October 2021 – Fooyah

October 29 2021October 29 2021

Dune

I went to the cinema to see a film, a good one this time. It was dark as I approached the cinema along the wharf road but I could see lights flickering off the wavelet tops all the way close to the sea wall so I know the tide was in. How far I couldn’t quite tell but whenever I looked I saw streetlight reflections. This was Rochester cinema, which isn’t in Rochester, and my second trip this week although I suspect not my final trip this week.

After watching a film I rate it on IMDB and then tweet the result just so this communication looks quite good with an embedded tweet. I mean, you could head over to Twitter to see what I thought but now you are here, why would you?

I watched Dune (2021) and rated it 10/10 – IMDb – https://t.co/BZvaCpnttm
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 29, 2021

This film was gorgeous. I already knew the story pretty well as I’ve watched the previous films and read a couple of the books. I’m sure that my friend, JH in Cornwall, gave me a copy of most of the books although I can’t remember how far through them I’ve read. I’m tempted to start again but I have too many unread books on my Kindle device thingy.

I wasn’t sure at first whether to rate this film as an 8 or 10. My reasons are that I don’t think I will pay to see this film again but I suspect that I will probably watch it again before the next film comes out. So, it gets a ten out of ten which is frankly what it deserves.

The whole look of this film is just absolutely gorgeous and the scale and vision is impressive. I guess it could be argued that given CGI and the skill of animators it is possible to make anything in a film these days but just to have the ideas of creating such things is still impressive to me. I really enjoyed this film and will one day make my kids sit through it all [ha ha]. I’m not sure they’ll be happy with the ending but I was very satisfied with it all.

When I entered the cinema I had to check which screen I was in as there were two teenage girls in the row behind me and I wondered what they were doing there. Dune isn’t really a teenage girl film I thought at first but then I told myself off and reminded my brain not to be too judgey about other people upon appearance. However, at the end of the film the two girls were not in the theatre so maybe they hated it, maybe they had to leave, maybe they just didn’t realise the film was over two hours long. I don’t know.

This is comms#1983 and so let’s see what things happened in the year I started secondary school:

ARPANET moves to the TCP/IP protocol.
Seatbelts become mandatory in UK for front row seats only.
Air Canada Flight 143 glides in to land in Gimli, Manitoba.
GPS is declassified for public use.
Kill ‘Em All is released.

October 29 2021October 29 2021

The End Of Nowhere

I took a trip out recently to the marshes. Romney marshes to be exact. It’s a strange world down that way and eerily amazing. I think I’m going to have to do again to explore a little more, park the car and see how far I can walk. The landscape is haunting and bleak and I do feel affected by it. Not enough to move there, good grief, it’s a long way to anywhere really but it is amazing.

None of the photographs I took really capture the essence of the countryside there, so here’s a picture of the nuclear power station currently being decommissioned. I wonder if that’s why so much art works on this barren landscape? Photographs can’t quite capture just how strange it is so art does the job for us. While in that area a train journey was taken from Dungeness to New Romney for lunch. The journey was kind of nice, but once you are going it’s just a railway carriage isn’t it. The views weren’t up to much, just the back of people’s gardens. But it was a nice little trip.

One of my children took the above photograph and I’m thinking of employing them as my editors and filter people as that’s something I can’t be too bothered to do. Maybe it’s time they taught me!

Comms#1982 and so here are some things that happened in the year that included my tenth birthday:

The first computer virus is found.
ET is released.
The Commodore 64 is produced.
Ciabatta bread is invented.
A BA 747 suffers four engine flame out.

October 27 2021October 27 2021

The Addams Family 2

I went to watch the film Addams Family 2. I can tell you the tide was low on the approach to the cinema, all of the mud bank was showing. What I don’t understand is that as we left the entertainment park the tide was pretty high so maybe there was some sort of time bulge or something while I was inside. The film didn’t feel too much of an eternity. I rated the film on IMDB and tweeted the result. This communication deals with the rating system.

I went to see The Addams Family 2 and rated it 4/10 – IMDb – https://t.co/5TYdX9Z4iZ
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 27, 2021

Whilst I didn’t hate this film I also didn’t care for any of it. I don’t think I’ve seen Addams Family the first animated one and I very much doubt that I will try now. Maybe I’ll go back and watch Addams Family Values from 1993, I’m not sure, but it would be interesting to see my kids’ reactions to this one. For me the best part of this film was the trailers and adverts as I read some of my book about the development of the U2 and I was on the chapter about converting the plane to be carrier based. It was far more interesting than the rest of the film. Maybe my problem is that I’ve seen many films and seen many plots and nowadays there’s nothing new. idk.

This is communication number 1981 and recent tradition requires me to now write a list of a few things that happened in that year. I’m quite excited as we are in the region of time where I have consciousness and so these things will become more relevant to me.

The Indonesian passenger ship Tamponas 2 catches fire and capsizes in the Java Sea, killing 580 people.
The Brixton race riots.
AIDS first recognised.
Liverpool race riots.
Slavery is abolished in Mauritania.
The Church Of England votes to allow women to holy orders.

October 25 2021

Bhutan Completed

As part of my around the world trip I have reached the Himalayas and so have visited Tibet, Nepal and now Bhutan. The last of these is relatively small and only has four airports so after landing at Paro International I decided to fly past two of the airports and then land at Yongphulla.

In the above image the black line is the direct route, the pink link a route leg I didn’t activate and the red line is the route I took. I’m flying a little Boeing Saab T-7, it has good feels and has the power of a military jet and so is able to cope with my rapid direction changes and approaches.

Thankfully I now have some time off work! It has been a hard few weeks and I need the rest. As if to let me know I spent all of Saturday lying on the sofa sleeping with aches and pains and general ill feeling. Even Sunday morning I wasn’t great but am feeling back to normal now, nearly, apart from a phlegm filled chest. It isn’t Covid, I’ve done many LFTs and also a PCR when I first started showing symptoms. I did the PCR using a postal service and next time I think I will make sure I go to a drive through centre, the results will be quicker.

My summer of letters has continued with a letter to my MP although nothing good will come from that. Teachers, and many other public servants, have had a massive pay reduction in real terms over the last ten years. My union, the NEU, published some graphs showing how pay had changed over the last ten years when compared to the RPI.

Now this uses RPI rather than CPI and I’ve been over to the ONS to see what the CPI rate has been and I can say it has hovered around 2% over the last ten years being generous to the side of the government. Using that generous rate a teacher’s pay would be GBP 44,805. As you can see even using numbers that flatter the government teachers have suffered a real terms pay loss over the last ten years amounting to a current loss of about GBP 3,000. I am not saying we are more important than other professions who have had a pay freeze and I am not saying we should be given the whole amount now. What I am saying is that the government should recognise these facts and put into action some plan to help correct these issues.

Clearly given the governments we’ve had for the last ten years this won’t happen. They won’t see the unfairness of these increases and they’ll say that recruitment is going well. I would argue that while recruitment is going well it is due to the fact that the rest of the economy is fucked and people are having to retrain after losing their jobs and everyone thinks they can be a teacher. Just as a comparison MP salaries have increased an average of 2.2% per year compared to the teachers increase of 1.2% in the same time. Oh, and they can claim fucking loads of expenses and have subsidised food and drink along with massive benefits like swapping prime residence etc.

I’ve been describing accuracy of lateral flow tests to pupils as part of a conditional probability part of the statistics course and I keep forgetting a couple of the words used to describe how good the tests are. The government likes to bang on about the specificity of the LFTs and that is generally a good high number, around 99%. The specificity tells you how the probability of you having Covid if the test returns a positive result. It therefore seems there’s a 1%, or lower, chance of a false positive result. The problematic number is the sensitivity the LFTs have. The sensitivity tells you the probability of getting a false negative, if you have the disease but the LFT returns a negative result. This is a measure of how sensitive the test is to the disease. Currently, depending on who does the LFT, the sensitivity is running at 40% to 80%. So, LFTs will only be positive on around half the positive cases. This is a massive fucking problem and one the government either deliberately doesn’t mention or is just too stupid to understand. You can’t have a policy of opening up the country when the test you are using to maintain the safety of everyone only catches around 50% of the cases. The government are fucking idiots.

This is communication number 1980 [+-1] and so here are some things that happened in the year of my eighth birthday:

Saudi Arabia beheads 63 people who did a bad thing.
123 people dies when a Norwegian oil platform collapses.
The first 24 hour news channel starts.
AC/DC release Back In Black.
A fire in a hotel in Las Vegas kills 85.

October 19 2021October 19 2021

Seems An Important Leg

I’ve been heading around the world in my Boeing/Saab T-7, just hopping from airport to airport. It started as a round the UK coast trip and I’m now in Nepal so I got distracted by more coastline and then mountains. This is not going to be an interesting communication as it is a list of every airport I have stopped at on this journey. X-Plane keeps a log of journeys and so I am able to write this here, also, I have a bit of paper covered with names of places and that is about to run out of space so I need to get this started:

Manchester, England.
RAF Valley, Wales.
Aberporth Airport, Wales.
Bristol Filton Airport, England.
RAF Lyneham, England.
Lee On Solent Airport, England.
Jersey Airport, Jersey.
Quimper–Cornouaille Airport, France.
Nantes Atlantique Airport, France.
La Rochelle – Île de Ré Airport, France.
Cazaux Air Base, France.
San Sebastián Airport, Spain.
Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport, Spain.
Santiago–Rosalía de Castro Airport, Spain.
Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, Portugal.
Monte Real Air Base, Portugal.
Humberto Delgado Airport, Portugal.
Faro Airport, Portugal.
Base Naval de Rota, Spain.
Gibraltar Airport, Gibraltar.
Rabat–Salé Airport, Morocco.
Ben Slimane Airport, Morocco.
Marrakesh Menara Airport, Morocco.
Agadir – Al Massira Airport, Morocco.
Tan Tan Airport, Morocco.
César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport, Spain.
Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport, Spain.
La Palma Airport, Spain.
Dakhla Airport, Morocco.
Nouadhibou Airport, Mauritania.
Nouakchott–Oumtounsy International Airport, Mauritania.
Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport, Senegal.
Banjul International Airport, Gambia.
Osvaldo Vieira International Airport, Guinea-Bissau.
Conakry Gbessia International Airport, Republic of Guinea.
Faranah Airport, Republic of Guinea.
Lungi International Airport, Sierra Leone.
Monrovia-Roberts Airport, Liberia.
Man Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
San Pédro Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
Félix Houphouët Boigny International Airport, Côte d’Ivoire.
Takoradi Airport, Ghana.
Kotoka International Airport, Ghana.
Aéroport de Lomé-Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togo.
Cotonou Cadjehoun Airport, Benin.
Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
Ibadan Airport, Nigeria.
Benin Airport, Nigeria.
Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Nigeria.
Ajaokuta Airport, Nigeria.
Bamenda Airport, Cameroon.
Bafoussam Airport, Cameroon.
Ngaoundéré Airport, Cameroon.
Yaoundé Airport, Cameroon.
Yaounde Nsimalen International Airport, Cameroon.
Bata Airport, Equatorial Guinea.
Port-Gentil International Airport, Gabon.
Omboué Hospital Airport, Gabon.
Agostinho-Neto International Airport, Republic of Congo.
Kitona Base Airport, Republic of Congo.
Luanda Airport, Angola.
Porto Amboim Airport, Angola.
Aéroport de Waku-Kungo, Angola.
Benguela Airport, Angola.
Welwitschia Mirabilis International Airport, Angola.
Aéroport de Xangongo, Angola.
Ruacana Airport, Namibia.
Andimba Toivo ya Toivo Airport, Namibia.
Grootfontein Air Force Base, Namibia.
Uis Mine Airport, Namibia.
Walvis Bay Airport, Namibia.
Aérodrome de Lüderitz, Namibia.
Aérodrome d’Oranjemund, Namibia.
Air Force Base Langebaanweg, South Africa.
Cape Town International Airport, South Africa.
Air Force Base Overberg, South Africa.
Port Elizabeth International Airport, South Africa.
Margate Airport, South Africa.
Maputo International Airport, Mozambique.
Beira International Airport, Mozambique.
Aérodrome de Nacala, Mozambique.
Julius Nyerere International Airport, Tanzania.
Moshi Airport, Tanzania.
Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, Zanzibar.
Aden Adde International Airport, Somalia.
Iskushuban Airport, Somalia.
Abdullahi Yusuf Airport, Somalia.
Socotra Airport, Yemen.
Salalah Airport, Oman.
RAFO Thumrait Airbase, Oman.
RAFO Masirah, Oman.
Muscat International Airport, Oman.
Fujairah International Airport, UAE.
Khasab Airport, Oman.
Dubai International Airport, UAE.
Al Bateen Executive Airport, UAE.
Jebel Dhana Airport, UAE.
Delma Island Airport, UAE.
Qeshm International Airport, Iran.
Jask Airport, Iran.
Konarak Airport, Iran.
Turbat International Airport, Pakistan.
Pasni Airport, Pakistan.
Ormara Airport, Pakistan.
Jinnah International Airport, Pakistan.
Rajanpur Airport, Pakistan.
Zhob Airport, Pakistan.
Miran Shah Airport, Pakistan.
Saidu Sharif Airport, Pakistan.
Skardu Airport, Pakistan.
Muzaffarabad Airport, Pakistan.
Chilas Airport, Pakistan.
Hotan Airport, China.
Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport, India.
Ngari Kunsha Airport, Tibet.
Simikot Airport, Nepal.
Jumla Airport, Nepal.
Tribhuvan International Airport, Nepal.
Tenzing Hillary Airport, Lukla, Nepal.

And so this journey around the world continues. I have just flown past Mount Everest after [not quite] landing at Lukla. After passing the highest place on Earth I headed to:

Tumlingtar Airport, Nepal.

I think is almost, kind of, half way around? I have no idea. We’ll have to see what the rest of this journey looks like.

This is comms#1979 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

Sid Vicious dies.
Compact Disk displayed publicly for first time.
The last British soldier leaves Malta.
A human powered aircraft flies across the English Channel.
A dam failure in India kills up to 25,000.

October 18 2021October 18 2021

Jumla and Lukla

I’ve been flying around the world in my T-7 and it’s been fun so far. I’ve covered the coasts of Europe, Africa and the southern Arabian peninsula. Once I got to Pakistan I decided to follow the mountains across Asia. I’m not sure what I’ll do once I get to the Pacific coast. Now that I’m deeply in the Himalayas the airports become a little more challenging. I’ve crashed at a couple – Jumla and Lukla. I’ve crashed mostly because of high descent rates but also because of running out of runway. The little T7 doesn’t have reverse thrust and I’m gradually learning the limit of the braking.

This map shows the route I flew to get from Simikot to Jumla and the fact that my aircraft is pointing the wrong way is not because I’ve started to taxi but more due to the fact that the plane was tumbling along the runway after an “aggressive” approach.

If you expand the image you can see where the runway is and I know it looks fine but I didn’t manage it the first time. I did ok on the second attempt which is not really what you want a pilot to be especially good at!

This is comms#1978 and so here are some things that happened in that year of our lord [what a load of crap].

The first GPS Satellite is launched.
Jimmy Carter proposes cancelling neutron bomb development.
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is first broadcast.
Mormons allow black men to become priests.
918 people die in a murder-suicide in Jonestown.
Artificial insulin is invented.

October 17 2021October 17 2021

Nachtmahr – Electrowerkz

Last night Smith and I went out! Out! To see a band! Well, two bands really but it was out and my first time in London since February 2020 when we saw Aesthetic Perfection. We got the train in and booked into our hotel room – proper full on night out! After getting changed we headed to Electrowerkz, which was quite close to the hotel and entered. I had forgotten my photo ID and the security people were very good at sorting that out as I had photos of all my ID on my phone, they accepted me fortunately.

I loved this touch of some old CRT showing a logo as we walked up the steps. It added to the feel of the place. We didn’t see the first two bands as we were drinking and chatting to the merchandise people. I think I bought some dog tags, but I have no idea where I put them, I’ll have to have a look shortly. I liked the few changes that had been made to the building and ambiance, the main floor looked really good.

Before The Crowds - Electrowerkz — Before The Crowds – Electrowerkz

Reaper is a band/person we had wanted to see for a long time as a couple of his albums are really good. A nice split between industrial and EBM. I enjoyed his set although I think there could have been some other songs added to make it greater but I guess you have to trust the artist and the things they want to play might not be what I want to hear.

I really enjoyed the Reaper set. It was about this time that I started to appreciate the new sound system in the room. I could hear all the nuance in the songs, which I knew quite well anyway, and this was a surprise as normally my hearing dies quite quickly into a gig and I can’t tell what’s going on apart from noise.

Nachtmahr - Electrowerkz — Nachtmahr – Electrowerkz

Nachtmahr were brilliant. They played a great set and the crowd really liked it. I don’t think this makes a top ten of gigs, but it’s definitely in the top half. I had a great time and danced quite a bit – I think the alcohol helped a lot with that. Overall this was a good gig. A couple of great bands and really good fun. Brilliant!

This is communication number 1977 and so in keeping with recent tradition I list below some events of that year:

Jimmy Carter pardons Vietnam draft dodgers.
The rings of Uranus are discovered.
Optical Fibre is used to transmit phone calls for the first time.
165 Killed in a fire in Kentucky.
Never Mind The Bollocks is released by the Sex Pistols.

October 16 2021October 16 2021

The Last Duel – An Update

I went for a run earlier today and I ended up thinking about a number of things about this film, mostly to do with how annoying it was. I keep wondering if it was genius or shit to have the story told three times from different points of view. I think I have settled on “shit”. I know the film was trying to be clever but as I get older I am convinced it is the job of media to push for equalities of rights and to make the world a better place. All the undertones of modern film should be progressive. Just maintaining the status quo doesn’t do enough. We live in a world where people are treated differently because of who they are and that’s wrong. We also, very obviously, live in a world where there is a pandemic of violence and mistreatment of women. Rachel Parris said it well in the recent episode of The Mash Report.

So, the concept of telling this story in three parts, two of which are from a male point of view and one of which wasn’t even involved in the rape is bollocks. By focussing two thirds on the film with a male point of view demeans the actuality of what happened to the woman. The fact that we see the rapists point of view as part of this film is shocking and sad. It tries to justify the rape with the emotional intelligence of a fucktard. The c(o)unt doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

The fact that the court trial focussed on the woman’s sex life and things she had said to her friends speaks volumes as we STILL DO THIS TODAY. Women are blamed for the violence that happens to them. Men are excused from being violent sexist pigs because the whole world and rules for everything are designed for men by men.

This film missed the chance to do so much. It could have sent a message around the world, it could have been a commentary on the modern world [same rules as 700 years ago]. It even had it’s own #metoo moment but it got lost in bullshit men fighting it out for their honour. I bloody hate this sort of film and probably shouldn’t have seen it. I thought it would be a good use of some spare time. Live and learn eh?

This is comms#1976

23000 die in Guatemala after an earthquake.
An explosion at an ammunitions factory in Finland kills 40.
Viking 1 lands on Mars.
First known outbreak of Ebola in Zaire.

October 16 2021October 16 2021

The Last Duel

I went to the cinema to watch The Last Duel. It wasn’t on at a suitable time at my local cinema so I went to Ashford – even then I couldn’t book online and I had to just turn up and pay there because the Ashford cinema is in a different “booking category” to Rochester and the online website won’t let you pay the difference, you have to do it in person. So, I have no idea what the tide looked like as I drove to the cinema. I can tell you the M20 to junction 9 is as boring as ever and it feels like it takes ages but I think it’s only fifteen miles.

After I saw this film I rated it on the IMDB website. If, while watching a film, I’m starting to think what score I would give it, then the film isn’t holding my attention. It didn’t take long for me to wonder where on my scale of film scoring this film stood. I then shared this score in Twitter because it gives me something nice to embed right now:

I rated The Last Duel (2021) 4/10 https://t.co/0SH6B38fMc
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 16, 2021

This film was as boring as shit. I really didn’t enjoy it and I did consider leaving, but there was a person at the end of my row and I had driven more than normal to get here. Most of the characters were assholes and the only nice character was the lead female who, because of when the film is set, has all her rights fucked over.

So, this is a film in FOUR chapters. We get to see the same scenes over and over and I really didn’t like this aspect. No doubt someone will tell me how clever it was and how the mood really changed from one chapter to the next, but mostly, it was boring and while the differences were there they were over emphasised and could have been more subtle. Three times we got this whole story. Then the final chapter concerned the start of the film because, tension or something.

The first chapter seemed to be all castles and horses and battles and there were dates up on the screen but who is able to follow those and really piece together a time line? I don’t think a film should have dates, you should be able to make the film understandable without those things. Maybe just one at the beginning so we know what era of misogyny we are dealing with. Now, there might be a stroke of genius in the overall “feel” of each chapter but it wasn’t stark enough for me. The first chapter was horses and battles and boring as fuck. The second chapter was wine and fucking and the third was oppression of women. If the film was design with clear artistic differences between those three then they failed as I felt only the first chapter had a different taste.

I did wonder how many times can you have horses galloping up to castles and I got bored. Were we meant to recognise the different castles and the local politics of the time? I hated some aspects of this film. It’s also hard to recognise French named places when the cast constantly talk in American English but switch to French accents when pronouncing names, I could be being generous there, but I wasn’t “ready” for the French and it took me ages to finally get what they were saying.

How long would it take to bleed out from a femoral artery wound?? Not long and that’s what the final scene had for me. Do they not do first aid?

This film could have been so easily made to actually say something. It could have pushed the parallels between the legal system then and what happens now. It could have highlighted the plight of rape victims in modern times and it could have made so much more for women’s rights of the past and today, but it didn’t.

I just read something about Jean De Carrouges life and it turns out that he went to Scotland to garner support from the Scots to attack the North Of England. The film does not make this clear in the slightest and I left the film under the impression that he was fighting the Scots from the north of England. A small point, but actually quite a difference.

Anyway, all those irritations aside, the main character in this resided at Carrouges in France and this excited me as, when I finally understood the name, was somewhere I had been. I went on holiday near there in around August 2008 or so. I had a look around the chateaux in the village. The chateaux was built by Jean De Carrouges, the main chappy in this film. I don’t think I was aware of that side of the story when I visited it. Why would I be. It doesn’t seem that a duel from 700 years ago would interest the locals. I hope they get a reasonable source of income from the fame produced by this film.

There was an art exhibition on in the Chateaux while I visited and I remember liking it a lot. I can also remember that the day was chuffing hot.

This is Comms#1974 [+- 1] and so here are some things that happened in that year of the mostly common calendar used in business and governments around the world:

174 die in a fire in Sao Paolo.
The F-16 Viper flies for first time.
India becomes the sixth nation to have and operate nuclear weapons.
The IRA bomb Westminster Hall.
Ceefax is started.
The Arecibo message is sent towards Messier 13.

October 15 2021October 15 2021

Correction Communication

Something went wrong. I’ve recently been adding some extra information to my communications, partly to keep track and partly to add content that might be interesting. I’ve been using the “posts” count within WordPress and at the end of each communication I write a little about what happened in that year, just as an extra. I did try this somewhere in the 1600s as I thought it would be fun but I got bored and couldn’t be bothered. Then I started it again in communication number 1897.

There has been a problem along the way because the communication number I have been using at the end of each post is now out of synchronisation with the number that WordPress thinks it is on and I have no idea how that happened. Either I can’t count [which is likely] or WordPress can’t count, which is also quite likely as there is no fool proof method for computer systems to count things. So, this communication will not have any exciting information at the end of it to bring the comms# into line with the WordPress number and to make sure that I hit 2000 spot on, or close enough. It’s almost embarrassing that the count on this site is going to be 2000+-1.

So, for a little extra content here is an embedding of my most popular YouTube video when scored by views:

This video was recorded just at the beginning of my lockdown in 2020 and features my new Philips Ambilight TV.

October 11 2021October 11 2021

Ultra Payloaded – Satellite Party

I think I got to hear about this album from a television show I watched in Australia, something like that. It’s a side project of the singer for Jane’s Addiction and as such, this is an OK album. I enjoy the songs when they pop up on a shuffle but I don’t think it’s an album I would normally reach for unless it’s summer time and maybe I’m outside in the garden, it’s got that kind of feel to it.

This is the first of the “U” albums and it’s a quite exclusive club. Definitely not as many as “T”, thank goodness. We’ll be at the end of the list soon I guess unless the “W”s have a surprise for us.

This should be communication number 1973 because all the other communications before this one have been building up to number 2000. That’s why I started added year-information-stuff. But now there’s a controversy. WordPress thinks this is number 1972 and not 1973 and I really am unsure why.

I get a “posts” count at the top of my WordPress page and have been using that to figure out the particular comms# but systems have gone wrong somehow. Now I don’t want to repeat a load of information and maybe I should make the content dynamic somehow but I’m going to stick with the system I have been using and hope WordPress catches up with me soon. Maybe this is my “millennium bug”.

Here are some things that happened in 1973:

The UK joins the EEC, fore-runner of the EU.
US dollar is devalued by 10%.
Dark Side Of The Moon is released.
Tu-144 crashes.
Sydney Opera house is formally opened.

October 9 2021October 10 2021

We Didn’t Even Ask

Had a trip where we swung by the RAF Museum in Hendon. It’s free to enter so it’s a great place to go. If there was payment then I would have to balance to cost with what is there and so the greatness would depend on the exhibits and the cost giving me a measure “value”. Now, I’m into aircraft and this is free. So it’s an excellent place. Actually, it is an excellent place and not by default.

Short Sunderland - RAF Museum Hendon — Short Sunderland – RAF Museum Hendon – they built 749 of these!

Now, I can’t just swan off to places like this in the work week without actually having good reason and so we did bring some cadets with us to have a look around. You might be disturbed by this but I think the motivation to leave school for some and have a day out of lessons is actually overcome by the fear that they will miss something important and, if I’m honest, we didn’t bring as many as I had hoped. It’s there choice but what have we done to education if children think a day out with friends learning about “other things” is not worth the effort?

This beast is one of the prototypes of the EH101 and it is pretty fucking big. It’s in the corner among all the other aircraft and this one is just huge. We were just hanging around and one of the museum helpers came over and asked if we would like to look inside. Well, you don’t need to ask aircraft nerds twice! So we took up the offer and wandered around the cabin – it was big enough to “wander around” – and then we sat in the cockpit as we were invited to. Really grateful to have had the experience.

EH101 Cockpit - RAF Museum Hendon — EH101 Cockpit – RAF Museum Hendon

Here’s a picture of me pulling a stupid face – I want to point out that I was deliberately making stupid faces – but I guess you can disagree with the deliberate part of that if you want.

Comms#1972, here are some things that happened that year:

The Godfather premiers in New York.
I was born.
A fire in a nightclub in Osaka kills 115.
US Officials own up to the Tuskegee syphilis study.
Apollo 16 lands on the moon.
Apollo 17 lands on the moon.

October 7 2021October 10 2021

Liushi Shan

Hotan to Leh. This is a picture of Liushi Shan mountain. X-Plane. #roundtheworldtrip pic.twitter.com/p8XqdehdG7
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 6, 2021

I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently flying around the world, in a flight simulator. Let’s make that clear, I’m playing a game on a computer. I’m not doing this in real life. This started as a coastline tour of the UK from RAF Valley heading south and I just got stuck following coasts all the way to Pakistan. One day there will be a list on this site of all the airports I’ve landed at, well, at least since I’ve been keeping a list, which I think starts in Africa.

I’m going to skip the coastline of India and head across the Himalayas to see some mountainous scenery. I’m not sure where I’ll go once I hat the coast again, and I’m not sure when I’ll head back to the UK. Maybe I’ll just do a trip around the eastern hemisphere for now? I don’t know.

While I’ve been flying I’ve been learning more about operating the aircraft and trying flight plans etc. I think I’ve just about managed to program a plan into the flight computer, but I haven’t yet followed it because I keep seeing valleys to get low down in.

I had been using some software to add other players into my game, but no one is really around where I am so I’ve been using the PC to generate other planes. This picture shows another T7 following me. I was worried it was going to shoot me down as I have combat turned on, but they just kept their distance and left me alone. It was quite nice to have someone else in the sky, even if it’s just an “AI” plane.

So, I#ve recently landed at Leh, in India and I think it’s the first landing I’ve made in India. I’m not sure. The borders around here are a little hazy! Looking at Google maps I’ve just missed K2 and I won’t be going back for it. I’ve got to keep on moving eastwards.

This is comms#1971, so here are some things that happened in that year:

First One Day International Cricket match.
Apollo 14 lands on moon.
Decimalisation of money in UK and Ireland.
Apollo 15 lands on the moon.
First Mr Men book.
A Clockwork Orange film is released.

October 3 2021October 3 2021

Tummy – Wat Tyler

Gosh, it has taken a while to get to this point but this is the last of the “T” albums. Once I complete all the albums alphabetically it’ll be time to go back to the beginning and start reviewing all the EBM, aggrotech, albums that I have. Sorry about that but I don’t think there is an end to this portion of this site. If you think these are boring just wait for my list of airports I have used in the Round The World Trip in X-Plane!!

I saw Wat Tyler at a gig in the Square in Harlow way back when I had more hair than now. They were funny and I bought this CD at the merch table. This album is the perfect mix of well written songs and joke songs which make me laugh. I love it.

Here are some of the highlights:

Justify Your Book – is it just me or is the singer’s voice remarkably sexy here?
It Makes Me Belch – heavy riff and shouty vocals with a great hook into the chorus.
Hops And Barley – such an amazing wholesome song.
Coming Home – a lovely sea shanty from before sea shanties being popular.
Perry Groves – apparently a song about soccer.
The Definitive Love Song – a bit of a Freebird rip off with spoken lyrics to make you laugh.
Dodgepotterydo – a song with the lyrics of Rolf Harris songs sung to the tune of “Stairway To Heaven”.
James Whale – sung to the tune of “I just called to say I love you” but with a chorus of “James Whale you’re a fucking cunt, you’re a fucking cunt”. If you aren’t sure who James Whale is then think Piers Morgan but slightly less offensive.
Ruder Girl – If I can find the lyrics I will put them at the end of this communication.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen – you will love this.
Wet Wet Wet (The Fucking Bed) – hilarious.
The Little People Make Lurve – a classic operatic story of elves and dwarves and shit.

Gosh, we’ve reached the 1970s in terms of communications and here are some things that happened that year:

Unix time epoch.
The USA invades Cambodia.
Tu-144 exceeds Mach 2.
Stonewall Riot.

October 3 2021October 3 2021

No Time To Die

Well, I did it, I went to see what is hoped to be a massive film at the cinema. I booked a midday viewing because that way I still get the rest of my day to do what I want – if that makes sense. I don’t really like getting home from the cinema too late and then going straight to bed, I like having a couple of hours before I have to end the day. I guess there’s a certain routine built in there.

The weather wasn’t that great as I drove to the cinema. It had been raining for an hour or so and it continued to do this for most of the day. I didn’t really mind, rain is a good thing, you just need to be dressed in the right gear. The tide was somewhere around two thirds, a little of the mud bank was visible at the higher parts but nothing else.

After the film I rated it on IMDB and then tweeted the result because I like embedding the tweets on this site. The history of tweets is one reason I haven’t deleted my twitter account. Anyway, there’s a communication written years ago about the rating system. This film trouble me a little because I didn’t think it was worth a six out of ten but I also didn’t think about leaving, I was just bored with some of the scenes.

I rated No Time to Die (2021) 6/10 – IMDb – https://t.co/67wyt53dgg
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 2, 2021

Well, what did I think of this film? Did I enjoy it? Did it do what I want a Bond film to do? All these are very good questions, but I’m not sure if I’m going to answer them in here. So, shall we start at the beginning? Britannia crumbling to dust in the opening credits made me chuckle a little I suppose, I wonder if that’s what the world thinks of the UK, I mean they aren’t wrong. So, I guess I should do some general bits before I go into spoilers.

I think I liked the film. I don’t want to see it again and there are plenty of problematic aspects to it. I have found Bond films hard to follow for the last six years and I think that’s because I try to think too much about the plot and the what/where/whys of characters and vehicles. There is a lot in this film that I genuinely think doesn’t make sense once you get more than one layer down.

I don’t know why all the baddies have to have facial scarring of some kind. It has always been so. The chap with the scar is the killer. It’s bullshit. I also didn’t understand any of the motivations in the film, why was the bad chap doing what he does? It was really weird. Oh, and the ultimate plot being to kill most of the world with a plague amused me massively.

I wonder if I’m old and decrepit because at times I couldn’t understand what was being said. I would have liked some subtitles I think. It was the odd sentence here and there and while they ultimately don’t matter I wonder if the audio mix was a little off at times?

There be SPOILERS from now on.

How many concussions can you get before you are no good. I quite liked the fact that we saw Bond get hurt but the recovery was short as ever and there were no lasting effects. The film borrowed sound detailing from games when a grenade explodes we get the muffled ringing sounds as though we are hearing things from Bond’s point of view.

God damn they killed Felix. I liked Felix.

I really liked the glider/submarine that drops from the C17. Mind you, Q only puts on his oxygen mask after the doors are open and I think that’s a little late, he would have passed out. Oh, it takes more than a few hours to get a C17 around the world to near Japan.

I hated this film for making me feels when they played “All The Time In The World”, but that’s not a Bond thing, it’s the fact that the chosen music is fucking excellent.

I liked the ending.

I did not like that “James Bond Will Return”.

“M” would be arrested and put on trial for treason. MI6 only do as they are told by the politicians. It’s why the whole thing is fucked as the forces and spy agencies do what they are told to do. Hate the decision makers and not the doers.

I think Bond should have punched, shot, killed M.

I was bothered about the size of the ammunition holders in the DB5. I think they would unbalance the car a shit-load.

Spectre had a bomb waiting for all time at Vesper’s grave?? What?

This film seemed slightly too long, but I think that’s what the fans want. I am not a fan. I think I agree with Jase when he says he likes the really shitty Bond movies of the late 70s and early 80s when it was all so silly.

This is comms#1969 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

First flight of 747.
Concorde first flies.
The Harrier enters service with the RAF.
Humans land on the moon for the first time.
Probes are sent to Venus.
My Lai massacre.

October 2 2021October 2 2021

Troublegum – Therapy?

Opening lines:

“I’m gonna get drunk, Come round and fuck you up
I’m gonna get drunk, Come round and fuck you up”

This album has the speed and power of a classic punk album but with a little more subtlety. The melodies are great and I do enjoy playing this. While I might not know what the songs are called when they are played I definitely know the songs and this album gets played or at least not-skipped when it comes up in a shuffle. Heavy riffs with disturbing lyrics, you can’t get better than that I guess. This is well worth getting.

The song Nowhere is super single material, very well crafted.

This is communication number 1967 and curating events that happened in certain years seemed a good idea at the time but I do find it irritating now. But, I want to get to the point where I am making up shit for the future, that’s my dream, that’s my nightmare. These shitty few pages are going to make me the Nostradamus of the future, I best get good at being vague as shit.

Apollo 1 fire.
North Sea Gas starts pumping.
China tests its first H-Bomb.
First cash machine in world.
Race Riots in USA.

October 2 2021October 2 2021

TRON: Legacy – Daft Punk

I got this because I quite liked the music in the film Tron: Legacy. Also because I’m aware of Daft Punk and don’t really mind their stuff. I haven’t played it that often and so pretty much I have no views on this album.

This is communication number 1966 and here are some things that happened that year:

SR-71 goes into service.
Plenty of racism in USA. Also evident in UK but less noticed.
A B-52 crashes and drops three hydrogen bombs on Spain. They don’t go off.
Hovercraft service starts across the Channel.
An XB-70 crashes.
Aberfan disaster where 144 are killed.