This particular Lego model is coincidence. It has nothing to do with the excursion yesterday. Surprisingly the shop at the Identities Exhibition had zero Legos!
Star Wars Identities
In part of the O2 arena complex there is an exhibition at the moment entitled Star Wars Identities. I went to see it today. The Millenium Dome as people my age remember it, the white elephant of bullshit that cost nearly a BILLION pounds for a year’s worth of exhibition about stuff at the turn of the millennium [although they got the wrong year, it should have been 2001 obviously]. I went to the dome in 2000 and it was shit. Then it lay empty as far as I know and at some point O2 coughed up money and it seems to be a half decent venue. I’ve not seen a band there but I have seen tennis and it was OK for that. The outer part of the arena seems to consist solely of places to buy food.
The exhibition was a little underwhelming. I knew there were going to be outfits, models and robots but I didn’t realise just how much “identity” was going to be in it. It was very nice to see the stuff from the films and I really enjoyed that but I’m not a fan enough to want to see developmental sketches and stuff like that. Just show me the real stuff.
The opening video section was about how Anakin and Luke were both heroes. How the choices they made changed them. And then there was more stuff but I had stopped listening. I just wasn’t interested in trying to shoehorn a reason for this exhibition into the exhibition. It wasn’t necessary. This sort of thing would have been good just by itself.
The best bit was being given a wrist RFID thing that meant I could create my own Star Wars character as I went around. By answering questions and making choices about my fictional life I would end up with a character.
I chose to be a wookie. There were nine other question stations and in the final hall area I could see the chosen character on the wall. I also got an emailed version which will appear below.
There was an expensive lot of tat being sold in the regulation shop at the end of the exhibition. I bought a few things including these glasses.
So, here is my character:
Here is my biography:
I was raised on the gas planet Bespin, where members of my community made their living working as engineers in Cloud City’s reactor core. On holidays my friends and I would traditionally relax in the luxurious floating spas.
My parents raised me with a mix of independence and support, and I inherited my natural abilities from them. Later on I spent some time with the wise Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose guidance left me with knowledge I still use every day in my job as a fighter pilot.
I remember this one time when I crash-landed on a strange planet. I didn’t let this affect me too much, though; instead I became a successful trader of scrap metal and found a home among the Jawas.
People often tell me I’m a generally organised and prepared person, I also tend to be adventurous and curious. But the most important thing to me is universalism: after all, as they say, equal rights for all and special privileges for none.
I have only a low sensitivity to the Force, but the Emperor saw potential in me. When he offered me limitless power in exchange for my allegiance, I fought the urge to join him and his evil minions and rejected his offer.
Overall it was expensive for what it was, although I expected that. I remember seeing a Lord Of The Rings exhibition at the Science Museum years ago and that was great. I’m glad I went as I love the photo I took of the Tusken Raider and the view from the cable car.
I also took a trip over the Thames in the cable cars sponsored by Emirates.
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.
Compensation
Since getting rid of the Beast and buying a new car I have missed using a gear stick and doing things with my feet and left hand. I now have a hybrid car which has a stick I move into Drive position and then into Park position. That’s it. My left foot operates the manual parking brake. I really like the car. It’s comfy and drives really smooth. But I need my fix of gear stick work.
Fortunately I have a decent steering wheel for the PlayStation and I can use the gears on that. It’s not the same but it keeps the coordination going a little bit I guess.
Missing manual gears hence this #PS4share pic.twitter.com/7K5nKw87r2
— Ian Parish (@iparish) January 21, 2017
There are a few things to note. I have the gear stick set up on the right of the steering wheel to mimic racing cars.
I will say that without really thinking about it I was heel-and-toeing the game and doing it quite well while using the clutch and steering. I’ve been playing Drive Club and while the game play and feedback about handling isn’t as good as Gran Turismo it will have to do until the PS4 version of GT comes out, which given that they said 2016 is quite likely to be 2025 knowing Polyphony.
Gran Turismo Sport is now available for pre-sale in select markets! https://t.co/Y8MjDaJn08 pic.twitter.com/TRSxlmqypQ
— Gran Turismo (@thegranturismo) June 11, 2016
It’s possible that not coordinating feet and hands in a real car anymore means I am going to get better at it on this gaming device. I will still get to drive manual vehicles, most likely minibuses at work for taking people places. I feel slightly sorry for them as I remember how to use a clutch!
Lego 42 Model 76045
I think this is the last one of the Lego Season. This is a Batmobile and some baddies.
And here he is coming for you!
Lego 41 Model 60119
Another in the series of “Lego Season”. Here’s a Lego City Ferry. It’s a nice little model, though not that little.
It is well worth the build:
Lego 40 Model 75152
‘Tis the Season of Lego. Another model for you to peruse. This time it’s a Star Wars thing. I will admit that I am not boned up on Star Wars vehicles, perhaps I need some more Top Trumps cards. Most of my early knowledge of planes and vehicles came from Top Trump cards.
![Imperial Tank [or something]](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/20161226_114640368_iOS-e1482935880208-974x1024.jpg)
Lego 39 Model 60044
This is the second Lego season model made. It’s from the Lego City series which is one of my favourite. I like Space, Technic and Lego City the most. I do need to get in to the computer controlled stuff one day though.
The sides open and give an internal view of the command centre.
Can you spot the prisoner in the cell? [far right].
Check out the coffee machine and radar system:
Lego 38 Model 75116
Of course, it’s that Lego time of year. So, here is the first in a series of Lego models created.
It’s a Star Wars character. Today I would like a Princess Leia version, because sad shit has happened.
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).
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.
Weekend Musings
It was a weekend of many happenings. I usually try to keep weekend happenings to a minimum and then I can use all the spare time to see a film, exercise, mess around with technology of various forms and play the PlayStation.
This weekend was the end of my relationship with the Beast. But, it was also the start of my relationship with the Not-Beast, which has yet to be named.
There’re a lots of differences between a diesel turbo six speed manual and a petrol hybrid automatic! I will probably bore you with these over time so I won’t go into the detail here. My main current issue is that I don’t know how to hill start this car. Oh, and sometimes I forget to take the “handbrake” off because in this thing it’s a “parking brake” and operated by the left foot.
The new car isn’t named yet, but will be soon. Suggestions welcome to @iparish. This purchase does now mean that the only manual driving experience I will get is either the school minibuses [limited to 100kph] or my Playstation. I’ve upgrade to a six speed manual stick for the PS4. I had been pretty good at heel-and-toeing and matching engine revs to new gears when selected. Now I’m worried my left foot will whither away through lack of use in the new car.
I spent some time in Essex this weekend and I can never be sure if I feel like I am home or whether Kent is now my home. I’ve been down here mostly since 1996 and so while not all of my life it certainly consists of quite a bit of my life. I don’t think I identify as an Essex-boy any more, but I’m not sure I was to start with.
I had a very nice run along the A1060 while in Essex.
It was good until the last mile when my left knee decided it didn’t really want to run and all I could do was hobble along keeping that leg straight. While it continued to ache through the day it turns out that a day later the upper part of my right foot hurts a lot climbing stairs. It is quite possible that my body is starting to fall apart due to age and wear and tear.
While running I spent some time directly under the flight path for the approach to Stansted Airport and I have to say I stopped twice to watch the aircraft fly overhead. It’s a lovely sight. I’m not sure why I like planes but I do.
Since I got home I have learnt of an update to No Man’s Sky. I am looking forward to seeing what that is like. I really enjoy a good hour of time exploring planets. I’ve tweeted a few things from this game, it’s nicely relaxing [as long as you don’t die].
#PS4share pic.twitter.com/DpgzzRe1ms
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 22, 2016
So I am currently waiting to decide a new name for the car and enjoying the knowledge that I should get 70mpg, because, you know, the planet is fucked.
Obit – The Beast
There always comes a moment when it is time to retire a vehicle or sell it on. For me, it is time to retire The Beast. It’s a rather sad moment. The Passat and I have been a large number of places and I’ve had to spend quite a bit on surgery to keep it going safely.
While this technically wasn’t the first car I owned it was the first one I actually wanted to own. Before I needed to transport p>2 around I had always owned motorbikes. There was a temporary period in my life when I owned a Nissan Micra, this lasted about five months and I’d rather not talk about it.
The Beast arrived in my life in 2006. It already had 90,000 miles on the clock and I think it was used as a rep’s car. There were a couple of odd things about it where paint had been redone poorly and there was evidence that gave rise the to suspicion that it had had a small side impact at some point. Anyway, mechanically it was sound and had a nice “pull” to it.
See this communication for a discussion of repairs and general things Beast related.
The Beast has transported me to the following locations:
- Hildesheim, Germany (twice)
- Le Mans, Carrouge and the beaches of Normandy
- Bordeaux
- Liverpool
- The Kingdom of Fife
- Carlisle
- The Lake District (four times)
- Lincolnshire
- The Midlands
- Cornwall
- The ‘Folks, Nor and Suf
- London town many times
- RAF Cranwell
It feels like a sad thing. Retiring this car. I’ve owned it for over ten years now. It’s seen me through many phases of my life. But it is now time to move on. To accept something newer.
I know I have a video from inside the Beast travelling around the Le Mans circuit in 2008. I will continue to look for it and post it below when I find it.
So after taking the total to 215,000 miles I will say: Sleep well, Beast.
Broadband Move
At some point this year I decided to change my broadband supplier. The main reason was to get a higher bandwidth and then, with this bandwidth for viewing moving picture content I could get rid of the dirty money I pay to Murdoch’s media empire.
Over the years I have watched less sport on TV and much less “normal” TV. I am pretty sure I can live without those things. I do still watch Formula 1 races but I either watch them live on C4 or there are always sites that aggregate the streaming content. So I took the step to get rid of Sky TV and broadband and move over to BT Broadband and Netflix along with the NFL GamePass.
The audio-visual entertainment is now mostly Freesat which I don’t really watch, Netflix, Amazon Prime or catch up TV services. There’s enough content on all of these that I don’t have to record anything on a HDD or similar. I don’t miss live TV and although people at work seem to like talking about it I am happy not knowing who managed to operate an oven correctly.
My broadband service has moved over to BT and my village has FTC (fibre to cabinet) which means I get much improved bandwidth but without the need for cables into my house. As I live in a small village it would never really be economical for a cable company to connect the place up. So my internet traffic travels down copper from the cabinet in the village. I am getting a pretty decent 50Mbs which is far better than the 5Mbs I was getting before.
It is now possible to stream music services to all the rooms in my house and also video to the PC and TV while at the same time play games on one of the consoles. This is great news. I no longer have devices buffer or cut out while I am doing stuff elsewhere. The PC used to max out the bandwidth when uploading files to OneDrive and I never quite figured out how to limit that. Films I download take 5 minutes instead of over an hour. It’s a rather grand new world I inhabit.
I also have no money directly leaving me and heading to the evil media corporations. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Dirty Digger has shares in many companies and I still use them, but for direct contributions he gets none. I don’t pay anything to Sky and I most definitely do not pay any money to his newspapers (scum of the Earth).
I am currently watching a few series on Netflix:
- Scorpion [terrible “spy” / “homeland” series]
- Archer [brilliant spy series]
- Black Mirror [brilliantly odd series]
I watch plenty of NFL and have seen all the Saints games so far. I do have to cope with american adverts but these are quite amusing and I can see how the ex-colony has dumbed down, although I see us heading that way very quickly at the moment.
I still have to finish Babylon 5.
I play the Playstation and I am so looking forward to the latest Gran Turismo version. I am quite disappointed that GT6 never really included all the features they said it would. I was hoping to record my own race tracks using an app on my phone, I guess I’ll just have to wait for that in a later full version of GT.
I am watching Haven on Amazon TV when I exercise on the erg.
I will NOT be watching the Grand Tour. Mostly because I don’t care for low key “acceptable” racism. I reached a point early on with Top Gear when I realised it was childish and silly. It coincided with a set piece on the “boys” camping in a caravan and setting it alight. So scripted, annoying and purile. I’ll give it a pass.
So, overall the broadband move went well. The new equipment / router is OK although I had to re-route the power cable for it. All the wired and wired connections seem to be generally OK. The router doesn’t seem to like me trying to set Static IPs for my devices so unless the device can request it, I let the DHCP do its job. I turned off the 5G channel as its range was quite restricted and a normal channel has enough bandwidth for the mobile devices in the house.
There are a few features of the router that are silly. Why do I want to control the lights on the front? What purpose does that serve? It’s just an extra layer of firmware that can go wrong. Every now and then the router blocks out the wireless devices for connecting. I first noticed this when my iPhone couldn’t join the network. This seemed strange and because the router claimed it was working fine I ended up resetting my iPhone wireless settings. This was not necessary as in the end I figured out it was something to do with the router. I don’t know what but turning off the wireless, rebooting the router and then turning the wireless back on seems to work.
I have a Raspberry Pi working away in the loft sending data to a Multilateration Client for aircraft ADSB signals. This is connected wirelessly and I also have a Dynamic DNS pointing to it. This way I can see what the Pi is recording and check the aircraft flying overhead. When the router needs to be reset the external IP is changed and the router automatically updates my DDNS, which is nice.
Overall, I am happy with the change. No Sky makes me feel superior. The series on Netflix aren’t really watched by others so that makes me feel more exclusive and the NFL is great in HD, streamed, on a big TV.
PSVR
On October the 13th the Playstation Virtual Reality headset was released and I had ordered a set. I wanted to experience an immersive game and be able to look around the world properly.
I was very excited although it took a little while to set this up as there was a new unit to be powered and cables. None of the cable work was onerous which was what a BBC report had suggested, in fact the BBC report was bollocks, very annoying. The reporter ended with the statement “I just wish it was wireless”. This in a device that needs power and two sets of HDMI cables for the screens. Anyway the experience was pretty good, the headset was comfortable and the headphones worked fine.
There was a mild sense of unease and sickness but I thought that would pass so I bought the game Drive Club VR. This downloaded and I was looking forward to driving around in the headset. I managed about 2 laps of a 3 lap race and the sickness hit me. Badly. I felt rough. Now this coincided with a bout of quite harsh cold so I decided to wait a couple of weeks and see how it affected me once I was better.
It was the same. I felt ill after about two laps. Now, I am quite susceptible to motion sickness; I don’t like ferries and aerobatics can make me incredibly ill but is always worth it. However, this time I knew I wouldn’t get any better at the PSVR and so I decided to get rid of it. There is no point me having this reasonably expensive piece of kit when I can use it minimally.
However, GT Sport will be released soon and my steering wheel set up isn’t PS4 compatible and so now I had some cash to buy a new wheel. There was only one to go for and that is the Logitech G29 with gear shift stick. It arrived today.
This took a short while to set up on the steering wheel system but was completed and then some GT6 played. The stick shift doesn’t work with GT6 but the flappy paddles were fine. There is quite a refined feel with this wheel.
I then connected it to the PS4 and played Drive Club and used the stick shift and clutch. That was good fun and I am looking forward to playing some more when my USB extension cable comes. The one connecting the wheel to the PS4 is a little short.
Lego 37 Model 42045
A full on F1 hydroplane with an inline 4 cylinder engine.
Lego 36 Model 60122
This is a lava splitting jewel finding machine, 60122:
Lego 35 Model 31029
The latest addition to the Lego box, 31029:
On Target
Just want to add a fooyah.net/wordpress communication to point out that this is a quality landing:
I did share this from the PS4 to my Twitter feed but the much bigger audience here deserves to see this neat not-crash as well.