I’m not happy. I’ve been playing Gran Turismo Sport for about six months. I had an issue in the past where my cars disappeared from the garage and I managed to fix that one using a cloud save that hadn’t updated in over a week.
This week it happened again. I remember the game crashed while moving through the menu GUI and I restarted the PS4. Then, I reloaded the game and it worked fine. I had all the cars and I completed the daily workout. I saved the game and then exited the program. Finally, because I thought it was all working well I copied the save game file to a USB stick. After that I watched some Netflix on the PS4 and so I think the PS4 transferred my save file to the PS Plus cloud save.
Next time I go to play the game all my cars, just less that 400, had gone from the garage. Only the DLC ones were visible. So, I try copying the save file form the USB stick, but that one is corrupted. Then I look at the cloud save file but that one is bad.
So, I restore the PS4 using a back up external hard drive from two months ago. That made no difference even though an old version of the save file was there. I think the GT server file must be buggered too.
My final test was to delete the entire game. Rebuild the PS4 database and then reinstall the game with its 60GB of download and then copy the two month old save file from the system restore from the USB stick, I had copied it across earlier.
Nope. Fuck you went the game. You can’t have any of that shit.
So. No cars in the garage but all my progress saved. I am currently pondering starting again from fresh. A complete new game. It’s OK. I’ll have to complete every lesson and test again and also all the circuit experience but maybe that will be fun.
I went for a swim after work today, it was nice to get out of the heat for a while and get my arms moving. However, I was a little perturbed by one of the posters in the cafe area of the gym. To be honest there are many gym-type posters that are disturbing showing body shapes and types that are not achievable by most. This does seem to be changing over time as the advertising world recognises that people are who they are and don’t really buy into the perfect body. Unless you watch Love Island.
Sports Injuries
So, on first inspection this poster seems pretty good. It’s for a sports injury clinic and that should be a good thing. A special place for all to go to ensure that those niggles get sorted out. But, let’s look a little closer at some of the treatments offered:
Osteopathy – not a fucking thing and doesn’t do anything. Read my previous, controversial, communication.
Sports Massage – could be OK, I don’t really know what it entails.
Therapeutic Massage – again, I’m not sure what this is and I should probably discuss this in a future communication. I’ll look into it. I doubt it’s anything good.
Aromatherapy – massage with nice smells. Doesn’t do anything.
Physiotherapy – probably the only legitimate treatment on this advert. Go see a physiotherapist for those sorts of things. Don’t see woo.
Nutritional Therapy – most likely bollocks. If you want diet advice see a DIETICIAN, they are a proper profession. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist.
Acupuncture – bollocks squared.
Look, the issue with this clinic is not that they offer some legitimate therapies the problem is that they also offer a load of bollocks and so you can’t assume they will be good at any part of their job. It’s the company you keep that defines who you are.
Don’t go here.
I’ve just had a look at the website for this clinic and it is a beauty. I will add it to my communication drafts with the hope that I one day complete writing about it.
Yesterday I sauntered over to the cinema. It is a large quiet room with air conditioning. It is a good place to visit during this heat. If only I could bunk off work to get there also! There are two films I’d be interested in, Skyscraper [which will be terrible] and Ocean’s 8 [which would be fun]. I noticed that many of the boats were up on mud flats and that means that the tide was quite low. When I went for a run 9 hours later the tide was still quite low so I must’ve missed high tide.
I rated this film on IMDB after watching it and I’m not sure about my rating this time. You should read this communication for an explanation of the grading system.
So, what about this film? It was good, but not good enough for a score of 8. I’m not sure what I thought. It left me very slightly cold. Perhaps that is more to do with my current mood and feeling with our politicians and global leaders who are arseholes. This film was a good Pixar movie. It had your classic baddie, although I’m not really sure what she was trying to achieve. I think I need to go and read some reviews by proper journalists so I can focus my thoughts.
When I got back from cadet camp a while ago I noticed, somehow, that my internet connection bandwidth had dropped quite considerably. I think I had to restart the modem/router for some reason and when I logged into it I noticed that it was getting a download bandwidth of only 20Mb/s. Now, I say only, because I was getting 60Mb/s before I went away.
I restarted the hub a few times but this didn’t increase the capacity and I also left it for 24 hours thinking it might pick itself up. It didn’t. So I contacted BT. The low upload bandwidth was noticeable when attempting to upload pictures to the cloud and the download was affect some streaming services, although 20Mb/s was still good enough for most things.
I tried to use an online tracking fault thing the BT have on their website but navigating it was pretty terrible. Eventually I chose to use the online chat. They performed the same tests that the website interface had performed and then they asked me if I wanted to raise a fault.
Yes please.
When I managed to log in to the fault tracker it registered a voice-fault. I found this curious as I had a data fault but because they travel down the same line it was a voice-fault. BT also do mobile and TV and stuff so maybe that’s another reason for their curious naming of the fault. But, I didn’t know that so I phoned BT and said it was a broadband fault. They explained the previous bit to me and then said the engineer [who is really a technician] had found three problems at the exchange and fixed them. I should head home and restart the modem/router.
Which I did and nervously anticipated the result.
Well, that seems a lot better. I checked it using some external speed testers, although it’s bandwidth and not speed.
I’m happy now. I have the broadband service that I pay for. It’s all fixed and the whole process was pretty simple. Well done BT.
I’ve just got back from a wonderful week away with the RAF Air Cadets at RAF Henlow in Bedfordshire. It might not be in Bedfordshire but Bedford was the nearest largest town/city. It was a very busy week and lots got done. I had a great time and I’m pretty sure the cadets did too. We didn’t get any flying [in aircraft] but there was plenty of shooting and fun.
As is usual we arrived on the Saturday and got settled in. Then Sunday was a day at a country pursuits experience. We went to the English School Of Falconry quite close to the Cardington Hangars. There were planes from Old Warden flying around showing off including a Percival, Lysander, Hurricane and Spitfire.
Cleared For Landing
We all had a go at landing birds of prey and then some archery, air rifles and laser clay pigeon shooting. It was a baking day, really hot.
Monday was filled with some camp admin, getting the right forms delivered to the right people while the cadets visited the RAF’s Centre for Aviation Medicine. I found this particularly interesting as I’m currently reading a book about the development of the pressure suit and it has a lot of medicine development in it. The camp photo infront of the Hawker Hunter gate guardian and then a church service for the RAF100 Baton. I, somehow, didn’t make it to the service but I did get there just in time for another selfie with the baton. My first was at Amport House.
RAF Baton. Second time! pic.twitter.com/11rxK9IB88
Later that day the cadets had a brief for a Rocketeers challenge they were going to take part in and then in the evening I ran a DCCT range over the other side of the Henlow base. We nearly got stuck in the base as they locked the gate at 21:30 and we finished at 21:25.
Tuesday we visited the RAF Museum at Hendon and in the evening the cadets watched the football match. I went for a run.
Sepecat Jaguar
Wednesday morning the RAF Outreach team came to run the cadets through a disaster response planning exercise. After that we headed to Twinwoods Adventure for indoor sky diving. Twinwoods was based on the old Royal Aeronautical Establishment site and actually used the vertical wind tunnel that was developed for investigating flat spin aerodynamics.
RAE Vertical Windtunnel
The skydiving experience was fantastic and I really enjoyed it. It was such a high to finish and contemplate the second flight.
I don’t think you can explain just what it’s like to do this. Such an exhilarating time. Wednesday evening I ran another DCCT range practice with the cadets doing the shoot to qualify for their “trained shot” badge.
Thursday was my big day. I had spent hours since arriving at Henlow preparing to run my first outdoor 25m 5.56 full bore range. For whatever reason the CC couldn’t do it and so it fell to me to run the thing. There were range orders to read and a RAM to write along with all the briefings etc. I planned the day so that cadets could qualify for their “marksman” badge. To give you an idea of what it’s like, imagine having six lanes of semi-automatic weapons and 900 rounds to be shot. Then put the rifles in the hands of teenagers. Now, we follow the safe system of operation but it is still an intimidating amount of responsibility.
The day went very smoothly and I was happy with the number of cadets who qualified for the marksman badge.
Thursday evening we dined out at a pub near the base, The Airman. The company was great and the food was ok. The next day one of the schools had to leave for a school event because normally we would hold this meal on the last night.
A Sexy Hangar
The hangars at Henlow were designed and built before the end of the first world war and they have a beautiful look about them.
Friday I judged the drill competition, went for a run and helped supervise the block clean up. In the evening we watched the Battle Of Britain on the large screen and essentially just chilled. It was a fantastic week and I am really looking forward to next year’s trip.
Having calculated [or rather tested] that my house uses 2kWh of energy per day when nearly everything is turned off I thought I ought to work out how far that would drive my car.
In this communication I wrote about the energy usage of my car, Bora Horza Gobuchul. I use 50kWh of energy for every 100km I drive, on average.
So, the energy I use to power my house; the fridge, a few clocks and the ADS-B receiver, would drive my car about 4km. That’s not quite enough to get me to work, but it would get me to the nearest supermarket.
A few weeks ago when I was in the Lake District I would occasionally look at 360Radar to see what was flying close by. I found it curious that there was quite a lack of aircraft flying compared to Kent, where I live normally. Now, the south east does have the three London main airports and most air traffic heading to the continent. Have a look at the two following views and decide for yourself. Both are the same area of land and they are taken within a minute of each other. I think the difference is striking.
Lake District Air TrafficKent Air Traffic
Of course, this communication could be entitled:
There’s a lot more planes where there’s a lot more airports
I recently had my electricity and gas meters upgraded to “smart” meters. They aren’t that smart. All they do is upload my meter reading to the utility company at regular intervals along with this information being displayed on a screen. I look at the screen now and then but I do think that eventually I will turn it off. I know roughly how much I spend each day and it’s not really a surprise.
May Energy kWh
This graph shows the energy use each day with the lower darker bar being electricity and the light blue being gas. I have a gas boiler for water and heating along with a gas hob. The oven is electric. This can be translated into costs [at current market rates]:
May Energy Costs
At the end of May I went away for a while and I normally try to shut-down most of the energy using devices in the house. The physical process can take about 5 minutes walking around the house making sure that everything is shut down in the correct order.
If you look at the last week of May you can see low and consistent energy costs. Although no gas was used in this time period the monetary costs is the standing charge that I pay for the privilege of having a gas supply.
Minimum Running
My daily energy use in a house that is mostly turned off is 2kWh. This accounts for the following items:
Fridge
Microwave clock
Oven clock
Modem / Router
ADS-B aircraft tracker in the loft
Alarm clock
That extension lead orange light
It is taking a while for my head to get around this bizarre and stupid unit the kWh. But here goes:
My house’s power usage at baseline is 83 Watts. A human during the normal day runs at about 100 Watts [as does a 100W incandescent light bulb]. Over the course of the day this ends up being 7.2 MJ. My house needs to consume about the same amount of food as a human to run at its lowest power consumption levels.
Wolfram Alpha has some lovely comparisons for energy usage, so 2 kWh is the same as:
≈ 1.7 × energy released by explosion of one kilogram of TNT ( 1 kilogram of TNT )
≈ 0.57 × average electrical energy required by an Apple iPhone 5 per year (≈ 1.3×10^7 J )
And my favourite is:
Relativistic mass m from E = mc^2: 80 ng (nanograms)
When I next go away it would be interesting to see how low I could get the consumption. To be fair, I could just turn the electricity off at the mains. But the only thing I could still power down is the ADS-B receiver and I like to keep that going because I can log into it from around the world.
This place was heading east early one morning [probably to Frankfurt] and the colour of the sky and the line of the contrails caught my eye. It looked lovely.
Wokka Over Maidstone
Then there was this Chinook. It passed right over my work place and was such a lovely sight and sound. It amazes me just how technologically amazing we are as a species. Now although I know how these things work it does seem like magic at times!
Spitfire
Finally, yesterday this Spitfire flew over my village. I keep trying to remind people that one day they will be gone and we won’t see them flying anymore. It’s a lesson I have learnt from seeing many planes in the 80s at various airshows without really appreciating just how special they all were.
Over half term I made the journey to the other end of this country to spend some time in the Lake District. While it is quite a drive the views and atmosphere are so worth it.
While in the district of Allerdale I decided to complete a few more of the Wainwrights. There are 214 fells mentioned by Alfred Wainwright in his books and I’ve got a taste for bagging some each time I go to the Lake District. My personal target is to complete the lot by the time I am 60. I’ve got 14 years to go. I need to up my rate a little but the next time I go I am planning some lovely ridge walks that should get quite a few crossed off!
On the first day I went up Walla Crag [number 204 by height].
I parked in Great Wood car park and walked up the Cat Gill route and down again via Castlerigg. It was a lovely little jaunt. Now I had a feel for it I wanted to try and get some of the lower stand-alone fells bagged. I was trying to cross off those that would mean a big detour on future longer routes so this would allow me to make as yet unplanned walks easier.
Next was Binsey [number 192 by height]. A little mound of a fell on its own to the north east of the Skiddaw range.
This was too easy. The car was parked about half way up and was really just a little stroll. The views from the top were amazing. It was a lovely warm and sunny day with visibility running at about 25km. The mist was so fine that I couldn’t see the Scottish peaks but could just see Scotland across the Solway.
Derwentwater Withies
Another day, another walk. This time up Cat Bells [number 189 by height]. I had already completed this particular fell and so wasn’t too fussed about climbing it but I had planned to meet a work friend there.
It was pretty busy at the top and plenty of people were making this their first Wainwright. I t was nice to see so many people enjoying this countryside. The views are just lovely.
Walking down Catbells and I saw this sheep just standing and staring.
The Hills Have Eyes
The next day was a rest day and I went on a narrow gauge railway and then visited Muncaster Castle. The walk back took in a short distance by the river Esk. The air was so still that the water looked like a mill pond.
River Esk
I drove back to Keswick through two mountain passes. One was Harknott pass and this is a most ridiculous road. There are hairpin bends with a gradient of 1:3. There were times I couldn’t see where the road went out the windscreen while turning because the road dropped away so fast. It was a very satisfying drive. Then, there was the Wrynose pass which wasn’t as spectacular but was still very pretty.
Another rest day followed with a lovely time doing various things together with going to watch Solo. The final walk day was spent hanging around Crummock Water after getting to the top of Rannerdale Knotts [number 210 by height] adjacent to the lake.
Rannerdale Knotts. Forgot my hat! pic.twitter.com/qFCKmBtnDj
I’m annoyed that I forgot my hat. I don’t do well in direct sunlight, I have a lack of natural head covering, not that I’m too fussed about that, and I burn easily, even with sun lotion on [SPF 50].
Crummock Water
That was it for the week. A journey back to the South East and good broadband bandwidths beckoned the next day. It was good to get back to upload speeds in excess of 0.4Mb/s, it was needed to chuck photos into the cloud.
