In which I vent on some ignorant chavs.

Disappointing news this week. I was hassled by some chavs in a car, nothing serious just general hassle. 

Thanks to Eltham BCSS folding there's a new club night over at Bromley and a mates decided to pick us up at Welling High street as it'll take 3 buses to get there and as I never learned to drive it'll be easier that way.

Getting off the bus and making my way down to the pick up point I could hear this beeping coming from a 4x4 out from the road. Thanks to my aspergers I never know if its for me, someone else or if I know the driver or not.  Sad to say this I didn't know them and they seemed to think I'm some sort of Trevor as they shouted out Paedo as the drove past.  

Trouble is these things affect people like me a lot more than regular folk (thin skin and feeling more and jesus do I really look like I fiddle kids?), and it played on my mind all through the talk (The cacti of Bahia state Brazil if you're interested), and to be honest up until now. Imagining and envisioning various tortures on the inhabitants of said 4x4 isn't the most productive but sure is fun and I was going to outline a few (a knee capping followed by foreign object anal rape before leaving them to bleed out and die from their wounds is my current favourite, trust me, I, like anonymous do not forgive nor forget).  

But I won't (except for the above) as it seems to be a thing, a way of keeping the non normal down by the supposed normal majority,  who believe that they have the moral superiority over the learning disabled and unaware peoples of the world. Fuck 'em' they aren't normal so they must all be Trevors and nonces is their logic.  Case in point, they had some story a few months ago about an Iranian guy who was killed off by chavs who reckoned he was a nonce (he wasn't) simply because he took photos of kids damaging his plants.  

They were sentenced to 18 years but they'll get less than that, a cushy prison ride with TV in their cells and a pat on the back for killing a 'paedo'.  They probably never held a job down in their lives or done anything productive to society except knock out a few more ignorant chav spawn probably called Tyler or Taylor and the whole cycle repeats.

The fact that most paedophiles are overwhelmingly relatives or close family friends is always glossed over rather than the kid fiddling kidnapper in the park or the weirdo in the street. Don't believe me just read nearly every woman's mag like Chat or Take A Break  they always have some paedophile story along with murder by spouses or domestic violence which always makes me wonder if they're edited by Whitehouse fans.

Your less than Ideal Home

We decided to take ourselves up town, with the last of my leave and enjoy the Ideal home exhibition, a paeon  to all those things you see on the infomercials.  Last time I went I took a pretty ropey picture of Linda Barker well I've got a much worse celebrity snap for you now.  Taking advantage of a promo email to get in for £9, (thats a whole pound cheaper than concessions) I took my trusty camera and made my way down to Earls Court.

Celebrities, included buttery biscuit bass John Torode, Suzi Perry from Channel 5s Gadget Show, rusty metal fan and garden designer Dairmuid Gavin and interior design fop Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen. Guess who I saw.

Yep that dot is Lawrence.

To be honest I did see Lawrence much closer up but by that time I couldn't be bothered to take a better shot of him and it wasn't if his mug wasn't plastered everywhere which it was.

Anyway the ground floor is still dominated by gardening and electronics including white elephant stuff such as Solar Panelling and wooden lodges which nobody has room for.  The best thing was a show bathroom with an unbelievably creepy white tile / metal bath combo looking like something from a BDSM torture dungeon.

We had a coffee at massively inflated prices from a stall and a nose round the dutch bulb stall which sold a massive amount of tulips and other less hardy plants for sale. 

Up the top is the food stalls and other diy products including 50 versions of steam cleaner and a section on beauty products including yoga and "facials".  Highlights included a palatable Gallo wine free sample in a tiny glass (incidentally thats about as much wine as I can stomach), a beautician with the most massive tits imaginable (didn't get the name of the stall or a photo of her either) and the Battersea Dogs home stall which is always nice.  We saw a few guide dogs around so we guess they were dogs in training and a bit of Jean Christophe Novelli making Gazpacho.  We took a final look around and took the tube back home with a load of kids from Foxfield school one of the local primary schools where I'm from.

Fnarr Fnarr Fwoo Fwoo

I'm here to fix your sink. . . 

Dear dogs.

Reminds me of Little Kings Story for Wii

Hall Place

Don't know if I've ever given a report from here, but today I was down at Hall Place in Bexleyheath taking in the wildlife and enjoying the sun.  Its a really nice place out at Bexley as the link above shows they have a butterfly exhibition on and a hands on display by Jambs owls and their parliament of owls. (incidentally I would love to be governed by parliament of owls they could solve major problems and keep rodent infestations down at the same time).

First of all they have a small greenhouse with a limited display of tropical species including a banana plant a large Plumeria and an impressive bottle brush (Callistemon) situated round a large pool.  The owls and butterfly exhibits are further down in more shaded and tropical glasshouses. I didn't go into to see them but did rake around the plant areas outside they had some Jatropha and small Hoyas for sale at quite expensive prices.

The main outside area revolves around a small river and the grounds are home to a lot of geese and ducks. I was lucky enough to see some greylags having a fight though unlucky enough not to catch them on camera as I wanted film and the pentax I use is fiddly for film. Windows doesn't like reading its memory card for some reason as it'll corrupt shots as will this isn't present in Linux Mint.

Anyway you want some pictures a few maybe old shots from previous visits. Here you go.

Orange plants for sale

Bottlebrush bush

Greylags 

Jambs Owls

Even though this is an old shot its still not changed to Aloe Arborescens

Ace(r) Camera

Here's something, we've found an old camera thrown out at work, so why not do some sort of review of it.

Its an... Acer CI-6330 from about the mid 2000s with a 6 Megapixel lens and 3x optical zoom plus 4x digital zoom. There's full details in that link above about its various stats and stuff but this isn't a bad bit of kit.

Like I say it was binned for reasons I suspect is entirely down to its absolutely brutal battery life. We road tested it today down by the riverside and got through 12 shots before it started moaning about low battery and shut itself down like a whiny little cunt, no amount of coaxing could get it to show another shot so we missed out on a classic image of  a badly painted knock off Barbie that looked like it had a cold sore, in Sams 99p store.

There are a few other niggles with it that means that I am definitely looking a gift horse in the mouth here. The first is that whenever you switch to a preview it spurts text all over image for a few seconds thus obscuring your view and the last is its finicky with its SD cards an old SD card works fine as does a Micro SD card in its adaptor, but anything else causes a card error especially when I've added some SDHC cards that I've had and used in other cameras.

The good points to this though are the absolutely massive zoom on it and the fact that its whisper quiet so you can take wildlife shots without alerting them.  If you want a massively detailed image from far away then this would be good to use it's a shame that it'll probably run out of battery life before you had a chance to focus on anything.

Incidentally image quality is rather nice on this as you can see if you scroll down (ignore the first two they were taken by the digital zoom) and its reassuringly heavy and well built. Which is another plus point to the whole thing.

In Conclusion.

A well built camera with a nice zoom and a few niggles let down by an absolutely brutally short battery life.
5/10

These Oystercatchers were a good 40 feet away.

Mud and general decay.

Little Dunnock tests the Digital Zoom.

Small Tortoishell out in the early March sun.

Do not adjust your eyes this is down on the Thames at Erith.

Late comers, and belated round ups.

Well looks like that P.I.E story has legs after all, at time of writing Harriet Harman has yet to apologise on her role in promoting PIE in the seventies although Patricia Hodge has distanced herself from the whole affair.  We still don't think its really news, although the variety of people who were linked to proto liberty who are now prominent Labour party members, activists or lobbyists is in my eyes. It seems the left have their own Bullingdon clubs for over privileged idiots who have no practicable experience with anything in the real world.

Just once I'd like to see a party made up of experienced older people who have worked in the real world, not some Eton loser or some stupid Islington equalities Quango reject that has no real world application. A party neither left nor right but based on common sense ideas, though I guess common sense is anathema to politics.

Break.

There is a preliminary version of the progress log in M.A.M.E/MESS in 2013 from David Haywood A.K.A Haze.  It still needs proof reading and I warn you its a long old read but if you are at a loss at work or need to kill time then this is probably the way to do it.  Taking in everything from Pinball to Data East Coin op protection with prototype Bubble Symphony on the way, its a long list of everything that has gone on in the last 12 months or so of MAME and its Multi Console compatriot MESS.

Finally there is some belated music round up including two newish Rephlex albums from EOD and Bochum Welt that are worth noting.  Both released last year and I got both only yesterday so that they couldn't be included in the big boxing day round up last year.  Also there is a brilliant little documentary by Matthew Herbert on Radio 4 that is worth hearing its called the Art of The Loop its up on Iplayer so non brits may have to grab the excellent Get IPlayer to listen in (unless you're reading this years later then it may be on Youtube).