"Nothing but the rain"
I had to complete a Gran Turismo challenge which required racing sections of the Nurburgring Nordschleife. I’m not normally blown away by graphics in games, I tend to concentrate on the action more than anything else and so I don’t really see the quality of the graphics. HOWEVER, this challenge had me racing around dawn and the lighting of the Nordshleife was incredible. Then, there were the mist patches. There was actual mist along the track. Just amazing. Really impressive. It looked awesome.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here and I apologise to my followers. I will be aiming to write more over the next few weeks so get ready for a load of mind-splurge. You should know what I’m like, there’ll be rants, I promise.
I also need to get to the cinema soon, Star Wars is out and I guess I should go and see it.
I’ll also write more about Electroneum, a crypto-currency I’m interested in. If you want to send me ETN then you can do so at the following wallet:
Cheers, m’dears.
/end.
I did a Gran Turismo Race Challenge. There were three laps around the Willow Springs Horse Thief Mile.
On the last corner I missed the tarmac and hit a bump, it was a big bump. The car launched into the sky. I managed to take some photos during the replay. They are below. A good thing is that I don’t know how the car landed. I launched and then passed the finish line in the air and so the race finished!
You know how it goes. Major music festival which normally announces headline bands at the end of the previous weekend goes all quiet. Then, you spend a few months worrying that it won’t be any good, because – why haven’t they announced the bands?
So, you wait and then, one day this pops up in your feed [my highlighting]:
Gosh, this looks an excellent line up. I am already excited!! Let’s see what these bands look like shall we?
It looks brilliant.
There have been legal reasons for a change in the status of my commission. I used to have a RAF VR(T) commission and currently still do but it will run out, have passed on at some point in the near future. My commission is now also, but soon to be solely, a Cadet Forces Commission. Not a great deal changes but my rank slides have changed and I no longer have lovely gold pins on my rank slides.
I now have exactly two sets of rank slides. One set are wedgewood blue and the other are colour matched to my jumper. The problem is that I have different jackets that are different shades of blue.
I spent the weekend at RAF Honington for a competition the CCF had been selected for. It was good fun even though I spent most of Saturday with a migraine and in bed. I did manage to watch them become best dressed in the organisation and also saw their drill routine.
Belated congrats to Maidstone Grammar School CCF (RAF) Section on winning uniform inspection at National Drill Championship. You did your school proud.
— Comdt AC (@ComdtAC) November 26, 2017
Here’s a few pictures of a proud base:
Sorry there’s not a great deal in this communication.
Last night I had dinner at the Hope and Anchor [lovely little pub and very nice] not far from the O2 Arena. I met up with friends, one of whom was over from the States, and chatted and moaned and then got locked in a prison transfer van.
The friend from the States was stuck in business meetings and the remaining four of us walked the short distance from the pub to Bunker 51 to experience an escape room challenge. We were put in overalls along with hand and foot cuffs and then given an hour to escape from a prison van using clues and ingenuity. We didn’t make it. We had one last clue to solve and just failed to escape. We were gutted. However, we were told that only 11 teams had managed to escape in the time this room had been running. Still not happy we didn’t make it. The current record is 3-1.
While I walked from the car park to the pub and venue the city was looking gorgeous. I took some photos.
![All This Will Go [post Brexit]](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/20171115_221414900_iOS-1024x768.jpg)
This is a lovely photo:
Last night was one of those events I had been looking forward to for quite a while. Nachtmahr were playing a gig to celebrate 10 years in business and it was happening at Electrowerkz. I really like Electrowerkz, it’s a dingy little club in Angel with a small venue for concerts. I’ve been here before. This time I travelled with my niece and met Smith there.
Outside the door is a sign saying Hadley’s Hope. Inside it’s black and reminiscent of the landing site in the film Aliens, called Hadley’s Hope. There’s a bar decorated in a very Giger way.
Bands playing were:
We arrived near the end of the set for the first band so I shan’t comment. The Biomechanimal set was . . . not marvellous. They had a keyboardist pressing buttons on a bass guitar looking device, the bassist was busy but I couldn’t hear what she was playing and the singer was screaming so I couldn’t really hear what he was saying. I would say they were an industrial dance band with heavy overtones but I’m not sure they were any good. Fair enough if some people like their music but it didn’t really do a great deal for me.
Third band on the bill were DKAG, who I’ve seen before a couple of times. It’s very dance. Well constructed but a little boring with no lead singer to interact with. We went to the bar.
Finally, Nachmahr were on. I saw them at M’era Luna a few years ago and was slightly underwhelmed. This time though they were great. One “programmer” and the lead singer is all it took. The music was hard fast beat Austrian industrial and it was great fun. Really enjoyed it.
Some songs are in German, some in English. Rainer spoke in both. This was well worth missing a multitude of fireworks and bonfires celebrating the state sponsored death of a Spanish Catholic. Over all this rated about an 8 on the official scale of 0-10. I thin kthe Combichrist gig a few years ago got a 9.9 from me and so using that scale gives this gig an 8.
After the final song the venue was shifted around a little to be turned into the Slimelight club. The bar downstairs was opened and the BBQ started. I took a picture of the full moon glowing through the roof:
Finally, here’s a picture of three people at a bar:
After watching Blade Runner 2049 for the second time it was late at night and I was driving home. There’s a paper mill near me, there were two but one shut down and I suspect it will turn into housing soon. The other seems to be working well and has expanding recently. The original location of these next to a major waterway made sense after the war. This area used to make bricks and cement but is slowly changing to a mostly expensive housing area rather than making stuff.
There is a need for communities to make stuff and to be based near things where tangible things are made. You can’t fill whole swathes of the country with just housing for all the people who work away. I see so much of the land around me going to housing when more is needed for enterprise and making things. Society doesn’t just exist or work because of people living there, you need decent work for locals too [spot the socialist].
Last night when I took these photos it was misty and the light was lovely. Here’s the current paper mill, Smurfit Kappa.
The colours here were just beautiful and the way the steam and water vapour was drifting over the sky made this stand out. The darkness surrounding the plant broken by the light of the manufacturing makes this stand out like Eden in the wilderness.
Once I turned down Bull Lane the view was just as lovely but more monochrome. I stopped my car and turned the lights off. I only had a short while to take some photographs before another car turned on to the road. I probably suddenly appeared when I put my lights back on! This picture makes me think of the Exorcist poster.
I was tracking a VW Group jet into Biggen Hill Airport in south east London and noticed that the waiting pattern was out over the North Sea.
I decided that the views out there can’t be that great. I’m also curious as to whether there is a beacon somewhere in the middle there. I don’t really know a great deal about the navigation of planes. VFR is easy, but other than that I need to read up about it all. Maybe I need another visit to Pooley’s?
Here’s a closer look at the waiting room:
This Embraer has left a beautiful track for us to see. This is the waiting area for London City and Biggen Hill.
00:26:04 – Arc Light. – What’s up?
00:26:07 – B-52 strike. – Yeah?
00:26:10 – What’s that? – Arc Light.
00:26:11 I hate that. Every time I hear that, something terrible happens.
00:26:15 Charlie don’t never see them or hear them, man.
One day, a momentous day for colour, I happened to think the place of work was particularly lovely. Fortunately I have a camera in my pocket and so recorded it for posterity.
My phone didn’t really capture the colour well as it auto-corrects the white balance and can’t cope. So, the above image, which I don’t process apart from cropping, is not really what it looked like. With that we could get into a lovely discussion about how we experience things and human memory but it’s probably best not to. Just to act as a contrast to the relaxed lovely image above, here’s what my work normally looks like:
This is the dullest part of my work. The best bit is seeing learning and understanding along with challenging views of people and trying to create a more progressive society that is accepting of all.
Last night I went to see Blade Runner 2049 again. I’m not sure the of the last time I went to see a film twice at the cinema. I definitely saw True Lies twice and there are some others I have seen deliberately twice, normally with friends. I think I watched Star Wars 3.5 and it was better on the second viewing.
If I could rate this film again I would still give it 10/10 I love it.
I rated Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 10/10 #IMDb https://t.co/0qMYv8pL0P
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 10, 2017
The pace, the cinematography, the look and feel of this movie are all brilliant. It makes such a change to have a lovely, gorgeous pretty film that works at a sensible pace. I know there’s CGI but plenty of it just fits. I loved the whole thing and I look forward to sitting with my family in the future and watching this.
I’ve got some Ordnance Survey maps of my local area and I’ve been to a few of the places that are mentioned locally. Just to see what they are. I regularly run past Kits Coty House and have got photos of it in this communication. The other day I was looking at Google Maps and I was slightly shocked that it mentioned a bunch of rocks I’d not seen. They aren’t on the OS map, but are mentioned here.
So, as it fits with one of my main routes for a run I went there and took some photos. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you, the Coffin Stone.
The coffin stone is one of the Medway Megaliths mentioned in this document.
I put some pictures on here from Gran Turismo Sport in this communication. However, I had used an iPhone app to get these pictures. I have now messed around with exporting straight to a USB stick from the PS4 and, not surprisingly, I get better resolution and quality pictures. So, here they are:
First, Triumphant:
And then there was more:
I know you aren’t that bothered by these pictures but I do like them and after winning [or losing] some races it’s nice to relax and mess around within the game without having to concentrate so much.
I went to Rochester Cineworld to see the latest Lego movie. I’ve seen a few of them before. I reviewed the Batman one in this communication. The tide was quite low and the mudflats were exposed. I wondered about dredging for a while and whether there is a natural deepwater channel in the centre of the Medway. I rated this film on IMDB and the discussion about the ratings system is in this communication although I may have to change the system.
I rated The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/Grxjy02QlK
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 23, 2017
I just didn’t really think this film was very good. It suffered with quite a bit of “too much in it” which I first noticed with the Transformers movie where the CGI is so fast and too much it’s hard to really see what’s happening on the screen. This problem could also be a side effect of me getting old, hence I loved Blade Runner because of its lingering shots.
The plot of this film was rudimentary and certainly wasn’t anything new. Largely it bored me. While I understand the Lego are on a massive expansion programme with loads of new sets being created and sales increasing I think that sometimes it’s OK for a company to say “You know what? We are doing OK. There’s no need for massive expansion, we can concentrate on doing what we do and do it well”.
I like the photo feature from Gran Turismo Sport. Here are two more offerings:
There have been PYO Pumpkin signs around this way for a few weeks and I thought it would be something quite fun to do. Whenever I run the route by the Malta Inn I pass the field and so I knew where it was.
When I arrived the car park was half full with around 100 vehicles. There were many people working there and it was just the most bizarre site. Over in the far corner was a burger bar and drinks van! The whole field looked mostly empty with pumpkins and squash laying everywhere. There was some maize on the eastern flank.
It was like a battle field with dead men and the detritus of war littered over the field. But it was monetised. Many people were on hand to help and make sure you spent lots. All the pumpkins were ready cut and so there was a lot of time and effort that had gone into this enterprise.
I suspect there are going to be quite a few of these communications as we go through time. I have found the photograph mode in Gran Turismo and it is gorgeous. I need more time to get used to the settings and options. Of, course I’ve downloaded the extra Scenes pack from the PlayStation Store.
I need to re-take the above photograph so the cars are the same size. Also, to get all three rear lights on the RHS I had to angle the car a little unnaturally.
St Pancras station is where my usual train to London terminates so I like this view.
I lived for two years, and worked for four, around the corner from here.
IT arrived on Thursday. The day I had to spend 13 hours in work making the place look lovely and welcoming. The packaging was lovely, even though it was a day late. I had spent some money on the collectors edition, mostly for a pretty box, a book and a toy car.
Once I got home after circling the village a few times to find somewhere to park I turned on the entertainment centre and popped the disk in. Instantly there was a 13GB update file to download. This was slightly annoying. It would take me 25 minutes or so for it to complete and so I watched some TV, all the while becoming more and more tired. This was at the end of a very long day!
I did enter some bonus content codes in the Playstation Store and got my extra goodies delivered when the game did eventually start.
I can confirm that this game looks absolutely lovely. I know there will be critics out there, but I’m not fussed. People take what they want from a game. I’ve been playing GT since 1997 [yep, I’m old] and still enjoy it. The aim of getting faster lap times or winning a hard race, thinking about pit stop strategy and over-taking tactics pleases me. I just like it. It’s also a game you can spend ten minutes on or a few hours, when you start it up you aren’t locked in to playing for a certain length of time.
I’m not convinced about the photo mode within the game. I’d rather spend my time racing but I probably will end up spending some time within it as there are bonus points to be got!
Did I say it looks lovely?
I’ll keep posting communications on this topic, as it’s a handy conversation for me. I can also track my progress.
#PS4share pic.twitter.com/UeFfP5LZeU
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 19, 2017