efaardvark

Pulled down an old favorite from the bookshelf; Mayflies, by Kevin O'Donnell Jr. Kind of a cross between Brian Aldiss's Starship and Anne McCaffrey 's The Ship Who Sang. The protagonist literally loses his head (or would that be body?) during an earthquake and by a quirk of circumstance the brain is kept alive. Supposedly brain-dead, it is reprogrammed as the core of the computer controlling a generation ship. Only he's not dead, just traumatized and catatonic. As his human mind fights to regain consciousness he accidentally knocks out the ship's drive a few months after launch, and the programmed part is unable to recover due to its rigid programming that didn't take such a failure mode into consideration. "Flames dance in a circle of lightning. The flames perceive the lightning not. The lightning scoffs at the notion of flame." Thanks to a politicized selection process the passengers on the ship are .. not the Earth's best-or-brightest, and now instead of a 15 year trip they have a few thousand years to kill. Struggle within to overcome and/or integrate the two minds (not to mention a god complex), cultural conflict over several generations among the passengers, and of course an alien encounter or two along the way make this a fun and interesting read.

No. Next question? But seriously, no. I’ve read books all my life too. There’s always a new story, or at least a different take on an old one. The classics are still (re)readable. Favorites are still favorites. New favorites get added to the list occasionally. I’m 56. I’ve been watching anime since before Star Blazers and Speed Racer. (The originals.) If it hasn’t happened by now then I kind of doubt I’ll ever reach the end of anime. Or books.

I FINALLY got a chance to play some more KSP for a couple hours today! I'm playing a "hard" career game but I made excellent progress. The contract gods were ultra nice to me and I was able to get two separate contracts to put up 2 "different" science bases, one in orbit around Kerbin and one around the Mün. The common requirements for both were that it had to be a new design built after the contract is accepted, had to have an antenna and a science lab, had to be capable of generating power, and had to reach its specified orbit and hold it for 10 seconds. One of the contracts required the science lab be staffed with two scientists and able to carry 11 kerbals total. The other just required berths for 7 kerbals. Both contracts came with $100k+ advances each and another $150k upon completion. I took both contracts, used most of the advance and some science I'd had sitting on the books to unlock and buy some heavy-duty engines, then built a giant science station with a "little" extra mobility. Put Jeb as pilot, Bill as engineer, Bob as one scientist, and "Minidou" - some wet-behind-the-ears grad student I grabbed off the street - as the second scientist. Put it up in Kerbin orbit for a few orbits to gather some science for the science bay to grind on. This satisfied the "10 seconds in orbit" part and finished that contract so I used the "extra" mobility (and half the fuel) to raise the orbit all the way to the Mün and do the same thing there, satisfying -that- contract as well. Yay! With the parts for the launcher for the science lab costing over $200k, total loss for the two contracts was nearly $100k even after completion bonus. That's net after all the R&D paid for too. The science part of the R&D I also had to spend out-of-pocket. Wait! Why is this good? (I hear you ask.) Well, the way science works in KSP is by visiting different moons/planets and performing experiments in orbit or on the surface in the various biomes you collect science points. You can get about half the potential science from any given experiment by transmitting the results back via radio but if you can retrieve the experimental hardware itself back to Kerbin then you can get full science points. Science returned to the R&D lab on (the home planet) Kerbin can be used to unlock better-quality equipment, or open up new areas of gameplay (such as off-planet mining). More science therefore means you can buy better parts to build with, easier-to-control vehicles, longer range, more re-usability, better profits on future contracts, etc, etc. Furthermore, if you have a Kerbal scientist who can collect the experimental results and a mobile science lab for him to work in then you can instead take the experimental data and research it in the lab. This takes a loooooong time and it is a lot harder to get a big, heavy science lab (plus the batteries, fuel, solar panels, etc. to support it) up and going on an orbital station than it is to just send a probe with an antenna after some science, but it ultimately nets up to 5x the science points, which can then be transmitted to Kerbin via radio and used as above for R&D. Naturally I included all the scientific gear I've unlocked to date on the orbital science lab, not just what was required by the contracts. So long term the big win here is having the two contracts pay most of the cost to put up that science lab, with all the science-collecting gear, and a hefty enough propulsion system to be able to move itself to another location when all the science in one location has been collected. As of KSP v1.11 I can even add new parts (such as new science instruments) to the station as I unlock them in the tech tree. This is an investment that is going to pay off big-time later on. In fact, right away it is starting to pay back the science I've invested. I'd previously landed a probe on the Mün that had some surface science left on it after transmitting what I could. I'd done well enough landing the probe initially that it still had enough dV to get to orbit (though not enough to get all the way back to Kerbin unfortunately) so I had it take off and rendezvous with the science station. The engineer slapped a docking port on the probe and refuelled it while the scientists collected the experimental data and reset the science gear. The science was added to the science lab. (Work for the grad student. ) So now the refurbished probe has enough dV to make at least 2 more landings, collecting and transmitting more science at each stop. If the opportunity presents itself the lander might even bring back some of that surface science to the orbital lab. Refurbishing and refuelling the existing probe in Münar orbit is probably saving me the cost of sending two or three new probes from the surface of Kerbin. Even if I can't get more surface science via the probe, currently the science station is in a polar orbit collecting all the science it can without itself being able to land on the Mün. There's still enough extra fuel in the station to eventually break orbit and head to Minmus, Kerbin's second moon as well. There's another probe on Minmus that's in a similar situation to the one on the Mün so that's even more surface science, plus whatever the lab can collect from orbit. The station won't have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin if I take it to Minmus but the plan is by the time it runs out of fuel and gets stuck in orbit there will be enough science data in the lab to keep it busy until I can unlock some of the mining parts. Then I can get a refinery set up and can refuel it. I had to launch the station with some empty tankage due to mass budget but with full tanks this science station will even be able to get to Duna. Thinking ahead am I. If I can get the station to Duna then I've all but won the game. I probably spent about 400 science to unlock the parts for the science lab, but I've already put enough data in the lab to eventually get back at least 3500. All the science I've already obtained from Kerbin and the Mün plus what I'll be able to get from orbiting Minmus and Duna is enough to unlock almost the entire tech-tree if run through a science lab. A couple odd asteroid return and outer-planet surface-science contracts (easy with high-tech parts) and that ought to make the whole tree available. With all the high-tech parts unlocked I can go anywhere and do anything to satisfy any contract, even the "Omega Mission".. the ultimate contract to land a single vessel on 16 celestial bodies that's considered the end of KSP. (Well, in the same way that fighting the Ender Dragon is the "end" of minecraft. KSP is a sandbox so it never really ends.) New science lab with refurbished probe still docked.....

Noticed this on youtube's "recommended" panel & took a trip down memory lane. (I think I watched the first several hundred of these all those years ago.) Apparently the guy's still going strong now over 10 years later. Still hasn't made it to the Far Lands either.

I seem to be on an Ayreon kick tonight.. (I'm still a sucker for a themed album, especially with a good bass.)

Got a new pair of wireless headphones last week for when I play KSP. (Some people tell me that exploding rocket noises in the middle of the night keep them awake. Whatev.) I'm liking them. Not only are they much more comfortable and less plastic-y than the old logitech "gaming" headphones they're replacing, they're visually more appealing as well. The Logitech pair had a prominent and glowing "G" that you could not turn off without using the (Windows, naturally) configuration app. These new ones have a barely-visible LED on the power switch and that's it. I hate the RGB-everything fad that's taken over computing recently. Reminds me of the "toilet seat" era of Apple Macs.. no performance benefit, more expensive, and looks like crap. But I like these headphones.

Dragon ships are sailing on....

Any Shakugan no Shana fans in the audience?

I do prefer sci-fi but steampunk is close enough. It's all good. Anyway, a little zombie now and then is relished by the wisest men*. What's to resolve in a zombie movie? <never mind.. No spoilers!> (*with apologies to Dahl. )

Just rediscovered Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress in my crunchy queue. I'd started (1st 2 eps) it a while back and I'd been meaning to go back but I kept forgetting it as it got pushed down in my queue. Glad I rediscovered it. This time I'm gonna make sure I finish it before I get distracted again. Might be a long night.

Not quite The Expanse but good practice for converting all those other dwarf planets in the outer solar system into habitats. If the field of such bodies extends out into the Oort cloud as well then we have a LOT of habitat-building to do. https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487

My SIL is trying to run cyberpunk 2077 on an old 4GB RX460 gfx card. Needless to say it isn't working out well so I did a bit of GPU shopping for her on my lunch hour. OMG these things are expensive! I/we can't afford a gfx that costs more than the rest of the computer. I mean, some of us out here are still working on making our first $million after all! Anyway, looks like best bang-for-buck is probably the 3060ti, but good luck finding one in stock anywhere. And if you do it'll still cost well over $400. AMD's 5700xt also looks interesting. Less performance but still respectable, and cheaper as well. Might even be slightly better in the benchmark/$ metric than the 3060, especially since she already has an AMD processor that (I think.. have to check) is recent enough to enable the ~10% speed boost. Again, good luck actually finding one in stock though. Even the years-old RX580s and gtx 1060s are over $300. The 1070s are over $500! I have a trusty old (8GB) RX480 that I thought I'd upgrade too if I could find something good for a decent price. Looks like I'll be keeping it for a while longer. I wish I could sell it. Currently even my old card is selling on ebay for about $100 MORE than what I paid for it all those years ago.

Completed my first "successful" Mün landing of the new year! (Jeb looks happy now, but just wait until he discovers all the snacks were in the cargo hold.)

Had to work today but tonight I be like...

That can definitely be a problem. There's a mod for my fav Kerbal Space Program called "MechJeb". It basically flies your spacecraft for you and there's endless "debate" in KSP forums about whether it saves or destroys the game. I don't use MechJeb but there are some that I won't play without. One of my long-standing must-haves is something called Kerbal Attachment System that allows you to build and repair minor stuff outside of the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building). The most recent version of the game included that feature in stock. Of course I think that's extremely cool, but it does change the game play somewhat. I haven't seen anyone yet go so far as to say it destroys the game but there's low-volume grumbles from some of the forum denizens. Personally I don't really care what other people do to their own game. I only care when people use outright "cheat" mods that let them do things like get all the arms/ammo/armor or see through or move through buildings in multiplayer arena-style games because that affects the game for other people.