Category: Personal

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Jar Of Flies / SAP – Alice In Chains

It has been a while since I wrote some stuff about albums I own and what I think about them. Hopefully I’ll have a push to produce more communications over the next while. It’d be nice to get a load of stuff written that isn’t just pretty pictures I’ve taken. This site was turning into a little bit of a photo-blog and while those communications are important I should be getting back to the purposes of originality.

Jar Of Flies.

Don’t listen to this if you are slightly depressed and alone. It’s a struggle to listen to this EP when perfectly happy and emotionally stable and alone so any worse off and you need to hide your shoe laces away.

This EP perfectly uses the haunting vocal style of the lead singer [dead – drugs] and the gentle guitar sounds of Seattle. Every song on this album makes me feel. This was one of the first ten or so CDs I bought, I think I owned it before I owned a CD player. This EP is perfect and tearsome.

You must listen to it at some point. Preferably when you are well. And in a brightly lit room. Laying on the floor, in the dark, with sunglasses on and beer in your system is not the ideal listening position.

Well, it is really but we shouldn’t go there. This album takes me back to 1994 with the opening three seconds.

Get your fucking hair cut.

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Mile 22

Yesterday I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see the film Mile 22. I didn’t know what to expect but as it was rated 18 I thought it might be better than some of the other films currently showing. As I journeyed the sun was shining and it was a lovely day, only ruined by my need to tidy the garden and pull some weeds. The tidal state of the river Medway was quite high.

River Valley
River Valley

You can’t see a great deal of the river in this photograph but it is there and was lovely and still giving nice reflections of the valley sides opposite.

As is usual I rated this film on IMDB when I left the cinema. I also then share stuff via Twitter because once it’s embedded in this page the tweet looks pretty good! You should see something written about my rating system and it just so happens I have an explanation in this communication.

Why the low score? Well, this film was shit. That’s why. I didn’t actually walk out although I did think about it. I was less than enthused about ten minutes in. After that the film just kept getting worse.

I don’t like shaky hand-held camera work. It’s lazy because it means there’s more space in the choreography of fighting than there should be. Hand held cameras give the idea that you are part of the fight and therefore you can’t see all the fight. You have no fucking clue what is going on. I gave up trying to track what was happening at times and let the scene play out and I would back-fill the fight from who was left standing at the end.

Some of the vocals were so poorly recorded or had such terrible accents that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Had I been watching at home I would have put the subtitles on. Which wouldn’t have made a huge difference to my understanding of the film because the plot was fucking terrible.

The Mark Wahlberg character was a piece of shit. We had some back story about him being really gifted and using “pain” to stop his mental thoughts but he was just an abusive person. I hoped he died. As a group of my friends would say “he’s a right proper Cynthia”. He was the leader of a super-secret cell of USA government hard bastards who went in and did the job and got out. Except we saw them resign their posts before using this super-power and therefore weren’t members of the CIA while they were blowing shit up.

One of the female characters was so cool under fire that it was highlighted by the film but then she couldn’t hold her emotions together when she was talking to her ex-husband. What a load of toss. Bullshit.

I don’t even want to go into all the problems with the plot and how it doesn’t really fit together or make sense. This film was terrible. I hated it.

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A Simple Favour

As part of an entertainment weekend I booked a seat to see A Simple Favour. A film about something. I didn’t know really, it was a film on at the right time for me to get to the cinema. There are things to be done you see. Also, hopefully it would stop me overdoing it at the SITD gig. There was a method to my planning. The last thing I needed was a big hangover.

It was raining as I drove to the cinema and so I did not notice the status of any solar-lunar effects on the Earth. I can tell you the tide was just below high when I drove away as the skies had cleared to sunshine.

I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication which covers the rating system called IMDB Ratings. Then my customary behaviour is to share my score via Twitter.

So, what did I think of this film? It was alright I think. It wasn’t super stunning or scary. It was a little full of too-perfect people, although I guess they had their flaws exposed as the movie went on. I guess my problem is I’m not sure who was the baddie. I am pretty sure both the main female characters were not heroes.

I think I saw a movie similar to this a couple of years back. A woman gets all scheming and fakes her own death. Etc.

Maybe we are meant to find both women horrific in their own ways.

I think I have one comment about the rest of the school mums and dads. This film had school mums and also a single dad who was probably a gay character. Perhaps the film-makers could have realised that there are life situations where the dad might be staying at home in a heterosexual relationship. I don’t think there was a need to make him gay. Unless, of course, there are quotas. On second thoughts, well done movie for showing a gay dad in a positive light and messing with the heads of all those crazy christians in the USA. Anything to get in their heads.

This film was a good waste of two hours. It’s worth a watch but maybe don’t pay for it.

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[:SITD:] – Electrowerkz

Throughout the rain I struggled yesterday to get to Angel. Well, it wasn’t a struggle but I wanted drama! Smith and I got to Angel with plenty of time for a few drinks before heading to Electrowerkz for an evening of music and atmosphere.

First band up on this quadruple bill was My Hysteria. They had a good solid beat but the songs were a little long and the singer needed more variation in his voice. He also didn’t manage to fit his audience participation in with the music but maybe that will change for him as the band progresses.

My Hysteria
My Hysteria

Second band were called Matt Hart. That may have been the name of the singer, the guitarist or the band. I don’t know. I also missed the beginning of the set. My notes go as follows:

Singer. Guitarist. Heavy bass drum beat, samples. Heavy guitar. Not quite working. Not sure why. Needs a live drummer??? Distorted voice. Lacks an “energy”.

I guess that’s something they could work on as well. I do understand that this reviewing stuff is very subjective and so should you. We probably don’t like the same things. However, I do like a decent live drummer.

Matt Hart
Matt Hart

Thirdest up was a band I had seen twice before. Biomechanimal are a regular support band over here and they played before the headliners. The main question is whether I thought they were any good. I’m not sure they were. My issues with this band are that the vocals are too distorted, I can’t hear the bass player and apart from the last two songs which were very “dance” the rest were a bit, meh. I have previously written about this band and commented then that I couldn’t hear the bass player. Disclosure: I play bass.

Biomechanimal
Biomechanimal

Finally we get to the German headliners. Shadows In The Dark or [:SITD:]. They were really good. I’d seen them at M’era Luna before. I like listening to their albums. I do think that their sound can get a little repetitive and so I thought it might be a bit like the Hocico gig. However, it was way better than that. The sound was very good. They proved that the right band in the right venue can be awesome. All their songs were enjoyable and the beat varied throughout to keep interest. It did not feel like an eighty minute set.

SITD
SITD

It was quite clear that the lead singer is suffering with his identity dealing with hair loss. I don’t think there’s ever any need to wear a beanie hat indoors. The main singer was reasonably energetic and even got down into the crowd to sing a verse and chorus of a song, a nice touch.

SITD
SITD

The [:SITD:] gig gets a solid 7.5 out of ten. I very pleasant and enjoyable evening drinking amaretto and cranberry juice. I definitely don’t have cystitis now!

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The Predator

This glorious afternoon I opted to stay in a darkened room and watch a film. The room was screen 7 at Rochester Cineworld cinema. You see, when you have a subscription you need to make sure you go enough to make that worth while. I could have stayed at home and learnt the songs for the next Disaster Area gig but I chose not to.

I failed to notice the state of the tide on the way to the cinema and it is quite unlike me to do that. Ever since I started mentioning it I have been a little obsessed although it is a quick and easy way to connect with nature, the sun and the moon. The tide was low when I left the film.

I rated this film on IMDB using the system explained within the words of the communication called IMDB Ratings.

This film was quite terrible. I only stayed until the end to see what would happen. I’m a big fan of the original movie Predator. It had Arnie and an alien and a misfit group of hard-core homo erotic troopers who all died one by one until Arnie had beat up the alien enough it decided to nuke itself out of existence.

This film had a misfit bunch of soldiers who were all bad men and heading to prison [I think, I’m not sure why they were all in the same bus]. There was a chap with Tourettes so that rude things could be said and blamed on Tourette’s syndrome when really he just said the toxic-masculine bullshit that the script writers really wanted to say. I’m pretty sure he had some stuff to say about “eating pussy”. It’s a shame because the actor playing the Tourette’s chap is really good and could probably pull that character off in a serious film.

There was a kid with ASD or high functioning autism. He seemed to cope pretty well when all the guns started going off. There was a brilliant throwaway line that autism is the next evolutionary level to let the movie goers know that this kids was the future.

There was a female scientist, a kind of Tia Carrere clone, who apparently:

“wrote the book on evolutionary biology”

I always thought that was Charles Darwin. When we first meet this actress she looks EXACTLY like a make-up advert with her head turned 1/4 on and hair flawlessly flowing down her shoulders. It was pissing ridiculous.

I looks as though the script writers just had gaps in the script with the words “insert science sounding shit here”. On that train of thought apparently a helicopter can “track another helicopter’s frequency”. Jesus.

It was disclosed that the Predator had been before in 1987 and another year. Predator 2 was in 1990. I’m not sure what year they said because they then claimed that it was coming to earth with an increasing frequency which is a pretty spectacular claim to make given just three datum points. Also, the predator was being chased to Earth and crash landed so I’m not sure that “intention” could be claimed.

This movie was enough for conspiracy dicks. It had secret aliens, a massive under dam base where thousands of people work on alien artifacts and secret government organisations run by a young man who seems to have extrapolated way too much from the limited data available. Also, this movie had

GUNS

Now, I know the original was full of guns and macho bullshit but it was an Arnie film. What the fuck did you expect? In this film it shows the American obsession that violence can cure anything. The gun can kill all things and rectify the problems facing the country. Got an alien dog running at you which doesn’t go down with a couple of bullets? Just shoot more bullets at it. This movie does not celebrate genius or alternative thinking. It celebrates a culture fantasising completely over small arms, and sometimes bigger weapons.

Arnie used his ingenuity to harm the Predator enough. This movie uses guns.

So, the primary female character explains at one point that the Predator left her alone when she was completely naked in the decontamination room. Does this come back to be used? Does this have any explanation later in the film. No! Because, fuck you. Don’t expect us to tie together all the plot points or even let this film make sense.

Save you money. Find Predator with Arnie on a streaming site and watch that. It’s awesome.

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Summer Time

This chronicles the summer holiday 2018. Just an idea of things I did because after almost a week, when I started writing this, I’m worried I’m wasting my time.

Sat – usual Sat stuff
Sun – run, Gran Turismo and cinema to see Skyscraper
Mon – Met Jo then went swimming.
Tues – Had a run and then met John.
Weds – Mostly food and fan shopping and ice cream lunch.
Thurs – stupid hot so cleared out a bedroom cupboard and started putting together a camping box.
Fri – bought camping supplies, a start on the M’era Luna costume and cinema.

Sat – run, more M’era Luna costume work.
Sun – wrote Fooyah communications, exercises, Gran Turismo, Death Of Stalin on Netflix, played No Man’s Sky, read a book.
Mon – Gran Turismo update, daily workout complete; drive 26.4 miles. Visit Spitfire memorial museum, RAF Manston Museum and Battle Of Britain memorial, all East Kent or Hellfire Corner, GT New track 4 laps then No Man’s Sky.
Tues – travel Maldon for the day, No Man’s Sky in evening.
Weds – snuck inot school to see new classroom, Gran Turismo, British Gas boiler service, No Man’s Sky, cleaned the car.
Thurs – run, finish M’era Luna costumes, Granturismo, No Man’s Sky, travel to London to see Freakangel in Hoxton.
Fri – shopping, had a nap, packed for trip, watched film Double Team, tried to complete Nordschleife circuit experience.

Sat – got up and headed to Lake District. Lunch at Wetherby. Petrol at Morrison’s Penrith. Campsite. Made camp. Dinner, read book. Checked out parking for Sunday walk. Up Latrigg – drove up, then parked in town to walk to the Lake. Reading upon return.
Sun – Got ready and drove to car park. Then did many many peaks and returned to the car. Had a cuppa at The Lodge in the Vale. Back to tent. Showered and dinner. Read.
Mon – Breakfast at Filling Station Café, eggs florentine. Drive to Maryport via Whinlatter Pass. Roman museum then to Milefortlet 21. Tea and cake at Buttermere, Booths for some cheese and rolls then back to tent. Watched Nanette and the Spiders web.
Tues –  Coffee, drove to Langdale and completed the Langdale Pikes.
Weds –  drove home. Washed stuff and packed for Thurs. also, went to Lakeside to get fuel, food and checked EE. Gran Turismo.
Thurs –  got engine oil for car. Channel tunnel, drove to Bochum, stayed in cheap hotel.
Fri – drove to Hildesheim, queues for a long time. Pitched tent. Ate, drank, slept, ate, drank, danced in the disco.

Sat – M’era Luna day one. MINISTRY and the PRODIGY.
Sun – M’era Luna day two. Eisbrecher.
Mon – drove home and unpacked.
Tues – washing and cleaning all camping equipment. Fooyah blog posts. Went to see the Meg. Some Gran Turismo. Tour Of Duty.
Weds – swimming, food shopping, watched Sea of Monsters, walk in the park, dinner, Gran Turismo.
Thurs – rowing, watched Jumaji 2, watched Avengers Assemble, Gran Turismo, X-Plane, watched Tour of Duty.
Fri – Ebbsfleet, train, underground, monument, shard, national gallery, Trafalgar square, HMS Belfast, Kings X for fish and chips, train home.

Sat –  Scoopid for ice cream, park and walk around the vineyard and playing PS You games.
Sun – Cleaned the garden and sorted it out. Had a run in evening.
Mon – dentist, stuff to dump, watched Channel 4 sci fi thing, cinema – Spy who dumped me.
Tues – run, head to Jason’s. Swimming and tea at Foxhills. Stay at Jason’s.
Weds – chill at Jason’s and then head to Look Out Discovery Centre. Lunch. Drive to Maidstone A&E. Subway and home.
Thurs – food shopping. Dossed. Watch Psych the movie in evening.
Fri – Head in to school and sort new classroom out. Afternoon run. Thought about cinema but decided against it.

Sat – chill day. Went to watch The Festival in evening. Been watching The Expanse season 3.
Sun – run. Went to Harlow to see sister. Lunch with parents at Harlow Mill. After home, more Expanse.
Mon – Bank holiday. Morning row – 60mins. Food shopping. Home, Expanse. Finished Expanse.
Tues –  Went to school to put posters up. Then drove to Costco for lunch. Shopping and then the most almighty traffic jam. Ikea then Costco again. Home finally at 2230.
Weds – up. Breakfast. Row.
Thurs – RAF Museum, Hendon. Started Killjoys season 3.
Fri – doss morning. Watched Journey to Centre Of The Earth. More school stuff printing SoWs. Run. X-Plane.
Sat – up and headed to 5K inflatable assault course at Kempton. Lunch out at Magpie pub. Rtn. Polished shoes. Finished Killjoys season 3.
Sun – up run. Shopping. Lunch. Watched “Halt and Catch Fire”. Ironing.

So, it looks like I managed to “busy it up” but I also kinda wrote more stuff down so it just looks like I did more!

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Hot and Chilly

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned here how lucky I feel I am being able to live in the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and every now and then nature combines in such a way to make the view gorgeous or stunning.

Nestled Mist
Nestled Mist

I didn’t really have time in the day to get the best photograph of the above situation. I think it would have been more stunning as fingers of sunlight crept over the horizon but I had other stuff I needed to do. Like get to work.

Sunny Lower North Downs
Sunny Lower North Downs

This photo shows the state of the soil on the Downs Slopes. It’s quite chalky here. I took this while I was trying to run up 5-O steps but I didn’t manage to run it all.

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Disconnected?

The speedometer in my car over-reads. The car, named Bora Horza Gobuchul, has been with me for a while and I remember being on a motorway thinking that I’ll settle at 60m.p.h. as I wasn’t in a rush. After a while I was being overtaken by HGVs and that was quite disturbing given they have a 58m.p.h. speed limit. So, I got a speed application downloaded from the iTunes store and tested my speed using the phones GPS signal.

The result, my speed, according to my phone, was 54m.p.h.

That explained a lot. I had never tested the speedo in the Beast, there never really seemed to be a need to do it. So I set about testing the readings my car was giving me and it turns out that my speedometer over-reads my speed by 10%.

So, if the car is indicating 70m.p.h. then I’m really going 63/64 m.p.h.

My understanding is that speedometers are allowed, legally, to over-read the speed but NEVER under-read the speed. Because of this rule that they are NOT permitted to under-read means that a tolerance HAS to be included for under-reading. It would be costly for manufacturers to produce speedometers that are “exact”.

So, a car indicating a speed of 70m.p.h. could be doing anything in the range of 63 to 70 m.p.h.

Having tested this and observed the traffic around me and used various different speed testing apps I have now adjusted my speed accordingly. This effect could also be deliberate to try and make Prius drivers drive a little slower and therefore save fuel. You use approximately twice the fuel to travel at 70 than you would at 50m.p.h.

Now, here’s the rub:

My car has a “computer” as they used to be called and it tells me average speed, m.p.g. etc. Over the summer I reset this to zero while travelling on a clear motorway. I set the car’s cruise control to a steady speed of 77m.p.h. and reset the trip computer. Once the computer had enough data it flashed up my average speed: 70m.p.h! This continued over the next ten miles of travel before I had to slow down.

It appears that the car’s trip computer reads or reports the correct speed.

This confuses me. The trip computer either uses a different source for its data OR it knows the correct speed from the existing source. I don’t understand why either of these would be designed like that. The car has a mechanical device for reading the speed OR it could use the GPS system but why over complicate things?

I don’t understand my car.

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In This Day And Age

During 2018 my work shoes died. Both soles split across the ball of my foot and while most of the time this was not a problem my feet got wet when it rained. So, I decided to get new shoes over the summer break. I don’t like shopping for shoes. I hate spending money on them. I am not a “shoe” person. But, I did think, it might be worth spending a little more on a decent brand of shoes to get a pair that will be comfortable and last.

Dr Martens it has to be then. I had owned this brand of shoe in the past and they are a solid brand. Good quality and lasting power. A pair of shoes that should serve me well. They were easy to find and bought after trying them on. I did think that they pinched a bit but surely that would wear off?

Last week I wore those shoes for one day and they destroyed my feet. I have open blisters on my heels and across the top of my feet. Bollocks. I didn’t “break” these shoes in over the summer. I struggled to wear them for the next two days. I took them off while performing my main role within the school and explained to kids that my feet hurt.

During spare moments I started to bend and break the leather so that it was softer and more forgiving. I have spent about an hour on each shoe making sure the leather is more flexible. I have used shoe-cream. I have hit them with a hammer.

I can’t yet wear these shoes as my feet need to heal. So, this week I am wearing some black boots that were issued to me by the RAF. And here’s the thing. Those boots don’t need breaking in and are comfortable straight away. NO BREAKING IN.

In May I bought some new walking boots. They are lovely. I wore them straight away. Guess what? They DIDN’T need breaking in and are going to last me another twenty years.

Five years ago I was issued parade shoes by the RAF. They DIDN’T need breaking in.

I’m annoyed that the DM shoes need breaking in. I’m annoyed I didn’t do that over the summer holidays. I’m in pain and annoyed by it. I’m hoping that in about a week’s time, once my feet are healed, that the new shoes will be more forgiving. It’s pathetic! [both my pain and that shoes need to undergo a process before they are comfortable to wear].

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Ant-Man and the Wasp

Earlier today I went to the Cineworld cinema in Rochester to see the film Ant-Man and the Wasp. I’m not really into superhero movies, they bore me and are too outrageous. I was curious to see what I would think of this one. There are some administrative duties I must attend to first though. The tide was pretty full when I got to the cinema, maybe just before high tide. On the way out the river was definitely flowing towards the see and the tide had turned. I rated this movie on the IMDB website and there’s a guide to those ratings within this communication which was written over four years ago!

Well, as you can see I rated this film well. I would watch it again. It had just the right amount of character and humour to make everyone likeable, even the Ghost. I don’t have any real problems with any of it. I recognise there must be many plot holes and don’t get me started on being able to shrink smaller than the molecules of which you are made but I liked it all.

The were even TARDIGRADES ffs. Those little beasts are mean motherfuckers! I really did enjoy this film. Well worth a watch.

My main criticism would be that the Ghost character could have been more developed. I would like to see a film with just her in it. The Ghost was played by Hannah John-Kamen who also stars as Dutch in Killjoys. As a superhero, whether good or bad, the Ghost had a wonderful costume and interesting back story.

If you do see this film, make sure you stay around to see that little bit after the first set of credits. It tied in very nicely with another film. Very interesting.

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Practise Refuelling

I’ve written here quite a bit about ADS-B and stuff along with tracking aircraft and multi-lateration. Well, I was looking at the aircraft tracking website 360 Radar this evening and spotted an amusing thing.

Almost A Penis
Almost A Penis

The route shown on the picture is that taken by an RAF Voyager aircraft over the North Sea. The plane took off from RAF Brize Norton and headed out over the Scottish area of the North Sea. The green area is rain and the purple highlights are RAF airfields along with the blue highlights showing civilian airports. What particularly struck me about this picture was the almost-penis drawn as the second area of activity. I think they should have tried a little harder [but would probably get “moved” assignment].

Let’s put this thing into some perspective by adding recognised Danger Areas in red and refuelling training areas in green.

AAR Ranges
AAR Ranges

Now we can see that the Voyager has maneuvered beautifully through the danger areas and maintained some lovely flight paths in the AAR areas. The plane is currently at 16,000ft and moving at 330 kts. Pretty standard stuff.

It’s amazing to see that this is practiced and practiced to make sure that when it comes to doing this in a real theatre everyone knows exactly what they are doing and it all goes to plan.

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An Air Powered 5k

This morning I spent a lovely few hours with old friends beating up an inflatable assault course and generally having a lovely time. First thing to note and to be honest although I’ve had the race number for a couple of months now today was the first time I noticed the devilish connotations:

The Number Of The East
The Number Of The East

The running was great fun. The obstacles more so as I tried to make sure I vaulted or somersaulted as much as possible. I even bunny hopped up all the “steps” on one of the obstacles. It was great fun, although I might have a nap soon.

Leaping Over A Wall
Leaping Over A Wall

My time doesn’t matter because we ran as a team. I’m almost tempted to do the 10k next year!

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Good Looking Not-Lego

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.

So, here are the pair:

Spitfire and Warhawk
Spitfire and Warhawk

And individually:

Spitfire MkVB
Spitfire MkVB
Curtiss P40
Curtiss P40
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Hendon Views

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!

Anyway, here are a selection of shots.

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Six And A Half Hours Later Than Planned

Today’s plan was reasonably simple. Head to Costco for lunch and a bit of shopping then head home and watch some TV. I expected to be back for about 16:00 [BST]. It initially went well. The lunch was bought and the stuff purchased, the car was filled and I went to leave the car park. Except I couldn’t because the road was busy. So I drove to the other exit thinking I’d go out by Ikea and head to the A13 and join the M25 there. But that way was blocked with traffic too. That was when I decided to look at my phone and see what Google maps was saying about the traffic.

It was fucked.

The maps app was reporting that the QE II bridge was closed. North and southbound. Bugger. I needed to use that to get back home. Alternatives exist but they are a pain and involve London.

Classic Dartford
Classic Dartford

Apparently two trucks had collided on the north side of the bridge. This meant both tunnel and bridge were closed. This meant the entire area because a car park. I decided to stop in the official car park I hadn’t left and leave the car and try and waste some time so I would start again when at least the traffic was moving a little.

I walked to Ikea, wandered around, found a few things to buy and then also went to the restaurant and ate some food. Periodically I would check twitter and maps to see if there was any movement. There was not.

I then thought it might be worth joining a queue again and maybe we would move a car’s length every minute or so, at least make some progress. So I drove to the Costco exit and joined a queue. The only times I moved forward was when a car not far ahead pulled a U-ey and we all move one car length. After an hour I turned around and parked in Costco again. To be honest I had made it about 50 m from the car park exit in that time so it wasn’t really like I had left!

A cuppa and toilet break in Costco and time to spend a little longer wasting time hoping that something would move soon. It wouldn’t.

Eventual Route
Eventual Route

While still trying to get out of Ikea and head directly north to the A13 it struck me it that heading south [the blue lines] and then heading east might work. The traffic seemed to be moving in those directions. Maybe I could then head north to the A127, rejoin the M25 or head into London.

Final Route - ish
Final Route – ish

The roads seemed reasonably clear. I got on the M25 anti-clockwise and I just kept following Google Maps. I headed down the M11, around the Olympic stadium in Stratford and then there were slight delays on the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. After that there were no more delays. I think they had started to open the Dartford Tunnels at some point because the traffic seemed to be moving north at that point. The M25 was delayed and stopped from Dartford to about Stapelford Tawney, the delays were immense.

My overall thoughts are that I am glad no one was badly injured. Yes, it caused huge delays and would have cost a lot of money because of those delays, but hopefully everyone got home OK.

I got home around 22:30 [BST]. A little later than planned. I’m not annoyed. I almost enjoyed the adventure of it all. I had looked at cinema times but there were no suitable films, I had looked at booking into the Travelodge over the road but it was full, I had considered driving to my parents’ house but the issue was getting out of the car park!

The trucks had spilled fuel over the road and this meant it needed to be resurfaced. They also managed to crash just before the slip way for southbound traffic to enter the tunnel. Therefore there was no alternative to shutting the entire crossing.

Next time, for there will be another time, I will do my best to look at the roads heading in the opposite direction. Had I thought of that earlier I think I could have been home around 19:00 [BST]. Oh well.

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Shaming Farts

On a recent trip to Surrey I stopped off at Chobham services on the M25. You wouldn’t think I’d find much to comment on while having a quick wee break on a journey but “Oh My!”.

Every advert in the male toilets was for Shreddies and not the breakfast cereal.

Women Can't Fart
Women Can’t Fart

Now, I will look at their website shortly and comment after but my initial reaction was:

WHY THE FUCK CAN’T WOMEN FART? WHO CARES?

My immediate next thought was:

We’ve had plenty of period shaming on women and now we shame them into smelling nice and pretty all the time and won’t allow them to perform normal bodily functions.

Well. I hope that the adverts in the ladies’ toilets were all for fart-pants for men, but i am unaware of those facts.

This advert is appalling. Women must remain clean and sweet and smell of roses for men. Women aren’t allowed to fart. Women should be beautiful for men. Farting is bad.

FUCK this company. I found this advert and all the other similar ones in the toilets sexist and shaming of humans for doing NORMAL human things.

Now, I’m off to look at the website and I’ll comment below.

So, they do men’s stuff too. Most of the web page is products aimed at men. It’s still disgusting.

“Fabulous idea, a great quality product with great styling, this could save many a marriage! A much needed product, fantastic innovation.”

Fuck this company.

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The Festival

Went to the cinema at Rochester last night to see The Festival. I arrived a little before time because I wanted to complete some more steps towards my daily total. Earlier in the day I had needed to buy some work shoes and I visited that Mecca of shopping: Bluewater. Before buying the shoes and doing a classic man-shop: walk to the shop, try a single pair of shoes, buy them, walk back to the car; I walked around the shopping centre thrice.

Medway Views
Medway Views

You can see that the view is just lovely and the light was nice last night. Plenty of sunshine to round out a cooler day that we’ve had all summer. The tide was also quite low with the mudflats showing to the edge of the river. I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication explaining the rating system.

This film was OK. There were some wonderfully grossed out moments that made me chuckle out loud. The basic plot is that an incredibly selfish chap gets dumped by his girlfriend and goes to a music festival as part of his recovery I guess. Over the course of the festival he learns just what a selfish prick he is and tries to make amends for that.

The set-up of him slowly learning all the things he did while he was high on MDMA was quite funny. This film is your usual “teen” gross humour and situational comedy taking the worst of human behaviour and placing all that in a single person or weekend. It’s relate-able to everyone I think because we’ve all grown up. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been to a festival, many of the set pieces in this film can be found in our collective pasts. I guess that makes it quite clever.

I’ve been to five festivals over the past six or so years and I would say that I have had a wonderful time at all of them. Even the muddy one. I mean, yes, I broke down in tears after my car got stuck in the mud and I was worried about it, and the walkways were ten centimetres deep with mud, but overall I had a good time.

This film encapsulates a sense of growing up and mini-experiences that we’ve all had. Well done.

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TankChip

On my recent trip to the Lake District I had breakfast in The Filling Station cafe. It’s a lovely little cafe with nice food and a classic soft rock playlist that could shock you.

  • Jack and Diane(John C-M)
  • Jump (Van Halen)
  • New Sensation (Inxs)
  • I come from a land down under (Men at work)
  • Stuck with you (Huey Lewis and the news)
  • Alive and kicking (simple minds)
  • Manic Monday (the bangles)
  • I died in your arms tonight (the cutting crew)

At that point I stopped recording what played. It’s almost the same content as my Hits 4 album from 1986. There is also Now That’s What I Call Music 6. These were my first foray into compilation albums. I expect I recorded them onto tape to listen to on a “walkman”.

So, in the cafe they have a free motorbike magazine and as an ex-biker I perused this rather than spend time staring at the mess and disaster on my phone twitter account. Nothing in the magazine was a particular surprise, it looks as though bike technology has moved on quite a bit since my 2001 Super Blackbird and bikes now seem pretty expensive. They are definitely a middle-class weekend thing. It’s not sensible to have one that is your only form of transport as mine was. Racking up over 12,000 miles a year on a motorbike is expensive in terms of servicing, tyres and depreciation. I digress.

So, in this magazine I spotted an advert for TankChip. It struck me as bullshit almost straight away but I am willing to see what evidence there is. Here’s the advert:

TankChip Bullshit
TankChip Bullshit

The advert seems to claim that by adding this device to the petrol tank you get more power, performance and acceleration along with an improvement in economy. Now these are some pretty impressive claims. I mean, a device that is cheap and can be added to any petrol tank and improves most characteristics of your engine? It’s almost as if it worked then manufacturers would be adding it to your tank anyway. It’d be a pretty impressive device. IF IT WORKED.

It doesn’t.

On the web page about the technology involved there are zero specific claims about the tankchip. There are plenty of claims and sciency sounding things but not one single claim about the chip itself. go and read it and see if it actually says anything about the chip. There are no testable claims.

So, here’s what happens. You see this advert, believe it, and purchase a crappy piece of plastic. Then you put it in your tank. From that point onward you are pre-disposed to see an improvement. You have paid money. You expect it to work. It will work, in your observation. What happens in reality is that it doesn’t work.

It’s like buying a nice wine. You look at the bottles and decide which one will taste nice. Then you pay plenty of money for that and, surprise!, it tastes nice. More expensive wines taste better than cheap ones. Expensive TVs look better than cheap ones because you are bought in to them.

So, riding your motorbike you expect results and so, unconsciously, drive a little more restrained but also it’ll feel like you are accelerating at a better rate, your engine will feel smoother, because you expect it to. You end up believing that this tankchip has made a difference when in reality nothing has changed. Expectation is a powerful thing.

Another clue that this is a scam is that they offer a money back guarantee. So, you buy this thing. Two things probably happen. You convince yourself it does work or you decide it doesn’t work but either forget about it or are a bit embarrassed you bought it in the first place. Either way, it’s quite likely you won’t bother to get your money back.

I have emailed the company for some information about the testing they performed and here is the response.

Can send you a some extracts from recent tank.chip customer emails when in the office.
As far as testing documents I’m not sure what you are looking for exactly.

So, I explained what I wanted. Testimonials don’t tell me shit. People’s thoughts are the worst way of collecting data because of all the biases of the human brain! That’s why we have science.

Since adding a tank.chip to my Royal Enfield 500 Bullet, performance wise it is more responsive and most importantly the engine has much less vibration at speed, which can be an annoyance when riding a single cylinder retro machine. I don’t know what or how it does it, but wow it sure does. An excellent product.
Barry H, Lincolnshire

I have purchased a tank chip, it seemed a small price to gamble! I am pleasantly surprised. Touring Wales on my Street Triple R ABS my average mpg has gone from its usual 56-58 mpg (at touring speeds) to 64.4 mpg (readout from the dash). That gives me at least an extra 20 miles from my 3gallon tank. Many thanks for a product that really works.
Clive T-B, Essex

Here’s what I asked for:

I was after a more serious test, such as some dyno testing or third party test of the product. Maybe something by a magazine?

Here’s the response I got back. It is a bank holiday weekend here so I expected to wait a little while:

Fast Bikes were setting up a dyno test but not heard anything.
Quite a few bike dealers and tuners repeat buy so I guess they have tested.
We won’t send out our data just yet for a number of reasons but will put something on line in the coming months.

I’m happy to wait for the details and if they get sent to me I will amend this communication. I doubt that any serious testing of this device will give any information or evidence that it works. If it did, then all manufacturers would already fit it. I did see one thread that it may actually include some lead which used to be added to petrol in the olden days to help with combustion and reduce “pinking”. Then we knew that lead poisoned people and campaigners worked to get it removed from petrol.

This device is very similar to the fuel magnets my father gave me about 13 years ago and they secured my descent into skepticism and you can read about that in this communication from six years ago!

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The Spy Who Dumped Me

Yesterday I drove to end up on a vector almost directly north from where I had started to end up parked near the Medway river to watch a film. It was a choice of this, The Spy Who Dumped Me, or The Festival [not that fussed] or The Equalizer 2 [even less fussed], also, Mila Kunis is in The Spy . . . . Yesterday I utterly failed to observe the state of the tide sorry about that. As is custom I rated the film on IMDB and there’s a communication explaining the rating system.

Look, this film is not great. It’s not that clever and I still am not sure who was a good person or not or on the side of whatever side was meant to be good. I’m not entirely sure the film made sense, I don’t know why the object was left where it was etc.

But, let’s ignore all that. This was a reasonably amusing film with some almost laugh-out-loud moments. It also has Mila Kunis. I don’t think there needs to be anymore explanation.

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