seeing an option to change it. COME ON ! That's a basic feature in anything above Notepad).

So I'll be doing a bit of research on Wordpress and seeing about a possible site migration. If/when I do that, I'll pop a link to the new site in the last post I write here. Hopefully I can do the move clean with a migration over of all of the posts but there's over 1600 of those going back 15 years.

We shall see ! I promised Lego Lunar Lander pictures the other day and didn't deliver ...

Shiny.

4 stages this time, distributed over a series of bags. (Btw, the line spacing looks like it's going to be a major issue with this editor and I think I'm going to need to edit it in the old one, if I can).

Astronaut ! The book this time comes with lots of little history tidbits about the Lunar Excursion Module.

It starts by building up a flat base.

Is that a resident ?

First steps of the lander module. I think someone wants to fly it.

The red and white cylinders are the propellant canisters. It's quite a dense, compact model and goes together nicely. And we see one of the Ladies of NASA guesting there too.

Another helper recruited and the base is almost complete.

Side panels going on. One hallmark of Creator Kits is that they have much more attention to detail with the finish, with smooth blocks finishing off the outsides.

Are those eyestalks ?

Ah ha ! Landing legs.

And that's the lower half complete. The Lunar Excursion Module had two halves. The above piece is the lander, which stayed behind on the surface, spent.

The astronauts travelled in the upper module, which has clever little windows added in which resemble the ones on the real landers.

And away it goes ! Well, actually slightly before attaching the two halves together.

Job done, everything together.

I rather enjoyed putting this one together over the weekend.

Stay safe, be well everyone.

PS Oh my giddy aunt it's not giving me the labels to pick from like it should be doing.

Landing the Trekking

Hello everyone,

It felt like this today when I emerged !

Although a lot of that was self inflicted wounds again after spending maybe an hour too long in Star Trek Online yesterday. I've been enjoying that game, despite its short comings.

Every game has shortcomings (I've gone from hyped to a Nope for the new Star Wars Squadrons game) but we'll stay with our favourites because of what they do well. In Star Trek Online's case, it's a mix of the starship combat stuff, combined with the Star Trek stuff on the ground. They've managed to make it fairly star trekky too, although perhaps more in the Discovery era or DS9 rather than TNG.

However, it has that MMO playstyle again which can wreak havoc with the old injuries I carry and in particular, the shoulder. I felt twinges start up, which I should have listened to ... definitely when they were becoming more intense. And then I stay 30 minutes longer than that in the game and I'm paying for that today. Oh well. It's just moderate pain, which is ok.

I have been greatly enjoying the game though and moved on another 5 levels since that start of the session yesterday.

One thing I haven't done is use the new Elite internet spaceship for anything more than following the start of Drew Wagar's latest tour :

There we go. That's the Icarus Rising, a Mamba class heavy combat ship. I like the design there, there is a huge gun amidships aft, two large guns alongside the cockpit and two little guns up front. They're all on the top side of the ship, whereas the Fer-de-Lance has its big gun on the lower side. (It means that if you're chasing someone in a pitching up motion, all guns can be brought to bear). There's also a huge amount of visibility and the only angle with more than a minimal profile is the top and bottom.

It has great potential ...

... to be used for shooting things as well as following Cmdr Wagar down to a planet in loose formation. That was the only time I got into the same instance as the main group though sadly.

And then there's other ships in a universe long ago and far, far away ... which I've been ignoring in favour of :

There we go. The ships in the spacedock looked great, no idea what they were though. The one to the lower right looks like an improved Defiant class and I think the upper one is actually two. One has a weird massive nacelle and I think the other has underslung nacelles like the Miranda and Nebula class. Looks like there's an Ambassador class (Enterprise C) down there too. I'm current in the Constitution class Dragon Spirit :

And the game would give be another ship at level 20. (Unless I gave them money for a special ship but I don't intend to do that). It is a bit odd though seeing that ship being a main ship in a game that has its main elements start in 2409. The old Enterprise is a bit ... ancient there.

Outside of that, cricket watching was curious yesterday with it being the end of the domestic season with the T20 blast finals day, delayed from Saturday due to rain. I don't intend to watch much IPL. It's a predatory influence on all cricket, to the cost of the game as a whole. And some of the commentators should not be allowed behind a microphone due to their attitudes. It's sometimes telling who gets allowed on to the Sky commentary teams here and who aren't invited back after a guest spell. No, not impressed with much about IPL although English cricket needs to learn from the overseas leagues but not having the finals day months or so away from the main league. Get the competition done in a single block so that the specialist T20 only players can be around for the finals as well as the league, the teams that make it to the finals tend to lose their overseas stars which makes the competition be a bit false.

But there are other issues with the game as well at the moment, although the standard in general has improved since I started with a lot of innovation coming in. I was playing when KP was doing his switch hit (and could play that shot), I'd have been really tempted to try out ramp shots if I was still playing now, if only because pulling those shots off would have hugely amusing consequences for the state of mind of the opposition. If you can knock the opposition out of thinking clearly, then you have an advantage. I used to wear a floppy hat while batting, to give bowlers a target ... you could say that the person encouraging bowlers to aim at his head wasn't the one who was thinking clearly :-D.

And then you shake hands at the end of the game and step away from all the on field psychology stuff.

Landing ? I did a little bit of the Lego therapy over the weekend ...

4D looking suitably impressed there.

However .... After that horrific example of shameless temptation, I better leave that series of pictures for another day as I can see from the scroll bar (it gets littler as the post gets longer) that this one has hit that Certain Length.

Obligatory Outside World Stuff :

Numbers have been going up again here, we're in that second wave that means we should be in lockdown already ... I'm ok. Put that trace app on your phone so you have a bit of warning to tell you if you've been around someone who's been exposed, watch out for idiots and look after yourselves. And that can be reaching out to people, being a Good Person in the communities like I try and be at work and with the various discord communities. If you find yourself doomscrolling in Twit/Book, just step away from them. People talk about fear of missing out but I doubt whether you'll miss out on much there and social media can and will cause a massive hit to sanity. Don't engage with the idiots.

But if you need a bit of help, reach out. We are in extraordinary times. The last time the world saw a pandemic like this is 100 years ago with the Spanish Flu. Be well. Stay safe.

PS I think I recognised a similarity ...

That's the star fighter from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I wonder if it inspired the Mamba ? Two big engines, very slim rectangular profile, incredible visibility.