The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Mesic

NO! That Is Not A Typo

It is, in fact, an hilarious bi-lingual pun, which any Slovenian could tell you: it means 'moist' when used of ecology.  Today we will be venturing into the mountains of Croatia, in the company of a Slovene, in one of the recounting vlogs that we occasionally feature on the blog.  Hill and mountain climbing as a form of mental re-set, absent the woes and wayfulness of our wicked world.  Art!

     The blog has covered Andraz a couple of times in the past.  He's built on the lighter side, but makes up for that by being made of steel cable and whipcord, and with an accompanying toughness of mind.  The mission in the mountains this time was to scale Mount Velebit, and if Art will put down his bowl of coal-

     This is not a foothill.  Just so we're clear.

     Andraz's plan was to drive to the farthest car park spot and hike onwards from there, all of which was carried out in bright sunlight.  Art!

     This is his 'Duster', which manufacturer ought to be giving him an honourarium when we see how things end up next day.  Note the complete absence of other people, which is not surprising given this is off the beaten track's off the beaten track.  Next he kits up and begins hiking.  Art!

 
     How does he know?  Because as an experienced hiker and mountaineer, he keeps track of what the weather forecasts are saying, despite how bright and sunny it is during daytime.  Spelunkers are similarly cautious.  On with the hike!   In passing he informs that he's only going to be ascending 500 metres vertically, since he chose to come the 'lazy route' from landward, also dropping that by the time he makes that comment he's crossed 7 kilometres of terrain.  Art!

     Yes, he's making this hike in the second half of March.  An aptly-named month for his hobby.  Which he take seriously enough to carry boar-repellent spray, as the wild boar and bear are occasional hazards in this mountain country, probably a sentence you never expected to hear today.

     By the time Ol' Andy reaches the shelter, he informs that the wind has changed and not in a good way.  Art!

Home from home

     I hope you were paying attention to the nice dry ground and mostly blue skies, with a bit of cumulus beginning to show.  We are treated to the inside of the shelter, which is not as basic as you might fear.  Art!

     At extreme port on the windowsill is the Visitor's Book, which Andraz never bothers to open or sign on camera.  Smack in front of him is the most important bit of kit in the entire shelter: a wood-burning stove.  To his disgust the previous visitors had left ashy remnants of onion and apple in the stove, which needed to be swept out.  On the shelf at rear are emergency food supplies, ready if anyone arrives in a real disaster without provisions; our hero has brought his own food, being wise in the ways of the wayfaring world.  Art!

Wood for the wood god

     Lest ye be unaware, that's not a lot of lumber to burn if the weather deteriorates, so Ol' Andy takes advantage of dryness and daylight to go collect wood and then saw it up into lengths that will fit into the stove, which takes an age.  Art!

Nearly sunset

     By the time he's completed this chore, the sun has set completely, so of course he chooses to go RUNNING ACROSS THE MOUNTAIN RIDGES.  Like you do.  Art!

     Port shows him running - not walking, not jogging, running - across the ridgeline, and starboard shows how appallingly narrow and uneven the ridge is.  There were no accidents or you'd not be getting this report.

     Then it was back to the bivouac, a hot cooked meal and bed.  Deep-fried cheese, jacket potatoes and roast sweet potato, if you must know.

     Andraz's morning alarm was an emergency weather notification to the sound of a siren, which rolled him out of his sleeping bag quick smart.  Art!

The Visitor's Book and toilet roll

     I shall gloss over his trip to the outdoor toilet, apart from showing how bad the weather was outside.  Art!

     Imagine if he'd blithely gone hiking in only a t-shirt and shorts based on yesterday's weather.  O how foolish he'd feel! as well as hypothermic.

     One cleaning later - good housekeeping for the next visitors always goes down well, pilgrims - Ol' Andy sets off for his Duster, fearing it may be snowed in.  He did bring a shovel, just in case.  Art!

    Snow a PROUD IMPERIAL FOOT deep, from only a single night's precipitation.  Andraz also bemoans that it's wet snow - see our title - which makes it harder going for his car, when he eventually and gratefully gets there.  Of course - obviously! - it's completely covered in, and surrounded by, snow, that needs removing before any attempt at getting onto the main road can be made.  Art!

The Slovenian Snow-Shifting Shuffle

     Putting his faith in the car - kind of 'Truster your Duster' he guns it to the main road without putting on chains, and - success!

     Conrad feels it must be refreshing to be so completely off the grid and beaten track, which feeling he is completely happy to leave to Andraz.
     CAUTION!  As Ol' Andy points out, this video and his exploits are for entertainment only.  Heaven forfend any of you become inspired to go mountaineering after seeing these stills.

     Good lord aloft, that took up far more of the Word Count than I anticipated.  More pictures needed.  

Screenshocked

Conrad has taken so many photographs of 'The Great War' that I've created a special folder for them, leading me to examine a file folder hitherto untouched: 'Screenshots'.  Art!

As it stands today

     It seems every time I do a Snip, it created a Screenshot in this folder, until there were 8,000 of them, taking up 2 gigabytes over the past 3 years.  So, Delete it was!  Art?

     Proof I was up to something.

Train Strain

Your Humble Scribe is typing this blog up on Thursday, my second day of unpaid leave in two weeks.  Last Thursday is when I swanned off to York and the York Army Museum.

     How lucky that I didn't choose to travel away to another regimental museum today, for - Art!

     To quote the TFGM website: "Due to a power failure at the Manchester Rail Operating Centre (ROC), there is major disruption on the rail network across Greater Manchester, the north west of England and the Midlands.

Delays and cancellations are expected on all operator routes across Greater Manchester until the end of today (Thursday 6th August). Rail operators have issued a do not travel notice with travel advice and the latest information National Rail website."

     Tut tut.  The system went down at 06:53 for five hours.  One would expect such a critical node to have an emergency back-up or disaster recovery plan in place.  Plainly not if it took 5 hours to resolve.

     Actually, looking a bit closer, it seems the Disaster Recovery Plan was 'tell everyone to catch the bus'.  Art!

Not always possible

I WARNED YOU!

Not for any altruistic reasons, merely that if Skynet takes over the world, it makes things much harder for me to do similarly.  Also, you can count on me being far more merciful a bit more merciful perhaps more merciful than an AI system.  Art!

     These, I hasten to add, are merely the instances we know of.  What else lurks, unrevealed, in the background, waiting to become the rough beast whose time has come?

Great Minds And All That

I made a note that the Avarasala character, at the end of 'Cibola Burn*', referred to the extinct superculture that Hom. Sap. was dogging the footsteps of, as 'boojums'.  Art!

     Quite apt, if inverted, as we never get a description of the Protomolecule Engineers, neither as a living entity or replicated in media, so they might as well be invisible.  Not even their doorways give away their appearance**.

*Volume 4 of 'The Expanse' novels

**  'Forbidden Planet' reference for you there

Aspire To The Child Of Fire

I Am Going To Be Going All-Out With A Previous Theme

CAUTION! ANOTHER SINGLE-SUBJECT BLOG

We have, for the past few weeks, been putting up illustrations from the Youtube channel 'Sci-Fi Art' as produced by the artist Angus McKie.  He belongs to a particular sci-fi 'school' that includes the likes of Chris Foss and Anthony Roberts, who also go in for verrrry detailed renderings of futuristic subjects.  You may not be aware, as Conrad wasn't, that 'McKie' means 'Son Of Fire' and in the spirit of that here's an illo featuring fire.  Laser fire, maybe, not oily flames, but still fire.  

     Minor apologies for including the scroll bar, Your Humble Scribe needed to include a few puny humans for scale, whom are bugging out in well justified fear.  

     Conrad is aware that this is a cover picture, and <thinks verrrry hard> it might be 'Brontomek!' by Michael Coney.  Allow me to dig a little - Art!

To show our appreciation of this fruitful theme, allow me to put up the title thumbnail from Youtube.  Art!

     We've covered this illo as cover art, so I'm not going to detail any more about it.  Tee hee!  Now for the rest of the remaining illos on the vlog.  Art!

     Old meet new.  In case you were wondering, no, this is not primitive Hom. Sap. greeting an alien probe by threatening to brain it with wooden clubs.  Note the giant fungi off to lower starboard, equally as large as the brutal primitives to port.  We're seeing a human space probe at work. 

     One can only wonder at the mindset of the probe-constructors  here.  The monolith in "2001" did have straight edges, yet it blended in with the background.  Here is what amounts to visually shouting HERE I AM HERE I AM, attracting all sorts of attention.  Unless - it couldn't be an harvesting probe, can it?  Moving swiftly on - Art!

     Conrad has cunningly fitted two separate images into a single one, since I think this might originally have been a wrap-around book cover, but don't quote me on that yet before I dig a tad.

     Nope, there is another single image on teh Interwebz showing the whole image instead of two halves, yet that's it.

     ANYWAY back to the content not the format.  The giant four-wheeled war machine needs a serious sensor net overhaul if it can be ambushed by another war machine as big as a skyscraper.  Seriously.  Also, Art?

    Note the similarity between Four-Wheeled War Machine and Mek-Quake's glazzies.  Homage, influence or just ripped-off?  Art!

     What you might call an 'Ooops' moment, writ large.  Pretty obviously it's an impact between a flying vehicle and a column, and the column bears some responsibility for the collision.  Do you see any warning lights atop the structure?  No.  No you do not.  Also, the large hill in the background  may have spoofed any radar returns.  I also note that the 'flying saucer' is so extremely robust that it has hardly suffered any damage, rather the inverse of normality.  Possibly due to it being a flying island cased in steel, from it's looks.  Laputa updated?  A bit of digging found a reference on FB and the 'Terran Trade Authority' artbooks.  Further to the artwork: "A city-ship slices through one of the TTA's interstellar communication pylons during its mad career across the surface of Terra."

 Art!

     There being an absence of puny humans scurrying about in panic, we have to take size cues from things like the sheer detail present, the haze of distance and the clouds emerging from the enormous hangar.  Your Humble Scribe is pretty certain that this is a book cover - TGHOE?  Let me dig.  Art!

One wonders if Angus was inspired by the Teuton zeppelin hangars of the First Unpleasantness.  Art!

Art!

     Here's Angus doing his best to out-Chriss Foss Chris Foss.  If this wasn't in a folio dedicated to Angus I would have gone for Chris as the artist.  ANYWAY AGAIN there's that whacking big gap at the top of the art that implies it's a cover illustration and my skip-like memory is quivering with vague recall about actually seeing said illo.  Let us deploy shovel and spade.   Aha!  Art?

     One of the benefits of having a midden of a mind.  Art!

     At first glance I thought this whatever-it-is was semi-derelict, yet a closer look reveals that the paint on the big numbers is peeling a little, and with another spacecraft/missile/STOL-jet emerging, it cannot be all that derelict.  Nor does the big missile hanging from a gantry look especially rusty or dusty.  Treat with caution.  Art!

Miami Spaceport

     I know it looks as if Sydney Opera House and a wedding cake had a baby, and you can see the antipodean artefact's influence here, although the end result is all Angus.  There are other iterations of 'Miami Spaceport' as well.  Art!

Anne, sometimes unkindly known as the 'Barbara Cartland of sci-fi'

     Art!

     This is more like it!  Proper sci-fi art, none of that milquetoast architecture nonsense.  Spaceships a-bristling with ariels and antennae and mysterious plaques (heat conductors?).  Angus has been imaginative enough to vary the external arrays on each ship so they are subtly different.  Art!

     A much grimmer picture than usual, with the sole visible casualty having been unsuccessful in reaching their medical kit before dying.  You can see the long-derelict spaceship they fled from, needing a bit of TLC to get back in running order again.  The fact that there's a palm tree waving bravely is a tad confusing, implying that we're looking at Planet Earth.  Except that the cadaver has their helmet sealed, which would hint that they don't breathe your our atmosphere.  Yet their skeleton seems very Hom. Sap.  Colour Conrad confused.  Or - am I overthinking this again?

Once again I think this is a cover picture.  Delving begins!  Art?

   Told you so <preens>.  There is also a video that was 'inspired' by Ol' Ang's artwork.  Art!

     Let me check dates.  Aha.  The Harrison/Aldiss work came out in 1976 and 'Def-Con' was released in 1985, so we know who's ripping off whom.  Or, rather, 'being inspired' by it, as Conrad did a check on their legal background and neither sued the other.  Probably because Sphere (the publisher) didn't want to generate free publicity for New World Pictures, the studio responsible, and whom ran on a shoestring budget.  Given that the film's budget was only $800,000 they couldn't even remotely replicate the poster, which is a bit of a cheat i

     Ooops, got a bit off-topic.  Art!

     Hmmmm.  Very stark, all whites and greys and black.  What we have here seems to be a spaceship about to deliberately plunge into a black hole, and once again the picture manifests a blank space at top, handy for a novel title.  I wonder, I wonder - 

     Nope, not an edition of 'The Forever War', where Joe Haldeman first elaborated the idea of travel across intergalactic distances via black holes.  O well I did dig.  Art!

     Say hello to a comic strip that Angus did, which was published in 'Heavy Metal' during 1978 and 1979, and that served as inspiration for a section of the 'Heavy Metal' film.  I've seen the film, which is a real mish-mash of the good and the bad, and read several episodes of SBASD when I was collecting HM.  It was difficult to make sense of when read out of sequence, but other people say that reading the complete thing from start to finish was just as difficult.  Art!

     The SBASD section featured Gloria, one of those under-dressed ladies whom has trouble keeping her clothes on, which is as far as we go here.  SFW, that's us.

     Righto, that's the end of that particular video from 'Sci-Fi Art' which I can now remove from Watch Later.  Don't worry, it's been replaced by - Art!

     I bet you can hardly wait.

A Different Intro

Let's See If We Can Avoid The Usual Suspects

Conrad, whom has worked in both the public and private sector, is going to try a different type of Intro, one focussing on business culture, and giving you my insight, having been a corporate employee for these past 13 years.  Which is still less than the 22 years spent in the public sector.  Go me, when do I get a medal?

     What follows is drawn from an item  from my news feed, that I deleted immediately after making notes, so I cannot inform whom they were.  The second strand is from the prestigious 'Forbes' magazine.  Conrad is making the justified assumption that all these <ahem> perks apply to South Canadian employers.  You know, the ones who believe employees are actually indentured slaves.

     You might call the original article 'From Work Perk To Scam-It-Am', which I made up all by myself.  Okay, let the list begin.

UNLIMITED HOLIDAYS: I have to say, this is a new one to me, coming as I do from This Sceptred Isle, where we routinely have 30+ days holiday per year.  Art!

    The real-world consequence of this policy is that employees end up taking less leave, rather counter-intuitively.  Why so?  Well, since there are no boundaries or guidelines for staff, and no use-it-or-lose incentive to take leave, staff tend to keep going in the office rather than bearding their manager about holidays.  Plus, what happens to untaken leave?  If I have leave left in January of the following year, it gets paid out.  Somehow I doubt South Canadian employers would do this.

FREE MEALS: Great, this would appeal to those stricken by cupboard love.  Not a cultural thing in the UK, this 'perk' is widely seen as keeping slaves serfs workers at their desks, if the food gets delivered a la carte., and encouraging them to work later if they aren't hurrying home for tea.  Art!

                                                  

Otherwise, it keeps employees in the office building rather than sloping elsewhere offsite to grab a bite.  Plus, if the food is free, are you really subsidising it with your wages?  There is also a risk that certain employees - Conrad hang your head in shame - would abuse free food and eat so much as to cause a food coma.  Having an employee falling asleep on their keyboard damps productivity, rather.

'FUN' OFFICE ENVIRONMENT: Conrad learned long ago to be wary of employers who seem to exist in a permanent state of 'Party-in-the-office'.  One imagines that 'Fun' is compulsory or else.  Does this Office Of Awesome behaviour conceal poor wages, lack of progression or other ills?  Some employees avoid the Games Room because using it it tallied and assessed in performance reviews as being of an undesirable attitude.  'Forbes' put it well: 'Nobody wants to do business with a frat house'.  Minimum professional standards, people.  

     On the other hand, the pool table on the Sainsbo's canteen floor never lacked for users.  Art!

TEAM-BUILDING RETREATS: Definitely a foreign concept in Perfidious Albion.  What this means in South Canada is an unpaid demand on your personal time, which sounds as if the State Labour Board need to be informed.  One may enjoy working with colleagues, but not for 48 hours non-stop without payment.  In fact by the end of such a torment you might well have grown to hate hate hate them.  Art!

"HATE HATE HATE!"

WELLNESS PROGRAMS: These are frequently promoted to make an employer seem Kind And Caring, when in fact it's only going through the motions, covering up burnout or overwork.  If the approach isn't properly integrated then it won't be anything more than window dressing.  Here in the UK I've seen support offered for an employee who had a nervous breakdown and whom eventually returned to the office.  In fact they were one of the few staff retained after the redundancy program kicked in.  Which is great.  For them.  Art!

'Employee burnout'

FINANCIAL REWARDS: Conrad is rolling two different items into a single one here.  Firstly, companies offering stock options as if they were money in the bank, when in fact they mature verrrrrrrrry slowly.  Having to wait 25 years to get a 1% increase in your bonds is a long-term downer.  The other financial 'reward' is in the form of employee discounts, which one 'Forbes' analyst pointed out are offered by companies to boost their revenue, not to benefit workers, at least in South Canada.  The items discounted tend to be poor value and end up being ignored by employees.  Art!

     Not so in Conrad's corporate experience, especially at the Co-Op towards Christmas, where the in-building shop gave big discounts on alcohol and chocolates, the two staple food groups.  

PAYING FOR PHONE BILLS:  Neither article explains if this is the business paying for a works phone, which is what Conrad would 100% expect.  Or, this may the company paying your personal phone bill, the suckers!

     Except not so quick, Ralphie Glick.  Paying for your personal phone leads to you being expected to be available 24/7 via your mobile.  Congratulations on your giant electronic ball-and-chain!  Art?

     Conrad also cannot understand the South Canadian office drones who take their office mobile home, and, even worse, on holiday - AND ANSWER IT!

     I think that's enough of (primarily) South Canadian manglement.  If you ever go looking for a job and these red flags come up, RUN.

Chugging The Big Empty

I stole that from 'Ace Trucking Co.' from 2000AD, sue me if you like.  Yes we're back to more of Mr. McKie.  Art!

     Yes, even in the 27th century mansplaining is still a thing.  What we're looking at seems to be the fractal artefacts created by a starship going FTL.  Conrad wonders how they arrange traffic lights and double yellow lines in hyperspace.  

In Clement Weather

NO! that is not a typo, it's an hilarious pun I tell you, hilarious, laugh or it's the Remote Nuclear Tormentor for you!

     I refer, of course - obviously! - to 'Clement Molin', the clever French chap who analyses open-source intelligence and charts and maps it, which has been picked up by other Youtube pundits such as 'Jake Broe'.  Jake presented a couple of Clem's charts and graphs about Ruffian versus Kozaky drone production, from which thereby hangs a tale.  Art!

     You can see the Ukrainian drone numbers taking upward flight in Easter 2026, and the Ruffian drone numbers taking a dive at the same time.  The latter is due to the Ruffians finding out the hard way that their Geran (a Shahed clone) drone in it's 'lawnmower' iteration.  Art!

     Here Clem illustrates how many Garans the orcs have been sent into Ukraine over time, with numbers solidifying in 2025.  The blue is the original 'lawnmower' Geran, the bargain bucket version that costs $20,000 per unit; red is the jet turbine model.  One reason the number of Ruffian drones are dropping is that the orcs are discontinuing the lawnmower model, since the Kozaky interception rate is 85% at worst and 95% at best.  It costs no more than $5,000 for a STING interceptor drone, meaning the orcs were losing money hand over fist.  Art!

     The thing is, these jet-powered drones, with their electronic countermeasures and armour, now cost $200,000 per unit.  Hence the numbers are dropping like their earlier brethren.  Typical orcs: the idea about drones is that they are kept cheap and plentiful.  Justin Bronk does not approve.

The Touch Of Death

One of the hilariously unfunny aspects of JD Vance, the South Canadian Vice-Prez, is that the world leaders he shakes hands with all die, literally or metaphorically.  Conrad is pretttty sue Orban The Weretoad would still be rolling in a money trough had not 'Judge Death' gone and stumped for him.

     Hmmmm whom else has that same effect?  Art!

     Rumours of NASCAR tendering for a racetrack on what's left of the White House lawns are not at all true, not in any way, especially since Donnie Dorko insists on closing a deal with a handshake.

     Pause for an Americano black coffee without sugar or sweeteners, the way it ought to be drunk.

To Be Handled Gingerly

I made up another batch of ginger beer, which is currently fermenting away in the Sekrit Layr.  Art!

     Safely ensconced in a stout bag in case a bottle bursts.  The one marked 'X' was only about half full with liquor, so I topped it up to the ullage level and we'll see how weak and feeble it is.  In four weeks.

Finally -

Conrad is now onto Episode 7 of 'The Great War', which deals with 1915.  I've gone over the previous 6 and made copious notes, whoopeee!  Only another 21 episodes to go.  Art!