Here’s another view of my VRS Splat:
Splat!
Carbon Footprint
I recently ordered a day-sack cover from a company using Amazon. It arrived and I was somewhat shocked.
The rest of the box had that paper-stuff in it to hold the rain cover in place. I have written about this before in this communication.
While this sort of packaging excess does seem a waste I’ve got some other ideas. Fuel use for transporting goods is largely dependent on the mass of the object. So although the box added something to the mass it was still reasonably light and so not a huge carbon drain. If the box is recycled then it doesn’t really matter about how much cardboard there was. There’s probably more carbon used in making the plastic wrapper of the item than in the box, as long as the box comes from a sustainable source.
So, upon reflection this excessive packaging may not be as bad a first thought.
I do think that eventually everything will be labelled with a “carbon factor” to make people aware of just how much carbon they emit and how well we are fucking the planet. Because we are. It is fucked. Utterly fucked. I am glad I will be dead in one hundred years. There are going to be wars over water, food and power. I am just very sorry that my children, or potential grandchildren, will be involved in that and the people to blame will all be dead. My parents’ generation and mine have screwed this planet over.
I could be calmed, I guess, by fluffy cat or dog pictures. But they don’t distract me from the bullshit. They reinforce our collective ability to ignore all that is going on.
What A Dump
This is the output from my radar server. If you want a better view then you can ask me for the details.
Hmm, there are page formatting issues. Not sure I care enough to fix them.
Irresponsible
I know they are the best we have but sometimes there needs to be some serious editorial control from the BBC because they publish utter rubbish like this:
This is the first article in the Health News section for today. Click on the story and you get this:
First up, a warning. The word CHIROPRACTIC already flags this up as a terrible article. The only responsible news item that mentions CHIROPRACTIC is one where there is a decent discussion of why it is rubbish and doesn’t work.
Rather than get enraged at the poor reporting lets look at the data and quotations included in the article.
First the BCA is quoted as saying that clothes can be bad for us. Then in the next paragraph:
However, the research has been rejected by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and other back experts.
They say we shouldn’t be afraid of our clothes.
Real doctors and scientists say this is bollocks. Then there follows plenty of gumpf from the BCA about what items can be damaging. While the BBC do “balance” this with more quotations from proper scientists they have already done the damage by publishing this shit.
In a section called “What’s the reality?” [it’s not reality, it’s written by the BCA] the BBC write:
The BCA’s poll of 1,062 people found 73% had suffered back pain and 33% were not aware that clothing could affect their back, neck or posture. They warn that any item of clothing that restricts movement, or that leads people to stand or walk unnaturally, can have a negative impact on the posture, back or neck.
There are major problems here. First they say a survey found that people have suffered back pain. So fucking what? I’ve suffered back pain. Most people have. Then, apparently, one third of people aren’t aware that clothing can affect your back, neck or posture. Well, given it’s not a thing they can’t know about it can they? This article relies on people being unable to understand a causation-correlation problem. Surveys are the worst of scientific evidence, but slightly better than anecdote.
At the base of the BBC article there is a quotation from the head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy who says that disseminating this false information could lead to real problems. The BBC need to get an editor who understands a load of bollocks when it is written and when to pull it. I am not going to look but I bet there are loads of news articles online and in print running this bollocks too.
Steve Tolan, head of practice at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, says “reading scare stories about skinny jeans is probably more harmful than actually wearing them.
“People should wear whatever is comfortable and they feel good in – skinny jeans and hoodies included. They certainly shouldn’t fear that their clothes are going to do them harm as there is no evidence for that.
“What is probably more relevant is whether a woman thinks that they are wearing something that is damaging their back, says Dr O’Keeffe.
“The beliefs about the jeans and bags may not only be incorrect, but detrimental if they cause worry about the spine being fragile and discourage women from moving normally and wearing what they want.
“Misconceptions regarding the causes and treatments of low back pain are widespread. This story about skinny jeans and heavy bags is just another myth in the long list of myths about back pain.
“It fits with the misconception that load and movement are bad and that the spine is a vulnerable structure that is easily damaged. Strong evidence shows that this is not true.”
I thought I ought to look at the BCA article or press release to see what it said. So I went to their website.
I clicked on the link, which I shall paste here:
https://chiropractic-uk.co.uk/womens-back-heal%E2%80%A6ing-sake-fashion/
I get the following page:
So, I can’t even read the actual article.
Scratch that. I found the proper link using their site search. I hope others don’t bother.
The “research” was probably a telephone or internet based survey. The BCA don’t link to the actual results. There is so much wrong with this article it infuriates me. As my tweet earlier said:
Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
Research from the BCA! Grrrrrrrrrrrr.— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 15, 2017
This “news” article is an advert masquerading as serious science. It’s bullshit. It’s designed to make people think “oh, I feel like that”, then they visit the BCA website and try to find a local chiropractor. This will cause proper injuries as chiropractic DOESN’T work.
Blocked
With reference to the previous communication I can update the main blockages on the ADS-B splat. I wrote about this before here.
The blocked area labelled 1 covers the North Downs. This natural boundary lurks to the NE of me and I can’t do a great deal about it.
The blockage labelled 2 is, I believe, down to the aerial being inside my loft and the terrace houses of my block extending in that direction. I wrote about that here. The only way to improve this range would be to get the aerial placed above the roof of my house, which is not a job I am going to undertake. I may, however, consider getting someone else to do it.
Pre-Amp Filter
These communications contain many items concerning the virtual radar system that lives in my loft and you can see a selection here. A short while ago I decided to buy an pre-amp and filter for my system to improve the range and number of aircraft being received. So, this communication now requires a large number of pictures to give you an idea of what this means.
In the above picture you can see that there are around 20 aircraft and the black area [the range of the receiver] doesn’t quite reach Norwich, Portsmouth, Bristol or Calais. There is the NW-SE block as described before.
This coloured splat gives pretty much the same information but uses colours for the ranges of aircraft at different altitudes.
I bought a filter which only allows signals close to the 1090MHz requirement through to the USB stick I bought. It also acts as a pre-amp so there is an overall 14 dB gain.
Here is the whole Virtual Radar system living in the loft:
Once this kit was turned on I looked at the DUMP1090 output from the Raspberry Pi and pretty much shat myself at the number of aricraft shown:
When this view is compared to the twenty or so aircraft that I had before you can see an immense improvement in the receivers ability.
Virtual Radar Server is a program I use on the RPi for a more detailed view, there are quite a few customisations you can create also. It is the software that will create the splat over time, keeping track of the aircraft and their position.
The distances have increased as has the overall coverage. I now track around 100 aircraft at a time. For a small sum of money the overall increase in detail has been terrific. I can now reach over northern France, over Wales and a lot of the channel to the SW.
A side by side comparison.
Infrastructure Update
It’s about time I updated the home network diagram from this communication. The original communication was written in January 2014 so three years seems a reasonable length of time for an update. It shouldn’t really be a surprise that the network has grown. There are some notable additions:
- Raspberry Pi
- Wireless Printer
I don’t have any “smart” kitchen appliances or anything like that, I’m not sure I see the point of them! Click the picture for a pdf file.
Don’t Patronise This
While waiting for my fish and chips to cook last night at the world’s most homo-erotic chip shop I saw a magazine with the following advert:
The Young Men’s Christian Association has a Wellness Centre which I guess promotes wellness.
WELLNESS is NOT a DEFINED MEDICAL TERM. Therefore it means fuck all in this context. It’s why promoters of bullshit use the term, because it DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING. Look, I used bold and block caps there! I must be annoyed.
Even the logo looks new-age and bollocks.
Of the services offered at the religious centre (which probably isn’t religious but the name is) some are utter bullshit before we’ve even had to look into them and some are possibly iffy by association. I have looked at their website and I will quote so in the following.
Osteopathy
I have rubbished this within these communications and so I can tell you now, it is bollocks. On the website there is information about osteopathy and babies. Just don’t.
They claim to be able to help with
- migraines and headaches
- asthma
- sports injuries
- disc problems
- sciatica
- trapped nerves
- tennis elbow
- arthritis (wear and tear)
I very much doubt this as there’s no good evidence to show that osteopathy works for anything. They even lost “lower back pain” recently. Have a look at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). God, this makes me so sad.
“Oh but it worked for me/my relation”
No, it probably didn’t. We humans are terrible at separating out what really happens and our experience.
Sports Massage
It feels nice. It massages you. It costs you money. They claim it helps you but these are all self-limiting problems and while a massage can do damage it might help you.
Acupuncture
Grade A bollocks. They claim it works:
Acupuncture is the insertion of fine needles into the skin at predetermined points to affect the internal levels of energy. It may be deficient, excessive or stagnant and therefore not flowing in the most efficient manner. When energy, called Qi, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is not in balance then we see symptoms, at all levels. Some symptoms are obvious, such as those affecting the physical, others less so, such as those that affect the emotional and mental.
There is absolutely NO evidence for Qi. In fact different practitioners will use different locations on the body to cure the same thing. It doesn’t work.
Acupuncture and other traditional Chinese medicine was promoted during the Barefoot Doctor scheme the communist government of China so that Doctors, who were short on real medicine, could “do something” to keep people happy even though it clearly didn’t work.
Reflexology / Aromatherapy
See “massage”. This is all bollocks. Aromatherapy smells nice. Reflexology feels nice. It doesn’t do anything else. The Wellness Centre says:
- Boosts the immune system, which is weakened by constant stress.
- Can relieve stress as it calms and soothes.
- Is a good preventative medicine.
- Improves the circulation.
- Can be very helpful at encouraging the body to heal itself and gives the recipient a feeling of well being, relaxing mind and body.
- The Digestive system is encouraged to work to optimum efficiency.
Boosting the immune system means nothing. Is a good preventative medicine for what? Encourages the body to heal itself, now I’m laughing, such a wishy washy phrase.
Psychological Therapy
This is probably the most important here and possible the one that can the most effect but I would worry about the company that this service keeps and I would prefer to book myself into a proper clinic. Yep, having looked over the website this seems quite legit. It’s just a shame it’s in a house of crap.
Physiotherapy
This is another that is probably good. Physiotherapy is a protected term and so it should be the real stuff. The problem is it’s hard work and some people obviously want the quick fix of bullshit medicine (see above). The chap’s website looks pretty flash but overall this is the second worthwhile thing on here.
Nutritional Therapy
This is bollocks. If you want the proper stuff you go see a DIETITIAN, that is a legally protected term for someone who has qualifications in diet. ANYONE can call themselves a nutritionist because it’s not legally protected. She claims she is a Naturopathic Nutritional Therapist, this fills me with utter fear. Naturopathic is a nonsense term invented to sound great but mean nothing. According to her website she can help with the following:
Some of these things are diet related but I wouldn’t want a quack telling me what I’m allergic to. Proper allergy testing takes a long time. Oh, and notice that Cancer is mentioned in there. Fucking Cancer. from the website:
“There are numerous studies suggesting a link between some foods and certain types of cancer. However, it would be a broad statement to claim that diet can directly cause or treat cancer.”
I can correct her if you want. It would be ILLEGAL to claim to be able to cure cancer. It shows just how fucked up these people are when they make iffy claims.
Pilates
I know nothing about pilates but isn’t it posh yoga? Just helps you move.
There are more claims on the website of these people and I will cover a few of them here with my crude guide to efficacy.
Food Intolerance Tests – more than likely bullshit.
Hypnotherapy – I’m becoming convinced it’s bullshit.
Neuro Linguistic Programing – bullshit.
And, I’m done. There’s only so much I can take of this bollocks. Look, it says Wellness. It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t go there. It’s in a christian association building for fuck’s sake.
Splaturday
I am aware that in some places on the internet caturday is a thing. I do not care for this. Nor do I care for cute dog picture stuff. It’s quite boring, especially when associated with a meme [a word now misused]. There is a smaller, some might say darker, part of the internet where comparing the range of an ADS-B receiver is a thing. These are called “splats” and so here is my Splaturday picture.
There are other communications cover this sort of thing here and here.
Mileage
I’m trying to monitor my car’s efficiency. It’s not the easiest to compare to the Beast because I didn’t really keep records of fuel consumption for that car. From memory I could get about 50mpg on a motorway and about 35mpg through the week when I’d be driving in and around town a lot.
This display shows that over 72 miles of driving which included motorway, dual carriage way, town and country I got around 56mpg.
I will do a big run one day and see what I get.
The main thing about this car is that it makes you very aware of how efficiently you are driving and so your driving behaviour changes.
It Doesn’t Say That
Here we go again. Another BBC News Headline and Fooyah goes off on one to deride the state of news. But first let me tell you where my biases lie.
I have recently decided to stop scanning my general Twitter feed. I follow about a thousand feeds on that account and a lot of them revolve around my interests of religion, airplanes aeroplanes, science and politics. Given what Donald Trump says and could possibly do after the 20th along with how that affects my interests you can imagine that my twitter feed is filled with horror. Even last year during the post-Brexit week I found that twitter was feeding the news I wanted while the traditional BBC site and radio news wasn’t giving me the detail I wanted. I felt I wanted to know everything that happened when it happened.
I have started to recognise that this was becoming an obsession. Constantly wanting to check Twitter. Missing parts of TV shows programmes because I was looking at my feed. I was starting to miss out on peace, on enjoying concentrating. I have now stopped looking at that particular feed. I use my normal account highlighted down the right hand side of this site because that feed has only friends and twitter is one of the methods I stay in touch with some friends. I don’t officially do Faceshit so that doesn’t really matter.
From now on I am going to get my news in manageable chunks by listening to the radio and occasionally browsing the BBC website. I gave up TV news a long time ago as I couldn’t cope with the forced human interest narrative they assigned to every story. The human interest of news didn’t affect me, I want to know the news behind the story, not the “this made Chloe from Bakersfield miss her train”.
I watched this video after my decision, it was sent to me by a friend and while I have some criticisms of the things said in the video I felt some of it applied to me and I am far from a millennial.
I do have some issues with some of the things he says and I am definitely not convinced he is right about everything but it is very interesting. I could see some of these behaviours in myself and so decided to change my behaviour to be more positive to my life. One of my current issues was feeling anger at all the Trump tweets or news items and being powerless to affect them in any way. By ignoring them I hope to gain some sense of control and happiness over those parts of my life. I can get on with my life largely as it is and just calmly wait for the end-times.
I have become largely convinced that mobile devices need to be banned in schools. Not because I am a nasty bastard but because we have a SOCIAL DUTY to teach children to concentrate on tasks that last longer than a few minutes. The young need to learn to be able to delay reward. They are in a system where I want them to learn during all my lessons in a week and the pay off is years away in their examination results, in their choice on university and in the pay of their future careers. I don’t have a science study to back this up but I do think we are doing a disservice to the young because they expect reward constantly.
Oh, but they can play computer games and concentrate for hours.
Yes and no. They are constantly rewarded while playing computer games. The tasks are short term and the rewards are built in regularly to make the kids feel good. This is the equivalent of checking an answer in the back of a maths text book and seeing that you got it right. That little hit of success. One of these is “fun” and the other takes place in a structured lesson where the ultimate pay off is years away.
A student I taught a few years ago who, in the run up to his exams, took his phone, turned it off and placed it in a plastic bag which he kept on him for emergency purposes. He did this for three months. He recognised the distraction that his phone is. It doesn’t matter if you find out something has happened 2 minutes after the event or 5 hours after the event. It’s the same thing that has happened. That kid got As and A* at A Level and now studies at a top university.
Look, I love my phone and I like my console and this computer where I am currently typing. I don’t want to throw them away. But I do think there are serious sociological problems that need to be faced. We are failing the youth by not preparing them to concentrate persistently at a task with a delayed reward.
This was the headline on the BBC News website, I heard about the article from listening to the radio 4 article. I also found the same “news” item in the Daily Fucking Piece Of Shit Mail.
Now, I’m not very good at reading science papers. I have tried and find the language very dense and deliberately obscure. Given my interest in REAL THINGS learning how to read science papers is probably a good thing. I found the original paper from where these headlines derive. It is linked here. The PDF can be found here, or below.
A cached copy from this website
I just want to cover some of my observations from reading the paper before writing about the news articles.
A Large-Scale Test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis: Quantifying the Relations Between Digital-Screen Use and the Mental Well-Being of Adolescents
This paper was a test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis [bullshit name making it seem acceptable or a good thing even though it’s a happy story about a fucking thief]. This paper is to test the happiness-screen time hypothesis. It doesn’t set out to find out if screen time makes teenagers happier than not having screen time. It doesn’t have a control group. All it does is see whether the youngsters have an ideal happiness-screen time relationship. It could have found out that 20 hours a a day was the ultimate happiness value.
Most of the paper talks about the regression curve they decided would fit and how they tested that. Essentially they found an upper limit in the curve.
The number of students used in the study was large. All the data was self-reported and that can cause issues of under-reporting of negative trends. This paper didn’t seek to find out how much happier students were before and after. All they looked into was the happiness of students compared to how much screen time they have. There’s no before and after. There’s no analysis of how increasing or decreasing screen time affects individuals. It could be imagined that deliberately affecting the well being of teenagers negatively would be immoral.
This study sought to confirm a previous hypothesis that a quadratic curve could be used to fit to the data and that from that there would be a maximum [inflexion in the paper]. It didn’t seek to find out anything else.
This study seeks to inform future studies and has nothing to do with optimum time to get students the most well-being. It just modelled that. There were no controls. We do NOT know from this study what happens if a student stops using their phone and does other stuff. This study wasn’t about that. It’s not a before and after study. It’s a study about now.
Interesting, but also obvious, was that different digital activities had different effects on well-being. Being on a phone has a lower time than watching TV. They are very different activities.
The study also says that they did not look into whether academic work was affected or what the possible outcomes are with high or low digital device usage. This study JUST looked at modelling the Goldilocks Hypothesis. My instinct is that the Goldilocks Hypothesis probably exists for most things. Want to eat chocolate? Have a certain amount to get most well-being feeling. Want to exercise? A certain amount will maximise your well-being score, and so on.
So, now a few quotes from the BBC article.
Moderate screen use ‘boosts teen wellbeing’
NOT what the paper says. The paper did NOT compare before and after, just what exists now. They are very different things.
They found a “Goldilocks effect” where a few hours of device-use seemed to boost mental wellbeing.
They were testing for the Goldilocks effect. They didn’t discover it. Their aim was to model it mathematically. Again, BOOST, no it doesn’t say that. Boost implies a before and after effect which was not measured by this study.
In addition, the first hour or two of screen time was actually associated with an increase in mental wellbeing for those using computers, smartphones, video games and watching TV or films.
FFS, not an increase just what is. IF I HAVE THIS WRONG PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I am not expert in reading science papers. Have a look yourself and tell me.
The BBC article is pretty bad but there are redeeming features to the article and even they explain that this paper confirms the hypothesis. It’s good to have some science about these things but the NEWS can’t report it very well. And we wonder why there are issues with fake-news and this being a post-truth world.
I need a few deep breaths now as I take some quotes from the Daily Shit article. I can’t read the whole thing without encountering a rage so I will rely on the bullet points at the top of the article.
Researchers found there is little evidence screen time damages teenagers
NOT what they were looking for. The study was to confirm the Goldilocks Effect. We would need a CONTROL group to decide if damage is done.
The found that, in fact, 257 minutes on a computer is beneficial for them
No, it didn’t. See above.
It is the ‘sweet spot’ when teens have had enough time to develop online skills
No, it doesn’t say that. For fucks sake. If we trained teenagers in developing internet skills properly they would soon realise that the DM website is full of shit.
I’m done. If I tried I expect I could take the whole DM article and pull nearly every sentence apart. The main problem is I don’t want to. I don’t want to read that shit. It’s misleading. The BBC article was misleading but not as bad. It was still misleading.
No wonder we have problems with people trusting the news and sources. No wonder they want to listen to “news” that agrees with their own narrative about how the world works rather than challenge their own understanding. I try to be unbiased in my understanding of the world. I try to give weight to things that disagree with my perception of the world because it challenges me and because, as a human, I am incredibly unable to decide what it correct or true. That’s why science developed. It’s why there are true investigative reporters. The world should be able to cope with REALITY even if they fundamentally oppose what that reality is. We should be accepting of things that challenge us and make us think but ultimately make us more aware of what is really going on.
After all, isn’t the truth what we seek?
Addendum
Let’s have another look at that graph:
I don’t know about you but a peak happiness going from 47 to 48.5 or so doesn’t seem impressive. Also, we don’t know how many students were at each level, so we don’t know how many students were at the zero hours per day level [I was sure I read this in the paper but can’t now see it].
Also, 20% of students reported more than 12 hours a day engagement.
it was clear that many participants had reported
simultaneous screen use; approximately 20% of the sample
reported a sum of more than 12 hr of engagement on
weekdays, and 35% of the sample reported a total of
more than 12 hr on weekend days
Fuck! These poor kids. We need some serious intervention so we are able to help these people in society as a whole, so they can develop friendships, so they can function.
Beat Them Up
I need to vent some anger and rage. I’ve been so annoyed recently at what politics and society has become that it has to come out. Normally I can get away with a rant with friends at work or friends elsewhere, definitely not the family though, there are some relationships that probably would cope with that level of anger potentially aimed towards their actions.
I think 2016 has finally got to me. I’m in such an angry mood today.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) November 24, 2016
Now I’m picking on a soft target for my anger. Education news. And I hate talking about education. I’ve been involved in education since I was 4. I don’t have the answers but there are times when there’s plenty of bollocks and bullshit messing with kids learning things.
So, the BBC headline is:
You can go ahead and read the story if you wish, I’ll be here, waiting.
This is a classic case of “shit goes wrong therefore blame education”. This country’s education system gets blamed for an awful lot. If there’s a need to tweek the way people feel about things then why not introduce that into schools? The government has always done one of two things:
- Blame the education system for not influencing pupils enough the right way.
- Blame the education system for influencing pupils enough the wrong way.
You see, the government thinks that all teachers are lefties, pinkos, commies, or liberal. The government doesn’t like teachers having power over pupils because all teachers are, by definition, caring about the future and society as a whole. The government sees schools as hot beds of resistance to the progress of society. That’s why teacher are called upon to include more and more social manoeuvring in all that they do. The government recognises that we have influence and while we influence lots the wrong way we can influence almost nothing the correct way.
What you should do is have a look over headlines and see how often “we will get schools to deal with this” crops up. It’s almost as if it’s a way for governments to say “we are dealing with that at an early age so it’ll be ok”.
Right, Brexit. In my opinion what caused Brexit? fucking austerity and a political class that shows little regard for the common man. A political class out to promote itself and not actually work for society and the progress of all. A political class whipping up notions of acceptable fascism and racism and a political class who consistently use an “us and them” rhetoric.
So there’s a correlation with social deprivation and the Brexit vote. Which means there’s a correlation with schools. THAT’S NOT CAUSATION YOU FUCKING TWAT.
So, here’s some of my views [no, they aren’t social science or proper investigations, therefore they are anecdote, but I don’t care].
- Society has no control over what influences kids these days, social media is what influences them. They don’t watch TV like I used to or chat to their mates.
- In the old days music was a concern because teenagers were obsessed with it. Now it is social media. Music didn’t try and sell them fake news and bullshit.
- I might have a particular class for four hours a week. There are about 25 kids in that class. I am meant to be able influence each of these kids?
- Kids spend 5 hours a day in lessons. Maybe another 90 minutes in school. The school enforces some of society’s rules and expectations. But that’s not a major influence on them.
- Education, in this country, is not prized or treated as a good thing. If you have a keen, educated society you are less religious, more socially aware and more understanding. You might even pay attention to politics and things.
- Knowing things (the correct things) should be prized. YES there are things that are correct. There is a right way to find out these things.
- Learning to critically think and appraise news sources needs to be a skill ALL people have before being allowed to vote.
The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange – wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017
to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against “Intelligence” when in fact I am a big fan!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2017
Possibly a little controversial here, but let’s face it, this communication has wandered a great deal. We have UK citizens [sorry, but really it’s fucking SUBJECTS] voting about shit they don’t understand, BREXIT, the general populous voting on a subject that the media has consistently FAILED to educate the public about what the EU does. A public that has taken all the information un-critically and voted correspondingly.
We also have the next PRESIDENT of the world’s most powerful country telling the world that you should let people make up their own minds about what is true! Utter bullshit. People have to be informed and have the facts as best determined by fucking experts. You very much don’t let the people determine what is true. You have experts, people who understand things explain WHY things are true to people.
I despair.
620 nm
I took a jaunt out into the local countryside yesterday and it was good.
The weather was cold and slightly misty which made the whole Downs to Medway area look lovely. Here’s a photo over the vineyard looking south.
While running down the Downs I noticed the lovely view of the sun reflecting off the new bridge which I have mentioned a few times within these communications.
There were some lovely scenes where the sun reflected off the river Medway the whole vista was calming and stunning. Later on there were some wisps dangling from the clouds. Now, like most of my photos the thing I am looking at isn’t always the thing that ends up being the focus of the photo. That’s probably what separates me from a proper photographer, that and I used my iPhone!
Hacking The Car
I recently purchased a new (ish) car. The name of the new vehicle has yet to be decided but some things did need to be sorted out.
As a safety feature the car beeps an alarm inside the car while in reverse. There aren’t parking sensors so this was purely to warn the driver that you aren’t going to move forward when you depress the go pedal. This beeping was annoying. Googling around soon led to two potential ways to fix it.
If the Prius is pre-2010 then you can use the following method:
Step 1: Depress the brake pedal and hold it there.
Step 2: Press the Start/Stop button to turn on the engine.
Step 3: Push the Odometer button. Push the button on your dash designated Trip/Odometer until “ODO” is displayed on the screen. If it is already displaying this, you will have to cycle through the options to refresh it by pressing the button a total of three times.
Step 4: Press the Start/Stop button. Press the Start/Stop button to turn off the engine of your Prius.
Step 5: Press the Start/Stop button again. With your foot still on the brake, press the Start/Stop button again, and your engine will restart.
Step 6: Push and hold the Odometer button: Push the Trip/Odometer button again and do not release it.
Step 7: Press the park button. While still depressing the Trip/Odometer button, put your Prius in reverse, then immediately push the Park button. Do not release the Trip/Odometer button until this is complete.
Step 8: Push the Trip/Odometer button. Instead of the usual miles traveled on the odometer display, there should be the text “b on.” Push the Trip/Odometer button until the dashboard displays the text “b off.”
Step 9: Press the Start/Stop button again. Press the Start/Stop button again to turn your Prius’ engine off. The reverse beep is now disabled, and you will not hear it again in future trips.
This, I think, is the car equivalent of ctrl-alt-del and using reg-edit and BIOS simultaneously. Now, I can follow instructions, but I wasn’t looking forward to doing this. My car is registered as a “59” but apparently it was a 2010 model as when I looked under the dash there was a OBD2 connector.
It turns out that car manufacturers have standardised the laptop connections to the car and its CPU. This makes sense and it also allows people to connect their own devices and customise or fix or break their own car.
So, I invited a friend over who tries does hack his own car and attempt to improve or fix it. He has a Bluetooth and WiFi connector and I downloaded the Carista app on my phone. After connecting the adaptor to the car and then getting the phone secure connection running the app decided to run some diagnostics tests.
After a short while I was able to pay for a week’s subscription to the Carista app and then able to change the settings.
My car no longer constantly beeps when reversing. It beeps once. Which is good.
I also turned off the seat belt alarm. That would beep constantly too if the driver didn’t have a seat belt on. I always wear my seat belt so this noise isn’t needed either.
VR Confirmed
The other day I had another go on a PSVR headset, just to see some more trailers and play another part of a game. See this communication about why I had to sell my PSVR. One of the trailers I watched was me strapped in a chair being attacked by what looked like a zombie. This was mostly fine.
Then I played a Call Of Duty demo where I was flying a space ship. I probably managed about thirty seconds before I had to stop as the feelings of sickness were rising.
It was a good thing that I sold the PSVR (which saddens me).
It Says Nothing
I recently spent some time in the A&E department of a Kent hospital. This may or may not have been related to the previous communication. While waiting for the hours to pass I read every poster and most of the magazines in the minor injuries department. This is mostly foolish as none of it is interesting. I did see this though:
I will highlight some areas of this poster. You can click on the poster to see a larger version.
Apparently 72% recommend a service, maybe. We aren’t made aware of what those 72% are recommending. It could be the coffee from the machine [I didn’t see one]. Without knowing the question this set of data make no sense.
Next of note are the responses on a scale of 1 – 6.
The percentages for these have been given to two decimal places, just in case you were desperate to know. Again we don’t know what question was being asked. The poster doesn’t say.
As for the two charts, these tell us nothing new. Absolutely nothing. They replicate the data given in the list. They are utterly pointless. I’m not known for being a fan of pie charts and this one is terrible. In my opinion if you’ve used a pie chart you haven’t done the best you can in interpreting your data.
Then, most helpfully we get a list of the most recent types responses to a survey question WHICH WE DO NOT KNOW.
Now we can guess the question. We also have a pretty good idea of what all of this means, but we aren’t told. This poster could have been way more informative, way simpler to read and quite a bit clearer. It says the same thing THREE times.
I’m not really having a go at the hospital. I imagine that they have been told it’s a target to make sure they have these feedback responses pinned on the wall for all to see. The hospital doesn’t have enough time or money to do this well and so they rely on a bit of software or an external agency that then does a print run and these things are pinned up all over the place. If hospitals and the NHS could be left alone to get on with their jobs, if reform was stopped, if the staff were listened to then maybe, just maybe, things like this useless poster could be stopped and the service returned to the excellence it once was.
YES I blame the tories.
Much like the shit that is happening in education at the moment.
Furthest East
So the previous communication about places of abode consisted of a group of friends who grew up on the Hertfordshire borders. Two of us lived in Essex, although A only live in Essex by about 20 metres, and two of us lived in Herts.
I have another bunch of friends from university and there are parts of the internet dedicated to them. We are further spread around the world as follows:
- Me in Kent
- M in Fulham
- J in West End
- R in Houston, TX
- A in Atlanta, GA
It’s a more interesting question about cardinal extremities for this bunch.
Here’re the numbers [to within a few miles each]
- Me – 51°19′ N 0°28′ E
- M – 51°29′ N 0°11′ W
- J – 51°20′ N 0°37′ W
- R – 30°10′ N 95°30′ W
- A – 34° 01′ N 84°14′ W
So, in summary R is furthest south and west by a long way. M is furthest north by about 10′ and I am furthest east. Yippee, I’m first to see the sun and more than likely the first to be asleep!
But, the plot thickens very slightly as there is another who should be included in this group but he isn’t part of the Fulham Five. K lives in the Midlands and given his approximate location is:
52°26′ N 1°34′ W
K is clearly the furthest north of all of us.
I am the only one in the eastern hemisphere though!
Who’s North
Recently in a discussion with a group of friends D ended by saying that all was quiet on the southern front. He lives in Offenbach and so, therefore, not that you know just yet, he lives furthest east of that particular group of friends.
So, D gets the furthest east and also south but not by a great deal. I’ve got some calculations to do in a minute. J lives in Saltash and is clearly the furthest west, and close to being the southern most!
Now some numbers:
- J – 50° 24′ 21.78″N
- D – 50° 6′ 32.47″N
The north-south distance between these two is:
0° 17′ 49.31″
Which turns out to be 33km.
I was more interested in who is the furthest north and by how much. The numbers for those, are:
- Me – 51° 19′ 5.60″N
- A – 51° 20′ 6.24″N
You can see that’s pretty close. The north-south distance for these two is:
0° 1′ 0.64″
Which turns out to be 1.872km.
It’s much closer than the difference between the other two, but I am neither the most north, south, east or west. Boo.
[The domiciles of D and J have been approximated but with 33km between them that’s not particularly an issue].
Virtual Radar
A while back I wrote about setting up an ADS-B detector in the loft. There are six communications I think.
And this one makes seven.
What’s the point in having an ADS-B receiver if you aren’t going to use it when you are out of your house? So, I managed to set up some wizardry on parts of my home network and now I can see the display from outside the confines of my wireless network. I’ve done some port forwarding and other lovely stuff which is easy enough if you are adept at googling, which I am.
Family thinks I’m a god because I can use regedit to fix a computer. But I’m really quite good at JFGI.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) November 20, 2016
So, I now have a Virtual Radar Service for the area around my house that I can log in to from anywhere in the world. I did have to set up a Dynamic Domain Name Service for my modem as I am not lucky enough to have a fixed IP from my broadband supplier. My router even informs the DDNS service what its new IP is whenever it restarts and because this just seems to work it makes me happy.
I did have some minor issues with the radar service as it uses Google Maps to provide a nice background and because I was using this outside of my home network I needed an API key to make this work. That was reasonably easy to set up but then it turns out that Google recommend you secure the key to a particular site so that other people can’t use your key and steal your Maps data, which would then mean Google would charge me.
It took a little while to get the formatting of this securing correct but I think I finally managed it. I guess I’ll soon find out if Google send me a massive Google Maps API bill soon!
So, I can log in to my radar server from anywhere and view it on a desktop or mobile device. That way I can see what my home system sees. It doesn’t catch all planes because some won’t be broadcasting position, see the MLAT communication. Below is a picture of a browser with my radar server running.
If you want access I can allow it to you. Just let me know and I’ll arrange a login and password and also give you the URL.
Brooklands
This particular communication is very delayed. I went to Brooklands in between christmas and new year 2015. It was great. There are plenty of wonderful aircraft, some lovely cars and also motorbikes.
I didn’t take any photos of the planes, which is weird for me, but I did have my kids and so that probably stopped me being as free with a camera as I would have liked to be. I did take some shots of them in cockpits, but they don’t get published here.
I really want to talk about the stratospheric chamber!
The chamber is a “room” that will simulated the conditions at high altitude. This type of research was really important just after the Second World War. Fighters and jet planes were being designed to fly higher and fast and they needed to be tested safely under these conditions.
It’s the largest in the world and quite fantastic to visit if you know what you are looking at. Just the idea and audacity of building something so large that can simulate those conditions. It is quite a remarkable piece of engineering and well worth seeing. I have a feeling it was only recently declassified and that makes it that much more interesting.
I would love to write loads of stuff here giving details and very interesting things but, unfortunately I don’t have the time at the moment. Also, as this is only eleven months late, I can’t remember the plaques around the design!!