Category: Personal

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Unhinged

I rated this film on IMDB, there’s a communication with a list of how the rating system works. I tweeted the result.

This film was terrible. I hated it. I considered walking out but was curious how they would end it. It was utter shit.

I think the lesson here is how we blame the wrong people for the things that go wrong. Woke up late? Your fault. Lost job just before retirement payout? Likely the fault of the regulations that are written by your government. Addicted to opiates? Likely the fault of the government. The media spin everything so our anger is misplaced. It keeps the masses quiet. Why don’t Amazon pay any tax? Because of the laws of the land. Why don’t companies pay fairly? Because of the rules of the land. Why is your MP fucking useless? Because individual people are selfish and vote without any form of altruism. Best I stop this before I end up in a downward spiral. This film was shit.

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Gearing

I’ve been out cycling a little bit recently and I have been enjoying it. As a calorie burner it’s not as efficient as running/jogging but it is a different activity and fun. Also, as I can cycle three to four times faster than I can run and because of the increased time needed to burn fat I now have somewhere between 9 and 25 times the area to investigate – it depends on a number of factors but is essentially the length scale factor squared.

When I’ve been out I’ve been changing gear but I have been wondering what the actual ratios are and understanding these would make things a little more efficient and help me know when it’s best to change from big to small etc. The bike is an 18 speed machine which I find surprising but then I’m slightly old and can remember 5 speed derailleurs being impressive technology. I looked up the number of teeth on each gear and created a spreadsheet.

Bike Gearings
Bike Gearings

This now means that I understand the numbers more and can change into a more correct gear given the upcoming terrain. All the above are in the form 1 : n, where it is turns of pedal : turns of wheel. On a more fundamental level I think I am surprised at how efficient we are at cycling and it should be done more, if you can get a bike.

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100% Wolf

To avoid the last day of this heatwave, there have been seven days with temperatures in excess of 30C, I booked in to the cinema. The main reason was to enter an air conditioned building for a few hours and relax without sweating all over everything. I went to see 100% Wolf.

On the way to the cinema I noted that the tide was very low. All of the mud banks were visible and the little boats were stuck in their tiny channels that keep them from beaching. After the film I thought about the rating and then did that and tweeted the result:

I gave this film a 4/10 because I fell asleep for about twenty minutes and then proceeded to figure out exactly what had happened to the characters once I’d woken up. I only watched until the end just to see what happened. This is possibly not the fault of the film but the fault of the hot weather and me not sleeping great. Without doing some control experiments I won’t know about which cause it is.

This film surprised me at the beginning as it was an Australian production and I don’t think you see many of those, especially animations. Maybe I’ll try and watch something slightly more highbrow over the next few days. I’ll let you know of course. In the mean time, while the world awaits MSFS 2020 here’s a clip of me going Gatwick to London City for giggles.

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Crypt Edition

This past weekend would have been the M’era Luna festival in Hildesheim, Germany. But it was not to be. SARS-Cov-2 put paid to any plans of a weekend of music and honigwein. So, instead of driving five hundred miles to get to a soggy campsite the M’era Luna chaps put on a day of a virtual festival with a live stream of some of the bands from last year. The most important thing was that Smith and I saw ourselves in a few of the concert videos and also, in one of the interstitials – we have been recognised for our efforts. If you aren’t sure what you missed then have a look at this video of Corvus Corax.

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Masters Of Time

When reviewing the film Proxima I mentioned there were two films from my youth that made a big impression. One I found on a listicle site of the greatest sci-fi films you haven’t seen – that was called The Quiet Earth. The other was some bizarre French time travel animation with small round animals that I had occasionally searched for. This week I think I found it “Les Maîtres du temps” and a quick search on Amazon showed it going to around £40 for a DVD. I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere and wondered what to do until I then remembered that this sort of thing is all over YouTube.

I started watching a French language version with English subtitles on YouTube but the subtitles were out of synchronisation, being quite early, and it looked as though it was getting worse so after about twenty minutes I had another look and found an English language dubbed version of the film on YouTube.

Feel free to watch this movie. I don’t know how long this iframe will stay there. I guess there’s a chance that this film will get removed from YouTube but given that it has been there since 2013 I guess maybe that’s not so much of a problem.

This was the film from my youth that has often come back into my thoughts. It follows the adventures of a space ship and its inhabitants who all have different issues and problems. It’s a lovely film from a simpler time. To be honest I joke about the time being simpler. We were living in the early eighties with the constant threat of nuclear war and only four television channels. It seems that kids were safer on the streets but I guess that’s not really true. There were race riots in London, the IRA were blowing up shit and we went to war [technically not a war] to save two shitty islands in the South Atlantic because a few hundred people lived there. The house where I grew up had just upgraded to a colour television and for heat we burnt coal in two open fires in the house.

The theme of time travel in this film freaked me out and I know it made me think an awful lot about time travel and paradoxes. In reality, we literally have no idea what happens if these things are possible. There’s lots of fictional writing but we can’t know what really happens. It’s like wormholes you see, as much as they are fixed within the collective consciousness we don’t even know if they exist.

This film is a good film. It was co-produced within Hungary and the eastern-European production values shine through. Any animations coming out of that part of the world in the 80s were horrifically strange and messed up. It was a bit of a thing to look for when I was growing up. I reckon everyone should watch this movie and begin to understand just how lucky you all are these days with your CGI and computer graphics. If a film can take you to its world but be low cost and production values then it is a good film. If you are engrossed and don’t notice the cheapness then it is a good film. It’s all very well these modern films being bursting with effects and good looking stuff but if your story just comes down to who has the biggest fists then it’s a touch pathetic.

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Back To The Future (35th Anniversary)

So, I wanted to get out and go somewhere and I normally return to the darkness of the film theatre as an easy escape. There isn’t really a lot of films on at the moment because all the major studios have delayed release of all their films due to the SARS-Cov-2 issues. So, in a sensible move, the cinemas around here are showing classic films to get us to visit. Today, as of writing, the following films are available to watch with my comments after each:

  • Back To The Future (35th etc) – seen
  • Back To The Future II (2020 reissue) – will watch at home
  • Dark Waters – seen
  • Dreambuilders – don’t want to see
  • Goodfellas: 30th Anniversary – maybe
  • Harry Potter II RE – don’t care for these movies
  • My Spy – already seen on Amazon Prime
  • Onward – absolutely not
  • Proxima – seen
  • Sonic The Hedgehog – seen
  • The Dark Knight (2020 reissue) – can’t stand Batman films
  • The Empire Strikes Back: 40th Anniversary – maybe
  • The Greatest Showman – kill me now
  • The Shawshank Redemption (2020 reissue) – maybe
  • Unhinged – really not sure about this isn’t it just Falling Down?

So, there is plenty to see and that’s just today. Tomorrow there’s a different selection of films going on. I might go again at some point. I’ve been going to early showings assuming that the cinema is cleaner than after a few crowds have been in. I’m not sure about the whole opening doors to the toilets thing but I guess if everyone uses hand sanitiser that shouldn’t be too bad. To be honest in the film yesterday there were only five people in that particular screen and I think we all pretty much enjoyed the film.

Earlier in the day I had been down to the river at Peters Village and seen that the tide was quite low. When I checked the tide charts supplied by Wolfram Alpha I could see that the tide was turning and by the time I went to the cinema it would have been around 75% of high water for that day. Sure enough on the way in to the cinema as I drove along the esplanade I could see that the tide was indeed getting towards its highest. There were no mudbanks to be seen.

After watching the film I rated it on IMDB because that is a thing I do for cinema films and there is a previous communication detailing the ratings process here. I then tweet the result on my rarely used (for now) twitter account.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this film again. It was great fun. There are so many aspects of the film that are well thought out and delightful little touches that it was as if I hadn’t seen the film ever before. I couldn’t tell you when I last watched this whole thing, but I can tell you that it was still excellent and it did make me wonder why films weren’t made like this anymore. Maybe they are and I just haven’t found them, or maybe they are and I’m struggling with confirmation bias, but this was a well scripted, well made film where every little bit of it just seems to work really well.

I’ve already bought the box set on Blu-Ray along with the Indiana Jones trilogy and Star Wars (1-6). I will be watching the next few films in this particular series over the next week or so and I can’t wait. I honestly can’t remember much and am pretty sure that the last time I watched the third film would have been in the cinema when it originally came out. We’ll see what I think of it!

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This Is What’s Wrong

One of the things I do everyday is check whether any apps on my phone need updating. I probably should turn the automatic feature on but I kinda like knowing which apps have updated. It gives me a feel for what is going on with the software on the phone. The other day I saw this on the app store front page:

I Hate Stuff like This
Social Pressure Is Bad

Everything is awful at the moment and then I see something like this app store front page.

Hey, aren’t you doing what everyone else is and learning a fantastic new hobby? You are a loser if you’ve not got anything new. What a waste of space you are and a shame to the whole human race.

I Parish

I reckon that if you are just about managing to stay sane at the moment then you are doing very well. I know the last four years have taken a huge toll on me. The Brexit vote, Trump, Johnson, SARS-Cov-2, Black Lives Matter. The whole world seems insane and while there are definitely baddies out there so many people seem to really like what they are doing. The only way to stay sane at the moment is to limit the amount of information going into my head and make sure that I do the best I can for me and my family and friends. I take joy in the simple things. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a job, a house, a family. Imagine if your world has started to fall out from under your feet? How must all those people be feeling? We are going to have a massive mental health problem.

This advert / article or whatever the fuck it is just adds more pressure to everyone. It’s stupid. I understand what they are trying to say they are just saying it in a bad way. I’ve taken to looking at phone stuff that tries to avoid most of the news. I will peruse the headlines in the morning and then try to stay away from the rest of it. Nothing really surprises me anymore about the world.

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Proxima

March 15th was the last time I went to the cinema. It is July 31st. That is 138 days without a visit to the cinema, no films seen in the [not] luxury surroundings of the Rochester Cineworld cinema. There are 233 communications within the menu “Film”, I’m not sure all of them are cinema film reviews but I am sure more than 200 are. The first film reviewed on this iteration of my website was Oblivion. That’s a little amusing as I recently saw that it was on Netflix and checked this place to see if I had already seen it, I realised I had and decided to not bother watching it again. The original cinema list is here and starts with Shrek 2!

I think there are formalities to get through before I mention what I thought of Proxima and the first point is to say that I did NOT notice the state of the tide on the way in to the cinema. I checked it on the way out but I think I was just pleased to be driving next to the river that I didn’t actually look at it and register how high or low the water was. When leaving that place I did look and the river was low indicating a low tide. I saw the 13:40 showing of this film on the first day that cinemas were allowed to open. I figured the place would be cleaner earlier in the day. When I booked the ticket I wasn’t aware just how hot the weather was going to be and I’m glad I went. It is 36C out there and spending a little while in the air conditioned cinema was great. My lounge is 26C and it felt so nice to come in to the cold house when I got home. I did have a bike ride earlier today and I rode along the river most of the way so it was shady and cooler than everywhere else.

The last few years I’ve spent some time trying to find two films that haunt me from my early years. One was a sci-fi piece that was Australian I think and about the end of the world. Another was a French animation which involved time travel. I think I have found them both and I am going to watch the live action film later. I think it is called The Quiet Earth and I saw it on a list of Sci-Fi films you should see but might not have – it was a listicle and I had seen most but the summary makes me think that this is the one I’ve been searching for. The animation is called Les Maîtres du temps and I will be trying to find a copy of that film to see if it as messed up as I remember.

As is custom I rated Proxima on IMDB and there’s a communication covering all the details of the rating system here. I then tweeted the result. Normally this would be completed from my phone but I have deleted the Twitter app for mental health reasons. I therefore only check Twitter about 0.75 times a day.

I really enjoyed this film, far more than some recent, meant to be realistic films like First Man. The film covers the training an astronaut receives in the run-up to launch and but primarily this film focuses on the way this challenges the relationship with her young daughter. I liked the dedications during the credits to the female astronauts who had young daughters when they went into space.

This film uses a mixture of space training alternating with relationship issues. And it has Matt Dillon! Matt Dillon! I’ve not seen him in anything for ages and he totally still plays the sexist pig quite well. I thin he melts a little towards the end of the film which I think was nice but also rather predictable. Eva Green conveys the emotions of being a parent really well. I really enjoyed her performance. I enjoyed this film, but probably won’t be watching it again, hence the 6/10.

A thing that irks me is how so many films try to make everything look so easy and non-technical. I think the idea is to maintain that myth that anyone can do anything if they work hard enough. This is complete bullshit. Some people aren’t able to do things that they want. You can practice and you can try your best but there are a lot of other people out there who are trying to do the same as you and it only takes a very small difference for them to win. Space is hard. Space is complex. We have this romanticised view of astronauts being gung-ho cowboys when in reality they are full of the most technical and detailed information about their entire mission that the side shown to the public is remarkably false. All media representations of aircraft, boats, cars, bridges, anything designed and built by humans tend to undersell just how complex these things are. Your mobile phone is, to you, just a black box which does stuff. I think that’s how most of the world is represented to us as humans. These things just work and we don’t have to worry about how.

Proxima showed some of the technical aspects of being shot into space and I liked it for that. It showed the difficulty of training for a mission and it showed the stresses on the human. It is a good film.

The Quiet Earth

Yesterday I also watched The Quiet Earth. I paid to watch this on Amazon and I am glad I did. For some reason I saw this film in the 80s and it has stuck with me all that time. I regularly think about it. Firstly, an admission – it’s not set in Australia but New Zealand and I think I’ll have to accept that’s close enough. The film follows the journey of a man who awakes to find himself alone in the world. He does find some other people eventually after going mad and we see what happens. I enjoyed it. Here’re the main things that I remember from thirty years ago:

  • An experiment to create an energy field around the Earth went wrong
  • The charge of an electron had changed

Both of these things were in the film but they weren’t actually big parts of the plot. I don’t know why they have stuck with me so much. Possibly my admiration for aviation matters? One of the issues with aircraft [and cars] is that they have to carry their fuel with them. This means that to travel further you need more fuel so you have more mass and therefore need more fuel to transport that extra mass. If we could find a way of negating the need for fuel to be carried on the aircraft then we would have a really efficient system. The premise behind this film is that an energy field was created in the atmosphere to power aircraft. This has stuck with me all that time and I used to think about it quite often.

The other film I mentioned earlier, Les Maîtres du temps, I have found on YouTube and will watch later. I can’t find it to stream and it costs a whopping GBP40 on DVD because it’s so rare. Having looked into it a little it looks like a joint production between the French, the BBC and Hungary so I expect it will be weird as fuck.

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Nice To See – But Disconcerting

They are always practising. If you want people to do their jobs in extreme stress then they must always practice. That’s what this RAF A400 Atlas was doing at Biggin Hill yesterday. I was looking at 360 Radar because something interesting flew over or I heard something interesting fly over. I then noticed this A400 practising approaches at Biggin Hill. To get home from there the Atlas would have to either fly low over the Cities of London and Westminster or head out over me keeping a low level to avoid the approaches for City Airport. It headed out to me.

Atlas Fly By
Atlas Fly By

I rushed to get my camera and headed outside performing a lens change while walking. I got out just in time and saw the A400 pretty much fly over my house and head north to go home. These guys tend to practise approaches to unfamiliar airports but normally at other military airfield where the noise and sight isn’t that bothersome. This year they have been doing plenty at civilian airports such as Edinburgh, London City, and Biggin Hill. This means the pilots and crew are used to going new places. This is so that when there’s a massive need for moving people to decent hospitals they can fly them for Covid treatment. Either that or they’ve been told to look good by the government. I’m quite convinced that the weekly Chinook flight through London is a “show of force”, a reassurance to the population that the boys in blue are there and ready.

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Had To Guess

I recently had to upload a photograph to a website for a photographic ID pass thing. I had already cropped the digital image to upload and then I noticed the website’s insistence that the photograph be <=40kB. Now, that’s not very big at all, especially when you consider that my cropped photo was about 150kB. So I resized the picture until it was just below 40kB. Then I uploaded it.

But.

Nope. The dimensions were incorrect! The photo had to be between 3.5 and 4.5 cm tall. Now, I ask you what does this mean? I’d already got the photograph to be within the correct size with respect to data but now I had to make sure it was the correct size in terms of cm. But, it depends how many dots per inch you are using. There was no information about the dpi the photocard people were using. It just had to be guessed!

Who does that these days? Who specifies a “paper size” for an image when you upload it? This was a classically terrible piece of web design made for bureaucrats who don’t understand what your average person understands about images and sizes. It was crazy. Do they not have an algorithm to just print the image to a particular size depending on the largest dimension? It was a frustrating ten minutes messing around with uploading files and cropping images along with resizing the image. What started off as a good detail photograph ended up almost pixelated.

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If Something Happened

So, here we are. It’s nearly August and the world is still in a state of pandemic. In the UK you finally have to wear masks in shops and the USA is slowly burning down as they struggle with the racism of the last four hundred years. Not that the UK is in the clear on that, hopefully there will be recognition over the next few years of how this country is built on the misery and murder and enslavement of the many.

I think I need to get out and use my camera. I shall do so this week at some point. I feel I could do with a change of scenery, something nice to see or at least somewhere else to be. I am not going to go anywhere special and I am convinced that the opening up of the country is going to cause massive health issues – while at the same time I am aware that this is about trying to reduce the overall risk to health from lockdown – or at least I would like to think that the government are intelligent enough to think that way but I don’t think they are.

Flight Sim Set Up
Flight Sim Set Up

This is my current flight sim set up. I’ve got a Saitek HOTAS system and an Android tablet for displaying instruments along with using the phone as a moving map display. On screen is a Grumman Goose with turboshaft engines.

Rochester Castle
Rochester Castle

I went for a bike ride and decided to see Rochester Castle. The ride involved a national cycle route and was actually quite enjoyable. On the way to Rochester I followed the course of the valley of the river but the return journey was completed by heading over the top of the Downs.

"circa"
“circa”

I met Penguin for a meal at The Bell. This is our usual meeting place and we both decided that the precautions put in place would be ok. The pub had set itself up really well and we ate outside. It appears that the manager now knows us and is happy to order the food for us which means there’s more time to catch up. I took this photograph, not because I was “out”, but because the sign says “circa” 1393. The circa part of that amused me immensely. Hopefully by the end of next week I will have some better tales to tell. I could always get some more album reviews completed!

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Before All This

Sometime last year I managed to run home from work and then the following day run in to work. This I did once. Mostly because I lost the fitness bug and also because I became mentally unable to do much. I might have written about it somewhere within these pages but I can’t remember and I’m not going to search. I wanted to get more exercise and try to lose some mass but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Earlier this calendar year I was feeling bad about the environment and how much we have messed up the future of this world for my children’s generation. I think the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations really got me thinking. So, I decided maybe I should ride a bike to work. I’d save a little on petrol, use less fossil fuel and keep fit. I decided I would investigate a bike.

Then. The world blew up. I was working from home and there didn’t seem to be a reason to suddenly investigate a bike. Once my routine had settled I started looking at bikes online and getting advice from friends. Would you believe it? Every fucker was buying a bike for something to do. It would appear that walking or running was too hard work for them and loads of people got the biking bug. I couldn’t buy a bike. I still planned to though. Mind you, this also meant getting a shed that would fit the bike as I don’t have a garage or anything like that to store the machine.

A few weeks ago I checked a local bike shop’s website and THEY HAD STOCK. Well, I was browsing really, not that bothered about buying at that point, but if I didn’t order something then I would be waiting another few months so I pressed “add to basket”, added some accessories and then waited for my delivery date. It took about 8 days for the bike to be in shop. I guess that’s not so bad. It’s very easy to forget that in this world some things you have to wait for, we are so used to everything being there right now. The next issue was a bike carrier for the car. In case I wanted to take the bike to the other end of the country and to move small bikes around. My car, Bora Horza Gobuchul, is a stupid shape and so I had to spend quite a bit on a bike carrier. Having now used it, I’m not sure I would take bikes on a long journey but it functioned well.

On delivery day I was persuaded to buy a year’s maintenance plan for the bike. I have no idea if that was good value for money but it seemed sensible. I haven’t maintained a bike, ever. Even when I was young all I did was make sure the tyres were at the correct pressure. I never really cleaned a bike or did any other type of maintenance. Pretty similar to my motorcycle history too, washing bikes was something other people did. The bike now rests in my dining room and will eventually live in the shed, but as you probably know, there is a seven week delivery time for a shed!

Commute Vehicle
Commute Vehicle

My observations on the first ride I had in over twenty years was that it was not a smooth ride. I did a little tarmac but mostly footpaths across fields which are fine to run on but cycling caused arse issues. I was being bumped all over the place and I did wonder if rear suspension would have been sensible, then I realised that the front suspension didn’t seem to be doing much. A even cycled down the North Downs on a footpath that I normally run and I found that a little scary as I had to keep the brakes on the whole time and was convinced I was going to hit the gate at the bottom of the track. I’ll have to try again soon.

On another ride with other people it turned out that the level of comfort was much better because we weren’t travelling so fast. The bumps in the footpaths seemed levelled out with a lower speed and perhaps there’s a lesson for me. I will have to try another ride soon across some tracks and see if I can go slower. I’m not convinced I will be able to, we all have our natural riding speed I reckon.

I’ve completed a practice commute, to see how sweaty I get and to check out the route. I got very sweaty. I’ll have to plan cooling down time and somehow work on the logistics of shirts and clothes which will be ferried in the car on days that I can’t use the bike. I’m also slightly worried about being able to see in the darker months but will figure that out when it happens. I’ve got a good head torch I use when running so maybe I can fit that to the bike helmet? Who knows? Plenty of time to think about it.

I actually have quite enjoyed discovering new stuff. More paths further from home. There’s plenty to explore and further to travel. I’m looking forward to it all. Except the cars.

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Still Happening

With all the recent lockdown easing and opening of shops etc every now and then I still have to think to myself THERE’S STILL A PANDEMIC. While this doesn’t really calm me down it does let me remember that my cautious approach is still sensible. I am not really looking forward to the deaths that will come in September in trade for the economy. This is mostly what this is about. Making sure the economy is OK while we accept a certain number of deaths. How does a government accept that trade off? How have governments always accepted that trade off? Or, do they just not understand the implications of their actions? Humans are terrible at assessing risk and probabilities, our brains just aren’t built in that particular way. It’s why we have mathematics and science. Science allows us to remove the human brain and observations from the problem so that we can really see what is happening. Maybe there are times when not understanding science and disease and maths and transmission vectors would make it easier to cope with all this? I have removed most social media from my daily references and am doing my best to avoid “live” news. The news shouldn’t be covered “live”. The news should be reflective and evidence gathering before announcing “news”.

What Are These?
What Are These?

Above is a picture of a Toucan Crossing and a Pegasus Crossing. I wonder if you know what they are? They were definitely invented after my passing into adulthood as I didn’t know about them until I had to do a Highway Code test for the RAF. A Toucan Crossing allows both pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road, we needed a special crossing for that apparently. The Pegasus Crossing allows horses and riders to cross the road. I’m not sure what the rules are for a horse by itself. When I did my first Highway Code test there were three Pegasus Crossings in this country so it’s not really a surprise I didn’t know what they are.

Attacking Apaches
Attacking Apaches

There’s been some military helicopter action over here recently. These Army Air Corps Apaches from Wattisham flew over Rochester Airport and then turned around above me as I was out running through the vineyards on the southern slopes of the North Downs. Very nice to see as we get very little military traffic down this way due to the bustling airways heading from the London Airports to Europe. Normally the best we can hope for is a A400 out of Brize Norton heading over at around 25,000 feet. It’s a noise beast and easy to hear.

Pouncing Pumas
Pouncing Pumas

Then there were two Pumas from RAF Benson flying eastwards and this photo was taken from the garden. These two then landed at Invicta Barracks in Maidstone which would have been lovely to see. One of the cadets got some great photographs of them. Oh, and yesterday while out exercising I saw a Spitfire in D-Day markings flying low on its way back to Biggin Hill. The Spitfire is actually quite a common sight down here as they fly from Biggin to the White Cliffs of Dover.

I started this communication with a moan and I don’t want that to continue because I have too much to say and need to feel happy with the day. I am not happy with the government or most of the world’s reaction to this pandemic threat. But, I have to just keep my own risks low and manageable and make sure that I don’t become a danger to my family and friends.

Leafy Lane
Leafy Lane

I took this photograph on my first cycle ride. It’s lovely. A trail up the Downs just by Wouldham.

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Beck Map

This most definitely is not a Harry Beck type map but maybe I should produce one. This map goes with the previous communication about the Minecraft world that I inhabit and the underground system that I made. Apparently we are now working on an infinity room in the server, whatever that is. I hope I have enough RAM to cope with that!

This map shows an aerial view of the meadow area of the server world. The straight lines represent different sections of the underground system.

Meadow Underground System
Meadow Underground System
  • RED – from Meadow Station to Harbour 1
  • WHITE – from Harbour 1 to Main House
  • ORANGE – Meadow House to Harbour 2
  • YELLOW – Harbour 2 to Mountain Base

Do these colours match the colours of the lights in each tunnel? Of course they do! Below is an overview of most of the world so far. We have discovered some deserts and a cold region but have yet to find a jungle biome which is a little annoying.

Current Interesting Parts
Current Interesting Parts
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You Gotta Get About

It’s been interesting removing oneself from the shit-show that is 2020 and enjoying my Minecraft server world. In the server world things aren’t perfect. I die sometimes, normally from entering the Nether, creepers seem to blow up my most treasured aspects of the world and occasionally I get lost and spend days walking back home. All of this still makes Minecraft better than 2020 or almost any of the last four years. My favourite time is when it rains in Minecraft. I love it. The sounds, the smell, the not getting wet. Now, I’m a little gutted as this is the second draft of this I’ve had to do. My first draft disappeared into the ether[net] and I don’t know what I wrote. I know I was happy with my prose but something will be lost this time around and you won’t get the chance to read my brilliance.

So, here we are, another video which is a screen clipping from the PS4. I looked into doing this properly with a voice over and all that jazz. I downloaded some software and recorded some screen clips on my computer and then starting meshing all that stuff together and having a go at a voice over. What did I learn? I learnt that I hated speaking out loud. I can just about do it for work stuff when I record lessons but I did not enjoy trying this out. Then, I also learnt that I spoke too many “ums” as I tried to commentate on a five minute clip. So I decided that I wouldn’t do it. Now, I do know that learning a new skill takes time and practice. I am giving it neither at the moment but I think that might change in the future and maybe I’ll give this another go over my summer break. What follows is a written description of the sort of stuff I was going to say.

This video takes about a Minecraft day. In fact I go to sleep at the beginning and the end so it is pretty much a day. We travel from one end of the Empire to the other but there are still aspects that are missed and maybe I will cover those one day.

So, we open at night and I am atop the Mountain Base. I sleep in the mountain top hall that I built and then head down the stairs to the internal secret hall. I think I want to make all the walls by the steps the same as I feel it’s a little messy at the moment. It was meant to be a secret staircase and so didn’t matter but every time I use it I think it needs smartening up. At the bottom of the ugly steps I look in a chest and take a rail – I’m not sure why because I didn’t even put it in its rightful place in the basement later, then I head out into the main hall and get a minecart from that chest. Then the journey starts! We get a tour of the underground railway I built.

Mountain to Harbour 2

The journey from mountain to harbour 2 station has smooth stone blocks and the railway lays on wooden planks. The lights start out as yellow stained glass and all the torches are placed one block rearwards from the track and with smoothstone surrounds. The emergency doors into the mountain base open and close automatically keeping the different areas secure. Once the yellow accented lights run out we get shroomlights. The whole idea of this was to give each branch of the underground from the main Meadow House a certain look and feel so you always kinda know where you are in the system. At Harbour 2 station we can see it has a purple concrete and smooth stone design to it. The way to the surface is a long ladder. The station at the top is designed to be similar to the platform area. We get a short look at the mountain base. Then, there is the harbour with the flip-flop switches that are operated by buttons and open and close the water exit to the harbour.

Harbour 2 to House

This section of the journey doesn’t take too long and we head to the main house and store room. House station is designed in white concrete with a light blue concrete ceiling to match the store room. The floor is glass and most of the lighting is torches under the glass. It costs a fortune to keep the glass clean of soot and dirt! Then we head up stairs to the Basement Storage Area which I built. It’s all nicely labelled and everything has a place. Every now and then I have a tidy up because other players on the server leave things all over the place. There is an enchantment room and a portal to the Nether. The doors to the station look hidden but are a bit obvious if you are the type of player who likes to go around pressing every button that you find. I do like the flip-flop circuit.

House to Harbour 1

Harbour 1 was the first harbour I built. I spent quite a while rowing around the rivers trying to map out the land. I have stairs places on all explored rivers which point back to the main house so if you come across a river you can find your way home. These walls on this line are a snazzy stone effect that I can’t remember the name of. The lights are white on this stretch of track. I think my favourite part of all the railways is the bit on this section where we go through a cave. I think it just looks nice considering every other part of the journey all looks the same. Harbour 1 station is red glass and wood accented. I think there’s even a tree growing up through the middle of the ground level building. We also see the first harbour and a glance at Meadow House. When looking at Meadow House you can see two platforms that were designed to give an overview of the meadow. The top one is called The Top and it’s just slightly too high for all the animals to be rendered when you get up there so you can’t actually see a great deal of detail. It’s nice up there though.

Harbour 1 to Meadow Station

Meadow station was originally the start of the railway line to the beach because it meant I didn’t have to have so many resources to build the line. Over time I wanted to be able to avoid walking and now I have achieved that. The underground line heading that way has the same snazzy stone things and pink accented lights. All turns in the system have signs on them in case you get lost. Meadow Station is a glass topped glorious sweet design that makes me happy. It was my first ever use of sea lanterns. There’s not really anything else there now but the station. It looks so nice I don’t think I’ll get rid of it but I rarely use the station for anything other than passing through.

Meadow Station to Beach

This is boring and takes around three real minutes. It’s quite good if you need a comfort break while playing as you can just get on the railway and head off to somewhere nice and do stuff. I’ve spent a while adjusting the redstone torches from the last video and putting them under the track to make it all a little neater. The purple concrete blocks allow you to find your way if you get lost. The side with the torch points to the direction of Meadow Station. The monolithic spikes every now and then were waypoints for when I used to walk to the beach. They also have torches on them which point towards the meadow. Getting back home has been quite important to me. The railway heads due west and as we approach Beach Station you can see my mob farm off to the right towering up over the land. Beach station is a glory of green and glass. I like the design of it. Once off the railcart we head to the beach, the house there, the small farm and the beach bar.

The Beach

The beach has an area nearby where I practise my redstone skills. It has the mob farm which kinda works ok ish. I also have an extensive mine which I have used to gather lots of lovely resources and the underground railway to that is in the next video. At the beach we gaze at the monolith which was a suggestion of a friend and I really like it. I think it adds a certain something to the whole area. The ratios of the edges of the monolith are 1:4:9, although I made this one 2:8:18, which is the same ratio. Then we head to the beach bar and dive into the sea pool I made. From there we are able to swim underwater to my ocean viewing platform. The lower opening to this was open to the sea but waterzombie things kept getting in my house so I used trapdoors to block it off. Finally there’s my storage basement at the beach and a short journey up to the surface and another flip-flop for the doors to my summer house. We have once last glance at the monolith and then head to bed, the end of a busy day in this Minecraft world.

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Flutter

A few weeks ago Nvidia released a driver update for their graphics cards and it screwed over X-Plane. Recently X-Plane has had an update to use Vulkan graphics processing or something like that and it improved frame rates enough that I went and bought a load of UK scenery. X-Plane started to look a lot better. Then this new graphics driver messed things up and there was a strange frame rate flutter from 50FPS down to about 15FPS once every two seconds. It made the game, sorry simulator, unplayable. Two days ago the newest driver version was released and the game now works as expected. Much better. I’ve finally got the HOTAS gear out again and am playing, as evidenced by this video of my Red Tail flight from Manston to Lydd. I think I’ll try out the Grob Tutor now.

Other things of note; the tin opener failed again and I’ve ordered a bicycle so expect plenty of communications here with boring details of bike rides soon.

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How Many?

Is it the can or the can opener? I think this could be the ultimate question. Until recently I hadn’t opened many cans I this point was moot. I didn’t really use the can opener that had happily lain in the drawer for years and years. Then, I decided I should start to eat the stock of tins I had purchased for Brexit being a load of shit. Now, I still believe Brexit is going to be a load of shit and that happens on the 1st January 2021. But, I will build up stock with more things that the family eat when the time comes. I probably also thought it sensible to lower the mass on the kitchen cupboard shelves, I don’t trust much about the structure of this house.

Now the original can opener in this house had a black handle. That’s about all I can remember about it, that and it had performed perfectly well on tins in the distant past. This new collection of tinned food was causing it issues and it regularly failed to open the tin. So I bought a new one from a supermarket. I’m not sure if I’m being the skinflint when I would happily spend GBP400 on a watch but not more than GBP10 on a can opener. Is this my fault? The next one was:

The problem with the second one was that the arms close to the hinge are thin and when pressure is applied to the arms it whole thing warps and bends. This is a design fault and means that there’s only so much pressure that can be applied and therefore this fails. So, I thought, I’d by a cheap old classic design.

This can opener couldn’t cope with anything. It wouldn’t puncture some cans. The paper got caught up, it wouldn’t keep a continuous cut going. It was terrible. So I bought another. This time I inspected it properly before buying and decided it was strong enough.

So, I currently have the can opener above. It seems sturdy. It worked well. Until, I was opening a can of cinema-hot-dog-type-things in brine. I was holding the can about 10cm above the counter while turning the handle on the opener when the can, half opened, dropped and fell onto the counter. This, is not normally a problem I guess, but liquid burst forward and covered my phone and phone case which I had on the counter as I was listening to “The Infinite Monkey Cage” podcast. I now had a phone covered in brine and the case was soaked too.

Is this the fault of the opener? Is it my fault for having poor technique? I’m not sure I know. I guess it’s time to spend in excess of ten pounds sterling on a new can opener that might actually work. I’ve recently been watching “What We Do In The Shadows” and this communication does seem very much like a Colin Robinson story and I will chuckle about that all day.

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Biscuits Weren’t Enough

Yesterday I was in work helping move our HQ from one side of the site to the other. We have new offices and stores, which will be nice. The cadets did most of the work and I’m really pleased with the results. We’ve now got a good space for administration of the unit and filing etc. We had a box of biscuits left over from a competition in April and so I carried them to the cadets, thinking I would make their day. But, as it turned out the Kent and Sussex Air Ambulance landed just as I brought the biscuits over. The cadets were super excited by the Leonardo AW169 and the biscuits were a long second place.

Kent Air Ambulance
Kent Air Ambulance

Obviously it’s not a good thing that the air ambulance lands near you. It means you either live in a hospital or airfield, or something terrible has happened to someone nearby. I do hope that whatever and whomever was affected are ok as can be.

Air Ambulance operated by SAS
Air Ambulance operated by SAS

Given that summer camp didn’t happen this year for reasons of pandemic it was nice to be close to an aircraft and also hear the start up sounds that I miss so much. It’s a really impressive piece of kit and I thought it was pretty quiet – other staff thought it was loud but then they aren’t often around twin afterburning jets.

Specialist Aviation Services Kent Air Ambulance
Specialist Aviation Services Kent Air Ambulance

Later that day I took part in our virtual sports day. I went for a 10 km run but made sure that kilometres 2-6 were at a “competition” pace. I did not enjoy anything from about 3.5km into the race onwards. But I did it and got what I think is a respectable time.

1km time - I'm happy
1km time – I’m happy

These times have now been added to the virtual competition and while I know I’m not the fastest, there will be points for participation. One member of staff I spoke to managed the 5km in 18 minutes. They have longer levers than me though and age on their side.

5 km - not to be repeated
5 km – not to be repeated

So, an interesting day. Helicopters, commissions, books, DVDs and VHS tapes all needed to be sorted out. Then the challenge of not killing myself while trying to run “fast”.

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