March 2014 – Fooyah

March 31 2014April 5 2014

British Summer Time

I don’t like change. I particularly don’t like changing the clocks. Some of my distaste for this biannual event is that it means I have to walk around my house adjusting various time displays and I also have to find the instructions for the cooker because I can never remember how to change the time on it. Why does my cooker need a clock? I also don’t like the day being asymmetric for around six months of the year. Finally, more daylight in the evening means more glare on my television [I need to buy some curtains but haven’t for ten years and so the likelihood of me getting around to it is quite low].

For around six months of the year we change the clocks so that we are in British Summer Time, what our American cousins would call Daylight Saving. I find this bizarre. I like how our clocks are aligned during the winter. When it is midday the sun is at its highest point in the sky and also due south. This makes an amazing amount of sense. I am aware that local midday is different across the UK and it depends how far east or west you are from the meridian but as a general measure it works well.

What I don’t like is the notion of midday during British Summer Time. The sun is not at its highest in the sky and won’t be for about an hour (depending on where you are). There is apparently an economic argument for having more daylight time later in the evening but I have yet to be convinced that it makes any difference. The “farmers need the light” argument is quite pathetic. Farmers would just get up earlier. I am not aware of any good reason to perform this ritual mess up of my routines.

Let me explain a couple of things.

The definition of noon is, first and formost, MIDDAY.

The definition of midday is the MIDDLE of the day. If our clocks say 12pm [12:00] then this should be the middle part of the day. If the sun is yet to rise to its highest point and we have more daylight hours after 12:00 than we had before the 12:00 BST is NOT midday. AM and PM both contain M which stands for meridian.

So, meridian refers to midday which refers to the middle of the day which, to me, is quite clearly the middle of the day when the sun is at its highest.

I could almost accept us changing to be in line with other European countries as we trade and work closely with them but unfortunately they are also wrong. France is either GMT+1 or GMT+2 and given that Paris lies on the meridian they clearly have no idea about how time works.

By the way, the National Physical Laboratory recommends the use of the 24 hour clock. I think I tend to use the 24 hour clock on this site more than I do am and pm. Apparently there is no convention to indicate whether midday is am or pm. I had thought that this was solved and that midday is pm but amazingly not.

If the NPL are telling us something we should listen.

I am quite aware that my bad feeling towards BST is mostly to do with my interpretation of the definitions and that other people might decide to define midday as the point when our clocks are halfway through the day rather than use the sun to define the halves of the day.

Just so you are aware the international time standard is UTC.

Universal Coordinated Time

Although UTC is synonymous with GMT and for all intents and purposes the same it is no longer a recognised standard. UTC is maintained by the scientific community and GMT is not. I used UTC as the time indicator on my tattoos.

March 30 2014April 5 2014

Five Finger Death Punch

I snuck into London last night to see Five Finger Death Punch at The Forum in Kentish Town. Curiously Kentish Town didn’t look as Kent-like as the name implies. Here’s a power station viewed from the fast train from Ebbsfleet to St Pancras [who was a Roman convert to Christianity and beheaded for his belief].

I had a pleasant walk from the London terminus to The Forum, about 40 minutes, and waited in The Assembly Rooms for Smith. Once he had arrived we chatted and ate. The queues to enter the auditorium were large, but gave us time to digest the contents of the flyers we were handed before discarding them in the traditional manner.

The first band on were called Pop Evil. They played ROCK. It was ok. Not to my current tastes but they were a good warm up band.

Then, on came Upon A Burning Body. A band from Texas. They played pretty good music although I couldn’t understand most of what the singer sang. This didn’t worry me, I don’t really do lyrics. Although I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this band again they were pretty good over all. I liked the suits they wore.

During their set all the lights stopped working and they carried on while lit from torches held by security and the guys in the “desk-in-the-middle”. The pit opened up in front of me and it was quite funny to see this close. Young men running in circles and generally pushing into each other. The atmosphere was one of comradeship as when someone fell down after being hit, they would be helped up by everybody. I saw a couple of rugby tackles and at some point it turned into a competition to see who would be the last man standing. Then, it went wrong. A short tubby man decided he was going to hit with his hands. He threw a punch and got warned to stop by most in and around the circle. He had gone too far. You don’t intentionally hit people in this small world of machismo. Then he threw another punch, caught a chap on the chin and stood gloating. About five guys rushed at him, pushing him to the floor and then two of them dragged the guy to the side and security. I didn’t see him again. As much as most people would look in horror at “the pit” it’s actually a safe place where, if you accept the rules, you will be looked after and everyone has the same needs.

Five Finger Death Punch burst onto the stage playing “Under and Over It”. There was energy and excitement. They played well and have a good stage presence. I was really impressed at Download last year and so was looking forward to this. They played songs. I don’t know the names of the songs. I just recognise them. I’m pretty sure my head is full up and can’t learn new song names. Also, the way I listen to music has changed. I no longer sit in my bedroom staring and the record sleeve, I play music while running, driving or working.

It was a solid gig. They played well. They played 3 ballads too many. I hate ballads. The atmosphere gets lost and the energy of the room fades during ballads. Also, as a rock child of the eighties, ballads were how bands promoted themselves. They had their place but are not necessary anymore.

The set finished at 22:30. This made the FFDP stage time about seventy minutes which was rather short. I was hoping to hear four more hard and heavy songs when the houselights went up. I was left feeling a little disappointed. They didn’t quite “bring the house down” in my opinion. A big problem for me was the singing of the chorus to Champagne Supernova by Oasis. I never liked Oasis. I think they wrote poor songs, sang badly and were hyped in a battle with a group of real intelligent people who could write songs. Don’t be a metal band and then play some Oasis. They were shit. It’s shit and it makes you shit.

March 30 2014March 30 2014

White Hart

The White Hart in Godstone is a place where I meet with a close friend, named Penguin, to put the world to rights, to try and figure out answers to the questions and to have old fashioned conversations without using the internet to find out the real answers.

We normally meet on an evening and arrive around 19:30 and are the last people to leave, barring the few employees still around. Our usual waitress is Caroline. On the times when I have been there at different times somehow Caroline is working! I went on a Sunday with Smith and family and Caroline was working there and today, Caroline was on shift and looked after us for the duration of her time working, she left before us!

Our conversations are rather Sorkin-like. Or, at least that’s what we like to think. We jump from topic to topic and sometimes never resolve the original problem or question. I had intended to write up a summary of our conversation but after meeting and chatting it was quite clear I would not be able to do this. Our topics changed so frequently and jumped back and forth that to produce an accurate representation would require recording the conversation and then categorising it while listening to about six hours of audio. I couldn’t write stuff as we were talking, it took my concentration away from the listening.

Here’s what I managed to grab from the first 10-15 minutes:

XKCD and XKCD prints
Waitress and whether we should eat outside
The hierarchy of conversations
Gran Turismo 6 and my note pad
Fingernail and the rock evening
Punctuation marks
Cameras
80s pop music and memory theories concentrating on facial recognition.

This does not include any matters that were discussed that shouldn’t appear in this particular format! To keep recording conversations for about 5 hours would be detrimental to the conversation. Maybe next time we should hire a stenographer?

These are the presents I received and I’m very happy with them too. In my opinion you can’t go wrong with Lego and a book explaining how to watch NFL is a good move.

We do allow ourselves a chance to correct or inform post-meeting. If one of us finds out something important or a correction then we SMS each other. I got a link to this graphing website after discussing The Newsroom and The West Wing [both Sorkin]. I also got some news about a couple of New Orleans Saints players who might be traded.

My time spent in Godstone is incredibly precious to me. It’s a chance to really nerd-out and discuss any issue without fear of what might be thought of me. I am very grateful for this.

March 29 2014

Lego 18 Model 75032

Many thanks to Penguin for this rather excellent Lego present that now gets placed in my cupboard of my things along with my Landspeeder [which was also a gift from Penguin] and DeLorean.

This model was constructed in the pleasant surrounds of the Beefeater in Godstone. It was a sunny day.

March 23 2014April 5 2014

Rain, Sunset and Fields

A Kent sunset:

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

March 23 2014December 28 2016

Lego 17 Model 76006

This is a Lego Marvel Super Heroes model that #1 son got recently.

March 23 2014March 25 2014

The Longest Day

This isn’t the longest day in terms of the hours of sunlight during a rotation of the Earth. However, this is being written reasonably close to the vernal equinox. Nor is the about the film The Longest Day. This probably isn’t really about my longest day, which was, in recent times, my first day in Rome last year.

This communication regards my involvement in Sports Relief Charity Day at MGS.

I set the alarms for 04:00 as I had promised to do some rowing on the ergs at 05:00. The MGS 24 Hour Row started at 10:55 on Thursday 20th March and was so scheduled to finish at 10:55 on Friday 21st March. When the sign up sheets had been up for a while there was a big area of dead time in the early morning so I said I would come in and help.

So I woke at 03:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. My neighbour was coughing lots and I could hear that. At 03:45 I got up and made a coffee. I got ready and then left for work. When I arrived at the Big Hall there were rowers asleep on collections of chairs. There was a space for rowing already free and so a bit before my allotted time I sat down to row until 05:40. At the end of my time I had rowed 11074m in 50 minutes. Not bad!

I hung around and did some marking and preparation and then once the Home Tech room was open I went and cooked a good old fashioned fry up for me and DM. We ate at around 07:40 and everything was washed up and tidy by 08:00.

Time to do some work. I went to register my form group. Then I had another 40 minute stint to complete as I had volunteered to do 09:00 to 09:40 as I had a free lesson. There was more of a crowd now and I concentrated more on my split time and aimed to keep that at around 2:10 /500m and my average split at that too. Nearing the end of this session I decided to row further than earlier this morning and so I managed 11120m in about 48 minutes. I was happy but very tired. I had to wash up and head to teach some mechanics.

I listened to my own music during my rowing excursions. The first time I listened to Combichrist’s “What the F^^K is Wrong With You People – Darkside” and the second time I listened to Combichrist’s “What the F^^K is Wrong With You People”. Very good music for working out.

This is the time lapse video for the event. You can see me do my first stint on Erg 2 [from the right] at 1:48. You might then see me in a bright blue top do some marking at about 1:56. My breakfast appears at 2:06, bright blue top on the right hand side. Then my second rowing stint is at 2:12, I am on Erg 1 [RHS] wearing a black top.

During break time I headed back to the Big Hall to see the end of the row-a-thon. There were four rowers active at the end and the atmosphere was really nice. Once the allotted time was up the total distance covered was just over 900km, which gets us from Maidstone to about halfway through Scotland to John O’ Groats. It was a splendid effort and a brilliant piece of community building work. Well done to all.

I had another two lessons before entering the MGS mile at lunchtime. I had booked an ICT suite for these lessons so that the pupils could do some independent learning, focussing on their weaknesses. It didn’t take long for the lunch hour to arrive and during those couple of hours my back was starting to feel rather dodgy.

Just under seven minutes was my time for the MGS mile according to my Up band. I’m not convinced I did it that quick because I didn’t feel as tired as I do when I try and do a fast mile on my usual runs. I will still claim a sub-seven-minute mile though. I know I could make that time. The lunch hour had been extended to a full hour and the mathematics department took full advantage of this to have a good meeting to discuss department business. As soon as I had completed my mile I jogged to the mathematics office to make sure I didn’t miss anything important during the meeting. It was a good gathering.

For my final lesson of the day I had a statistics class. They worked well on the past examination paper I set. Then, for me, it was off home to collect my children and clean up ready for the evening performances.

I am part of the MGS staff band and we are called Disaster Area [with apologies to Douglas Adams]. The evening of this day was dominated by the Rock Band evening at MGS where student bands play in front of parents and other pupils. As the staff band we get to go first and warm up the crowd. This time around we played “The Ace Of Spades” and “Highway To Hell”. I understand there are videos available on Facebook but as you should be aware I don’t do Facebook. About halfway through Highway I started to relax and really enjoyed the experience, especially as I sand some backing vocals in the song.

I came on about 20 minutes later to play bass guitar for a pupil band playing “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden. When I get footage of this I will link it from here. Playing this song was great fun and I hope I get the chance to play it again.

Finally my school day was over. I got home about 20:30 after bailing out on the rock evening. I should have stayed for longer with DM as he had been in school a since 05:00 but I wanted to try and get some sleep before my sons woke at 05:00 Saturday morning. This felt like the longest day. I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’ll keep you informed of more throughout the coming years.

Me, playing with Disaster Area at MGS:

March 19 2014March 19 2014

Racing Approach

I probably do it all wrong. I’ve no idea what other people do. It’s not what should be done in real life.

I recently started a line of communications looking at my progress through GT6. There’s a definite pattern to my play. I have made the following conclusions:

Try to get a steady lap time recorded to ensure I have an idea of:
- Control under braking
- Control under power
- How much under/oversteer
- Corner speed
- Gearing
Try to increase speed at the first few corners, normally coming off a lot.
Try to increase start speed.
Try to maximise corner speed on all corners, normally with one or two bogie corners.
Crash a lot.

This approach isn’t what should happen in the real world. No-one could afford to pay me to drive and crash as much as I do. If I was driving in real life I would need to have an innate understanding of where the limit of traction and how to improve speed around a track. I would also, I hope, have better reactions to control the car. To get such a deep understanding I would need to have been driving and undertaking purposeful practice for a long time. It’s no surprise that the world’s best racers in any of the top formats started racing and driving when they were young and so effectively know no different.

To learn to race a car as fast as possible would require a certain number of crashes and offs, but not as many as afforded me in the console game. There’s no danger to life in the game, I just press restart.

There are some of you who might be thinking that I need to change my approach and that you want to tell me I don’t do it the right way. To you I say, “maybe” and “I know”. It’s something to work on in the future.

March 18 2014

GT6 Birthday Present

If you sign into GT6 on or after your birthday you get a present. The car you receive is from the year you were born. I will remain grateful for the present but surely there were other cars released in 1972!