I’ve been taking part in the teacher strikes recently. Interestingly the disruption would happen whether I went in to school or not. As the managers can’t tell who will be in school they can’t ensure the safety and supervision of the pupils, therefore they have to make decisions well in advance of the day about who is going to be in school attending lessons and who is being taught remotely by staff who aren’t striking. I could turn up to work on those strike days and get paid, but I’m known as one of the more “militant” members of staff and I don’t think politically it would be a good idea to threaten strike and then turn up. I put “militant” in quotes as I’m pretty sure that just means standing up for workers’ rights.
During the most recent strike day I took a trip to Dover Castle and then the Battle Of Britain Memorial, both of these are in a corner of Kent. Dover Castle is impressive and full of so much history from Roman lighthouses to Operation Dynamo planning rooms and beyond. The BoB memorial was poignant.
Junkers Stuka Sculpture – Battle Of Britain Memorial
I’ve had a pretty rubbish time, health and fitness wise, since November so I’m trying my best to get back into running and also getting fitter. I need to lose some mass and the running will get easier if I do that. Currently I can’t run up the Downs and so that is my aim. To lose enough weight to make my fitness enough to run up the Downs and back down again. Today I ran the furthest I’ve done for ages. It felt good but it fucked me up – I ache and feel so tired!
I will keep going. This week has seen a bit of a turn around in motivation.
I’m still moving on with my around the world mission in X-Plane. In the last communication I was bombing around over Brazil having visited Antarctica. I’m still working my northwards at the moment to complete the east coast of the Americas. I do have some new kit on the flight sim – two desk extensions that hold the HOTAS system.
The updated flight system
So, my last landing was in the Falkland Islands so we shall continue with the next airport visited:
Rio Gallegos International Airport, (RGL/SAWG), Argentina Comandante Luis Piedrabuena Airport, Argentina Santa Cruz Airport, Argentina Puerto Deseado Airport, Argentina Cañadon Seco Airport, Argentina General Enrique Mosconi International Airport, Argentina Almirante Marcos A. Zar Airport, Argentina Antoine de Saint Exupéry Airport, Argentina Comandante Espora Airport, Argentina El Palomar Airport, Argentina João Simões Lopes Neto International Airport, Brazil Aeródromo de Belém Novo, Brazil Diomício Freitas/Forquilhinha Airport, Brazil Florianópolis-Hercílio Luz International Airport, Brazil Costa Esmeralda Airport, Brazil Joinville-Lauro Carneiro de Loyola Airport, Brazil Curitiba-President Afonso Pena International Airport, Brazil São Paulo/Guarulhos – Governor André Franco Montoro International Airport, Brazil Jacarepaguá–Roberto Marinho Airport, Brazil Rio de Janeiro/Galeão – Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport, Brazil Joaquim de Azevedo Mancebo Airport, Brazil Campos–Bartolomeu Lysandro Airport, Brazil Guarapari Airport, Brazil Eurico de Aguiar Salles Airport, Brazil Una-Comandatuba Airport, Brazil Val-de-Cans/Júlio Cezar Ribeiro International Airport, Brazil Macapá-Alberto Alcolumbre International Airport, Brazil Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Guyana Piarco International Airport, Trinidad and Tobago Maurice Bishop International Airport, Grenada Canouan Airport, Canouan in St. Vincent and the Grenadines Argyle International Airport, St Vincent Hewanorra International Airport, St Lucia Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport, Martinique Douglas–Charles Airport, Dominica John A. Osborne Airport, Montserrat V. C. Bird International Airport, Antigua Princess Juliana International Airport, St Martin Terrance B. Lettsome International Airport, British Virgin Islands Henry E. Rohlsen Airport, US Virgin Islands
So, not far to go now. Heading northwards and then I’ll curve over the Arctic to get back home. I’m looking forward to it.
I think I’m back. I’ve missed the diary part of this website and it’s time to utilise it again as a repository of my activities and thoughts.
In some ways the technical challenge of doing this has been fun along with frustrating. It turned out I felt useless not being able to check the things I’ve done or films I’ve seen. There’s a lot of effort gone into creating this site and a lot of words have been written. I want to be able to check my flying records wherever I am. I spent quite a while looking at getting my database exported to a word document but none of that was free. I thought about setting up more hosting accounts but that costs more than I am willing to spend in the current climate and so I recently decided it was time to utilise my NAS drive again.
I had used the NAS in the past for hosting but I never really got around the fact that my home IP address kept changing. It was a pain. Since then I have discovered a company that uses dynamic dns routing and can apply this to a domain name. Hence, this site should now work using the old addressing system. I’m currently working on cloud based back ups in case the NAS dies.
Current costs for this website are now around GBP30 a year compared to the over GBP100 I was paying. Mind you, I don’t have a security certificate so maybe that’s the next level of stuff to look at.
I think I am coming to the conclusion of this website experiment. Current feelings are that I will end this site. I will cancel my hosting service. It is reasonably likely I will also delete my twitter account. I think it’s time.
So, this morning I had to drive a short distance which in everyday normal experience is only mildly frustrating. I’ve chilled quite a bit as a driver since I got the Prius and I would say I’m calm. However, today was not normal. There was a lot of snow over night and so the roads were covered in ice and snow. The car took about ten minutes to clear of snow and to make sure it was road worthy. I spent time making sure it was safe for me to drive. I tested the roads at the start of my journey, steering response and braking. This seems sensible to me.
As I drove home I could see other cars not really aware of safety or even other users on the road. Plenty of people were driving what I thought was too fast for the conditions. While they not have had a crash the issue is their ability to react to dangers and then being able to control the vehicle and be safe generally. I let this type of driver past me, who wants that kins of twat to hit you from behind?
Then there was the couple of cars covered in snow with only small viewing areas through the windscreen. These are the sort of people who should be banned from driving. Your whole car should be clear of snow and ice. You shouldn’t shed massive lumps of snow as you are going at speed. You should be able to see out of the whole windscreen and side windows. These people are a danger to others and that’s the thing that bothers me. I generally don’t care if you are a danger to yourself, what bothers me is if you could endanger others. /rant.
You know what? I shouldn’t be ashamed of enjoying this game. I think I’d thought poorly about it in the past but I needed to check my privilege. I shouldn’t be gatekeeping what proper gaming is or looks like. It’s not my place to do that. If you enjoy playing your games then go ahead and enjoy it. I’ve been playing Fortnite and I’m enjoying it. I’m also reasonably ok at it. I know my weak points and I’m going to work on those over the next few weeks to try and get a little better.
Fortnite – Rather Good Fun Really
So, a week ago or so Epic were offering the chance to gain extra XP by playing some challenges within a website. I’m not sure what their motivation was but I enjoyed it. I had to get 25 eliminations in a day to get the XP. Somehow I got 44!
Fortnite – One Day’s Play
The next part of this is to get some colleagues from work and create a super-team for smashing all the competitions. This might take some time but would be so worth it.
I was exploring the options within the PS5 menu and I noticed that the games I play get totalled up in terms of time played. I’m not sure if I was shocked or just pleased at the amount of time I have spent playing. I do know that it certainly justifies me spending the money on the hardware and infrastructure to experience these things.
PS5 screen capture showing amount of time played . . .
In case you can’t quite see the numbers in the above graphic let me write them down below. I just want to point out that the game could be a PS4 game that is played on the PS5 and register timewise as a PS4 time. Hence, while I tend to play Minecraft on the PS5 its total comes only from PS4 playtime.
Gran Turismo 7 – 120 hours
Fortnite – 111 hours
Minecraft – 722 hours
Now the Gran Turismo times clearly do not include all the time I have spent playing other versions. Let’s be clear. Gran Turismo is 25 years old this year and I’ve been playing it for that long. In terms of cost/benefit I think I’ve done very well.
I’ve had occasion recently to look at things within the Highway Code. I know that they change it year on year and I try to keep aware of these things, but somethings have happened recently to change my mind about road behaviour and so I wanted to know the actual rules.
Maidstone is a somewhat special town with all its traffic glory. There are plenty of places within the town where there seem to be “local rules” and I often describe it as driving in London. You need to know what lane to be in for a junction one mile up the road otherwise it all gets a bit shitty. There are roadworks currently at a junction I use a lot. Two of the lanes now drop down to one lane to give the workers room to work and to be safe. Many, many people try to get into the open lane as soon as they see the signs and this leaves the lane that is closing empty of traffic. This might seem sensible but then I saw an image on [twitter I think] social media that made traffic queuing sense. Both lanes were full and then you merge in turn where the lane actually closes.
This makes sense. It shortens the length of the queuing traffic on the road and makes it more fair by insisting that people take it in turns to merge. THIS IS THE MOST SENSIBLE FOR QUEUING TRAFFIC. This is so sensible that there is a rule about it in the Highway Code and that is Rule 134.
Rule 134
You should follow the signs and road markings and get into the lane as directed. In congested road conditions do not change lanes unnecessarily. Merging in turn is recommended but only if safe and appropriate when vehicles are travelling at a very low speed, e.g. when approaching road works or a road traffic incident. It is not recommended at high speed.
The problem with this rule is that people think they need to move over straight away and then they get annoyed at someone “cutting the line” and doing the correct thing which is to use the closing lane until the last moment. I’ve even seem people gatekeep the road by making sure no one can get along the closing lane. These people are wrong and also utter wankers. To be honest I looked this rule up because I want the defence when I get someone complaining about me driving up the empty lane and then merging in turn. Also, I don’t understand why merging in turn isn’t a bigger thing over here. People seem to be right assholes about it all.
Last night I powered up Gran Turismo 7 for the first time in quite a while and I enjoyed myself. I even managed to enjoy myself driving Willow Springs which, as a circuit, I don’t like. I did the Circuit Experience section of the game as it’s about thirty minutes play to smash the gold on these. I’m still distracted quite a bit by Fortnite, which feels such a terrible admission but I do enjoy that game. Anyway, I recorded the gold winning lap and zapped it to YouTube.
