Personal – Page 68 – Fooyah

December 7 2013December 7 2013

Bullet In Wembley

Went to see Bullet For My Valentine on Thursday (5 December). Travelled over to Wembley Arena and saw three bands. On the way we took a wrong turn thanks to poor Sat-Nav instructions and me not paying attention (I wasn’t driving) and we ended up on the bottom of the M1 heading north where the first place to turn around is Watford, added half an hour to our journey, but we still arrived on time.

First band on were Young Guns. I think rather than be disparaging about their music it would be best to describe their set as very not my kinda stuff. Dave, who I went with, said this band looked like a “metal boy-band”, a bit manufactured.

Next up on the stage were a band called Asking Alexandria. Apparently from “somewhere up north” and from this fair isle of Great Britain this five piece were much better than Young Guns. Not brilliant but better. I was impressed, but then again, not enough to buy their album. The music was good but there was too much shouting singing for me and it didn’t sound like anything new. Skinny guitarists!

Next up were Bullet For My Valentine. They had a lovely curtain in front of their set. It made me almost patriotic. What I would say was that about one third of Wembley Arena was not used. There were curtains blocking the back part of the arena and some of the seats were covered. This could have been intentional to make it a more intimate gig but maybe they can’t sell 12,500 tickets in London?

The music in between bands was good. There was lots of AC/DC played and I liked that but the song that everyone sings is “Run to the hills” by Iron Maiden. This is not the first gig I’ve been to where everyone sings that song. It must be some kinda anthem for us British metal fans.

So, the opening music was Carmina Burana to get the crowd excited. This is, unfortunately, an overused piece of music. Ozzy used it in the 80s and 90s and I was seriously expecting him to come on stage. Also, the X Factor use it. Grow up and choose something really dark and mysterious. “Night on a bare mountain” for instance.

When they came on they played a song I had never heard. Never a good start. I really liked “Scream, Aim, Fire”. Over all they played a solid set and were musically impressive. Stage presence is something they don’t have and overall the stage show was a bit shit. It lacked something. Oh, they had flames and sparkly shit when they came on and then there was nothing but the unveiling of a giant screen that showed everything in black and white. The encore was 30 minutes long and they played a montage. I hate montages. Metallica played a “Kill ‘Em All” montage in 1990 and I hated that then and I hate montages now. Fuck off and play all the songs, or come on earlier. Oh, and they played a ballad. I don’t care if other people like them, I don’t. Oh, and further, oh, there was a guitar solo. Shit, a guitar solo. Bollocks. I was actually texting a mate during the ballad and ensuing solo. Arse.
Anyway, overall it was a 6 or 7 out of ten. The audience was composed of different types of people than I am used to, more women and more make up. I guess that might be who this music appeals to. If that’s the case then it’s a shame I listened to my stuff all this time (few women!).

The journey home was much easier than expected.

December 4 2013

What We Moan About

Firstly I shall make a number of presumptions. There’s probably plenty of evidence for these but I am not going to give citations.

Humans are tribal, belonging to groups makes us feel safe
Humans feel supported by groups and common interests
Humans are storytellers

I’ve been thinking about the things I moan about. Sometimes I explain those things on these pages, sometimes a short burst on Twitter and sometimes I like to moan to my family or work colleagues. It’s good to let off steam as long as you don’t come across to other people as a moaning bastard. Then again, it’s not always a bad thing to be considered the grumpy one, you tend to be left alone.

So, here goes.

The topics of our moaning need to be generalised. They should be topics that nearly everyone experiences or understands. They should be communal so we all feel involved and able to agree or chide.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the best topics for moaning are:

The weather
Driving
Supermarkets
Television

We all love to join in and be part of a gang. With these topics we can feel part of a gang straight away.
Just because we find cause to moan about these issues, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s getting worse. It might be different or worse or better. Anecdote won’t be able to tell. Let’s leave the details to the sociologists and scientists and engage in ranting every now and then. It’s good for you.

November 23 2013November 23 2013

Views From My Run

On my run this morning I took some photographs because this area of Kent is lovely. It was nice and sunny, although cold. I run in the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Here’s my route:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Here’re my photographs:

Kit’s Coty House – note the moon hanging around!

A road / footpath:

The North Downs taken half way up / down from the footpath from Burham to the Robin Hood pub:

A kind of triptych of the view just out of Burham on Church Street

West South West from Church Street — South West from Church Street

November 23 2013

Dr Who

I tweeted about giving up Dr Who and it seems fair to give you more information, dear Fooyah fans.

I’m (most likely) middle-aged. I grew up believing in The Doctor. The glory days of Tom Baker as the time traveller. I liked Peter Davison as the Doctor and also watched a little of Sylvester McCoy. By this time I was a little older and TV had outgrown its purposes of entertaining me for a while.

I remember looking forward to the Doctor Who film in the mid 90s. I quite liked it but had hoped it would prove to be enough for a new series. The things of wonder from my childhood still provide wonder as long as I don’t return to them because the adult mind is so different to that of a young boy. Things I thought were great don’t always stand the test of time.

When the BBC returned the series in the 2000s I was hooked. It was great. Funny, exciting and what it should be. Ecclestone was good and although I was rather shocked when he left I still enjoyed the story line with Tennant. Personally I found that the series peaked with the discovery of who the Face of Bo really was. It was such a revelation that I can’t wait to watch the first few series with my children when they are older just to see their faces at that point. I think that occurs about 4 seasons into the new imagining of Dr Who.

When Matt Smith took over I had no problem accepting him as the Doctor and I didn’t stop watching because of him. I stopped watching because the plots and solutions to universe ending crises seemed too thin and similar. I don’t need the Doctor to save the existence of the entire universe once a series. I just want intelligent scripts and reasonable effects. The sonic screw driver seemed to have become such a plot device that it could do anything, boring. The Doctor would think for a while, rush off while our companions are in mortal danger and fix everything with a zap from the screwdriver. More boring. Deus Ex Machina. Boring.

I gave up watching it. I only have a certain amount of time I give over to television and Doctor Who dropped of the list of things I like to watch. There, said it for the world to see. I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be. Put that in your screwdriver and smoke it.

So, here’s W.A.S.P. singing “I don’t need no Doctor” [yes, I know that’s a double negative but you know what it means].

November 23 2013November 23 2013

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

First off: I haven’t read the books. I probably won’t. I don’t get a great deal of time to read and so when I do I read other stuff I find interesting. I’m currently reading “Ring World” by Larry Niven and have been for about 4 months!

Second thing: People who eat from noisy packets should be escorted from the cinema. I go to the cinema about once a week and last night was the first time for quite a while where there were idiots eating from extremely noisy crinkly packets. I could understand it if you sneak food into the auditorium in a plastic bag and quickly get food out and make a “one-off” noise but making noise all the way through the film is not acceptable. It displays a complete lack of empathy and care.

Thirdly: Since I haven’t read this book this communication is simply about what I thought of the film and not how it did as an adaptation.

Overall, it was a good film. Very well made and filmed. The acting is ok and the storyline worked well, possibly apart from the final five minutes which left me a little non-plussed. Out of it all I think I liked the chariot ride the best. Well, that’s not much written for a film of 146 minutes but it’s not outstanding.

I do like the look of the Capital and the politics. It makes it quite interesting. The fashion looks good but then again flamboyant costumes have been used for years to enhance films. I can’t help thinking that the same story has been told many times. We all know how it’s going to end. I keep thinking of “The Running Man” and how this is essentially just a cross between that and “Battle Royale”.

It’s all cyclical, I guess. When I grew up I think that Swallows and Amazons was still quite a big thing for kids to read along with the Famous Five and also the Hobbit stuff. Over time franchises grow and decline giving a snap shot of the teen zeitgeist. Harry Potter and then the Vampire crap will all become a thing of the past with children only reading it because their parents buy it for them thinking it’s good stuff while a new story will rise and sell shed-loads. Is Lord Of The Rings really (I mean really) that good? This cycle is probably going to get worse with bigger blockbusters with a shorter lifespan because information travels so much more quickly via the internet now. My conclusion is that the grand-themes will return but jacketed within different characters, leading each generation to think they have “their” thing. Ha ha. It’s all been done before.

Addition 4 hours later:
Potential Spoiler

When Katniss fires her lightning conductor at the force field it breaks the shield. That’s fine but then there’s loads of roofing and girders crashing down to the ground. If you have a force field you don’t need a solid structure too. I don’t understand what was going on here. It doesn’t fit with the technology in the film.

November 16 2013

Thor – The Dark World

This is a really enjoyable film. It is funny, predictable and grand. Finally, superhero films have grown up.

I went to see this film in 3D as the showing time suited me better than a standard 2D showing. I don’t normally like 3D films as the 3D effect adds nothing to the enjoyment of the film for me. It’s a rather pointless gimmick [I am planning to write about my response to 3D at another time]. I was generally quite impressed as there weren’t too many gratuitous 3D shots and nothing in the film seemed out of place.

I like the CGI and battle scenes. Normally CGI battle scenes seem too busy and too much blurring. I struggle to make sense of what is going on on-screen. Thor did this well with sensible battle scenes and nothing over the top. A battle recently didn’t like was Superman’s final fight in his latest film. I like the fact that the people of Asgard use swords to fight, even with all their tech, it allows for good scenes in films. The final destruction was well done and not over the top as most films tend to make it.

The plot line doesn’t really matter. Once you invent “gods” and mythical creatures you can do anything you want in terms of plot [much like Doctor Who] and creatures [much like Doctor who]. The last part of the film and the epilogue just go to show you can just make-shit-up. Five infinity stones? Wow, they suddenly appeared from nowhere and can now be used for future films, clever but not thrilling. By the way, I don’t read graphic novels and so have no idea if these are in the books.

The cast was stellar and hammed it up brilliantly. Nice to see an old version of the Doctor in there and also nice to see Rene Ruso pop up, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen her in anything since Lethal Weapon 3.

This film was good fun and well done. I laughed out loud many times, on occasions by myself, but I don’t care.

November 15 2013November 15 2013

The Last Time Was 17 Years Ago

It’s been a long time since I last wrote on a blackboard with chalk. I remember the second school on my teacher training programme had blackboards and especially in the small sixth form teaching room. I explained arithmetic and geometric progressions in there as my A Level teaching experience.

On Wednesday 13th November 2013 I also used chalk on a blackboard. It was a pleasant experience. I particularly like the contrast of the white text on a black background, it makes the writing stand out well [when I read in my Kindle app I have the setting that way around].

You might be able to see a little bit of white-roller-board in the picture and be wanting to ask why I didn’t use that? Well, it only makes up one third of the board and I didn’t want to have to erase my notes and it was dirty and creased. I’m rather fussy about white boards and how clean they should be kept. See this communication.

November 15 2013

Possibly Slightly Fussy

I could possibly be described as being slightly fussy. This may surprise you, dear reader, but then again I would think not. I’m a teacher of mathematics and I love science and the real world. Of course I’m going to be fussy and whimsical.

I am probably too fussy about white boards at work. The one in my main teaching room I keep as spotless as possible. I do not use permanent pens [you’d be surprised the number of times that does happen] and I always wipe the board using a circular motion with my hands.

If you wipe clean a white board using a side to side motion the ink gathers in small areas at the edge of the wipe, much like windscreen wipers. However, if you clean using a circular motion this does not happen.

There is a slight dent in my whiteboard in the bottom right of the picture. It irritates me slightly but I can’t do a lot about it! Also, if you look carefully you might be able to see my year 10 class doing a test!

November 14 2013November 15 2013

Just Wrong

Maps eh? This is the picture of a wall chart by Michelin (the French company but for their English cousins). It is a Van Der Grinten projection with changes made by Michelin. I’m not sure it’s ethical to change a map projection but they did.

This map makes Great Britain look the same size as France. The real multiplier is that France is 2.2 times the size of the UK, let alone GB.
Spain is really twice as big as Great Britain.
Although it’s not on this picture Kenya looks about the same size as GB but is in fact 2.4 times bigger.

What have Michelin done? They’ve made it appear that Great Britain is larger than it is really. Oh dear. Perhaps we should all watch the

Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail

episode of the West Wing. It will explain it all, I assure you.

By the way, the last time I saw this episode of the West Wing was summer 2013 in Keswick while I was visiting penguin.

November 13 2013December 22 2019

Umbrella

In 1988 I went to the British Formula One Grand Prix with my sister and friends. We were four in total, Nick, Andy, Tracy and me. It was pretty exciting and one of the first “big days out” I had done as a teenager (I was 16).
I remember about five things about the day:

It rained
We watched from the Hangar Straight
Nigel Mansell came second
Andy and I bought an umbrella
We couldn’t hear the radio commentary because the cars were too loud
A car came to a stop right in front of us

Ok, wow, that’s six things about the day. I also want to say that we drove there in an Austin Allegro but I don’t think that is correct. I shall check and get back to you.

According the to Wikipedia page on this race it did rain, which is reassuring for my memory cells and Mansell did come second. It’s the umbrella I want to focus on.

As it rained so much Andy and I decided to buy an umbrella. We didn’t have enough money to each buy one so we put our funds together and bought a Marlboro McLaren umbrella from a stall. This umbrella served us well during the day and from then on we agreed we would share the umbrella between us as we both owned it.

I think this arrangement may have lasted about a year until I lost the umbrella. It’s something I feel a little bad about even to this day [when I remember to]. I had a strange canvassing job for Eissman who were trying to build a business of home delivered frozen food. A group of us would wander crappy (and some not-so-crappy) housing estates delivering the catalogue of frozen delights and then two days later we would ring every door bell and see if we could have the catalogue back, preferably with an order. It was commission only.

For this particular week I was getting a lift with the son of the vicar of Ugley in Essex. We were working in Letchworth in Hertfordshire. The weather must’ve been bad because I had the umbrella with me and then left it in his car when he dropped me off from another unsuccessful day at work. I’m pretty sure he quit and didn’t turn up again. As a job it was pretty bad, I lasted two weeks. What is more annoying is that I lost the umbrella which meant quite a bit to me.

I remembered this recently when I was teaching ratios to a class of mine. I told the story and then text Andy about it. He had forgotten what happened to the umbrella, but for me, I feel the loss nearly every day!

November 13 2013

Gravity

I went to see this film and was rather excited about it. When I go to the cinema I generally don’t watch the trailers. Most trailers seem to give too much away about the film and if you see them once then you don’t need to see them again. If it is a film of which I am already aware and am looking forward to then I won’t watch the trailer and I will continue to read my book (on the Kindle app). Occasionally there’s a trailer that makes me look up and Gravity was one like that. Firstly it’s in space and I like space stuff. Secondly it was directed by Alfonso Cuarón. This was enough to make me very excited. Since I first saw the trailer I have avoided seeing it advertised since, I don’t want to know any more about the film.

I was rather worried that my expectations for this film were going to be too high. I have seen a number of films where I have been overly looking forward to them and have ultimately been disappointed as the film didn’t live up to expectations.

I needn’t have worried.

The opening shot was awesome [literally]. The rest of the film was beautifully filmed. It looks just stunningly gorgeous. I even decided to see it in 3D and in the past this has tended to remove something from the film but this was really well done. I won’t write too much because the trailer is so minimal and I don’t want to give anything away up in this section. Basically, apart from some simple scientific issues, this film is absolutely brilliant. I’d even go see it again. I am happy with the scientific short-cuts, as the film would not have worked or flowed as well if it had been truly simulated.

Go see this film. I dare you to be disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT

A couple of errors I picked up on. You can’t get out of a space suit in about a minute. It takes about an hour to get the whole thing on so this was a little imperfect. When returning to Earth the astronauts have their backs to the ground, Bullock’s return was filmed in such a way as to imply she was heading face down, or facing the direction of motion. There’s more analysis over at Phil Plait’s blog pages at Slate.com

November 7 2013

Ender’s Game

Wow!

I have bought the book but will read it after seeing the film. I’m currently working my way through Ringworld by Larry Niven. Back to the film:

It was ace. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t know a great deal about it before I went. I’d had a small synopsis from a friend and so went with a complete open mind. I loved it. The visuals were really good and the story was rather excellent. Go and see it.

I’m trying desperately to not give anything away but for me there were two moments when my jaw hit the floor. I guess if you’ve read the book you’ll know what these are.

It was great.

I don’t like the descriptions by the press of it being Harry Potter in space. That’s not what it is about. It’s a story with a wonderful political background and reflects on the politics of the time. Whereas Harry Potter is just the latest in a long line of book series that sell lots, it a generational thing. Every generation has “their” Harry Potter, or Famous Five, or Swallows and Amazons. My main issue was that Ender looked like a young Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and I had to work hard to remove that thought as I watched.

November 3 2013November 3 2013

Personal Air Conditioning

Last June I was in a new lecture theatre at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It was a nice room and well designed, apart from the positioning of the projector screens. One thing that I found surprising (and expensive) was the personal air blowing device. It’s either that or the designers have included some form of personal-gas-recovery-system to save attendees from other people’s smells!

October 29 2013October 29 2013

Escape Plan

This film was better than the trailers would make out. It was quite good fun although had one MASSIVE and annoying misunderstanding of science. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were both quite entertaining and the whole film worked well. If you want 90 or so minutes of fun and a little plot then it’s well worth the time-investment.

SPOILER ALERT – Do not read any further unless you want to know!

The idea of a prison owned and run by very rich people is sensible enough. Prisons are already run by profit making private companies so I don’t have any issues with that. The main premise of the prison was to keep these people out of society (and to gain information from them). But, this seemed a little expensive. If these people are as bad as thought then it would be massively cheaper just to kill them. There’s no point in keeping them alive (unless you need some information from them and that could be done much cheaper). Is it more morally right to keep people detained without trial instead of killing them, when the bottom line is profit I don’t think so.
It would have been nice to see Stallone’s partner suffer a little more with dirty objects as the film made it quite clear he was very OCD about dirt.
Generally the film was quite accurate to reality. A prison on a ship, done that, there were prison ships on the Medway during the Napoleonic wars. A constantly moving ship in the ocean? No problem with that. Do the prisoners know they are on a ship? Happy that it could be kept from them although every ship I’ve ever been on vibrates with the thump of the engine. It has been a while though.

My Biggest Problem with this film:

The Coriolis effect does NOT, I repeat NOT make the water flow down a plug hole or toilet in a particular direction. If you understand physics a little you would know why. I’m not going to debunk that particular part of the film here. JFGI. Sometimes I hate script writers, ignorance is not an excuse for messing up the science.

October 19 2013

Machete Kills

So, I didn’t really have any expectations apart from quite a bit of gore. I knew nothing about this film apart from Michelle Rodriguez being in it. I think I expected some sort of pulp violence movie.

Guess what I got? A pulp violence movie. It was certainly refreshing from the high budget “action” films I had seen recently. The effects were organic. I think I mean cheap but that just added to the film. This was never going to be a movie with a budget of $100m. I really liked it.

The acting was good, adding to the overall atmosphere of the film. Everything was over the top. The effects, the action, the gore, all of it.

If you want 105 minutes of laughter and gore then look no further. I recommend this film to all who know what to expect. I’m really looking forward to the sequel.

The Situation

The Wrong Hand Signal Method

The Correct Hand Signal Method

My Biggest Problem with this film: