penguin – Page 36 – Fooyah

March 13 2021March 13 2021

That Was A Week, That Was

Absolutely bloody shattered. That’s how I ended this week. Last night, Friday, I ate food and then tried to watch a film. Fell asleep at 2000 on the sofa and then went to bed at 2230 when I woke up. I’ve not even really had the hardest of jobs in the organisation. There are others who are running the testing centre and track and trace and all that and all I have to do is our core business of teaching. Knackering. But also nice to be able to see faces again. Kinda.

I bought a new cafetiere and it came with a coffee grinder so I’ve been grinding coffee beans and testing that type of coffee out. It’s fun, I guess, but not sure if it’s worth it. Especially as I bastardise my coffee with sugar and milk. I then decided to get a filter coffee machine instead of a new kettle. My kettle looks worn out but a bit of descaling has meant it still works fine so I can live with it for a while longer. The coffee machine has a timer and so I can set everything ready in the evening and come down to fresh coffee when I wake up every work day. I will say that having everything done when I walk through the kitchen is a sheer delight.

My home boiler, hot water and heating, has issues and I can’t let the heating work automatically. This has been like this for two months now. I pay money for a boiler fixing service and my initial appointment was to be about four weeks after I initially called them, and while that seemed a long time to me I had to remind myself this is Covid and my system still works to an extent. Then they cancelled that appointment because – reasons and pushed it back to mid March. Now the service company have cancelled that and pushed it to beginning of April. I will have been waiting approximately four months for something to be fixed with a house that is mostly cold. This isn’t the sort of service I pay for. Screw them.

I got a new mobile phone a while back and while it’s the same brand as I normally get it still feels new. Which is nice. Normally I get a new phone, you transfer all your data and you look at it and go “Oh, works the same then” which is exactly what you expect when devices run the same OS. This one feels and looks different somehow and that’s even after one month of owning it! Oh, I also upgraded my sim only contract and now I have 160GB of data a month. I use around 5GB. So, I’m going to have to see if I can max this out. Time to start downloading films and streaming lots of video. There was only one time in my past when I think I went over my data allowance and that was at Linton when I was trying to stream an F1 race.

I also had a bad headache this week and woke at 0200 in pain and not able to get back to sleep. I had to get up and take pills in the night, which I can’t remember ever having to do in the past. Fortunately the pain had gone by the morning and I was able to head in to work. But trying to sleep and having thoughts running through about how to organise work and cadets when you aren’t going to be there is not nice. I think I need to change one of my life rules. If I think I might take some tablets then I should take them there and then. Don’t wait to see if it gets better. Just get those drugs into my system. I have a similar successful rule about work. If I think I’m not sure I can make it to work because I feel ill then that is when you don’t go in to work. That particular rule doesn’t always work because there are other social pressures when working in my sector.

Minecraft Bedrock ran an update which also included a server update so it was a nice distraction to put the updated server on my PC. It’s not a hard job but there’s a list of things that need to be done correctly to make sure everything works properly. Which it does and so I got a nice sense of satisfaction from that. I did have a small panic when the ray tracing didn’t seem to work on the PC but it did after a short wait and so thankfully I don’t have to investigate why. I quite enjoy fixing PC things but sometimes the time involved can be quite high. Things are generally fixed either within fifteen minutes or three hours.

I hate selling stuff on eBay. I recently went through a cupboard and found some old tech items and thought I would either throw them away or sell them. So, I decided to sell them on eBay. I wasn’t sure how much I’d get but it seemed more responsible than just chucking them out. Once tech items sell I’m always worried they decided to stop working in transit and arrive broken. I would never knowingly sell something that doesn’t work [unless I labelled that clearly]. So, once things are posted I have a week of background stress until I get my positive feedback. One item I sold I accidentally labelled it as the wrong model and so that is coming back to me which is perfectly fair because that’s my mistake. I’m happy to correct that. The other item the buyer wanted to return because “it didn’t work”. Now, he had already messaged me asking for the software download and how to get the item working. This indicated to me that he didn’t understand the tech side of things. Then he wanted to return it saying it didn’t work. I messaged him asking if he had followed a detailed list of steps to get it working on his system and I haven’t heard back at all. I suspect he was hoping it was plug and play and I also suspect he was connecting it directly to his PC and not to his router. There are many things it could be and I’m not his personal tech support. So his request to return was denied.

Time to get out for a run and burn off the calories of my take-out last night.

March 6 2021March 6 2021

The Good, The Bad and The Whoops!

Below I have arranged some screenshots from me playing X-Plane. I’m not really going to give any commentary. I should be writing a summary of this week of lockdown here but I genuinely am not sure what I can say without breaking my own website rules.

February 28 2021February 28 2021

Exploring The Curves

I headed out in the glorious sun yesterday afternoon for a bike ride. My intention was to not climb any hills which limits the routes I can take given that the village is almost at river level – although I’m not at future risk of future flooding due to sea level rise unlike most of the new houses being built on flood plains in this country. I decided to investigate a riverside path which looked iffy. The were definitely marsh conditions but it is the other-side of the river to my normal running routes. I didn’t know how far I was going to go but I headed out to Brooklands Lake and found my way from there.

The footpath would have been better on foot. There were times when I had to get off the bike to avoid diving into the river and also a number of trees over which I had to decided either to climb over or go under. I felt like I was exploring and it was good fun. I may have ended up with bleeding legs and hands from the thorns but I didn’t care. Along the way I found three pillboxes built in the second world war much like the one along the Medway from last year.

The first pillbox was a surprise to me as I’d never been that way before and now I’m tempted to chronicle all along the lower Medway – even though that’s been done on other pages. Holborough Marshes was a surprisingly nice place with the sounds of running water and a lovely calmness. Apart from the motorbike racing up and down behind the river defences. I’m never sure what I think about bikers off roading around the villages. Part of me gets annoyed as they shouldn’t be doing it, but the other side of me thinks that as long as they are out of people’s way then it’s up to them. I guess the overarching societal decision is they are wrong and should go to specific places to enjoy their sport, there are tracks around here where they could go. It’s like those wankers who dump rubbish in places around our gorgeous countryside, they don’t think the rules apply to them or they don’t want to pay for the proper disposal.

This one at Brooklands Lake was rather a surprise and I didn’t expect to find anymore pillboxes as I travelled further up the Medway towards Allington. I apologise that the photographs aren’t that great but I have two excuses. Firstly I’m using a new camera app and getting used to how it works and secondly, I had polarising sunglasses on [which I didn’t remove] and that messes with what I can see on the screen.

This pillbox was in quite a nice position with some open ground towards the river. I remember thinking it would be a nice picnic spot. There were other spots which were quite nice but I saw the remains of around two tents and some air mattresses and the usual human detritus. This was a shame as it ruined the area. I do think sometimes that I should become a litter picker and collect this trash but time is the limiting factor there.

Overall this was a lovely cycling route, thorns excluded and somewhere I think I could run possibly one day if I can get my distances up to 18km or so. I’ve recently been running around 15km and found it quite good although my feet hurt. I’m going to try some new inserts in my trainers.

February 26 2021February 26 2021

Somehow Not The Same

Until recently I owned a Bodum Cafetière and it worked fine. I mean it’s just a French Press coffee maker and there’s not a lot that it could do wrong. As an aside I just went over to the Bodum website to see if I could grab a picture of what the cafetière looked like and it turns out there are far more variations on these devices than I thought possible, what a rabbit hole! Then one day while washing the cafetière the glass cracked. I’m not sure how and I didn’t hear anything but it broke. Now, I like my morning coffee and so I wanted to get another French press as soon as I could.

Imagine me now walking down the “home stuff” aisle in Sainsbury’s and I spot a cafetière. It’s not made by Bodum and is branded as Sainsbury’s. Should be OK I tell myself, there’s not a lot you can do wrong with a device like this, and if I’m being honest they seem far more expensive than need be. So, I bought the Sainsbury’s cafetière.

That turns out to have been a mistake. Apparently not all French presses are the same. With this new one there is no way to remove the glass from the surround and so I can’t clean the outside of the glass properly. The gaps between the surround and the glass mean that stuff gets in-between and looks horrible from the inside of the cafetière. I guess that’s liveable with but then the bigger issue is that the lid design has less rim and does not align well so when pouring the coffee it regularly spills down the side of the cafetière and ends up on the kitchen counter.

When this leakage of the nectar first occurred I could hear something in the recesses of my brain from before, when I owned a not-Bodum and it just wasn’t as good. I had flashbacks to another time thinking that I should have spent the extra on the Bodum because the one I bought at half the price was shit.

So, the moral is sometimes the better brands are better.

Oh, and I ‘m still searching for a decent can opener. The latest one works, as in it opens cans, but I’ve got cuts on my fingers because it uses the outside of the rim rather than the safer inside part. Ho hum.

February 23 2021February 23 2021

Somewhere Else

It’s almost a year since I went somewhere else. If I look back over my journeys since March 2020 I can recall visiting my parents twice, I think in the summer when we were allowed to visit people in gardens. I went to the white cliffs at Dover in early September I think. I had a walk along the river Medway sometime recently. And that is it. I’ve not been to anywhere vaguely military for a year. I’ve not seen friends and colleagues for about a year. I did return to work Sept through to Dec and saw those people then and it was nice. But I haven’t been somewhere else for a long time. All of a sudden I am very aware this is a modern world problem and that I am quite lucky in reality. No-one I know has died from this virus and I have a home which is somewhere palatable to be. There are plenty out there who have no idea how to feed their families or how to keep a roof over their head.

I am looking forward to being somewhere else. Just to experience other things. The mental aspects of constantly doing the same things and not being able to improve or learn new things has taken a toll. I guess I’ve been doing gaming videos in a bad way over on my YouTube channel and that was quite fun but not the same as actually being outside somewhere else. I haven’t used my camera for quite a while and I think I should. Maybe I need to start doing still life compositions? I don’t know. I guess I could do some sort of project to make sure my camera still works!

I’m not sure that the current moves by the government are the right ones. I’m not in charge and I’m sure they’ve got their reasons I just don’t think public health is at the top of their list. I also worry about the ability of these people to absorb technical and nuanced information about the ‘rona and how it affects us all. The covid recovery group are cunts. I guess we always knew there were a lot in that party but this group have clearly defined themselves as such.

I’m going somewhere else today. I’m looking forward to seeing other things. But I also know from the other times I have been to this “somewhere else” that after about thirty minutes it feels normal. I’m actually looking forward to being somewhere with jet noise and the smell of fuel. Hopefully that will happen later this year.

February 20 2021February 20 2021

Even The Kitchen Sink

I’ve decided that the life of things in a house is around ten years. Things apparently wear out after that length of time or at least the high use things do. Given my hatred of decorating in now comes to the point in the house when I need to make some decisions and get myself prepared to reboot the rooms. I recently noticed that my kitchen sink was dripping water into the void underneath and I found it was the tap causing the issues. The tap was also rusted to the sink quite completely. This necessitated a new sink and tap which I was OK with. I found a sink that was the same size so that hopefully removed the necessity to cut the counter top and with luck the waste pipes would line up well to avoid plumbing issues.

The old sink also had a fresh water tap that I had removed and so it was possibly time to rejig it anyway. All the limescale is me just not having cleaned the sink for a while but there is a lot around the tap and it leaked into the basin but also through into the pipe system. The limescale in this area of the country is pretty harsh and things die after a short time. A friend bought one of those clear kettles to see the water boiling but every week it would need descaling, it’s best not to be able to see these things.

Kitchen Sink - Halfway — Kitchen Sink – Halfway

This level of piping is quite frustrating I think. Most of it isn’t used anymore. I used to have a water softener but after a while I noticed that it wasn’t plumbed in correctly so I removed it. There are also spare pipes for cold water access to the bathroom as the hot water pipes to the bathroom were replaced a few years ago. I kind of know what all the pipes do and the ones that aren’t needed are clearly shut off. Oh, and two stop-cocks because apparently you need one before the water meter.

The new sink fitted snugly and that pleased me. There would be less hassle and no cutting of the counter top. The waste pipe could be aligned with a tiny amount of force so officially I have a pre-stressed pipe system, but that stress is low. I did have to cut some of the support wood to get the sink screwed in properly but I’ve been gluing that back and have a plan to secure it more. The new sink feels smaller but I don’t have a huge amount of washing up to do.

Overall this all went well and I will have to start planning the next thing in the house which needs sorting. There’s also the loft and I’ll have to tidy and sort that at some point.

February 19 2021February 19 2021

Clean Up

I’m just about to start writing this communication and I have realised the irony involved, however, I shall continue and ignore the double standards I so clearly employ.

As I come out of a two day migraine which was probably required by my body to make me do nothing I have realised a few things. I guess what I mean is that there are a number of things that I knew separately but I have only very recently put them all together to come to a conclusion, which I suspect is that actual definition of how a realisation works.

I’ve been spending time trying to change my behaviour for the improvement of my mental health. I have times when the weight of the world rests on my shoulders and I need to learn that there are some things I can do very little about. So, I have stopped obsessing with the news and feeling anger at all the terrible things that are happening. I have removed the Twitter app from my phone and I even deleted two of my Twitter accounts. I’m toying with the idea of deleting the final remaining account but I’m not sure about that yet. I’m failing at overcoming the “sunk Cost” fallacy where I feel that the Twitter account contains details of my life and I’ve put effort into it. However, I don’t look at my historical tweets often and I only check that place once a week or so, primarily to see if Pom has been in touch. The grander idea behind all of this Twitter removal is that no-one else cares what I think. Literally. People might be curious to see my reactions to things but the truth is no-one cares. Chucking ideas and thoughts onto Twitter doesn’t change the world and more than likely won’t change anyone’s mind about anything. It just allows me to join the faux outrage at whatever thing I should be outraged about.

Twitter used to be a place where I kept in touch with friends. But nearly all of them are now connected via WhatsApp! which is problematic in itself but that’s for another time. Oh, I learnt recently that the developers of WhatsApp! came up with the name first and then tried to work out what the app would do. So, the opinions and thoughts of people I genuinely care about are accessible to me via other methods that web based social media. I don’t expect I can change any of their minds about things, we’ve all known each other for too long to know our own thoughts on issues but if I want intelligent conversation then I can chat to them on the messaging app. I don’t need to have Twitter to chat to the few people within my “circle of trust”. By that I mean those people whom I consider to be absolute trustworthy friends. I’m fortunate to have people I trust implicitly and the only downside to those groups is that we aren’t physically close enough to meet up once a month to get wasted.

I’ve been clearing out my email inbox and I have removed all the email subscriptions that I just “mark as read” without even reading them. Why should I get those emails if I don’t care about the content? Am I worried I might miss out on something that I want? Probably but maybe I should wait for the natural processes rather than be pushed into buying something because the marketing department thinks I should. It’s curious that outdoor clothing shops keep sending me emails telling me that this new jacket is great or these shoes are brilliant but I’m expecting my current jacket and shoes to last twenty years. Why would I want to know about more of them?

I’ve cleared out all the cookies within my browsers. This is so that I can refuse all the tracking cookies that come along with visiting most sites. I don’t really want advertisers to know what other things I have looked at. I’ve also been over to turn off the custom advertising that Google wants me to use and while I was doing that I have set a time limit on the browsing data that Google keeps on me. So, this means that I’ve got things in my history in case I need to find them but also anything older than 18 months goes away. If I haven’t looked at something for a year and a half then the chances are I don’t need to keep it in my history.

I’ve deleted the Reddit app from my phone. I found I was spending around thirty minutes a day browsing through Reddit and none of it really added to my life experience. Most of what I looked at was aircraft and things designed to kill other people. I’m having a bit of a break and trying to use my time more productively. Which, I guess, also includes writing this stuff which is read by approximately three people. I found that most of the time I could avoid looking at Reddit but once I opened the app that was at least twenty minutes gone and maybe more if I didn’t keep an eye on the time. It would be a better use of my time if I read Scientific American instead.

I would like to remove or close my Facebook account. But I can’t really. There are two communities I belong to who only seem to use FB. First the 360 Radar bunch use FB as their main way of sending information out to people who contribute. So if there is an update that needs to be completed I need to have access to that information. Also, my friends within the CCF all are on FB and if I want to get in touch with them then I need to maintain that access. I only check my account once a week and that is within a browser that is used only for that. The browser also has add-ons to remove tracking. This way I hope to minimise the information that FB can gather about me, although I suspect I would be rather surprised at what they do have.

I’ve also turned off the Google Advertising customisation options. I can’t quite remember what URL is used to do this but you can access this in your Google account settings. This way, I will no longer see adverts aimed specifically at me. I will just see general adverts. I can cope with that. If I want to buy or spend money on something new then I would like to leave the choices to my own flawed thinking modes rather than relying on someone else to point me in their direction. Yes, I know this whole argument is flawed but it feels good to lower the amount of tracking information that these very large companies keep about me.

Interestingly there is, of course, the problem that this website contains an awful lot of information about me. You can find my interests, purchases, bands, travel and political ideas. But this is a site that I control and the information you see is just the information I want you to see. It is very rare for me to delete a communication and if I adjust them then my policy is to try and make sure that those changes are clear and open. This site also runs counter to the convention that no-one else cares about what I think or feel about the many issues I have written about. Again that is true. But as I say on the homepage, this site is about me and how I think. It’s got nothing to do with looking for approval. I know people don’t care what I think. But for me, this is my diary, sort of.

February 15 2021February 14 2021

The World Championships

I’ve been meaning to write something about the NFL on here for a long time. I love American Football and I know that a lot of UK people don’t really get it. They say stuff like “but you’re allowed to throw the ball” and “watch rugby it’s not for girls in pads”, you know things like that. I’m also a bit of a stickler for being correct in language and so when people ask me about football I ask them which code. This doesn’t not normally end well because I use the term “soccer” for Association Football and that in generally disliked in the UK. I mean, it’s the most correct term for that particular game but you know British people! When I’m not at a live match I watch the NFL using their Gamepass App.

Sidenote: I dislike the term App. I think you’ll find the thing is a program or Application or Executable file but “App” seems lazy. This is similar to my dislike of the term “folder” for a directory but I’m old and the world moves on.

Gamepass on a browser, on iOS and PS4 works really well. By really well I mean it works. There are some silly things which you would have thought a massive organisation would have fixed like which PS4 buttons can be used for fast-forward etc. But, once you accept some of the basic issues the app seems to do what I want. The Android version though is a piece of shit. There is no option on the Android platform to hide the finals scores of matches. WHO WANTS TO KNOW THE SCORE BEFORE YOU WATCH A MATCH? If I know the result of a match I can’t watch it. The match is spoilt. If I want to watch a match using my [quite expensive] Android TV box then I have to hold my hands up in front of my eyes as I browse the matches hoping that I cover the part of the screen where the scores appear. I tend to use the PS4 instead because I don’t have to blind myself.

At the end of each broadcast there is a warning from the NFL declaring that any use of the imagery and descriptions thereof is a breach of copyright or something like that and so this really made me want to get permission to write about something I had watched on Gamepass. I wrote to the NFL and I got a load of legal waffle back which, I think, says that I can write about things I have watched online as long as it’s not for profit. This little site is definitely not for profit and so I am going to write a little and risk the wrath of the NFL.

“You may use the Services and the contents contained in the Services solely for your own individual non-commercial and informational purposes only. Any other use, including for any commercial purposes, is strictly prohibited without our express prior written consent. Systematic retrieval of data or other content from the Services, whether to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a collection, compilation, database or directory, is prohibited absent our express prior written consent.” – I’m pretty sure that this part means I can write something here as I won’t be making any money off it.

Superbowl 55. The “World” Championship. Which is a bit like me saying I’m the world champion of racing from my lounge to my kitchen as I’m the only person able to partake in that particular activity.

I haven’t yet watched LV on the full replay and I will at some point [even though I know the result] but I have watched the full live action replay of all the action [this show is 40 mins long, which means for a game of 1 hour I’m being shortchanged]. I can say the following with confidence. The Kansas Offensive line was terrible [maybe the Buccs were amazing] and Mahomes wasn’t protected at all. The O-line broke so often that Mahomes was under so much pressure he just couldn’t land many passes. This wasn’t his fault. He also threw some amazing passes under pressure and I was very impressed with him. To win a Superbowl with different teams is impressive and so I will acknowledge that a certain person has done well. I still don’t have to like the cheating fucker, but I can say I’m impressed.

KC seemed to give up an awful lot of yardage through penalties and I’m not sure if these were called for as I haven’t watched the full match. But maybe the KC defense was getting frustrated which would make sense. Maybe I’ll check back here once I’ve seen the full replay.

February 13 2021February 13 2021

Week Six – Completed

Here we are a whole half term [I refuse to call them terms] completed. I thin I passed through a tough stage about two weeks ago. I was annoyed at everything and I needed to change my behaviours because I couldn’t change all the things that concerned me. I stopped looking at the news multiple times a day. I stopped looking at Twitter so much which was already reduced from the old days, I now check about two or three times a week and because I don’t follow many people not a lot happens there. Facebook is something I don’t really do, except I do for certain things. Facebook is there so I have contact with the RAFAC and the aircraft tracking people. I do understand why they all use Facebook, it’s just I never really have and won’t.

I’m still trying to read more science news with my Scientific American subscription. The first paper copy came last week and while I’ve been quite busy I’ve not had the chance so far but I will next week. There are some articles I’m looking forward to reading using the app as I have access to the last four years of editions. I can’t currently read Private Eye because they highlight all the shit going on at the moment and I can’t cope with that. Oh well. I won’t be cancelling my subscription though.

I had to get my car seen to because there was a dodgy rattle noise and I suspected the exhaust. I was hoping for a bracket that could be replaced, that would be a few pennies. Then, the coolant level on my inverter system was dropping quite a lot and I asked for that to be looked at. Well. New inverter radiator needed. The exhaust was indeed a bracket that was removed but the radiator needed replacing and that means the whole front end of the car needs to come off. I’m half a grand lighter. Not exactly pennies but at least it’s fixed.

The other big thing this week I guess has been the snow. It’s been nice. A week’s worth of snow. It’s not really bothered me for travelling reasons because the last time I was away from my house was a year ago on some WHST weekends down at SMP. The snow has been nice but the cold has highlighted how chilly my house gets when outdoor temperatures dip below 4C. Anything above that and my house can maintain a reasonable warmth. Below that and I need the heating on permanently. Such are the issues of living in a Victorian two-up two-down. The bathroom and kitchen both stick out of the back of the house and are extremely cold. It’s best not to go out there!

I am in the process of persuading myself to buy a new kitchen sink, tap and kettle. Yes, I know they aren’t all connected but those are the things I am contemplating. My sink and tap combination leak a little and I guess it’s time to stop that. I’ve found a set that will work, it’s now just a case of buying them and doing my best to use screws and bolts and things. The kettle is required because my current kettle just looks a bit old and tired and covered in limescale. Short of letting it rest overnight in a bath of lemon juice I think the easiest thing to do would be to get a new one. I should, I suppose, get a Dualit one to match my toaster, but I don’t like the Dualit kettles. So, I will get one on other aesthetic grounds.

I’ve been practising going through checklists in X-Plane and I’ve printed off a book concerning flying and how it all works. I’ve got a degree in Aeronautics and yet and I know little about the actual processes. I’m looking forward to spending some time learning that. The issue is that during the working week I am spending eight hours a day in front of a screen and I don’t want to spend any more time doing that in the evening. My Minecraft rate has dropped a lot along with my Gran Turismo progress. This week will prove to be a return to form though.

February 7 2021February 7 2021

Why Give Me The Option?

Updated a piece of software just now and it needed a complete install rather than just having a module that updates itself. Which is fine. I’m happy with that. But the install gave me language options which looked like this:

I was teased with the notion that there may be different English options within the software and maybe I could change the install version to English (UK). But, no. You aren’t given that choice. Maybe they are specifying that the English I install is American English and not any other kind. That I suppose makes sense given the Portuguese and French options? I’d be quite surprised if the other languages there don’t have their own versions and therefore each needs to be specified. I can’t imagine that Mexican Spanish is the same as Spanish Spanish. Maybe it is and I’m wrong but given how much the English language varies over parts of this small island I rather suspect I’m right. Interestingly the idea of a standard language is relatively new in concept and dates from printed copies of the bible.

As I write this I await the onslaught of snow to this county. I’m hoping it gets terrible after midday as I’ve got places to be before then. I’m hoping it settles enough for sledging and fun. I’m gutted that schools will never have another snow day. Perhaps I could make the case for all lessons tomorrow or Tuesday to be “go out and have fun”? I might suggest ti and see what happens. A blanket of snow is so rare in this part of the country and I’m not surprised everything grinds to a halt. If we had snow for thirty days a year then sure, we would be able to cope with it more and the infrastructure would work. But it doesn’t matter for the maybe two days a year that the snow really hits.