I think I originally saw this product on Reddit. There’s a load of aviation geekery on that site and the JetClock turned up. Plenty of people have made their own aircraft indicator displays but of those I’d seen JetClock is the nicest and best looking. I knew I’d probably get one but waited for the right time. The company recently increased their product range to include a version without a display and also an Android app.
Jet Clock Desk Version
I bought the JetClock Zero as this seemed the most versatile version. I could use it on an existing display or I could buy my own screen if I wanted. Yesterday it arrived and the packaging was super nice. I don’t generally care for “unboxing” but the fact that the cables were in a reusable bag and the device itself was in a sealed bag made the whole experience really nice. It took a few minutes to set up the JetClock Zero but that was painless. I like the fact I can change the settings via a web-page but I am slightly concerned that the company aren’t asking for a subscription, I hope they’ve really thought that out.
Today I have ordered a 7″ display so that I can have the JetClock running permanently and on display. I know I want to put it in the lounge but I haven’t quite decided where and how it should be fixed yet. That’s some work to look forward to.
The Logbook is a lovely addition to the device. It’s an online database of aircraft that the JetClock has “detected”. The device doesn’t detect aircraft itself but relies on a server somewhere knowing the position of the JetClock and providing data to be displayed. I already have a Raspberry Pi in the loft that feeds aircraft data to an aggregation service and I have written about that extensively on this site. Below is an image of the logbook output:
Exported View Of JetClock Logbook
I get pretty pictures of aircraft with the world map showing the routes my JetClock can see. I live in the south east of the UK and so aircraft are very common because of travel to and from London and also because the UK happens to lie on a line of the great circle from Europe and South West Asia to the USA. Another bonus for me is that Biggin Hill isn’t far away and plenty of smaller jets fly into there. I’m also sure that at some point over the weekend there will be a Spitfire popping over towards the White Cliffs.
Rarest Aircraft Seen In Just 24 Hours
JetClock has a “rarity” score for aircraft. I’m not sure you could do a lot to increase the likelihood of seeing these unless you take your clock with you as you go around spotting. As you can see within 24 hours of set up I’ve already had a plane with rarity of 100. Just as I was writing this I heard an A400 fly over and I’m a little disappointed that its score is only 52! Maybe I’ll do better with the AN-22 that fly over a couple of times a week!
RAF A400
This device is great. Super easy to set up. The customisation options are brilliant and it gives me all the information I could want. Highly recommend.
I spent a school night recently in the big smoke. I took a train from Ebbsfleet International Station to north-ish London and then tubed it to Camden Town. The reason for travel was to watch a few bands at the Electric Ballroom. I had a nice, but expensive, burger for dinner. I also bought two drinks and that came in at more than GBP20 in The Worlds’ End, I know I’m old but this seemed very expensive, I miss the days of drinks in the Officers’ Mess. The Electric Ballroom was a new venue to me and I liked it. There was plenty of space, the bars were large and one of them was sheltered around a corner, you could escape easily.
Dark Divine – Electric Ballroom, Camden
First up were Dark Divine, a band from Florida which isn’t their fault I guess. I enjoyed their music. The singer was a good frontman and worked the crowd well. They genuinely seemed to be enjoying themselves. The music was standard metal. The usual singer with a good voice doing growly stuff and the guitarist sand the deep growl. The lead singer was chatty with the crowd and really seemed to be enjoying the whole show so that was nice.
Second band was Enemy Inside which was our main reason for attending this gig.
Enemy Inside – Electric Ballroom, Camden
I enjoyed their show. I felt it was, again, pretty standard metal. It was good fun although part way through I needed to move to the bar so I could rest my back. The damn muscles in my lower back have been painful for about two weeks now and standing watching a show was not helping. Enemy Inside were good enough for me to seek out their music on iTunes and pay for some albums. I’ll put it on when I’m working.
Smash Into Pieces – Electric Ballroom, Camden
The headliners were Smash Into Pieces. Smith and I weren’t that bothered about watching them but we stayed for a couple of songs. To be honest it was nice to have an evening out and still get home at a sensible time which meant I wasn’t absolutely fucked for work the next day. Yes, I understand that makes me old, but that’s where we are in this life so far.
Smash Into Pieces seemed reasonably heavy to start. The guitars were pretty cool. But I have some observations. . . . The drummer wears a mask – whoopee do, seen it before. Some people in the crowd thought it was really cool. I didn’t care particularly. The light show was pretty cool with lasers and shit, again the youngsters seemed impressed. The singers voice was really weird. I did not like it. It grated. I listened to some songs when I got home to see what the rest of their produce was like and it was a lot more keyboardy and less heavy. The singers voice still grated and that’s a big no-no for me. It’s a bit like Muse – I’ve tried to listen to their stuff, really tried and I should like it – but I can’t cope with the voice. This band’s live voice was not good. Maybe he’s having a bad night but it was poor.
Overall, I had a good evening. Good company, Smith, nice food in my current dieting time of life and a couple of bands I really enjoyed in a new venue, in bed before midnight. Worth it.
I took a trip on the Bank Holiday to the cinema at Rochester to watch a film that is forty years old. I suppose it’s a marketing idea by Cineworld where they show old films to encourage more people to attend? I saw Akira recently and this time it was the turn of Highlander. The tide was very low as I drove towards the cinema, all of the mud banks were visible. After watching the film I rated it on IMDb and gave to 6/10.
I don’t really want to review this film as a modern release, I have much love for this film. I don’t think I saw it when it was released in 1986, I would have been fourteen but I think I saw it on television some time after that. When I was at university people would reference it. Queen did the soundtrack. It was quite a thing.
As a film the story makes some sense, but the plotting and script of this film is terrible if I’m honest. I’m not going to rip everything apart, the film doesn’t deserve this, it’s a classic. I will say that there are many scenes in the film that are just stunning and I was amazed at the reflections in the final fight scene. It was well worth the drive to the cinema. Also, there was footage of a Sepecat Jaguar jaunting through the Scottish Highlands towards the end of the film and, for me, this absolutely made the film. It was great.
So, I took a trip to the cinema at Rochester [not Rochester] to see The Mummy, by Lee Cronin, not a reboot more a reimagining. But there are things to be written here before we get on with what I thought about the film. For some reason I mention the tide in these communications. I do know the reason I’m just not sure when I started doing this. I think I mentioned the tide to avoid mentioning the actual time I went to the cinema as I might have skipped off work or something a little earlier than I was meant to. The actual details are hazy now and so I mention the water levels in the river for completeness.
High Tide On The Medway
The picture was taken just before I entered the cinema. As you can see the water was lapping at the wharf edge and so the tide was high, probably at its highest. When I left the cinema the central river channel was obvious and the mudflats were prominent. After I watch a film at the cinema I rate it on IMDb, there are rules to this and there is a communication here that covers the system. I have started to rate every film I watch – so those on television / streaming – because I have, on occasion, found myself rewatching something I thought was rubbish but had forgotten about. It’s only about thirty minutes into the film that I realise I’ve already seen it. This especially occurs with rubbish science fiction films on Amazon Prime. So many films have storylines that seem familiar and so that’s why it can take a while to figure out if I’ve seen it before.
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy – 4/10
This film scored 4/10 in my system. It was close to a six for a while as I was watching it but it got slightly too gross for 6 and I stopped caring about the people and so I only watched to the end just to see how they ended it.
My first though while watching this film was “I don’t think birds have that much blood in them”. I’m not really sure what that scene indicated. Perhaps the awakening of the demon. I know I always want to kill pet birds when I wake up. After that the film progressed mostly gently and it seemed fine. I liked the silence of the crashing aircraft but the fact the explosion sound was instantaneous to impact and we were viewing from over a kilometre away really annoyed me. Like really annoyed me. Explosion noises take time to travel to you or the camera – get it right Hollywood.
This film didn’t have the colour or fun of the previous Mummy film. It was dark and gross rather than bright and fun and not scary. I mean this one wasn’t scary. Some make up and odd noises isn’t really enough to make a film a bother. I know I’ve seen a few horror films recently and they don’t really do much to me. The worst I felt in this one was when one of the old ladies throws up. It made me gag a little which I thought was an interesting reaction. The rest of the film just seemed to rely on loud stupid noises and “creepy” looking children and make up. Mind you, I loved it when the small daughter called their teacher a “cunt”. Always nice to hear that word from the “innocent”. But, I hasten to remind you, it’s been done before. “Jesus fuck my cunt” I believe was in The Exorcist and that’s a really old film.
This film just wasn’t that scary. It seemed a touch slow as well. I don’t know. A lot of my opinions have probably changed over time and I’m being affected by watching things on streaming services. Perhaps once you’ve seen a lot of films you get to feel blasé about most new films unless they really tell an interesting story. I did comment to Smith the other day that the last film that really disturbed me was The Omen, the original when it was shown on Channel 4. That’s probably because I was young and hadn’t really dismissed supernatural stuff by then.
I spent time at the weekend with some old friends at the Bentwaters Cold War Museum. It’s an old building and collection at the old RAF Bentwaters in Suffolk. The museum had about seven aircraft and a little cafe and shop. The coolest part of the museum is the battle command centre within the building showing how the first stages of a non-nuclear World War III would have been led. Bentwaters was home to A10 Warthogs and the job of those aircraft was to be the second wave of A10s into Germany after the first two days of a ground war. It was a really interesting visit and super fun to be with old friends and making fun of each other as we always have.
RAF Bentwaters TACAN Sign
There were plenty of people volunteering at the museum who are ex-service people who gave great talks about the base and the roles of various people. It was really interesting. After the visit I chose to drive to Rendlesham Forest and inspect the site of the famous UFO sighting in 1980 or so. The forest was nice but the ground was mostly sand and that was annoying to walk on. I had a great time.
I recently went to the cinema at Rochester [Strood] to watch Akira, again. I have watched this film many times, firstly in the early 1990s and then whenever I feel like it. Smith and I went this time and this mirrored the time twelve years ago we watched it at the BFI. I also watched this film in 2020 when things were being shut down and cinemas were going to be closed for a long time. I’ve already rated this film on IMDb and so there’s no need for a rating here, but it obviously scores 10/10. I’ve seen it plenty of times and still really enjoy it. I did struggle a little this time with momentarily shutting my eyes in the last half hour of the film.
On a local footpath there’s a gate post with some stickers on it. I’ve walked, cycled, or run past these stickers many times and I finally got around to trying to figure out what they are. There were two and one of them looked like a rave sticker and I couldn’t find any information on the internet about them. The second sticker though . . .
A Stand In The Park – sticker found locally
I searched the interwebs to find out what sort of thing or mindvirus had spread its way to Kent. Now, to be honest, I’m well aware that Kent has its issues. It still has conservative MPs FFS and also a Reform led county council who are doing an amazingly shit job at everything. The whole county is, how do we say it, a bit right-wing. I guess I’m trying to make a little difference in this world through attempting to influence people and putting a little money into causes I think are worthwhile. So, I looked for A Stand In The Park and I found their website. The homepage sstates the following:
No agenda
No religion
No leaders
That all seems quite reasonable I suppose but if you are organising a collection of like minded people then you very much have an agenda and leaders. Someone is doing the organising. It looks like the organisation was started in the early days of the Covid Pandemic [or plandemic as ASITP calls it, showing some of their ideology straight away] when some man stood in Hyde Park [Sydney, Australia] because they wanted to connect personally and infectiously rather than online. I guess you’re free to pass on a deadly disease to other people if that’s what you want to do, but were all the other people turning up accepting of the fact they could die or kill others close to them if they became infected?
So, the front page of the website just looks like a group of people who had some distrust about the messaging of the pandemic and they wanted to meet up. I don’t really have too much of a problem with that. They were wrong to do so and they probably ended up killing people through infection but, sure, meet up if you want. There’s a “click here for more” link and I did and the following bulleted list turned up.
What I find really interesting about the list is that there’s some of it that I, a complete lefty, can agree with. There are ideas that I think many people would agree with.
Cost of living
Unnecessary surveillance and unreasonable use of force
Rental crisis and public services stretched and underfunded
Lower class ignored, rich getting richer
Media and govt inflaming division
Justice system broken
Funding of wars
Poverty and homelessness at all time highs
Resources being sold
The things I’ve listed I reckon are probably thought of as issues by many people. I know that this organisation is based in Australia but we have the same issues here in the UK. It seems perfectly reasonable to have the concerns raised about society. My issue is that the best way to fix these things is higher taxation and a wealth tax. In the UK the government systems have been broken deliberately over the last fifteen years by a conservative government underfunding every area of public life. Then we had Brexit which has caused such financial damage to the country that the only way to try and fix it is to re-join the EU but under worse conditions than before. Yes, so many areas of UK are underfunded, but why do you think that is? It’s because of who the country voted for. It’s because we had a series of incompetent liars as prime minister.
So, this organisation attracts you because you think the government has made some “errors” over the last couple of decades along with having an idiot in charge for Covid times. So it would seem reasonable to meet like minded people and stand with them in the park for a while to try and get a point over to those in charge. Standing In The Park attracts you with legitimate concerns but then you meet people who will try and convince you of:
Wokeness and cancel culture
Chemtrails
Excess immigration
C19 “truth”
“vaccine”
Attacks on children’s minds
All of a sudden a group that seemed concerned for freedom too much government control [while wanting a government to fix the things it considers important] now wants us to believe a few extra things that are affecting the world. We are starting to move into the right wing propaganda and conspiracy theory world. This group starts off thinking what I consider to be good things and might attract you because of that but once you are there you will be talked at by people who believe in chemtrails. Here are my explanations of the things in that list:
Wokeness and cancel culture – this is what people who want to be openly racist complain about. “You can’t say what you think these days”. “They cancelled us because they didn’t want to hear what we have to say” etc. Wokeness is about following the evidence and having empathy for people. That’s it. Nothing particularly bad there. I think one of my favourite phrases I heard recently was “reality tends to bend towards leftist thinking”. We know people struggle in a world that refuses to accept them, so if we are more accepting then we can make people happier. Want to be racist? Sure, go ahead but find out the consequences when you do. Being a racist isn’t a protected class so if you are a racist you can go fuck-yourself. If you want to spout hate then that’s fine, go ahead but we don’t have to have you saying that shit in this venue – go fuck yourself. There’s a reason the tory government passed some bullshit freedom of speech law about publicly funded bodies. It because they couldn’t stand the idea that universities were not booking people who spout hate and right wing politics. So, they forced them to have to accept them. Cancel culture is literally just “consequences”.
Chemtrails – bullshit nonsense made up by low-information people.
Excess immigration – now you know when people talk about “excess immigration” what they really mean is people coming to this country who aren’t the right colour. It’s always veiled in a way that everyone could support – problems with public services – but really it’s just racism. We don’t like people who look different to us so we don’t want them here.
C19 “truth” – hey, if you want to know the truth why don’t you pay attention to the various public inquiries going on at the moment. Does it turn out that the PM at the time was an idiot, liar, self-interested cunt? Yes. Does it turn out that had we locked down earlier we could have saved thousands of lives? Yes. Will he be prosecuted and called to pay for his decisions? No.
“Vaccine” – vaccines work. My motto with reference to vaccines is “get that shit in me”. We know they save lives. We know there work and are considered safe. Now, you have to understand what “safe” means. Sometimes people will have a reaction to a vaccine and sometimes it won’t be nice. But overall more people will be healthy and alive than if we didn’t have the vaccine. That’s why there are government pay-outs to people injured by vaccines. It’s best for virtually all of society to be vaccinated so stop being a selfish prick and get pricked.
Attacks on Children’s minds – I don’t know what this is about but I think if you asked the group they would explain how woke gender ideology is damaging children. This is curious. They are saying that by accepting children for who they are and looking after them damages them? I guess first off you have to accept that there are more than two sexes. Then you also have to understand that gender is a different thing. Then you also have to understand that sexuality is different still. It’s a lot to take in I suppose, especially to people who have a very rigid view of the world. Gender affirming care is literal health and metal care. Do you know what happens to kids who aren’t supported? They kill themselves. By being nice and accepting to people we are saving lives.
I had already seen enough on the website to understand that after an initial stand with these people in the park because some of their ideas seem reasonable I would soon be listening to someone who hates the “trans” and blames that on chemtrails and HAARP. It wouldn’t take long, especially if I was easily influenced, for me to be thinking lots of right wing thoughts and attacking the woke. I looked at the Facebook page of ASITP. Just to see what other information I could find about them, the website covered lots but also not much at the same time. I looked to see who ASITP follow on Facebook, some highlights are:
Turning Point Australia
The Light Paper Australia
Stand In The Light
Wake Up America
Turning Point USA
These are all right-wing organisations. Yes, I’m opposed to them. I don’t like their ideology. I clicked on a few of the indivisuals that ASITP follows on FB and it turns out that quite a lot of them are conspiracy people with posts about 5G masts, vaccines, and so on. So, A Stand In The Park, an organisation that has no agenda or leaders have clearly shown their true colours by being full of agenda and misleading information that deliberately harms people. I won’t be going along to the park to join them. I also feel bad for those people who are drawn in to this crowd with legitimate concerns for society that I listed at the top of this communication but then get dragged into full on right wing hate.
I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen while I’m driving, playing PS5 games, running or just working around the house. Sometimes I run out of podcasts to listen to and I feel a mild anxiety about that, but I have a couple I don’t mind in reserve so that I have spares. Just for fun here’s a list of my current subscriptions:
Citation Needed
Cognitive Dissonance
Data Over Dogma
BBC Friday Night Comedy
Maintenance Phase
Opening Arguments
Pod Save The UK
Science Stuff
Skeptics With A K
The Bugle
The Know Rogan Experience
The Scathing Athiest
The Skeptic
The Sceptics Guide To The Universe
Where There’s Woke
God Awful Movies
The Sketicrat
A couple of times over the last few months some of the podcasts have asked for listener recorded intros which they add to their show. It’s a nice way of making the audience feel part of the show and adds to the character of the production. I have recorded two such introductions and so far, one of them has been used. If you listen to The Know Rogan Experience episode 62 you will hear my voice used as part of the introduction to the “main event”. I also get a name shoutout and this site gets mentioned. If I get mentioned on the other show I recorded for I will let you know.
After the aborted attempt at a short break in the Lake District I caught up with playing the game Hogwarts Legacy. I think I got it as it was reduced in the PlayStation store to about GBP15. This seemed reasonable and I had a go at playing it. I had started a game a couple of years ago but didn’t really feel it so left it alone. This time I paid a bit more attention to the details and the mechanics of the actual game and I also think that playing Horizon Zero Dawn gave me more of an idea of how these adventure stories work. It’s a new genre of game for me.
Hogwarts Legacy – A screenshot
After about 45 hours of playing the game I have completed the main storyline and while there are lots of smaller quests to complete and objects to find I think it’s time to stop. I’m not that used to playing games for three hours straight. Most of the other games I enjoy I can easily pop in and out of so short bursts of playing time are the norm for me. Minecraft doesn’t care how long you spend in the game and I always feel as though I have achieved something. Gran Turismo is normally played for about half an hour and then I’m almost bored, I find other things to do that are more interesting. I can also enter that game and undertake a single race, which including qualifying will get me the daily mileage completed bonus.
The thing that struck me most about Legacy was the lighting. It is very impressive. Likewise that’s what amazed me about the Horizon games. How the game was coded and the engine it used to ensure that the lighting was gorgeous! I loved the sunrise and sunsets within the game. They looked just wonderful. Sure, the mechanics of the actual game was fun too but to be able to stop and watch the sun within a virtual world amazes me.
