Personal – Page 73 – Fooyah

April 6 2013October 8 2022

DC Day One

This and the following communications will be a brief summary of my time in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. I won’t go into excrutiating detail, except possibly for the aircraft [come-on, I’m an aircraft geek].
I flew out from Heathrow, T5, on the 17:30 British Airways flight to Dulles it was a Boeing 777. I got bumped up to Premium Economy class which was nice and then did a seat swap so a family could sit together, this saved me and my new neighbour hours next to babies. The flight was wonderful [it says earlier I’m an aircraft geek] and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Upon arrival at Dulles, Rich was there to pick me up and question me about the flight. We drove home to Georgetown and had some rum and coke. Ended up sleeping at about 5am my time but did well and woke the next day feeling good.
After breakfast we drove past many sights to pick up Mazza and son from Union Station and from there we went the the Udvar-Hazy Extension to the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space Flight.
The extenstion part of the museum is absolutely, really excellent, so much space and so many aircraft of all types. The highlights:

SR-71A Blackbird
Orbiter Discovery
The Enola Gay [I know!]
F-14 Tomcat
A-6 Intruder
The second ever Pitts Special

After lunch and more geekdom we eventually drove back to Winfield Lane and had some drinks before taking Mazza and son to the railway station. We drove past more of the sights which will all be mentioned later in further communications. Dinner that first proper night in DC was a curry at the Taj of India in Georgetown, what else would three Brits end up eating?

March 16 2013March 16 2013

They Just Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore

It doesn’t have to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway. Those Victorians really knew how to build lovely buildings. Just look at the ceiling in this cafe area of the Natural History Museum!

March 15 2013March 15 2013

Cold Morning

It was a touch cold the other morning. I know it gets colder elsewhere in the world but I live in the south-east of the UK where it’s not often this cold. The worst I knew was -10 Celsius, both the dog and I felt a bit cold that morning!

Car in the cold (spot the engine insulation lines):

March 11 2013

I Think It’s A Porsche

Although I understand the connection between sponsorship and sport, especially in the USA, I was somewhat surprised to see a Porsche on the tennis court at the ATP Delray Beach Competition. If you look carefully you can see two people sitting in the car. I guess they are either the dealership owners or winners of a competition. I guess they’d be ok if they have the air conditioning on!

I thought I’d seen it all!

March 5 2013March 6 2013

It’s Just Right

Once a fortnight is just about the correct frequency.

Private Eye is a fortnightly news magazine to which I subscribe. It’s possibly the only newspaper willing to spread the truth and print what is going on. It’s quite frightening really just how corrupt and dodgy most organisations and societies are. Maybe corrupt is the norm and I’m just hoping for an idealised society that can never exist? The other magazine I subscribe to is Scientific American.

In the same week that I receive Private Eye the Merseyside Skeptics Society release their podcast called Skeptics With A K. It’s a show about an hour long which features three normal (ish) guys chatting about skeptical items that interest them. There’s a bit of swearing and a reasonable amount of poking fun at people but it is very interesting and I learn a lot.

Both these subscriptions arrive in the same week and have for a few years, even allowing for the Christmas break they have. Each new year I wonder if the synchronicity will be altered but I haven’t found so this far. Perhaps it’s deliberate?

March 5 2013March 5 2013

Crocus

Saw this earlier today in the sunshine and it warmed me through. So nice to see spring flowers and sunshine. It’s been rather grey for the last few months.
A garden in Kent:

March 4 2013March 4 2013

Too Much Milk

I think there’s too much milk in this fridge door!

March 3 2013March 3 2013

Not Green Fingers

Just spent a wonderfully pleasant hour with #1 son sowing seeds in the garden. We tidied the vegetable patch and got rid of the weeds and then planted this year’s selection of veg. It’s going to be carrots, parsnips and chillies. I don’t think the chillies are going to survive the cold so I’ll get some more and grow them inside.

We also read the instructions for the tomatoes and are actually going to grow them inside. They are on the kitchen window sill.

March 1 2013March 11 2014

Wow, A Castle!

This morning I might have been having a cheeky couple of laps on Gran Turismo 5. I was possibly attempting to win one of the seasonal events (which for some reason I find quite tricky).
While racing around the GT Original track I noticed a castle in the background. I was so fascinated by this that for a few laps I couldn’t really concentrate on the track. The castle is a rather good looking building and really adds to the atmosphere. Sometimes I wonder whether game designers have bets about the most ludicrous things they can add!

Screen #1:

Screen #2

These two screen grabs were taken using the LG remote app on my iPhone that has a capture function!

February 22 2013March 5 2013

Too Early (part one)

For too long now I have been an early adopter of new technology [funds dependent]. Sometimes this has caused me issues of new tech surpassing me and then I feel a little left out.

I think the earliest part of trend setting in which I was involved was roller-blading. I know my mum was rather unhappy that I asked for a set of rollerblades (by Bauer) for my 20th birthday. I think she would have preferred that I got an iron or something else sensible. But, I was at university and wasn’t thinking about setting up kit for real-life and houses and things. I practised on the roller-blades during the Easter break from college so I was able to GO|STOP|TURN before I went back to halls. I was one of the first students on rollerblades and one of the first people to rollerblade around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Jason and I would rollerblade around London for an afternoon trying to find the smoothest pavements. It was a good time and I felt as though we were starting something big. In the next few years rollerblading really took off.

In my fourth year at college, a sabbatical year rather than a four year degree, I bought a NICAM Stereo video cassette recorder and linked it up to my new hi-fi amplifier. Watching Star Wars on a 21″ 4:3 CRT television with two hundred watts of sound power blasting out was brilliant and an excellent investment. I remember watching Fry and Laurie on TV and they had a sketch where they played the sound of a telephone ringing. In the early-mid nineties all telephones sounded the same and were plugged into the wall. Whenever they played this effect it sounded as though my phone was ringing! To make the point they put a small picture (now called an icon) in the corner of the television picture whenever they played this sound to save us mere mortals getting up and trying to answer the phone. It was a wonderful piece of television and technology.

Coming up soon in this list of things I-have-bought-before-the-technology-was-mature are HD TV, Speaker docks, wi-fi, mobile phones, pro-logic decoder.

February 20 2013

Latest iPhone Background

Here’s a picture that I have as my latest iphone background. I got it from the Hubble app. It’s just gorgeous.

February 10 2013March 11 2014

Is That It?

After playing for a long time I have finally got to 900 cars in my Gran Turismo 5 garage. This represents a large amount of effort and time playing. Also, the process for buying cars in the dealership is laborious and boring.
All I get for reaching nine HUNDRED cars is a bonus colour and car horn! I don’t even customise my cars with these.
Some money or game points would have been rather better!

February 10 2013February 10 2013

Breather

I’m slightly paranoid about electronic gear overheating. This might be down to a fear of setting my house (and street) on fire and relying on Jase to put it out but is also to do with breaking electronic kit.
Everything has an optimum operating temperature. Whether that’s me at about 36 or so Celsius or the sun running at a few million Celsius. Electronics are no different. Why do you think that stuff has fans and air circulation grates?
My amplifier has loads of grating over the top of the housing. This indicates that the contents are likely to get quite warm. The Blu-Ray player I bought has tiny feet and a solid base. Now, the only sensible arrangement for the kit is amp at the bottom, then the disc player and finally the Sky box.
All of these items have a fan or large vents. Why then do they stack so to leave very little room for air circulation? Granted, you don’t need a great deal of space to move air but you would think these things would be designed to fit with other electronic kit? No. They are designed to look good and functionality comes a close second! (See the original PS3 for cooling issues)l
So, rather than pay loads for spacers for my kit I used Duplo and Lego. It looks rubbish but adds a little colour and a certain something!

February 6 2013

I’m Back

I am back online. I have watched the NFL Super Bowl and don’t have to avoid seeing the result anymore. I managed to watch it on Monday night although I did fast forward the power outage and in the last quarter I had to skip the huddle time. I was getting very tired and knew I could manage to see it all.

It was a thoroughly good match and full of excitement. Really pleased I saw it.

The problem now is that I won’t be seeing any NFL until Septemeber! I’ll have to dust off the Madden game again and complete a championship there. I am considering getting ESPN added to my subscription just so I can see college football but I don’t know what their season is.

February 5 2013March 5 2013

A New Fallacy

I would like to introduce a new logical fallacy into the world.

The argument from “PROFESSIONALISM”.

This argument is provided by those who wish to change organisations and structures. The conversation might go something like:

“We want to make you work 20 hours more in a week. As a professional you must agree that this would increase the time you have to work.”

Essentially it seems rather a hard argument to try and battle. If you are a professional then you want to do your job to the best that you can. You also think that you are open to change and improving outcomes. So, this “you should agree with me” approach seems rather hard to argue against.

My problem with this argument backing up changes in an organisation is that pretty much anything can be justified using the “you’re a professional and so would want the best for your sector”. This is why the argument shouldn’t be used. If your argument can be extended (a bit like the slippery slope) to back up anything then it invalidates the points you are trying to put across.

“You can’t disagree with these new standards as they surely improve what it is that is expected of you as a professional.”

Again this seems hard to argue against. But there is a counter argument to be made. As a professional I should be expected to do all that I reasonalby can to ensure that I work my best. There is a limit to what can physically be done and the expectation on professionals should stop before that limit is reached.

Time for the world to use arguments that really back up what they want to do. Some evidence wouldn’t go amiss either [not just anecdote].

February 3 2013February 3 2013

Off Grid

Hello my followers and stalkers. I am going off grid for a few days. It is a tradition since I have started recording the NFL Superbowl and then watching it over the next few nights. I expect to finish the Superbowl within two evenings, but, it could take longer. It depends on too many factors.
From tonight, when I go to bed, I will not be checking Twitter, BBC News, an other news outlet and only marking all emails as read. Don’t contact me I won’t answer!

Go 49ers.