Ian – Page 114 – Fooyah

September 18 2017September 18 2017

Genesis 1:3

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Well, given how fictional god is this is more about me asking for there to be light in my house and the lights turning on. Nothing particularly supernatural there. Just fucking science, baby.

My sister has an Amazon Alexa/Echo tower thing and it was actually quite fun to ask it questions and get answers [most of the time]. So, I bought a Google Home. It is a nifty little piece of kit. I don’t think it looks as good as Echo, the home is more organic whereas Echo is quite futuristic looking and flashy lights.

The voice control works really well. It’ll be better when Google becomes better at interpreting questions and answering them. The “tell me a joke” feature is amusing.

When I was in the south west I met with a friend and he has an LED light made by Phillips. I am not really one for lights in the house, I lived for years without any lampshades on my ceiling lights, but I like the tech involved in the Philips device. They don’t make the actual model my friend had but they make a similar one. I have a table lamp in the corner of the dining room that I use a lot. It provides just the right amount of light to the centre of the house. I thought I could replace this with a colour lamp. So, I investigated Hue lighting by Philips.

I initially bought a starter pack with E27 connectors on the two bulbs. The expensive bit is the bridge to the home network. There is no need for it to be as expensive as advertised so Philips have added a premium to that device. The individual Hue lights are a reasonable price as long as you want white. The colour devices are expensive, I think.

So, it turns out that most of my ceiling lights are bayonet connectors, not E27. I wasn’t sure where to put the new bulbs! I ended up putting them in the kitchen. So, I had to get some bayonet fixing LED bulbs for other areas of the house.

Now, the main lights in my house are voice or app controlled. The lights up the stairs and by the backdoor along with the bathroom light are still manual. There’s a fan attached to the bathroom light so that one probably can’t go wireless control and the others aren’t used much. I did get the colour lamp for the dining room.

The lamp can be any of the 16 million colours you can get with a 256 graduation of each LED. You can use the app to load a photograph and match the colours from that picture. It’s a good piece of kit. I also believe it can be used to match colours on a television to add mood lighting, but I don’t have a Philips TV and won’t be getting one.

The lights don’t have to be light controlled. The switches still work. If you turn the lights off [at the switch] and then on again the default position is On-100%. This means other people can still use your house if you need them to. They might feel silly talking to Google to get the lights on.

Oh, it did take over an hour to get Google Home to register the Hue Bridge. That was largely because the iOS app has a problem and it only really works via an Android device [this is forgivable given Android is Google]. I was using an online chat help window to figure out how to connect the two systems. The person on the other end of the line was helpful and patient. Especially as I had to download a new app on the Android tablet which, in normal circumstances is easy, but my Play Store had been not been working correctly for a few months. I had to roll back the Play Store software to then be able to download the Home app. This is what took the hour. Google Help were really good and everything is now connected.

It’s still odd asking someone to turn the lights on. I still forget now and then, espeically when leaving a room and I automatically physically turn the light off. Then I wonder why it’s not connected to the network when I get home!

I am looking forward to the some lights turning on automatically when I get home. I’m also looking forward to my parents being in my house and then lights turning on when I come back from the shop or wherever!

September 17 2017September 17 2017

Not Splatted For A While

I am currently working on the Raspberry Pi I have installed in the loft as a web server and aircraft spotter. It’s been a while since I mentioned it here. I thought I’d just chuck up some images.

This picture gives an idea of how many aircraft can be tracked at once. Be aware this was early on a Sunday morning.

This splat shows how far away aircraft are detected. Please note I am not where the blue dot is, that would be quite weird. The smallest locus is up to 9,999 ft, the green is 10,000 to 19,999 ft, the purple is the 20,000s and the red is above FL300.

September 16 2017

American Assassin

So, I went to the cinema to watch American Assassin. It was that or Mother and I plumped for stupid action. I rated this film on IMDB, as usual, and there’s a communication that deals with my rating system here.

I rated American Assassin (2017) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/jOZxbLJXqP

— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 16, 2017

This movie was a piece of fucking shit american macho bullshit.

I love the way all physicists can put a nuke together and that Turkish bad people drive landrovers. It was shit.

September 16 2017September 24 2017

Recent Running Routes

Sometime back I started using the Strava app on my phone as some friends were using it and they weren’t on Map My Run. The Strava app has the ability to use a photo taken as the main picture in the saved area rather than a map. I think it looks quite good and I have been trying to take a photograph whenever I am out running.

Here’s what it looks like shared to twitter:

Check out my run on Strava.https://t.co/nmtRAJoImU pic.twitter.com/Ojw23jbJZ3

— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 10, 2017

So, here’s a collection of photographs taken while out exercising.

September 11 2017October 13 2018

Bradford Impressions

Having spent a weekend in Bradford for the Infest music festival I also got time to wander around the city and soak up some of its heritage.

While driving from Keswick to Bradford via Kendal I passed a road direction sign saying:

Bradford
Bingley

This amused me no end as most of you will know the Bradford & Bingley was a building society that was taken over by a bank [I think]. I had not realised they were the names of places. This maybe due to their advertising being based on two bowler hatted characters called Bradford and Bingley.

This area of the UK is lesser explored by me. I spent a week near York but didn’t actually go into York so this was a chance to find out about a northern industrial town.

On Saturday morning we needed some liquid latex and so used Google maps to find a shop that would hopefully sell some. It was in a shopping centre. On the way we passed the town hall.

This was actually quite pretty and built using local stone as a lot of the city was. The drive into the university the day before had highlighted that this city, while once great, wasn’t that great and had suffered a lot of economic depression. There were many boarded up buildings and run down areas. The overall tide is turning though as new shopping centres pop up in the centre, but the long term economic benefit of these doesn’t seem useful to a town. They might make the locals think the centre is nice and it looks good but the vast majority of money spent there will leave the town and head to corporations elsewhere in the world. A thriving shopping centre is not the economic boon to a town I suspect locals think it is.

The Kirkgate Shopping centre looked like a 60s build. While walking there I think we went past five Greggs shops. I get it that they are quite cheap but I’m not sure that’s a good sign. The Joke Shop in the market area of the Kirkgate sold liquid latex along with cheap sex toys and bongs. A funny little shop with an odd clientele.

I had, in the previous week, been discussing “seaside” joke shops with Penguin and we wondered if there’re still places that sell joke fingers and snappy chewing gum. I was glad to have found this little shop.

After a nice breakfast we wandered back the University and music and escape.

The Sunday morning meant that I wanted to have breakfast and also see the Science and Media museum. It’s possibly even a “national” museum. Just Googled that and yes, it’s a “national” museum.

Firstly we went to the Cathedral to have a look and it was “churchy”. There were some historical aspects that were interesting but I wasn’t that bothered. Little Germany was close by and we wandered that and saw the mural dedicated to a band of socialists.

The Waterstones in Bradford is in the old exchange building and very grand. A lovely space and ideal for selling books where those hushed tones of a library abound.

Then the science and media museum. It was free and we wandered the history of photography which was pretty good and had a very lot of cameras. A lot of the older exhibits were reproductions, which I don’t like so much but, I understand why they are like that. We didn’t go into any of the temporary exhibitions and maybe that is where the value is in this museum but most of it was a bit boring and shit. As I explained previously that could be because all the museums I’ve been to before this are in this nation’s capital and large and big. I’ve also seen museums in Washington DC, maybe they aren’t representative. Overall I was disappointing by the museum there wasn’t a lot of science [none] and media was underwhelming.

Bradford seemed a little sad to me. A once majestic northern industrial town / city that has suffered and only now seems to be rejuvenating using shopping centres and little else. I hope it changes constructively, there’s a lot of glossing over the cracks when financial investment isn’t done correctly.

September 10 2017

It

This morning [just, it was an 11:50 showing] I went to the Rochester Cineworld Cinema down by the Medway’s edge. Earlier in the day I had run along a stretch of the tidal Medway and also the non-tidal part above Allington lock and then later I found myself parking alongside the river but on the western bank.

I went to see It and after the film I rated it on IMDB, you should see this communication as it deals with the ratings system.

I rated It (2017) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/qTaKZ3toCV

— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 10, 2017

Before the film started there were trailers for a weather disaster film called Geostorm. This looked absolutely terrible. The timing of the trailer with its gratuitous floods and storms was pretty poor given Harvey and Irma this month. Another trailer for a horror film was called Jigsaw and I couldn’t give less of a shit for watching it. I’m not a horror movie fan. Mostly because they don’t scare me, I just think they are stupid. Then there’s a film trailer with an interesting guilt start which I thought should be called “We should have gone to Vegas” but was really called The Ritual. That looked hilarious too. AND there was a trailer for a modern Flatliners!!!!!! Along with The Lost Boys, Flatliners is one of the seminal films of my teenage years, it scared me senseless! The new film looks just ok.

I’ve read the book a long time ago. I’m not sure I could tell you a great deal about it. Certain things stick in the memory but who knows? I also watched the original TV series with Tim Curry as Pennywise and remember it being good. I remember the adult characters but not a lot else.

This film turned out to be chapter one. You can’t do a Stephen King film in two hours. Especially It. Mazza and I once watched all of The Stand on video back in 1994/5 and that was a whole evening job, six hours I think. Good but long.

I recall the book being about the adults remembering the summer previously but I could be wrong about that. The overall set up was good. The film was good. Jump scares are boring. For a truly terrifying experience there needs to be a film with little incidental music. As it was so long ago that I read this story I don’t know how faithful it was to the book. It served memory well. Apart from the child orgy.

In the book there is def a thing where Beverly Marsh has sex with all the survivors of the experience. I think it happens in the barrens. It’s written in a very sensible way. This film version avoided that. Maybe the 1990 version did too!

I would be tempted, if I had the time, to go back and read the book or watch the last version of the film. The book is significantly more detailed. But then it would be.

September 10 2017May 1 2022

KMFDM – O2 Academy Islington

I’ve seen KMFDM twice before although by the date of this gig I should have seen them thrice! They were due to tour in June or July but postponed until Sept. They were playing at the O2 Academy in Islington. I saw them here once before and also at M’era Luna this year.

The O2 Islington is a twenty minute walk from Kings Cross, which is handy as that’s where my train gets to after leaving Kent. Yep, that is the wrong side of London for most of Kent, but it’s perfect for me. Most of the venues I go to are up in the NE of the city. After a drink at The Angel Wetherspoons with #3 and we went to the venue to find Lord Of The Lost playing.

To me, this almost felt like being at home. They are a very “German” rock band. I say that as someone who has experienced a lot of German rock over the last three years with time at the M’era Luna festival. I had seen them before although I wrote very little about them in this communication. They were very good. They looked like they were having fun and the music was crafted well along with sounding good. I particularly liked two songs: La Bomba, which I’m pretty sure was a samba, and I.D.G.A.F. which is obvious. Their interaction with the crowd was very good.

Both of those songs are on the above EP. Next band up were Inertia, whom I don’t think I’ve seen before.

I’ve just searched my website and I saw them play when they supported Ayria. It turns out I didn’t much like them then and I wasn’t impressed last night. My notes for this time say: slow plodding songs and few audience interactions, odd. I did take a photograph but a picture here isn’t warranted.

Headliners were KMFDM. They started with D.I.Y. and continued with ninety minutes of excellent heavy music. It was a really good set and thoroughly enjoyable.

Their guitarists were the chaps from Lord Of The Lost, which makes sense really. If your normal pickers aren’t around use those travelling with you. There wasn’t a huge amount of crowd interaction by the main two but the guitarists made up for that. Having seen them at M’era Luna this year it was clear that all the chatting to the audience back then was them try to cover the technical issues that surrounded that gig.

After the first song the main man actually smiled and showed emotion. This was a little surprise! It was nice to see that one of the guitarists [the main singer from Lord Of The Lost] was wearing a Combichrist t-shirt, a good endorsement.

It was really enjoyable and a solid professional set, as you’d expect.

AS a side note I’ve decided I might start wearing some ear defence to gigs. It’s just a thought at the moment. I’ll have to ponder it over the next year or so.

September 6 2017October 13 2018

Hybrid Theory

The second half of my summer break was spent wandering the Lake District and attending the Infest music festival in Bradford. I had a very good time and did a lot of driving. I am quite convinced that my wheel balance is out very slightly for speeds above 70 miles per hour, there’s a fine vibration there but it’s not that often you can go faster than that here in the south east of this country.

I wasn’t deliberately keeping an eye on my fuel consumption as life is too short to worry about that. Life might be considerably shorter in future due to excessive fuel use but owning Bora Horza Gobuchul gives me a slight advantage in the smugness over non-hybrid drivers.

This image shows that over this trip I did just over a thousand miles and returned a fuel consumption of 59 miles per gallon. That’s not bad. It’s a shame Bora Horza Gobuchul doesn’t report in litres per 100km which I think I prefer, but goodness that won’t catch on, it’s waaaay too European.

September 5 2017October 13 2018

Summer Of Parking

This summer was not a good one for me attempting to park the car. It seems I’ve been a little unlucky or forgetful!

The first incident was caused by me largely not connecting the dots and being in a slight rush. I parked my car at work when I left for CCF Camp. When I did this the entire site was locked because it was being used by the Ramblin’ Man music festival in the park nearby. I managed to get into the car park and was going to park “out of the way” in my normal spot. I decided there and then that I really wanted some CCTV coverage of the car so I zoomed around and parked in the main part of the car park.

I thought little of this until the Tuesday. I was walking down to the Eden Project and I had a phone call asking if the spare keys were nearby. Could I get the car moved as it was blocking the route for a new water and electricity trench that the school needed to build. There was a few hours of consternation until I was eventually called and told that a car breakdown service had been instructed to move the car. I was relieved.

Bora Horza Gobuchul no longer blocked the path for the trench. I had been told about this work that was going to take place, but did not combine this fact with where I parked the car.

The next incident was parking at the M’era Luna festival. Along the journey we had received updates about the parking and rain situation and we arrived around midday to park. The queues into the car park were long and we wondered what the delay was. I followed the instructions given by the parking attendants and turned onto the field. Drive fast they said and don’t stop.

Well. That’s all very well for a manual non-hybrid car without and traction control electronics. I think we managed about 100 metres across the field before we became embedded in the mud. The car was not going anywhere.

We weren’t the only ones. There were many cars getting stuck including a BMW X5. Shortly after this the organisers closed the car park and managed to arrange alternative parking for the festival attendees. One of the attendants explained there would be a tractor when we wanted to leave. I was quite distressed because the car was beeping and flashing lights at me. There wasn’t anything I could do and so I turned the thing off. Andy did well to calm me, slowly my stress lowered and I managed to enjoy most of the weekend without panicking too much.

Before leaving the car park we found the emergency tow hook and I read the instructions about how to fit it and be towed. Mentally I prepared myself for the car to be broken and the steps we would have to go through to get home.

Sunrise Over Bora Horza Gobuchul – note the lack of surrounding cars

On the Monday morning, in quite a gorgeous setting, we flagged down the tractor man and he towed us out of the hole. I had to put the car into neutral which I rarely do but it all seemed to work well. As we neared the edge of the field the tractor chap unhooked us and said we had to drive the last three metres by ourselves. I’m not really sure why. I wanted a tow to the road so I had a proper surface to drive on.

I floored the accelerator and the car moved to the road. I shouted to Andy to get in and we left. A few miles up the road I removed the emergency tow hook. We headed to the UK. All seemed far better than I had expected!

The good news is that since I am now back at work the summer is officially over and I have had no more parking incidents. I even had quite a time in the Lake District and then Bradford and neither resulted in issues. My nerves have dissipated now.

September 4 2017October 13 2018

Infest 2017

After leaving the Lake District I drove down to Bradford. I had known about the Infest music festival for a few years but the bands in previous years had not been enough to draw me, also it’s in Bradford. Smith and I had accommodation booked in the university halls of residence and the festival itself was based in the student union. I arrived, got my keys, found my room and also found somewhere to park the car. Then I waited for Smith to get up from London and wandered the university to get my bearings.

There were three bands, the headliners, that I wanted to see:

Rotersand – I saw these at M’era Luna and they were bloody fantastic.
Die Krupps – I’ve seen these at M’era Luna too and they were very impressive.
Revolting Cocks – pioneers of the industrial sound and iconic and influential band [although arguably Die Krupps were more important in musical history].

On the Friday evening I watched:

They Call Him Zone – slow beat goth and boring.

Noyce – band with a violinist, indie style fast beats but with goth lyrics. One of the musicians was playing a saw in a song. Could be improved (!) if the violinist played a melody rather than just holding a chord note for each line.

Accessory – good fast industrial pop, very fucking good.

Rotersand – fucking awesome.

And . . .Friday night was done.

We hung around for a while chatting to a few people. The rooms in halls were pretty good although there wasn’t a basin. There were two shower/toilets for four people to share which I guess is OK. It reminded me of my time in student halls at Imperial. Mind you, that particular hall of residence is no more. Bradford halls were based on town houses with four levels, IC halls were a messed up design with spiral staircases which created interesting loyalties.

Saturday morning came and it was time to find food. We wandered Bradford, I was not impressed, and bought some needed liquid latex. Then we found a small cafe and had breakfast at the Smorgasboad Bar. Upon our return to Infest we got changed and I actually felt an unease at being different. I do not get this apprehension in Germany.

Saturday’s bands were:

Riotmiloo – shouty female singer, microphone didn’t work for quite a while.Started slow, got better as beat increased. Good finish.

Chemical Sweet Kid- French. Female keyboardist and male singer and guitarist. Good, upbeat songs. Quite enjoyable. Slightly formulaic songs. Good version of Paint It Black.

Empathy Test – left after two songs. See this review in this communication.

Wulfband – fast electro punk. Singing in German. Guitarist on but only played in last half of songs. Singer had a posed fight with someone during one song. Crazy. Best comment from the crowd:

“I don’t know what you are but I want more.”

Then we had food. My notes say the letter B but I can’t remember what that means!

End.user – DJ type stuff. Bullshit.

Finally to top the evening were Die Krupps – they were heavy and really good.

On Sunday morning we wandered around Bradford some more looking at the Cathedral, the Waterstones shop and Little Germany. I’ve just looked at the Google map of the city and it shocked the shit out of me as the University was on the wrong side of the centre. For some reason I had thought it was on the SE of the centre, I was wrong in my head and that explains what the sun was in the wrong place in the sky while I was there. This does happen at times, me being wrong, not the sun being in the wrong place. I should have studied the map a little more while I was in the city.

There’s a Science and Media museum in Bradford. We looked around it. While there was a good collection of cameras it was pretty shit for a museum. Very little science and not a great deal of media. This could be due to the fact that my local museums are all in the capital and generally pretty impressive.

So, Sunday’s bands and my thoughts follow:

Among The Echoes – standard guitar based rock with synth stuff over the top. Not good. Not bad. Quite routine.

Sidewalks and Skeletons – slow ambient DJ type stuff. Industrial noises. Not feeling it.

Vampyre Anvil – good, heavy industrial electronic. Two guys and computers. Distorted singing.

Juggernauts – Left for food after 10 mins. Belgians with shiny helmets. Not sure what was going on.

iVardensphere – upbeat. Heavy bass. Not the easiest to discriminate between all the sounds. Not sure it translates well to live. Still good but not quite same as album music. Drum solo! Really heavy song. Good variation.

Revolting Cocks – 38, No vocals for first half of song. Change of singers after Big Sexy Land. Last song Beers Steers and Queers. Then encore: If you think I’m sexy (not expected and quite disappointing).

I was somewhat underwhelmed by the Revolting Cocks but that’s probably normal for a band of such stature. I had enjoyed Rotersand and Die Krupps far more. However, it was good to see this seminal collection of people doing their stuff. They are quite influential although Die Krupps win the overall who influenced who competition having influenced many including Nitzer Ebb who then influenced the Cocks!

We both decided that the atmosphere on the Saturday was a little strange and I didn’t get as much of a party atmosphere as when I’m at M’era Luna. Attendance at this little festival of goths and freaks will depend on the acts they book, as it did this year.

At some point during the weekend we were sitting outside around a table. I was reading a news article on Babylonians and their understanding of trigonometry. I need some head space during the weekends otherwise I get over-loaded. I kinda shut down for a while and enter calmness. A young woman sitting opposite [looking a little smashed] asked me what was wrong with me and why wasn’t I happy. I explained I was fine. She asked again. Smith tried explaining that being quiet now and then was what I do, to reset myself. So, she asked again what was wrong with me. It was one of those situations that happen when you keep getting asked why you are in a mood, when you aren’t. The incessant questioning eventually puts you in a mood.

So, I explained to this woman that I had read a news article about how the Babylonians had possibly figured out trigonometry before Hipparchus and that an interpretation of one of their clay tablets could show a decent base sixty understanding of trigonometric tables. I explained I was a little phased as it wasn’t something I had expected.

Reply – there came none.