Plasticine stop motion.
What happened to American Adventure?
On the edge of Ilkeston, Derbyshire, there use to be a theme park called American adventure. I remember going a few times when I was little. As I got older I completely forgot about it. Not really my fault. No one talked about it. In Britain if you want to goto a theme park you goto something like alton towers, spend all day in queues, get on about 5 rides and go home happy.I looked up American Adventure on wikipedia and I was shocked to find it had closed. It's even near 2 large cities Nottingham and Derby, but as it turns out it closed after "a period of difficult trading".
The website is now down, however the google cache reveals:
The American Adventure Theme Park has announced with regret that following a period of difficult trading it has taken the decision to close the American Adventure Theme Park near Shipley, Derbyshire. As a result American Adventure will not re-open for the 2007 season. All rides are currently being marketed for sale and the remaining staff are assisting with these disposals. It is anticipated that this exercise will be completed during this year when the leasehold for the park will revert to Derbyshire County Council.
The American Adventure Theme Park states that it has invested considerably in trying to make the Park a commercial success but a fall in attendances, which has been experienced across the UK theme park market, has proved impossible to overcome. The company would like to thank all of its staff and customers who over the years have contributed to making American Adventure a fun family experience.
The theme park has a funny history...
For example, in order of events:
- It was originally the Britannia park started by Peter Kellard in 1985.
- It was opened by a boxer called Henry Cooper (one of the greatest British heavyweights of all time).
- Supposedly it rained a lot on the opening day. (not a great start)
- Britannia closed 10 weeks after opening with a huge £9.5 million debt.
- Henry Cooper and various other people were never paid.
- Peter Kellard was sentenced 4 years in prison for fraud.
- The County Council bought the park for £2.5 million in 1986.
- It was sold to Grenada and finally called American Adventure in 1987.
Later additions included:
- Missile roller coaster (which was the best roller coaster in the uk for sometime)
- Rocky Mountain Rapids
- Iron Wolf rollercoaster (gladiator tv show themed ride, oh the joy!)
The park went from something like this: Crazy Cowboys and Indians...
...To something like this: Super happy family park thing
In 2005 some of the rides closed due to just generally being run down and the missile, not fitting in with super happy family park image, was put to bits and sold to Pleasurewood Hills as 'Wipeout'. In January of this year the park officially closed.
The park is now like a ghost town. Check out picasaweb.google.co.uk/gazandflyss/AmericanAdventureGoneButNotForgotten. Some great pictures showing how run down and empty (without people and most of the rides) it looks now.
Btw. I dont own any of these images used in this post, all rights belong to their rightful owners; Ventureworld.
Brewing yet another stout
I got another stout kit, this time one I have used before. The edme dry stout kit. I used the same ingredients as my last brew expect no chocolate malt. Less oats more roasted malt. Lots of hops. Fuggle, willamette and cascade for finishing.
I used a sieve to keep everything in to steep. Makes things more easy. Less messing around to.
Will upload pictures sometime.
I used a sieve to keep everything in to steep. Makes things more easy. Less messing around to.
Will upload pictures sometime.
Godzilla vs the blue tack
Found a few Godzilla toys in the attic. The one from the American Godzilla film. So heres a 5 second stop motion.
Exaile player
I was looking for a gtk+ music player. Because Amarok is really slow on a default install of ubuntu even with a decent spec machine. Some users might go with banshee, rhythmbox or even the great songbird. However the best I have come across (although songbird when out of beta should kick some ass) is exaile. It's aimed to be like amarok but with gtk+. It has last.fm support that works. You can sort your music with the Library functions, search your library music and look through files. All the features you would expect are there.
To download it (Repository):
www.exaile.org/downloads
Thoughts on ISPs warning BBC
" The explosion in popularity of online video could lead to increases in the cost of broadband for UK consumers.
The way I see it is that the "network" is already congested with uk ISPs gaining more and more new users than they can handle. Instead of raising the already high prices compared to the rest of Europe, why not invest in "network" instead of being greedy?
The fact is most, if not all, ISPs in the uk advertise speeds such as 2mb and 8mb when there service comes no where near those advertised speeds. Although no one will get an exact advertised speed there is no need for a 3 figured number (mb) loss of speed that your paying for.
If the BBC goes ahead with its iPlayer video service its not going to make a difference to an already poor network.
Internet services providers, such as Tiscali, say that the raft of recently launched on-demand services will "undoubtedly" congest the network. "
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6944176.stmThe way I see it is that the "network" is already congested with uk ISPs gaining more and more new users than they can handle. Instead of raising the already high prices compared to the rest of Europe, why not invest in "network" instead of being greedy?
The fact is most, if not all, ISPs in the uk advertise speeds such as 2mb and 8mb when there service comes no where near those advertised speeds. Although no one will get an exact advertised speed there is no need for a 3 figured number (mb) loss of speed that your paying for.
If the BBC goes ahead with its iPlayer video service its not going to make a difference to an already poor network.
My beer is a success
The stout is really good. Its only 4 days old and it tastes great. Its kinda like a Mackeson meets a Murphys. Dead smooth, chocolaty, sweet and nutty. I'm surprised how good it is only 4 days old. I put some in bottles too. I not to sure how good they will be since the rest is in a keg. Ill get a chance to compare them. If there any good I have like 6 500ml a few small ones.
So ill see how it goes. 2 weeks it should be great. Ill be making a lighter beer next.
So ill see how it goes. 2 weeks it should be great. Ill be making a lighter beer next.
Will I move back to KDE?
After using KDE on and off over a few years it's not really changed. I find the artists are obsessed with blue. Icons, panels, window borders, backgrounds, all blue. Blue, blue, blue, lots of blue. That's fine if you like that kind of thing or just blue. I also dislike the way konqueror works too. So I have stuck with beryl/gnome or fluxbox for a while now.
Though after seeing kde4 screenshots with plasma, KDE's new desktop shell, I think I might be tempted to try it out again. Kwin has supposedly been given composite effects like Compiz Fusion.
Since I don't like konqueror there is now an alternative file manager called Dolphin.
It looks promising. Defiantly better looking than vista. Makes me wonder what all the fuss was about longhorn/vista screenshots. Windows XP with a black theme and a few effects. Yeah amazing. It has nothing original unlike this project. At the moment its still in beta, but runs well on top of kde4 desktop.
Check out some other screencasts on youtube
youtube.com/results?search_query=plasma+kde
If you want to try it out, try the kde live cd
home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/
Though after seeing kde4 screenshots with plasma, KDE's new desktop shell, I think I might be tempted to try it out again. Kwin has supposedly been given composite effects like Compiz Fusion.
Since I don't like konqueror there is now an alternative file manager called Dolphin.
It looks promising. Defiantly better looking than vista. Makes me wonder what all the fuss was about longhorn/vista screenshots. Windows XP with a black theme and a few effects. Yeah amazing. It has nothing original unlike this project. At the moment its still in beta, but runs well on top of kde4 desktop.
Check out some other screencasts on youtube
youtube.com/results?search_query=plasma+kde
If you want to try it out, try the kde live cd
home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/
Brewing a big style stout
Today I spent just about all day in the kitchen trying to brew a huge stout. It started with a john bull stout kit with some barley for a nice head, oats to make it smooth, crystal malt for added body, fuggle, cascade, willamette hops. Was a very big brew. I think I should have added less oats and more crystal malt but we will see when its finished. When I finally got all the wort in and the must done, the colour was opaque black. I didn't use an Irish yeast like normal I went for the Scottish yeast since it worked well with my barley wine.
The must O.G was 1.025, seems a bit light?
The must O.G was 1.025, seems a bit light?
Epiphany web browser
I love Firefox just as much as any other open source geek, I like the Mozilla gecko engine, it renders pages fast and properly unlike IE. A few days ago I noticed a blog post on some blog (cant remember it) calling Mozilla for there to be a Firefox lite. Well if anyone really wants a lite Firefox there is Epiphany. Of course you will need gnome. Though I run it within fluxbox with gnome installed. I have used it once before along time ago and I wasn't impressed by it all. I guess I was stuck in my ways with Mozilla and Netscape navigator. After trying it today I am confidant to say I like it.Its the fastest GUI browser I have working on a 1ghz, 256mb celeron. I think its a little quicker than Firefox to load but it defiantly beats Firefox on loading pages.
It features
- Gecko engine (used by FireFox)
- Smart address bar / Google search
- FireFox 2 like tabs
- Security / privacy options
- Extensions such as ad blocking and smart bookmarks
- Nice zoom feature
- Customizable toolbar
To install it look for the epiphany-browser package or
sudo apt-get install epiphany-browser
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