Tuesday, July 28, 2015

And in the news this week...


 The US have developed an anti drone canon shell.   Now a few points. First the US government are probably the biggest user of drones so this may be a bad idea as others will copy it, secondly your ship mounted anti aircraft system (much bigger with huge radar) couldn't tell the difference between an F16 and an Airbus, how exactly this small vehicle mounted system will be able to tell a drone from say a piper cub (or an airbus) is open to doubt.
Probably best not to fly from any airport near one of these canons.


Global warming numties are saying the sea levels are going to rise 60 feet when the Arctic sea ice melts, and because it'll dilute the ocean it won't refreeze.  Errr for scientists your not very good are you, first of all it's sea ice, it's floating on the sea, it's already displacing it's own volume of water so if and when it melts the sea wont rise, secondly it's sea ice (did I mention that) it's frozen salt water not fresh water, now I'll admit some of the salt is forced out when it freezes but thats going into the water near bye anyway so it's not actually diluting anything.  The final "issue" is it's not actually melting, in 2013 (the latest report I can find) sea ice increased 41%, that's a lot of extra ice, far from melting it's getting bigger.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

War Pigs 2015 (film review)

"Disgraced World War 2 Army Captain Jack Wosick is given the opportunity for redemption when asked to lead a rag-tag unit of misfits known as the War Pigs on a secret mission to go behind enemy lines to uncover and capture a Nazi developed Super Weapon the V3, a massive artillery canon that would give the Nazis an insurmountable advantage against the Allies. With the help of Captain Hans Picault, a German Anti-Nazi serving with the French Foreign Legion and Colonel AJ Redding, a battle hardened WW1 veteran, Jack must train, lead and earn the respect of his new squad to become a functioning reconnaissance unit." IMDb

The film stars

Dolph Lundgrun as Captain Hans Picault.

Micky Rourke as Major A. J. Redding.

Rrian Kelley as William York.

Luke Goss as Captain Jack Wosick.

 Think dirty dozen and you've got the idea, sadly this isn't close the the dirty dozens league.  While the costumes and weapons are mostly right, it falls down on acting (I expected better from the likes of Luke Goss).
 The film has the same low budget feel as  many other war films made these days, it also shares the terrible Hollywood muzzle flash and some really terrible cheap special effect explosions, yet again we're given the "star wars" tracer bullets.  Come on guys, real tracer doesn't look like that, and WW2 rifles don't have a muzzle flash (or at lest not much of one), it really baffles me why they don't get it right.
 The filming and locations look reasonable, but frankly the film is pretty grim, the trouble is it's not bad enough to be good (if you know what I mean) it's just rubbish with all too many clichés thrown in.

 Waynes rating 3/10  Save your money and buy the dirty dozen or kelly's heros.






Margam park flower and things.




Saturday, July 25, 2015

Daisy black hole.


Wood grain.


 Took some pics of wood grain today.



Movie theatre shooting.


 John Houser killed himself after opening fire in a movie theatre this week, it's not the first either, in 2012 a similar shooting occurred in Aurora Colorado.  Americas answer?  Better security at movie theatres, seriously thats what they are looking at.
 It never seems to occur to Americans that letting mentally unstable people buy guns in the first place is a bad idea, or that letting anyone buy an Uzi along with a packet of biscuits and a tin of cat food in a local store might be a bad idea without a lot more checks. Oh no, let's let everyone have half a dozen assault rifles, after all you never know when 87 year old Mr Jones an ex teacher is going to need to assault an Al Qaeda or ISIS stronghold. 
 Lets face it it's bloody unlikely My Jones is going to be doing that, and for home defence a good pump 12 gauge is pretty hard to beat, just cycling the action tends to worry would be attackers, that lovely "snick snick "sound, and makes much more sense, you can go duck hunting with that too.
 So expect to see a poster something like this in a US movie theatre soon...... Well it is the USA and it is run by the NRA.


Friday, July 24, 2015

Pressure 2015 (film review) Possible spoiler alert!!!


 "A group of men are trapped in a small pod on the sea bed, after diving down to fix an oil pipeline and becoming separated from their ship" IMDb

Starring.

Danny Huston as Engle

Matthew Goode as Mitchell

Joe Cole as Jones

Alan McKenna  as Hurst

The 4 men are deep sea diver (saturation divers) They work from a diving bell, sent down in a storm to 650 feet to fix an oil pipeline they get trapped on the sea bed. Can they be pulled up or rescued before the air runs out?  Watch the film and find out.

The movie starts well with action more or less from the beginning, then after they get trapped it slows up to more a psychological drama.  The acting was quite good and the sets/special effects were up to the usual standard with no obvious blunders (until near the end) I wont give the ending away but I'll give you a clue saturation divers work under great pressure, to surface they have to decompress slowly on the way up. The longer they are under pressure the longer the decompression time is, a deep dive can easily need 24 hours or longer to decompress, thats why saturation divers live in the diving bell, they stay under sea bed pressure sometimes for weeks, they are are brought back to surface pressure when the work is over, sometimes over days.

Waynes rating 6/10


Yet another success for the builders....


Yep the curse of the builder has struck again.  This time while taking down the scaffolding the took out next doors wooden fence, now when I say took out, I don't mean they took it for a drink and a visit to the zoo, no, they took it out in an Al Pacino sort of way. It sleeps with the fishes, it's run up the curtain, it's joined the choir invisible, it is an ex fence!

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Two more black and white shots.




Well done builders yet again.


 Well the scaffold is down from my house.  Whoopie Doo!   The bad news is they forgot to do the window ledges on the back of the house, they also left the roof trough gutter off the back, they didn't put the edges on any of the front window sills and the lefy my sky dish on the floor broken.
 All in all a good effort for builders, I should be glad I've still got fucking walls I suppose......

Log on the beach


Heres one from the other evening wander converted to black and white.


Thursday, July 16, 2015

Morfa beach evening. Waves and old iron.


And the last from Morfa beach walk.



Morfa beach evening


 Had a nice walk to Morfa beach and got some pics.





Wednesday, July 15, 2015

A dark gloomy marina


The other day I had to kill some time while I waited for my son to have an exam (he passed) so I took a compact camera for a walk into the marina.  It wasn't a great day for photography as the lighting was bad.