"Nothing but the rain"
The other day at work I needed to draw a circle on the whiteboard. I did it freehand and without thinking about it too much.
It looks pretty good, even if I say so myself. It’s a plan diagram of a car’s turning circle. The class were given the circumference of the turning circle and they had to work out the kerb-kerb distance even though in reality the question wanted the wall-to-wall turning circle distance.
Giotto did far better than me [so says the legend].
There are a number of reasons why 1989 was a good year for me but the one to talk about is my trouncing of my ATC squadron for awards. As listed in this communication I won four of the awards that year.
I am very proud of these. I still have the personal trophy for Cadet of the Year.
I recently attended a meal in celebration of thirty five years of 309 squadron and it was a good bash. It was lovely to see lots of faces from the old days. The trophies were on display and although my names are no longer on the prizes given out now – there’s not enough space for the new names and so new trophies were bought – I could see the old trophies around the room along with plenty of clippings in the scrap books.
There was also a presentation on the large screen with plenty of photographs from the old days. A fair few had me in them, mind you I was involved for over ten years.
The above photograph has John Trant, Lisa Slater, me, Flt Lt Andrew Passfield OC 309, Jamie Hubbard, Dean Willetts and Simon McGarry. We are the ones who won prizes in 1989.
That’s me playing the fife as the band marched down the town high street.
I’ve been thinking about time. Well, let’s face it I think about lots of things all the time but time is problematic. I was mostly thinking about this at the turn of the year, when 2018 magically turned into 2019 or the start of the nth journey around the sun when starting from an arbitrary point. I mean starting the new year on the day after the shortest day for the northern hemisphere would be more sensible but I guess we could have a war with the southern hemisphere about that.
Midnight is the first moment of the next day. When the clock hits 00:00 that is the start of the next day. The previous day ends at a moment which is the limit of all time before 00:00. Twelve AM is the beginning of that day. Such is the definition.
Now, here’s the problem and it involves language and colloquialisms as is often the case with problems about definitions. Within mathematics there are plenty of words which have specific definitions in the subject and different meanings in casual language, I mean that was designed that way originally to exclude the masses from education.
So, if I said to you I will meet you “at midnight on Thursday” then it is likely that we would be talking about meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday. But, if I said I’d meet you at 12am on Thursday that would probably mean we were still meeting at the boundary between Thursday and Friday but in reality that time is the boundary between Wednesday and Thursday.
Thinking about this now I think it would be only me having problems with a meeting time of “midnight on Thursday” and in a group discussion I would be the one asking for clarification whereas everyone else would be perfectly happy with the understanding of the meeting time. Oh how I hate language sometimes.
Here’s a boring list of the things I am watching at the moment on the television screen. By at the moment I don’t mean right now or all at once, I mean separately and over a period of time.
Also, here’s a photograph of a building I’ve been to recently:
Now, there’s an idea for a series of communications – a picture of the front of each building I enter. Could be fun! But I think I’ll wait until the album review series is complete.
I wandered the White Horse Wood Country Park and didn’t really know what to expect. I was hoping for some decent views from the North Downs over the Greensand Ridge and High Weald. That is what I got. But, I also found a curious structure:
This apparently is a sculpture of two ash trees with arrows stuck in them to signify the die-back of the ash tree in this country. A very curious site and at first when I saw them from a distance I expected them to be disguised mobile phone masts.
Also close by is the ruins of Thurnham Castle, a home to rich people using and abusing the poor.
It was not a sunny day, but at least it was bright.
First communication for the new year of 2019 is a couple of pictures from Gran Turismo photographic mode. The first is my Chevvy over-steering around the penultimate bend on the Sainte-Croix Circuit. You can see a list of circuits here.
This second picture is of my two favourite cars on GT Sport. Both have a really good balanced feel and I’ve raced over 500 miles in the Porsche.
A little while ago Sony Entertainment made a video giving a run down of my time on the PS4 and you can see that in this communication. I guess these types of videos don’t take a huge amount of effort to produce and they might even have started on Faceshit, I don’t know. However, the other day Strava came up with one for me. I use Strava to track my running and other exercise. This year I’ve also done some rowing on the erg and a little swimming.
Here’s my Strava video:
Although these weren’t taken on Newtonmass Day they were taken in the 2018 season and in the area of the Medway Valley. Not sure what they say about this area though.
Actually, two of them do point to the idea that the Medway valley area is rough as fuck.
A couple of nights ago I was watching television in the evening when I could hear the sound of a large or low helicopter. I didn’t move but consulted 360 Radar and observed that it was a Royal Navy Merlin helicopter flying over. It struck me as a little odd but not enough to make me move. I see Apaches and Chinooks a couple of times a year and given there are DIO training areas in east Kent there’s reason for the activity.
Turns out I was rather wrong.
The next day there was quite a bit of news about the Special Boat Service or maybe the Royal Marines on social media although most of the mainstream press kept away from it. I probably should have followed the Merlin on 360 Radar a little longer, but my television show was deemed more worthy.
I found out about this cool feature on PlayStation.com where Sony will create a short video detailing your playing history over the five years of the PS4. Here’s mine: