I recently spent some time away at St Martin’s Plain Training Camp. I was part of the team training cadets on aspects of cadet skills. It was the second time that I have gone through this particular process and I have to report that it was definitely better the second time.
Channel
This picture shows what the view was once the weather had cleared up. It’s always interesting weather on the top of the hill next to the body of water. In the distance in the picture is the channel looking across to France.
Rough Line Of The View
Overall, I had a good weekend. Looking forward to the next one.
Recently I’ve been trying to exercise more and failing. My excuse the other night, when I had a clear two hours to get out, was that it was raining. It is a fair excuse but I could have jumper on the rower at home and done some exercise on that but I was sidetracked by computers and driving games. I recently ran five or so miles and my standard route takes me along a section of road that gets wet easily. It’s easy to avoid the puddles by running on the raised ground at the edge of the field. Sometimes, when it has rained a lot a large pond is formed and stays for a long time.
A Lot Of Rain
As you can see the temporary pond to the left and the road to the right. I was run-walking along the raised pathway but it’s quite disconcerting because of how slippy it is and the thought of falling into the pond.
I’ve written about this before and I am sorry for not doing enough but these weather events and wet winters are only going to get worse. All caused by anthropogenic global climate change. Sorry younger people, I am convinced life is going to be particularly hard for you.
This brings me to another, slightly related, thing. Humans have an amazing ability to ignore the evidence and only concentrate on the things that they as individuals think will make them better. I’m thinking at the moment of people wearing face masks to avoid getting the current coronavirus which causes Covid-19. Face masks won’t protect you numbskulls. They don’t do what you think they are doing. Stop buying them and leave the stock for people who genuinely need them. I spoke with someone at the weekend who mixes and makes chemotherapy for different individuals. They said that they have to re-use disposable face masks while mixing the drugs because they have run out of stock and stupid people are buying up all the facemasks in society.
Another organisation I am aware of is ignoring all the evidence and making people work through particular practices even though there is no chance that any of it will work. We see this all the time with governments and humans. There is an attitude of doing something [even if it doesn’t work] is better than doing nothing because we can then say that we did something [even if it wasn’t going to work]. What an utter waste of human time and resources.
Want to avoid getting the latest fad-virus? Wash your hands properly. If you do get the virus, don’t sneeze over anyone and follow the government advice on using tissues.
I was recently away at a place and I noticed that they had a clock on the wall. Nothing wrong with that you might think but let’s look at it.
True But Not True
Now, the time was set correctly so it’s not like I was being a classic mathematician about the clock itself. I was more bothered by the insidious message written on the clock face.
Families Are Forever
And other bullshit sayings
On first inspection this phrase doesn’t really seem that bad. It’s one of those classic bullshit sayings that you’ll hear used by people when trying to justify their pathetic view of the world. This saying reinforces the idea that you have to love your family and protect them. This saying reinforces the idea that you make sacrifices for your family. This saying, while true genetically, assuming plenty of creation of more genetic material, is utter bullshit. There’s no truth in thinking that your family is the most important thing to you. You can, actually, choose.
This sort of phrase is like many others we have in society that will reinforce bad ideas that will force people to make choices that are detrimental to their lives. People will listen to this phrase and then spend time and emotional energy trying to engage and keep onside with people who are bad for them. It’s time people recognised that actually there are plenty of assholes out there and some people need to be away from them.
Imagine there’s that person who has that racist uncle. You know the type. That uncle who, when he comes for dinner, you hope the topic doesn’t get around to anything that could be mentioned along with people with a different shade of skin or people who don’t speak your native tongue. That uncle: fuck him. He’s not forever. He’s a piece of shit.
Maybe you’ve got a mum who is a terrible mum. Those people exist. Mums who look after themselves and don’t give a shit about their kids. Mums who will drop everything to do with family and rush off to ensure that their own interests come first. Those mums are assholes and fuck them. Leave them. Be the best person you can.
This isn’t a money thing. This isn’t a class thing. This is a “some people are cunts” thing. We don’t need those people in our lives. If your live would be better and easier and more productive to be away from those people then it is best for you to be apart from those people. It’s OK to leave. You might be genetically linked to your family forever but you don’t have to have anything to do with them.
To those people who think I’m being overly politically correct or would rail against my arguments that you have to look after yourself first I would say that being politically correct is just about being nice. It’s about treating people with respect and being nice to them no matter who they are. If you can’t do any of that then don’t do anything at all. If your family are assholes, then do your best to walk away.
I wrote recently about a damn good gig that I went to, Aesthetic Perfection, at the Lounge 666 or whatever it’s called. Because technology is so wonderful and lovely I can now show you a graph of my heart rate throughout that day.
Gig Heart Rate
There are three main aspects to this graph to chat about. The first is that low bit at the beginning. It’s me asleep. I’d have to compare it to my REM patterns to know what the little blips are in that section. Then, there’s me waking up at the little alarm clock symbol. The running man symbol is where I went for a run and the break in the graph is where I took my watch off for a shower. The low level preceding the first grey man is me driving my car into London for the show. The peak at the first grey man is me walking from where I parked the car to the venue. The next big dip is me eating food and so sitting down. Then, the bouncy bit is me bouncing at the concert.
The second grey man is me walking back to the car from the concert and then my watch thought I had fallen asleep because there’s a “Zzz” symbol. In reality that we me driving home from London and my heartrate stabilised because I wasn’t doing much. You can see that this resting heart rate is still higher than my normal sleeping rate. Finally the small peak just before the end is me walking from where I had to park the car in my village to my house.
This level of detail is pretty cool but I do wonder if it’s worth knowing? All that extra data I have about everything I do but does it change my life? I don’t know.
Took my lovely niece and Smith to see Aesthetic Perfection last night at The Lounge 666 or whatever it’s called near Archway tube in London. Before the show we were just about to go to get food when I checked where the venue was and spotted Daniel Graves on his way out of the venue. I, very politely, asked if he would meet my niece because she loves him. I think I even used the phrase “I don’t mean to impose but would you mind . . . .”, jesus, what a british twat I can be. Anyway, he came over and met my niece and they had a photo taken. She was very happy.
The first band we saw, but second on the bill, was Jadu. Biomechanimal were on first but we missed them. That’s not a bad thing, we’ve seen them before a few times. Jadu are a German band who I quite enjoyed. There were four of them, a female singer and a drummer, guitarist and keyboard person. It was quite slow stuff but perfectly good. I quite enjoyed it. I did note that the sound of the kick drum was pretty good and didn’t over power the rest of the sound. I’m probably going to get a Jadu album, it was good enough for that.
Jadu – Archway
Shortly after that Aesthetic Perfection came on stage and this is now the about 9th time I have seen Joe Letz. This makes him the artist I have seen most. I don’t mind. His on stage persona is brilliant and I enjoy his antics.
Joe Letz banging the fuck out of a drum
Aesthetic Perfection put on an amazing show. It was probably the best I have seen them and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The crowd was nice and pleasant. Even the six foot six female pair allowed those of us shorted than them in front. I spent the whole gig about three rows back from the front, which didn’t even have a barrier.
Daniel Graves and Elliot Berlin
The band played for a decent length of time and I have to say I enjoyed it all. There was a moment when Joe Letz tapped Daniel in the penis and it was pretty funny. There’s a good camaraderie between them all. It’s nice to see a theremin being used at a concert, they’ve probably used them before I just didn’t notice it.
Aesthetic Perfection
This was a bloody good gig. Probably the best I have seen them and I really enjoyed it. My niece managed to sweet talk one of the roadies and got a Joe Letz drum stick at the end of the gig. This will now go with her stick from a Combichrist gig a few years back. I am a little jealous.
Joe Letz’s Knackered Drumstick
Well done AP and I look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.
Here’s a win. Me racing my Porsche around Brands Hatch. Started in 5th and ended in first. I was pretty happy. This also means I don’t have the child rapist cabal that is the catholic church as my last communication.
I recently finished all of the Gran Turismo Sport races that exist in Campaign mode. It’s taken quite a while but I am done. It was a little sad to finish but now it means that to get my fix I’ll need to start using the online racing mode a bit more. I’ve not enjoyed this in the past as some drivers out there are dicks. However, my recent experiences show that if you pick the longer / harder races you tend to get people who are quite good at racing and it seems to work quite well. I won my second race ever recently and it was a good feeling but I forgot to save the replay and I was gutted about that.
I did however recently complete a race and made a decent run of it to gain about seven places. Only a couple of these were overtakes, the rest was gaining places when other driver ran wide! I was racing in my Porsche which I like but for this race the gearing is set quite low so I only use about four gears and many of the corners are done in low revs, which is good for reducing over steer and makes getting the torque on a little easier.
Yes, that’s my gloriously bright and shiny green Porsche. It probably has an advert for this website on it!
Yesterday I took a half term trip out to see Sonic The Hedgehog. I know Sony spent a ton of money [or someone did] to change the look of the creature and I was curious to see what the film ended up like. Sonic The Hedgehog forms a massive part of my history, I played it a lot in 1991/2. I was in my first year at university and Big Jim had just moved into halls. He owned a Megadrive AND a television which seemed impressive, none of the rest of us had such stuff. Jase had a TV and I remember watching Rumpole with him on a tiny screen but everyone else relied on the communal television.
Big Jim never locked his door and he was happy enough for us to play his Megadrive when he wasn’t around. There were quite a few nights when I would get a bottle of wine, a few CDs, and head down across to Jim’s room to finish Sonic The Hedgehog. This was in the days before save-games on consoles and so every game was a fresh start. I can’t remember which level of Sonic it was now, but there was one where you would gain four or five lives every time you did it [100 rings]. This meant that the aim was to die before the end of the level and go back and get more lives. It was the only way to ensure you had enough lives to finish the whole game.
It would normally take about three hours, a few CDs and a bottle of wine to get the game done. It was good fun. It was also the start of my downfall I guess? I bought a Megadrive in my second year of university and that probably had the effect of ruining at least two of the educations being paid for by the state. It’s OK though. I realised my mistakes and have been paying it back to society for the last thirty twenty five years or so. It was worth it and without the Megadrive this site wouldn’t exist in this state.
The weather wasn’t great on the drive to the cinema but I did remember to look at the river to gauge the state of the tide. It was pretty low as all the mud bank was visible. Upon leaving the cinema the tide was lower as a boat that was floating earlier was then resting on the bottom of the river. So I left the cinema pretty much at lowest tide [not checked online].
After seeing the film I rated it on IMDB using a system I developed many years ago. This rating will probably cause some consternation amongst readers of this site, but I don’t care. I then tweet the result and here is that tweet:
You know what? I quite enjoyed this film. Yes, it was a kids’ movie, no, there wasn’t really enough adult humour, but overall it was quite good fun. You could watch any kind of kids/alien/monster film and it would be the same as this. Pretty sure I saw Monster Trucks a while back and it’s exactly the same. Alien thing befriends humans and then solves some puzzle or problem while being chased by the evil government. I think there was the possibility of more “Sonic” specific ideas that could have been placed within the film but I still enjoyed it.
I need to talk for a short while about Dr Robotnik. I wasn’t really aware of who was in the film before I went to see it and after a short while I recognised the facial contractions of Jim Carey being Jim Carey and I thought it was him but at the same time I didn’t recognise him. While watching the credits I had to wait quite some time before Jim Carey’s name came up and I was starting to worry that maybe it wasn’t him. It was. This film has Jim Carey being Jim Carey and it was glorious.
The BBC is still the best news site this country has and unfortunately it’s going to be destroyed by the current government because they report on news and are independent. Oh it’s not a glorious future for our country. Mind you, there are still times when the BBC News section falls into the populist click-bait type of “news” which isn’t news but more magazine. Perhaps I should expect it and be forgiving but I can’t. Some of us have to talk about what we see.
Not a “news” story
Money.
There, that’s a simple, easy, quick, and honest answer.
There are all these people out there around my age with money to burn and they will go and see this because they remember Back To The Future being a good film and they will want wholesome entertainment for the rest of their family. Just to be clear BTTF is a good film.
These juke-box musicals or film translations are easy money and rely on the original ideas being burned into the brains of the middle-aged. Have a look around and see all the shows and shit with their origins in the 80s.
I’ve been thinking recently about creating a time lapse film of the view outside the back of my house. I think it would be nice. It’s a big open space and the weather and seasons changing would make it interesting. I quite like the challenge of figuring out the tech to do it. I’m going to investigate a small 1080p camera and then see if I can write some script [or steal it] to capture a still from it every hour or so. That would make a six minute video for a year’s worth of photos. Once it’s created I’ll write a communication on here and let you know.
