Author: Ian

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The Set Up

It’s been just over a week that I’ve owned the PS5 and after the initial joy of cabling and getting it in place I have been messing with some of the settings to get the best experience. The good thing about modern appliances is that they can “see” what they are connected to and output the correct formats for whatever gear you have. So, the PS5 is outputting 7.2 sound into the amp. I did have a problem with the picture format though!

The Current Set Up
The Current Set Up

The above picture shows a real mix of technologies and brands. There’s a Logitech G29 steering wheel, an Nvidia Shield Pro, the Sony PS5, a Sony AV amp, a Sonos unit, some Bose speakers, the Philips TV, a Sony speaker and a Sony PS camera. I think it all works together pretty well and even if people freak out about it they should realise that audiophile types are rare and most people can’t hear or see the difference between many basic makes and low end cables! I used to think that expensive cables were a thing that could improve your experience, but the answer is “no” they do not. Most of my speakers are connected by quite think mains cable. There isn’t a need for expensive cables.

So, back to the picture output from the PS5. I tried selecting a 4K HDR output but the PS5 was adamant that the receiving device wouldn’t be able to handle this. The PS5 wanted to downgrade the signal to 1080P for HDR rather than 2160P. Well, if I have to choose resolution over HDR then it’s the resolution that’s going to win every time I reckon. Every couple of days over the last week I would remember this issue and I played with the TV settings trying to find the magic button that would clear the way for these signals. I was pretty sure that 4k HDR was possible on the television. I couldn’t find the correct combination of settings.

I once again tried messing around in the PS5 settings to see if there was a thing I could do to fix this. I even bypassed the PSVR thinking there might be a thing inside that unit that meant it couldn’t bypass a 4k HDR signal. I also tried plugging the PS5 directly into the television but this didn’t change anything – I am aware now that this is because only one of the HDMI inputs to the TV is really set up for the best quality signal. I tried googling again and found a Forbes page which looked promising. The page suggests setting an input device to “enhanced”. This seemed like some kind of BladeRunner reference but I decided to go ahead and see if I could find this setting. Then, I remembered the AV Amp.

Why an amp needs to have a HDMI throughput setting set to “enhanced” I am not sure. But there it was, in the amp settings. The option to allow the HDMI bypass to be set to “enhanced”. I switched this. Then I restarted all the devices, because it seemed sensible to do so. I headed over to the PS5 and it was in “screen set up” mode. It wanted me to set up screen size and some HDR settings. I was reasonably excited and once the settings were made the PS5 is now outputting 4k HDR. It took a week of not-really-worrying about it but also knowing in the back of my mind that I could improve the look of the games.

I will say that once I’m engrossed in playing a game I don’t really concentrate on what the graphics look like. I don’t really notice the little details. It’s something I’ve always been conscious of. It’s the gameplay that makes the difference for me as a player. I know there a people out there who quite like just watching games and I understand that the graphics can really make a difference to them, but, for me, if the game play is good enough then you don’t really notice the rest of it?

This is communication number 2003 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • Space Shuttle Columbia breaks up over Texas.
  • Massive protests against an illegal war in Iraq. Governments do not listen. This is the start of my realisation that governments do what they want, not what we want.
  • Two people [not Musk] start Telsa.
  • China launches people into space for the first time.
  • Concorde makes its last commercial flight.
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Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor – Rob Zombie

All the Rob Zombie stuff is good. I bought a load before seeing him at M’era Luna a long time ago apparently, I seem to remember it was just the year before last, covid has fucked memories. I couldn’t tell you anything specific about this album. I don’t think you’d be disappointed if you got it.

This is communication number two thousand and two. Here are some things that happened in that year:

  • The Euro becomes the currency of those countries in the Eurozone.
  • Iraq agrees to disarm wrt UN Resolution 1441.

It’s been curious completing these little lists of things that happened in each year. When I started back in the 1800s I think there were lots of things that stuck out from the rest as I went through the list of events on Wikipedia. I found fires, human rights and climate change things with ease. Now I’m looking at the lists of things from the 2000s it’s becoming harder to find things that resonated with me in that time. The 80s and early 90s were quite clear and events stuck out. But, now, not so much. I wonder if that’s to do with my experience of those years and whether I just wasn’t that aware of what was going on? It will be interesting to see what happens as we come closer to the present day.

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Playing A Numbers Game With Death

It’s been reasonably frustrating to see the current government be so utterly terrible at managing the country. I guess it makes sense in some ways, people who are good at being elected to represent the population of the country don’t really have to be good at project management. They just need to be good at getting elected. Mind you, in most constituencies they just need to be good at being selected to run in those areas. When you look at it you have to wonder why people vote for Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson. They don’t vote for those people do they? Otherwise I’m pretty sure they would have to agree that one is a puritanical prick and the other is a liar. People vote for selfish reasons and the tories seem to offer the best deal for selfish people. Politicians are the worst people to have in charge of the massive projects this country is running. We need project managers and people who understand risk.

The current policy of not worrying about the Omicron variant and letting it run wild through the country relies on a couple of massive WISHES. The government aren’t worried about taking precautions, they are a reactive group of people who don’t have the balls to enact what is right for the country. It’s almost as if being popular enough to get voted for doesn’t make you very good at the thing you’ve been voted to do, especially so with the current bunch. For the UK to succeed we need all of the following WISHES to come true:

  • Not too many people need to self-isolate due to virus.
  • Not too many people end up in hospital due to new variant.
  • The vaccination programme means people don’t end up in hospital.

I am horrified at this approach. This gamble based on WISHES. We aren’t being pro-active. We are reacting. The problem is that the reactions happen two fucking weeks too late, because that’s how viruses work. It appears that the government still do not understand any basic biology. If we are really fucking lucky then hospitalisations will remain low and this works. We are hoping for luck. Fucking luck. We are playing with people’s lives while hoping for luck. Precautions are not being taken.

Less Severe
Less Severe
It's A Numbers Thing
It’s A Numbers Thing

So, Omicron might be less severe. But we didn’t know that until very recently. We kept everything open because we are reactive remember. Let’s go with the best possible number there, 70% less likely to be admitted to hospital. 70%. This seems good. But what this means is that if we were to have a massive peak in infections any gains would be wiped out as the total number of admissions returns to bad levels. This would be bad if the policy had been to keep everything open and say have a massive surge in infections.

Massive Increase In Daily Cases
Massive Increase In Daily Cases

Fuck. That’s what has happened.

Now, I’m not claiming to be correct and I’m not claiming that we are fucked. I’m not saying the NHS is going to be overwhelmed. I’m saying the risk of that has increased massively and the government are playing a numbers game. Hoping for the best outcome. They are playing dice with the lives of the vulnerable and the unlucky. They are placing bets on being lucky and making everything look like they were geniuses. Quite clearly they aren’t geniuses. It turns out that lots of MPs are just selfish twats who don’t care about anyone:

Oppose Tougher Covid Rules
Oppose Tougher Covid Rules

We currently have a bunch of MPs who don’t understand science, are willing to play dice with the lives of the country and who maintain a liar in power. It’s a fucking depressing world we live in at the moment and I only have so much anger I can maintain. Very soon it’ll be my chance to ignore the news again for a while. I need to get away from being a realist and play my PlayStation and enter a world of happy aliens I can shoot.

This is communication number 2001. Here are some things that happened in that year:

  • This is the first year of the third millennium.
  • UK foot and mouth outbreak.
  • Race riots in Bradford.
  • 9/11
  • The war in Afghanistan starts.
  • The iPod is released.
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The 2000th Fooyah Communication

I had been saving a few items for this communication and this is going to be a rambler rather than focussed on particular issues. I guess this could be considered my christmas newsletter to the world if you think I care enough about you – actually to the ten people who look at this site I do care. So, what sort of things have been happening?

I’ve recorded a couple of videos for YouTube showing me landing in two New Zealand airports. I’m currently there in my journey around the world and my biggest “problem” is deciding whether to island hop across the Pacific to South America or to head up the ring of fire to Japan and then cross the Bering Straits. I need to look into the range of my T-7 EFT and go from there.

I just had a look on YouTube and I hadn’t uploaded the second video, I shall attempt to do that a little later. I’ve got some music file management to do first because I had helped Kickstarter an album by the artist Faderhead. Their music hits my sweet spot and so I was happy to chuck some money towards his project. I get my name in the thanks in the CD notes.

I’ve reinstalled Twitter onto my phone, not sure why, but I think I have a slightly healthier relationship with that dark place than previously. It’s also nice to see what Cornish Pom is tweeting about.

Just over a week ago, Friday 17 December, I was chatting to one of my work colleagues and they said that they had a PS5. I don’t think I was aware of this and so I acted surprised. The person then told me that to get it they had just kept checking a couple of large UK suppliers websites a few times a week and one day there was stock, so he bought it, drove to a nearby town and owned a PS5. I was slightly surprised this method worked as I had envisioned having to keep checking stock level tweets and getting in long queues in different shops. Just for a giggle that evening I looked on the Currys PC World website and it said they had two bundles in stock! I clicked order and they confirmed that the devices would be delivered on the Thursday [23rd December]. This seemed nice as it would be a christmas present and also a 50th birthday present for me [it’s coming up].

I then keep getting emails from the delivery company saying the delivery date is being brought forward and eventually they deliver it on the Sunday! Just two days later. I was super pleased. I then spent about an hour organising AV corner in the lounge to make sure that it fit.

Early Christmas
Early Christmas

I’ve finally decided to remove the Blu-Ray player from AV corner. It doesn’t get used and on the very odd occasion when I do want to watch a disc I can use the PS5. The PS4 is removed because the PS5 is backwards compatible, so the 4 isn’t needed. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet. I currently have in my possession a PS3 [at work], a PS4 in a cupboard and the PS5 being used. I thought about taking the PS4 into work but the steering wheel isn’t compatible and I’m not getting another one just so I can keep the RACE club going on better hardware.

PS5 in its new home
PS5 in its new home

AV Corner has a 7.1 amp, Nvidia Shield Pro, PS5 and PSVR. There are a couple of cooling fans there to force the airflow as the corner is stuffy and doesn’t really allow for convection. The new system looks good and the PS5 is pretty darn amazing. I’m really impressed with the DualSense controllers. The force feedback on the L2 and R2 triggers is really impressive.

So we now arrive at the lovely xmas present the world decided to give me and that’s Covid. I tested positive the other day. Had a PCR and just waiting for those results. But, given the specificity of the LFD tests, there isn’t really any doubt. I had expected to get it at some point but I would have been happier if it was when I was meant to be at work and not during the holiday season. I felt like shit yesterday and today is better but every joint aches and I can’t regulate my body temperature. Guess I’ll just lie on the sofa and watch a load of shit all day.

I hope the world treats everyone well over the next few days and here’s to my third thousands worth of communications.

In the year 2000 the following were some of the things that happened:

  • The Y2K bug is averted through massive investment and hard work.
  • 800 people die in flooding in Mozambique.
  • A Concorde crashes after taking off from Paris.
  • The Kursk sinks killing 118.
  • I went to the Millennium Dome and it was really shit.
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The Matrix Resurrections

I remembered going to see the Matrix reissue when it was released and in my head it was about a year ago that I did that. Well, according to my own communication on this site I went to watch it in July 2019. Fucking 2019. Do you remember that? This means I went to see this original film twenty years after its initial release before SARS-Cov-2. Let me just repeat that, BEFORE. I’m not even sure I can remember what it was like in the before-times. Can you remember walking around and doing whatever you want without having to wonder why some cunts aren’t wearing facemasks? Can you remember a time when we didn’t have 150,000 dead in this country from this pandemic. I would ask if you could remember a time before having an incompetent and corrupt government but, they’ve been in power for a long time now and BJ was still as shit then as he is now. All he had to fuck up then was the Brexit agreement and that is going to shit still so we knew how our politicians acted.

Sorry, where are my manners? There are things we need to discuss first. The tide was pretty low as I drove along the riverside road. There are currently road closures in the village and so anywhere over “cinema side” of the local area is actually a bit of a pain to get to. As far as I know the gas people are trying to fix a gas leak somewhere along the main road into the village but someone decided to close the road as the hole is a little big? I’m not sure why it was closed but it is quite an inconvenience to many in the village. After watching the film I rated the film on IMDB and there is a communication from years ago where I discuss how the rating system works.

There are going to be spoilers straight after this tweet:

I didn’t dislike this film. I’m not enough into the canon to worry about what the fuck is going on all the time and how it affects the original storylines. To be honest I liked the original Matrix but the two sequels were shit I think. I know they had loads of money to make the films they wanted to make and they did, but I think when you try to narrow down the storylines to the point of making it make sense you end up with something that doesn’t work. Let’s face it, the Matrix looked gorgeous and has been much imitated since 1999.

I quite liked the first bit of this film where nearly every line was taking the piss out of the fact that they were making a sequel to the original trilogy. I thought this part worked really well. Normally I try and remember key points as I go through the film and sometimes [rarely] I write a note on my phone. I’ve not yet resorted to taking pen and paper but that might be worth it in the future. I also interact with a film by wondering what I will write about it on these pages. I don’t think I did much thinking about that last night. I was more concerned about a lot of things that didn’t seem to make much sense in the film.

In the film they talked about how The Matrix [game] Trinity was inspired by how Tiffany looks as Thomas Andersson sees her everyday in the coffee shop. They also explain how the game was released twenty years ago which means that Tiffany wouldn’t have had kids and possibly wasn’t married so Thomas could have approached her. There were a couple of things like this that didn’t quite make sense but you can do whatever the fuck you want with this film.

A bigger issue for me, and this is extremely similar to my complaint with Spiderman, is that Neo is told that going to get Trinity will cause a war and lead to the destruction of Io, the new human settlement. But fuck it, he’s going to get her anyway because Love. No weighing up of the death of thousands in a war, just a straight up obvious decision to go and get his beau. I did not like this aspect of the film.

I will tell you that this film looked gorgeous. It was really well made along with many themes of accepting who you are. This isn’t a surprise given the background of Lana Wachowski, the joint-writer and director. I’ve read quite a bit on social media where the general consensus is that Lana Wachowski created a gorgeous rebuff to the right wing of politics who had co-opted themes from the original film. Good on her. Fuck those people.

This is communication number 1999 and so here are some things that happened in that year, which is a newish thing I’ve been doing:

  • A fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel kills 39 people, closing the tunnel for nearly three years.
  • Columbine High School massacre.
  • British TV presenter Jill Dando, 37, is shot dead on the doorstep of her home in Fulham, London.
  • Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is released.
  • The sovereignty of Macau is transferred from the Portuguese Republic to the People’s Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese settlement.

Engineers and software people spend a lot of time and money fixing the millennium bug and because of the hard work the threat of mass computer failure fizzles out. But it was because we fixed it. Not because it wasn’t really a thing.

The Labour government spend a load of money creating the millennium dome. I think it was over a billion pounds. All to get ready for the celebrations of the end of the second millennium and the start of the third but because we have a stupid year numbering system most of the world gets this wrong.

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Spider-Man: No Way Home

Yesterday I went to see this film. Given the omicron variant is being a bitch I had to balance out all the variables. I booked the largest screen/auditorium and made the the seats were definitely spaced from other vectors, facemasks were worn. A group of young men were there not wearing facemasks and I don’t think they were all exempt but there’s no folly like the stupid invincibility of the young. Wearing a facemask actually show that you care about others, you are reducing your airborne vectors, you are being considerate. These young men, quite clearly, aren’t aware of that or just don’t care. It’s easy, I think, to want to think about others and do your best for them. I really should remind myself that the tories have one a majority the last few general elections when the alternative was a society trying to help people.

It was dark, cold and foggy on the drive to the cinema and with roads closed near the village the journey was a bit longer than hoped for. The tide looked low on entry to the cinema. I could see all the mud flats and they were covered in seabirds having a rest from attempting to fly with almost zero visibility. After watching the film I rated it on IMDB and there is a communication that covers all the rules for the ratings here. I then tweet my result and because I have re-installed twitter onto my phone I could do that straight after the rating rather than having to use the PC to send it.

I didn’t hate this film. But I didn’t really enjoy it. But I was happy to see how the story was resolved and how they would figure certain aspects out. I don’t like superhero films and stories because it always ends up – who has the bigger fists wins – and that’s a lazy trope. It’s toxic masculinity class 101. Anyway, this film was mostly dull. I don’t like Dr Strange as a character and I didn’t really like most of the plot. It felt as though they had run out of ideas and just needed to bring back all the baddies because being creative is too hard.

From here on there be spoilers.

This is a film about selfishness. Utter selfishness. Peter Parker could have fixed it right at the beginning by not changing the spell every few seconds. Dr Strange could have stopped the spell and then re-started it but apparently the rules in this universe don’t allow for that. Peter Parker was selfish at the beginning and then ruined many people’s lives and cost millions of dollars of damage. He could have fixed this at any point by hitting the button on the McGuffin. The problems created in this film are so easily stopped. Press the fucking button.

The reason he doesn’t press the button is this universe Peter Parker believes that people should be given a second chance, that they have the chance at redemption. What christian wank this is. Just accept christ on your deathbed and say you are sorry to the imaginary man in the sky and you are redeemed and accepted into heaven. Parker wanted to fix these terrible people without their consent. I’m not sure what was meant to happen after that? Were they going to live in his universe? If you had the amazing power of being a bad superhero do you think you could go back to living in the suburbs? I’m not sure that would end well. The reason these people become bad is that they are egotistical cunts.

What was the end game? It seems Parker came up with a plan but with no idea how to resolve then ensuing issues. This is another classic modern trope taken from the real world examples of Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look back at the end of WW2 there were plans put in place to rebuild Europe and Japan. There was never a plan for Iraq and Afghan. Right, ok. This has gone political. I probably need to stop. Look, the thing is, Peter could have hit the button at anytime and fixed it all. He didn’t. He’s a selfish prick.

I was hoping we could see some Miles Morales, but it didn’t happen. I feel that the script could have been loads better with the other spidermen. I felt stale and slow. It didn’t really work. Perhaps the writers need to watch some buddy movies, or some where they get the team together.

So, this is communication 1998 and I’ve been writing a few things that happened in each year as I get through the publishing of communications. The last few have been interesting as nothing of note has stuck out at me on the wikipedia page and I so there’s this blank area when I wasn’t really into news as such. I just didn’t take that stuff in. Anyway, here are some things that happened in 1998:

  • Andrew Wakefield’s lying study into MMR vaccines and the lies told by the media of the day launch the anti-vaccination movement.
  • The second Congo war starts, it will leave 5.4 million dead.
  • Google Inc is formed.
  • An oil pipeline in Nigeria explodes killing 1,082 people.
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Tasman Sea

It’s been tough, this last term. There’s plenty to moan about and discuss. But I’ll leave that to private conversations rather than let everything be out in the open on this site. If you can believe it I have my limits. I’m typing this as my flight sim heads across the sea from Hobart, Tasmania to an airport in New Zealand. I’ve got about fifty minutes to go. This is the longest over sea flight I have done and I keep looking at fuel levels. I think I might travel the length of New Zealand and then island hop to Hawaii, after that I’m not so sure how to get to the Americas. Maybe I’ll head to Galapagos and the South America. I honestly don’t know. I’m not even sure what the maximum range of my aircraft is. I can tell you that the T7 that I’m flying seems remarkably “loose” in the sky and I’m not sure if that’s the updated aircraft or just my flight sim. I guess I’ll find out when I try and land.

I’ve been tweeting the flights for a while now and I’m looking forward to whatever I’ll do when I return to the start point. I’ll need a new challenge but I’m also hoping that X-Plane 12 will be out by then. If they could make a version that uses multi-core rather then a single core then that would make me very happy. I don’t know how complicated that is but I do know they use an Apple computer for writing everything. I get a reasonable performance at the moment except over very built up areas and so multi-core could sort that out for me.

I’ve been checking online every now and then for PlayStation 5 stock. I was curious but I didn’t think I’d actually end up with a decent result, but . . . the other day I checked Argos and then Currys/PCWorld and it turned out there was a bundle in stock at PCWorld. Well, what could I do? I didn’t think I would buy one but the dream of GT7 on a 4K TV with raytracing got me and I clicked the order button. It’s coming on Tuesday. I need to rationalise AV corner now and think about getting game saves etc over from one machine to another. It’s probably time for the DVD and Blu-Ray player to go. It’s very rare that we actually watch anything on disc and the PS5 can be called into use whenever that ability is needed. I’ve promised myself I’ll try and get into more games over the next year. I want to use the games I have in the library. I will possibly report back on if it’s good or not in about a week.

The kids play mostly PC games when they are here. One on a laptop and the other uses my beast of a machine. I use my own PC for flight sim mostly. My fingers don’t really operate at a ASWD level, they are too used to a PS5 type controller. I could learn but there are other things I’m going to try and learn to push my brain a little. I guess I might reveal those things sometime in the future.

I’ve recently actually paid for a couple of albums. I’ve had Children Of The Dark by Mono Inc. in my head for ages and decided it was time to try and purge the earworm. It turns out that didn’t work and I keep getting their songs going through my head. I’m looking forward to seeing them in concert at sometime in the future. I’ve been wondering about whether it is best to buy an album or to stream music and I’ve mentioned that before on this site. For me, I thought buying an album meant more of the money I’ve spent would go to the artist. If I don’t listen to the songs many times more of the money in terms of royalties goes to the artist than if I just streamed the songs. Now, Daniel Graves from Aesthetic Perfection has said that he makes more money from streaming that album sales because I guess some people play individual songs over and over. I don’t know if it would make my contribution more to the artists as I often only play a song a couple of times and not over and over. It’s something I’m going to think about over the next week or so.

Well, I arrive in New Zealand in about ten minutes so I need to head back to the flight simulator and get ready for landing. I’m really worried about the handling of the aircraft and I hope I don’t crash on the landing as by my own imposed rules I would have to start the flight again!! Keep an eye on Twitter for progress.

This is communication 1997. Here are some things that happened in the year 1997 ACE:

  • Hale-Bopp makes its closest approach to Earth.
  • The UK hands Hong Kong to China.
  • The country went Diana mad. I was left remarkably unfazed by the whole thing and didn’t really care.
  • The Prius goes into production.
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Dune Demolishing

So, this week I’ve watched Demolition Man along with the 1984 version of Dune. There are other things going on but none particularly interesting enough for this site, except maybe the caves and cliffs update to Minecraft. Why did I choose to watch Demolition Man? It’s even worse than that I paid for the privilege of watching it on a streaming service rather than “download” it which I would have done in the past. So, I didn’t download it as I only do that on an old laptop, the new PC hasn’t been tainted with any torrent type software or files and I refuse to let it become untouchable. A podcast I listen to reviews films, specifically terrible christian movies although they sometimes do jewish and muslim films too.

These guys chose to review Demolition Man this week and I remembered really liking it when I saw it at the cinema and the “three seashells” thing is something that I think about now and then. It’s sometimes nice to watch the film before it gets reviewed, most of the time I’m not bothered but this time I thought it was worth it. It’s very interesting seeing how far film technology has come in my life time. This was a high quality film and the effects are some of the best of its time. I mean, they look terrible compared to nowadays but they were still pretty good and didn’t mess with my enjoyment of watching this film. It’s a great film.

Dune, 1984 Lynch version, also happened to pop up in my interest this week as I had discussed the 2021 film version with a friend and as much as I knew I’d seen the original I couldn’t really remember much about it. So, I watched this too this week. What did I think? Well, it’s more gross and despicable than the 2021 film, and I think it’s probably a better film. Again, there are issues with the technology being so much more improved these days that it’s hard to make a film look terrible because of the effects [especially so when there’s so much money involved]. Everyone raves about the sense of scale and vista that Villeneuve creates but the Lynch version has the same sense of wonder and mechanical amazement. I’m not sure people who reviewed the recent version had watched the Lynch version within memory.

I think I have a bigger issue with the overall plot of films like this one which I consider to be absolutely fucking lazy. This isn’t really the fault of the movies but more a fault of the writer of the story. My problem is: it’s just a fucking jesus story! Stop being so fucking lazy and making your lead character the last chance of a prophecy. So many books and films have prophecy and saviour figures that it reinforces upon society the religious views prevalent at the time. Even Harry Potter is the result of a prophecy. This child was born to do the things he did. Every time a book or film with this lazy-ass plot device makes it big it reinforces two things in the population:

  • The concept of religion and the prophecies from the past allowing us to redeem ourselves if we believe in the correct god.
  • The concept that people are born into a particular standing in life and that you need to learn your place.

Both of these concepts annoy the fuck out of me. Both of these concepts continue to encourage and force the disparity we see in society, they discourage altruistic behaviour and they encourage fucking idiots to become leaders of countries because that’s their fucking birth right. You know that t-shirt that says if you aren’t angry then you aren’t paying attention? I’m a walking human version of that. I have to constantly pull away from the news to pay less attention because everywhere I look I see entitled pricks trying to do a job they have no idea to do because they think they should be doing it. These assholes genuinely think this is their purpose in life. To be in charge. To make decisions that will affect populations. But, the problem is, they aren’t qualified to do it. They are slimy cunts who have the right parents and attended the right schools. They don’t give a shit about everyone else, they just care enough to try and maintain their position of power.

I read an headline in The Guardian recently where someone was saying that will all the recent shenanigans they are thinking of changing their vote. Fucking What? How stuck in your ways and forgiving do you need to be if you are only now thinking of changing your vote? How much shit and bollocks do the tories need to create for you to just around now start thinking of changing your vote? What a selfish prick. If you can’t see that the current bunch in charge are utterly incompetent then maybe you shouldn’t be voting in the first place. I suspect it’s more about getting to the balance point where you can accept your hatred of voting Labour rather than the selfish view of continuously voting for the tories because you always have.

Well, that went sideways as a communication but I think it’s all on message for the general themes of this website. In other news I bought an album by Mono Inc because I’ve had “Children Of The Dark” going through my head for weeks now.

This is communication number 1996. So, let’s see what things happened that year that made a mark on my life:

  • Fokker goes bankrupt.
  • Australia bans automatic and semiautomatic weapons following a mass killing.
  • IRA Manchester bomb.
  • N64 is released.

I don’t think I was paying much attention to the news in this year as looking through the lists of happenings, not much actually reminded me. I was news-blind. I wish I was such now.

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Use Your Illusion II – Guns ‘n’ Roses

Each new communication seems we get a little closer to ending the work that has been the album reviews because that is literally the definition of writing about a finite list. But, I will go back to the beginning and start over with all the EBM, Aggrotech music once I’ve finished this. It looks like there’s around thirty or so to go but I don’t think I’ll finish them this calendar year. Here’s a tweet about a journey around the world that I’m undertaking at the moment. Nothing to do with music but it’s nice to add something into these communications.

Here we go with my review of Illusion II. It’s very similar to Illusion I in its feel and atmosphere. They did come out on the same day.

Civil War – boring.

14 Years – Doesn’t have a huge amount going for it.

Yesterdays – plinky plonky boring.

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – great live, but then it’s not their own song. Dull as.

Get In The Ring – something worth listening to. I testament to Axl’s treatment by the metal music press. He calls out the journalists and reckons he could fight them. Look, when you are out of it on drugs and alcohol you think things should be settled in one way only. I do like this song.

Shotgun Blues – Nope.

Breakdown – whatever.

Pretty Tied Up – I quite like this one. It’s a bit more upbeat that most and makes me smile.

Locomotive – I’m playing this right now and I genuinely can’t remember this song!!

So Fine – boring.

Estranged – boring.

You Could Be Mine – used in a film. A good song.

Don’t Cry – AGAIN? What. Isn’t this on number one?

My World – really nope.

I know it looks like I hate this album and I do think I would skip a lot of the songs if they came on now but I loved this and the other one. They forged a part of me. I mean, I saw Guns ‘n’ Roses three times in the early 90s and had a great time at every concert. I’m not sure Illusion II stands the test of time, or possibly the test of my patience with ballads.

This is communication number 1995 and we get closer to the massive TWO THOUSAND each week. I wonder if the end of the second thousand communications will happen this side of my christmas break or in it. It depends how keen I am to keep writing stuff on here. Here are some things that happened in the year 1995:

  • I started learning to be a teacher after a year of doing sabbatical stuff.
  • Genocide in the Balkans.
  • Windows 95.
  • Existence of top quark is announced.
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Use Your Illusion I – Guns ‘n’ Roses

There was a time when Guns ‘n’ Roses were the largest band in the world. This is communication 1994 and it’s quite close to the release year of 1991 for these two albums, Illusion 1 and Illusion 2. I can remember walking around near South Kensington underground station trying to find an “Our Price” record shop to buy these things. My thinking was that that there are shops near the tube station and so there should be an “Our Price”. Where I grew up where there were lots of shops there was an Our Price so I think my logic was solid I just hadn’t realised at that point just how “shoppy” London can be. I had to walk all the way to Kensington High Street to find a shop that could sell me these albums. I know I bought them on album and then transferred them to tape to listen more conveniently, record players being quite rare in drivable vehicles.

I have listened to these albums recently and I would think it’s been around twenty years since my last full run through of the songs. There are some songs that I really like and many that I’m just not fussed by. I wonder how much my experience of these songs has changed over the last thirty years. I think I’ve changed a lot in my tastes. I mean, fuck ballads. But then I don’t think I’ve ever really loved Don’t Cry and November Rain – they are too popular and musically written to create that popularity.

Right Next Door To Hell is a good fast song that smashes the sound and experience into your head. But it’s followed by:

Dust N’ Bones which is a bit bluesy and shit. It was with these two albums that G’n’R started having lots of backing singers on tour and it all went a little not-dangerous. But what are you going to do when you are the biggest band in the world.

Live and Let Die can fuck off.

Perfect Crime is a bit boring and so much of the same. Maybe I’m too old for this shit. I’m not bothered by most of this. I do think Appetite is still an amazing album though.

You Ain’t The First is boring.

Bad Obsession I absolutely love the slide guitar at the beginning of this song. It’s an awesome sound. Is that a harmonica in the mix? Not sure, but I don’t think I like it. The song isn’t terrible though.

Back Of Bitch. I really struggle with the term bitch when referring to people. I don’t like it. It reeks of a poor attitude and behaviour.

Double Talkin’ Jive I quite like the solo and overall I think the song works quite well.

November Rain – utter shit.

The Garden – is that fucking Alice Cooper? Such a malevolent voice. Makes this entire song something worth listening to.

Garden Of Eden – nope.

Don’t Damn Me – again, a decent riff and a decent song. I like this one.

Bad Apples – nope.

Dead Horse – OK.

Coma – I quite like a decent opus and this one works for me!

I guess the next album to be reviewed will be Illusion II with bloody Civil War and other songs that are wildly popular but just piss me off. Oh well. I can’t help being a grump.

This is communication number 1994, so here are some things that happened in that year, the twenty-third of my time on Earth.

  • I graduate and prior to that had won an election.
  • Bill Clinton calls for a ban on assault weapons. I wonder how that’s going.
  • The Downward Spiral is released.
  • Kurt Cobain takes his own life.
  • Ayrton Senna is killed the day after Roland Ratzenberger dies.
  • The Channel Tunnel is opened to passengers.
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Not Quite Caves And Cliffs

I’ve been busy over the last while playing Minecraft now and then. This video is long overdue as it’s a walk through of the latest base area, which I think was finished a few months ago but I just hadn’t got around to recording the walk-around. Things have been quite busy. This last weekend gave me the opportunity to spend some time setting up the recording software again [it hadn’t been used really since the new screen was purchased]. It took a while to figure out how to create new scenes and get widescreen recording to work nicely. However, this Minecraft video is in standard 16:9. Why? Because I don’t think Minecraft looks good in ultra-widescreen. I’d rather put a decent product onto YouTube than one where I think I’ve compromised in video quality. I’ll be uploading some flight sim stuff soon and that will be in lovely widescreen.

Comms#1993, here are some things from that year.

  • A 21st birthday party ends in hilarity.
  • A bomb in a van under the WTC explodes killing 6.
  • Waco siege, Texas. 76 die.
  • Jurassic Park is released [first DTS film].
  • Marine dumping of radioactive waste is banned.
  • Doom is released.
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Ghostbusters: Afterlife

There wasn’t much choice at the cinema when I looked to book a ticket. Eternals was on along with some films I had already seen but I am not going to bother with Eternals. I don’t like superhero films and if I want to watch them I’ll do it on a streaming service. Ghostbusters: Afterlife was all that was left, but that doesn’t mean it was a poor choice, I wanted to see this. It was dark and stormy so I couldn’t see where the river water was for a tide report, but there were some reflections of lights high up the mud bank and, more telling, there were sea birds just resting all over the place, floating around, and I think they were taking shelter from the storm.

After seeing this film I rated it on the IMBD website and there is a guide to the rating system within this communication. I flip-flopped between a six and an eight because as much as I enjoyed this film and it gave me the “feels” I wasn’t sure I was going to see it again. But, let’s face it, for a film to make me happy and smile thirty five years since I watched the first version, it deserves a decent score. I then tweeted my score.

I really enjoyed this film. It felt like it was paced quite slow to start with but I think that’s because modern films are paced too fast in case the audience decide they hate the film. Making people wait for the “action” is perfectly good. There doesn’t have to be loads and loads of action all the way through the film. We don’t need films to keep racing to the lowest denominator of the public. There should be room for improving society and not just destroying it all the time.

I smiled at many points in this film and laughed [inwardly – I’m not a freak] in the right places and sometimes in this wrong places. The person three seats along my row seemed to laugh too loud and too much, but you know what? Each to their own. It’s better than the narcolepsy person I was near for one of the Matrix fims. I’m going to try and give little away about the film but that also means I can’t really talk about the ending. I will say that I loved the effects of the big-baddie, I thought they looked really good. The voice was interesting and in the credits it mentioned that Shohreh Aghdashloo had been the voice and that didn’t surprise me. She has such a unique voice and accent it really works in this situation.

The touches of music that plinked away in the background were perfect and hinted at the original film enough that I’m considering getting the soundtrack in digital form. The Ghostbusters OST was the first album I ever bought with my own money. I can remember my mum asking me to make sure I wanted it as it was quite a bit of money. Clearly I wanted it. If I want something then I always want it. I think.

I enjoyed this film a lot. It is nostalgic. It is lovely. It is worth seeing.

Comms#1992 and we get closer to the millennium each week. I wonder what number 2000 will contain? I’m not going to plan this, I’m just going to let it happen. Now, I’m one of those who can count correctly and so in terms of years I recognise 2001 as the start of the third millennium because that is very clearly when it starts. Here are some things from the year 1992 C.E.

  • The Maastricht Treaty is signed.
  • 263 die in a coal mine disaster in Turkey.
  • The LA riots following white cops being acquitted of beating a black man when a video clearly showed them doing so.
  • The Balkans are going to shit.
  • The first text message was sent.
  • The Fulham Five first lived together.
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Up From The Ashes – Don Dokken

I really do just like some classic cock-rock. And this I think is classic cock-rock. I don’t know anything about the history of Dokken and Don Dokken, it’s mid to late 80s stuff and all information about rock bands came from magazines in those days. I didn’t really care for that stuff. Does it matter who leaves what band and who fought whom? I guess it’s a bit like a soap opera if you are really into that stuff but I don’t think I was really bothered by it. When Izzy left G ‘n’ R it was more a understanding of “yes that makes sense” than OMG G ‘n’R are breaking up. Bruce left Iron Maiden and I wasn’t fussed and so on.

Sometimes I wonder why people give up on a thing that clearly makes them plenty of money. If I had an acting job that meant loads of money but it was shit TV then part of me would want to keep doing that job. However, the motivation of money is much higher in my personal priorities having grown up with not much of it and as an adult choosing a career where the financial rewards aren’t great [even diminished under the tories]. Ah, now I see my motivation – I chose a career path that I find fascinating and fun and the lack of money is just a side product which I cope with – hence other people choosing to leave their success and seek fulfilment. Good on them.

I don’t think Dokken were ever megastars with the ability to retire whenever they want. One of their songs was used for a film soundtrack and that’s about the limit of their fame and fortune. Their favourite album of mine was recorded in Japan and as a previous headteacher of mine said to me once regarding his own music success in Japan – they buy any old shit over there. So as I write this the songs are playing and they are broadly speaking very well constructed rock songs with reasonable riffs and verses that are a little too ballad for my tastes now. I don’t really like songs which slow down. The verse should be upbeat and then the chorus should be even more so. It’s an 80s thing to have ballad shit in songs and keep repeating it. I don’t think I’ve ever really liked it.

Some song highlights are:

  • When Some Nights – I like the guitar and bass combo in this one. It’s the fist song with some life in the album.
  • Give It Up – good bass sound. Good quality sing along song.
  • Down In Flames – interesting opening with mechanical voice.
  • The Hunger – opening drums – amazing, riff – amazing. Balled verse – shit.

Comms #1991, so here are some things from that year:

  • I was working at Raytheon/Cossors and almost considered joining the air force if the Gulf War became “bad” whatever that means.
  • I started university and met some great people.
  • Dissolution of the Soviet Union.
  • The Moby Prince sinks killing 140 people.
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Windows and Window

It feels like it’s been a busy month and also such a struggle to keep up with everything that has needed to happen. Basically I think I’m saying it’s been too busy and I want it to stop. This weekend I have been mostly fixing a laptop that kept moaning about files missing and therefore it was unable to perform some windows updates. Obviously it would only tell you this after it had spent about two hours looking promising with the update. It didn’t feel overly safe turning off windows updates so I tried to fix it.

I made it worse. I managed to mess it up so it would even boot to the windows login screen. I had been doing some DISM work within windows trying to get the windows image to fix itself so it would run the update. Oh well. After quite a bit of attempting to boot to safe mode I finally got the laptop to boot to command prompt and from there I was able to browse the various drives within DOS. I found a setup.exe file on a bootable USB stick and just thought I’d see if it runs. It did. It proceeded to reinstall a fresh copy of windows and slowly over the next twelve hours I got all the previous software and files reinstalled. Small items are still being loaded as I write this but mostly, the machine is back and running quite well.

No major files were lost because I have a very clear – save it in the cloud as well policy. Useful things are only saved in a OneDrive type situation so that things aren’t lost in exactly this kind of situation. Even my NAS Drive is triply redundant, although two of those are physically in my house, so if it burns, I lose those. I don’t know who else thinks like that but I do. There have been many times I’ve come home hoping that my house hasn’t caught fire and burnt down the entire row. No, I don’t leave naked lights on or anything like that, it’s just a thing.

I also resealed some of the outside rubber things on a window. I had removed it a while back with the aim of buying some more and then replacing it. I think it’s the source of a leak I have with rainwater appearing on the window cill. The old stuff looked “dried out” and cracked. I think it just being a south facing window did that with direct sunlight all the time. I ordered a variety pack because there are approximately thirty different types of window gasket and then I chose the one that fitted best. I don’t think it’s an exact match for what I removed but it did seem to fit snugly. Yesterday I spent an hour fitting less than a metre of this stuff to the window. The issue now is that the corners of the gasket don’t fit super tight so I have some duck tape there at the moment. I need a rain storm to hit so I can judge the effectiveness of this stuff.

The oven heating element blew again about a week ago. I know I’ve changed it in the past and when I searched this site for some information it turns out that was in 2016. I suppose five years for an oven element is OK? I’d prefer it if I didn’t have to change it but at least it’s something I can do with relative ease. I’ve pencilled that in for next weekend along with a busy Saturday. Once again I find myself wanting everything to just stop for a month or so.

This is communication number 1990. Here are some things that happened that year along with me becoming of legal voting age and taking my A-Levels.

  • The Pale Blue Dot photograph is taken and sent back to Earth.
  • The NZ Navy stops daily rum rations.
  • A fire in an illegal club in New York kills 87.
  • Germany merges economies.
  • Berlin Wall destruction begins.
  • Iraq invades Kuwait.
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United Abominations – Megadeth

Here’s the thing with Megadeth; since they gave up drugs and became all christian they’ve kinda gone a bit shit. I understand the reasons for coming off drugs, that makes loads of sense, I’m not sure I understand the christian part because doesn’t that mean that god made them an addict in the first place and he’s a fucking asshole? I do know that twelve step programmes might not work that well and one of the steps is to surrender yourself to a higher power. Fuck that shit. In Scandinavia they have a programme that doesn’t depend on abstinence and that works better I suspect. Anyway, it’s a complicated picture and not one that I’m going to do justice to in this here little blog.

This album is not on my iPhone. I think that says it all really. While it’s in my collection and on the NAS drive in the house I won’t listen to it anywhere else. To be perfectly honest if I want some Megadeth in the house I wouldn’t even put this album on. I think there’s only so much twiddly thrash metal you can have in your head at one time before all the songs start to sound the same [I will admit that typing that just made me sick]. The Megadeth albums on my phone are:

  • Killing is my business . . . And business is good.
  • Peace sells . . . But Who’s Buying.
  • So Far So Good . . . So What.
  • Rust In Peace.
  • That One Night – Live In Buenos Aires.

So, there. You now know what I think of this album.

This is communication number 1989 and as has become a recent tradition these are some things, curated by me, that happened in that year.

  • 47 died in the Kegworth air disaster.
  • Union Carbide agree to pay the Indian government 470million for causing the deaths of 3,700 in the Bhopal disaster of 1984. [$127,000 per human life in case you wondered].
  • 97 people die in the Hillsborough disaster.
  • 51 people die in the Marchioness disaster.
  • 11 die in bomb attack at Deal Barracks, Kent.
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Unholy Terror – W.A.S.P.

I had this album playing while I was flying X-Plane yesterday. I had thought that I might recognise some of the songs, but I did not. It could be that yesterday was the first time I actually played this album. W.A.S.P. are a comically larger than life band who sought out the controversy and I’m hoping to see them soon. But this album left me unfazed. Just go listen to Live . . . In The Raw.

This is communication number 1988 and it’s quite exciting writing and finding these little happenings each year as we enter a period of time when I was quite aware of the world and the goings on therein. I was sixteen in this year. ATC summer camp was at RAF Coningsby, I took my GCSEs, it was the very first year of those examinations.

  • 3 members of the IRA are shot dead by SAS in Gibraltar.
  • 167 die in the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion.
  • 75 people are killed in an airshow accident at Ramstein.
  • Total one million dead as Iran Iraq war ends.
  • F-117 acknowledged as existing and first B-2 is revealed.
  • Pan Am flight 103 is blown up over Scotland, the debris lands on town of Lockerbie.
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Undaunted – Mordecai

I saw this band live at Download 2013. They were in a smaller tent and Smith and I just went there out of curiosity. They were not terrible. It was perfectly good rock/metal music. So, I bought their album.

I’m not sure there’s anything special about the album. There’s not really anything that stands out enough to say that this band should be massive. But, that might be the crux. The whole album is crafted really well. There aren’t any shit songs and it all works pretty well. It’s a pretty good choice when I want to listen to rock but nothing superstar.

This is communication number 1987 and as with recent traditions I have been adding a few things that happened in that particular year in the current calendar system. Having typed this I’ve remembered I didn’t do it for my previous communication so I’ll head back that way and adjust it shortly.

  • The Archbishop of Canterbury had sent an envoy to the middle east to try and help but Terry Waite was kidnapped and not released until 1991.
  • 193 people die in the Herald Of Free Enterprise ferry disaster at Zeebrugge.
  • 16 people are killed in a massacre in Hungerford, UK.
  • Mathias Rust lands a small light plane in Red Square Moscow.
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November Happenings

Sometimes it’s hard to keep finding “content” to fill these gorgeous pages. Often this site requires me to go to the cinema or at least go somewhere so I can then write about the terrible/great experience. Recently it feels that I’ve not done much. I mean I have but it’s just the boring same old.

Last Sunday I helped supervise some of the cadets who are entering a national competition in a couple of weeks, nothing exciting there. This past week I had two days off work ill and actually slept for the entire day for the first one. Then yesterday I ran a weapon training session and range for some of our new recruits. Oh, today I’m heading into town this morning to take part in the Remembrance Parade which I guess is something important but not always something I’ll take photographs at or write about each year.

This week just gone I’ve either been too tired or ill to cope with opening up the editing software and writing stuff here. I’ve actually just reminded myself that I started the album reviews for this exact problem, if I don’t have anything to write about then I can write an album review and publish it easily. So, this week I’ll probably publish a few of those. It also means I get to listen to those albums to remind myself of the specifics.

I do know that I’ve felt ill since the return to work in September. My lungs don’t feel correct and if I go for a run in the cold it really knackers those air bags. Not sure what’s going on, it’s not SARS-Cov-2 as I’ve repeatedly tested with both LFT and PCR. There are big issues with the LFT but it’s the best thing we’ve got at the moment I guess. I don’t think the government should be pushing them so much but they are blinded with their “success” of just under 150,000 deaths so far. Fucking twats. I honestly will not understand why anyone would still vote for the tory party after everything that has happened. They are in over their heads and horrible. Some people I talk to seem to think that voting labour endorses complete socialism or communism and they can’t bring themselves to do it. Happy to trudge along with the stupid cunts we have now in charge instead of wanting to help people. Let’s be clear, the government response to this pandemic has been disgraceful.

I’ve been playing Minecraft a little recently and am trying to give myself little projects in that as time goes on. I’ve just built a bubble elevator for one of the kids so they can build a sky base and we’ve worked on somewhere to attempt to kill the Wither. We’ll see how that goes. The last time we tried it I had to reload the world from a back up as our entire base got destroyed. My next job is to build an underground area in a few chunks a long way away for us to attempt to kill that bastard. We want a beacon. I think we’d also like some elytra but we are working on that. I don’t think we’ve found an end portal yet.

I keep being tempted with buying a PS5 but I will only play one game on it and so I don’t think it’s worth getting for just that. Especially when that game is available on the PS4. I haven’t pre-ordered my copy yet but I will. It comes out around the time of my completion of half a century of rotations around the sun. I’m currently having a go on Assetto Corsa on the PC and it’s ok but I possibly need to connect the steering wheel to the PC and that means moving it from the front room which seems like effort at the moment. Using a PS4 controller works reasonably well given my extensive experience in racing sims.

There’s nothing currently on at the cinema which I can be arsed to see. The only film I could possibly go to is Eternals but I dislike superhero movies so much that I reckon it’s just not worth going. My biggest issue is that the resolution to these films is always who fights better and never a negotiation or discussion. It’s never a cerebral conclusion it’s always fists and I fucking hate that.

I guess it’s time to start doing things to get ready to parade through Maidstone. Maybe later I’ll complete some more album reviews. I know that the Use Your Illusions are coming up and it’ll be fun to see what I think of those albums thirty years later.

This is communication number 1986 and so here are some things that happened in that year of our lord:

  • Chernobyl disaster.
  • M25 motorway is opened.
  • 2000 people die in a limnic eruption in Cameroon.
  • Top Gun is released.
  • Consensual sex between men is legalised from the age of 16 in NZ.
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Such An Inflating Day Trip

I went to meet a bunch of people in London. The congregation was meant to be part of a stag do. I mean, it was a stag celebration but I didn’t really attend most of it. The plan was brunch, a rugby match and then whatever followed. I knew that the brunch was going to be either outside or in a well distanced restaurant and so I was happy with that but as the time approached to attend a rugby match travelling via crowded trains and being in a stadium I felt unsure about the covid-ness of it all. Now, I had been to a gig where you had to show your vaccinated status to get in and there were quite a lot of people but it felt mostly safe. I didn’t want to be in an England crowd at Twickenham.

Belfast, London
Belfast, London

Another things that’s been bothering me recently is the pay rises the government has paid teachers over the last ten years. I find this really interesting, partly as I’m a teacher and partly because I can’t believe teachers are not as angry as they really should be. Over the last ten years the government has deliberately followed a policy of austerity. This was their political choice. We now know it wasn’t necessary as when the covid pandemic hit they decided to spend a fuck-ton squared and even then the controls were so poor that BILLIONS was lost. Here’s a graph showing teacher pay over the last ten years compared to where it would be if we had JUST received pay rises in line with inflation.

Teacher Pay Rises Versus RPI
Teacher Pay Rises Versus RPI

Back to the stag. We met at a place near Waterloo station but I walked in from London Bridge station which was about a twenty five minute walk along the South Bank. It was a really nice walk and I started on the river close to HMS Belfast and then walked past the City Of London, the Golden Hind, and a lot of eateries. Fortunately I didn’t have to walk past too many of those “people who stand still for money” as they annoy me intensely. The brunch was nice and the restaurant staff were very tolerant of the pranks played on the stag.

Cityscape, London
Cityscape, London

Here are some numbers for you wrt the pay. The pay rise over the last ten years amounts to around 13.2% total pay rise since 2010. Inflation in that time has caused an increased in prices of around 37%. For comparison the CPI, and clearly you are going to use whichever inflation measure works best for your argument, has increased 25% in that time period. I used the Office for National Statistics to get my data. If my pay had increased by the CPI it would be around 46,000 now which is still clearly above what I am actually paid. In essence I have had a real terms pay cut every year for the last [over] ten years.

MP Salary
MP Salary

There’s nothing like mixing up all your graph types when you are trying to make a point but I was curious how much MPs have awarded themselves over the same time period. They’ve had a pay rise of around 25% meaning that they are inline with the lower of the inflation measures. So, the people voting to not pay public servants according to the lower rate of inflation have awarded themselves that exact rate. We all know that’s not even the best of it. Over that time MPs have given themselves plenty of expenses to be able to pay for things that they would say are required as part of the job, and I would mostly agree, but I would also argue that many MPs play the system to enrich themselves. This pay doesn’t take into account any other jobs and directorships that MPs take on.

I think the problem is that too many of us do our job because we like being a teacher. We feel a “calling” or feel we should do the things that are considered normal of us. I personally don’t think that. I don’t feel the calling and I don’t feel this job is a vocation. This job is one that is bloody hard work and no one will be there to thank you at the end of it. That’s not how all this works. You don’t get a special seat in heaven. You just stop doing this shit one day and it leaves your life. Salaried jobs are bollocks. We should be paid for what we do and in a specific time frame otherwise the organisation is stealing from you.

Comms#1985 and so here are some things that happened in that year:

  • “Neighbours” starts on Australian television.
  • First mobile phone network in UK.
  • South Africa ends its ban on interracial marriage.
  • 56 die in the Bradford City football ground fire.
  • 39 fans die in the Heysel Stadium disaster.
  • Windows 1.0 is released.
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Last Night In Soho

So, I used my last night of freedom in this mini-break we have from work to go to the cinema to watch Last Night In Soho. It was directed by Edgar Wright who also directed Baby Driver which I reviewed here. Driving along the south run towards the cinema I noticed that the tide was very low, I couldn’t see the mudbanks because it was dark but I could see the white of the seagulls standing on top of the mud all the way to the centre channel of the Medway. I don’t recall checking what was going on with the river levels when I left I was puzzling out what I thought about this film.

After watching the film I rated it on IMDB, there’s a whole thing about the rating system and that’s covered in this communication. Then, eventually, I tweet the result to my fans but not from my phone as I’ve had Twitter removed from my phone for a long time now. The only “scoial media” type app I have installed is Reddit and that’s only for times when I need distraction from the happenings around me because I’ll get too annoyed if I actually pay attention to anything.

I’ll try not to give too much away about this film but for the first 75% of the film it was heading for an EIGHT out of ten. I really enjoyed it and thought I might watch it again to see all the subtleties between each decade of happenings. Essentially a girl moves to London and experiences visions from the 1960s. I thought this premise worked really well and I liked the whole [first 75%] of the film. The music was great, the look and feel of London in the 60s was fantastic and the experiences of a Cornish girl heading to London were reasonably accurate but I’m not sure the “big city” is that much of a “thing to worry about”. Maybe I’m wrong because I grew up near London and regularly went there in my teens, I guess I also have to factor in that I am a male and places feel different to us depending on what sex we look like.

When people talk about the swinging sixties I tend to remember what my mum once said and that was “it was still a bit shit everywhere”. While there might have been an amazing scene in some cities most of the world was still a bit shit. The image of Carnaby Street and the Kings Road garnered feelings of freedom and liberation and I suppose while that’s true the men in charge were still assholes. I did like the fact that many of the male characters in this film were creepy as fuck. I guess that is what the world is like even now and the experiences of women were shown to be generally quite awful.

My problem with this film started in the last 25% of the run time. I had positively enjoyed the film until then, wondering whether the main character was crazy or experiencing some weird time displacement. I was hoping this would turn out to be a film where the mental health of the main character grew to be known and helped to be minimised with care and compassion. But, no. This turned into a plain horror film. I don’t care for horror films because they are clearly bullshit and the tricks they play on you are trope-like and mostly boring. Every now and then a film will come along that will be surprisingly different but then that spawns a load of shit.

Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg were fantastic in this film. The two lead characters managed to keep their eyes open in terror suitably long enough. This was a well made film but the crappy ending dropped the scoring down from an easy 8 to just a six and so this film gets lumped in with all the other sixes and there’s a lot of them.

I’d be curious to know just how good an Redruth accent the lead female had, @cornishpom?

This is comms#1984. Here are some things that happened in that year of our lord:

  • The USA and the Vatican restore full diplomatic relations.
  • The start of the Satanic Panic.
  • An explosion at a waterworks in Lancashire kills 16.
  • Liechtenstein finally grants women the right to vote.
  • Threads airs on BBC two and gives me nightmares.
  • Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic, solo, in a hot air balloon.
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