Flight Of The Conchords

Flight Of The Conchords are an alternative folk comedy duo from New Zealand with a rather surreal, but absolutely superb sense of humour. If you're lucky, you can catch them at various venues around the world, or even, recently, on a couple of Sky/Virgin channels late at night.

Assuming you've paid to see them in both of these roles, you're naturally entitled to then go and check them out over at YouTube. I highly recommend 'The Humans Are Dead' (featuring one of the best binary solos in modern music) and 'Business Time' - but for now, here's an except from one of their television performances, entitled 'Albi, the racist dragon':

Preparing for the new year

2008 is fast approaching, and some of you will be seeing me precious little for a lot of the coming year. As such, my kind and generous nature has led me to produce a solution:



Now available to order - prices range from £0 (if I like you) up to £3 (if I don't) - which'll cover printing and postage and the like. Let me know if you want one.

--

Update: No, the 'up to £3' isn't legally binding and doesn't apply to people who live in stupid countries like Belgium. You have to pay full postage :P

Kettles, more kettles, and the Solar Death Ray

Back home in Cardiff I've been struggling to get my head around the gadgetry of my mother's Eco Kettle. The principle behind this bit of wizardry is that the water your pour into the top isn't actually the water that gets heated. Instead, you merely transfer the amount you need into the lower compartment, only heating what you need, and saving all the penguins and berries in the rainforest into the bargain.

Problem is, you can never quite get the right amount into the bottom. Anyway - I'll often want some very hot water a mere half hour later too, so not boiling the rest of the water simply causes me some more inconvenience. As such, I take great pleasure in filling the eco-kettle to the top, and then boiling it a few times before using the water.


_{At last, hippies can drink tea!}

An invention that claims to offer an even more eco-friendly way to heat up some water is Tefal's Quick Cup. The water flies up through a heating element, boiling on its way, and you're presented with exactly one cup's worth of boiling water.

At £60, with a £30 per year saving in energy bills (assuming, I presume, that you run a business selling hot drinks), it seems like an ideal buy. But, before you students all run off and buy one, consider this cunning comment left on a Gizmodo report about the Quick Cup:

I like the idea but my kettle cost £8 from tesco and therefore saved me £52.

You won't see a better review than that anywhere. Here's what it looks like:


_{Note that you need pricy custom filters}

However, an invention which bizarrely hasn't made its way onto the virtual shelves of EthicalSuperstore.com is the Solar Death Ray. Offering the power of 112 suns, this is surely the most environmentally friendly (and fastest) way to heat up your H2O.

Even better, unlike the other options, it can be used for a wide range of other purposes too. The videos are awesome and much worth watching.



'According to the watch it was 22:32, but according to the Solar Death Ray it was Time To Die'

Christmas Platitudes

The spoken phrase 'Merry Christmas' has become so ubiquitous now that it can often fails have to any impact whatsoever upon receipt - especially if uttered in passing by a stranger (such as a shop assistant, or friend of a friend), or merely used as the sign off to a conversation.

In writing too, 'Merry Christmas' can almost be overlooked - although this is even more context specific. This Yuletide I've decided to rank the ways I've received 'Merry Christmas's, according to what I find most important...

1. A hand-made Christmas card, given to me in person

Cost: 6/10
Effort: 10/10
Sincerity: 10/10

Overall: 26/30

Obviously this method suffers, with no postage cost involved - and was probably made with materials the sender already possessed. Top marks for effort and sincerity though.

2. A shop-bought Christmas card, posted to me

Cost: 10/10
Effort: 7/10
Sincerity: 6/10

Overall: 23/30

Cost of card, ~£2. Probably bought in bulk, so the effort rating here isn't great. Cost of stamp, ~36p, again probably bought in bulk. Then there's also the writing, finding of my address and taking the thing to a postbox to take into account, which gives this form a very respectable score for effort. It's nice to know I was thought of, but I doubt the sender would lose much sleep if I didn't get their message.

3. A shop-bought Christmas card, handed to me

Cost: 8/10
Effort: 6/10
Sincerity: 8/10

Overall: 22/30

Well, as you can see, marks have been lost for both effort and cost - but the sincerity factor makes up for that. A card that's physically handed to you is likely to be opened on the spot, so the sender will have written something fairly interesting, more often than not.

4. An e-card

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 2/10
Sincerity: 1/10

Overall: 3/30

Seriously, just because I work in technology, and hang around on the internet all day, does not mean it's acceptable to send me an e-card for any reason. Ever. If I wanted flashing images and garish text on a badly coded webpage, I'd go back to the 90's. Or Yahoo. On the plus side, these sites are notoriously hard to navigate, and so there's a smallish amount of effort involved.

5. A text message

Cost: 1/10
Effort: 1/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 2/30

Your text message has interrupted something really important I was doing. My mother is now in tears, the windows are smashed and the kitchen's on fire. I hope you're happy, you've ruined Christmas.

6. Writing on my Facebook wall

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 1/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 1/30

I get it - you're bored and looking up people online. You want one of them to reply to you but you're not feeling quite pathetic enough to actually call them or send them a message. Or maybe you don't have their number or email address, because you're just some weirdo who stalks them online. So - you leave them a friendly wall post, hoping they'll feel emotionally blackmailed into getting back to you. Not me kiddo.

7. Leaving a picture on your blog for anyone who happens to visit

Cost: 0/10
Effort: 0/10
Sincerity: 0/10

Overall: 0/30

Ok, actually I've never been on the receiving end of this one. Unfortunately for you, that's a claim you can never make again:



Merry Christmas :)

Is It Christmas?

No.

I've been watching Is It Christmas for weeks now. I can't wait for tomorrow to come to see what happens. I'm really, really hoping it's nothing garish. In fact, this is how I would have written the site:



Screw presents, screw Christmas dinner. This is easily the most exciting part of Christmas.

---

Update: You'll be pleased to know, there's even a RSS Feed for Is It Christmas.

Midnight Shopping

Tesco's, not surprisingly, decided to open at midnight this fine Monday morning. After all, they are a 24 hour supermarket, and so when archaic religious laws don't apply, they might as well make themselves some money. Oddly enough though, it never seemed to occur to the wondrous overlords there that midnight on the 24th of December might just be a little busy - so maybe they should put a few more staff on.

It was quite refreshing to see masses crowding around a bag of sprouts dressed only in a coat and their pyjamas. The masses that is, not the sprouts. It was also quite amusing to see men hopelessly running around the homeware aisle - clearly wondering what the hell they should get their wives - a new soup strainer or a set of measuring spoons to replace the ones broken during their last drinking game.

Off to bed now, ciao.
Xx

--

PS: 500 posts. Go me. Prizes for anyone who can honestly claim to have read them all. Apply within.

Self-Reverential

This post, rather self-referentially, was typed, as many of my posts are, in size 4 font, in Notepad, whilst on public transport. It's a great way to do your work, blogging or other such things without prying eyes reading over your shoulder - but if you really strain you can still read back over the odd word if you absolutely need to. It also makes you look cool and secretive, like a spy. Plus, when you can touch type nice and quickly whilst looking out of the window, everyone looks at you and thinks 'bastard'. But, whilst they're doing this, you can look around at all of them and think "I'm better than you".

Does anyone else like sitting, or walking, or performing some other such activity in a public place, and glancing around them in order to rank every other person nearby on one factor or another, to see who is better at x - you or them? Or is that just me. I imagine it is, because I generally seem to win, and so for anyone else I can imagine it would be quite a depressing exercise - unless I wasn't around of course. I also sometimes look back at something I've done, or even something I'm in the middle of doing, and think "Wow, that's awesome" - I think more people should be like me. I'm great.

More inane ramblings...

Sorry, I appear to have written endless reams of complete and utter rubbish recently, whilst on trains, and then not even bothered to post it for a couple of days. Well, lacking anything better, here you go:

--

After a couple of rather tiring nights Ju and I managed to stay in bed all the way up to an impressive 2pm - which I imagine is fairly common for a student like her, but was certainly a novelty for such a hardworking professional as myself. From there we had the arduous task of buying Christmas presents for all the various people who were coming to the Birmingham Christmas party we were organising ('An Erdingthorpe Christmas' - Also, how did anyone ever organise any event or party ever before Facebook? Answers on my wall please). After a lengthy half hour in town we decided that simply wasn't happening and came back home (accompanied by sunset, which was a tad disturbing) to lounge about a bit and play some Guitar Hero III Co-Op.

After a fun-filled trip to the local supermarket, in which we managed to drive around most of Tilehurst, and a few other fun bits of Reading - without finding the Asda I was directing Julie to, we finally managed to get enough veg to feed the 12 or so hungry students that would be turning up, and drove on back to Birmingham. I do love how simple it is to get between any two decent sized cities in Britain - I was always (for some reason) in the impression that any journey of length required a great degree of cartographic study and planning, but in reality you can just set off, find a road of decent size and wait for some signage.




Once back in Brum Julie naturally became completely unintelligible (see above) and I...something. It's actually really hard for me to write these posts, because I have a crap memory, which becomes even worse after a couple of days' drinking. So, things happened, magic wands were waved and it was Monday, and time to buy and wrap some presents. I'll leave those for another post though, because the people on this train are starting to look at me a bit funny, I think they want to steal my hair.

DPE Christmas Party

Last Saturday was the annual (well, how often did you expect it to happen?) Christmas Party for the Developer and Platform [Evangelism] Group here at Microsoft UK. I put 'Evangelism' in braces as I'd say a good half of the Brits who work there don't much like that particular Americanism and as such, drop it. I personally think it sums up what we do though....

Once Julie and I had spent many hours getting ourselves thoroughly dolled up - me in a tuxedo and her in a gorgeous, but simple purple dress (with accessories, of course) we joined a few others at Reading station and made our way over to Portland Street, near Regent's Park in London. For reasons still unknown to me the Royal Institute Of Public Health had hired out their building to us for the event - and a very nice building it was too.

As pretty much everyone had a partner I didn't know most of those who were there - which gave me an idea. If you can find exclusive little venues like this in London, and just watch for when people turn up, you've got a good chance of getting a great free night - with drinks and food all included. All you have to do is dress smart and look confident.

On the subject of free drinks, they were indeed forthcoming, with the waiters bizarrely seeming almost madly intent on ensuring that every wineglass was constantly filled. I think they lost some of their salary for every ten seconds that someone's wine glass was at 75% capacity or less. Like some bad 80's game show, but with more potential drink spiking and embarrassing behaviour, and less muddy knees and...embarrassing behaviour. Of a different type of course.

Once we were done with all of the inevitable introductions - which consisted of some banal small talk and mentioning of names, whilst the men compared their partner's against their colleagues partners, or female colleagues, to see who had the best trophy there. It was a bit unfair as the colleagues' wives had to dress relatively reservedly, whereas the office girls could 'let it all hang out'. As they did. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Don't think this is sexist and horrible by the way, because whilst the men were engaged in this the girls were being far more despicable, and quietly pricing everything the other women were wearing, checking that their bag and shoes matched (I was told by a complete stranger that this indeed happens upon *every* social meeting of two women whilst shopping earlier on the weekend), and doing whatever other underhanded things women do to eachother when they're not nagging men, or covering one another in whipped cream (which I assume they spend pretty much all of their time doing, unless I can physically see them).

After that, it was time for dinner, and I must say I was quite impressed that special girl (aka, Julie-oh 'the celiac') got served food which looked almost identical to that which everyone else was eating - despite often bearing little componential resemblance at all. Fairly standard stuff for a black-tie dinner - looked nice and pretty but there wasn't enough. Why won't they learn that wealth equates to giant plates of food, rather than small plates of art? And, more to the point, who the hell are 'they' anyway?

After a couple of speeches about how great I am (other things were probably mentioned too), dinner was over and it was time for the real fun. A roulette table and a blackjack table were set up, and everyone issued with some fake money, which I thought was rather cheap, given how much Microsoft makes every year. A small disco was also set up (think Wedding) and therefore most of the crowd simply stood around chatting and staring in bewilderment at their wine glasses as the night went on. Julie turned out to be quite a gambling shark and managed to nearly bankrupt a fake casino on the roulette table, and I had a conversation about the fragrance (perfume & flavourings) industry with someone extremely interesting.

By 1am everyone was rather tipsy indeed and the night wound down, and those of us that weren't staying in hotels set off for the coach back to Reading station. I imagine the people who were already starting to gossip about the fact I'd brought someone who clearly wasn't my girlfriend (and on my girlfriend's birthday no less), and who had been acting very...affectionately...towards me, would probably have exploded if I'd taken her to a hotel, so we went back to my bed instead. The time inbetween the night winding down and us setting off for home was extremely fun, but I'm not going to post about that here for various legal reasons - IM me or call me or something if you want to know. Don't talk to me in person though, that would default the entire point of blogging. The coach journey somehow managed to last nearly two hours and involve a break halfway, which was quite impressive for a short hop from Reading to London - and then it was time for some sleep before yet another busy day...

--

Wow, this is really long. I bet no-one read this far. Sorry about that ^^

More Excuses

In West Wales, no electricity - updates soon.

Xx

Friday - Other Stuff (Jazz 'n' Shops)

Wow, I really have been busy, I forgot these bits about last Friday - thanks to those who reminded me. I'm sure people only read this thing to tell me when I get something wrong.

Well, once back from work, Julie & I popped into town and hired me a lovely tuxedo¹ from Moss Bros, which even came with 30% student discount - highly recommended kids.

After that it was time to move the various musical instruments from my house into my room and introduce the origins of the Tie-Dye Quartet to the modern incarnation. That's a fancy way of saying I had a little jam with Will & Julie. I also got her to put some words and trumpet to a little jazz guitar song I've been working on, which should be pretty cool once I get it finished.

I really miss playing music with people over here in Reading, I just don't seem to have the time, or the company to do so. Never mind - back in Brum in half a year, and living in the old house with Terra, Julie and Tim too, so there'll be plenty of that. I'm also planning on getting a few folks together to record an 'album' of my various compositions and jams over the summer - more on that later.

For now though, here's an old video I found of us playing 'Ina's Jam'. Before I get to that album, I really need to start thinking of some better names for my songs. I don't think 'Jazz Guitar' or 'Trumpet Led Jazz' or 'Skeleton Jazz' will really cut it.


_{Tie-Dye Heart - Ina's Jam. Sometime in 2006}

--


_{1 - Firefox thinks 'tuxedo' is a typo of 'outfoxed', 'redoubt' or 'untaxed'}

Saturday, seniors, shopping, smashing...

As you might have guessed, Saturday didn't have the earliest of starts given the antics of the night before, which meant we were kept rushed off our feet, for the portion of the day that we were off our backs for.

We went to visit Julie's grandparents who lived relatively nearby, in the 'morning'. They were fairly generic old people, with biscuits and tea. They also erm...yeah. Old people. Very pleasant though. Oh, and there were cats.


_{This is an old person. They're not related to anyone I know.}

So, moving on - for Christmas, Julie had provided me with a lovely set of shot glasses, and a chess board. The two had cunningly been combined into a single box to make 'shot glass chess', a bizarre game in which the odds are evened by the fact that upon *taking* a piece, one has to drink a shot.

This doesn't seem like most drinking games I know, where the loser gets punished by drinking, and so I've added an additional rule, that the loser has to finish the rest of their colour's shots when checkmated. The game therefore, is now an exercise in gaining checkmate whilst leaving your opponent with the most remaining pieces possible. Also, 'Suicide Chess' has taken on a whole new meaning.


_{Red vodka, blue vodka...does this ring a bell for any of you regular readers?}

Unfortunately, despite being packed in many layers of polystyrene, a fair few of the shot glasses were smashed when I opened it. When we took the box back to the Reading branch of 4Front (multinational branding and globalisation pushing out independent shops does have its advantages), the staff were a bit dubious about our claim that the glasses were broken when we opened the box. That is, until they opened a box at their end and found the same thing. We managed to piece together one whole set between the two that were now open, but I'm still fairly bemused by the fact that the glasses could get smashed in such a protective environment.

Well, that's enough about shot-glasses for what was meant to be a non-alcohol related post. We spent the rest of the day getting ourselves spruced up for...

Wait for it ;)

Interns' Night Out

So, the reason you've only had one, rather cryptic post in the past 5 days is that Julie's come down to visit me, and kept me rather busy. Apologies for that.

Being the bad influence that she is, she turned up to my workplace on Friday afternoon, and after a tour of the Microsoft campus, dragged me off shopping. It's the first time I've shown the campus off to someone in quite a while and I didn't realise how novel most of what I now take for granted really is. Most people, for example, apparently don't have pool tables lying around their offices, or remote control boat racing on their office's lake.

It was also quite touching to see the level of detail the facilities folk had put into Christmas - even on the far side of the lake, in the woods, where no-body walks now that it's gotten rather cold, there was still a beautiful Christmas tree, with little fairly lights powered by a generator, and steel guy lines securing it to the path. No-one's ever going to see it unless they walk around the lake, and I don't know of anyone who does that in this season - but someone still went to all that effort. Quite sweet really.


_{The red circle is about where the tree is}

Now, I don't believe the phrase 'organised as a bunch of students' is yet a common simile, but we (the intern community) certainly advanced the cause for that Friday night. Four of us got to Nando's at the 'agreed' meeting time of 7.30, booked a table for 8, and waited half an hour for it. The four of us then sat there for a while, whilst other patrons stared angrily at our remaining spaces until the other four turned up. And then a few more, and then a few more...

Well, once we'd ruined Nando's seating plans for the evening, and had a couple of Savanna Ciders (which our resident South African informs me is actually quite an 'alternative' drink over there), it was time to hit some bars. Bar 38 (now rebranded to something else) was as expensive as I remembered it, but pretty good fun, but I was mostly looking forward to Mango, which had been billed as a 'dance/trance club'.


_{Obligatory picture for those of you who can't read large streams of text}

Unfortunately, the trance was lacking and the dance turned out to be generic modern house and r'n'b but a few tequilas and that wasn't a problem. A few more tequilas and things started to get really fun. I'm not entirely sure what time we stumbled out of there (or how we got home), but I can't say I really recommend going there again, unless you're prepared to intake your RDA of salt as a by-product of tequila slammer drinking.

If that's fine with you though, you'll have a fab night.

Too busy for you

Tequila, roulette, black-tie, magic, girls and rumours. Real updates later.

Xx

Dancing...socks

If there's anything better than turning off the lights and dancing in your living room to some jazz and soul classics then I'd like to know what it is. Unfortunately, my feet do rather hurt now, since the floor's just laminated wood, but I couldn't be bothered with the noise of my shoes on this floor.

Anyhow, if you decide to take me up on this wonderful recommendation¹, then I highly recommend the following:

Jive:
Jackie Wilson - Reet Petite
Blues Brothers - Everybody Needs Somebody
John Coltrane - Blue Train (if you're feeling brave)

Waltz (Swung):
James Brown - Sex Machine
Commodores - Brick House
Miles Davis - So What

Swing:
Duke Ellington - Take the -A- Train
Charlie Parker - Billie's Bounce
Stevie Wonder - Superstitious

And if you're not sure on how to dance any of those, then there's some great videos over at Expert Village - highly worth a visit.

--

_{1 - I take no responsibility for anyone following any recommendation I make. Ever. Especially if it involves drinking.}

Five amusing news from around the web

1. Microsoft accuses kids of bullying Santa into sex chat

El Reg's shock headline aside there, this is actually a pretty poor reflection on Microsoft that they let their 'ai' chat bot representing Santa get away with foul language. Still hilarious though :)

According to the BBC, it seems there will soon be a revolution in digitally broadcast entertainment. As well as the sounds that we're used to hearing from technology such as radio, we'll soon be able to receive pictures too!

2. Coming soon...moving pictures and sound - in one!

Digital radio has wild plans for a new future - broadcasting pictures alongside the sound we expect from them. Now aside from the obvious conclusion that they're simply re-inventing television, I can't actually see why anyone would want this. When I'm listening to my iPod, or the radio, I'm generally doing other things. If I have time to sit down and pay visual attention to something, I'll watch TV!

3. McFines for slow eaters

It seems people have been getting fined recently for spending too long in McDonald's car parks. I would feel some sympathy for them - but does it really take longer than an hour to wolf down junk food? Then again, it's not just McDonalds...

A Tesco store in Wiltshire recently warned an elderly couple that they took too long to do their Christmas shopping - after the couple had spent around £200 in-store.

4. Schumacher commandeers a taxi

Late for the plane? Get a F1 driver to break all the traffic laws (and probably some other ones too - I doubt he had insurance to drive a taxi) and get there in time. It's an amusing story, but you have to wonder how the fascist strict folks over in Germany haven't picked up on it.

5. Man trapped in toilet for 4 days

Nothing like a bit of toilet humour to round things off eh?

Hello - Everything is fine. Goodbye

I got quite a bizarre call from O2 customer services today. A thoroughly nice British chap rang me so that we could have the lovely, but slightly pointless conversation paraphrased below:

"Hello"

"Hi, is that, Mr. Ian MacGillivray?" (He even pronounced it ok)

"Sure is"

"Hi Ian, my name's <x> and I'm calling from O2 customer services, is now a good time to talk?"

"Yeah sure, I've got a minute..."

"Great, I just wanted to call to tell you that I've been having a look at your recent bill usage, to see if we had a more appropriate package for you"

"Oh ok cheers - so is there a better package then?"

"No, everything's fine, the package you've got is the best deal for you given your usage"

"Oh right, thanks"

"No problem, have a great day"

"You too"

--

Reminds me of the Everything's OK Alarm as invented by Homer Simpson (can't find it on YouTube! - "This alarm will sound every 5 seconds so long as everything is OK!")

Brain Bones

Another great game I found over at OneMoreLevel, Brain Bones is a bit like Yahtzee - but with a lot more strategy involved. There's still a bit of luck involved, but I challenge you to try and beat this :)



Enjoy.

Lance Gambit

Picture Loans have gained a degree of fame for having what are publicly acclaimed to be the most irritating adverts on TV. A particularly hated one is 'Josh, Dad's found ya scootah' - you know the one I mean. Well, like everyone else, I hate that advert, and the awful acting within, but I do really like the vibraphone music in the background, and have never been able to find out what it is - until I decided to give it a really good search after it appeared on Top Gear.

The song is 'Leftbank 2', written by Wayne Hill and played by the Lance Gambit trio. You can even find the album, Cocktail 2000 over on Amazon - it contains such greats as Barbie Girl and Return Of The Mac - played in a smooth, chilled style on the vibraphone.

I can't find any of the tracks online, but I'm really tempted to get the album, for pure comedy value if nothing else. Let me know if you manage to track any of them down before I resort to the archaic method of actually paying for music before I hear it.

Sawse - Design and Art

Sawse is a blog I've recently stumbled upon that offers A Healthy Blend of Design Inspiration, New Technologies and Offbeat News. As well as offering some of their own stuff, they do a great job of compiling some of the best bits of funky art from around the web too.



The above's from one of my favourite posts on the site - 20 photographs taken at the exact right angle, which is absolutely kickass, and well worth a look.



25 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Time is another great post along the same lines.

One final link before I leave you to go and discover their site myself is going to have to be a recent post, Stop motion animation, which has some absolutely brilliant videos on there. I particularly like the ones from damnfunnypictures, like this one:

No more detox

Well, it's been a fun experiment, but yesterday I decided to end my detox after only two weeks. It wasn't the depressing experience of watching other people eat gorgeous food whilst I sat there with some nuts and berries. It wasn't even the fact that every meal required a degree of effort - there was never a quick solution or the option to eat out. No, the main factor in my decision was that my body decided it would be fun to faint on Wednesday night.

Now, a common question I got when I said that to people in person was 'Why?' - to which I'm still unsure of the answer. My body doesn't exactly have a LED readout that justifies its actions...

Despite giving up early I'm still happy I gave the whole thing a try - I certainly did feel a lot better in myself after a few days, and I've learned some really nice recipes and meals that can be made with absolutely no bad stuff at all. I'm also sure that I've processed all the 'bad stuff' that was leftover by now, giving me a clean start before I go and fill my body with crap all over again.

Would I recommend it? Certainly - but perhaps only for a week or so at a time. And certainly not in December, that was just silly. If you fancy giving it a go, get in touch, please, because I've not bothered to mention on here some important stuff, and if you just go at it with what I mentioned you'll probably get very ill.

Back to work...
Xx

Harmonica Hero

Why do I not already own this game?

The world's strangest laws

Cheap post here, but I couldn't resist linking this. From The Times online:

The world's strangest laws

Enjoy :)

The Calamity of Ina

Thanks to Anthony for the post title, it made me giggle :)

So, following on from all locked up, I had an eventful early morning start today for my trip to London. My key was actually found during the day by my housemates by the way - stuck deep inside the folding mechanism of the bed part of the sofa-bed.

This wasn't my only calamity today, I also kinda failed on my detox. As such, the new plan is to have two short stints of detox - most people only do 7 days anyway. I've managed 8 days before my failing today, and I've got another 12 days until the departmental Christmas party.

Today was my team's little Christmas-celebration day in London, and the welcoming of our new manager. With all the festivity in the air, it completely slipped my mind that a nice steak and 7 cocktails at lunchtime weren't allowed under the rules of my detox. It also made for an interesting first meeting with the new boss, who arrived quite late into the celebrations.

Bit of a spectacular failure really :( Oh well - I'll start again tomorrow with some lovely hummus and raw veg. I've got to say that I could really feel the difference eating 'real' food, but I should hopefully process it quickly and get back to my airy and light detoxed state within a couple of days.

Comments on Tie-Dye Heart

A few of you have requested it, so with some help from the friendly, fun & talented admin (Steve H) over at ComicCMS (which powers tiedyeheart.com), we've now made it possible for comments to be added for comics over at Tie-Dye Heart.

Now, given that barely anyone comments here, I was a bit dubious about taking the time to add this functionality, so please go and prove me wrong guys :)

Xx

All locked up with no way to go

Yesterday, around tea-time, I was happily sitting on my sofa, watching repeats of Top Gear on Dave. To my right was a bowl of red pepper houmous (which I'm growing to tolerate, if not actively like), and a plate of cucumber wedges and sliced peppers which I was dipping in said bowl. To my left, on the arm of the sofa, was my laptop, and next to it, my front door key.

_{This story does get better, promise.}

Having gotten all the entertainment I could out of Facebook for the day, and with Top Gear hotting up, I decided to move my laptop to the floor. Whilst leaning over to do this, I knocked my key off the arm of the sofa. I know I did this, because I heard a metallic 'ting'.

_{Oh well.}

So, I then proceeded to get up so I could pick up the key...and couldn't immediately find it. Half an hour passed, with me turning the living room upside down, taking the sofa apart and even checking the kitchen, in case of a miraculous bounce.

_{I've managed to lose my front door key, in my own living room.}

Now, with my housemate arriving home the next day, and having no need to go out that night, this wasn't really going to be a problem. When he got home, he could let himself in, and I could then simply get a new key cut - once he'd checked over the living room to make sure I wasn't being completely insane (he has, by the way, checked it, and also can't find the key). As such, I happily went off to bed at some hour and thought little more of it.

_{Sweet dreams...}

Until I got woken up by a phone call at 9am this morning from that housemate, telling me that he'd been up all night in London due to various mix-ups, and was on his way home having had no sleep. Oh, and, his house key was currently in a flat in London, so could I let him in.

_{Yeah right.}

Naturally, I thought that one of the people I'd complained to about my missing key had told him, and so he was winding me up. Also naturally, he assumed I was merely winding him up when I said that the door was locked and I had no key. So, a few minutes passed until he actually got to the door...and then we were faced with a predicament.

_{A cunning plan was in order.}

As it was, he eventually managed to clamber in through a window I opened for him, and we're now both stuck inside a locked house with no key. Tomorrow we've both got to be in work by 9am (and for me, that means getting to London) which should be quite fun. Current plan of action is to set the alarm and then leg it to the window and jump out before the alarm goes off on us. Then, hope no-one decides to clamber in until our other housemate arrives at midday.

_{If you're a burglar in the Reading area and don't mind loud alarms, please disregard the above.}

The Pirate Bay speaks up

With music, TV & guitar tab sites dropping like flies, it's nice to see one which is fully prepared to take responsibility for their actions and defend themselves in an educated manner. It's also hilarious to see the Swedish public defending their local torrent site.

From BBC News:

The views from The Pirate Bay

Highly worth a read if you're into this kind of thing :)

Spacedust

A chap by the name of John recently left yet another comment on my timeless anti-BT post, and, interested to see if he'd blogged in more detail about his experience, I had a click on his profile.

Well, I can't find a blog, but I did find his brilliant website, Spacedust, which does something I've always vaguely wanted to but never had the time for.

You know all those signs you see dotted around that are just hilarious? Well, he's gathered a bunch of photographs of them together - go take a look, there's some corkers :)

Depressing

One of the worst things about this detox is when I join the other folks from the office for lunch in the canteen. I go and find a table all by myself (picking up a fork on the way, brushing past everyone with the plates piled high of gorgeous, decadent food) and sit there with my tupperware, waiting for the others to arrive.

Naturally, with the wonderful selection of food at MS, it takes a while, and when they finally appear, trays full of sweet desserts and creamy, rich lunch, I'm almost relieved. Oh, and I always finish first too (no puns please), so have to sit there, staring at their plates as they devour them.

Anyhow, interesting though the above is, that's not the depressing bit. The depressing bit is when I come home, and watch my housemates. Now that I'm no longer cooking for them, they're like lost sheep. Today they were arguing over how to cook Super Noodles.

Nice.

The 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project

I recently stumbled across a little something that really made me smile. Nothing like the power of the human spirit and a little sense of community - and it's even better when there's no real point past the sense of achievement and a bit of brightness in the day.


_{Click to enlarge}

The 16th Avenue Tiled Steps Project was a neighbourhood effort by some folks in San Francisco and has led to 163 steps in their area becoming absolutely beautifully tiled with mosaics. Visit their site for some more pictures and the full story.

How to enable spell-checking in Firefox 2.0 or later

I recently noticed that an install of Firefox on a new machine didn't, for some reason, have the spell-checker enabled, which probably led to one or two typos on this blog (sorry!). So, for those of you who haven't worked out how to fix this, or never knew it existed - this simple fix should have you literate in no time.

1. Right click an editable text box (The body of an email you're writing should be good).
2. Choose 'Add dictionaries'
3. Pick your language (they even have Welsh!)

Oh and, don't forget your Firefox addons

--

If you're using Internet Explorer - check out iespell.

Four days of healthy eating down, twenty six to go

I've so far managed to religiously stick to my detox plan, despite the dangers of temptation, and the even more perilous dangers of forgetfulness. I got all the way to sorting through my change in front of a vending machine at work before remembering I couldn't have a Mars bar :(

So, to answer a relatively common question I've been getting, here's what I've been eating to date:

Sunday
Lunch - Porridge, with honey
Dinner - Salad with lemon and lime drizzled
Supper - Banana

Snacks - Nuts, raisins, apple.

Monday
Breakfast - Banana
Lunch - Lettuce wrap (think a healthy fajita) containing; peppers, cucumber, apple, raisin & cashew nuts.
Dinner - Home-made carrot, parsnip & apple soup

Snacks - Nuts, grapes, raisins, banana

Tuesday
Breakfast - Banana
Lunch - Rice salad (Brown rice, raisin, cashew nuts, peppers, apple, lemon), fresh orange juice
Dinner - That soup again

Snacks - Nuts, grapes, raisins, dried apple rings (gorgeous)

Wednesday
Breakfast - Porridge, cooked with pure apple juice instead of water or milk, and with a stick of cinnamon in whilst cooking. Absolutely brilliant.
Lunch - Nuts, grapes, raisins
Dinner - Carrots & peppers roasted in honey, chunks of apple and cucumber

Snacks - Banana, more grapes

Disclaimer

It's come to my attention that there's been a fourth occurrence of someone(s) imitating things I've done whilst drunk (or whilst on the way at least). Now I realise I tagged Forxspresso as a recommendation, but clearly I wasn't being serious. As for the Purple Spinners and alcohole (or if you prefer, alcohole in pictures), I thought I'd made it clear that those should never be reproduced.

Still though, I already know of these four copycat incidents, and there have been no deaths so far, but I really must impress upon you, dear readers, the importance of not doing anything I do, ever.

Right, I now can't be sued for any future deaths - back to Top Gear..

Freebies

One of the great things about working at MS is the amount of promotional material flying around - especially over in DPE, where we work with nothing but the brand new stuff. On an average day I'll get something small, such as a pen or a stack of paper or a keyring or something. One some days however, I get t-shirts or even more bizarre things (Visual Studio 2008 Database Developer Edition tattoos were pretty weird I must say).

Today was probably a bit of a record for goodies though, as I managed to lay my hands on:

• Two copies of Vista Ultimate


• Two copies of Office Ultimate


• Two copies of Windows Live OneCare


• A (very nice) t-shirt


• A thin tin case for 10 cds or so


• A stressball


• 'Golf On The Go'

...all for free! :)



_{You can rake the sand-trap to make it more difficult - how awesome is that?}

Kids need bullying

I've said it before and I'll say it again - this crackdown on bullying in schools has left us with a generation of complete wimps. I recently stumbled across a news story, in which a set of schoolgirls, upon being confronted with a field of cows sparked off a major search & rescue operation.

Scary Cows Spark Schoolgirl Rescue - from Sky News.

In a farcical waste of resources, we learn that the coastguard, police, hospital and ambulance services were all 'scrambled' to help this party of 14-15 year olds after the shocking revelation:

"The children were concerned because they realised they were going to have to walk through a field with cows in it."

After a whole range of people had persuaded them that cows weren't in fact dangerous - our brave girls proceeded to cross the field, but then:

"They got to the other side of the field but were feeling tired and it started to rain so someone from the centre called the coastguards."

Fortunately, there were no fatalies - although there was one very close call:

"None of the girls suffered any injuries, although one girl who complained of feeling cold was taken to hospital to be checked over by medical staff."

Pathetic eh?

Detox

Today I start on a 30 day detox program which may well cause me to embark on a number of small killing sprees as it begins to really dawn on me that I can't eat any of the following:

• Meat


• Fish


• Eggs


• Dairy


• Mushrooms


• Refined sugar


• Salt


• Wheat – bread, pasta, cake etc


• Alcohol


• Caffeine


• Soya


• White rice

I'll be taking a few supplements to help ensure I don't die, but other than that I plan to mostly be living on water, fruit, veg, honey, rye, brown rice and nuts - with a couple of other bits I'm allowed.

I'm sure the temptation to wave doughnuts, pork chops and cans of Coke in my face will be enormous, but rest assured folks - I will have my revenge if and when you do so.

Anyhow, I'll keep you up to date with how I go, and what I manage to actually find to make meals out of, until you're bored of hearing about this. Should be a fun adventure if nothing else - although ideally I'll lose a bit of weight and get rid of all the crap building up from all the fast food and processed junk I've been eating since becoming a student.

Oh and, did I mention I can't have tea, or alcohol? I'm going to go cry in a corner now...

Strange and disturbing games for the Nintendo DS

There have been a few games for the Nintendo DS recently that have made me wonder - who actually buys these?

For example, there are currently no less than four games of the 'I'm a princess and I have a horse' genre, which presumably are aimed at young girls who've already learnt to strive to be upper-middle class, when really they're lower-middle class. A quick game of Pippa Funnell 2 (they made TWO?) and they'll be throwing dinner parties and acting socially aware in no time.

I've also counted at least three 'I wish I was a vet' games, which sounds like a reasonable concept after the success of Trauma Centre. Prime amongst these is Zoo Hospital, which offers the facility to give a panda an enema:


_{This may feel a little cold..}

We've got nothing on the Japanese though, who have some absolutely unbelievable games. When they came out with Brain Training, the westerners went for it - and I've got to say, it's a great set of minigames, if a bit bizarrely presented. I can even see the attraction in Sight Training. But...face training?:



When you thought it couldn't get any worse - there is one further game I'll mention here - Touch Little Girls. That's a YouTube video too, but I won't embed it as YouTube have flagged it as for over 18's only. I only skipped through the video myself, but I'm pretty sure that's not because it's explicit. I really, really hope not anyway.

Drinks in Prague

I don't think I've actually mentioned yet that the reason I was over in Prague was for some 'soft skills' training with work, alongside a bunch of other evangelists from around Europe and Africa. It's great being in a classroom environment with this type of audience, because you get so much interaction and contribution from everyone else - although with everything being in our native tongue, the brits were probably a bit louder, as you'd expect ;)

After a hard day's work, DPE folks are also great at partying. The first night was spent trying to find some 'authentic' Czech bars, and drinking some 'authentic' Czech beer. We eventually found some bars where the majority of people didn't seem to be speaking English, and where herring was on the menu instead of steak and chips, and so we settled down for a few drinks.

Now, we'd already heard of Budweiser (the real stuff) and Pilsner before, so we decided to order the other beer available - which had a name I'll never remember and had no chance of pronouncing. Turned out to be a quite sweet and very, very nice dark beer, and I stuck to drinking this for the first two nights.

On the third day however, I was told by one of the Slovakians on the course that dark beer was traditionally drunk by...Czech women. The big, hairy Czech women, to be more precise. Well, hey - I drink girly drinks back home too, and I'm pretty sure they weren't selling Bacardi and Coke there anyway.

Ah well, very fun times - I don't remember much of the first night, but I do recall catching the end of England's loss to Croatia in that most homely of Czech lodges - 'Fat Boy's Bar' on the third night. I also managed to turn up very hungover and half an hour late to the first morning of training (I thought it started at 9, not 8:30, in my defence), which was pretty much an expectation being the resident student there :)

MIT (Men In Technology)

I get really annoyed when I hear the phrase 'positive discrimination' - because the person using it is generally under the impression that it's a good thing, despite the fact that they've just clearly stated that it is still discrimination. Probably the worst example of this was a manager I once had being told he had to hire 'someone black' - I'm sure you've heard similar stories before.

Something I'm not so sure how to feel about however, is when a set of women take something which is generally unisex, and form a 'girls in' or 'women for' club. Examples of this in my world would be the Girl Geeks or Women In Technology. There are other examples in other areas here, but it's the gender thing that generally gets me - and that's mostly female > male rather than male > female.

I may be being naive here, but in my experience there's no general air of sexism in the techie industry - or any discrimination really, which is one of the reasons I love it. Geeks are logical people, and if one person is better than another at a certain job, then they'll get the gig - regardless of anything else. The internet's brought a lot of dubious contributions to society, but one can't argue that it's helped us to judge people a lot more on personality rather than physical attributes.

As such, when I hear a group who recommend companies with, and lobby companies for an "open and explicit commitment to inclusive recruitment policies" I get quite annoyed. What's an 'inclusive recruitment policy' anyway? In my mind, that means that they'll actively try and recruit from both genders/all races/a range of ages/etc. An 'exclusive recuirtment policy' would likewise indicate some degree of discrimination too - only a recruitment policy which doesn't mention this issue can be truly open to all.

For a bit of lighthearted humour, and to make this point in a friendly (if not so subtle) way, I've recently redecorated some of the Women In Technology stickers that were lying about the office, and even put one up near my desk :)

Airport Security

For this wonderful trip to Prague I had the pleasure of flying out of Gatwick airport - home to a hilarious web of bureaucracy and security. I'm sure no-one wants to hear me complain about all of that fun (and to be honest, if you can read English and have common sense, it's not that much of a hassle), but here's a couple of amusing observations/anecdotes:

1. The 100ml rule
The 100ml rule states that no liquids may be taken on a plane unless they're inside a sealed container with a capacity of not more than 100mls. This container must then be inside a sealed, transparent bag, which must have a maximum volume of 1 litre.

Now then, I'm firstly quite bemused by this. Why restrict me to 100ml bottles if I can happily take a full litre of explosive substance onto the plane, presuming I bother to go and get 10 separate containers.

Secondly, given that I can take on pretty much any solid I want, including one which could say, melt at room temperature during the hour I'm waiting for the plane after I'm past security, why are they being so fanatic about liquids?


_{For the chavs amongst you, that's the same as 4 shots of White Lightning}

Thirdly, what happens to all of the confiscated liquid? Well, I can tell you that from what I saw, two things happen.

At the point of confiscation, it's thrown into a large dustbin-type container. Yes, you heard, hundreds of litres of almost certainly explosive liquids are thrown together, with little tenderness, into a bin surrounded by potential passengers and customs officials.

After this, the materials are then 'disposed of' (from what I hear, crushed - applying high pressure to explosives is always a great idea), except the ones that are used around the airport to demonstrate the dangers of not following the 100ml rule. Yup, they put loads of potentially explosive substances in nice glass stands all around strategic points at the airport. Nice.

Finally, this amused me:
Vatican Air passengers have Holy Water confiscated

2. Shoes
It was great fun watching female passengers with fancy high-heels having to strip them off for the 'shoes' part of security. This policy was recently introduced after someone, somewhere, had something bad in his shoes and didn't get caught. Makes it pretty tempting to try getting a bomb through in a bra doesn't it lads?


_{Even airport-friendly shoes need to be taken off. What the hell makes them airport friendly by the way?}

I heard a great story about how this bit was handled in one airport a colleague travelled through - where the shoes were taken by a security official and banged hard against a table to check for explosives. Brilliant.

3. Metal detectors
Over at Gatwick I went through a full-body metal detector, which I'm sure you'd expect. As quite often happens, I made the thing beep, so someone came along with a hand-held thingy and pushed it around me. Once we'd decided that it was probably the buttons on my jeans causing the beep, I was let through.

It wasn't until I got off the plane at the other end that I noticed I'd kept my wallet in my pocket, complete with penknife I'd forgotten to take out. Lucky I'm such an easygoing guy with no particular dislike for any countries eh?

More later, off to get food that won't poison this weekend's visitor now :)
Xx

Back from Prague!

I'll spam regale you with tales aplently later, once I've sifted through the reams of work, email and other stuff that require my attention, but I just thought I'd make it clear that I'm now back, and you can therefore all start making me cups of tea again.

Also, as this post is pretty much worthless as it stands, here's a quote from the Interns discussion alias (quite fun, sometimes) about the Social discussion alias (my favourite, as close readers here will have noticed):

Things that social like –

• Touting only things they see fit


• Spending hours and hours discussing rubbish things


• Having no fun


• Pouncing on innocent members of the Microsoft community and “bullying” them to relieve their own insecurities


• Ian MacGillivray


• Talking about the state of the car park


• Any other tedious subject they can think of

How sweet of them to think of me :)

Flying visit

Not much time for an update I'm afraid - need to go start packing and sort some other stuff out. So, quickly;

Lucie came up this weekend for her birthday present - I took her to Waltham Airfield outside Maidenhead and she flew a plane whilst I sat in the back and re-discovered religion - great fun apparently.

New comic up at http://www.tiedyeheart.com - I can now no longer claim that website contains no lesbians.

Off to Prague for 4 days tomorrow with work. Wish me luck.

Xx

Masterful Advertising

I'm sure we've all had days when we've considered having everyone that works in marketing rounded up into a large pen and shot. On rare other days, such as today however, I might let them off with a light hanging, and then some tea and biscuits. Why this sudden orgy of generosity? Well, sometimes, they really do get it right.

Hopefully you've all by now seen this masterpiece from Cadbury's:



The impressive point here, isn't that it's just a cool advert, and well shot. It isn't that the fact it's so 'out of the box' that everyone remembers that crazy gorilla. It isn't even that this is something that grips the viewer and sometimes draws more attention than the program it interrupted. The really amazing thing about this advert is that everyone I've spoken to doesn't think of it as 'that gorilla ad', but as 'the Dairy Milk ad'. I'm not entirely sure how they've done it, but they've managed to make a really cool advert which everyone still associates with the product.

The viral response to this advert was massive too, with spoofs and clones popping up everywhere. Viral marketing is something I see attempted a lot, but often fails - mostly, I think, because someone actually started a campaign with the idea of making it viral. Just because someone came up with the buzzword 'viral' doesn't mean it's something you can force. The internet is a fickle place that can be swayed by the most obscure things, and that can ignore the most big budget flashy things there are. Just make a great product and advert, and hope for the best - don't try and force some kind of following or set of spoofs.

The second thing I wanted to bring your attention to was a recent Natalie Dee comic, which has probably generated more traffic to her site than anything else - and she's already very popular with tons of great cartoons and t-shirts. It even worked on me, because I'm blogging about it, and giving her some more links:



Just brilliant.

Crayon Physics - for your inner kid

There's plenty of games out there where one can draw a couple of lines on a tablet PC and have the on-screen objects react, towards some kind of goal. Line Rider was a massive fad along these lines, and InkBall's a pretty fun new Windows game in this genre too. However, Chinny recently linked me to this video for Crayon Physics, which looks absolutely awesome - can't wait to get my hands on it.



Up above is 'Crayon Physics Deluxe', but go download Crayon Physics Freeware for now :)

Two new favourites

So, Will recently lent me a bunch of books, in his infinite kindness. I've got to say, that two of them are amongst my favourite books of all time (and yes, I'm including the Guitar Hero manual there).

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

A beautiful, funny and most importantly, believable tale of the lives of two young Jews in America, starting with World War II and moving on to the rest of their lives. Unlike many great books of this sort, which focus on the War and its consequences, this book manages to shift the focus over to escapism (of the literal, and metaphorical sorts) and comics, of all things, whilst retaining its very serious air. It's a wonderful story, with characters that'll become close to you than your own family, and superb prose.

We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shrivel

Written as a series of letters, from a wife to her estranged husband, the prose has an interesting and very seductive tone right from the start. The common failing of a book, where you feel you're standing on the outside looking in is thrown away, with every word sounding like it's directed straight at you. The story focuses on their interesting son, recently convicted of mass murder in a school shooting - I won't spoil any more than that but I highly, highly recommend you give it a read.

--

So, if you know someone who's into literature, then there's a couple of good Christmas ideas for you. I'm currently reading the hilariously tongue-in-cheek Black Mischief by Evelyn Waugh, which I got from a set of 10 books from The Book People for something like £10. Disgracefully cheap and superb quality, with great service. Go to it kids.

Test your English (and help charity)

I recently came across this very tough little game online:

Free Rice

Every time you get an answer right, some rice gets donated to someone who wants rice (I didn't read the specifics). That's lovely and all, but the best part is clearly the 'vocab level' bit which rises slightly every time you get a few hundred right, and crashes back down as soon as you make the slightest mistake, or so it appeared to me.

My top score so far is 44 (I've stopped playing since I fell from that giddy height all the way down to 38) - go see if you can't beat that. A University lecturer friend of a friend apparently got up to 50. Ouch.

I strongly believe that the new Aston University logos are horrible

Not too long ago, it was announced to all students here at Aston University that we have a new 'brand'. Now, the old 'brand' was a very tasteful, simple affair, which worked well and had a bit of class about it:


_{The old logo}

The new logo is rumoured (no idea of the reliability of this) to have cost £60,000 to develop. After the London 2012 fiasco I can readily believe this, but I certainly hope it's not true - given that the new thing is absolutely horrible and looks like it was knocked up in MS Paint in a couple of minutes:


_{The new logo}

Within no time, a Facebook group had sprung up, with the title I've appropriated for this post, I strongly believe that the new Aston University logos are horrible. It's now 650 people strong and still growing - you wouldn't believe that 'students have been thoroughly consulted', as we're told in the communications that came from the University. None of the people in the group have yet mentioned that they've been contacted or consulted, and plenty have explicity said that they haven't...

The group's organising an online petition, and hopefully through that we should be able to get the Students' Guild to put pressure on the new(ish) Vice-Chancellor to get this atrocity removed. So, if you've the time and inclination, go sign the petition, and if you're still up at the Uni, consider putting this wonderful picture up at choice locations (the VC's office door, car windscreen...you get the idea):


_{Kudos to Jason Whyley for this one}

Kappow!

This lunchtime I was treated to one of the most bizarre spectacles I've witnessed in the atrium of Building 2 at work, and that's saying something. The entire centre of the atrium had been cleared, for Team GB's Karate 'arm' to demonstrate some of their skills to us.

These guys were really impressive, and the shouts that accompanied some of the kicks and punches must have scared the hell out of some of the folks working upstairs in Building 2 who hadn't noticed the signs that this thing was going to take place.

This on it's own would have been pretty cool, but it was actually in aid of Get Safe Online Week, and as such, some of the poor souls from Team GB had to read out monologues from a script on online safety.

I'm fairly sure it's safe to say that their passion laid with their (superb) martial arts, rather than preventing phishing, so it was rather surreal to hear karate shouts, see a karate demonstration, and have the entire thing overlaid with a less-than-enthusiastic set of helpful tips on staying safe online. And all this when I was just going for lunch...

Scary stat of the day (taken from some brochure which didn't quote its sources, pinch of salt recommended):
24% of folks online use the same password for every single website they visit.

Scarier stat:
100% of folks references in the above statistic were stupid enough to admit this.

Contact Juggling

I was on Wikipedia last night, browsing around things related to M.C. Escher to confirm whether or not he did actually enjoy torturing fish. The answer, by the way, is that he didn't, but a quick Wikipedia edit from myself could quickly change that bit of history. Oh how I love the internet..

Anyhow, I got onto looking at Henderson, Lucas & Bowie's film The Labyrinth, which I've still never gotten around to seeing. Anyone got a copy I can borrow? I learned that during that film, Bowie appears to be 'contact juggling' a lot. Now, I'd never heard of contact juggling, let alone seen it, before then, so naturally I popped along to YouTube.

Wow. Contact juggling is far, far cooler than 'toss juggling', just see:



That being said, a man by the name of Greg Kennedy certainly had a good go at restoring the balance not too long ago with his conical juggling routine:

Wednesday's going to be fun...

My placements tutor, [name edited out], whom you may remember from my rant about him or rant about placements was recently the subject of a couple of Google queries, by some folks who later contacted him.

Well, lo and behold, if my little old blog doesn't come up as the second hit once SafeSearch is turned off (naughty naughty). Two hours passed, and at 4am this morning, he sent an email from his personal email account, cc'ing in two other folks from Aston (the head of placements, and...his boss? Not sure of the relationship there).

In his usual style of poorly placed sarcasm and 'broken English' (if you're reading [name edited out as requested], it wasn't me that coined that description of you) he complained again about my 'professionalism', 'maturity' and 'respect'.

Well now, I was in a bit of a pickle as to how I replied. The mail was from his personal account, so I felt quite justified in letting rip, but then he'd cc'ed in professional colleagues...so perhaps I'd better tone it down.

In the end, after consulting a few folks, I removed the bits deemed 'potentially slanderous' and stuck pretty much to the facts. I've kindly offered to remove his name from the metadata of the First Circle Of Hell (though, I'm not entirely sure I'm obliged to do so) and I've even given the folks at the University a free shot at having the post taken down if there's some University policies it violates (again, I'm not entirely sure I'm obliged to do this, but no harm in playing it safe).

I couldn't resist this little crack though:
"I'm afraid that 'respect' has to be earned. My respect for you dropped much, much lower than it already was once I got phone calls, emails and instant messages in response to that post. Maturity we'll leave up to debate, and I'll let professionalism speak for itself, however anyone wishes to interpret this post, and the below email exchange."

If only I could have put in the rest of what I'd written - but if it's too potentially slanderous to be cc'ed in to two of his colleagues, it certainly doesn't belong on the net. Feel free to pm me though kids :)

To clarify the title - I'm meeting him for my 'placements visit' this Wednesday, which should be a pile of fun. I'll let you know how that turns out.

--

...and to think I thought I was going to be bored this Sunday :)

Worst Guitar Hero Video Ever

So this video was recently brought to my attention after I posted that vid about the 8 year old 5*ing Psychobilly Freakout:


_{Warning: Do not watch unless you have a legally bought copy of this South Park episode. Or don't care about IP laws. You bastards.}

Now I've not personally gotten the 1million award yet, because I can't find anyone good enough to play multiplayer with me on the XBox version. But, when I do, I assure you I will be told I'm not a fag, I will be told that 'I rock'.

And, let's face it, is there anything more life affirming than such a compliment from that most divine entity, Guitar Hero? I think not.

--

By the way: Just beat Dragonforce's 'Through The Burning Storm' on a custom Guitar Hero disk, and had a 4x combo going quite a few times. Still only 3* though :(

Best Guitar Hero Video Yet

My best score so far on this song is a paltry 120k with 4*. This kid's brilliant, I'm pretty sure it's not faked too...

Lottery scratch cards withdrawn due to poor maths skills

From The Manchester Evening News:

Lottery cards withdrawn due to poor maths skills

So it seems that Camelot have had to withdraw some scratch cards from the market because they caused mass confusion, with many people believing they'd won. The aim of the cards was to 'find' (scratch off) a number that was lower than the initial number given to you - there was some penguin theme involved I believe.

Anyhow, you wouldn't believe how dense some people are...or maybe you would. Here goes:

"The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher, not lower, than -8..."

Work or Lego? Why not both...

Last week, I accepted a meeting request with no real idea of what the meeting was about. I was simply enticed in by the words 'Lego' and 'Free Lunch'. Turns out the whole thing was to help with promotion for the First Lego League, but it turned into a very exciting day.

Can you imagine what happens when you give a roomful of creative & enthusiastic guys (and a couple of girls), who spend all day playing with techie toys a massive bag of Lego? Well, try to think how bad it would get if you then casually throw in the words 'plan' and 'challenge'.

Between us we got a bunch of cool stuff built - including a car, a railway and a space station. I was unfortunately a bit too busy with the free lunch so I ended up with a house to build, which was actually surprisingly fun when I realised the roof came in about a hundred different bits or so.

Great day, great fun, great job. Enjoy my masterpiece:


_{Don't think any of this was easy, even the flowers took 10 steps to assemble each}

One is from Sutton Coldfield, *not* Birmingham

Staying in one place is rather boring, wouldn't you agree? I'm in London at the moment, as I didn't get to go to TechEd in Barcelona, but I still owe you a blog post about the rest of my time in Birmingham before I can move on to what's been happening in Reading.

Just kidding, nothing ever happens in Reading.

So after a Friday night rediscovering the joys of Mah-Jong with the old team (Tim, Terra & Julie-oh) I popped online to make my cryptic post about: Vodka espressos, broken bones, job offers and inappropriate clothing.... I've elaborated on three of those by now, and I'm afraid the last, broken bones, isn't that dramatic to be honest.

Julie-oh had something big fall on her hand whilst at work, and ended up in a bunch of pain. She then (probably) put some eye-make up on her hand to simulate bruising and claimed breakage, in order to get tea brought to her in the morning.

We popped along to A&E in Sutton Coldfield, where I got to see a bunch of the NHS software I've been working on in practical use, which was actually extremely interesting and pretty useful for me. Julie was in and out of the entire place within an hour, with an X-Ray giving her the all-clear. The lesson here is; if you want prompt, efficient and friendly medical service, go to the posh part of town.

I was also quite amused by the fact that she was admitted to the Minor Ailments ward as a non-priority, and even within there had a pink folder, which I presume means less serious than blue folders - carried by those who were bleeding. Other amusement came from the bullying leaflet, which put 'being left out' on a par with 'being attacked because of ethnic origin'.

We also found an open-air market in Sutton which was awesome, and full of great little handmade trinkets. Highly recommended if you can find it again, some of you'll be having your birthday presents coming from there :)

Anyhow, back to this meeting.

Xx

--

Vaguely related picture of the day (I mentioned drama) - Microsoft's internal tools are apparently designed by someone with a bit of a flair for the theatrical. If ever anything goes wrong with this particular tool (in this case, a group wasn't found), you get an amusingly hyperbolic error message:


_{I dread to think what message comes up if a server goes down}

National Graduate Recruitment Exhibition - Birmingham

Thursday night, as I mentioned in my last post, involved a couple of drinks, and a bunch of biro scrawled onto my torso. What I didn't mention, was that I spent the night in an absolutely gorgeous top which Julie-oh had hand made for my in Ghana. Amongst the many lovely features of this top was the fact that it has a fairly wide opening at the top, which makes it wonderfully suitable for a night out in a warm pub, but not so suitable for representing one's company at a fair of this sort.

As I'd slept in a house other than the one my things were stored in, I was forced to turn up to the fair with nothing but the clothes I'd spent the night in, and a slight hangover. This added a nice festive air to the start of the proceedings, until a nice, corporately branded and oversized polo shirt was found instead.

As I usually do at these things, I managed to get 'round pretty much every other company's stall, before and after the busy periods when I had to man the Microsoft one, as resident techie. I met a fair few folks who'd gone to Aston, which was nice, and lots of other interesting guys who did interesting things at interesting companies. I also got lots of lovely freebies, of course (I typo'ed that as 'freebirds' twice, I love GH & LS too much)

One of these guys did some very interesting things indeed, and I got chatting to him about these. Some of it was very hush-hush, but I was intrigued, and noted that it sounded like a very interesting place to work. At this point, the chap gave me his phone number and the offer of a job when my current contract ended. I think it was the hair that impressed him so.

I'm still undecided, but it's very tempting. I also have the card of another fellow who seemed quite interested in me, and also did very interesting things for an interesting business, but I don't think that one constitutes an unconditional offer too. Interesting stuff eh?

Final point of awesome; free beer for all exhibitors at the end - Nice.

--

"Vodka espressos, broken bones, job offers and inappropriate clothing..."

Three down, one to go.

Forxspresso - The return to Karaoke

This Thursday I decided to ditch my lovely, young-professional life in Reading and delve back into the seedy underworld of student-dom. Committed to doing this right, I therefore went for the full extreme - the students' guild on a Thursday night, with low quality karaoke and lower quality drinks.

Surprisingly I still knew most of the people there (and those that I didn't, I soon scared off), and unsurprisingly, Snakebite still tastes like ribena, mixed with sugar, mixed with stale water - slightly carbonated. Fortunately, a new drink has been invented, by the legend that is Forx, and named in his honour.

The Forxspresso is a drink of a type most people haven't tried before - a Hot Shot. Here thar be instructions for making your very own (if the well-trained Aston bar staff aren't to hand, for some reason):

1. Pour one shot of vodka into a small glass (half-pints work fine)


2. Pour one piping hot double espresso into a separate cup


3. Add two teaspoons of sugar to the espresso


4. Stir well


5. Add the espresso to the vodka (Do Not Add The Vodka To The Espresso)


6. Stir, thoroughly but promptly


7. Consume, all at once


8. Fall over (vodka)


9. Stand up (sugar)


10. Jump around (espresso)


11. Rinse


12. Wash


13. Repeat

Unfortunately, a few of these makes it rather hard to remember what happened over the course of the night. Fortunately, there aren't many pictures to enlighten me. Here's one though, and I'm still wondering who was drunk enough to lend me their glasses at a point when I was drunk enough that I wouldn't remember them doing so later on:



Also, many thanks to whoever kindly scrawled a large heart, and 'Ina FTW' on my chest at some point. That went down a treat the next day when I was working ;)

--

"Vodka espressos, broken bones, job offers and inappropriate clothing..."

One down, three to go.

Birmingham fun

Vodka espressos, broken bones, job offers and inappropriate clothing...

Details to follow, off to hospital now :)

Xx

I love this job (still)

A couple of weeks after starting here, I noted that I love this job and that's still very, very true.

I get to do what I want, when and how I want to do it, so long as it helps to realise the targets of my job/team/department, and see some really interesting stuff along the way. Ever wondered how massive steel structures get built? How countries worldwide manage their healthcare? How a lot of the technology you use every day is really put together? If so, I recommend a job here at Microsoft :)

The latest bit of joy comes from the fact that I've just found out that on the 20th of November I'm off to Prague for a few days of training. Not only is the stuff I learn likely to be much more useful in the 'real world' than anything I've learned at University so far, but it's going to be fab visiting a new country, and in style too - with all expenses paid (of course).

In February, I'm off to Seattle, for either one or two weeks, for Tech Ready, which should be absolutely awesome. Now if you'll excuse me, I can't sit around blogging all day, I've got work to do. Specifically, there's a lego space station that needs some more bits adding to it. Pictures to follow when I get them...

Car for sale

..or, why not to leave your wife:


_{Click to enlarge}

A Geeky Halloween

A few little pictures for halloween. I do love the amount of effort some folks put in to things for no renumeration...just for the fun of it.


<sub>Portal Pumpkins


The standard TF2 logo


The geeky halloween version


This one's just superb...</sub>

Happy Halloween kids.

So, so annoyed

So, remember that joyous post I made about my wonderful experiences with the University placements office? Well they've been annoying me even further recently and I'm trying my very best not to rip into them - I deleted six emails today before sending one back that tried to be nice.


_{[tutor's name edited out as requested]}

The tutor has, under the rules of my placement, to come and pay me a visit before the end of November. Therefore, he thoughtfully planned ahead and emailed me on the 10th of October to let me know what timeslots were good for him. I suggested a date a couple of weeks away, and he said he'd get back to me, after he'd contacted some other guys nearby, who he wanted to visit on the same day. Now, how he does his personal timetabling is none of my regard, and so I simply waited for him to get back to me.

He did indeed get back to me, at 12pm on the day I'd been expecting him, to tell me that as the other two people hadn't bothered to reply to him (or even give a real email address in one case), he wouldn't be coming. Oh, and would I therefore co-ordinate with these two guys who can go 15 days without checking email, because he couldn't be bothered doing his own timetabling.


_{Aston Placements Office}

At this point, I was clearly in a good mood, as instead of ranting at him for his unprofessionalism in both not replying to me, and expecting me to do his work for him, I simply listed the dates that I definitely couldn't make (those I wasn't in the office or was doing all day events), and asked for two weeks notice for any other dates so that I could re-arrange my meetings. Seemed reasonable enough to me.

Instead, the two clever folks over at Oracle sent me a lovely email a few days later. They didn't say they were suggesting a time two weeks away, and asking if that was ok for me, but that they'd booked some time 72 hours away.

Now, once I'd finished with their grammar, I let them know that I'd be in London that day, so...no. The tutor then proceeded to send me a very bitchy email, in which he suggested:

"Perhaps, smooth organization and "prioritization" are part of the skills that you should also consider for your future career."

He also claimed:

"I have almost given you three-days slots for every week for both Oct and Nov to choose from. I need your further coopertaion in this regard."

And then, even more cheekily, he went on to imply that I was some kind of code-monkey whose hand was held daily and had every minute timetabled by his manager:

"I am sure that your supervisors [...] are prepared to free you for an hour or even less during any of the my 2 months slots!"

Now, I'd hardly say that emailing me on the 10th of October, and then not getting back to me about my suggestion of the 23rd until midday on...the 23rd was giving me two months of dates with ample notice. Also, I doubt my manager could even tell you where I am or what I'm doing on an average day - I'm not saying he's not doing a good job or anything, just that I work very independently.


_{Oracle's training department}

I relatively politely replied, letting him know my displeasure, without ranting, saying:

"Dear [name edited out],

It is your responsibility to organise your visits (plural), and my responsibility to organise my visit (singular).

I don't feel it's acceptable to ask us to co-ordinate your time.

In future, I ask that you, and you alone contact me to suggest dates (I have provided you with my free times) and I will do my utmost to ensure they work.

Yours,
Ian."

Right, enough ranting here for now, I think this has done enough to ensure I don't ring him up and scream obscenities down the phone at him for a while. I don't even see why the guy needs to visit me, except for a free lunch. Couldn't we just do all this via a webcam link? I could even give him a full tour of the campus by carrying the cam around, he could talk to the folks in my office...

--------------------------------
Update (11/11/2007): Meant to pop this in here earlier but never got around to it. As the post's recently come to light though, I was going to give you the University's response to my above paragraph (phrased more thoroughly in my email to them):

"I see the logic of video conferencing, but we are always concerned that while some people are quite happy in the video environment, many are uncomfortable and restricted in that environment, and hesitate to talk freely. We (the University) feel that in many cases we gather fuller information with a physical visit - for example the atmosphere of a workplace is only evident on a physical visit.

The visit is also a chance for an academic to see briefly a little of the world of industry, to keep a little more up-to-date by talking to people in industry, so in that sense benefits the University and its students."

Very, very nicely put. He should be a politician :)
--------------------------------

What a pointless waste of resources. I'll let you decide if I mean the tutor, the placements office or the fact that I 'need' a physical visit by that.

--

w00t :) Just learned the tutor's leaving the University soon enough. Let's hope we can get someone a bit more professional in to replace him...