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10 Tips for Attending the Air Tattoo

email — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:23:06 +0000

Top 10 Tips for Attending the Royal International Air Tattoo

1. Leave early, otherwise you will end up spending a LONG time queuing to get in, we were queuing for almost 2 hours!

2. Take a portable seat to sit on, you will spend a lot of time sitting around and having a portable seat will make this a lot easier, especially if the grass is wet

3. Take an umbrella, just in case it rains

4. Wear comfortable shoes, it’s a big “show ground” and just to walk from one end to the other is about 2 miles…

5. Take something to read, there are some quite bits where you may want to have something else to do, unless you’re with a bunch of friends.

6. take something to eat and drink, there are a lot of concession stands, but they are far from cheap! And it’s mostly burgers and chips, although there was a very popular Noodle Bar towards the middle of the show ground.

7. take some ear plugs, although you can get some there. Some of the fighter jets are very loud, so having some ear plugs is not a bad idea…

8. take some spare batteries for your camera, mine ran out within minutes of being there (who forgot to charge them…), so I ended up taking pics on my mobile instead, luckily it’s got an 8MP camera, so the pics were still ok.

9. If you’re really keen on taking pics or video then consider taking something to stand on to get a better view.

10. If you buy a program, understand that they may not stick to exactly the order published in it, they didn’t when we were there.

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Royal International Air Tattoo 2009

email — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:18:21 +0000

Royal International Air Tattoo 2009

I was hoping to take my kids to the Royal International Air Tattoo last year, but it was rained off for the first time in it’s history, so we we’re pretty determined to make it this year, and it was well worth it!

We took umbrella’s just in case, but the weather was kind enough to stay dry, my son and I even picked up a bit of sun burn, so we certainly can’t complain at the weather!

The day didn’t start quite so well though, as we ended up stuck in the queue to get in for almost 2 hours!

Fortunately we did make it in just in time to see the Red Arrows doing their display, which managed to cheer up the kids no end, as they suddenly forgot about all the time spent sat in the car in the queue.

The only down side with seeing the Red Arrows first, was that all the other air display teams we aw after didn’t quite seem as exciting… lol!

but then there was the Avro Vulcan B2 Bomber!

I hadn’t realized that it was going to be there, so this was a pleasant surprise for me as this was one of my favorite toy plane’s as a kid, the distinctive “delta v” shape is just sooo coool!

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who felt this way about the Vulcan, the moment the announcement came over the tanoy that it was about to take off EVERYONE was up on their feet with cameras in hand!

and no one was disappointed, the Vulcan taking off is an amazing thing to watch and hear!

One moment it’s on the runway and the next it’s leapt in to the air at a 45′ angle and is screaming it’s way in to the sky.

I managed to get a great pic on my mobile, but I seriously regret not videoing it instead, the Vulcan’s engines have an amazing roar to them, and the speed with which it leaps in to the air is totally astonishing for a plane of it’s size, after all, this is a long range heavy bomber, not a jet fighter!

The Vulcan was easily the highlight of the day for both me and the kids, but there were also some cool flyby’s, including a LancasterBomber and 2 Spitfire’s, as well as a pretty amazing display from a Chinook helicopter, something that big and clumsy looking should not be able to do what the pilot managed to get it to do.

We headed back to the carpark to try and beat the rush out before the Eurofighter display started, but ended up seeing most of it from the carpark as we were waiting to get out anyway.

All in all the Air Tattoo was a thoroughly enjoyable day out!

Oh, I’ll be a doing a Top 10 Tips for Attending Air Shows post next…

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Funny Cat Videos

email — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:02:27 +0000

it’s a wet, windy and grey day here in the UK today, so I had to find a way to put a smile on my face for a few minutes.

These VERY funny cat videoson YouTube did the trick!

If there’s something wrong with your printer, check the cat…

“The funniest Cat Clips”

more of “the funniest cat clips”

hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.

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Rob Pearlstein Our Time Is Up

email — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:24:43 +0000

This is a truly excellent short film from Rob Pearlstein called “Our Time Is Up”.

it’s just over 14 minutes long and it’ll seem a lot shorter, it’s that good…

you’ll probably also recognise quite a few of the faces in it.

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Internet Connection Speed Tests

email — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:13:33 +0000

Have you tested your internet connection speed?

Having recently moved house I thought I’d run a test on the connection speed I’m getting with my broadband connection.

Most services will limit you to around 7-800KBps upload speed, so it’s really the download speed I was interested in, especialy as that’s what effects stuff like browsing sites, watching videos and downloading programs etc.

I’m not going to mention the name of the first site I first used to test my connection speed, as after the results I got with them sucked I realised I should probably do a bit of research before I called my provider to shout at them…

This first site was showing my download speed as around 2MBps on average, which may not sound too bad, but I’m paying for 30MBps from my provider and it’s not exactly cheap…

It turns out that there are quite a few different things that can effect the speed of your connection, but primary amongst them are the age of your computer and how far you are from the server on which you run the connection speed test.

As an example of the first “variable”, my desktop PC (running Windows XP Pro) is a 2 or 3 years old now and has way too much stuff running on it, so it often struggles simply because of the number of applications I run on it.

I also have a laptop (running Vista) that is just a few months old and fairly high spec.

My laptop, even though it is running of a wireless connection, was achieving on average, double the download speeds of my desktop PC, so the age/speed/specification of the computer you’re using can make a big difference!

I also found a decent speed testing site, after checking a couple of dozen!

the difference with this particular site is that they offer the ability to test your download speed for diffeent servers in different locations across the world, obviously some (like those that are closer) will give you better results.

Here’s a selection of the results I got with my desktop pc for some differenet server locations, bearing in mind I’m based in Cheltenham in the middle of the UK: -

Maidenhead : 16MBps
London           : 10MBps
Kent                : 3MBps
Dublin             : 10MBps
Kiev                : 2.6MBps
Moscow          : 0.7MBps
New York      : 3.7Mbps
L.A.                 : 3.5MBps
Vancouver     : 2.3MBps

as you can see from the results, the servers in the UK gave me far higher download speeds.

So am I getting what I pay for?

well, remember I said that my laptop was getting double the speeds of the dekstop pc, in fact on the laptop I was able to get download speeds of close to 30MBps for all of the UK servers, and over 20MBps for most of the USA based servers, so I guess my provider (Virgin Media) are delivering what I’m paying for!

one last tip, if you’re broadband/cable/DSL supplier have increased your bandwidth over the last year or so and you haven’t upgraded your modem, then doing so will probably help as well, but have a chat with your supplier to see if they will provide one for free, mine did…

The best site I found for doing internet speed connection tests is SpeedTest.net

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Why WordPress Rocks

email — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:35:14 +0000

If you’re a regular visitor you may notice that I’ve updated the “look & feel” of this site.

I use a blogging “content management script” for this site called WordPress, you might have heard of it, as it’s quite popular and with good reason.

I am a bit of a “web head” and have been building my own websites for a decade or so now, so I know how to “code” a site using “html”, but using a blogging platform like wordpress makes it all SO MUCH EASIER!

Once a blog is set up to add a “post” like this one you simply log on to the admin panel and choose the “write post” option and then write what you want in the big box and put a title (description) for the “post” in the little box, simply click on the “publish” button, and hey presto, you have a new web page/post!

There’s no need to mess around with html code or stuff like that, unless you want to.

This is why blogs are so popular generally, or at least it’s one of the reasons.

It’s also a piece of cake to change the “look & feel”, or style, of your site by simply uploading and selecting a new “Theme”, which is how I’ve changed the look of this blog.

Of course being a techie there’s also the small fact that this is my own theme, although I’m not going to claim to have written it myself, I employed a clever guy from Indonesia to do that for me, Thanks Andre!

Blogs are also easy to add extra “bits” to.

All those bits and pieces in the sidebar menu on the right hand side of the page are bits that I’ve added using “plugins” (written by other people, and usually free) or widgets to add my own bits of code, like the “contact Mattg” link and the “BlogTactics” setup guide link.

There is another reason why blogs, and especially WordPress blogs, are so popular, the search engines (like Google) love them, so it’s easier to get good search engine rankings (i.e. appear on the first page or two when someone searches on a term that you blog is about).

Anyway, this isn’t a lesson on blogging or how to set one up for yourself, if you want that click on the BlogTactics link in the sidebar, I just wanted to explain why the new look for the blog, and see if you like it.

I’d love to hear what you think, you can leave a comment in the comments box below this “post”…

(oh, that’s another reason blogs are cool, visitors can leave comments, so it’s not like a dumb old “static” website, it’s really a “communication platform”..)

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Science v The Chruch

email — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:29:18 +0000

being an intenet marketer means that most of the time my inbox is chocker full of email’s promoting the latest “must have” new course or product, much of which get deleted, but there’s a few people out there who’s email’s I look forward to receiving and will make a cup of tea and put my feet up to read, ’cause they’re just that good..

One such guy is Phil Gosling and I though I’d share his latest email:

Success Engineering revisited.

Suppose I tossed a coin ten times and it landed heads up every
time. Is the probability that the coin will land tails up on
the eleventh throw greater, less, or still 50-50?

Statistically, the more you throw the coin, the more the
scores should even out at 50% heads and 50% tails. So, we’ve
just had ten heads in a row, surely the chance of getting a
tail result has increased?

Not so, say the boffins. The coin has no memory. It does not
know the previous result, therefore the next throw must be
50-50, just as if nothing had happened.

This is perfect science. It is logical, and indisputable. It’s
also ‘not quite right’.

Instead of a coin, let’s use an electronic random number
generator (like ERNI - the Electronic Random Number Indicator
used to select Premium Bond winners.) These gadgets are far
more accurate than a coin.

In scientifically conducted tests, a team of experts in
meditation techniques managed to influence an e.r.n. generator.
They couldn’t make it produce a given number, but they did
influence its randomness. It became ‘less random.’ This test,
like all good science, is repeatable and confirmed as true.

There is an ongoing experiment taking place in which a series
of e.r.n. generators have been placed around the globe to see
if their ‘randomness’ can be influenced by world events. They
discovered that major world events can influence the
generators. The death of Princess Diana, and 9/11 caused a
change in the statistical randomness of the generated results
in all the machines. This was at odds of billions to one. It
seems that human emotion can affect statistics. Science finds
these results deeply unsettling. In days gone by, such tests
were often performed by ‘unqualified’ enthusiasts working in
the ‘unscientific’ field of ‘the paranormal’. But not now.

These tests are being conducted by rogue scientists. Rogue
doesn’t mean they are stupid, or weird. Many of these
scientists are brilliant in their fields, like Dr John Hagelin,
a Ph.D in Physics at Harvard, or Dr Fred Alan Wolf Ph.D,
Theoretical Physics UCLA. These guys are not quacks. They are
very serious geniuses who are in the forefront of correcting an
historic anomaly.

Back in Galileo’s time the established church and scientists
like Galileo were having a bit of a barny. They still are
today, but this time without the instruments of torture. Every
time a scientist disproved some church dogma, like the
earth-sun rotation, the church got all uppity and started
excommunicating and dismembering people left, right and centre.
So the scientists quite understandably backed off and created
‘The Clockwork Universe’ in which life, or the life-force, was
ignored. It was taken out of the equation, so to speak.

This made things simple. To calculate the gravitational forces
between objects was simply a function of the mass of those
objects and the distances between them. It didn’t matter a jot
if one, or any of these objects was alive. That had nothing to
do with it. The gravitational forces between Galileo, Pope Paul
V and a medieval toilet seat were the same irrespective of the
heat of the argument, or indeed the heat of the seat.

And for the next five hundred years the idea of a universe in
which life was only a side show to the physics held sway.

But what’s happening today is that eminent scientists,
particularly in the micro-world of nuclear physics, have no
longer any choice but to include life itself in the workings of
the cosmos, because if they don’t - the numbers don’t work. The
clockwork universe is dying on its feet. Indeed it’s looking as
though life itself is at the very core of science, beyond
string theory, beyond energy. In the beginning there was life.
‘Things’ came later.

This is hugely exciting. If Bob Proctor, or Tony Robbins, or
yours truly, or any of a whole host of people tell you that you
can change your life around using the ‘law’ of attraction then
you largely have to take this on trust. There is no ‘law’ of
attraction, not in science. If there was, there’d be an
equation to go with it.

But there is a law. There is an equation. It’s many equations,
all so complex that only geniuses understand them. All the
numbers work. The experiments work.

When science had the door slammed on it by ancient church
dogma, it developed a dogma of its own. That dogma said that
things and objects do things as they do without the need for
life to be included. Everything must be proven in the most
rigorous of objective, repeatable tests, and if it doesn’t fit
into that framework then it is either wrong, or intellectually
sidelined. Things to do with science fitted in the box marked
science. Things to do with life, the life-force or the plain
weird, or anything that didn’t fit into the first box, were put
into a second box marked unscientific. Unscientific was quietly
redefined as ‘not to be believed’.

It’s still early days. The thumbscrews of the inquisition have
been subtly replaced by the torture of isolation and ridicule,
used by the scientists of the new inquisition to excommunicate
scientists who dare question their own sacred texts. You’re
still thrown out of the club if you speak too much heresy. But
it’s started. One swallow does not a summer make, but a dozen
or so swallows are braving the winter.

Science is changing. You can affect the toss of a coin. You
can affect the throw of a die. The coin does have a memory.
It’s using yours.

If you are observing anything, you - the observer - influences
that event. In the Olympic 100m sprint, the timekeeper sits
apart from the competitors and does not affect the outcome.
But in the Physics 100 nm sprint, the timekeeper sits in the
middle of the track, causing competitors to stumble or go around him.
He affects the outcome. Just thinking about things affects the outcome.
This is scientific fact.

All progress starts with mind, not things or systems. Your
future starts with changing the way you think. When you do
that, you affect what’s going on around you. At a psychological
level, your thinking affects your mood and that affects
others. Enthusiasm is catching.

But it doesn’t stop there. What you think about has an effect
on the fabric of nature itself. Circumstances and events are
created according to how often you think about them and the
degree of expectation. If you expect a bad day, you’ll get one
- on all levels, both psychologically and physically. If you
expect to double your income in the next twelve months, not
only will your mind come up with ways of doing it, not only
will you be psychologically set up to achieve it, but happy
events and circumstances will appear, almost spookily into your
life.

But don’t take my word for it, or Bob Proctor’s or anyone
else. Don’t take this on trust. Don’t take this just because
thousands of others have proved it in their own lives. This is
science, albeit the thinnest, cutting edge, but science
nevertheless.

If you enjoyed that, you can sign up for more of Phil’s “Rants” on one of his websites below:

www.homepublish.com/
or
www.renegadelemming.com/

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UK Earth Tremors

email — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 02:03:11 +0000

On of the best bits about living in the UK is that it’s a pretty safe place in many ways.

We don’t have a bunch of poisonous creepy crawlies or snakes like some countries.

Our coastlines aren’t terrorised by sharks.

and we seldom have things like Earth quakes..

Well, not very often anyway, except tonight that is…

just before 1am tonight I was sat here working on some blog posts for one of my many blogs,enjoying a quite glass of wine when I suddenly noticed my wine glass was shaking, next thing I knew the whole damn house was shaking!!

When you live in the UK earth tremors are not something you’re used to, do my first though was to actually look out of the window to see if there was some huge juggernaut driving by or something, then it dawned on me that it was in fact an earth tremor!

The shaking lasted for junst under 10 seconds and shook everything in my office, although not bady enough to break anything.

Once it stopped I calmed the cat down, grabbed my glass of wine and headed down to check the news on TV, I needn’t have rushed, it was over 20 minutes before they gave it any coverage at all..

So apparently it was 4.7 on the Richter scale and the epicenter was just north of Lincoln, which is well over 100 miles from me in Cheltenham, it will be interesting to see how much damage, if any, was caused in the morning once people can see what’s what, but according to the news, there’s no casualties.

So I guess it’s still pretty safe here in the UK, even if it does get a bit shaky once every few years..

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Valentines Day Video

email — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:55:34 +0000

Happy Valentines Day!

I’m not really celebrating, as I signed my divorce petition yesterday..

Found this cool video on Revver though, check it our: -

If you don’t get the “Biff Johnson” reference, perhaps you should go rent Michael J Fox’s “Back to the Future” Trilogy” on DVD…

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Dealing With Cold Callers

email — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:00:19 +0000

yeah, I’ve been back on YouTube again, checking out the funniest videos and this made me laugh so much I almost coughed up a lung, although that may be because I smoke too much too..

any way, watch this and tell me if you’d have the balls to actually tru this the next time you get a cold caller…

I’m laughing again just thinking about it, and I’m dying to try it out!

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