This is the store of “things”. You never know when you are going to have to make a rocket or volcano. Just one of those things that you do for your children.
Armada
This is my 800th communication on Fooyah.net. As I have been quite angry recently you should be pleased to know that I have taken up paper folding for some of the day to calm me.
This is my armada of planes so far this year. Thanks to Penguin for the gift. Only another 300 or so to go!
Simulation
If you are a regular reader of these pages you will know that I love playing Gran Turismo on the PlayStation. I always have. My relationship with GT goes back to when it was first released and playing it with my landlord when I lived in Gillingham. GT and Crash Bandicoot are two reasons I bought a PlayStation, or PSOne as it is now known! You can see other communications about GT here and my gallery here it’s been a while since I added new photos to the GT gallery and I should try and do that soon (it’s a quite lengthy process).
Gran Turismo defines itself as The Driving Simulator. Which is probably about right. It’s quite likely to be the most realistic driving game on the market, especially in terms of the physics model it uses. I haven’t played any other driving games really and so I can’t comment. I am also not a racing driver so it would be hard to me to comment on the realism. It amuses me when people describe certain computer games as unrealistic. How would you know? If I was a real racing driver I probably wouldn’t be playing GT.
I recently bought a new home PC. See this communication and the follow up to that. this made me think I could have a flight simulator and I tried installing FSX – The Microsoft Flight Simulator, last version. It turns out that FSX hates Windows 8.1. Some people got it to work and some didn’t. I didn’t want to spend ages digging into why it wasn’t working and the only way I got it to work was to turnoff some graphics function which made it look pretty rubbish on the big screen that I have. So, I had to turn to the only other alternative AFAIK.
X-Plane [I could link to the official site but then you could JFGI]
If you want to see why this is a good program then go no further than Randall Monroe’s What If? blog and see how he used it. I downloaded the demo version and played with it a bit. It is pretty good. You are stuck to the Seattle area in the demo but most of the rest of the game functions well. If you want you can use this program properly and use it professionally. Also around the time of doing this I ordered the X-Plane 10 Global edition. It contains the scenery of the world in it. All of it. I ordered this from the USA website as I didn’t want part of the profits going to a third party seller. It seemed the fairest way to buy it. I didn’t read the small print as I ordered it though. It could take six weeks to arrive. Customs issues apparently.
Here are my tweets.
I’ve ordered @XPlaneOfficial Global edition but I ordered it from the US, over Xmas, I’m waiting. And hoping.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 19, 2014
Number 1 son just took the Goshawk for a flight. He was pretty good. pic.twitter.com/cTDErPHNgR — Ian Parish (@iparish) December 21, 2014
Just arrived! 60GB now installing. pic.twitter.com/jVfWCSum20
— Ian Parish (@iparish) December 28, 2014
Just read the instructions. It’s 75GB and about 6 hours to install! — Ian Parish (@iparish) December 28, 2014
It looks like I ordered it 8th December and it was waiting for me after I got home on the 28th December. I guess that’s not bad. I’ve also installed a Saitek joystick and throttle (HOTAS) comnbination. I’m currently getting to grips with all the buttons and programming some functions into the joystick.
Here’s a gallery of some of my screen shots so far. I have been tweeting them so you might have seen them before. I’m trying to work with real time and weather in the program so far hence my flights are taking place around the world. I also need to work on my landings. Currently the Sabre is my favourite plane. It’s fast enough to be fun but easy to handle.
I spelt “Harbor” the American way, for accuracy.
I’m quite curious as to whether there is another type of simulation game I would like. On the Megadrive I played a submarine simulation but I would get bored quite quickly and send out a “ping” just to liven things up. I think a nuclear power station simulation would be a bit of a laugh, but then you’d try to recreate the “big ones”, Three Mile Island, Windscale, Chernobyl and see if you could have stopped the outcome. It’d probably take up a bit more technical knowledge than I have and then I’d get kidnapped by some dodgy regime to set up their nuclear program [Oh, no, that’s what Imperial did in the 80s, teach various countries their nuclear knowledge].
I don’t think I would find playing the Sims that exciting. Much like PlayStation Home doesn’t really bother me. I’m not that sociable in real life I don’t what to spend “virtual” time being sociable. I like games that challenge just me. I’ve played SimCity, but I played it once, for about 12 hours, non stop. And then I stopped.
With racing cars and aircraft you can make things happen fast. It’s about getting the timing correct. I’m not that sure that any of the following would bother me much:
- Train Simulator
- Fairground Simulator
- Farm Simulator
- Goat Simulator [it exists]
- Car mechanic Simulator
Also, I don’t have the time.
Long Time
This is the follow up to this communication. I am happy to say that after about 10 days of waiting I finally picked up a new tower PC from PC World in Chatham. I have been using it to waste plenty of time.
The main reason I bought the computer was to do some music stuff in collaboration with my best mate. I’ve been inspired to have a go and create stuff. This is a new direction for me. If you want to know more then pop over to twitter and see what happens.
Still playing around with our first ever song! No idea how long this will take. Am aiming for 4 ish songs buy the summer!!
— DBL_MF (@DBL_MF) December 22, 2014
So, I have the computer back. It took about 2 days to set it up to my liking. Most settings copied across from my Microsoft account which was nice. If you want to see more reasons for me getting the PC then look at the next communication.
I’m happy again, but I don’t have enough time to do all the things I want to. Too many projects.
Long Wait
tldr: computer broke, still waiting for replacement.
I wrote a while back about my new computer. OK, I just looked for the communication so I could link to it and apparently I didn’t write about it. Curious. Here’s a picture of the new screen behind my little old tablet PC [the old fashioned type of tablet PC before they all went Windows 8 and mobile]. I blame Rich for the screen size because his computer was this size when I visited him in Washington DC. As he now lives in Texas I guess he’s got a larger screen.
I bought an ASUS M51BC from PC World with an Acer screen. In terms of screens “you can’t get big enough” is a good rule of thumb, thanks to Trusmoov.
The software on the new PC, Windows 8.1, along with the touch screen made it extremely useful and easy to use for the kids. Photos look great and I was going to start the DBL-MF project.
Early on using the computer I went to get a coffee and when I returned the computer had turned off. I thought it might be an errant setting. However, it turned itself off a number of times over the next few weeks. The fan would run up to maximum speed and then the power would cut.
I got in touch with ASUS and they said they would fix it. The PC got sent to Scotland to be fixed. This seemed reasonably efficient. I later got an email saying they were waiting for a new motherboard. No problem. I could use the tiny laptop that I own. Then the new motherboard failed the tests. It would be longer still to get the PC back. I had been waiting four weeks.
I got in touch with PC World and they agreed to replace my PC. So they got in touch with the repair people, agreed to get the PC delivered to them and then ordered a new replacement PC. I am currently waiting. I have been waiting about a week for the new PC to be delivered to store.
I just want a computer, that works, with my big screen so I can start doing plenty of time wasting stuff again. Like writing these communications.
I’ll update you when I get back on a PC tower rather than use my reliable little 7 year old tablet PC, which still works fine.
Time
I’ve been feeling that I don’t have time to do all the things I want to. I’ve been adding to the “things what I do” list and unfortunately I don’t see a lengthening of the day to allow me to do these things. I think this means that I have to give up or lower my priorities of “things to do”.
Not enough time to get stuff done.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 21, 2014
Things what I have done regularly:
- Running
- Rowing [erg]
- Listening to podcasts
- Listening to music
- Playing Gran Tursimo
- Watching American Football
- Watching Babylon 5
- Write stuff on this website
- Go to the cinema regularly
New things what I do:
- Write music
- Play on the PC
- Play on the PS4 more
- Watch Hawaii Five-O
- Listen to more podcasts
- Learn new music
- CCF
I’m not too happy. All of these new things have to be prioritised. I could do with about an extra 4 hours a day to myself. I have to work and look after my family so once that’s all done I get little time to do all the things I want to. I don’t even consider myself to be a busy person. How do you get to do things if you are VERY busy? I don’t get it.
Now, I guess I am lucky that I do get time to do these things and I should be grateful and I think I am. I get to do things that I like doing, I just have to ensure that I balance my time successfully.
I have also come to the conclusion that I need at least an hour of “brain dead time” each day, preferably once the house is nice and quiet. I can cope with less than an hour if planned and I extend the time another evening. Oddly enough some things which I really enjoy don’t count as part of that hour. Gran Turismo is great and I play it a lot [not so much recently] but it doesn’t count as part of the hour, it’s something I have to concentrate on and work at, the rewards are good. Cinema doesn’t count towards the hour but most TV shows do. I guess that means I need an hour of stuff to watch each day, to keep the brain fresh!
Switching The Blue Sky
A short while back I wrote about changing broadband supplier. This is an update to that communication.
It is a few months since the new broadband internet connection started. It appears that my network has settled down tremendously since those early days.
All streaming, file sharing and music systems within the house seem to be working well. Large upload files are no longer causing connection issues.
Bandwidths seem to be approaching 650KB/s which translates to 5.2 Mb/s. This is not bad given my quite rural location and the aging connections within the village and house.
The Wi-Fi provided by the Sky router is pretty good. The signal dips a bit at the extremes of my house (top front room) but otherwise it is fine. The router connects everything that I need to be connected and my initial worries about a lack of “user” options have dissipated. This router and also the free EE one I had before both do a better job of routing that the £100 Netgear router I bought and have since sold on eBay.
Essentially, so far so good.
So what.
Location, Location and a Camera
I spent the day at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and while there an RAF Tornado flew past at high speed. I was fortunate enough to take a few photographs, of which the following is the best. I haven’t cropped it or anything. [the other 5 photos were ok-ish].
My favourite thing about this shot is that you can see the Navigator/Weapons Officer looking at the ground as they fly by.
Progress
This is how I am doing in GT6. It’s been a while since I wrote about it so here it is.
Camera Flaws
I love my new Nikon camera. It takes great photos, is easy to use, has brilliant settings and feels great in my hands. It’s a great bit of kit.
I like my iPhone camera. It’s small, pretty much always on my person and, surprisingly, takes pretty good low light photos.
The problem is that my iPhone camera is getting on a bit and has flaws in every picture it takes. Normally these can’t be seen because there’s plenty of detail in those areas. However, when there is a steady area the flaws show up a lot. Just see this photo of Whitby and spot the problem areas.
I’m not sure if these can be cleaned away or if they are internal. I also can’t be bothered to find out.