So recently the Legend got me a Lego Gran Turismo Car. I wrote about it here. I then had to play Gran Turismo and buy that actual car. Which I did. Here are some scapes photographs I took of this car.
Gran Turismo Stuff
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, and everything looks gorgeous.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These Were A Surprise
Not much more to say than I was travelling my Minecraft world when I came across these beauties.
I was surprised as I hadn’t expected to see things of such amazingness.
The Portal
I have and have not wanted a PlayStation Portal since I saw they were released. There was a period of time that I had a notification from a stock checking site to try and buy one but I was always too late to the party. I nearly managed to order one from Currys but then the order got cancelled as they had run out of stock. So, I gave up on stock checking sites and just thought I’d be ok without one.
So, I had settled myself to not owning a Portal, I can always use remote play on my iPhone if I wanted to even though I really hate using screens as controllers. Then, one day, EE sent me a text message saying they were selling Portals in their shop. Even though I had mentally settled on not owning one, I somehow went through the entire order process and ended up having a Portal delivered to my home.
The above image is a poor photograph because you can’t see the main features of the Portal which would be the controller part of it. But you can see that I am logged into Fortnite. I have found that the Portal works really well on my home network. I haven’t tested it fully on another Wi-Fi network yet, but I am going to do so this weekend. So far it seems a great little device, as long as you have connectivity. If you don’t then it’s just a lump of plastic and electronics.
One of my main methods of connecting to my PS5 will be via my phone’s hotspot. I figured that I pay for quite a bit of data so I might as well start to use the allocation. However, when I first tried to connect to my iPhone the Portal said it couldn’t connect. I tried again and I still got an error message. I spent a little while using Google and I found a number of pages where they said it was not possible as iPhone doesn’t support the particular NATs or whatever. I was somewhat upset at this.
Then, through a random Reddit post I saw that someone had connected to an iPhone using manual settings in the Portal and so I tried that. It worked!!! I now have the best of all worlds. I am a happy chappy.
Portal Gateway
This communication should come after the next one as I have some writing to do about my new toy. I bought a PlayStation Portal and have been using it to play from somewhere that isn’t my lounge. I was quite worried when I tried to connect to a hotspot from my phone because the Portal refused to connect. What would be the point of having a Portal if I can’t connect wherever I get mobile service?
I spent some time googling and there were many pages saying that “nope, it’s an iPhone thing” and also that the wrong type of NAT is supported or something like that. So, I started looking into a wifi device just for the Portal to use when I am not in wifi range.
Then . . . . . today I stumbled onto a Reddit post that listed the manual wifi settings to connect to an iPhone hotspot. I tested it and I am very happy to announce that it worked, so I am now able to connect and play via my iPhone hotspot. I have decided to write the settings here, mainly as a reminder for me in case the Portal resets itself or something. Also, maybe other people will find these settings if they need them.
SSID – whatever your iPhone is called
Password – WPA2, and the password is whatever your iPhone says in the “allow other devices” section.
IP – 172.20.10.10 [the last number you can change from 02 to 15.
Subnet Mask – 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway – 172.20.10.1
DNS – 8.8.8.8
I’d Been Aiming For This
Over the time of playing the recent chapter/season or whatever it’s called of Fortnite I had hoped that the opportunity to jump the train in a vehicle would arise. I had tried before and it didn’t really work. But recently I did manage it and I managed to capture the video of it. I have removed the sound as other people were talking while I did this.
Random Events In Pairs
I’m really not a fan of “loot boxes” in computer games. The latest version of Gran Turismo has a kinda-loot box but at least it’s not one you can use real money to get. The task is to complete just over 26 miles of driving within the game within a day. If you manage that you then get a “random” prize. The prizes go from around 5000 in-game credits to cars and even a million in-game credits [I think]. Anyway, plenty of people moan about the consistency of “winning” the 5000 credits. As a counter argument this is what happened to me on consecutive days:
I guess it’s not all bad.
Project Progress
Nope, this communication isn’t about how I would like the government to make changes to improve peoples’ lives. I almost wish it was but then I don’t think I have the space for all the things I think government should be doing. If you know me then you also know I’m a raging lefty who is all for social progress, self determination and people paying taxes. This communication is about Minecraft and the current project.
The above picture shows the very first steps of this project. I think you can see a staircase and that’s about it. This was in September and I’ve been messing around since then. Here is what the mountain looks like at the moment:
A lot of the work that has gone on is actually hidden from view and so I’m hoping I might get a short video together to show the stupid amount of mining I have actually completed. At the top of the picture is a mob-spawner that’s working quite well. Towards the bottom of the picture there is a slice of mountain that I have cut out and I am planning to cut out more slices. I’m not sure what it is going to look like but I’m having fun. I am also thinking of surrounding each slice with some precious blocks to make them stand out.
Yesterday I spent time trying to find an End Portal and although I’ve found a stronghold I haven’t yet managed to locate the portal inside that and I’ve found that quite frustrating. I guess I need to learn about stongholds and their generation. Anyway, the Minecraft world is far nicer that the actual real world, even with mobs that try and kill you.