Month: October 2014

Posted on

The Judge

I went to the early showing of The Judge today. Actually it was the only showing at Rochester cinema and just happened to be at 10:25. As with other films I have watched at the cinema which can be seen here and here I rated the film on IMDB. See this page for a discussion of my ratings.

So, I liked this film and I rated it an eight accordingly. I don’t often go to see dramas be they courtroom or family. I just don’t like seeing stuff that reminds me of real life. That’s why I go to see science fiction or action movies, I don’t have to reflect upon my own life. This film explored the reunion of a estranged brilliant son and his family and dad after the mother dies. The dad is a judge. Hence the title.

If we ignore the actors and their star attraction I just liked the complex nature of the back history and how the story was weaved together. It doesn’t really matter what happens and the outcome of this film. It’s really about families and what they are, how they work, the tragedies and the loves. There were a few funny moments that lightened the mood but it is not a film I left feeling happy. It made me realise that life’s a bit shit really. The times when you are cradled in your parents’ arms and truly happy and safe are short. The times when you are carefree and crazy are short. The times when you hold your own children close to your heart and feel true love are short. Life is constantly changing and you have to keep up. You have to make the most of every moment and treasure all those little moments you are given. One day, there’ll be no more me, so I should do the best I can while here.

Went a bit heavy there! Look, films are an art form and art is meant to make you emotional and affect your emotions in some way. This film affected my emotions [normally quite easy to do though], but more importantly I loved the story and wasn’t bored. My mind didn’t wander. I just paid attention. This is why I gave the film 8/10. I probably won’t watch this film again, but I did like it.

This was filmed somewhere in the States and it looked like a really nice place to live. If I searched the interweb thingy I could probably find out where. I loved the river, the bridge and the weir and white water. It is somewhere I would like to visit, although there are still many places like that in the UK where I haven’t been. I nice restaurant next to a rushing, rapids section of a river should be easy to find over here. Oh, an we don’t have tornados in the UK.

Posted on

Green Bay

I like American Football. Not sure why, I just do. I’ve a feeling it started young when Channel 4 was a new TV channel in the UK. I was probably about 12 when NFL started being shown on UK TV and it was different and exciting. My dad and I would sit and watch the show now and then. I became a Miami Dolphins fan, not sure why but that is who I chose. They may have been the most famous team at that time.

My allegiances were changed after seeing my first real NFL game at Wembley Stadium. On October 26 2008 I chose to support the New Orleans Saints in their match against the San Diego Chargers. Why? Because it was the Saints’ home game and hurricane Katrina had recently destroyed the city. As a bonus the New Orleans Saints won that game 37 – 32 and I became a full-on Saints supporter. So my teams are: New Orleans Saints and secondly the Miami Dolphins. It’s perfectly OK to have two teams in NFL.

As an aside here are the NFL matches I have seen at Wembley:

  • San Diego Chargers @ New Orleans Saints, 32 – 37, 26 October 2008
  • Denver Broncos @ San Francisco 49ers, 16 – 24, 31 October 2010 [added 18:28 30/10/14]
  • New England Patriots @ St Louis Rams, 45 – 7, 28 October 2012
  • San Francisco @ Jacksonville Jaguars, 42 – 10, 27 October 2013
  • Miami Dolphins @ Oakland Raiders, 38 – 14, 28 September 2014
  • Detroit Lions @ Atlanta Falcons, 22 – 21, 26 October 2014

[I’ve a feeling I’ve seen another match, but I don’t know which one so when I do remember I will place it in the list above] This has been sorted, thanks Rich.

If I was starting again and choosing a team then I would choose the Green Bay Packers. I could, of course, just change my allegiances now and maybe I will. It’s not like my blood runs black and gold. I will let you know how this process goes. At the moment it’s the start of a thought. It’s quite funny that people don’t change their banks or football teams. My association football [soccer] team is Tottenham Hotspur and I guess I could change them if I had good reason or even any bad reason. Who cares?

Here are my reasons for moving allegiances to the Green Bay Packers.

  • They are a non-profit, community owned sports organisation
  • They don’t have cheerleaders

The Packers are the ONLY non-profit community owned professional major league sports team in the USA. This is surely a good thing. The fact that they are, not the fact that they are the only one. It seems ridiculous to me that sports teams are owned by individuals or corporations. From a social and moral point of view the Packers are the team to choose.

Not having cheerleaders is a positive thing. Can you really, and I mean really, justify having women dancing in front of mostly male crowds in between the sports action, as entertainment? It is not justifiable. It demeans women. It enforces pre-existing notions of sexism and misogyny. I would argue the same for Formula 1 and other major motor racing creeds which have “grid girls” or models lining the route to the “room of uncomfortableness” after a race. Is the sport SO dull that it needs women to distract and entertain men? Wise up people. It’s simply sexist and appalling in this day and age.

My train of thought is now about the Packers and to move my support to them. I’m sure they’ll notice. There will be further updates as I make this journey.

Posted on

Elephant – White Stripes

This was the second album by The White Stripes that I owned. I really like the first one I owned and I guess it’ll be written about eventually in this place.

This album is much the same as the other one. I haven’t really played it a great deal in the last ten years but I really do appreciate the barebones sound and writing. I think it shows that every now and then the popular taste in music comes full circle.

One thing I would say is that this is the album with Seven Nation Army blasting off as the first song. It’s a great song with an amazing riff that has been ruined by every sports ground ever since.

Posted on

Electric Ladyland – Jimi Hendrix Experience

Look, I am perfectly aware that this is a classic album. I’m also perfectly aware that it’s hard to criticise things that are considered classic. For instance; I’m not that keen on The Beatles, they don’t really do much for me. I feel much the same way about this album. It’s OK. I can see that it’s considered a classic and I can even see why but it does little for me. I don’t really play it often.

Posted on

Time

I’ve been feeling that I don’t have time to do all the things I want to. I’ve been adding to the “things what I do” list and unfortunately I don’t see a lengthening of the day to allow me to do these things. I think this means that I have to give up or lower my priorities of “things to do”.

Things what I have done regularly:

  • Running
  • Rowing [erg]
  • Listening to podcasts
  • Listening to music
  • Playing Gran Tursimo
  • Watching American Football
  • Watching Babylon 5
  • Write stuff on this website
  • Go to the cinema regularly

New things what I do:

  • Write music
  • Play on the PC
  • Play on the PS4 more
  • Watch Hawaii Five-O
  • Listen to more podcasts
  • Learn new music
  • CCF

I’m not too happy. All of these new things have to be prioritised. I could do with about an extra 4 hours a day to myself. I have to work and look after my family so once that’s all done I get little time to do all the things I want to. I don’t even consider myself to be a busy person. How do you get to do things if you are VERY busy? I don’t get it.

Now, I guess I am lucky that I do get time to do these things and I should be grateful and I think I am. I get to do things that I like doing, I just have to ensure that I balance my time successfully.

I have also come to the conclusion that I need at least an hour of “brain dead time” each day, preferably once the house is nice and quiet. I can cope with less than an hour if planned and I extend the time another evening. Oddly enough some things which I really enjoy don’t count as part of that hour. Gran Turismo is great and I play it a lot [not so much recently]  but it doesn’t count as part of the hour, it’s something I have to concentrate on and work at, the rewards are good. Cinema doesn’t count towards the hour but most TV shows do. I guess that means I need an hour of stuff to watch each day, to keep the brain fresh!

Posted on

Fury

Last night I went to see Fury. It’s a film about a tank crew in the Second World War and their movement through Germany in the last few months of the war. As a film it was OK. I rated it an 8 on IMDB, as ever, see this page concerning my ratings. [check out the bottom of this communication but avoid the spoilers]

So, overall this film was an acceptable piece of Hollywood film-making. I probably will watch it again one day, not because I seek it out, but because it is on TV and I don’t change the channel.

The film seemed realistic enough [although I have never been in a tank, nor war] and I liked the way they tried to portray the cramped conditions inside the tank. This was a bit like Das Boot in that sense. As in all war films there was lots of death and strange behaviour because, let’s face it war is fucking weird.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

I didn’t like that the young boy, whose progress we follow [apart from the first ten minutes] survived. I guess someone had to survive to tell the story. I have no idea as yet if this was based on any real story, I doubt it as it never said so. I don’t like happy endings, I prefer more real endings. When the boy was discovered underneath the tank I am sure an SS member would have shot him there and then. I realise that the SS member was young and that he was in shock too but given their fanaticism he would have alerted the rest of his troop, especially given the amount of dead they had. The Americans had murdered plenty of Germans earlier in the film and I am sure they would have killed the Nazi scum, as the Brad Pitt character already did at the beginning of the film.

I didn’t really understand the breakfast scene in the middle of the film. Or rather I did understand it but it told me nothing new. It showed that Brad Pitt was a caring leader [who knows the bible] as well as being tough, that he had “morals” [he quotes the bible] and that this crew respected him. Problem is that they didn’t do as he told them. They flouted the boundaries he set down much like naughty children. Was this scene purely for the “kid” to have sex? And then to see his love destroyed and killed by a mortar shell? I don’t know. This scene felt most like the French plantation scene in Apocalypse Now! and that was cut from the cinema release. I guess this twenty minutes would have made Fury too short had it been removed. It served nothing. Added nothing. Told me nothing. Pointless.

 

 

 

 

Addendum:

I’ve changed my rating to a 6/10 after writing this review. I clearly didn’t like certain aspects of it.

Posted on

Disaster Area 10 Oct 2014

Shredder

Disaster Area played a couple of songs at the MGS Arena on the 10 October 2014. This should really be a page under the DA section on MyMusic but I am moving those pages to communications to tidy up my menu etc.

Set List:

  • Symphony of Destruction
  • Highway To Hell

Disaster Area is:

  • Shredder Shillito
  • Destroyer Martin
  • Punisher Parish
  • The Anvil Gymer

Here’s some pictures, if I can get a video I’ll embed it on this page too.

A little later in the gig most of Disaster Area joined Iron Maidstonian to play a couple of Maiden songs:

  • The Number Of The Beast
  • 2 Minutes To Midnight
Posted on

Gone Girl

Gone Girl. In all honesty I haven’t decided whether I liked it or not. Last night I rated it as a 6 on IMDB.

Please remember to see my previous explanations of how my IMDB scoring system works.

Was this film a comment on the rabid invasiveness of the media upon private lives? Was this film a comment on sociopaths? Was this film a comment on poor little rich girl who liked a bit of rough to get back at her parents?

POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOLLOW

(I haven’t worked out what I’m going to write yet and although I could come back and edit that header I won’t, mostly what you see is the train of consciousness of me)

Overall, this film was neither of those. I have no interest in reading the book, although I probably wouldn’t have read it before seeing the film. I think we end up coming back to the main crux of the problem. After a while neither of the main characters were likeable. The wife was appalling and the husband annoyed me. To make a film effective you need to create characters that people can empathise with. In this film there is the poor little rich girl with a trust fund who has degrees from Harvard and the writer for a men’s magazine who has a smooth patter approaching someone at a party. They live in a big house in the middle of shit-ville. They have a cat. He owns a bar.

Would this film be made if the main characters were scum bags living in a trailer park? Why doesn’t film (or TV) show us real life with normal characters? Where are the films that represent normality. People who have lost their homes or struggle to make ends meet. People who love and laugh and cry. People who form MOST of our society. People who have friends and family and tragedy but humility? Soap Operas do not count. Look at what happens in soap operas. Look at the tragedies that befall a single person. Look at the terror and strife that happens to all. Where are the happy and comfortable couples? Television and cinema thrives on scandal.

My friend would tell me these films exist but I chose not to see them. I would argue they don’t show them outside of London art-house cinemas. I would also argue that for the majority of the time I see films that are clearly escapism. I see sci-fi and trash action movies. I don’t often see humdrum films. Maybe I should.

Well, there you go. It turns out I didn’t like the film.

Gone Girl was written by a writer about a clever writer who had a mum who wrote children’s books. The husband character was a writer. Say no more.

 

Added extra [06:24]

WTF was up with the Doogie Howser ex boyfriend guy? Who was he? What kind of relationship was it he had with the wife? ANOTHER rich spoilt brat enjoying life. There’s about 5 minutes of him in the film but was he controlling or was the wife? WTF? How? Who? Where? Actually, I’m glad there wasn’t any more of him in the film, it was over two hours long anyway.

Again I arrive at the conclusion that rich people suck. They mostly don’t pay taxes, don’t give a shit about those who work hard and they aren’t likeable. Stop making films about privileged twats.

Right, time for me to calm down and to go and do some work for the day.

Please let me know if you watch this film and actually like any of the main characters. I’ll let you like the police investigation and the sister, these seemed to be the only two main people who had any decent morals, approach to life.

Posted on

Switching The Blue Sky

A short while back I wrote about changing broadband supplier. This is an update to that communication.

It is a few months since the new broadband internet connection started. It appears that my network has settled down tremendously since those early days.

All streaming, file sharing and music systems within the house seem to be working well. Large upload files are no longer causing connection issues.

Bandwidths seem to be approaching 650KB/s which translates to 5.2 Mb/s. This is not bad given my quite rural location and the aging connections within the village and house.

The Wi-Fi provided by the Sky router is pretty good. The signal dips a bit at the extremes of my house (top front room) but otherwise it is fine. The router connects everything that I need to be connected and my initial worries about a lack of “user” options have dissipated. This router and also the free EE one I had before both do a better job of routing that the £100 Netgear router I bought and have since sold on eBay.

Essentially, so far so good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what.

Posted on

Hello Vivo

It happened. Finally. My Up band died again. Out of warranty.

The Up band is a fitness and health tracker, a wearable technology device. Well, it doesn’t track fitness unless you do and it’s not a health tracker unless you do the work, but you know what I mean. You wear it, you look at the data and you either change your lifestyle or you don’t. The flaw in this is that just wearing one won’t improve your health or fitness, you still have to put the effort in. What these devices do is give you the information to help you decide what to do to change.

Up By JawboenIt’s stylish, a little different and worked well, when it worked. I first got one just after my trip to DC in 2013. I’ve written about it here a few times. According to the data I have the total number of steps I moved while wearing the Up band is:

2013 – 2,428,950
2014 – 2,276,268

Total – 4,705,218

I really liked the Up band. But there was a major problem. It stops working after a while. I first got the Up band on 2 April 2013. The first one I had stopped working properly on 8 June 2013. I got a replacement one on 19 June 2013. That new one then died on 10 August 2013. I ordered a replacement, gave that to my niece and bought a brand new one to try and break the cycle! I started tracking again on 30 August 2013. The “new” one decided that kaput was the standard state of working on the 3 February 2014. It was still within warranty and so I got another replacement on 8 March 2014. The 5 October 2014 was the final bell toll.

Over the summer I had investigated the step counting bands out there. I knew that the Up band was going to wander off this mortal realm at some point and although I like it and think it looks good I can’t justify buying another Up band when they don’t last. Much like my iPhone when it works properly it’s lovely, but when it fails it’s very frustrating. Mind you, I’ve never really had an issue with the iPhone, my biggest issue is with the awfulness turd that is iTunes.

These are the pedometers I investigated:

  • Up by Jawbone
  • Samsung Gear Fit
  • Razer Nabu
  • LG Lifeband Touch
  • Garmin Vivofit
  • Jaybird Reign
  • Fitbit Flex
  • Larklife
  • Nike Fuelband
  • MyBasis

A lot of these seem to be “notifiers” as well. They will let you know who or what is calling your phone along with displaying notifications. I don’t want this. If I want to know who or what is happening to my phone I will LOOK AT MY PHONE. I don’t need an extra display on my wrist telling me stuff I don’t want to know. Also, having this feature means that the Bluetooth connection is always on which MUST be a drain on all batteries. I don’t see the point. I don’t use Bluetooth often and when I’m not using it I turn it off. I don’t see the point of having stuff turned on when you don’t use it.

The Fitbit Flex and the Garmin Vivofit seemed to be the best options for what I want. It took a while to decide but I went with the Garmin device. The reasons were as follows:

  • Reputable company known for making portable devices
  • Battery life of 1 year
  • User replaceable batteries
  • Always on display
  • Syncs with MyFitnessPal
  • Heart rate monitor accessory
  • Looks pretty good

According to the reviews that I looked at there were issues with the strap clasp being easily caught on things and the device can fall off easily. There are ways around this and although it’s not ideal the benefits of this device outweighed this by a long way. Although Garmin are new to the “wearable tech” market they have been making “wearable tech” for a long time and are an established company using proven technology. They aren’t a start up or someone jumping on the bandwagon. They aren’t a “sexy” company but I’m not fussed about that.

This is the Vivofit device:
vivofit1 vivofit2

So far I have been impressed and am left happy with my choice (mind you I don’t have any comparative data in that case). I shall update you people in future about my experiences with the Vivofit and how I think it stacks up with my experience with the Up by Jawbone.

Posted on

Other Activities

And, finally, we come to the last section of my immortalisation of my 3822. The Air Training Corps Record of Service. This page does not list everything that should be listed in the “Other Activities” section of the blue book. All I have now is what is recorded on this page. The detail follow. Should you wish to see more of these communications then please search this site.

Other ActivitiesOther Activities

This list does not include the band engagements that I played. There were probably about an average of 10 a year of those. I have, also, not attempted to adjust the list at all. What you see is how it is recorded in the 3822. Because of this some of the dates are in the wrong order and there’s a vague reference to an airshow in June 89. I doubt this was a month long airshow but the details are now lost in time.

I doubt this is the last communication on my Air Cadet journey and there are probably going to be more of my CCF journey. Enjoy!

Posted on

NFL, Baby

A couple of Sundays ago, more accurately on the 28 September 2014 I went to London Town.

While there I met a group of people for an afternoon of sport. We met at MEATliquor just behind Oxford Street and I have to say it was one of the best burger meals I have ever had. The food was lovely.

After that we travelled to Wembley stadium to see an American Football match. It amuses me that in all my time I haven’t seen a soccer match at the home of soccer, just music and NFL.

The teams playing were

Miami Dolphins @ Oakland Raiders

I chose to support the Dolphins, although that wasn’t really a choice. I have “supported” the Dolphins since I was a teenager, I now consider the New Orleans Saints as my first team.

The match was good, although the Dolphins smashed the Raiders. There was plenty of action and I had a good time.

I don’t take my camera to events I want to watch, mainly because I’d end up spending my time looking for a few great photos rather than actually watching the game. So here’s a shot using my mobile phone and all the restrictions that come with that.

IMG_7534.JPG

Def Leppard played before the game which was interesting, although I couldn’t see them as the stage faced the other way. Some dude sang the USA National Anthem and a female opera singer sang the UK National Anthem. See my communication here about that!

I was meant to see Def Leppard in 1988. A friend and I had bought tickets to see them at the Royal Albert Hall in the round in London. It would have been a great gig to see and it would have been my first. However, I was offered a place on the ATC Cyprus camp and so went to that instead. So, 26 years later and I get the chance to see Def Leppard, except I couldn’t as the back of the stage blocked my view. I have placed them back on the list of bands I haven’t seen!

Posted on

Glider Flying Log

It’s been a while, but you could catch up on all these in a single session by searching Fooyah.net for a list of 3822 communications! What follows is a list of the gliding experiences I had as an Air Cadet a long time ago. These were my formative years and this community influenced me a lot, enough to still get involved.

As a Squadron we would go to RAF Wethersfield in Essex and go gliding with 614 VGS a squadron of volunteer pilots.

Here follows my log:

AEG

As you can see the 21 July 1990 was a bumper day for gliding. Most flights tended to be a short hop as the glider is winched up to about 1000ft and then does a single circuit as it returns to land. On the 21st it was a sunny day and there were plenty of thermals. I can remember parts of my 35 minute flight, I almost got bored, which is a terrible thing to say about flying!! I could see the other gliders in the air at the time and had a great view of Wethersfield.

I also remember that Lisa was having a flight and coming around to land when her glider traded altitude for velocity and sped up greatly while heading towards the ground, from my view the glider even dropped below the tree line and I was slightly worried but a couple of seconds later the glider popped up from below the tree line and landed successfully.

I always felt that gliding was a poor cousin to powered flying but I think I would appreciate its beauty a little more now. Don’t get me wrong, any chance to go flying and experience these things was great, but given the choice, I’d go powered flying first.

Posted on

Location, Location and a Camera

I spent the day at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire and while there an RAF Tornado flew past at high speed. I was fortunate enough to take a few photographs, of which the following is the best. I haven’t cropped it or anything. [the other 5 photos were ok-ish].

RAF Tornado

My favourite thing about this shot is that you can see the Navigator/Weapons Officer looking at the ground as they fly by.

Posted on

Stones

I had a lovely run today. Up over the North Downs and then back again. I actually stopped today to take two photos of stuff I regularly see.
This is the route I took.

Run 4 Oct 2014

Here’s the fist photo I took of the Upper White Horse Stone on the way up the North Downs [the link takes you to Wikipedia].

White Horse Stone

And here’s a photo of a distance marker I passed at the top of the Downs.

Distances

Posted on

Essex Fog

This communication is much unlike Ronseal products. This IS Essex fog but Ronseal products don’t do what they say on the tin [great marketing though!].

IMG_7541.JPG

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress