Vague – where should it go? – Page 9 – Fooyah

May 3 2014

My Favourite Birds

I have been lucky in my life to experience the company of two very gorgeous girls. I can remember seeing the Lockheed SR-71 fly at an airshow at USAF Mildenhall in the late 80s. The aircraft is just a wonderfully beautiful design and amazing technologically. It is a lovely aircraft.

Here’s the one on display at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford:

Here’s the one on display at the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles in Washington DC.

Here’s my other favourite bird, the Honda CBR1100XX Super Blackbird. Named after the aircraft and I am proud to have owned one of these for about six years and covered around 70,000 miles on it.

Just so you know, this bike was FAST. Top speed by Honda was 186mph. I never went that fast, because the took the wing mirrors off to make that speed. I might have managed somewhere more like 71.53 metres per second.

If I could I would own another Honda Blackbird. I really like the matt black with gold wheels version they issued. It’s a shame that the ‘bird is no longer in production.

April 27 2014

Recent Things

This is a boring communication listing a few things I have been organising on this website.

I have finally got around to sorting out WordTwit. This means that my website automatically posts tweets when I write a new communication. Each communication will send three tweets delayed by 5 hours because I have readers around the world. It will also tweet to both of my twitter accounts, which is nice.

I have also been adding some photographs to two main pages. There’s the page of photographs taken within Gran Turismo. This page is located here and is full of cars. I have also put some new photographs on the page with shots from my new camera.

I will shortly be updating my iTunes library online so that it reflects my current library. I have added a number of Hellektro albums and tunes to the collection.

If you’ve been following my tweets you’ll know that I don’t like my router at the moment. I am still working to fix that.

That Is All.

March 23 2014April 5 2014

Rain, Sunset and Fields

A Kent sunset:

A panorama. To be honest it looked much better than this!

March 5 2014March 24 2014

Water Ice

I find the water ice crystals on the roof of my car yesterday morning rather attractive.

This photograph isn’t a brilliant representation of what I saw, so, I shall try again to take a picture next time the car is covered in a beautiful blanket.

#nerd

February 13 2014

CopyTrans Manager

For quite a while I have found iTunes to be thoroughly frustrating. It has issues with my music collection, randomly adds songs I’ve deleted and doesn’t like updating the artwork on my albums. iTunes also takes an age to synchronise my phone and when it does it fails to update artwork, copy playlists or new songs across to my phone. It seems to be a pretty bad and bloated piece of software. I don’t use iTunes to back up my phone and rely on the cloud for that, which I am thankful for as iTunes probably wouldn’t cope very well with it.

I searched the internet thingy and found a free piece of software called CopyTrans which has a suite of iPhone utilities. I was rather hesitant about using it as it could really mess things up. Would it work with iTunes and my phone and help me do the following:

Edit my playlists on my phone without me having to add songs one at a time?
Update the artwork on my phone without me needing to delete the songs and then load them again?
Copy music onto my phone quickly and efficiently?
Actually read my phone database and allow me to edit it (kind of)?

I do still need iTunes but only to manage my playlists on the NAS drive as that is where my Sonos system reads the files. I guess I could use a completely different music manager but iTunes works well as long as I don’t connect my phone to the PC (which is kinda the point of the software).

I downloaded CopyTrans and started it up. The Manager part of the suite is free to use. I was quite wary of doing this. I love my music and have spent ages making sure I have the songs I want and the correct artwork. It’s quite a time investment.

“Connect Your Phone”

CopyTrans wanted my phone. I connected it and waited. CopyTrans read my database and a song list appeared on my computer. I tried to copy some new songs across to my phone.

IT WORKED

AND QUICKLY

I tried editing a playlist – easy. I even tried making sure my artwork was up-to-date (I had noticed two albums only had artwork on the first song), this was really easy and IT WORKED.

The online help files are really good. It all seems so easy.

CopyTrans you have made my life a lot easier and I am thankful. I hope millions read this and use your software, but unfortunately this website only gets ~270 hits a month. More people should use CopyTrans.

Confession – I have absolutely nothing to do with CopyTrans. I just think their software it worth a mention here.

January 18 2014

I Don’t Get It

About five years ago there used to be three or four burnt out cars by the footpaths surrounding my village. The were rusty and were old, plants had grown in them and I couldn’t see a track or pathway to get them there. At some point there was a clean up and the footpaths and surrounds were back to a more natural look.

This morning on my run up the Downs and down them again I found a freshly burnt out car. It was still smoking. I don’t understand why someone would do this. I really don’t. It’s not that I care for cars, I just don’t get why you drive a car to a relatively quiet spot and set light to it. Seems pretty shit to me.

Here’s the route I ran:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Here’s the car I found along Common Road at the top of the Downs.

Possibly a Vauxhall Corsa. I don’t really care.

January 17 2014February 13 2014

Lunch

Thanks to the 309 Twitter feed this is a picture of me from quite a while ago. I’m the twat in the hat.

A nice lunch on the cantilever many years ago! #30yearsof309 pic.twitter.com/R157u01GxW

— 309 Air Cadets (@309atc) January 17, 2014

January 2 2014

Bridges, I See Three

There are three bridges here over the river Medway. See if you can spot them.
They are:

M2 Eastbound

M2 Westbound

Channel Tunnel Rail Link [CTRL]

January 2 2014January 9 2014

Infrastructure – Home Network

In 2001 I first got internet access and a home PC. I think it was 2001, it was either then or 2002! It was dial-up access with a bandwidth of around 56Kb/s I first got broadband and wireless in about 2004 or so. Since then I would agree with the “new” hierarchy of needs with Wi-Fi at the base. I feel definitely lost when I don’t have internet access, especially when my phone has no data signal too.

This is a diagram of my home network. Just because I wanted to, you know? This is an hour of my life I won’t get back, but was worth it. Click for a PDF.

January 1 2014January 1 2014

Made Me Laugh

I was having a text conversation with my sister about my lack of mixer drinks for use with Jack Daniels. I tried to say that I’d go and buy some coke but I have fingers that are a bit bigger than my keyboard on the phone. Whoops!

I seriously laughed out loud in my house while alone for a good five minutes. It’s still a giggle when I think about it.

December 19 2013December 19 2013

Compromise

Here’s the thing. Where I work has some rooms with lovely views. Here’s the view from my normal classroom:

As you can see, the view from my classroom is dominated by mud. Mud and the sports hall. In terms of view, this room rather sucks. However, the selling points of the room are plentiful.

Cool in the summer
Cool in the winter
Nobody passes the room, there’s nowhere to go
Occasional wildlife, cats, squirrels, pigeons, dog
Quiet, there’s no where to go after my room and so I don’t get people walking by
Far away from anything else

This room is in the same building and actually has a positive altitude in opposition to my room. The view over Maidstone is lovely and should be worth the effort of changing rooms. However, there are downsides to this room:

Hot in the summer (faces east)
Hot in the winter (faces east and at top of building)
Too bright
People can walk past the room to go to other rooms
Sometimes the view is just more interesting than the classroom.

The compromise is that although I would love a good view from my work room I value the other good things about my room more.

November 23 2013November 23 2013

Views From My Run

On my run this morning I took some photographs because this area of Kent is lovely. It was nice and sunny, although cold. I run in the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Here’s my route:

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyRun

Here’re my photographs:

Kit’s Coty House – note the moon hanging around!

A road / footpath:

The North Downs taken half way up / down from the footpath from Burham to the Robin Hood pub:

A kind of triptych of the view just out of Burham on Church Street

West South West from Church Street — South West from Church Street

November 15 2013November 15 2013

The Last Time Was 17 Years Ago

It’s been a long time since I last wrote on a blackboard with chalk. I remember the second school on my teacher training programme had blackboards and especially in the small sixth form teaching room. I explained arithmetic and geometric progressions in there as my A Level teaching experience.

On Wednesday 13th November 2013 I also used chalk on a blackboard. It was a pleasant experience. I particularly like the contrast of the white text on a black background, it makes the writing stand out well [when I read in my Kindle app I have the setting that way around].

You might be able to see a little bit of white-roller-board in the picture and be wanting to ask why I didn’t use that? Well, it only makes up one third of the board and I didn’t want to have to erase my notes and it was dirty and creased. I’m rather fussy about white boards and how clean they should be kept. See this communication.

November 15 2013

Possibly Slightly Fussy

I could possibly be described as being slightly fussy. This may surprise you, dear reader, but then again I would think not. I’m a teacher of mathematics and I love science and the real world. Of course I’m going to be fussy and whimsical.

I am probably too fussy about white boards at work. The one in my main teaching room I keep as spotless as possible. I do not use permanent pens [you’d be surprised the number of times that does happen] and I always wipe the board using a circular motion with my hands.

If you wipe clean a white board using a side to side motion the ink gathers in small areas at the edge of the wipe, much like windscreen wipers. However, if you clean using a circular motion this does not happen.

There is a slight dent in my whiteboard in the bottom right of the picture. It irritates me slightly but I can’t do a lot about it! Also, if you look carefully you might be able to see my year 10 class doing a test!

November 14 2013November 15 2013

Just Wrong

Maps eh? This is the picture of a wall chart by Michelin (the French company but for their English cousins). It is a Van Der Grinten projection with changes made by Michelin. I’m not sure it’s ethical to change a map projection but they did.

This map makes Great Britain look the same size as France. The real multiplier is that France is 2.2 times the size of the UK, let alone GB.
Spain is really twice as big as Great Britain.
Although it’s not on this picture Kenya looks about the same size as GB but is in fact 2.4 times bigger.

What have Michelin done? They’ve made it appear that Great Britain is larger than it is really. Oh dear. Perhaps we should all watch the

Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail

episode of the West Wing. It will explain it all, I assure you.

By the way, the last time I saw this episode of the West Wing was summer 2013 in Keswick while I was visiting penguin.