I rearranged my workplace the other week and had a bit of a sort out. One day I might even empty the cupboards at the back of the room or I may even throw away the Video DVD player that lives behind the door. But, in this clean up I found the following collection of music cassettes.
The “Work” Collection
These are the tapes I would listen to in work while marking or doing other things that I’m meant to do. Although you might be thinking I’m a massive Ozzy fan because there are two tapes of him, I can assure you I’m not that fussed. I enjoy some of the music. There were more tapes somewhere and I’ll see if I can get an image of those.
I have recently completed a couple of nice little games that I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s quite rare for me to play games other than the “big three” – Gran Turismo, Minecraft, and Fortnite. These are my standard games and I probably play a little of them everyday. I tend to want games that I can jump in and out of and the time needed for a session doesn’t matter. GT7 I can play for a few laps or a longer race depending on how much time I have in the real world. Minecraft is a world contained on a server and so I get to play that whenever I want and I can do as much or as little as I feel like. Fortnight I play to be with the Legend and spend time with them.
I did recently play some other games and really enjoyed them. They weren’t too stressy and I knew they could be played for a little while and saved easily. Also, I didn’t really have to learn new controls – this is important to me as if I only play a game a little bit spread out over time I don’t want to have to learn a new control system.
Atomfall
This is a game of wandering around the Lake District in the early 1960s [it could be the 1950s I didn’t pay that much attention] and you have to survive and escape. I love the Lake District and had wanted to play this for a while, then I think the price was reduced and I had a half term break so decided I would go for it.
The Lake District – looking gorgeous – Atomfall
I played the game on easy mode and even then I died quite a bit! I really enjoyed the story, the scenery, and the gameplay. I think my favourite thing though was the occasional crashed helicopter and the militaria of the age. The whole game really captured the time period. It was a really nice game to play.
Under The Waves
This game follows Stan, a North Sea diver, and explores their journey after the death of their daughter. For me, the cut scenes were a little too long. I don’t really care about those things, but I know the story was important to this game. I enjoyed the pace of this game and each day I could swim around and do the jobs I was meant to do. There weren’t any time restrictions within the game as those can make things really stressful. So I was able to explore with ease.
Under The Waves – from the press pack
I enjoyed the game. That’s the point isn’t it? To enjoy things.
Apparently there is going to be a portable X-Box released soon. I guess this will excite those fans of Xboxes. I’m less fussed but I was curious to read about it. I have a PlayStation Portal and it works by effectively cloud-gaming using your own PS5 as the server. It’s pretty good and I enjoy it. I have played Fortnite using the Portal away from my house and the performance was fine.
I Don’t Trust Anyone Who Say This
I started reading a Guardian review of the portable XBox and I got to the bottom sentence in the image. No. The person is wrong. No-one can appreciate the asymmetry of an X-Box controller and if you do then I will stop reading. I did just that. I didn’t read any further. I do not care what this person wants to say. My last few words on this matter will be that human hands are, mostly, symmetrical.
I’ve been playing Atomfall and I’ve really been enjoying it. I am playing in almost-peaceful mode because I want to enjoy the game. I’ve still died plenty of times though! The developers set the game in the Lake District in the 1950s after the Windscale accident. I really like the look and feel of the game. It’s got proper sci-fi feels about it.
Gran Turismo has weekly time trails using various cars around various tracks. I try to take part each time because it’s a good way to get credits and also rates your driving against the rest of the world. I normally get a silver award for these which means I’m within 5% of the time of the fastest in the world. Recently I got gold for being within 3%.
Gran Turismo Within 3%
I’m also within the margin by over 1/10 second which I consider a good result. So, another 1.5 seconds knocked off my time and I’d be best in the world – highly unlikely. I only play for around thirty minutes a day so I’m never going to be the best. I’m also working on getting gold in all the master licences but that is taking quite a bit of time!
Gran Turismo Overall Progress
I go in phases with this game. Sometimes I play enough every day for the daily workout prize and then sometimes I leave it for a couple of weeks. I’m half and half at the moment because I’ve been playing AtomFall which I am enjoying a lot.
I recently heard about a faction of the Labour Party who call themselves Blue Labour. Well, it turns out those Blue Labour people can go fuck themselves.
I don’t understand why we want to blame DEI for things that might be going wrong. Actually the bigger issue is why should Labour attract people who are voting for Reform. People who vote reform can get in the fucking sea. If you are convinced the reason you can’t get an NHS appointment is because of asylum seekers or DEI hires then perhaps you should fuck off. Maybe it’s the fault of the more than a decade of austerity caused by the Tory government. Chronic underfunding of all services in the country have led us to where we are today. Blaming asylum seekers is the racist thing to do. Blame those tory fuckwits who failed to invest in the country.
Labour shouldn’t be paying any attention to Blue Labour and they certainly shouldn’t be proposing policies that agree with the political right. If anything, Labour need to go harder to the left. Start offering people real hope. Let the racists vote for the racist party. Let the bigots vote for the bigot party. Let them slowly die in their own hatred. Labour need to move further to the left. Become a caring party. Become a helping party.
I had spent most of my life thinking we were progressing socially and becoming more accepting of others. But it feels like the last ten years have been a slide away from being nice. It feels like we are heading to fascism and war in ten years. I’ve never felt this way before and I grew up in the 80s when nuclear armageddon was four minutes away. It depresses me how little I look forward to the future. And I’m not even thinking about anthropogenic climate change as part of this.
Some Godforsaken Underground Walkway
All I can do is concentrate on the things I can control and do my best for the people close to me. I can also give money to what I consider good causes and I will do so as long as I can afford it.
Well, what to say about this film? We can start with the formalities. I went to the cinema at Rochester, the tide was very low. I could see all the mud banks at the edge of the river along with the dip at the end showing the main channel. We were late getting to the cinema because the junction on the motorway was closed so we had to go to the next junction and then return back. I didn’t mind being late because we missed most of the adverts. We did see a few trailers though. The trailer for F1 managed to make the film look as boring as fuck. So, back to Mission: Impossible. I rated this film on IMDB and there is a guide to my rating system here.
MI – Final Reckoning IMDB Score
I really didn’t enjoy this film. Had I not been with other people I would probably have walked out after the first half hour and overall the film is 2 hours and 50 minutes. I turned to JCBFan after about half an hour and asked “do you understand any of this?”. The reply was “no”. Maybe there were loads of references to MI films I haven’t seen? Maybe I needed to learn a bit more about the characters but the first half hour was really disjointed and made zero sense. I think it was meant to be a “getting the team together” thing, but it was really badly done.
The rest of the over two hours of film was really just two large set pieces of action. Some submarine stuff which was done better in Hunt For Red October and The Abyss and also some flying stuff which was alright I guess. At least I now know how to punch someone piloting a biplane when I’m holding on to the side – the move was used twice and it annoyed me – although why change something that works. The set design for the submarine was pretty special and the way it rotated was impressive. But the story part of this was shit.
The general plot seemed to be that the internet is bad and it is going to kill the human race. This I agree with and if it was deliberate to warn of the perils of social media and untruths then that would be a good part of the film. There’s an AI going to destroy the world and is slowly taking control of nuclear weapons – which hilariously is shown on a giant map on the wall inside a mountain. WHILE at the same time people push little models of ships around on giant maps in the room which was very WWII. So much of this film was just stupid. I didn’t understand what they were trying to do and why.
The American Navy was scared of the Russian carrier but it’s a heap of shit so that wouldn’t really bother them. The USA also have a LOAD of carriers. I don’t think the naval tensions were really worth it. Did you know you can fly a DC3 from the Bering Straight to South Africa in less than twelve hours? Those DC3s are notorious for transcontinental journeys in no time. Oh, and they are super comfortable. Also, people seem to have normal volume conversations in loads of situations where the actual noise would be consuming. If you’ve ever seen pilots in little planes they wear headsets. There’s always noise.
We need to know a bit about the data transfer rates that work in this film. The “entity” – what a fucking shit name – could “move” very quickly. Even when a thingy was connected to a boggler in the middle of South Africa away from any form of internet connection. Did you know that pick pockets are really good at grabbing something and taking it within a 100 millisecond window? Human reactions are hardwired at best to 190 milliseconds so she wouldn’t have been able to take the dongle out in time. Why was there a woman who speaks only French which most people understand but she also understands all the English being spoken? Who was fighting who in the cave? Who turned up to start that fight? Why do people who live on an island in the arctic know the yield of atomic weapons and detailed specifications about how long you have to run after cutting the wires? God this film was absolute shit.
I think we should consider vertical parking for more vehicles. Imagine the cars you could parking within a certain volume if you could store them vertically. There might be leakage problems I guess but those could be fixed. Oh, hang on – I’ve just remembered the standing seats for aircraft I’ve seen online recently – but, having googled, I think that while they exist people aren’t going to buy them.
As of writing this communication the first page of googled news results for these new “standing seats” are links to poor quality news outlets such as the Daily Mail, Time Out, Daily Express and The Sun. Ryan Air have denied they will be installing the seats. Industry news sites don’t have anything interesting to say. These seats haven’t been approved by the regulators. I doubt they will happen. We are easily in the last stages of the current capitalism model of running the planet and hopefully the world revolution will happen before we need these seats because infinite growth is a stupid thing.
I started this communication with the plan of posting my amazing parking within the game Fortnite. So here it is, very efficient:
In testing for video output and uploads on the PC I decided I would try flying a floatplane in X-Plane. I chose to take off from Rochester, UK and land on the river Medway. This is not as silly as it seems because eighty years ago the Shorts Brothers made seaplanes in Rochester and they slid down a gangway to the river Medway for their first flight. The whole area is now residential but you can still see the gangway which is a historical object. It would have been nice to still have seaplanes and floatplanes taking off from there.
ITs’ another year and another chance to see Combichrist. This was the twelfth time I have seen this band since 2009 and, if I honest, I am starting to get a little bored. The Old School set at M’era Luna last year was amazing. I didn’t know what to expect last night but there hasn’t been any new material from the band for a while. First we have to cover the early bands.
Smith and I got to the venue while Esotrik were playing their set. It wasn’t anything special. In my notes I wrote – OK.
Crimson Veil @ The Underworld 2025
The second band of the evening were Crimson Veil. A band comprising 3 women and a man playing guitars. The drummer was excellent. I liked the idea of the electric viola and harp. The singing was excellent. I struggled a little bit with the beat and the length of the songs. The songs were long. The beat felt disjointed. I suspect this is what would be considered “experimental” sounds. I also suspect it was musically clever, but my ears aren’t good enough to spot that.
Extize @ The Underworld 2025
Extize were great. It was the singers birthday and also the release date of their new album. It was their first time playing in the UK. I really enjoyed their set last year at M’era Luna and I also really enjoyed the set they played here. It was good fun, the band looked like they really enjoyed themselves. I enjoyed myself. In my notes I described this as heavy dance with humour. I will buy their new album.
The headliners were Combichrist. It was a solid set from the band. I didn’t dance or mosh too much as I was worried my back would die again – it died at a gig I played before christmas. So, I stood near the back and observed – this was my standard position years ago before I got pit-hungry. Apart from two newer songs in the middle of the set it was all really really good. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole show. I would still argue they don’t need guitars on most of the songs, but they have moved on from electro and it does kinda work.
Combichrist @ The Underworld 2025
Elliot Berlin is now on his way to being the most seen artist in my concert going career. He used to be with Aesthetic Perfection and is now with Combichrist. Joe Letz didn’t make it to this many shows I’d seen. He left Combichrist a few years ago. It’s interesting that it has taken me this many gigs with Combichrist to start getting a little bored. There are many bands from my teenage years who I’ve seen a few times but really don’t think I’d be that fussed about seeing them again. In music my attention wanes.
