I left Twitter about a year ago? I can’t remember when but I know I was very happy to leave. It was not a safe space for people to discuss with civility. Musk has made it far worse and I’m terrified at what is going to happen in the USA. I have now, recently, signed up to BlueSky. I heard about it on a podcast and I thought I’d have a little look. I like it.
I haven’t really figured out what I am going to do with the account. All I’ve done so far is post some pictures of aeroplanes. Let’s see. I might even leave if I find it adds nothing to my views of the world.
During the pandemic I bought a Kindle e-reader. I had bought a hardback book and I wanted to read it but my arms were too lazy for me to hold the damn thing. I also thought that if I spent some money on an e-reader I would read more. I really enjoy reading but there are lots of things I enjoy doing so reading tends to drop down the list, which is a shame because reading is really important for knowledge and thinking. So, I bought a Kindle.
I have been impressed with the Kindle and I enjoy reading from it. I’ve bought too many books on there and I probably won’t read them all. Much like real life where I buy books because books are cool but I don’t get around to reading them all. However, real life books at least exist in the real world and have matter to them.
I’m reaching the point nearly five years later where I might start buying paper books again and start reading them. There’s something about holding paper in your hands, leafing through a book, looking at the cover, not needed to be charged, that I like about paper books. So I am going to start buying real books again. Books are great. Even if you read them electronically or listen to audiobooks they are all great. Oh, yes, I do believe audiobooks are an excellent way to read and people who disagree with me are wrong.
I have spent a little time recently trying to get netherite armour in Minecraft. It used to be relatively easy – you “just” needed to get some ancient debris to make netherite ingots. Then they went and added a “smithing template” to the list of requirements and it took me a while to a) want to get a smithing template, b) be bothered to look for a bastion and cope with the general sense of death in the nether, c) feel netherite armour was worth it.
I have now done such a thing. I expected the bastion to kill me over and over but I actually managed to wander around relatively unscathed. It could be my gold armour saved me some injury – I don’t know. I not only found a netherite template but I also found an armour decoration template and that made me super happy. Although the templates are destroyed in the manufacturing process once you have one template you can craft more so I don’t have to go searching around other bastions, but I might just for the challenge.
So, armour has been upgraded and prettified.
Minecraft Armour Front View
Minecraft Armour Back View
For information and nothing else I’ve just checked my Minecraft world database file size and it’s coming in at 6GB at the moment. I have no idea in terms of average world size but it seems impressive.
I went with my parents to a café at North Weald airfield. The place was called Rosey Lea café, part of a chain of four cafes in the Hertfordshire borders area. It was a pretty neat place which meant driving around the entire airfield to get to it. I’ve driven on airfields before, most notably at RAF Brize Norton where I was chased down by a C130 Hercules, and this place felt similar except for the lack of giant transporters. The food was nice and there were a few things flying around so at least there was stuff to see. I did see a Jet Provost and also this beast:
I like playing Minecraft. It’s a better world than the one we live in. I know there are creepers and zombies obsessed with trying to kill me but the farming is fun and apart from the strange slavery the game is mostly peaceful. I only play in survival mode, I have entered a creative world, once, but I hated it. The offspring don’t really play in this world much anymore so it’s mostly me just wandering around and doing little projects. I do want to get elytra soon so I will need some help in The End.
There are many cheats that could be applied to the game but having played since Covid-times I have a good idea of which ones keep me playing and which ones make the game far less fun. In the past I have used teleportation and even edited the contents of chests and inventories. I don’t use these cheats anymore. As much as travelling around the map in real time seems frustrating, teleporting from one place to another really kills the fun and sense of acheivement.
I use one main cheat these days and that is software that produces a map along with coordinates on the screen. This does mean I can easily find resources underground such as coal, diamonds and gold. But I think it balances out the time I spend. I don’t have to strip mine, I just mine but in calculated directions.
A Mine Map – Minecraft Level 17
In the above picture you can see the routes I have mined and also some of the resources that remain, ready for me to plunder. Brown is copper ore, silver is iron ore and the grey is coal, I think. I can hover over the map in the application and it informs me the type of block I am over.
The mapping software I use is called Unmined, and it needs you to be able to access the world database. I normally FTP this from my server so I can explore using the map but without live updates.
A Minecraft Item Sorter
The above picture shows my item sorter which is placed underground. The red squares are all redstone. I will be making a video about this soon as the last one I uploaded covered my dugout mountain.
This is what the current base looks like from above:
The Legend and I have spent some time away adventuring and generally enjoying being away from things. We stayed in Crowborough initially and investigated things around there. I had to do some car “repairs” as I broke part of the bottom of the car being slightly impatient. We visited Pooh Sticks Bridge on a rainy day, which did keep the riff-raff away. Then we also tried to find the source of the river Medway. This wasn’t that easy. I knew where the source was and it is a spring on some farmer’s land. We walked to the spot but then could only really see the bushes and ferns covering the spring. We could hear running water but could only make it out a little further downstream where there was a small bridge. It was all rather overgrown but it was pretty cool to be in that spot.
Source Of The River Medway – Trust Me
The Crowborough campsite was below part of the approach pattern for Gatwick airport. Many aircraft flew overhead and it was great tracking them on the phone. There was also an amazing sound some of them made when flying over. It was a strange howling sound that I think is something to do with their engines spooling down or flaps extending. I’m not sure but it was gorgeous.
We then travelled down to the New Forest. The campsite was positioned on an old RAF Base and we were set up at one of the aircraft dispersal points along the perry track. The campsite was busy but after a couple of days most people went home so it became quieter and calmer.
Geeses – The New Forest
We visited the Bovington Tank museum and had a ride in a tracked vehicle, watched a tank battle show and saw plenty of tin cans that burn soldiers alive if hit. Later that day we drove around collecting new supplies for our camp. We had a day of cycling which was lovely. I had never really explored the New Forest and it was great just pootling along enjoying the experience.
Sea Rex – The World’s Largest Pliosaur
I think possibly the best adventure was travelling the Kimmeridge to see the Sea-Rex. This is a skull of a pliosaur which was discovered in the cliff face of the Jurassic Coast. There is a BBC programme about it and this was most of the reason we visited this place. The display was really nice and we even got to see the Steve Etches at work in the lab. We had lunch at the pub opposite and then drove to Tyneham. This village was suggested as a place to visit by one of the workers in the Etches Collection.
Tyneham is an abandoned village. Everyone was relocated during the second world war and have never been allowed back to live. There’s a big local campaign but it hasn’t got anywhere so far. It was interesting to see. My most interesting piece of information was that when the village was compulsory purchased all the money went to the “squire” as he owned all the property. The villagers were given only the value of the vegetables in their gardens. I see most of the world in terms of a class struggle between the poor and the wealthy. This classically highlights this struggle that is a very long way from being resolved.
Kimmeridge
On the return from Kimmeridge and the Jurassic Coast we drove past a shop selling pretty cool outdoors and biking stuff. So we hung a quick u-ey and visited that place. I would recommend Guardhouse Sports to you. I bought the Legend her birthday present. While packing away and getting ready to return I saw some nice aircraft heading to Bournemouth airport ready for their airshow. There were a couple of RAF Tutors and then, the most gorgeous Saab Draken and Viggen of the historical flight. I’m not sure I’d seen these flying before so it was great to see them.
I’ve recently had to deal with Razer and get a keyboard replaced. This started when one of the children complained about some of the keys not responding all the time. I quickly ignored this as I hadn’t noticed this and sometimes kids moan about things when really it’s a “them,” problem. However, later I noticed the same effect and one of the keys didn’t always respond. So I got in touch with Razer and went through their returns process. This was easy and annoying at the same time.
Initial contact was good but I did get an email saying that if I didn’t respond within 48 hours they would close my case. This was frustrating as I was away from my PC and I don’t really like using my phone to do work/typing stuff. But I did respond. Then they wanted a video of the problem, which was irritating as filming keypresses and the PC response to them was not the easiest, also trying to make the problem happen when it is intermittent meant a few tries recording.
Then, once the video was approved as showing a problem, I had to show that the keyboard did not work by cutting the USB cable. This would seem strange if I hadn’t experienced the same thing when returning a PlayStation steering wheel many years ago. Rather than spend money returning the product the company just want to make sure you can’t use your product so cutting the cable is the easiest and cheapest for them. I sent a photograph of the keyboard and cut cable. Did I think about how to do this to keep the keyboard operational? Of course. Did I think of a way to do that? No.
Next, the return was approved and I got an email telling me that a new keyboard will be sent to me. I do not know when that will be. Also, they said I might get a different type of keyboard depending on stock levels. All I can say is that if I get a different one it had better be more expensive than the one I am returning.
So, the delivery has occurred and it was quite painless. I had a DHL notification and I had that sent to a DHL centre as I’m never in my house when delivery people arrive. I would add that I didn’t get a “you can pick your parcel up” notification which was inconvenient as I had to keep checking their tracking website. Collecting the parcel was easy and quite local.
My keyboard was replaced with exact same type so I needn’t have worried about that. It also looked brand new in a sealed box so it’s not likely that it’s been refurbished. I want new stuff. It is plugged in and some keys replaced with different colours as specified by others in the household. I think it looks good. I’m back to being happy.
I went to see this film, Borderlands, at the Vue cinema in Thanet. I have no idea of the tide even though I was surrounded on three sides by water but this was an early evening showing of the film. I knew it had been panned in reviews but the trailer still made me want to see it.
It’s rather tricky to embed an IMDb score these days since I left Twitter so I will just tell you that I rated this film a 6/10. There’s a whole communication where I explain the scoring system.
I quite enjoyed the film. I liked the look of it. The story could have been better within the film, the overall plot was good it was just poorly executed. I would not watch it again but I was happy to have seen the film.
I went camping for a little while in east Kent and saw some of the cool things they have over there in the far east. We went to Lydden Hill to see rally-cross which was really exciting, lots of races over 4 to 6 laps. We watched the film Borderlands, to be reviewed. We visited The Wonderworks by Hornby – a place where the history of building toys is on display. Also a trip to the RAF Manston Museum, which was nice, lunch in the Royal Victoria Pavilion which was super quick to be served, and dinner at Bella Amalfi where I met the owner who looked a LOT like Jean Reno, the actor.
Rally Cross as Lydden Hill
Also over the weekend we played Catan, Outsmarted, flew the kite and threw an Aerobie.
The middle of August means it’s time to travel to Germany and attend one of the friendliest music festivals I know [I haven’t been to many but this one does feel like home]. On a Wednesday I travelled to see Smith in London town and we had dinner. I stayed over at his house as we had an early start to catch a flight to Hannover.
This year the flight was on time and we landed in Hannover and had plenty of time to get to our room. In fact, at one point we just sat by the river and let the world pass us by. In the evening we walked to the Maschseefest after a walk to get alcohol. We were both pretty tired having got up at 0400.
The Maschseefest, Hannover
Friday starts with a walk to the Bahnhof and then a train to Hildesheim. Once there we get the bus to M’era Luna. The whole experience is relatively painless. We find the tent and then chill because it’s been a long journey and not much happens on the Friday until the evening. I had some LED lights to light up the tent so we could find it once it was dark.
After I watch a band I note down a few comments on my phone. What you see below are those comments. On the Saturday the music we watched goes as follows:
re.mind – Main Stage – standard electronic. Singer wasn’t powerful but only ok. OK for a first band.
Steril – Club stage – upbeat electronic with some guitars. Much better than the first band.
Schwarzer Engel – Main Stage – Seen before. Metal.
Hell Boulevard – Main Stage – OK. Heavy rock. Keyboards in the background. Nothing special.
Centhron – Club Stage – Heavy as fuck bass and other motherfucking shit.
SPOCK – Club Stage – Excellent cheeky space based pop.
S.P.O.C.K.
Hamatom – Main Stage – Late on – technical issues. Good set. Lots of audience participation. Heavy metal. I enjoyed it.
Suicide Commando – Club Stage – Excellent set. Best band so far. Really enjoyed it.
Suicide Commando
The Sunday bands were as follows:
JanRevolution – Main stage – Better than yesterday’s first band. More upbeat. Enjoyable. I wouldn’t buy it.
Extize – Club Stage – Heavy dark dance. Actually good. I would buy.
Eden Weint Im Grab – Club Stage – Slow rock with violin and viola. OK.
Future Lied To Us – Club Stage – Really good electronic bouncy dance. Singer had energy but I didn’t like his voice. Really enjoyed the overall set though.
X-RX – Club Stage – Great energy. Very bass. Enjoyed it a lot.
Welle: Erdball – Club Stage – I was just getting into position for Combichrist. I didn’t like it. It was actually boring.
Combichrist – Club Stage – Elliott motherfucking Berlin! Amazing. The fucking best. An old school set.
Combichrist – Old School Set
Die Krupps – Club Stage – good. But not as good a previous times but enjoyable nonetheless.
Monday was all about getting home and leaving ML early to make the flight. We managed with plenty of time and it was interesting to see just how many people on the flight had come from the festival. Obviously I didn’t talk to any of them.
Yesterday I went to the cinema to see Twisters. I went to my “usual”, Rochester Cineworld, even though it’s in Strood and over the river from Rochester. After the film I rated it on IMBD using my rating system which you should read.
Look, I guess I’m meant to write what I thought about the film. It was alright. I guess it did what it said on the tin. Did I spend most the movie worrying about the relationship between a woman who looks 18 and a man who looks 40? Yes I did.
So my final camp is now complete. I’ve spent a week at RAF Henlow and it was a great time. I spent the week driving around in the party bus and singing along to all the great tunes we had playing. It was really nice being back with staff who I hadn’t seen for half a year and also meeting new staff from the other CCF unit there.
Bombardier Global Express Undercarriage
Here’s a list of the things we got up to during the week:
Archery, raft building, high ropes.
Shuttleworth Collection – anti aircraft Bofors training, bus ride, searchlight training, camp photo.
Leadership tasks.
Live 5.56mm 25m range at RAF Wittering using L98A2 weapons.
Martin-Baker factory visit.
DeHavilland museum visit and Link Trainer experience.
Harrods Aviation visit.
Voyager Simulations visit.
Elstree Aerodrome visit.
Duxford IWM.
Awards ceremony.
It was a camp worthy of my last CCF adventure and I look forward to seeing the section continue. The boss and I had loads of ideas and some plans fell through but that is how it goes. Overall I think we did a really good job.
You know how it goes. You’re flying along over the Netherlands and then BOOM, there’s a lightning storm in front of you. Fortunately for me I was already planning on landing before the storm but I don’t recall seeing lightning before in X-Plane.
T7 Red Tail Over Netherlands with lightning
You might need to click on the picture to embiggen it and then be able to see the lightning forks.
I went to see a film at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester yesterday. As we drove alongside the river I noticed that the tide was very low. I really should, at some point, learn about spring and neap tides, or at least the timing of them. I understand why they occur I’ve just not investigated when they occur. After the film I rated this on IMDB. You should see the ratings system on within this communication. I can’t get the code to share my rating because it used to be on Twitter and I left that hellhole many years ago. So, below is the average user rating from IMDB. I rated this film 6/10.
I didn’t hate this film. I didn’t really love it either. It kept my interest for its entire 135 minutes runtime. I did find myself constantly thinking why apes were the main characters and whether this film would be any different had all the cast been “human”. If it was set as ginger haired people against the rest of the world would it have made a difference? Is it ok to watch this as the apes being lead characters makes it ok rather than problematic. I do get that the whole premise is apes rule the world. That makes sense. But this was just a film with characters and their development. Maybe people wouldn’t see it if this was a human based story.
I quite liked it I guess. I am still thinking about it and I guess that makes it a good thing. However, I am thinking more about an episode of Dr Who, 73 yards, and trying to get my head around that more than I am this film. Like, why was the name of that episode in imperial units? Couldn’t they have made it 73 metres. There are bigger issues with that episode and so I will have a look online to see if there are answers.
I have and have not wanted a PlayStation Portal since I saw they were released. There was a period of time that I had a notification from a stock checking site to try and buy one but I was always too late to the party. I nearly managed to order one from Currys but then the order got cancelled as they had run out of stock. So, I gave up on stock checking sites and just thought I’d be ok without one.
So, I had settled myself to not owning a Portal, I can always use remote play on my iPhone if I wanted to even though I really hate using screens as controllers. Then, one day, EE sent me a text message saying they were selling Portals in their shop. Even though I had mentally settled on not owning one, I somehow went through the entire order process and ended up having a Portal delivered to my home.
PlayStation Portal
The above image is a poor photograph because you can’t see the main features of the Portal which would be the controller part of it. But you can see that I am logged into Fortnite. I have found that the Portal works really well on my home network. I haven’t tested it fully on another Wi-Fi network yet, but I am going to do so this weekend. So far it seems a great little device, as long as you have connectivity. If you don’t then it’s just a lump of plastic and electronics.
One of my main methods of connecting to my PS5 will be via my phone’s hotspot. I figured that I pay for quite a bit of data so I might as well start to use the allocation. However, when I first tried to connect to my iPhone the Portal said it couldn’t connect. I tried again and I still got an error message. I spent a little while using Google and I found a number of pages where they said it was not possible as iPhone doesn’t support the particular NATs or whatever. I was somewhat upset at this.
Then, through a random Reddit post I saw that someone had connected to an iPhone using manual settings in the Portal and so I tried that. It worked!!! I now have the best of all worlds. I am a happy chappy.
This communication should come after the next one as I have some writing to do about my new toy. I bought a PlayStation Portal and have been using it to play from somewhere that isn’t my lounge. I was quite worried when I tried to connect to a hotspot from my phone because the Portal refused to connect. What would be the point of having a Portal if I can’t connect wherever I get mobile service?
I spent some time googling and there were many pages saying that “nope, it’s an iPhone thing” and also that the wrong type of NAT is supported or something like that. So, I started looking into a wifi device just for the Portal to use when I am not in wifi range.
Then . . . . . today I stumbled onto a Reddit post that listed the manual wifi settings to connect to an iPhone hotspot. I tested it and I am very happy to announce that it worked, so I am now able to connect and play via my iPhone hotspot. I have decided to write the settings here, mainly as a reminder for me in case the Portal resets itself or something. Also, maybe other people will find these settings if they need them.
SSID – whatever your iPhone is called Password – WPA2, and the password is whatever your iPhone says in the “allow other devices” section. IP – 172.20.10.10 [the last number you can change from 02 to 15. Subnet Mask – 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway – 172.20.10.1 DNS – 8.8.8.8
Last night Smith and I went to the Angel and our favourite little music venue in Torrens Street. I drove into the big smoke and parked in some driveway using the Just Park app. Now, let’s be clear, the app doesn’t park the car but it allows you to find a space that is convenient and, normally, quite local to your destination. It was a much nicer drive than on Wednesday when I met up with the Fulham Five for a leaving party – one of our number is heading to the US to live. There are now three of us in the USA and three and a half in the UK. Back to the gig.
First band on were Machine Vein. I spent most of the gig thinking they were j:dead because I wasn’t aware there were three bands on. While driving in to the gig I thought it would be funny to see Biomechanimal again as they have been support for many bands I have seen. It turns out that Machine Vein have some of the same members of Biomechanical. I quite enjoyed their set. It was heavy bass with tiddly sounds over the top. I had a good time.
Second band were j:dead and I thought I had seen them before somewhere, sometime, but now, having seen them I suspect not. I also thought I had some of their music on my phone but that was also not a correct thought. I think they pop up in a lot of the social media I have because of their close links to the EBM – Aggrotech genres. I didn’t find their set as much fun as Mechanical Vein but they were definitely a more polished live band to see, you could tell there was plenty of experience. I was also surprised they were British. Not sure why that surprised me but it did.
j:dead at Electrowerkz
Then we were on to Faderhead, a singer I had seen before twice at a music festival and one whose shows were great. I’ve even helped fund their albums at times and there are communications somewhere in this site. I’m quite happy to pay for things that make me happy, hence I even pay for free podcasts, I will recognise that being able to do that is from a position of privilege. So, Faderhead. I really enjoyed the show. It was great to see him in London and the crowd was pretty darn good. He has a load of songs that are really good for singing along with. Some of my favourites are “No gods, no flags, no bullshit”, “Destroy, improve, rebuild”, “Fistful of fuck you”, and “Swedish models and cocaine”.
Faderhead @ Electrowerkz
Earlier in the day Faderhead had said that he wasn’t feeling well and that his voice was struggling. I think this showed in the early songs and he clearly didn’t feel healthy-well. He sounded better about halfway through the gig and then his voice declined more towards then end. They had decided to put some extra ballads into the set to ease his voice and I didn’t mind this. Overall I really enjoyed the show. It was great to see them play a smaller venue and I look forward to seeing them again sometime.
I went with KL to Brighton for the second time within a month. The plan was to experience the i360 and hopefully to be able to see outside this time. The last time we went it was foggy and we couldn’t see a thing. This time we travelled and the weather seemed good. We were lucky and the visibility was clear up to a height of around 150 metres so the views this time were excellent.
Brighton East, The View From The i360.
While enjoying the ride I accidentally knocked over an expensive drink of ginger beer so once we had returned to earth I told the staff. I also pointed out the various buttons behind the bar to K, these were the ones that controlled the UFO shaped observatory. The person in charge of the experience seemed so impressed I had taken an interest in his knobs that he asked if we wanted to stay on and ride again. We accepted.
While in the i360 I looked at the altimeter on my watch out of curiosity. Below is a picture of the watch once we had returned to earth the second time.
Brighton Day – Altitude
Apart from the disgusting hairs on my arm you can see I’ve marked four sections. The describe the following parts of the day:
A – Being at home. B – The journey to Brighton. C – The first ride in the i360. D – The second ride in the i360.
It’s nice to see that parts of the watch that I paid for really seem to work. I’m curious as to how sensitive the watch is to pressure changes. I might investigate.
