Ian – Page 164 – Fooyah

May 8 2014May 8 2014

It’s A Passat But Not Original

I like my car. It has enough power to be interesting and yet is also comfortable. It is rather family orientated as it’s an estate and full of old sweets and cake crumbs.

Just for fun, here’s a list of things that I’ve had changed on the car because bits broke [I am not listing things you would replace regularly]:

Boot door
Rear windscreen wiper motor
Front headlamp units
Rear light units
n/s wing mirror (x2)
n/s cv boot (x2)
both front springs (blame a pot hole)
both rear door locks
radiator
fuel injector on number 4 cylinder
Front VW badge

The boot currently contains two bikes, a bass guitar and some shopping bags. What else would you expect?

The wing mirror has some interesting stories [sorry, I wrote interesting, but I meant boring]. The first wing mirror replacement was needed after an incident on Christmas Eve of 2013. There had been storms the day before and various trees were knocked into Pilgrims Way near where I live. Someone had been along and cleared the trees from the road and made the journey passable. Unfortunately at one spot the tree trunk still stuck into the road by about 15cm and perfectly at wing mirror height. The first time I drove this road I noticed this and managed to avoid the tree. However, the next time I drove this way it was dark and my headlights were pretty poor [they’ve since been replaced]. As I came to the point where the tree was sticking out into the road there was a lorry driving towards me and I couldn’t move out to avoid the trunk [to be honest I had forgotten the trunk was sticking out]. I was driving the car in one direction and my wing mirror hit the truck which stubbornly refused to give way or move. My wing mirror was ripped off. A few days later as I drove past this spot I noticed a lot of wing mirrors in the hedgerow, probably in the order of 10s. There were quite a few cars in the village with their nearside mirror broken, I think that tree trunk claimed a number of kills for the week that it stuck into the road.

The next wing mirror I had to replace was because someone drove down the street too fast and clipped my mirror, it smashed the glass and the holding mechanism and so needed replacing again.

The front springs decided to die after I hit a pothole with the near side wheel and this broke the nearside front spring. I didn’t notice this at the time as the car was held up by the off side spring, although I did notice that the car was handling slightly strange. After about a day the off side spring broke on the way to work and for the last few kilometres I was driving without any suspension on the front. The car did not like the speed humps near my place of work and it didn’t like turning corners. It did look rather cool though as the front end was lowered by a few inches! A truck was called and the car got fixed [for a very tidy sum – from the garage’s point of view].

There are a few things I am expecting to need replacing over the next year or so [although I will get a newer car in 18 months so I am hoping that these bits last that time].

Driver’s door locking mechanism
Driver’s door window (it doesn’t work which makes getting car park tickets interesting)
n/s differential or front n/s bearing
Air intake trunking

Sometimes I hear a new rattle or noise from the car but I fix that by turning the stereo up a little bit more! That way my car is always working properly.

May 3 2014

My Favourite Birds

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 3 2014July 22 2014

Duxford 2014

Yesterday I should have accompanied some students on a flying experience trip as part of the cadets at work. We were driven to the base and had our safety briefing before we were told that the unit had just been told to ground their aircraft because of a pre-flight check list issue. We had to leave! No flying.

So, the next best thing is to go and look at a load of gorgeous aircraft. Fortunately, the Imperial War Museum at Duxford was on the way home. It is seriously worth a visit. I love it. My one criticism would be that there are so many aircraft in the display hangers that a good look or photo angle is quite rare!

Here are my best shots:

Looks like a JP but isn't — Looks like a JP but isn’t

Now, some of the planes here are not named, so if you know, drop me a line and I’ll change the details in the gallery above.

April 30 2014May 1 2014

Sack Race

I saw an advert last night while watching Warehouse 13. Rather, I was fast forwarding through the adverts and saw a clip of Mo Farah in a sack race. I have no idea what he was advertising I was just reminded of some cunning shenanigans of primary school sports day.

I was at primary school in the 70s and early 80s. This was in the days when:

There were 3 channels on television
TV only started at 4 in the afternoon
Telephones could only be used to phone people and were attached to the wall
My phone number was 3 digits long
The height of television cool was The Rockford Files
Wrestling wasn’t American
A space-hopper was the toy of choice
BMX was new
The bike of choice was the Chopper
You had to be home by dinner time
AIDS hadn’t happened
The people trying to kill us were from Ireland
I actually spent quite a lot of time scared of being killed in a nuclear war and I worried about the end of civilisation

Oops, that went quite heavy! Perhaps I’ll enlighten you another time with tales of growing up in the cold war.

Anyway, this communication is mostly about primary school. I can vaguely remember a few things from primary school. It was always sunny [confirmation bias], we would quite happily wear shorts for school, I had a giggling fit in the 3rd year after either Matthew or I farted.

Primary School sports day: I don’t remember being involved a great deal. I never really enjoyed playing or watching sports as a child and I think I probably did it because we had to. During sports lessons there was a small group of us who would wait behind in the changing rooms while the rest of the class went on to the field and then we would go to the playground and tell the teacher there that we had been sent to play basketball. I have no idea if our teacher was aware of this, if he was then he never said, perhaps it was worth it for us to not be in the football practice.

Finally we get to the point where I refer to the sack race. Every year we would have a sack race as part of the annual “embarrass those who are unfit or fat” day. The idea is that you climb into a potato sack and then jump as fast as you can along a 60 metre track. This is shown on the television advert. This is also a very inefficient way to travel, but I guess being good at it is useful if you are captured and kept in a sack.

The technique to win, which has always stuck with me, is to put your feet in the corners of the sack and then run as normally as you can. The first time I saw this I was amazed. It was a boy in the year above me called Jon Sheekey [spelling probably wrong]. He lived down the Chelmsford Road and also had part of a pencil lead stuck in his hand [the things you remember!]. Jon put his feet into the corners of the sack and then ran, he was a pretty fast runner anyway, and he won the race by about half the length of the track. Sheer genius!

April 27 2014

Recent Things

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

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

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

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

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

That Is All.

April 26 2014April 27 2014

Spider-Man 2

I had a bit of a Spider-Man marathon recently. On Friday evening I watched The Amazing Spider-Man on 3D Blu-Ray and I enjoyed it. I found the new actor far better than Tobey Maguire who just annoyed me. I rated this film an 8 on the understanding that I will probably watch it again (mainly with my sons). See this communication for an explanation of my rating system.

I mainly watched the first (new) film because I went to see the second film at the cinema. I, again, rated this new film an 8. I enjoyed it and this film goes to show how you make a good super-hero film.

I won’t give too much away except to say that I found it rather curious that every product within the film was made by Sony. Some people might be thinking that because Sony paid for this film it allows them to place products [it does].

I won’t go into the organ-destroying acceleration experienced by the people that Spider-Man saves by swinging and catching them, also the conservation of momentum law seems to have been forgotten. Mind you, the film is about a man who can walk up walls.

April 26 2014April 27 2014

Vantage Point

I had a good run yesterday [26 APR 14]. I decided to discover more of the North Downs and headed further to the north than I had previously. This run is shown below and includes all three of the Medway Valley villages.

Here’s the view (rather cloudy) of the valley from Wouldham Common.

This is the longest run I have ever done and I am quite proud of myself. I am going to try and do this route more.

April 26 2014April 26 2014

Circus

A short while ago I went to the circus! According to the information I was given it was the Circus Of France and they were based for a while at the Newnham Court shopping thing on the edge of Maidstone.

The tickets seemed expensive to me, although the last time I went to the circus was around 1991. The arena tent itself was pretty big and we were guided to some bench seats. I tried to take a photo but dropped my phone under the raised seating. I had to borrow someone else’s phone to use their camera flash to see below the seating and to find my phone, I could just reach it!

The acts we saw were all human, so animal lovers don’t have to worry about the living conditions. There was a juggler who came on in different costumes for three different acts, the high-wire artistes also did the trapeze at the end of the show, there was a climbing rope act and also a foot juggler (who was dull). The clowns provided reasonable entertainment for the scene changes although I would have liked to see a clown car fall apart in the ring.

The first ropes act included Spider-Man, which was an interesting piece of marketing, and also the anti-Spider-Man who was dressed in black. My sons loved this. During the interval there was the chance to have your photograph taken with Spiderman. We didn’t do this, but I can understand why the circus did this.

The knife throwing act was interesting. There was the typical man throwing the knives and a woman having knives thrown at (or not) her. The lady was tied to an upright spinning disc and the disc was set in motion. Before the man could throw a knife the axle broke and the woman and disc crashed to the floor, woman first and the mechanism on top of her. I have to say the staff reacted really quickly to this and the lady came back on stage shortly afterwards and completed the act.

The best part of the show was the trapeze act:

Leaving the circus there was some lovely blossom trees.

April 22 2014

Transcendence

I had expected worse. I think there are some films where the tag line needs to be:

Better than the trailer suggests

I think the best film I saw which was let down by a terrible trailer was the Road To Perdition.

Transcendence wasn’t the worst film I saw this weekend. It was a well made and glossy film and there was lots of stuff. The overall plot line was pretty good for the first half of the film and then it went bad. At lots of points I found myself thinking “what?”, “how” and “why?”. I just didn’t get it. I could write the plot flaws below, but I don’t often do spoilers. It would be best for you if you just watched The Lawnmower Man from the early 1990s.

I gave this a 4 on IMDB. See this communication for my rating system.