The Edge Of Madness

On Sunday, myself, Lana and Tim went to check out London Film and Comic Con.

I mainly go to check out the freaks and have a laugh (plus to reconfirm to myself that I'm not that geeky). There wasn't anyone on the list I really wanted to check out and for a Comic Con, there wasn't that much comic focussed.

Queuing up to get in, bunch of goths behind us making fun at the geeks. I really had to bite my tongue from turning around and telling them everyone laughs at you as much as you laugh at the geeks.

Get in, few geeky costumes. As usual lots of fat jedis

Walking to the back to check out the famous ppl giving autographs. Lana's going on about how she won't recognise anyone, blah de blah. Bam, she looks around, goes bright red and screams "There's Lorenzo Lamas". Star of 80's tv show Renegade. She paid the £15 and got a signed pic and photo with him. Highly amusing. Plus winding her up that she has a crush on him

Newt from aliens was there. She's now a middle aged woman.

Patrick Stewart was doing autographs, but there was a sign up saying "No handshakes". Which I thought was a dick thing to do, but then reading about it, realised it made sense. Last year he was out, but didn't get time to sign all the autographs, so this year he wanted to make sure he go through everyone, and handshakes tended to slow down the queue.

Tim got star struck at meeting the guys from Cyanide and Happiness. Who were pretty cool guys, there were giving out free doodles to anyone who asked. Tim put his mouth in it when he met them as he confused them with xkcd briefly. He got a drawing from them, but was very annoyed he hadn't thought of a better word. They basically drew a comic based on a word you gave them. So we sent Lana in. Her genius word was "bacon". She got a picture of a horny bacon. I was going to get one, but the masquarade where the geeks show off their costumes was on, and that was the main reason I came.

And I was very disappointed. No where near enough costumes, half a dozen or so people. Some were pretty cool, some freaky.

All in all, for £5 entry + £15 for Lorenzo Lama's signed picture, cheap fun afternoon out.

In the process of upgrading my blog, so there may be weird stuff for a bit.

Edit: And the only problem seems to be that you can't post comments. I'll work on that, but since the main reason I was updating was to stop the frequent spammers, I'm in no rush to fix that.

Edit2: And that's fixed. I'll prob add in some captcha stuff depending on how much spam is accumulated, but now I can turn off comments for older posts, so shouldn't have to.

Sometimes people are sheep.

Went to the movies to see Wall-E (which btw was a very good movie).

Get our tickets, go upstairs to outside the cinema. Lana needs to pee. There's a queue outside the cinema. Lana goes to the bathroom. I wait for her, she gets back, the queue has got bigger.

Go and get some popcorn. The queue is even bigger.

I take a look at the queue, there is no usher standing at the front stopping people getting in, so I go bugger it, I'll walk past them all and walk straight in.

And that I do, with about 10 minutes before the start of the movie.

30 seconds later, everyone else realises there was no reason to queue up and they all come in.

So me and Lana had our pick of seats, while everyone else was queing up like sheep. Rather amusing.

Well short-story I did 750 miles, from 1pm - 9am (21 hours). I didn't end up at the final checkpoint for reason's we'll go into now, so technically I didn't complete the rally.

At the time I pulled out and headed home I had clocked up 370 miles, so I would have got Silver if I pulled into the final checkpoint.

To start with I was running late. Major roadworks on the way to the first checkpoint. Got there late, and I couldn't find the damn checkpoint. Me getting lost would be a major part on this trip. Ended up getting to the checkpoint at 3pm. According to the rules if you start more than 20 minutes late, you can't make the gold category. So I was out for that, but went bugger it, let's see how we go.

I also was a major dumb ass the night before. Free work drinks, intended to have one or two, go home get an early night. I got fairly wasted, had a bad nights sleep. Woke up tired, not a good start.

Next checkpoint, got lost again. This was down to me and poor planning. I hadn't confirmed 100% on a map the exact location. Better planning would keep me better here.

So it's now 4 o'clock. On the sheet I've only done 55 miles. On my bike I've done a little over 200, and been riding for 3 hours.

After the first two checkpoints, it kind of fell into place. Didn't get badly lost for a while. Was running about an hour behind on my schedule.

Due to the fact about every 30-45 minutes you need to break to sign your card, kept you really fresh. Wasn't feeling tired at all.

Got dark at around 11pm. Now I hate riding at night, can't see crap. Again, if I had planned better I would have made the checkpoints at night all Motorway work. Piece of piss to get from A to B.

At about 2am, I had had enough. Told myself as soon as I can't find the next checkpoint, I'm going home.

Found the next one okay, kept going. One after that was fine. Now it's 3:30am, done 370 miles according to the sheet + the extra lost laps I've done. I'm running low on fuel and the 24 hour fuel place marked is shut. It starts to rain. Hard. I can't see crap, I'm running low on fuel. It's 350 odd miles home, about 3.5 hours. Or 6 more hours to complete + another 2 hours home.

I'm also starting to make some mistakes while riding, my knee is locking up, and my shoulder is starting to go. So I make the decision to head on home.

Riding tired on the motorway at night is easier than anything else. Simply, you pull behind a truck not going that fast, and follow it. You're braking is much better, no need to rush, and faster cars tend to avoid the truck and you easily.

I ended up taking about 4 or 5 breaks on the way back. Buggered as hell, concentration shot. Made it back okay.

All up according to the speedo, done a little over 750 miles.

The rally itself was great fun. Will I do it again next year? Yep. A bit more planning on my part, and now I've seen where a few of the checkpoints are, think I should be able to do it easier.

I lost about 3-4 hours from being lost, without that I would have been fine.

Also I hadn't got around to installing the risers on Floyd, which should make her more comfortable. And I'll prob get some highway pegs.

Checkpoints were interesting. All run by riders. Some big clubs, some one or two people. All (except for one exception) good people, and a good laugh.

BTW, my route was Watford, Harlow, Sawston, St Neots, Corby, Wansford, Grantham, Lincoln, Gainsborough, Rotherham, Thorne, York, Harrowgate, Leeds, Penistone.

This weekend I'm doing National Road Rally.

Motorcycle rally around England. The one I'm doing is "Special Gold" class, which is 540 miles. The rally runs from 2pm Saturday until 10am Sunday. There's a class above this which is Platinum, which consists of doing a test at the end of the rally, and I can't be stuffed doing that.

Now according to some, I'm going against the spirit of the rally by using satnav gps. But fuck that, I'm more interested in the ride than spending hours on a map working out where I'm going.

And here's the other twist.

Here's a copy of the Control matrix .

Have to do exactly 540 miles...and visit the maximum number of checkpoints possible...and they don't tell you what the maximum number of checkpoints is. Only requirement is you end at number 99. The numbers don't mean zip, they just match up to the description of the point.

Of course I had to code something up. My solution is a little sucky, it's a brute force with a random path selection. But since it's a finite set, and a once off run, I don't care

This is the first time in my life, I've solved a real life situation with code. Fairly cool.

Here's a list of routes that I generated. Oh, the lines marked with BINGO and ALMOST were based on where I wanted to start from.