Category: Social

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Disaster Area 10 Oct 2014

Shredder

Disaster Area played a couple of songs at the MGS Arena on the 10 October 2014. This should really be a page under the DA section on MyMusic but I am moving those pages to communications to tidy up my menu etc.

Set List:

  • Symphony of Destruction
  • Highway To Hell

Disaster Area is:

  • Shredder Shillito
  • Destroyer Martin
  • Punisher Parish
  • The Anvil Gymer

Here’s some pictures, if I can get a video I’ll embed it on this page too.

A little later in the gig most of Disaster Area joined Iron Maidstonian to play a couple of Maiden songs:

  • The Number Of The Beast
  • 2 Minutes To Midnight
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Switching The Blue Sky

A short while back I wrote about changing broadband supplier. This is an update to that communication.

It is a few months since the new broadband internet connection started. It appears that my network has settled down tremendously since those early days.

All streaming, file sharing and music systems within the house seem to be working well. Large upload files are no longer causing connection issues.

Bandwidths seem to be approaching 650KB/s which translates to 5.2 Mb/s. This is not bad given my quite rural location and the aging connections within the village and house.

The Wi-Fi provided by the Sky router is pretty good. The signal dips a bit at the extremes of my house (top front room) but otherwise it is fine. The router connects everything that I need to be connected and my initial worries about a lack of “user” options have dissipated. This router and also the free EE one I had before both do a better job of routing that the £100 Netgear router I bought and have since sold on eBay.

Essentially, so far so good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what.

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Hello Vivo

It happened. Finally. My Up band died again. Out of warranty.

The Up band is a fitness and health tracker, a wearable technology device. Well, it doesn’t track fitness unless you do and it’s not a health tracker unless you do the work, but you know what I mean. You wear it, you look at the data and you either change your lifestyle or you don’t. The flaw in this is that just wearing one won’t improve your health or fitness, you still have to put the effort in. What these devices do is give you the information to help you decide what to do to change.

Up By JawboenIt’s stylish, a little different and worked well, when it worked. I first got one just after my trip to DC in 2013. I’ve written about it here a few times. According to the data I have the total number of steps I moved while wearing the Up band is:

2013 – 2,428,950
2014 – 2,276,268

Total – 4,705,218

I really liked the Up band. But there was a major problem. It stops working after a while. I first got the Up band on 2 April 2013. The first one I had stopped working properly on 8 June 2013. I got a replacement one on 19 June 2013. That new one then died on 10 August 2013. I ordered a replacement, gave that to my niece and bought a brand new one to try and break the cycle! I started tracking again on 30 August 2013. The “new” one decided that kaput was the standard state of working on the 3 February 2014. It was still within warranty and so I got another replacement on 8 March 2014. The 5 October 2014 was the final bell toll.

Over the summer I had investigated the step counting bands out there. I knew that the Up band was going to wander off this mortal realm at some point and although I like it and think it looks good I can’t justify buying another Up band when they don’t last. Much like my iPhone when it works properly it’s lovely, but when it fails it’s very frustrating. Mind you, I’ve never really had an issue with the iPhone, my biggest issue is with the awfulness turd that is iTunes.

These are the pedometers I investigated:

  • Up by Jawbone
  • Samsung Gear Fit
  • Razer Nabu
  • LG Lifeband Touch
  • Garmin Vivofit
  • Jaybird Reign
  • Fitbit Flex
  • Larklife
  • Nike Fuelband
  • MyBasis

A lot of these seem to be “notifiers” as well. They will let you know who or what is calling your phone along with displaying notifications. I don’t want this. If I want to know who or what is happening to my phone I will LOOK AT MY PHONE. I don’t need an extra display on my wrist telling me stuff I don’t want to know. Also, having this feature means that the Bluetooth connection is always on which MUST be a drain on all batteries. I don’t see the point. I don’t use Bluetooth often and when I’m not using it I turn it off. I don’t see the point of having stuff turned on when you don’t use it.

The Fitbit Flex and the Garmin Vivofit seemed to be the best options for what I want. It took a while to decide but I went with the Garmin device. The reasons were as follows:

  • Reputable company known for making portable devices
  • Battery life of 1 year
  • User replaceable batteries
  • Always on display
  • Syncs with MyFitnessPal
  • Heart rate monitor accessory
  • Looks pretty good

According to the reviews that I looked at there were issues with the strap clasp being easily caught on things and the device can fall off easily. There are ways around this and although it’s not ideal the benefits of this device outweighed this by a long way. Although Garmin are new to the “wearable tech” market they have been making “wearable tech” for a long time and are an established company using proven technology. They aren’t a start up or someone jumping on the bandwagon. They aren’t a “sexy” company but I’m not fussed about that.

This is the Vivofit device:
vivofit1 vivofit2

So far I have been impressed and am left happy with my choice (mind you I don’t have any comparative data in that case). I shall update you people in future about my experiences with the Vivofit and how I think it stacks up with my experience with the Up by Jawbone.

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Other Activities

And, finally, we come to the last section of my immortalisation of my 3822. The Air Training Corps Record of Service. This page does not list everything that should be listed in the “Other Activities” section of the blue book. All I have now is what is recorded on this page. The detail follow. Should you wish to see more of these communications then please search this site.

Other ActivitiesOther Activities

This list does not include the band engagements that I played. There were probably about an average of 10 a year of those. I have, also, not attempted to adjust the list at all. What you see is how it is recorded in the 3822. Because of this some of the dates are in the wrong order and there’s a vague reference to an airshow in June 89. I doubt this was a month long airshow but the details are now lost in time.

I doubt this is the last communication on my Air Cadet journey and there are probably going to be more of my CCF journey. Enjoy!

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NFL, Baby

A couple of Sundays ago, more accurately on the 28 September 2014 I went to London Town.

While there I met a group of people for an afternoon of sport. We met at MEATliquor just behind Oxford Street and I have to say it was one of the best burger meals I have ever had. The food was lovely.

After that we travelled to Wembley stadium to see an American Football match. It amuses me that in all my time I haven’t seen a soccer match at the home of soccer, just music and NFL.

The teams playing were

Miami Dolphins @ Oakland Raiders

I chose to support the Dolphins, although that wasn’t really a choice. I have “supported” the Dolphins since I was a teenager, I now consider the New Orleans Saints as my first team.

The match was good, although the Dolphins smashed the Raiders. There was plenty of action and I had a good time.

I don’t take my camera to events I want to watch, mainly because I’d end up spending my time looking for a few great photos rather than actually watching the game. So here’s a shot using my mobile phone and all the restrictions that come with that.

IMG_7534.JPG

Def Leppard played before the game which was interesting, although I couldn’t see them as the stage faced the other way. Some dude sang the USA National Anthem and a female opera singer sang the UK National Anthem. See my communication here about that!

I was meant to see Def Leppard in 1988. A friend and I had bought tickets to see them at the Royal Albert Hall in the round in London. It would have been a great gig to see and it would have been my first. However, I was offered a place on the ATC Cyprus camp and so went to that instead. So, 26 years later and I get the chance to see Def Leppard, except I couldn’t as the back of the stage blocked my view. I have placed them back on the list of bands I haven’t seen!

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Glider Flying Log

It’s been a while, but you could catch up on all these in a single session by searching Fooyah.net for a list of 3822 communications! What follows is a list of the gliding experiences I had as an Air Cadet a long time ago. These were my formative years and this community influenced me a lot, enough to still get involved.

As a Squadron we would go to RAF Wethersfield in Essex and go gliding with 614 VGS a squadron of volunteer pilots.

Here follows my log:

AEG

As you can see the 21 July 1990 was a bumper day for gliding. Most flights tended to be a short hop as the glider is winched up to about 1000ft and then does a single circuit as it returns to land. On the 21st it was a sunny day and there were plenty of thermals. I can remember parts of my 35 minute flight, I almost got bored, which is a terrible thing to say about flying!! I could see the other gliders in the air at the time and had a great view of Wethersfield.

I also remember that Lisa was having a flight and coming around to land when her glider traded altitude for velocity and sped up greatly while heading towards the ground, from my view the glider even dropped below the tree line and I was slightly worried but a couple of seconds later the glider popped up from below the tree line and landed successfully.

I always felt that gliding was a poor cousin to powered flying but I think I would appreciate its beauty a little more now. Don’t get me wrong, any chance to go flying and experience these things was great, but given the choice, I’d go powered flying first.

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Loyalty

Today I will face an annual grumping. On this day, the day of the NFL International Series, Jase will moan at me, about me, to me. I love American Football and today I am going to Wembley to watch my second (but really first) team, the Miami Dolphins, take on the Oakland Raiders. Before the match, every year, I get an ear roasting.

I have been struggling over the last few years to decide where my loyalties lie and why. What social groups do I belong to, or at least feel most allegiance? If we accept that we are social beings and that we need to belong to groups or tribes then you start to think to which tribes do I belong?

My tribes change depending on what I am doing or who I am with. I guess my tribes are how I identify myself within society. It’s a way of quickly explaining things about me. We take information about these tribes and use them to make decisions about people. We do this all the time. It’s similar to the cast system in India, we judge people by their associations and not necessarily their deeds.

Some of my tribes IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

  • Heavy Metal – I spent a great deal of teenage time associating myself with this tribe. It was and still is a very big part of my life.
  • Industrial Electronica – this is a new tribe. It’s what I listen to and write.
  • Tottenham Hotspur – Now, this is an odd one. It seems to me that if you live in the UK you must have a soccer team. “My team” is Spurs. I don’t like football. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t understand the fanatical following by people but Spurs is my family’s team and so that’s who I support. It’s my dad’s fault, but then we grew up in the London over-run area so it was to be expected.
  • Fulham Five – a bunch of 5+1 people who met over 20 years ago.
  • Home Friends – a few people I still would “go that extra mile” for. I know none of them from school, I feel very little allegiance to my school.
  • 309 ATC – This was where I spent my teenage years getting to experience things most people can only dream of. I’ve not been a part of the Squadron for 15 years and I still visit, I still give money, I still attend the dinners.
  • MGS CCF RAF Section – My new thing. It’s a strange one because I’m not initially a CCF man but am becoming one. This CCF Section does a lot of good.
  • MGS – having been here for six or so years I feel part of the community and happy to be there. It’s looked after me well.
  • New Orleans Saints – my first NFL team after seeing them play at Wembley in 2008. The Dolphins are my second team as I have supported them since the mid-eighties.

I should feel a great deal of patriotism, I think it’s expected, but I struggle to identify with what the UK is or stands for. I guess this may have been easier in the cold war because there was an enemy, the zeitgeist was more patriotic. I’m not sure that I love the UK or England. I don’t know what it means to be British I guess. We Brits are meant to have common values but I don’t know what they are. I am British but I don’t know what that means. I struggle with this.

Would I stand and fight if necessary? Yes. Where would I draw the line? I don’t know. Part of me feels that the cliffs of Dover make a good line, through the fortunate but randomness that the UK is (mostly) an island and we have distinct borders. But if there’s an army marching across Europe would I wait until they got to Calais? Probably not, so does that mean I identify as European? I don’t know. Once you start moving the “line” where do you stop?

I feel that we as a collection of humans need to see each other for what we really are:

The SAME

We break our societies down into manageable chunks so that we can closely identify and organise ourselves, but in reality we are the SAME. We are one collection of lots of little tribes where we fight for one tribe or identity above another and that’s quite sad. Who cares if you support Arsenal or Spurs? Who cares if you speak Spanish and I speak English? We care the same for our families and our societies, we are the same. I think this is at the crux of my problems with identifying with a country [which is purely a socially constructed tribe for the organisation of things].

Countries are too big and vague for me to feel a connection. I think I feel a connection or loyalty to those things which I experience regularly. Hence the list above. I don’t really feel loyalty to things I don’t feel or see or experience regularly.

And finally to the reason that Jase will moan at me today. I won’t sing the national anthem. Jase doesn’t like this, he thinks it’s wrong. I will stand, if only to avoid having to explain myself because it seems that it is “disrespectful” to sit [I don’t understand who or what I would be disrespecting or even what that means]. I don’t feel a connection to the UK. I won’t sing the anthem. At work when we have awards presentations I sing the school song [small local tribe] but I still don’t sing the national anthem.

Another, small point. Our national anthem [see how I said “our”, because I feel some connection, oh the hypocrisy] has nothing to do with our country. It’s about god blessing and saving a person [or legal entity]. We don’t sing about the lands and its people, we sing for praise to a person who is meant to be more important than anyone else. Fuck that. Give me a song about the land, as long as it’s not “Jerusalem”, and I might consider singing it.

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Privileged

I live in one of the three villages of the Medway Gap. I have only just heard of the term Medway Gap, I was preparing the previous communication and looked up Eccles on Wikipedia and there was a link to something called the Medway Gap. I think I prefer the Three Villages moniker but Medway Gap is a pretty good name too.

The Medway Gap is a part of the Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Kent. My village doesn’t quite make the cut into the AONB but I do get to look up at the Downs every day and often run through the lovely countryside.

Here’s the Kent AONB:

Here’s a link to the website of that organisation.

The Medway Gap is a little part of this map just outside the AONB but nestled between the conurbations of Maidstone and Rochester. To live here it feels as though you are deep in the countryside of Kent but in reality there are two motorways within 3 miles, a mainline railway to London, a major river and the Channel Tunnel Highspeed Railway passes under the Downs within this area.

Here’s a map of the Medway Gap.


View Medway Mosaics in a larger map

Here’s my rubbish attempt to show the route of the high speed rail link:

High Speed Rail Link - Tunnel Highlighted
High Speed Rail Link – Tunnel Highlighted

The title of this communication is privileged. I feel privileged to live here and see this lovely landscape every day.

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Progressive Tax

I consider myself a liberal. I have some views, which I obviously thing are the morally correct, which would place me firmly as a conservative. I also hold some views that are positively communist. Overall though, I think I sit as a liberal for most things. Except maybe this.

As I think about it more and more I find it harder and harder to justify the higher income tax rate.

I think it is right that we pay a certain amount of tax. I also am happy to pay that tax. It goes (mostly) towards services that I consider for the good of society. It also seems obvious to me that to tax the lowest of earners would be wrong. We already know that a higher proportion of their money is spent on the basics. If we want a society with cheap goods and services we have to accept that we should support those lower earners.

Currently the government has a “basic” tax rate of 20% of income and also a higher tax rate of 40% for people earning above a certain threshold.

It is the higher 40% rate I have issues with. For a fair society we would ask that those who earn more, give more. This already happens if we tax people as a percentage of income. I don’t see that there is a need to tax the higher earners more. This seems very unfair to me. In fact I would think that this tax rate encourages people to investigate ways of lowering their tax bill. There are some people who have their own personal service companies and they receive a dividend from this which is quite plainly “income” but is taxed at a lower rate that the 40% they would pay if they took the money as they should.

If we had a standard tax rate the same for all people and a higher threshold for paying tax to help the poorer of society, then this would give all a sense of fairness and probably encourage greater payment of income tax.

Governments like to either raise or lower the higher tax rate. This looks either good or bad depending which side of the threshold you sit. In reality it doesn’t do a lot. The exchequer gets little extra or loses little because of these rate changes. It is a rhetoric gambit. A way of looking as though they are looking after the little man but with very little real impact. In reality the government has very little control over the economy but we don’t tell people that. We like to think that “someone” is in control and that things happen for a reason. The world economy is far too complex to be manipulated easily.

Make it fair for all. A single tax rate and relief for the lower earners.

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A Slight Explanation

Earlier today or if I publish this after many revisions it’ll be early on 21 Sept 2014 I tweeted the following:

I thought I ought to give some clarification about why I said this. I think I feel slightly guilty and that the tweet may have come across as not considered and plain offensive. It probably is still offensive, if you are easily offended, but it was considered. I spent the weekend in Coventry. I saw the Ricoh stadium, a massive Tesco store and the Transport Museum [home to Thrust 2 and Thrust SSC].

I was invited to the christening of a friend’s children. These friends are people I see about once a year. I have known them for ages [since College] and I always look forward to their company and listen to what they have to say. This communication is definitely not about questioning my loyalty to them. I remember at their wedding the vicar asked the whole congregation to promise that they would be there for the couple in a time of need. I promised and would keep that promise, even now, ten years after the wedding. I didn’t really have to make that promise though. These people are the sort of people I would help out and look out for without the need to make a promise in front of the zombie cult alter.

The christening took place in a village church to the south west of Coventry. I turned up and there was singing in the church, five people playing guitar, piano, bongos and bass while singing. It set a reasonable tone. There were two projector screens on the walls giving words and information. The vicar seemed good fun and wore a Madonna style microphone so we could hear him. In terms of a service this was probably as modern as the Anglican Church gets. It was happy and friendly. People were singing out loud and dancing and raising their hands when they sang to god and putting effort into it all. I could imagine the more “cold and dreary” traditionalist hating this all. The church was a lovely very old building and was decorated well.

Here’s my point. I saw the best the modern church can offer. It left me cold. I was not moved at all. Not a tiny bit. In reality I felt slightly sorry for them. Their whole beliefs are built on lies. The historical evidence for Jesus is pretty slim, as for him being the son of god, well, let’s just say they jumped the shark with that one.

And so Jesus said . . .

Was how one of the readings began. Well, that’s all well and good and the lessons are probably perfectly good moral lessons, but why don’t you use Star Trek or Dr Who? They are all three as made up as each other. Saying that Jesus said it doesn’t make it true. And, so to my conclusion of that hour spent in a lovely church:

I just don’t get it. I don’t see how they can believe. I don’t understand why they think these things happened. I just don’t get it.

This was the best a church can offer and it was still shit.

Here’s two proper human achievements. Something we can all celebrate and take lessons from:

Thrust 2
Thrust 2

and

Thrust SSC
Thrust SSC

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