On a recent trip to Surrey I stopped off at Chobham services on the M25. You wouldn’t think I’d find much to comment on while having a quick wee break on a journey but “Oh My!”.
Every advert in the male toilets was for Shreddies and not the breakfast cereal.
Women Can’t Fart
Now, I will look at their website shortly and comment after but my initial reaction was:
WHY THE FUCK CAN’T WOMEN FART? WHO CARES?
My immediate next thought was:
We’ve had plenty of period shaming on women and now we shame them into smelling nice and pretty all the time and won’t allow them to perform normal bodily functions.
Well. I hope that the adverts in the ladies’ toilets were all for fart-pants for men, but i am unaware of those facts.
This advert is appalling. Women must remain clean and sweet and smell of roses for men. Women aren’t allowed to fart. Women should be beautiful for men. Farting is bad.
FUCK this company. I found this advert and all the other similar ones in the toilets sexist and shaming of humans for doing NORMAL human things.
Now, I’m off to look at the website and I’ll comment below.
So, they do men’s stuff too. Most of the web page is products aimed at men. It’s still disgusting.
“Fabulous idea, a great quality product with great styling, this could save many a marriage! A much needed product, fantastic innovation.”
I’m having a short phase of ignoring Twitter on my phone, or rather just ignoring my general account where I follow too many people. Strangely the news hasn’t been getting me down, although it should, but I feel that it’s time to use other things to distract me. Because of this I was looking at Google News and spotted the weather box.
Google News
How cool is it that you can set the temperature to Kelvin? I thought that was a nice touch. It’s something I can explain to people and give them the knowledge of Kelvin as a temperature scale.
Then there’s the BBC and they default to a decent scale of temperature:
BBC
This is clearly that the BBC knows the correct units to use. Finally I give you the Daily Mail:
Daily Fail
You can tell it’s the Daily Mail, partly by the insane length of the headline and the other reason is that they still use Fahrenheit as their measure of temperature. I’ve moaned about this before but the use of antiquated units is why this country CAN’T MOVE ON. It reinforces the idea that old people can have things the way they want. It continues to allow people to refuse to accept change. It is a deliberate attempt to force this country to stay in the past. The Daily Mail knows this. It is bullshit.
Celsius has been in use since 1995 in the UK because of alignment needed with the EU. There are some measurements which are allowed to be in Imperial units still and they are:
the mile, yard, foot and inch for road traffic signs, distance and speed measurement,
the imperial pint for the dispensing of draught beer and cider, and for the sale of milk in returnable containers,
the acre for land registration,
the troy ounce for transaction in precious metals.
These are almost acceptable. The implied cost of changing roads signs and the education to change to kilometres makes that something that is never going to happen. However, the pint, should go. All you have to do is order a large or small. Did you know that if you go to a pub and order a pint of lemonade you aren’t buying a pint? You’re buying the metric equivalent. There isn’t a good reason for this to have not changed but all you need is the image of that far right politician Nigel Farage with his pint to understand that the government was scared of those old people who go down the pub a lot and didn’t want to upset them. Not that the experience would have been any different to anyone visiting a pub.
Now, pubs are closing. They aren’t sustained by the changing use of society. They are losing money. There are campaigns to keep pubs open but these people don’t understand that society is changing. People don’t go down the pub anymore. Closing pubs might be sad but such is life.
I recently traveled to London for the day. I did plenty of walking along with a few train rides and underground journeys. Not going to say a huge amount about what I saw but here are some of the highlights:
HMS Belfast
National Gallery
Westwards
The Shard
The Tower and a pointy thing
There you are. Some of the classic sights of the city of London and Greater London and the City of Westminster.
It does seem that every year I end up driving all around the country and continent. This summer I drove to the Lake District for a few days of mountain walking. It is literally the other end of the country from me. If I travel about 50 miles from where I live I would be in France and my destination in the Lake District is about 25 miles from Scotland.
Then I drove to the middle of Germany. This means crossing the Channel, crossing France, Belgium, Netherlands and then half of Germany to pretty close to where the old border was with East Germany. This is about 400 miles as the crow flies. I have such a great time while there that the driving is perfectly worth it.
The only place not included this summer is a trip to Cornwall, another end of this country and maybe I need to correct that.
The total for these two trips, excluding driving around while there was 1658 miles or 2652km.
One of my favourite times of year is when I drive the 798km to Hildesheim in Germany. It takes about a day to get there and a further day to return, however, it is so incredibly worth it. Smith and I go there to spend the weekend camping in a tent city of 20,000 people to watch bands and be a part of the atmosphere.
Thursday was the day to leave Kent around lunchtime, drive the short distance to the magical train where you put cars on board and it drives you underneath the English Channel. Once we arrived in France we set about navigating our way to Bochum which is where we have a stop for the night. We travel through France, Belgium and the Netherlands to get to Germany and I will be really fucking pissed off if next year we have to pay for visas to get through those. Also, I suspect that the “leaving the UK” system will be a crock of shit. Fuck Brexit.
Friday morning we woke early and headed to Hildesheim. It’s another three hours or so of driving and we wanted to get there before the campsite opened to try and get a good spot to stay. We’d filled up with fuel back in Bochum so we should be good for the rest of the trip. Once in Hildesheim we followed the SatNav to the festival and managed to find the normal entrance to the car park. This year the fields were dry and we were much earlier than other times and so able to park reasonably close to the festival. We got some bits together and then joined the 400m long queue to enter the campsite. We had about an hour before the campsite opened but the queue was long already. It took ninety minutes to get into the old Army Air Corps base.
Mera Site
The Google Map star in the field is where I parked the car. We then walked due south and the campsite started at the runway. The grass area to the north of the runway is all campsite. The festival pretty much all takes place in between four hangers, where the red cross is marked.
The Friday was spent chilling, looking around the Middle Ages market and generally getting used to what’s around. We also had to do another run to the car to collect more equipment. Around 22:00 we headed to the disco hangar.
Daniel Graves DJ-ing
The disco was good fun. Daniel Graves of Aesthetic Perfection spent an hour at the mixing desk and it was good to see him doing this stuff.
Ok, this isn’t a gif. It’s a video clip but you can at least see the colours. pic.twitter.com/cD9Wyyl5rA
At some point that night we went back to the tent but I have no idea what time that might have been.
Saturday started with getting dressed up for the day. I recycled a costume from a couple of years ago. I was planning to wear the coloured mask that day but it was quite heavy and not easy to carry [except on my head]. If I was going to dance and mosh then I wanted a simple costume. Therefore I went for the human butcher look again.
The bands on that evening were Ministry and Prodigy, I expected both of these to be really good and possibly ones I would dance along to. So, the following is a list of the bands seen and what I thought:
Whispering Sons – hangar stage – Goth. Androgynous singer. Goth indie. Songs were ok.
Erdling – main stage – German rock. Pretty good.
Cephalgy – hangar – heavy dance but not fast. Ok. Blonde keyboardist. Singer had shirt tucked into his jeans. Not great crowd interaction. Songs slightly too long? Left after about 5 songs. My anticipation for The Prodigy is immense.
Merciful Nuns – main stage – samey songs, but goth. Goth shit.
Eisfabrik – hangar stage – dance. Snowman on stage. I guess someone has to corner the snow market? Didn’t really watch it, just saw them on the screens from outside the hangar.
Rabia Sorda – hangar stage – best so far. Good solid rock set.
Lord Of The Lost – main stage – pretty solid set. The band did well.
Ministry – main stage – by this time I was drunk, had been for a few hours, but I have to say that Ministry were pretty amazing. I saw them about 20 years ago at Brixton and this was just as good, if not better. Smith and I were in the mosh pit for quite a bit of the set. There’s a live steam video and we appear a number of times. Just look for the two people dressed in white next to each other.
In the video you can see me and Smith at 18:42 in the middle of the screen. Look for the white and me clapping.
Next band up were In Extremo but I have written no notes about them so I can’t comment. I don’t remember a huge amount about the rest of the day/
The final band were THE PRODIGY. I was very pumped to see them. They were on stage for about 90 minutes but I will admit that apart from knowing it was amazing I have very little recollection of the event. I don’t think there is any video either which is a shame because I would love to see what songs they played and possible see me in the mosh pit. All I can say is that at then end of the set I was drenched in sweat and absolutely knackered. Smith lost his phone. I know I had an amazing time. I just don’t remember much of it.
The Prodigy
Once the set was finished and Smith had used my phone to cancel his handset and we spent a short while looking over the ground it was time to head back to the tent [a 12 minute walk] and then shower the make up off. The showers were open all night so that wasn’t too much of a problem and to be fair the showers are pretty good. The biggest problem for me now was making sure I didn’t have a monster hangover, my hangovers are legendary.
Sunday morning was a little rough and eventually I got up, had an intake of caffeine and tablets, there was a headache there, brewing, waiting for the right opportunity to strike and limit me to slow movements and quiet. I struggled through trying to get ready for the day, which meant mostly painting Smith.
So, here is the run down of the day, after we had been to the Info Point to see if a phone had been handed in.
Massive Ego – hangar stage -goth with a reasonable heavy but slow beat. British band. Buns on his head. Some of the longer deeper sung notes were not good. We saw this singer hanging around the main arena later on and that’s pretty cool,
FabrikC – hangar stage – heavy fast dance. Singer talks too much. Really heavy sound. No real singing and lots of samples from movies.
Aesthetic Perfection – hangar stage – really impressive again. Joe Letz on drums.
Rotersand – hangar stage – bloody brilliant, as usual.
Atari Teenage Riot – hangar stage – first two songs were really poor but after that it turned into high energy industrial punk. Pretty good.
Front 242 – main stage – really good sound. Songs were solid but very 242
Eisbrecher – main stage – A very good set. Impressive show. I liked the snow on stage.
Considering the amount of alcohol I drank on Saturday along with being drunk before midday, sobering a little and then getting drunk again, the Sunday went remarkably well. I didn’t have a headache, I did drink lots of water, I didn’t have any alcohol this day.
I think the show finished around 22:00 and then there were showers to be had. Monday morning was all about packing up, getting everything to the car, Smith going to the police station and then driving the 798km home. This was easily the best M’era Luna so far. My suspicion is that although I am into EBM now, I have been a metal head for over thirty years and this M’era Luna was more of that than goth.
Just so you can see, here are two diagrams that show how much I moved over the two main days of the festival.
M’era Luna SaturdayM’era Luna Sunday
I am already thinking about costumes for next year and looking forward to it!
While the second day in the Lake District was spent wandering around Maryport on the Cumbrian coast I did learn a reasonable amount about the Romans in Britain. The weather while there was pretty poor with low visibility and often rain.
Maryport Harbour Wall
I visited the Roman museum there and I was going to visit the town’s museum about the sea and fishing but it’s one of those museums that only opens on even numbered days or something like that. There is, nearby, the only discovered remains of a Roman Milefortlet which was a fort placed every Roman mile along the coast to protect the country.
Roman Milefortlet 21
There was also the remains of a salt pan from medieval times.
Salt Pan
All fish and meat was preserved using salt and much of that salt came from pans like this where the water evaporated leaving the sea salt. This is much like the process used in Maldon. Later that day I drove back to the campsite via Buttermere and the wonderful cake and ice creams that are served there.
Maryport Boat
So, my last full day in the Lake District was going to be walking more fells. I decided to try and complete the Langdale Pikes. These are quite close together so once up at height it should be easy to get around. That is if the weather was clear. I started my walk later than normal because the weather was due to clear after midday [it was more like 15:00 but you know, they can’t get it correct all the time]. It’s also worth noting that the temperature at altitude is lower than that in the valleys. So, around 600m up the temp was around 12C rather than the 20C in the valley, along with wind this means clothing must be carried.
I took a route up from the New Dungeon Ghyll hotel up along Mark Gate towards Loft Crag. My first stop was at Thorn Crag, which is written on the map a little way off from where it is and I used a second app on my iPhone for working out where I was with more accuracy. Pretty much all the while I was at the top I was in cloud. This only abated after I had spent a little time at High Raise.
So, here’s the list of fells and pikes reached and where they figure in the Wainwright list:
Thorn Cragg [not on the list]
Loft Cragg [number 93 by height – 2270 ft]
Pike Of Stickle [number 83 by height – 2323 ft]
Harrison Stickle [number 71 by height – 2403 ft]
Pavey Ark [number 88 by height – 2288 ft]
Thunacar Knott [number 77 by height – 2351 ft]
High Raise [number 57 by height – 2500 ft]
Sergeant Man [number 69 by height – 2414 ft]
A couple of things stick in my mind; rock climbing up to the top of Pike Of Stickle which was fun but only because I missed the footpath by about three metres. The footpaths were not clear to me at the top an I did a lot of dead reckoning about taking bearings etc. The cloud didn’t help much either. Whenever there was a break in the weather I tried to look for footpaths and remember where they were going.
View From Pavey Ark
Eventually when I got back down the mountains it was much later than normal for me. I try to walk early in the day to give myself time in case things start going wrong but the weather forced me to walk at a particular time.
Finally I leave you with a picture of a Roman article. I mean, it’s a penis isn’t it?
This afternoon I traveled to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see The Meg. The tide was high and the Medway looked nice and pretty as I drove by various parts of it. I rated this film on IMDB and you should read about the scoring system in this communication. Here’s my tweet showing my score:
Well, what can I say about a film that is almost an exact remake of Jaws? It’s not exactly Jaws but it’s pretty close. Firstly, before I give spoilers about the film, I want to make a point about one of the adverts. It was for Facebook and it was trying to say that Facebook is sorry for the way they have allowed selling of data and fake news type things. They are trying to rebuild the trust in the company. Look, I don’t want to seem stupid, but Facebook makes its money from advertising and selling your data. If they full stopped your data being used then the company would have to find another income stream. Anyway, they say that they want Facebook to get back to doing what it was originally for. Keeping in touch with families and friends.
Except that’s not what Facebook was originally about. I mean it is for most users but Facebook started as an online way to rate the attractiveness of students at a university. Just saying.
So, the film? It was a pretty good fun film. There were, of course, many moments where I thought it was absolutely bollocks but those were easily ignored because the story was kinda OK.
So, the idea there is a thermal layer below which more species lurk is pretty fine, placing it so far down isn’t though. Ships and submersibles can’t get there. Also, there’s a massive issue with the nuclear submarine at the beginning being so far down, they can’t get there. Along with the idea that they were attacked above the thermal layer by a Megalodon which couldn’t get above the layer or the sub was below the layer but no-one at that point knew about the layer. That occurs in the first few minutes. But, let’s ignore that shall we?
When they track the Meg attacking boats they decide to go and investigate in their own boat. But they had a HELICOPTER on the research platform. Strange choice really.
Their ship can travel faster than a Meg through the water, this seems pretty poor. I love the fact that they had twenty minutes to get to a shallow area to trap the Meg and in those twenty minutes they managed to rig up many extra gadgets to try and kill the shark.
How come when they got to the shallow area it was really deep for the underwater shots?
How come you can see really far in water? Pretty sure you can’t.
Anyway, I still enjoyed it. Those you expect to die, do. Those you want to live, do. They all seem pretty happy at the end of the film even though there has been massive death and destruction. I guess we ignore all the pain.
Right at the end of the film they projected the French word for the end:
Fin
I laughed. I didn’t notice anyone else laughing. Oh well.
Just over a week ago I drove to the Lake District to spend some time camping and walking. My main objective was to escape the 30C heat in the South East and replace it with more normal 20C temperatures in the mountains, well, in the valleys anyway. I camped at Burns Farm camp site and it was well sited, within the peaks of Latrigg, Blencathra and Clough Head.
Burns Farm Campsite
In this picture you can see Latrigg and my tent highlighted with arrows.
That first night I drove up to the Under Skiddaw car park and walked the little way to the top of Latrigg. It’s nice to see the lakes from this angle and gaze down on Keswick. Then I drove into town and walked along the banks of Derwentwater. It is so easy to take gorgeous photos of this lake in the sunset.
Derwentwater
So, on the Sunday I got up and made coffee in my new cafetiere I bought solely for camping trips. The coffee was nice. The previous day I had checked out parking spots for my Sunday walk and I had decided to park at Thirlmere village hall car park where the parking was £2 for the day and the footpath I was planning to use started at that spot. When I got there on the Sunday though there was a notice up saying that the car park was being used for a private event for two days. So I headed 500m back and parked at Legburthwaite Car Park which turned out to be free!
I headed up the mountains via Stybeck Lane and then up towards Brown Crag. Brown Crag isn’t an official Wainwright Fell and so while pretty it doesn’t count towards my total.
From there I walked up towards Whiteside [number 84 by height 2317 ft]. From there it was a reasonably simple ridge walk to the following listed mountains, I used my walking poles for the first time and I found them useful for the open trekking rather than steep climbs.
Raise [number 12 by height 2889 ft]
Stybarrow Dodd [number 21 by height 2770 ft]
Watson’s Dodd [number 40 by height 2584 ft]
Great Dodd [number 19 by height 2807 ft]
Calfhow Pike – not on the Wainwright list
Clough Head [number 74 by height 2381 ft]
I wasn’t sure I was going to complete the last two peaks because there was a very long walk back to the car if I completed those. As it was I chose to do them anyway and the walk back hurt but was nice and fun.
The view from Clough Head was quite stunning.
View From Clough Head
There were two choices for the route down Clough Head, one along a very clear footpath [when seen in satellite view] and one down a steep scree path which is much steeper but shortens my walk back by some distance. After chatting with friends I chose the red scree path and it was fine. It was quite steep and thin but it was easily passable. In the picture above you can see a little of the bottom part of the path.
Once I got back to the car I drove the short distance to The Lodge In The Vale and had a lovely Persian cake with a cup of tea. It was very much deserved.
The next geographical amusing thing is Butts Green Garden Centre, again in Essex, although over to the east of the county, which is the weird part of the county.
So, as I named this communication, you’re welcome.
I’m currently working through the tests and track challenges on Gran Turismo. This is largely due to a corrupted save file that lost my 400 or so cars. So, I decided to start again. It amused me that one of my sector times was:
The Devil’s Coming
I was then amused even more when I was typing in “The Devil’s Coming” into the WordPress media file editor the following tweet appeared in my desktop side bar.
Well, with temperatures hitting 33C today it’s time to write some stuff about this. I mean it’s so hot I have adjusted my plans for the day to keep indoors as much as possible. The hot weather is lovely. There, I said it. I can’t remember feeling cold and I am wondering about all my cold weather clothes, but it is nice to finally have a proper summer.
It feels as though the last many years have had summers where the skies have been mostly grey. While it’s been warm, the cloudiness has detracted from the feel of a proper summer and the country has looked dull. This year, the weather has been blue skies and proper clouds. It’s been good. While I was alive in 1976 I don’t remember anything about that summer. I broke my arm and the plaster kept going soft. That is all I know, but I have zero direct memories. Having looked it up on Wikipedia that summer seemed vicious. Worse than the current one in terms of temperatures.
My main problem with this heat is social. People are going to die. There will be a bump in the total deaths because heat kills people. We know the grass is pretty brown at the moment but those human deaths will come. Whether there’ll be a big news thing about it I don’t know.
The biggest problem with this weather is it highlights the problem of anthropogenic global climate change. Humans are causing a massive change in the way the Earth’s weather systems work and it will quite likely cause wars. The current heatwave pretty much covers the entire northern hemisphere. Everywhere is having a massive issue with the heat. The 1976 heatwave was pretty localised. While weather does not equal climate we should be aware that these events seem to be coming far more prevalent than they were. most predictions tell us that the extreme weather events are becoming more common. So while those stupid fuckers in the right wing press keep saying this isn’t as bad as 1947 or 1976 they don’t seem to realise that isolated events are now more common.
In this country the winters are going to become more extreme along with the summers and it doesn’t really look like there’s a massive move to try and counter this. When we study the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere we can see that we are already past the point of no return. There will be utter damage to the climate. Humans have caused this. Humans have also known for about 50 years that we are causing this. There are heavy metal songs from the 1980s going on about climate change FFS.
Eventually these changes are going to cause a massive change to the way of life. Governments around the world should be preparing their populations for this. Everyone needs nudging in the correct direction. There needs to be less individual transport. Flying needs to be reduced. Consumption needs to be reduced. Power consumption needs to be reduced. It all needs to change. Everyone needs to understand that the things they take for granted and assume they are entitled to will be gone. The world needs to change.
I am not an optimist about any of this. I don’t think that any of the political systems currently in use around the world will do anything because of the way they work. I don’t think anyone is properly preparing for this. If I expect the worst then maybe I’ll feel very slightly less bad when the billion displaced people can’t find acceptance in any country once their land disappears below sea level. I mean we can’t even accept those refugees and asylum seekers currently displaced by the shit in the current world.
Hopefully I’ll be dead before the water wars start.
Selections from the transcripts of the International Court of Insurance Fraud, Filmstrasse, The Hague. Tidal conditions are irrelevant.
The Pearl
Judge R. Chester: State your name and occupation.
Will Sawyer: Will Sawyer, building safety investigator and licensor.
Judge R. Chester: Please tell the court a brief history of your experience.
Will Sawyer: I’m a military veteran and also SWAT team member, part of the Hostage Rescue Team. I got blown up. Lost my lower leg. My doctor fell in love with her patient but that’s not creepy at all because we are married now with twins.
Judge R Chester: Thank you. Can you please give us a run down of what happened from your point of view when the Pearl was consumed by fire.
Will Sawyer: I was employed by the owner of the building to inspect the fire and safety systems, my job was to approve the works and then the insurance company would agree to insure the Pearl.
Judge R Chester: Do you think that being paid by the building owner to approve his building is a conflict on interest?
Will Sawyer: Err, nope.
Judge R Chester: Shouldn’t this building have had insurance approved before breaking ground and then you would inspect as the construction evolved?
Will Sawyer: Err, maybe. But then we couldn’t have ripped off the story of the Nakatomi Tower.
Intermission.
Judge R Chester: Mr Sawyer, please tell us why this building was taken over by violent gangs.
Will Sawyer: The building project was blackmailed through threats of removing unionised workforce. The Pearl owner decided to pay off these criminals rather than inform the authorities and then managed to track the details of these payments through all the shitty money laundering countries. He then kept the names of these international criminals in a safe in the top of the Skyscraper. The crime bosses wanted those details removed. There are apparently copies of this file elsewhere but those aren’t explained.
Judge R Chester: How did the crime bosses intend to get the memory stick?
Will Sawyer: By setting the building on fire above the open floors it was intended to blackmail the building owner. He would hand over the names he had collected. Neglecting to mention the copies he had made.
Judge R Chester: So it didn’t really matter?
Will Sawyer: I guess not.
Judge R Chester: Let me get this right. The whole episode is moot as there were copies of the file elsewhere?
Will Sawyer: Yes.
Intermission.
Judge R Chester: Did the insurance company representative strike you as odd?
Will Sawyer: Yes, he did seem rather slimy and twisted. It was obvious he was a baddie. But, then he was in insurance and no-one likes them.
Intermission.
Judge R Chester: Was it necessary for the police to turn up at the park where you believed the ground crew were waiting with your blues and twos on?
Head Of Local Police: Yes, we always prefer to give warnings to criminals we are trying to sneak up on.
Intermission.
Judge R Chester: Did you not see the sports ground nearby within the area you were searching for the ground crew and also, how come you know so much about base jumping?
Head Of Local Police: Err, we needed an old industrial area to have a fire fight.
Intermission.
Judge R Chester: Mrs Sawyer, how come you can’t use an iPhone and what are you doing to make it stop working?
Sarah Sawyer: We’d prefer to watch Die Hard. It’s far more realistic.
I went for a swim after work today, it was nice to get out of the heat for a while and get my arms moving. However, I was a little perturbed by one of the posters in the cafe area of the gym. To be honest there are many gym-type posters that are disturbing showing body shapes and types that are not achievable by most. This does seem to be changing over time as the advertising world recognises that people are who they are and don’t really buy into the perfect body. Unless you watch Love Island.
Sports Injuries
So, on first inspection this poster seems pretty good. It’s for a sports injury clinic and that should be a good thing. A special place for all to go to ensure that those niggles get sorted out. But, let’s look a little closer at some of the treatments offered:
Osteopathy – not a fucking thing and doesn’t do anything. Read my previous, controversial, communication.
Sports Massage – could be OK, I don’t really know what it entails.
Therapeutic Massage – again, I’m not sure what this is and I should probably discuss this in a future communication. I’ll look into it. I doubt it’s anything good.
Aromatherapy – massage with nice smells. Doesn’t do anything.
Physiotherapy – probably the only legitimate treatment on this advert. Go see a physiotherapist for those sorts of things. Don’t see woo.
Nutritional Therapy – most likely bollocks. If you want diet advice see a DIETICIAN, they are a proper profession. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
Acupuncture – bollocks squared.
Look, the issue with this clinic is not that they offer some legitimate therapies the problem is that they also offer a load of bollocks and so you can’t assume they will be good at any part of their job. It’s the company you keep that defines who you are.
Don’t go here.
I’ve just had a look at the website for this clinic and it is a beauty. I will add it to my communication drafts with the hope that I one day complete writing about it.
Yesterday I sauntered over to the cinema. It is a large quiet room with air conditioning. It is a good place to visit during this heat. If only I could bunk off work to get there also! There are two films I’d be interested in, Skyscraper [which will be terrible] and Ocean’s 8 [which would be fun]. I noticed that many of the boats were up on mud flats and that means that the tide was quite low. When I went for a run 9 hours later the tide was still quite low so I must’ve missed high tide.
I rated this film on IMDB after watching it and I’m not sure about my rating this time. You should read this communication for an explanation of the grading system.
So, what about this film? It was good, but not good enough for a score of 8. I’m not sure what I thought. It left me very slightly cold. Perhaps that is more to do with my current mood and feeling with our politicians and global leaders who are arseholes. This film was a good Pixar movie. It had your classic baddie, although I’m not really sure what she was trying to achieve. I think I need to go and read some reviews by proper journalists so I can focus my thoughts.
When I got back from cadet camp a while ago I noticed, somehow, that my internet connection bandwidth had dropped quite considerably. I think I had to restart the modem/router for some reason and when I logged into it I noticed that it was getting a download bandwidth of only 20Mb/s. Now, I say only, because I was getting 60Mb/s before I went away.
I restarted the hub a few times but this didn’t increase the capacity and I also left it for 24 hours thinking it might pick itself up. It didn’t. So I contacted BT. The low upload bandwidth was noticeable when attempting to upload pictures to the cloud and the download was affect some streaming services, although 20Mb/s was still good enough for most things.
I tried to use an online tracking fault thing the BT have on their website but navigating it was pretty terrible. Eventually I chose to use the online chat. They performed the same tests that the website interface had performed and then they asked me if I wanted to raise a fault.
Yes please.
When I managed to log in to the fault tracker it registered a voice-fault. I found this curious as I had a data fault but because they travel down the same line it was a voice-fault. BT also do mobile and TV and stuff so maybe that’s another reason for their curious naming of the fault. But, I didn’t know that so I phoned BT and said it was a broadband fault. They explained the previous bit to me and then said the engineer [who is really a technician] had found three problems at the exchange and fixed them. I should head home and restart the modem/router.
Which I did and nervously anticipated the result.
Well, that seems a lot better. I checked it using some external speed testers, although it’s bandwidth and not speed.
I’m happy now. I have the broadband service that I pay for. It’s all fixed and the whole process was pretty simple. Well done BT.
I’ve just got back from a wonderful week away with the RAF Air Cadets at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire. It might not be in Bedfordshire but Bedford was the nearest largest town/city. It was a very busy week and lots got done. I had a great time and I’m pretty sure the cadets did too. We didn’t get any flying [in aircraft] but there was plenty of shooting and fun.
As is usual we arrived on the Saturday and got settled in. Then Sunday was a day at a country pursuits experience. We went to the English School Of Falconry quite close to the Cardington Hangars. There were planes from Old Warden flying around showing off including a Percival, Lysander, Hurricane and Spitfire.
Cleared For Landing
We all had a go at landing birds of prey and then some archery, air rifles and laser clay pigeon shooting. It was a baking day, really hot.
Monday was filled with some camp admin, getting the right forms delivered to the right people while the cadets visited the RAF’s Centre for Aviation Medicine. I found this particularly interesting as I’m currently reading a book about the development of the pressure suit and it has a lot of medicine development in it. The camp photo infront of the Hawker Hunter gate guardian and then a church service for the RAF100 Baton. I, somehow, didn’t make it to the service but I did get there just in time for another selfie with the baton. My first was at Amport House.
Later that day the cadets had a brief for a Rocketeers challenge they were going to take part in and then in the evening I ran a DCCT range over the other side of the Henlow base. We nearly got stuck in the base as they locked the gate at 21:30 and we finished at 21:25.
Tuesday we visited the RAF Museum at Hendon and in the evening the cadets watched the football match. I went for a run.
Sepecat Jaguar
Wednesday morning the RAF Outreach team came to run the cadets through a disaster response planning exercise. After that we headed to Twinwoods Adventure for indoor sky diving. Twinwoods was based on the old Royal Aeronautical Establishment site and actually used the vertical wind tunnel that was developed for investigating flat spin aerodynamics.
RAE Vertical Windtunnel
The skydiving experience was fantastic and I really enjoyed it. It was such a high to finish and contemplate the second flight.
I don’t think you can explain just what it’s like to do this. Such an exhilarating time. Wednesday evening I ran another DCCT range practice with the cadets doing the shoot to qualify for their “trained shot” badge.
Thursday was my big day. I had spent hours since arriving at Henlow preparing to run my first outdoor 25m 5.56 full bore range. For whatever reason the CC couldn’t do it and so it fell to me to run the thing. There were range orders to read and a RAM to write along with all the briefings etc. I planned the day so that cadets could qualify for their “marksman” badge. To give you an idea of what it’s like, imagine having six lanes of semi-automatic weapons and 900 rounds to be shot. Then put the rifles in the hands of teenagers. Now, we follow the safe system of operation but it is still an intimidating amount of responsibility.
The day went very smoothly and I was happy with the number of cadets who qualified for the marksman badge.
Thursday evening we dined out at a pub near the base, The Airman. The company was great and the food was ok. The next day one of the schools had to leave for a school event because normally we would hold this meal on the last night.
A Sexy Hangar
The hangars at Henlow were designed and built before the end of the first world war and they have a beautiful look about them.
Friday I judged the drill competition, went for a run and helped supervise the block clean up. In the evening we watched the Battle Of Britain on the large screen and essentially just chilled. It was a fantastic week and I am really looking forward to next year’s trip.
Having calculated [or rather tested] that my house uses 2kWh of energy per day when nearly everything is turned off I thought I ought to work out how far that would drive my car.
In this communication I wrote about the energy usage of my car, Bora Horza Gobuchul. I use 50kWh of energy for every 100km I drive, on average.
So, the energy I use to power my house; the fridge, a few clocks and the ADS-B receiver, would drive my car about 4km. That’s not quite enough to get me to work, but it would get me to the nearest supermarket.
Here’s a replay of a recent online race I took part in on Gran Tursimo. I qualified third and then managed to win.
It was a good race although nothing too strenuous. It’s best to qualify as high as possible because there’s normally a massive shunt-scene at the first corner if you are lower down. My general method for online racing is to try and steer clear of other cars and take a wider line in corners if there are cars around me. There have been many times that I have been driving well and then some wanker punts me off! He gets a slow down penalty of 4 seconds and I end up at the back of the field. I hate that!
A few weeks ago when I was in the Lake District I would occasionally look at 360Radar to see what was flying close by. I found it curious that there was quite a lack of aircraft flying compared to Kent, where I live normally. Now, the south east does have the three London main airports and most air traffic heading to the continent. Have a look at the two following views and decide for yourself. Both are the same area of land and they are taken within a minute of each other. I think the difference is striking.
Lake District Air TrafficKent Air Traffic
Of course, this communication could be entitled:
There’s a lot more planes where there’s a lot more airports
I recently had my electricity and gas meters upgraded to “smart” meters. They aren’t that smart. All they do is upload my meter reading to the utility company at regular intervals along with this information being displayed on a screen. I look at the screen now and then but I do think that eventually I will turn it off. I know roughly how much I spend each day and it’s not really a surprise.
May Energy kWh
This graph shows the energy use each day with the lower darker bar being electricity and the light blue being gas. I have a gas boiler for water and heating along with a gas hob. The oven is electric. This can be translated into costs [at current market rates]:
May Energy Costs
At the end of May I went away for a while and I normally try to shut-down most of the energy using devices in the house. The physical process can take about 5 minutes walking around the house making sure that everything is shut down in the correct order.
If you look at the last week of May you can see low and consistent energy costs. Although no gas was used in this time period the monetary costs is the standing charge that I pay for the privilege of having a gas supply.
Minimum Running
My daily energy use in a house that is mostly turned off is 2kWh. This accounts for the following items:
Fridge
Microwave clock
Oven clock
Modem / Router
ADS-B aircraft tracker in the loft
Alarm clock
That extension lead orange light
It is taking a while for my head to get around this bizarre and stupid unit the kWh. But here goes:
My house’s power usage at baseline is 83 Watts. A human during the normal day runs at about 100 Watts [as does a 100W incandescent light bulb]. Over the course of the day this ends up being 7.2 MJ. My house needs to consume about the same amount of food as a human to run at its lowest power consumption levels.
Wolfram Alpha has some lovely comparisons for energy usage, so 2 kWh is the same as:
≈ 1.7 × energy released by explosion of one kilogram of TNT ( 1 kilogram of TNT )
≈ 0.57 × average electrical energy required by an Apple iPhone 5 per year (≈ 1.3×10^7 J )
And my favourite is:
Relativistic mass m from E = mc^2: 80 ng (nanograms)
When I next go away it would be interesting to see how low I could get the consumption. To be fair, I could just turn the electricity off at the mains. But the only thing I could still power down is the ADS-B receiver and I like to keep that going because I can log into it from around the world.
