Category: Penguin

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Farewell Vulcan

Avro Vulcan Bomber RAF.JPEG
“Avro Vulcan Bomber RAF” by Sgt. David S. Nolan, US Air Force – DF-ST-86-11850. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

On the 13 Sept 2015 I saw the Avro Vulcan fly for my last time. I was geocaching with Sally near Coventry airport when I checked twitter and saw that the Vulcan XH558 had taken off from Doncaster heading to Coventry for a display. This wasn’t on the official list of shows that she was doing but I was excited and ran the mile or so to the end of the runway.

Before XH558 was due to arrive there was a short display by a Gloster Meteor and a DeHavilland Vampire.

Gloster Meteor
Gloster Meteor

Once these two planes had landed I could see the Vulcan in the distance. I had seen her recently while I was at RAF Cosford and the noise was stunning. It had been a long time since I had seen a Vulcan fly. I used to watch them at airshows in the 80s. The noise then was always incredible and I distinctly remember an occasion at a Duxford Airshow when she made my stomach shake. The Vulcan flew past a few times and did some lovely throttle-up manoeuvres. All in all it was great to see her fly for my last time. I’m glad I ran the short distance to the runway.

XH558
XH558
Vulcan
Vulcan

It’s a sad thing that she won’t fly again, but a good thing that she did.

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Treasure Hunting

I’ve been doing something at weekends to keep me busy and outdoors seeing parts of the countryside!I first heard about geocaching at work where I had helped a colleague solve some puzzles. I hadn’t really thought much about it until recently when I was persuaded to have a go with Sally.

We started geocaching around Rugby, just to see what it was like and what we could expect. We have since done quite a bit and seen some lovely places around the country, mostly with the excuse of going there to find some caches.

Current places we have been to just for the cache:

  • Dunchurch
  • Ryton Waters
  • Baginton
  • Buttermere
  • Herne Bay
  • Mote Park
  • The Fosse Way
  • Claybrooke Magna and Claybrooke Parva
  • Coombe Abbey

As you won’t know as I think my status picture will update, I am currently on 99 finds. I’d like the next one to be special but I doubt it is going to be that, probably a boring cache.

Anyway, it’s good fun and a good reason to get out and about.

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Holograms FFS

So, I have been spending time in Rugby to see Sally. It’s actually a really nice town and I like it a lot. The town has three markets a week, plenty of independent shops in the town centre and plenty of drinking establishments. It is well connected and easy to get to. There are a number of out of town shopping places and I hope these don’t detract from the town centre income. Many of the villages around Rugby are nice, pretty and look expensive.

There also happens to be a school where a game started. It is called The Rugby School and the game is Rugby Football. Now, as you might imagine, the town itself is very proud of this heritage. The game is named after the town. The game was invented in the town. The town doesn’t have a stadium for the purposes of playing the said sport and so it makes the most of its history.

I have two issues with Rugby and its branding along with rugby football:

History:
The evidence shows that William Webb Ellis was more than likely NOT the boy who picked up the ball and ran with it. He never mentioned this himself in the rest of his life. He worked as a vicar at St Clement Danes church in the Strand and then in the South of France where he died and is buried. The ONLY source is someone writing about WWE running with the ball about 40 years after the actual event. It is most likely that WWE wasn’t the boy. It is also most likely that rugby developed over time and Rugby School only tried to impose its own version when there were differences with the game around the country, just when it would have been handy to have history on its side.

By the way, it was perfectly ok to hold the football and run with it as long as you ran towards your own goal. What the boy did was run towards the opposing goal, this was illegal at the time.

As a good friend said to me recently.

You shouldn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.

Here’s the statue to William Webb Ellis outside the front of The Rugby School. Please understand he didn’t look like this. He was modelled on the sculpture’s own son.

More Important Things:
HOLOGRAMS were invented in Rugby. Denis Gabor worked for British Thomson-Houston in Rugby where he invented the hologram. The hologram FFS. In Rugby. There are holograms on nearly every bank card and bank note around the world. In terms of affecting most people and importance to the world holograms easily beats the game of rugby football. Jesus, HOLOGRAMS!

The Jet Engine was partially developed at the British Thomson-Houston labs in Rugby. Whittle used the manufacturing firm to build his first jet and then the company was involved with the development of the engine, mostly at the Lutterworth site. While many places can claim the jet engine Rugby is allowed some kudos. This, complex, beautiful piece of engineering has easily affected more people than the game of rugby football.

Rugby Cement is based somewhere locally. Oh, they are based in Rugby. They are now owned by Cemex but once their red trucks were seen all over the country. They still produce plenty of fine cement and other products. The cement works serve as a guide over the countryside to find your way back to Rugby. The industrial site looks awesome. It is arguable that Rugby Cement has affected more people than the game of rugby football.

RUGBY – home to holograms, the jet engine, cement and a game for men played with odd shaped balls.

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Inside out

I went to see this film. I don’t remember being that impressed. It was quite nice to see a particular model of how our brains work even if it was very simplified, there wasn’t any executive function. Overall I just didn’t really enjoy it. I think they could have made a better film about kids and emotions. Also, we don’t really remember the way the film depicted it.

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Combichrist – O2 Academy Islington

Early one Monday morning I returned from Germany and a music festival there. Some details are contained within this communication. After getting home and sleeping for a short while I had to get ready to see Combichrist at the O2 Academy in Islington.

Combichrist Setlist Fleece, Bristol, England 2015

The above set list is for a gig in Bristol although it looks pretty similar to the gig I saw.

Stereo Juggernaut and Controlled Collapse were the support bands. I seem to remember that both bands were pretty good and enjoyable.

Combichrist were pretty darn good. They were impressive and the crowd was very active. Having just come from a weekend at a festival where the crowd all stood where they were and didn’t rush the stage this was a very different experience. There were some quite violent people in the mosh pit and, maybe I’m too old, but this was a bit of a turn off.

Now that Combichrist have guitarists the older songs have been adjusted to keep the musicians busy. They have created guitar parts to the mostly synth music and I think this detracts entirely from the quality of the original songs.

Even with all that this was still a bloody fantastic gig. Not quite as good as being at Electrowerkz but close.

Combichrist
Combichrist
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M’era Luna 2015

Smith and I travelled to Germany to a music festival over the summer. We searched many festivals to find the right one for price, distance and bands, although that wasn’t the order of the criteria. We settled on M’era Luna, a gothic/industrial festival that takes place on an old British Army Air Corps airfield near the town of Hildesheim, just south of Hanover.

On the Friday we traversed the channel via a train that carries cars [just imagine! a train that can carry cars! UNDER the sea! We humans are ingenious!] and headed to Germany. We used just a Sat Nav device, neither of us had a proper map. France, Belgium and the Netherlands were all pretty boring and we longed for some hills or vague scenery. The world kept track of our journey via twitter.

The route took us on the ring roads of two large towns and the traffic slowed a lot around them, hindering our progress! Once in Germany we travelled fast on the autobahn although we did have a detour around the northern edges of Dortmund as the sat-nav didn’t quite warn about a lane change on a slip road in time and then the next junction was closed. Dortmund looked like the edges of any town.

The temperature was hitting 32 Celsius along the way and finally we arrived at the airport near Hildesheim. 500 miles, 1 tank of diesel and plenty of snacks and LOTs of music.

We only just managed to find somewhere to put up the tent. There wasn’t a great deal of space left in any of the campsite. Our spot was furthest as could be from the main festival area, but reasonable close to toilets and leaving on the Sunday.

That evening we wandered the festival area, drank some alcohol already purchased from a service station and went to the disco hangar. There was some pretty good music played and it was good fun.

After a good sleep we awoke to find that the air bed had stayed up and was really comfortable. We both went about our routines to get ready to leave our tent area. I needed to satisfy my caffeine addiction and stave off withdrawal symptoms by finding more caffeine to ingest. Just as we were getting dressed Andy managed to puncture the airbed. It slowly deflated. We found a repair kit and tried to stick on a patch. We would have to wait 6 hours before we knew whether it had worked.

I found coffee. I also found some food. The weather for the Saturday was meant to be slightly overcast with a chance of rain showers. It had rained quite heavily in the early morning but the ground was so dry from the scorching summer that it didn’t really create any puddles or mud. Shortly after the sun had arisen the whole place was dry. Once we were ready we headed to the festival area to check out the shops, food places and mediaeval village (with food places and shops). It was also a good chance to see how the arena and hanger were set up so we knew where toilets, drink entrances, exits etc.

There now follows a list of bands we saw with comments about them if I can remember them. It is a good few months since the festival while writing this, unlike my detailed descriptions about Download.

  • Nachtgeschrei
  • Versengeld (with person playing the hurdy gurdy and another on bag pipes)
  • Speilbann
  • Coppellius (who played some Maiden covers in the style of mediaeval rock)
  • The Other
  • Frozen Plasma (half of this band is Reaper which is good, but Frozen Plasma were a bit dull)
  • Lord of the Lost
  • L’ame Immortal
  • Aesthetic Perfection (3rd or 4th time seeing these and they were awesome)
  • In Strict Confidence (surprisingly ok even with a female singer)
  • Blut Engel (just no)
  • X-RX this band replaced Suicide Commando who had to pull out of the weekend. They were good and I liked it, but left to see . . . .
  • Rob Zombie who just blew the competition away and was professionally brilliant.

Sunday started with the search for caffeine and then food. The air bed did not stay inflated and so the night was reasonably uncomfortable. We had decided we would probably leave M’era Luna that evening and then drive as far as we could home before kipping in the car. The bands on Sunday were:

  • Private Pact (a bad goth, stand still, band)
  • Schwarzer Engel getting better, quite thrash, goth and heavy.
  • Unzucht were just a great band with heavy thrash riffs and a great guitarist.
  • Dope Stars Inc. were good but looked as though they had just come from the 80s!
  • Tying Tiffany was the surprise of the weekend. They started slow and boring but from the third song onwards it was full of energy and heavy. Just a great find for the summer.
  • Assemblage 23 dull. very dull.
  • Rotersand a great band, a great show and really put previous band to shame. I loved it.
  • Nachtmahr were slightly disappointing. It’s hard to pin point this. Their music is very good. But live, they just didn’t capture the mood. It was almost boring, even with two women acting out a fetish scene it was dull. Can’t quite figure it out.
  • Nightwish we said we would stay for two songs but managed just a half of one song. We then drove towards the UK.

A strange thing about the German crowds is that if you had your spot to watch from everyone stayed in that spot. No-one moved when a band appeared. There was no crush at the front. Andy and I were in the second row for a number of bands on the Sunday and there was room to dance, moved around and no crush. This was actually refreshing and pleasant. It made the weekend a much more enjoyable event that had there been the UK crush.

It was easy to leave the festival as the final band hadn’t finished. The roads were clear and we made fast progress across Germany and then the Netherlands. We agreed between us that we would stop at the first rest area we found after midnight. It was fascinating to see how the landscape changed from central Germany to the low lands. Flat and straight is pretty much every road after Germany. We stopped at some services about 1km before the Belgian border. I think we slept ok.

The Monday we woke, I found caffeine and then we drove towards Calais. We arrived at the tunnel way before we were due but we paid some extra money to be on an earlier train. This was worth it as it meant I got home before my family left for other things.

The excitement of the weekend continued to the Monday evening as Combichrist played the O2 Islington thing.

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Rust In Peace

I am in shock. Rust In Peace by Megadeth came out 25 years ago!

To me, this is still a new and fresh album. I think of Peace Sells as an “old” album and “Rust In Peace” as new! The good thing is that this album is brilliant. I don’t think there’s a bad song on here. The previous couple had a dodgy song or two [Mary Jane, Anarchy, I ain’t superstitious] but this album is truly a classic. Everyone should own it.

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Moomins On The Riviera

I saw this film with my children at the Cineworld in Rochester or it may have been the Odeon in Maidstone. I can’t remember.

The film was largely dull. The social commentary was vaguely amusing. That’s all I can remember.

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All Ship Shape

It has taken a while for me to get back to this and I apologise to those who read this rubbish whenever I publish. I will get on top of it all soon. I have many draft communications and not many rants so it might actually be a pleasant read for you five.

Sally and I went to Bristol for the weekend, way back before the summer holidays. Why Bristol? Well, it’s a place in Britain and it has good engineering history. That’s about it, all of my reasoning for choosing Bristol. Oh, that and it’s not London.

We drove down (across) on a Friday. I think we left late to avoid a lot of the traffic but it didn’t matter, there was plenty. Also, it pissed down. Thoroughly terrible rain! On the way there we listened to an 80s mix on Spotify. It surprised me how much I knew about this music, given that I consider myself to be a metal-head.

We stayed at the Double Tree Hilton, which was chosen because it had a car park and looked close to the centre of town. When you check in to these hotels you are given a cookie [warm]. Not sure that makes it worth the price but it was a nice touch. We only had time for a drink in the bar before heading to bed. Breakfast was nice in the old kiln room of the hotel.

The Saturday morning we toured the SS Great Britain. It was a wonderful piece of engineering and I recommend everyone see it and learn about it. Brilliant. There was an Olympus jet engine as part of the museum, that was cool. We then did a harbour [harbor] tour of the Bristol Floating Harbour. It was fascinating and I also learnt why the phrase:

All ship shape and Bristol fashion.

Turns out the Bristol shipmakers had to cope with large tides, when the water was in the boats floated. When the tide was low the boats rested on the rocky floor. Therefore they had to be build stronger and better to cope with this. “Bristol fashion” means study, well built. The harbour tour was on a little boat called the Red Shank.

Red Shank
Red Shank

During this harbour tour we spotted a “green”, “emission less” boat used for tours and another boat which was the harbour’s fire boat. Somehow the conversation revolved around these for a short while and I started to make a matter-anti-matter annihilation joke and Sally laughed before I had finished. That was the moment I knew.

M-Shed was our next destination. It’s a museum of Bristol stuff. It had stuff in it. I can’t quite remember but I think there may have been a jet engine somewhere in there. There was definitely an exhibition of photographs taken showing local industry and people in their workplace.

After the M-Shed we walked around to the centre of the city and as sheer luck would have it there was a thing going on. The festival of nature had taken over one of the city squares and it seemed to be quite a big thing! There was a hashtag and it was well worth the time to take a selfie.

Following on from our journey around the festival of nature we went back to the hotel before heading out to dinner.

Dinner that night was at The Ox. It’s a steakhouse, if you can find it. We walked up and down the street a few times before seeing a tiny ox head picture above a door to a basement underneath the local Weatherspoons pub. We started with cocktails and then had dinner. We drank a Dr Gonzo, an Elevator, a Martini along with wine with the main meal. There was a meat platter to start and then I had steak and Sal had what seemed to be the world’s biggest burger. After breakfast we went to walk the length of the Clifton Suspension bridge (twice). Getting there was fun as lots of roads were blocked off for a cycling race, so we pretty much made up a route through the back streets making sure that our general progress was “up”. We made it and spent some time admiring the bridge. DSC_4634 I do think that if you don’t find bridges fascinating then you are potentially dead. They are glorious! The ingenuity of man continues to amaze me. It was time to head back to the real world and the south east and so we travelled home along the M4. I decided we should drive once around Swindon to see what it has to offer. I had made some disparaging comments about the town on the way to Bristol and I felt bad about that. It seemed a good thing to do, to see what Swindon was like. We drove in to the town centre. There really isn’t a great deal there, it’s awful. We did find the magic roundabout and drove around/over it just to see what that would be like. Magicfuckingroundabout Yep, it really is as crazy as the sign shows. It was strange driving over it. I just kept following the arrows on the ground and checking that nothing was in my way or coming to hit me! After that we found some sort of outlet centre and I bought a tea pot. That is how exciting my life gets sometimes! It also turns out that I might know some of the Spice Girl songs. They were playing in the car and I accidentally sang some lyrics and mentioned that I knew how the dance went in the video. I got quite a bit of grief for that!

There you have it. A very boring run down of the things Sally and I did for a weekend in Bristol. Great fun and very interesting, for nerds.

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Mildenhall

Had a day trip with the CCF to RAF Mildenhall which is actually a USAF base in Suffolk. It’s home to the 100th ARW or to the rest of us the 100th Air Refuelling Wing. They are the only USAF refuelling group in Europe supporting operations over a vast area. Here’s a selection of photos including a couple of me in the Boom “seat” of a KC-135 and also the co-pilot’s seat.

The 100th are the only USAF group allowed to wear their insignia from WW2 on the tailplanes. Hence the “Square D” you’ll see.

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Flag Of Destiny

I really am quite behind on updating this website. I have just been busy. That’s all. But, now I have a moment I can take the time to bore you all with tales of not daring-do.

After an excursion to London and our Canary Wharf apartment, we visited the Midlands. The Tuesday morning we carried our kit to the car, which was where we left it, and navigated our way out of London with a quick pass of City Airport, where planes were seen. The north circular and then the M11 facilitated our escape from the metropolis.

Later, Coventry beckoned. It was time to have a cuppa and biscuits with parents. This took us up to lunch time and so we headed to the Blue Lias pub next to the Grand Union Canal. The weather was lovely and so we ate outside (even though I don’t like doing that). There was activity on the canal with narrow boats and service boats travelling past. Then we walked up the set of locks nearby. These are called Stockton Locks. They are ingenious and very pretty.

Stockton Locks
Stockton Locks
Blue Lias
Blue Lias

After a lovely lunch we went to the centre of Coventry. Sally showed me around the town. I also got to see the cathedrals. I have to say I don’t like the new one. It’s depressing and ugly, along with windows that are likely to scare the crap out of kids and anyone who takes religion vaguely seriously. There was a display of children’s television programmes on at the museum in Coventry, the cathedral, museum and university were all next to each other. The display included some of the actual models used over the last 60 years of TV broadcasting for kids. It was a trip down memory lane.

While walking back to the car, and Ikea, we sneaked into a rather unassuming building that turned out to be the Guildhall. It was a very nice building with lots of history, fortunately this building survived the blitz. Coventry has mostly crazy ring road with interesting intersections.

One of the highlights of the half term was dinner at Simpsons in Edgbaston. On the Tuesday evening we drove to the restaurant. The food was quite simply, divine. The wine was gorgeous, the service impeccable and the overall experience was brilliant. I’m very much looking forward to sampling a similar meal in Kent soon.

Here’s a list of food that we ate:

  • Salmon and squid cracker canapé
  • Cheese and bacon ball canapé
  • Fancy bread
  • Mise En Bouche
  • Beef tartar
  • Ham hock with broth
  • Squab pigeon
  • Lamp
  • Corn caramel
  • Rum baba
  • Passion fruit soufflé
  • Very nice sweets

The return to Coventry from dinner was marked with a quick visit to Meriden. There’s a stick in the village green which is supposedly the centre of England.

Wednesday was similarly busy. A day in Birmingham was planned. We drove to and then parked in the Bull Ring. Karl and his two girls met us for drinks after which we wandered around the city looking for specific items of clothing for an event at the end of August.

Selfridges
Selfridges

We walked to the Custard Factory which was an eclectic mix of odd shops and weird stuff. The statue was pretty cool, although we didn’t find what we were looking for.

The Custard Factory
The Custard Factory

The Oasis is another collection of shops. I found some bits for the Asylum. It was time for lunch and we just had to have champagne cocktails at Bar Epernay. The snack food was lovely, as was the alcohol. There was a lovely view over the canal. What I didn’t understand though was why people would go to a champagne bar and just have a pint of lager?

Bar Epernay
Bar Epernay

We had a short walk along the canal to the Sealife centre. It was good fun to see the penguins swimming and, also, some otters running around playing. After the Sealife centre we found the car, packed up all our purchases and headed home. I’m looking forward to seeing plenty more in the Midlands.

Finally, the title of this communication? I saw a flag and asked Sally what it was. “The flag of destiny”, she replied. Fair enough.

Flag of Birmingham.svg
“Flag of Birmingham” by JimmyGuano – Own work. Licensed under CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Burnt Sticks 2612W

At the end of May Sally and I went to stay in London for a couple of nights. I now give you a run down of those days including various comments and things I remember.

We arrived on a Sunday evening. After parking the car we walked to our apartment block, carrying enough kit to survive for two nights and days. We stayed in the Pan Peninsula West Tower on the 26th floor. The décor was interesting. The apartment was mostly black walls and floor along with no bedrooms (studio flat) and built in appliances. Many thanks to Mazza.

Once in the apartment we settled and spent time on the balcony overlooking the docks and most of London. We drank champagne and watched the sun set over most of London. The champagne sunset contributed to a partial completion of a promise I made a while back. I intend to complete the promise fully later in the year.

London Sunset

Once the sun had set we tried to find somewhere to eat food. The problem was that most places were shut, it being around 21:30 on a Sunday. I ended up downloading an app, signing up and getting kebab delivered to the apartment! Classy.

On Monday we made sure to get breakfast at a Café Nero in the Canary Wharf shopping complex. Now, I will admit that I really struggled with the layout of this shopping area. Here’s a link to the map, see what you think. It seemed there were three or four main shopping halls, all on different levels and all connected by strange walkways. The map seemed a fanciful sci-fi work of art to me and walking around stressed me intensely. Sally seemed to work out the map and so I relied on her to find our way.

The Shard At Night

A flight on the Emirates Air Line was next, taking a cable car from south of the river near the O2 Arena to the north side of the river near the Excel Arena. One shocking thing was that the price of a tube return from Canary Wharf to the O2, which is one stop, was £9-60 because it crosses a “zone line”, how pathetic! The cable car journey was much smoother than I expected, it was most enjoyable.

Cable Car

We then wandered around towards the Excel Arena before heading back to the O2 and looking at the Emirates display thing. They had a Lego model of a Rolls Royce Trent engine. This made me very excited.

RR Trent (Lego)

Our lunch was in a Brazilian themed restaurant within the O2 complex. There were lots of different eateries there but the Brazilian tempted us most.

Cocktails

The cocktails were very nice, as was the food.

City Airport from Cable Car

After lunch we wandered (by Tube) into the centre of London. A short visit to the M&M shop in Swiss Corner was completed. The whole shop smelt of chocolate, which was nice at first but sickly afterwards. Also, the people were just annoying. It was a shop that sold tat. M&M branded tat. It was full of shit. We purchased some M&Ms though, it would have been rude not to.

Next up was drinks at The Chandos, always a great place to go for a cheeky pint when near Trafalgar Square. We had lager and a short with mixer for me.

The Shard beckoned. You can feel this beast looming over London. The Eye Of Sauron is missing though, they need to create that and insert it at the top, then perhaps we could steal some tourists heading for New Zealand.

I think you’ll find that the Shard is really a Star Destroyer waiting to be launched.

Star Destroyer?

The observation deck of the Shard is on Level 69. I kid you not. This made me giggle a lot. I am sure there is an architect somewhere who wakes up every day with a wry smile at this.

20150525_151243129_iOS

The view from the top is just stunning. We had a glass of champagne while walking the perimeter of the glass just staring out at London and its surrounds. We could see the QE2 Bridge, which is a bit of a Kent/Essex landmark and well known to anyone who uses the M25. Many of the buildings nearby were highlighted in electronic viewfinders so you could find out about them. Here’s a picture of Canary Wharf and the apartment block we stayed in.

DSC_4348

Although it was murky and not very bright we could see a long way. At one point a helicopter flew by at eye level. I liked this. Dinner that night was at a GBK somewhere in the freaky Canary Wharf shopping complex. The next day was the end of our London adventure. We packed and drove out by City Airport to head to the Midlands.

DSC_4373

The last thing I need to say on this matter is what were the burnt sticks in the apartment? Why would you have them? Why?

Burnt Sticks

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Units

I have some new proposed SI units for you to use. I think you should use them liberally because language evolves and changes over time so these could be commonplace in the next couple of decades. Both of these units have been developed with Sally.

THE WARDROBE

The wardrobe is an integer measurement with an upper and lower bound for determining the minimum number of romantic dates before new clothes must be purchased because clearly outfits can’t be repeated. The symbol for the wardrobe is:

][

This unit is quite person specific and covers the following range:

Lower bound – the number of complete clothing outfits that can be worn given that no single item of clothing may be worn twice.

Upper bound – the number of clothing outfits that can be worn given that any complete combination can’t be used twice.

As an example consider the following rather basic wardrobe contents:

  • 7 different pairs of socks (socks of same colour and style count as 1)
  • 5 different pairs of pants (pants of same colour and style count as 1)
  • 4 different shirts
  • 5 different pairs of trousers
  • 6 different pairs of shoes/boots

Given this situation then clearly:

wardrobe1

This person can only wear the four different shirts before they need repeating. It doesn’t matter what else that person owns. The upper bound is simply calculated as the product of the number of items in each group that can be considered as being fully dressed for a romantic date.

As you can see the ][ unit has a wide range. The minimum is merely equal to the fewest items of a clothing category. The upper bound, because of combinatorics, becomes quite large, quite quickly.

example question:
I own shoes, pants and onesies. If wardrobe2determine how I organise my wardrobe.

Solution:

4823 = 13 x 371
371 is product of two primes, namely 53 and 7.
Therefore you have either have 53 sets of pants or 53 sets of onesies. Either way I would suggest that you use a pack of playing cards, with one joker included, attached to your clothing to organise the items in a wardrobe.

THE FUCKTON

This unit developed out of the need to describe large quantities where previous units and measurements had failed. It may be clearly seen that the etymological derivation of this unit comes from a portmanteau of fuckloads and tons. This unit is not specifically a measure of mass, but could be used as such. The fuckton is used primarily to give a sense of more than “very much”.

The symbol for the fuckton is:

FT

The fuckton should be used as a non-specific answer to questions where the term “a lot” doesn’t quite give the correct impression.

How many raindrops fall on the UK over a year?

How much does middle lane driving annoy you?

If you go in the express petrol lane, how wrong is it to then pay in the shop?

How many colours are there in a rainbow?

To give a sense of scale I think it is necessary to indicate what size the number is that a fuckton could represent. The fuckton is defined as the total number of Lego bricks ever made. So the current value of a fuckton is:

This, we believe, to be an extremely useful unit of measurement. The difficulty associated with a changing definition is outweighed by the usefulness of the value.

By the way, a Fuckton << googal.

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Spitfire 3

I said goodbye to part of my form group today. It was Leavers’ Day at MGS. Here’s a picture of the cookie-cake they bought for us to share. 

IMG_8218.JPG

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Mad Max – Fury Road

Went to see Mad Max last night at Rochester Cinema (which is in Strood). I went with Sally and we had dinner before the movie. Well, I say dinner, we ate at McDonalds because we got to the restaurants too late to get food before the movie, mind you it was worth being late.

I rated this movie on IMDB, as I do with all movies I see at the cinema. You don’t get reviews for stuff I watch on the TV though. That would make this site tedious! You should read this communication about my ratings system.

I then thought about the movie some more and I got asked “What didn’t you like about it?”. This made me re-evaluate my IMDB score. So I changed my mind.

So, I should tell you what I thought. I would watch this movie again and that is the main reason for increasing the score from a 6 to an 8. I really liked the way it looked, was filmed and acted. Max didn’t say much, but then, he’s mad. This is, overall, a really enjoyable film.

But there were issues [potential spoilers follow].

The main tribe seem to have mastered modifying cars and trucks and keeping them running in the heat and sand of the desert, but they seem unable to design and build a water distribution device that doesn’t just pour everything in to the ground.

Why did they keep the rig attached to the truck they were driving for all the film. Really? What purpose did they have for it?

The tribes seemed to clear the fallen rocks very quickly and easily without any heavy lifting equipment laying around.

Motorbikes heading for 160 days across a salt lake. That sounds fine until you REALLY think how much food you would need. I’ve owned motorbikes. They run out of fuel after five hours.

If you can suspend the disbelief then this is a gorgeous, great film.

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Passion Dribble

Some of my Twitter followers may have been surprised at a recent tweet of mine:

I thought I ought give an explanation. I had bought some desserts for dinner with Sally.

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When she asked what they were I couldn’t remember what they were called.

Passion Dribble

Was my response. I think it was an accurate description of the dessert. Apparently there may be other connotations of that phrase. She laughed. A lot. I’m not sure what she was getting at!

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Heading to J-Day

I am sure you are aware that J-Day is on August 29 1997. This is the date that Skynet becomes self aware. I have seen the future and it scares me. This morning I tried to print a file at work. My computer declared there had been a printer error and so I went to the office to see what was wrong.

This is what my printer said to me:

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It would appear that the new computer understands that it needs to commit suicide and then arise again to fulfil it’s purpose. Perhaps it has been programed by Buddhists. It’s almost refreshing that a piece of software “understands” that there are some situations where a re-boot is necessary.

This would only have been made cooler if the little screen had a copy of the classic blue screen of death. I would have laughed, a lot.

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Chilston Park

On Sunday I went for afternoon tea with Sally at Chilston Park.

The weather was lovely and as we had arrived early we decided to wander the grounds. Unfortunately for me there was a large outdoor chess set not far from the house. We decided to play. From the outset it was clear I was going to lose. I’ve never been great at the strategy involved, I tend to get bored and just attack, just for the fun. Fortunately for me, our appointed time for tea arrived before I could lose the game in spectacular style. We went inside to have tea and cake.

Chilston Park
Chilston Park

The interior of the house was lovely with some odd lion/dragon things guarding the fireplace. There was a wonderful wooden staircase and portraits hanging everywhere. Our tea consisted of Lady Grey tea with some wonderful food.

Afternoon Tea
Afternoon Tea

This was a very pleasant afternoon in very pleasant surroundings, even the Hen Do was quite reserved and quiet. I am looking forward to the next time I get to do this.

Roofage
Roofage
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Boxtrolls

Unsually for me I went to see the Boxtrolls at the Odeon Cinema in Maidstone. My normal cinema is the Cineworld at Rochester. As ever I rated this film on IMDB, see this communication for an explanation of my rating system.

I saw this movie on a Saturday morning kids club event. This meant I only paid £2-50 for each of us to go. Overall this was a perfectly well made kids film. The animation was lovely and the whole concept was typical fairy story. My son really enjoyed it. I will point out that I don’t like overly large machines used in films [like the spider thing in Wild Wild West] there are issues with structural strength and manufacture [flying airbases in Avengers] but the one in this film gets a free pass as it was used well.

I’m not sure I’m that fussed about seeing this film again, I expect my children will want to see it. Hence I gave a 6/10. It’s worth a watch with kids.

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