"Nothing but the rain"
Here are a couple of photographs taken of the glorious colours in the morning skies above Kent.
I know they are sunrise because both of these photos have the camera facing to the East.
The weather for the last few weeks has not been usual. We are in the middle of October and I’ve only had the heating on for two days and that was me being luxurious.
So, what is happening? It is mid-October and I am writing this while wearing shorts and a t-shirt and the house heating most definitely is not on. For some reason the temperatures in this fair land are rather balmy this weekend.
Today is 23 Celsius according to the car and tonight is going to be warm. I’m not sure I like it. I’m looking forward to the cold, although not the heating bills that go with that. Tomorrow there’s rain coming and that doesn’t really fit with my plans so I’ll be back to moaning like everyone else I guess.
I’m curious about the level of abnormality for this current weather.
Over the last two years the news has become increasingly depressing. I think that is because everything I hear goes against my views of what our society should be. All the politics since the EU referendum and election of May and Trump has been frustrating. I have often switched off from one of my twitter accounts because I find it depresses me, makes me worried for the future and makes me feel helpless.
I have tried to cut down the amount of news I consider. Recently I have found that listening to BBC Radio 4 a lot hasn’t helped my mood. The presenters don’t seem to approach the discussions in the way I think they should and they seem to miss all the important issues facing this country at the moment.
I went through a phase of listening to music in the mornings and evenings while in the kitchen and I am now at the point where I miss the voices. I like the music but I miss the discussion of talk radio.
So, I spent a little time last night trying to get a radio station from New Orleans play over my Sonos system. I am pretty sure that this station, WWL, broadcasts only to the USA and the website I get directed to doesn’t work properly in my browser. I don’t do any VPN type thing yet, although that might happen at some point.
So, I spent a little while trying to find the URL I could use to add WWL to my Sonos system. Sonos uses TuneIn Radio to connect to streaming services and WWL doesn’t broadcast over that network. However, you can add stations manually if you can get a streaming URL.
It took a little clever Googling around to find a source that would work but eventually I did it. I have now added WWL to my sound system. I am looking forward to, once again, learning about the weather in Louisiana and how the traffic is near the big lake.
A previous communication in 2016 covered this media switch also.
Why New Orleans? Because I follow their American football team, that’s why.
Well, that was a weekend! For some reason I decided to have a go at running my website [this one] from my own NAS drive. I figured this will save me money in the long run? won’t have to rely on GoDaddy who have hosted my website since its inception. I’ve not had any problems with GoDaddy but it’s a bit like car tax. When it comes around to paying for the hosting I just find I’d rather not.
So, I spent many hours staring at my computer screen. The first thing was getting the NAS to run as a web server and get the data out to the world. This took a little while to configure, especially the port forwarding and stuff, but I had done this for my Raspberry Pi and it’s web server so I did have some experience. I installed Webstation on the black box and got it working.
The next thing to do was trying to migrate my website from the GoDaddy servers to the NAS. However, this means running WordPress and that means the following have to be installed on the NAS drive:
WordPress configured everything to run well and then I followed a web guide which had explained it should be easy to transfer the data with a little knowledge. I have a little knowledge and I think that makes me more dangerous than most! I FTP’d my site to my PC ready for uploading to the NAS drive.
I then tried importing the SQL database and setting up WordPress to read that database and work properly.
I failed at this about three times.
I failed terribly. To the point of uninstalling WordPress and deleting all the data and trying again. Each attempt took about an hour. It was quite frustrating because I do think I was close and only needed to change a “space” or “comma” in one of the php files and it would have worked wonders. But I started to despair.
So, I paid for some migration software. I already use UpdraftPlus and this automatically backs up my site to the cloud and they offered a migration package for about £20. Considering how much time I had spent doing all this it would have made more sense to spend that in the first place. But, you know, I wanted the experience. I do know a lot more about SQL and stuff now so it wasn’t a complete waste.
UpdraftPlus migration was easy to use and it even sent the files straight to my webserver. I thought that was quite impressive. It did take a long time though and I left it running overnight. I checked on it this morning.
The local version of WordPress was asking me to locate the backup files and then import them. As I was running a very basic and unmodified version of WordPress I hoped the import file would write all data to the SQL database and also import all the settings.
It did and quite quickly.
However, it did come up with an error reading one of the “upload” zip files. I think there must’ve been an error. Most of the website was working well and the WordPress dashboard was looking good. I think the database thought all these media files existed but Updraft couldn’t remove them from the zip file and so stopped working.
I FTP’d into the existing site and downloaded all the media files, about 5GB and FTP’d them to the NAS and hey presto. It all seems to work quite well. I am quite pleased.
I now have to go through and change the odd link here and there which won’t work because of the directory structure, but generally I am very happy with everything. I have a plugin which will crawl through and check links for me. I could also get Google to do a crawl for me, it worked really well last time to indicate some issues on the site.
This is the very first Fooyah communication on this new hosting. I am happy. If blurry eyed.
Last night I went to Rochester cinema [not in Rochester] to see King Of Thieves. It was dark so I don’t have any information about the state of the tide for this communication but I can tell you it was raining. I can also inform you that the JD was very pleasant while waiting to go into the theatre. I did see a really cool device developed by Guinness that took a poured glass of Guinness from a can and then made bubbles appear so it looked like a draught pint. This device is apparently called a Guinness Surger and I will let you Google that for yourself.
I rated this film on IMDB and you should sneak over to this communication to see how the system works.
I rated King of Thieves (2018) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/UzkslauApf
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 7, 2018
Well, that seems quite a low rating for a crime caper! I just didn’t really like it. This movie starts off with likable characters trying to get one over on The Man. Although that is what they have always done, being professional thieves. But, you see, this means they are scum bags unwilling to work for the things they want. Stealing isn’t a thing to be celebrated, even though we love those movies. I would also rail against those who make money by taking advantage of people. I’ve a simple mantra in life, let’s be nice to one another.
In this film you have what looks like a bumbling group of old guys with a lovely camaraderie who slowly develop and show their greed and mistrust of each other because they have always lied. They start playing off against each other. They just aren’t nice people. You see, thieving:
IT’S NOT A NOBLE OCCUPATION.
It’s for assholes and scumbags driven by a sense of inequality. Whilst they are right to have that sense of inequality they should be trying to change things through the proper channels, not breaking the law. Arrrgh, I’m stuck now because the law works in favour of those with money and those who take advantage of everyone, especially while the Tories are in power.
Do you know what? Go and watch the Jonathon Pie thing on iPlayer. That’s good.
It has struck me recently that while I stream quite a bit of music the money I pay for this doesn’t seem to get back to the artists. I know that each Spotify steam is bugger all. Each stream of a song is about 0.4 cents or pence it doesn’t really matter. For an artist to make a living from Spotify they have to be best sellers really. Now, I will listen to an album a large number of times when I like the music. But I might steam an album once or twice. It seems to me that if I know I like the songs then paying for the album means I will listen to it more, enjoy it more and contribute to the artist more.
Just paid for an actual album (download). More of the money will go to artist than streaming.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) October 2, 2018
So, my first album purchase in probably over a year goes to: Leaether Strip.
I decided to buy two albums. A “best of” and a later album. Ironically I’m going to share them here via Spotify you can always search for these on your preferred content provider.
I think it should be an aim to buy an album each month. Preferably using Bandcamp or something similar where more of my payment goes to the artist.
Yesterday I went to the Cineworld cinema at Rochester to see the film Mile 22. I didn’t know what to expect but as it was rated 18 I thought it might be better than some of the other films currently showing. As I journeyed the sun was shining and it was a lovely day, only ruined by my need to tidy the garden and pull some weeds. The tidal state of the river Medway was quite high.
You can’t see a great deal of the river in this photograph but it is there and was lovely and still giving nice reflections of the valley sides opposite.
As is usual I rated this film on IMDB when I left the cinema. I also then share stuff via Twitter because once it’s embedded in this page the tweet looks pretty good! You should see something written about my rating system and it just so happens I have an explanation in this communication.
I rated Mile 22 (2018) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/kto1ID7bm7
— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 29, 2018
Why the low score? Well, this film was shit. That’s why. I didn’t actually walk out although I did think about it. I was less than enthused about ten minutes in. After that the film just kept getting worse.
I don’t like shaky hand-held camera work. It’s lazy because it means there’s more space in the choreography of fighting than there should be. Hand held cameras give the idea that you are part of the fight and therefore you can’t see all the fight. You have no fucking clue what is going on. I gave up trying to track what was happening at times and let the scene play out and I would back-fill the fight from who was left standing at the end.
Some of the vocals were so poorly recorded or had such terrible accents that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Had I been watching at home I would have put the subtitles on. Which wouldn’t have made a huge difference to my understanding of the film because the plot was fucking terrible.
The Mark Wahlberg character was a piece of shit. We had some back story about him being really gifted and using “pain” to stop his mental thoughts but he was just an abusive person. I hoped he died. As a group of my friends would say “he’s a right proper Cynthia”. He was the leader of a super-secret cell of USA government hard bastards who went in and did the job and got out. Except we saw them resign their posts before using this super-power and therefore weren’t members of the CIA while they were blowing shit up.
One of the female characters was so cool under fire that it was highlighted by the film but then she couldn’t hold her emotions together when she was talking to her ex-husband. What a load of toss. Bullshit.
I don’t even want to go into all the problems with the plot and how it doesn’t really fit together or make sense. This film was terrible. I hated it.
As part of an entertainment weekend I booked a seat to see A Simple Favour. A film about something. I didn’t know really, it was a film on at the right time for me to get to the cinema. There are things to be done you see. Also, hopefully it would stop me overdoing it at the SITD gig. There was a method to my planning. The last thing I needed was a big hangover.
It was raining as I drove to the cinema and so I did not notice the status of any solar-lunar effects on the Earth. I can tell you the tide was just below high when I drove away as the skies had cleared to sunshine.
I rated this film on IMDB and there’s a communication which covers the rating system called IMDB Ratings. Then my customary behaviour is to share my score via Twitter.
I rated A Simple Favour (2018) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/AxbP2DFzMK
— Ian Parish (@iparish) September 23, 2018
So, what did I think of this film? It was alright I think. It wasn’t super stunning or scary. It was a little full of too-perfect people, although I guess they had their flaws exposed as the movie went on. I guess my problem is I’m not sure who was the baddie. I am pretty sure both the main female characters were not heroes.
I think I saw a movie similar to this a couple of years back. A woman gets all scheming and fakes her own death. Etc.
Maybe we are meant to find both women horrific in their own ways.
I think I have one comment about the rest of the school mums and dads. This film had school mums and also a single dad who was probably a gay character. Perhaps the film-makers could have realised that there are life situations where the dad might be staying at home in a heterosexual relationship. I don’t think there was a need to make him gay. Unless, of course, there are quotas. On second thoughts, well done movie for showing a gay dad in a positive light and messing with the heads of all those crazy christians in the USA. Anything to get in their heads.
This film was a good waste of two hours. It’s worth a watch but maybe don’t pay for it.
Throughout the rain I struggled yesterday to get to Angel. Well, it wasn’t a struggle but I wanted drama! Smith and I got to Angel with plenty of time for a few drinks before heading to Electrowerkz for an evening of music and atmosphere.
First band up on this quadruple bill was My Hysteria. They had a good solid beat but the songs were a little long and the singer needed more variation in his voice. He also didn’t manage to fit his audience participation in with the music but maybe that will change for him as the band progresses.
Second band were called Matt Hart. That may have been the name of the singer, the guitarist or the band. I don’t know. I also missed the beginning of the set. My notes go as follows:
Singer. Guitarist. Heavy bass drum beat, samples. Heavy guitar. Not quite working. Not sure why. Needs a live drummer??? Distorted voice. Lacks an “energy”.
I guess that’s something they could work on as well. I do understand that this reviewing stuff is very subjective and so should you. We probably don’t like the same things. However, I do like a decent live drummer.
Thirdest up was a band I had seen twice before. Biomechanimal are a regular support band over here and they played before the headliners. The main question is whether I thought they were any good. I’m not sure they were. My issues with this band are that the vocals are too distorted, I can’t hear the bass player and apart from the last two songs which were very “dance” the rest were a bit, meh. I have previously written about this band and commented then that I couldn’t hear the bass player. Disclosure: I play bass.
Finally we get to the German headliners. Shadows In The Dark or [:SITD:]. They were really good. I’d seen them at M’era Luna before. I like listening to their albums. I do think that their sound can get a little repetitive and so I thought it might be a bit like the Hocico gig. However, it was way better than that. The sound was very good. They proved that the right band in the right venue can be awesome. All their songs were enjoyable and the beat varied throughout to keep interest. It did not feel like an eighty minute set.
It was quite clear that the lead singer is suffering with his identity dealing with hair loss. I don’t think there’s ever any need to wear a beanie hat indoors. The main singer was reasonably energetic and even got down into the crowd to sing a verse and chorus of a song, a nice touch.
The [:SITD:] gig gets a solid 7.5 out of ten. I very pleasant and enjoyable evening drinking amaretto and cranberry juice. I definitely don’t have cystitis now!
But still getting there.
