Communications

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Missing Links

Along with the move of this website to a different hosting company or rather to a company as I was self-hosting I also decided I needed to go through all the broken links in the site. There were hundreds.

I have a program running that scans this website and informs me of broken links. It recently chose to inform me of hundred and I decided I needed to sort it all out. I had to make some decisions about how to deal with this.

I think when writing this site I have the belief that all weblinks will exist and forever. This, it turns out, is not the case. Over the last few years I have deleted my entire Twitter history and I don’t think any of that exists anymore. All of my tweets that I embedded in this site still have the text as that was part fo the embedding process but links to the original site have gone. I deleted the links.

Some of the links were to other sites that I hested but they don’t exist. Whoops. It’s all a bit of a mess really but if you find stuff wrong/missing then please get in touch.

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Hosting and Website

For the last couple of years I have hosted this website on my own device in my house. I reached a point where I was trying to install a security certificate and facing a web of settings that I just didn’t understand. I decided to look for a new host for this site. It’s not easy moving a website and I had to build up to the process. I’ve done it a few times and there are always things that go wrong.

I founda company with which I could host and created an account. Then I backed up my current site. I used a plugin to save the backup data or at least the database and plugin settings. Following this I reinstated the website using that plugin. I will admit that the whole process went smoothly. The only thing that took most time was uploading the images that I don’t save as a backup but regularly download and copy using FTP.

This site is now much faster than when hosted within my actual home. The interface with the hosting company is pretty good and I have no complaints so far. Welcome.

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Recent Racing

I am currently trying to complete a few games, or at least play them more. I got Astrobot recently and it is exactly my kind of game. It’s a 3D platformer with some easy and some difficult levels. I really enjoy it, it’s like Ratchet and Clank but without the guns. I’ve also been messing around in Gran Turismo a little more recently. They have added weekly challenges to the game and so it’s a good sense of achievement to log in and complete those. I am also working my way through the licence tests and challenges bit by bit. I want to complete the Cafe Menus and that means getting credits to buy some serious cars.

I have found a useful method for gaining credits to be the time challenges they now have in the game that change every few weeks. I spend about twenty minutes driving and I can normally get a Silver time but definitely a Bronze time within the game. I recently completed some laps of the Nurburgring GP circuit in some electric car and got a pretty good result for a worldwide competition.

Gran Turismo Time Trial Result
Gran Turismo Time Trial Result

Another method for gaining credits which is remarkably innefficient is to complete the daily driving distance – one marathon – and then hope fo rthe best in the lucky dip reward. As much as this feels like a loot box it isn’t a loot box because you aren’t paying real money for the rewards. It’s cheeky but it’s not as immoral as some loot boxes in other games. Every now and then you do get 1,000,000 credits in the circle of doom.

Gran Turismo Lucky Dip Result
Gran Turismo Lucky Dip Result

This amount of credits might seem useful but when some cars are valued at 20,000,000 you know there’s a long way to go.

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Crossing The Rails

I recently went for a walk and we crossed a railway line which is always exciting and also routine at the smae time. I wonder if my appreaciation for railway crossings has increased since I’ve seen so many videos of cars and lorries getting smashed by trains on level crossings? My daily route to school when I was attending as a pupil was to cross a railway with a manual crossing gate. A person worked in the tower next to the crossing and wound a thing that made the gates shut. They got replaced by technology which is soon going to happen to a lot more people thanks to capitalism.

Railway lines stretching into the distance.
Railway Lines

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Gran Turismo HUD

As much as I really enjoy Gran Turismo and play the game quite a lot there hasn’t been much on here about it from me. I’m still heading through the game and aiming to complete it, if that is possible. I’m currently stuck on one of the license tests where I have completed the course within 0.05 seconds of the gold target time but haven’t quite made it through that barrier.

I have upgraded to the G390 wheel which supposedly has “true feel” or something like that. All I know is that there is more feedback through the wheel and you can “feel” the limits of the grip a little more and also notice when you might be burning through the tires with late braking and excessive cornering.

Somehow I stumbled across a telemetry display that fits to all types of steering wheel. I thought about it and then ordered one along with a new spring for the brake on the G390 pedals and the current spring is waaaay too tough. The new spring has a progressive feel to it and “feels” better.

The telemetry unit was easy to set up and instantly did a firmware update. You use the browser on your phone to enter your wifi settings and the little box does all the rest. It connects to the PS5 output over wifi via UDP. It would be nice if the PS5 output more details that can be read by the little box, but I’m very happy with the results. The rev LEDs are really useful and give good feedback to my peripharal vision.

Gran Turismo 7 Steering Wheel HUD
Gran Turismo 7 Steering Wheel HUD

In this image you can see the current gear (3), tyre temperatures, revs (8552), fastest lap time (2:10:496), lap counter and speed. The digits on the right don’t currently change with the game.

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My First Mesh

My house is too small to require a mesh wifi system. The router works pretty well when there are four rooms and they are two up, two down. There are a couple of areas of weak signal, especially when using 5G because there are brick walls in the way. A quick swap to 2.4G and it’s sorted though. The 5G signal has a higher bandwidth but the higher frequency doesn’t penentrate solid substances as well as the 2.4G signal.

I have installed a mesh at another house. It was a mostly harmless process. The TP-Link Deco system connects to the internet modem with an ethernet cable and then it all works! I did have to log in to the modem/router and tell it to turn off the wifi that it produces. Then everything is connected via the Deco unit. There are two mesh wifi transmitters and also a LAN going to a simple switch that connects the entertainment stuff up to the internet.

There is a gaming console connected to part of the extension of the mesh and even thgough there is a double wifi lan connection to the internet there haven’t been any complaints about latency. I am impressed.

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Current Podcasts

I haven’t really done much with this site recently so I’m looking to change that and try to write more. I think changing my hosting provider with sort that out. I was self-hosting on a NAS but I have moved to an proper hosting service because there were aspects of my site I just couldn’t really get working.

Here is a list of podcasts that I listen to regularly.

  • The Scathing Atheist
  • God Awful Movies
  • The Skepticrat
  • Citation Needed
  • Skeptics With A K
  • Data Over Dogma
  • Cognitive Dissonance
  • Opening Arguments
  • Maintenance Phase
  • Law Pod UK
  • The Bugle
  • The Know Rogan Experience
  • Pod Save The UK
  • The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe
  • The Allusionist
  • Curious Cases

I use the RSS Radio app to listen to these because I don’t like the Apple Podcast app.

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AstroBot

OK. This is an excellent game and I really enjoying. I’m hoping to complete it sometime during the Easter break as once this week is over my time for gaming returns to practically zero.

AstroBot Photomode 3
AstroBot Photomode 3

There’s a photomode in the game which I keep forgetting about unless there is a photo point like the one above. The whoe game is pretty amazing and excellent fun. It’s pretty much my level of stuff. The feedback on the controller is really impressive and the game uses the device to its fullest.

Astrobot Photo Mode 1
Astrobot Photo Mode 1

Oh, and everything looks gorgeous.

AstroBot Photomode 2
AstroBot Photomode 2
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Just For The Fun Of It

Just wandering along and enjoying the game of Lego BrickLife within Fortnite and it’s all so much fun or gorgeous.

Gorgeous Sunset Views - Lego Brick Life
Gorgeous Sunset Views – Lego Brick Life

It is delightful to drive the school bus into the sea, jump out at the last minute and watch it float along for a little bit before sinking to the depths. I love it.

Sunken Bus Fun - Lego Bricklife
Sunken Bus Fun – Lego Bricklife

My favourite spot to put my house in on the beach front next to the concert stage. There’s a rock arch just south of that and I found out it’s possible to drive the bus up the arch and then drive off and land on top of my house.

Parked The Bus On The House - Lego Brick Life
Parked The Bus On The House – Lego Brick Life

The last image today is the underground garage with cars dumped inside. These are other players’ cars that I have run around and “stolen” and then brought to the car park for storage. It’s a fun game.

Stealing Cars Fun - Lego Brick Life
Stealing Cars Fun – Lego Brick Life
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Views Of Flight

I’ve been trying to fly in X-Plane a bit recently. I need to do more I guess. There’s a plugin called Volanta by Orbx which I’m using to track my flights and it has some challenges it can add to the simulator so that gives me things I can aim for. I recently took a dawn flight from Biggin Hill to Le Touquet and I flew under the QE2 bridge and alongside my village. In the second picture here you can see the village where I live, if you know what you are looking for.

T-6A Dartford Crossing
T-6A Dartford Crossing
T-6A Where I Live
T-6A Where I Live
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