Monday 18 December 2017

Fifty (50)

The pages keep turning! I am now a fifty year old. I will never again be a 49 year old. It doesn't feel much different to be honest.

It was a damn fine birthday! My mate Dave came all the way from Torquay to help me celebrate. My wife and family came too, partly to club together to get me what I wanted, and partly to make an occasion of the evening.

We went ten pin bowling and a sort of laser paintball thing in a local venue. I was a mediocre bowler (as usual) and a half decent laser sniper/run-a-rounder.

The thing they clubbed together to buy was a thing called a loop station. This is a bit of musical tech that allows you to play stuff, then over dub it. There's a huge amount more to it than just that, but that's essentially what it does. Ed Sheeran uses one apparently, as does Juana Molina, and many many others.

So far I've only scratched the surface. I need a week off so that I can just fuck about with it.

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Wednesday 13 December 2017

Conduct

I have to say, my own conduct fell a long way short of the professional standards expected of me the other day.

I posted, on social media, the personal details of someone who I shouldn't have. Just a name. The name of a driving examiner.

I did it because I was absolutely rat-arsed. I was rat-arsed because I was stressed. I was stressed because despite the clarity of my conviction expressed a couple of posts ago, the people I had been fighting were adamant that I had no cause to fight for.

I don't like confrontation. Yet I'd been forced to confront. At some point I will have to meet the examiner I've accused of falling short. I should demand an apology. Instead I fear its coming.

So I got drunk. I'd reached the end of the road, (or so it seemed) and I had not been listened to. They'd fobbed me off and covered their own arses. And at some point I copied and pasted the final email exchange between myself and them, without redacting the specifics.

I awoke late the next day, and at some point thought better of it. I logged in to the social media site in question with the intention of removing the post, or at least of editing out the names, but it was no longer there.

Perhaps I removed it myself. Perhaps someone complained and had it removed. I have no idea.

I suppose there might possibly be repercussions. I suspect if the people that might make such repercussions happen had got wind of it, they'd have been in touch by now.

Anyway, after taking things right to the top, they sided with the examiner. I got drunk and angry and I did something I shouldn't have done.

Yet I still knew I was right, and after a couple of days, I had a thought: The girl on her test has put herself in the wrong lane, because she had not been given the right information. She should have recieved a serious fault but she didn't. Could I be cheeky and re-complain on that basis?

Well it turns out that rule 1.06 states that I can.

1.06. Assessment and recording of faults

It is important that, in addition to a common standard of test, there should be a common standard of assessment of candidates’ driving ability. The most reliable basis for assessing a person’s competence to drive is to observe faults as they are committed and to evaluate them as soon as a confident judgement can be made.
Examiners should not be too hasty in making a definitive assessment and marking the fault.
Examiners should wait until the event has finished, then mark the fault. Driving errors must not be double marked. Once assessed, each fault should be recorded on the DL25 in accordance with the definitions laid out below.
Note: When assessing and marking a manoeuvre, it is not considered as double marking to mark both control and observation.

Watch, as they say, this space.

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Saturday 9 December 2017

Walking on the moon

I'm still trying to master spaceflight. Kerbal attrition rate has dropped. I've managed to design, build and fly fast stable and long range aircraft, and have started to get my head around orbital mechanics. Mainly because I actually bothered to read the manual.

And I've just managed to put a man on the moon. Here's the historic moment...



The poor bugger has no way of getting home, but he will go down in history. I hope it's worth it.

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