test please delete

[mudskipper]

Wine has gone. May have paced this badly.

[cojak]

I’m just starting the fizz

[NickFitz]

My upstairs neighbours are unusually loud tonight. I suspect they may be celebrating

[NickFitz]

Happy New Year, denizens

[NickFitz]

Tonight's entertainment opened with Deepwater Horizon (2016), concerning the disaster on the eponymous oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. I thought it was pretty good as disaster movies go. They should make a film like that about Piper Alpha, but I don't suppose they will, as that wasn't American.

Back when Piper Alpha went up, the accommodation block containing the galley where a large number of the men had taken refuge and died was, many months later, raised and brought to shore, and the water drained through holes cut in the bottom, which took a month or so. A friend of mine was one of the large team of embalmers who then went up there to deal with the bodies. They split into two teams on site; one would climb up to the top of the rig and work their way down bringing bodies out and lowering them down to be brought ashore, where the other team did their best to make them presentable for return to their relatives. He spent about a month working there. In the end, the remains they were bringing out were in such a state that the decision was made that any remaining people were "missing, presumed dead" and the rig was towed back out to sea, sunk, and marked as a grave.

And eight years later, I got a job with a company whose primary business was creating and providing multimedia training in the new safety systems that were instituted as a result of the disaster, such as the Offshore Safe System Of Work certification required for all rig workers. I didn't work on that stuff; instead, they hired me to work on a sideline opportunity that had come their way, doing e-commerce stuff for BT on this newfangled "world wide web" thing. So Piper Alpha was, indirectly, how I ended up becoming a web developer before the term had even been invented.

After that, midnight and the New Year came, and I started watching another film that turned out to be a bit slow about getting moving, which wasn't what I was after. So I turned instead to In Time (2011), about a future in which you don't age after 25, but nor do you continue to live unless you earn or otherwise obtain additional time. Naturally, the plutocrats have collared all the time for themselves and ensure that the mass of people are forced to live lives of desperation in order to further enrich them. Bloody capitalist bastards. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good; worth picking up should you see it in the charity shop

Goodnight all

[Dark Black]

Morning All

(or should it be.. MORNING ALL! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!)




[edit: and... Century ]

[Dark Black]

...So I turned instead to In Time (2011), about a future in which you don't age after 25, but nor do you continue to live unless you earn or otherwise obtain additional time. Naturally, the plutocrats have collared all the time for themselves and ensure that the mass of people are forced to live lives of desperation in order to further enrich them. Bloody capitalist bastards. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good; worth picking up should you see it in the charity shop

I really liked that film - good soundtrack too

[WTFH]

Morning all

Manflu

[BR14]

Morning everyone
a bit hazy this morning.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Sort of a thin overcast out there again, but not too gloomy