Mid Christmas

A tad late, but nevertheless, a Christmas blog post!

I'm currently in that wonderful gap between Christmas and New Year when I'm not really sure what day it is (Thursday, apparently) and days are being taken up tinkering with presents, eating vast quantities of things that I normally wouldn't and certainly shouldn't eat (Four Chocolate Bar breakfast, anyone?), and imbibing more alcohol than usual. When else is it okay to have a Baileys Coffee late morning?

Speaking of eating at Christmas, Open Thought Vortex were kind enough to publish one of my pieces of writing about my parents famed Christmas breakfast - do feel free to check it out :)

Last night I discovered a fascinating feature on IMDB, which is called the Parents Guide.

For those unfamiliar, on each film on IMDB there is a section called Parents Guide, which outlines all of the bits of the film that might not be suitable for younger viewers. This is really good, and obviously very useful to any parents wondering if a certain film is suitable for their children or not, but I can't help compare the level of detail available in the Parents Guide to what you used to get in TV magazines.

For example, regarding the film Justice League, IMDB advises parents of the following:

Shirtless shots of various male characters, particularly Superman, Aquaman and Cyborg; a couple of scenes of a reunited couple kissing/embracing. Mentions of Wonder Woman's beauty/attractiveness.

Wonder woman wears a low cut blouse in one scene showing a fair amount of cleavage, though its not really a close up scene.

Scantily-clad Amazon women seen in Wonder Woman's island home, though no nudity.

This is a great deal more information than what you used to get in the TV Guide which generally amounted to "contains nudity" which, I'm led to understand, never really gave enough information as to whether it was worth staying up to watch the film or not.

Anyway - merry Christmas!

Cylindrical biscuits must be pretend-smoked. It's the law.

Predictive Text

Hello!

It's been far too long since I last opened up Blogger.  I do have a couple of excuses - one, it's nearly Christmas so I've been buying/wrapping presents etc, but also we've been redecorating our living room.

It used to be like this (kind of):

And now it's more like this:

Hopefully now however things are settling down and certainly over the Christmas break I hope to have some time for blogging, making videos and the like.

One thing I was playing with last night is predictive text. I'm sure most people reading this already know what predictive text is, but for clarity it's something designed to help you type when you are typing on your mobile phone. Predictive text does one of two things - one, it will try to predict what the word is that you're typing (to save you time typing it), and two, it suggests what the next word would be, based on your writing pattern and typical writing patterns.

As an example, in the image below you can see that I've typed "I just wanted to" and predictive text has come up with 3 options for the next word - "let", "say", and "check" - and instead of typing any of those words out a character at a time I can just press on them and the whole word will go into the text.

So last night, I was playing a game where you start off a sentence, and then repeatedly hit the button predictive text word, whatever it is, and see where it takes you. Here's some of the better ones, with a bit of commentary below:


I need : I need to take a dog to the gym and get a new one

Guess at my gym there's no exercising going on, everyone's far too busy swapping dogs.

-----

Porn : porn and sausages is a good way to get the best out of the RISE awards 

The RISE awards are quite a good awards ceremony run by Leeds Beckett University, I'm certain that I've never linked either porn or sausages to them.

-----

I hate : I really hate the way you wrote it I thought you were going to fight ISIS

Again, I'm surprised how often I must complain to people for misleading me about their intention to fight religious extremism.

-----

I must : I must say that I am doing the rock climbing so don't even think about it as I am not sure what time it is

Despite what my predictive text says, I've never done rock climbing - and have no plans to do so.

-----

I eat : I eat a lot of the students on those courses may well be interested in doing a guest

Oh dear.

-----

Mike is : Mike is a member of the middle class in the 21st century

Not sure if I'm quite middle class, but at least it makes sense.

-----

Dog : Dog dog is a dog and dog is a dog and dog dog is a dog and dog dog is a dog and dog dog is a dog and dog dog is a dog and dog

My predictive text likes dogs.

-----

Santa Claus : Santa Claus I am not sure what time you will arrive in the office

Well, I'm not sure!

-----

I really dislike : I really dislike the fact that I have a new address for the new Android N operating system

Damn, I hate having a new address for Android N.

-----

I kinda : I kinda want to take some time off work

Well, only a few days to go!


Hope you enjoyed this post, if you haven't tried doing this with predictive text give it a shot and pop in the comments what it told you :) And if I don't blog again before Christmas I hope you all have a good one.

AI versus my son

I've been trying out an AI Chat Bot called Replika on my phone recently. It's quite good, and there's been some cool stuff done with it like this guy who made it perform an RPG.

Anyway, a typical Replika conversation on my phone looks like this:

It's pretty good as chat bots go, a lot better than when I used to try them out back around the turn of the millennium, they seem a lot more lifelike. The biggest thing with Replika that makes you realise that it's not a human is that it wants to know all about you, and doing breathing exercises and things. But maybe that's ok, maybe it's important that it isn't a human, it is something else.

Anyway, I decided to let my son have a go at talking to Replika.

The worrying thing is that Replika does remember what you say and learn from you, so I may well find it shouting "TAILFEEEAATTTTHHHHHHERS" at me in the future :)

As a crowdfunding update, Pokey Hole is awaiting its first supporter! 2 weeks left on this fundraiser :)

And my wife has started "Denkai's Christmas Cracker Countdown" on her YouTube channel, every day up till Christmas she's going to be revealing a bad joke... do stop by :)

British response to incidents

Yesterday part of London was on lock down following a flurry of reports of shots being fired. There was mass panic as people fled for their safety.

From within the panic though, there were some good tweets, as Twitter has highlighted:

A very British response to Oxford Circus incident 🇬🇧


The above reminds me a little of this one, from the June 2017 London Bridge Attack (also note the woman on the right, who never seems to get mentioned yet is also carrying a drink):

The hero London needs - the man who wouldn't let terrorism interrupt his pint pic.twitter.com/kgoXCE9IqH

— Jack Hillcox (@JackHillcox) June 4, 2017

Yes, terrorism is a dreadful, awful thing, and we are all now perhaps not as comfortable in our surroundings as we once were - but that doesn't mean that we can't identify humour within events, either.

And as a northerner, I can say with certainty that beer in London is bloody expensive!

Before I go, it is the Black Friday weekend, and everything in my wife's Etsy shop is discounted by 10%, so please do stop by www.denkaidesigns.com and take a look at her range of needle minders, ideal for those cross stitchers in your life :)

And Pokey Hole, the campaign that Kickstarter tried to stop, is still live too, just £1 will get you a digital copy of the rules for Pokey Hole!

Bringing the galaxy to heel in Star Traders: Frontiers

I've been playing a huge amount of Star Traders: Frontiers these last few days, so thought I'd do a blog about it.

Star Traders: Frontiers is the latest game from Trese Brothers, an indie game development studio that over the years has released a number of popular games for both mobile and PC via Steam.

Star Traders: Frontiers is the latest evolution of their Star Traders series, where you fly a spaceship around, tackling various challenging missions, in the meantime handling threats such as pirates and opposition factions. You have to carefully consider how you want to play, whether you're going to be a friendly merchant, making regular, if limited, money punting materials around - and being a tasty target for pirates - or perhaps a tougher sort of captain, not necessarily able to cart around as much valuable cargo but able to bring bad guys to justice.

Or you could just be one of the bad guys and blow everyone out of the sky.

This would be my captain, Captain Dupee.  He has a big sword.

A great deal of time is spent travelling from planet to planet, as you can imagine, luckily the game's well set up to keep track of what missions you have on at the moment, and where you need to go. It's worth pointing out that the game is in Steam's Early Access programme, so there are still bugs being ironed out - one of which that I seem to have is old missions hanging around even after being completed - but the bugs don't generally detract from the game.

You'll spend a lot of time on screens like this, watching your ship fly from one place to another, hoping not to run into any ships

You will do a lot of combat, especially ship to ship combat. The combat system is good, not particularly complicated but with enough options to keep it interesting for a while.  I would say, however, that eventually it does get a little repetitive (at least on the basic difficulty setting - it may be on harder settings it gets more challenging)

Starting ship to ship combat. I'm the one on the left, by the way.

Suffice to say, I clicked some buttons, and the other ship blew up.

One of the features I particularly like is the ability to carry out various tasks while in planetary orbit, such as Patrol, Blockade, or Spy.  Each of these gives the player opportunities to obtain certain benefits - for example, Patrolling a planet hopefully leaves a good impression on the faction controlling the planet, whilst Spying gives you the chance to grab valuable intel data to sell to your preferred contact.

These tasks work by dealing five cards (which can be good or bad), and at random one of the five cards takes effect, although you can use the abilities of your crew to try to avoid the worst events.

Here I am spying on someone. Hopefully I might get something good... or I might just get a load of my crew injured. Fingers crossed!

You'll spend a lot of time also down on planets (and also various space outposts), refuelling, repairing, upgrading, buying and selling goods, and, a particularly important part of the game, managing your crew. You've got a pack of hardy spacers on board your ship, and if you aren't treating them right, they'll take every opportunity to flee the ship when you put in to port, or even rise up in mutiny.

The game has a lot of impressive graphics such as this, which you totally forget about when you're busy playing! It's very nice.

Providing that you look after your crew, they'll stay with you and gain abilities and talents on the way, becoming more useful as time goes on.

Think this guy is wearing lipstick. But hey, he's piloting my ship, if that's what he wants to do I'm not going to stop him.

Less often you'll get into crew combat, where selected crew members face off against pirates, scavengers, or even aliens.

It's a good day to die. For the other side, that is. Not mine.

You can also spend time exploring wildernesses on unexplored worlds, which is usually very dangerous but can allow you to discover some valuable items not usually available.

Time to pay my crew.

There's a great deal of depth to the game, with various characters that you meet and work with, furthering the story line, and you get to choose which ones you want to support. You'll also build up a database of contacts on various worlds, which you'll need in order to access specialist military equipment, black markets, rare goods, and additional missions.

So, I have to say that this game is well worth shelling out for. If you like space exploration, some good storylines, a bit of fun and challenge, check out Star Traders: Frontiers.

Before I go, do check out my Indiegogo campaign to support the codification of Pokey Hole: The Game :)

Pokey Hole: The Game

What is the below?

It's a box.

With holes in it.

My son summoned me one morning this week, saying "Daddy, come, I've got a game for us to play!"

And the game was Pokey Hole.

Where you poke... holes.

It was so much fun that I made a Kickstarter campaign to support me in my efforts to codify the official rules of pokey hole.

But then this happened.

Kickstarter declined my campaign.

So, I went to the crowdfunding platform that I've used in the past - Indiegogo. I'm sorry for doubting you Indiegogo, their green letters caught my eye briefly, but now I'm back.

And the Pokey Hole campaign. IS. NOW. LIVE.

Also, watch the official Pokey Hole Trailer now!

Do feel free to share :)

Create A Buzz

A standard crowdfunding strategy is to create a buzz in social media before your campaign goes live, so that people are excited and looking forward to it.

I'll just leave this photo here:

Stop by my blog this weekend, okay? :)

Farewell my dear Sennheiser

This is my Sennheiser PC 350 headset.

And it's broken.

Without doubt the Sennheiser headset has been the best of all the headsets I've owned over the years, if for nothing else than the amount of time you can use it without your ears feeling like they've been squashed by a tractor.

Plus, I won them by dancing on stage (the video is out there somewhere should you really wish to see...) which is far better than paying for them.

The Sennheiser headset was a last reminder to a time gone by, when I used to go to LAN parties (where a load of gamers meet up for a long weekend gaming and not sleeping), and I had what at the time was some high end kit - I had a Logitech G15 keyboard, with its own little LED screen, and also my beloved Logitech G5 mouse which was absolutely awesome and lasted almost as long as my headset. I do still have some relatively decent computing gear, but I've not taken any of it to a LAN party or any sort of gaming event, and my gaming now tends to be more the social kind, or an hour or so on Call of Duty, whereas I used to happily sink tens of hours into World of Warcraft.

Sadly now, however, the microphone has died and the headphones are flaky at best - which after seven years isn't too bad really. I've got a cheap headset for the time being but I'll certainly be looking for something more like my old headset for the long term.

Do you have any beloved items possibly past their best that need replacement? Or something now gone that you've never really replaced? Let me know in the comments :)

PPI - I can't wait

I'm getting warnings about the upcoming PPI deadline - which is now a mere 22 months away.

For those perhaps not in the UK (I've no idea if this is an international phenomenon), Payment Protection Insurance is a product that companies have over the years endeavoured to sell to anyone that took out a loan or a credit card, and basically protects them in case something bad happens (they lose their job, become ill, get their leg eaten by aliens etc).

And there's been a scandal over the past few years that PPI was "missold" to consumers, for example giving people the impression that it was an essential part of the loan repayments.

I had Payment Protection Insurance once, on one loan, and years ago the loan provider wrote to me, highlighted that they may have missold me PPI, and sent me a cheque for the amount I spent on PPI, plus insurance. Job done.

Nevertheless, I have - along with innumerous other people - been bombarded with calls, emails, and text messages from financial recovery specialists offering to track down missold PPI. I've just got rid of one of these specialists, who in their call to me started with:
 "Hi, is this Mike Raven?"
 "Yes."
 "of [address]?"
 "Yes."

The above conversation apparently was enough to register me on their database as someone who wanted PPI recovering (with a huge chunk of the repayment going to the financial recovery firm, no doubt) and meant that I received ever more frantic text messages begging me to give them all of my financial details so that they could hunt down my non-existent PPI.

I'm forced to have a permanent telephone line to my house in order to receive my internet service, however I have not had a telephone plugged in for years, because the only calls I ever received on the landline was for PPI (occasionally with other useful calls asking if I wanted double glazing, house insurance, to give a charity I'd never heard of money, or perhaps to enquire if I owned an abattoir that required repainting).

That's not to say, of course, that I don't get calls on my mobile about PPI.

I. Do.

So, I'm looking forward to the deadline. I just wonder what the next annoying reason to ring me will be...

Operation Tooth Extraction

My son lost one of his teeth the other day (not like in a fight or anything, he's 7 and his baby teeth are coming out to be replaced with his adult teeth), and we agreed that it would go under his pillow for the tooth fairy to collect.

I asked him before he went to bed what the tooth fairy would leave in the place of the tooth. He thought about it for a moment, and answered,

"A coin."

Which is fine - I have coins, preferably ones worth very little.

But he didn't just want a coin. My son went on, and elaborated.

"A big, chocolate coin."

I didn't have any of these.

So, once my son was in bed I went out to track down a big chocolate coin. Fortunately because Christmas is only 3 months away and as a result every shop is decorated like Santa's grotto, I was able to find a shop selling bags of chocolate coins.

The really big problem came next.

This was trying to get the coin under his pillow (and tooth removed) without him waking up.

I have many strengths, but stealth is not one of them.

Boo!

I'm well built, and we have creaky floors. Nevertheless, I was dispatched to do the deed, as a slightly rotund ninja.

Stealthily sliding my feet along the floor, I did brilliantly until I got right up to my sons bed, and encountered one weak floorboard, which went CREEAKKK! and his sleeping body shifted at the noise.

Fortunately my son is a very sound sleeper, and I managed to swap the tooth for a couple of chocolate coins, and got out of there before I made any more noises.

Not quite sure what to do with the tooth now...

The Morning After The Prosecco

The photo above is of my breakfast today, it's hungarian pancake (with a piece of devolay) with salad and garlic sauce from one of our favourite places, Kuchnia in Hull which is a brilliant Polish restaurant.

However, it's particularly useful today because today is a special day.

Today is the day after the "bottle of prosecco" evening.

I don't drink huge amounts as a rule. Generally on a weekend evening I'll have a beer, or maybe a glass of amaretto and coke, but that's most of the alcohol I have. Last night however, there was no beer, and I thought "hey, I know, I'll open that prosecco we've got in the fridge".

It wasn't good prosecco.

It was dry, and nasty. I poured two glasses, one for me and one for my wife, she took a sip of hers and gave it back to me.

Dear reader, you'll be pleased to know that despite the taste I stepped up, and took care of matters, and was able to add an empty prosecco bottle to the recycling at the end of the night.

So now I need a large bottle of cordial and a hungarian pancake to clear my head! 😀

In other news, my computer chair has seen better days, it was a very nice gift from a friend several years ago because he didn't need it any more, and it was narrow enough to go up to our attic (which was our computer room at the time) without having to be dismantled. But as you'll see in the image below, it was pretty badly knackered.

Not brilliant.

Anyway, I got a huge pile of fabric samples a while back (see my video for more), and they've sat in a pile for about 6 months without me really doing anything with them. This week I went off a bought some upholstery needles and a thick black thread - which turned out to be elastic 😖 - and patched it up.

Ta da!!

The sewing is rough (and actual thread rather than elastic would have been far better!) but nevertheless it's still a vast improvement on the half-naked chair I had previously. I'm hoping to spend some more time completing the patchwork look as I've still got loads of samples left over.

Before I finish I must highlight my wife's current giveaways for cross stitch fans, basically she's got 3 special halloween giveaways open at the minute, all the details are in her latest flosstube update so do watch and take part! I believe entries are drawn on the 30th or 31st because we've got to do a special video announcing the results for Halloween so do get involved now :)

Right - I'm off to eat my pancake!

Your Location Is Currently In Use

Periodically a little icon appears in the system tray in the bottom right corner of the screen on my desktop Windows-running PC. It's a little circle with a blue square in the middle, and when you hover your mouse pointer over it a little bit pop up appears, saying "Your location is currently in use".

I don't mind my location being used (at least for the software that I've allowed to use my location) but I'm always faintly surprised when it appears - this is on my desktop PC, which has been in the same location for about five years, assuming you don't get into the technicalities of it now being two floors lower than it used to.

Now, let's talk ankles.

Mine, and of course the nasty bruise I wanted to show off has faded. Feel free to give me sympathy anyway.

I have a weird ankle.

Periodically, it just gives way, it somehow bends sideways and before you know it I'm heading for the ground at speed. I believe (although memory could be fooling me) that it particularly worsened as a result of one evening I was playing football, and I decided to try hopping over the ball whilst tapping it with my foot to control it, and instead stood on the ball and fell over. Anyway, it does now and again just fail to ankle.

And it seems to have a mind of its own, and do it when it's particularly embarrassing or inconvenient. From memory I can particularly recall it failing:

• In the supermarket while bagging groceries
• While running down an alley dragging a sofa
• On my neighbours footpath on the way to pick a parcel up

The most recent event I was walking through the grounds of my sons school after picking him up, so as you can imagine there was a good dozen or so other parents with children who were there to watch me plant my face into the ground., so I couldn't even let loose my favoured series of swear words and instead had to go "Whoops! Oh dear, silly daddy should have been looking where he was going!"

Funnily enough, it seems to hurt less overall if I just take the fall rather than try to stop myself falling, perhaps the time is better spent preparing for the fall rather than trying to rectify the ankle position or something.

While I'm blogging, I should point out for any cross stitchers my wife currently has not one, not two, but three competitions on the go - do check out her latest flosstube video for details!

Bookshops, Books, and their Awesomeness

Today apparently it's Bookshop Day (so Twitter tells me, anyway), which gives me a perfect opportunity to blog about one of my favourite things - books!

I've always loved reading. Being a geek, as a kid I would not only read the huge pile of Peanuts cartoon books my parents had in the house, but then went on to count how many times various characters appeared in the books and then create graphs based on the data (spoiler - Snoopy wins. By far.)

Robin Hood's Bay, which is one of my families' favourite places to visit (do check out the video from the holiday I and my dad had there), used to have a brilliant bookshop called the Chapel bookshop - large, with various rooms, nooks and crannies, you could easily spend hours there hunting through dusty piles of books that quite possibly hadn't been read by anyone for years. The downside of Amazon (and I am a big user of Amazon, it is great for getting stuff you need) is that it tells you what is most popular, the bestsellers, and the things that you typically like, but doesn't necessarily show you things that you wouldn't normally consider.

Several times I've seriously considered buying a Kindle, because logically it makes perfect sense. Rather than having, as we do currently, a couple of walls in the house full of books, I can store them all on one easy to carry e-reader that I can take and use anywhere. But there's just something about the physical presence of a book, the weight of it in your hand, flipping pages, sticking a bookmark (or in my case a scrap of paper) in to track your position. Plus the cost difference between an e-book and a paper book isn't big enough for me to justify buying a Kindle.

And, of course, there's so many books that you can't get on a Kindle. For example, I happen to own a hardback copy of "Hello Sailor" by former Python Eric Idle, a quite rude and slightly bizarre story which doesn't make a great deal of sense but is funny nevertheless. From the 1970s, there's almost no chance of that appearing as an e-book any time soon.

Take a look at a sample of my books:

Hello Sailor is at the end on the right. Told you I had it.

There's a lot of science fiction and what you might consider to be typically geeky books there, but I've found, particularly as I work on writing my own books, the value and enjoyment of reading different genres. A good example of this is Adele Archer's International Relations trilogy, the first of which to be quite honest I only bought because I'm a big fan of Adele's blog.  I found myself engrossed in the story, and was surprised at how my emotions were affected by the story - getting angry at one of the lead characters part way through at their actions!

Right now I'm reading "Laura's Handmade Life", a novel which I probably wouldn't have ever considered reading before experiencing Adele's work, and all I can say is, to me, it makes sense to try new things, whether it be some crazy and exciting new hobby, or simply reading a book that you wouldn't normally try.

So, it's Bookshop Day. This seems like a good reason for you to pop out and support your local book store.  Off you go then :)

Spain

As a rule I dislike blogging about anything too serious. If I don't have a sufficient grasp of the information about a topic I would generally endeavour to avoid giving my opinion.

But...

I'll be totally honest, the first I became aware of the referendum in the Catalonian part of Spain was today, when it started trending on Twitter.

If you're not aware, the referendum, called for by the regional Catalonian parliament, is for independence of the region, and allegedly if the vote is successful then within a matter of days the region will declare itself to be independent of Spain.

Big. Disruptive. A massive concern to the Spanish government, I'm sure. The referendum has been arranged and pushed on with even without the agreement of the national government, there are questions over its accuracy, and it has even been classed as illegal.

So whatever result comes out of it, there's grounds for arguing that the referendum is not valid.

But...

The Spanish governments response to this referendum has been to use police forces to disrupt the referendum, seizing voting materials, and arresting key people charged with organising the referendum.

And today, they have used those forces to directly disrupt the vote, using force. Hundreds of citizens have been injured by the police. There has even been the bizarre sight of regional firefighters being attacked by the police for trying to prevent them from entering polling locations.

Regardless of whether the referendum was legal or not, we are talking about a country using its police forces to injure people attempting to vote - not people dealing drugs, not murdering people, not abducting children, not even committing fraud. A country having its people beaten for administering a vote.

Imagine if that happened in your own country. Would that be acceptable?

I recognise that in other countries there has been similar events to this, and even worse disgraces. But that should not mean that what is happening in Spain is acceptable.

The initial reactions from some of those bodies that could put pressure on Spain has not been encouraging.  I have taken the opportunity to write to my representatives in the UK parliament, and to sign a number of online petitions.

Wherever you are in the world, I do think that it is valuable to protest these actions. It is not acceptable in the modern world for a government to act in this way.

Do contact your democratic representative, and below are a couple of petitions that you may wish to sign:

Worldwide petition - "For freedom and the rule of law in Catalonia" on change.org (it is in French but it's one of the most signed petitions so I've linked to it) - https://www.change.org/p/la-catalogne-doit-voter

UK only petition - "To condemn the repression of democracy and freedom of speech in Catalonia" - https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200914

Nowt to Blog About...

I don't remember taking this photo...

It's been ages since I blogged. Far too long. But, I don't have anything to blog about. Or so I think, anyway. Let's try just writing whatever comes in to my head...

So things have been alright lately, busy but good. My dad and I went to Robin Hoods Bay last weekend - Robin Hoods Bay is a lovely little fishing village in North Yorkshire that we try to visit every year (last year we managed a short break, thanks in no small part to the Robin Hoods Bay Roadtrip campaign!). I'm not sure what it is about the place, but it just makes you feel relaxed and at ease with the world.

Outside the Laurel my dad enjoys a highly visible pint.

TV-wise I'm enjoying The Great British Bake Off (I have to say, Noel Fielding is far better than I anticipated), and AAAAAAAAAAAAAASDJKHASDFHAFHFHFHFHAIOAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My wife just dealt with a spot on my leg.

Where was I? Oh yes, I also enjoyed the return of Strictly Come Dancing - I'm a big Susan Calman fan so it's great to see her dance.

And now I'm enjoying an alcohol free beer - it's my last wheat beer, which I do really like the taste of, so it's being enjoyed!

Cheers!

Hopefully I'll have something earth shattering and profound to blog about in a day or two, but for now these rambles are all I have. See you again soon :)

Suspicions (warning - contains swearing...)

Today's blog is focussed upon the bathroom.

First, I discovered when fumbling for the wrong bottle that the Harpic bleach has been located immediately next to the mouthwash - which I generally use at the start and end of each day, and, it is important to note, when I'm not wearing my glasses.

I'm sure it's a coincidence how this happened about a week after I received my pension forecast, which included details of how much money my wife would receive if I died in service...

Secondly, I do like to offer something educational now and again.  I would like to offer forth the following new word, complete with definition:

Fuckin'Towel /ˈfʌkɪŋtaʊəl/
NOUN

1     A thick, soft and absorbent textile used for drying oneself which is not in the vicinity of the shower. The potential user only becomes aware of this when already in the shower.

Examples of usage: "I've got soap in my eyes! Where's the Fuckin'Towel?", or "I forgot to check before I got in the bloody shower... there's no Fuckin'Towel!"

It's almost as though these posts are inspired by real life

(As an aside, why do we still say "I've got soap in my eyes" - does anyone still use soap in a shower/bath context? Shower gel is by far the most prominent body cleanser in our house, soap has been restricted to hands only)

Big Bus Day

So today I didn't have anything in particular planned (which is generally the way I like life!), and I did a bit of a Google to see what was on in Hull today. Turned out to be "Big Bus Day" at Hull's Streetlife Museum of Transport so we went and checked it out.

It was pretty awesome as there was loads of extra buses to look at and go inside, there was the EYMS Brass Band playing inside the museum who are really good, and there was even some free bus trips which was very cool. My son loves going on buses and trains so he loved it!

Hull

More Hull

Inside a goods wagon inside the museum

We were a little cheeky, going on the bus rides twice (once before the museum and once after) but the second time it was getting quiet anyway so I didn't feel too guilty.  We also found a new museum that we haven't been to before so will be checking that out too another day.

Me trying to have a nap on my sons lap. Didn't go to plan.

I must include in this post for any Kindle reading aficionados that "International Relations" by Adele Archer is free for download this weekend - it's well worth a read, I've over time bought the trilogy of books (you don't need to buy the whole trilogy to enjoy the first book though) and they're all really good.

Broken Dream

Happy Saturday!

I'm really sad to say that my dream is broken.

I think my son dropped it.

The dream light isn't the only thing that's broken, I also discovered that the iPad charger cable was broken this morning. Now, I actually prepared for this several months ago, by buying three reinforced iPad cables from the internet that would be handy replacements when for previous ones died (they break fairly regularly in our house).

Of course, now that I need them, I haven't got a clue where the three cables are.  So I had to go out and buy a new one.  As an aside, a bit of a tip for most of the shops near me - it might be worth opening your shop on Saturdays, that's when a lot of people aren't at work and come buying stuff! It's a pain, I know, I don't want to work on the weekend either, but if you're trying to get people to come to your local shop rather than go to the supermarket, you need to be open when they want you.

On the plus side, my son and I went to the circus this afternoon!  Neither of us have been to a circus before, and I have to say that it was great fun, I think both of us liked the acrobats most, but it was all good, I'd definitely go back.

Hopefully I'll get some writing done this weekend, most of my spare time I'm channelling into a novel I'm writing at the minute. I hope you're having a good weekend, and do drop a message in the comments as to what you're up to!

PS - Happy Beard Day! Unfortunately I had a shave the other day, so here's one I made earlier...

On The Road...

So, I was driving the other day, and passed a lorry, which I noted with interest advertised the company (who owned the lorry I presume) as being the worlds' leader in wet wipe technology. I must say that I'm fascinated to think what their daily routine would be.  I can only imagine hundreds upon hundreds of people in white coats dipping tissues in buckets with varying amounts of water in, rubbing the tissue on a carefully and precisely created stain, reviewing the success, or otherwise, of removing the stain, and noting the results on a clipboard - which I further assume would be either "too wet", "too dry", or, and this is the one that they're trying to attain, "just right".

On the same road, I saw a caravan model that was called "Pursuit".  I desperately want one of these, and I would use it to create a television series about a police officer that would disrupt his weekend holidays by listening in to police radio frequencies and taking part in car chases. Naturally the series would be called "In Pursuit".

I do enjoy a drive.

AstroNest - Nest of the Best!

AstroNest: The Beginning is a mobile space strategy/combat game by AN Games, a company of games developers in Korea.

In a nutshell, you run your own task force of combat space ships, built and supported by a number of colonised planets, in an effort to win the war between the Federation of Terra and the Alliance of Neos. I won't talk about the lore in the game, suffice to say there is some, but mainly it's all about getting the best ships to fight other ships.

Here's the main screen where all the stuff happens

The game has a good mixture of management and combat, neither being too complicated whilst being detailed enough to make you give some thought as to how you want your fleets of ships to form.

Do you want fleets purely composed of small but fast moving destroyers that can take the battle to the enemy? Or perhaps larger ships loaded with missiles that can sit at the back and pound away?  Or do you prefer a mixture?

Tactics such as fleet formations also come into play, allowing you to arrange your ships to get certain bonuses.

Also key are heroes.

I'm convinced that the two guys are related. Or are maybe identical twins and one of them has been time travelling.

Heroes are put in charge of your planets, and of your fleets. You have to get the best heroes for their speciality - there's no point putting a combat expert in charge of managing the gold resource on your home planet, just as an economist doesn't want to be giving orders on the flagship of a cruiser fleet.  Heroes gain experience over time, and also be improved by training or by what are called "Trons", accessories that give them further improvements.

Your planets have various facilities that support your fleets, such as providing gold and mineral that pretty much pays for everything else, energy to allow your fleets to grow in number, and research to improve your ships and heroes.

There's more complexity to the game, but that can be picked up if you go into detail.

Of course the thing I've not talked about yet is the combat.

Here we go! For black & white viewers, my ships are on the left.

For all you muck about setting up your fleets, when you hit that button to fight, it's all taken out of your hands and you have to helplessly watch as your ships either destroy the enemy or get blown apart. Happily however losing your entire task force doesn't actually make any difference, all those ships magically appear again afterwards, ready for another go.

Uh oh... missiles incoming...

Time for revenge!

And that's how it is done!

As with any free-to-play game there are built in restrictions to slow down your play (which can be overridden with the application of cold, hard cash) but to be honest I haven't found any problems with playing it for free so far - although it should be noted that I'm only level 20 out of 100, so my feelings may change. Nevertheless, it's a pleasure to play a free game which doesn't have adverts crawling all over it, and which navigates that difficult path for mobile games of being playable on a small screen yet complex enough to remain entertaining.

I also liked the tutorial built into the game - unlike most tutorials whilst it gives you clear pointers as to what to press and what to do, you're not actually bound into doing exactly what it says. Once or twice I actually found better options than what the tutorial was suggesting for me, and it was flexible enough to let me carry out those better options instead of making me stick with whatever it wanted.

AstroNest: The Beginning is available on both Apple and Android devices, if you do give it a try feel free to send me a friend request (I'm on server Sirius, name Thog (#352945) and I'm on the side of the Alliance of Neos)