"Nothing but the rain"
After a little more work the mountain is starting to be adjusted. Still not sure how this will end up but I am working on the idea of a floating mountain over my cave. I did think that I might have made a mistake as my cave is around level -50 and that’s an awful lot of stuff to remove. I’ll cope.
I have a nice cave base in Minecraft and I’ve been thinking about doing some landscaping around it. Or more accurately above it. To find the cave I travelled far in the Nether and built a new portal. This took me into a nice cave and I’ve built a little house along with some prettification inside the cave to make it look more homely. The next issue, I think, is sunlight. So I’ve started to remove the mountain from above the cave.
In the above picture you can see my staircase to the top of the mountain and to the right of that at the base you can see the entrance to my cave. I’ve started small as you can see in the next picture. I think my current plan is to remove a lot of the levels and leave the mountain there but dangling in the sky. I’m not sure, we’ll have to see how it progresses.
The first part of this had me digging a 2×2 tunnel through the mountain at sea level +1 to see how far I had to go. If you look to the left of my mountain staircase you can just about see the entrance to the small tunnel. I’m hoping this will progress over time to be a complete layer leaving the mountain suspended in the air.
I think the first part of getting this collection was having the chair and seeing someone else hang their aircraft things on their own chair. It seemed a good place for them. So, I have the following on my Secret Lab chair and I think they look rather smart. No, I don’t care what you think.
Game design is generally good these days and I think the makers actually think about the interactive experience of it all. But. I hate Epic for this within the Fortnite game:
This might look ok at first glance but if you look at the top menu the order goes Combat, Exploration, Challenge. Then, if you look at the bottom menu the order is Challenge, Combat, Exploration. Who the fuck designs something like that? Awful Just awful.
I recently attended an Expo thing and it’s somewhere I’ve been a few times. Whenever I go members of the group I take get a goody bag. While, in the past I have also been given a goody bag I haven’t received a branded Teddy Bear. So, at the most recent event I all-out asked for a teddy bear.
Upon collection it turns out that there are two teddy bears. One dressed in blue and which looks like a standard teddy bear and the other dressed in white with a ribbon in its hair. Apparently the ribbon indicates that the teddy bear is “female”. I didn’t raise a complaint at the time but I do think that teddy bears are literally un-gendered and so can be any gender that the owner wants. It’s a toy. Why does it have to have a gender pre-associated with it. I don’t really understand the idea of making gendered toys. Just make toys for everyone. It’s a bit like Lego releasing pink Lego sets. Lego was already agender. Anyone could play with any of the sets. I suppose if more girls play with Lego and enter traditional male dominated areas of society because of pink Lego then maybe I need to be corrected.
Ever noticed that to describe with images, something as female we ADD to the male image. Male toilets have a stick person, generally, but female toilets have a stick person with extra lines to create a skirt. To show a female character in comics extra is drawn on them to highlight the femaleness [eye lashes, eyebrows, bows, longer hair etc]. It is a sad state of society when signs for female things are only the male with extra. It shows a lack of understanding over the years of designers and artists to match how society has been.
Also, while I’m on the topic of gender, I absolutely do not like “gender reveal” parties. Firstly it’s a sex-reveal and even then it’s very problematic. Biological sex isn’t binary. There are many variations that can, and do, occur. To describe the human species as binary in terms of biological sex is scientifically incorrect and actually incorrect. We have a massive problem with society that is unable to accept the truth of our biology. We know these things now and we should be pushing as a society to change our historical mistakes. Sports shouldn’t be divided into two categories. I’m not sure what the answer is but I definitely think we categorise everything wrongly. We could just have “toilets” instead of male and female categorised toilets. We could change the historical mistakes for the better to be a more inclusive society.
Gender is a problematic term for the reveal parties because who the fuck are parents to describe the gender of their child? Firstly, using a penis or lack thereof to define biological sex is ultimately flawed. Secondly, gender is about how people identify themselves. You can’t reveal gender because you don’t know how your child will be. It is up to the child to define who they want to be. Not you. I won’t go into sexuality in this communication because that is another separate issue although media and people in power don’t seem to realise that all these things are exclusive. We have such a long way to go as a society and the last ten years have seen us move backwards into a more divisive unaccepting society. I hope the future is less bleak than I imagine it.
For a long time I’ve had some Apple Airpods. They are first generation Apple things and I got them after some people at work suggested that they are quite good. I’d been in the market for some wireless music ear things for a while and thought these would be good for running and general wearing around the house/work. Until this point I’d always used wired headphones because wires are good – wireless is trouble. I have a pair of wired Bose noise cancelling headphones that I bought in 2013 and I love them. They are excellent quality and the noise cancelling is great. I don’t want to wear them all the time around the house and most definitely not when I’m running.
I got some airpods, which seemed expensive at the time for small tiny things. I think I’d rate the sound as just-about-ok. I preferred the wired sound but in the balance of things these were pretty good and they didn’t isolate me from the world. The areas where I run require a certain amount of situational awareness or you get surprised. While running I did use a plastic strap thing to save losing individual ear things. This was fortunate as on my first run with them one ear-thing got pulled out by a branch and rather than losing it in the grass it stuck out with the plastic attachment with the other ear-thing.
At some point I went back to using wired headphones while running. They just seemed less hassle. They were also a lot cheaper. I’m not sure when, but my airpods started having battery lasting problems. I remember about a year ago one of them dying before the other and listening to a podcast through one ear only. I was out on a walk and didn’t have any way of charging them. Since that time the internal airpod battery has become un-usable. I might get about twenty minutes before there are warning beeps. So I was in the market for different headphones. I knew I didn’t want Apple though.
I found Shokz. I’d seen these at a shop in the Lake District a few years ago and I liked the idea of bone-conduction for the sound. It allows the headphones to be water resistant and also means that ambient noise gets into the ear canal so it can be heard. I looked at it and decided that because I mostly listen to the spoken word the music level of quality could be sacrificed. So, I ordered some Shokz Open Run. These turned out to be excellent for running and very suitable for my situation. They fit nicely and are comfortable. I was slightly worried that I would find the “rear band” irritating but I don’t think I notice it. They are a good buy and I would recommend.
I was still after something for use at work and around the house. Something as convenient as the airpods and in-ear. I deliberated and finally settled on getting Bose in ear headphones. I’ve always been impressed with Bose speakers and I have some as part of my home cinema system. The over ear headset I have which is wired is really good and perfect for flying [and writing reports]. They block out all the background noise and I get a large sense of relief when they are activated. At work I can’t hear the normal hum-drum background noise as I concentrate on a task and so this is great.
The Bose in ear things were amazing out of the box. The sound is incredible and the noise cancelling technology astounded me. I shouldn’t be this impressed but I think that having used Airpods and then Open Ear Bone Conduction things the level of noise and reproduction from the Bose kit was amazing. The noise cancelling is great – I can’t hear my children – and I can use an “aware” mode when I need to but it is slightly odd as the bypass sound is actually outdoor sound microphoned and piped into your ear. It’s a bit like being in a corporate box at White Hart Lane. There’s little sound but if you want it can be played in over the speaker system.
Overall I have been blown away with these little earphone things. They have reminded me of what good sound sounds like. I don’t often have music out loud at home so to have decent quality piped straight into my ears gives me joy.
There was an X-Plane update and I thought I ought to “test the system”. I also found some scenery for my favourite airport – Hildesheim. I’ve been to this airport about seven times but I’ve never flown from there. When I visit it is the location of a music festival and the whole airport is a campsite. Anyway, I did a circuit. I don’t think there’s any sound, I’ve got to play with OBS settings a bit more. Also, no visuals of me! Who wants to see that!
Like and subscribe!
Towards the end of my summer period of “not-work” I went to the New Forest with the families. The weather was medium for most of the time allowing shorts and t-shirts but it did get chilly overnight in the tents. The campsite was Hollands Wood which was quite large but maximum occupancy levels were enough to keep it feeling quiet. Driving through the moors was very interesting – the idea that this level of wilderness exists in the south of England was surprising.
One of the reasons the New Forest was chosen was that it was on the way to the Tank Museum at Bovington. People in my house play War Thunder and while it’s not my game of choice they are both pretty good at tank recognition – I am not. The number of tanks, the history, the show, the arena, all made for an excellent visit.
I found it interesting seeing all the different tanks and I took a lot of photographs, but, I will admit that once I got home all the different tanks kind of blurred into one! A big heavy metal thing with a gun sticking out of it. The kids had a great time and loved seeing the tanks in real life. We all had a ride on a Vietnam was era troop carrier, it took us around the arena a few times and was great fun if dirty and noisy!
I guess I’ll try and find another place like this for next year. Something with planes, trains and automobiles.
As part of the journey to M’era Luna 2023 I had a little less than a day in Hannover, or Hanover as apparently we British spell it. Smith and I flew to Hannover, stayed the night in a hotel room and then travelled to M’era Luna in Hildesheim.
There’s a website that gives information about curios in different places. You let it know where you are going and then the return data are interesting things. The first one we wanted to see was the church with the pentagram built into the walls. In the above picture you can see the pentagram [traditional sign of the devil] and also the Star Of David around the clock. I’m not sure why either are there, but also, I don’t really care. It was pretty nice to see.
Next on the list was the musical manhole cover or drain cover I guess they should be called. Trying to explain manhole cover to a German native was interesting. Their language didn’t have the male-ness of it in their word so English gets called out, quite rightly, for being misogynist.
The new town hall in Hannover was spectacular and very pretty. The whole centre of the city was a delight, even with the mentally unstable people we saw. I found the basement level shopping mall quite a surprise but understandable. It’s hard talking to Germans about their cities when they talk about “it was bombed and we built it back the way it was before”. I’m not sure of the correct response to that. I know when in Washington DC I was almost proud the Brits had burnt the White House to the ground, but these war actions felt different.
Wandering around Hannover it was strange to see emblems of the British royal family. But then I remembered that the current royal family are literally descended from the Hanoverians who ruled Britain in the past. Once I remembered this I felt a kind of kinship with the city and I’m not even a royalist. I’m definitely a not-royalist. But there we go.
I’m trying to upload the musical drain cover to YouTube but am struggling slightly, I think that the music might be missing for some reason, but that’s the main reason for uploading. I will try again in a moment.
Another summer another journey to Germany for a music festival. Well, it’s the only festival I’ve been to for a number of years and it’s in Germany so all of that makes logical sense. Smith and I have been going since 2015 to this festival and this year there weren’t really any big bands that drew us there but we went for the atmosphere, meeting people and some of the lower-down-the-bill bands. Other darkness visits are all within this site:
I’ll write more about the journey in another communication I think. There’s too much that happened and things to share especially from the time spent in Hannover. On the Friday we took a tram, train and bus to get to the venue. There was a kiosk in Hildesheim bus station handing out the wristbands so we were pretty much sorted and got into the venue quickly and efficiently. Friday at M’era Luna is all about looking around, seeing the merchandise and maybe attending the disco. We didn’t attend the disco. I did buy the t-shirt, a hood and a metal cup. I also got a small bag for the Legend.
What follows are my notes from the bands I saw on the Saturday:
Antiage – mains stage – pondering slow standard stuff. Nothing exciting. Bunny dancers. Keyboard on a spring.
Intent Outake – club stage – More threatening. A better band than first one. Sun has come out. Good set design. Couldn’t see Mac operator as hidden behind car, mic with camo netting.
Versus Goliath – main stage – good guitars. Good riffage. A cross between Rage and Linkin Park . Heavy. I liked it. Almost rap. Bought their album.
Rave The Requiem – main stage – Good energetic Swedish rock with three singers and a percussionist. Looked like they enjoyed it. Too many key changes but I enjoyed it overall.
Tanzwut – main stage – rock with bagpipes and a medieval feel. Actually quite enjoyable.
Megaherz – main stage – good German rock. Enjoyed it. Proper rain shower. Heavy rain.
Project Pitchfork – main stage – Honestly boring, even with two drummers. Both drummers playing same thing – what’s the point? Walked during song three.
Solar Fake – club stage – Really fucking good, upbeat. Excellent drummer – he really impressed me.
Mesh – club stage – Boring.
Sunday was a better day weather-wise and I was looking forward to some of the bigger names this time.
Dragol – main stage – mythical? Cellist. Male pianist. Female singer. Slow, but quite interesting. Tom Tom player looked like the caveman from Ghosts.
Blitz Union – club stage – amazing. Thrash bordering on excellent rock. Interacted with the crowd really well. Wall of death. Very enjoyable. Had a good energy rather than the plodding of a lot of the weekend.
Heldmaschine – main stage. A bit plodding German metal. Nothing special.
Eisfrabrik – MainStage. Dressed in white. Bit meh.
Gothminister – main stage. Dressed very goth. New German rock. The keyboards were very chord-y. Songs were too long.
Letzte Instanz – main stage – Rock with violin and a cello. There was a cello solo.
Ashbury Heights – club stage – Very enjoyable set. Not really my stuff but got the crowd moving and the songs were excellent.
Subway to Sally – main stage – A very enjoyable set. If you have a violinist they don’t need to play ALL the time. Oddly very heavy at times.
Mono Inc. – main stage – loved it. Was close to front. They played a cover of Passenger. Excellent crowd dynamics. Great.
Within Temptation – main stage -Derivative female led rock music. I guess it was ok. Nice to see. Not bothered about seeing again.
The overall highlight of the weekend was Mono Inc. for me. I missed them play at the Underground in London because I had covid and so it was lovely to see them and really appreciate it.
So, that’s it for another year. I’ve seen plenty of new bands and also some that I’ve missed in the past because other music has been on in the hangar stage. It was a lovely atmosphere. All I have to do now is wait for my back to fix itself. I’m being reminded that I’m getting older and all the walking, dancing, sleeping on airbeds and travel might not be great for me. So, until I do it all again next year:
