Short Trip, Long Trip, Shopping Trip, Round Trip

Hello everyone,

I have to report that I've ventured out of the house again ... Needed food. And an egg. Food and egg have been acquired ... I wanted to give the car a little run as well because in this current climate, it isn't being used much at all. So instead of going directly to the supermarket, I went the slightly longer way around ... (Not too far, just a fairly quick circle to make sure battery ok and all things that like to turn had a chance to turn !)

That's the in real life stuff out off the way ... I tried a little bit of speed running yesterday. I vaguely remember doing speedy runs of games like Alone In The Dark (a long time again) but it's not really my style of game play any more. But a challenge is a challenge and it got me back into one of the smaller ships again.

That's me at the start, in a Cobra Mk3 named Warp Factor Potato, given a special paint job and with the callsign TEA-89. Various references there to the online communities I enjoy nattering and sharing screenshots with.

(words for a bit, couple more screenshots later)

The challenge is to see how quickly you can make your way from the home of humanity, Sol, to the centre of the galaxy. The distance is 25,899.71 light years. Well, Galileo Station, in orbit of the Moon. Pretty station too. I didn't want to have it take too long, so I set up a ship for the Unlimited class. There are 3 classes ...

Classic - no engineering modifications or boosters, no help from neutron stars.
Neutron - no modifications again but you can use neutron stars to cut the time down.
Unlimited - you're free to use enhancements and neutron stars.

(Before I go any further, here is the Frontier forums link with the challenge)

The difference between classes is that my Cobra was capable of doing jumps up to 51.2 light years, which boost up to just over 200 with a neutron star. The unmodified version of the ship would be able to jump 26.4 light years. It's not just a doubling of the distance, it's being able to go in a straighter line. The stars aren't exactly 26.4 or 51.2 light years apart, so the ship with the shorter distance may have to go on a more wiggly side to side up and down route in order to make forwards progress.

The record for a Cobra Mk3 in classic is 14 hours 26 minutes. I made it in 6 hours 7 minutes. It should be possible to knock probably 2 hours off that. Let's see ... there are times for the Cobra Mk4 of 16 hours 12 on classic and 4 hours 30 on unlimited and I'm seeing the jump ranges as being 23.3ly classic or 46.2ly on unlimited. So I should be quicker than the Mk4. Ok for a first shot and I've learned more for later. The fastest time is just under 98 minutes in an Anaconda, which is a big ship that can take advantage of the fitting systems to get massively long jump ranges around the 77ly range.

There's a site called Spansh (link) which lets you plot a route with the neutron stars to speed things up, the mk3 comes out at about 200 jumps whereas the mk4 reckons 242. The next attempt is likely to be in a little Dolphin passenger ship and I've already forgotten the name I picked out. Gotta get home first though.

Too much theorycraft !

The competition rules ask you to post two screenshots, the first of which sees you in the departure station, ready to launch ... with the time stamp. (I'll post the other one later).

The route mapper has been vastly improved since the first days of the game. It used to be able to plot up to 1000ly with you having to go down to perhaps 250ly skips near the Core (it would crash). Now you can plot up to 20,000ly. You still have to use a couple of waypoints with that but it is way better.

That was taken just as I was about to embark on the last leg of the trip, with the blue light being the light of the neutron star I was about to get a boost from.

Another of the conditions is that you make the trip in Open ...

There we are part way through the trip. I don't like playing in Open because I'm not a fan of the people who are able to put way too much time into a game which then enables them to take out their sociopathic tendencies out on other players. But that's me. I'm just not that in to multiplayer gaming and spend most of my time in this game in the Solo mode.

Not too far to go and about to enter the Galactic Centre sector. The stars come out much more around the Core, as the star density is much increased over the density of stars near our star system.

Final jump !

And emerging from hyperspace at the monster which is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole which is the engine of our galaxy.

And the other condition for the competition is to post a screenshot of the galaxy map when you arrive at the destination, this has a time stamp on it as well.

Not much time for sight seeing on this run, as it's pretty much just Jump-scoop-jump whoosh but I took a couple at the end :

Silhouetted by the Core ...

And then looking on at Sagittarius A* from the safety of a planet just over a light year away. (Sagi A* is the white dot just over the horizon that's down and left from the black dot which is another planetoid.)

And I turned around for a better look at the ship and her markings.

A good learning trip, it'll be a bit of time before I do this again though because 6 hours at the stick with minimal breaks is a bit of a silly thing to do.

Time for a chilled out day demolishing yesterday's Easter egg.

Have a great day everyone, stay safe, be well.

Books and Banners

Hello everyone,

Almost Easter ! Hope everyone reading this is well. As well as the games, I've been enjoying going back in to the books lately. Although it feels as though the last one broke my brain a bit.

It was called Ignition! by John D Clark, An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants.

A fun read but it does go quite deeply into higher levels of Chemistry knowledge and you ideally need A-Level equivalent going on to degree level Chemistry to be able to really understand everything going on in here.

That said though, he did a remarkable job of explaining the routes the chemists went to in attempting to figure out the issues around getting the best propellant all round, looking at issues like storage, power and toxicity.

Instead of being a reaction like car fuel or what goes on in gas turbines where the fuel is combined with oxygen from the air, the rocket fuel has to carry its own oxidiser. That's not usually Oxygen either because Liquid Oxygen fails that storage criteria (it boils off if left and these needed to be good for years). The ideal that they were looking for is like :

The idea being that two chemicals on their own would be reasonably benign ... but if you mixed them together, watch out. After all, the intention was to make things go very fast, very quickly so there was a fine line between these being chemicals to make things go WHOOSH and chemicals that went BOOM.

One consistent theme running through is that everything in the chemistry world runs on strict, set rules. Elements, molecules and compounds will only react in certain ways and those ways are set. If you know the rules, conditions and exactly what's occurring, the results are predictable. The problem that the early rocket fuel scientists had was that they had very little idea what the rules were.

It's one difference between computer simulation and the real world. A simulation is only programmed with a certain set of conditions and it only contains the rules that the programmer knows about or is interested in. In the real world, all of the rules get applied and when the results differ from what was expected, you've just discovered a rule that you never realised existed or applied.

Fun stuff. And very Scary too for the more sane of the scientists ...

Oh and the author doesn't hold back with comments on what he thought about some of the more ambitious or foolhardy attempts to get a better rocket fuel. This probably applies :

And some of the after incident anecdotes definitely resemble :

They'd have some compounds which were ok until those chemistry rules satisfied a certain set of conditions and then KABOOM. Even if the fuel had been sitting in a drum apparently inert for a while, the decompositions and ongoing reactions, including the physics behind the solution settling out, would change the overall composition.

Well worth a read and when you're reading about the various stages they went through :

Quite. I could do with grabbing more coffee.

Banners ? Another game that's just come out that I won't be buying for a few reasons* is Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord ... it has a banner editor ...

*Reasons - it's horrendously buggy, it looks like just a graphical update of an 8 year old game and has the same issues, I barely played that 8 year old game and ... expensive. Oh and there's other games I want to play.

However, the same thing applies as for games like Animal Crossing. If someone else is enjoying the game, I'll enjoy watching them enjoy it. Fun is something universal. And I seem to be catching a tendency to enable other people's enjoyment by making things for them. The latest is the M&B2 banner editor ... (link).

2 banners have appeared so far, the first is one for Fuzzyfreaks :

The editor is bound by the rules behind banners in the game and doesn't have many features but ... You can make some cute stuff with it. And the codes it comes out with can be taken by others and refined or otherwise improved.

Here's the other one for Enter Elysium :

That one has worked pretty well and it's not that far off his old logo.

As far as my own gaming goes, I think I'm nearly at the end of Mass Effect Andromeda now ... the follow on game to that is highly likely to be Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Elite is still bringing out the super pretty screenshots but I might be a little burned out on that now. It might be time to look at No Mans Sky, which is similar with the spaceships but much more focused around the exploring of planets. And there's also the last little bit of Motorsport Manager.

There's also Skyrim and Fallout 4 which I've never finished ...

After coffee !

Have a great weekend, stay safe, be well.

Imaginary Space Carriers

Hello everyone,

I've been playing a bit in the Elite beta today ...

Ooo - shiny ...

It's just in beta at the moment, so the carriers aren't part of the main game yet but it's been nice to check them out.

There we go. Different one, not quite in as pretty a location as the other one.

Circling back to go on approacch. That's the docking bay side, which seems actually to be the underneath although there does look to be a flight operations control tower at the end there.

There we go. Landed ! And about to go into hyperspace on a jaunt to another system. There's not much to see there though. You get put into a lockdown state in the hangar bay without a view of the outside.

And then you come out in a different place ! It's a bit different from the outside ...

Going :

Going ...

Gone !

Or it's melted into a cloud of something.

That's another from before a jump.

The asking price of 5 billion credits is way too steep for me. I haven't gone into that phase of grinding out massive amounts of credits yet. To be honest, that bores me ... I'd rather be out and about seeing stuff than staying in one place and exploiting the game mechanic that makes that possible.

The name of the place if I'd been able to get one though : House of Elliott. I wonder how many will get that reference ? (It's not related to a TV series about dressmakers ...)

What do I think about the carriers ? Nice to have them in the game. They're a bit like a form of player housing, acting as a base for repairs, trading, outfitting, shipyards and they can jump from place to place as well. You wouldn't want to go to the far side of the galaxy in one though. It takes 2 hours to jump up to 500 light years and an exploration fitted ship could do that distance in 8 jumps ... or 8 minutes.

I couldn't actually do much with the carriers that I landed on. I had a full cargo hold of stuff looking to be sold ... but couldn't sell it. I suspect that's down to the settings of the carrier, although I can't test that because the beta doesn't give the funds to buy the carrier for testing.

If they stay in the game as they are at the moment, they'll be a rare curiosity. I can't actually see the point of having one at the moment, especially if you have a tendency to disappear off round the galaxy for a few months at a time. There's no point taking the carrier with you. It would be good if there were refinery or other production services built in, so you could buy resources, add value by turning them into other things and then sell for a profit which would go back in to the carrier.

Bit like how the X games do starbases. They do feel a bit like a "what's the point ?" at the moment and they've come in at a cost of things like :

Keeping the galaxy story alive through the Galnet news service. This has gone silent.
Community Goals. These were very handy for giving something new and interesting to get involved in. There hasn't been one since Xmas.

It'll be interesting to see how the carriers develop. Later !

Stay safe everyone.

Randomly Monday

I'm on leave at the moment !

Don't worry. Not going anywhere. Just needed a period of not thinking about work for a while, for disconnecting from the world for a while. Although it does feel like the world has disconnected from reality as well and we're living some parallel timeline from a disaster movie or book.

More like a book because books have a longer timescale than movies.

I've been in the self isolation for quite a while now. I have actually talked to people but it's been over the phone with work stuff over the last week. They've been a bit worried about me coughing over the phone ... It's not so much a cough, more allergy season kicking off.

Yep. Allergies and dust issues aren't good around now and they've definitely been in my lungs. I don't think it's anything more sinister than that although I think the issue that'll make this current situation continue is that if isolation doesn't continue for long enough, the outbreaks will keep re-emerging.

As far as I go, I've been out of the house maybe 5 times in the last 3 weeks. A couple of those were to top up on supplies, 3 of those saw me in work. So instead of getting out and about in somewhat fresh air, I've been breathing in that dust in the house ... dust which is worse due to the skin condition I'm pretty much just recovered from.

Most of dust is actually us ... and I'm dusty.

But after massively overheating and suffering from breathing in dust on Saturday (an attempt at cleaning !), I'm breathing fairly ok at the moment. I'm probably scaring the neighbours too with some of the coughing that's been happening. And it's not as bad as the bug I seemed to pick up around the start of the year.

Apart from that though, light stuff happening at the moment is seeing me in Elite, in Mass Effect Andromeda and in Motorsport Manager as well. I also tried out a little bit of Torchlight too.

I was sorting out the problems of the Planet Of Deadly Holes yesterday. I'm still enjoying the game but kinda want to move on to something different now ... but I also want to finish it.

Over in Elite, I've been bringing Tea to thirsty miners in return for very rare stuff that goes in to modifying the components of your ship. The Tiamat's Chariot is a very powerful beastie at the moment and due to get even more powerful when the current target in the game is complete. (unlocking Powerplay shields) But that's a rather boring grind and I stepped away from it today to do some roaming trading.

Here's another of the places where I found myself :

o7 Commanders.

I'm a little concerned about the state of the game at the moment though. There's a new update coming very soon for Fleet Carriers, which don't seem nearly as good as what people were looking for. I'd kind of like them to be a kind of player station, which they're implementing mostly. But they do seem to be a money sink instead of something actually useful. They'll have commodity markets and other services but what I'd like to see are things like refinery stations or manufacturing stations (like the X games and Eve have) so that the station/carrier can be used more like a hub to passively make you money ... instead of being a money sink that you can't do much with.

I'll have a look in the Beta though. Need a name for that imaginary carrier that I'll check out for a short time in that beta testing phase.

Apart from that, it feels like I'm approaching hitting all the goals I had in the game. I'm in my end game ship now, I've been to places like Beagle Point at the other side of the galaxy again. I've acquired almost all of the ships. Where to from there ? Outside of maybe another reset. I'd consider that ...

Outside of that, there is a huge amount of music listening going on ... even more now that I'm on leave and not working from home. I have a few rules for Working from Home when I do it :

No music. Because this is one of my separations of Work Time vs Me Time.
TV doesn't go on. Because daytime TV is a route to insanity and daytime TV ads are even worse.
I keep to normal working hours as the pattern and switch modes when the laptop goes away.
Lunch is important and while I'll keep an eye on what's coming in through email, I'll look at doing something different for that 30 minutes or so. (I'm not good at this and have been working through that lunch doing a few quick tasks !)
Breaks happen because you have to top up that coffee mug or otherwise keep yourself hydrated.

Other people do the working at home thing better but it was good to not think about work at all today.

Apart from that, I've been attempting to read through Ignition! More about this in a later post but while I'm learning stuff from it, the book definitely requires A-Level Chemistry to understand it and I suspect it's going in to degree level Chemistry as well.

It will be good when we get past the isolation period. It's sad that the live events like the sporting schedules have been pretty much stopped completely. But they'll start up again at some point. That's for sure.

I look forward to London Comic Con and the Lords cricket every year. Not sure if the cricket will happen this year and I'm uncertain about the Comic Con too. Same with the motor racing on the telly. Motorsport Manager is a poor substitute for watching the races !

It'll be good to see actual people as well. I've been missing a few people in particular.

We'll see what happens over the next few weeks with the curve of the cases.

Back to me again, my game playing has been limited by a couple of things :
State of my arms. It kinda feels like I've been getting a tennis elbow thing where my arms don't want to fully straighten ! Weird. My wrist was complaining bitterly as well and threatening to go on painful strike (I think this was from holding my phone awkwardly for a teleconference).
Interest in the games. I'm maybe a bit burned out on Elite and don't want to put the mental effort in to learning new games. It has been good to watch the videos though. At the moment, it's a Starsector video by Man The Maker.

I've been tempted to order some things as well. Like marshmallows from the posh marshmallow place. Like upgrades for my Elite control stuff. Amazon stuff (although Amazon are a really nasty company towards their work force and I could do with finding an alternate). I'd like another Ugears wooden model, also down to just one unbuilt Lego kit.

I'm not ordering anything online at the moment though out of respect for the Postal workers. They're in a really bad situation as well at the moment with not enough protection and a CEO who needs a butt kicking. I don't want to make that situation worse by ordering stuff that could easily wait a while.

I do miss pizza as well. When I'd get pizza, it would be on a £10 for any pizza any size collection deal, which isn't available at the moment. Pizza's expensive ! And it's mostly about pizza for multiple people too and I'm just here on my own.

I think my first non-me meal after the isolation will be from our local Chinese takeaway though. They're a wonderful bunch (disclosure note - I occasionally get free bonus prawn crackers from them) and that's why I've been going to them for over a decade.

I think that's enough for me for tonight. Am doing ok, although the dust and other allergies have been affecting me consistently over the last few weeks.

Hope you're doing ok as well. Stay safe, be well.

Thursday Thank You

Hello everyone,

Something is emerging as a Thing for Thursdays ... It first happened last week and the first I knew about it was seeing people dropping messages on Twit/Book saying well done for the thanking clap. And it happened again this week.

I didn't hear anything round here this week or last but that could easily be down to competing noise from in the house. (The introvert part of me stops me joining in).

But I did want to drop my own :

There we go. The world is going through a rough time at the moment and there are quite a few people who are putting themselves on the line to help us all through it. Let's see :

The doctors, nurses and other medical staff who are literally putting their lives on the line to care for those who have this virus. You're amazing. Thank you.

The people still working in the shops, designated as essential workers, who are also in the firing line as they maintain that vital supply line that keeps the rest of us from starvation. When I resupplied on Monday, the lad on the till was quite philosophical about things. Whereas the rest of us are staying at home, they're still out there in contact with a multitude of people.

The delivery people who bring us what we need*, still hard at work on their rounds. We can't go to shops at the moment, they bring the shopping to us.
*(hopefully this stuff we need and not stuff we want ... I've been tempted to Want buy a few things but I'm holding off because I know they're overstretched at the moment. I don't want to make that worse).

The lorry drivers who will be keeping those supply lines running.

The people being required to keep working away in conditions that shatter the social distancing protocols. Hope you're ok. You're awesome too.

The military people keeping at it still protecting the country (like shepherding the Russian fleet that went past the country a few days ago) or being retasked to aid with the logistics of responding to the demands this virus is going to place on the country. You're lovely.

The bin men came today doing their rounds, collecting the rubbish so we don't have to head out to the refuse heaps.

The people who are carrying on keeping us amused and entertained through the crisis. Mental health is as important as physical health. Currently listen/watching to a Tashnarr stream, she's raising money for the Cats Protection League. Earlier it was Fuzzyfreaks with more Mount and Blade 2.

The cleaners who are doing a storming job keeping public services disinfected. It should all help in putting a lid on this thing.

The Police who are charged with monitoring the streets and ensuring that those people who will prolong the situation through their stupidity are sorted out.

The people keeping the services going. Like our power, our water, our gas, our internet, phones and all the rest.

And everyone helping to combat this virus in their own way by observing the social isolation protocols.

You're awesome. Thank you.

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.