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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
Fortnite – the game [although I’m not sure what else you might think it is] – has now become a platform for loads of games. They have teamed up with Lego and now have a few official Lego based games in the Fortnite family. One of these is Brick Life and the other I enjoy is called Odyssey.
Lego Brick Life is game where you run around a little seaside town doing jobs, making money, and build your dream house and decorate it. IT’s an escape from real life where everything looks lovely. It reminds me of Playstation Home from about ten years ago. Brick World is a good place to spend some time enjoying yourself.
Fortnite Lego Brick Life – Chess Board
Just look at the view in this picture, the sea, the stars, the sand, the city.
Fortnite Lego Brick Life – Beach Views
Now, the following picture is not from Brick Life but I think it captures the thought and playfulness that has gone into creating the Lego games. Isn’t it pretty:
So, I left BlueSky. I deleted my account and decided life was too short for all the interactions it would cause. I found myself following lefty type news organisations and it was all the same stuff that I’d been seeing on Twitter all those years ago. It’s not my fight anymore, I think there are other things I need to get interested in.
So, the only “social media” I do is Reddit. I get pictures of aeroplanes and other flying things that I can then admire. I don’t really count WhatsApp as social media as I use it as a messaging device to communicate with people close to me. I don’t use it for unsolicited opinions.
I left Twitter about a year ago? I can’t remember when but I know I was very happy to leave. It was not a safe space for people to discuss with civility. Musk has made it far worse and I’m terrified at what is going to happen in the USA. I have now, recently, signed up to BlueSky. I heard about it on a podcast and I thought I’d have a little look. I like it.
I haven’t really figured out what I am going to do with the account. All I’ve done so far is post some pictures of aeroplanes. Let’s see. I might even leave if I find it adds nothing to my views of the world.
