National Space Centre

Today we drove to the National Space Centre in Leicester. We left home about 7.00am and arrived at about 9.45am after a short break at the services.

It costs £14 each entry and the ticket can be used for entry for whole year so is reasonably good value for money. had a great day out – some pics to follow.

We also met Al Worden the astronaut who flew in Apollo 15 in 1971 and went to the Moon. He had a signing session so we shook hands and got him to sign a photo and also sign our Lego Saturn V Rocket which is of course the rocket he flew in Apollo 15. We had some fun getting it there as its 1M tall but thankfully comes apart in three sections. His assistant held the second stage whilst Al Worden signed the fuselage in sharpie.

Is this the first Lego astronaut signed model I wonder?

 

R2D2 by DeAgostini Stage 14

Stage 14 has you continue with the head frame and leg components and takes a couple of minutes to complete.

 

Raid the Arcade

Just finished reading the Ernest Cline book, Armada. This is the soundtrack from the book. Hope it makes it to an album when the film is released:

Masters of the Universe meets Dirty Dancing

What a quality advert. Anyone of a certain age will remember the masters of the universe cartoons. These moneysupermarket adverts are hilarious. its the only thing to cheer me up today.

Game of Thrones Virgin

After three weeks I have finally gone from a GoT virgin to watching every episode to date that’s been screened.Some 60+ episodes. Even my mum likes it apart from the nude scenes.

Atomic Blond

Went and saw this movie at Slough’s cinema on Tuesday evening as two tickets is only £8.50 so its cheap compared with other cinemas. However once again you get what you pay for. Great film and loved the music as well. Must look out for the soundtrack. Some great fight and x-rated scenes with our blond haired lead. We look forward to its 4K release later in the year.

Slough cinema continues to decline though. There were just a handful of staff present in the cinema. Screen no 8 was about 28 degrees. They are obviously trying to save money but not switching on the air conditioning. There were only about a dozen people in our viewing. There was a group of teenage lads came in 40 minutes into the film. Sat down and proceeded to pull out the phones and record the juicy bits of the film on their mobiles. After a bit of filming they left again. We went and told one of the staff downstairs in their reception area but their security turned up 15 minutes later by which time they had simply left again. There were also a group of girls at the back who could not have been more than 12 giggling away. The film is classified as 15 but with no staff you could easily walk out of one film and straight into another and not be challenged.

I’m sure any locals of a certain age will remember the original Slough cinema near the police station. With torch enabled staff leading you to your seats, Saturday morning matinee’s, interludes with ice cream and popcorn to buy. Damn I must be getting old!

Most people now probably have a smart TV, at least one computer, mobile devices etc that are all capable of streaming film and TV programs. I’m sure a lot of people know how to download/stream content that isn’t even officially released. Its not difficult to find whatever you want to watch online and often not pay for this. With this in mind, people are going to cinemas less. Its not the social event it used be in the 20th Century. If I go the cinema now its generally because I want to see a particular film on a very large screen with a THX sound system that flaps my trouser legs and not have to worry about keeping the neighbours awake with my cinema surround system at home. I’m sure with all this in mind that the only cinemas that will be doing business in the next 10 years will be the ones offering a great customer experience, not just the cheap ones. Hope you’re listening Empire Cinemas!

Ready Player One

Finished the book. Best read I’ve had for a while after “Sully”

Can’t believe he did a resl Easter Egg in his book and I’ve missed it. Still I don’t think I was going to break any Workd Records in his choice of video games. Shame he didn’t go with Titanfall, I might have had a chance. It did inspire me to fire up an emulator of Joust and Black Tiger. I need slot of practice.

Can’t wait now for the film. Just seen the trailer and it looks just like I imagined in my head.

Reading the book, reminded me of so many of favourite TV, films and games from the 80’s and 90’s. The author is American so most of the references are also American but they were still part of teenagers lives in the U.K during this time.

TV Bingeing

Two TV series I had never seen until recently but always wanted to see what all the hype was about:

Just watched the whole of 24 Series 1.

Now starting Game of Thrones Season 1

Got a lot of series to catch up on but two weeks to do it.

And the geeks shall inherit the Earth – is this the future of VR?

Just started reading my new book, “Ready Player One”. Excellent so far!

The book is based on a dystopian future where everyone engages in a virtual reality environment that reminded me of Second Life – perhaps it could be the evolution of second life.

The designer of a Virtual reality software system called OASIS dies and leaves a fortune to the person who solves a complex puzzle and the main character seeks to find the fortune by following clues that only someone with intimate knowledge of pop culture could solve.The whole book is full of references to music, games and pop culture from the 80’s onwards. Its a Geekfest.

So far, we’ve had mention of many of my guilty pleasures, Krull, 80’s arcade games, 80’s home computers like the TRS-80, Commodore 64, Atari 2600, Dungeons & Dragons, Easter Eggs, Monty Python, The Last Starfighter (which is on Sky TV this week!), BBS, modems, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Betamax, Atari 800XL and more. I’m only on chapter 4.

VR has been around for a long time now but has been gaining some ground recently with the likes of HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. People are beginning to see some possibilities of how this technology could change our lives, particularly in areas such as education.

As a lecturer, I can fully see a future where students study from home without having to physically attend a school or college. Think of the advantages. The government could save millions. The students log in and find themselves in a classroom with their peers studying. With VR, they could go on field trips every lesson. Haptic feedback technology is also advancing rapidly now so again to crack VR users would still want some feedback from their environment. haptic gloves and bodysuits could fulfil this. At the moment these are being developed with gaming in mind but could easily be adapted for learning.

In the book, the VR school environments are still interactive lie the real world and have interesting ways of managing behaviour that we cant employ in the physical world.

I will update this post as I read more of the book.

And finally, they are going to make a film out of the book – I cant wait.

War of the Planet of the Apes

First day back after our holiday and we decided to pop into Slough Cinema and see the new War of the Planet of the Apes film. There were just four people in the cinema!

Enjoyed the film. Great visual effects compared with the original 1968 Charlton Heston film but I still love the original. Typical Charlton Heston film of the era. Love his final quote of the film…

YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!