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.

Dragon Racing

Firstly, before I dive in too much ... this was originally going to be a set up for my traditional April 1st daftness but I'm going to skip that this year.

Too much going on. Plus part of the story was going to include "So while I was in isolation ..." Hopefully next year for daftness again.

The dwagons have been busy !

What could it be ? Oh and as always, click for bigger.

As always, it's a humble beginning. This is the back of the vehicle, with a differential gear and independent suspension.

We add on the chassis frame, plus there's the front mechanical bits waiting to go on.

There we go. The sills went on at this point as well. The various Lego Technic mechanical bits are pretty well packaged and (disclosure note - kit bought on sale, not provided by company) they operate nice and freely with very little resistance. That's one thing about Lego Technic, it's expensive but the moving parts work and move very nicely.

There's another look from the front end.

Every race car needs an engine and here we have a traditional Porsche Flat 6. It's a fun thing that the building blocks can be set up either flat like this, or in a V as for the Le Mans car.

Someone suddenly gets interested as the steering wheel goes on.

Tuning up the engine.

With the mechanicals complete, construction moves on to the body with one side completed.

And the other side. The car has working doors too. (And I need to tidy up the stuff that's been hidden!)

I thought I'd try something there. That's actually the car (bit of a topless convertible at this point!) on my chair, pointing upwards and I'm holding the camera looking down at it. I think it actually worked :-D.

From a more traditional angle.

A little later and it's time to :

Make an inspection.

Looks quick.

Sounds quick. (Something was making brum brum zoom zoom noises).

Can we take it for a test drive ?

Go on little fella, try it out.

I do hope he can see over the steering wheel.

There we go. Happy smile.

Last one.

I tried some different photo techniques for the final pictures too. I still had a little daylight to help out, plus they were taken on my bed upstairs, using the sheet as the backdrop. Most of them are in natural light plus my rather yellowish (energy saving) room light but that last one had me holding a torch in one hand and camera in the other. Think it worked ?

I hope you enjoyed this post. I've enjoyed tapping the buttons to make it happen. I'm glad/relieved that I've abandoned the April Fools idea for this year, I don't think my heart would have been in it as I'd have been typing. It's not the right time.

But I have been chuckling at putting some of those words around the pictures.

Be well everyone, stay safe.

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 :-).

Star Wars Advent 2018 Days 23 and 24 - a perfect snowman

Yep. Two days worth today !

I'll be needing to get on the road sometime fairly soon and I wanted to post a picture of the entire collection for this year.

Today - Han and the Wookie Snowman. A good finish for the year I think.

Highlights for this year for me have been the AT-AT, the Naboo fighter, the Rose minifigure, another mini TIE Fighter and the speeders.

The books today had to be Lego. I definitely enjoyed putting together all three of the models corresponding to the books above. I haven't posted the pictures for the fighter yet but :

Here's a link to BB-8 ...
And the Millennium Falcon build.

The Falcon was before I really got into the swing of knowing when and how to take pictures as the build develops. I've got a lot of respect for how the Brick Builder fella does his videos, those must take a mountain of work to produce and present.

But yep. I'll be on the road fairly soon, pretty much as soon as I throw a bunch of things into a bag and stagger out of the door with them.

More posts later undoubtedly !

But for now - have a great holiday everyone.

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 22 and a collection of Hills

What's behind today's door ?

I think it's some kind of tree today. (It's the green thing with 4 pointy things on the sides).

It's a Douglas Hill day today. I did that thing again where I look up the author to remind myself of their bibliography and discover they died a few years ago ! Same again here. The books above were all written in the 80s, which is mostly when I got to read them.

(I've snipped off the top so left to right it's : Warriors of the Wasteland, Exiles of Colsec and the Last Legionary Quartet).

It's a shame there won't be any more books from this author, he came out with some very readable, albeit pulpy books and I enjoyed reading them at the time. They rattle through extremely quickly and manage to pack in about as much action and narrative as you'd find in a book of twice their length. There's no messing about, straight into the story while still totally explaining what's going on. It's quite odd how they've never seen their way into television. They're almost totally made for being turned into a miniseries.

First up today is Warriors of the Wasteland, middle book of the Huntsman trilogy. This series is about Finn Feral, huntsman who leaves his home village after his family is abducted by the mysterious alien slavers. This one is set in the far future, on an Earth where aliens have invaded and effectively destroyed civilisation with humans being set back into a hunter gatherer existence. There are 3 dominant races, the brutish beastmen who enforce the will of the alien slavers and the humans are the subjugated third race.

This one sees Finn make his way across the land he has found himself in, getting ever closer to where the alien slavers have taken his family. But .... there are other perils in the Wasteland.

In the middle, we have Exiles of Colsec, which is another far future novel. Except this time the oppressors are humans and they didn't get beaten to the stars by aliens.

This one sees a misfit group of outcasts getting dropped on an untouched planet. The main tactic of Colsec (Colonisation Section) is to round up prisoners and drop them on to new planets. If they survive, Colsec moves in to take over what they've started to set up. If they die, then Colsec drops more people. A set up that is in typically brutal Douglas Hill style. However, this time the spaceship has crashed, leaving the survivors with even less supplies than usual and there's a prison guard who was expecting to be able to gone home, he's stranded with them too.

But ... it gets worse ! There are many alien critters on this planet and they're just waking up to a new food source.

This one sees the colonists attempt to survive, the next book (Caves of Klydor) sees them attempting to repel an incursion by Colsec with the third having them look to turn the tables on Colsec.

Another trilogy I must re-read at some point.

Last up is the Last Legionary Quartet, which I wrote about in a couple of the 52 books series earlier this year. (Link to Last Legionary, link to the other 3). A quick summary :

Humanity has colonised the galaxy and spread across all of its boundless expanse. Conflict abounds and the most elite fighting force in the galaxy has just been annihilated by unknown forces. The protagonist, Keill Randor, finds himself ending up as the Last Legionary of Moros. He immediately sets out to figure out what happened and his investigations through the 4 books lead him to the source of growing chaos in the galaxy.

Another good set of books !

The next couple of days will be a little odd with Advent. I should post up tomorrow's one fairly early but Monday's may be a little odd due to travel. We shall see what I can post !