First up, lets all just say “Woo! Isn’t that impressive!”.
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If, of course, you don’t think it’s impressive, don’t bother. I’ve already said “Woo!” enough times to make up for you unimpressed types.
Right, moving on…
For reasons most (all) would associate with masochism, we decided to go play in the traffic again. Specifically, since every country claims that its roads grind to a halt, we decided to go play in rush hour traffic. Read the rest of this entry »
So, I’ve largely recovered from the flight, and I have an OU textbook to avoid. What better time to start the holiday memories…?
We flew out from Birmingham International on Saturday night. We landed in Dubai Sunday morning, and took off two hours later for Brisbane. An hour layover and we’re on again, this time to Auckland. It’s nearly 30 hours later, we’ve had about 4 hours sleep and it’s now lunchtime Monday. The brain is no longer working.
Auckland Airport is a marvellous thing. Sure, Dubai terminal 3 is a magnificent structural phenomenon, with walls of glass and two Oases, but Auckland is full of Kiwis. Somehow it’s completely alien and completely at home. I mean, we step off the plane straight into an immigration queue – but it’s efficient. It’s like the twilight zone.
The various officials are happy too. Back in Australia the security staff all looked like they’d had exceptionally bad news and were waiting to take it out on someone (and later on in Birmingham we’d walk into a world full of automatons) but here the immigration guys joked with us about what we were doing. The biosecurity lass was even cooler – we ticked just about all the red boxes we could find on the biosecurity form (food, plant matter, hiking boots, animal contact, living on a farm, smuggling wood, liking Marmite) and she cheerfully worked down the list before telling us that we could go on our way. Read the rest of this entry »
Did I say that I was going away? Well I did. And I came back.
I’ve just spent the last two weeks upside down in the wonderful world that is New Zealand.
Stories, pictures and other excitement will happen in the next couple of weeks but I’m currently shattered and surviving on sugar and chocolate, so here’s a quick rundown…
The great bits
The less great bits
Every day my RSS feeds are full of gently amusing. This post from PhotoshopDisasters just made my week…
I’m only up to the end of season 3, which probably makes this list a bit spoilery…
HEROES DRINKING GAME:
- Drink every time someone is given additional powers to get the writer’s out of a corner.
- Drink every time a major plot line is completely abandoned (Claire’s a lesbian right?)
- Drink every time a character’s consistently evil past is ignored and someone gives them another chance to screw them over.
- Drink every time a Hero could have solved a problem by ACTUALLY USING THEIR SUPER POWERS but chose not to.
- Drink every time Hiro’s brain tumor is cured by a dream (so far this has only happened once).
- Drink every time you get fucking sick of reading ALL of Hiro and Ando’s dialog in subtitles WE TOTALLY GET IT, THEY’RE JAPANESE!!!
- Drink every time Claire seems to forget that her blood cures death in others, so it really doesn’t matter if anyone she cares about dies.
- Drink every time you have no idea who Noah works for any more.
- Drink every time it’s obvious the FX budget has run out and they show a “power” off screen or with simple lighting effects.
- Drink every time a characters actions completely betray any previous character development (WARNING: This is guaranteed to kill you).
As some of you may know, I’m a member of the local Parish Council. Last night was a council meeting. It didn’t go well. We normally meet from 7.30 til 9.30. Last night were were still there at 10.30…
The first problem was a recurring issue with dog walkers and our land. The details are long and tedious, but we did have one of the local dog walkers give at 20 minute long speech in which she said “I’m not suggesting you are all corrupt, but…” and then listed things she considered us to be corrupt over.
Later we had to deal with the precept (our chunk of the council tax charge). This year, our precept on a Band-D property is £70.
The problem is that for the last ten years we’ve set the precept too low, so our funds are running much lower than they should do, and we’ve increased our expenses this year. According to our budgetary team, we need a 20% increase in precept to stand still. To build our reserves back up, another councillor proposed (and I seconded) a 25-30% one-off rise in precept for next year. Not one person agreed with us.
The reason seemed to be that the council are worried that people won’t be able to afford it. At the very top end, that would be £1.50 a month extra for a Band-D or 97p for a Band-A. What’s that? A quarter of a packet of smokes? A bottle of knock-off cola?
No, the council instead decided to go for a 15% increase.
I’m sure it’s entirely co-incidental that the entire council is up for election in three months time. I’m sure that no-one would favour a low precept to keep the electorate sweet instead of setting it high enough that we could actually bloody do something…
I took my big camera with me to Christmas dinner. I got a new lens for Christmas. I took no photos.
These were the 27th, and the only photos I liked from a twenty minute session and nearly 60 photos…
It’s probably only limited to the UK operations, but it looks like Borders is no more.
The first I knew of it was when I walked in to the 3 storey Cambridge store to find the place stripped. 80% of the popular stock & 50% of the rest is gone. Everything is discounted by between 20 & 50%.
And that rather explains their disappearance. Even so discounted, everything I wanted was cheaper on Amazon, so I added it to my wishlist instead of buying it instore.
Borders has, to me, always been a fancy library with a coffeeshop and a till for me to pay an “i want it now” premium.
And even then Waterstones had better coffee and a more library-like feel.
They couldn’t keep up their original low prices & they didn’t have great coffee, stock or atmosphere. In fact, the only irreplaceable facet was their superb collection of periodicals…
So, goodbye Borders. You’ll be missed, but you were hardly a Fopp.
Only 50 of these will be made. It’s got a 2 litre V twin engine, weighs just over 200kg and has 183nm of torque. And it looks bloody beautiful. Cory Doctorow would have SteamPunk-gasm…
You’ve got to give it to these crazy foreigners… they have a certain way with stupidly large engines. Yes, we could probably make something similar over here, but it would be like the Japanese version – a 1 litre engine that revs to 20,000 and screams like a banshee. If this doesn’t sound like Godzilla destroying Tokyo I’ll be very, very disappointed…
How about this for a beautiful image of Dubai’s skyline…?
No idea as to who owns it, other than it is used on this page from The Cool Hunter…
It was only a matter of time.
Back on 18th November, my grandmother died – less than 10 months after my grandfather. I’m not the oldest member of our branch of this rather depressing little tree.
There’s my wife and me (who aren’t planning on having kids), my brother is rapidly approaching 30 and yet to settle. Both our parents were single children – mum through adoption. It’s hardly a thicket we’re discussing here.
Going back up the family name, my grandfather’s only brother died during WWII without having kids, and I think their father was the only boy in the family. Our little branch of a relatively rare surname (50 entries in the UK phonebooks) look like it lies just on our shoulders.
Our plans have to change too… there’s no way I can afford to take on the half million pound house that I grew up in, so it’s getting sold off.
One way or another, everything has changed in the last fortnight…
I’m so sorry. I haven’t posted for nearly a month and then I update with a video post. I don’t deserve you my loyal and loving audience. Either of you.
So, after half deafening myself on the way to work this morning, I started thinking about songs that would (if played back to back) lead to the destruction of my speakers. This update is cunningly being written at 11pm so that I can’t turn the music up for fear of upsetting our neighbour (who just happens to be the landlord’s daughter).
For fairly obvious reasons, this list is a little light on ballads. :)
So… in no particular order…
Read the rest of this entry »
Why hasn’t the internet said anything about these two sounding strangely similar? I can’t hear the former without expecting the later…
It’s not just me, is it…?
Gary Larson is one of those comic writers with a beautifully twisted sense of humour. I’ve always loved the silliness of this cartoon…
So, imagine my delight at seeing this on BoingBoing…
Creative Commons picture from flickr user wmjas
This is all a matter of the public record, so I’m perfectly fine telling you this. We’ll add the layers of murk to it so that I can stay a hidden little bunny rather than to protect me from revealing supa-sekret council information…
Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a horse. So she bought some land off the council and got planning permission to build some stables on it. The council said ‘yes’ but put a restriction on the application which banned use as a business property. She built her stables and rode her horses. All was fine.
8 years later, a new owner comes along and puts their horses on the land. They realise that the stables don’t match the plans, so they apply to the council for retroactive approval on the grounds it has been up for more than 4 years and no-one has noticed. They get a letter back saying the stables are now fine and the old planning permission is null and void.
4 years further on and a local dispute kicks off about the stables. There is much pushing and shoving. Much of it may be relevant, but little looks provable. One of the things that is brought up is that the new owner is now running a livery stables and riding school from the stables. Which is obviously illegal.
Except, it turns out that it isn’t.
When the council voided the old planning permission, they voided the business restriction at the same time, so there are no restrictions on what can happen there.
It’s strange how one piece of post can change your day.
This morning I was an University drop out who wasn’t getting anywhere fast with the Open University. I had grades at the OU that I was disappointed in and I was looking through the list of level one courses.
Lunchtime I got a letter from my old Uni (Leicester) with a transcript of my grades. A phone call to the OU confirmed that they’d accept up to 240 credits from other sources. Suddenly I had 190 credits towards a 360 credit degree.
Looking back over my OU sheets, the course I was deeply disappointed with was actually a 2.1 (for you forners, UK grades go 1st, 2.1, 2.2, 3rd, fail).
Suddenly I’m at the end of my 2nd year with a 2.1 average and looking at level 3 courses…
As Ladysmith Black Mambazo are currently singing in my ears “Happy day, oh happy day. Happy day, oh happy day. ” (ad nauseum)
I’d like to present a short play entitled “The day the food came”…
You can have as many ‘actors’ as you wish, however they fit into four roles: Big Fish; Little Fish; cardboard box; Shrimp; Live Food.
In the première, Big fish was played by Mollies and Platys; Little Fish was played by baby Mollies, baby Platys, Enders Guppies and some tetras; Shrimp were played by some, erm, shrimp; and Live Food was performed by by daphnies and brine shrimp…
Shrimp :
“The food god is coming. We can feel his presence in the ground”.
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Food? Food!”
Shrimp :
“Be patient… the food god doesn’t only bring food. Sometimes he brings death or small ornaments.”
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Foooooood!”
Shrimp :
*sigh*Meanwhile, elsewhere…
LiveFood :
“It’s got brighter. And warmer. We must be out of the fridge. Wake up guys. Wake up! Ergh – that’s not Bob, that’s an empty shell. Warming up, we’re warming up, we must be about to escape to the great oceans our great * X^87585 grandfathers told us about!”Back in the tank…
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Foooooooooooooooooooooood?”
Shrimp :
“The ground moves again…”
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Foooooooooooooooooooooood!”LiveFood enter stage… top.
LiveFood :
“We’re free!”
BigFish :
“More mouths to feed? Damn.”
LittleFish :
“Hello! Do you want to be friends?”
Shrimp :
“Oo, these old shells are tasty…”
BigFish & LittleFish :
“They’re edible? Omnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom”
LiveFood :
“Nooooooooo…!”
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Omnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom”
…
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Nom?”
…
BigFish & LittleFish :
“Where’d all the food go?”
Shrimp :
“Some say the Food God bringeth and he taketh away. Others think you’ve gutsed the lot.”BigFish :
“There must be something else to eat…?”
LittleFish :
“Nooooooooo…!”
I’m pretty sure that the only Annie Lennox song I know is “Walking on Broken Glass”, but this is seven kinds of cool.
Annie Lennox has given her master tapes over to DJ Earworm and let him go nuts with them. The result is the above linked Backwards Forwards.
It’s a nice little mashup, but it’s much, much cooler that one artist has given another artist the ability to do something cool with her work. Come on musicians – stop hiding behind copyright rules and be creative…!