I nearly bought this album when I was in Melbourne, Australia. I think I was in a Blockbuster there and having a movie day because nearly three weeks on holiday was quite hard work. I’m not sure why I didn’t buy the CD but I ordered it when I got home. It’s a great album. A mix of Sabbath and Zeppelin. I really like it. They deserved to do well with this one.
Just Another List
I’ve always enjoyed playing computer/console type games. Ever since the classic Commodore 64 with Chuckie Egg and Manic Miner. So, here’s some of the recent games I am enjoying:
- Fortnite
- Minecraft
- Gran Turismo
- Minecraft Dungeons
- X-Plane
I tend to have quite a bit of imposter syndrome so I think if I was asked I would say that I’m not a gamer. But then I have nearly 800 hours on Minecraft so maybe I am.
My Tweets
There used to be a page here that had all my tweets from that micro-blogging site Twitter. In January 2023 I deleted my entire Twitter account. It was not a happy place to hang out and I decided that for my mental health it was time to leave. One thing that stopped me leaving twitter for a while was the fact that many of the communications on this site had embedded tweets and linked to twitter. Once I deleted my account it turned out that the embed code still kinda works and you can see the text of my old tweets, but you can’t access the actual look of them. I can live with that.
A Striking Day
I’ve been taking part in the teacher strikes recently. Interestingly the disruption would happen whether I went in to school or not. As the managers can’t tell who will be in school they can’t ensure the safety and supervision of the pupils, therefore they have to make decisions well in advance of the day about who is going to be in school attending lessons and who is being taught remotely by staff who aren’t striking. I could turn up to work on those strike days and get paid, but I’m known as one of the more “militant” members of staff and I don’t think politically it would be a good idea to threaten strike and then turn up. I put “militant” in quotes as I’m pretty sure that just means standing up for workers’ rights.
During the most recent strike day I took a trip to Dover Castle and then the Battle Of Britain Memorial, both of these are in a corner of Kent. Dover Castle is impressive and full of so much history from Roman lighthouses to Operation Dynamo planning rooms and beyond. The BoB memorial was poignant.
Trying To Get Fit [Again]
I’ve had a pretty rubbish time, health and fitness wise, since November so I’m trying my best to get back into running and also getting fitter. I need to lose some mass and the running will get easier if I do that. Currently I can’t run up the Downs and so that is my aim. To lose enough weight to make my fitness enough to run up the Downs and back down again. Today I ran the furthest I’ve done for ages. It felt good but it fucked me up – I ache and feel so tired!
I will keep going. This week has seen a bit of a turn around in motivation.
Still An Ongoing Mission
I’m still moving on with my around the world mission in X-Plane. In the last communication I was bombing around over Brazil having visited Antarctica. I’m still working my northwards at the moment to complete the east coast of the Americas. I do have some new kit on the flight sim – two desk extensions that hold the HOTAS system.
So, my last landing was in the Falkland Islands so we shall continue with the next airport visited:
Rio Gallegos International Airport, (RGL/SAWG), Argentina
Comandante Luis Piedrabuena Airport, Argentina
Santa Cruz Airport, Argentina
Puerto Deseado Airport, Argentina
Cañadon Seco Airport, Argentina
General Enrique Mosconi International Airport, Argentina
Almirante Marcos A. Zar Airport, Argentina
Antoine de Saint Exupéry Airport, Argentina
Comandante Espora Airport, Argentina
El Palomar Airport, Argentina
João Simões Lopes Neto International Airport, Brazil
Aeródromo de Belém Novo, Brazil
Diomício Freitas/Forquilhinha Airport, Brazil
Florianópolis-Hercílio Luz International Airport, Brazil
Costa Esmeralda Airport, Brazil
Joinville-Lauro Carneiro de Loyola Airport, Brazil
Curitiba-President Afonso Pena International Airport, Brazil
São Paulo/Guarulhos – Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport, Brazil
Jacarepaguá–Roberto Marinho Airport, Brazil
Rio de Janeiro/Galeão – Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport, Brazil
Joaquim de Azevedo Mancebo Airport, Brazil
Campos–Bartolomeu Lysandro Airport, Brazil
Guarapari Airport, Brazil
Eurico de Aguiar Salles Airport, Brazil
Una-Comandatuba Airport, Brazil
Val-de-Cans/Júlio Cezar Ribeiro International Airport, Brazil
Macapá-Alberto Alcolumbre International Airport, Brazil
Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Guyana
Piarco International Airport, Trinidad and Tobago
Maurice Bishop International Airport, Grenada
Canouan Airport, Canouan in St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Argyle International Airport, St Vincent
Hewanorra International Airport, St Lucia
Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport, Martinique
Douglas–Charles Airport, Dominica
John A. Osborne Airport, Montserrat
V. C. Bird International Airport, Antigua
Princess Juliana International Airport, St Martin
Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport, British Virgin Islands
Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, US Virgin Islands
So, not far to go now. Heading northwards and then I’ll curve over the Arctic to get back home. I’m looking forward to it.
It’s Been A While
I think I’m back. I’ve missed the diary part of this website and it’s time to utilise it again as a repository of my activities and thoughts.
In some ways the technical challenge of doing this has been fun along with frustrating. It turned out I felt useless not being able to check the things I’ve done or films I’ve seen. There’s a lot of effort gone into creating this site and a lot of words have been written. I want to be able to check my flying records wherever I am. I spent quite a while looking at getting my database exported to a word document but none of that was free. I thought about setting up more hosting accounts but that costs more than I am willing to spend in the current climate and so I recently decided it was time to utilise my NAS drive again.
I had used the NAS in the past for hosting but I never really got around the fact that my home IP address kept changing. It was a pain. Since then I have discovered a company that uses dynamic dns routing and can apply this to a domain name. Hence, this site should now work using the old addressing system. I’m currently working on cloud based back ups in case the NAS dies.
Current costs for this website are now around GBP30 a year compared to the over GBP100 I was paying. Mind you, I don’t have a security certificate so maybe that’s the next level of stuff to look at.
This Is The End
I think I am coming to the conclusion of this website experiment. Current feelings are that I will end this site. I will cancel my hosting service. It is reasonably likely I will also delete my twitter account. I think it’s time.
Why Don’t People Think?
So, this morning I had to drive a short distance which in everyday normal experience is only mildly frustrating. I’ve chilled quite a bit as a driver since I got the Prius and I would say I’m calm. However, today was not normal. There was a lot of snow over night and so the roads were covered in ice and snow. The car took about ten minutes to clear of snow and to make sure it was road worthy. I spent time making sure it was safe for me to drive. I tested the roads at the start of my journey, steering response and braking. This seems sensible to me.
As I drove home I could see other cars not really aware of safety or even other users on the road. Plenty of people were driving what I thought was too fast for the conditions. While they not have had a crash the issue is their ability to react to dangers and then being able to control the vehicle and be safe generally. I let this type of driver past me, who wants that kins of twat to hit you from behind?
Then there was the couple of cars covered in snow with only small viewing areas through the windscreen. These are the sort of people who should be banned from driving. Your whole car should be clear of snow and ice. You shouldn’t shed massive lumps of snow as you are going at speed. You should be able to see out of the whole windscreen and side windows. These people are a danger to others and that’s the thing that bothers me. I generally don’t care if you are a danger to yourself, what bothers me is if you could endanger others. /rant.
Don’t Tell Anyone I’m Enjoying This
You know what? I shouldn’t be ashamed of enjoying this game. I think I’d thought poorly about it in the past but I needed to check my privilege. I shouldn’t be gatekeeping what proper gaming is or looks like. It’s not my place to do that. If you enjoy playing your games then go ahead and enjoy it. I’ve been playing Fortnite and I’m enjoying it. I’m also reasonably ok at it. I know my weak points and I’m going to work on those over the next few weeks to try and get a little better.
So, a week ago or so Epic were offering the chance to gain extra XP by playing some challenges within a website. I’m not sure what their motivation was but I enjoyed it. I had to get 25 eliminations in a day to get the XP. Somehow I got 44!
The next part of this is to get some colleagues from work and create a super-team for smashing all the competitions. This might take some time but would be so worth it.