I went to see this film because it’s the summer holidays for me at the moment. It is slightly ridiculous that I have only worked through August in about five of my years. It’s an interesting thing that for me the summer only starts at the end of July, when teachers talk about “the summer” we don’t meant the meteorological summer. Just for giggles I think the following are my five years of working in August:
Post GCSE I worked on a farm driving tractors.
Between lower and upper sixth form I drove tractors.
Post A Level I worked at Cossor Electronics for a year until I went to university (two summers).
I was one of the student union officers and so worked the summer of 1994 in Beit Quad, Imperial.
Back to format now. The tide was on its way in and was covering most of the mudbank but the grass on the bank was still visible, it wasn’t visible on the way home. I didn’t see the seal from last time but it didn’t matter. The weather was really nice and the who vista was very pretty.
After watching this film I rated it on IMDB and there’s a communication which discusses the scoring criteria here. It is then usual for me to embed the tweet:
My web editing software doesn’t really like pure HTML being entered and for a long time it would warn me of errors, but my code was correct. I use WordPress btw.
So, the film. I really enjoyed the whole thing. It was good fun. There were many nods to the cartoon series it made it fun. It was really a more modern Goonies [which I can’t remember so will have to dig out].
Part of my recent trip to the Lake District was walking some new Wainwrights. I travelled up to Keswick for a week. I’m hoping to get back there later this year for some serious ridge walks and possibly ticking off another ten or so of the categorised mountains.
Derwentwater from the Ashness Bridge
Just look at the gorgeous views you get from even half way up to high. This is the view from just above the Ashness Bridge.
Watendlath Tarn
If you keep driving or walking up the road from Ashness you get to Watendlath, a tiny hamlet high up in a hidden valley. It’s an amazing space and the tarn is lovely. This is just the sort of space you can imagine walking around a mini peak and finding people having sex, you know, the usual.
Hills and mountains can’t be everything and so it’s also important to see aircraft. I went to the Dumfries and Galloway Air Museum at the old RAF Dumfries. It was a curious place with planes looking rather dishevelled and in good need of a paint job.
Fairey Gannet
This one along with the Lightning was the best looking plane. There was a Saab Draken, a JP and a Westland Wessex, but they didn’t look great. The Dassault Mystere was doing OK.
Dassault Mystere
There needs to be a list of hills walked and their placing in the Wainwright list so here you are:
High Rigg [209 with a height of 354m]
Great Mell Fell [155 with a height of 536m]
Loughrigg Fell [211 with a height of 336m]
View From High Rigg
I did also walk Latrigg but this is about the fifth time I’ve done that one and so it shouldn’t really get a mention here. I did some rowing on two of the Lakes while I was there, Derwentwater and Grasmere.
Exploring Islands in Derwentwater
Keswick is a lovely place I think, maybe very slightly less so during Convention time because it makes it so busy and full of people, but still such a wonderful place to visit.
Grasmere from Loughrigg
Next time I’m up here in the summer I think I would like to go swimming in the Lakes. It looked very inviting and paddling wasn’t that satisfying. I’d rather be out there adventuring. I think my swimming is good enough. I’m not fast but can keep a steady pace going, much like my running. I can’t wait to get back up to the north west again.
I went to RAF Fairford a short while ago to attend the Royal International Air Tattoo. RIAT is a huge airshow which takes place each year at RAF Fairford. I’d never been to this particular airshow before and so I was quite excited. There were also a few aircraft types I had never seen static or flying before:
F35
Su-27
P8
F18 (a friend told me I had seen some at RAF Waddington years ago)
Patrouille de France
Freece Tricolori
Nearly all the other types of aircraft I had seen static or flying before. I have to say now that the very best displays were the F16s and F18. They were both incredibly impressive given how old their design is. The Flanker was amazing, utterly brilliant.
Here is a selection of some of the photographs I had once I’d returned home. Not all the credit goes to me, the kids took quite a few of the photos and did a good job.
Spanish Harrier
Freece Tricolori
NATO Elephant Walk
Breitling Jets
Patrouille de France
Flanker Landing
A Moody Red Arrows Shot
Min Radius Turn F-16
Flanker
Freece Tricolori
Double Concorde
The weather was a little cloudy at times but we coped. Photographs look better with a mixture of blue sky and fluffy Simpsons clouds.
The noise was amazing and I just loved the sound of the afterburning jets taking off and pulling many G to show off their capabilities. I also met some old friends while at the tattoo and it was lovely to arrange to meet them. I even managed to bump into George who is a colleague from the PAC at Amport, I knew he attended and I was hoping to see him.
I’m not too happy with the media page for the photos as I think the photo is too small on that, so the images link to the actual image file, I might get around to learning how to adjust that one day.
This morning I took a trip to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester. The tide was waning. It was mid-morning and so the perfect time to go see a film. The cinema was pretty busy as End Game is just out and people are trying to get their viewings in. When shall I go?
I rated Missing Link on IMDB as is customary, there’s a communication here which explains the scoring system.
Took a few hours out of the busy schedule the other day to visit the Historic Dockyard at Chatham. This is one of the places this country built and serviced warships for over four hundred years. I found the positive spin put on it all in the introduction video to be full of cognitive dissonance but I guess that’s how it goes. It was rather “Great Britain ruled the seas and controlled the world” it was kinda a Brexiteer’s wet dream with promises of glory and power. It completely ignored the human aspects and damage this country has done around the world. Anyway, enough from this old lefty, let’s have some pictures.
Smithery No. 1
I like the way the light enters this room. It’s part of a building that contained the first smithery. There were a few buildings like this where all the metal work was completed. It’s quite impressive.
Ocelot
HMS Ocelot is a spy submarine and the last Royal Navy ship to be built at Chatham [they built more afterwards, but for other countries’ navies]. It’s quite impressive being given a tour around this beast. I think I’d love to see a more modern submarine, the whole concept of living under the sea is rather freaky.
Cavalier
HMS Cavalier is a destroyer now permanently moored in wet-dock at Chatham. I would have liked to have seen the engine rooms and murkier areas of the ship, but that would probably need specialised tour guides and so this one is a self tour.
It’s a great place to visit and I have been here a few times in the past. I’m not sure if I’ve written about it before though. I’ll go and have a look! well, my cursory search has highlighted no references within this website to the dockyard, that seems strange but there you go. This is the first. It’s a lovely day out.
Within visible distance from my house, about a mile away over the fields, I can see looming lights and flashing brightness. I had thought it was set up for a weekend when a friend performed some music thing at the Monastery down the road. There’s an actual piece of St Simon Stock’s skull down there and I think it’s where they draw their power. Have a google for Aylesford Monastery if you want to find out more.
Next to the monastery at the moment is a large temporary theatre showing a pantomime once or twice a day for about a month. It turns out that the lights and glitz are connected to the pantomime and it’s meant to be a Winter Wonderland.
WinterWonderLand
I went there. No, I’m going to sound like an untrustworthy snob and I probably am but I don’t really like the health and safety aspects of carnival rides that are routinely reduced to fit on the back of a truck and moved around the continent. I do not think that all the best possible safety aspects are adhered to.
The Winter Wonderland consisted of lots of rides, a few food stalls and ticket outlets. It’s one of those places where the workers aren’t trusted with money, like in a Roman nightclub, and you have to buy tickets at centralised locations and use those tickets to go on rides. Twenty five tickets would set you back the discounted price of GBP20 or it was GBP1 each.
A ride on the shittiest ride was three tickets. The dodgems were five tickets a car and to me that sounds expensive. I was thinking maybe GBP3 would be more reasonable but I now realise I’m old and grumpy and harking back to the old days when things were cheap. I don’t get out much and perhaps that explains why I thought everything was pretty expensive.
The ice skating seemed reasonable though. GBP10 for an adult ticket which lasted for the entirety of a three hour window. I managed an hour and forty five and so I think I got my money’s worth along with a hurt wrist after having to do an emergency stop into the barrier with my arm. There’s plenty to remind me I’m getting old. Aches and pains and a natural tendency to moan about how expensive things are!
I don’t think this will last long. I’m having another go with the PSVR. It’s a virtual reality set for the Playstation. The last time I used one I felt sick almost immediately and got cold sweats. I expect the same to happen again, but this time I have a plan. I am going to keep working at it and try and overcome the sickness.
The other night I set it up and then tried a few of the simpler, slower, non-moving experiences and I coped quite well with that. As I felt good I went on to have a go at driving in Gran Turismo. I did a couple of laps of an oval in a slow car and felt OK. I then managed a few more laps in the same car around Brands Hatch GP circuit. By that point I was tired and starting to get very slight cold sweats. I stopped.
I reckon, that with time and sensible use I might be able to play it enough to be happy with the financial costs. It will take time.
The principle reason that made me get a PSVR again is that I should be able to hook it into the PC and get the flight sim working in VR. This will be an amazing improvement to the sim. This should be reasonably simple so I am going to wait for a time when I have a whole day uninterrupted to do this. I find that setting things up on the PC either take twenty minutes or four hours. There isn’t really an in-between.
After a visit to the RAF Museum at Hendon I came into contact with a couple of not-Lego models that while not-Lego certainly look nice and have a good size. These are Cobi blocks and it looks like they are made in Poland.
I went to visit the RAF Museum at Hendon. It’s a lovely place, partly because it costs nothing to go in* but also because it’s full of aircraft.
*there are parking charges.
My main issue with the museum is that the aircraft are parked close together and it’s hard to get decent photographs of them. Also, some of the rooms are pretty dark and getting the white balance correct is a pain. Maybe I need to be a better photographer!
I recently traveled to London for the day. I did plenty of walking along with a few train rides and underground journeys. Not going to say a huge amount about what I saw but here are some of the highlights:
HMS Belfast
National Gallery
Westwards
The Shard
The Tower and a pointy thing
There you are. Some of the classic sights of the city of London and Greater London and the City of Westminster.
Over half term I made the journey to the other end of this country to spend some time in the Lake District. While it is quite a drive the views and atmosphere are so worth it.
While in the district of Allerdale I decided to complete a few more of the Wainwrights. There are 214 fells mentioned by Alfred Wainwright in his books and I’ve got a taste for bagging some each time I go to the Lake District. My personal target is to complete the lot by the time I am 60. I’ve got 14 years to go. I need to up my rate a little but the next time I go I am planning some lovely ridge walks that should get quite a few crossed off!
On the first day I went up Walla Crag [number 204 by height].
I parked in Great Wood car park and walked up the Cat Gill route and down again via Castlerigg. It was a lovely little jaunt. Now I had a feel for it I wanted to try and get some of the lower stand-alone fells bagged. I was trying to cross off those that would mean a big detour on future longer routes so this would allow me to make as yet unplanned walks easier.
Next was Binsey [number 192 by height]. A little mound of a fell on its own to the north east of the Skiddaw range.
This was too easy. The car was parked about half way up and was really just a little stroll. The views from the top were amazing. It was a lovely warm and sunny day with visibility running at about 25km. The mist was so fine that I couldn’t see the Scottish peaks but could just see Scotland across the Solway.
Derwentwater Withies
Another day, another walk. This time up Cat Bells [number 189 by height]. I had already completed this particular fell and so wasn’t too fussed about climbing it but I had planned to meet a work friend there.
It was pretty busy at the top and plenty of people were making this their first Wainwright. I t was nice to see so many people enjoying this countryside. The views are just lovely.
Walking down Catbells and I saw this sheep just standing and staring.
The Hills Have Eyes
The next day was a rest day and I went on a narrow gauge railway and then visited Muncaster Castle. The walk back took in a short distance by the river Esk. The air was so still that the water looked like a mill pond.
River Esk
I drove back to Keswick through two mountain passes. One was Harknott pass and this is a most ridiculous road. There are hairpin bends with a gradient of 1:3. There were times I couldn’t see where the road went out the windscreen while turning because the road dropped away so fast. It was a very satisfying drive. Then, there was the Wrynose pass which wasn’t as spectacular but was still very pretty.
Another rest day followed with a lovely time doing various things together with going to watch Solo. The final walk day was spent hanging around Crummock Water after getting to the top of Rannerdale Knotts [number 210 by height] adjacent to the lake.
I’m annoyed that I forgot my hat. I don’t do well in direct sunlight, I have a lack of natural head covering, not that I’m too fussed about that, and I burn easily, even with sun lotion on [SPF 50].
Crummock Water
That was it for the week. A journey back to the South East and good broadband bandwidths beckoned the next day. It was good to get back to upload speeds in excess of 0.4Mb/s, it was needed to chuck photos into the cloud.
Today I went to see Solo. A film from the Star Wars universe but nothing really to do with the Empire and the Star Wars films. It was set before Han meets Luke is Mos Eisley. I went to the Plaza cinema in Workington and it was a very pleasant experience. The cinema was a good multiplex with decent prices. I liked it. I now need to include some form of information about the tide and I am afraid I have no visual information about it. I can inform you of what it was like at a similar time the day before:
This was the view over the River Esk slightly further down south. Just north of the Eskmeal Ranges used by the MOD to test rockets and shit out to sea.
As is customary I rated the film on IMDB and you should know by now to see this communication with information about the rating system.
So, there we go! A resounding 8/10. That’s pretty good for me. I went to see the film without any real expectation and I just wanted to be entertained. I struggled at the beginning because it seemed to be Oliver Twist for the first fifteen minutes but things settled and I enjoyed the remainder of the space romp.
I’m not going to go into detail. I enjoyed the film and I liked the action sequences. Could it have been better? Yes, loads. But it was good enough. I think what makes it survive a roasting here is that it didn’t have anything to say about the Darth Vader issue. It’s not a prequel and it doesn’t mess with the original films. I enjoyed it.
I spent a few delightful hours at Brands Hatch over the weekend to watch the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Races. I do like this type of car. I think I have grown out of F1, it’s not that interesting and full of masses of bullshit. I prefer the “honesty” of GT and Le Mans Prototype type racing. This closed-wheel racing seems more fun and spectacular. I know these cars don’t really bear much more than a passing resemblance to their road-going cousins but I like the look, sound and overall racing of these vehicles.
Audi R8 LMS
The first part of the WEEKEND OF NOISE was a trip to Norwich for Thrashersaurus. This was the second part of the weekend and my ears were still ringing from seeing Xentrix play the Brickmakers.
The day started with a free pitwalk and a chance to get close to the cars and drivers. Hence the above picture.
Anyway, the first race watched was the GT 4 European Series with many cars on the grid it was pretty good but there was a number of safety car periods and this stifled the racing somewhat, but it did mean there was a good lot of close racing.
I did like the KTM cars which had a lovely rear end.
After that was the first of the sprint races for the GT series and the hour of racing included a pitstop and driver change. It was an impressive sight and good fun to watch. The weather was perfect, lovely and sunny. You know it’s summer when the circuit commentators are reminding spectators to put on plenty of sunscreen.
The beginning of the race was a rolling start and I captured it here:
As I watched the race from the Brabham Straight I got to see the podium celebrations:
Final Podium
It was a good day with plenty of noise and ice cream.
Audio R8 LMS GT4
It’s very nice being back at Brands Hatch. It’s the place I spend an awful lot of 2004 and 2005, almost every Sunday. Not sure I could have that commitment again but a couple of times a year seems a good start.
Just because I can, I decided to have a go racing a similar race to the GT series on Gran Turismo and, just because I like most of you, I have uploaded that replay on to YouTube. Enjoy (or not).
I made it to the South Foreland Lighthouse yesterday in weather that can be described as atmospheric [as can all weather, literally]. There was sun, rain and some haze. France could be seen at times but not all the time. I don’t have a picture here of the light house so you’ll have to imagine what it’s like but the tour was interesting and, once again, I find myself amazed at how ingenious we humans are.
St Margaret’s Bay
The lighthouse was built to warn seafarers of the dangers of Goodwin Sands where over a thousand ships lay wrecked. It is also the first place that an international radio transmission was made, by Marconi, of course.
Dover Harbour
The light turns by the use of food to human energy turned into potential gravitational energy. A large mass is raised by hand and the energy contained within that turns the 3 tonne light system as it drops. The lighting system floats on a tub of mercury, this reduces the drag to manageable proportions. Remarkable.
There is a tea house and also a cottage attached to the lighthouse. The guide mentioned that the place was quiet and normally they are very busy and the lighthouse is packed.
Essentials
Being here made me realise just how busy the Dover Straights are and how much traffic moves through the port.
Count Them
And so, as we prepare to leave the EU, this fine town of Dover voted OUT but will find itself fucked over as our incompetent Government fails to secure the best deal for the security and economy of this country.
Also, I managed to get this far without mentioning Nazis.
There was a mini Lego season recently and this is the first beast from that. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the RC Racer:
42065 Side
This beast uses a lovely little IR transmission system. It’s pretty well designed and have 4 channels just in case you are near other systems.
42065 Head On
Possibly the only drawback is that the battery pack takes SIX AA batteries, but then that does give a decent about of power. It’s the same battery pack as the Excavator I built about a year ago.
Exposing The Innards
In this picture (above) you can see the right (front) and left (rear) motors along with the battery pack and IR receiver.
There have been PYO Pumpkin signs around this way for a few weeks and I thought it would be something quite fun to do. Whenever I run the route by the Malta Inn I pass the field and so I knew where it was.
When I arrived the car park was half full with around 100 vehicles. There were many people working there and it was just the most bizarre site. Over in the far corner was a burger bar and drinks van! The whole field looked mostly empty with pumpkins and squash laying everywhere. There was some maize on the eastern flank.
Harvest
It was like a battle field with dead men and the detritus of war littered over the field. But it was monetised. Many people were on hand to help and make sure you spent lots. All the pumpkins were ready cut and so there was a lot of time and effort that had gone into this enterprise.
I went to see if Pixar had restored their story abilities yesterday by going to see Cars 3 at Rochester cinema. The tide was in and the mud flats were hidden from view. I was really disappointed with Cars 2, while it was a fun film it was a shockingly poor sequel to Cars. So, could they do it properly this time?
I was borderline between giving this film a four or a six, see my ratings explanation communication. You see, this film was pretty predictable. It was the same as the first film. I guess that’s the best way to make a sequel, you can just look at The Force Awakens. This film was OK in terms of plot. It seemed a little obvious towards the end, but it worked. I was surprised they bought the voice of Doc Hudson back, but they needed it for the film – just had a quick look and all the quotes were from the first film, so they didn’t need to resurrect Paul Newman.
I liked the idea that Hamilton was played by Lewis Hamilton. There were many other stars of the road included but when you remember this is based on NASCAR you’ll understand why I have no idea who they were.
