I was reading a local discussion group on an interwebs platform recently. I live in a little village at the base of the North Downs, it’s even in an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Having said that the village has an history of being for the working classes. There used to be a brickworks at the river and this village housed the labour for that business. As far as I know the bricks for Buckingham Palace, or some of it, came from the Burham Brickworks. The brickmakers have gone. All that remains is the wharf and a few foundations, there’s an old railway route that went to the quarry, other than that the villages here are the legacy.
The discussion group had an image of a four bedroomed detached house for sale in the village. It was on the market for slightly over £400,000. This already seemed over the top to me but the very next comment was:
Shame you couldn’t get more for it.
This made the left-wing me want to spout. This country has a problem with social engineering over the last forty years which insists that owning a house is good and everyone’s aim. The population has also been conned by the media into thinking that rising house prices mean wealth and that any increase is a good increase.
[I am writing this before Brexit. I suspect the whole shebang is going to hell in a hand cart post-Brexit. This country is on the verge of collapse at the moment. Financially. Socially. Politically. Environmentally. I honestly fear what next year will bring. We already know mental health issues are on the rise because of the Brexit concerns in this country. What hope?]
Let me write that number again. £400,000. For a house with no large garden. A house with four bedrooms. In a less than desirable village underneath the flightpath for a small airfield. I was and am still shocked. To afford this house you probably need to be earning more than £80,000. Maybe I’m in the wrong employment sector. I’m not sure how I personally judge what is over-priced. I don’t want a four bedroomed house. I can’t afford to move. Perhaps this is personally motivated reasoning that just because I am unable to move I feel annoyed. Maybe I’m biased? I’m not sure where this communication is going.
What’s surprising to me right now is I’m looking at the £400,000 and thinking maybe that’s not so bad. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe houses are worth that? Maybe my own prejudices are affecting my thinking. Maybe only people earning loads of fucking money should be able to buy a medium sized house? This is what the media and society have done over the years. They have normalised extreme house prices. They have affected how the population think. They have made all manner of societal expectations normal.
Here’s the thing. If children grow up in an area and then go to get jobs that are available locally shouldn’t they be able to afford a house in that area? Is this privileged thinking? I don’t know. Two bedroom terraced houses in the village are “worth” around £230,000. Nearly a quarter of a million pounds for a little house. With just two bedrooms. What? At a time when wages aren’t rising [many having gone down in real terms over the last ten years] this seems ridiculous. You need to earn £40,000 to afford even a two up two down house in this village. If you work in retail you aren’t going to be earning that. This market system is bollocks.
Now, if you consider the sell-off of council stock to private organisations this means there are very few affordable places for people to live if they are on a lower wage. They are then at the mercy of the buy-to-let market where landlords have all the protections because this country is full of Tory assholes. This country has been brainwashed over the years and we’ve all been turned into selfish empathy-lacking wankers.
Do you ever watch action movies and wonder where reality ends for them? It’s always the little things for me. Those small aspects of controlling mechanical objects that films like to exaggerate and mess up. But, it’s not just film, I see this sort of thing in kids cartoons and other media.
Last night I was watching a submarine based film. It was terrible and had loads of parts to it that I hated. But in it they had a small rescue sub piloted by two submariners. While driving this craft along they, on more than one occasion, had to turn “harder” and then ever “harder”. So, what did they do? They pulled harder on the joystick and made grimacing faces to show that this took more effort than normal to turn this tight. What shit.
Here’s some explanation. When we [humans] first made mechanical devices we had rigid linkages to the control systems and if it was going to take more effort to move the control system then we would have to put in more effort to our hand sized device be that a control column, wheel, or pedals. There used to be a direct mechanical connection from one end of the system to the other. This is fine for objects requiring little force to move control systems as humans can provide that force for a limited time.
Then, over time, our mechanical devices became larger and required more force input to move the control systems. Engineers and designers soon realised that the pilot/driver/controller couldn’t provide all the force [push or pull] required to move the control surface and so they needed help. Also, if large effort was required over a long period of time the pilot would become physically tired very quickly. So, powered control systems were invented.
When a pilot/driver/controller moves the control stick/wheel/pedals they actuate a motor which helps to turn the control surface or device. Now, it starts to get a little complicated. There is required a certain level of feedback force to the pilot through the control column so that they can “feel” what is going on with the aircraft/sub/car etc. This amount of feedback is controlled very carefully to ensure that the pilot can understand what’s happening to their craft while also allowing them to maintain a high level of work without becoming over-tired.
So, in the submarine movie they had the pilots obviously physically straining trying to turn this craft but that would not be the case in real life. Once the control column is moved as far as it will go there is nothing else you can do. It wouldn’t take that amount of effort to maneuver and you can’t turn a little tighter by grimacing. It’s bullshit.
This trope is similar to driving fast in a chase. It always seems the vehicles have another gear to change in to or the driver can put his foot down more. If you are being chased why aren’t you going as fast as possible from the very start. It’s lazy filmmaking because they could do other things to make the action interesting. The producers just settle for the easy.
So, as a rough guide to powered control systems and feedback devices I would suggest that anything before 1950 would require effort to move a control surface. That is a very broad brush. Many bombers had powered control systems and so it’s not the absolute guide but it does set a rough idea of how to spot the crap in a film.
Another warm day means another period of time spent in the cinema watching glorious films. Well, they aren’t all glorious but some are. The tide was high on the way in and lower on the way out of the cinema in Rochester, UK. It’s a thing.
I then rated this film on IMDB and there is a discussion of the method for scoring films in this communication. You should read it to see why I would rate a Tarantino film lower than this one! I then sent a tweet.
I sat watching this movie thinking how lovely it was and laughing at the jokes. I’ve got a feeling that I will watch it again just because I enjoyed it that much. I suspect there are many layers to the jokes and the more I watch it the more I’ll see. It was good fun.
Having read about Boudica on the interwebs I like the idea that we have no idea where her final battle was. It was somewhere between London and Wroxeter which is a pretty large area to cover. Also, when you read about how the Romans treated her family it makes perfect sense that she became this fearsome leader of the tribes inhabiting Great Britain at the time.
This was a good fun movie with an excellent cast and great writing. It’s a who’s who of comedy.
I have tried Muse. I’ve tried really hard. The problem is I hate it. About eight years ago I borrowed three albums from a student at work. I listened to them and I tried really hard to like it. I wanted to like it. I can hear it and appreciate the cleverness and the writing, I can see why people love them, I know they are a very technological wary band – they produced a VR music video. I’ve had it explained to me that the shows are amazing. But you know what?
I still hate it.
I think it’s his voice. It could be the melody. I don’t know. It leaves me cold. Almost sick.
I was in the sixth form at school when my metal and rock awakening truly happened. I saw Iron Maiden in December 1988 during that academic year. I’d spent a few years learning my stuff. Metallica played regularly in the common room and pretty much the whole sixth form liked its metal. There wasn’t really any other type of music played as far as I can remember – but this could be just confirmation bias. We had study booths and in and around them we decorated them with pictures of bands and singers.
Brett Michaels is the singer in the band Poison, his picture was up on the wall. I found this picture confusing. I wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman. It amused me the idea that this hard, heavy, macho, sexist genre of music produced so many stars who were sexually dubious. When someone told me it was Brett Michaels I was very much, “Oh, ok then”. Whether a man or a woman wore make-up didn’t bother me either way. Do what you want was in my mind. I don’t think it was a rule to be explained to people as it is now but it was there in my conscious.
Brett Michaels
These days I feel I have to explain to the world that people can do what they want [within the realms of the current socially-liberal laws] that makes them happy as long as it’s consensual. Two men, two women, four men, any combination, dress how you want, wear make up, do whatever. As long as it is consensual then feel free. I reckon that poster of Brett Michaels helped me start to build my ideas of society and its rules. Another time was the first Red Nose Day when I wore make up around the school for a laugh, I liked it.
I should probably talk about the music as that what these communications are about. I have had the album playing while I’ve been working at the computer and also writing this. I’m four songs in and haven’t had a bad song yet. It’s all good natured lovely rock songs. Brilliant stuff. Now to skip the songs a little to jog my memory.
Look But Can’t Touch has an amazing opening riff and I reckon it would make an amazing thrash song or even some decent aggrotech. I wonder if I can make the other half of my art collektiv give this a working over?
Love On The Rocks
Nothin’ But A Good Time
Back To The Rocking Horse
Good Love
Tearin’ Down The Walls
Look But You Can’t Touch
Fallen Angel
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
Your Mama Don’t Dance
Livin’ For The Minute
I’m going to put my neck out and state that Your Mama Don’t Dance is the weakest song with it’s bullshit rock ‘n’ roll riff. It’s a popular song but it misses the mark as far as I am concerned. Then there’s “Every Rose”; It’s an amazing song but I think it’s been over done in my head, slightly over cooked, it’s too big, it’s so well known. “Rose” is a great song, it’s just too much now.
Every song on this album is excellent and it’s a very good BBQ summer, outdoors album where no one would dare be offended. I do love my 80s cock-rock and I love this album.
It’s always my plan on a very hot day to visit the cinema. It doesn’t cost me anything other than petrol, there’s normally a film on I want to see, and I get to spend two hours in a room with air conditioning. It seemed more important this time as the field out back was being harvested and I couldn’t have the windows open for dirt and dust.
So I travelled to Rochester cinema, where I tend to go because I pay a monthly fee and go as often as I want. The last time I went to avoid the heat I had to go to the cinema at Bluewater because there was nothing suitable to see at Rochester. I observed the state of the tide as I drove along the embankment and it was high, the water was lovely and still and it would have been a good time to take photographs of the area as the reflections were gorgeous. I didn’t have time for that as I arrived at the cinema pretty much as the programme started.
Instead of watching all the adverts and trailers I tend to read a book using the Kindle application on my phone. I sit there, along, reading some sad technological book as I ponder the uselessness of the trailers in front of me. So far I have read/am reading the following:
Elegance in Flight: A comprehensive History of the F-16XL Experimental Prototype and its Role in NASA Flight Research
I went to watch Angel Has Fallen and I was somewhat surprised at the number of “older” people in the cinema. I don’t know why this seemed more than normal, maybe because it’s a bank holiday weekend? After the film I rated it on the IMDB website and there is a guide to the rating system as the main thesis in this communication. In the greatest of styles, I watched the film, I didn’t stay just to see the end and I wouldn’t watch the thing again. So, like the last two films I’ve seen this ends up as a six.
This film was exactly what you expected it to be. Gerard Butler saves the President and there’s lots of killing, also there’s lots of near-dying. You know, when the hero is in a massive truck crash without a seat belt and then groans and wakes up with no problems at all. This film seemed to be co-produced by the GB vanity project, no problems there but it was obvious.
I liked the opening section where we see that GB, I don’t remember his character’s name, is struggling with headaches and pain, I assume this is from the military machine caring not for his safety and using his body hard, pushing him until he can do no more. The capitalistic society over the pond forces people to work as much as possible while wearing out their bodies, and then, when done, it cares not for helping these people. It was nice to see that the Opioid Crisis was hinted at in this film with GB popping pills through the introduction but none of the pushing by the pharma companies was mentioned and how they have created this crisis – READ A DECENT NEWSPAPER PEOPLE.
When GB was talking to his old friend about the training facility it was bloody obvious who was going to be the baddie in this film. This talk was terribly scripted. It could have come from the last speech by a Bond baddie just before he thinks he’s going to kill Bond. It was shit. Also, the opening fight sequence was clearly training and meant nothing. It’s such a trope that it was boring. Whenever I see helicopters used in films where they think private companies would use them you have to think, that’s a lot of money. Helicopters are expensive.
It’s nice to see Hollywood reacting to the world around them. The earlier mentioned Opioid problem mentioned and also in this one they mentioned Russian interference in an election. It shouldn’t surprise us that the socially liberal west coast town produces films which argue for the treatment of everyone as a person and try to tell the real story of the world around them. There are plenty of films with gay people, trans people, anti-war, pro-good-guy, anti fascist themes. It’s nice to see. I guess they hope they will slowly pick away at the public to become more socially liberal and treating all humans as if they were fucking HUMANS.
Apparently GB has had too many concussions during his career and then, in this film he probably suffers another eight or so. I would imagine that he would be having massive mental problems by now. Of course, the mental issues only really show when GB isn’t doing much. When he’s in LION mode he’s clearly the “best”. It’s almost as if getting hit in the head a lot or having explosions go off around you a lot mean that you might end up with damage. At the end of the film I would have expected GB to retire and slowly degenerate into a highly disabled person with no help from the state because that’s how things work in the USA.
There’s a comedic movie review podcast I listen to, it’s theme is kinda specialist [NOT like that] and they make me laugh. In it they discuss the “force-push” problem quite a bit. The idea that Obi Wan can use the force-push to destroy a droid from a distance but sometimes he has to fight in sword combat. Why not use the force-push all the time? Why waste the time doing close combat with higher chances of being injured? Just use force-push. Always go straight to the highest setting. It’s a bit like Power Rangers individually fighting before joining together as the large machine thing [I am unsure about the correct terminology now!]. Well, this film has its force-push moments everywhere.
GB is driving a truck at some point and we see film of him keep putting his foot down and then changing gear. Why not go as fast as you can straight from the start? Just drive the fuck away. I know a truck takes a while to accelerate but we see the gear changes keep coming and the truck accelerates more. Just drive fast. If I had police chasing me and I needed to get away I think I’d drive as fast as possible straight away. You go for the max setting as soon as you can.
There is another point where the bad people are shooting at Secret Service members in a corner and there must be a few thousand rounds exchanged before the bad people use a rifle launched grenade to kill all the SS members. This seems an obvious move from the beginning, why wait? Use the force-push straight away [I’m expecting an explanation about the force-push from Pom as he cares more about Star Wars things than I do].
In the film they make a hospital blow up. They flood the hospital with oxygen and use high pressure nitrogen and then SOMEHOW remotely ignite the lot. The hospital explodes in grand style and I couldn’t help but think that it was impressive how they managed to evacuate an ENTIRE hospital in about five minutes. Impressive stuff! But, I won’t be the first to point out that nitrogen is an inert gas. It doesn’t react with anything. It doesn’t explode. Also, oxygen by itself doesn’t explode. If you remember your fuel triangle you need fuel/oxygen/heat or source of ignition. There wasn’t a fuel in this film. If nitrogen is explosive then the entire atmosphere would burn, it’s around 79% nitrogen. Maybe they used the compression of the nitrogen tanks to cause the explosion?? I don’t know but this wouldn’t have brought down the hospital.
Nearly there, I promise. [definite spoiler in the next paragraph]
There were two female characters in this film. There is the FBI agent investigating GB. There is the wife of GB who we ONLY see in a motherly caring role. We don’t see the wife as anything other than the dutiful wife. The FBI agent, who seems hard-ass, is a reasonable character but she gets shot in the stomach and then shot in the face. This bothered me. Firstly films don’t tend to shoot women in the head, execution style. Also, the only decent female character gets killed, fortunately this is just after she’s uncovered the proof needed to resolve the film. Now, I am not bemoaning the role of women as a carer for children, but within this macho bullshit the only women are treated poorly. The females could have been much stronger characters. Although in reality this film is about the macho bullshit of GB and the bad-guy mate of his.
How did the bad guys manage to track Nick Nolte’s woodland place so quick when the FBI couldn’t do it? Computer magic, it was poorly written. There could have been other ways of doing this but the film glossed over it. Then, there’s the FBI using their facial recognition software on “every camera in the US”. This made me laugh, it’s a terrible idea. It would also take more computing power than exists. I mean, my iPhone doesn’t recognise me most of the time with face ID, how would they use “all the cameras”.
What a bullshit last fight there was. Such macho mano-a-mano crap. “I’m glad it was you” says a character. What a load of fucking shit. The final battle of the movie was basically a load of bullets and testosterone. I hated it. The film had kept me going quite well but the final twenty minutes was cock. The filming technique at times was close-up blurry and I don’t think it’s a good technique. It started with the Bourne Identity and the style it introduced and all it does is mean I have no idea what is actually happening in the scene.
Where this communication ends up I don’t know. It’s a theme I’ve been thinking about for a while now and I’m not sure what my conclusions are. I think about this whenever I watch a film with an aircraft crash or if I visit the Survival Equipment chaps at an air force base although it doesn’t just apply to flying stuff. Let’s see what happens.
There have been two crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft where everyone on board was killed. Straight after the second airlines started to stop using the aircraft and then eventually the FAA and CAA decided to withdraw the airworthiness certificates of those aircraft. The underlying thinking here is that you can’t have an aircraft type which regularly crashes killing people. It is a requirement of the manufacturer to correct any faults in the aircraft type. Society has a lower limit to what it expects the death rate for flying to be, whether most participating in that society understand that or not. The regulators have stepped in. Another pressure is that the market would stop choosing the 737 Max and Boeing would die if they didn’t make the changes. Society and capitalistic market forces require the product to work well. Human life has a value and should be cherished.
I’m old enough to remember the Herald Of Free Enterprise ferry disaster. I can still remember my dad telling me about it when he picked me up from cadets that evening. I remember feeling sick. I’m not sure why this affected me more than an aircraft crash but it did, maybe because I’d never heard of a ferry disaster before. There were issues with the ship’s operation procedures and the resulting investigation made recommendations which improved the safety for ferries in this country and around the world. The ultimate thinking here was that human life has a value and we should do all we can to preserve it.
In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger [rather the Space Transport System] launched and then blew up about a minute into its flight. This killed all seven astronauts on board. Nasa stopped all flights and investigated the disaster. There are, I guess, many pressures here: government funding, shuttle cost, human life, public relations, the cold war. It was deemed necessary for the programme to be paused while changes were made to ensure the safety of the astronauts. The lives of these people was important and nobody wanted to experience the “ultimate sacrifice”. To those youngsters out there who need to know, there is a phrase in my circles: “Space is hard”. Yes, space is hard. It’s complex and difficult and there will be sacrifices [just think about that word there!].
It would seem that companies like to try and cost cut to maximise profit and so the market forces only come to bear after a particular problem catches them out. So human life to companies is cheap, until they have to make changes I guess. My evidence for this is the General Slocum disaster in New York. A fire caused the Slocum to be abandoned. Most members of the public on board couldn’t swim, it wasn’t a common thing in 1904. Some of the life preservers were wired in place, maybe to stop them being stolen. The life preservers were meant to have cork of a certain volume in them to maintain buoyancy on humans. This cork was meant to be solid chunks and the amount was measured by mass. The life preserver manufacturer had chosen to use granulated cork as it was cheaper, but because it didn’t meet the mass requirements they then used metal bars hidden in the vest to bring the mass up. When humans jumped into the water the cork bubbled out of the vests as it wasn’t in large lumps and then the people were dragged under the water by the metal bars. 1021 people died that night. I guess afterwards there were investigations and corrections put in place to save this happening again on this scale. The city decided that human life is precious.
In the 1960s the Chevrolet Corvair had a design flaw that meant its handling could be unsafe. The company only started to rectify this after the problem was made public and even then it initially decided that the extra safety features should be “optional” and a paid extra on the model. This time a company succumbed to public pressure and eventually the Corvair was produced with suspension similar to contemporary designs. In this case human life was deemed to be precious but only after the flaw was made public and pressure was applied to the company.
When I visit the Squippers on an RAF base it becomes quite clear that the whole purpose of the military system is the protection of life of people within that particular branch of the military. The safety equipment designed to help a fast jet pilot in the case of a problem is impressive. The aim is to preserve the life of the pilot or aircrew in as many situations as possible. It doesn’t always happen but effectively the aircraft is expendable and the life is not. The motivation for this could be that aircrew are hard to find and cost a lot of money to train but the principle is the same, there is a value to the human life and it should be preserved.
So, governments and companies place a value on human life and it is generally seen to be a bad thing for people to die because of bad design or systemic issues with the rules and management of a system. If there are rail crashes then they are investigated. All shipping accidents are investigated and rules put in place to make sure those type of accidents either don’t happen again or the risk of them happening again is reduced to an “acceptable” level.
The rules governing the use of roads by people with vehicles have developed over time and change on occasion to make the roads safer. Deaths on UK roads have decreased over time and seem to have settled to around 1100.
There are probably many factors in this. I mean, when I was a child seatbelts WEREN’T compulsory to wear. Can you believe that? It was decided that people could choose for themselves whether to wear a seatbelt or not. There is only one problem with that: people are stupid. The best thing for a car would be to wear a five point harness and make sure it’s tight. But that is quite a hassle. Volvo invented the three point harness and gave away the technical rights to the whole industry. This means we have seatbelts in cars that, while they aren’t the safest, they are the best balance between safe and convenient.
When you get into a car you ACCEPT the risk that driving on the roads brings. You accept the balance between getting somewhere in comfort and the risk that you might not arrive. Now, you might not be aware of this, but it is what you should be thinking. Driving, or to an extent existing, means you implicitly accept the associated risks. If driving was an activity supplied by a company you would have to sign a disclaimer each time you decided to go somewhere. You decide to accept the implicit social contract every time you do something like driving or getting on a train etc.
The value of human life is not measurable. Current society tries to do the best for the people within that society. It tries to educate. It tries to help. It tries to save.
Except it clearly doesn’t.
Individuals on the whole are largely selfish and lack empathy. I mean this from a point of view of looking at individuals within a system. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about a single person within a system, within society. Our system of collectivness means that we each have our freedoms within that social construct. We chose what to do with our own lives [we don’t really as free will is an illusion but that’s for another time], we can spend money how we want, we can arrange our time how we want. There are restrictions within that. I hope that everyone pays their tax [they don’t] and many of us have to work to get money to pay for the things we use but generally we have a certain amount of freedom.
This freedom leads to us not caring or thinking about others as much as we should. We all vote or feel empathy for the latest finalist on Britain’s Got Talent because their gran died when they were young and the zit on their nose lasted for ten years but we lack the empathy for people around the world who have oppressed lives. We don’t care collectively about the thousands of people dying in wars [Yemen] or those being abused by their own governments or those systematically killed through religion or lack of action of governments. We don’t care about the critical underfunding this country has had for over ten years now causing deaths and poverty on a massive scale. We don’t care about people more than one degree of freedom away from us. We don’t seem to care about people dying. Why do we lack this empathy? We don’t seem to care about the child-rape cabal headquartered in Rome.
It seems that some systems and social constructs are there to help us survive. They are there to save life and preserve humans. Lives are values in a social structure. But, as individuals, we seem not to care. Maybe it is too much for individuals to take on the world and do the “right thing”. There is only so much an individual can do to make changes.
In this country people still vote Tory even though their policies over the last ten years have led to the UK having a need for FUCKING FOOD BANKS. Let’s get this straight. FOOD BANKS. Places where people who can’t afford FOOD can go and get food. FOOD BANKS. There’s a lack of empathy for these people. As long as I am comfortable I don’t need to think about the lives of others and help them.
Damn, I’m not sure where this is going. My starting point was that human life is precious and yet in so many ways we don’t value it and people are dying through so many preventable causes but it’s not visible, so we don’t know or care about it. Maybe I need to lay out my arguments a little better. This communication seemed to end in a rant about selfishness and lacking empathy. It started well but ended up as a grumpy old lefty moaning.
I got this album because I went to see Mastodon play at the Brixton Academy. I was quite impressed with the album, it’s complex and has a unique style. I don’t think I’ve really listened to it since I went to the gig though.
A strange thing popped out of this for me, I think the drummer sounds a lot like Nicko McBrain when he drums. I’m not wordy enough to be able to explain but there’s something in the complexity of the fills and rolling beats that reminds me of Iron Maiden.
This album is worth listening to. I’m not sure I’d buy any more from this band though.
I went to see this film because it’s the summer holidays for me at the moment. It is slightly ridiculous that I have only worked through August in about five of my years. It’s an interesting thing that for me the summer only starts at the end of July, when teachers talk about “the summer” we don’t meant the meteorological summer. Just for giggles I think the following are my five years of working in August:
Post GCSE I worked on a farm driving tractors.
Between lower and upper sixth form I drove tractors.
Post A Level I worked at Cossor Electronics for a year until I went to university (two summers).
I was one of the student union officers and so worked the summer of 1994 in Beit Quad, Imperial.
Back to format now. The tide was on its way in and was covering most of the mudbank but the grass on the bank was still visible, it wasn’t visible on the way home. I didn’t see the seal from last time but it didn’t matter. The weather was really nice and the who vista was very pretty.
After watching this film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a communication which discusses the scoring criteria here. It is then usual for me to embed the tweet:
My web editing software doesn’t really like pure HTML being entered and for a long time it would warn me of errors, but my code was correct. I use WordPress btw.
So, the film. I really enjoyed the whole thing. It was good fun. There were many nods to the cartoon series it made it fun. It was really a more modern Goonies [which I can’t remember so will have to dig out].
I recently went to see the latest Tarantino film at the Cineworld cinema in Not-Rochester [it’s really in Strood, a bit like Sainsbury’s Larkfield is really in Aylesford]. Apparently this is the ninth film from Tarantino and I’m just going to have a look. I make it ten but only if you count Kill Bill as two films, I mean, they were released separately. Here’s the list of his films I’ve seen:
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction (I can’t really remember much about this one)
Kill Bills
Django Unchained
And now Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood
I’m not sure if I should go ahead and watch more of his films. I’m certainly not part of the “Tarantino’s great” movement. I like the films and see them for what they are.
As I drove along the riverside I checked to see what the tide was doing. Well, I mean it never really is doing much, it’s more slowly wandering around rather than having visible changes but I looked to see where the river was compared to the riverbank. The river was very low which means the tide was “out” or “low” depending on how you want to phrase that. There was a drone flying around over the marsh area and I’m curious about what it was doing. There was also a seal resting on the edge of the marsh area, possibly after having a big swim. Maybe the drone and the seal are connected? I don’t know.
After the movie and a little extra time to mul this film over in my head I rated the film on IMDB, as is custom. Then I tweet the thing. It looked a little something like this:
I have a feeling that a lot of this film was just showing off. It made the whole thing look amazing and Tarantino has created a faithful reproduction of Hollywood but there were some scenes where I just thought it was gratuitous money. Here I’m thinking of all the scenes with massive backgrounds and time-correct cars and posters. I mean, the effort is astounding but it is also very proud as a film of managing to look so real.
As is usual with a Tarantino film the music plays a very key part and his motif is obvious all the way through this film. Most scenes carry music over from one place to another. I found the reproduction of sound a little annoying as the soundtrack was loud and punchy when in a car the sound would have been terrible. If you go to all that effort to reproduce massive backgrounds and freeways full of period cars then maybe the sound of the car stereo should be exact?
I liked the idea of the faded actor still trying to make his mark in Hollywood. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was amazing in this movie. He managed to convince me fully. There has been some controversy about Margot Robbie’s role having so little to say and almost being a pin-up in the movie. I’m not sure I felt that. It is true she had little of a speaking role in the movie but the film was mostly about Rick and his fight in Hollywood.
As the climax of the film approached I was actually worried that it would glorify the Manson murders. I hadn’t read anything about the film, I’d only seen the trailers, and it wouldn’t have been right for any Tarantino violence glorification. Then, it ends the way it does. It was at that point I understood what Tarantino was doing. I had thought he was trying to write an historical document to give us the facts about the case but what he did was pure Hollywood. The film ended in classic Tarantino violence but at a level that worked perfectly in the film.
I possibly underrated this film slightly. Maybe it should have been an 8. I’m still thinking about it and that’s a good thing, it means the film affected me in some way. I did go down a bit of an internet rabbit hole after this looking through the Wikipedia articles on the Manson murders and the people involved. It was during this that I realised the band Kasabian named themselves after one of the Manson family. There are lots of bands, seemingly innocuous, who are named after awful things; Rammstein, Spandau Ballet and many more.
I’ll tweet again if I decide to increase the score on this film. I’ll add that tweet below so keep an eye out. Remember to keep looking at this terribly boring website.
I had this album copied on music cassette at first. I can’t quite remember who I got it from but it was possibly the chap who I had planned to see Def Leppard with in 1988. There were two of us at school who liked the band and I was meant to go and see them play at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Hysteria tour. I didn’t go to that in the end as I secured a place on the Cyprus camp and that seemed more worthwhile.
This is the first album by this band. IT is a monster album musically. I don’t know if it was a numerical success [checks Wikipedia], it did OK for a debut. I reckon it did well ultimately because fans went back and bought the back catalogue. I know that Def Leppard were disappointed at being lumped in with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal which was a mostly London thing. Def Leppard were from [checks Wikipedia, wants to write Sheffield] Sheffield and didn’t really like all that London stuff.
I love this album.
What gets me most is how well all the songs are crafted so well for such a young band. You could swap this and their second album and it would make more sense. In my mid to late teens I found High n Dry a little too-samey and this, the first album, was interesting all the way through. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in that early 80s sound of rolling bass lines and proper sounding guitars.
So, the singer has a classic high voice, but that was a part of its time. The bass is lovely and loud, the guitars work together in harmony and each song has tempo breaks and fits together in a Coca Cola contour-bottle shaped audio-scape [that last metaphor is either amazing or bullshit].
When writing these reviews I tend to have that album on in the background, jogging my memory as I write. The sounds for this album have made me stop and listen a number of times. This is a good thing, I normally don’t pay attention to the music, or at times I don’t have the songs playing as it is an album I know intimately.
Rock Brigade – lovely
Hello America – a little bit bullshitty
Sorrow Is A Woman – great guitars, lovely lyrics, good riff
It Could Be You – look, all these songs are
Satellite – really good, except for the “ooh yeah”s in this one
When The Walls Come Tumbling Down – a post apocalyptic wonder
Wasted – Excellent opening riff, the beat keeps going, excellent
Rocks Off – classic high speed riffage (possibly live but I think the crowd sounds were a post production issue
It Don’t Matter – Lovely
Answer To The Master – to be said with an American accent, also has a classic starty-stop solo section with some awesome bass work [I guess the guitars are good too]
Overture – this is an amazing piece of writing that still shakes me
Look metal fans. Go and buy this. Listen and enjoy. Play it to your family telling them it’s one of the best. They won’t understand.
I’ve just spent a weekend at RAF Wittering where I was practising my skills at instruction. I can assure you, worryingly to my profession, that my skills are not that good and I need loads of practice. The next weekend is within the month and so I need to read a lot, learn and instruct. I’m secretly looking forward to this as a challenge is always a good thing. Even if I’m not that good there’s still the challenge of getting better.
I bought this album because I really liked the first album by this band. I’ve listened a few times but nothing particularly strikes me about this album. The songs come on now and then and they are fine.
Motörhead are one of those strange bands for me where I listened to the absolute best of them and sought out further music but found it all disappoints slightly. I’m not sure I’ve even listened to this album.
This is a slightly unexpected sight in these pages I guess. what happened is that Ice-T released a heavy metal album called Body Count. It made me wonder if I would like his more “traditional” stuff. So, I bought this CD.
Here’s the shocker – I didn’t mind it. I liked the beats and most of the lyrics. It seemed a good fun album to own.
This album did consort with controversy because the second track was meant to be Princess Diana speaking about being completely on Ice-T’s dick. I mean it sounds like a well spoken British person but if it really was Di that would have been the absolute best.
This album is so very important to me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get across why but I’ll give it a go. The most talented writer I am not.
My earliest memory of rock music is being in the back of the Smith’s car and they decided to play this via a music cassette. I can remember being driven in a Ford Granada along Gilden Way in Harlow and all the members of the Smith family banging their heads up and down. I’m not sure I understood what was going on. I was young, somewhere around ten. This whole event seemed strange. I form of loud guitar music when you move your head.
I’d only been exposed to Abba and Jean Michel Jarre at home. I don’t think there was any rock in the house. There might have been some of The Shadows but nothing particularly heavy. We have to skip a bit after that and it’s worth reading this communication about my descent into metal music. Music back in those days was hard to find, it was exciting to be able to listen to something you had search for, something others hadn’t heard, something that was your own. It’s like finding that one book that really affects you but no-one else has read.
I don’t know when I bought this album. I expect I had a taped copy for a long time. I’m pretty sure I have a CD version somewhere now but, of course, it’s all digital and on a NAS now.
What amazes me about this album is that it is a complete and fully-rounded rock album and it was released in 1974! I probably expect that rock started around 1980, when I became music-conscious, of course every generation likes to think they invented sex (or music).
I have loved this album for over thirty years and I expect I will continue to do so. There isn’t a song that is fast or crazy. Just a complete album of well-crafted songs that make you want to dance, or smash your head on something. I’ve always been amazed at just how beautiful the two lead guitars sound when they solo together.
Not Fragile – the title track starts with a blistering bass line and continues to develop into a crushing riff. I love it. The duelling guitars is amazing.
Rock Is My Life, And This Is My Song – Lovely. A wonderful song.
Roll On Down The Highway – classic rock anthem with a wonderfully crafted solo.
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet – arguably the weakest song on this album but annoyingly the most well known.
Free Wheelin’ – An instrumental with some classic stop-start riffs. It’s built upon all the classic forms of rock/blues. It even has a bass solo. Love it.
Sledgehammer – another of my favourites. The opening riff slowly beats out and makes this song a calming beast.
Blue Moanin’ – I do think this is the second weakest song on this album. I mean it’s good but one of them has to be bottom of the list doesn’t it? I’m excluding You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet from the list.
Second Hand – you gotta love a cheeky muted cow-bell in this song. This is a great song.
Givin’ It All Away – an upbeat bluesy riffed beast of a song that would get a pit going (maybe, if we weren’t all so old).
This album isn’t metal. But it’s some of the finest blue-rock you can find. It still holds it own forty five years after release. If I had my way either everyone would know this or no-one. You aren’t good enough for this music.
Yesterday I went to the cinema to watch what I suppose is called a film. There are formalities to get through here before I can launch into the review. The tide on the Medway as I drove to the cinema was quite high. I don’t think it was at its highest but it was definitely waay above half.
The next thing is to talk about my rating I gave the movie on IMDB. I changed my mind as I started writing this communication. There’s a guide to these ratings on in this communication. My first rating was pretty good:
Now, I suppose, there needs to be some explanation about this. This film was pretty shit. It was a mindless action movie. I think my score of a 6 was initially because it was quite well done, you know, it looked good and slick. But this morning I couldn’t face keeping this film ranked above half way.
This film is a testosterone fuelled bullshit story about people with egos so big they aren’t allowed to lose a fight on screen. It was bad, like, Bond bad but without the intelligence.
I guess it takes some commitment to drive 500 miles to get to a music event. This is the fifth time Smith and I have done this. It is possibly going to be the last for a while, we kinda feel we need to seek out new things, but we shall see. M’era Luna does have an excellent atmosphere and I think we’ll be back at some point in the future.
As is now the standard we left on the Thursday and drove to a hotel in Bochum. We should have got there in time to have a meal out and see the town but instead there were power issues with the Eurotunnel that delayed our journey on the train by three hours, that was quite frustrating, but we did walk a couple of miles along the main road and find zero bars. Yep, zero. There were two gambling dens but zero bars. I’m not sure if that’s the Germany I imagined.
Campsite Sky
Friday morning means driving the last two and a half hours to Hildesheim and getting to the festival. This part of the journey went well. The traffic was queueing to get into the car park and so Smith ran to join the queue to get us a decent tent spot. It’s quite amazing how quickly the massive campsite fills up with tents. I got parked and dragged most of the kit to the tent. After that, we chilled and wandered and thought about getting ready for the disco that evening.
Friday Night at M’era Luna
Tickets for the disco were different from years before, we had to buy a wristband which was the standard 5 Euros. As we arrived in the disco there was some decent heavier music being played and it was DJ’d by a guy from the band Unzucht. After a short while it did change style as someone else took over and the music went a bit shit. Smith and I had drunk quite a bit. He lost his glasses. It was about 0200 when we quit and I went for a shower. That night I wandered back from the showers down the runway to the tent, the air was warm and I was happy.
I guess you haven't lived until you've walked half a runway dressed in only a towel.
Saturday was going to be hard work. There is always one night when there’s a little too much alcohol consumed. Last year it was the Prodigy gig and Saturday night. This time we overdid it on the Friday! Hangover protocols were now in place. But, there were bands to see starting at 1100 and so things had to get ready. I sometimes feel I physically suffer for my art.
Saturday at M’era Luna
Saturday’s theme for me was future-dystopian-cyber outfit. This was pretty much all home-made and I was very happy with the results. Smith had problems with his horns and so I watched the first band by myself.
Null Positive – main stage. Female fronted metal band, bit like Arch Enemy. quite enjoyable. Two female”dancers” on stage, playing with smoke and fire.
The gas mask on my outfit was really pulling into my head and making me experience pain. Plus the hangover wasn’t helping.
Sudenklang – main stage. I didn’t write anything else here so I don’t remember how good or bad they were.
Centhron – hangar stage. Fast beats, bit boring. It was during this set that I decided to go and get rid of the gas mask. It was hurting me and the backpack was annoying. Also, it was a warm day and I had about three layers on. I returned to the tent [about 15 minutes walk away] to get changed into boring normal clothes. I had been photographed and so thought it time to feel comfortable.
Corvus Corax – main stage. Four bagpipers medieval/folk stuff. It’s basically metal but with bagpipes. It’s not very inspiring stuff and the singer was terrible but the Germans love this shit.
We heard Oomph! while we ate food and I don’t remember being impressed. It’s a terrible band name also!
Agonoize – hangar stage. Bit disappointing really, I had heard some of their stuff and I was hoping for a really “edgy” show. The singer squirted blood three times, he pretended to cut his wrist and let the “blood” spray out for most of the songs. Finished with Breathe as a tribute to Keith, but it was a terrible version.
Agonoize – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna
Lacrimosa – main stage. 1.2 songs. Yeauugh.
SITD – Hangar. solid but only got going after second singers song. Lead singer doesn’t know words to some songs and was reading. The sound at front not great, the system speakers are quite wide and so a lot of the dynamic was missing from being close to the front.
SITD – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna
Die Krupps – Hangar stage. Saturday headliners. We watched from slightly further back and the sound was much better. This band are really good and their show has been excellent every time I’ve seen them. I’d happily go and see them again. I’d recommend them to anyone.
Die Krupps – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna
That was the end of the Saturday for us. I think ASP were playing the main stage as we left, I wasn’t bothered at all about seeing him. It had been a long day. We had both had problems with the sun cream running into our eyes and causing massive hayfever type symptoms. Overall the music had been great but I felt dead.
Saturday Steps
From the above picture you can see I walked quite a bit that day. I also hadn’t slept much, which was going to be the pattern for the whole weekend really.
On the Sunday I woke to the sound of someone calling “Kaffee”. I popped my head out of the tent and had coffee poured freshly for me from one of the festival workers. He had a large backpack with a supply of drink and all the accoutrements on his belt for a perfect coffee and only 3 Euros. Bloody lovely.
It might be time to talk about the pooing situation at festivals. I mean, this shouldn’t be talked about but too make the process as easy as possible it takes planning and hard work. Firstly, eating vegetarian reduces the amount of time required in the portaloos. Next, pick your portaloos carefully. The ones on the runway are very busy and stink. I mean they stink more than others. So, go to the toilets in the car park. Leave the festival site and walk a bit. This needs to be planned for after waking and coffee. Next up, take the portaloo furthest west. The one in the east gets sunshine on it and heats up. This increases smells. So, to sum up, find the least used loos, and use the coolest one.
Getting ready on Sunday was easy, it was an old costume being recycled.
Sunday at M’era Luna
I kept the hood with me as the Sun was warm and I didn’t want to burn my skin.
Fear of Domination – main stage. Finish. Male and female singer. Good bass drop. Good solid set.
Fear Of Domination – Main Stage, M’era Luna
Yellow Lazarus – hangar stage. Ok. EBM but fast, not great. Two songs. It’s like Aqua (Barbie girl) on speed. Pretty sure we only caught a few of their songs.
Scarlet Dorn – main stage. Slow melodic rock with female singer. Keyboardist is from LOTL. This sort of music is fine in the background but it didn’t really rock.
At some point I went to get changed, again! It was another hot day and I wasn’t enjoying being in my costume. My head was sweating a lot under the gas mask.
Formalin – hangar stage. Live drummer. Keyboards. Singer. Pretty good. Very good crowd interaction. Good song dynamics.
Heldmaschine – hangar stage. Blue LEDs on costumes and drumsticks. Two guitars (one a lefty). Bass. Drums. Singer. Backing track somewhere.
I’m in there a few times, as is Smith, I’ll leave you to find it though. After this show I had to keep pouring water over my head to cool down. I think I had over done it. At least I didn’t get a cracked rib from the PIT unlike Smith.
Suicide Commando – hangar stage. Really good but I lefty feeling unwell. Sounds better a distance from stage, speakers too wide at very front. I needed cool air. Spotted the SITD guy in front of SC.
Suicide Commando – Hangar Stage, M’era Luna
VNV Nation – main stage for a few songs. Ok, but the gig at the Scala was amazing.
After this it was shower time and a walk down the runway. Then, Monday we just had to drive home. On the way we had planned to stop just into Germany for photos but because of the delays at the tunnel we chose not to. We had plenty of time on the return journey and so we stopped on that:
Wankum, De
I couldn’t tell you why we chose to stop here!
The excitement didn’t end in Germany! We got to the Channel Tunnel a few hours before our crossing and so paid a little extra to get home earlier than originally planned. This was good as Smith only had prescription sunglasses left after losing his in the disco and he didn’t want to drive home in the dark. As we approached the Maidstone junction on the M20 one of the front tyres blew and deflated quickly. This was very annoying. We managed to pull off the motorway and put the spare on. We were about three miles from my house.
I’ve had the car looked at and it it probably a tracking issue which caused the insides of the tyre to wear down too far. This will hopefully be fixed on Monday or Tuesday. I’m just glad that it blew where it did rather than 500 miles away in Germany. That would have been quite a shitter.
So, M’era Luna 19 was amazing and fun. It was also hard work and a challenge. Next year, we will see what happens. Maybe I’m too old for this shit?
This is a monster of an album. Buy it. Play it. Love it.
I was meant to see Motörhead play in around 1990 with two friends, Smith and KH. That didn’t happen because of a falling out between me and KH. I didn’t go. I’ve heard the show was really good. Oh well. I had to wait until 2013 to see Motörhead live at Download Festival and they were OK but very much a product of their time. This album though captures them at their very best.
I bought this on tape [music cassette] waaay back. I can remember listening to it while I worked at Cossor Electronics in my “gap year”. I had an AIWA portable cassette player with bass-boost and this album was a great kick in the ears. Gap Year is in quotation marks there because I never intended to go to university but things happen, maybe I’ll write about it here.
I think the thing that this album surprised me the most was the elegance with which Lemmy plays the bass and how his rolling riffs and scales really fit the music. I’m not sure I’d be able to hear this subtlety live but in this album it shouts out.
Ace Of Spades – bloody marvellous.
Stay Clean – another great song.
Metropolis – not a bad song on this album.
The Hammer – it’s metal isn’t it.
Iron Horse – better than when Bon Jovi mentioned it.
No Class – say it with an American accent.
Overkill – Often imitated never bettered.
(We Are) The Roadcrew – Just listen to that scream.
Capricorn – Not a unicorn.
Bomber – I’ve not seen the video but I suspect this is when the lighting rig, shaped as a bomber, flies over the band.
Motörhead – This is the best.
Just before the band play Motörhead Lemmy says “Just In Case”. This phrase echoes through my brain, it’s there as a constant catch phrase, I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve written it on pupils’ leaving books in the past and referenced this album in the hope they listen to it. The bass playing explodes out of the speakers and knocks you flat. It’s an amazing song and the rhythm of the vocals makes me smile. I don’t really know what Lemmy sings, it’s not thing – vocals, I leave those to Smith.
Everyone should own this album, even if it’s to put on at the end of a party to get rid of everyone, or to celebrate a great night. Go and buy it.
Part of my recent trip to the Lake District was walking some new Wainwrights. I travelled up to Keswick for a week. I’m hoping to get back there later this year for some serious ridge walks and possibly ticking off another ten or so of the categorised mountains.
Derwentwater from the Ashness Bridge
Just look at the gorgeous views you get from even half way up to high. This is the view from just above the Ashness Bridge.
Watendlath Tarn
If you keep driving or walking up the road from Ashness you get to Watendlath, a tiny hamlet high up in a hidden valley. It’s an amazing space and the tarn is lovely. This is just the sort of space you can imagine walking around a mini peak and finding people having sex, you know, the usual.
Hills and mountains can’t be everything and so it’s also important to see aircraft. I went to the Dumfries and Galloway Air Museum at the old RAF Dumfries. It was a curious place with planes looking rather dishevelled and in good need of a paint job.
Fairey Gannet
This one along with the Lightning was the best looking plane. There was a Saab Draken, a JP and a Westland Wessex, but they didn’t look great. The Dassault Mystere was doing OK.
Dassault Mystere
There needs to be a list of hills walked and their placing in the Wainwright list so here you are:
High Rigg [209 with a height of 354m]
Great Mell Fell [155 with a height of 536m]
Loughrigg Fell [211 with a height of 336m]
View From High Rigg
I did also walk Latrigg but this is about the fifth time I’ve done that one and so it shouldn’t really get a mention here. I did some rowing on two of the Lakes while I was there, Derwentwater and Grasmere.
Exploring Islands in Derwentwater
Keswick is a lovely place I think, maybe very slightly less so during Convention time because it makes it so busy and full of people, but still such a wonderful place to visit.
Grasmere from Loughrigg
Next time I’m up here in the summer I think I would like to go swimming in the Lakes. It looked very inviting and paddling wasn’t that satisfying. I’d rather be out there adventuring. I think my swimming is good enough. I’m not fast but can keep a steady pace going, much like my running. I can’t wait to get back up to the north west again.
