Format: Aside

Looks like children can fritter a ton of sand from a single sandbox within 5 years.

Possible that the cats help. The jury is still out on that. Nobody wants to touch the evidence 🤡

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SpaceBourne 2 by DBK GamesDBK Games (SpaceBourne 2)
The official website of indie game studio DBK Games, the developer of SpaceBourne series and Mesel.

So this was recommended to me by Patola and while I usually do not buy into an early access game I made an exception. I’ve only seen one hour of the game so far but this promises a lot of fun. It’s still very rough, that I can tell – and often inputs do not register or register double. Nonetheless I felt right at home and after a lot of fiddling with the inputs I was happy enough to give it a spin with my X52 Pro (that was indeed detected just fine after the initial tutorial).

So after learning the basic ship navigation and shooting up some drones during the first quest I got ordered to investigate some asteroids.

There were of course some pirates hanging around and the shoot-out did take more time than I’d like to admit. For some reasons I could not for my life get any target lock so all the shooting had to be done with the good old Mk 1 eyeball without having an idea about reach (or even arcs?) of the weapons. Probably a bug. Or user error. The jury is still out on that.

Next was a surprise. After parking the ship in stealth I was ordered to exit and do a little space walk to clear a hidden platform of hostiles. Space diving was not on the things I expected 🤯

Anyway, after some more shooting, and some more explosions, I was back with the contractor and the reward was for reasons yet unknown a freakin robot head. That kicks off a quest to reassemble that poor thing. For some reasons this unfolded into an epic space battle where two different fractions slugged it out in the middle of an old battlefield with me, the contractor helping with the parts and the robot head in the middle – also somehow attacked by scavengers as a 4th faction. What a chaos!

After surviving this I got recommended to someone else to get the robot assembled again. The person that would be able to do this resides on a station in another system though, which means travelling through a… stargate. Awesome! After filing a flight plan and requesting passage I had to line up my entry and found myself in another system – surrounded by illuminated advertisement of all things, of course.

An in-system jump later I docked at a station and found the contact that would help me with the robot. For a price, of course.

This was where I decided to stop for today. So much stuff happened during the first 60 minutes of this and judging by the in-game menus there is a lot more to come. There are skill trees, load-outs, factions and many systems to explore. Yes, it’s not as beautiful as StarCitizens but it’s perfectly playable already and I’m getting Wing Commander vibes from that and this feels rather good.

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Scribbles to run a X52Pro as two virtual gamepads via moltengamepad

Put this in ~/.config/moltengamepad/gendevices/x52-pro.cfg

[events="superset" vendor="06a3" product="0762" driver="hid-generic"]

# 06a3:0762
# Options file is license as WTFPL http://www.wtfpl.net/
 
name = "x52_pro_controller"
devname = "x52_"
exclusive = "false"
change_permissions = "false"
flatten = "false"
rumble = "false"
split=2
1.device_type = "gamepad"
2.device_type = "gamepad"
 
# btn_east = "cross", "The cross (X) button"
 
# Event mappings
 
# 1.key(288) = "cross", "Primary fire button"
1.btn_trigger = "left_trigger", "Gun Button Step 1"
# 1.key(302) = "right_trigger", "Gun Button Step 2"
1.btn_trigger_happy15 = "bbb", "Gun Button Step 2"
 
1.btn_thumb2 = "a", "A button"
1.btn_top = "b", "B button"
1.btn_top2 = "x", "C button"
1.btn_thumb = "y", "Safety fire button (Fire 2)"
1.btn_pinkie = "guide"
1.btn_base2 = "button_16"
 
1.abs_x = "left_x", "Left stick X axis"
1.abs_y = "left_y", "Left stick Y axis"
1.abs_rz = "right_x", "Right stick X axis (Z axis)"
1.abs_z = "right_y", "Right stick Y axis (Throttle axis)"
1.abs_hat0x = "leftright", "HAT POV up"
1.abs_hat0y = "updown", "HAT POV right"
1.btn_trigger_happy4 = "right_thumb", "POV2 up"
1.btn_trigger_happy5 = "right_shoulder", "POV2 right"
1.btn_trigger_happy6 = "left_thumb", "POV2 down"
1.btn_trigger_happy7 = "left_shoulder", "POV2 left"
 
2.btn_trigger_happy3 = "left_trigger", "Scrollwheel click"
2.btn_dead = "right_trigger", "Mouse button (click)"
# 2.btn_trigger_happy15 = "x", "I button"
 
2.btn_base = "a", "D button"
# 2.btn_base2 = "b", "E button"
 
2.key(719) = "left_shoulder", "Function button"
2.key(722) = "left_thumb", "Function page up"
2.key(723) = "left_thumb", "Function page down"
2.key(726) = "right_shoulder", "MFD select button"
2.key(724) = "right_thumb", "MFD select button up"
2.key(725) = "right_thumb", "MFD select button down"
 
2.abs(004) = "left_x", "Left stick X axis"
2.abs(003) = "left_y", "Left stick Y axis"
2.abs(040) = "right_x", "Mouse X"
2.abs(041) = "right_y", "Mouse Y"
2.btn_trigger_happy8 = "up", "Throttle POV up"
2.btn_trigger_happy9 = "right", "Throttle POV right"
2.btn_trigger_happy10 = "down", "Throttle POV down"
2.btn_trigger_happy11 = "left", "Throttle POV left"
2.btn_trigger_happy17 = "start_stop", "Start/Stop"
2.btn_trigger_happy18 = "back", "Reset"
 
# Aliases
 
# 1.btn_trigger = "primary"
alias primary a
alias secondary b
alias third x
alias fourth y
 
alias start start_stop
alias select back
alias mode guide
 
alias thumbl left_thumb
alias thumbr right_thumb
 
# right shoulder
alias tr right_shoulder
# right trigger
alias tr2 right_trigger
# left shoulder
alias tl left_shoulder
# left trigger
alias tl2 left_trigger

Run this with moltengamepad --num-gamepads 2 --mimic-xpad and press button on the joystick _first_ and on the throttle _second_ so they get assigned in the correct order.

This should result in two gamepads _and_ the X52Pro so even really braindead games that do only support gamepadS should be able to read this at least in any way.

AntiMicroX showing X52 Hotas mapped to two virtual gamepads

If the game does support only one gamepad consider binding joystick _buttons_ to keyboard presses (e.g. with AntiMicroX instead).

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All that balloon talks going on and I can only think about my odyssey on the weekend to find lumpy 10l of Helium.

We usually buy this in an industrial bottle because the one-time bottles you can get for birthday parties are… meh. In costs, litres and waste of the empty can (litre litter).

The 10l bottle is enough for years and several birthday parties and can be refilled.

So I was puzzled when I went for a refill on Saturday just to find out that my usual dealer doesn’t have any. I was told that their dealer holds deliveries back to provide hospitals first at the moment. This is also going on for ~1.5 years by now.

In the end I found another local dealer who had some in stock but to what cost! 10l for ~122 EUR!

I never bothered to check where Helium is coming from but it all makes sense. It’s basically natural gas and it’s coming from the same deposits that are all in bad supply due to various reasons and it’s used a lot as coolant e.g. for medical equipment.

I guess the next birthday parties will see way less balloons 🎈

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Deliver Us The Moon by KeokeN InteractiveKeokeN Interactive (Deliver Us the Moon)
Deliver Us The Moon is a Sci-Fi thriller set in an apocalyptic near future where Earth's natural resources are depleted. In an effort to solve the energy crisis, global powers created the World Space Agency and secured a promising new source of energy on the moon.

Played Deliver Us The Moon on Linux PC. What a ride. Took me 6h 21m to complete and I only left the keyboard twice briefly. The story had me hooked from the very beginning 🤓

Got it on GoG, installed it with Lutris and played it without a hitch or single crash [of the game *cough].

Can recommend. Thrilling, casual puzzles, some sneaking around and very thick atmosphere (without much oxygen at times).

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Geheimnisvolle Welt des Mittelalters by Karolin KüntzelKarolin Küntzel
Wie sah eine Ritterburg von innen aus? Welche Kleidung trugen die Menschen? Mussten die Kinder damals auch zur Schule gehen? Dieses Sachbuch ab 8 Jahren nimmt Kinder mit auf eine aufregende Reise in die spannende Welt des Mittelalters! Atemberaubende Bilder und packende Texte erwecken die geheimnisvolle Epoche wieder zum Leben.
Geheimnisvolle Welt des Mittelalters

Eyed that for a while already and got this yesterday. It’s a children’s book about medieval times with illustrations by @kristinagehrmann@mastodon.art

It’s not like most children’s books and also has chapters about uncomfortable topics, like the plague, and is apparently not full of Holywood bs.

ISBN: 9783817423545

https://stream.jeremycherfas.net/2022/catalytic-converter-theft-is-something-ive-read-about-never-imagined by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (stream.jeremycherfas.net)
Catalytic converter theft is something I’ve read about. Never imagined it would happen to me, but it did. A very rude awakening.

Yikes! Gotta admit, that is catalytic converter theft something I’m very afraid of as BEV driver too. That battery has only “some” screws more – and is also worth a lot more.