watching martial arts movies

Last night I watched the Capitol Conspiracy (also known as the prophet) from an online streamer of films. It featured Don (The Dragon) Wilson. There was some plot, but basically like everyone else I watch this film for the fights. It was old fashioned in the sense that there was a lot of high kicking, which has gone out of fashion, because after the Bourne films. Now people want to see more realistic fighting.

Maybe 10 years ago I would only watch this type of movie on video, but now with the internet and streaming, there is more choice. Still a person needs a little dumbness in their life.

Hanover to Hamburg

When I was student at Edinburgh I did small rail tour of Germany. I think I went to Hamburg on that trip. I can remember being excited about going to a wild area of Germany. I thought I would go down to the docks and spend sometime in some sleazy bars. I can remember being bitterly disappointed when I was walking around Hamburg in the late evening, all I saw was empty shopping streets. I couldn't find the docks, let alone the sleazy bars.

So twenty years later I thought  I would try to sample the delights of Hamburg again. It takes a about two hours on the train to get from Hanover t Hamburg. I got off the train at the main railway station, but I could not find my hotel, or one of the landmarks fort the hotel. My phone told me that my hotel was 7 km away at a place called Hamburg Altona. I then worked out how to use the local S-Bahn to get there. My phone refused to update my position to Hamburg Altona, so it was hard to find my hotel.

After I checked n in I walked around the area. It looked like a very quiet and boring area. Not again I thought. There were some cafes around with groups of people drinking. I went into a small bar. There was no draft beer, so I ended up drinking a bottle of beer. Two older women at the bar were loudly talking about nothing much in particular,but they were women bar flies. I would have liked another beer, but the guy serving was not very interested.

I trudged back to my hotel. Would I ever swing in Hamburg?

Final day in Hanover

So my final day in Hanover was not going to be spoilt by any work related things. I decided to start the day with a Hemingway breakfast. This didn't involve any booze -- much to my surprise and disappointment. I planned to travel to Hamburg n the afternoon, so I spent the morning reading my book, and drinking coffee in the morning. At lunch time I had a couple of beers at an outside cafe.

What are my memories of Hanover? I just remember concrete and the heat. Perhaps I should have explored more beyond the railway station. At lunch i ate a box of Viatamenes food.

Hanover day II

Although it was a holiday for me I was still writing some stupid document for an application. I didn't do much in Hannover. It was so hot that I could only stand to be in my hotel room for abut two hours and then with no T-shirt on -- I was just sweating too much.

I did buy some shorts and a hat. There were a lot of people around. After I had submitted the document I went for a cocktail and beer around 19:00. I went to a kebab shop to get food and there was a junky woman begging for food. She held my hand and rambled. After I gave her a Euro she went to Burger King, because the food was cheaper.

And that was day II.

Hanover day 1

I had booked a short holiday in Germany before I knew I would be leaving Germany in September. I planed to spend two nights in Hannover. However I had soem work related deadline for the first day of the holiday, but in the end I decided to go and finish my work thing off in the hotel.

I arrived in Hanover on Sunday evening.  It was very hot still. There was a big pedestrian area in fro of the man railway station. After a little messing around and frankly not helped by the GPS in my phone I found the hotel. The  hotel looked shut even though it was only 21:00. I pushed the buzzer and the a voice said "hello Mr McNeile we are on holiday, but the key is in your room.", so that was all right.

I then wandered around fro a bit. It was Sunday night so a lot of places were closed. I did have a beer in the Jack the ripper pub which served traditional London beers such as Stella and New castle Brown.
After that I picked up some beer at the kiosk and went back to my hotel room and watched TV.

The rolling Stones versus Public Enemy

So I spent more and more of the weekend watching the coverage from the Glastonbury music festival. The big event was the Rolling Stones playing Saturday night. When I was about 18, the stones were viewed as uncool and old. The whole point of punk was to clear away these old guys. Having said that some of the people I was at school with were heavily into the blues sound of the early Stones. During the early 80s they released a video which was banned from the TV because it featured someone getting shot in a south American style.

If I had been at the festival I would have gone to see Public enemy play because they now mean more to me than the Rolling Stones. Still I enjoyed watching the Stones set on the Iplayer.

Safe fire works on the streets of Wuppertal

I noticed an interesting trailer when I walked to my local supermarket yesterday.  Yes Germany is a very different place to the UK. If you left a trailer with a fireworks advert on it outside a house 

in the UK, it would either get stolen or set on fire.

Watching a famous physicist having a stroke in a dream

Last night I dreamed that I was walking a path outside a temple. I saw an old physicist, who is over 80, on the ground struggling to get up and he was having difficulty breathing. I thought he was having a stroke. I didn't have my phone with me, but my friend ran off to call for an ambulance. I just stood around and comforted as best I could.

An attractive black woman ran up. She knew first aid, so she started banging on his back. The guy's face had gone blue. She was a hard hitter. On the third hit, she missed his back and hit the back of his head. What she was doing started to help and we got the guy to stand up and walk to a cafe where he sat down.

My friend came back and tried to chat up the black woman. I thought I should know more about first aid, so I decided to order a book on this subject from Amazon (even in my dreams I think about buying stuff online).

The famous physicist doesn't like the field of physics I work in, so I was generous in prviding what little help I did. (What a mean thing to say).

skiffle lives on

The big Glastonbury musical festival is this weekend. Unfortunately I am not there in person, in the mud and under the rain, but I just watch some acts on TV in comfort. I watched Jake Bug play a set on TV last night. I didn't realize that this type of music was popular with the "kids". It is bit folky and does remind me of skiffle. (No doubt the video below will get pulled at some stage.)


The set did remind me of Lonnie Dongan a little bit. The video below is much harder than Jake Bugg though. I saw Donogan play at the Cavern club in Liverpool.

Trwbador and rain

I have been complaining at work about the crap summer weather, but this seems like a normal
English summer with one or two sunny days, but mostly being cloudy and wet.

The freakier zone radio show played the track below from the band Trwbador as part of Welsh music music special. I think it is great and a good sound track to look out at a rain drenched forest.

Fight the state snoopers with encription

I posted the text below on facebook, but I only got one like.

Such ingratitude from the Germans! Don't they know 
that the activities of GCHQ are for their own safety.
Isn't the whole point of the EU that a country spies on citizens of 
any country in the EU in the same way that it checks the emails 
of the people in its own country.

It would be even cooler if British companies could sell
software to Germans whuch could encrypt their emails and
so stop them being read by GCHQ.

So our governments are spying on us. What can we do, apart from voting of course.

But a more serious point is that there are a number of tools to sign and encrypt emails already, but most people don't know how to combine the software in the correct way. There is a need for a book on how to protect your privacy online, using gpg for example.

There are a few very old book on pgp:

and

Now that I look at Amazon I see some self published books that may be useful.

On the other hand I should try to work at GCHQ. They seem to have a job page. I am going to be out of work in one years time.

I write a TV series in my dreams

In my dream last night I was in a US shop and I was drinking a beer. Some bikers came into the shop and there was a gun fight with three of four people shot dead. The bikers removed all the dead people and I put my half finished beer back on the shelf. I left the store and took a plane back to France.

Back in the store a detective is searching for clues. He knows that a crime has occurred, but with no dead bodies he has no evidence. He sees the half drunk can of beer and sends it to the lab for a DNA test. The detective identifies me, but knows that I am just a witness and not the criminal killer.

Back in France I realize that putting the beer back on the shelf was not a good idea. I wonder whether I should go back to the US to hide it better by drinking it. I work for the military in some way.

There was a lot more in the dream which I have forgotten. This was the longest dream I ever had. Essentially I have written a TV series. It will be the next "breaking bad."

A night out at B7 club in Wuppertal

I felt I needed a nigh out, so I went to the B7 club in Wuppertal last night. The actual event was Dark Stop, which is described on the web site as:

Gothic, Electro, Mittelalter, Kult Classics mit DJ Dalecooper

I am never totally sure how to categorize the music on the Dark stop night, but people like dancing to it. And they dance very energetically too. In the past I have been known to get up and dance, my feet and ankles are a bit of a mess at the moment, so I just watch (and drink fluid). One woman seemed to be dancing for me, but then I thought I am getting paranoid. Too my shame I did drink two absinthe and colas, because I love the taste of absinthe so much, but it is uncool to drink it with cola.


Before I went for the 11:40 bus home I went for a quick beer in the underground bar., which is next door to the B7 club. This pub was full of people, and the atmosphere was good. This bar has a beer garden, but because it keeps threatening to rain, they hadn't set out any chairs outside.

Bad weight news

I finally weighed myself on Tuesday I think. I am back to 93kg. This time last year I weighed about 88 kg and was aiming to get to 85kg. I have not relapsed too much on the food front. I don't eat any chocolate at 11:00 or at any time in my flat. I no longer eat crisps in my flat, but I do have the occasional bowl of nachos if I go for drinks in certain bars. Still it is not enough ...

I feel a bit bloated as well

I have been trying to stretch my legs out, because my hamstrings feel so tight. I just manged to trash my knees in some way that makes it difficult to walk up the steps to the University.

You Aren't What You Eat:

Europeans are very keen to tell me their opinion of British cooking. This involves them standing very close to me and them shouting "English food is shit!" There are a lot of cookery programs on the TV. I hate Jamie Oliver, particularly for his fake chummy cocky way of speaking.

While travelling to the UK I read You Aren't What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture by Steven Poole. The book was a number of essays against some of the excesses of the new food culture, with star chefs and weird food. I will now not bother to hide my contempt for anyone who describes a chicken as "sexy". Woman are sexy, but chicken is tasty.

Oh yes, if I go on holiday to test the cooking of different chefs around the country , please punch me. My quest to find the best Vindaloo curry in Germany is totally different to a middle age
guy testing different cheeses.

I think I have read Poole's book on video games.

Actually I think I read the book, because I wanted to read some essays ranting about something.

Crows

The date tells me it is summer, but when I look out the window, all I see are swirling dark black clouds. Occasionally a raw ray of the sun shines on the green leaves of the forest. Even though the weather is bad, I hear the beautiful sound of birds singing.

But then the squawking of the crows breaks through the beauty of bird song.  I saw two crows playing with each other in the upper levels of the trees.

Skeletons

I did plan to go out to the B7 club in Wuppertal last night. Every three days I seem to plan to go there, but I only actually go to the club once a year. I just felt the need for listening to rockablity tunes, drinking beer and absinthe and cola.

In the end I stayed in and watched a great film called Skeletons on the Iplayer, before it disappeared early this morning. I really liked the film. I think I am getting soft, because I was happy that the ending didn't involve violence, but it was sweet.

The only thing I regret for the evening was at the end opening a bottle of alcohol free beer, which foamed up and made the kitchen stink of beer this morning.

Progressive capitalism

While I worked in Liverpool I went to a particle physics conference in Manchester (or was it Salford). The conference was at time before the B factories had started and LEP facilty was producing interesting science, but was not finding any BSM physics. So the conference was a bit boring. What made it even worse was that the best plenary talk was by the science minster David  Sainsbury. (He didn't give a science talk, but it was very polished)

This week I read the book: Progressive Capitalism: How to achieve economic growth, liberty and social justice  by David Sainsbury. After the banking crisis of 2008 and the resulting massive and final failure of the neoliberal  ideas, everyone (except the Tories of course) have been searching for a better way to build a sustainable and fair economy. Sainsbury notes that some aspects of the German system would not work, because we don't have  strong trade associations.

All good pragmatic stuff.

Yukikaze

Today I just finished reading  Yukikaze  by Chohei Kambayashi. The novel was about a pilot and his super plane fighting a war on a strange planet called fairy. There was lots of action, but there were  interesting issues because some of the human seemed to be become more robot like, while the computers became more intelligent (but not human like)

They are fighting a war against the JAM, but they have no idea what the JAM are.

There is a anime of the novel which I had never heard of.

Rain, nettles and my death

Summer is here in Wuppertal, so it is warm. Around 13:00 yesterday the sky was dark and I thought that hell was sprawling into the earth. There was a huge rain storm with thunder and splashes of lightning. The previous day it had been so hot, so everyone was wearing their summer best, shorts and t-shirts. How the weather knows how to humble pride.

The rain stopped in the late afternoon. I walked through the drenched forest to my home. The plants were bloated with food and energy. I have been scared of plans since watching a TV show of the triffids. The terrible sound of that knocking still haunts me. As I pushed through the vegatation that was invading the sensible German path the trees, I brushed my leg against a plant and I felt pain. They have got me I thought. This is it, I will be found covered in flies with my arm stuck inside a tree trunk.

But |I made it home. I could feel the pain in me. I knew I should call for help, but there was no time, so perhaps I should think of my legacy and type a few words on my blog in a vain bid for some kind of immortality through words.

So as the poison fills my veins I feebly type. Fucking nettles.