Month: July 2016

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Splat

Further to my previous communication about my virtual radar set I now have been investigating what can be done. I’m waiting for a Raspberry Pi and then I will be able to move the aerial unit higher in the house.

In the mean time, here is a “splat” of what I can “see” using the original aerial and no RPi.

Radar Splat
Radar Splat

Here’s a version zoomed in a little. I’m thinking of taking the unit to the Lake District soon!

Radar Splat
Radar Splat

The different colours represent aircraft at different altitudes. The higher the plane the further away it can be seen.

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ADS-B

I’m interested in aircraft. I don’t know why it started but it’s pretty much always been there. I grew up near Stansted airport and I can remember seeing the Space Shuttle visit in the early 80s, I saw the 747 and Shuttle circle around from the primary school playing field. When I studied art at secondary school every picture of mine contained an aircraft much to my teacher’s annoyance.

Nowadays it’s easy to see aircraft on the web. I have the planefinder app installed on my phone and often tweet when I spot an A380. I only really tweet the A380 as it’s massive and extremely beautiful.

My aircraft thing also meant I travelled to Stansted to see Air Force One take off a few months ago.

28000
28000

I wanted to find a way to see what military aircraft are doing in the skies and I found a website called 360Radar who have this information. The site isn’t open to public yet and I emailed to see if I could get a test account. They said yes.

I like the site. I like the filters and information that I can see. This site relies on people sharing their MLAT data with them and they will offer a free account if you share data. They have a great comprehensive guide to setting up a system that is currently here. I ordered a small aerial and it arrived today. Within about thirty minutes of getting to the computer I was running the data server and sending information to the network.

I have a USB aerial picking up 1090MHz signals from aircraft. I then have a small program running to collate that data and form it into useful data.

Screen Grab of MLAT
Screen Grab of ADS-B Signals

You can see that I am picking up an aircraft over Cherbourg which I think is quite impressive. All of my aircraft are south of my position because my aerial is placed in a south window. I will look into moving the aerial to a more central, higher position in the house so that I can pick up aircraft all over!

Here’s another screen grab of the output from my aerial.

Another ADS-B Map
Another ADS-B Map

How it works

Many aircraft broadcast position information on 1090 MHz. This information comes from the aircraft’s navigation system but does not require the pilot to be involved in the operation of the system. The position of the aircraft is determined by GPS. This output information is called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast. My little aerial picks this up and reads it. My computer then sends this information to a website which aggregates the information.

For aircraft that don’t output the ADS-B signal their position and direction can be known using multilateration [MLAT]. This involves two or more base stations and measuring the time difference between each station receiving a signal. It’s very clever!

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Not A Thing

I should have learnt by now. I really shouldn’t look. But sometimes it’s a handy way to kill twenty minutes. I glance over the headlines of the Daily Mail online to see what crap they are infecting the populous with these days. I saw this:

dailyfail2

Please click on the picture to read more if you want but trust me, it’s propaganda and mostly an advert for an online ancestry DNA company. It also doesn’t tell you anything about your own ancestry.

Up front I should tell you that I have big issues with nationality and pride in our country. I don’t even understand why being born somewhere makes you different to people born in other places. I don’t understand good old British values. For instance, Leonard Da Vinci was born in the Republic Of Florence, but we would describe him as Italian if we wanted to. So where you were born has no influence on the nations that will rise after you and claim you for themselves.

This Ancestry company takes a swab of your DNA and then compares common components of it with that taken from people around the world. This is bullshit. They compare your DNA with that of people living now in other countries to see what you share. That’s what you share now. In this time. Not what you share that’s from a common ancestor. It doesn’t tell you about your “racial” or “nationality” make up. It tells you that you have a common ancestor with people in another country.

EVERY modern European is descended from Charlemagne. Go back far enough and everyone has a common ancestor. Someone having children 2000 years ago has contributed to the DNA of virtually all Europeans.

There is no such thing as race. There is no such thing as nationality.

Now, let’s get to the headline.

Saxons

The Saxons are from Germany. Saxony. In Germany. Or rather in what is now Germany and wasn’t Germany for many many years.

Angles

The Angles were from what is modern Germany. It’s why we are called English. It’s why the French talk about Anglais.

So, there are no British people. Just people who happen to be born on the island of Britain at some point in time.

Fuck the Daily Mail.

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Star Trek Beyond

Last night I went to Cineworld, Rochester to see Star Trek Beyond. It was a curious start to the film as the cinema showed trailers that were all kids’ animated movies and then the classification certificate showed up and said we were about to watch the BFG. After five minutes they had started projecting the correct film. I rated this on IMDB, as usual and here’s a communication that covers my rating system.

Now, you might think a 6 is a little low but film enjoyment is subjective so fuck off.

I saw this in 3D and I don’t like 3D. It adds nothing to a film. If you have good cinematography then you get depth of field from your standard projection, you don’t need 3D. It’s a big bad gimmick. My reaction to this may also be because I have a low 3D perception in these films, I seem less affected by 3D effects, they don’t really stand out much with me.

This film was OK. It had good effects and humour in the right places. I didn’t really like the action sequences. I think they suffered from Transformers Syndrome – too much shit going on at the same time. Just because we have CGI doesn’t mean using it more and more makes a film better.

Here There Be Spoilers

I didn’t like the bad character being human. And a war mongering human at that. A man so annoyed at peace after the wars that he wanted to destroy the human race. Fucking bullshit and lazy.

PHYSICS
We just have to assume that everyone has access to inertial drive technology. I can suspend my disbelief for physics, you get to break a couple of rules. I do wonder if the 5 Year Mission is relative to the Enterprise or to a Base station, given time dilation.

BREAKING THINGS
The Franklin, constructed in space and not meant for atmospheric travel works perfectly well after fifty years on an alien planet? Bullshit. Also, when they drop the Franklin off the cliff top they accelerate and then hit some rock towers on the way down. The ship absorbs these perfectly well like it was designed to smash through rock and mine diamonds. Hated it. The ship would have been torn apart from the first load of rocks. The Franklin hits about four of these mounds and just carries on with no problems. Utter crap. Curiously there was someone in the cinema behind me who was gasping whenever it hit the rocks, this I found amusing. It’s a Hollywood movie, of course they’ll be ok. It reminded me of the people gasping and crying at The Passion Of The Christ, such bullshit.

The Franklin then crashes into the Star City and everyone seems to survive. An entire quarter of the city is evacuated with absolutely no problems. The Franklin seems to be built like a brick-shit-house.

FIRE
When Kirk returns to the disk to collect the magic weapon the whole thing is on fire but he considers it safe to enter and wander around. Bollocks.

MOTORBIKE
Why? A motorbike that works perfectly after 50 years on another planet. Why? Why not a speederbike. Why not anything else? Also, Kirk can see a route down to the base through the caverns and chasms? Hated it.

STAR CITY DESIGN
Why would you design a spaceport that has a large tunnel for the starships to travel through to get to a docking area? The docking area would be somewhere to minimise potential damage to the Star City. Also, why is this tunnel only just wide enough for the Enterprise. There are surely going to be larger ships? Perhaps they have a Panamax type system. Seems very silly to me.

FUCKING USA NAMES
The Enterprise sums up the “American Dream”. Star City was called York Town and the other star ship was called the Franklin. Of these possibly Franklin is the only one with any merit but is really USA-centric. There are other greats of invention and leaders of countries. The arrogance to consider your names will be the names of the future.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this whole film?

 

And . . . . calm.

I have tried to find my other reviews for the first two Star Trek films on this site and I can’t find them. I possibly didn’t write about them, I don’t know! I can remember reading a lot about the first reboot to try and make sense of why I didn’t really find it brilliant. Much like my issues with Prometheus.

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The Jungle Book

Busy cinema week for me I guess. Took another trip to Cineworld, Rochester. This time to see The Jungle Book. I rated this on IMDB, always look at this communication to explain the system I use.

I have to say that I hadn’t seen the other films. I knew the songs but most Disney stuff is not on my radar. There are many “classics” that I just don’t know. I watched some Disney films over the last year but I wasn’t really that impressed.

This film looked bloody gorgeous. It was worth seeing just to marvel at the animation. The animals are spectacular. It was brilliant.

The story was largely dull, not really something that I thought was brilliant. I was concerned that the animals seemed quite happy to forgive their jungle being burnt down. The overall story is that man is superior. So sad really. Humans may be in charge but we are also fucking the planet over rather well. Sod all this Brexit stuff, we have a much bigger problem to work together and minimise but the current political system won’t allow that.

I was really impressed with the Apocalypse Now! references and I wanted to laugh out loud but I don’t think that would have been understood!

I wasn’t that surprised that some of the songs were kept in the film but would rather they weren’t. Although they may have been the only songs in the animated film, I don’t know, I’ve not seen it.

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Kentish Garden

Took a trip out to Sissinghurst in deepest darkest Kent. It’s a National Trust garden and although billed as a Castle Garden, there wasn’t much of a castle.

It was a nice few hours spent wandering around and see stuff. As someone who isn’t that bothered by plants I guess some of it was lost on me at a deep level. There were plenty of people stopping and smelling and touching the flowers but I didn’t. Yes, they look nice but I’m just not interested.

Here’s a gallery of green.

On a walk around the lakes there was a little door in the bank. How strange.

Doorway
Doorway

There did seem to be quite a few German visitors and this pleased me, the Germans coming over and spending their money, although granted it’s not as much money as before the referendum.

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Ratchet And Clank

Tool a trip to see Ratchet and Clank [The Movie] at Rochester Cineworld. I’m feeling somewhat let down by this film. Anyway, before looking at a Parish Rating you should read this communication about my rating system. As is custom I have also shared my rating using twitter.

This film was a disappointment. Especially after playing the game quite a bit!

The game is brilliant. It’s just about my level of intelligence and playability. I really liked “A Crack In Time” or whatever it was called and I thoroughly enjoy and love the latest game.

The game is based on the film which is based on the game. The problem is that the game is much much better than the film. I wouldn’t recommend any one to see the film. Such a shame really it could have been brilliant.

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Kent Views

Not a great deal of writing with these. Here’s Maidstone bridge over the Medway.

Here’s another Medway bridge this time it’s for the M2 and railway (three bridges really).

Now a picture of a lavender field. There’s another one next to the A229 and from the corner of my eye it looks like an uphill lake!

Finally, here’re some boats, just because.

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The Legend Of Tarzan

I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see The Legend Of Tarzan. As usual I have rated this film on IMDB and if you aren’t sure of my rating system then you should see this communication.

I thought the film was enjoyable. A good romp with those pesky colonial Belgians in charge. I was largely impressed with the CGI animals, very impressive and realistic. The story was ok but nothing special. My one quibble would be with the physics of swinging on vines and catching a train doing so, simply unrealistic, but a minor infraction for this particular film. I guess I should read the book.

By the way, the first corner at Zandvoort race track is called Tarzan. It is named after the man whose garden was used to create that part of the track.

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+B+G-R

It was a lovely day and I was just walking out to bat and would you believe it? I just had to take a photo. Here’s where I work, in the sunshine.

MGS Hot Day
MGS Hot Day
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The Cosmic Dead – Electrowerkz

Smith and I went out to find some noise. Our initial heading was to the World’s End pub in Camden and the Underworld venue where a Japanese band were playing a two hour concept album. Can you believe it, the place was full. We weren’t allowed in. That was a shame so we went in search of food and ended up at a terrible Chinese buffet place. It looked ok from the outside but Smith couldn’t find much food that he liked. I liked nearly all of it. After that we returned to the World’s End. The Underworld club night was due to start at 23:00 but the music looked a little popular and boring. They were going to play some Arctic Monkeys FFS.

So, we decided to walk to Electrowerkz in Angel. It was about a 40 minute walk. It’s alway nice to walk around London, it feels more organic and natural compared to hopping onto a tube train. I guess I should have been surprised at how many people we saw standing around in parks playing Pokemon.

Now, we knew there was an event on at Electrowerkz, we just didn’t know what sort of music it would be. The current music taste of DBL-MF is industrial electronic. Almost everything else doesn’t matter. But, as we walked down Torrens Street we could hear noise and it seemed good. GBP15 lighter after paying to get in and we went into the downstairs music room. The band playing were called Bad Guys.

 

So, as you can see, two double guitars, no bass player, a drummer and a singer. It was rock type stuff. It was tolerable although the vocals were shit. After they had finished we had some drinks and pondered the nature of the post-referendum country [we are fucked] and what the next band could possibly be like.

 

Pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs were on stage at 01:00. Two guitarists, bass player, drummer and singer [who also played a synth which I couldn’t hear]. They weren’t great. They were energetic and played well but it was screamy shouty music and it bored me.

The two bands that we saw were ok. Nothing great. Nothing special and not my current taste in music. It’s quite difficult to find aggrotech on a usual night out in London, Slimelight is almost the only club night and that’s fortnightly on a Saturday. The crowd was a metal crowd. People dressed in denim and dark t-shirts. It was like being in a house that you’ve just sold and are waiting to move to your new home. The furniture was normal and in the right places but your new home awaits and it’s more exciting and a fresher place to be. I much prefer and feel more at home with the “alternative” crowd who attend AC and Slimelight.

Thank goodness there are trains every hour from Victoria towards Gatwick. That meant we could get home. There’s something quite wonderful about walking through the capital early in the morning, it doesn’t ever sleep.

 

Added 12:09 18 July:

It struck me that this communication is titled “The Cosmic Dead”. Well, they were the band on at 02:30. We didn’t stay that long, we didn’t think it would be worth it. All of my gig communications have been titled the Headline band so this one did the same. I’ll do similar with Mesh when I see them because I’m really going to the gig to see Aesthetic Perfection.

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New Wheels

Consider the state of these:

Tatty Trainers
Tatty Trainers

I thought it was time to change them. I think I’ve had them for about 2 years and so they have probably done around 1000 miles! So I bought some new trainers. These ones are nice and bouncy!

Shiny!
Shiny!

 

Let’s see how long these ones last!

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Ghostbusters

I took a wander out to Rochester Cineworld cinema last night and watched Ghostbusters. I had to see it in 3D to get a convenient start time, I don’t like 3D I don’t think it adds anything to films and is very much a gimmick, a well-made film will be well-made whatever and doesn’t need 3D. Anyway, I rated this film on IMDB, please see this communication regarding my rating system.

So, this is quite a high rating from me. Essentially I really enjoyed the film. I thought it was well made and funny. The story was OK. I’d probably see this again if it appeared on TV, hence my rating of 8.

This was an enjoyable couple of hours. I’m not going to go into specific points or plot areas. Everyone surely knows the story. I will say that when I was walking towards the car and rating this on IMDB I saw that it had a terrible average “user” score. A score which was much lower than the “critics” metascore. This was quite strange as normally its the other way around. I wonder if loads of old people saw the film first and then rated the film, unable to remove the genius of the original film. Who knows.

For whatever reason I managed to spill some of my onions and tomato sauce from my hotdog onto my lap and so I spent most of the trailers and (shitty) adverts trying to clean my phone/lap/seat.

Addenda:

A chap at work said he didn’t think the film would be any good because the main characters were played by women. However he then claimed that he wasn’t being sexist. I explained that what he said was the absolute definition of being sexist!

I went to see the original Ghostbusters when it came out in 1742. I remember I really enjoyed it. I also bought “Ghostbusters” the single by Ray Parker Jr as well as the 12″ remixed version. The soundtrack to the film was the first album I ever bought and I can remember my mum saying to me that I had to be sure I wanted it as it was expensive and did I know I would like all the songs? Well, she was right about albums being expensive (probably about £2) but how was I meant to have listened to all the songs without owning the album yet? I bought it. I enjoyed it.

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Independence Day: Resurgence

I went to Rochester Cineworld cinema to see Independence Day: Resurgence. I rated this film on IMDB, but as usual you should see this communication explaining my rating system.

It was shit. Terrible. Such a let down. Watch the original.

 

 

I’m not sure I even liked the original. It was out somewhere around the start of my career and I saw it three times in quick succession with different people each time. I think I knew it was terrible, but it was terrible well done. It was funny, improbable and looked good.

This latest film was terrible. Not funny. Poor. I got bored, moved around in my seat a lot and even planned my weekend in my head. Such a shame.

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God Reaffirms His Commitment to the UK

Last night I had a few drinks at The Red Bull, a pub in my village. I say “my village” but really I mean the collection of dwellings in which I reside. The pub is nice, except it was expensive. I say “expensive” but I don’t really know, I don’t often drink in pubs although £8-50 for a wine and a bottle of beer seemed expensive.

Just as the sun was going down a very beautiful double bowed rainbow appeared in the east. It looked fantastic. I took some photos with my phone but they don’t really do it justice. I wish I’d had a better camera with me and time to play with the settings.

After a while it went weird. It looked as though the two rainbows had merged for form one large rainbow. I should point out it wasn’t raining and I couldn’t see any around so maybe it was cloud stuff or ice?

Covenant
Covenant

 

As I said, this picture doesn’t really do justice to it. The rainbow looked wonderful.

Closing In
Closing In

 

As for the west. It also looked truly wondrous.

Just Lovely
Just Lovely

The person I was with said that the rainbow was god’s covenant with Noah for the future of mankind. Well, that’s a nice little story. I’m not convinced he can do a great deal about the UK because we seem pretty much fucked.

I have seen that the titles for the last two posts seem a little like Daily Mail headlines and so I promise to change back to something more my style soon

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For God’s Sake Man It’s Only A Weather App

I recently saw that the Met Office had a new weather app. I think it popped up on the front page of the app store. I was interested as I’m quite fussy about my weather apps. Once you get used to one and the information it gives you it’s quite hard to change. Much like buying a new wallet, which I have to do soon and it fills me with dread. By the way, I don’t like the term “app”, I’m not particularly fond of the term “application”, to me these are programs and always will be.

Here’s the front page of the new app:

The new app had embedded video forecasts from the Met Office – these are not needed, I’m too old to care for video forecasts. Also, video on a phone is antisocial and useless, I can get the same information without the noise and movement. I think this may be a generational thing. I don’t need sound and people to inform me something that I can see in a diagram or map. It could possibly be why I also don’t like the news that is broadcast into our homes all the time [hint: change channel, which I do].

 

Here’s another view of the new app:

I’m not sure I like the days across the top. I think that’s mostly because I the older app [which is still available] had the days going down the screen. The worst part of the new app is the weather alert screen. This screen used to be a map with colours over it.

This is a good weather warning map. It tells me what I need to know. The new app just has text to read. I can’t be bothered to read it. The text is broken down into regions. I can be even less bothered to find my region and then decode the words. Oddly, I do like listening to radio weather broadcasts so maybe I’m just weird here.

One last thing. The new app has done away with proper weather charts. These actually mean something to me and I like them. They give an overall impression of what is really going on in the weather. Here are some examples of good stuff:

Day by day and then lovely extra information if you need it. There’s a page that will give hour by hour predictions too.

Look at these maps. Aren’t they pretty and lovely. They let you know what’s going on. The new app doesn’t have this. Which is a shame. I do get the feeling that sometimes things are “improved” to include lots of new functions but the reality is that they just fuck them up.

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CCF Camp WITT

I recently spent a lovely week at RAF Wittering [EGXT] with the MGS CCF RAF Section. We were there with cadets and staff from Malvern College who all turned out to be great people. In fact, their Officer Commanding had been on my OIC course.

Harrier Fun
Harrier Fun

Here’s a list of activities we got up to followed by a small photograph gallery which could have been bigger but sometimes there are restrictions on what we can photograph.

  • High ropes course and power fan
  • Archery
  • Air Experience Flying with No 5 AEF
  • WHST
  • Shooting with the L98A2
  • Drill and drill competition
  • Command Tasks
  • Visit to Marshalls Aerospace Company
  • Visit to the American Cemetery near Cambridge
  • 5131 BD Sqn visit
  • Fire Section visit [I might have been sprayed by a branch]
  • Harrier Heritage Centre visit
  • I did two runs
  • Ten pin bowling
  • Meal out in Stamford
  • Outreach team
  • Party minibus

This was a very enjoyable camp. Great fun. Some of the pictures below aren’t really level with the horizon, but I am not going to edit them. It’d take time I don’t really have.

My last photo is of a lovely elliptical bridge I saw in Leicester. Very pretty:

Elliptical Beauty
Elliptical Beauty
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