The Cosmic Dead – Electrowerkz

Smith and I went out to find some noise. Our initial heading was to the World’s End pub in Camden and the Underworld venue where a Japanese band were playing a two hour concept album. Can you believe it, the place was full. We weren’t allowed in. That was a shame so we went in search of food and ended up at a terrible Chinese buffet place. It looked ok from the outside but Smith couldn’t find much food that he liked. I liked nearly all of it. After that we returned to the World’s End. The Underworld club night was due to start at 23:00 but the music looked a little popular and boring. They were going to play some Arctic Monkeys FFS.

So, we decided to walk to Electrowerkz in Angel. It was about a 40 minute walk. It’s alway nice to walk around London, it feels more organic and natural compared to hopping onto a tube train. I guess I should have been surprised at how many people we saw standing around in parks playing Pokemon.

Now, we knew there was an event on at Electrowerkz, we just didn’t know what sort of music it would be. The current music taste of DBL-MF is industrial electronic. Almost everything else doesn’t matter. But, as we walked down Torrens Street we could hear noise and it seemed good. GBP15 lighter after paying to get in and we went into the downstairs music room. The band playing were called Bad Guys.

 

So, as you can see, two double guitars, no bass player, a drummer and a singer. It was rock type stuff. It was tolerable although the vocals were shit. After they had finished we had some drinks and pondered the nature of the post-referendum country [we are fucked] and what the next band could possibly be like.

 

Pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs were on stage at 01:00. Two guitarists, bass player, drummer and singer [who also played a synth which I couldn’t hear]. They weren’t great. They were energetic and played well but it was screamy shouty music and it bored me.

The two bands that we saw were ok. Nothing great. Nothing special and not my current taste in music. It’s quite difficult to find aggrotech on a usual night out in London, Slimelight is almost the only club night and that’s fortnightly on a Saturday. The crowd was a metal crowd. People dressed in denim and dark t-shirts. It was like being in a house that you’ve just sold and are waiting to move to your new home. The furniture was normal and in the right places but your new home awaits and it’s more exciting and a fresher place to be. I much prefer and feel more at home with the “alternative” crowd who attend AC and Slimelight.

Thank goodness there are trains every hour from Victoria towards Gatwick. That meant we could get home. There’s something quite wonderful about walking through the capital early in the morning, it doesn’t ever sleep.

 

Added 12:09 18 July:

It struck me that this communication is titled “The Cosmic Dead”. Well, they were the band on at 02:30. We didn’t stay that long, we didn’t think it would be worth it. All of my gig communications have been titled the Headline band so this one did the same. I’ll do similar with Mesh when I see them because I’m really going to the gig to see Aesthetic Perfection.

New Wheels

Consider the state of these:

Tatty Trainers
Tatty Trainers

I thought it was time to change them. I think I’ve had them for about 2 years and so they have probably done around 1000 miles! So I bought some new trainers. These ones are nice and bouncy!

Shiny!
Shiny!

 

Let’s see how long these ones last!

Ghostbusters

I took a wander out to Rochester Cineworld cinema last night and watched Ghostbusters. I had to see it in 3D to get a convenient start time, I don’t like 3D I don’t think it adds anything to films and is very much a gimmick, a well-made film will be well-made whatever and doesn’t need 3D. Anyway, I rated this film on IMDB, please see this communication regarding my rating system.

So, this is quite a high rating from me. Essentially I really enjoyed the film. I thought it was well made and funny. The story was OK. I’d probably see this again if it appeared on TV, hence my rating of 8.

This was an enjoyable couple of hours. I’m not going to go into specific points or plot areas. Everyone surely knows the story. I will say that when I was walking towards the car and rating this on IMDB I saw that it had a terrible average “user” score. A score which was much lower than the “critics” metascore. This was quite strange as normally its the other way around. I wonder if loads of old people saw the film first and then rated the film, unable to remove the genius of the original film. Who knows.

For whatever reason I managed to spill some of my onions and tomato sauce from my hotdog onto my lap and so I spent most of the trailers and (shitty) adverts trying to clean my phone/lap/seat.

Addenda:

A chap at work said he didn’t think the film would be any good because the main characters were played by women. However he then claimed that he wasn’t being sexist. I explained that what he said was the absolute definition of being sexist!

I went to see the original Ghostbusters when it came out in 1742. I remember I really enjoyed it. I also bought “Ghostbusters” the single by Ray Parker Jr as well as the 12″ remixed version. The soundtrack to the film was the first album I ever bought and I can remember my mum saying to me that I had to be sure I wanted it as it was expensive and did I know I would like all the songs? Well, she was right about albums being expensive (probably about £2) but how was I meant to have listened to all the songs without owning the album yet? I bought it. I enjoyed it.

Independence Day: Resurgence

I went to Rochester Cineworld cinema to see Independence Day: Resurgence. I rated this film on IMDB, but as usual you should see this communication explaining my rating system.

It was shit. Terrible. Such a let down. Watch the original.

 

 

I’m not sure I even liked the original. It was out somewhere around the start of my career and I saw it three times in quick succession with different people each time. I think I knew it was terrible, but it was terrible well done. It was funny, improbable and looked good.

This latest film was terrible. Not funny. Poor. I got bored, moved around in my seat a lot and even planned my weekend in my head. Such a shame.

God Reaffirms His Commitment to the UK

Last night I had a few drinks at The Red Bull, a pub in my village. I say “my village” but really I mean the collection of dwellings in which I reside. The pub is nice, except it was expensive. I say “expensive” but I don’t really know, I don’t often drink in pubs although £8-50 for a wine and a bottle of beer seemed expensive.

Just as the sun was going down a very beautiful double bowed rainbow appeared in the east. It looked fantastic. I took some photos with my phone but they don’t really do it justice. I wish I’d had a better camera with me and time to play with the settings.

After a while it went weird. It looked as though the two rainbows had merged for form one large rainbow. I should point out it wasn’t raining and I couldn’t see any around so maybe it was cloud stuff or ice?

Covenant
Covenant

 

As I said, this picture doesn’t really do justice to it. The rainbow looked wonderful.

Closing In
Closing In

 

As for the west. It also looked truly wondrous.

Just Lovely
Just Lovely

The person I was with said that the rainbow was god’s covenant with Noah for the future of mankind. Well, that’s a nice little story. I’m not convinced he can do a great deal about the UK because we seem pretty much fucked.

I have seen that the titles for the last two posts seem a little like Daily Mail headlines and so I promise to change back to something more my style soon

For God’s Sake Man It’s Only A Weather App

I recently saw that the Met Office had a new weather app. I think it popped up on the front page of the app store. I was interested as I’m quite fussy about my weather apps. Once you get used to one and the information it gives you it’s quite hard to change. Much like buying a new wallet, which I have to do soon and it fills me with dread. By the way, I don’t like the term “app”, I’m not particularly fond of the term “application”, to me these are programs and always will be.

Here’s the front page of the new app:

The new app had embedded video forecasts from the Met Office – these are not needed, I’m too old to care for video forecasts. Also, video on a phone is antisocial and useless, I can get the same information without the noise and movement. I think this may be a generational thing. I don’t need sound and people to inform me something that I can see in a diagram or map. It could possibly be why I also don’t like the news that is broadcast into our homes all the time [hint: change channel, which I do].

 

Here’s another view of the new app:

I’m not sure I like the days across the top. I think that’s mostly because I the older app [which is still available] had the days going down the screen. The worst part of the new app is the weather alert screen. This screen used to be a map with colours over it.

This is a good weather warning map. It tells me what I need to know. The new app just has text to read. I can’t be bothered to read it. The text is broken down into regions. I can be even less bothered to find my region and then decode the words. Oddly, I do like listening to radio weather broadcasts so maybe I’m just weird here.

One last thing. The new app has done away with proper weather charts. These actually mean something to me and I like them. They give an overall impression of what is really going on in the weather. Here are some examples of good stuff:

Day by day and then lovely extra information if you need it. There’s a page that will give hour by hour predictions too.

Look at these maps. Aren’t they pretty and lovely. They let you know what’s going on. The new app doesn’t have this. Which is a shame. I do get the feeling that sometimes things are “improved” to include lots of new functions but the reality is that they just fuck them up.

CCF Camp WITT

I recently spent a lovely week at RAF Wittering [EGXT] with the MGS CCF RAF Section. We were there with cadets and staff from Malvern College who all turned out to be great people. In fact, their Officer Commanding had been on my OIC course.

Harrier Fun
Harrier Fun

Here’s a list of activities we got up to followed by a small photograph gallery which could have been bigger but sometimes there are restrictions on what we can photograph.

  • High ropes course and power fan
  • Archery
  • Air Experience Flying with No 5 AEF
  • WHST
  • Shooting with the L98A2
  • Drill and drill competition
  • Command Tasks
  • Visit to Marshalls Aerospace Company
  • Visit to the American Cemetery near Cambridge
  • 5131 BD Sqn visit
  • Fire Section visit [I might have been sprayed by a branch]
  • Harrier Heritage Centre visit
  • I did two runs
  • Ten pin bowling
  • Meal out in Stamford
  • Outreach team
  • Party minibus

This was a very enjoyable camp. Great fun. Some of the pictures below aren’t really level with the horizon, but I am not going to edit them. It’d take time I don’t really have.

My last photo is of a lovely elliptical bridge I saw in Leicester. Very pretty:

Elliptical Beauty
Elliptical Beauty