This is the system I use to play on the flight simulator. I really enjoy my time flying around the world virtually and trying to split the journey up into twenty minute flights.
X-Plane Set Up
The stuff I have here is a HOTAS system from Logitech, two PC screens, keyboard and mouse from Razer along with two external displays. The Samsung tablet runs some software giving me a PFD and the information involved there. My phone runs some software which is similar to the tablet PFD but also includes glideslope information and forward terrain. In the picture below you can see my chair, which I absolutely love. It’s a lovely chair.
My Favourite Chair
It was quite hard to get the camera to take a reasonable photograph of the system because I have a polarising filter on the lens and as the displays are also polarised, but in different directions, it means that I couldn’t really get the best direction of the polarisation. But I did ok. Here is what it looks like at its worst.
Parents are funning creatures. When I was young they had a couple of phrases designed as “in” jokes but possible more widely known, I don’t know. If my parents wanted to go somewhere but not tell us where we were going they would answer with “there and back to see how far it is” whenever we asked where are we going. It’s a vaguely amusing come back which really means “we want it to be a surprise, or maybe it’s somewhere you won’t like, so shut the fuck up”. Another in-joke was whenever we were lost or getting somewhere was taking longer than expected dad would say we are taking “one of mum’s shortcuts”. I guess the implication is that anything mum suggested was terrible? I don’t know, I’ve never really thought of it as sinister until know and I’d rather pack that one back in its little box. We once went to Flatford Mill as a family and it pissed down all day, so if it rains hard someone will normally make reference to Flatford Mill. It’s these little in-jokes that forge a sense of belonging and community [explicit sexism aside].
I’ve got a lovely scenery pack on my computer for X-Plane 11 and it covers the whole of the UK [I think it has Northern Ireland, I ought to check]. But flying around over the UK has limitations I guess and so for giggles one day I decided I would start flying following the coastline. I started at RAF Valley and headed south, I popped over the channel and visited Jersey and then I kept going westwards around France, Spain, Portugal and now I’m in the Cameroon. I’m not sure when I am going to stop this particular journey but at least I’m seeing other parts of the world.
I have spent some time wondering whether I should get rid of my Twitter account as when I look at what’s trending or what people are discussing it seems full of stupid arguments limited by the character limit. There isn’t really any space for nuance and so I use it only as a place to plug tweets into this site. If I get rid of my twitter account then all the absolute glory within these communications will be gone. No one will be able to see my anger and sheer disgusting language over the years. Social media is bad for your mental health. It’s bad for society.
I am going to try and catalogue the rest of my journey in X-Plane on Twitter so that is a good use for the platform. I will not be using twitter for much else, although there are a couple of people I keep in touch with over there.
Today I am officially vaccinated against Covid-19. Two weeks and one day ago I had my second injection. I can report that I had no side-effects and was able to carry on. I was happy to get vaccinated. I don’t really read a huge amount of social media and I certainly am not affected by all the claims of vaccine-conspiracy. If I was in charge then vaccinations would be mandatory. But I’m not in charge and the socialist authoritarian in me lies dormant.
We should be clear about what the vaccine does. It minimises the risk of you suffering greatly and being hospitalised if you catch Covid 19. It doesn’t stop you from getting the disease it just gives you that extra boost so you don’t get it too bad. Our current government policy is placing an awful amount of hope on the vaccine that hospitalisations remain low and deaths remain low while they can open the country economically bit by bit. It turns out that people “want” their summer. I have found this attitude incredibly amusing and I think the autistic spectrum part of me doesn’t get it.
Let’s be clear about what is happening right now. The daily cases are going through the roof and people are being told to isolate all over the place. Yes, this makes sense. If you get the disease you should minimise the risk of passing it on. It’s called being SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE AND A GOOD PERSON. I will accept that some people will be struggling financially and that isolation isn’t the best thing for them. But if we had a caring government you would hope they would help. Ultimately, everyone is going to get the disease and we have to manage the outcomes of that. If we can maintain the low death rate then we are doing well. The whole point of lockdown is to ensure that the health services can work. We’ve seen what happens when that is not a possibility.
What we should remember is that this government’s response to the pandemic has been an utter shambles and fucking terrible. They are a pathetic bunch of idiots. I’ve written about this before. Their choices have meant this country has had one of the highest deaths rates and one of the highest case rates in the world. Sydney, Australia recently went into lockdown because there were 40, yes 4-0, cases. There were 48,000 in the UK yesterday alone.
July 2021 Covid Cases
This graph shows quite clearly how terrible certain countries around the world have done. The worst ones are:
USA
Brazil
UK
India
Hungary
What do all those countries have in common during 2020? Shit-speaking arsehole leaders. Idiots who are in power for the power and unable to empathise or even consider anything other than themselves. There needs to be an extensive public inquiry into the responses of the UK government and there should be court cases after that. There needs to be legal ramifications about preparedness because the next pandemic, and it fucking will happen, could have a higher death rate and truly fuck everyone over.
July 2021 Deaths Covid
Given how rich this country this the above graph is a fucking embarrassment. Fuck this government and their response to this pandemic. What a bunch of twats.
This headline just shows how widespread the virus is. It shows that the cases are rocketing. It is very clear that the easing of restrictions over the last few months has caused widespread infections and it’s going to get worse. The government’s hope is that the death rates stay low. I hope that is the case too, but we don’t know. We need to remember that death rates run two weeks behind infection rates.
Given that many places are still going to insist on masks and the government is hoping that people are “sensible” we know it’s still bad. The issue with the the Tories hoping that people are sensible is that people AREN’T sensible. That’s why we have rules in place. If there were no speed limits and we let people decide for themselves then road deaths would increase massively. It would be terrible. This is the same as that. Many people aren’t going to be sensible and they might kill themselves and, more importantly, they might kill plenty of other people. We are led by fucking idiots.
With the most recent SARS-Cov-2 regulations in the UK we’ve been able to operate some activities at work. So, a couple of weekends ago I spent some time with the officers, CIs and cadets and we ran a “summer camp”. It was only a weekend and there was only one overnight in the open on the school field. But we managed to fill the weekend with school based activities. We are lucky that we have plenty of equipment and also suitable venues within the school site.
Sunday Station
My job on the Sunday of this camp was to run an orienteering activity. Nothing too hard in terms of map reading but something to give the cadets a feel for orientating the map and basic navigation around a wooded area. It was lovely to be doing something close to normal.
I’ve just finished watching Raised By Wolves, an HBO television series which I bought on Amazon because I didn’t want to download a dodgy version and I’ve kinda been paying for things properly recently. Why did I watch this? Well, I saw a clip of people exploding on Reddit and wondered where it came from. Turns out someone had placed a comment explaining that it was from this series which, it was mentioned, was also from Ridley Scott. That man is responsible for Alien and also Blade Runner, he has excellent form. This ten part television series follows the growth of a small number of children on a planet after Earth is destroyed. Eventually the religious zealots turn up and it all gets interesting – or as I found it more boring.
This series started well but I was mostly bored by the end. I watched it all, I paid for it after all but I found it all rather “meh”. The look of the series was great and the struggles faced by the characters seemed real enough. What I found terrible was the biology and general thoughts about faith and belief. Oh, and androids misbehaving. Oh, and white “blood” for androids. Oh, and lack of guilt for androids. We get it Ridley – you are obsessed with androids going bad and like to question faith along with thinking about the origin of human life. Give it a rest. Please.
In this series the religious are the less moral and the atheist androids – where can their moral compass come from? – are the good ones until they go and kill a load of people, virtually the last of humanity. An atheist person hiding in the cult goes mad and starts to hear things and thinks he’s the anointed one meanwhile his adopted son is making model buildings out of stones and gets elevated to prophet. Seems to me these people need some decent medication and learn to work together.
Then there’s the creatures. These are apparently devolving humans. What the fuck does that mean? It means nothing. It’s not what happens or what can happen. I found some of the writing very lazy and I know that they did it to increase the crazy and “what’s going on aspect” because they are making a TV series so you need things to stay strange. I think the bigger problem is they are writing themselves into a corner and won’t be able to explain any of it. Given the premise I think I could create a better story line and investigate the issues they want without the laziness.
If this show is meant to be a moral discussion about the “humanity” of androids then that is possible and can be done. Perhaps this show wants the morality of eating meat or of eating conscious creatures to be discussed? Then there’s the elements of crazy forcing religion and that could have been handled really well. But ultimately I think this show has missed the opportunity for a decent exploration of any one thing by making too many moralistic aspects to introduce. Androids and their role along with their moral code could have been amazing but it wasn’t.
The final episode included the birth and I’m really not sure what to think. I currently consider it an easy trick to shock people and make future series work. I almost enjoyed the idea that the newborn is similar to extinct creatures on the planet but at the same time it just annoyed me. I won’t be watching the second series because all the characters are just annoying. They come across as very single-dimensional and I don’t think the show’s creators are using the medium to their fullest.
I went to the cinema. Again. Not really a surprise I guess but given the recent Covid-times I think that maybe sitting in a room with other people isn’t a good idea. But then, I think that the cinema needs money to survive and so far there haven’t been more than 20 people in the films I’ve seen and the distancing is quite good. It’s nice to be back [I’m not counting this film].
I went to see Land and it was in screen 8 of the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I do like screen 8, it was meant to be the “posh” one many years ago but now it’s just slightly more comfortable than all the others with its better chairs and fewer seats. I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen films in there just because it was in screen 8 and not for any other reason.
As I drove along the riverside towards the cinema I noted the state of the tide and it was low. I could see all of the mudbanks and only the central channel was buoyancy-providable. The weather was actually quite nice given the previous day where it rained the whole day and I was silly enough to go for a walk to see the Medway Megaliths, my shoes were soaked but the sun dried them nicely. After I’ve seen a film I rate it on IMDB and there’s a guide to the rating system within this communication. Normally I would then tweet the result from my phone but I removed Twitter a long time ago so the tweets have to wait for the next opportunity when I’m on my home PC.
So, I had to reread my IMDB communication to remind myself of the scoring system. Then I rated this as a 6. It was a perfectly fine film but not one I’d watch again. I booked whatever film I thought looked most interesting. I had slight pangs of concern when I entered the theatre as all the people in there were women and I ended up being the only man in the room. All the trailers were for what I would call “emotional” films – as stereotypical it is I like space films and then thrillers and action films I guess although most action films are stupid. These are not my usual style of film to watch but I was here now and so it was time to soak up what was on offer.
For me the star of the film was the Wyoming countryside. It looks just absolutely gorgeous. It made me think of doing the same and abandoning all of the trappings of modern life and to head off and lead what would feel like a simpler life. When I say get rid of modern life this woman still have tinned food, knives and a rifle. I wonder if everyone feels that they would like to survive by their “wits” rather than our current world system?
The film was broadly speaking enjoyable and told a nice story, one of emotional recovery and trying to learn to live again after tragedy. I know it was for the purposes of the film for the main character to survive after the midpoint of the film but I’m not sure she would. You end up wondering “what are the odds” but it is dealt with very well although all films suffer survivor bias.
The only part of this film that irritated me slightly was that it made shooting things look really simple and easy. I’m not talking about the pulling of the trigger or the moral problems of killing life but I am talking about how hard it is to hit a target with a rifle. Films make this look much simpler and easier than it really is. The funny thing is I actually know what I’m talking about here – I’m a weapons instructor, coach and a range officer – hilarious I know but I do have those qualifications and use them regularly. Me, having official qualifications in something extreme, I find it a curiosity.
I recently had a long session on Minecraft, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out as I was waiting for someone to come and fix my boiler. I didn’t really feel like getting into a TV show so I spent some time [too long really] putting an idea I had a while back into place. Here’s an overview of part of the latest world:
Latest World Overview
The mess top right next to the bay is the MAIN Base. I’m going to see if I can get some screen shots of it, or maybe give a walk around viewing video, I’ll see what I can manage. The big grey blob in the middle of the map is a gravel topped mountain and I’ve not been there to get the gravel yet but it will be useful at some point I hope. In the bottom left of the map you can see the nearest village to the base. I wanted to create a way of getting to and from the village without having to walk over land. I could have created a minecart track but in this world I chose to dig a canal.
Sea Level Details
This cross-sectional map shows everything at level 62 – sea level [currently]. If you look closely at the top you can see a thin blue line going horizontally. That is the canal I dug and added water to. You enter the canal from top right and move directly westwards and exit in the Great Lake. From there you follow the passages and mini-canal southwards to get to the village. There could be an issue that I can’t remember whether it was this village or not that had actual live villagers in it. I didn’t bother to check before I started this infrastructure project so it could have been for nothing!
Length Of Navigation Route
My map making software also has a measuring tool. You can see that the total canal length is about 0.85km. So that’s 850 blocks long. I’ll probably create a video soon of the base and where the canal goes but until then, I leave you in peace.
It’s hard to keep this site up to date with interesting things when there are very few interesting things that are happening. Normally these communications would be full of film reviews and photographs of curious things I see whenever I go somewhere new. But I haven’t been somewhere new in a long time. The cinemas are still closed and possibly won’t open again. Who knows what’s going to happen over the next year or so as the world learns to manage with a pandemic which will always be circulating. I hope that the variations will die down as the cases are reduced, then eventually humanity will have a chance to control the spread of the virus. I am happy that I might never again have to be in the situation where people think I’m weird for not wanting to shake hands with others.
Now, I don’t mean to imply that things aren’t busy. Work is super crazy at the moment while at the same time we are trying to improve the cadet experience within guidelines. Everyone is struggling with balancing responsibilities because of the short sightedness of the government in coming up with a plan for how education should work in these covid times. I mean, they’ve only had a year to get things sorted. You would have thought someone would be able to make decisions and get systems in place but it turns out that when you are just a selfish power crazy person you don’t care about those important things. I’m not sure why people seem surprised to know that Johnson might have lied or said terrible shit. He’s been doing that all his life. This country voted him in and this country deserves what it gets. I just feel really bad for all those who want a caring government.
I’ve been trying to play more computer games or at least try some new ones. I’ve not been getting very far with that though. I’m still playing Gran Turismo a lot and given that I’ve been playing it since 1997 I don’t think that is going to change much. I started playing GT on a PlayStation when I lived in Gillingham and the house own borrowed a PS from his brother and GT came with it. We found we would play and race each other and congratulate when the other managed a lovely drift. The I bought my own PS, which my mother thought was a waste of time, and I played GT and F1 ’97 quite a bit along with a few other games. When the PS2 came out I bought one. Upgraded GT and played on that system. Eventually I bought a network card for the PS2 and played, very briefly, online. I was joining in with some Navy Seal game online where all the players knew the maps and my time alive was very small. I didn’t really enjoy the experience. When the PS3 was released I upgraded and got GT. Somewhere around this time I also started to get steering wheels – not sure if it was PS2 or 3. Clearly, once GT is released on the PS5 I will be upgrading but I’m not going to bother trying to get a PS5 until that point. I’m very happy with my PS4.
I’ve been playing a bit of The Last Campfire by Hello Games. It’s a delightful little puzzle game with some problems that have made me walk away in embarrassment that I didn’t figure them out quickly. I’m hoping to finish the game soon although I have no idea how long it is supposed to take. It’s a lovely little story and looks wonderful.
In other news I think I would like it to be a little warmer than it is currently. I’m fed up feeling cold a lot of the time. Some of this is to do with my office at work having zero heating outlets and also my home heating is shitty because I’ve been waiting FOUR SHITTY MONTHS for British Gas to get their act together and come and fix it. I’ve been mostly annoyed by this while equally feeling as though I’ve been unable to do anything about it. At least I have been able to use the heating, it’s just that the boiler requires some TLC every now and then. I know that British Gas are going to tell me that they were hit by the third wave of Covid and that also their technicians went on strike. This is what happens in business when you under value your staff and put your motivation to shareholder profits before other things.
I am beginning to think that I have too many screens in one room in my house. I know that seems like it shouldn’t be possible but currently the dining room – so called because it has a table – there are four screens. Two 27″ computer monitors attached to the home PC. A 27″ monitor when I have to do work at the table and a 45″ screen on the wall which gets used as a TV when I’m on the rowing machine. Considering this room is really quite small I think it might be overkill, but they all have their uses and I’m not that inclined to remove one. I’ll just have to avoid people seeing the room unless they think I’m too much of a gamer. Which, I’d like to point out, I don’t think I am.
I actually drove out of the county of Kent for the first time since last August recently. I didn’t go far, only across the Thames to Essex but it felt like a whole new place. I think I’ve been separated from Essex for long enough now that I don’t really have any urges of “home” when I go there. I do look around the village and think it’s very pretty but all around it’s changed so much with building and “improvements” that it’s not the Essex of my childhood anymore and I don’t feel that romanticism. I did go for a walk with the family and we went to some lovely local reservoir lake things. It was pretty and the sun was shining.
My Homeland
As much as I’ve labelled that picture as my homeland curiously I didn’t even know these lakes existed for all the time I lived in the village. I had never explored them as a child. Doesn’t really matter. It just adds to the alienness of wandering around somewhere so familiar and yet so different.
As a slight contrast I did find this work of art on a walk around the lake area near me in Kent. I have to say it is stunning. I’m not entirely sure about any of it though. I’m a republican and couldn’t care less about what happens with the royal family. It does appear that this picture has likened Kate to the virgin mother of Jesus and quite literally sanctified her in image. It’s such a strange sight and one of conflicting impressions.
I’m Just Not Really Sure What
Does this image mean it was paid for by arch royalists? If so then I’m not sure why the person in the image isn’t part of that bloodline – I guess the child is [?] assuming it’s actually one of Kate and William’s children. I honestly don’t know. I also feel that the people who did this are particularly on the right of politics as that is what I mostly associate that particular colouring of cloth in the background. This image has me conflicted in many many ways.
Heading just a few miles from the graffiti we see other iconography in the local friars. Now, it turns out that the monastery near where I live isn’t a monastery it’s actually a friary. It also turns out there’s a difference. Let’s make this clear here. Monks are selfish twats who give their lives over to serving and praying to god. Friars are less selfish twats who give their lives over to serving god while at the same time being allowed out to do things in the community. So, friars are the better of the two wastes of time. I guess anything which has use to the community is better than a thing which does not.
Iconic Stuff
This image has another mother and child in a system which allowed rape, slavery and murder of the right people. Is Mary crying in this image? Perhaps she’s upset at the lack of consent for her pregnancy – which makes god a rapist. If you look at the bottom images on the front of the alter it looks like there is a snake climbing a crucifix which I suppose I understand and then there is also a badly drawn T-Rex with a halo! I know it’s a sheep but it’s much more fun to think of it as a terrible lizard. Damn, I wish I had looked more closely at this when I was there. Perhaps I’ll pop back for another look soon.
Yesterday I had the first part of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine against the SARS-Cov-2 virus. I was expecting to feel rough today but so far I do not. It’s been around twenty four hours and all good at the moment, perhaps later today will be rough as fuck. I’ve read and heard on podcasts about people’s reaction to the vaccine and so I’m curious to see how I react. The most important thing is to get vaccinated and help reduce my reaction to getting Covid.
There are some things we don’t yet know about any of the vaccines. What we do know is that they don’t stop you getting Covid-19 but they do minimise your reaction to it. It’s highly likely you won’t be hospitalised if you get the real virus. We don’t know if vaccinated and infected people are still contagious and we don’t know how long the vaccine lasts and we don’t know if it helps you recover from all the Covid variants. But we do know it stops you being hospitalised if you catch Covid. So, while we don’t have the data yet on various aspects of the vaccine we do know it lowers your chances of dying from the virus. Seems a good idea to get vaccinated because your chances of dying of something else while waiting to be vaccinated are higher than the chances of you dying from the adverse reactions to the vaccine.
In the mean time here’s a video taken from inside the Prius as I did a lap of the Brands Hatch GP circuit. It’s a four minute lap time, roughly, which is amusing as it should be closer to one minute forty had we been allowed to race. However, that’s not the point. I’m happy to leave my racing to playing Gran Turismo.
