Ian – Page 92 – Fooyah

December 12 2018

Not Live

A couple of years ago I chose to get rid of my Sky TV subscription and that felt good. No more of my money would be going to any Rupert Murdoch entity. Around that time I also bought a FreeSat decoder so that I could record live TV shows onto a hard drive. I don’t record that many TV shows and ultimately the box is largely used for steaming content to the television rather than used the TV itself, the Blu-Ray player, the PS4 or the Apple TV. It’s kinda ridiculous how many things that are connected to the TV.

About a week ago the FreeSat box was reporting that it wasn’t getting any satellite signal. That was a little weird but I think I just turned the box off and on again and it seemed fine. Then, over the weekend, it dropped the signal, only thought one cable was connected [there are two] and wouldn’t find any signal. Whether this was a problem with the box, cables, dish or LNB I have no idea. The dish has been up for longer than I have lived in this house. The LNB was new when I upgraded to Sky HD a long time ago and the cables snake their way around the house and get bumped around a lot because I moved the TV room from close to the dish to the other end of the house a long time ago. I’ve never had any problem with satellite signal before.

I pondered the time and effort and cost in trying to work out where the fault was. I could get a signal detector from eBay for about £20 and use this to see if the box is at fault. I could hook up the old Sky box and see if that was getting a signal. After that I would probably have to pay someone to come and check the cables and LNB. I thought about this and decided that actually I don’t watch any real live television. Over ninety percent of the content I watch is streamed or already recorded onto the HDD in the box. There isn’t a huge amount of live TV I’m interested in.

After a little thought I decided I’d just remove the FreeSat box and get a streaming device so that I didn’t have to use the PS4 all the time for watching moving pictures and sound on the TV. I did try the TV built in apps but they are quite old and while the TV is almost “smart” it’s not that smart and the performance might not be that good. Also, I don’t think the sound output would be brilliant via the ARC.

Having looked around the various streaming devices I could have bought an Amazon stick thing but I don’t want any Alexa stuff in the house. This abode is definitely a “Hey Google” home, I didn’t want to add even more confusion. I also wanted to be able to have a remote control with the device for other people to use. I didn’t want the device to be Google voice activated, I wanted a decent UI and control system.

These criteria essentially led me to the Roku stick. I don’t need 4K streaming and so the £25 device was suitable. Looking online it supports all the services that I use with the exception of NFL Gamepass and Eurosport. I’m happy to stick with Gamepass on the PS4 and Eurosport is only need for one weekend each year when the LMP1 cars are racing around their spiritual home.

Yesterday evening I removed the FreeSat box, although I had some wiring issues as I’d forgotten where the power cables went in AV corner and I did need to move all the devices around. There is very limited space in AV corner and you definitely need your aluminium foil hat going anywhere near there! The Roku device was easy to plug in and works really well. I’m impressed with it as the device is cheap, simple and works as expected. Maybe one day I’ll go 4K but this would require me to upgrade the PlayStation as well and I’m not ready for that level of investment.

Yesterday I managed to get all my services logged in and now I am set up. All of my viewing content is now delivered via the ADSL connection and I’m now slightly fearful for an internet outage. It is good to have a high bandwidth though. There is a slim possiblity that I will write about this again in the future to indicate how it’s going with no live connection. I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine without it but my parents might struggle when they visit [a very small concern].

December 11 2018December 16 2018

Costly Wonder

Within visible distance from my house, about a mile away over the fields, I can see looming lights and flashing brightness. I had thought it was set up for a weekend when a friend performed some music thing at the Monastery down the road. There’s an actual piece of St Simon Stock’s skull down there and I think it’s where they draw their power. Have a google for Aylesford Monastery if you want to find out more.

Next to the monastery at the moment is a large temporary theatre showing a pantomime once or twice a day for about a month. It turns out that the lights and glitz are connected to the pantomime and it’s meant to be a Winter Wonderland.

I went there. No, I’m going to sound like an untrustworthy snob and I probably am but I don’t really like the health and safety aspects of carnival rides that are routinely reduced to fit on the back of a truck and moved around the continent. I do not think that all the best possible safety aspects are adhered to.

The Winter Wonderland consisted of lots of rides, a few food stalls and ticket outlets. It’s one of those places where the workers aren’t trusted with money, like in a Roman nightclub, and you have to buy tickets at centralised locations and use those tickets to go on rides. Twenty five tickets would set you back the discounted price of GBP20 or it was GBP1 each.

A ride on the shittiest ride was three tickets. The dodgems were five tickets a car and to me that sounds expensive. I was thinking maybe GBP3 would be more reasonable but I now realise I’m old and grumpy and harking back to the old days when things were cheap. I don’t get out much and perhaps that explains why I thought everything was pretty expensive.

The ice skating seemed reasonable though. GBP10 for an adult ticket which lasted for the entirety of a three hour window. I managed an hour and forty five and so I think I got my money’s worth along with a hurt wrist after having to do an emergency stop into the barrier with my arm. There’s plenty to remind me I’m getting old. Aches and pains and a natural tendency to moan about how expensive things are!

December 8 2018

Ordination

On a bit of a whim I decided to get ordained in the Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I think this will allow to undertake certain duties within the Church. I really do feel as though I have been touched by His noodly appendage.

I’m looking forward to undertaking my new duties as part of this Church. I’ve owned a copy of the Gospel for a long time.

I’ve had a FSM on my car for a while because those stupid fish really annoy me. I’m not sure how many people understand the concept of the Church but maybe they should. I’m always amused when people say “but that’s not a real religion” and my response is “what’s a real religion and how do you know?”.

I haven’t yet decided to go full Pastafarian but I might. I probably need to ask someone to get me a metal colander as a gift though.

December 6 2018

Killers – Iron Maiden

There’s something about the raw power and sound in this album that has stayed in my core. Along with Iron Maiden, Killers has that kick in the teeth, it pushes you around and beats you up with its riffs and lyrics. I bloody love this album. My feelings for the first two albums often goes against the grain of general fandom. In my view Iron Maiden were good until the end of Seventh Son. After that they went shit. Or maybe I just grew out of them?

The Ides Of March – Borrowed from Samson and written by Bruce before he was part of Maiden. This opener gets you ready for the onslaught.

Wrathchild – rolling bass line with bouncy riffs. A great song.

Murders In The Rue Morgue – such a melody that I get shivers down the spine.

Another Life – You can imagine jumping around to this song in an East End pub in the early 80s. The riff change halfway through is ace.

Genghis Khan – This song pops with the main riff. What out for the speed change that doesn’t accelerate it just knocks you flat.

Innocent Exile – Another bouncy tune that keeps me jumping around the room.

Killers – Entirely about stalking someone and killing them. What do you expect from a band named after a medieval torture device?

Prodigal Son – Devil’s got hold of my soul. But with a ballad feel. Although it’s not a ballad.

Purgatory – high speed danger in this song. It races along daring you to join in.

Drifters – The symbol crashes on the off beat excite me in this song. Just one of those things. This song canters along with room for a breather at the end of each verse.

This whole album encapsulates a teenage yearning for power and respect. You can feel the angst in the writing and the production. It still excites me after over thirty years of listening. I bloody love it.

“Sanctuary” isn’t on this album and so probably wont’ get mentioned until “Live After Death”. That’s an “L” album and so won’t be too far away. As a clue I’ll let you know that “Live” is simply the best Maiden album.

December 5 2018December 5 2018

Old Memories

Being part of the cadets at work has given me some brilliant experiences and I absolutely love. I often feel like I’m just a big kid really, soaking in all the experiences and seeing some amazing things, some of which I’m not even allowed to talk about. When I went to Cyprus last year it was twenty nine years since I had last been and had those experiences. I went to Akrotiri in 1988. I went one better with a recent trip!

In 1986 October time just after I had been to my first annual camp at RAF Coltishall my squadron went to Crowborough Training Camp for a week of activities. I have a few distinct memories of being there. One evening we watched a scary movie, I think it was Alien, and we had to do this in the girls’ block as that was where the TV and VCR were. When we left it was foggy and we all ran down the hill to our billet as fast as we could.

I knew that one day we were meant to be going rock climbing and abseiling at High Rocks but it was raining and instead we went to watch Top Gun in the cinema at Brighton. We were full of that film for the rest of the week.

A memory that came back to me after looking around one of the billets this past weekend was that we had a music box near the door where the power was and we played the Top gun soundtrack a lot along with “In The Army Now” by Status Quo and also “The Final Countdown” by Europe. I loved these songs at the time and I loved the feeling of belonging and having a good time together. I can still remember my team from that Crowborough camp; Nick Filler was I/C, Charles Randall, Vanessa Payne, Gummy and me.

This recent visit and my first time back to Crowborough comes thirty two years later. I’m back at this place with a bunch of new recruits who are learning the skills to be good leaders and enjoying that feeling of being part of something larger than themselves. I hope they enjoy it and get as much from it as I did.

I’m not always sure that I appreciated every moment while I was a cadet but i do look back with such fondness. So much so that I’ll be heading back to my old squadron for a meal next year to celebrate thirty five years since 309 was given squadron status.

November 28 2018February 26 2020

Kill ‘Em All – Metallica

I’ll keep posting album reviews here while I suffer from such anxiety and anger about the current state of politics in this country and the world. The entire Brexit bullshit needs to be mostly ignored else I’ll get too worked up and angry about it all. An electorate who were lied to with illegal spending and Russian money voted to leave an organisation it knew mostly nothing about because of a systematic campaign over thirty years by right wing newspapers to remove cooperation and friendliness between countries. If you aren’t sure about that last bit then have a look at this website. It’s a list of all the lying claims by the UK press.

Now it’s time to be happy about reviewing this album. This album starts a small series of “Kill” albums that are bloody amazing and ground-breaking. Kill ‘Em All is the fist studio album by a tiny band called Metallica and while they are shit now this collection of songs is bloody amazing. The sheer raw power and energy in the songs is more than in anything else they have produced. It is probably something to do with Dave Mustaine having helped write a lot of it. Once you get to the Black Album it’s all gone wrong. I’ll review that one in about a year I guess.

I was asked recently what is the last decent Metallica song. I took some time and went with “Harvester Of Sorrow”. The question asker plumped for “Shortest Straw”. Fair play. Blackened is also a choice for that but the rest of “Justice” aren’t that good.

Back to “Metal Up Your Ass”. This album, in my view, helped create thrash metal as a genre and introduced chugging as a “note” to be used below lyrics rather than the swinging bouncy guitars used by Iron Maiden.

Hit The Lights – starts with a crash ending of a song and I’ve always loved that. It’s hard and busy.

The Four Horsemen – smashes you in the face with it’s blistering pace and makes you want to rush into the pit.

Jump In The Fire – would be great to sing out loud. It’s got a good moshing pace and plenty of Hetfield trademark “yah!”.

Pulling Teeth – blows my mind. The noise and cacophony that Burton pulls from the basss guitar makes me smile and wonder at the talent. When Ulrich enters the drums create a rhythm perfectly matched that gives a good swing to this bass solo.

Whiplash – I can remember playing this at top volume in school. We were in the sixth form and there was a music box in the common room, which was opposite the staff room. We would open the windows, put Whiplash on full volume and leave the common room leaving the music playing as loud and obnoxiously as possible to the staff trying to enjoy their break time away from those pesky kids. Fast, heavy and a standard song in thrash. Seeing Newstead play this at Download in 2013 was brilliant.

No Remorse – chugs away with a canter. Brilliant. No regrets.

Seek and Destroy – I don’t think you can get better on this album than this song. It’s my favourite and I love it. I once saw Metallica at Milton Keynes bowl and I think the concert was broadcast live on Radio 1. I got a friend to record it from the radio for me and the version they played there crunched away in my head for years. Brilliant.

Metal Militia -we all are aren’t we? Why don’t normal people “get” this music? Why is it that when you play metal to someone who doesn’t understand you can hear their brains pop? You can see the disconnect in their minds as they struggle with the noise. I’ve tried to persuade people to metal over the years and now I don’t bother. I’ve tried playing aggrotech to people but they don’t get that either. It’s all fine by me. Being at a music festival with eighty thousand people all enjoying the same music gives a kinship.

November 25 2018November 25 2018

Lord Of The Lost – The Garage

Smith and I traveled to the lofty intellectual heights of Islington last night to visit the Garage venue just outside Highbury station. On the bill were Lord Of The Lost, a German rock band, the venue was meant to be Electrowerkz but I think they sold more tickets than expected and they moved the gig to the Garage.

This was my third time at the Garage and again I was impressed. It’s smaller than I remembered, a nice, cosy (but not squashed) venue. I will say now that the sound in the place was pretty impressive and worked well. Probably better than Electrowerkz but I think this is largely to there being a little more space. Possible improvements would be a light beam a little further out from the stage to light up the bands a little more from the front rather than from a 3/4 position.

The second band were just finishing as we entered and they weren’t that impressive.

One of my favourites on as last support act were Unzucht. I’d seen them before at two M’era Luna festivals and I was looking forward to this.

They were good fun and played a decent set. They play a good hard riffage and then go and mess it up with an almost-ballad in the middle but I enjoy their style and it was good fun.

The headliners came on and I wasn’t really aware of the time but when I did look at my watch it was only 21:30 so for some reason there was an early curfew. It looked like they were setting up an urban-disco type thing.

Lord Of The Lost were good. It was a solid fun set and they seemed genuinely happy to be playing to a large-ish crowd.

I don’t really remember what songs they played but they started with “On This Rock” and ended with “La Bomba” which is always good for fun. Somewhere in the middle they played “Drag Me To Hell”.

It was a good evening and one that I ended too early really because I needed to be up early the next day [boo!]. Normally there would be more written here but I’m tired.

November 24 2018

Kerbdog – Kerbdog

I do think that this album was another of my early buys on CD in the days when CDs were the latest technology. I don’t recall where I bought the album but it released in 1994 so that puts me at college. I don’t know a great deal about this band, I do know that when I got another of their albums I was slightly disappointed with it.

This album has some excellent riffs and can only be described as having “wavy” guitars. I used to have quite a bit of resistance to that term but over time I have decided it does represent a style of riffage.

I’m not sure I know any of the songs by title but I do know that I quite often hum the main riff from End Of The Green. It starts with a rolling riff that then hits hard when the rest of the band enter. The vocals are quite haunting also.

Dry Riser hits home as well. A good riff with a sudden pace change towards the end.

Dead Anyway crunches the squawker with its guitar work.

After that the songs fade from my riff-memory-centre. I’d definitely recommend giving the first few songs a blast over Spotify – whoops – just checked and this album isn’t on Spotify.

November 24 2018

Another Go

I don’t think this will last long. I’m having another go with the PSVR. It’s a virtual reality set for the Playstation. The last time I used one I felt sick almost immediately and got cold sweats. I expect the same to happen again, but this time I have a plan. I am going to keep working at it and try and overcome the sickness.

The other night I set it up and then tried a few of the simpler, slower, non-moving experiences and I coped quite well with that. As I felt good I went on to have a go at driving in Gran Turismo. I did a couple of laps of an oval in a slow car and felt OK. I then managed a few more laps in the same car around Brands Hatch GP circuit. By that point I was tired and starting to get very slight cold sweats. I stopped.

I reckon, that with time and sensible use I might be able to play it enough to be happy with the financial costs. It will take time.

The principle reason that made me get a PSVR again is that I should be able to hook it into the PC and get the flight sim working in VR. This will be an amazing improvement to the sim. This should be reasonably simple so I am going to wait for a time when I have a whole day uninterrupted to do this. I find that setting things up on the PC either take twenty minutes or four hours. There isn’t really an in-between.

Bank warns no-deal could see UK sink into recession – BBC News