Smurfit

After watching Blade Runner 2049 for the second time it was late at night and I was driving home. There’s a paper mill near me, there were two but one shut down and I suspect it will turn into housing soon. The other seems to be working well and has expanding recently. The original location of these next to a major waterway made sense after the war. This area used to make bricks and cement but is slowly changing to a mostly expensive housing area rather than making stuff.

There is a need for communities to make stuff and to be based near things where tangible things are made. You can’t fill whole swathes of the country with just housing for all the people who work away. I see so much of the land around me going to housing when more is needed for enterprise and making things. Society doesn’t just exist or work because of people living there, you need decent work for locals too [spot the socialist].

Last night when I took these photos it was misty and the light was lovely. Here’s the current paper mill, Smurfit Kappa.

Industry By Night
Industry By Night

The colours here were just beautiful and the way the steam and water vapour was drifting over the sky made this stand out. The darkness surrounding the plant broken by the light of the manufacturing makes this stand out like Eden in the wilderness.

Once I turned down Bull Lane the view was just as lovely but more monochrome. I stopped my car and turned the lights off. I only had a short while to take some photographs before another car turned on to the road. I probably suddenly appeared when I put my lights back on! This picture makes me think of the Exorcist poster.

Bull Lane By Night
Bull Lane By Night

Not A Great View

I was tracking a VW Group jet into Biggen Hill Airport in south east London and noticed that the waiting pattern was out over the North Sea.

Waiting For Biggen
Waiting For Biggen

I decided that the views out there can’t be that great. I’m also curious as to whether there is a beacon somewhere in the middle there. I don’t really know a great deal about the navigation of planes. VFR is easy, but other than that I need to read up about it all. Maybe I need another visit to Pooley’s?

Here’s a closer look at the waiting room:

Nothing To See
Nothing To See

This Embraer has left a beautiful track for us to see. This is the waiting area for London City and Biggen Hill.

Arc Light

00:26:04 – Arc Light. – What’s up?

00:26:07 – B-52 strike. – Yeah?

00:26:10 – What’s that? – Arc Light.

00:26:11 I hate that. Every time I hear that, something terrible happens.

00:26:15 Charlie don’t never see them or hear them, man.

One day, a momentous day for colour, I happened to think the place of work was particularly lovely. Fortunately I have a camera in my pocket and so recorded it for posterity.

Orange Grammar
Orange Grammar

My phone didn’t really capture the colour well as it auto-corrects the white balance and can’t cope. So, the above image, which I don’t process apart from cropping, is not really what it looked like. With that we could get into a lovely discussion about how we experience things and human memory but it’s probably best not to. Just to act as a contrast to the relaxed lovely image above, here’s what my work normally looks like:

What Work Looks Like
What Work Looks Like

This is the dullest part of my work. The best bit is seeing learning and understanding along with challenging views of people and trying to create a more progressive society that is accepting of all.

It Was Just There

I’ve got some Ordnance Survey maps of my local area and I’ve been to a few of the places that are mentioned locally. Just to see what they are. I regularly run past Kits Coty House and have got photos of it in this communication. The other day I was looking at Google Maps and I was slightly shocked that it mentioned a bunch of rocks I’d not seen. They aren’t on the OS map, but are mentioned here.

Coffin Stone
Coffin Stone

So, as it fits with one of my main routes for a run I went there and took some photos. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you, the Coffin Stone.

The Stone
The Stone
Another View
Another View

The coffin stone is one of the Medway Megaliths mentioned in this document.

Better Quality

I put some pictures on here from Gran Turismo Sport in this communication. However, I had used an iPhone app to get these pictures. I have now messed around with exporting straight to a USB stick from the PS4 and, not surprisingly, I get better resolution and quality pictures. So, here they are:

First, Triumphant:

Triumphant
Triumphant

And then there was more:

Touring
Touring
Speed
Speed
Winning But Ungainly
Winning But Ungainly
There Was A Gap
There Was A Gap
First Livery
First Livery

I know you aren’t that bothered by these pictures but I do like them and after winning [or losing] some races it’s nice to relax and mess around within the game without having to concentrate so much.

Well, That Was Just Weird

There have been PYO Pumpkin signs around this way for a few weeks and I thought it would be something quite fun to do. Whenever I run the route by the Malta Inn I pass the field and so I knew where it was.

When I arrived the car park was half full with around 100 vehicles. There were many people working there and it was just the most bizarre site. Over in the far corner was a burger bar and drinks van! The whole field looked mostly empty with pumpkins and squash laying everywhere. There was some maize on the eastern flank.

Harvest
Harvest

It was like a battle field with dead men and the detritus of war littered over the field. But it was monetised. Many people were on hand to help and make sure you spent lots. All the pumpkins were ready cut and so there was a lot of time and effort that had gone into this enterprise.

The Result
The Result

Triumphant

I suspect there are going to be quite a few of these communications as we go through time. I have found the photograph mode in Gran Turismo and it is gorgeous. I need more time to get used to the settings and options. Of, course I’ve downloaded the extra Scenes pack from the PlayStation Store.

Triumphant
Triumphant

I need to re-take the above photograph so the cars are the same size. Also, to get all three rear lights on the RHS I had to angle the car a little unnaturally.

Touring
Touring

St Pancras station is where my usual train to London terminates so I like this view.

Cromwell Place
Cromwell Place

I lived for two years, and worked for four, around the corner from here.

Sport Edition

IT arrived on Thursday. The day I had to spend 13 hours in work making the place look lovely and welcoming. The packaging was lovely, even though it was a day late. I had spent some money on the collectors edition, mostly for a pretty box, a book and a toy car.

GT Sport Edition
GT Sport Edition

Once I got home after circling the village a few times to find somewhere to park I turned on the entertainment centre and popped the disk in. Instantly there was a 13GB update file to download. This was slightly annoying. It would take me 25 minutes or so for it to complete and so I watched some TV, all the while becoming more and more tired. This was at the end of a very long day!

I did enter some bonus content codes in the Playstation Store and got my extra goodies delivered when the game did eventually start.

I can confirm that this game looks absolutely lovely. I know there will be critics out there, but I’m not fussed. People take what they want from a game. I’ve been playing GT since 1997 [yep, I’m old] and still enjoy it. The aim of getting faster lap times or winning a hard race, thinking about pit stop strategy and over-taking tactics pleases me. I just like it. It’s also a game you can spend ten minutes on or a few hours, when you start it up you aren’t locked in to playing for a certain length of time.

Nice Car
Nice Car

I’m not convinced about the photo mode within the game. I’d rather spend my time racing but I probably will end up spending some time within it as there are bonus points to be got!

Did I say it looks lovely?

Screenshot
Screenshot

I’ll keep posting communications on this topic, as it’s a handy conversation for me. I can also track my progress.

Fixed – Hopefully

There haven’t been any new communications in a while because I have been going through about sixty of them to sort out embedded picture links. I wrote about this here, where I explained that some of my OneDrive pictures weren’t really working within my website.

I could see them, but I think that was because my computer was logged into OneDrive or at least had cookies saying it was logged in. When I checked in an “incognito” window the pictures didn’t show.

The main aim of this embedding was to save space on my server and use the space on my OneDrive allowance as I keep pictures there anyway. I’ve just checked my web server space and I have 100GB, I’m currently at I-Don’t-Know! The web managing tool doesn’t seem to have me down as using any space. Strange! I’ll have another look another time.

Anyway, all communications should have pictures that work! If they don’t work then let me know, my units of readers.