PhobosAnomaly

I got into Poets of the Fall in a big way after Late Goodbye. Their work is fantastic and they’re brilliant live.

I’m glad Remedy have stuck with them over the years, the Herald of Darkness song from Alan Wake II was a banger.

Point 3 has always been a great equaliser. I grew up in a household that was tight for money, and I never felt that my school wear defined my “class”, quite the opposite.

Now I’m older and am in a comparatively fortunate position financially, I’m happy to kit out my kids in a uniform. I don’t really want them flashing brand names or in an arms race to look the most fashionable, and I don’t want the less fortunate folk in the class to feel left behind.

If a uniform is plain and inexpensive, I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

The first major story where I thought “oh noes” was the Canary Wharf bombing in 1996ish. It was the first time I’d ever seen a “we interrupt this broadcast…” moment and it was so out of the ordinary that it sticks in my mind.

9/11 was a wild ride too. Getting home from school and my old man - who never watched the news - had Sky News on. At that point, the replays seemed… incredible, in the most literal sense of the word.

many

That line break is unfortunate.

I’ve had many an “ass apocalypse” in slow time after a dodgy kebab. They were anything but boring, however.

Mint.

On an unrelated note, my old girl used to take me to a local cafe for a slice of toast most mornings - there were two cabinets there.

My first memory of gaming as a three, maybe four year old was Pac Land, 10p a pop, absolute banger of a game - even if the controls were seriously dodgy.

Next to it was Street Fighter II - a premium cab at a whole 20p a credit.

A group of teenagers were playing it one morning, and I popped my 20p in, and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. This older lad absolutely demolished me, like never even gave a poor kid a chance. Fair play, I learned a lot about going up against skilled opponents that day!

Outstanding. It’s like picking stuff like November Rain and Free Bird to make the most of your money.

In a similar vein, one of my old haunts had a jukey, but the button under the bar to skip tracks was fucked. So, we’d get towards the end of our drinks, put two quid in the jukey, pick two decent songs to give us six or seven minutes to finish our drinks, then queue up a load of Christmas songs… in June.

We’d drink up, fuck off, and sit smugly in the next pub knowing there was half hour of Mariah Carey & co. blaring out at the previous pub which couldn’t be skipped. Good times.

doesn’t matter bro, they’re your thoughts and that’s what makes them awesome 😊

have you tried getting someone else to do it?

Figma balls wheeeyyyy

Well jeez, I didn’t expect to find an Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters reference here, especially this late to the party.

Here’s another good source if you’re interested.

The stage one music is a banger too.

Chuck it in the oven for ten minutes, no drama at all.

Then pre-book the following day off work with a dodgy stomach.

Honestly, I didn’t have a scooby about amateur radio until I watched a few videos by Ringway Manchester - he’s a really knowledgeable amateur. He’s a bit of a wanker to people in his comments who dare to offer dissenting opinions, but his videos are generally presented with a classic no-bullshit British vibe.

The point of this is that he pushed me in the direction of the Baofeng UV-5RH, which is a handheld that operates on the VHF bands but is very versatile. The company gets grief for producing hamstrung cheap shit, but honestly being a so-called Baofeng Warrior has provided me with the inexpensive entry point into the world of Ham Radio - and it even has a function for listening to FM radio for the… lesser-legitimate audio broadcaster needs 😊

My advice would be to get a UV-5RH (around £25), get a quarter-wave magmount antenna for the car (around (£15 for a cheap one), and check out Essex Ham’s videos on Foundation-level radio guidance (free with a recommended donation).

If you like it, brilliant - get your chequebook out and go wild. If you don’t, then you’ve invested forty-odd quid and you can get half of that back on various internet auction sites.

Have fun!

edit: but yeah if you want beyond line-of-sight communication then £300 would be well under a lowball estimate 😢

Ah yes, that tracks with the very surface level overview that I picked up from it. It was only when I saw the magic “optional” tag that I was like noooope!

Maybe I’ll have a look at it in more detail when I get a free summer 😊

I studied entry level maths at uni level - a prerequisite course for most STEM degrees to cover the relatively small amount of maths common to nearly all science fields.

Chapter 11 of 12 were Taylor polynomials and series, and it was listed as “optional”.

I looked at it once, read it aloud for my young son to fall asleep to, and never looked at it again.

Very little 😂

No I got into it to learn the theory of it more than anything. I’ve been faffing about with a VHF setup to see if I could establish a little station that could be heard anywhere in the town I’m in. That’s inexpensive to do and you can probably knock together a basic station with decent range for £100 and the time and effort needed up a ladder.

The next step is to look further afield and build a station that operates in the 20m band, but I’m yet to be able to convince Chief Girlfriend that an end fed antenna dangling across the back garden, or a fiver metre whip mounted to the roof is a good idea. HF transceivers are exponentially more expensive, and require some support devices too.

Otherwise, I go “hilltopping” and head up elevated positions with a quarter-wave antenna and a cheap handheld radio to listen out on what’s happening. It’s good for the geek in me; it’s good for the mind being at such pretty viewpoints; and it’s good for the body walking or running up hillsides.

Alternatively, I’ll sit in the garden while the kids play around with FlightRadar24 open on a device and a handheld radio tuned to the local airport approach frequency, and talk about what an aircraft is or may be doing while listening to the chatter.

So yeah, I don’t do a lot really. I live quite close to the coast so getting into marine frequencies is something on my list to do; and speaking to folk worldwide would be a laugh!

I’m in that age bracket and I’ve turned to spunking the little amount of disposable income on amateur radio kit and equipment.

I wish I’d picked up a debilitating cocaine habit instead. It’d be cheaper.

I’m not sure if this is a razor sharp witty comment, or if it’s gone so far over your head that it nearly put a hole in the International Space Station.

In the end, “this” doesn’t even matter