The Martian (film review)

"During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive." IMDb

Staring Matt Damon, Sean Bean, and Jeff Daniels, the movie has a good cast.  The plot is simple, Mark Watney has been left behind, can he survive until help can get to him....  The movie is mostly about Damons character and his struggle to survive on Mars, although a drama the movie has plenty of humour to lighten it along the way.  Special effects are well up to standard, indeed better than many, as is the stunning landscapes (was it shot on Mars?... No Jordan mostly, but it bloody looks like Mars to me).

Waynes rating 8.5/10   Well worth a watch

A few evening shots.

The last few from our evening walk to Southerndown.

An evening at Bad Wolf bay (southerndown) part 2

Some of the photos.

An evening at Bad Wolf bay (southerndown) part 1

Last night we went to Southerndown, AKA Bad Wolf bay from Doctor Who, we went for some sunsets and ended up with wet feet, yes the tide does come in!

Note to cyclist

 This is for the cyclist I saw the other night all in black riding the wrong way down a busy dual carriageway with no lights, dodging the traffic. 
 You really need to see a psychiatrist or phone the samaritans, if you want to kill yourself thats fine with me, but doing what your doing is going to get other people killed or injured too.  Any one of those cars could have had an accident trying to avoid you.
 It's really time the police did something about this sort of stupid riding!

I love WD 40

 WD 40 was invented by Norm Larson in1953 (WD-40, abbreviated from the phrase "Water Displacement, 40th formula", indicating it was the 40th formula the chemists tried before finding success)    Originally designed for the Atlas rocket, it has a huge host of other things it can do (including making a mini flamethrower DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME)
 Why do I love the stuff?  Well apart from all the normal jobs of loosening seized nuts and squeaky doors I just mended a torch with the stuff.... Yes a torch.   About 5 years ago I bought x2  4w torches from a well known supermarket I hate (Cough Tesco!) I was doing a fair bit of exploring tunnels at the time.  Well the batteries leaked in one and buggered up the tail cap switch, I've tried taking it to bits but it's sealed, I was going to just throw it away (I'm not short of a torch or two) but then I gave it a squirt of WD40, clicked the button a few times and blow me down with a feather! It worked fine.  Jobs a good-un!
 So well done WD 40 you might be the same age as me but your still useful...... unlike me!

Mars and my bathroom.....

 There are several different groups planning to land men and women on Mar in the next decade (including NASA)  Personally I think it's daft, and I'll tell you way.
 I've just spent the last FIVE minutes trying to stand three plastic bottles upright in my bathroom, one is shampoo, one is mouthwash and the other a container of what I use for toothpaste.  Now lets be sensible here, if we can't make a simple plastic bottle of shampoo thats not top heavy how the bloody hell are we going to get humans and all they need to survive for years 33.9 million miles away (Mars closest ever approach, the average distance is around 140 million miles) We cant really get a bus service to run properly.