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March 30 2014April 5 2014

Five Finger Death Punch

I snuck into London last night to see Five Finger Death Punch at The Forum in Kentish Town. Curiously Kentish Town didn’t look as Kent-like as the name implies. Here’s a power station viewed from the fast train from Ebbsfleet to St Pancras [who was a Roman convert to Christianity and beheaded for his belief].

I had a pleasant walk from the London terminus to The Forum, about 40 minutes, and waited in The Assembly Rooms for Smith. Once he had arrived we chatted and ate. The queues to enter the auditorium were large, but gave us time to digest the contents of the flyers we were handed before discarding them in the traditional manner.

The first band on were called Pop Evil. They played ROCK. It was ok. Not to my current tastes but they were a good warm up band.

Then, on came Upon A Burning Body. A band from Texas. They played pretty good music although I couldn’t understand most of what the singer sang. This didn’t worry me, I don’t really do lyrics. Although I wouldn’t go out of my way to see this band again they were pretty good over all. I liked the suits they wore.

During their set all the lights stopped working and they carried on while lit from torches held by security and the guys in the “desk-in-the-middle”. The pit opened up in front of me and it was quite funny to see this close. Young men running in circles and generally pushing into each other. The atmosphere was one of comradeship as when someone fell down after being hit, they would be helped up by everybody. I saw a couple of rugby tackles and at some point it turned into a competition to see who would be the last man standing. Then, it went wrong. A short tubby man decided he was going to hit with his hands. He threw a punch and got warned to stop by most in and around the circle. He had gone too far. You don’t intentionally hit people in this small world of machismo. Then he threw another punch, caught a chap on the chin and stood gloating. About five guys rushed at him, pushing him to the floor and then two of them dragged the guy to the side and security. I didn’t see him again. As much as most people would look in horror at “the pit” it’s actually a safe place where, if you accept the rules, you will be looked after and everyone has the same needs.

Five Finger Death Punch burst onto the stage playing “Under and Over It”. There was energy and excitement. They played well and have a good stage presence. I was really impressed at Download last year and so was looking forward to this. They played songs. I don’t know the names of the songs. I just recognise them. I’m pretty sure my head is full up and can’t learn new song names. Also, the way I listen to music has changed. I no longer sit in my bedroom staring and the record sleeve, I play music while running, driving or working.

It was a solid gig. They played well. They played 3 ballads too many. I hate ballads. The atmosphere gets lost and the energy of the room fades during ballads. Also, as a rock child of the eighties, ballads were how bands promoted themselves. They had their place but are not necessary anymore.

The set finished at 22:30. This made the FFDP stage time about seventy minutes which was rather short. I was hoping to hear four more hard and heavy songs when the houselights went up. I was left feeling a little disappointed. They didn’t quite “bring the house down” in my opinion. A big problem for me was the singing of the chorus to Champagne Supernova by Oasis. I never liked Oasis. I think they wrote poor songs, sang badly and were hyped in a battle with a group of real intelligent people who could write songs. Don’t be a metal band and then play some Oasis. They were shit. It’s shit and it makes you shit.

March 23 2014March 25 2014

The Longest Day

This isn’t the longest day in terms of the hours of sunlight during a rotation of the Earth. However, this is being written reasonably close to the vernal equinox. Nor is the about the film The Longest Day. This probably isn’t really about my longest day, which was, in recent times, my first day in Rome last year.

This communication regards my involvement in Sports Relief Charity Day at MGS.

I set the alarms for 04:00 as I had promised to do some rowing on the ergs at 05:00. The MGS 24 Hour Row started at 10:55 on Thursday 20th March and was so scheduled to finish at 10:55 on Friday 21st March. When the sign up sheets had been up for a while there was a big area of dead time in the early morning so I said I would come in and help.

So I woke at 03:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. My neighbour was coughing lots and I could hear that. At 03:45 I got up and made a coffee. I got ready and then left for work. When I arrived at the Big Hall there were rowers asleep on collections of chairs. There was a space for rowing already free and so a bit before my allotted time I sat down to row until 05:40. At the end of my time I had rowed 11074m in 50 minutes. Not bad!

I hung around and did some marking and preparation and then once the Home Tech room was open I went and cooked a good old fashioned fry up for me and DM. We ate at around 07:40 and everything was washed up and tidy by 08:00.

Time to do some work. I went to register my form group. Then I had another 40 minute stint to complete as I had volunteered to do 09:00 to 09:40 as I had a free lesson. There was more of a crowd now and I concentrated more on my split time and aimed to keep that at around 2:10 /500m and my average split at that too. Nearing the end of this session I decided to row further than earlier this morning and so I managed 11120m in about 48 minutes. I was happy but very tired. I had to wash up and head to teach some mechanics.

I listened to my own music during my rowing excursions. The first time I listened to Combichrist’s “What the F^^K is Wrong With You People – Darkside” and the second time I listened to Combichrist’s “What the F^^K is Wrong With You People”. Very good music for working out.

This is the time lapse video for the event. You can see me do my first stint on Erg 2 [from the right] at 1:48. You might then see me in a bright blue top do some marking at about 1:56. My breakfast appears at 2:06, bright blue top on the right hand side. Then my second rowing stint is at 2:12, I am on Erg 1 [RHS] wearing a black top.

During break time I headed back to the Big Hall to see the end of the row-a-thon. There were four rowers active at the end and the atmosphere was really nice. Once the allotted time was up the total distance covered was just over 900km, which gets us from Maidstone to about halfway through Scotland to John O’ Groats. It was a splendid effort and a brilliant piece of community building work. Well done to all.

I had another two lessons before entering the MGS mile at lunchtime. I had booked an ICT suite for these lessons so that the pupils could do some independent learning, focussing on their weaknesses. It didn’t take long for the lunch hour to arrive and during those couple of hours my back was starting to feel rather dodgy.

Just under seven minutes was my time for the MGS mile according to my Up band. I’m not convinced I did it that quick because I didn’t feel as tired as I do when I try and do a fast mile on my usual runs. I will still claim a sub-seven-minute mile though. I know I could make that time. The lunch hour had been extended to a full hour and the mathematics department took full advantage of this to have a good meeting to discuss department business. As soon as I had completed my mile I jogged to the mathematics office to make sure I didn’t miss anything important during the meeting. It was a good gathering.

For my final lesson of the day I had a statistics class. They worked well on the past examination paper I set. Then, for me, it was off home to collect my children and clean up ready for the evening performances.

I am part of the MGS staff band and we are called Disaster Area [with apologies to Douglas Adams]. The evening of this day was dominated by the Rock Band evening at MGS where student bands play in front of parents and other pupils. As the staff band we get to go first and warm up the crowd. This time around we played “The Ace Of Spades” and “Highway To Hell”. I understand there are videos available on Facebook but as you should be aware I don’t do Facebook. About halfway through Highway I started to relax and really enjoyed the experience, especially as I sand some backing vocals in the song.

I came on about 20 minutes later to play bass guitar for a pupil band playing “The Trooper” by Iron Maiden. When I get footage of this I will link it from here. Playing this song was great fun and I hope I get the chance to play it again.

Finally my school day was over. I got home about 20:30 after bailing out on the rock evening. I should have stayed for longer with DM as he had been in school a since 05:00 but I wanted to try and get some sleep before my sons woke at 05:00 Saturday morning. This felt like the longest day. I’m sure it won’t be the last. I’ll keep you informed of more throughout the coming years.

Me, playing with Disaster Area at MGS:

March 7 2014March 11 2014

Willow Springs

This communication is about more research for my Poisson Distribution data, let’s see how long I can keep this going. For more information see this communication.

The next GT6 Seasonal Event to complete or participate in [there are some challenges where I have achieved a Silver Award but not quite the Gold, I might return to those] is to race the Plymouth XNR Ghia Roadster 1960 at the Willow Springs Race Circuit in California, USA. Willow Springs is a new track to Gran Turismo and I’m not that keen on it. There are a couple of off camber and over-the-crest corners that make it pretty tricky along with most of the races on the track being rear wheel drive because it’s in the USA.

Aerial Shot:

This is a diagram of the circuit with the corners named:

Here’s a picture of the car:

Right, here’s some information about the car and laps. It turns out that I already owned this car and didn’t need to buy it, I can’t remember when I won it but at least that’s some money saved. Once into the set up section I upgraded the following parts, which improve the car’s handling but don’t affect the power or performance points:

Uprated the suspension to “racing hard” and fitted racing brakes
Fitted a 5-speed close ratio transmission unit
Fitted limited slip differential and racing flywheel
Fitted triple plate clutch, carbon fibre driveshaft

I also increased the power by adding or improving the following engine settings:

Racing ECR
Isometric exhaust system
Intake tuning
Sports catalytic converter

These items took my Performance Points over the allowable limit and so I limited the engine output to 94.4%.

The lap times required were:

1:42:00 Bronze
1:36:00 Silver
1:33:00 Gold

My lap progress was as follows:

Lap 1 – off at turn 5.
Lap 2 – off at turn 3.
Lap 3 – 1:37:360 Bronze level achieved.
Lap 4 – off at Castrol Corner, outside of exit, too fast on entrance and understeer pushed car out.
Lap 5 – spun, lost control of rear at Budweiser Balcony.
Lap 6 – spun off at Castrol Corner, too much power on exit [restart entire lap rather than finish this one].
Lap 7 – off at turn 9 before I had even started the lap.
Lap 8 – 1:35:311 Silver Award.
Lap 9 – 1:33:889.
Lap 10 – off at Castrol Corner.

Bought the fully customisable transmission and changed the gear ratios to meet the top speed more efficiently.

Lap 11 – off at Castrol Corner.
Lap 12 – 1:43:338.
Lap 13 – 1:32:960 Gold Award Achieved.

Job Done.

Glory Shot:

March 6 2014March 11 2014

Keeping A Record

I made up an example for a lesson where we needed to approximate the Poisson distribution using the Gaussian distribution. I told the class that the average number of attempts I need to complete a Gran Turismo 6 Seasonal Event Time Trial was 20 [I needed a number greater than 10 because Poisson tables go up to a parameter of 10].

20 attempts seemed a reasonable value. I find the newer challenges on GT6 pretty hard and I’m not sure if they are meant to be or whether I am getting worse at the game. So, this is a record of my attempts to get a Gold Time on a seasonal event.

I chose to do the latest seasonal event using a Lotus Elise Race Car around the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit. The required times were:

Gold 1:30:00
Silver 1:33:00
Bronze 1:40:00

I bought the Lotus Elise Racing Version tuned by Gran Turismo.

I will state here that I don’t like racing the normal Elise. The car is light and mid-engined which means I have big problems with oversteer braking for corners and accelerating leaving corners. I find the standard Elise very “twitchy”, I can clear some of this behaviour by change the suspension settings but it is a challenging car to drive fast. I was quite careful on my first few laps as I learnt how stable this car is.

Here’s a map of the GP circuit at Brands Hatch so you can see where the corners are, note that Dingle Dell corner was straightened slightly in 1999 and so it’s not quite as severe as it looks here, more a sweeping right turn at the top of a hill.

Here’s my progress.

Lap 1 – off at Clark Curve coming to the finish line.
Lap 2 – 1:39:6 Bronze Time secured. Car doesn’t oversteer as much as the standard Elise. It’s slightly twitchy under braking but accelerates well. No changes to set up yet. Quite a lot of downforce and it squirms through the corners.
Lap 3 – 1:35:1
Lap 4 – 1:32:28 Silver Award secured. Good increase in speed, but now all the low hanging fruit has been taken. Need to find a 2.5 second decrease of time.
Lap 5 – Off at Dingle Dell Corner, outside on exit.
Lap 6 – Off at Hawthorn’s, cut too tight a lost rear on grass.
Lap 7 – 1:33:3 no increase in speed.
Lap 8 – Off at Druids, cut too tight and tyres on inside grass.

Perform some setting changes. Lower car by 50mm front and rear.

Lap 9 – Off at Hawthorn’s on exit, too wide.
Lap 10 – Off Paddock Hill Bend, outside exit, lost car and went across track to RHS.
Lap 11 – Off Paddock Hill Bend, cut corner too much, spun car.
Lap 12 – Off Druids, late braking, didn’t make corner.
Lap 13 – 1:32:199
Lap 14 – Off at Dingle Dell Corner, too wide on exit of corner and spun [lots].
Lap 15 – Off at Paddock Hill Bend, turning while braking, ended up cutting corner too much.
Lap 16 – Off at Surtees. this corner is key to a fast lap as there is a long straight after it. It is also off camber and nearly a blind entrance. I spun after the steering gripped while braking.
Lap 17 – Off at Stirling’s, too wide on exit and lost rear on grass.
Lap 18 – Off at Druids, on inside.

Perform some setting changes, stiffen the spring settings.

Lap 19 – Off at Hawthorn’s after being 0.5 seconds ahead of ghost lap. Too wide on exit, taking the corner at high revs in 4th.
Lap 20 – Off at Clark Curve, annoyed.
Lap 21 – 1:31:531
Lap 22 – Off at Stirling’s. This corner is key.
Lap 23 – Off at Paddock Hill, too wide on exit.
Lap 24 – 1:30:773
Lap 25 – 1:30:643
Lap 26 – Off at Dingle Dell Corner, lost rear on inside of corner, ended up in RHS barrier.
Lap 27 – Off at Druids.
Lap 28 – 1:30:563
Lap 29 – Off at Graham Hill corner, too wide on exit.

Looked to see if settings for power could be changed. Tuned engine to 200 b.h.p. with stage one tuning. Performance Points still below limit.

Lap 30 – Off at Hawthorn’s while ahead by 0.4 seconds.
Lap 31 – Off at Paddock Hill Bend. New power means faster and I haven’t adjusted braking point into Paddock, just going too fast.
Lap 32 – Off at Paddock (again, same problem).
Lap 33 – Off at Surtees, while ahead by 0.5 seconds.
Lap 34 – 1:29:939 GOLD time.

I have finally beaten the GOLD required time by 0.061 seconds. This is perfectly good. I’ve won.

If I left the track near the start of the lap I would restart the lap unless I had just changed some settings in which case I carried on with the lap to see how the car behaved in the corners, it would effectively be a free tuning lap. I think this challenge took around 80 minutes for me to complete, including time for writing down my progress.

Now, if I knew more about suspension and had the time to gradually play with the settings and see how to improve the handling of the car (power is limited) then I should be able to find another two seconds (I like to think). I just don’t have the time to do this.

The online time record is a good 6 seconds faster than me. I had a look at the replay video of the person in first place and they are using more of the track than me (I am too safe in corners) and they also slide the car a little more than me. I like to think that with more practice I could get there, but I have other things to do. As much as I love the game, I also enjoy spending some of my time doing other things.

Some Extra Thoughts – 6/3/2014

I described the Lotus Elise Race Car as “squirmy” in the corners. By this I mean that the tyres grip too much and I think I’m losing time in the corners through the tyres not wanting to turn the car. I *think* I could resolve this by adding some toe-in to the wheels and maybe a little extra camber. I am not going to test this remedy I am just mentioning it because that would be the next adjustment I would make to the suspension settings if I wanted to improve my time further.

This picture is me taking Paddock Hill Corner in the Lotus Elise Race Car tuned by Gran Turismo. This photo was taken using the photo feature in recorded replays. This was the start of Lap 14.

This photo is me a little later in Lap 14 where I didn’t get the exit of Dingle Dell Corner correct and lost the rear of the car on the grass. I spun wildly. I haven’t counted how many times I span but it’s around 10.

It looks as though I am still in control but I am not. There were still a few more complete turns to go after this photograph was taken.

March 5 2014March 5 2014

Trap Door

Amazon have upgraded their Prime membership [and charge more at the same time]. I think this has something to do with them buying LoveFilm and then rebranding the who shebang. Fair enough.

The streaming video service is now called Prime Instant Video. If you have a Prime subscription it now includes a number of free films and videos over the internet to a device with the right software. My television has the right software and so I can now watch this streaming service using the following devices in my house [if I wanted]:

Television
Tablet PC
PS3
PS4
iPhone
Tablet

It seems ridiculous that so many devices can be used to bring entertainment to me. What a wonderful world.

I’m not sure I’ll spend a lot of time watching streaming video, but if I do I will let you know. My boys, however, will watch this and we found ourselves browsing the free kids’ section over the weekend. The usual kids stuff was there:

Peppa Pig
SpongeBob Squarepants

We also found that the programme Trap Door was available. This was good news for me. I can remember watching it when it first came out. It was, for a while, my favourite programme and I really enjoyed it.

I have just checked and this show first came out in the mid-80s and so this fits in where I thought it did in my life [I was slightly worried that it might have been an early 90s thing, which would mean that I loved the show when I was at university, quite likely but worrying].

This show is worth watching. It’s short. Funny. Well scripted. Apart from the resolution I don’t think it has aged.

Give it a go.

February 28 2014April 11 2014

IMDB Ratings

I am considering re-adjusting my IMDB ratings. When I see a film I tend to give it a rating on IMDB [btw – I remember IMDB when it was a little web project at Cardiff University]. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I need to change my scoring system for these films and I am actually considering using even numbers only.

I have been worrying about what the difference between a 5 or a 6 might be. Also, Restricting the scoring to just the even numbers will mean that I have to consider the film and try to be more realistic. If I currently give something a 6 or 7 what does that difference show? What would be the difference between a 3 or a 4? I just don’t know. The scale of 0 to 10 seems too big for these things [especially as I’m not taking the mean of lots of scores].

I also think there is a human tendency to give middle of the road scores when we think something is average or even below par. If you have seen Come Dine With Me, you will be aware [or will be after this] that when the contestants don’t really know how to score a meal or want average then they tend to plump for a 6 or 7. Their words describe an evening that is probably below par but their score is one that is not meant to offend [6 or 7] but is really rather damning. I want to call this the “Come Dine With Me Fallacy”, which would mean that sub-optimal experiences receive scores that are perceived as “average”, rather than risk offend or come across as a nasty [but realistic] person.

So, at some point in the near future I am going to adjust my IMDB ratings. I will only use the even numbers [thoughts: I need to check if I can score a zero].

Have returned: I can’t score a zero on IMDB. That is not good. So, the default scoring system means that even the poorest film ever made will receive one star. This causes some problems. But I shall try to get around that. So, my new system goes:

10 Stars – I loved this film, I would pay to see it again in the cinema and maybe buy it to keep [Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, The Fifth Element].
8 Stars – A good film which I ~~certainly~~ probably will watch again [The Rock, Independence Day].
6 Stars – While it was enjoyable at the time it is not a film I will spend the time to watch again [The Railway Man, Hunger Games], this might include films I think were really good critically but not ones I’d see again.
4 Stars – I only got to the end of the film to see what happened but I’ll admit it was poorly made and rubbish, maybe this is a good “bad film” [Titanic II]
2 Stars – [lowest possible score] I gave up watching this film before it had finished. I hated it [Sharknado]. I left the cinema [I would have left the cinema had someone not been in my way – Van Helsing].

I shall update this or write a new communication once I have updated my scores using this crib sheet and let you know which films I struggled to pigeon-hole.

Addendum

I have just started looking at my IMDB ratings and have decided that I will use the above scoring system BUT please understand that I am now using the “Will I watch again?” criteria and this is a personal thing, very subjective. I am able to spot a “good critically acclaimed film” but think my ratings should reflect my intentions about the film and not what I think the wider world will think (1st March 2014).

Further Addenda

I have just realised that this means that any film I enjoyed but won’t intentionally watch again ends up being scored a “6”. Oh, the irony, given I complained about the “Come Dine With Me” fallacy earlier. But, in my favour, I have declared that my scoring system will be 2,4,6,8,10. This means that a score of 6 is the mean and median of the scoring values. When reading my film scores you need to understand my system which I have at least tried to communicate here.

Even More Addenda

These are my latest (updated) scores using the system explained above. I don’t care if you think otherwise about some of the ratings.

Human Target appears twice because I rated an individual episode as well as the whole series.