I'm a muthaf**king artist dudes

IMG_2740,
originally uploaded by AntToeKnee.

Check it out! All my own work. I held the camera (my camera as well) I pointed it at H (who was busy attempting to catch the wee he had just done in the sea, I shit you not) I pressed the button (after turning on the black and white setting) and when we got I home I downloaded it. That all makes me the artist right? Shit I'm hot.

NASA are you reading this? I can take B&W photographs as well.

One small step...

First man on Trearddur bay beach. Just like Neil planted flag; took samples; looked back towards home and felt very small. Unlike Neil I made a bitching castle; got my feet wet and had an ice cream with a flake sticking out of the top.

Are you watching this NASA? Moon lands, huh? Moon landings my arse. 

Train travel in this country is a f**king joke

What, you need more information? Just remember that each and every rail timetable you read is a dull, poorly developed work of complete and utter fiction. I suggest they add the following disclaimer to the bottom of all timetables. All trains are fictitious and any resemblance to actual trains or their time of travel is purely coincidental.

"Wankers!" As Pete from Big Brother would say.

"Useless wankers!" As Pete from Big Brother would say after just spending 3 hours traveling from Sheffield to Manchester.

"Take that useless wankers!" As Pete from Big Brother would say after just spending 3 hours traveling from Sheffield to Manchester and then attacking several members of 'Central Trains' and 'Network Rail' with sticks and bottles.

"Ahhhhh get these cats away from me you slimey alien bastards!" As Pete from Big Brother would say if attacked by an alien race carrying cat launching weaponry and hell bent on defending both 'Central Trains' and Network Rail'.

Ermmm... that'll do Donkey, that'll do.

Don't Panic

As mentioned by Douglas Adams in his science fiction/comedy tale "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", space is big. Last night I was looking up at the sky and I had to agree with him, it really is bloody big. In fact, as I looked around at it (at leat the bits I could see between the clouds and trees) I started to get a sense of just how really huge space is. Trust me on this, it is very, very big (take a look for yourself). Then I thought, hang on a sec, space is not something but is actually the absence of anything. It is in fact defined as the lack of any physical matter and thus how can I attribute any particular size to it, no matter how qualitative the definition? Surely logic dictates that 'space' doesn't exist and therefore can have no further attributes. Then it occurred to me that, although there is nothing physical to associate with 'space' as a concept it has a consistent property, that of absense of anything. Therefore, my reasoning went on, the dimensions I was considering were the distances between objects that do exist within 'space' and I was simply assigning these as properties of the 'space'. Although somewhat idiosyncratic, my thinking continued, I rationalised this was appropriate because of the relatively small proportion of matter in comparison to the 'space'. It then occured to me that perhaps the cheese I had just eaten was out of date.

Fact, fiction and the strangeness there of

Growing up in the seventies I saw a lot of weird stuff. One thing that I very much enjoyed was the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" with Lee Majors playing Steve Austin, the man barely alive. I was a big fan of the show when I was around the age of 8 years old. I held ambitions of my own to be severely maimed in a test flight gone wrong and then rebuilt at the tax payers expense. Can you imagine the reality of this Microsoft-NHS partnership?

Until recently I hadn't realised that this series was based on a book called Cyborg by Martin Caidin. More interesting is the background to this book. In a previous life Martin Caidin was a aeronautics specialist (amongst other things) who was based at Rogers Dry Lake bed when Bruce Peterson plowed his M2-F2 into the turf (pictured left, just prior to the flight). The accident which befalls Steve Austin is in fact based on Bruce Petersons flight. The M2-F2 was a lifting body prototype and part of early developments in the design of the Space Shuttle. During his unpowered drop flight from a B-52, Peterson experienced what are known as PIOs or Pilot Induced Oscillations, an unfortunate and all too familiar characteristic of this design (here is a link to some NASA footage of the problem). Although able to correct this Peterson had lost too much speed and had to dive the craft to regain airspeed (remember it is gliding). This, together with a poorly positioned reference helicopter, resulted in the crash which saw the M2-F2 flip over end to end 6 times and Peterson badly injured. Ultimately he lost the sight in his right eye but was still able to fly. Caidin had his inspiration.

Remember the start of the Six Million Dollar Man?

"Oscar to NASA One." Oscar
"Roger." NASA One
"VP is armed switch is on." Victor
"Okay, Victor." Oscar
"Lighting Rods are armed switch is on. Here comes the starter, circuit breakers in." Victor
"We have separation." Victor
"Roger." Oscar
"Inboard and outboards are on. Come a-port with the sidestick." NASA One
"Oscar?" Oscar
"Uh, Roger." NASA One
"I've got a blowout vapor three!" Oscar
"Get your pitch to zero." NASA One
"Pitch is out I can't hold altitude." Oscar
"Direction alpha hold is off try trajectory emergency." NASA One
"Flight Comm! I can't hold it! She's breaking up, she's break..." Oscar

Most of this is actual communication between Peterson, NASA and the drop ship and the footage used in the opening sequence was actual footage of Petersons crash (that guy bashing his helmet on the canopy is Peterson). Week in week out Peterson had to relive it. Poor sod. But I bet his mates loved it.

Fandabinazi

In summary then, Nazi pedotranny

pantingant please note the use of correct punctuation

10p to continue

If you thought watching someone play a computer game was boring try to imagine how incredibly dull it must get being a sprite in a game (if I get a single fizzy drink/silly goblin comment I will not be happy and don't try and get round me by being all pedantic and leaving more than one comment Pardelrum). Well, imagine no longer and instead witness the level of absolute boredom first hand. This film allows you to watch a whole game of Space Invaders played using stop frame animated actors (real people : I bet the actors guild are thrilled to see real people being used to replace computer generated characters) moving across rows of seats. Alright it's not exactly a current game but I expect its prety difficult to do 3D Phong shading or texture and light mapping with members of the Surbiton amateur dramatics society.

Fandabidozi

In summary then; Pedotranny.

I thank you

Two nuns are cycling down a cobbled street. An absurd conversation then unfolds that exploits both the listeners ignorance of religious protocol as well as their simplistic Freudian sexual attitudes to innocence. When combined with society's corruption of the habit, the very icon of the nun, as well as a general failure to comprehend the performance of modern bicycle suspension systems, the opportunity to explore the wholly fundamental view of life provided by the intercourse between the protagonists who have taken the solemn vow is lost and replaced by little more than pathetic titillation.

insert drum roll & high hat

Lights, Camera, Faction!

So it appears NASA is going back to the moon. They need to be careful here as this could add more to the theory that they never went in the first place. With all the movie remakes that have been released of late it may look to a conspiracy nutter that NASA is just remaking (or reimagining) it's previous blockbuster series Apollo. I liked Buzz (accidentally given the nickname by his sister who pronounced brother as buzzzer and subsequently made it his real first name) Aldrin's solution when approached recently on the question of whether the whole moon landing thing was just an elaborate hoax to demonstrate the superior technology of the USA to it's cold war adversary Russia. He twated the guy.

However, if you wanted to make a movie about Cold War space travel pioneers you could do a lot worse than the story of Vladimir Komarov. Just read this exert of the Soyuz 1 flight taken from Wikipedia;

Problems began shortly after launch when one solar panel failed to unfold, leading to a shortage of power for the spacecraft's systems. Further problems with the orientation detectors complicated maneuvering the craft. By orbit 13, the automatic stabilization system was completely dead, and the manual system was only partially effective. By this time, the crew of the second Soyuz had modified their mission goals, preparing themselves for a launch that would include fixing the solar panel of Soyuz 1. Heavy rain at Baikonur is reported to have made the launch impossible. It is believed that, in reality, Soyuz 2 never launched because of the severity of problems with Soyuz 1 in orbit.

As a result of Komarov's orbit 13 report, the flight control director began making preparations for the abort and reentry attempt. Valentina, wife and mother of two, was brought in and seated at a private console for a few precious moments. Vladimir Komarov, who was ill from the violent motions of his ship, remained calm and was able to say good-bye.

After 18 orbits, Soyuz 1 fired retro-rockets and was deorbited as soon as it passed above the USSR again, although the pilot had little control. Despite all of the technical difficulties up to that point, Komarov might still have landed safely, but the main parachute did not unfold due to problems with a pressure sensor, and the manually deployed reserve chute tangled, making the spacecraft fall to Earth nearly unbraked, at about 400 miles per hour. Large retro-rockets should have fired to further slow the descent. Instead, at impact, there was an explosion and an intense fire surrounded the capsule. Local farmers rushed to try to put it out, but Komarov would have already been dead, from impact.

The man was a true hero. He was both forced and compelled to fly the mission. Forced by the highest powers in the Soviet 'Cold War' machine in order to prove superior pre-lunar flight capabilities, including a docking procedure, to their American competitors. He was also compelled, both by a love for his country and his also his friend. Despite knowing that the Soyuz craft was almost certainly not up to the flight he remained as mission pilot as he didn't want risk the life of the mission backup pilot and close friend Yuri Gagarin. It's reported that this incident is the reason Gagarin left the space programme. Gagarin once said, "...if I ever find out he (Brezhnev) knew about the situation and still let everything happen, then I know exactly what I'm going to do." Less than a year later Gagarin dies in a routine training flight. If you want conspiracy theories, forget NASA.

Can anyone else see the movie here?

The Grate Outdoors

The Grate Outdoors,
originally uploaded by AntToeKnee.

It appears that the world and his Thai bride have decided to go camping these days. I should have noticed the signs when, on a tuesday evening our local camping store had the kind of crowd usually reserved for a christmas eve in the food section of M&S (trust me it is crazy, I worked in one as a lad). To be honest I cant talk. Until last year the suggestion of camping set me off into either a fit of giggles or some rant about the decline of the great British holiday camp (to put the record straight, Butlins was and always will be shite). Suddenly the kids are tearing the house apart and we are spending the summer sheltering from the rain in something that I can only describe as a fabric bungalow. That is how I now find myself sat, in toilet with a broken lock, writing a blog entry on my mobile phone whilst my wife thinks I'm waiting for those little blue plastic boxes that keep your food cold.

I say, I say, I say..

Two homosexual men relax at home with their pet hamster. What follows is a frankly ridiculous and physiologically implausible tale which serves only to further malign this oft derided minority group.

Right I'm off camping for a few days now (no pun intended).

Uzbekistan ain't for sale

I've checked on eBay and there is no sign of it. Neither did I have any joy looking to buy a "small African nation" or "Classic Bond villain style island". There also appears to be a real lack of "cat parachutes", "bomber jackets for dogs" and "light armaments for rats and mice". The situation is no better if your investigating a crime. A scout for "Information leading to a conviction", "Smoking gun" or "The bloke that did it" produced zip. However, interestingly a search for "Weapons of mass destruction" throw up 37 hits which might be of use to Tony Blair.

Well I'm all out of ideas. Frankly I can't imagine what people are selling on eBay!

It's the way I tell 'em.

A man walks into a pub, begins a verbal exchange with the barman and a familiar story unfolds with a tedious inevitability.

Boom, boom.