Captain Fargon

Rosetta Stone

2011-08-26T02:04:00.007+01:00

Here's a picture I took of the Rosetta Stone a while ago, that I was fiddlin' with in Photoshop (...mainly to divert attention away from the monkey in the background).

More Smurf shit...

2011-08-01T17:47:00.007+01:00

Well, not literally, I'd imagine they'd get mistaken for little blue smarties...

It has recently, like yesterday, come to my attention that there is a new Smurf film out, in 3D, called 'Smurf 3D', which, in all *likelihood (*caution: spoiler alert), will be in 3D... and about Smurfs.

Being (~~proudly~~) in the top 1 percentile of adult males who have blogged about Smurfs in the past 5 years, I should be more excited than I am. I'm not.

Also, since this blog seems to get more visitors from people looking for 'Smurfs', 'knee rashes' and the phrase 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net', I should be at least motivated about it to some degree. I'm not.

Not wanting to completely piss on the smurf parade though, here is a nice tid-bit about Smurfs for all you Smurf-seekers out there:

The name 'Smurf' and ensuing concept, originally came from a Belgian Artist Peyo, who had mis-pronounced a word at dinner as he was asking for something to be passed over.

UPDATE: Now pissing on my own parade, I actually took a moment to look up the 'real' story on the Internet and it turns out that he was asking for the 'salt' to be passed over and, furthermore, the actual word that came out was 'schtroumpf', not 'smurf'. Which is French for 'whatever' so it seems (or allegedly anyway. I don't speak French and Babelfish does not seem to agree... nor know what it is at all?!?).

It was only in subsequent translation to Dutch that it became 'Smurf' and, from there, in English too!

So, after all that (and 30 years of my own belief), he never actually said 'Smurf' in the first place.

*sigh*, I liked my version better...

Smurf or Schlumpe

2011-07-10T12:15:00.007+01:00

I just spent 10 mins looking for a specific photo on my blog, that isn't there...

And it should be!

I meant to blog it years ago and, frankly, am amazed that I didn’t, or hadn’t, done so (yes, it's been a slow morning).

It concerns Smurfs and my love for them (legal disclaimer: relatively speaking). I've got some great Smurf stories (who doesn’t… boo-yah!)(Ed note: we have no idea where this is going either).

One of them from a friend ages ago, told me about this girl who had gone missing at a party. A period of time later and they found her, all OK, sitting alone in a cupboard.

Only thing was though as they opened the door and she looked up, she got all upset, started wailing loudly and then bursts, inconsolably, into tears.

Ages later and they're still trying to comfort her and get to the bottom of what is upsetting her, when they discover that ‘in her mind’ she had been happily sitting in the cupboard, surrounded by Smurfs. They were running and playing all about her and she was having the time of her life, all alone in this secret wee world with her new little blue friends.

Awww, fluffy bunny rabbits and happy thoughts…

Suddenly, her delight was disrupted as the door to the cupboard flew open and the humans started crowding in. As they did so, they stood on and, of course, squashed, lots of her new Smurf friends - to her absolute horror and dismay!

Hence the frantic reaction.

True story!

...did I mention that she was on mushrooms at the time?

~ ~ ~

As a life-long traveller, I had often thought of what would be good mementos from my travels.

One idea had been to see a cultural sporting event, relevant to wherever I was on the planet. All things considered, there has been limited overall progress on this one - $500 USD tickets to see the Canucks in Vancouver, for example, has put paid to that.

At an even younger stage I thought collecting the red McDonald's french fry packets would be pretty cool (...did you know they have different country-specific icons on them? Or did, anyway, somewhere back in a time closer to the last mini-Ice Age).

That, however, died out too as consideration on the hygiene matters associated with the storage of year-old greasy chip packets, grew on me (figuratively speaking). And, relatively, I just grew out of McDonalds food anyway.

~ ~ ~

Then, as a somewhat older monkey, I thought learning a unique word in a multiple foreign languages would be fun or useful. So, after the initial obligatory journey through swear words, I realised that, for me, 'Smurf' was the way to go.

With this life-matter affirmed, the next place I happened to settle in was Germany (specifically, the Bavarian countryside. Which, to some, if not many, is kind of a separate country in Germany anyway), but it took me absolutely freaking ages to find out what the word for 'Smurf' was there.

...after many conversations with many people (remember, I didn't speak much German at that stage. So, describing Smurfs and the world they live in, was not very easy nor successful. These conversations were not being helped by the fact that, not very far into the discussion, the other person had more thoughts on “actually, this cat might be nuts!”…or, specifically, “eigentlich, dieser Katze ist vielleicht verruckt”, than on working out what the juice I was talking about).

About 4 months later, I was in a service station with my girlfriend, standing idly in the books section, when I noticed there was a kids puzzle-book with a Smurf on the cover. Grabbing it in delight, I hurried over to her and while pointing enthusiastically at it, started manically repeating “Smurf, Smurf, Smurf”, over and over again.

To which she laughed and said “Ahhh, Schlumpf”.

Of course, it had been the word we had pondered many times previously, but had never had the definitive evidence to confirm it (look up Smurf in YOUR dictionary and see how you get on). Remember this was the pre-Internet, caveman, era and live in a foreign-speaking country for a while and you'll find many cultural divides.

Years later and I'm back in Hamburg, Germany, on a flying visit again and you can imagine my absolute joy at coming across a U-bahn stop (tube / train / subway) that was called ‘Schlump’, which is only one letter short of a Smurf.

It obviously deserved a photo.

This is that photo.

So, 10 minutes of searching and 40 minutes of writing later, I’m pleased to have found the picture. I’m also equally disturbed that, at my age, I’ve spent so much time sorting ‘this’ out {Ed not: I, somehow, blame Rob Brydon}.

Having had to look up the exact spelling of Schlumpf online, I have sadly just discovered that: move back a letter in the alphabet and:

Schlumpf (Smurf) becomes Schlumpe (slut)!

Egad, really?!? I never knew that.

But, then, sadly, found myself wondering - “Ist Smurfette a schlumpf-schlumpe?”.

Wow, I hope some German creative team has thought of this before and worked it through (please send all royalties to…).

Forget your 'Vorsprung durch Technik', there's a whole new Smurf paradigm going on here - and I don't need to Google that to know that 'that' whole philosophical quagmire has been debated to death (sic: Smurfette).

Addendum:

(1) I did once know ‘Smurf’ in about 12 languages. Years later and I have to use the Internet now just to find it in German - and that adventure in itself, just about turned into a visit to some websites that I really don’t want to see.

(2) Sadly, I never did find the Universe where knowing how to say the word ‘Smurf’ in multiple languages, was useful.

(2a) …probably in the cupboard with Mushroom Girl.

(3) from a greater blog’astic point of view, the fact that I’ve only blogged 3'ish times in two years is probably of greater significance than a ‘missing Smurf photo’ - Universe dependent, of course!

(4) I've got a sinking feeling that I've blogged about some (a lot) of this before (oh dementia... so soon?). Something ironic about repeating yourself on an inane subject, on a blog that you don't write to enough anymore.

(5) Oddly, No, I'm not still with that girlfriend...

Time keeps on ticking, ticking, into the future...

2011-06-11T04:01:00.003+01:00

Egad, where does it all go...

3 blogs in the lion's share of 2 years - nice!

Paths & Windows

2011-04-03T02:32:00.001+01:00

I find it difficult to talk...

that'd be Venus then, somewhere between BBC3 & BBC4...

2010-04-16T23:23:00.003+01:00

Click for (much) larger pic...

Phantastich, Schumacher Kommt Zurück!

2009-07-29T21:32:00.002+01:00

That's got to be the best news I've heard in ages (obviously, there ain't been much good news in my life recently), Schumacher is going to make an extraordinary return to F1 to fill in for the injured Felipe Massa!

Wow, that is so cool and is really going to put a bit of spice back into F1. Think of the matchup's with Schumacher vs Hamilton, Schumacher vs Alonso, Schumacher vs Button, Schumacher vs Vettel, amongst all the other stuff going on.

I never did see Schumacher race during his normal career and I'm already thinking about a wee trip to the Valencia for his first race and only one of the few European races he'll appear in. That'll be me & 80,000,000 Germans then...

Wild Turkey

2009-07-27T00:43:00.002+01:00

Someytimes, you just gotta dance... with a 'Y'...

Ohhh, I want one of those...

2009-07-21T13:54:00.006+01:00

Over the years I've spent a buckload on Sony's overpriced crap (one the reasons I'm now a Mac owner), but I really have to get one of these...

Sony Releases Latest New Kit

40 years to the minute...

2009-07-20T20:57:00.002+01:00

...since man landed on the moon.

Personally, since that time, I've learnt to walk, wipe my own bum and, eventually, fly.

All things considered, I think I've achieved more than NASA in the interim...

Administrative Error {502:Overload}

2009-04-22T00:36:00.006+01:00

There must have been...

...surely, I've blogged sometime between now & the 10th Dec 2008...?!?

"...check the logs for 'icebergs'." quoth the Raven (unhelpfully).

"Nope, all cool!" replies Bridge...

+ + TRANSMISSION LOST + +
dataCodeStamp: 004722042009Z;

Duck's Disease

2008-12-10T03:29:00.008Z

Amazingly, positively, I can report that I’ve been running like a dog recently. In fact, rather more like a dog than I would have liked on some of the more recent ones (I seemed to go through a phase there of losing any fitness that I had).

Looking back I see I’ve chalked up 50 runs in the last 3 months, which, frankly, has required a huge amount of effort and a fair degree of obstinacy because, when all is said and done, I’m not really a runner’s runner.

For beginners, I have what my father would have descriptively called "Duck’s disease" – where my arse is too close to the ground i.e. long spine / arms, shorter legs (not that he used it on me personally, as I am nigh on 6 foot. ‘Nigh’ in this case being 5’11 ¾ - as whinged about previously).

My body configuration is good for swimming and especially good for ice-skating, where the lower your centre of gravity the better, but it is not much chop for running.

I also can’t even say I particularly like running, but I have a huge amount of respect & belief in being fit and, at the end of the day, running is the most accessible form of fitness there is available to most folk. You put on your shoes and just do it, to quote an over-hyped company (he says spying his branded running top & cap in the corner).

So, with a life-long attempt of trying to maintain fitness (having first ever set off for ‘a run’, of my own accord, when I was about 8), I get out there irregularly and go plodding... with varying degrees of success. Anyway, I had a vague agenda in mind this year that I shan’t bore you with here, but am pleased to say that it will be over in a few more weeks (or this phase of it anyway).

It has been tough going recently and as the winter gets grimmer, darker and colder, it has been getting tougher, run by fargin’ run. In fact, I haven't been running in temperatures that were in 2 digits for goodness knows how long and over the last 8 weeks, it has averaged between minus 2 & 5 deg C (I do have a habit of running at night), plus, at times, there's been a shitty westerly wind recently - once up to 35 mph (that was a bundle of laughs, let me tell you).

The other day, 3rd December to be precise, I went out for what must have been one of the most precarious runs of my life. It was cold, 0 deg C, but it had been a lot colder the night before at minus 6 and there was black ice everywhere.

As I started out on the first mile or so, I didn’t really appreciate how bad it was. Over a hill and as I got down to an exposed section where the wind consistently blows, thereby dropping the temperature even further, it was like an ice skating rink. By this stage I was out on the road, as the footpath had become un-runable (sp?), and so I began matching up my life & limb, with the passing traffic.

Being 5.30pm, it was already pitch black and the cars were having their own difficulties without having to deal with an over-enthused, but under-prepared, Kiwi on the same road. As I got down the end of a straight I figured I’d be OK as the return leg was along the canal and once there, there would be no traffic to contend with.

How wrong was I. The path beside the canal was now fully iced up, as it had not had the benefit of some heat friction from any passing foot-traffic. Now I was having to run on the very rough weedy grass that separated the canal & path itself, which is, at best, 3 feet wide.

Now, there are no lights along this canal path and with sections of ice hidden in the undulating tussock, I was only one bad-foot step from a plonk in the canal. It’s a pretty canal it has to be said, but the water is not the best and of the two folk I know of who have ended up submerged in it, one ended up with Glandular Fever and the other contracted some other equally scary lurge.

Thinking before writing this blog, I cast my mind back over the years and I don’t think I have ever aborted a run before. I’ve certainly flagged a few before they ever started, but never crapped out of one, during it. Another mile or so along the canal and I finally thought ‘bugger this’ and figured I’d stop at the next bridge, review the safest option and either walk home along the canal, or get back to the main road, via the bridge, to return that way.

So, I make it to the bridge underpass which consists of cobblestones and just as I’m easing to a halt at the far side, I lose my footing on some ice and start to tumble. At the same time an elderly chap appeared entering the short tunnel from the other side and, in essence, I skidded out past him, sliding along on my knee & side.

He looked shocked and said “Goodness, are you alright?” to which I replied “...and that is why you don’t go running along canals on black ice!”. I stood up, thanked him for his concern and walked up to the main road for the return (in the end, I ran home anyway as I’d already been on that part, it was nowhere near as bad as the canal and I had my tail up by then about the whole adventure anyway).

The only injury (read: world's smallest scratch) was my knee and that is barely worth talking about. Post-shower it looked something like this:

But I do mention it because it has been a while since I’ve been able to post a photo of personal injury on this blog (as feeble as it may have been) and for a while back there, I was starting to have a field day with adventures like this and this.

At the end of the day though, gotta say I kinda enjoyed myself in a perverse way. Mad & dangerous as it all was, it was a jolly good challenge and I thoroughly enjoyed the Carpe Diem element of it all.

Oddly enough, as I reflect back now, there were no ducks to be seen out there on the canal, short-arsed or otherwise - I guess they know better…

Samaratin Work

2008-12-09T04:29:00.008Z

Well, that’s pushing it really…

In that odd twist of life where things happen in 3’s, two rather strange similar events have happened to me recently. Essentially, I’ve helped to return a couple of wallets to their respective owners.

The first one happened about 2 weeks ago when I was leaving my flat to go and watch some rugby. I’m barely 10 feet from the front door when I spy a bulging Japanese ‘Manga’ type wallet, lying on the ground.

Initially, I sorta walked past it in a way that a cat does, airing indifference, while it sizes up the situation.

I was already late for the bus and the game, but after taking a few more paces my good ol’ Kiwi upbringing took over and I knew I could not just leave it lying there. I dashed back and picked it up, whilst looking around for anyone who had that ‘oh crap, I’ve lost my wallet’ look on their face.

After a quick inspection I could see no-one (at all) so I figured I’d quickly stick it in my flat and sort it out later.

Many hours on, post rugby and associated mayhem, I’m back and ready to investigate the wallet situation. I open it to discover that it belonged to a girl, who was a local University student and like all good students, she had virtually no money - vice a fiver and some pennies.

Monday morning and I phone up the local University all ready to get a message to this girl that her wallet was safe & sound and arrange a way for her to pick it up.

Yeah, right – not in bloody 21st century Britain!

First of all I spoke to a chap who said I could bring it in, to which I said that I wasn’t able to come in right at the moment or, frankly, wasn't prepared to trapse over town, losing a couple of hours of work, to drop it off (well, like I said, not right then). He then said to e-mail in the details of the student.

Dutifully, I sent off an e-mail to the address he supplied and a couple of hours later I got a reply back saying that they couldn’t help, that I would have to drop off the wallet to them, in person. I wrote back a somewhat curt message saying ‘what do you mean, you can’t help? Surely you can get a message to the, by then, probably fretting girl, to say that her wallet and its contents were safe & sound?’.

More hours go past and I then get an e-mail back from his superior stating that due to the Data Protection Act, they can not give out any details about a student and, furthermore, they can not confirm or deny whether they have a student there.

WTF? I wasn’t asking her out for a date! I was merely trying to get a message to her that I had her wallet and that she didn’t necessarily need to go and cancel all her cards etc. Again, the overlord said I needed to drop it off to them or into a local police station.

I couldn’t be bothered replying to her by then, but, being somewhat irate, I was tempted to write back to say that ‘alright, no problem, I’ve chucked it back into the middle of the street - where I’m sure it’ll get stolen pretty quickly! But at least we wouldn’t breach the Data Protection Act’.

Anyway, a day or two later I discovered there was a police station somewhat closer to me than I realised and I trundled down there to hand it in. Going though the motions with the policeman, I related my tale of the University reaction fully expecting him to say ‘WTF, that’s crazy!’, but he only said ‘Yeah, they can’t give out details because of the Data Protection Act’.

*grumble*

I couldn’t be bother going further down the path to say about the ‘just passing on a message’ thing, as I realised this was going nowhere and my view of the Universe had been superseded by an early 21st century parliamentary act.

So there you have it folks, what a monkey’s arse-about-face time & place we live in. I agree about not giving out details on a student or encouraging any situation where they would be sent off to meet up with a stranger, but that is Data Protection gone absolutely spastic where they can not pass on a message to say something has been found and that it is safe & sound?!? Twats!

In the end, by the time any message got anywhere near the poor lass to say that it had been found, she must have cancelled all of her cards and, as such, the contents of it would have been thoroughly useless by then – save the £5 & funky wallet.

So, on to the second of these odd events…

About a week ago I hear the clatter of my postal slot and a rather ominous thud in my hallway, as something crashed to the ground. I go out to investigate there is a very screwed up white envelope, with the barest of writing on it. The scrawled address on it was right, but the name was not and there was no return address.

The contents were already spilling out so it was no feat of entry, nor breach of the 1792 postal act, to investigate the contents. I turned it over and to my amazement, a bulging wallet came tumbling out.

WTF, am I attracting these things?

Well versed by then in the art of wallet investigation, I got to the heart of the matter and found a drivers licence in this one, which belonged to a guy called Ben (I’ll call him that… since that is his name). It stated that he lived in the same street, but the next number along.

That night, early evening, I went down the road to look at the buzzers on the next building to see if I could identify the flat or his name. Like all good UK buzzers they were completely illegible and gave absolutely no indication which flat was which.

Back at home I fired up the trusty internet and did an investigation on him (I’d done the same for the girl above, but it was inconclusive). Eventually, on Facebook, I found a chap who was in Edinburgh and who’s profile picture sorta looked like the one on the driver’s licence (he had a cycling helmet on in his Facebook profile image, so his face was somewhat obscured).

I sent a quick message to him and the next day I got one back, saying ‘yeah, fantastic, that is my wallet, but he hadn’t lived there for a couple of years!’. He identified the wallet correctly in the message, for any diligent sleuth-like reader out there, and mentioned about some money being in it.

I wrote back to him to say ‘great, let’s meet up and I can give it back to you’, but, at the same time, had to tell him that there was no money in there (it was only a 20 Euro note). So, I’ve yet to meet Ben, as he was away for the weekend, but I look forward to catching up to return his possessions and basking in the light of my humanitarian work.

I wonder if he works for the Parliament or knows much about the Data Protection Act?

Good on ya' Manly...

2008-10-06T04:42:00.005+01:00

Somewhat late to the picnic, I got to see the final two games of the NRL season... since there were no takers on my Setanta Broadband sale.

It was great (even getting up at 7am on a Saturday to watch the Final) and I really enjoyed being able to watch a bit of sport from 'downunder', especially with some 78 points scored over the 2 games.

Could have been a teensy-bit better if Manly hadn't have scored 72 of those 78 points.

Final score NRL grand final * Manly Sea Eagles 40 - Melbourne Storm 0 *

For Sale

2008-09-28T17:05:00.004+01:00

"1 x Setanta Broadband Package. Barely used. Upset owner."

I guess that's progress - at least they converted the try this time in their 32-6 loss...

No history repeat please!

2008-09-27T10:17:00.007+01:00

I'm anxiously glued to my computer waiting for the game to start...

Very soon, like in 26 minutes, New Zealand's only pro Rugby League team will take on the Manly Sea Eagles in the last semi-final of this year's NRL (Aussie Rugby League competition), to see who takes the last spot in this year's final.

Middle of this year and they were doing terribly, everyone had written them off. While I was in NZ they turned their season around and started their current winning streak (10 in 12 games to today) which took them to the play-offs and, now, very against the odds, to the semi-finals.

I got to see about 2 of those first few games of that run and none since, bugger it.

Figuring I'd blow £10+ if I went to see it at the pub this morning, I thought I'd cough up the bucks for Setanta Sports so I can actually watch it from the comfort of my own home. Actually, with my laptop and my mobile broadband contract I could watch it from the top of the nearest hill, but home will do for this morning.

It's funny since I once saw the Warriors play live at the Sydney oval way back in '95, shortly after I'd first left left NZ. The club had only just formed and on the other side of the equation, I had a mate who had played for Manly in time gone by - so I was keen to see the game while passing through New South Wales.

Unfortunately, as the time for game start drew close, I’d been on a 50-hour bender, part of which was spent in the pub from the beginning scene of the massively crap film ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’, which is worth a digression in itself. I'm not much of a fan of musicals in the first place, so it was never going to have much hope with me, but, to add to its doom, some clown had told me before the film started, way back when, that it was about 'aliens', or that is what I heard anyway. So, I sat there for 1/2 the film wondering when & how on earth aliens were going to come into this film?

When it finally truly dawned on me that they weren't and this was as good as it gets, I was pretty pissed!

Anyhoose, back on the day, entering my 49th hour with a wee accomplice at my side, I figured I was up to going to the stadium to watch the game. So, I actually made it across Sydney and into the stadium, but, sadly, faded as the game started, passing out ½ way through the game... falling asleep on the grassy bank!

I only woke up as the game was over and the crowd were all leaving. Lucky thing really – since the bloody mongrels lost by 52-4!

1 minute to go...

Wot's on the telly...

2008-08-19T02:20:00.015+01:00

Well, I'm back and it's great to indulge in a bit of crap telly, in the comfort of my own house... with my own universal remote.

It's funny, I've found, that if you ask folk they'll generally always say "Oh, I don't watch telly that much...". 'Really?', I so often seem to think 'It seems like the fargin' thing is on, every bloody time I go round there'.

Whilst in the Land of the Long White Cloud I had the slightly unnerving pleasure of meeting the man who 'doesn't care what channel the telly is on'.

We've probably all been in the situation in someone else's house, when the host, who you don't know so well, is out of the room for a extended period of time, to go and change the channel over to some other crap, which you'd slightly more prefer to watch. In this case with, obviously, bugger all else on, I'd settled on Ski Jumping - a 'passing interest' leftover from having lived through a German in Winter where, like anything, if you watch something for long enough, you get into it!

A few minutes later he'd come back in the room and I thought 'shit, I don't want to be seen as the guy who has boldly taken over his telly' (some people can be quite sensitive to this sort of thing) so I left the remote on the table, pretending nothing had changed, and squirmed with embarrassment as this 'brief' news update refused to go away - highlighting my breach of domestic protocol with the never-ending heartbeat, beating, beating, under the floorboards.

After about 10mins I had to blurt out "change the channel back to what you want, I was just surfing about". He said "nah, I don't mind" and the funny thing was... he actually meant it!

On a few occasions I was back at his house and, for various reasons, the channel had, at times, ended up on something abstract thing or other and I had noted, he really was perfectly happy to sit there, in complete silence, and watch whatever crap TVNZ would throw at him - no matter what it was. Bizarre. That was flexible telly watching at the extreme (in case you're wondering, he was nice soul, but I would not called him 'dynamic').

I'm not advocating that one should watch the telly too much, or watch it 'like that', or even to watch ski-jumping, but there is a time & place to just blob out and watch 'something'. Personally, I don't watch normal shows at all, merely soaking in documentaries, sports, cartoons (Simpsons & Family Guy) and even now, late at night, as I often do, not owning a radio, listening to a bit of radio courtesy of my not-very-electrically-green-for-such-purposes TV - 'Late Junction' in this case on BBC Radio 3 (highly recommended - eclectic music from ALL around the planet).

My 'TV man' buddy did have one vice I have to admit and that was Coronation Street. Christ, how much do I hate soapies - with that being the worst plague of the lot. Well, maybe not, at least they can act (or in that wooden, exaggerated, pregnant-pause manner of soapie acting). But for the truly tragic check out NZ's own Shortland Street - not only is the program incredibly shit, but the acting is absolutely atrocious, on a scale that has to be endured to be believed!

Back in my own world of rubbish-telly watching, I did find myself the other day slighty drawn into the fascinating world of some folk whose hobbies effectively revolved around 'checking out roundabouts'. I kid you not. They got together at weekends and then and went and visited roundabouts around the UK. They would view them from all angles, take notes, take photos, some even had their own club (with t-shirts) and, naturally, all went for a jolly beer afterwards. Extraordinary!

Of course, in the same breadth of a weekend, on another documentary, I did learn that the space shuttle has a fuel efficency, in its take-off stage, of 2 feet per gallon. I like that, that's good, and its the awareness of that sort of thing which sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom (which, of course, we are able to lampoon over their furry little heads and can continue to do so in the future, if there is any form of an ecosphere sphere left to do it in).

On other fronts I've also been thorougly enjoying the Olympics. I wouldn't normally cheer on the Americans, not for any xenophobic hangup, but purely because, like China, they have such a vast population, it is pretty hard for them not to win everything. As such, it seems hardly worth giving them any further inane moral support.

Having said that, being an ex-swimmer and sporting purist, I found myself up late at night a couple of times last week, circa 4am, screaming at the telly, cheering on Phelps to pull of his incredible feat (8 golds if you're a sporting heathen). I was always disappointed to not have been able to see Mark Spitz swag his 7 incredible gold medals, at the '72 Munich Olympics and never thought I'd see such a feat passed in my lifetime. So, to be less than 3 1/2 decades later and to see the impossible being done, was something special to behold.

Finally then, In the words of Richard Dawkins (on telly tonight), on the subject of religion & science "Planes fly - magic carpets & broomsticks don't!".

Touche my good man, touche!

2008-07-19T13:43:00.000+01:00

ich schreibe jetzt...

2008-06-02T01:02:00.020+01:00

'Shazam' and I'm back...

... haven't actually really been anywhere of course, but there are tales to be told nonetheless.

Life, she’s a funny ol' buzzard at times, good/bad, happy/sad, and at other times completely Fargin' complicated.

When all is said and done though, you’ve only got one, so whatever it is “you better make the most of it before the whole shithouse goes up in flames..." as Jim Morrison famously said once, or something like that anyway (never could work out exactly what the hell he was babbling about on that particular album).

So, to be frank, there's been a whole pile of crap going down for moi and generally not very good crap indeed. Was seeing someone for quite a while too, but that ended up in a moderate train wreck as well. *mwah*, so it goes.

I had heartily looked forward to the end of '07 since that year had been, all in all, a bit of technological nightmare (also read: expensive). Sadly, '08 has been having its own catalogue of barndances, as well.

This ain’t the time nor format to get into it, but one sadder recent life-torpedo I will mention, is that someone close to me has developed terminal cancer and is fading pretty fast. Sad stuff indeed and with that in mind, I’m off in a couple of weeks for an emergency flying trip back to New Zealand, to see various folk, friends & members of my own Cavebear clan!

I gotta say, in the carnage that has been life recently, that it has completely pissed me off that I fallen off the bandwagon with this blog. Happily though a couple of recent kindly comments & prompters from friends, has reminded me that there are some folk out there who do ‘actually’ enjoy reading it (must buy them a beer).

Over the months I have kept quasi-hassling myself thinking that I ‘need’ to explain my absence to my own blog, like a tardy schoolboy and that, naturally, adds more obstacles to writing itself.

Naturally, the idiocy of that sentiment is only too clear to me. That 'sentiment' being quite difficult to define i've realised and a jolly good exercise in rhetoric, that Cicero himself would revel in.

In that, I realise I’m subconsciously saying ‘…hassle self to go forth and write in an abstract online diary, explaining to your most enthusiastic, nay regular, reader (which would predictably be yourself - now redefined as the audience), why you have not written ‘as such’ to the audience explaining the extenuating circumstances in the delay of writing to yourself, on behalf of yourself, about yourself… or your life therein’.

Hmmm, Cicero could provide more eloquent prose, but he went to a better school and had more time on his hands.

That cerebral minefield aside, I figured I’d just naturally get the band back together at some right time & place anyway. So, hoo-har, I think it can be said, I’m now officially back in the game (if I use another cliché or idiom in this blog, I’m gonna shoot myself).

So, I’m keen to try and blog a bit over the next couple of months (ideally decades), but I’ll have to play that by ear (right… get the gun).

Actually, it is quite an important time in my life anyway for different reasons, but I shan’t get into that here either. Regular readers of this rather irregular blog, may get the reference if I was to refer to previous dribbles on Kylie Minogue’s birthday, Robert Kennedy being shot, Andy Warhol being stabbed and Helen Keller dying.

Suffice to say, it is a big one and I’m going to be running for it. Literally, as the bell tolls, he says, especially now, with only a few hours to go...

(not from new camera)

All that obtuseness aside, I had to buy a new camera a while ago (my previously beloved digital SLR took an unexpected broadside and was never been the same afterwards). A hassle to cough up the money (or credit card as the case may be), but my replacement camera is a hell of a step up.

I had a Canon 300D and now am the proud owner of a Canon 40D, oft-described as the ‘baby brother’ of the insane, top of the shelf, Canon EOS 1D mk III.

My new little baby has a fantastic lens on it as well, worth about the same as the body itself as it goes, and also runs the same operating system as that which is integrated into the 1D.

Amongst a number of other wicked treats, this all means that the lens is image stabilised and the camera can handle shooting at just under 7 fps (frames per second), and can do that for about 30-40 frames in a row (in the 20^th century that means a standard 24-exposure roll of film gone in a shade under 3 ½ seconds). I hate to be immature, but when you hold down the shutter and it's firing off absolutely tonnes of high quality photos in the blink of an eye (all about 15MB in RAW mode), it is all rather exciting, ducky.

I’ve barely had a chance to use it with all that has been going on, but good old Kiwi land is well identified as my first serious photographic essay. So, some hopefully better-than-crap pictures may grace this blog, or some of my other outlets, soon.

The 2 pictures on this blog here are just from my camera phone, which is a N95, in case you’re wondering … which is a replacement handset (that I had to actually physically pay for) since I lost the other one a while back (and that, in itself, was already a contract replacement for my original one that died when I ‘effectively’ sat on it, with my fat arse *sigh*). Hence the quality of these pictures is a bit ropey.

They both feature from this very weekend where I’d been catching up with some people and was getting home a bit… erm… late. So late in fact, that the sun was already getting into another day. In my defence though, we are at pretty high northern latitudes here in Edinburgh (the same parallel as Moscow as it goes) and with the summer equinox only 3 weeks away, there are a fair few sunlit hours in the average day here, in this global neck of the woods (somewhat making up for the virtual darkness of October thru March, that the Scots get to ‘enjoy’ here annually).

So, that’s it, I’ve said my piece, spent my load, done my bit (right, bullets please) and I’ll sign off now with the stated enthusiasm of being a bit more proactive with this blog in the time to come.

On one last serious note though, there are a number of you out there that I am desperately overdue for e-mailing to. So please accept my apologies for those oversights and the messages will be coming through in their own manner & form, as soon as they can (unless they do actually, finally, start writing themselves, in which case it'll be sooner).

See you on the other side!

Captain Fargon – 2 June 2008

p.s. contrary to what a this blog has implied, I’m pleased to report my that my arse is not fat, except, in this case, in a figurative sense. My heads a bit bald, but my arse is not fat… as I can do something about that.

A good whine & overdue job

2007-10-16T20:01:00.000+01:00

I've been somewhat grounded with a shitty head cold ever since I went to Glasgow late last week. A number of days later and it has well & truly outstayed its welcome and I'm getting somewhat sick of it...

So much so that you could say that I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!

I had been watching, distractedly, the news tonight having given up on a desparate search to find something more cerebral than 'Emmerdale Fargin Farm' to watch (on this note, may I add that the latest rouse of digital Freeview activity which took place yesterday has, notably, given us a new station called 'Dave' and stripped away UK History from the 6pm-1am programming schedule. Nice one! I'm sure there aren't any office workers out there who would like to watch something more 'informative' than God-forsaken soapies, when they get home from a hard days work. Especially if you look at todays normal television schedule for 7.30pm, where you have the grand options of EastEnders, Snooker, Emmerdale, News {after Hollyoaks} and Nigel Marven's Shark Island {an hour after Home and Away finishes} ).

Anyway, the news had an article about the middle-classed English drinking too much wine at home! 'Jolly good' I thought and, as mentioned, being sick & tired of being sick & tired, I put on my jumper, thick denim jacket & wolly hat and trundled off down the road to buy a nice bottle of wine.

Somewhat partial to New World wines (surprise, surprise, but, in my defence, who isn't?) this is the 2nd time I've bought a 2007 Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc from their private bin and I've got to say it is jolly nice.

I normally stick to the £5-8 bracket, due to an inbuilt natural thriftiness (read: tight) and the realisation that my palette is not that distinguished, nor versed in fine-world wines (I don't even drink Red, but that is a very good story for another day). But I quite happily coughed up £10 for this little number, which got about 8 steps in the door before, unsurprisingly, its head got knocked off.

In an associated fit of enthusiasm last night (also trying to rid this cold from my consciousness) I launched into some well-overdue tasks. Before I knew it I had decided to change the strings on my trusty guitar, which has served for well for nigh on 20 years now.

I haven't changed the strings for years (5 at least) which is inexcusable. I always think to myself go and play it steady for a few weeks and then, when I'm a bit more up to speed, put a fresh set on then. The theory being that the initial rich vibrancy of new strings are wasted if they are only going to be used by rusty fingers (watch out younger readers, it's the same type of mindset you'll find you get afflicted with when you get older - saving 'good looking' or 'useful' plastic bags).

All of which is complete twaddle and I should have just changed them years ago.

If you look at the lower section of the picture (click for a zoomed version), you'll see there is a pretty cool dust smear, where I swiped my finger down it. Normally it lives in its flight case, but over the last year its been running around free and, apparently, collecting my human detritus.

Now it's all sparkly & shiny again with brand new strings, and that is before I even get into the brightness & richness of the sound (resonance is what I'm trying to say). If I didn't know better I'd say it sounds like a 12-string.

It's always has had a great sound (far greater players than I will ever be, have often commented so) that stands it way above what its initial purchase figure would suggest. I think its life beside me in sooo many & various temperatures and climates around the world, frantically cooled & heated from many trips in unpressurised aircraft holds and the just 'general' knocking about its taken - not to mention the odd kicking, falling over and general 'being dragged about' (that's before i got the flight case obviously) has added to its rich & unusual vibrance.

So, that's me, away to get quietly phished by myself and fiddle with my guitar - nice night in at home, eh (...unless you have a 'life', partner, children or SKY, of course)!

p.s. an addendum to this story. Halfway into my 2nd glass (they're only wee) and I figured I'd go and record a little number on it and then post it on this blog as an .mp3. Having duly practised for 5 mins and found my £2 microphone (which I flogged off somebody once - state of the art 'quality'), I realised that you can't upload/host .mp3 files to Blogger's server anyway.

Which is a bummer - about to give my first global gig and the theatre hall collapses around me... farg' me!

moose in da hoose...

2007-10-09T13:16:00.001+01:00

When I was young I used to like to draw.

Particularly, I used to like to pull things apart and draw the contents of what was, by then (in the pursuit of artistic expression), a freshly ruined item - I'm talking about one-speaker headphones here, vice cats.

Sadly, all of that kind of thing died on its arse when I turned 12 and elected to follow more academic pursuits. Believing, after receiving advice from elders, that it was the better and more relevant way for me to go.

I don't necessarily disagree with the advice given, but if I had been the one giving the 'said advice' to a young mind, I would have chucked in a "do bear in mind that sometimes there is more to life than black & white decisions (or considerations)".

Pity because now, many years later, having lost any real form of youthful skill, I realise I quite like the act of drawing in itself and, personally, find it's quite a fairly cathartic thing for me to do. Also, I'm happy to admit, my drawing skills are somewhat cocooned at a 12 year old level, which is fine, since the things I'm inclined to draw include logos & cartoon characters. Besides which, as more of a 'Homer' of Springfield than Greece, I realise its more about the act of drawing, vice what you actually produce.

I don't know if it all started sub-consciously with me pondering sub-orbital animals (see last post & comments), but, late last night, with sore eyes from staring at a computer screen all day long, I picked up a bit of paper and started scribbling away.

A short time later and a wee moose had turned up.

By the time I realised the perspective was all out of kilter with the cheese etc, I didn't really care, I was enjoying myself and thought 'bugger it' and carried on regardless... 'no-one will see it anyway', I thought.

So, I kinda like him for what he stands for, vice what he is with his wonky perspective & late minute nose-job. Hence, I figured I'd launch the little fella into cyberspace anyway...

Sputnik on...

2007-10-04T22:58:00.000+01:00

All 3 of the regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I'm a pretty keen monkey on all matters of space. As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, but the NZ space administration would have had trouble organising a car boot sale, let along lobbing something into space.

So, today, the 4th October 2007, hearlds 50 years since the Soviets blasted 'Sputnik' into space, the first man made object to orbit the earth. It was a shade under 60cm in width and a shade over 80kg in weight and couldn't do much except electronically bleep "I'm sputnik", or the russian equivalent.

Well done to the Ruskies, it was a stirling effort and the igniter that sparked the Space Race...

it's always interesting to relate relative technology and one comparison I love is that the computer on board of Apollo 11 (the one that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins to the moon and back) had a 8KB processor on it. What is that you ask, well, effectively, it had the computing power of the most basic calculator you could find in a shop now i.e. one that could add, subtract, divide & multiply and that's about it.

In my own homage to space I have always named my computers / technological bits of kits after major space components. There has been Sputnik, Voyager, Apollo, Titan and others. Only my first computer didn't adhere to the system and he was called 'larry', as in 'Larry the Laptop' - perhaps I should write to NASA with a down-to-earth naming suggestion.

As it goes, I've had a bit of a technological day today myself as I took receipt of a long dreamt of Garmin Forerunner 305. Essentially it's a stopwatch, but it also records your heartrate and, with thanks to it's onboard GPS, it also maps your route, change in altitude in a spatial 3D manner, all of which can be downloaded to a computer.

Last Sunday, 30 Sep, I chalked up my 100th run for the year and as I've wanted one of these puppies for years, I treated myself. Earlier in the year when i did the bulk of the work toward this goal (back in NZ), I thought if/when I get to the centennial target, I will treat myself to something nice as a wee pat on the back for my efforts (as you get older there ain't too many people to pat you on the back, so you've got to do it yourself sometimes), even though, financially, there are plenty of other things that I should be putting my money towards at the moment.

I'm lucky if I get to 60 runs in a year, so I've broken all previous records and still have 3 calendar months to go in this year. So, i'm quite aware that I'm setting a personal record this year that I ain't ever going to beat. I've always wanted to be a person who just happily bounds out on runs 3 times a week, but that is not my mindset.

I'm the kind of guy who gets fit for 6 weeks and then craps out, only having to go through the whole painful 'getting fit again' phase again, 2 months later (this has been going on for about 25 years now).

Anyway, well done to Sputnik and a pat on the back to myself too. I now need to go and name the little bugger - sadly i've used 'Sputnik' before, so I need to dream up something else... Albert II was the first monkey in space (erm, on a one way ticket), but it doesn't quite have the ring I'm looking for.

Any suggestions welcome...

still badgering

2007-09-24T21:37:00.000+01:00

I went to write a 'well done' on a site that caught my imagination today and ended up writing a Fargin' essay and bombing their guestbook with it. Since I can't seem to write on my own blog, I might as well whack it in here too.

To most folk the discussion may be a bit esoteric (discussing programming languages), but I'm sure you'll appreciate the underlying sentiment, as we all use the interent & computers, if you can be bothered to read through my blether. What they've done is to set up a platform that shows the programming code which will produce the words to the song '99 bottles of beer on the wall'.

The kicker is though, that it is open for other programmers to contribute to and they write the same functionality, but in varying languages (they're up to 1120 when I viewed it). It might not sound like much, but I explain my enthusiasm below (you can see the site at 99-bottles-of-beer.net/), whilst also managing to make a couple of bad jokes and attempting to offend the Chinese government at the same time:

Author: Captain Fargon
Location: Earth
FANTASTIC++

"Wow, I wish I knew of this site last century when I first started programming!

It is so useful, especially when you are first starting out, to be able to compare programming languages in multiple syntax, all achieving the same function…

Darn, the amount of sleep, hair and mojo I could have saved over the years by not fretting over which language to next self-learn! The time & energy I put into getting a handle on what was going where, which would be most useful & what was truly the 'right path to follow’ (which, as it turns out, is none of them as it is all relative to what you're trying to achieve and whether, generally, your vent in life is for altruistic or commercial gain), almost makes me cry now, looking back.

Flying on a non-binary level, I speak a couple of languages (Deutsch & Espanol) and, similarly, dual-language books are a wonderful tool for advancing rapidly in your appreciation & digestion of a new language.

On each open page of said books, you have the new language on one side and the translation into your mother-tongue, on the other. Once you've learnt 300-500 words etc and have what is recognised educationally as the ‘initial grasp of a language’ (enough to be able to read, & generally understand, a book written for a 7 year old), you can then rapidly advance your broader understanding and base knowledge of the new tongue, by being able to immediately relate the new word, term or phrase of what you are reading, to your existing vocational map - Antipodean English, of the 'Kiwi' variant, in my case...

The first programming language I learnt was Javascript, circa 1998, and 'experienced' programming soothsayers of the day (established Gods, as it seemed to me at the time), would tell me that I was wasting my time, it was doomed and would be defunct in 5 years and, besides which, it wasn't a real programming language anyway!

Well, knocking on 10 years later (and, maybe, 10 forays into various languages), I still think learning Javascript up front was the best thing I ever did (HTML came first of course)!
With social networking sites & Web 2.0 ever so gently evolving, Javascript is a handy tool and trusted friend to have in the box. These days, with its fundamental association to things like Ajax & ActionScript (Flash programming language), it is only ever going to become more prevalent as richer interactive web applications come to the fore of EVERYBODIES lives.

See Google Maps or Google Analytics (if you’re a website owner) in action, in order to see the opening salvo’s of the future of the internet / computer. And, ultimately, the part they will play in the evolution of Homo Superior. These sorts of applications, platform independent, will sit on your computer desktop, fridge, tv et al, and 'richly' assist your life whether connected to the internet or not.
Even the new ‘One Laptop Per Child’ XO machines are running on Python and good ol’ Javascript (discover the Project here). If the project works and I really hope it does, there could be ½ billion of them running around the planet in 10 years time (or whatever form the ‘machines’ may evolve into).
Well done to the chaps (or chapesses) who thought up the idea and created this site. A fine initative indeed and, I’m sure, of invaluable use to new & developing programmers out there.
I’ll certainly buy you a beer one day when I meet you in a bar… hopefully not in a Chinese prison camp on Mars though (free thought and all that)."

21 years

2007-08-04T02:56:00.000+01:00

wow, twenty one years...

I forgot to say...

2007-07-13T18:37:00.000+01:00

... while I was writing that blog earlier today I got an e-mail from a mate which said something like - "I've got a spare ticket to go and see Blondie playing at the Castle tonight. Do you want to go?"

To which I spluttered (or, as best as one can splutter via e-mail and a keyboard) "You mean like Blondie? Blondie as in Debbie Harry or, now, the 62 year old 'Deborah' Harry?".

"Hell yeah dude!".

I had somewhat of a crush on her when I was a wee fella (along with a NZ singer called Sharon O'Neill) and hoped / imagined that my future wife would look like / be like 'Debbie Harry' (little did I know that decades later the closest thing I would have for a wife, would be a 3kg flat rectangular box of plastic & metal, made by 'Uncle Sony').

Now that it is raining outside (it is still 'summer' over here, of course) as I know first-hand having just come back in from a run, I've discovered that my friend, who is somewhat younger than I, is not so keen to go any more (the tickets were free, God knows how or why). But he ain't gonna get out of it that easily!

So, now, I'm quickly heating up something to eat, writing this blog and preparing to have a quick shower. I've already checked online with Ticketmaster and I can't take my good camera with me - let alone my zoom lens! So Mr Nokia N95, here's your big chance to be a hero and prove your worth. Let's see what snaps you can take of an elderly lady, from a distance and in the rain.

I'll post them over the weekend if it works!

Cool, I must admit I'm a pretty happy little bunny about all of this...

hectic times

2007-07-13T12:10:00.000+01:00

"for the love of God" I've cried many times in the last few weeks, which, as an antitheist, shows the lengths of desperation I've been driven to...

To summarise the last few weeks:

The great British summer has rolled on, or rained on, to be more precise. So much so, that it had a bloody good go at raining out Wimbledon! Whilst all that was going on, the flooding was getting to extreme levels, noticeably around Sheffield. Which luckily is nowhere near where I live - but, it is, however, where my Broadband supplier has their network center (including their backup system).

One Thursday morning I'm sitting there trying to do some work when I can't get on the Internet!

Naturally, I assume that things have fallen at my end over so I start disconnecting & re-connecting things to try and diagnose / resolve the problem. 90 mins later and I decide to give up & go & have lunch. After lunch I phone my ISP who told me about the flooding problem. "Oh!" I said, and "Any idea how long it will be out for?". "No idea, the engineers haven't even made it on site yet... due to the flooding!".

So, in the end, it was about 4 hours in total until I was back up an online (which I thought was pretty good). Having said that, for the next week and a bit my Broadband was pretty poor. I'm supposed to be on a 24MB service, which, even with my close location to the exchange, should degrade to 18MB by the time it gets here, but, in reality, I've never seen it above 8MB (haven't had the time to really tweak my settings / firewall to get the best out of it) and, typically, it sits at around 4/5MB. During that soggy 1 1/2 weeks, it dropped, at times, to about 30KB (that's KB not MB), which is worse than the hazy old dial up days at the end of the last century.

Next on the list of life tales was my phone - that's my cool Sony P990i that I've dribbled on about before. I damaged the screen a few weeks ago when it was in my bag and since I have insurance with my phone provider, I figured I'd get it sorted out properly. A week later it turns out that it is 'inefficient to repair" and it needs to be replaced. No problemo I thought, I'll happily have a new handset, but then I get informed that there are no more handsets available as 'they don't make them anymore'.

Say what? Sony was 15 months late in releasing them in the first place (I know, because I was impatiently waiting for it to come out on the market) and now, 9 months later, they're not providing them anymore to the UK (& Europe presumably). In the words of John McEnroe "You can not be serious!".

Meanwhile, the phone dude is on the phone with the insurance people and tells me that I can have any other handset I want (great), but they need to know which model now so they can tie up the paperwork (not so great). 'Holy crap' ('more blasphemy' said Mr Dawkins) I had done no research on where the current smart phone market stood and, in my business life, my phone is an essential part of my operating system (it needs to act as a mobile modem, ideally wireless i.e. Bluetooth or WLAN, for my laptop when I'm on the move - especially downunder).

He tried to talk me into a Blackberry device, but I knew I needed more than that (and it looked like one of those Japanese kids toys, that you need to feed every 20min or it would die). Luckily I had, by sheer fluke, been reading about a hot new phone on the market just the other day. So, after quickly firing off some questions at him about the spec's, I said "I'll have a Nokia N95 thanks!" (Nokia fluff or Wikipedia brief).

So, like that, I had just taken a huge roll of the dice and hoped I was not about to get Steve Irwin'ed by it.

As it turns out, I hit triple gold on this one and the wee handset is an absolute gem. I got it home, dutifully charged it up and started to learn how to work it. It had all the functionality of my old Sony (in a smaller handset) Bluetooth, WLAN, office system, media player, 5MB camera (the picture at the right taken at night the other day. Being a handset with a small lens the quality is poor at night, but I like the pic anyway), DVD quality video camera (I find that hard to believe) and a few other surprises to boot.

Most notable of which was as I was flicking through the manual I spied a page on 'GPS' and I thought 'no way, it must be an attachment you can buy!'. But, low & behold, it does have a GPS receiver on it and integrated maps, so I can use it as a navigational device (although it can take 20mins for the handset to lock onto the satellites. Fair enough though I figure as it is only a wee phone, with plenty of other things to do).

So, all in all, that turned out pretty well.

Now to the real gripe. Having felt sick Saturday last, to the point where I threw up a few times (I really can't remember the last time I actually threw up from 'real' sickness. It must be over a decade at least, I'd say) I had to abort on my plans to go out for the day (I had a n important sporting event to watch and a mates birthday party to go to that night 30 miles south of here). By the evening I was feeling a lot better and decided I'd commence the Vista upgrade (the new operating system from Windows, released in January) for my fairly top end Sony laptop (dual processors, 2GB RAM, which is only 8 months old). How hard could that be I thought to myself?

Well, for the love of fargin' God, what an absolute performance that has been!

I have never dealt with such an absolutely dreadful system in my life. Now get me right, I'm not a basher of Microsoft products. In due course I'll happily get a Mac Powerbook (when finances allow) to supplement my PC / laptops (I've worked on Macs quite a bit and even had a friends laptop for 6 months while he was away overseas), but I harbour nothing particularly for or against either operating system. I don't bang on for either of them - believing that they both have their strengths (& weaknesses) and uses in specific work environments.

I'm a great believer in what ever helps humanity get along and move forward in the best manner, is worthy of hearty applaud and on that front, Bill Gates and his lot have done the best job (i'm talking the 90's here). I've worked in critical environments where there were non-standard systems and everyone had their own protocols and it was downright infuriating, inefficient and, in this case, dangerous. So, what Microsoft did bringing in home computers and standardising operating systems was fantastic and could have saved us a decade if the industry kept muddling around doing their own thing i.e. if there had been 10 main vendors of operating systems.

So fair dues to them for getting us all onto a moderately similar wavelength at that point in time. Having said all of that, after almost 2 weeks with it, the Vista operating system, as it stands, is absolute crap (is that the best the Microsoft development team could come up with in 5 years and a rip of the Mac GUI, Graphical User Interface, to boot)!

I have never had to 'crash' shut down my PC so many times, since the dark days of Windows '98 and its cursed blue screen. Vista is forever dropping connections, drivers or a tonne of other infuriating things.

When I develop web applications I run them on my own computer, simulating how they will run on a real web server and, consequently, on the Internet. I, and most developers, do this to speed up development time and reduce a tonne of other variables that might be causing problems. Normally, applications will work in the blink of any eye on your local computer (localhost) since it is all happening onboard your own computer.

Well, since I've had Vista installed, the speed of my Localhost testing platform has dropped to an absolute crawl. When I even try to open a webpage it will take 8-20 seconds to load a normal page, let alone interact with a database (that is worse than the first ever modem I used back in 1990, which must have been about 9.6KB).

I can not believe it, I have been reduced to doing all my development online and from a personal point of view, am used to starting up my laptop to find that 'this time' my speakers aren't working, it can't connect to the Internet for love nor money, I can't install Vista-approved programs (even bypassing UAC) or a million other things.

*sigh*, I've seriously thought about rolling back to Windows XP, but I just don't have the time to make such a retro step. So, I'll just hang on until they bring out the first service pack which should hopefully sort out a number of these issues.

A word to you all then, if you don't need to install Vista then DON'T! It has been 6 months since they launched it, but I'd give it another 6 months at least and, especially, wait until the bring out the first service pack for the mongrel!

been badgering...

2007-06-26T19:33:00.000+01:00

...still flat out and with so much work to do at the moment. I haven't even had a chance to properly appreciate and moan endlessly to someone about the weather we're having... which has been absolutely crap, for those of you who read this blog from overseas and aren't experiencing, personally, the joy of living through the UK's 'Summer of 07', at the moment...

Well, with no spare time and, now, today, having spied myself blethering away on other blogs, I figured I should stop badgering people and go and put something on my own (one poor chap has had close to 2 letters dropped on his). Which is great except I can't think of much of interest to say. Of the 2 things that I can think of, one would be quite boring (to most folks) and the other is more a recent "oh shit" sort of life moment.

So for those of you with a 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Meganet' interest to all things computer'ish, you'll be pleased to hear I've bought some interesting software recently.

Basically, after years of clawing my way up the design ladder via various purchases & upgrade options, I've now gone and bought the 'Adobe CS3 Design Premium' package, which includes:

Photoshop CS3
Illustrator CS3 (for doing logos, cartoon work, page layout stuff)
Dreamweaver CS3 (web design software)
Flash CS3 (whizzy software software, for motion/video stuff you often see on the web)
Acrobat Professional (useful for, amongst other things, making multi-page .pdf's)
InDesign CS3 (never had this before - for making books, brochures - print / press program)

So that is all great, although when I said "bought it", I should probably really say I "VISA'd the moment".

I won't bleat on about it at the moment, except to say it is awesome kit and a fantastic feeling to have such full set of software and, frankly, nice to have it so close after its release date. I've been using pre-CS software for ages, so it is fun to catch up on that front.

Funny thing was after I'd ordered it, on the Saturday morning on which it was due to arrive, I had waited patiently by the door for it to arrive. Having got to 1 o'clock and needing some milk, with no sign of the disc, I decided "bugger it" and popped down the road to the shops.

As i'm leaving, I open the door and 'clunk' the parcel falls to the floor from where it had just been leaning on the door. So, great, a massively expensive box of software has just been sitting outside my front door, unattended, all morning. Annoying, since I had been up since early on, waiting especially for the postman or any sign of him, with no radio or tv on, but you'd be kidding me if there was any friggin' knock or buzz at the door.

And, to add insult to injury, when I tested it, the box fitted through the mail slot anyway.

Funny ol' thing, a week or so later, I ordered a new mouse online (which I like to call my "blue-tooth-moose", which, when said quickly, becomes "blue-tooth-mooth"... really, it seems funnier in real life). When it arrived, there's a buzz and an additional crisp knock at the door and a friendly, cheerful delivery dude is standing at the door, with my mooth... and to conclude the transaction, I had to sign his Star Trek autographer collector to boot...

Now, on the 2nd subject, I've having second thoughts about talking about the 'oh shit' moment, so might leave it and see how it pans out over the next couple of days...

picture to the right - has no relevance to this post, just a snap I took in Japan that I like (looks better if you click on it)...

Oh what a week

2007-06-06T13:32:00.000+01:00

I was watching the film 'Bobby' (chronicling the events at the Ambassador Hotel and the last day of Robert Kennedy, prior to his assassination) on the flight back from Japan, not so long ago. More recently, I've just chalked up another birthday and the two events combine to remind me of something that I'd noted when I was a much younger.

It was quite a week on planet Earth in the time around when I was born - none of which, admittedly, was related to me. In chronological order, the following happened:

- 4 days before I was born, Kylie Minogue was born (alright, perhaps not the biggest of newspaper sales on this one)
- the day before I was born Hellen Keller died
- the day after I was born Andy Warhol was almost fatally shot (never recovered in some ways)
- A couple of days after I was born Robert Kennedy was shot, dying a short period of time later

Kinda busy week for the newsreaders.

Astute readers of this blog will have done some age calculations by now and be able to understand why, on occasion, I have said that "I was shitting myself when man walked on the moon...".

Which, whilst very true, needs to be appreciated in the 'literal' rather than 'emotional' sense. Presumably, I was also sucking my thumb, crawling across the floor and facing the wrong way as a man made a small step & giant leap for mankind...

Well, that was a giant leap for 6 years, until they cancelled the whole firkin' space program!

about time..!

2007-06-05T23:42:00.000+01:00

Whoops, what happened there, eh? One minute I'm on a bus and, then, I disappear off Fargonia for 4 months.

Well, since it's such a funky date, 567, I figured that it was well overdue that I said something.

The Antipodiddlies were interesting, Japan foreign & San Francisco wins the award for the 'place of the trip'.

Something said...

& cheers to the folk who badgered me to do so (they probably hoped for more).

Technology in the Colonies...

2006-12-26T08:43:00.000Z

Most impressed - sitting here on a bus, cruising down the line to my folks place & I have my laptop hooked up to the Internet, via a connection established on my mobile phone. It's pretty slow, but, all things considered, its pretty amazing. Here's a picture of the view...
Chat soon...

Picture cancelled - firewall problem or something and this ain't the place to sort it out...

*** so, 5 days later and I've finally got this blog posted... few troubles with the natives i.e. firewalls & the local Vodafone system (forced to use Internet Explorer for some reason).

from Conan to Dawkins

2006-12-10T08:15:00.000Z

What a jolly hoot travelling can be...!

I've made some real rookie travelling mistakes in the last few days (lost MUNI passes being just one of them), but, then again, I'm cool with the fact that I'm somewhat rusty in the 'mobile warrior stakes.' Nonetheless, I've had a whale of a time and, as it stands, I wish I never had to leave San Francisco.

On a tangental note, I've noticed a 'trying' trend in my recent escapades around planet Earth, whereupon I arrive in a place 'out of season', enjoy a day or two of good weather, haphazardly wombling around the local tourist sites... and then the weather turns!

It happened to me earlier this year in Hamburg and, now, it's done it again in San Fran. I was out at Alcatraz yesterday (I hope to write some notes from that wee adventure shortly) and, then, when I got back to town, the weather turned and holy crap, did it chuck it down.

Anyway, today, being a Saturday, I was up early this morning, heading down to local ice skating rinks to try and buy some ice hockey skates for my nephew. I caught the bus down the road and then as I came onto the main drag, I was passing the 'Four Seasons Hotel' at 765 Market St.

Now the streets were pretty empty, but as I passed the hotel I looked left and noticed a tall chap, with red hair & angular features, who was standing on the curb outside the front of the hotel, talking on his mobile. I immediately clocked who it was, looking somewhat rougher in real life and, I suspect, hungover, but there he was, larger than life, I knew that for that moment in time I was sharing the same bit of the Universe as Conan O'Brien.

Being a sad git and with very little self-pride, I immediately came to a halt, rummaged in my bag, got out my cellphone and made a very poor impression of someone not taking a photo... while taking a photo....

In the heat of the moment, I didn't get much of a chance to take the picture and, as you can see it is a pretty poor picture (you'd be fair in saying that could be any chatshow host, or tall red-haired male for that matter) - but, belive me, it was Conan O'Brien.

...

Many, many shopping hours later (like, 6 at night) and I still have not got the ice skates for my nephew. It turns out that downtown San Fran is not the place buy hockey skates. Eventually, I get a lead on a place that sold ice skating stuff, but it was located in Oakland which, especially with the inclement weather in mind, was located somewhat of a haul from downtown.

Ages later and I'd made it the 26 miles to this shop and bought the skates, but being in the middle of nowhere the taxi I'd called could not find the place to pick me up and had given up on the journey. Kindly, the chap who was in charge of the shop gave me a lift back up the road to the train station in his rather cool Chevrolet car.

Yeah-har, with a tonne of shopping missions under my belt (I have also, virtually, bought a complete new wardrobe in the last few days) I finally made it back to the Hotel at about 9.30 tonight. Happily looking through the goodies that I had bought today, I start flicking through the many channels of crap on the TV.

To my absolute joy there was Richard Dawkins discussing his new book, "The God Delusion" to a University Crowd in Virginia (hah- the Bible Belt). What a laugh, the immediate memorable quote that springs to mind was during 'question time' when someone asked whether people joining absurd religions were helping or hindering the Atheist cause - to which, after a degree of analysis and indepth discussion about the use of Atheists banding together to show their depth of numbers, Prof Dawkins quipped that "trying to get a rally of Atheists together, is like trying to herd cats...".

So, what a great day, admidst the trials & tribulations of dealing with Xmas shoppers, rain, public transport and my own cock-ups, I met some really nice people and, notably, a few folk who really helped me out when they didn't need to.

Now, with a program on Ali on TV, quoting some of his best raps, I need to go to sleep - for tomorrow is, what I hope, will be the highlight of my few days here (or the wettest as the case may be) - as I head out to Monster Park (terrible name - it used to be Soldier Field) for an American Football Game to see the 49'ers playing the Green Bay Packers.

*** please excuse typo & spelling errors - this has just come out as a stream of consciousness, as I wanted to fire this online immedaitely, since I know there are a few folk out there following this, so I'm trying my best to be a good little blogee!

the 27 dollar photo

2006-12-08T06:25:00.000Z

Not surprisingly I didn't have much trouble getting to sleep last night - well that was until 1.15 in the morning, when I found myself quite awake. With bugger all else to do, I did some work and finally got back to sleep at 4 am.

With a grand scheme in mind I'd set my alarm for 6.15 am, whereupon I planned to get this trip off to a flying start with an early morning run. I knew the sun was due to rise at 7.04 am and my plan was to get out to the Golden Gate bridge to go for a run across it, and back, as the sun rose over the city.

Amazingly, I did actually get up as planned and staggered out of my hotel ready to catch the first of 2 buses. It all seemed pretty easy in the planning stages - if I was lucky I'd catch one bus that would take me all the way there or, alternatively, catch a bus down Van Ness Ave and catch another one along Lombard Street and out to Golden Gate park.

Being dark and me somewhat groggy, having caught the first bus I missed the junction that I needed to get off to catch the connecting bus. Happily just 'rolling with the punches', I walked back up the hill laughing at my oversight and turned right onto Lombard St where I figured I'd just get to the first bus stop and head out ot the bridge from there. On the way down Van Ness the bus had stopped every 2 blocks (getting into the American vernacular), so I figured it would do the same down Lombard - oh hardy, har-har!

I ended up walking 15 blocks (1 1/2 miles) before I, eventually, came to a firkin' bus stop. I found out why from some lady at the bus stop, but I won't bore you with 'why' here.

So, onto the bus and some 1/2 hour later than planned, I finally made it out to the park. I had a quick stretch and took this photo looking eastwards back at the city...

Now, of course, I was only in my running gear and it was somewhat chilly out there on the exposed headland. So after fluffing around for a minute getting my kit sorted out I set out, heading across the bridge. Actually it is a lovely run and the view looking back over the city at that time of the morning is stunning.

As mentioned, it is somewhat windy out there, but considering that there is a busy highway right beside you it all works out rather well. Running on the city side footpath (there is one on either side), the wind blows directly across you and diverts the fumes from the traffic over the other side of the bridge - so you don't end up getting suffocated by carbon monoxide.

Meanwhile, there are tonnes of cyclists coming into town on the same footpath and they go bombing past you on their hi-speed racing bikes. I stopped a number of times to get some photos of various scenes with my camera-phone and an additionaly video of my bipedal madness.

After a 30-minute plod I had made it back to my starting point and was ready to catch the bus back into town, feeling quite pleased that I had done one of the things that had been on my list to do so early in the game.

It was at this point that I started ferreting through my pockets to find my MUNI pass. A MUNI pass can be bought in 1, 3 or 7 day blocks and covers all of your main transportation in the city i.e. buses, trains and cable cars.

I had bought my 7-day pass the day before at the airport, for $27 USD, and now, some 17 hours later I began to realise that I had just lost the bloody thing somewhere on Golden Gate Bridge whilst getting out my phone or some other idiotic manoeuver. Brillant, just brillant - it is 8am, I'm standing there in sweaty running clothes with no wallet, 5 miles from where I'm staying and I've lost my bus pass.

Luckily, I had taken a $20 bill with me in case of emergencies (and a note with my name, address, blood type and a note to say "I DO have medical insurance" - hoping they'd begin to patch me up if I'd been splatted by some over-sized American tank etc). But, when the first bus did finally turn up, I realised, as I'd suspected, they could not take bills that large. Luckily the bus driver, after hearing my odd story, let me on anyway and, so, off we set.

Relived to have finally got on a bus, being so keen to get back in town and having now explained my saga to the bus driver (who looked a wee bit sceptical that I'd even been running and whether I even had a MUNI pass in the first place), I just wanted to get back to town, shower up and get to the Hotel breakfast before it closed.

As I had known, there are 2 buses that stop at that tourist spot and, as became abundantly clear, I was on the wrong one. I didn't think it would be that bad because, surely, it was just heading back into the heart of town. And yes it was heading back into town but only after first going to Vancouver, Denver & Tijuana! So, off we set to do a complete loop around the whole firkin' Peninsula.

Realising what was going on, and now half way into his route, I decided to get off the bus and onto the road that ran directly back into town and straighy past my hotel. I still had no bus pass and the untouched $20 bill, but figured it was, all things considered, a better way to get back into town.

I was on 30th street and figured I had to get back to 1st and that would be that. Well, yes, I did have to get back to 1st, but then I discovered there were at least another 15+ 'named' blocks after that. By the time I got to 20th street & I eventually found an open shop (not much open in San Fran suburbs at that time of the day), changed some money and was finally able to hobble onto a bus back into town (I must have walked / run 10 miles at least by now).

The bus was a bendy-bus and standing there in my sweaty running clothes, I soon became very aware that we were in rush-hour traffic, with rush-hour passengers. Oh my God, I couldn't believe it, as we got closer to town more & more people kept on getting on the bus until, finally, it was just absolutely sardines.

Finally, oh so finally, we made it to my hotel stop. So a mere 3 hours after I set off, I had made it back to the hotel where I could now have a shower, get some fluids and draw a close on this mad-capped scheme... (after brekky I decided to go back to bed, have a snooze and try starting the day again)

So, ladies & gentlemen - I present to you the 27 dollar photo. Please click on it, say "Oh-arr, isn't it pretty" and send all monetary donations to 'captain fargon'.

The Eagle has...

2006-12-07T03:47:00.000Z

...packed, shifted, cleaned, gotten stung by excess baggage, taken off, landed, hobbled around London, taken off again, landed in San Fran and 'BART'ed into the city - but now sits happily perched in a hotel room, with a disturbingly cheap JD's & coke in his hand / paw / claw, accompanied by 74 channels of crap to watch on the TV...!

Yes, indeedy, it has been somewhat of an epic, as these missions are - bruised arms & black eyes atest to that (from shifting & tiredness respectively, vice bare-knuckle boxing). But, now, with my body feeling it is 4am in the morning, and the local clock showing 8pm, I thought I would drop a quick line to say I'm on the road and here is the photo of the day.

Taken with my camera phone, it has come out surprisingly well. Couldn't tell you exactly where it is, but am reasonably sure it is somewhere in Idaho (click on it for the full version).

Chat soon with some travelling tales...

*** Oh, after hitting the 'post' button, I realised it is my first anniversary of blogging (or not blogging as the case may be). Happy blog birthday to me!

Sunny days in November

2006-11-17T02:08:00.000Z

It's been raining, but tonight I was out seeing a mate....

This is not him...

But he was there...

On the bus on the way home, over my right shoulder, this was my new friend I'd made at the bustop...

After he'd passed out and fell off the seat, forwards, when the driver hit the brakes (only to pass out again)...

He'd seen better days...

Time to put old wrongs right

2006-11-02T22:43:00.000Z

As November rolled in, it had become time to put my money where my mouth was...

It's been a bit of a tedious exercise trying to buy this long-haul flight ticket. With an unlimited budget and 6 months notice, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but, where I stood, time was really starting to press and the whole circus was going to have to go on the Visa card anyway.

Having had a good look around the Internet and not having had much luck, I decided to go into town and have a chat to a couple of the mainstream travel agents. Always nice, I figured, to chat to an 'informed monkey' on such matters. As the investigation in the shop progressed it appeared that every man, woman & dog was heading to the Antipodes this December and flights were unusually full. Great.

In the end the best deal they had going was a return trip to Melbourne for £1033 (about £380 more than I was hoping to pay), whereupon I'd need to sort out my real travels from there. I had already pre-thought to myself that "if the flight was almost to cost a grand then I might as well push on and make it into a decent global trip". So, delving deeper into the computer system we looked into an itinerary that routed London - Melbourne - Auckland - San Francisco - Vancouver - London. After a bit of a search we were able to find seat spaces (but only just) and I would have needed to book it within the next 24 hours in order to secure it.

So far so good eh - except that it was going to cost £1490. It was at that point that I politely excused myself from the shop and went in search of a beer-buddy. When in doubt go and have a beer!

A couple of beers later and I was back home, firing up the computer ready to have another more 'inspired' look around the Internet. After about 4 hours I had found some flights which could get me there and back for about £870 (if I went before the 7th Dec) and over £1000 if I went afterwards.

Getting ready to bite the bullet and cough up the lion's share of a grand, I decided to do a search of mainstream airlines. I don't normally ever do this because the flight prices they advertise on their sites are normally ridiculous and your get hugely better prices through the travel sites i.e. skyscanner.net, opodo.com, expedia.co.uk.

Eventually, I got on the Air New Zealand site (the .co.uk variant) and they had some astonishing 'web specials'. It all seemed a bit too good to be true or, I figured, they would be completely sold out until Easter 2008.

Initially I looked at direct return flights for about £800 (which was still better than anything else I'd seen) and then I started to look at their code-sharing flights with Virgin. After a bit of playing I was looking at a flight routing London - San Francisco - Auckland - Tokyo - London and get this - for only £778.

I could not believe it, spaces were tight on the flight and as I started to look into it more, it stated that there were only 7 spaces left. When I first tried my credit card the system crashed and, ultimately, stated that "they could not confirm spaces on the 'SFO-AKL' leg". It gave a 0800 help number and when the cheerful girl answered she initially said 'Good Afternoon' (I realised I was talking to someone in NZ itself), which was a bit of a shock since it was then about 0430 in the morning in the UK.

They bounced me around a bit and eventually put me on hold. As I waited for them to come back on the phone I decided to try again (the error message on the screen had said my card hadn't been charged). This time the system said there were only 6 seats left available... shit (the whole thing was critical because in order to do the stopover legs, there were very few subsequent departures out available. If I couldn't get out of San Fran on the 11th, the next available departure was after Christmas, so the whole plan would have been scuppered).

Hey, hey Bingo and with a last press of the button at about 5am in the morning, I was bouncing around my flight with joy because, even despite my apathy, I'd managed to hook up a flight for under £800 and had 5 day stopovers in San Francisco & Tokyo respectively (not quite Vancouver, but, as I've said previously, I've always wanted to go to both these places anyway).

Actually, when i was first working my way through these flights, I was looking at flights returning via Shanghai (figuring I should go and make my introductions to the future masters of the planet), but they were all gone, so Tokyo was a good enough 2nd option. As it stands then, I fly out of London on the 6th December, a Wednesday, and don't leave San Fran until the following Monday.

Still buzzing about the flight today, I have already cancelled my flat, phoned the local council to tell them to shove their council tax (or, more accurately, give me some money back) and been to a bookstore to look at San Fran.

Tonight, when I got back in, I got on the Internet to look up something else and to my absolute joy I discovered that the San Francisco 49'ers are playing the Green Bay Packers on the Sunday that I am there. So, I have already been looking up tickets and there appears to be some available. Wahoo - I've only been to one game before and that was amazing. A pre-season game for the Denver Broncos in front of 79,000 people, a truly mind-blowing spectacle.

********************************
I have actually been to San Francisco once before. It was only for a refuel and we were supposed to be legging it on to Hawaii, but there was a 110 knot headwind and our little dinosaur didn't have very long legs (not very good fuel endurance). So we just about (read: just about) got grounded there...

As the crew made its way back from flight planning / met office, the flight engineer came up to us and told us that we were parked beside the Lear Jet of the owner of the 49'ers. He had been talking to the Flight Engineer of that aircraft and when he had heard about out predicament, he had said that the 49'ers were playing that day (it was a Sunday) and that he could get us all complimentary tickets.

I was only 21 at the time and was absolutely ecstatic about the possibility (having always liked American Football and to see Joe Montana play at Soldier Field would have been a dream). As life goes, the wind dropped by a few knots and the captain decided to go (wimp, he could so easily have aborted the flight).

To add salt to the wound, on departure the American air traffic controller realising we were Antipodeans, offered us the 'scenic departure' which is flight talk for giving us the sight-seeing radar departure (in the States, and at most major locations, you're completed vectored around by radar controllers) i.e. he would deliberately vector us over the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz and all the other scenic spots.

True to form (you guessed it), old wimpy dick declined the offer and requested a 'direct' departure. So off we went leaving a bridge, a prison & the 49'ers behind.

A couple of decades later and I may finally be able to put such youthful heartbreak to rest...

O' Canada

2006-10-19T22:50:00.000+01:00

After a pretty lacklustre start to the week, it is now starting to pick up some momentum (tomorrow being Friday now, of course). My sniffle has reduced to a snuffle and I'm feeling somewhat more back in the ballgame.

I did, however, manage to keep myself up for an extra hour last night, with an infuriating tickle down the back of my throat. If I'd tried harder to ignore it at the outset, I probably would have been alright, but it was annoying me - so I decided to annoy it back!

Lying in bed, late at night, trying to get to sleep with a tickle down the back of your throat, is pretty infuriating and a damn hard thing to itch, to boot. After a few unsuccessful rounds of clearing my chest, exhaling sharply and generally coughing, I had cleverly managed to make it a lot worse.

After sooking on a Strepsil for a while and wondering how badly I would choke myself if I fell asleep and got the lozenge got stuck in my windpipe, I drifted off to sleep. Today, I'm feeling heaps better and have been getting back up on the pitching mound.

A couple of weeks ago I had made up a list of jobs that I had to do before I could get on 'the' jetplane, in early December, to head south for the winter. A lot of furious scribbling later and I had filled in 4 sheets of A4 with jobs ranging from the critical to the obtuse. Then, while still in my administrative frenzy, I made up a calendar with target completion dates, for certain key tasks in the coming couple of months.

Inching towards the end of October, I now need to decide how I'm going to route the flight and, very importantly - I also need to actually buy the bloody ticket!

I have a number of options available, with 'my' standard return journey being to fly JAL (Japan Airlines) to the Antipodes, with a stopover each way in Tokyo or, more specifically, Narita airport (a long & expensive train ride from Tokyo).

There is nothing special about the flight or the routing itself, except that on the way back they stop for the night in Tokyo (or, more specifically, Narita Airport - a long & expensive train ride from Tokyo). You get in at about 6pm and don't leave until 10am the next morning, but the good bit is that they put you up for the night in JAL's airport hotel - all as part of their standard airfare!

I don't know if you've ever done the trip from Aus/NZ to London but it is a long haul, especially in one flap. The journey can take up to 26 hours and you arrive back into Heathrow at about 6.30am, proceed to clear customs etc, and gleefully arrive back in London at about 8am - just in time for the manic early morning tube crush! Not what you need when you're beside yourself with tiredness and are carrying a whole pile of significant life possessions on your back.

So, with the stop in Tokyo (or, more specifically,...) you have a nights kip (in the worlds smallest hotel room), eat some unusual food and pay about £10 per beer - but it is heaven after 1/2 a day cooped up in cattle-class (on one of these journeys, due to various connecting flights, I had to endure Lilo & Stitch 3 times - painful Trev, painful)! The haul back to London is only about 14 hours and you arrive back in London feeling moderately compus mentus.

This time, though, I'm thinking of doing a round the world trip. Mainly because it would be nice to do something different (I've done the JAL thing about 3 times) and I would really like to go to Canada. I've never been there before and I find most Canadian folk nice, easy-going people.

I did actually stop for a night in St Johns in Newfoundland once, but I was quite sick with the flu at the time (seems to be the theme of the week eh!) and couldn't bring myself to go and view anything of the city - it was already pretty dark when we landed at about 5pm. Somewhat wimpy you might say, but when we had landed the air temperature was -22 deg C and there was another 20 deg of wind chill factor, to add to that (or subtract, as the case may be).

I tried to get myself inspired since I had been wanting to go to Canada for a long time (still am), but with a screaming head cold, the 5 mile journey into town in, -45 deg C weather, was just a bit too much.

So, now, I need to decide if I make the extra effort (and cost) and go and visit a bit of Canada this time round (finally). I'd really like to go to Vancouver, but from my research so far, it looks like I'd have to route via America to get there (LA or San Fran).

But, to put it bluntly, I have no interest in going to America while it is ruled by that infernal idiot George W Bush. No offence to our American friends out there, I've been to America a number of times (staying in Denver once for a couple of months) and really enjoyed the country & the people I met, but I have no interest in going there while that idiot is still in charge!

So, I've got some serious pondering to do over the next week before making a solid decision and coughing up some money (shit, did somebody say 'cough')...

p.s. I've never been to Tokyo either...

p.s. I might be back blogging next week with a grand plan for a road trip from San Francisco to Vancouver, via Seattle - 3 well-overdue places that are high on my list to visit!

the sniffles.

2006-10-18T13:43:00.000+01:00

Well, it's not quite what I need at the moment, but I've cleverly caught a cold...

I did have a couple of late nights at the weekend, but I can't imagine either of them did it...

Having said that, I did go for a bit of a harder run before going out on Friday night, over a none-too-small hill that sits near to my flat. When I did eventually get to the pub, I was feeling rather 'low' and would happily have gone back home, but it was one of 'those social occasions' where I needed to attend. So, perhaps, the chilly night air caught me out there?

A few days later and this is where the glossy 'self-employed brochure' would tell you that as Master of your own Ship, you can just lay about on your couch, blissfully wallowing in self-pity.

Blatant false advertising if ever I've seen some, since my phone (which I still love) and e-mail inbox, have been blasting, beeping, ringing and generally haranguing me all week long so far.

Actually, if the truth be told, it is a mere sniffle and barely worth a mention in a blog, let alone its own entry, but it has given me something to write about.

Oh well, 6'ish weeks and I might be sitting in some real sunshine.

rainy days & mondays...

2006-10-07T13:11:00.000+01:00

Actually, it's just 'overcast & saturday', but the Carpenters' song title sounded a lot better for the blog title...

What a busy wee time eh? Well, you wouldn't really know would you, because I ain't really been blogging recently, have I!

As it all stands, I have just about, finally, got the major components of one job sorted out and am now just in the 'tidy & wrap it up' phase of it. Meanwhile, I'm left with an absolute tonne of other jobs / contracts that now just 'have' to be sorted out... most of which I've been tactically fending & parrying off for the last couple of months.

Importantly, on top of all this, there is one other key factor relevant to all this present & imminent activity...

A flock of birds captured it all for me the other day, which, in a moment of frantic photography, I managed to capture a record of. The birds never did actually make it to the right position that I wanted them in (backdropped against the Mediaval skyline). So, in a manic last minute SAS-type roll & dive manoeuvre to the floor, I managed to fire off this one burst, capturing this remarkable picture ('remarkable' meaning 'crap', in this case).

So, the end result of what you see (or don't see, as the case may be) is a picture of 1/8 of the birds who were flying past in 3 huge 'V-wing' formations, now handsomely contrasted against my cheap plastic guttering.

Anyhoose, the reason for the picture and general inspiration therein, was that on this chilly October day, 100's & 100's of birds were making their way south for the winter. When I initially spotted them in the sky I thought to myself "what a jolly good idea" (yes, my subconscious mind may very well babble to itself using such literary fossils as 'jolly').

The point being that, in 2 months time, I need to be doing the same thing myself. Yup, time to climb on a jetplane for the Antipodes for a 3-5 month trip (business & pleasure). I haven't booked anything yet, but I plan to this month. From past experience, I know I need to get out of the UK by the end of the first week in December, since flight prices go through the roof after that - as folk clamber home for Xmas, or to catch the Antipididdlin summer.

So, there is a hell of a lot that I need to do between now & then. Naturally, i'm quite looking forward to it - living in Europe is great, especially when you can bugger off to the other side of the planet for the winter part of it. Having said that, Winters in Europe are great if you're in the right situation - I tried to drive to Kitzbuhel (Austria) once, to become a barman at the home of what is probably the most dangerous FIS Downhill ski racing slope in the world (Hahnenkamm, they say racers accelerate to 100km/h faster than a Porsche). That would have been a good winter, sadly the combi never made it past Munich (from Berlin)... but that is a story for another day!

A number of things have been happening in preparation for the trip already. After 2 years of being eligible for an upgrade and now waiting 11 months while Sony Ericsson fluffed around launching this flagship model, I finally got myself a new phone.

It is the new Sony Ericsson P990i and is, currently, rocking my world.

It is effectively a laptop in a phone (in fact it has about 2/3 of the processing power of my first ever laptop, called 'Larry'... as in 'Larry the Laptop', which I bought a very distant 8 years ago) and the key reason why I've waited and now bought the new phone, was for its wireless capability. It can not only log 'itself' onto and use the Internet (via WiFi or 3G/GPRS i.e. via Hotspot or a cellular phone network), but can also share that connection with a laptop (or PC/Mac) which, therefore, effectively use it as a modem (via Bluetooth or WLan), allowing 'them' to gain access the Internet. The speed is not fantastic (384 KB/sec), but it's good enough.

Naturally (he says, ever so casually) apart from being able to surf the 'net, it is also a camera, video camera, mobile office (Word, Excel, PDF's & others), media player (music, podcasts, videos etc), radio player, but it has other hot items like handwriting technology and updateable software (I've already installed a German dictionary and am looking at turning it into a GPS platform, where I can use map facilities like an in-car SatNav system). Oh and it makes phone calls too (radical).

I've had dreadful problems in the past on trips to Aus / NZ with their miserable Broadband network and the typical problems associated with borrowing people's connection i.e. "sure you can use it, but my... mouse, phone, keyboard, harddrive, scanner, printer, monitor, camera, USB port, brain don't work... could you fix it for me?".

In all honesty, in over 3/4 of the houses that I went into belonging to friends/relatives on my last trip 'Downunder', within 5 minutes of getting in the door I was on my hands and knees round the back of their computer, crawling through the dust and debris of their lives ('detritus' is probably more accurate) - fixing their farkin' machines. This time, I'm bringing the Internet with me - hence the requirement for the Star Trek phone!

As mentioned briefly, I went to a wedding on Thursday which was a great day shared with a number of friends that I've known for over 10 years. It was a really good day, finally wrapping up at 0615 at my flat with peppermint teas (the damage was well & truly done by that stage).

I've picked one picture to include since it shows the view from the restaurant where we had the reception. As you can see, it is quite a dramatic setting and affords one of the best views of the castle that I've ever seen.

So, finally, I've achieved a bit of a longer blog. On some personal notes (what's all this crap been about, if we're now getting to the personal bit?) congratulations to all the folk who've had babies recently (it's been the season for it, was there a bad night on telly back in January?) and those who've got married. Additionally, great to have caught up with some good friends recently from all around the globe, some of whom who I have not seen for a very long time.

An hour later and in hindsight, I realise that the title of this blog bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to the actual content of it. Excellent, I can go away and relax in the knowledge of another job well done!

Meanwhile, I'm gonna go and cheer Michael Schumacher along for the F1 Japanese qualifying, since he's only got a couple of weeks left to go in his magnificent career. I've always been a fan of his, not just because we were born in the same decade, about 6 months apart (wait until you get a bit older, you'll find yourself starting to support 'any' older sportsperson still active in their sport), or because I once lived in Aachen & he comes from just up the road (about 40km away in Kerpen - you pass it on the Autobahn to Cologne), nor because he is German.

Well, actually, they might all be the reasons - but , he is also one of the most dedicated, effective and successful sportsmen that I have ever seen in my lifetime (to my mind only Michael Jordan & Wayne Gretzky are in the same league).

not mine...

2006-10-05T02:03:00.000+01:00

going to a wedding in a Castle today.

yeah, right!

2006-09-26T13:48:00.000+01:00

uh-huh, "one small step" I said...

Try a re-invention of the wheel, re-discovery of how to make fire & a complete re-write of the whole firkin' database...

*sigh*

one step

2006-09-20T19:52:00.000+01:00

Brüder und Schwestern - I'm one step away from a new life and this last frustrating damn hurdle revolves around a SQL statement, which I can't suss, but I'm close, oh so painfully close...

They say...

2006-09-06T01:51:00.000+01:00

...a picture is worth a 1,000 words - here is 3,040 of them

the best of a crap collection of photos of fireworks...

a baby - a 'weemb', some would say...

some bloke I met in a bar...

RIP. Steve Irwin

blast from the past

2006-08-14T15:11:00.000+01:00

Well, there has been some real speed bumps in the road recently - ranging from family & friends ending up in hospital, through to the typically insane highs & lows of self-employed business... nuff said.

I've been rather swamped with my work schedule recently and, frankly, the last thing I've felt like doing at the end of the day - is spending another hour or so, at the computer writing a firkin' blog. For the last 2 weeks, I've barely been to bed before 4, 5 or 6am and it really stuffs around your life pattern.

Having said that, I've kinda missed my blog-sessions as there is definitely something cathartic about maintaing a blog and it's kinda fun to see how quickly it builds up into... something ().

I've also actually been setting up a test blog on a local server with lots of cool things and all running off PHP/MySQL, but I can't launch it until I re-configure my server setup - which is another huge impending saga (all for the good... in the long run... surely... *sigh*).

Anyway, I have made it out to a few good things recently. Last week I went to a show by Dylan Moran which was jolly good - although I was seated up in the galleries of this large venue, a good distance from him on the stage (it felt a bit like listening to a comedy show on the radio).

I actually met him once - well, saying 'I met him' would be stretching the envelope of truth somewhat.

I had been out early one morning watching some international rugby at a local pub. At lunchtime I had wombled off to catch a train and while waiting for it, I had gone around the corner to a local free outdoor performance area.

I had my good camera on me and low and behold, as I approached the area, I see Dylan Moran seated amongst the free-sitting crowd. Sadly, the experienced professional in him had, by now, also, already spotted the lurker amongst the plebs and, already, I knew the game was up! Luckily, i'd had a few beers and any real daytime logic had already already been pissed up against the wall.

I wobbled up to him and ever so slightly dribbled at him "Excuse me, do you mind if I take your picture?", to which, with the understatement of an Irishman, he said "Yes, I do mind!".

Even in that ever so brief holy-exchange, I clocked the consumate professional in him - sublimely avoiding using the F or C word in his reply... but, as a Gonzo, I knew it was there!

So, back in my world, I tottered back off down the road again, dragging my last tatters of pride behind me. I don't blame him - he did have his kids there with him and 'it all' must get somewhat tedious. At least, as I now think to myself, I was in his life for 1.5 secs!

Even if it was only for him to tell me to 'get back out of his life!'.

Last weekend I went to see Howard Jones, the new romantics singer from the 80's from back in the days when I had a lot more hair and the likes of Duran Duran & Madonna ruled the world. I was a bit concerned before going to the gig because I thought his voice might have gone, or that he could have looked like a 3,000 yr old troll or that he would just play lots of new stuff (if he had any - I had not really bothered to look him up at all).

As it turns out, he has a stunning voice and at least ½ of the songs he played were the old ones, played beautifully by him on a keyboard and another very talented wizard on a stunning 12-string Takamine guitar. Fantastic to hear someone who, obviously, is very musically talented and can actually perform & sing their own material. You would have assumed that his 'sound' was completely engineered in the production studio, but you, like I, would be happily surprised to know that his sound is natural - and his songs can be played completely on keyboard & guitar (well, an electric keyboard).

Howard Jone's gig venue was at a personal wine bar with 100 or so other folk, which was really nice especially after having sat in the heavens watching Dylan Moran the other night. I took my camera with me and managed to fire off almost 100 shots. Most of them are terrible, out of focus or of him scratching his ear, nose or arse, but a couple came out alright.

As I left the venue and milled around the front desk looking at some of his stock for a while, he actually came out of the back. So I, & a host of other idiots, got to have a moment with him.

In that moment & time, I passed on a message to him from the ol' neighbourhood, where I grew up. In future years I knew that when I ran into some certain old girls/girlfriends, that I would be able to get a lot of mileage out of telling this story. They would, I think, still flip out at the news of someone having met him and having passed on a wee collective 'hi' from them!

Anyway, I did manage to get my photo with him, but, sadly, I 'm not going to display it here. Email me and ask nicely & I might give you a link to the picture.

On a final note, I did notice at the Howard Jones gig that there were a few panty-waving, slightly psychotic, hardcore female supporters in the crowd too (interesting but scary). Seated behind me was also some bloke who kept shouting 'Joneeeess', which seemed like it would be more at home in the Millenium stadium in Cardiff - supporting Welsh rugby.

tech-tastic

2006-07-28T11:59:00.000+01:00

Got to love a bit of impulse buying eh!

Wombling around Tesco's yesterday (*a major supermarket chain in the UK), I got drawn into the vortex that is their 'technical/gadget section'. In there was something very exciting that I had noticed the other week and had, subsequently, researched on the internet - but, to no avail.

Firstly, the background to this situation, now as bad as it is (and I know it is bad) I have a wee tv in my bedroom that I quite like to watch before going to bed. Nothing like relaxing tired eyes, that have been staring a computer screen all day, by going to bed and staring at a tv screen.

Anyway, living in this Medieval area of Britain I can only get channels 1-4 on my bedroom telly (running off bunny ears). Or, I could only get channels 1-4 until, very mysteriously, a short while ago, Ch3 (or ITV) disappeared off the radar scope. Weird (and, yes, I tried everything to get it back, except for re-wiring the telly).

I don't know what happened because I don't remember reading anything in the paper about a TV mast being de-commissioned or a stray Israeli missle hitting it (the way they're spraying them around at the moment, nothing is safe). All of a sudden, one day out of the blue, I was reduced to 3 channels ("of crap", I'd like to add).

So, in Tesco's, I had eyed up one of these wireless video (or whatever - DVD, video, PC) transmitters. Now I was pretty sceptical of their real-world effectiveness and, furthermore, would not normally buy a piece of kit like that from a supermarket. Nonetheless, in a fit of carefree abandon, I threw it into my trolly, doubling my food bill, and bought the little gizmo!

Having got it home, I pulled it out of its box (read the instructions - I must be over 30!) and began to start plugging it in. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it worked, or sort of!

Amazing, just like that, I could now watch Freeview (digital telly - with about 30 channels) from my bed. Admittedly, at first the remote would not work, so I had to walk 50 paces down the hall and into the lounge to change channels and it completely screwed my wireless internet connection. Eventually, I got both of those problems resolved and I was able to relax in bed late last night, listening to Radio 3's 'Late Junction' with Verity Sharp (great name, especially for a music presenter), as I was dozing off.

It is, probably, a very expensive way to listen to radio, involving 2 tv's, a digital tuner, a wireless transmitter & receiver, not to mention the millions of electromagnetic waves that must be bouncing around this house and their associated cancerous implications.

But, late last night, I was in heaven - 30 channels of crap to watch on tv with an additional 50 radio stations to listen to! I don't normally give a company like Tesco's a thumbs up (typically, going out of my way to try and buy fruit & veges from local traders), but credit where credit is due - that was a pretty good deal on a techy piece of kit... and my regards to the children in the sweatshop in Shanghai who probably built the thing too...

* it must be so helpful to foreign language readers of this blog that I, helpfully, explain that Tesco's is a big supermarket chain, but don't give any lead as to what 'wombling' is, earlier in the sentence... It'd be a bloody good dictionary that translated wombling... (or a kids one from the 70's, I suppose).

busy times indeed

2006-07-19T19:47:00.000+01:00

in the last week, I have:

- baked my first ever loaf of bread,
- installed & got running - Apache, PHP5.0 & MySQL on my localhost,
- had enjoyable e-mail contact with a jolly nice chap who writes a bloody good blog,
- wrote a quote for a life-changing amount of money (relative to my life & remember, I don't get out much),
- helped a disabled woman back into her leg because she was sooo pissed that she fell over horrifically in a bar and was too wasted to (a) get up (b) deal with it & (c) re-attach the aforementioned artifical leg.

It's been a funny ol' week...

quoth the raven

2006-07-10T12:39:00.000+01:00

In an e-mail I sent to someone this morning...

"Well, how about that eh? Who'd have imagined that the Italians would have successfully elbowed, dived, goaded and faked their way to a World Cup victory! Not bad for a bunch of guys who'll probably be playing in the 3rd division for the next year"

...and that was the World Cup. The biggest, allegedly, sporting event on the planet and what are to be the enduring memories - elite, absurdly-overpaid sportsmen, faking, diving, rolling, writhing and screaming in agony from non-existant tackles all over the pitch. This is the message being broadcast out to young folk all over the world - this is the way to play sport (...& live life). This element of the game could be eradicated if they had the desire & balls to do so (yes, tragic pun). My heart goes out to all the PE teachers out there who now have to try and deal with a billion youngsters imitating their onscreen heroes.

I don't just blame the Italians, everyone was at it, but they were just somewhat more successful than others. Zidane, in the Final, was a bloody idiot obviously, but I look forward to hearing what actually happened out there. The deliberate brutal elbow to McBride (American) by the Italian defender will be remembered as the most violent moment of the tournament. Australia humped out of the tournament by an Italian dive in the penalty box in the dying seconds of overtime was another sad moment for many neutrals. Molti Squalo!

On a final note though - well done to Germany, everyone, & I mean EVERYONE, thought you folks put on a fantastic tournament. It was a pity that you didn't get to the Final as it seemed it would have been a wonderful finale (DE vs FR). It was refreshing to see so much support from all over the UK for you folks in the playoff against Italy (everyone hoped you'd win).

So there it is folks, early in the 21st century and that was the biggest sporting event from the biggest sport on the planet. Mixed reviews from many pundits on the tournament, but I'll go with - 'good start and faltering finish'.

well, farg me

2006-06-30T13:13:00.000+01:00

Checking my e-mail this morning, I got a nice surprise message from my brother R who is now firmly back on the other side of the planet. We had recently caught up for the first time in a couple of years, in Germany. The reunion being the main purpose of the short-notice Deutsch reise...

I'd arrived the day before from the UK and he'd caught an overnight train from Austria, arriving early on a Sunday morning. Having made his way to the hotel in the north of the city, he had come up to the room knocked on the door and so 'it' had began.

Interestingly, in that first blast of conversation (not very well digested since I was still half asleep) he mentioned that he'd "just seen Bert & Ernie driving a beer truck outside the hotel" (Zum Zeppelin). I said "you mean, like Bert & Ernie off Seasame Street", "uh-huh!" he replied...

I didn't really respond since there is not much you can say to that sort of a statement at 8am on a Sunday morning. If he was older I'd have thought he was having some sort of weird 70's flashback.

So, a few months later and he just sent me a few snaps from the trip and low & behold there it is, in all of its reality or, more appropriately, surreality (is that a word?)...

Bert & Ernie driving a beertruck.

Funny how an odd conversation can be resolved 2 months later. Looking at the picture, I was pleased to see that in a 'true Teutonic law-abiding fashion' Bert had his seatbelt on (he always was a bit of a stickler for the rules).

a whinge, 8,000 women in bra's & an 'adios amigo'...

2006-06-29T13:29:00.000+01:00

Well there goes the blog award, eh - unless there is a category for 'flying start with a dribbly middle and a complete & utter collapse by the end...'.

Things are normally kinda hectic for me around this time of the year, but this period of work has really eclipsed all former years. It's a pity because the weather in the UK has been absolutely fabulous recently and for the whole bloody time, I've had my face glued to a computer screen and my, ever-widening, arse stuck in this chair. My engagement with summer thus far, has have included a few trips to the bank and a weekly trip to take out the rubbish!

A couple of weeks ago I had to do 38 hours work between the Friday night & following Monday morning. Tiring stuff indeed, felt like I had the hangover without going to the party. But there are good times ahead - in a fit of organisation I pre-ordered some tickets for an upcoming festival in this neck of the woods. In my enthusiasm, I booked tickets for (no clues to my age here):
- Demetri Martin
- Bill Bailey
- Dylan Moran
- an acoustic evening with Howard Jones
- & an evening chat by Tony Robinson

Last Saturday night I'd been to a friends place watching some footy when, on the return route home, I decided to come through the heart of town (which I never normally do). I'm glad I did because as I turned the corner onto a main thoroughfare, at half past midnight or something, I was greeted by the sight of 8,000 women walking towards me in the bra's (or quasi-bra's)!

I actually had my camera with me but all of the pictures are rubbish. It was quite dark and trying to hand hold a camera for 0.5sec shosts in the middle of a 'heaving' crowd (that pun must be worth an award alone), was never going to work - and it didn't...

Finally, to cap this brief update, there is a very good friend who is leaving the country in a few days... for good - so it goes. It is jolly sad that he is going and the gravity of it all has not really sunk in yet. He has been a bloody good mate and on behalf of us all I wish him well with his future endeavours. Good luck & strap it on Biggles, see you on Saturday!

The Otters and the Scientist...

2006-06-06T12:14:00.000+01:00

Idly bumming around the Internet, there have been a couple of things that have caught my fancy recently...

Those who know me will have heard me bleat on about Otters at some time or other. I do kinda like the little fellas - even managing to have got bitten by one at a zoo once (who hasn't).

A friend of mine sent me the following link to the Otter section at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (I think he was inspired by my 'hen-cam' post the other day). Otters are highly intelligent animals and, in a broad sense, come in 2 varieties - one large & one small (with the small ones being the smarter ones). They are quite liked by humans because they're playful, intelligent, have an ability to learn, use their thumbs like we do and, astonishingly, seem to have a sense of humor.

One good example that I heard once was of an otter who had, over time, come to appreciate its owner's life pattern. It noticed how the owner always left the house in a rush at 8am, taking some shiny metal objects with them. In due course, it developed a great game where it would hide the shiny objects and, then, take quite obvious pleasure from watching the human being run around in a complete flap, trying to find the missing car keys. Cool - let's see a cat do that!

In another work-avoiding, procrastination-fuelled, hour-of-life-wasted amble around the Internet, I stumbled across the site of this retired scientist. Now, I've done a fair bit of travelling, but, after seeing this guy's list of countries that he's been too over his life, I realised I ain't seen nothing yet - check this out for a well-travelled American.

Not surprisingly, his world views are rather judicious and his personal dislike of Bush is pretty easy to see.

Wunderbar...

2006-06-01T10:25:00.000+01:00

Staggering around a Supermarket last weekend, due to a teensy-weensy bit of over-indulgence on the previous day ('nuff said - my lawyers are dealing with all enquiries "you can't believe everything you read in the paper"), I found myself in all sorts of interesting aisles...

With a vacant stare, bad breath and a throbbing head, one is in the right state of mind to womble around a great big store to see what capitalist delights await. Admittedly, when I found myself in the dog food section staring at the truly staggering range of doggie delights, I had to ask myself a few questions - "why am I here?", "what am I looking for?" and "which dog food looks the best?". In all reality though, I could have saved myself a lot of mental effort if I'd just remembered that I don't actually have a dog, and... perhaps... I should just move on.

When I finally got the departure lounge - well it might have been a checkout, but it felt like a departure lounge to me, I was uncompromisingly reminded that World Cup fever is upon us (or those of 'us' who care anyway). Standing tall by the counters were big pallets of beer - not only beer, but beer with German writing on it.Now my phone camera doesn't do the display justice (with its 0.000000000000003 MB lens), but it was handsome pile of beer indeed (even to someone with a hangover). I had to laugh at the German text which proudly stated "Das Tennents Lager is WUNDERBAR".

A hearty sentiment indeed except, if you ask me, it should have said "Das Tennents lager tastes like a subtle blend of detergent water, perservatives and other gut-wrenching chemicals, but, on a slightly more positive note... it is bloody cheap"

Compu Global Hyper Meganet

2006-05-25T12:36:00.000+01:00

Somedays you've just got to love the Internet...

Yesterday, having finally decided that I needed a laser printer (who doesn't), I finally decided to place my order. Going to PriceRunner (my first stop before buying anything these days - highly recommended, along with KelKoo & Dealtime) to check what the latest prices were, I was happy to find a suitable bundle of technological joy for under £50 - undercutting the likes of Dixons, Currys & PC World by a good £25.

So I zoomed off to the website with the cheapest price and placed my order at 4.40pm. The site said that "if orders were placed by 5pm it would be sent that day". A couple of hours later and I get an e-mail that linked to the CityLink site and my order, where I could happily watch my printer trundle up the country overnight.

Checking on it's progress this morning, I saw that it had arrived in the right city and had been bundled onto a van - ready for delivery today. Funny old thing, I'm 5 words into this blog, when the buzzer goes and there is my shiny new laser printer! A mere 20 hours after I bought it from some unheard of company in London - who are probably on their way to Tijuana now, courtesy of my credit card.

On this sort of note and what really made me laugh the other week. One or two days after I got back from my German trip, I had made myself one of those magnificent breakfasts that can only really be produced in one's own kitchen. Essentially bacon & eggs on bread (sorry folks, I am a canivore, but, generally, only piggies are in the firing line), it actually entailed mushrooms, onions, spring onions, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, tomato, iceburg lettuce, smoked bacon & Pastel Coloured Free Range Eggs from Clarence Court ("supporting rare breeds" says the box) on wholemeal seed & nut bread, all washed down with Tropicana Sanguinello (red oranges). Mmmm, I feel quite hungry now!

It's the type of breakfast that makes you leap out of bed for and then need to return to for an hour, in order to snooze it off.

Anyway, while eating this orgy of breakfast delights, I ended up reading the carton that the free range eggs came from. On the inside, apart from telling me what a wonderful life these hens were having (good), was a link to their website.

Sitting at the computer, as I was, I zoomed off to Clarence Court and, then, immediately clicked on the 'hen-cam'. Low & behold there I sat, munching on my brekky, watching 'my' ecstatic little hens running all over the show in a wonderful outdoor farm (an Alton Towers of the Hen world I thought), like the mad little fowls they are...

Gotta luv the 21st century (well the bits where we're not trying to blow ourselves to smithereens). The Hen-Cam is here.

Although when i just went to it, it wasn't working.

Yes - I did phone them up and told them to expect 1000's of hits, or two at least, and enquired when it'll be back online. They were unaware of the glitch and are looking into it as we speak (got their best rooster on it, I suspect). I did also tell them that "I thought they were doing a great job" and, after hanging up, wondered if this was another early sign of impending senility (phoning up a farm, asking when the hen-cam will be back online).

This all reminds me of a quip I heard once. On the subject of dolphins getting caught in tuna nets (which is bad, naturally), someone said "Yeah, well they're all up in arms for the dolphins, but you don't hear anyone banging on about the tuna's predicament do you!". Good point...

Oh, goodie, I just checked and the hen-cam is back on! Although, it's different to last time when I could see a grassy field with trees, a river and swings (ok, there were no swings). Now it's kinda up close & personal and the picture is somewhat intermittent (last time it was better than Nasa's)!

That was summer...

2006-05-21T17:51:00.000+01:00

Sadly, this blog has become another casualty of me being sooo busy at the moment (currently sitting in the same bin as exercise, e-mails & a social life). Full of enthusiasm as I may be, I just don't have the time to write more than a few feeble words...

Discussing feeble things - we had a great summer this year (or 'a great April', as some people may call it). Really, it was lovely, 3 weeks of unadulterated sunshine. Sadly, I spent most of it working, but did manage to spend one whole day in the sun and, then, cheekily informed a client that "in a tense vote between 'doing his important work' or 'sitting on my arse in the sun' - the outside world through... although, it was a close vote!".

Anyway, with dark clouds filling our skies again, I took a slightly interesting picture (remember, I don't get out much) from my work desk of a stormy sunset the other night. Taken at full zoom (200mm), with 1/2 sec time lapse, I was lucky to get anything, but if you click on the picture you'll see a feathered friend (or a tip-duck, depending on your disposition).

Mental note to self: 2A

2006-05-16T12:31:00.000+01:00

Dinnae drink & rollerblade:

- decades of ice skating / ice hockey experience £8,000
- conversion to roller blades £200
- Friday night drinks £40
- zooming around flat at 0200 Saturday morning, attempted broken hip in kitchen - PRICELESS!
Right thigh, Tuesday morning - nice!

Who are these people?

2006-05-08T13:30:00.000+01:00

Very much against the grain, I decided to go to bed early on Saturday night - missing out on what could have been a good party...

I got up early on Sunday morning with the keen intention of photographing a local event. Living right in the heart of the city, I knew that between 10 & 11am, there were going to be 9,000 people running past my apartment.

It was the annual 10km run - an event I know only too well!

A couple of years ago I ran it 2 days after shifting house - that is after shifting into a new apartment that was up 3 sets of fairly steep stairs (like Dutch steps - if you've ever been to the Netherlands). Anyway, 3 friends were supposed to give me a hand and none of them showed up *grumble* (of course, they all had good excuses)! On the day my Quads were already absolutely fried and it was a horror run.

Last year I did it again and this time there was a mini-heatwave (20 degrees is a mini-heatwave in this part of ol' blighty). Hence, the ol' spleen took another good hammering.

This year I decided 'bugger it' and vigourously fended off all suggestions about doing it with a firm and unrelenting "NO, I'm not doing it this year!"

But, I did decide to photograph the event and as you can tell by the pictures, the weather was atrocious. Really, really, really bad (especially for photography)! I'm starting to think that 10km races & I don't mix.

Nonetheless, I got some interesting pictures (these aren't them). Actually, it was quite hard to get any pictures of the 'elite atheletes'. Between the bad conditions, using a zoom lens and the fact that they were going downhill - bloody quickly, it was hard to get anything of them at all.

As an aside - the eventual winner of the womens race, won the 2005 New York Marathon. Touche!

Cripes, that's a big ship!

2006-05-02T13:01:00.000+01:00

Beloved regular readers of this blog will be well aware of my continuing efforts to maim myself recently. Various escapades on inline skates have left little bits of 'Fargonite' smeared all over pavements around the UK. Happily, I can now report that this particular circus act has been taken further afield.

As alluded to in recent posts (if you read German), I had a groovy wee road trip to Germany last week. 5 days in Hamburg, Bremen & Lubeck, to meet up with my brother R for a couple of days (he lives in Austria, although, only for another 48 hours).

Having got safely to Lubeck airport (after having initially departed my flat at 3am on a Saturday morning *ugh*), picked up my hire car, found the city of Hamburg in appalling weather and then navigated to the Hotel, I, finally, had the rest of the day to myself.

After a quick snooze and dinner in the Hotel 'zum Zeppelin' (Graf Ferdinand von Zepplin, Father of the Airships, stayed there when his car broke down outside the Hotel early into the 20th century. They asked him if they could use his name for the Hotel and he said 'Yes'), I caught the U-Bahn into town and set about exploring a bit of the city... with camera in hand.

Naturally, in true Gonzo fashion, I headed immediately to the Reeperbahn to see what all the fuss was about. After a quick assessment of the scene and, not long after arrival, having been 'informed' by a burly, bearded, German biker guy "zat photos vere not to be taken in zis area", I, astutely, decided 'bugger it' and found a bar where I could have a beer.

At this odd wee bar I asked if they had Weiss Beer (a Bavarian beer made from wheat, vice hops. Try it, it'll change your drinking life. I, personally, recommend 'Erdinger') to which, with a disinterested look, the barlady said "No, Becks!". "Oh" I said "have you got anything else. "No, just Becks!". And so it was, they sold Becks and only Becks (reminds me of a 'Mad' comic joke once about a radio station that only played "Led Zepplin's - Stairway to Heaven".

The actual conversation-

Me: "Haben Sie weiss bier?"
Barlady: "Nein. Becks!"
Me: "Ach So, welches anderen bier haben Sie"
Barlady: "Nichts - nur Becks!"
Me: "Hmmm, klar - ein Becks bitte"

So, having finished my yummy Becks, I headed down to the Harbour area to see what was going on. The port was, as it turned out, only 500 metres downhill from where I was, as a crow flies... or as a Beck's bottle rolls... or, in fact, as a Beatle crawls...

I casually wandered down the hill and, as I got closer, I could see an enormous ship looming up, directly in front of me. Now, I don't know a heck of a lot about ships but, by anyones standards, it was a bloody big ship. As I got closer and closer it just rose further into the air and, then, when I was only about 200 metres away from it, I realised that it really was absolutely colossal!

It was about then that I started to notice that I wasn't the only person taking more than a passing interest in this ship. There were lots of people standing about, all taking pictures and when I looked down onto the dock area, I noted that there were big crowds down there as well.

By now, knowing something was truly afoot (or afloat), I furiously got out my camera, changed lenses and starting taking pictures. The damn thing was already on the move and starting to slide from view, behind some buildings. After taking a few hurried pictures, I ran another 800 metres down the road to try and get a less obstructed view.

In this new location, I threw down my daybag and pulled out my camera again. Rapidly assessing the situation, I realised that I needed to get a bit further out onto the busy road in order to get a better angle of the ship. Very quickly checking for traffic to my right, I proceeded to step out. On my last step, at edge of the pavement, I caught the hem of my trousers under my other shoe and as I tried to pull that leg forward, my pants pulled taut and toppled me forwards and over, onto the road.

Before I knew it, *CRASH*, I had fallen knee first and ended up sprawled out on road surface. Now, looking properly Left, I saw that there was traffic coming directly towards me. I was pleased that I had managed to cradle the camera and protect it in the fall but, now, it was time to get off the road. I quickly sprung back up and leapt back off the road.

Safely back on the side of the road, I mentally berated myself for my stupidity! When I had checked the road for traffic, I had looked 'Right', BUT, of course, I was in Germany, Europe, and the traffic there drives on the right! Hence, I actually needed to have looked 'Left' to clear the road.

I had been in such a rush and with that blinding bit of stupidity, I had fallen, completely and ignorantly, into a road full of busy traffic endangering my safety - or the camera's at least. Luckily (he says with 4 still intact limbs), the traffic was slowed up, slightly, by the traffic lights further down the road.

As I somewhat tentatively took some more pictures of this ship, I noticed that my knee was hurting a bit. Subsequently, in a toilet in a hotel bar (where I did find an Erdinger), I pulled up my trousers and looked at my knee and took the picture above (I'm surprised, looking at the pictures on this blog, that I don't get more hits from people into self-harm).

This, of course, all leads to the question: what the hell was the ship anyway?

As it turns out the ship was called 'The Freedom of the Seas' (as can be seen in the quality picture above) and, in fact, is the largest ship in the world (passenger ship anyway - I assume there are bigger Aircraft Carriers?). It was in Hamburg for its last trials (I don't know if it was built there though) and, on that night, it was going out for it's last night sea trial.

The damn thing moves pretty fast (as I discoverd) and, as I subsequently learnt after my wee adventure, during those few minutes that I tried to photograph it - it had moved from its initial berth, a kilometre eastwards to the main Port area, where it executed a 3-point turn and had then, rapidly, buggered off northwest and out into open seas...

And, of the pictures, you may very well ask? Well I must have taken at least 25 snaps and all of them are crap! Being nightime, I was having to use a bit of timelapse photography to try to burn the pictures in and with no tripod to assist me, they are all blurred and crap. The one above is the only slightly usable one I have i.e. for a blog (click on it to see a bigger version) and even that does not do the the ship any justice at all.

2 days later it set forth on its maiden voyage from Hamburg to New York. Since there have been no 'Titanic' type stories in the news since my return, I assume it safely made it...

Hmmm, I wonder if I sent them a letter and a blurry photograph, whether they'd give me a free trip?

und, die Antwort...

2006-04-30T22:40:00.000+01:00

and the answer

... click the picture / klick auf Bild...

Ein kleines Problem..

2006-04-20T13:16:00.000+01:00

Dieses wochende gehe ich, ganz ungeplant, fur ein schnell resie nach Deutschland (Hamburg & Hannover eigentlich). Wahrend dort, ich habe entschieden ein Auto zu mieten. Ich habe eine ganz billig Volkswagen Rollschuh fur 117 GBP gefunden...

... aber, ich habe auch ein Mercedes sehen, es fur nur 190 GBP kosten. Was denkst du? Ein billiges, kleines, Auto oder ein grosses, schnelles, Deutsches Auto.

Ya, Ich habe das auch gedacht - I werde das grosste, schnellte, Auto mieten.

Autobahn, hier komm ich!

Fargin busy...

2006-04-13T19:27:00.000+01:00

can't write... busy, busy, busy... fargin busy!

The Freddy Mercury Story

2006-04-06T11:14:00.000+01:00

So it came to pass in the 80's, that the mighty 'Queen', who were at the peak of their fame at the time, were coming to play a gig in the Antipodes...

Big acts have a habit of bypassing that part of the world, since it is a bit of a logistical nightmare to get their kit there and, realistically, the whole operation is just too damned expensive, relative to the amount of suitably sized stadiums they can fill and, therefore, gigs they can play. If they are lucky they will cover their costs, but that is about it. Big bands do come, but, normally, only once in their careers.

As it turned out, at the grand old age of 15, this was to be the first ever concert that I went to and what an initiation it was. Having never been in a crowd of more than than 8,000 people (seated), it was an experience to mix it up with 35,000 drug & booze fuelled rockers - quite an eye opener for young, virgin eyes.

Full of youthful endeavour, we made it our mission to try and push through the crowds and get to the front of the concert. As anyone who has been in this situation would know, it is not an easy thing to do. It probably took us an hour of squeezing, sliding, shoving and generally apologizing, to muscle our way to the front. Finally, unable to go another inch, we found ourselves about 50 feet from the edge of the stage which, in a crowd of 35,000 people, is a heck of a place to be.

And, there, before our very eyes, was the mighty Freddy Mercury and Queen, giving it wildy on stage - a mere stone's throw from us.

To be honest, I can't really remember that much of the concert because (1) it was a bloody long time ago, and (2) I was pissed (I think). Nonetheless, there is one key moment that is indelibly glued in my memory. At one stage of the concert Freddy had had a costume change and, now, was strutting about the stage in a fairly thin, white, lycra, one-piece outfit. In the midst of one of his songs he turned around, spread his legs reaallllly wide and bent right over to the ground, with microphone stand protruding backwards & upwards, through his legs. Now, he held this pose for quite a while, as I recall, and continued singing with his 'inverted' perspective of the world.

It had, actually, come to my attention earlier that his costume was somewhat see-through. But, now, stretched to its physical limits by his splayed legs and his doubled torso, it was way beyond any form of decency that an 'average joe' would have considered appropriate.

Two initial things became immediately apparent: Firstly, he was not wearing anything underneath and, secondly, he was somewhat of a hairy chap ... all over, so it seemed.

It was at this point that I remember thinking "I wonder if he knows?" and, furthermore, "I wonder if someone should tell him?". I do remember there was a general awarkwardness amongst the crowd in my general area. We were all enjoying the gig and the music, but no-one quite knew where to look, when confronted by the very real spectacle of Freddy's hairy anus...

In hindsight, I've always laughed at these innocent youthful concerns which I held on Freddy's behalf. I've told the story a number of times during the intervening years and had always thought, and said, that I was about 14 at the time. This is of relevance because as I've mused over the incident, I've often wondered if, at that age, I knew what 'gay' meant and, furthermore, whether I was aware that Freddy Mercury was gay?

With this new piece of chronological information regarding the date of the gig, I realise that I was 15/16 vice 13/14 and, therefore, I'd have to say, I was very aware of what 'gay' meant (not that I would have been exposed to it at that stage of my life). And, frankly, looking back, I'm pretty sure that I did not know that Freddy Mercury was gay.

It is obvious now, but to a teenager in the midst of the 80's (new romantics etc) it was not such a surprise to see a chap who would dress extravagantly and mince it up somewhat. Of course, in the bigger scheme of things my lack of awareness about Freddy's homosexuality and general concern for his 'wardrobe malfunction', are somewhat relevant to his subsequent unfortunate demise i.e. in my understanding of 'the big picture'.

At least he did live his life to the full and I, for one, can claim to have seen Freddy Mercury's arse and not many people can say that.... hmmm, actually, that might not, technically, be such a valid statement.

As an addendum to this story, during my research for this story I came across a report of the actual show from this website... www.queenconcerts.com

"Tony Hadley from Spandau Ballet came to see his friend Freddie and they both got drunk like pigs before the Queen concert (even many people in the audience noticed there was something wrong with Freddie that night :-) In addition to that, Tony decided to join Queen for the encore ('Jailhouse Rock') but he confused the lyrics and started singing 'Tutti Frutti' instead"

Which, frankly I don't really remember that well, although, it has to be said, I do remember that the concert didn't blow me off my socks, so it can't have been that good.

Interestingly, in the same nature of story, a few years later I went to a 'Big Day Out' concert with the sole intent of seeing 'The Cult' playing (they were the headline act). As it turned out, Ian Astbury (lead singer) was also pissed and I don't just mean pissed - he was off his trolley, legless, shit-faced, absolutely fuckin' cunted!

He was sooo pissed that he was just staggering all about the stage, tripping over the microphone lead, barely able to recognise the 50,000 strong crowd and making incoherent sounds, which, presumably, were meant to be the lyrics. He made it to the 3rd song when, during another violent lurch, he crashed backwards right through the huge drum set - completely wiping them and himself out.

So ended the Cult's set. Nice one Ian!

Saturday shopping list: buy Dettol

2006-04-01T14:47:00.001+01:00

Well, the jolly good news of the day is that the sun has come out to play... which means this I was able to blast back onto the roads again.

The other not quite so good bit of news is that I've grafted another part of my body onto the pavement - again! This time it was my left elbow, which is somewhat in keeping with my previous left hip injury (see earlier entry). There were some extenuating circumstances, but, in reality, there was a lot more Fargonite in there than there should have been.

Upon initial purchase, I told myself to take it easy for 6 weeks before going 'hooning ' on my now not so shiny Widowmakers, which I've been generally keeping to. This agreement was made with due reverence to another youthful incident involving a sharp corner, a 750cc motorbike (suitably branded a Ninja) and that good ol' exuberant Gallah - traveling, this time, at 173kmph.

So, now I'm off to the shops to buy some Dettol and, on the way, I think I'll ponder buying some elbow pads... and, maybe, square-dancing - that sounds a nice & safe pastime...

I can really see, at the rate I'm going, that this is going to end up being a one-armed blog.

Getting pissy

2006-03-31T11:45:00.003+01:00

Right , I'm really starting to get really pissy!

I've been back from my trip for over a week now and I've only been able to go rollerblading twice - and that was in the first 2 days after my return. Ever since then it has been bloody raining, or, at the least, it has been wet enough for there to be moisture on the ground, thereby, making skating a serious health risk.

This picture (somewhat enhanced) shows my hallway carpet which, as you may notice, is starting to look like a rollerskating rink. And this is because some 90KG monkey keeps whizzing up & down it in his shiny new 'Salomon 3V Dominator X-1 Widowmaker' Rollerblades - all because he can't go outside and play.

Although, it has to be said, in the interim, he has been mastering 'advanced toilet operations' on inline skates.

There is, I guess, some hope in the air though. Last weekend the TV weather report proudly declared that 'Spring had started' and by comparing Wednesday's (before & after), a real difference can be seen. Last Wednesday it was snowing and since things have warmed up somewhat, this Wednesday it just rained all day. Brilliant..

toilet chic

2006-03-30T19:45:00.000+01:00

There's a bar up the road from me that used to have some very funny logos on the toilet doors. When i had first seen the guy's one I just about pissed myself (bad pun) and, consequently, just had to head down the hall to see what they had put on the woman's door - which, I thought, was even funnier than the guys.

The next time I went to the bar, a few months later, the signs were gone and I couldn't help wondering if, perhaps, this was because of complaints from patrons. I seriously hope not because they were great and, frankly speaking, they captured one's intent perfectly.

Note: On a Gonzo aside, I don't know if you've ever stood outside of a toilet taking photos of the door, but it is not a very cool feeling - especially, as a bloke, when you're taking photos of the door outside the 'ladies'.

All in the pursuit of artistic integrity..!

a LION RED, please!

2006-03-26T22:54:00.000+01:00

I bought a beer at a race-track once...

This statement is not so surprising in itself except, to say that, I was 12 at the time...

For some unknown reason we, as a family, went to the horse races (never had before, never did after). In addition to my sister S in attendance, there was also my good mate McGoo. As we wombled aimlessly around the interior of the race track Pavilion, completely bored out of our little skulls, we went past the entrance to the members bar (there ain't much to do at a race track if you're 12 years old, can't bet and have less than a passing interest in horses).

As we peered anxiously into this mystical place of adult ritual, we were intrigued by what was going on. We all wanted to go in there, but, as became readily apparent, my younger sister and the ever-practical McGoo were reticent to do so. Captain Fargon, on the other hand, has always been pretty keen to run headlong into walls, so, with a gust of bravado, I declared that i was going in for a beer! As McGoo & S watched on anxiously, I strided manfully up to the bar, head held high - or as high a 4 foot kid can get it anyway!

As I got to the bar, the first thing I noticed was that the height of the bar was a lot higher than I imagined it would be, which did nothing to bolster my confidence. The barmaid seemed in no particular rush to get to my end of the bar, which also helped slow time to a painful, almost impreceptible, crawl.

Finally, she came over to my end of the bar and, with a slightly bemused look on her face, looked me up and down for loooong a minute - well, from nose to forehead which is all that could probably be seen. I held my cool, maintaining her gaze with a steady eye and, eventually, she said "...wadda ya want?"

"A beer!" I firmly declared.

"What sort?" she replied

...and, then, at that very moment in time - I knew I was fucked! I didn't know the name of any beers.

I stood there looking verrry dumb for another eternal period of time, desperately trying to think of the name of a brand of beer. How frustrating - to be this close the goal and, now, the whole charade is torpedoed due to my limited beer knowledge. Breaking her gaze for a moment I looked along the bar to my right and there, a few feet awy, was a bottle of beer with its label pointing my way.

Quickly reading the label I said "a LION RED, please!" (my parents brought me up well, always making me pay my courtesies - even when buying illegal, underage beer).

So, off she went and returned with an ice-cool quart bottle of Lion Red (2 pints or 745ml in modern speak) - which is a lot of drinking for a kid, especially a kid who does not like beer and who, now, really wanted to get the hell out of there. Looking over my shoulder I could still see S & McGoo looking back with a mixture of surprise & pride.

Necking the beer as fast as I could, I got the hell out of there before I got completely busted...

Hmmm, hope my parents don't read this...

Idiot on wheels...

2006-03-24T17:49:00.000Z

Ahhh, an old friend has returned to my life - good ol' fashioned fear...!

While I was away down south on my wee venture last week - I finally, after about 10 years of 'wanting', bought myself some rollerblades. I have, actually, been ice-skating since I was 7 (when I ended up on the side of the rink crying, because 'I could not do it like the big kids') and by my mid-teens, was skating every night of the week - if not 10 times a week with the multiple public weekend sessions that were available. Late in my teens, I had taken up Ice Hockey where I played for the North Shore Vikings.

During those public sessions I used to say to myself - if I hadn't fallen over once per session, then I wasn't trying hard enough!

Due to my semi-religious devotion to that mantra, I spent a lot of my teens with moderately serious water on the knee & elbow. Notably, it was always my left knee & elbow, since that was the way I would spin or jump things - whether that be the rink walls, cones, people, high bars or anything else that got in my way.

Like most young skaters as the years passed on by, I moved onto bigger & better things (drinking & girls), but always held a secret desire to go to the Netherlands (thanks to some naff 60's Disney film) and be able to go skating from village to village - whizzing along the frozen canals. Unfortunately, ol' Walt and I never figured on global warming and it has been a looong time since the Dutch canals have frozen over - or been frozen enough to safely go skating on anyway (not since the early 80's, I believe).

So, finally, I have invested in some Salomon Crossmax V3's, on which the front & back wheels can be adjusted to go up or down. Thereby, giving you a multi-purpose skate which can be used for distance / speed skating (in the down position) or as a highly manoeuvrable street skate (in the up position).

A week into it and I have discovered a couple of key factors which are very relevant to my refreshed 21st century skating:

(1) I'm used to skating on flat surfaces.
(2) Rollerblades don't work in the wet.
(3) The road is harder than ice - not absolutely true (rock hard, overly cooled, ice can cut you up pretty badly too - but in crowded rink sessions it gets very wet, thereby 'dampening' your fall. {har-har, nice accidental pun}), but obstacles like cars & bollards do add a complete new survival factor to this mobile circus.

The first skate I went for, post-purchase, was in Wiltshire, along some country roads, which can truly be described as adventureous and dumb, dumb, dumb brother - real dumb! Not only was the road surface pretty rough, it was way more undulating than I expected and there was no run-off from the road - only a high bank on either side. Ultimately, I only had one major wipeout during which, luckily, no cars, trucks or tractors came around the corner!

Upon arrival back home, I went skating around a local park (the top picture, above, was taken just before setting off) and then, on the next day, I was all set to go for a long daytime skate, i.e. fully kitted up, when I looked out the window and realised it was bloody snowing (in late March - nice one). A couple of hours later and it had stopped snowing / raining and I tried again, which is when I discovered that inline skates don't work in the wet.

Yesterday, I finally got to go for a long day-skate and went to a reputable bike shop to look at some 'body armour' (I only have wrist & knee guards at the moment, but am keen to get a body-sized airbag). It was on the return from this shop, empty-handed I should add, that I contributed my first bit of skin to the road surface (again, see the photo above of my left hip).

All in all, it's been a jolly good hoot - hope I live through it! Busy medieval cities that lie on the same latitude as Moscow, are not really the place to go skating, I'm slowly being forced to realise...

So, if you see some Gallah flailing down the road while you're driving by, make sure to beep your horn and I'll tell you to 'fark off', like I did to all the other cars...

Bruce, Dave & Willy

2006-03-24T12:06:00.000Z

I've just returned from a week around the south of England which included a whirlwind tour of Cambridge, London, Wiltshire & Bristol.. You'd think after such a cultural fix that I'd be bursting with great anecdotes and tales of yore...

Actually, my week was intriguingly influenced by 3 blokes called Bruce, Dave & Willy. Each, unique in character and all with an alarming party trick of licking their balls in public - nice, that'll always impress the chicks!

You probably won't be surprised to hear that they were cats - and black ones at that. In the normal course of my life, I don't really have a lot of association with cats, but during this week I was surrounded by the little buggers, each one somewhat more bizarre than the previous.

The first wee fella was called Bruce and he lived in Clapham, London, and was, upon due reflection, a fairly tame little wee bloke who just enjoyed a good cuddle and a nice meal (who doesn't).

My next port of call was a pub in Wiltshire where I was greeted, upon arrival, by Dave. Dave had somewhat more of a robust personality and, effectively, ruled the bar. Importantly, he liked sitting on a bar stool right in the middle of the bar that was pretty well exactly where you needed to be, if you wanted to order a drink - not much chance of that then.

That was, of course, when he wasn't walking along the bar. The owners continually tried to stop him and were constantly telling him off, but Dave had it sussed - he just didn't give a shit. He, as a feline, wasn't in such a rush for a cuddle since everyone patted him all day long anyway. So, he had one of those annoying habits of looking and acting as if he wanted to be patted, but would actually stay just out of arms reach as he passed by - walking along the bar.

In my final port of call, Bristol, I stayed with some friends (T&J), there was a psychopath called Willy (or William). I don't know what his game was, but it involved a lot of squarking and feeding. The little bugger was able to let himself in and out at will, via a wee window in the kitchen, which stood at head height (or 5 foot 11 3/4). It wasn't much of a window and the funny thing is, at his present feeding regime, he ain't going to be able to fit out of it for very much longer.

He was only 18 months old and at one point I had politely asked (as you do) "if he'd had his balls removed?" - because the cat was in some serious need of some pretty heavy life adjustments. On an hourly rotation, he would come in the window and then proceed to start squarking, manically, in desperate need of food for the next 1/2 hour, prior to departing on another nocturnal adventure. Seriously, he would do this like 10 times a night and, frankly, it really was getting on everyone's tits - especially T's who had had a complete sense of humour failure with regard to this farkin' cat.

Of course, Willy would spend all day sleeping (when he wasn't in the kitchen squarking for food) since he was knacked from being up all night - squarking for food.

My final suggestion to T was to buy some soft slippers - slippers with a good trajectory & flight aerodynamics!

Competition improvements

2006-03-23T13:16:00.000Z

I was just watching the 'Super Heavyweight' weightlifting competition at the Commonwealth Games and it has to be said these fellas lift some pretty spectacular weights. The Gold & Silver medals were won by a couple of Aussie students and the Bronze went to a teenager from Niue. A new Commonwealth record was set by the Silver medalist at 217KG in the Clean & Jerk (it was a combined weight competition, hence his 2nd placing) and, then, the Gold winning Aussie failed to set a new record at 225KG - which is somewhat short of the World Record at 263KG (set back in 1978 - in the good ol' hey-day of drug-fuelled sports).

Watching these behemoths in action I couldn't help wondering how a Gorilla would get on in the competition?

Not your typical 'monkey on a barstool' kinda guy, but a full-on shitkicking Silverback! Naturally, they would be pretty strong, but you would have to assume that their technique would be fairly poor (you try teaching a fully grown Silverback Gorilla the required technique for Clean & Jerk).

Another key point is that Monkeys, Apes & Gorillas can not lock their knees in as we do. Our closest relatives can walk on their hind legs, but this is only achieved by supporting their entire body weight on their muscles, which they are generally reticient to do (fair enough). We, on the other hand, can use the locking system of the knee joint & the integral strength of bone to support us, which helps to make walking a realistic option for us.

Presumably, they would also get disqualified for not locking in their knees as mentioned above which, I think, off the top of my head, is a key requirement for completing a successful Clean & Jerk lift. Additionally, I don't know how these competitions run with regard to etiquette - but can't help thinking that doing a poo on the stage would probably not endear one to the judges either.

Oh well - it would have made for an interesting tournament...

I kissed a girl once...

2006-03-22T11:52:00.000Z

... sadly, nothing ever became of it...

... This is not a picture of her...

... although, interestingly, it is her brother...

...and he just won 2 Golds & a Bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games...

hoo-har!

I'd probably give him a kiss at the moment - if he asked nicely...

My living hell..!

2006-03-06T16:22:00.000Z

Well, I've been to some shit things in my life, but Saturday afternoon took the cake...

I had headed over by train to a distant 'big city' for a business meeting, in the city's huge exhibition hall. At the time in this big hall was the annual 'Baby Show', where I was going to meet the prospective new client and do the typical 'song and dance' that comes with such a tenative new business relationship. So, here we are at the Baby Show which, as one would naturally anticipate on a Saturday afternoon, was absolutely heaving!

There were babies as far as your eyes could see, you've never seen so many babies. Not only babies, but each one came complete with its own SUV. I mean, seriously, these wee tykes all had their own little battle cruisers. Naturally, between the thronging crowd all trying to look at the display stalls, all wheeling these minature SUV's - it was a nightmare of uncontrollable traffic & congestion. Being a Baby Show it was not the place to pull faces at bad parking or inefficient driving which, I must admit, I found a wee bit difficult to temper.

The thing that really struck me and it's not that surprising really, is that I have never seen so many pregnant women, in one place, in my life (I don't remember e-mailing all these women). Really, about 2 out of every 3 women of breeding age, was like 6 months+ pregnant. So now make it a huge crowd, a massive collection of badly parked & driven minature SUV's and a clutch of women with their belly buttons sticking out.

I, like all around me, did at one stage VERY respectfully pull aside for one slightly deranged looking couple as they weaved their way through the chaos. They were pushing in front of them, and it nearly filled the aisle, a 3-person people mover. Yup, and in it were 3 little pumpkins that looked like they were each about 24 minutes old. I swear, everyone they passed with their triplets went ever so slightly quiet as they neared, dropped their eyes with due revernce to the SUV as it passed and, then, respectfully looked at these folks with a weak smile. The look in the parents eyes said it all "we know, we know - oh my God, how we know..." and, loosely translated, that look in everyone's eyes as they passed was 'thank fuck that it is not me!'.

So, the meeting went well and I have a new client but 'mental note 2b', I think I need to check the expiry date on some condoms that I've got floating about.

Later that day, I thought I'd go to a bar (not called 'Cheers') where there is 'always someone I know'. Naturally enough, there was 'no-one there I knew' although, ultimately, I did end up talking to a chap who looked like a greasy street urchin and a woman who runs a local B&B. She was turning 50 - I knew this because she had a balloon that said so - and knowing her from a past life I would have expected her to be VERY, VERY, DRUNK (in a complete loss of bladder control type of way).

Unusually, for her, she wasn't (although she was dropping them pretty quickly, I did note) and I couldn't help wondering if, perhaps, her birthday was actually in 8 days time and she was 'just' getting a head start i.e. come and see her next week, after she has been on the lash for 7 days...

Later, that evening, there was one notable quip which was the phrase of the day... In conversation to a girl, I said to her (whilst still not giving out my blog address to any folk that I know, which I still don't do at the moment - so if you're reading this and know me, you shouldn't be - somebody has loose lips):

"I've got a blog"

to which she immediately replied, completely unplanned, I think:

"you should get some cream for that..."

touche!

mental note to self: 1a

2006-02-27T20:23:00.000Z

Dear brain,

When you have fish for dinner the night before, don't forget to take the rubbish out the next day...

do not wander aimlessly around the house, looking for the source of the particularly troubling smell,
do not think that it must have ingrained itself into the walls,
do realise that if it is getting worse throughout the day, then there is definitely some form of a problem,
do not think that it has ingrained itself in your clothes,
if it is getting worse, do something about it,
do not think that it has ingrained itself in your skin,
do not try and pretend it is not that bad,
do not open lots of windows for 2 hours, risking pneumonia, in the idle hope of removing smell,
do not, necessarily, blame yourself for the smell (you may be getting older but come on),
do not think that the cause must be the leftover food which is in a closed fridge,
note 1b: if it was yesterday's leftovers - throw them away,
do not ignore the problem,
if it has happened before (and it has) then remember what caused it last time,
do not have abstract thoughts of dead mammals under the floorboards,
do not look out the window in the idle imagination of a malignant seagull flying by (or circling),
do take out the firkin' rubbish!

"I'm a lot funnier with a moustache..."

2006-02-27T16:07:00.000Z

In the words of Jason Lee, regarding his new role as Earl Hickey in 'My Name is Earl', "I'm a lot funnier with a moustache...!". Great quip and even funnier since it is not even part of the program.

He's an awesome actor, is absolutely natural in front of the camera and seems to be a fun sort of guy to boot. In the same article, he was reflecting how he can't wait for the season to be over so he can shave the bloody thing off - although, since he has now caught chicken pox and they've had to close the set, that is not going to be for a while dude!

I caught chicken pox off my nephews once when I was 21. I was dropping off their Christmas presents and the little buggers infected me with the virus. If you know anything about chicken pox, then you'll know that it is not a very nice thing to catch as an adult (not a bundle of laughs as a kid either, i'm sure). In it's adult variant, It is more commonly known as 'shingles' and it absolutely drove me nuts.

It took 6-months to get rid of the bloody thing (well, get rid of it in the 'moved to the base of my spine' sense) which was not helped by the daft doctor who took about 3 months to diagnose it correctly (knowing more about the condition now, post-trauma, so to speak, this guy must have been a real Dumbo - since it is relatively common and the symptoms are pretty straight-forward even for a bozo GP (... he probably studied it on day 2 at 'Dr Doolittles school of doctoring for the enthusiastic beginner').

There have been 2 classic episodes of 'My Name is Earl' on UK TV recently, one where he went home with a biker girl from a party ("I went home with a Harley and woke up with a Moped") and another where he discovered the joys of free beer after someone scores a hole in one at golf. That latter episode had a tonne of references to 'Smokey and the Bandit' which were weaved particularly well into the storyline. At one stage, when his brother Randy turns around and says "c'mon" or something, and then "...we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there!". It was so subtle that I just about missed it, but when I clocked it - I almost slopped my dripper with laughter!

At the end of that particular episode, there were a number of outtakes from the weeks filming (which they don't normally include) and it seems that the real life Jason Lee is not that far removed from his character - just a naturally funny, full of life guy! I love the fact that he is an ex-Pro skateboarder and I think that shows in how he moves and handles his body on set (i.e. the break dancing at his own birthday – done to look 'inappropriate at his age', but you could tell he 'really' could do it properly). I hope they do an episode where there is some skateboarding involved. That, I believe, could have the potential to be one of the funniest sitcoms ever. Perhaps the plot could be something like helping out some under-privileged kids, whereupon he decides to set up a skate bowl, or something. Naturally, at first, he is completely useless and continually hurts himself but, as the storyline develops, he really takes to it and, ultimately, ends up doing some really crazy shit (as he can, I'm sure) - cue blown away looks from the local gromits!

Out of interest, two other quasi-professional skaters are Jason Priestly and Michael J Fox - both were ex-Senior level ice hockey players in Canada (and both just about went Pro). Whatever you may think of their acting, I've seen respective episodes where their skating was brought into the story (Priestly on ice skates and Fox on rollerblades - quite a few times on 'Spin City', actually) and, even though I knew they had these hidden talents, it was fantastic to see them do their thing - when you're so used to them 'just' being an actor.

Case in point being someone like Orlando Bloom - he just strikes me as a big bunny, if ever I saw one (breaking down in tears if it starts to rain on set, kinda 'high-maintenance-trailer-princess'). The sort of guy who can't act 'standing still'. I speak out of term, obviously, because I don't know the guy personally - but If you watch him during the action sequences of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' or 'Kingdom of Heaven', you can just tell it took tonnes of takes to make him not look like the most uncoordinated Wabbit ever to hop on the silver screen. He is completely at odds with his body and every movement whether it be with a sword or on horse-back, looks completely contrived, stiff and awkward.

Sadly, Wikipedia reckons Jason Lee is a Scientologist which brings him down in my estimation somewhat, but, as things stand, he is still 'just about' on my list of folk to come to a dinner party (this is in the 'currently living' category) - behind, in no particular order, Stephen Fry, Richard Branson, Michael Palin, Hermann Maier, Bill Clinton, Richard Dawkins and some others who I forget now, off the top of my head (Michelle Gomez springs to mind but she isn't really one. She is the wee Scottish lassie off 'Green Wing' (she plays Sue White - the absurd HR manager) who, frankly, seems just absolutely out there and the sort of person that would be great to have a beer with! Great news for those who know and love the program, I saw an advert on Ch4 the other day saying that series 2 of 'Green Wing' is about to air (in March) – so hang onto your hats folks, it's back!

Thinking about it, I forget now who is on my full list of dead folk that I'd like to have at a dinner party - Charlemagne (the Father or Europe) would be there and so too would be, probably, Gaius Julius Caesar. I'd actually be tempted to dig up Cato as well, since it would be fun to see him and Caeser kick off - again. But, it would probably all end up in tears - since they have somewhat unfinished business and I'd imagine Caesar would still be pretty miffed at Cato for his suicide (robbing Caesar of the gracious act of pardoning him for his morally correct indisgressions).

It's karma, Gaius, just karma...

new book

2006-02-23T20:19:00.000Z

Got a new book at the library today "Yellow Dog" by Martin Amis. A friend had recommended him to me in 1988, so I thought I had better get around to reading one of his books. Thanks Dane - wherever you are. Oddly enough I met his brother by accident in Europe once, many years later, and we travelled around in my Combi together for a few months. There was another girl with us too for quite a while and, I believe, they subequently got married... so it goes...

He'd also recommended Hunter S Thompson & Kurt Vonnegut as well, of whose books I did get around to reading (in less than 2 decades)... so it goes...

For someone who prides themself on not reading novels, I seem to be reading a lot of them recently... so it goes...

20 minutes...

2006-02-22T14:41:00.000Z

I often ponder what is the best thing that I've ever bought (because that is the sort of crap that my brain will fill in its day doing). It's an interesting thing to think about and all of us will have often used it in passing conversation i.e. "it was the best car I ever owned...", but do you know what the best thing you've ever owned is - all things considered i.e. category, price, usage and age, independent?

Yesteday, I thought that, perhaps, I had just bought the worst thing in my whole life... (which includes my first ever album - a Willie Nelson record, which I had bought at age 7 because I saw an ad on TV and I liked 'wee' bit of one lyric, thinking the whole album would be like that - boy, did I learn a harsh, early lesson about advertising and marketing that youthful day)!

Being information-cautious in this 21st century, I'm quite careful about what I throw out with my domestic rubbish. For example, I certainly never throw out bank bills and, generally, no normal bills, nor even addressed data for that matter. Around where I live (really, it is not that bad), I have now, twice, spotted some hobos wandering off with some rubbish bags from our communal rubbish area. The first time I saw one of these guys I couldn't be sure, but the second time I saw this guy coming out of the area with a black rubbish sack slung over his shoulder, I knew we had problems.

So, with those events in mind, I've been even more cautious recently. Meanwhile, my business rubbish bin was overflowing with 'possibly' sensitive rubbish that I just didn't want to throw out. Up in the center of town yesterday, I was passing one of those budget shops and saw a paper shredder for £10, which is pretty cheap.

2 minutes of compulsive shopping later and I was heading home with my new piece of kit. Back in the apartment, I pulled it out of the box and then read the brief instructions (experience has bashed it into me to always review instructions) prior to firing the little fella up.

Anyhoose, I plugged it in and away I went - furiously shredding paper like there was no tomorrow (or George Bush's academic 'evolution' review team). The machine was going for it like a rabid motormower and I was about 20 minutes into it, when it went 'Grrrr - uhh...!" (you try describing the sound of a shredder crapping out) and that was it - no sound, no noise, nada!

So I sat there looking at this thing thinking "you're kidding - that is it, you've crapped out after 20 minutes of usage?", in a very John McEnroe tone I said out loud "YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS...". I mean, I've bought some shit stuff in my time, but 20 minutes for a mechanical device to crap out is unbelievable by anyones standards - only BT could come up with that sort of quality product!

Fiddling around with the thing for a while, I ultimately turned it upside down and on the underside of the motor I discovered its manufacturing tag that had, in very small writing, the words "INTERMITTENT OPERATION - 2 mins on 25 mins off". Oh shit, I thought - don't tell me I've just fried the little bugger.

I double checked the instructions and there was no mention of this operating limitation anywhere to be found. Anyway, I had to go out so I just left it be and hoped it had just overheated.

Many hours later and I'm back at home and I plug the little monkey back and, low and behold, it worked fine again. Life eh, gotta laugh...!

So, whatever is your current most beloved and trustworthy item whether it be a car, tv or vibrator - give it a wee hug tonight when you get home, you never know when it is going to shit itself...

C'mon the Herminator...

2006-02-20T14:10:00.000Z

Go boy - this is it, one last chance. The silver the other day was phenominal, but you NEED that gold...!

hangin' in there...

2006-02-10T03:09:00.000Z

mmm-hun! Hangin' in there team...

If January was the sort of dreamy month when you slept 3 girls in one night, then February is following day - when you got 3 STD's, 2 of which are curable...

and a Happy Australia Day to me...

2006-01-26T19:52:00.000Z

And just like that Im back in business - you little ripper...!

I've borrowed a friends computer, but only for 48 hours. He said borrow it till the end of the weekend and I was like "Nah, it's alright, I only need it for 24... 48 hours, for what I need to do".

Of course, now that I've got it home, got it plugged into my network where I am happily accessing files on my PC, whilst having got myself comfortably propped up on my new bed (which was bought yesterday), listening to Bavarian Radio and revelling in the 21st century - he ain't got a shit show of getting this little monkey back before Monday and, even then, he'll be lucky.

Shit - hope he doesn't read this blog!

My own laptop went "Crap - BANG" a while ago, or, more accurately, "blink" - and a terminal 'blink' at that. Of course, this happened 5 days after the warranty expired, on a Tuesday - black Tuesday, as it is now referred to in my head.

So, 'Sputnik' (that's its name, my first laptop was 'Larry', as in 'Larry the Laptop') has sat under my kitchen sink for 6 weeks now - a 'Dominator X1' of Sony technology - all of a year & a week old, before it entered, of its own volition, a cryogenic state.

Actually, I phoned a company today who will fix it for 100 quid, which is waaaayyy better than what Uncle Sony would have spanked me for it. Nonetheless, its great to have a laptop for 48 hours and to be reminded what life was like - when I could go to cafes and do work, or, at least, just leave my desk.

Right - this bastard 'Office Assistant' is doing my tits in (you know the one, the smug paperclip with an inane lightbulb beside it) - gotta go and remember how to tell it to 'fark orf...'

I know..

2006-01-23T18:59:00.000Z

it seems that I've got my finger up my arse but, actually, I've been thinking... (and losing jackets).

With digits guiding a pen (vice, itching an annoyance) I was able to scribble down some good ideas for bloggin'. So whilst I have been a bit erratic with posts this new year, I'm feeling inspired to cut loose... (I'm getting on top of Flash too, so there is a bit to be done - bettter turn off the telly).

Subjects range from F-TV (putting the fark back into TV), the Herminator, a non-Thickee list, hover boards to imaginary friends...

to be continued (or forgotten, *sigh*)

:: I also know that this blog needs some serious graphic luvin' and to get hooked up to a database ::

has anyone -

2006-01-23T02:54:00.000Z

seen my blue jacket from the party on Friday night (you know the one that commenced at 4:08 am)..? It looks like 'me in a jacket' but, now, without me in it - it looks like a hooded light blue jacket that is probably feeling pretty lonely by now.

I'm thinking Eve's partner or a girl called 'Rebecca' might have seen it - since they saw me when I ~~stumbled~~ came in. If it's anywhere, it's probably to the left of the telly...

Failing that it could be at one of 3 pubs...

Realistically though, I reckon its RIP to the only jacket that I own(ed) which I actually like(d)...

Midgets, you've been warned...

2006-01-16T02:50:00.001Z

Very close to where I live there is a lane that leads to some shops. I wander past there on a regular basis and have constantly been intrigued by a series of signs that adorn one of the walls. They must be pretty serious because there is 3 of them, about 15' apart (there were 4 but someone ripped one down)...

I wouldn't normally dribble on about a sign (mmm, actually I might), but these ones befuddle me...

As you can see the sign clearly states "BEWARE ANTI CLIMB PAINT" which, obviously, is a pretty
direct message.

Now what gets me is that this wall is only 1 metre high, if even that. I've included a portion of myself for reference and I'm 5'11 3/4" tall.
(note: not 6 foot tall as much as I'd like to be. Every time that I've been measured I've clocked in 1/4" shy of 6 foot. Now, you could say why don't I just say 6 foot - well that would be a lie wouldn't it, or an exaggeration at best and I'm not prone to exaggeration, verbosity perhaps, but not exaggeration. I've spent a lifetime stating my height correctly, proudly maintaining my integrity and, no doubt, leaving some people thinking that I'm anally retentive - such is the price of your morals eh Cato).

I mean, the wall could provide a challenge to a midget but I don't think even the most diminutive of folk would be terribly troubled by it. So, all in all, it seems to be a pretty aimless sign or, as this case is, a collection of signs.

Having got closer and spent more time beside the sign than I ever have before, it has become clear to me that:
(1) there is no-one climbing it,
(2) there are no signs that anyone ever has climbed it (jumped it perhaps)
(3) there are no midgets nearby (as far as I could tell),
(4) this anti-climb paint does attract more than its fair share of bird-shit.

In fact, there is a tremendous amount of bird-shit on it and, if I know my bird-shit, I suspect that the culprits are seagulls (I live pretty close to the sea as a crow flies or, in this case, some full-bellied seagulls). So, perhaps, the local council could better use their time (& budget) by putting up some signs advising the seagulls that this is not a toilet.

Admittedly, its a long shot as to whether the seagulls are actually going to be able to read it, but, then again, I ain't seen any clans of free-climbing midgets lurking about either. So if they are going to put up signs they might as well keep it real - or surreal if that is their true purpose.

p.s. my neighbours now think I'm a weirdo taking photos of a climbing wall for midgets (hope they don't ask me how tall I am).

a pub conversation

2006-01-13T13:30:00.000Z

Twitching with self-employed boredom, I decided to go to the pub last night in the vague hope that there was 'something' going on - which there wasn't!

There was, however, karaoke - which was being enthusiastically performed, alternately, by a Japanese chap (no surprises there) and 2 girls who, amazingly, were equally out of tune with the music - but perfectly in tune with each other (luckily the 'actual' music was turned down so low we could not even hear the proper song and only their inane screeching)...

As it turned out, in hindsight, the highlight of the night was a conversation with a smoker regarding the imminent smoking ban in the UK (Mar 26 I think). He, admittedly, was quite pissed but his point was essentially this:

Smoking is doing us all a favour because it hides the smell in a pub. And, in case you're wondering, that offensive smell is predominantly caused by blokes farting (& their breath, I think was the other contributor). At one point he declared to me "you don't know how much blokes fart" which, even at the time, struck me as odd - since I am a bloke and reckon I've got a rough idea!

So, while it was an interesting take on the smoking ban, he seemed to have overlooked a couple of salient points:
- the smell of smoke is pretty horrific to non-smokers anyway (especially in ill-ventilated and cramped pubs, as often found in the UK)
- he would not be much of an expert on the smell since his olfactory senses would be pretty fucked up thanks to his own smoking habit and I, for one, will risk the smell of farts anyway.

There would be more points I'm sure with greater thought, but these were the 2 that came to me at the time. I did begin to voice these thoughts but, as mentioned, he was pissed and like a lot of these types of conversations, it wasn't really going anywhere (or going to achieve anything). So, I nodded, smiled and murmured a non-committal "mmmm..."

detox...

2006-01-12T06:00:00.000Z

Subsequent to the New Year's haze, I was wombling around a local supermarket with an adventurous spirit at heart. Every time I go shopping I try to get outside of 'my envelope' and buy something that I wouldn't normally buy or eat (livin' on the edge eh).

Normally, it is just some sort of weird vegetable or unheard of soup but this habit, combined with a refusal to throw food away (unless it is badly out of date), has happily introduced me to some great new things over the years..

On this furry day, I found myself in the organic section seeing what life-changing products could be found there. After a vague blank stare for a bit, my eyes dropped to the funky drinks department where I couldn't help but notice one little number which sucked me in with it's "I'll change your life" advertising. Picking up one of these bottles I started to read through its ingredients to see what this wondrous elixir may hold.

I read it for a second and then realised that I hadn't taken it in (no big surprise there - this was New Years Day and, unsurprisingly, there were to be no awards won for dynamic brain activity on that day). I re-read it again and realised that I didn't really understand something on it. I looked away for a brief second, to re-focus my eyes, and then looked back at the label again.

With further intensified study, I locked onto one of the main ingredients and confirmed that I had no idea what that ingredient was. I was intrigued by the word and pondered that further because, essentially, it was a straight-forward English word and I figured a brief review of its etymology would solve the problem or, at least, give me a major clue to its origin...

Nope.. nothing.

- I tried to say it in my head... and couldn't even do that.
- I tried to say it out loud and couldn't even do that properly.
- I was still stumped!

It was about then that I had my first true moment of clarity for the New Year and realised that I was speaking out loud - to myself - in a busy supermarket.. (maybe I did wear my pants back to front on my New Years Eve run)!

"What the crap is it" I thought and then menaced my own brain with "gimme an answer now" - where it happily filled in the gap by replying 'Cholera..'

"Mmmm-huh. Nice work brain..!".

A bottle of Cholera indeed. "Well," I thought, "you wanted to try something new - how about a bottle of Cholera then Biggles". Result! So in it went to the shopping basket, to join the rest of the rather eclectic spontaneous shopping clan.

To date, I still have yet to try it - but there is still a while before it expires (and a grace period after that before it becomes bubonic) so plenty of time yet. It has, however, been in and out of the fridge about 3 times to be pondered (and duly replaced) and has even been on a photoshoot – so I can't say I haven't got my moneys worth out of it even if it does taste like seawee.

telly blunder...

2006-01-10T04:48:00.000Z

As the evening was drawing on, I'd already decided to work on through to the early hours of the Monday morning. Some background distraction was definitely required to keep my Gemini brain occupied while I did my accounts - so I trawled through the Radio Times to see what the telly-dribble there was on offer later on...

Low and behold I stumbled across this little number:

I hadn't heard of it at all and, frankly, found the title a bit off-putting, but I do enjoy a good bit of history.

As I read the blurb I was intrigued - a woman, with children, who departs 11th century England for Morocco (very much into the heart of Moorish Islam at that stage). As I thought about it a while I was beginning to scratch my head, wondering "really, that means she must be fleeing a few years after William the Conquerer invaded England". Wow, that must be quite some film (or, at the least, if it was a crap film it would be covering some interesting ground - literally).

So I settled in for a few hours of work and looked forward to an enjoyable late night movie that would keep me company in the early hours (since they've darn well stopped playing NFL on Ch5. I'm not biased, I appreciate sports from all countries even though currently I'm in the UK). Finally, 20-to-midnight rolls around and I flick on the box - only to discover that it's actually a story about an Englishwoman who escapes life in the UK with her two daughters, to adventure in Morocco in the... 1970's...

- twat -

*sigh*, semi-watched it anyway while working on ( slightly more dejectedly)

hitting the ground running...

2005-12-31T16:26:00.000Z

I'm the kinda guy who is full of great ideas - some more abstract or feasible than others. As times gone on, some of them have been scaring my life for almost 20 years now...

Enthusiastically, in my teens, I thought it would be a great way to commemorate that annual celebration of the 'breath of life' which we all hold onto so dearly, and to go for a run on each of my birthdays. Fantastic idea indeed - full of merit, commendable spirit and a great innovation... and now, many years later, a massive pain in the arse.

Well into my 2nd decade of this hare-brained scheme, it truly has become tiresome. No matter how enthused one may be to get up early on their birthday - and every following birthday - to go for a run, eventually it becomes somewhat annoying. Now I've done the bloody thing for so long, I don't know how to stop it (one year I almost forgot about it until a 'helpful' flatmate offered to come with me on 'the run'. Bastard - even failing memory couldn't help me.). At some point in life i'll eventually be too infirm to do it - and so it will finally end (at which point I'll be dribbling into my tea, reminiscing on all those youthful runs).

I don't really believe in making 'new years' resolutions in the sense that I believe you can make a resolution on any day of the year or, at the least, your own birthday is be a better date to launch into it. But I do have an inspiration to get this year off to a 'flyer'.

In a similar train of thought, was my concern over what to do for this New Years Eve - I had the choice of a party at a mates (with 5 kids under the age of 8), an invite to an unknown party full of over-achievers & snobbery (I suspected anyway, perhaps incorrectly) or a street party of 180.000 (which I've done a tonne of times). Alternatively, I was thinking - how cool to work! Not 'cool', per se, but what a stirling effort for my business and a dedicated start to the new year.

As the time drew closer the situation evolved yet again. With this latest update, 4 of the 5 children have been executed (well, shipped of to various Grannies), the snobby party is now a dinner party and an 'on the guest list' setup for a nightclub and it is now raining outside, hence the street party will be 180,000 wet / cold / drunk people)...

Earlier this morning though...

With all these thoughts in mind I had devised a cunning way to get the year off to a good start but still manage to sneak a few 100 drinks in as well. Having been born on the other side of the planet, I have regular occasion to celebrate certain events twice in one day or to extend celebrations over a 2-day period (it's a very flexible and convenient system that I use).

So I figured that if I got up early today (new years eve) I could be out there running as the bells tolled in the Antipodes. Good plan, except that I have only managed 2 other runs in the last 3 months (and am pretty staggeringly unfit). Like I said, you cannae beat a good idea - so I signed the dotted line last night and made my preparations.

I was awoken by txt msg's from around the planet this morning and then crawled out to get on with this latest charade. It had been so long, I could not find my running gear but finally, through blurry eyes and shivering bones, I got it all together. Minutes later and I'm double-tying my running shoes and, then, looking for my MiniDisc player.

As I leaned over for the shelf for my walkman I feel my pants were a bit tight and ill-fitting at the hem, to which I naturally thought "I know its been a while since I have been for a run, but I haven't put on that much weight - have I?". Looking down to assess the situation I begin to pull at the front of my pants, only to discover the manufacturing tag proudly looking at me. Nice one - they're on back to front and I've got fully double-knotted shoes on...

For a minute, I must admit, I thought 'bugger it - just go anyway' and then I thought what a great start to the year that is - going for the Herculian run on New Years Eve with my pants on back to front (if that doesn't set the pattern for the year nothing can)!

3 minutes later and the problem was resolved, next on the schedule was a pee. Deciding to sit down for the effort (I was fiddling with my stopwatch at the time and needed more limbs), after a moment or two I realised that I could see the floor of the bathroom through the crotch seam of my running pants. For gawd's sake, now I've blown my pants with my fat arse. Nice one...

I really considered going back to bed but I'd come this far and decided to press on with it... at least I can certainly say I hit the ground running for 2006...

Quality customer relations...

2005-12-27T14:14:00.000Z

you cannae beat the Medieval institution that is the British Banking System. Steeped in mystery & tradition, they proudly turn any minor administrative task into an ordeal that would be worthy of a mention in Homer's Odyssey.

I recently got some mail through my door from those kindly folk up the road, providing me with the finer details of a charge that was to be debited from my account. Fair enough you may say, except that the charge had already been taken out my account about 3 weeks prior and a good 10 days before the letter was written (which almost leads me onto a diatribe about 'Royal Mail' who, in this case, took 10 days to get the delivery 400 metres along the road - and it was downhill).

Anyway, I knew the bill was coming so I was in no particular concern about it. What did catch my eye though was the accompanying statement of 'Principal Terms'. As I quickly scanned it, my eyes fell upon point 3C, which you can see below (or, almost see):

So, if you don't take the time to read it properly and you just happen to catch that particular line (like I did) it states: "If you are a Sole Trader, you die."

Well, actually, I am a Sole Trader and, therefore, is this some kind of a threat from my bank..?

I mean, in its full context, it's a valid point but, it must be said, there are a million nicer ways in which they could have made it. At the least though, they could have made it with a hint of empathy or even humanity in the statement, vice the clinical methodology of a surgeon 'removing' a cancerous tumor...

surely, there must be one?

2005-12-26T13:17:00.000Z

I was chatting to a mate the other day and had brought up a certain subject that I had been pondering. This friend of mine is quite a well-read, knowledgeable chap and, hence, the perfect person to help explore such matters.

I had enquired of him "Tell me - can you think of anything positive to say about Rupert Murdoch?" (the media tycoon). My friends eyes glazed over slightly as he stared off into the distance and started to mull this over in his head. Finally, after a very long pause he said "ummmm..." and, then, after some further determined thought "...he does allow the 'Simpsons' to take the piss out of him...".

and that was about that, we couldn't find a single good other thing to say about him...

The conversation continued and during it I mentioned that even after actively reserching the matter (Wikipedia entry), I could not find mention of a charity that he works with, donates money to, nor a single decent cause that he has any involvement with, at any level (the Cato Institute sounds a bit self serving).

"Surely" I thought "there must be one?" - but, for the life of us, we couldn't identify one. C'mon Rupert, pull your socks up...

p.s. quirky afternote: this conversation happened on 22 Dec and then, today (after this blog was written), I caught a late breaking news item announcing that Kerry Packer, the other Aussie Media Tycoon, had passed away today...

p.s.s. my friend obviously caught it too - in an e-mail a day later he said:

"Had a thought about Murdoch and what you were asking the other day (thinking of him partly because his portly sparring partner, Kerry-ugliest-MoFo-alive Packer just died), anyways you pointed out that he's always railed against the fact he's not allowed to own free to air TV and newspapers in Australia. But at the same time ENTIRELY JUSTIFIES this situation - by ensuring that all of his newspapers carry the party line - see Bush & Iraq!"

Give me a break...

2005-12-15T06:22:00.000Z

Good ol' Xmas is the time of the year when one receives those loving, albeit predictable, seasonal greetings from family & friends. Now and again in the blossoming 21st century, you actually now get some wonderful surprises via cyber-post. Just yesterday I got one of the surprises in the form of an e-mail from Emma...

My relationship with Emma was effectively a brief, non-consummated, fling during my teenage years while I was working as a supermarket checkout person - for ridiculously low pay I might add (you can't beat the enthusiasm of a 16-year-old working their nuts off for a miserable pay rate which, ultimately, converts to 2-possum-shit-pellets for every hour of slave labour)...

As for all of us I'm sure, the rise of the Internet & e-mail culture has allowed us to catch up with many folk from our former years / lives. Personally, my own gaggle of friends and schoolmates seem to have adopted the 'Old Friends' website as their designated posting board. And so it is through that site that, over time, I have been nicely surprised by some old girlfriends writing to me.

Like any natural soul this is all very flattering and it is genuinely wonderful to hear how they are all getting on with life, especially as the years roll by. As a single bloke, having missed out on the first round of marriages, I figure may actually meet the girl of my dreams (well, woman - since she is obviously aging now, admittedly) as she divorces from her first failed marriage (or second I'm not fussy), via some quirky online encounter / reunion like this...

Well without the joy of any of the 'thunderbolts & lighting' that normally is associated with this kind of event, during the last couple of years 4 of these ex-girlfriends have ended up pregnant during the course of our correspondence...!

Now for god's sake, it is lovely to catch up with folk, even indulging in idle fantasies of catching up with them and putting to rights those missed opportunities of purile youth - but give me a break man!

The first time it happened I thought it was funny, the second was bizarre and by the 3rd I was getting pissed off, pure and simple.

The fourth in this ever fattening list was Emma. She had written to me completely out of the blue via 'Old Friends' and we had established a degree of correspondence over the following months. She was now living in Australia with her long term Aussie boyfriend of some 12 years (although they had never married nor had kids, so I was informed). Reading between the lines she seemed a bit dulled by her life and enjoying the freedom of the Internet, which enabled her to dabble into old friendships and, perhaps (I enthusiastically imagined), indulge her own fantasies…

So a few months go by and you could say the conversation became somewhat more 'personal'. Nothing serious mind, just some idle banter from a keyboard a million miles away. When, all of a sudden, one day she mentions that she feels a bit guilty - which seemed odd since our e-mails had, realistically, barely breached platonic...

Upon enquiring why she was feeling troubled, she, all of a sudden, blurted out that she was actually pregnant with twins!

Nice one!

At least this time, admittedly, it happened before I impregnated her through the keyboard. I really have given up hope on meeting up with old girlfriends / future wives, through one of these services. I feel I should change my post on the ‘Old Friends’ to carry the disclaimer

WARNING: "Do not contact me unless you have been sterilised or want to have children"

"Watch this..."

2005-12-14T00:36:00.132Z

How to make an impression at a party...

Many moons ago as a somewhat younger fella, I was at a party in a rather 'upmarket' part of city. I was there with a group of friends and we had made our way in via some tenuous connection or other, with someone who did 'actually' have an invite.

The house that the party was at, was on a massive property with sweeping balcony and an immaculately landscaped garden. All completed with a sturdy retaining fence that braced the distant horizon...

Upon arrival, looking out into this garden, the party was already well abuzz and there must have been over 200 good looking and culturally elite people already there.

Not really knowing anyone and being from the Western part of the city, which, at the time, was more known for black jumpers, long hair and V8 muscle cars, we were quite happy to stand in our own little muddle, getting merrily... erm... pissed.

As the evening wore on a drought developed and I was the one who was press-ganged into going out to the car to get some more drinks from it. As it was, I really couldn't be bothered navigating my way back through the throng of strangers, nor labyrinth of a house - of a party that I was not really invited to in the first place!

As a crow would fly, the car was probably not more than 100' away, pretty much directly on the other side of the fence from where our group had formed. So, being a bit rubbered by now, I had a cheeky thought and figured that I could use a gymnastic vault to get over the fence and straight to the car, saving 10 minutes of party navigation.

Now, I'm no gymnast to be sure, but, at the time, back in my halcyon '20-something' days, I was pretty competent at jumping over things of various sizes and shape.

My basic method for clearing a high fence was to approach it at high speed and jump up & at it, aiming to hit the crest with my hips and midsection. From that contact point, I could then immediately roll forward, place my hand 1/2 way down the other side, ready to use it as a fulcrum. Meanwhile, my forward momentum would continue to rotate my lower body over myself and the obstacle itself.

As my legs came through the vertical (with me now fully inverted), I could release everything and begin to roll my body 180 degrees, ready to land cleanly on the other side, facing in the right direction (a lot of this came from being a swimmer and the years spent doing various swimming turns, as well as, a life-time of ice skating where, amongst other things, we used to jump over waist-high walls at the rink, to get on the ice as quickly as possible).

When done correctly it looked grand, flipping over high walls incorporating a roll and some 'hang time', all while 8-10 feet in the air and completely inverted, before landing gracefully on the other side. All performed in a split-second and with a youthful, devil-may-care, attitude!

It was with this enthusiastic vision in mind and a couple of drinks under my belt, that I set off on this particular mission.

Without a word to my friends nor a moment's thought (... and 'Oh!', to have that moment back) I set off running towards the fence at full speed.

As far as my group of friends knew and subsequently recalled, I was standing there normally one minute and then I was off, running helter skelter towards an innocent fence, shouting "WATCH THIS...!", at the top of my lungs.

The fence itself was about 6 1/2 high feet (or 2'ish metres). It had a wooden frame around each section and each panel in those sections (which measured 1.5 x 2 metres) was filled with a chipboard type material, that was about 8mm thick in itself.

In normal circumstances this whole stunt should have come off fine... well, I might have looked a youthful prat but, that is about it.

On this day however, in the middle of a very big party, on a very big lawn, with hundreds of very posh people watching me - it was all about to go spectacularly wrong!

Initially, everything was going fine, just like it had 100 times before. I had the fence lined up perfectly and knew exactly where I needed to plant my left foot, in order to get a good launch platform...

And then it happened...

Just as I was about to take the penultimate step before the actual, final, 'launch step'... I caught my toe.

Not by much and, in fact, I doubt many people would have even noticed that I had tripped at all.

But it was enough to lower my ever-so-imminent launch trajectory by about 3 feet, from the top of the fence to the middle of it instead.

'Oh... shit!'

I remember nothing of the impact itself, as it was all over in a flash.

The chipboard provided little resistance and I just drilled a nice, slightly human-shaped, oval hole, right though it. On the other side of the fence, I tumbled, rolled once and came to a halt sitting perfectly still on my arse, now facing back towards the direction that I had just come from.

From 'my' point of view - things seemed quite different now. I had just been inside a very busy party, with music pumping and lots of people chatting away. Now, mere seconds later, I was sitting alone on the grass verge of a quiet suburban street, looking at a party through a round hole in a fence, where hundreds of strangers were all, and I mean ALL, staring back at me - with absolutely incredulous looks on their faces!!!

From 'their' point of view - they had all just been enjoying a very nice summer's party when, all of a sudden, some dick had shouted out loudly "WATCH THIS!" and then run off madly with, seemingly, full intention, right at and then, through, a big wooden fence!

~ ~ ~

It was a humbling moment to say the least but, it must be said, I did get to meet the owners of the party and a whole lot of other folk besides... and get to pay for a new fence section!

Upon eventual return to my group of friends, I think it was Geoff who had succinctly and politely captured the moment, when he said "What the fuck did you do that for...?"

Now, even all these years later, I really don't know the exact moral of the story. In some ways there are hundreds of them, but I find it hard to capture a single one that captures the complete pathos...

It certainly brought my 'public' gymnastic displays to a sudden and very premature end... but not the adventures of Captain Fargon, of course ;)

p.s. I really do need to review this and a million other stories with Geoff who does, even after all these years, in an extraordinarily whale-like manner, still manage to remember some key and fascinating details to these and 268 other similar hare-brained adventures...

p.p.s Here's a picture of Geoff at work:

Geoff - a talented craftsman & Master Builder

(although slightly prone to the odd accident)

hmmm...

2005-12-07T05:19:00.000Z

...where the hell is the accelerator pedal on this little bugger anyway...?