Warp Factor 4 Commander Ivanova, Starburst

Hello everyone,

I have to report a little bit of getting caught in Deus Ex Mankind Divided tonight, so this one is coming out a bit later than intended ! Oops. Bit hungry now too (dinner's just gone in).

It's one of those days today that's kind of been appropriated ...

Star Wars has been around for pretty much all my life and it's a kind of up and down thing with it too. Some Star Wars is amazing. Some is utterly rubbish. It's at its best when it's either being silly, or if it's ignoring the wider Star Wars universe and letting the characters have their head. Sadly, that doesn't happen too much in the movies but about half of the old Expanded Universe books were amazing for it. In particular, the writing of Timothy Zahn who is continuing to write in the universe, Michael Stackpole who started the excellent XWing series and Aaron Allston who continued the XWing books with Wraith Squadron.

This one's going to be a bit of a journey back through some old pictures ... And a new one or two maybe.

After the books and the movies, the first Star Wars game that I was around was a board game ...

Old one too. I have the fond memories of this being played when I was really young. Very nebulous memories now though cos it was like, last century. I was entranced with the various arcade games too and there were a couple on the BBC B too, recreating that famous Trench Run sequence. We of course hacked them (they were written in BASIC) to make it possible to win. Good times. There was also one for the Battle Of Hoth which I didn't have much chance to play with until later. Must actually install Rogue Squadron at some point because I think that has it in. I was a better pilot back then too.

One of the more modern ones is Knights of the Old Republic, which melded a variation of D&D's 3rd edition rules with lightsabers and blasters and a pretty decent story to produce a groundbreaking game back in 2004.

Great graphics there too. Actually pretty decent for the characters, although there's very little customisation there and flattened textures.

There's Deus Ex Mankind Divided from today, a game that came out 12 years later. Back to Star Wars !

Always a good one for a meme.

Wonder what that one did ...

I do like a bit of cantina band music.

Thankfully I have, after having an increasing headache yesterday evening, I've been free of that today. Not sure why though, I seemed to be having trouble nodding off again last night.

There's been the models too. I quite enjoyed this one.

 Definitely enjoyed creating that. I even have an extra Snowspeeder now ...

There we go. Not sure if I posted those build pics before ... It's felt a little like I've had to hold back some of the Lego build stuff for me and not necessarily post them.

Some of the humour is great.

I've always been a fan of the spaceships. TIE Fighter was another great game, although I think I'd struggle to stay with it for long if I went back to it. It was the successor to XWing and saw you flying for the Empire. There was an intriguing storyline running through the game, tying the missions together and it was a pleasure to play through it. Even if it did share the tendency of games around that time (1995ish) where they would increase the gameplay length by just making the missions have insane difficulty.

I did enjoy setting up those Battle of Hoth snow scenes outside the front door.

And I am soooo close to trying to install the old Star Wars Pod Racer game too. That was another one that got the best out of the limited capabilities of the machines at the time but that didn't matter because the racing in the game was fantastic.

And there we have BB-8. Some of the best characters in the movies are the droids (and some of the worst too!) The people writing BB-8's antics got it spot on with this little one.

I had a suggestion to go see Legoland and when I eventually found my way there, it wasn't too long before texts along the lines of "THIS IS AMAZING" were being sent to people :-D. I'd like to go again sometime when the current crisis calms down.

Something I've massively enjoyed over the years has been the Advent Calendars. I wasn't sure if I'd do it again this year (after burning out on the books the other year) but it was good combining it with Marshmallows, Elitecember and the Mass Effect pictures.

Whew ! That's a lot of pictures. Let's see how to finish :
Best film : Rogue One, by a long way. Very few of the movies get me close to a tear or two but this one definitely does.
Best book : The XWing books. Because they're fun and choosing all of them lets me cheat outrageously.
Best game : Pod Racer, after TIE Fighter. The sad thing with a lot of the Star Wars games is that they don't really do justice with the universe and miss the mark when it comes to Fun. But these two managed it.
Best TV series : Clone Wars. Haven't seen The Mandalorian.
Best theme ? Star Wars has always had amazing music and there's no mistaking The Imperial March or some of the battle music. It's always been perfectly complementary to what's happening on screen.
Best character : BB-8 and Rey. Although I did like Poe Dameron too in the end. What am I thinking - it's Rose, always Rose, only Rose.

Anything more ?

I'll have to find a time to watch The Mandalorian at some point.

Star Wars isn't the best space fantasy out there, not by a long way. But it caught the mood at just the right time, it grabbed that interest and held it through a fantastic original trilogy and it's brought out a lot more great stories too.

Stay safe be well everyone !

Best Sci Fi on the Telly

Hi there,

Another day another meme and this time it's scifi shows on the telly ... Bit of a late post because I've been catching up after going in to Motorsport Manager again for a little while tonight !

I'm pretty sure I've done this one before not all that long ago but even though it's an older meme it still checks out. No Star Wars in here though because a) haven't seen The Mandalorian and b) other scifi is just better ... Although the Clone Wars animations were actually pretty good.

So - Top 10 in no particular order except for how they pop out of my brain.

Firefly ! It had far too short a run and was ended well before its time. There were many more stories to come from the universe of Firefly as well as Serenity and her crew. It was fun, tense, interesting, emotional and you never really knew what was coming. It didn't always go the way of the crew although they usually found a way to come out on top.

Next up is Doctor Who. This has been a highlight for pretty much all of my life and a fair few people in the UK would say that as well. At least those who watch the show. It's perhaps suffering from script fatigue again but apart from rolling out the old enemies time and again, there's usually some handy variation in each series. Enemies like the Family Of Blood, the Mummy Child, the stories where the Doctor and People have to recover an impossibly lost situation.

They're still doing ok with it.

Star Trek is another I grew up with and the choice here will be incredibly divisive : STAR TREK DISCOVERY ! There. I said it. Best Star Trek ever. HA ! The various other series had their highlights but they also had inconsistencies and just plain filler. DS9 had the best arc ... hid it behind Ferengi filler. ST:TNG mostly predated story arcs. Voyager ... best of the rest. TOS was also incredibly inconsistent. Enterprise was messed about with too much. Picard is ... good but feels stretched and is just going over old well trodden story arc ideas. Discovery is just better.

Why Discovery ? Because season 1 was a masterpiece in setting up story arcs early and with immensely impressive subtlety. There were things set up in the early episodes that didn't pay off until right near the end of the series. It was interesting, mysterious and extremely well made. Season 2 wasn't as strong but Captain Pike played by Anson Mount was a huge, huge highlight.

Wait. Wrong Gene Roddenberry invention.

Next up is the universe of Gerry Anderson and I'm going to go to Captain Scarlet here. Why that one ? Because you never knew what was going to happen in that series. Usually the main characters win. Not in Captain Scarlet, sometimes the Mysterons would win. And the various series were very well made too, in their own style. It's a shame Space 1999 didn't get the scripts but UFO was a fun one too. Thunderbirds managed to inject far more drama into a puppet show than anyone would have thought possible.

I really enjoyed Farscape too. If a series ends its run with you jumping out of your chair and shouting NOOOO at the telly, it's done something right over its run. I'd never done that before or since. It's the story of an astronaut who is flung through a wormhole into far off unknown space and then brought on board a ship full of escaping mismatched convicts. Will he survive ? Will he find his way home ? This is also the series that introduced the amazing Claudia Black.

The list that inspired this has The Prisoner on it. A favourite choice of a fair few. I watched this a while ago and was wondering what was going on with it. It challenged so much around its time. Possibly too clever for its own good but very well made and the questions it asked are still relevant today. Perhaps even more so in this time of plague and isolation.


Battlestar Galactica old series. Yes. This was daft and silly. But it also had drama mixed in with the fun. Especially original Starbuck. This was probably the first attempt at doing a long running plan for a series. So much of the special effects were reused, over and over again. Didn't matter. The modelling worked great.

Popping in a Blakes 7 too. This was made in the days when BBC were still getting away with actually being a bit subversive.

I loved the ship, the Liberator, partly for its just plain silliness in how it looked. The design appeared in games too later. When it originally came out in 1978, I was definitely probably too young to really understand what was going on with this series. But I loved it and it almost certainly set me along the path to happy scifi addiction.

Last one to write (cheated a bit with B5!) about is The Expanse. This one is set in a reasonably distant future where humanity has spread throughout the solar system. There is no Space Magic, outside of the mysterious stuff from forerunner species. It's a series about the people again. I did like the character of Miller and I especially identify with the pilot, Alex Kamal, probably because that's the part I'd see myself playing in that universe.

I've read up to book 8 and watched the first 4 series. The telly version is probably better than the books, because it's cleaned up some of the messier aspects of some books that were probably too drawn out. On the other hand, the books get a chance to breathe more with a timeline that lets the story have a chance to tell itself. I'd thoroughly recommend watching the books and reading the series. Or is it the other way around. I'll be reading the books again after the series is complete.

But the last and best in its time has to be Babylon 5.

Not just for the 5 year story arc that introduced a new universe, built the scenarios and then exploded into a most spectacular epic. No, the big strength of Babylon 5 was in the characters. The interplay between Sinclair and Garibaldi. Pretty much everything Garibaldi did. And G'Kar. Humble Zack and Dr Franklin. I'm mentioning all those who were played by actors who are lost to us now but the rest of the cast were amazing too. Like Sheridan and Delenn. Ivanova is a legend, Lennier was as tragic in his own way as Londo. And there has been no character more alien than the enigmatic Kosh. All of them.

Babylon 5 will be my favourite for quite some time just because of those characters and how they amplified how good the story was. It looked incredible for its time as well. Work of genius.

Other mentions to :
Stargate - Atlantis. Not SG-1 because O'Neill is actually kind of a scumbag in that series overall. Universe was curious but was infected by the grimdark scifi trend.
The Mandalorian is supposed to be amazing. But I'm not intending to sign up to the Baby Yoda Channel to watch it.
Battlestar Galactica new series. No. It gets most of its core ideas from the 1978 series. Its thing was to expand upon that but ... it started up the grimdark phase of scifi which I was most definitely NOT a fan of. It also spectacularly lost its plot after New Caprica and the writing massively suffered after that.
Dark Matter was one I was massively enjoying ... but it also got cut off before it really kicked off. Perhaps they took too much time to get to that point. Perhaps it would have been worth it.
Ulysses 31 - an animated series that was doing the long series arc even before Babylon 5 brought that in ... Need to watch this again. Actually, most of the animated series were doing the long arcs before they came to normal telly.
Space Above And Beyond - I was immediately caught in this one from the very nicely done pilot. However, it was another one that didn't get the chance to tell its story.
Defying Gravity - again, lovely setup but stopped too early.

That's it for me ! Sleep well, be safe and ...

Nite !

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 20 and something old, something new

Oops. Late one again today.

Someone opened Stellaris and you know where that tends to go.

I'm pretty sure it's a transport shuttle today, from Rogue One again. I must watch Rogue One again soon, it's a great film.

So many films, books and games ... so little time ! I think I'd reached the ends of my reserves over the last week or so and was really glad of a chance to sleep in and switch off thoughts of responsibility today. My background stuff has been the cricket channel showing reruns from the summer and it's very nicely chill.

To the books !

Something I grew up with was a series called Robin of Sherwood. It had a wonderful soundtrack by Clannad which perfectly fit the setting. Here's a link to the title theme but I think Together We is a special highlight. The album is called Legend and it's an excellent one.

The book closely resembled the series and the series had a lot of fun in it. I can't remember too much of it (this was over 30 years ago !) but I thought the main star, Michael Praed and the rest of the cast were stunning.

Next up is something new, it's Excession by Iain M. Banks. I think this is the best of the Culture novels. It starts steady but quite soon in, a calamity occurs where an extra-dimensional / extra-galactic invader appears that is of equal or even better technology compared to the dominant Culture.

It's described in the book as an Outside Context Problem where something comes along that is so off the board, so unexpected, that there is no defense against it.

Must read this one again soon and I'd thoroughly recommend it to people interested in Iain M. Banks' Culture universe. Although I'd advice reading Consider Phlebas first as an introduction. The drama runs all the way through this book and the sense of The Culture Will Win In The End is thoroughly shaken up.

I wonder if the Nomnivorian Raveners will face an Outside Context Problem. Here's the situation at the moment :

They now feed on about a quarter of the galaxy (top right) and nothing has even slowed them down yet.

(They will face an Outside Context Problem. Google will tell me the console commands to summon one, two or even them all at the same time ....)

Last book for today is an older Robert Heinlein book called Sixth Column. This one was from 1941 and was first published as a novel in 1949. You'll be well aware of what was happening in the world at that time and this book borrows heavily from that.

It's set in the future (probably a bit ahead of today still). The PanAsians have steadily been taking over the world and enforcing a brutal regime on their subjects. America has just surrendered except for ... a lone outpost of 6 scientists who have just invented something amazing.

Can they survive ? What will their future be ?

Can they thrive ... can they take the battle to the enemy. And what will the cost be as the brutal PanAsian regime exacts a terrible revenge as reprisals against rebellion.

Oh and the Steam Xmas sale may have started. What shall appear ?

Walking into Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 19

5 more to go after today !

Sneakiness today.

The new Lego thingy is the AT-AT walker in front, I believe it's one of the command/coastal AT-ATs from Rogue One. You know, the ones with the orange thing in the middle that folded up under blaster fire.

First up today is How To Destroy The Universe (and 34 other really interesting uses of Physics) by Paul Parsons. A curious book, which goes into all sorts of physics theory/practical things like building the ultimate rollercoaster, how to stop a hurricane, invisibility cloak, teleport, recreating the big bang and other theories.

A curious book, acquired as a present a few years ago. (That Lexus letter that's in there as a book mark may well date it !) I read through to about half way, put it aside for other books meaning to go back to it. I really should at some point ......

In the middle is The Martian, which is a book that I think is rather superior to an excellent film. As with most fiction, the book has the scope to go into the thoughts, the theory, the background. Films are very limited by their duration and the need to keep the story rattling along. If it can't be explained visually or in quick explanation between characters, it has to go from the film. Books have far more licence to allow themselves to properly explain the story.

I would thoroughly recommend reading the Martian, it has humour and intelligence throughout but the key factor is that it also has accessibility. It explains its science in a way that hopefully everyone can understand.

(Aside - yes, it's a bluray ! My copy of The Martian is another Kindle book and I only have 1 iPad to show Kindle covers with !)

Last up is an older book, which probably inspired the film Interstellar. It's The Death of Grass by John Christopher.

This one is a contemporary book, which could have been set any time in the last 50 or so years. It's timeless and not bound by time, which is rare for a book like this. Indeed, the time it is set in does not matter, all that matters is its examination of people and their behaviour in crisis situations.

You see, an otherwise unknown germ is having its wicked way with the various grass species and grass worldwide, is steadily being wiped out.

That's a bit of a problem because the animals at the bottom of the foodchain all live on grass. And we do too cos wheat is a grassoid.

It's not the end though, as our motley collection have family that live in an isolated part of the Lake District, so they make preparations to travel there to hole out. Except that the collapse of civilisation comes far quicker than anyone predicted.

Cue a peril strewn trek across the country with potential sudden death around every corner and behind every door.

Another compelling book. Old but definitely still worthy of a read these days. Must watch Interstellar again sometime too.

But not yet because my level of energy at the moment is making me think that when I fall into bed later, I'll be asleep until Friday.

Nite !

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 14 and BB-8 is building an army

Something short today. I think bugs have decided this weekend is going to be a bugs weekend.

Today was a good day though. Lots of loot and excellent company this afternoon to raid the Xmas market with.

Click for bigger. There's a lot in there (plus some obscured that I didn't mean to obscure !)

On the left we see a new pooch, a lovely little metal thingy from the market.

Big Lego BB-8 is at the back, keeping his beady eye on 4D. He remembers what happened the last time these two shared screen time and doesn't want to be eaten again.

We have a trio of micro BB-8s dotting around the scene, including super stunts BB-8 from last year's advent buzzing around the place on his snowboard.

The advent thingy for today is a blaster rack, with Rose keeping a sharp eye on it. I think she's checking out the stun setting so she can use it on cowardly stormtroopers attempting to run away.

Nano BB-8 is taking up station over there on the right, in front of a new book : Attack of the Flickering Skeletons (and more Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of) by Stuart Ashen. I'll look forward to diving through that soon. (Currently lost in Persepolis Rising in the Expanse series).

Popz BB-8 is a new one. SHINY. And then there's a new key ring BB-8 lurking beside him.

(I had trouble getting key ring BB-8 to cooperate. Think that one's been on the funny oil or too close to the Helium stores).

But who is that on the right ?

We have found something to scare the 4D. He was ok with one BB-8. 2 BB-8s. Even 3. But an army of 7 ? He's off at a dead run, exit stage right.

See you tomorrow !

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 10 - a Cannon of Niven

Day 10 today and I thought I'd focus on just one author !

Looks like a cannon and a mean aimer there in the indomitable Rose.

Larry Niven and cohorts today.

First up is The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steve Barnes. It's set on a distant colony world, indeed the first colony dispatched from Earth arriving at Tau Ceti after 100 years of travel.

The colonists arrive at their new planet Avalon and set up a base on an island, isolated from the mainland. Start somewhere defensible, then spread out later as colony growth demands. However, there is an immediate problem. The imperfect suspended animation technology has caused a phenomenon they call "Ice on their mind", where their once top of their field intelligence has been damaged by ice crystals forming during their unprecedented period of coldsleep. Some are more affected by others and the colonists battle to overcome their new disabilities and isolated position to build up the colony.

And then all hell breaks loose as super crocodiles find the colony and attempt to adopt it as their new food source. It so happens to be breeding season for these Grendels too and the humans are in the nest.

How much do I remember of this book ? Perhaps a little bit of a slog to get to its end but it was good enough to spawn a sequel where the colonists have expanded enough to start a foot hold on the mainland where they discover .... something that eats the near invulnerable highly intelligent Grendels.

Next up - Neutron Star.

This one is a series of short stories set in the Known Space universe that Larry Niven is probably most famous for. This is the universe of the Ringworld. Yes. The original proper stellar class Rimworld and not the idea stolen for a game. This is the universe that the Kzinti live in, bipedal sentient cats with opposing thumbs and an appetite for any sentient race not their own. There are also the Pierson's Puppeteers, a race of introverted tripedal cowards who's defense mechanism is to turn, tuck their two heads between their legs and kick backwards.

Neutron Star opens with a short story about an investigator who is hired by the Puppeteers to covertly find out why two researchers have died while performing a close fly by of a Neutron star in a Puppeteer ship that should be invulnerable to all attack. They didn't just die though, they were ripped apart.

People who know lots of physics have probably guessed what happened to them ! Lots of gravitational stresses when you go that close to something heavy. After all, Neutron Stars are stars that exploded with not quite the mass to compress down and become a black hole. The rest of the book has a series of short stories that circle back to the start again.

Recommended. As are the Man-Kzinti Wars novels and very definitely, Ringworld and its sequels Ringworld Engineers, Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children.

Last up - Lucifer's Hammer. This one is a collaboration between Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

This one tells the story of the end of civilisation.

An asteroid is heading our way. At the start of the book, the chance to hit is very low. But then an unexpected collision tips the asteroid just enough to nudge it a little. As the book goes on through its first act, the chance to hit gets higher and higher as the impact day approaches.

But it's worse than that. Instead of staying as one big object, the asteroid calves (breaks up) into many smaller but still devastating lumps.

The first act sets up quite a large cast and a couple of important locations. You then have the inevitable calamity as bits of asteroid pepper the Earth with devastation. One of the scenes that sticks in my mind is the tsunami that hits the West Coast of the USA. Surfers are waiting for it, believing that if they are skillful enough, their best chance to survive is to surf the 100 foot high tsunami. One by one they fall.

A decent end of the world book. Perhaps a bit depressing as it portrays that middle act of the calamity and then goes a bit silly as an army develops to threaten where our protagonists are heading to.

A great start and middle but I'm not convinced they knew how to end it ...

That's it for today ! Who knows who it will be tomorrow :-D.

Oh ! One last thing - honourable mentions to :
The Mote in Gods Eye - what happens when we find a race of superlative engineers who can see what we have ... dismantle it and then build something far better. Can our people escape with the secrets of Earth ? Great book. There is a follow up to this one as well which I haven't read.
Footfall - aliens invade the Earth and are very confused by the Earthlings. This one has a stunning concluding act which I won't spoil here.

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 9 - Taxi for the Emperor

Back to books today !

I may have gotten myself distracted in Stellaris this weekend .... The new expansion is out (haven't bought it yet, waiting for discounts) but there's a fairly hefty rejigging of the core game with the planets being completely redone. I'm not convinced to be honest, it's very easy for the game to do a massive shift in your economy as the planets redo their priority lists when you build stuff. You can very quickly run out of the basics by going for the end products that go towards ship building. Maybe a refinement in the strategies ....

But my Nomnivorian Ravagers are way ahead of the second placed normal race (the Fallen Empires stay out in front) so I must be doing something right. I'll be launching the conquest as soon as I have 3 fleets together.

I first thought today's Lego was a taxi or the car that Senator Organa used on Coruscant but apparently it's General Grievous' fighter ...

Today's books are on an Empire theme.

The one on the left is Mutineer's Moon by David Weber. It's the first in a loose series of 3 and follows an astronaut heading off to the Moon. Or at least, what he thinks is the moon .... It's actually a long dormant battleship called Dahak.

Yep. This is scifi.

Turns out there was a mutiny quite some time ago and the ship managed to get rid of the mutineers who left in still dangerous but unable to go faster than light parasite craft that usually go on board the full battlemoon. The narrative trick of having an unknowledgeable person act as the protagonist is fully in play here too as the central character is rapidly brought up to speed by Dahak and given his mission, to defeat the mutineers before they cause chaos on Earth.

Oh and there's a time limit .... a race of alien invaders who sweep across the galaxy every few aeons destroying everything in their path. But that's for another book.

I quite enjoyed this book, although there is gratuitous weaponry effect descriptions in which are not for the squeamish.

Next up, set in the Imperium of Man in Rynn's World by Steve Parker. It tells the story of the Crimson Fists Space Marines, genetically enhanced elite warriors of the Adeptus Astartes and the defence of their homeworld from an immense incursion of Orks.

(Yep. The Warhammer 40k has elves, orcs, dwarves, ogres and other nasty things to give it the variation.)

Quite early on, the battlefleet is destroyed and an errant missile wipes out their home base. The mission then turns into a battle for survival.

To be honest, can't remember that much of this one although I think it held the attention all the way through.

Last up, is another one by Timothy Zahn. It's Heir To The Empire and it's set around 5 years after Return of the Jedi.

There is a fledging New Galactic Republic that is rebuilding after the end of the war with the Empire. Well, almost. The Empire collapsed after Return of the Jedi but there are still sizeable continents of ex Imperial ships, fighters, military and planets. This book is part of a trilogy that sees the emergence of brilliant strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn as he aims to sweep away the Republic and rebuild the galaxy as he sees fit.

It's a great book, showing off the talents of Timothy Zahn as he plays in the existing galaxy of Star Wars and he even adds a bit of his own lore to the telling as well.

I'd highly recommend this one, although it is part of the old Expanded Universe so it has no bearing on the new films. (Some may say that's a good thing !)

That's it for today ! Shoulders and neck are sore again so I think I need to give Stellaris a rest for .... weeks maybe !

See you tomorrow.

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 6 - I think it's a lamp post

What's behind the door ?

There we go. Front and centre.

Lamp post ? Actually ... looking a bit more (and cheating with a peek through the googles) and it's the Cloud City of Bespin with the red thing being a cloud car.

The Empire Strikes Back is one of those great films, from the set pieces during the Hoth segment of the movie and the trip through Cloud City that was massively enhanced in the special editions. There's a Lego set too ... which I have no intention of getting (it's £200+ and a bit meh)

What are the books for today ?

On the left is one of Isaac Asimov's final novels, Nemesis. The first new colony on an alien world has sent a distress signal and a rescue mission is dispatched using a spaceship with a revolutionary new hyperdrive. At least, that's what I can remember from reading this book a few decades ago. It's been on the list to read again, need to get around to making a dent in that list.

In the middle is The Ship Who Sang, by Anne McCaffrey. This is from her earlier days, before the Dragonriders of Pern books really took off. It was written as a standalone book, although the Brainship millieu has expanded since then. There have even been novels with guest authors like S.M.Stirling who wrote The City Who Fought, another shell person novel.

This was a pretty interesting book, posing all sorts of ethical questions in its own gentle way. At the core are the shell people. If I remember right, they had genetic manipulation but for some issues, the genetic damage was too great and would have resulted in a quick death for the little person. However, the central theme of these books is that they are permanently inserted into a life support system that looks after their basic needs. Keeps them sustained, gives them an interface to the outside world, provides them mobility. I vaguely remember a scene where the shell children are racing around in their life support shell buggies.

Happy children, albeit in a metal shell. They are also taught and conditioned to be able to mentally accept connections with computers and other complex electronics and the central character in this book, Helva, is selected to be the brain at the centre of a spaceship.

The crews are a symbiotic relationship of a Brain and a Brawn, with the Brawn being the pilot that the outside world sees while the Brain is hidden behind a protective shell, interfaced with the spaceship. The Brain is effectively the spaceship.

But they're not just computers, Helva develops a taste for music which she uses to refine a voice and become .... the Ship Who Sang. The book itself is a combination of several shorter stories tracking Helva and her interactions with the people who travel on her ship and her brawns.

A pretty good book. Recommended.

Last one for today is Voyagers by Ben Bova. He's an author that I read a lot of in my teenage years. He doesn't have quite the same hold on my attention now though. Other authors write far stronger stories.

Anyway ... in this one, the Solar System has a visitor. An object entering our sphere of attention and ... slowing. The object comes within close enough range of Earth but ... wouldn't be sticking around. Can they reach it and examine its secrets before it is lost to the void forever ?

There are 2 more books in the series ...

That's it for today ! I've been struggling for the past couple of days with a sore fuzzy head but should be good for a bit of travel tomorrow. Hopefully. There are going to be 3 people from the Lovely Gaming People on the right (Enter Elysium, Maggie Krohn and FuzzyFreaks) plus a few more who I've enjoyed watching.

Should be an excellent trip.

Star Wars Advent Day 4 .... and something tanky ....

What does Day 4 have for us today ?

Apparently the new thing is a Republic Tank. Dunno though, must come from one of the various animated series. Yesterday's was the Arrowhead, from another animated series. It's a shame that, the old Star Wars Expanded Universe canon which was accessible to all through books got ripped up and replaced by stories told mostly through animations which are locked away behind a D....y company paywall.

There are too many paywalls appearing in our modern entertainment and it makes a mockery of choice and accessibility. Personally, I have a Netflix sub plus a higher value cable TV package with movies and sports. I have no intention of subscribing to any more entertainment subscription services, I'd rather do without sampling their content. And there isn't enough time in the day to get the full value out of all of those subscription services.

Especially if it's people like Amazon who got into their dominant position by not paying taxes.

How about the books today ?

The first is Revenger by Alastair Reynolds. This book should really have been in the 52 books challenge but I left it out because I finished it pretty much just before the year started. Anyway, the story is a lovely tale about 2 sisters who run away from home and are taken on by a band of treasure hunters who are down on their luck.

Alastair Reynolds is fantastic at world building and that talent is on show here as well. The setting is rather different to any other tale of interplanetary adventure, with the ships depending on solar sails instead of anything more forceful like sublight or warp engines.

It's a compelling, standalone tale and I'd heartily recommend it.

From a standalone novel to part of an epic ...

The Lost Fleet books by Jack Campbell brought to life a fleet, hopelessly outnumbered and trapped behind enemy lines by a cruel and sadistic enemy. All hope is lost, until Admiral Jack Geary emerges from a few centuries of coldsleep to lead the fleet to home and safety.

The Beyond the Frontier series picks up the tale after they get home, with Dreadnaught having the remaining ships of the fleet getting sent on a mission beyond known space, to chase the unknown Enigma race that was menacing the fleet in the later days of the previous series.

Jack Campbell (aka John G Hemry) is pretty good at allowing you to visualise what's going on with the epic space fleet that he has bouncing around numerous systems. He uses the narrative trick of having the central character Jack Geary being brought up to speed by his fleet XO, Captain Tanya of the Battlecruiser Dauntless. The weapon systems in play and the tactics available are explained by the reader in a very believable and understandable fashion.

A wise man once said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." but book readers should demand more than that. The magic is brought to life in the world built by the author but an author also needs to explain the fundamentals for the book to be successful in my eyes.

And Jack Campbell does that brilliantly in these series of books. I got as far as the book Steadfast and should really pick it up again. These are great books.

Last one is a throwback to my childhood and a really old book ...

It's Caverns of the Snow Witch, a Fighting Fantasy book from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. These books are choose your own adventure books, where the narrative is split up into (usually) 400 segments, with horrible things and creatures awaiting your character as you journey through. Each segment would have choices, which would send you to another segment often at the other end of the book.

This one is somewhat more linear than most, with what amounts to a few phases as you go through the book. It also has a "if you don't get this item, you die", which was a bit too common in these books.

It's one of the better ones though and I enjoyed it when I was a lad.

Last century indeed.

I am old.

What will be tomorrow's books ! And Lego ! We shall see.

Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 2 and a Rose

Hello again !

Advent Day 2 sees my favourite character from The Last Jedi appear :

Kelly Marie Tran put a lot into that character and really brought Rose to life. Hopefully the Rose character will get lots of screen time in the 9th film, that character is fun.

Books today ? A slightly deviant right to left.

First up is David Weber's Path of the Fury ... I have very little memory of this book ! From reading the Wiki entry, I think I've read it but can't remember it. (Could have read it during Concussion Number 1 where my memory became rather damaged) It's another space scifi book set in another independent universe, separate from the Honorverse which David Weber is known for most. A retired commando wants revenge and a supernatural entity is very keen to help her out. They then find an AI enhanced super ship and set out for mayhem.

I think I have read this one .... think I may have to add it to the list to read again at some point ! David Weber's books are usually pretty good and draw you into their tale. His Honorverse was excellent but kinda outgrew past the fun space battle drama and started getting infected by boring politics and other make it up as you go along espionage stuff.

I'm sure there will be a few more David Weber books getting featured this month .....

Next up is Waterdeep by Richard Awlinson. The author's name is a pseudonym for 3 authors, with Troy Denning penning this entry in the series. It's the third in the original Avatar trilogy set in the Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms campaign world.

It's quite a rich world and this book takes its characters on a tour of the Realms. The gods have fallen from the skies and have been incarnated as avatars upon the Realms. They are still powerful but can be killed .... and a number of them do find their end in this series with catastrophic results.

This series is a defining addition to the Forgotten Realms lore, with descriptions of quite a wide swathe of locations and important characters plus the changing of the pantheon of gods looking over the world. Many characters that become key are introduced in this series like Midnight, Ciric and Kelemvor.

It's a great finish to the series and (with the other two, Shadowdale and Tantras) is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in or playing in the D&D Forgotten Realms setting. Not quite as good as the R.A. Salvatore Drizzt novels .... but still pretty good and enjoyable.

Last and best .... an ancient classic.

It's The Time Machine by HG Wells.
(Post edit note - yep. It's Around the World in 80 Days and I was sure it was a different book ! I know one of the books I'll be talking about tomorrow !)

You know the story here .... an inventor has created a machine that lets him go backwards or forwards in time. He finds himself going far into the future, past the world wars, past an apocalyptic war that buries him and his machine and eventually stops at a far distant future with the Eloi and Morlocks. The Eloi have an idyllic as gatherers, the Morlocks are terrifying creatures living underground.

Our inventor falls in love with one of the Eloi ... who disappears into the realm of the Morlocks. Can our inventor save the lady ?

One of THE classic books, a foundation piece for modern scifi. A book that has to be read if only to experience one of the great authors and it's actually a good, fun read as well.

Oh and my copy has an extra bit at the back, a short story that is an educational piece where a gentleman idly wishes that the world would stop because it's getting too much for him. An entity agrees ... and makes it happen. The world stops turning ... but everything on the world doesn't. Cue mayhem and destruction !

So there we go :

Path of the Fury - another decent book from the very prolific David Weber;
Waterdeep by Troy Denning - essential for any player or DM using the Forgotten Realms setting.
The Time Machine - a timeless classic.

Star Wars Advent 2018 day 1

Advent is here !

And I have a Lego Advent Calendar again. More Lego is tempting me too even though I still have the Ladies of NASA set to build. It's a sales and retiring products thing ... What's in the box for today ?

A speeder to kick it off this year.

This year, I'm going to do the picturing upstairs in my main room. (This has very little to do with a "No More Room For Lego" problem).

And who set my keyboard back to English US ! Darn Microsoft fiddling where they shouldn't be.

This year, I think I'm going to run a theme of books. I.e. instead of showing a bare wall behind the increasing swarm of Lego, how about a few random books. Oh and 4d sneaking in from the side too, can't keep that one out of pictures.

First up is The Icarus Hunt by Timothy Zahn. He's an excellent author who I first found via the old Star Wars Expanded Universe books. In fact, his books were so good that his Grand Admiral Thrawn character survived the great purge of the Expanded Universe with Thrawn making his way back via the Star Wars Rebels series.

Having read a few more of his books, I'd say .... mostly brilliant, occasional dips. Probably like most authors as prolific as Timothy Zahn probably. Here's a link to is extensive bibliography. The Icarus Hunt is a book I read a number of years ago, it's about a madcap chase across the galaxy by a crew full of characters in a ship that has a cargo that the aliens running the commerce in the galaxy definitely don't want to have reaching its destination.

What could it be ? I must read this one again as I remember it as being one of his better books. Timothy Zahn plays well in other people's universes and is pretty good at his own worldbuilding too. His technologically advanced Cobra warriors make far more sense than the Halo Spartans that essentially photocopied his ideas.

Next up is Battlestar Galactica : Resurrection by Richard Hatch, which I really need to read ... it has escaped my attention so far. This one is set in the original Galactica universe where the humans were running from the aftermath of a disastrous end to the war with the partially cybernetic Cylons.

I liked the original Battlestar series hugely more than the remake. The remake had great ideas with the warfare among the stars but after a while, it became painfully apparent that they had been making up the backstory as they went along and after the New Caprica escape episode, the whole thread kinda fell apart for me as they went for dramatic episodes with very little sense behind them.

Last up is David Weber's March Upcountry.

This one sees the Crown Prince being ambushed and forced to land on what Warhammer 40k would call a Death World.

As in, everything on the planet is out to kill, dismember and eat you and not necessarily in that order. The Crown Prince and his party land halfway around the planet from the only star port and their mission is to get themselves and their incredibly limited supplies around to that planet and escape.

David Weber is a wonderful world builder with his book series and I have enjoyed a huge number of his books. This one didn't really gel with me when I read it. Possibly that was another state of mind issue ? Maybe. My mental state has gone through various nosedives over the last 15 years or so and that can be reflected in the impressions I take away from what I experience.

(I'm ok at the moment, although I need to go back to Expanse book 7)

But yeah ! David Weber. I fully expect I'll be pulling out a few more of his books to show off in future advent posts .... And I reckon I'll be bringing out a few of his to re-read again.

To tomorrow ! And more Advent and Books.

Book 28 (and movie too) - The Martian

I love my scifi. I really do. It's the genre I tend to go to most of all.

(There's usually a "but" here isn't there .... not today !)

Book 28 is The Martian. I've already read this book a few times and it's a testament to how good I think it is that I keep going back to enjoy it again. This time, I reversed the order and watched the film before reading the book.

They are essentially the same story, although some of the scenes occur out of order and there are scenes that are in the book but not film and vice versa.

It's a consequence of a film having between 2 hours and 3 hours to tell its story. A book like the Martian is more like 8 to 10 hours. There's a lot more scope in there to explain and just add more content.

One huge criticism I have of the film, after reading the book, is that elements of it just don't make sense. The trek in the rover is the biggest example here. 100+ days cooped up in that rover ? Won't work. Plus where does the extra kit go. The life support equipment. Where does it go ? It's touched on in the movie but so much is glossed over.

Other scenes are added into the movie which are either just plain bad (the explanation of the slingshot) or are unnecessary (the metaphorical "let's kill Sean Bean's character again"). I did think that the movie's Watney teaching scene at the end was an excellent addition though, I'll say more about that in a bit.

What is The Martian ?

The book opens with astronaut and botanist, Mark Watney, writing his log on Mars, a sol or so after being left behind during an emergency evacuation and stranded on our neighbour planet. It's an inhospitable place, with barely any atmosphere and extreme cold. All he has to survive with are the rations left behind, the equipment in place and his wits. The communications with Earth are cut off and it will take 2 years for any assistance to arrive.

The book swaps between the point of view of Watney, as he writes about his escapades in his log, the mission controllers and administrators back at NASA, the rest of his crew and a selection of other places. But it's mostly about Watney.

He's a likeable character with his most important resource being his brain. He'll look up answers and figure things out through science before getting stuck in to sort out the issues he's facing. From food, to life support, to communications, to driving a few thousand miles across a desolate planet, away from his base of security.

There is a lot of humour in the book and it takes the time to explain what's going on in terms that I hope everyone reading can understand. I'm cheating there because I'm an engineering graduate with interest in the other sciences on show in the book and I've been reading fiction about space since I was a kid, so I probably understood the engineering and technology a bit quicker than most. With the language and prose in this book though, I don't think anyone will be left behind by it.

And the science bits are wrapped up in that humour that runs all the way through the book. You can figure out what's going on before the reveals, which just makes it all the better.

There is some unnecessary drama plopped into the story but ... if the author didn't do that, you'd have an Arthur C Clarke lecture. (Legendary author ... but I found his books to be a bit lectury) And the drama causing scenes are very plausible.

As a scifi story goes, this is utterly rock solid in its plotline, the technology and science on show. This is in contrast to a story like Interstellar, where it has an amazing storyline but the technology, science and stuff around that plotline is so bad it's insulting to the space geek. The Martian has an excellent story, supported by accurate science and the characters are varied and charming.

I loved this book. I've already read it a few times and I enjoyed reading it this last time just as much as the first.

Highly recommended.

Book 26 and an Iron Fisted Wraith

Back to books !

It feels like it's been a long time. Quite spookily coinciding with the cricket season and the reactivation of the Warcraft sub.

(Picture unattributed - it's from Pinterest and they don't play nice at all with attribution. Let me know if it's yours, if you'll let me keep it there and it you want a note/link).

To the book ! More natter later.

This one was Iron Fist, the second in the X Wing Wraith Squadron books by Aaron Allston. It picks up on an excellent start from the first book and runs from there. There are new characters to replace those lost in the first book. Not all of the squadron survives this book either ... It's part of why these books have a certain compelling factor to them, you don't know who is going to survive out of the characters that don't have Plot Armour*.

*Plot Armour - a device where certain things have to happen, certain characters have to be in one piece for later. Like Picard could get captured (multiple times actually), Data could have his head blown off ... but they'll be back for the next episode.

Anyway. The story in this one follows the first, where the Republic born from Rebellion is trying to track down and deal with the Warlord Zsinj. He's an elusive one .... with a very powerful and nigh on unchallengeable Super Star Destroyer, the Iron Fist of the title of the book.

Just for chuckles ... Lego Super Star Destroyer build video ! I'd love to put one of these together but ... It's still £550+ for an unopened one on That Auction Site Everyone Knows About.

To the book !

Yep. The Wraiths are set up this time as a pirate band, with them even stealing the fighters they use to prey on a star system. The hallmark of these books is clever tactics and strategy, where it's believable that the squad have everything in hand for the plan .... and then react as the plan falls apart around them.

Oh and the characters have a lot of fun throughout the books and you, the reader, are invited to share in that totally free form fun.

I won't put too much more but I'm looking forward to reading the last book of this three and then there's Isard's Revenge if I can find where I buried it in the mountain of books.

I'd say that's me but ..... I suspect Cyberkitten got there first and stole the chair.

Actually no ! The shadow off to the left is Cyberkitten's mountain of books ... towering over mine.

I may acquire more Stuff tomorrow. Legoland ! Looking forward to it. On a school day too. (I have tonnes of flexi credit built up and I need to burn some of it down).

I haven't been posting much lately, the ideas haven't been flowing like they can do. Hopefully another post soon !

Haha, I suspect a Legoland post may appear over the weekend.

In the Stars .... plotting.

I've been getting lost in that Stellaris game again ...

Gaming is good at the moment. On the one hand, I'm enjoying my time in World of Warcraft again with an active guild and fun stuff to explore. That may be a little time limited perhaps though. On the other, I had an epic Stellaris campaign that I took all the way through to fighting the Fallen Empires (brutal campaigns) and an end game crisis.

We need a thumbnail though ! Check this out.

I'm working up to doing a heavily modded Battletech play through using the Rogue Tech mod, plus a little addition of my own. Check out the Company Logo. I haven't started that yet because I may well record the play through, for however long it goes. I'd be heavily editing that, because after a while the battles blur into each other. So I'd be picking out the important parts and wrapping a few battles together.

Looking forward to it.

I said to someone not too long ago that I'd tell them whether I thought the Stellaris DLCs were worth buying ... Here we go :

Apocalypse - gives you planet killer weapons and space pirates. Optional, the space pirate marauders are highly annoying and the planet killer weapons are end game things.
Utopia - buy this one. This expansion opens up a new set of Ascension perks and other mechanics.
Distant Stars - meh. Optional. It opens up new clusters of the galaxy with hidden dangers ... I haven't seen these properly fire yet ... but I'm only in my second game with them in. More buy than not buy.
Synthetic Dawn - buy it. This one allows you to play as machine races, which are an interesting variation on playing as the typical organic. Things like energy being required instead of food and actively needing to build up the population instead of watching it grow naturally.
Leviathans - Optional, it adds in a series of mid level power encounters which are quite varied in nature and level of menace. I enjoy these encounters and I'd miss them.

Ones I don't own (make your conclusions as to whether I recommend them !)
Humanoids, Plantoids - give you new ship models and species appearances. Meh.

On top of that is a vast array of mods that are available for the game. I'm using a few quality of life improvements (like a speed dial feature) and some mods that change and expand on game mechanics. Oh and then there's the ship models :

Click for bigger as per usual ! At this point, the Swarm had 10 fleets of 40k power each. Each of those is a fairly powerful fleet. The game makes you split your fleet up like this and it's a good feature when you get used to it. Each separate fleet can be given attack duty, blockade duty or back to base for upgrades or repairs.

In the above shot, I'd gathered the massed fleets together for an invasion of a Fallen Empire homeworld. My swarm had 10x 40k power fleets, the enemy had a few 60k power fleets plus a hefty space station. A brutal fight but the swarm prevailed.

The mod in this case is the Star Wars Rebel Ships mod and the larger ships are Mon Calamari cruisers forming the Battleship wings. If you zoom in real close, you may be able to make out a mass of Corellian Corvette zooming around.

This was the final fleet action of the game, with 12 massed Swarm fleets advancing on the last vestige of the Machine Contingency which had awoken to sterilise the galaxy with only the Swarm able to deal with them.

It was an intense campaign when it kicked off in the end game. Very enjoyable.

The latest campaign has quite different ships. I've only unlocked the corvettes and destroyers so far. Here they are :

Shiny ! The next game will have Next Generation ships and something must have gone horribly wrong because I'll be playing a machine assimilator race.

Warcraft ? I definitely enjoyed the social aspect of the raid I was involved in on Saturday. We made an attempt at battering the content from the last expansion. The social side was awesome, with lots of fun over the voice comms. But it did remind me of the very fiddly and punishing mechanics that exist in the raid encounters in WoW. A single mistake or misunderstanding of the mechanics is punished very heavily.

I think that's made up my mind somewhat on how heavily I'll stay in WoW in the weeks to come. A younger me would have been grinding away to get to the required gear level and I'd have been training myself in raid modes. (I have an idea ... but haven't played that idea for quite some time).

I'd honestly rather play different games now than be subject to those raid mechanics. Like Stellaris !

Books 24 and 25 - Classic Wraith Ships

Haha. Not Stargate Atlantis, although the Wraiths in that were a fairly decent (if over melodramatic) enemy.

Nah. Two more books completed, Wraith Squadron by Aaron Allston and something I picked up called Classic Ships. I enjoyed both of them and the Classic Ships book was a nice little in between one before I dive into the next Wraith Squadron book.

What is Wraith Squadron ?

It's a book that I feel is very definitely inspired by the X Wing games and the successors that were so excellent for their time on the PC.

They're from the first age of space games on the PC and the X Wing series had massive competition from games like Wing Commander (never played) and later Freespace (own but too busy with Tie Fighter). The screenshot above is from X Wing Alliance, which was a fairly late entry in the series, almost the last game actually.

The systems from the games are interwoven into the series of XWing books. It doesn't restrict the books at all, it somewhat adds to them as the game mechanics give them a skeleton to build up good space combat action sequences. But the stories aren't all about that.

Whereas the Rogue Squadron books were about a squadron of elite pilots, Wraith Squadron is about a far more interesting set of misfit characters who are on their last chances before losing their chance to fly space fighters. And it's not just about the space combat, the characters are brought together for their covert intrusion skills.

It all makes for a quite packed book where you really don't know where it's going to be going next. And that's just the plot. It's jammed full of character interaction too. The characters grow throughout the book. They change in more obvious ways than is usual for a book, at least the books I've been reading lately. Oh and the author has huge amounts of fun with his characters as well, with a few running jokes going through the story and relentless humour brought out when you're least expecting it.

If you understand Star Wars, you will definitely enjoy this book. If you're coming into it without reading too much of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe (the one that's been written out now!) then I think you'd enjoy it as well.

One thing about Wraith Squadron is those characters ... Outside of a couple of the regulars, they are all unknown. Which means no plot armour .... (Plot armour is when you have a major character like Luke, Leia, Han who has to stay around for future books, they won't be dying). And no plot armour and the style of this particular series means that death can happen at any time to the characters involved.

I like that. It adds in a certain uncertainty that adds a lot of interest to the book for me. In fact, one particular superbly dramatic scene had remained in my memory from my last reading which must be many, many years ago.

Next up is the second Wraith Squadron book, Iron Fist.

I quite enjoyed racing through Book 25 yesterday evening as well. It was Classic Ships, which I picked up thinking it would have lots of lovely pictures in (it does). A short book of just 123 pages, it goes from Tall Ships, to working ships, to ocean liners and gives you a few words about each.

It's curious to see how the ship designs changed over the years. I was especially curious about the low, thin and very long designs of the tall ships and the earlier steam driven ships. It feels like we started with clean lines, went all bumpy around the two World Wars and now we're back to cleaner lines again.

An enjoyable read.

In other news ...

Tap is still winning. I get the feeling it needs the old adaptor and its pipe chopped off and a new fitting applied. That's a job for a professional plumber.
Me ? I am super tired but I've booked a week off work in 3 weeks. If it gets cooler then that'll help. The heat wipes me out. This weekend will be chilling out with a few domestics to do.
And more healing too. Almost there.

And reading ! Around streams and Warcraft that is. Never go adventuring without a great looking hat.

That's Tashmetu, Shaman in Training.

Book 21 - Afterlife and a ... fair few semi random things

Book 21 !

Cracking through them still, although I sense a slowing in the summer with the heat we have now. Car was reporting 30 degrees C in the covered car park at the Mall earlier.

Book ?

It's Blake's 7, Afterlife written by Tony Attwood who compiled the Programme Guide. The book was publised in 1984, following up on the series which ran from 1978 to 1981. It was one of the classic 70s/80s sci fi series. Good stories, little bit (often very) weird, minimal budget to support it but keeping it all about the characters who were an edgy bunch for this one.

This one only has 5 characters returning from the series and concentrates on a much smaller cast. It picks up on and explains what happened at the end of season 4 (spoilers!) and then carries on a story from there.

The good parts of this book were that the characters were instantly recognisable. From ruthless Avon, to cowardly Vila and then tyrannical Servalan (plus 2 more!). When reading the dialogue, I had that minds eye picture of the original actors playing out the scenes. And I haven't watched Blake's 7 in years.

The bad part was that it felt like a miniseries worth of episodic sections, all pretty separate from each other with tenuous linkages between them. It felt like the author didn't really know what to do with the great characters or where he wanted to take them.

That said though ... this is a far superior book to Lucifer which didn't belong in the Blake's 7 universe. Oh - I remembered what the other thing I labelled like that was : Alien Covenant, although that was a decent movie (unlike Lucifer) that shouldn't have had the Alien tag on it.

Next book ?

XWing Wraith Squadron - Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston. Enjoying it so far after 63 of 414 pages. I didn't want to put it down to go to bed last night. Honest ! More later.

Random stuff ?

Washing machine - need a new one. It's been wearing down for quite some time now but on Saturday it went the WHAM of a probable failed bearing and the drum doesn't really want to turn any more. So I'll buy one of those and get it in over the next fortnight. I got away with it on the wash ... there was only about 2 minutes to go before WHAM occurred.
Music buying - tonight's Mall run saw cds from Jack White, Chvrches, Snow Patrol and Banks appear. Looking forward to listening to those.
Waiting for music buying - Kasey Musgrave's album is wanted and listening to Gorillaz Humans yesterday has changed my mind on getting their next. (Still not getting Arctic Monkey's new one though). Still waiting for Ed Sheeran's latest to go cheaper. It's taking a while !
Not cable buying - Jessops guy didn't want to know. I found them a tad rude and I won't be going back any time soon. Besides, there's a camera shop in town who were very helpful when I acquired my camera.
Not laptop buying - no issues, the John Lewis lady who has answered my questions a few times is very helpful. They just don't have what I want. Although the Dell XPS reduced to £880 in clearance was VERY shiny. Too expensive.

What else ?

It's warm out at the moment. Looks like we'll have this for a week until it breaks into rain. In the meantime, pass the ice cubes !

Right - too hot to play the games at the moment (and I'm wary that opening Stellaris now will lead to closing it at 1.30am. Or later). Book plus videos, possible stream watching if an interesting person comes online !

Oh and ... sneak preview of a later post :

Could that be part of Book 22 ?