Celebrations

As the days roll by I approach a celebration day. CHAIR. I’ve been wondering what I should get to reward myself for this celebration day. CHAIR. I have been slowly upgrading my kit at work to make my job more comfortable/doable. I have a rising desk, second monitor, good mouse, desk fans, charging points, PlayStation, Lego ruler and pencil case, and a Darth Vader pen holder. All of these are things that please me and make the day-to-day grind more tolerable. CHAIR.

The next thing I have been thinking about, especially given recent back problems, is a suitable sitting object. CHAIR. Perhaps I could get an decent office chair that supports me well and is comfy. Something I like, something that says – ME. My current desk chair does not have wheels, squeaks and doesn’t have arms. It’s an OK chair but I’d rather have something more special.

An issue with decided what to get is that my room is used by all manner of people and even children so any CHAIR would potential need to cope with uninvited torsos. Obviously, there would be rules but people do like breaking rules, especially if they think they can get away with it.

So, buying a chair seems to me to be a very personal business. I want to know that I find it comfortable and that it is made well. I have sat on some chairs in PC World and they have been mostly shit. This could be because many people “try” them out and also, maybe, they aren’t put together with love and attention. I don’t know if the abuse they get means they feel “cheap” or they are just cheap.

I’ve also tried some chairs at Ikea and although there seem to be some promising types there we still come across the “feel cheap” side of things. So, what to do? CHAIR. I keep having intrusive thoughts. This is made worse by the fact that, at home I won a really nice, well put-together chair. It also costs that much. But. It is a nice chair. My current thoughts are to get a new chair from that company and the bring the current home chair into work. I think it will make a nice addition to my workspace.

More complications arise as the when I bought the current home gaming chair I had it delivered to work. This then required me to transport the box to my house. It almost didn’t fit in the car. It definitely doesn’t fit in the boot and so the last time I had to slide it into the back seats, which normally wouldn’t be an issue but I did have a human I needed to sit in the back as well. It was a tight squeeze and I’m not sure that human would want to be squashed like that again. So, I have to think carefully about delivery. I’m not at home during working hours, but transporting could be an issue if delivered to work!

Missing Links

Along with the move of this website to a different hosting company or rather to a company as I was self-hosting I also decided I needed to go through all the broken links in the site. There were hundreds.

I have a program running that scans this website and informs me of broken links. It recently chose to inform me of hundred and I decided I needed to sort it all out. I had to make some decisions about how to deal with this.

I think when writing this site I have the belief that all weblinks will exist and forever. This, it turns out, is not the case. Over the last few years I have deleted my entire Twitter history and I don’t think any of that exists anymore. All of my tweets that I embedded in this site still have the text as that was part fo the embedding process but links to the original site have gone. I deleted the links.

Some of the links were to other sites that I hested but they don’t exist. Whoops. It’s all a bit of a mess really but if you find stuff wrong/missing then please get in touch.

Crossing The Rails

I recently went for a walk and we crossed a railway line which is always exciting and also routine at the smae time. I wonder if my appreaciation for railway crossings has increased since I’ve seen so many videos of cars and lorries getting smashed by trains on level crossings? My daily route to school when I was attending as a pupil was to cross a railway with a manual crossing gate. A person worked in the tower next to the crossing and wound a thing that made the gates shut. They got replaced by technology which is soon going to happen to a lot more people thanks to capitalism.

Railway lines stretching into the distance.
Railway Lines

Current Podcasts

I haven’t really done much with this site recently so I’m looking to change that and try to write more. I think changing my hosting provider with sort that out. I was self-hosting on a NAS but I have moved to an proper hosting service because there were aspects of my site I just couldn’t really get working.

Here is a list of podcasts that I listen to regularly.

  • The Scathing Atheist
  • God Awful Movies
  • The Skepticrat
  • Citation Needed
  • Skeptics With A K
  • Data Over Dogma
  • Cognitive Dissonance
  • Opening Arguments
  • Maintenance Phase
  • Law Pod UK
  • The Bugle
  • The Know Rogan Experience
  • Pod Save The UK
  • The Skeptics’ Guide To The Universe
  • The Allusionist
  • Curious Cases

I use the RSS Radio app to listen to these because I don’t like the Apple Podcast app.

Just For The Fun Of It

Just wandering along and enjoying the game of Lego BrickLife within Fortnite and it’s all so much fun or gorgeous.

Gorgeous Sunset Views - Lego Brick Life
Gorgeous Sunset Views – Lego Brick Life

It is delightful to drive the school bus into the sea, jump out at the last minute and watch it float along for a little bit before sinking to the depths. I love it.

Sunken Bus Fun - Lego Bricklife
Sunken Bus Fun – Lego Bricklife

My favourite spot to put my house in on the beach front next to the concert stage. There’s a rock arch just south of that and I found out it’s possible to drive the bus up the arch and then drive off and land on top of my house.

Parked The Bus On The House - Lego Brick Life
Parked The Bus On The House – Lego Brick Life

The last image today is the underground garage with cars dumped inside. These are other players’ cars that I have run around and “stolen” and then brought to the car park for storage. It’s a fun game.

Stealing Cars Fun - Lego Brick Life
Stealing Cars Fun – Lego Brick Life

BlueSky No More

So, I left BlueSky. I deleted my account and decided life was too short for all the interactions it would cause. I found myself following lefty type news organisations and it was all the same stuff that I’d been seeing on Twitter all those years ago. It’s not my fight anymore, I think there are other things I need to get interested in.

So, the only “social media” I do is Reddit. I get pictures of aeroplanes and other flying things that I can then admire. I don’t really count WhatsApp as social media as I use it as a messaging device to communicate with people close to me. I don’t use it for unsolicited opinions.

BlueSky

I left Twitter about a year ago? I can’t remember when but I know I was very happy to leave. It was not a safe space for people to discuss with civility. Musk has made it far worse and I’m terrified at what is going to happen in the USA. I have now, recently, signed up to BlueSky. I heard about it on a podcast and I thought I’d have a little look. I like it.

I haven’t really figured out what I am going to do with the account. All I’ve done so far is post some pictures of aeroplanes. Let’s see. I might even leave if I find it adds nothing to my views of the world.

Kindle Served Its Purpose

During the pandemic I bought a Kindle e-reader. I had bought a hardback book and I wanted to read it but my arms were too lazy for me to hold the damn thing. I also thought that if I spent some money on an e-reader I would read more. I really enjoy reading but there are lots of things I enjoy doing so reading tends to drop down the list, which is a shame because reading is really important for knowledge and thinking. So, I bought a Kindle.

I have been impressed with the Kindle and I enjoy reading from it. I’ve bought too many books on there and I probably won’t read them all. Much like real life where I buy books because books are cool but I don’t get around to reading them all. However, real life books at least exist in the real world and have matter to them.

I’m reaching the point nearly five years later where I might start buying paper books again and start reading them. There’s something about holding paper in your hands, leafing through a book, looking at the cover, not needed to be charged, that I like about paper books. So I am going to start buying real books again. Books are great. Even if you read them electronically or listen to audiobooks they are all great. Oh, yes, I do believe audiobooks are an excellent way to read and people who disagree with me are wrong.

Weald Cafe

I went with my parents to a café at North Weald airfield. The place was called Rosey Lea café, part of a chain of four cafes in the Hertfordshire borders area. It was a pretty neat place which meant driving around the entire airfield to get to it. I’ve driven on airfields before, most notably at RAF Brize Norton where I was chased down by a C130 Hercules, and this place felt similar except for the lack of giant transporters. The food was nice and there were a few things flying around so at least there was stuff to see. I did see a Jet Provost and also this beast:

Douglas C47 Skymaster
Douglas C47 Skymaster

M’era Luna 2024

The middle of August means it’s time to travel to Germany and attend one of the friendliest music festivals I know [I haven’t been to many but this one does feel like home]. On a Wednesday I travelled to see Smith in London town and we had dinner. I stayed over at his house as we had an early start to catch a flight to Hannover.

This year the flight was on time and we landed in Hannover and had plenty of time to get to our room. In fact, at one point we just sat by the river and let the world pass us by. In the evening we walked to the Maschseefest after a walk to get alcohol. We were both pretty tired having got up at 0400.

The Maschseefest, Hannover
The Maschseefest, Hannover

Friday starts with a walk to the Bahnhof and then a train to Hildesheim. Once there we get the bus to M’era Luna. The whole experience is relatively painless. We find the tent and then chill because it’s been a long journey and not much happens on the Friday until the evening. I had some LED lights to light up the tent so we could find it once it was dark.

After I watch a band I note down a few comments on my phone. What you see below are those comments. On the Saturday the music we watched goes as follows:

re.mind – Main Stage – standard electronic. Singer wasn’t powerful but only ok. OK for a first band.

Steril – Club stage – upbeat electronic with some guitars. Much better than the first band.

Schwarzer Engel – Main Stage – Seen before. Metal.

Hell Boulevard – Main Stage – OK. Heavy rock. Keyboards in the background. Nothing special.

Centhron – Club Stage – Heavy as fuck bass and other motherfucking shit.

SPOCK – Club Stage – Excellent cheeky space based pop.

S.P.O.C.K.
S.P.O.C.K.

Hamatom – Main Stage – Late on – technical issues. Good set. Lots of audience participation. Heavy metal. I enjoyed it.

Suicide Commando – Club Stage – Excellent set. Best band so far. Really enjoyed it.

Suicide Commando
Suicide Commando

The Sunday bands were as follows:

JanRevolution – Main stage – Better than yesterday’s first band. More upbeat. Enjoyable. I wouldn’t buy it.

Extize – Club Stage – Heavy dark dance. Actually good. I would buy.

Eden Weint Im Grab – Club Stage – Slow rock with violin and viola. OK.

Future Lied To Us – Club Stage – Really good electronic bouncy dance. Singer had energy but I didn’t like his voice. Really enjoyed the overall set though.

X-RX – Club Stage – Great energy. Very bass. Enjoyed it a lot.

Welle: Erdball – Club Stage – I was just getting into position for Combichrist. I didn’t like it. It was actually boring.

Combichrist – Club Stage – Elliott motherfucking Berlin! Amazing. The fucking best. An old school set.

Combichrist - Old School Set
Combichrist – Old School Set

Die Krupps – Club Stage – good. But not as good a previous times but enjoyable nonetheless.

Monday was all about getting home and leaving ML early to make the flight. We managed with plenty of time and it was interesting to see just how many people on the flight had come from the festival. Obviously I didn’t talk to any of them.

London
London