Defensive Baking and Speed Running

Hello everyone,

Book today ! Internet spaceships later.

It wasn't that book. Although after seeing it in my search for a thumbnail today, I kinda want to read that now ! The pic above is The Great Dragon Bake Off by Nicola O'Byrne and here's the Goodreads link.
Nah, this semi-review is about A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon.

After switching to this one after giving up on the tedious Existence (David Brin), this book was a wonderful breath of fresh air. It's written in a light style and it's always half a sentence away from an inventive bit of humour that'll keep you laughing all the way through the book and quite often, bursting out into uncontrollable chuckles.

What's it about ?

This book is centred around the 14 year old Mona, who lives in a feudal medieval era world blessed by a light touch of magic. Wizards are rare ... and our Mona has an affinity for bread and baking. She can make gingerbread men dance and animate dough in various other ways.

However ... not all is well in this world ...

There's been a Murder ! This is one of those lovely books that's extremely well paced. You don't get bored but happily get drawn gently into a tale of skullduggery and then heroism. It builds to a natural climactic finish too. Quite possibly a bit dark with what one of the characters gets up to ... but you probably need a bit of evil to balance all that fluffy goodness.

I think I had all sorts of bread puns lined up when I was talking to someone about this the other day but the internet spaceships thing today has banished them a bit ! Let's see ...

A nice fluffy story. It rises satisfactorily throughout, it tempts with goodness and the humour and characters are the icing on the top. Oh and it's consistent within itself too, coming out the oven with a lovely texture throughout.

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T.Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) - wonderful book, will definitely be checking out what else she's come out with. Humour throughout and delicious inventiveness.

Internet spaceships ? I may have to be a bit more careful with these because my body wasn't liking what I was doing with them today. (Oo-er?)

I left things last time with the Hand of Caledorn doing a different type of mining ... After one more quick session, I've switched over to Zoomnarr, aka 5K-L4H. That's Zoomnarr in the picture above. She's my second Krait Mk II ship, with that type selected because there hasn't been a record run done with them yet. Mission ... head to the Core.

After a little shakedown cruise first. Seen here checking a decidedly second hand science ship.

The speed run thing is to see how quickly you can get from the Sol system to Sagittarius A* at the galactic centre. It's been done in 86 minutes 57 seconds ... in a ship with greater jump range. They're probably seeing 75-77 light year jumps there, Zoomnarr can do 61.1 light year jumps. I think they have a much craftier route as well than the ones the Spansh plotter gives me.

The things they look for to register runs are 3 screenshots ... the one above which proves you started on the same day you arrived (they changed the info in the next one). The time of departure :

There we go. 12.58.00 in the top right. And time of arrival, using the Galaxy Map to prove that you're at the Core :

This time it's 16.08.49 in the top left, making the run time 3 hours, 10 minutes and 49 seconds for my fastest time yet. I thought I had a chance of breaking through to under 3 hours but made a few errors at neutron stars :

That was the worst, where I bumped into the exclusion zone which drops you out of hyperspace. To go really far and fast, you drop into the streamers of the neutron stars and that lets you jump 4 times the distance that you would without the boost.

One thing about the trip is that as you get closer to the centre, the star density massively increases. It's pretty. And I'm definitely liking the new colour scheme.

And another visit to Sagittarius A* ! I think this is the fifth time I've been there on this character and it's still a treat seeing the stars lensing around the monster in the middle there.

But it was time to put the ship to bed and there she is coming to rest in Explorer's Anchorage. The trip back will be a lot slower and I'll be checking out places to see as well with a new rover.

Next objective - to have Zoomnarr on screen with Cmdr Drew Wagar's next Elite tour, starting in October. I should be back in the bubble for that :-).

Hopefully with limbs that have forgiven me by then too ! The speed run play style is a bit reminiscent of MMOs, where you feel pressured to keep at it when you'd normally step away for a moment or take it a bit more chill. I was feeling this trip in my hip (strange I know !) and I'll have reminders from the arms over the next few days.

But the setting of a new time and the screenshots I'll get on the way back will make it worth it.

Stay safe everyone, be well.

Venturing Out

I've been out of the house ! Even further than the local supermarket place !

It was work though. Not sure if that really counts. It was good to see and talk to people I know in person again instead of just over the phone and Skype. Can't say what I was getting up to though cos ... work.

I'll be ending with more Internet Spaceship pics but before I get to that :

Being out and about more ? I'll wait a bit longer there I think. This current situation isn't over yet. I think I may actually have been lightly touched by the virus because I wasn't particularly well back in April. It wasn't serious enough to think about contacting for aid but I did have numerous symptoms that I put down to other things like : April allergies, dust, bad buns from a service station and otherwise adjusting to the new situation. I'm still incredibly lacking in energy though but that could also partly due to not doing much.

But yep. I need to be getting a few things sorted out, like new glasses in particular and a few other things as well. Plus I want to do one of those city centre wanders that tends to see me going past book caves, Lego shops and places that sell music.

I think I might have to look at alternatives for my next car ... I'm on my third Lexus IS300h at the moment. I'm not planning on changing it but they do keep trying to tempt me into changing. At the moment, it's to get one of the last ones to come into the UK. They're discontinuing it ... which feels mad because it was becoming an increasingly popular car in the car park. Looks like they're looking to move in to SUV type cars and are abandoning that particular part of the market. I'm not a fan of SUVs, I can see why people might like them but for me, all that extra metal isn't doing anything for me so it's just slowing things down.

What would I get if I had to change now ? It'd be between the bigger Lexus ES or quite possibly a Toyota Corolla ... they have a 2.0litre hybrid which looks fast and efficient. The Prius is efficient but slow and the CT I had was a wonderful little car but ... slow and less efficient.

We'll see ! But yeah, not planning to change any time soon.

Internet spaceships ? I've been continuing the tour. I'm hoping to catch up to one of the live streams, which is a definite possibility and might actually lead to some hanging around not doing very much. I think I've been burning out on the game again, or it might be a case of needing to do something different.

I've actually been in different games as well, courtesy of Steam sales.

That's Gear City, which I found while looking into a different game. This one sees you set up a car manufacturer and try to survive and thrive. I've been starting off in 1900, the era of vintage cars. We'll see where it goes.

I picked up the DLC for Battletech and have an early campaign game going there ... It started pretty well but then turned a bit rough. I've got a pretty firm handle on the tactics there now, basically speed is life and concentration of firepower is the way to go. Get guns off the field is a strong theory to run with.

I've also acquired Oxygen Not Included (CK loves that), Knights of Pen and Paper 2, Reassembly and Hardspace Shipbreaker. I still need to try those ones. I've managed to bin the Idle Champions addiction, that's a curious one. You barely interact with the game, outside of figuring out the strategy you're going to go with but you feel like you have to keep monitoring it.

Still doing the miles in Elite though. I left it last time at Tau Ceti. The next step in the tour was to visit Achenar, home of the Empire.

But first, that's the latest ship in the fleet. The name is Maverick, callsign GO-05E. Some of you may catch the reference. She's built for speed.

Speed and fly bys of towers. I built this one to go really, really fast (we'll get to that) and to zoom around the features both in space and on planets.

Back to the tour though. The first place to visit was the Homestead, close to the home star.

I couldn't resist a closer look at the farm.

Quick peek at one of the planets too.

The Imperials have their own capital ships. Far more stylish than the very functional Federation capital ship design.

Coming in to dock at Dawes Hub. One of the things I wanted to try out in the Achenar system was a gravity dive. This is where you start at altitude at a high gravity planet and see how fast you can go, preferably without needing to lithobrake (ground assisted braking, usually involves dents).

The dive started out at 1000km up and the gravity meter is already showing 5.94g. That's a lot of weight. The technique is to start off at the ship's top speed, point slightly downwards and thrust "up". Oh and you turn the flight assist off so that you go more like Newtonian physics instead of the ship trying to keep you to your maximum speed.

After dropping around 250km, the speed is up to 3,817m/s. The ship is already a fast one, as seen in that first screenshot. The normal maximum speed is about 700m/s.

I thought about doing a tower flyby but ... kinda missed it, shooting over the top at an altitude of 375km.

This is where I thought I'd just about hit the top speed I was going to get, with me pulling the brakes on at 7,500m/s. The altitude was a mere 34.7km up (I wanted to leave some room in case levelling out wasn't simple) and the gravity at this point is 6.7g.

Pretty good for a first attempt at doing a gravity dive. Speeds of above 10km/s are possible.

I didn't go for a landing this time (6.7g is heavy !) but it was a fun little thing to do.

Bit like getting out of the house and on the road again ! I'm still pretty tired from all that though, so gaming sessions have been short and I haven't opened a book since finishing Murderbot 2 either.

Hope you're all good out there as well.

Be well, stay safe, have fun !

Potato On Tour

Hello everyone,

More internet spaceships today ... Perhaps while I ignore what's happening in the world outside still ! The shops are steadily opening here but I haven't ventured out to them yet partly because I know this crisis isn't over yet plus I don't think there's actually much I want to buy at the moment !

What are things I want to pick up ?
Graphics card - I'm starting to pick up games that push past the limit of what my current card can do so I'm looking to upgrade from my 1060 3GB card to a 2060 or even up to a 2070. With a Next Gen card on the horizon, prices are finally starting to drop.
Keyboard - mine continues to have an issue or two. It's currently repeating occasional o's and the light up keys are stuck in set colours at the moment. (I could probably fix this by unplug / plugin).
Hotas upgrade - Not sure about this one actually but I am having increasing hand issues which might be down to my current stick and throttle.
Oven - needed one of these for a while but mine is still perfectly capable of burning food.
Glasses - these are becoming much more urgent and will require a trip out to get some more.

Internet Spaceships ?

As always, click for bigger. I left things last time at Cortes Base and have since embarked on the Drew Wagar Elite Lore Tour (youtube link), following that path and hoping to catch up before the end. The Warp Factor Potato may make an appearance on his stream at some point if I catch up.

The first stop was Mercury, closest planet to the Sun.

Venus is next up, still too hostile to land on.

And then we move on to our home and I'm pretty sure that's Australia. One thing I'm really curious about is that while the game is on GMT, that's the wrong side of the planet to be in the day time !

There's Europe, with rather curious lighting if you have a closer look.

Both Earth and Mars have capital ships in orbit. Nice big chunky ships and the Federation ones look like they mean business. Earth is no longer the place where the Federation is run from in the Elite universe, massive ecological damage led to the end of most of the superpowers and then the Congress decamped to Mars.

There's still a lot to look at though, this is one of the space stations in orbit.

Moon's still there too, a station here is the starting point for the speed runs to the galactic centre.

Mars is the next stop, the 4th planet in our solar system. In the Elite universe, it's been fully terraformed and is actually in better shape than Earth is. I think the pimple there is Olympus Mons.

There was a megaship to have a look at too.

A bit further out we have Jupiter in the background, with the moon Io orbiting. This is the setting for the 2001 and 2010 stories ... at least as they were done in the films. In reality, this is a really unhealthy place to be because Jupiter is massively hot radioactively.

Of course I had a closer look.

I had a stop off at Europa too, which is another important part of the 2001, 2010 and 2061 stories. "All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there." Erm ...

There's a base there too, which I mostly landed on to get a picture with Jupiter :-D. (Jupiter is at something like its highest point in the sky in the previous pic).

Saturn is the next major gas giant in our solar system. In the original 2001 book, the Incident happens at Jupiter and then after Hal is disconnected, they fly on to Saturn which is where the monolith is with the Discovery being run remotely from Earth. That's changed for the film and subsequent books, probably for the better to be honest.

Next up is another gas giant, this is me probing Uranus. Yes, I went there. I have no shame.

Last place for the tour is Neptune, another smaller gas giant. The sun's a bit far off in these pics hence the lack of general illumination out here.

Bit more lights in there. What are Fuel Rats ? They're a wonderful organisation in Elite that will come out and rescue pilots who run out of fuel. I've never had to call on their services but they're quite possibly the best player run organisation I know in any game.

Plenty of room in that tunnel by the way ...

That's what I flew inside ...

It became time to move on though. The Voyager probes are apparently in the solar system, somewhere ... I didn't stick around to find them though. Next stop, Tau Ceti, which is the first extra solar colony in the Elite universe. There are a few more curious bits of lore to pick up on in the tourism beacons in this system too. That's probably enough pictures for one day though ...

There are a bunch more from today ! But I'll hold those for another post.

For now, be well,

Stay safe. Have a great week everyone.

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.