This afternoon I was back at the beach at Eastney … which in the summer is full of nudists cavorting, but today had just a handful of textiles fishing and walking. Plus me waving a camera around trying to come up with interesting images.
#0: Untitled (for obvious reasons)
Untitled
#1: Ferries In The Sunshine
Ferries In The Sunshine
Format: Blueray
IMDB Entry here
Now this is what I call an action movie. A bunch of mercs are hired to get a case off somebody, and are gradually whittled down by casualties, and betrayal until it becomes about something other than just the job. Not only are the action scenes interesting and believable (too many modern films have action scenes that require the existence of superhumans), but include some of the best car chases anyone has ever seen.
It also has a lot of depth with a surprisingly complex and twisting story. Tons of mystery; not least of which, what was in the case ? Nobody knows.
Definitely worth a watch.
On the way home from work tonight (after a particularly hard day that started at 6am), I dropped into Tesco to pick up a lazy person’s meal – a pizza and a four-pack of Guinness. I intentionally queued at the very long queue in front of the human checkout rather than the very short queue in front of the machine checkout because :-
I noticed several curious things whilst queuing … which was rapidly getting longer :-
When I finally reached the head of the queue, it was obvious that there were no plastic bags to bag the shopping for anyone … except for those who had chosen to use the machine checkout. Which was decided odd as it is more common for those with full baskets to use the human checkout.
I can understand that plastic bags should be discouraged, but this was a little extreme! In fact the bloke in front of me was forced to buy a re-usable bag because he had far more shopping than could be carried by hand. I would have just left it and gone elsewhere in his case!
It did seem as though this particular Tesco seems to regard customers as an inconvenience.
So this morning I am sitting in front of the TV with my caffeine fix and some news channel on to break up the silence. On comes this item about how a school has shown a dramatic improvement after having introduced a new disciplinary regime. Something like an increase of 25% in pupils getting 5 or more GCSEs (cannot recall the exact numbers and it does not matter anyway).
But wait! The reporter goes on to say this increase does not include English or Maths and when those subjects are included, the increase is not quite as dramatic. So English and Maths are unimportant subjects are they ? Or perhaps the story does not come across as so interesting if the real increase is given.
So this reporter has stretched the truth (i.e. lied) by reporting a meaningless statistic that sounds good rather than a proper set of figures which would still sound good to those who do not have unrealistic expectations.
Why does the media do this ? Well obviously to make things sound better than the really are or more usually worse than they usually are. That is fair enough on an entertainment show, but surely news should present the facts and not try to stretch the truth.
It has been a while since my urge to photograph random scenes, and the time available to do so actually met comfortably, but I managed a short session at the weekend wandering around Southsea. Nothing especially interesting – apart from anything else I’m obviously a bit rusty.
But to give this place something a little more interesting than just random noise :-
#0: Two-Wheeled Partyers
Two-Wheeled Partiers
It looks like they arrived a little late.
#1: Giving The Sky The Finger
Giving The Sky The Finger