Speed Of Superman

I have been thinking about these 4 hour flights from UK to Australia. Usually takes 21 hours. Well London to LAX (Los Angeles) is 11 hours, while London to Houston is 10 hours. Does this mean we could be in California or Texas in about half an hour? That would truly be a revolutionary step forward in travel, and one could argue even bigger than a certain Neil Armstrongs stroll on the moon. A truly bite sized world which would change a whole heap of things from work to visiting family/friends in distand lands.
Be great for sporting events too! You could be anywhere in the world by early afternoon, hell you could even have dinner at home before setting off! And be back for supper. The more I think about it, the more exciting it sounds. Super quick travel is the logical next step because it needs to keep up with our almost immediate communications. This is not the age of the snail, it is the age of speed and bouncing across the globe like a pinball with barely time to catch a breath. Everything needs to be done YESTERDAY from messaging to meeting.

Dibnah Fear, Pet

You dont get many men like Fred Dibnah these days thats as damn sure as Strongbow. A proper working man from Bolton who sadly passed away aged only 66 (from cancer) in 2004. He was the type of man who was seemingly born with gifted hands because whatever the popular steeplejack did it looked like he did with ease. (And of course being a mechanical engineer helped.)
Watch the video (above) and you can easily see that Fred was a million miles from the type of vacuous, attention hungry celebrity on todays television screens. He was down to earth, humble and could talk at length on almost any given subject. None of those things could be applied to the reality dimwits in 2012.

1979 BBC documentary Fred Dibnah: Steeplejack.
Directed by Don Haworth
1980 BAFTA Best Documentary Programme winner

Resistance: Fall Of Man

Fight them on the beaches!

The Chimera are aliens who have not come in peace. Nor are they looking to phone home. All the fanged terrors want is to invade earth and eradicate all human life. Bugger. Oh and they have deadly automatic pulse rifles and other highly advanced weaponry to aid them in their dastardly mission. Double buggery.
The first game in the series, Resistance: Fall of Man (2006) takes us back to 1951 Britain as Sgt. Nathan Hale and troops attempt to stomp Chimera ass and send them packing. Afterall humans and 9ft tall murderous aliens are never going to make it work. And thus begins a spiffing trilogy (so far*) of First Person Shooters (FPS) games for Playstation 3. Ashamed to say im late to this party and have only recently got around to buying the first two games but better late than never and on the plus side I did manage to snag both for a bargainous £2.80! (When PS3 first arrived on the scene I was busy playing third person action stuff.) Ive always had a weird relationship with FPS games in that Ive never been their biggest fan but in spite of this been hammering them since Alien Trilogy and Medal Of Honour on the original Playstation donkeys years ago. Also if you were to look at one of my game shelves and see the amount of FPS titles I have in my collection, you would think I was the biggest fan. Weirdz huh?
Im not a total Resistance virgin, I played the demos and from those I knew I would be taking the longterm fight to Chimera sooner or later in the full games because lets not mince words here: these games f**king rock! Who the hell wants to be plugging terrorists in Call Of Duty when you can be lobbing Hedgehog Grenades into the angry faces of lizard extra-terrestrials? Sign me up for some of that shit quick as you like!
In fact thats one of the things which attracts me to Resistance so much. I really like the humans v alien scenario, pitting our primitive 50s weapons against superior alien technology. In the early part of the campaign before you get your hands on the baddies stuff, gunfights often feel like you'd be better off using a peashooter or catapult against Chimera. And you know what? Its awesome! David versus Goliath but always Mankind has spirit on our side.


*Following the release of Resistance 3, Insomniac left the series with studio head Ted Price stressing that they felt Resistance had "reached its logical conclusion in terms of the story that we wanted to tell".


School sweetheart