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 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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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
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.
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
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
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.
So my final camp is now complete. I’ve spent a week at RAF Henlow and it was a great time. I spent the week driving around in the party bus and singing along to all the great tunes we had playing. It was really nice being back with staff who I hadn’t seen for half a year and also meeting new staff from the other CCF unit there.
Bombardier Global Express Undercarriage
Here’s a list of the things we got up to during the week:
Archery, raft building, high ropes.
Shuttleworth Collection – anti aircraft Bofors training, bus ride, searchlight training, camp photo.
Leadership tasks.
Live 5.56mm 25m range at RAF Wittering using L98A2 weapons.
Martin-Baker factory visit.
DeHavilland museum visit and Link Trainer experience.
Harrods Aviation visit.
Voyager Simulations visit.
Elstree Aerodrome visit.
Duxford IWM.
Awards ceremony.
It was a camp worthy of my last CCF adventure and I look forward to seeing the section continue. The boss and I had loads of ideas and some plans fell through but that is how it goes. Overall I think we did a really good job.
Last night Smith and I went to the Angel and our favourite little music venue in Torrens Street. I drove into the big smoke and parked in some driveway using the Just Park app. Now, let’s be clear, the app doesn’t park the car but it allows you to find a space that is convenient and, normally, quite local to your destination. It was a much nicer drive than on Wednesday when I met up with the Fulham Five for a leaving party – one of our number is heading to the US to live. There are now three of us in the USA and three and a half in the UK. Back to the gig.
First band on were Machine Vein. I spent most of the gig thinking they were j:dead because I wasn’t aware there were three bands on. While driving in to the gig I thought it would be funny to see Biomechanimal again as they have been support for many bands I have seen. It turns out that Machine Vein have some of the same members of Biomechanical. I quite enjoyed their set. It was heavy bass with tiddly sounds over the top. I had a good time.
Second band were j:dead and I thought I had seen them before somewhere, sometime, but now, having seen them I suspect not. I also thought I had some of their music on my phone but that was also not a correct thought. I think they pop up in a lot of the social media I have because of their close links to the EBM – Aggrotech genres. I didn’t find their set as much fun as Mechanical Vein but they were definitely a more polished live band to see, you could tell there was plenty of experience. I was also surprised they were British. Not sure why that surprised me but it did.
j:dead at Electrowerkz
Then we were on to Faderhead, a singer I had seen before twice at a music festival and one whose shows were great. I’ve even helped fund their albums at times and there are communications somewhere in this site. I’m quite happy to pay for things that make me happy, hence I even pay for free podcasts, I will recognise that being able to do that is from a position of privilege. So, Faderhead. I really enjoyed the show. It was great to see him in London and the crowd was pretty darn good. He has a load of songs that are really good for singing along with. Some of my favourites are “No gods, no flags, no bullshit”, “Destroy, improve, rebuild”, “Fistful of fuck you”, and “Swedish models and cocaine”.
Faderhead @ Electrowerkz
Earlier in the day Faderhead had said that he wasn’t feeling well and that his voice was struggling. I think this showed in the early songs and he clearly didn’t feel healthy-well. He sounded better about halfway through the gig and then his voice declined more towards then end. They had decided to put some extra ballads into the set to ease his voice and I didn’t mind this. Overall I really enjoyed the show. It was great to see them play a smaller venue and I look forward to seeing them again sometime.
Yesterday the Legend crew took a trip to West Horsley House. It’s the location where most of the BBC series Ghosts was filmed. If you like the series then you’ll understand that the house is a pretty big feature of the show.
West Horsley Place – BBC Ghosts Filming Location
The open day was ticketed to avoid there being too many people around, also the car parking was somewhat limited. We rolled up in our luxury minibus, hired for the day, but not quite luxury enough for the wheels to be correctly balanced or the doors to close without needing an extra shove. Coffee and some snacks were downloaded into the living bodies and then we wandered around the place.
West Horsley Place – Fanny’s Window
There were plenty of Ghosts fans and superfans wandering around. I found it fascinating how much they changed the look of the interior for the show and the dressing that was required to do that. I also liked the fact that filming the show used almost every part of the house.
West Horsley Place – The Drawing Room
Seeing the same rooms and furniture that was used for Ghosts, and also some feature films, it was a lovely sense of familiarity along with the first time of being there. A bit like when I went to LA and saw things that I’d seen all along on TV and film. I think to get the most out of the time at the house it’s probably important to have recently watched the show and then re-watch it all upon return.
