Elite: Dangerous stats on WordPress blog posts

One of the things that you may have noticed recently on the Elite: Dangerous posts on this site is the little statistics panels at the bottom of posts – this post is about those:

They are generated by a custom extension to the WordPress theme that I’m currently using, backed by a MySQL database. The database schema I’m using can be found here for those interested.
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Sagittarius A* – 18th Dec 3302 (Day 14)

After a minor incident where I decided to fly into a planet, today hasn’t been particularly exciting.

The only news of note to report is that I appear to have overtaken CMDR Braxton Doyle, as at the current time, the CMDR hasn’t plotted Waypoint 7 yet, so I’ve taken the initiative and plotted that now too. Whether or not he’ll follow me to my first via, I don’t know.

Sagittarius A* – 14th Dec 3302 (Day 12)

Again, not as exciting a day as yesterday, albeit a really long session given the amount of exploration data I’m collecting on this trip. :(

So much so, I forgot that I needed to scoop fuel…. yeah, I know, I’m an idiot. Luckily I had a choice of stars to scoop from, and managed to scoop from the primary star, a class A.

My first “true” binary system for quite a while also showed up.

Alas, I’ve reached Waypoint 5, and also added the Great Annihilator system to my list of places to visit while I’m in the vicinity of Sagittarius A* – I might as well take a look while I’m there!

Sagittarius A* – 13th Dec 3302 (Day 11)

Not a hugely exciting day, after the excitement of the interesting discoveries of yesterday.

I did find this stunning Earth-like world though:

… and this complex system…

and this beautiful star…

My ship appears to have been plagued with technical issues as well, ranging from multiple connection loss incidents between my cockpit and Curiosity’s computer network, causing flight to be challenging. I’m going to have to take the ship in for a service with an engineer when I get back to the bubble I think.

I heard what I assume are Thargoids again this evening… I must be going insane…

Anyway, I’ve heard about the Six Rings system at Myriesly RY-S e3-5414, so I’m going to add that to my list of places to check out along the way. I’ve no idea where I’m going to need to fit it in amongst my planned waypoints though…

Sagittarius A* – 12th Dec 3302 (Day 10)

I’ve spent a couple of weeks cooped up in my ship considering the journey ahead of me.

Space madness is real.

Of course, it didn’t help that I spent a little while away from the cockpit attempting to make some interesting clothing with some spare panel display LEDs that I found kicking around – which I must write up a post about at some point soon. That and getting to ingrossed in that pesky game I found on the ship’s computer, which appears to let you simulate a desk job in an office. I must delete that, it’s taking up valuable storage space that I could use for exploration data.

Huh, detailed surface scanners work through a star… interesting

Water based life…. on a gas giant… with an 80% hydrogen atmosphere…

Not only do brown dwarfs appear to pretend to be planets, apparently that class L hiding in the middle wants to as well…

Around Kyloarph JN-S d4-6126, I also heard a strange sound when I was in supercruise, which can only be described as Thargoids.

At least, either Thargoids or space madness…

And it must be space madness, because no being in their right mind would put seven stars in one system…

…although this is a very pretty blue star…

Must be space madness.

There’s no other explanation.

Alas, I must stop for the night, for I grow weary – not that much sleep is possible due to the brightness of the skies. I’m going to have to get a sleep mask or something when I get closer to the galactic core.

I’ve parked up in a system which no less than three class B stars, just for the sheer beauty aspect. It’s a shame they’re not really close together, or it’d make an amazing photo opportunity. Only 16 jumps to go until the next waypoint though!

Sagittarius A* – 20th Nov 3302 (Day 8)

Not much progress again today, other than a lot of driving around a planet which was impressively closed to a nearby planet, and the star.

I also managed to gain stocks of arsenic, which help pad out my materials bay somewhat, giving me another ingredient of premium jumponium.

I also spent long enough on the planet to witness a sunset, which was quite nice, but I called it a night soon after, and headed onwards to Waypoint 2.

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Sagittarius A* – 17th Nov 3302 (Day 7)

That’s me under 2k jumps to go!

I spent a long time today roaming Kyloall AE-B D3297 1 this evening, finding no less than two new elements, and having a lot of fun with how the SRV just sticks to the ground on the high-gravity planet.

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:O Tungsten!

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:O Technetium!

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I love this new material discovered animation. I can’t have that many left to discover now…

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Some of the valleys on this quite mountainous bit of planet are impressively steep. You can’t see it that well in this screenshot though

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Some of the resources though were in really awkward places to get to, stressing the SRV engines to the point momentum was the only option in some cases

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And the really hard ones to get to had the most useless materials there.

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I even had to take a run at this hill to get back up to my ship. Poor SRV…

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One more centimetre and it’d be over the edge…

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The sensor sweep gives an idea of the valleys here….

Sagittarius A* – 16th Nov 3302 (Day 6)

Another day in paradise, away from the hustle and bustle of Colonia!

Who am I kidding, it’s the only thing keeping me from SPACE MADNESS.

I started the session by watching CMDR Felix Macedonica‘s Twitch stream of his epic rescue by CMDR Chiggy Vonrictofen, in which Chiggy travelled from the Zunou sector to Jaques for a refit, then out to (almost) Beagle Point where Felix was stranded – a truly stunning rescue.

After that, I didn’t have quite as much time remaining as I’d hoped for to allow me to make more significant progress, hampered further by a few interesting planets.

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Interesting HMC world, with a “water-rich” atmosphere. This is my new favourite way to describe the Scottish skies…

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8% Vanadium on this planet, though you’d never have known it

By this point, you may be wondering where the “ran out of SRV fuel” incident came from. Well, I got distracted by something else while sat in my SRV, forgot to turn off systems to conserve fuel, and was suddenly confronted with a “Shields Offline!” message. What could possibly have killed my shields this far into deep space? Oh, yeah. Fuel.

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That’s small for a ringed planet…



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