I’m going to try and explain my position on data mining and data collection and profiling. The government wants to collect lots of data on all of us to help fight terrorism. This won’t work. The amount of data they want to collect is immense. They want to find terrorists using sophisticated computer programs and mining this data for connections.
Problem 1
If I was a terrorist I wouldn’t use social media for communication. I would use face to face meetings, dead letter drops and PAYG mobiles using them for a week and then dumping them. I would never directly contact anyone in charge and all organisation would be off the internet. It’s no use searching these data for patterns. Terrorists don’t use communication methods we can tap into.
Problem 2
The laws of probability. Let us suppose that the software can recognise a terrorist, by using their behaviour traits, 99% of the time and it incorrectly states an innocent person is a terrorist 1% of the time. Let’s suppose we are monitoring a million people and that there are 100 terrorists in that population. This would extrapolate to around 7000 terrorists in the UK. It would seem likely/reasonable that there are that many people within our borders willing to cause damage to the state.
The Sums
Of the 100 terrorists the software finds 99% of them so 99 terrorists are taken into custody. 1 terrorist remains at large.
The software also falsely accuses 1% of the population as it is only correct 99% of the time. This means that 9999 honest members of the public are wrongly accused of being terrorists.
So we have taken 10098 people into custody. The chances of you being accused but innocent is 9999/10098 which is about 99%.
The chance of you being guilty if taken into custody is 99/10098 or about 1%
This is a bad situation.
Data mining isn’t going to work. Neither is profiling or algorithms about people’s behaviour. The numbers don’t make sense. This measure won’t work.
To give you an idea of the scope of this problem I will now expand this to those people who enter this country each year. Let’s assume that the domestic population of the UK is perfectly happy with the State and not partaking in naughty behaviour (a false assumption). According to this BBC report there are 200 million people who enter and leave the country each year. So that means 100 million coming into the country each year. This profiling method assumes we have access to all of the data about every person who enters the country. Let’s look at the numbers and just for niceness let’s increase our software detection accuracy to 99.9%.
99.9% at selecting a terrorist correctly.
0.1% at selecting an innocent person.
Let’s also increase the number of terrorists to 10,000 (although this seems remarkably high to me).
9990 terrorists will be correctly detained. This means that 10 will go free.
99990 innocent people will be detained.
The probability of a detained person being guilty is: 9%. This is slightly better but not a system I want to be a part of.
On the 22 November I got up and looked forward to a train journey from Rugby to Birmingham International.
Now, I live in Kent and the International train stations down this way go to the continent by TRAIN. You can get on a train at Ebbsfleet or Ashford and get off in Paris, Brussels or Disneyland [wtf would anyone want to go there?]. Birmingham International, by contrast, requires you to get off the train and go through the airport to board a plane. Same end result I guess but not as cool as a train going under the English Channel.
I like the trains from Rugby to Birmingham. They don’t cost a great deal, there’s a reasonable car park close to Rugby station, are always busy and comfortable. There were plenty of people dressed up at the station heading to Comicon in their cosplay outfits.
Sally and I had tickets to go to the MCM Birmingham Comicon at the NEC, we were meeting her brother there. I had bought an express ticket which apparently meant I could enter the hall an hour before Sally, whose brother bought their tickets. I think it’s worth pointing out that a glance through the official online programme produced absolutely no times that events were happening. This was annoying as it would have been nice to plan the day out while at home rather once in the venue and having to try and find a timetable.
Because I got in to the arena before Sally and her brother I went for a walk to figure out the lie of the land. I tried to find times of events, checked the autographing queues and looked at some of the shops there.
When it got close to the time for Sally to enter the event I wandered back and found her. I had expected a decorated hall with plenty of events. Comicon seemed to be a mostly trading event with many many shops selling all types of comic and anime stuff. There was an arena in a dome with some events but the cosplay was quite late in the afternoon and we decided to head home before then. We found a small stage area where the celebs were going to be paraded and interviewed. We hung around there to see Liv Tyler but didn’t listen to the interview. In one corner of the hall there was a Storm Trooper display:
They looked great. Although I think some of them looked a little short to be storm troopers.
We wandered around the autograph area where I saw various people from good sci fi shows over the years. I didn’t get their autographs as I don’t think that sort of thing bothers me. They are just people. Adding their signature to something may make it more valuable but doesn’t really change the product. I was quite impressed to see Virginia Hey as I remember her in Farscape. Steve Austin, of Six Million Dollar Man fame, was there too and I could see him. Liv Tyler also signed some stuff if you wanted.
I was already aware that these guys charge for signatures and it didn’t bother me particularly that they did but the prices really did vary! The bog standard celebrities were GBP5 for a signature. However, it would appear that the more famous you are the more you can charge:
Lee Majors £25. Liv Tyler £45. Prices for autographs, not prices for a quick grope!!! #comiconbirmingham
That’s a lot of money just to be close to someone and see them sign something of yours!
On the way out of comicon Sally and I decided to find some geocaches as there were two within easy reach. It didn’t take long but as this was just after the Paris attacks it seemed weird to be nosing around near a train station and massive exhibition centre. We found two, as you can see below:
I did buy a few comics direct from the writers who were based in writers corner. I have yet to read these but will report back once I have.
The 29th and 30th of August was a pretty cool weekend. Sally and I had booked some tickets for the Insomnia gathering at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry and also the Asylum festival at Lincoln.
Insomnia is a gaming festival that is usually held at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry. The arena is next to a Tesco superstore where much Redbull and other types of sugary caffeinated drinks. We parked in the Tesco car park for the couple of hours we were in the festival. It was an interesting experience. We spent time in a Minecraft hall, a large stage hall, and smaller exhibition areas. Around the periphery there were RAF and Army recruiters with activities that involved games. There were many more children and families there than I had expected. My initial assumption was that most people attending would be teenagers or early twenties, but I was surprised by the number of families walking around, dads and mums with pre-teen boys (mostly).
I wasn’t that interested in any of the big stage events and I wasn’t allowed into the LAN halls, which is where most of the intense gaming competitions were held. I was impressed with the lay out of event although a little more signage around the arena so I could find my way in would have been helpful.
In one of the gaming halls I was happy because I found a copy of Crackdown for the Megadrive. If you know a little about this website then you will know why this was an important game for me, you could just check here if you want.
Crackdown
I now need to set up Sally’s Megadrive and play the game. I am quite excited about that as she claims to be a bit rubbish at Crackdown. She also claims to be quite poor at a number of games but apart from crazy golf she has beaten me at everything we have played so far.
One of the stalls / attractions outside of the arena was a truck with about 8 PCs in the back and a racing game set up. When we first walked by I asked what track and car for the competition. This is important to me as there are some tracks I like racing on and certain cars I like “driving”. The response was:
Donington National Circuit, F1 cars.
This was not the best response. I don’t know the Donington Circuit and I hate driving F1 cars, I much prefer touring cars. We wandered off.
As we were walking around I though about Donington and tried to remember the circuit and figure out how to manage the F1 car around it. Most of the circuit was in my head, I just didn’t know where the National Circuit went different from the Grand Prix circuit. This was going to cost me £5 for some practice time and then a race with the qualifying time being the best lap time from a circuit.
We had to head back so I could have a go.
I joined a group of guys while they were practising but there was still about fifteen minutes left and then the race. The car worked well and all I had to learn was what gear to take each corner, where the last corner was and when to brake for each corner. I reckon it took a couple of laps to get the gears right for the corners and another couple to get the braking points. After that I was trying to decrease my times. While driving around I could see many people spinning and not managing the corners.
I qualified in pole position. I think it was a three lap race and I never got overtaken but I did pass many so I knew I was in first place. At the end of the session my fastest lap made it onto the leader board.
I was very pleased with my result. I reckoned that with another two or three goes I could save around three or four seconds but there wasn’t any way I was going to get to the top. I moved on. Overall the Insomnia experience was good and would have been much better if I had wanted to see some of the big stage events.
The last Sunday in August was a good one. We had tickets to the Asylum Festival in Lincoln. We had to get up early, get our costumes on and then drive to Lincoln. This was the second time we had driven that route recently as we also had a few days on the North Sea Coast. Our costumes had been planned and created over the previous months and I have to say a specific “thanks you” to Tina for the hats!
My boots are my favourite out of the whole outfit. It took quite a bit of effort to find these on sale in the UK but I managed it along with a pair I bought for when I’m in heavy metal mode. If you don’t quite get what steampunk then I can’t help you. JFGI.
The whole of Lincoln had been converted into a centre of steampunk excellence for the weekend. It was great to see so many people walking around in their costumes and the general public and tourists wondering what was going on. We managed to find a parking space near the centre of town and within half a minute of leaving the car people were already asking if they could take photos of us. That didn’t last too long as our costumes were quite poor in comparison to most at the event.
We had a rough idea of what events we wanted to see but the main one was the Tea Duelling. This is a real thing. Tea Duelling has its own rules and guidelines and was really great fun to watch. I have since duelled with tea and it is a mighty fine thing to do.
Tea Dueling
Burlesque Theatre
Cathedral
Ladies
Bounce
Lovely Wings
Hand Made
Guns
Gents Sitting
Idiot
Outfits
Castle Entrance
MOD
Market Place
Very Smart
Thinking Cap
Room of Gadgets
Awesome Backpack
The entire centre of Lincoln embraced and celebrated the steampunk culture. It was great fun to be there and to see everyone in their costumes.
The big event of the day for us was a burlesque event which took place at the Bishop Grosseteste University about a mile from the centre of the city. We had some lunch and then tea at a pub in the centre of town and then walked to the university.
Oh Dear, What would the Major say?
The show was brilliant. It was funny, occasionally rude and all in the best possible taste. It was great fun to see. From what I can gather the show was put together by Tallulah Blue. She was once of the dancers. The compere for the evening was meant to be an ex Eastern Bloc lady (I can’t tell, her accent was good but then again was it an act that fitted with the overall theme?) The first dancer was Scottish and blond. That is pretty much all I can remember apart from the music being pretty up beat and she smiled a lot. She did throw her clothes into the audience as she took them off.
Tallulah Blue danced two numbers during the evening. There was a male dancer who did a brilliant version of the dance of the sugar plum fairy from Swan Lake (I think). It was brilliant and showed that the evening wasn’t sexist, just fun. At the end of the show the compere did a brilliant piss take of the Dita Von Teese champagne glass dance. We laughed a lot. It was such a brilliant experience to spend time in a city totally welcoming to a bunch of oddly dressed (mostly middle-aged) weirdoes. We both had a great time. The only problem was we had to drive home that evening, it would have been good to stay over somewhere. Maybe next year although I need to start work on my costume!
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.
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.
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.
In Germany! Passing Wankum. And now there’s hills! — Ian Parish (@iparish) August 7, 2015
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.
Nachtmahtr
Rotersand
Rotersand
Assemblage 23
Rob Zombie
Private Pact
Schwarzer Engel
Unzucht
Dope Stars Inc.
X-RX
Aesthetic Perfection
Frozen Plasma
The Other
Blut Engel (I think)
Spielbann
Coppellius (possibly)
Smiff and Tent
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.
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:
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 determine 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:
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.
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:
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.
I’ve been using the Garmin Vivofit since October 2014, that makes it roughly 8 months. These are some “badges” I have gained in my Garmin app on my phone.
It turns out I have moved more than 2 million steps which is quite impressive I think. Also, I get entered for the challenges automatically. It’s not something I do deliberately. Whether I win those challenges really depends on how many runs I get done that week.
This communication doesn’t really say a great deal, sorry!
The BBC are arseholes. The headline and photo ALL imply that plucking makes hair grow in humans. Here’s the first few paragraphs. With my emphasis.
Plucking hairs in a precise pattern can make even more pop up in their place, a US study suggests. Playing with the density of hair removed altered how serious an injury the body recognised and in turn how much hair regrew. The team managed to regenerate 1,300 hairs by plucking 200, in the study using mice reported in Cell journal. Experts said it was “really nice science” but were uncertain if it could lead to a cure for human baldness. Half of men have male-pattern baldness by the age of 50. The team at the University of Southern California were investigating how hair follicles communicate with each other to decide on the scale of repair job needed.
So, with only a single reference to the fact that the study was in MICE and lots of human type text and a picture this article screams that plucking in humans will cause hair growth.
Ok, so it happens in mice. So fucking what. When they can show it works in humans I may interested in knowing about it. Not for myself although I am mostly bald, I’d rather have less hair.
This is extremely poor reporting. There is no need for this article. It is a waste of time.
The show looked brilliant. The mix of miniatures and CGI was perfect. For a great example of where this works well you could see Moon. For examples of where just CGI doesn’t work see Star Wars Episodes 1-3. The whole look was organic, more natural than pure CGI.
I have no idea of which Tracy brother is which. I just can’t do similar faces and names. I will probably end up knowing them by colour. Quite clearly Kayo, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward and Parker were obvious. The others? No idea. My facial recognition fails me completely.
The vehicles looked and sounded brilliant. I had two “moments”. The first was when TB2 took off from Tracy Island and there were a couple of “boom” sounds that made me shiver. Then, and this is just brilliant, when TB1 flew there were condensation clouds behind shock waves that made my hairs stand on end. Yes, I am that much of a nerd.
Who cares if the story was over the top, that’s just what we want. Overall, this was a great piece of television. It is something I am really looking forward to sharing with my children The wait for something like this has been too long!
Nerd Stuff:
The animators have been very clever. They have given the humans a slightly shiny face in homage to the plastic models of the original series AND at the same time they have avoided falling into the UNCANNY VALLEY. Well done. Any more realistic and people would have felt an urge to throw up and turn off. Also, creating a smooth surface with certain reflective properties saves a ton of rendering time.
If you aren’t sure then think about why in Toy Story ALL the characters have plastic faces [rendering time] and then think about Monsters Inc, only one character has hair, why? Rendering time and computer power. I saw a documentary about Pixar where they essentially said that if they tried to re-create Cars using the computer power available when they made Toy Story the rendering would have taken around 2000 years. Computers are awesome.
[I had watched the Reggie Yates documentary called No Strings Attached, but I got bored. It was a modern documentary with reviews and reminders bracketing every advert break and that ruined it. Not worth watching.]
So, here’re some photos from the Disaster Area gig on the 20 March. Our set list, although small, was perfectly formed.
Detroit Rock City
Symphony of Destruction
The quality of these photos is terrible, mainly because they’ve come from the Disaster Area Facebook page. If you really want to see more head over to that stuff. As I’ve explained before: I don’t do Facebook.
I guess this is an historical type communication. I’m not entirely sure why I decided to write this but this site does have some odd pages, like this one and this one. The communication about my home network is incorrect now and one day I intend to update it.
I am a bit of a gadget fan. Although I would like to think that I evaluate whether something will add to my life and make it easier before I go ahead and buy something. The Apple Watch, for instance, or any other smart watch is not something that I am currently willing to invest in. I have looked at it, and decided that I am currently happy to stick with my watch and phone as separate devices. My phone is within easy reach and the watch tells me the time and date [if I remember to correct the date at the end of months where d<31]. I also spent quite a long time looking into wearable technology when my Up band died [again].
So, this communication is a list of televisions I have owned. The title really does say it all.
Pre-personal ownership:
<1982 black and white valve based TV, needed to be turned on 5 minutes before you wanted to watch it. Blood was black. Had to physically move and touch the TV to change channel. RF port only.
1982 – 1990 colour TV with remote control AND Ceefax! Probably a 21 inch machine 4:3.
1991-1992 lived in university halls, no need for television.
1992 -1994 bought a second hand TV for £50 from a second hand TV shop. Carried it down the North End Road to Winchendon Road. RF port only. No remote. Maybe 6 programmed channels. Mainly used for Megadrive games. Maybe 21″? 4:3
1994-1999 inherited a 21″ 4:3 colour newish TV. RF and SCART ports. Mainly used for Megadrive games.
1999-2006 bought a Sony 28″ widescreen 16:9 CRT from a TV shop in Brentwood. RF, SCART and S-Video inputs. Remote control. Quite heavy. Good sound but never used it as got into external amplifiers in 1997 or so. Loved this TV but before a year was up a single pixel died in the middle of the screen. I had a new CRT fitted but the alignment and colour mix was never quite correct after that. Used mostly for West Wing, Sony PlayStation and PS2.
2006-2013 Sony HD Ready TV. 40″ 16:9 screen. 720P. RF, SCART, S-Video and 1 HDMI. Mostly used for West Wing, PS3 and Gran Turismo. Lovely television, bought after seeing HD images on similar TV of the Royal Albert Hall. HD looked great, even if it was only 720.
2013 LG 1080P 3D Smart TV. 47″. It has speakers but I have no idea what they sound like as I currently have a 7.2 home cinema amplifier. This TV is used for streaming TV from BBC iPlayer and the Amazon video thing. You can play games on it but they are shit. Both the PS3 and PS4 are wired into this thing. Amusingly I rarely use the 3D effects because I don’t think 3D adds anything to the viewing experience.
So, there it is. The list. I’m not sure I get the 4k thing. Once the resolution is high enough your eye can’t differentiate a higher resolution. I think 4k content providers are also a long way away. Curved TVs – WHAT!!!!? How does a curved TV improve my experience? It reduces your viewing points and take sup more space, surely a backwards move.
I discovered this on Amazon recently. I used to watch this “back in the day”, or in other words in ancient history. This TV series by Hanna-Barbera is just right to show to my kids. There’s no real violence and it introduces mega-fauna and superheroes.
when reading through the reviews there’s plenty of scorn aimed at this series claiming the Godzilla never worked together with man, blah blah blah. Those should observe that Godzilla isn’t real and so anything can be written about it.
Firstly the spelling of the title of this communication is deliberately wrong, I’ve used the US American English version. Secondly, where is this going?
I like watching Hawaii Five-O. I like seeing the wonderful Hawaiian scenery. I also quite like the characters. I’ve been watching for five seasons now and I still enjoy it. OK, the technology is purely comical and the team can hack into any CCTV system and use facial recognition etc. The plots are far fetched and they have jumped the shark many, many times. In fact I think I have tweeted about that before.
Now I have a problem with this and many other films and TV series which include dubious science. Having this level of nonsense in the public domain creates an impression where some things are seen as essential or that they actually work. I do understand that 5-O is a TV show and that they must get their man. I honestly do get that. I also understand that a major plot device is that they aren’t the police but a “special taskforce” and so they can blow shit up without too much hassle. Much like Inspector Morse gave the impression that Oxford was full of murderers so 5-O gives the impression that violent crime is rampant in the USA’s 4th smallest state [by land area].
Another thing that this TV show pushes into the public perception of acceptability is torture. Suspects are often beaten and are left chained to a chair in a small room to consider their options. I am pretty sure that this helps permeate public perception that torture works. There are many films where the bad people are tortured and then the world is saved. This is all good for governments who indulge in poor unscientific behaviour. I would suggest you follow the links in these articles to see what I mean.
Ultimately, torture doesn’t work. It’s illegal. It won’t help you get the information you want. It makes you barbaric. For a good discussion about stopping terrorism then I suggest you listen to this episode of Freaknomics. I still watch 5-O. But at the same time I like to think that I can ignore the bullshit aspects of it and use the TV show as 45 minutes of escape and relaxation [apart from the bloody Halloween specials that they do I hate those shows].
Halloween specials in TV series are annoying. — Ian Parish (@iparish) February 12, 2015
While I’m on terrorism here’s why data-mining doesn’t work.
When I’m drafting communications I tend to write a title and then put a little bit of text in the body so I remember what it was I intended to say. I have no idea what this communication was going to be about and so this can only be labelled as random.
There’s a flag on the play.
I love that saying. It normally means that a great football play is about to come back because someone couldn’t keep their aggression in check in a game which is entirely about aggression.
With respect to previous communications I would have to say that I am still angry. Being completely without religion I don’t understand why people believe the things they do. I also don’t understand the people who back them up.
Let’s state quite clearly why so many media outlets and people do not show Mo cartoons or mention how crazy religion is. Because they are scared. No one wants to take responsibility for approving a cartoon and then having some crazed religious twats find their house and kill them. That seems fair to me. But then they don’t say that’s the reason. They waffle on about not causing “offense”. It’d be nice if publishers said what they really think. We are scared at being targeted and killed or maimed by the maniacs who believe they are doing god’s work.
Our religions are so contradictory that we suffer because of them. Islam is a religion of peace except for all the barbarity in the book. Christianity is a religion of love and peace except for women because they aren’t worthy and don’t forget all the barbarity in their book too. God is all loving except for all the people who sin and are going to BURN forever in hell. These ideas are fucking crazy. They make no sense.
Now, I don’t like the idea of a pope and I have little respect for anything he will say. Let’s remember that the Catholic church has SYSTEMATICALLY covered up child rape and refuses to pass information to the authorities. It has caused endless hardship and disease because of its stance on contraception. It has more money that it knows [recently discovered a ton of cash in a Swiss bank account]. But worst of all the Pope said something along the lines of “if you insult my mother expect a bash on the nose” while defending the Charlie Hebdo killings. FUCK YOU Pope. You’d expect a religion of peace and love to preach that all people should talk to each other. They should learn to forgive and spread love. Oh no, not the religion that hides abuses of children.
I’m not really sure that the apologists saying it’s not really Islam know what is going on either. Killing people just because they published some cartoons can only be motivated by the flawed thinking that religion promotes. Non-believers don’t go around killing in the name of non-belief. There are plenty of examples of Christians and Muslims killing in the name of their religion. Killing for their god. Killing because someone doesn’t believe the way they do. Killing because a book or someone sanctioned it. Can’t we all just be a little grown up about this?
Killing is bad.
Perhaps you should try discourse? Discuss why you feel so offended or upset about something. Oh yeah, you have sincerely held deeply religious beliefs and they can’t be scrutinised or questioned. Bollocks. All ideas can be questioned and scrutinised. They are ideas. Evidence needs to be presented and then a conclusion made.
You aren’t allowed to draw a picture of Mo. Why? Because a book says so. Except for all the previous pictures of Mo in your culture. Not being allowed to draw Mo is a recent thing. Remind why women have to be covered up? Oh, someone says so because otherwise men will be distracted and rape the women and that will be the woman’s fault. Grow the fuck up. Do something worthwhile, educate your people. Education will improve livelihoods and the economy. Education will help create a fairer society and improve living standards. But at the same time it will erode your power.
[still angry apparently and in need of a penguin on my shoulder telling me good things]
This is a belated communication as I saw Selma about five days ago. I normally write up a film quickly after seeing it but this time I was pretty busy on Sunday at the AST competition and so this has had to wait.
So, I rated this a 6/10. In reality it should have been an 8 but then you have to understand my scoring system which is explained here. This was a very good film covering some of the most important issues of the 20th century. It was well acted and well filmed. I would recommend that all go and see it.
Upon reading around the film it turns out that LBJ was more for equal rights than the film makes out. The claims are that the film is not a documentary. Hmm, I’m not sure. If you take something like the civil rights movement and want to make a film about it then I think you have to make it accurately.
While watching this film I was constantly reminded of my main life rule:
Do no harm
The extended version of this is that you can do what you want but make sure you cause no others any harm. This seems a perfectly good rule. It’s essentially the same as my mum’s saying:
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all
And also similar to the following quotation from the most excellent Tim Minchin:
Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will break my heart.
There was so much hate in this film from ignorant people who had grown up in a segregated society. The USA is still not mended from these issues. Go see it and then promise to do something good.
The following pricing strategy seems ridiculous to me. Normally it’s “better value” to buy the larger pack of waffles. The waffles are cheaper individually at 14 4/9 pence per waffle compared to 14 4/5 pence per waffle although I would argue that this difference isn’t worth worrying about.
With this price reduction regime the smaller pack of waffles is much better “value”. The small waffles come in at 10p each and the larger pack of waffles requires 11 1/9 of your hard earned pennies per waffle. This, to me, just doesn’t make any sense as a pricing regime.
You possibly thought this website couldn’t get more mundane but I would like to think that I have stooped lower than before!
Here’s a look at my flight simulation set up. There’s a decent screen for the PC, the 10.1″ tablet which displays a moving map image and the HOTAS system for controlling the machine. I am going through the process of setting up the programmable functions of the stick so that flying is efficient.
What do I do? Hard to explain. Last night I went from Sint Maartin to Anguilla and landed successfully. My current favourite plane is the Dassault Rafale.
I have to admit that I am still angry. The events of the last week have really annoyed me.
There’s all this hate in the world. Wouldn’t it be easier if we just followed the basic rule of “do no harm”. It’s not hard. It’s just three little words.
Now, I’ve an idea where we can start. Let’s have a look at the books where religious people get their morals and guidance.
“I will … smite Egypt with all my wonders.”
“God wants to be remembered forever for the mass murder of little children.”
“Kill … before the Lord and … sprinkle blood round about.”
“Both parties in adultery shall be executed.”
“God sends evil spirits that cause humans to deal treacherously with each other.”
“Beating your children will make them wise.”
“Jesus sits on a white cloud with a sharp sickle in his hand. When the angel tells him to reap, he kills all the people with his sickle”
“Christians and Jews (who believe in only part of the Scripture), will suffer in this life and go to hell in the next.”
“Allah will punish the disbelieving Jews until the Day of Resurrection.”
“Those who oppose Allah and His messenger will burn in the fire of hell.”
“Allah curses people by making them deaf and blind.”
“Disbelievers will be given a painful doom.”
So, if your book of guidance includes passages like those above don’t you think it’s time to stop using that book for your religion. It’s no good saying we only look at the good bits that are relevant to us today, it doesn’t work like that. You lend credence to the whole book. It doesn’t take much to turn bored angry teenagers and men into violent arseholes and it happens everywhere but you using this book [just the good bits] mean that all of the book can be used to proselytise.
If your book says crap like the verses above then it is time to change the fucking book.
The Russian headline is there above to show that even non-religious countries can be fucking stupid. What a crock of shit. It feels like there’s a storm coming with all these governments cracking down on human rights.
Now, there’s a 0.001% of all people who are very very nasty [I made that statistic up]. But what atheists don’t do is go around doing things in the name of their religion or a shitty holy book.
How about we change all religious and governing rules into the following:
