Forces TV

Earlier this week (on the 10th June) a new channel became available from our cable TV provider ... Forces TV.

Forces TV is an independent news organisation focused on all aspects of the British Armed Forces. It is currently available on a variety of different platforms including:

• Sky Channel 299
• Virgin 244
• Freesat 652

Forces TV is owned and operated by the Services Sound and Vision Corporation, a charity that was set up in the 1980s to 'entertain and inform Britain's Armed Forces around the world'.

SSVC also runs the radio and television services of the British Forces Broadcasting Services,the chain of SSVC Cinemas, the British Defence Film Library, and Combined Services Entertainment. The latter provides live entertainment for members of the Armed Forces stationed across the world, and is the successor to ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association ... or as it was sometimes called by those who were ‘entertained’, 'Every Night Something Awful').

Green Army Men from Hawkin's Bazaar

During a visit to our local retail centre I happened to go into a branch of Hawkin's Bazaar, a shop that sells a range of traditional toys. On the shelves I found some boxes of Green Army Men ... so I bought a couple.

This might seem like a rather odd purchase, but over recent months Tim Gow has been leading the development of a post-War version of FUNNY LITTLE WARS entitled – surprisingly enough – LITTLE COLD WARS. He has promised to run a session at the forthcoming Conference of Wargamers (COW2014), and I thought that I might try to put together my own small army to take along.

My original thought was to create a NATO-style army for Laurania, but after giving it some more thought I may well opt to paint them up to represent the army of AGGRESSOR, the OPFOR (opposing force) used by the US Army during the 1960s. The uniforms used by AGGRESSOR were American in style but Jungle Green, with Olive Drab webbing/Black leather belts and Black boots, combined with coloured collar tabs that indicated a unit's branch of service.

Feedly is back ... but now the gas has gone off ... and come back on again!

I finally got my Feedly service back late last night ... and this morning our gas supply was cut off.

The story of the replacement of the main gas supply pipe to the houses in our street has been going on for some time, but this morning – just after 8.30 am – the workmen arrived to disconnect our house from the old supply pipe prior to connecting us to the new supply pipe. They told us that once that had been done a fitter would arrive to purge the system and ensure that our gas supply was safely reinstated.

At 11.30am we were told that the fitter would be arriving at 3.00pm, although he might be slightly later. At 4.30pm there was no sign of the fitter ... and thinking that there was little likelihood that they would arrive before they finished work for the day – and the week! – I contacted the gas supply company and explained the problem to them.

As we were in the situation of having no means to cook or to heat hot water until the gas supply was reinstated – and that this might remain the situation until Monday morning – the supply company agreed to send an emergency engineer to deal with the problem.

The fitter who was originally supposed to arrive at 3.00pm finally arrived at 5.30pm. It appeared that he had been given the wrong street name and incorrect postcode, and had driven to the wrong side of London ... from his base in Gosport, Hampshire … which is over 100 miles away! He took just five minutes to reconnect the gas supply and to check that everything was safe ... and then he set off for the return journey to Gosport.

Once he had gone I contacted the gas supply company and cancelled the call out of the emergency engineer. It was at this point that my wife reminded me that it was Friday the 13th today!

---

As an aside, the temporary three-way traffic lights that the contractors installed whilst they replaced the gas supply pipe caused an accident today.

A bus that was travelling downhill was confronted by a large dumper truck that had – quite legitimately – passed through the traffic lights in the opposite direction. Trying to avoid the dumper truck, the bus mounted the pavement and hit a bus stop, demolishing part of the bus shelter as it did so and damaging the bus so badly that it had to be taken out of service. This caused a traffic jam that took quite some time to sort out ... and which totally disrupted the local bus service for some hours afterwards.

As my wife pointed out ... it is Friday the 13th today!

No feed from Feedly

Yesterday Feedly was subject to a 'denial of service' cyber-attack, with the result that most users – including myself – were unable to access their service.

According to Feedly's blog:

2:04am PST – Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can.

We are working in parallel with other victims of the same group and with law enforcement.

We want to apologize for the inconvenience. Please know that you data is safe and you will be able to re-access your feedly as soon as the attack is neutralized.

6:25am PST – We’re making some changes to our infrastructure that will allow us to bring feedly back online. However, these things take some time to put into place and it may still be a few more hours before service is restored. Thank you so much for your patience and for sticking with us. Remember, none of your data was compromised or lost in this attack.

15:07pm PST - We have neutralized DDoS attack that began at 2:04am PST last night. You should now be able to access your feedly from both feedly.com, mobile apps and third party applications. Our ops team is closely monitoring the situation in case the attacks resume. It might take a few hours for some of the 40 million feeds we poll to be fully updated. We would like to re-iterate that none of your data was compromised by this attack. I would like to thank the ops team for working through the night to resume the service as quickly as possible. I would also like to thank the community for your amazing support! -Edwin

16:34pm PST - If you are not able to access feedly.com it is most likely due to the fact that your ISP or computer is caching an old DNS entry. Please refresh your DNS cache or wait for it to expire.

I checked my feed from Feedly a few minutes ago, and mine will not as yet update, but I hope to catch up with all the blogs that I follow at some time later today. In the meantime all I can do is wonder about the motivation of someone who thinks that mounting a 'denial of service' is justified in any way whatsoever.

I have been to ... Broadside

Despite feeling slightly under the weather due to a mild stomach bug, I was determined to go to BROADSIDE. This is a small regional wargames show that is run annually by the Milton Hundred Wargames Club. I know the main organiser – Alan Abbey – very well indeed (I taught him when he was eleven!), and it was a pleasure to meet him again this year.

Here is a picture of the man himself:

I managed to get around all the games that were taking part, and took photographs of as many of them as I could. I did have the usual problem though; some had excellent signage and information whereas others did not. As a result I have not been able to attribute some of the games to a group … so if your group's game is featured but unnamed, please accept my apologies.

---

World War I (Crush The Kaiser)

Kandahar: Second Afghan War (Gravesend Wargamers Club)

The Arabian Campaign, World War I: The taking of Akaba (Rainham [Medway] Wargames Club)

American Civil War Ironclads in action (South East Essex Military Society)

Note: SEEMS (South East Essex Military Society) were using a slightly tweaked version of my Portable Naval Wargame rules.

Western Gunfight ... using Playmobile figures (Gravesend Gamers Guild)

Dr Who (Friday Night Fire Fight Club)

A variety of skirmish-level wargames (Hornchurch Heroes Gaming Club)

Somewhere in France: Summer 1944 (Shepway Wargames Club)

Battle of Shaho: Russo-Japanese War (Posties Rejects)

Postie scratch-built this very impressive balloon using a polystyrene ball, wire, and cardboard. He used a metal base so that it was stable.

Belgium: August 1914 (Medway Wargames Society)

The Magnificent Seven Gunfight (Skirmish Wargames Group)

---

North West Europe

Vietnam War

Science Fiction games

Western Shootout

Napoleonic Wars