Personal – Page 30 – Fooyah

November 25 2018November 25 2018

Lord Of The Lost – The Garage

Smith and I traveled to the lofty intellectual heights of Islington last night to visit the Garage venue just outside Highbury station. On the bill were Lord Of The Lost, a German rock band, the venue was meant to be Electrowerkz but I think they sold more tickets than expected and they moved the gig to the Garage.

This was my third time at the Garage and again I was impressed. It’s smaller than I remembered, a nice, cosy (but not squashed) venue. I will say now that the sound in the place was pretty impressive and worked well. Probably better than Electrowerkz but I think this is largely to there being a little more space. Possible improvements would be a light beam a little further out from the stage to light up the bands a little more from the front rather than from a 3/4 position.

The second band were just finishing as we entered and they weren’t that impressive.

One of my favourites on as last support act were Unzucht. I’d seen them before at two M’era Luna festivals and I was looking forward to this.

They were good fun and played a decent set. They play a good hard riffage and then go and mess it up with an almost-ballad in the middle but I enjoy their style and it was good fun.

The headliners came on and I wasn’t really aware of the time but when I did look at my watch it was only 21:30 so for some reason there was an early curfew. It looked like they were setting up an urban-disco type thing.

Lord Of The Lost were good. It was a solid fun set and they seemed genuinely happy to be playing to a large-ish crowd.

I don’t really remember what songs they played but they started with “On This Rock” and ended with “La Bomba” which is always good for fun. Somewhere in the middle they played “Drag Me To Hell”.

It was a good evening and one that I ended too early really because I needed to be up early the next day [boo!]. Normally there would be more written here but I’m tired.

November 24 2018

Another Go

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.

November 18 2018November 18 2018

Drill Finals

I volunteered to help out at the RAFAC National Drill Finals. These are based at RAF Honington in Suffolk, not far from Thetford. I took on the role of competition announcer, my dulcet, cold affected voice echoed around the Jimmy James Hangar parade square on and off over the course of the day.

RAF Honington is home to the training of the RAF Regiment. If you don’t know what the Regiment do then they are a bit like the Infantry of the Army but in Blue. They provide Force Protection to RAF bases and personnel. In terms of a rather old but funny television show they are “double-hard bastards”.

The hanger is named after Bertram “Jimmy” James who was a member of the regiment and also one of the greatest POW escapees during the second world war.

I had a good day and it’ll be nice to go again and help out. I quite like being the only-CCF chap on these events. It gives an instant shock factor. We don’t normally do these things.

The finals has three competitions:

Banner Party Drill
Continuity Drill
Foot Drill

All six regions were represented along with the CCF as its own (massive) region.

November 13 2018

The Nicest People

I recently had to spend some time in the company of the NHS. In case you aren’t sure what the NHS is, well, it’s a health service that I pay for through my National Insurance contributions. I pay these in the knowledge that the money will either help me when I need it or help other people. Maybe I’m an odd one because I am happy to pay my fair share of money to help others who are less fortunate than me. I consider this a social duty. I will quite likely rant on here one day about how we should make everybody pay their fair share, too many people in this country try to avoid paying to help others. While that might seem very black and white it’s not and the arguments are complicated.

There’s a communication that has been in draught form for about three years where I explain my politics and the reasons behind it, but it will be long and rambling and possibly unpopular. As an idea of what I think I am currently considering the idea that many wars are caused by those in power aiming to maintain their fragile grip on power and to do that they send millions of “little people” to their death. That’s not my final thought, it’s just part of the things I’m considering. This came about because the end of World War One was more caused by the German people rebelling and the Kaiser resigning than any military gains by the allies. The UK government then did its best to quash any forms of rebellion in the UK. It’s why the Eton arseholes still rule us. Anyway, you can see my thoughts degenerate into anger and swearing quite quickly. Another day for the reasoned arguments.

The point of this communication is to praise the lovely people I met at the hospital and how they couldn’t have done more to keep everything happy and safe. So many of the professionals who came and talked to us had heavy accents but I don’t care about that. In fact I’m glad about that. It highlighted how much our medical service relies on people who come here from abroad and our country is better for it. The whole system worked well and all the workers were brilliant. It’s never an easy time being in hospital and I have nothing but praise for the people who helped us.

It’s so galling then that our government continues to bolster itself into a situation that will culturally and financially ruin our country for the next thirty years at least. This along with the chronic underfunding of all public services over the last ten years truly has ruined our country. I am so fucking angry at these things. But maybe that’s for another day.

November 5 2018November 5 2018

Stairway To Where?

What is going on here? If you look at these stairs there doesn’t seem to a whole lot going on. They are down the side of a bridge over the river Medway. You can’t see that to actually get to this point you have to climb over some armco from the path but that’s not my biggest issue with them.

If you look more closely you will see that there isn’t a route to the left at the bottom of the stairs. There is just a slope. No flat path for walking on. Just slope. I don’t understand what the intentions of the designer were. The fence implies there should be a wlakway. The reality is there isn’t one. Maybe I’m just not meant to be there.

November 2 2018November 2 2018

Black Celebration 2018

I spent a lovely amount of time with Smith at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town on Sunday. The event was the Black Celebration music festival of all types of dark music. Of most interest was the band Suicide Commando. The event was promoted by the Flag Promotions company who run so very many of the gigs and concerts I go to. Obviously my music tastes are aligned with some of theirs.

Here are my reviews of each band in order of viewing. As is my usual behaviour I write notes on my phone during or after each act to help me remember what I’ve seen. That is why the comments may be pithy or short.

Machine Rox – were first up. We arrived towards the end of their set as Smith and I were having make-up issues. But they were ok. My notes indicate the following: female singer, there was a guitarist but I couldn’t hear him.

I liked the dancers who came on for the last song wearing outfits similar to the lead singer. It was a nice touch.

Next up were DKAG who are quickly becoming my most-seen band. They are supporting many bands over the next year. While the music is good there are no vocals and so unless I am wasted on alcohol I’m not that interested. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but I like crowd interaction from the band, I want to know that they are enjoying it. Two guys with their keyboards doesn’t quite hit the mark.

There was now a short dinner break for me. The local cafe was very welcoming and the food was nice. Recommended. It was Mem’s Cafe on Kentish Town Road.

The return to the Forum meant the last few songs from Sulpher. This band sounded good and heavy with a decent industrial feel.

My notes are: guitars and heavy stuff. A little bit of samples mixed in. We saw about 4 songs and it was alright.

Let me explain the “alright” comment. This means I enjoyed it more than a lot of others. While “alright” might not seem a glowing review it means that the music was OK, suitable etc. [I’m trying to renormalise the term AVERAGE and OK to mean what they really mean].

Empathy Test came up next. I have seen this band before although I couldn’t remember exactly where or when. Smith and I had a discussion about who the lead singer was. Once they were on stage I figured out that they had played Infest last year and I saw them there. Here’s what I noted at the time: only 20 seconds in and I was done. Remember them from Infest. Boring vocals and drone-like. Slow. Female drummer who looks like she’s concentrating too much. Well constructed songs but boring.

Suicide Commando rocked the venue. I don’t mind the graphic visuals of people with holes in their bodies where holes shouldn’t be. This band was really good. A real uplift from the previous band.

I still maintain that a live drummer rather than a machine or dead person makes such a difference to a gig. I really enjoyed Mr Commando!

My notes say only the following:

heavy, fast and dirty. Great.

And then we get to Mesh. This might be the third time I’ve seen Mesh and they seem almost bored to be on stage. There’s not a lot of interaction. My only notes were:

Kinda boring

The Young Gods came on stage next. I knew nothing about them but I could see three white lights thinly blazing over the positions of the band on stage and I liked that set up. It worked really well. The first song was very Pink Floyd with a slow build up to not-a-lot and then a slow wind down. It felt like the crowd didn’t really know when the song finished. But, this band were older and clearly excellent musicians with that easy style of people who have worked together for so long.

My scrawled notes say:

Interesting but not really my stuff. turning into experimental upbeat music. Still quite psychedelic. Good beat to some songs. Enjoyable.

Finally we had DAF. A band I had seen at M’era Luna and a band that didn’t impress hugely. I get it that without DAF and other older bands that my style of preferred music wouldn’t exist but I’m also allowed to find their stuff a little boring. I think I would be the same with Nitzer Ebb and other bands from the 80s and 90s. Smith and I stayed for a while but in reality we both had work the next day and long-ish journeys home. Maybe I’ll see a complete Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft set one day.

October 30 2018October 30 2018

Am Port

I had a lovely time recently at the Armed Forces Chaplaincy Centre in Hampshire. This was a weekend course in the wonderful setting of Amport House.

The weekend was spent with like minded people learning about personal development, emotions, biases, listening, understanding and respecting each other.

I know that a chaplaincy centre doesn’t really fit my overall view of the world but in all honesty it’s just a nice calm place to be. I didn’t have the room directly next to the church organ this time and in all honesty I was slightly disappointed about that! I did manage to fit a run in on the Sunday morning and that was pleasing. It only worked because we moved the clocks back to symmetrical time.

The pleached limes looked lovely with leaves and all that, but I didn’t manage to get a good enough photograph of them. Maybe next time?

October 27 2018October 30 2018

First Man

Days ago I went to the cinema at Rochester to see the film First Man. It has taken me this long to process what I thought about it along with being away and in an area of limited data coverage. Before I explain what I thought about the film there are some formalities to cover.

I have no idea on the state of the tide that evening. I didn’t particularly look at that tidal area of river as it was dark and raining. I could look it up but that’s not the point. I also rated this film on IMDB and you should see this particular communication which explains the rating system, I’ll give you a hint though, I broke the system for this film.

I rated First Man (2018) 5/10 #IMDb https://t.co/XbqrGtSXcL

— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 26, 2018

I’ve a slight feeling that this is going to be a little controversial. But then again, it’s my view and I’m not a professional critic so I don’t make or break movies.

I’m not sure I liked this film.

I wanted to like this film. I wanted to love this film and be amazed at it and learn a bit about Neil Armstrong. I’m not sure I did and that pains me. I think it took me two days before I rated this film on IMDB as I wasn’t sure what score to give the film.

So, we know I am a nerd and I know a fair bit about the moon landings and space travel. I didn’t mind that I didn’t learn anything new about those aspects of the film. I also knew that Mr Armstrong was quite private and quiet but also a professional and extremely clever man. I’m not sure this film captured that.

Here’s what I did like. The emotional aspect of Armstrong attempting to deal with the death of his daughter. This film heavily places that at the centre of the story telling and I am fine with that but it’s almost fiction as the man himself never really opened up about it. I loved the final touch of his offering to the moon and would love that to be true.

What I didn’t like was all the shaking camera work. This film was like watching a tense emotional marriage drama with episodes of shaking camera and stress. I guess that’s what the astronauts’ lives are like but I just don’t like blurry screens.

I didn’t like the way the film side-stepped the knowledge and understanding and skill that is needed to be an astronaut. I like the technical stuff. I know that’s just me and so I get why this film has rave reviews.

So, in the end this film has a 5/10 from me. I didn’t hate it. I just didn’t like it enough.

October 25 2018October 25 2018

Not Really

This one is easy pickings really. Almost everything written in the Daily Express is rubbish and it has been amongst the leaders of our “free press” stoking the embers of racism and nationalism over the last few years. But, let’s stick with science:

I took this clip of the Daily Express two days ago. It’s a photo that was shared widely through the press and you’ve probably seen it.

It is a good photograph and quite stunning. Although we can’t see the right hand corner of the iceberg and I couldn’t see any other views of this iceberg so I wonder how rectangular it is and how many people’s brains will fill in another right angle.

I’m more interested in the words that the Express uses.

“Nature can do straight lines” – yep, knew that already. Pretty sure light travels in straight lines (at a basic level). Also, notice that the edges of the ice berg aren’t straight. There are bumps and lumps. So, it’s not straight. It just appears that way.

“Eerily perfect 90-degree angles” – hmm, have they measured that? Perfect 90-degrees is pushing it a bit. I mean they can be close to 90 but “perfect”. Bullshit. In the very NEXT paragraph they say the angles can be “about 90-degrees”. So they dismiss their own claim in the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH.

“Perfect ice rectangle” – but it’s not perfect. What sort of person writes that word in a news article? We can’t see the rest of it. The picture is at an oblique angle so we can’t measure the sides. I doubt the Express have done anything like that.

So, let’s see what NASA said about their photographs:

“I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos,” Harbeck said.

The photographer took the photos for a lark! Brilliant.

They aren’t all that rectangular:

In fact pretty much all of them are irregular in shape and so the odd one that looks a little special to human brains isn’t that exciting:

How do you get your kit to Antarctica? In a large plane of course. How do you land large plane? Make an ice runway:

October 23 2018

Johnny English Strikes Again

Well, today I took a trip to the Cineworld cinema in Harlow. Not the one in the Harvey Centre but the one on the edge of town. I can’t remember the last time I went to Harlow town centre but I’m pretty sure I thought it was shit. Harlow, you see, is a new town. It’s a classic example of 1960s urban planning with a concrete town centre to boot. It may have improved I guess but don’t know because I didn’t go there.

The cinema I patronised was close to the river Stort but that isn’t tidal. In fact there are no tidal reaches close by so I can’t give you a decent idea of where the tide was at. I can tell you it is pretty much a full moon out this evening. Also, a new one for me in the 40 odd years that I’ve lived and moved around this part of Essex I actually saw deer in the first field coming out of the village.

I should probably get on with the film and the review type stuff. I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication here detailing the scoring process. You can even search in the little box on the right to see more reviews and things or use the drop down menu directly below my header picture. I tweeted my IMDB score:

I rated Johnny English Strikes Again (2018) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/9OPw7A2t25

— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 23, 2018

So, as you can see, 4/10 is a pretty pants score. There’s been a few others recently that scored that and there’s even a film where I went completely away from this trusted format. Why did this film get a 4? Mostly because it was shit.

I did like the idea that they were trying to train Johnny English into understanding that the world has moved on and that women can have jobs of power although they could have gone into this much more. The idea that women should be treated the same as men, although it probably doesn’t work so well in this movie franchise compared with Bond because Johnny English is generally a fool whereas Bond is full of misogynistic toxic behaviour that deserves to be corrected and then consigned to the rubbish heap of shit things.

No, this film was pretty shit. Other people in the cinema laughed plenty and I chuckled a couple of times but it wasn’t far enough on the dinosaur discovering a new world idea and it wasn’t enough Mr Bean.

October 22 2018October 22 2018

Reinden Wood

I spent a couple of days inside Reinden Woods part of the Cinque Ports Training Area. Whilst there I supervised a number of training opportunities for the cadets and generally helped out. I quite enjoyed playing a role during the vehicle check point exercise. I took some photos and they are below. I’m not going to say a huge amount about this weekend except to say it was fun while also being cold overnight.

Of course I don’t believe in ghosts but if films and stories are anything to go by the lodge pictured above would be haunted. It was bad enough having the cockerels crowing at 04:00.

I don’t go near wild fungi, I have no idea what they are and don’t want to die.

This is possible not the greatest photograph of this view but I had a task to do and came back to this spot about two minutes after and go this shot. I was even prettier two minutes earlier.

October 13 2018October 15 2018

Sub 540 Seconds

I’ve been trying to keep my hand-in with the Nurburgring racing circuit. I’ve been trying to race it a couple of times a week. Most tracks don’t take that long to get back in the swing of things, but given that this one is 14km or so long it takes an age to get used to it. While racing my lovely Porsche around I noticed that my times for the 24 Hour circuit were getting close to nine minutes and so I’ve been playing with the aim of beating that.

Here’s the proof I finally did:

Look for the fastest lap time in purple in the bottom right hand corner. I’m quite happy.

This is the gorgeous beast that I achieved that time in:

October 13 2018October 13 2018

Glorious Colours

Here are a couple of photographs taken of the glorious colours in the morning skies above Kent.

I know they are sunrise because both of these photos have the camera facing to the East.

The weather for the last few weeks has not been usual. We are in the middle of October and I’ve only had the heating on for two days and that was me being luxurious.

October 12 2018October 12 2018

Radio

Over the last two years the news has become increasingly depressing. I think that is because everything I hear goes against my views of what our society should be. All the politics since the EU referendum and election of May and Trump has been frustrating. I have often switched off from one of my twitter accounts because I find it depresses me, makes me worried for the future and makes me feel helpless.

I have tried to cut down the amount of news I consider. Recently I have found that listening to BBC Radio 4 a lot hasn’t helped my mood. The presenters don’t seem to approach the discussions in the way I think they should and they seem to miss all the important issues facing this country at the moment.

I went through a phase of listening to music in the mornings and evenings while in the kitchen and I am now at the point where I miss the voices. I like the music but I miss the discussion of talk radio.

So, I spent a little time last night trying to get a radio station from New Orleans play over my Sonos system. I am pretty sure that this station, WWL, broadcasts only to the USA and the website I get directed to doesn’t work properly in my browser. I don’t do any VPN type thing yet, although that might happen at some point.

So, I spent a little while trying to find the URL I could use to add WWL to my Sonos system. Sonos uses TuneIn Radio to connect to streaming services and WWL doesn’t broadcast over that network. However, you can add stations manually if you can get a streaming URL.

It took a little clever Googling around to find a source that would work but eventually I did it. I have now added WWL to my sound system. I am looking forward to, once again, learning about the weather in Louisiana and how the traffic is near the big lake.

A previous communication in 2016 covered this media switch also.

Why New Orleans? Because I follow their American football team, that’s why.

October 8 2018

Migration

Well, that was a weekend! For some reason I decided to have a go at running my website [this one] from my own NAS drive. I figured this will save me money in the long run? won’t have to rely on GoDaddy who have hosted my website since its inception. I’ve not had any problems with GoDaddy but it’s a bit like car tax. When it comes around to paying for the hosting I just find I’d rather not.

So, I spent many hours staring at my computer screen. The first thing was getting the NAS to run as a web server and get the data out to the world. This took a little while to configure, especially the port forwarding and stuff, but I had done this for my Raspberry Pi and it’s web server so I did have some experience. I installed Webstation on the black box and got it working.

The next thing to do was trying to migrate my website from the GoDaddy servers to the NAS. However, this means running WordPress and that means the following have to be installed on the NAS drive:

Maria Db for the SQL database
Text Editor for getting into those pesky php files
phpMyAdmin to read and mess around with the SQL databases
WordPress

WordPress configured everything to run well and then I followed a web guide which had explained it should be easy to transfer the data with a little knowledge. I have a little knowledge and I think that makes me more dangerous than most! I FTP’d my site to my PC ready for uploading to the NAS drive.

I then tried importing the SQL database and setting up WordPress to read that database and work properly.

I failed at this about three times.

I failed terribly. To the point of uninstalling WordPress and deleting all the data and trying again. Each attempt took about an hour. It was quite frustrating because I do think I was close and only needed to change a “space” or “comma” in one of the php files and it would have worked wonders. But I started to despair.

So, I paid for some migration software. I already use UpdraftPlus and this automatically backs up my site to the cloud and they offered a migration package for about £20. Considering how much time I had spent doing all this it would have made more sense to spend that in the first place. But, you know, I wanted the experience. I do know a lot more about SQL and stuff now so it wasn’t a complete waste.

UpdraftPlus migration was easy to use and it even sent the files straight to my webserver. I thought that was quite impressive. It did take a long time though and I left it running overnight. I checked on it this morning.

The local version of WordPress was asking me to locate the backup files and then import them. As I was running a very basic and unmodified version of WordPress I hoped the import file would write all data to the SQL database and also import all the settings.

It did and quite quickly.

However, it did come up with an error reading one of the “upload” zip files. I think there must’ve been an error. Most of the website was working well and the WordPress dashboard was looking good. I think the database thought all these media files existed but Updraft couldn’t remove them from the zip file and so stopped working.

I FTP’d into the existing site and downloaded all the media files, about 5GB and FTP’d them to the NAS and hey presto. It all seems to work quite well. I am quite pleased.

I now have to go through and change the odd link here and there which won’t work because of the directory structure, but generally I am very happy with everything. I have a plugin which will crawl through and check links for me. I could also get Google to do a crawl for me, it worked really well last time to indicate some issues on the site.

This is the very first Fooyah communication on this new hosting. I am happy. If blurry eyed.

October 7 2018

King Of Thieves

Last night I went to Rochester cinema [not in Rochester] to see King Of Thieves. It was dark so I don’t have any information about the state of the tide for this communication but I can tell you it was raining. I can also inform you that the JD was very pleasant while waiting to go into the theatre. I did see a really cool device developed by Guinness that took a poured glass of Guinness from a can and then made bubbles appear so it looked like a draught pint. This device is apparently called a Guinness Surger and I will let you Google that for yourself.

I rated this film on IMDB and you should sneak over to this communication to see how the system works.

I rated King of Thieves (2018) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/UzkslauApf

— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 7, 2018

Well, that seems quite a low rating for a crime caper! I just didn’t really like it. This movie starts off with likable characters trying to get one over on The Man. Although that is what they have always done, being professional thieves. But, you see, this means they are scum bags unwilling to work for the things they want. Stealing isn’t a thing to be celebrated, even though we love those movies. I would also rail against those who make money by taking advantage of people. I’ve a simple mantra in life, let’s be nice to one another.

In this film you have what looks like a bumbling group of old guys with a lovely camaraderie who slowly develop and show their greed and mistrust of each other because they have always lied. They start playing off against each other. They just aren’t nice people. You see, thieving:

IT’S NOT A NOBLE OCCUPATION.

It’s for assholes and scumbags driven by a sense of inequality. Whilst they are right to have that sense of inequality they should be trying to change things through the proper channels, not breaking the law. Arrrgh, I’m stuck now because the law works in favour of those with money and those who take advantage of everyone, especially while the Tories are in power.

Do you know what? Go and watch the Jonathon Pie thing on iPlayer. That’s good.

October 2 2018

Paying For It

It has struck me recently that while I stream quite a bit of music the money I pay for this doesn’t seem to get back to the artists. I know that each Spotify steam is bugger all. Each stream of a song is about 0.4 cents or pence it doesn’t really matter. For an artist to make a living from Spotify they have to be best sellers really. Now, I will listen to an album a large number of times when I like the music. But I might steam an album once or twice. It seems to me that if I know I like the songs then paying for the album means I will listen to it more, enjoy it more and contribute to the artist more.

Just paid for an actual album (download). More of the money will go to artist than streaming.

— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 2, 2018

So, my first album purchase in probably over a year goes to: Leaether Strip.

I decided to buy two albums. A “best of” and a later album. Ironically I’m going to share them here via Spotify you can always search for these on your preferred content provider.

I think it should be an aim to buy an album each month. Preferably using Bandcamp or something similar where more of my payment goes to the artist.

Bank warns no-deal could see UK sink into recession – BBC News