The danger of self diagnosis.

 The dangers of self diagnosis are very real.  Now I suffer from the occasional eye infection, nothing major just a sty or a touch of conjunctivitis now and again, now out of curiosity I looked it up on the dreaded Google!
 Well it seems I have every disease known to man (and woman) and a few that are not known, including east Portuguese cat-leg-foot pox.  Now fortunately I'm not a nervous sort of bloke or by now I'd be in a blind panic on the phone to Harley street for the world leading expert in eye infections to rush over and sort it out.
 So theres a warning, if you have a health issue and your worried it about go and see your doctor, don't look it up on Google as A you'll be none the wiser as it could be pretty much anything, and B Google likes to concentrate or the worst case. So if you have a runny nose it'll tell you that you'll be dead by friday.  Now to be fair it is technically right, one day you will be dead before a friday, but that may be seventy years away so stop worrying about it.

Luna power!

We hear about solar power all the time, what about luna power???

A selfie that wasn't taken by me.... so a photo then.

I came across this recently while looking for something else. It's an old pic of me back in my younger fitter days just off the top of three cliffs and apparently on fire.  You can't beet the good old days cane you!

I'm thinking of a new business venture?? -ish

 Yes I'm considering making body armour.  I have the plastic my new washing machine came wrapped in and by heck it's tough stuff.  I suspect several layers of this stuff will stop an 88mm anti tank round, and it's light.  Now I have a Kevlar vest in the wardrobe, it's 48 layers of  Kevlar (I think) it weighs about the same as a collapsed neutron star and it's about as hot to wear. So a light weight cheap to make version should sell well.
 So if you live in a trouble spot, and who doesn't these days, and you need to be bullet proof give me a shout and start saving your £50 notes for when my new line starts shipping.

The day just keeps on giving!

 Well I made it home without getting hit by a tsunami or something, but before that I went to get my mothers shopping and left my jacket and wallet in her house.
 My new washing machine is installed and working but I've just been told to make sure I turn if off at the wall when not in use as they have a tendancy to catch fire. Well whoopie fucking doo!

Oh what a rubbish day I'm having... and it's only just started!

 My phone bill has arrived and it's marginally less than the US spends on defence annually, then when I tried to do some washing the stupid excuse for a washing machine I have (I've mentioned before it's reluctance to take in water) decides not to take in ANY water. After filling it manually it then decides to pay back by not spinning the clothes dry.
 Why is it that washing machines never actually stop you loading them when they are knackered but always leave you with a drum full of soaking wet clothes?  Every fucking time!
 Well I'm just popping off to the second hand shop with the deeds to Bolivia and a spare space shuttle to see if I can raise enough money to pay the phone bill

EDIT.
It's just occurred  to me that shit happens in threes. So this may be my last post. The way the day is going I may be hit by a meteorite, or fall down an abandoned mine shaft in Asda, or be set on fire by a flame thrower test on the M4.  So just in case...  Errr goodbye and thanks for reading.

Tonights wander

I had a short walk this evening and got a few pics.

How to make a horror film.

 Location.  A disused asylum is best, failing that a disused hospital, factory, old house, woods, shed, or even bus stop. As long as it's disused and creepy looking

 Plot. Not important, the filmiest excuse for your cast to be at the location will do.

 Cast.  Impossibly good looking youngster's for the victims and some older ugly old git for the baddie. It's important the the girls will get their tops off and jiggle their breasts frequently without any logical reason as often as possible.

 Camera.  You will need a half decent camera as you'll be filming in almost total darkness for the whole film (except the bits with the girls jiggling their breasts}

 Script.  Again not too important, but you will need the boys in the group arguing and fighting amongst themselves to show how tough they are and the girls need to scream constantly for any reason, except for the bits where they jiggle their breasts.

 Special effects.  Don't spend too much money on this (nobody else does) A few severed heads and hands are popular.  Lots of rubbish quality fake blood (note dried blood looks brown not bright red) A large knife and a chainsaw are essential.  Several torches to shine at the camera are also expected.

 Costume.  The boys should have tee shirt and jeans, the girls either shorts or short skirts and flimsy tops that they can take off easily.  Don't forget a silly costume for the baddie, a leather mask and apron perhaps?

 Oh yes did I mention the girls need to jiggle their breasts a lot???

 What you have above is the plot of just about 95% of all the low budget horror films I've ever seen.

Water and rocks.

Heres a few pics of water and rocks.

A few more sunsets....

Oh smegging joy, I have to go to tesco's !

 Yes, oh joy I have to go to Tesco's  (large dollop of sarcasm)  I need some food for dinner this evening and it's easier to get it all in one place.... Tesco... Sadly that means the nearest tesco as I don't have the time or petrol to go to a proper one.
 This means braving the nutters day out trip, a meeting of grannies for warmth, and the welcome to tesco's community centre where people meet, talk, but don't shop.  If I'm really unlucky it'll be strictly come nutter dancing finals too!
 Joking aside it really is that bad in there.

A few light trails

Heres a few light trails taken recently. The bottom one was a passing bus.

Just for a change some sunset... And trees!

Criminal minds

I've just watched the latest episode of criminal minds (series 10, episode 21) Wow!  Criminal minds meets the X-files!  One of the best episodes I've seen, very different to the usual but quite gripping to watch.

Waterfalls and... Errr More sunsets.....

Do drink and drive.....

 The police have now advised driver to drink and drive.  No, honestly that's what they are saying.  Of course they don't mean you should drink alcohol, what they mean is dehydrated driver make as many mistakes as drunk drivers.
 Recent tests have shown that a dehydrated driver is as lightly to have an accident as a drunk driver, so the advise is to drink 200ml of water an hour. Of course this advise doesn't take into account the temperature, or how your supposed to go to the loo, as Britain has a chronic shortage of public toilets, especially near roads.
 It also raises another question, are drunk driving accidents actually caused by the alcohol, or by the fact that alcohol dehydrates you and the bad driving is a result of that rather than the effects of the alcohol? Buggered if I know.
 Oh course clever as it sounds it's missing a lot. Try driving with two young children in the back, I bet that's more dangerous that drunk driving, the distraction they cause is terrible, same if your and your partner have just had a massive barney. And what about smoking?  Smokers are lighting cigarettes and occasionally dropping then in their laps (my dad used to do this a lot) as they drive. Driving while tired or feeling ill, it's easy to say you shouldn't, but if loosing your job is at stake how many will stay at home? And lets be honest, if your 20 miles away from home and tired how many will actually stop, and try and find somewhere safe to have a kip. Not many!
 The problem is if you look hard enough you'll probably find road accidents increase if you eat marshmallows, or like trees, does it mean you should advise people not to eat them or like trees?, no it means people should use their own common sense about what they are doing. It's the nanny state again, next week we'll have meters in out cars measuring how much we drink.

Why for heavens sake ?

 What is it about shampoo makers?  Why can't they make a bottle of shampoo that will either stand up without falling over on even the slightest uneven surface (and baths are not usually flat) or open easily? 
 Seriously though, the bottles you can open are top heavy so they fall in the bath all the time, and for some reason they have a one inch hole for the shampoo to come out of. Who need half a pint of shampoo every time?. Then somehow with hands dripping in shampoo you have to put the top back on. Otherwise the open bottle will fall in the bath and to loose all the shampoo.
 The other option is the flip top bottles with a tiny hole, much better you say....  Except, the one I have is nearly impossible to open.  You see the tab you flip is tiny and with wet hands it's tricky to flip. But worse is the force needed to flip it, seriously it takes a lot of force, now that's not too bad if your a fit healthy guy, but not everybody is, I'm a burly bloke but I struggle to open the bloody thing, what happens if you have arthritis or something that affects dexterity, your buggered.
 So why does a simple shampoo bottle so difficult to make properly, it's not the twelve labours of Hecules for heaves sake it's something people use several times a day. Make the bastard thing stand up properly, the trick is to make it bottom heavy not bloody top heavy like they are now. And make them easy to open, having to use a samuri sword to get the top off is a pain in the arse!

Another sunset.

Garden flowers

Heres a few garden flowers, some of these are no more as a man with a petrol strimmer strimmed about 6 times as much as I strimmed with a normal strimmer in about twenty minutes. I took the best part of two fucking hours, one hour and forty five minutes of which was me changing the string.
I need a petrol strimmer!   No, fuck it!  I want a nuclear strimmer!.  

Correction... Well sort of...

 A few days ago I suggested that some years in the future it might be necessary to line up and shoot health and safety nutters so some work could be done... It's been pointed out to me that shooting people (even health and safety nutters) is inherently dangerous, and that it should be carried out under health and safety supervision.... And this is where it gets complicated.. You see if we're shooting the health and safety nutters does that count as supervision?, or do we need more health and safety nutters to actually supervise the shooting bit. If thats the case what do we then do with those health and safety nutters....  You see my problem.
 To be serious (just for a minute) I'm not suggesting that we really shoot anybody, but something does need to be done about the "silly" made up health and safety nonsense.  Yes there are genuine reasons for some health and safety, but so much rubbish is spouted, such as you cant play conkers, and that sort of fake health and safety.
 So heres a thought, make it a criminal offence to make any false health and safety claim, if it's not in the book then it's an automatic £10.000 fine and up to 10 years in jail if you if you make up false health and safety stuff, It's the only way you'll stop the bullshit.

 But please, if you do know any real health and safety people don't shoot them, they do save lives.

Colour Infrared

 Colour infrared is making something of a come back, the film originally designed for aerial photography made a hit with landscape photographers due to it's odd colours.
 Now the film is a little hard to get hold of, and it's not so easy to use as to get the full effect you need an IR filter for the camera. Some plastic body cameras can't be used, and neither can those cameras with a little window in the back showing what film you have loaded. This is because some are not IR light proof, so best to use an old metal film camera if you can find the film.
 Fortunately there is an easier way, photoshop to be exact, to get it exactly right is a bit fiddly as you need to convert to CMYK and swap channels, then add a Chanel mixer adjustment layer.
 Heres a few pics I have converted to show the effect. As you can see it works best on grass and trees.

What happened to the world I grew up in ?

 I was born in the 1950's, and growing up in the 50's and 60's was very different from today.
 For a start we played, we didn't have computer games, we had sticks that were machine guns and lots of bushes to hide behind. We used our imagination. Yes occasionally minor accidents would happen, like the kid who hit his head on the milk bottle I was holding, but he lived, and he was proud of that scar.
 Today children hardly go out, partly a fear of predatory paedophiles , mostly unfounded, and mostly because it's "not safe" as we're told all the time.
 In my day schools didn't close when there was snow.  No we played snowballs, without safety glasses and hard hats, or hi-vis jackets.  Today the first hint of frost and the health and safety police arrive. The park near  me stays closed when it's frosty in case someone falls over. Oh they don't grit the pavements in case someone falls over. They just close the park so people playing don't fall over.... So what exactly is the difference?
 When I was young we all had bikes, no helmets, or yellow clothing, yes we fell off, but we're still here, beside a helmet and hi-vis jacket isn't stopping people being killed by buses and lorries in London is it, and thats with cycle lanes.
 This week I'm told two children were taken into care because they were playing alone in a park, the children were ten and six years old and playing in a local park.
 Come on for heavens sake! Most children go to the local park, I certainly did, sometimes on my bike to make it worse! (without a helmet!!!) Does that make my parents uncaring and bad?  No of course it doesn't, they had to sense to realise that children need to develop their Independence and not be mollycoddled.
 And thats were we're going wrong now.  The 'nanny' state is so controlling of our every moment that the idea of a ten year old alone means he's either in terrible danger, or planning a terrorist attack. Curiously he/she is in danger of neither.
 The real danger is about ten years away when that generation grow up and won't be able to hold a pen without safety gloves, a hard hat and a tracking device. Then when bugger all work is getting done because any work is inherently unsafe (if you look hard enough any job with have some risk) then the world will grind to a halt..... Well until someone lines up the health and safety nutters and machine guns the lot, and we get back to common sense.

The Pyramid 2014 (film review)

"An archaeological team attempts to unlock the secrets of a lost pyramid only to find themselves hunted by an insidious creature." IMDb

 Staring Ashley Hinshaw, Denis O'Hare (Dallas buyers club), Christa Nichola (home and away), and James Buckley (inbetweeners)
 The story revolves around a archaeological team and a camera crew who go into a buried pyramid. The film made mostly in the dark is a slow starter, then it's some time before you actually see whats after them.
 To be honest I found it all unconvincing, the acting was average and the blair witch camera work made parts of it hard watching, by the time people started dying I wasn't too bothered if I'm honest, I didn't really connect with any of them.
 It sort of reminded me of the much better Descent (2005) but sadly Pyramid isn't in the same league.

Waynes rating  4/10 buy the descent on dvd instead.

Reality TV, not so real....

 The idea of reality TV is to show real people going about their real life jobs.  Sadly it's far from that, it emerged a long time ago that storage wars were "seeding" the lockers with interesting stuff. Pawn stars pawn shop is now virtually a merchandising outlet for their tee shirts etc.
 Moonshiners now stars a gone legit moonshiner... so he's a brewer then, and the spokes person for the ABC (alcoholic beverage control) in Virginia Kathleen Shaw says "If illegal activity was actually taking place, the Virginia ABC Bureau of Law Enforcement would have taken action.” And special agent Jesse Tate said "Nobody in the whole series was actually making any liquor, we wouldn’t allow that. If we knew somebody was making liquor they would have been in the next episode in handcuffs.” So no reality there either.
 You see the problem with reality shows is they are going to be boring, I mean watching a man cleaning drains is ok the first time you watch it, but by series nine episode twenty three you'll be cutting your wrists, or more lightly watching paint dry, or worse watching cricket. So the producers try and liven it up a bit, and thats where it gets silly.

And in the news this week...

China is planning a rail tunnel under mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world* They say it could take five years to build... or about as long as British railways take to fix a signal.

The Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, (also the most consonants in a name winner) looks lightly to get the death sentence after being found guilty of all thirty charges. Thats not really news, I didn't expect him to get off with a strongly worded post-it note if I'm honest.

It''s now emerged that police failed to respond to an alarm at the Hatton Garden jewel robbery, and that the thieves may have spent three days back and fro to the building to clean it out.  That won't come as a surprise to most people who have called the police, their response times to anything other than a motoring offence or a celebrity pervert is appalling. Lets face it most of them are still searching for the long dead Jimmy Saville. And look how quick they got around to visiting Jeremy Clarkson over a possible minor assault.
Maybe next time your jewelers alarm goes off ring the old bill and them you saw Jimmy Saville there, they'll be around with a swat team is seconds.

Apples new watch has an actual battery life of three hours it's claimed.  Well thats ok then, I mean nobody needs a watch that lasts longer than three hours.....  Oh, wait, yes they do.


* Note Everest is the highest mountain above sea level, it's not the tallest mountain, thats Mauna Kea at around 10.000 meters (Everest is 8.848 meters) Mauna Kea is measured from the seabed to the top.

For pity sake Tesco!!

Yes I know I'm a fool to myself but I went into Tesco Port Talbot again, or Nutter-ville as I like to call it!
 The thing is it was handy and I was hungry. It was a desperately risky move I know, I mean how many supermarkets do you know that have a straitjacket parking area?  Anyway while trying to get from the fresh bread to deli counter (a distance of a few yards) I encountered a mad old bat dancing behind her trolley (off her bloody trolley more like) she looks at me trying to get past and says "no dancing in the aisle"  Silly cow, I'm trying to shop!
 You see Tesco is a shop where traditionally people exchange money for goods, it's not a community centre, it's not a place to keep warm in the winter, it's not supposed to be a centre for the mentally handicapped,and it's definitely not Blackpool fucking ballroom.
 So welcome to Strictly Come Nutter, at Tesco Port Talbot, you won't be disappointed, theres bloody loads of them in there.

More sunsets I'm afraid... (part two)

 And the final few from last night.  Note the building in front of the sun in some of the pics.

More sunsets I'm afraid... (part one)

Yes I know I'm taking a LOT of sunset pictures, but you see the trouble is I live fairly near the coast and we get such stunning sunsets here it's a shame to waste them.
So here are some from last night.