Some country photos

 From yesterday.

BBC again!....

 The BBC has decided to find new, innovative, and original comedy.  So they remade Are You Being Served, and Porridge... So not new, innovative or comedy really.
 Well I watched the first episodes... maybe suffered is a better word.
  While Porridge has been brought up to date with a relative of Fletcher (also called Fletcher) now in prison for computer fraud, but broadly similar to the original series was just about watchable if your desperate, I can't say the same for Are You Being Served.
 Sadly Are You Being Served has kept things more or less as they were with copies (near enough) of the original character like Mr Humphries. They've also kept the same tired old jokes and innuendos, while they were just about funny in 1972 when the series started, they were struggling by 1985 when the series finished. Now in 2016 they are positively dire, the Mrs Slocombe "pussy" joke and the "I'm free" are simply so out of place it just sounds stupid.
 Seriously give them a miss.

Not what you want to see....

 Not what you want to see when you look out the aircraft window......


Image by Jeremy Martin

EDC torch review Olight i3E EOS mono

Olight i3E EOS mono   around £9

 This is another of the very small budget keyring torches.  It's output is rated at 120 Lm and battery life with alkaline is claimed 35 minutes. This is a single mode torch, you have no low or strobe options, but it's small and amazingly light, honestly it weighs next to nothing, it's a bit longer but slightly thinner than a AA battery, and runs off a AAA battery.
 In use you simply twist the head for on or off , the torch has a soft spread beam, again it's not going to throw a long way but it's loads of light for finding your way about or fixing something, way brighter than a torch this size is expected to be.
 This is another you can bung on your keys and forget until you need a decent light, indeed this one is on my car keys and staying there for now.

Shown here with a AA battery for scale

Swallows and Amazons 2016

 For those of you who remember the Arthur Ransome classic book from their childhood theres a new film.
 There was a charming film of the book made in 1974, it follows the original story very closely, and it's filmed in the stunning lake district.
 Well good news the new film is also filmed mostly in the stunning lake district.  Sadly there where the good news ends....
 You see despite being called Swallows and Amazons this has little in common with the book, the supposed children in the film look more like adults in shorts (which is what they are) indeed it reminded me of the comic strip the 5 go mad in dorset, (or whatever it was called) the "new" version has the kindly writer on the houseboat a grumpy spy, theres a train rooftop chase, planes landing on the lake (with really bad CGI), and for all I know aliens invading the stunning lake district... again... (it was used in star wars ok!)
 Seriously if your going to make a film based on a book use the bloody story from the book, don't just make up a load of old crap and call it Swallows and Amazons...
 What next?  Noddy does Las Vagas, he was an undercover DEA agent all the time. Pooh Bear X rated.  Rupet Bear the Alcatraz years.. Yes theres loads of childrens classic stories you could fuck up it you try.

EDC torch review Cree ultrafire Q5

 Cree Ultrafire Q5 300Lm  (about £3-£5)
 This is the second of my budget EDC (every day carry) torches review
 The Cree Q5 comes in 2 versions, a single or 3 mode version.
 The 3 mode has strobe, low and high power. High power is claimed to be 300 Lm, I've no means of checking that but it is prett bright on full power.
 The torch has a zoom head, and goes from a wide spread of light to a point spot (square) which will throw a long way, it works off a single AA battery. Run times seem pretty good, I haven't done a full rundown test but a well used AA battery (out of my flash) gave about 90 minutes on full and was still going strong when I turned it off.
The torch is solid, mine has been in my pocket for about 2 years now, it's been used dozens of times and knocked about a lot, the only issue I've had is the screws holding the pocket clip working loose, thats what it's wrapped in tape in the pic, it's just stopping the screws geting lost, thats not holding the clip on.
 For a torch that you can buy for a few pounds it's a great buy.
 Pros.  Good value, good light, easy to get batteries
Cons, slightly bulky, too big for a keyring light, this is a pocket torch.

A few beach shots

EDC torch review Thrunite Ti3

 I mentioned I was going to review some budget small pocket torches, with winter on the way it's handy to have an EDC (every day carry) small torch.
 I'm starting with the Thrunite Ti3. (around £14)
 The torch has 4 modes.
Firefly  .5 Lm (115 hours)
Low 12Lm  (6.5 hours)
High 120 Lm ( 0.5 hour)
Strobe (120 Lm)  (1 hour)
 The torch is solid and feels like it'll take the knocks a pocket torch will get, it's drop tested to 2 metres and waterproof to IPX8 (the highest standard) which means it can be submerged without damage.
 It comes in a nice tin with spare O-rings and a pocket clip, it also has a keyring chain.
 Firefly is quite dim, it's fine for looking at your watch, checking a map, or finding something in your bag, that sort of thing.
 Low, this is a bit misleading, low is actually quite bright, plenty bright enough to find your way around the countryside at night or fix the car.
 High, frankly this is amazing, for a torch this size it's a heck of a lot of light, bags of light for moving across country or lighting up a room.
 Strobe, this is the joker in the pack, apart from a sort of self defence situation it's not very useful, and as it takes 6 twists of the head to activate strobe your not going to be using it anytime quickly, later in this series well see a torch with a much more useful strobe.
 In use, to turn on you simply twist the head on and it starts in firefly, twist off and on and you get low, twist off and on again and you get high, it easy enough one handed.  the torch itself gives a very soft spread beam, it's not throwing a beam a long way, but you get a lot of light around you, ideal for seeing the sides of a path etc.
 One feature I found was if your in high power when the battery runs down the light drops of quite quickly, but if you then switch to the lower mode it comes back to what looks like the full low brightness and will runs for another hour or so, thats handy if your battery goes and your in full you still have low mode to get you home.
 It's slightly longer but a bit thinner than a standard AA battery.  It runs on easily available AAA batteries.
Pros.  It's gives a lot of light for a very small torch, it's not heavy enough to really notice on your keyring, it runs off easy to get batteries and it's fairly cheap.
Cons.  Battery life in full power is short, and it would be nice if it stayed in the last used setting instead of reverting to firefly, and the keyring was a total bastard to put on.  But lets face it this is a small torch on your keys, it's more than enough for the normal jobs an emergency light is going to do.
This is staying on my keys!!!

Well it looks like summers over

 It looks like summer's over now, and the nights are drawing in already, it's darker earlier every week (about 15 minutes a week) so it's time to check your winter kit
 Over the next few weeks I'll be doing some mini budget torch reviews, the sort of thing you can put on your keys and forget, but yet are bright enough to be usefull.

Can you pierce your nose with a bullet?

 Can you pierce your nose with a bullet?  Hard to believe but this is actually one of the more popular search questions on Google.
 For those wondering about the answer... The average pistol bullet will go through most normal cars, in one side and usually out the other (not counting the engine or wheels) Yes they will pierce your nose, but not in a good way. If you want to blow your nose off, or tear a huge chunk out of it, the bullet is perfect, for a nice neat piercing to put a stud in... NO!

 Seriously for anybody actually thinking of doing this please don't. As well as disfiguring yourself you may blind yourself as well from the blast, and quite possible hit someone passing.  Honestly using a bullet to pierce your nose is a really bad idea.

Star Trek Beyond 2016 (film review) Spoilers!!!

 "The USS Enterprise crew explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a new ruthless enemy who puts them and everything the Federation stands for to the test." IMDb

 This is the latest offering of the Star Trek franchise.
 The same cast as the previous two efforts, this film though isn't as good, the special effects are well up to scratch, and the Enterprise crew sit much better in their roles as clones of the iconic original series. Simon Pegg has improved a lot as "Scotty" his first effort was quite poor. 

 Carl Urban as Doctor McCoy is still brilliant, he got it spot on in the first film and gets better with every movie, to be honest I have a hard time believing I'm not watching the original Deforest Kelly.

 Chris Pine as Captain Kirk has also improved, he's getting closer but still has a little way to go, but all in all the crew do a very good effort

 For me the movie was let down by the plot. The basic idea (spoiler alert) is the Enterprise has an alien object that the bad aliens want.  While the idea makes sense the plot doesn't, the aliens attack the Enterprise and destroy it, not a great plan if the small object you seek is on it. 

 Then the plot starts to fall apart, the aliens find where the object is on the Enterprise (a huge ship) but can't detect it on one of the crew members. They also keep the crew mostly alive although they have no use for them.

 Kirk and company find an old Enterprise like star ship that crashed on the planet they are stranded on, the aliens are looking for them but cant find this huge ship because it's got a sort of cloaking device. Trouble is the alien leader was in this ship when it crashed landed, so he'd know where it was in the first place.

 After that it just gets silly, they end up in the city's gravity sphere, which couriously has a hatch that needs four handles (hidden in boxes) to open it. Why? the sphere has nothing in it normally and theres access at the bottom (how Kirk gets in) so why would it need another complicated hatch at the top that just happens to line up nicely with a port into space.

Waynes rating 6/10  Lots of action but the plots a bit thin.

Bee's on a flower

 Spotted these yesterday.

Reel cinemas...

 Real Cinemas, real pain in the arse more like!.
 Small crammed in seats, sound too loud, they want your car registration number to see a bloody film and half the staff on the day we went were from overseas. What couldn't they find any Welsh people? No wonder the place was nearly empty,   I certainly will never go there again!

Weather

I've been weather watching this week, theres been a meteor shower on that would have been nice to see. Sadly the weathers been so cloudy you'd be lucky to see the sun never mind a meteor.
 This raises a question, we were told a heat wave was coming for the weekend, it's cold and grey here, no heat wave.
 You'd think with all the high tech computer stuff the weather forecast would be more accurate, in fact it's worse now than the 1940's when a man with a tie and glasses on looked out the window at his pine cone hanging from his shed roof for the weather forecast.
This year was the hottest ever we're told... Thats then spoiled by telling us that 2003 was hotter, then they tell us 1976 was hotter again. How the fuck can this year be the hottest on record then?
 If the global warming/climate change enviro-mental-ists are using the forecast rather than the actual weather data it's easy to see why the morons keep getting stuck in sea ice that shouldn't be there (they got caught again this year lol)   According to the forecast I'm lying on a beach in Gower frying myself into a "crispy-critter".  In fact I'm sitting in the house with the bloody heating on.
Later on today I might buy a few patio heaters to thaw out my garden path.....  Global warming, don't make me laugh!!!

See it can be done....

 This week I bought some shampoo, more often that not my son gets it while I get other shopping, well this week I was shopping and grabbed the shampoo
 I bought Tescos everyday value orange shampoo, it was about 80p (or something like that) anyway today I go for my morning scrub and guess what... it's a normal bottle, it stands upright on the side of the bath, and more importantly it has a normal screw cap.. Gone are the days of needing ten minutes and a hacksaw blade to open the stupid bastard child safety bottle top that so many have.
 Gone are the days of having to wedge a top heavy upside down bottle on the side of the bath, and gone are the days of trying to squeeze out the shampoo through a mesh "porthole" Why? who thought that was a good idea, the bloody things clog up half the time.
 But seriously why is it I can buy a litre of shampoo in a proper bottle for less than a quid, and yet a tiny bottle of something you can't open and wont stand up costs a fiver?

And some news....

 Police are looking for a six foot nine inch tall man, last seen wearing an army uniform, an SAS beret and carrying an army radio. The man was arrested for climbing into Buckingham palace grounds recently. When questioned he told police he was working for Prince Philip on a secret mission, he was also found to be carrying ofensive weapons.
 He failed to answer bail and is thought to be on the run....
 Bail! WTF an armed man dressed as a soldier and barking mad, what the hell did they give him bail for, he should have been sectioned.

 Scientist have made a disolving battery for spies, it's been designed to disolve in water in about 30 minutes and to stop spies secrets being discovered.  Errr, it'll stop the battery being discovered guys, the secrets will be on a memory stick or something, not a battery.

 A bus at the Rio Olympics as been shot at and stoned it's claimed. Well just about everybody who wasn't part of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) told you Rio was a bad idea, also a swimming pool changed colour from bright blue to bright green DURING an event.  Something seriously wrong there.

Well the Olympics are going well (snigger snigger)

 So far my favorite event was the ambulance crew dropping French gymnast Samir Ait Said (doesn't sound very French to me) after he had broken his leg on Saturday, bet that hurt.
 So the gold medal for being clumsy twits goes to.... the Rio ambulance service..... and well deserved it is!

I really should have learnt by now....

 I really should have learnt by now not to watch ANYTHING on the so called "Discovery" channel.  The main reasons being A. you wont discovery anything and B. it's be a total shambles of a program.
 Well they reached a new plateau of stupidity this week, I'll start from the beginning.
 I started watching the vanishing women, a 6 part series that started on June the 6th. The series is looking at the deaths and disappearances of 6 women in the town of Chillicothe, Ohio, and is on investigation discovery.
As I say the 6 part series started on June the 6th, it's now August 8th and we've had 5 parts of the series.  Worse they haven't made the 6th part yet, they are waiting until a trial takes place that may be linked to one of the murders.
 So my questions, Why not make all 6 episodes in the first place? You didn't know there would be a trial or that it might be linked when you started filming.  Why not wait until the case was brought to trial before filming any of it, the court case may well NOT be part of this case. Is it fair to viewers who followed the story to wait months or even years to see the last part of the story. Why does it take 8 weeks to show 5 parts, cant you keep track of time?
 Why the fuck do I bother watching any of the shit programs you make.....

Water on leaves

 Just a few shots of water on leaves.