Driving home from work last night1 I got to witness 3 idiots in cheap, little hatchbacks almost literarily ram their way into the queue of traffic by the airport. These yoofs2 has shot down the outside lane at well over the speed limit, slammed on the anchors when the merge arrows appeared and forced people to perform near emergency stops as the dove into the tiniest of gaps to avoid the also breaking oncoming traffic.
These prats then proceeded to literally swarm round the back of the car in front, desperate to overtake. The one attempt that was made was foiled due to the inability of cars like that to do 60 to anything appreciably faster than 60 in a small space of time. I know, I drive one. Another flurry of break lights and into the rather large gap the driver following these morons was leaving.
The next bit of interesting driving was undertaking the car in front on the roundabout while it tried to turn left. I think he knew it was going to happen so he let them scream off before taking his exit.
The three cars in front of me all went left at the roundabout leaving me the lead following car behind the idiots so I decide to keep up the best I can to see what they get up to. Little Po shot out of the roundabout and was soon gaining on the morons, who were now swarming behind a van that wasn’t exactly being slow. 500 yards on and the van starts breaking and indicating right. As he pulled into the turning lane I saw the final part of ridiculous driving. Two cars undertook the van, the last one overtook him so this poor sod had vehicles flying past him on both sides.
What really made me laugh was that I was now behind them and, knowing how Po responds, was actually able to keep up with them until I gave up at 65. I hope for their sakes they were in 1 and 1.2l cars because otherwise they just got pwned by Po
I didn’t see them after that. I was rather hoping they would get stuck behind someone doing 40, which you so often do down that road3, or maybe see them in a ditch somewhere as they were definitely racing and were probably hitting a ton down a road that’s not designed to support it. It’s little wonder car insurance for teenaged boys is so expensive.
1 Yes, I know. Sucks to be me. 2 because, let’s face it, it’s only going to be idiot teenage boys who have just passed their test driving in cars like that in a manner that proves that they are just dickheads. 3 as I did 5 minutes later.
So the plan for yesterday was get haircut, head to London, meet up with a for lunch, drop my stuff at the hotel, head to Camden, pop round in Limehouse, head back to hotel, get ready, get to Slimelight for 11:30/midnight, party. That plan didn’t quite pan out, although the resultant order of events ended up being far superior.
The haircut got postponed as the barbers didn’t open until 9:30. It, and the trip to Camden plus looking for a barbers in London were cancelled because Ian and I were having a good catch up and decided we’d just go to the pub after lunch instead. Very usefully Ian also knew where my hotel was so we parted company outside of that, he headed home and I checked in before heading out to Limehouse. That journey was an in itself and I was an hour late. Still a good night was had with Mr and Mrs Goron and I ended up staying much later than intended. Not that that’s a huge problem, the band wasn’t on until 2am and the good company more than made up for having to pay £4 to get into Slimelight.
Back at the hotel I changed and walked to Slimelight. The rain very kindly held off until the last few meters of the journey saving me getting drenched as I didn’t have my brolly. Once in the club I barely had time to dump my top in the cloak room and have a quick drink before some stomping tunes came on the dance floor. I stayed there until 1:45am when I headed upstairs to get a good spot for the band.
The [X]-Rx gig is the fullest I’ve seen Slimelight in a long time. If I’m honest they are supremely cheesy with fairly formulaic songs which are easy to dance to, but then a good cheesefest is huge fun one in a while1. An hour later and I’m drenched in sweat with a knackered shoulder2 and a huge grin on my face. Concert over it was back to the middle floor to continue dancing for a bit before retiring to my hotel room and dying. All in all a fantastic day
1The highlight for me had to be when one of the band had to take 5, presumably to be sick as he wasn’t well apparently. With the music paused for a few minutes we were invited by the remaining member to “make some fucking noise!” to which one heckler replied “No, you make some fucking noise!”
2And before you start telling me that perhaps I’m to old to be clubbing I should point out that one if Slimelights oldest members put in an appearance last night making me closer in age to the youngest people there than the oldest
Tomorrow I’m off to London to wonder round Camden (I love browsing through Camden Market), catch up with some friends I have not seen in a while and go see [X]-Rx at Slimelight.
To allow me to cope with crap weekend trains, dump things and not have epic all nighters to content with I have me a cheap hotel room. As a result I’ll be heading to London earlier than I normally do (no getting kicked off the last train at Ingatestone due to fatalities at Shenfield for me this weekend), and heading out later than I normally do after having some actual sleep! Should be a fun weekend. Just wish The Zozo could come too (although she’d probably hate Slimelight )
Im so very tempted to start a website called youdrivelikeanasshole.com where I can vent my frustration at the absolute cocks out there on the road.
This weekend we’ve had the bike that didn’t like the fact I was slowing down so tried to overtake, only to notice the flashy yellow thing on the right of the car whereupon he aborted his manoeuvre and allowed me to turn. We’ve had the guy doing 53, regardless of the speed limit, refusing to go and faster when we hit 60 areas, and yet when someone started doing 50 in font of them they started falling back, accelerating very hard and braking sharply right up the arse of that car in order to make them go faster. There’s been multiple “I’m going to do 40 in a 60″ people, a twat of an estate agent driving right up people’s arses, lane hopping, speeding, jumping lights and brushing his hair, some moron ‘reserving’ spaces at a carpark. And not forgetting the van driver who was so far up my arse I couldn’t see a thing (I ended up slowing down to about 20, but instead of overtaking he shot down a side road, only to pull out in front of me 10 minutes later and scream off doing 60+ down a road that’s 40 for a reason). As he charged down roads that are not quite single track, but fairly tight when passing, at least two cars coming the other ways were forced to break hard and dive for the verge to let him past. The great irony being he never got that much further ahead as he was having to brake so hard for everything and I’d just catch up.
So yes, a website, where I can record as much detail as possible about each and every moron I encounter. And then, when I’m elected into power: death squads. Or failing that a sternly written email to The Daily Mail
The Odeon in Norwich now has an IMAX screen for The Ultimate Viewing Experience, or something like that. The Odeon in Norwhich was also showing The Pirates of the Caribbean: On Less Funny Tides1. With these two snippets of knowledge in mind I decided to book us tickets to see Pirates of the Caribbean on Saturday2. In 3D3. On the IMAX4. In Gallery seats5.
So what we have here are tickets that should, in theory, give us unparalleled viewing. The best seats with the best screen with a whole extra dimension thrown in. Hmmm.
The IMAX screen is something to behold. They’re bloody huge. Well, the other ones I’ve been to are. The one in Norwich seems a bit diminuative compared to others I’ve seen. Although that could have just been because we were right at the back and the size was lost on us. Still, the screen went from edge to edge, floor to ceiling, so it wasn’t going to get much bigger. This, however, caused the second problem.
Other IMAX screens I’ve been to have seating that is highly raked, so much so it can give you vertigo looking down. This does, however, give you a clear view of the screen, and you quickly forget about it. Our seats didn’t quite seem high enough meaning the heads of the people in the row infront intruded onto the screen when all of it was in use. Thankfully the aspect ratio of the film meant they weren’t quite in the way during that (although it was close).
What was in the way was the disabled viewing area. It juts out meaning you get to see the black silloette of the head and shoulders of anyone sat there. Seriously bloody annoying.
Still, on the plus side, IMAX 3D seems much less blurry than RealD 3D.
1It’s a good film, just not as funny as the first one.
On Wednesday large metal temporary fencing sections and their bases appeared by the carpark adjacent to the newly refurbished section. Yesterday some of these were erected and signs were put up.
Now, with the last closure, the only signs were on the fence stopping you from progressing and basically said “Welcome to the closed bit. It’s closed. For three weeks.”. Now we have signs at the entrance to the path well before the bit they’re closing and signs on the bit that is about to be closed. These are big, hard to miss signs. They give details of where, when, why and how long.
The where has already been established, it’s the section next to the one they’ve just done up. The when is Monday, meaning I have today to try a new alternative route that could involve more river walking than my old alternative route without having to worry about back tracking. The why is for a new footbridge over the river, which could actually prove useful AA I currently have to walk past work a little bit, cross on the bridge, and then head back. The irony being that if I use the new bridge I’ll be cutting out the refurbished section entirely, so I’ll never get to enjoy it over a summer. The how long is 25 weeks. Yup, all summer. Hence me wanting a route with as much riverside walking as possible. Still, 25 weeks is long enough to reprogram the morning autopilot to whatever the new route ends up being.
The only downside with my train journey to work these days is that it passes through deepest, darkest nowhere. Lovely if you want to stare out of the windows. Hopeless if you want mobile data access. This problem isn’t limited to my line either. The Norwich to London line has crap signal. When I used to use it regularly I would be continually frustrated by the lack of signal in places like Stratford, somewhere you’d expect to be saturated with mobile coverage.
One thing I have noticed is the underlying infrastructure (where it exists) is much better at handing off between cells and switching between GPRS, EDGE and 3G than a few years ago. Despite this many apps are shockingly bad at handling patchy and/or slow data access. I’ve had games that were unplayable on the move because they’ve not been able to talk to an optional service, apps that crash because it’s taken to long for data to arrive and apps just behave badly due to losing connection.
Take the Facebook app. If I hit reload on the news page and the signal drops out it shows me a full screen message saying it can’t connect to the network. Useless. How about you cache what you’ve got, show that and inform me some other way (preferably not with an annoying dialog box) that this is old data. Chances are in 30 seconds I’ll have a GPRS signal again and you can resume loading. Useless.
Even the blogging software I use went through a phase of being utterly shit without a full speed 3G or Wifi connection. I can see how not being connected would be an issue when posting, but crashing every time you drop off the network when writing a blog entry? I believe the issue is now fixed, but I’ve had so many problems I use another app to compose blog entries and post them via the blog app when I know the signal isn’t going to crap out.
Still, give it 10 years and I’ll be bitching about how I’m only getting 1Gb/s downloads on my iPhone X thanks to being in the sticks… and I bet apps will still have issues if they lose connectivity
This weekend is the first time I’ve driven a long distance on fast roads by myself whilst playing music (I usually don’t have anything playing so I can concentrate, but I’ve got at lot more confident driving). I can now attest to the fact that certain tracks do indeed increase the ‘leadness’ of ones foot, add at least 10mph to the proceedings (would have been more if it weren’t for the fact I’m paranoid about speeding, and that Po doesn’t really like doing over 80) and make you a much more aggressive driver, as the Audi driver who tried to cut me up will attest. Still, he was in a turn right lane and I did have +5 acceleration due to Banging Tunes so his attempt to cut in front of me was thwarted by a little red car with an engine screaming in pain while it’s driver shouted “Fuck you Mr Audi driver!”. I was, of course, summarily overtaken by him 400 meters later, but I think my point stands.
There was a downside though. I was listening to a playlist on my iPhone, which was mounted on the windscreen for use as a satnav, so changing track doesn’t happen. Being stuck in a queue of traffic behind a lorry doing 40 in a 50 is annoying. Add music that makes you want to do Mach 3 makes it near intolerable. They should allow you to rate music as motorway, main road, country lane or urban driving and then have the satnav serve up the relevant tracks depending where you are
I’m not sure if it was the fact it had just rained but yesterday’s walk home seemed to involve a multitude of bugs flying at what can only be described as mouth height. For someone who naturally marches to the station at high speed with their mouth open to facilitate breathing this makes life very awkward. Hopefully it’s just some sort of short lived spawning event otherwise I may need to invest in some kind of bug mask. Either that or get used to the taste of bug.
I shall go to the ball after all. Got hone last night, checked to discover they are in fact running trains, and at vaguely the times I want and without busses getting in the way. The Zozo is working Sunday, I can get home before midday and there were still cheap tickets to be had to London. Normally things stack up to make it awkward to go, but with everything being this straight forward someone is obviously trying to tell me something. I’m not going to argue with that. Now I just need to order in some new blue glowsticks
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