The element of irreducible rascality [498]

Greetings from the the Derby Beer Festival...

I’m Christian Payne, photographer, chancer and writer. In this weekly dispatch I seek out novelty, explore the relations between things, how we share, what we share and consume, plus where we might be going. Thanks for joining in.

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#TheAction

This week has been manic. Mostly due to a selection of plumbers, workers from Anglian Water and Gigaclear. We had a large hole blocking the driveway thanks to the waterboard digging a hole looking for a stopcock that was perfectly accessible 20 meters away. The plumbers have been fixing the hot water and heating systems and after ten months of promising fibre broadband, Gigaclear finally turned up at the house.

We switched from Plusnet’s 24MBps to Gigaclear’s 550MBps. We’d applied for the upgrade on the 10th of February and it's taken this long to get fibre to the house.

Although I had to assist to make it happen. The engineer told me he could not dismantle the BT cable (they are not allowed) and asked if i’d cut it. It was weird severing the information umbilical from our home. I'm sure I could hear 28 individual screams as all the devices disconnected from the outside world. I wasn't that bothered. If anything it felt liberating.

I busied myself routing the fibre where the copper once was. Then while the engineer did other stuff I chopped some wood and drank a coffee in the garden. Disconnected and happy.

The re-connection was simple enough. I watched him splice and fuse the fibre and in his words we were "good to go". Which was true till after he left and it came to adding the mesh networked nodes and upgrading the firmware.

I had momentarily witnessed a blisteringly fast internet peak at 600MBps and immediately drop to nothing. Just as the kids got home.

Once their excitement was replaced by anguish, I experienced new levels of stress as they stood arms folded asking in turns if it was fixed yet.

I thought I'd broken it, but a few hours later and one long phone call to Gigaclear, I now know all about Mac address conflicts and the wonders of IPV6. It's now working again. The kids plugged into Teams, Discord and Netflix and I spent the rest of the evening putting the new password into 28 things that like to talk to the internet.

I’m looking forward to the next time it falls over. That firewood is not going to chop itself.

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#ThePictures

Really enjoying there imagery of Live..Simply on Flickr.

I think they are using the Hasselblad X2D 100C Mirrorless Medium Format Camera for a lot of their shots. Click the link or image above to see more.

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This is addictive viewing…

Thanks to Stephan Caspar and The Spaces In Between.

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Finished all four series of Slow Horses. Loved it. Glad to see there is a fifth series out in the new year and and a sixth series planned.

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If we are connected on Letterboxd then you might be aware that La Jetée is one of my all time favourite films. It inspired me in a number of ways. Especially in regard to creating photo slideshows instead of 24fps videos.

If you have not seen it, you can find the 28 minute film on YouTube. Please watch it if you don’t want the following spoilers in the next analysis video to ruin the film for you.

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#TheWords

I listened to the VoiceOver for this and was intrigued all the way to the end. Well worth the read and it might have you thinking differently about some of the more disruptive climate protesting. The rise of the climate antiheroes.

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A polar night in the world’s northernmost town.

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I picked up this book this week.

I mean… Tombstone, Heat, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, The Doors, Wonderland, True Romance… what’s not to like?

Well… this book is not to like.

I can't remember the last time I didn't finish a book. I probably should not be writing about something I’ve not finished. But that in itself will be the crux of this review.

I read over a third. But only because I kept thinking that it really must get better. It didn't.

I hoped the verbal diarrhoea would dissipate to reveal some kind of structure. It didn't.

I should not be surprised that the Val Kilmer I felt I knew and respected the work of was not in fact him. It was all the characters he so aptly became. And he did a great job at that. But in recounting his life, the book ricochets from one point to another never really resting on anything long enough to get truly deep and meaningful. It might be his ego getting in the way. It might be the rushed hand of someone one wondering how long they might have left.

I stopped reading when I did because I'm happy with the Val I know in the films. In this instance I feel the films are way better than the book.

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#TheSound

I love stumbling upon new music randomly on band camp. New to me anyway. I wanted to see if this band had any videos and was a little surprise to find these virtually unseen gems.

On digging around a little more looks like lockdown 2019-2020 saw some unconsolable differences surface in the band and there is now a new front woman, Nuria.

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After sharing some audio transcription solutions in the last email Nick Garnett pointed me to Aiko for Mac. Here is a link to it on the Apple Store. The audio is processed on device and i’m really impressed with the results. I tested it with some old audio of me chatting with my lad while he was just a toddler. It was spot on. Quite impressive and well worth a look.

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#TheConsumed

Obvs beer. For research purposes of course. Also… remember ten years ago when I tried to convince you that sharing what you were eating on Twitter really meant something? Bluesky obviously feels the same and recently created the #GoodLunch feed. Dip in if you want some lunch option inspiration or if you’d like to get all judgy on what others are eating.

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#TheThanks

I must thank the paying subscribers that pay $5/month to get all the content I share into this feed. Please consider upgrading to become a paid supporter. Or if you prefer PayAsYouGo you can do that via Ko-Fi, PayPal and Monzo.

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#TheThings

Yesterday Quadlock kicked off their Black Friday sales. I still don’t have my new iPhone but as soon as I do i’ll don a new case. For the time being I’m contemplating the tripod selfie stick.

There’s been a few times I’ve not taken out the mini tripod and camera clamp and had to use my coat to prop up the phone.

This results in more shots of the sky than me and my daughter climbing a tree or drinking hot chocolate on a walk. This shot just about turned out albeit a bit skewed. I use my watch to trigger the shutter.