Personal – Page 7 – Fooyah

November 29 2025

A Nice Experience

I’ve been grinding in Gran Turismo. Personally I wouldn’t call it grinding but I’m trying to play every day and get the daily bonus for travelling just over 26 miles. I guess I’m trying to complete the game by getting all the cars and golding every licence. I’ve already got the platinum PlayStation trophy so that was nice.

I recently tried an online race. In the past I have NOT enjoyed these. Qualifying somewhere in the top ten or so but then getting knocked off at a corner and ending up last is not satisfying. It’s incredibly frustrating. So with some trepidation I had a go. I was racing a Gr4 car around Spa. I chose my Honda NSX to race because Honda. I had a few laps of qualifying and was reasonably happy with my time but you never know how good you are until you enter a lobby. It turns out I qualified second. This seemed pretty good. But five laps of the race awaited.

The pole position person went too deep into a corner early on and I gained first place. Pole person ended up in third. Then for five laps second place person and I had a really hard and fair race. It was very good racing, even if I am judging that. When either of us moved for an overtake the other would indicate to show they understood what was going to happen. We didn’t touch each other and it was clean. I actually won because they went too deep into the first corner on the last lap. It was a great race and really enjopyable.

The next day I decided to have another go at an online race. I did more qualifying laps and ended up in pole position for my race. I led from the front and stayed there. I think the race finished with me around three seconds ahead. It was fun.

Now that I’m 2-0 it’s probably a good time to quit racing in that mode. Or at least no longer mentioning it here unless I do well!

November 24 2025

The Running Man (2025)

I went to see this film recently. I went to the cinema at Rochester (really Strood) and I noted that the tide was indeed quite high as I drove along the esplanade. I did rate this movie on IMDb but there is a trick rating system which is covered in this communication. In days gone by I would tweet the result of my rating, but all I can do now is say that it is a 6/10.

This film was perfectly enjoyable. There’s some grossness in the killings, a few bits of humour here and there and it looks pretty amazing. I wouldn’t go any further than that really. For me, the political message is more important and I know this is based on a book but the messaging hasn’t really changed in the forty years since the original film. Large media organisations do not have our interests at heart and they are corrupt.

I had some issues with the main character. He’s very quick to violence and it’s played as though he’s just angry. I’m not sure he’s a good character to have as the lead. But, when the revolution comes we will need a figurehead and I guess someone like that would work well. Also, I guess the chap is angry at the injustice and inequality in the world so maybe that makes it better. Remember people, government should be for the people.

November 10 2025

Amazing Detail

I’ve recently been trying to upskill in Gran Turismo. Or rather, I’ve been trying to remember how to drive cars the way I used to drive cars before flappy paddles came around. When I’m in a car that has a gear stick with H box I’m trying to use the actual gear stick on my rig. I’m also going to try to improve and use the clutch more, along with careful heel-and-toeing while downshifting into corners. Anyway, I was watching a replay within the game of me driving some Honda around Spa and I was really impressed with the level of detail of the car model.

Not only is the level of graphical detail impressive but also the dynamic animation struck me as particularly well done.

A particular animation I like is brake glow when hard braking into corners, it looks really good. All in all I’m still impressed by this game. Even if I am trying to get gold on the licences and slightly frustrated at the number of times I need to keep trying each test. The current test I am working on requires me to spaff the RC92P at speed around part of the Nordschleife and I am currently about 0.4 seconds off gold pace. I will get it eventually.

October 30 2025

Aviation Collection Four

I do find aircraft inherently interesting. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s the idea of defying gravity (I know they don’t really do that but it’s a simpler explanation to what’s going on). I’ve recently mentioned these items at work and searched this site but they didn’t exist here. So this is to make up for that. There are a couple of other communications about the aviation collection, search them by the tags at the bottom of this page.

My first diecast model was a Northrop F5 Freedom Fighter. I bought one of these from a stall at North Weald many years ago. I can’t remember if it was an airshow or just some event I was at. That F5 represented the VF111 Sundowner United States Navy unit. I used to have it on display at work because I would use it for cadet type things, especially explaining the dynamics of aircraft and airflow. This model was lost. More accurately I think it was stolen. It was in my room and then it wasn’t. This was a shame but I knew I needed an F5 because they are cool and also it’s an F5.

I can’t remember which unit this F5 represents. It might be an aggressor squadron. It just looks nice. The second diecast aircraft I bought was from a stall at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2019 (I think). I took my kids there and enjoyed the day I spent watching displays and seeing the static aircraft. I wanted a memento of this trip and so I bought an A400M at, what I thought was, a reasonable price.

The A400M sits atop my NAS drive in one of the tech corners of the house. It looks pretty there, guarding the dining room.

The third and final model I have is tiny. It’s a pretty small model of a small and cute plane. I’ve written about the Baby Bus here. I couldn’t find a British Airways version of this plane, there’s still an Air France version flying I think. But this is a lovely plane.

Those are my aircraft and apart from some trinkets I have from a 1980s Brize Norton that is pretty much it for collections related to aviation.

October 23 2025October 22 2025

Finally Uploaded

I finally managed to upload a video to YouTube after about a month of trying now and then. I don’t know why things didn’t work well for that time. But, I’ve managed to upload two videos recently. I’d been trying for ages to upload my V22 flying video. It’s now done.

October 22 2025

Recent Places

Some photos from places I’ve been.

Art Work Outside St Thomas' — Some Flag Or Other But It Looked Good

October 21 2025October 22 2025

Keg

Every now and then it’s well worth jumping around in front of a crowd and hitting things. I would always suggest that you do this in a safe space and also where everyone knows what’s going on. I did this recently and I had a great time. Not sure what to do if we play more songs though. How do I top that?

October 11 2025

Well Known Place, Strange Time

Got up early one morning to do things. Here’s a picture of a thing I found while doing those things.

October 2 2025

Upload Frustrations

I have been flying in the Simulator recently and trying out a new aircraft. I’m learning how to use the V22 Osprey and this time, compared with X-Plane 11, I am actually reading the manual! There’s a really good plugin for X-Plane that shows an on screen version of the checklist and this has made it relatively straightforward to know how to start and operate this aircraft. When I say straightforward I mean it’s ok once you have learnt where all the switches are.

Because I love how X-Plane looks and how the aircraft operates I’ve been wanting to share my experiences via YouTube. Multiple times over the last month or so I have recorded by screen and sounds using OBS and then tried to upload the resulting video. It turns out that YouTube doesn’t seem to like this. I don’t know why but after an initial decent upload bandwidth the video stops uploading to YouTube. I’ve tried leaving the upload running for a while and although the percentage seems to increase the rate is very low. I can’t wait all night just for a video to upload.

When you search for help with these problems I love the way the websites reckon it’s my fault. Have you checked your wifi? Have you checked your broadband? Have you checked the firewall? All of these things I have already checked. I’m not stupid. I just want to know why my video fails to upload. I suspected it could be that the video is approaching 1GB in size but when I downgraded the quality it still stopped uploading. Maybe I should try a PS5 upload to see if it’s me.

I really want to share some videos covering night flying, the flares being released, landing, vertical take offs and the wing blade fold system, which is really cool. I will keep trying. I know it’s not really like my “followers” are demanding this but I do want to keep adding stuff to my channel. I like the idea of sharing things people would actually appreciate. Here’s a previous video I uploaded:

September 30 2025

Spooky Times

This morning it would have been spooky if I believed in any of that stuff. But I don’t so it wasn’t. It looked good though.