Screw Walking

Recently, I was walking down a hill.

Quite boring, no? Walking simply isn't cool.

Next to me however, was a small girl, also descending the hill. She had a pair of Heelys (it burns my soul to use the suffix 'ys', but use it I must) on, and was gliding down the hill - looking very cool.


_{Here's a picture of someone's children. They're not mine.}

Quite some time ago, when they first became fashionable, I came very, very close to buying myself a pair. It was only a present of a scooter for my 21st birthday that prevented me from doing so. Still though, the old desire and longing was brought up by watching this little girl roll along. Desire for shoes with wheels that is, not little girls.

Then...

Today, I was reading XKCD and saw that the chap behind it all has bought himself a brand new electric skateboard. Being the impressionable youth that I am, I now really, really want one of my own. To be fair, I have wanted one for quite a while anyway...honest


_{Randall's new skateboard}

Much though I'd love the one he bought (0-20mph in 4 seconds), that's a bit out of my price range at £300 so I'm strongly considering getting myself this one, from eBay. It's only capable of 8.5mph, but it's not a bad starter for £55, including postage.

Then...

As I was reading some posts online about how great these boards are in London, I stumbled across an even cooler method of getting from Point A to Point B - Powerizers. These are sprung stilts which allow you to jump and run your way around the city at great speeds - and even perform some pretty awesome stunts too:



At £140 they're a bit more expensive, and also possibly a bit less practical (the skateboard can be stowed underarm in a shop...these look like they take a lot of work to get on and off) - but are also very tempting.

Any more ideas on how I can get around, to and from work, to the shops etc...and do so in style - without resorting to the dull and drab method of walking, which I've already had far too much experience of? Let me know.

I just got back to work after two weeks' holiday...

...and I have about a thousand emails to read. Not amused.

Lille - Day 2

We decided to be nice and touristy on our second day in France and wandered around Lille taking photos of anything that was large and had been carved in some way. Here, for example, is a picture of a man on a statue of a horse on top of a large block of stone. Thrilling eh?


_{This chap is called 'Foch'. Hehe, 'Foch'.}

I much preferred the little things in doorways and side-streets though, of which there were many - sometimes very cool. Take this little angel doorknocker on a building of no importance whatsoever:



Likewise, here's a kitty in someone's window:


_{Hehe, kitty}

After quite some wandering, I dragged Julie - a confirmed heathen (Methodist) into a proper, Catholic Palm Sunday mass. In French no less too. I love French Churches and services - and there was naturally a great organ in the Cathedral too.

We then headed to the Museum of Beautiful Art to look at some...well you get the idea. That was all lovely, but it was the impromptu renaissance music group playing amongst the paintings that I really loved. That and the fact that there were two harpsichords just lying around the place...and being played. So, so beautiful:


<sub>The first, beautifully simply harpsichord


The second, fancier, modern harpsichord


Inside the second one...</sub>

After some more wanderings and the like it was off out for our meal in a brothel.

I must stop typing the word 'brothel' on my blog.

Cadbury's World is one giant drug trip

Up in Birmingham a day or two ago, and I got dragged away for a surprise day-trip adventure. All the hints and clues pointed towards some kind of strip club or brothel - so I was quite bemused when I stepped out of the car and found myself surrounded by small people running around and screaming a lot.

On an average day, Cadbury's World is normally a haven for the bored students in Birmingham, where they can wander around aimlessly, obtain a nutritious meal and generally manage to pass a day without any risk of learning anything. In the middle of the Easter holidays though, it's a little busier..

It was still an awesome day though, with liquid Dairy Milk and chocolate...lots of chocolate. I only just managed to avoid buying a box of 60 Curly Wurlys (a decision I'm regretting). But that isn't the point of this post.

As I was sitting in a small, chocolate car, being transported around a village of small cocoa beans, with music strikingly reminiscent of It's A Small World being piped in, it occurred that this would be a dream come true for someone on an acid trip. Even better than that scene at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Then there's a giant monkey. On a TV, in one of the houses.

It goes on like this, with lovely, childish and vaguely disturbing animations, models and singing being followed abruptly by something scary and disturbing. Then for no apparent reason, a parrot flies overhead and you're in outer space. I never did find out quite what the ride was supposed to show me, or understand its logical progression. I did find out, however, that Cadbury's originally owned a tea shop - what an awesome family. I also liked some of J. Cadbury's remarkably un-PC quotes, including:

"So we hired a little Chinese man, and dressed him up in a full outfit"

Right, time to stop rambling...I'm watching Charlie and The Chocolate Factory with a 3 year old who looks absolutely petrified by everything going on.

Xx

New Phone!

Being a loyal O2 customer, when I decided that my thoroughly antiquated, battered and burnt (yes, literally) Nokia 6230 was due for a replacement, I headed straight over to their online shop. It's hard to find a phone company with a decent website and good customer support, so I was rather hoping to find something new and decent with them.

I didn't.

After discovering that Orange.co.uk appears to wish that the year was 2002 and it was Lycos, and eventually getting through to their online shop, I discovered they didn't really have anything decent either. So I wandered over to the wild hinterlands of Vodafone, famous for its poor reception and found an absolutely amazing deal on their front page.

I then called up O2, and told them about the Vodafone deal. And they gave me their £35/month contract for £25/month. With extra stuff. And a Sony Ericsson W910i. Free.


_{Hot eh?}

600 minutes any time & any network, unlimited texts, one free bolt-on of my choice (free O2 calls, free internet etc) - totally leet. Can't wait for it to arrive.

Dunquerke is the least interesting place on Earth

A chap I work with started the Marathon Des Sables today - a 250km run across the Sahara Desert over 6 days. The Sahara is one of the most desolate, unchanging, flat and boring areas of landmass in the world. Compared to Dunquerke though, it's a veritable metropolitan hotspot.

Ju & I decided, based on the fact that we'd heard of it, to pop into Dunquerke on our way home from Lille, to see what there was to see. We got there at the peak hour of activity, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that parking in the city centre was mere pence, as opposed to the usual high tariffs we'd been experiencing in Lille.


_{I was going to put up a picture of Dunquerke, but this one was more interesting.}

We took a stroll up from the car park to see a statue of Jean Bart...whoever he was. It was quite a nice statue, it even had a bit of a water feature. We then walked around the whole centre. Twice. There was a café, which didn't look very nice. There was a clothes shop, which didn't have many clothes. There was a fish shop, which still accepted Francs. There was a boulangerie, I bought a cake.

Then we left.

I went on the internet to find some streams of paint drying, but unfortunately Watching Paint Dry has now shut down, so instead, here's a live stream of grass growing. It's better than visiting Dunquerke.

Jean Bart, by the way, was apparently a French pirate who liked to sink English ships. Bastard. Here's a couple of choice quotes from the Rough Guide I browsed through (after visiting the place, needless to say) to learn that:

"Dunquerke achieved fame at the exact same moment as it was flattened"

"...was rebuilt during the most uninspired period of Western architecture"

"...contains no landmarks or places of interest to visit"

And my favourite line, from the 'Eating Out' section (which normally spans two pages, even for a relatively small French town, and contains many restaurant recommendations, notes about the food of the region, etc):

Eating Out:
Dunquerke is not famous for its gastronomy.
_{<The section ends.>}

LolBible

In the beginning, the internet created the LolCats, and web geeks saw that it was good, and it was Dugg.

Then, the internet created LolCode, and coding geeks saw that it was good, and there was much rejoicing.


_{Today's Lolcat from ICanHasCheezBurger}

But, still...there was the issue of the religious geeks to take care of. Where could they see the things they wanted to see, but through the medium of cute cats and bad grammar?

Well, Easter Sunday seems a reasonable time to share this little link, which solves that problem once and for all, it's a labour of love and quite frankly, the best thing on the internet ever:

The LolCat Bible

Genesis 1
³At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz. ⁴An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin. ⁵An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

Eating in Lille

There are only three reasons to visit France. I'll discuss shopping in another post, and I didn't see any reservoirs to drop poison into - so we're left with the third...the gorgeous food. I won't bore you with every bite...but here's some of the highlights...

Post's a bit long I realise...but read on to find out about the brothel.

Our first night, we managed to find the only restaurant in Mouvaux, which was gorgeous despite being stuck in the middle of nowhere. I was also fairly amused by the fact that the English menu they tried to replace our French menus with after they heard us chatting didn't have any of the set meals or special offers on it. Smooth.

Campanpaille - Mouvaux
Myself - Grapefruit, Steak, Apple tart
Julie-oh - Cheese & herbs, Faux-Filet...and the below


<sub>My dessert was ok...


..but Ju's expresso with chocolate, whiskey and cream was gorgeous</sub>

----------

The next day, once we'd actually found Lille proper, we stopped off in a small corner café for a quick lunch. Once I'd explained in French, to the waitress who I later found out spoke Spanish and English (but little French), about Julie's specialness (gluten allergies), we were ready to order. I picked the dish on the menu I could translate the least of, and she ordered a gorgeous salad. Without bread or croutons.

Some café - Lille
Myself - Tartin au...something. A kind of French bread base with gorgeous cheese, duck and pork over the top of it
Julie-oh - Beautiful looking salad with pate and apple. And no bread, eventually.


<sub>As I enjoyed my superb meal...


...Ju sat there taking photos of me and sending her salads back because they had bread on them...


...but it was totally worth the wait.</sub>

----------

That night, we found the most amazing restaurant in the whole city, and ended up completely abandoning our plans to have a night out on the town, favouring instead the choice of simply sitting back and relaxing in Tropic '97.

Tropic '97, not found in any guide book we could see, was a little place set off a side-street in the centre of Lille, and we could tell it was going to be good as we passed through the palm trees, through the Star-Trek style sliding glass doors and into what looked, at first glance, like a brothel. Seriously.

Purple and red chaises longues were scattered around the room, next to a grand piano and a well stocked bar. The chap who casually strolled out to meet us from behind the bar just shrugged and said 'sit anywhere' when we asked for a table and then proceeded to walk back behind the bar and dance for a bit. 'Sit' makes it sound a bit formal, doesn't it - I think a more appropriate verb would be 'lie', or 'lounge'.

The whole place was Caribbean-French, in terms of attitude, food and sheer élan and the food was to die for. I wouldn't often go to one country to taste the food of another, but this place is certainly recommended if you're ever within a few hundred miles.

Tropic '97 - Lille
Myself - Creole prawns, spiced chicken, aubergine, onion, dauphinoise potatoes...and many other things I couldn't identify that were simply exquisite. Followed by the thickest and nicest chocolate mousse I've ever tasted.
Julie-oh - Crab, with a steak of some fish we never did quite work out - along with all the various side bits too. Followed by a mix of ice-creams that were very Caribbean and possibly a bit alcoholic.

No pictures I'm afraid, we forgot the camera - but that's probably just as well given the drinks they were serving afterwards. When I asked for a g&t and a rum & coke I wasn't expecting triples...the barman just assumed. That's the kind of place it was.

----------

We finished up with lunch at a crêperie on the Sunday, followed by a 'picnic' of sorts on the ferry home, after our trip to the hypermarchet...but a bit more on that place later. It's quite depressing being back in Britain now, the food's not just the same.

Lille trip - The first day

Our weekend in France was actually spent in a little place by the name of Mouvaux, famous for being:

"...a populated place in Nord-Pas-de-Calais"

Hardly seems worth getting up at 5.00am for, does it? With my usual style, grace and just generally superb directional abilities we just about managed to make it to Dover on time, despite heading off towards Gatwick for a bit. I still blame Google Maps' vagueness for that one.

The super-budget SeaFrance ferry (the channel's answer to EasyJet) was a disappointment, it didn't even have a grand piano in the lounge area - or Point Blank in the arcade room! I seriously have one of the best Point Blank scores ever on an arcade machine that is (was) floating across the Bristol Channel, unless Greenpeace have blown it up yet.

After a thrilling trip across the desolate wastelands of Northern France, littered with fields upon which many German and British troops died (the French had run off), we decided to drive into Lille for some entertainment. Unfortunately, the first time we'd arrived, we didn't actually make it into the centre of Lille (my directional skills again) and stopped somewhere in the suburbs, thinking; 'this doesn't seem very impressive...'.

Still, we found some nice shops and somewhere to eat (more on food later too), before heading on back to our little b&b - Le Jardin d'Alix. A gorgeous little place with only one downside...a very tempermental 'automatic' gate blocking the way in or out - we had some fun with that.


_{It looked a hell of a lot nicer before the rain came down}

That evening we exhausted the thrilling delights that Mouvaux had to offer (a pharmacy, a health food shop, a Church with a classical concert on that Julie completely failed to photograph well despite many, many hours of trying, a few more shops, a traffic light) - so it was a relatively early night for the pair of us...well, we were a fresh couple after all.


_{This is the best photo, would you believe :P}

Facebooked

In the old days, when the world was young and innocent, and people lived in caves listening to something called 'wireless', starting a new relationship was a romantic affair. Knees would be bent, poetry offered and perhaps some light jewellery exchanged.

Facebook's made that so much easier...now all you need to do is click a few buttons, which causes an email to get sent out, and see what the response is. I do love the phrasing of the email though:

Julie said on Facebook that you two are in a relationship. We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, in a relationship with Julie.

(although, it is annoyingly French Spaced [also, when finding that link on Google I was amused by this: Results 1 - 10 of about 25 from tiedyeina.com for hate french. (0.23 seconds)] - damn Facebook)


_{XKCD proves my point, as always}

Should probably point out I clicked accept. Now to wait for my inbox to fill up with people wanting gossip.

Also, this, by the way, is my excuse for the recent quietness of posting on here. Like I needed one..

Also also, it's great having a blog. Means you can just wait for your mother to read the news here, rather than actually telling her in person...hi mum! Look at me! I'm on the internet!

Back in the real world (almost)

Phew, don't think I've ever been this quiet before, have I? Been having quite a wild time since last Friday - I'll share some stories and the like with you later (when I have some more photos to put up) on here, feel free to ask about the rest of the stories I shan't be sharing on here. I probably won't tell you though. Ooooh, mysterious :p

Right now though, I'm just lying around trying not to fall asleep after some very, very early mornings and late nights. I've managed to have an entire holiday without one lie-in or full night's sleep and more than a couple of very early mornings to get to various places.

After an early start yesterday to get me to a hotel bar in Birmingham for a team meeting (it's a hard life), I was at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham today for a big Microsoft event I was presenting and helping out at, and tomorrow I'm back off to Cardiff for some much needed relaxation and sleep.

France was great though (if not the French), and I had a rather good time and got back with lots of really nice stuff. Still though, for the >£700 we managed to spend that weekend, you'd really hope so wouldn't you? Ouch for my bank account :(

Pictures, etc, to come later. Sleep now.

Xx

Busy busy

France, Dover, Reading, Birmingham, Cardiff...updates soon.

Xx

Quickie

Lazy French scum back to work. Leaving 5.30am tomorrow. Text me if you want anything bought. Cider, dinner cooked for me and washing up done. Hebs has an awesome trilby. I want a trilby. See you next week.

Bloody French

I'm supposed to be off to France for a long weekend presently, but the cheese-eating surrender monkeys have only gone on strike again:

SeaFrance regrets to inform you that due to industrial action by Officers, all crossings are currently suspended. Passengers booked to travel in the next 48 hours are requested to call SeaFrance on 0871 22 22 500 for details.

:(

A Politician's Priorities

I just happened to click through to the blog of James Cleverly MP for Bexley and Bromley, to read about an amusing little one liner that Boris Johnson had made.

James has taken the very sensible step of tagging his posts, so that it's easy to see in an instant exactly what he talks, thinks and cares about the most. Here's a small sampling:

• #1 - Spin (82 posts)


• #4 - Fun (62 posts)




• #10 - David Cameron (39 posts)


• #23 - Campaigning (20 posts)


• #27 - Bexley [his constituency] (14 posts)




• #39 - Islam (2 posts)


• #40 - Darfur (1 posts)


• #40 - Human Rights Act (1 posts)


• #40 - Spice Girls (1 posts)


• #40 - Russia (1 posts)


• #40 - Women (1 posts)

Quite telling, no?

Well, this got me thinking, maybe this was just a one off - perhaps I'm not being fair to politicians. Or, perhaps I am.

--

David Jones, MP for Clwyd West does slightly better, although he does appear to talk about people a lot more than say, issues:

• #1 - Gordon Brown (58 posts)




• #2 - David Cameron (15 posts)


• #2 - Peter Hain (15 posts)





• #9 - Liverpool FC (2 posts)


• #10 - Afghanistan (1 posts)


• #10 - China (1 posts)


• #10 - Welfare (1 posts)


• #10 - Jazz (1 posts)


• #10 - Transformational Government (1 posts)




• #? - Clwyd West [his constituency] (0 posts)

--

Half an hour of trawling the internet later, I can't find any other politician-bloggers that actually bother to tag their posts. Interesting to see the wide gap between those who've set up their blogs themselves (godawful design that should be taken off the internet) to those that had the money to get a very professional job done though.

Reading Half Marathon Photos

It seems the organisers of my recent marathon were very camera happy, and have a great system for showing the photos up later - a bit of digital magic indexes all the pictures they took, by the bib number of those in the photo.

Unfortunately, my bib wasn't secured too well, so not a lot of photos of myself got tagged. I was, however, next to Will for most of the race - so I've still managed to retrieve a few of myself. Here goes, click any photo to embiggen:


<sub>A nice, gentle start


A not quite so gentle middle


The extra two seconds gained by sprinting at the end weren't really worth the damage it probably did


Doesn't Will look happy? I was probably passed out somewhere by now</sub>

Food & Food

Fortunately for my sanity, Julie's visit wasn't composed entirely of shopping. As well as various other fun things, we also got up to lots of eating.

Now, for a coeliac like her, eating can be quite a hassle and I thought I'd take that load off her mind this weekend and treat her a bit. That sounds lovely and selfless doesn't it? Truth is I just love cooking for people.

So, she arrived late on Friday night, so that was simple enough - just leek and potato soup. I've become completely addicted to leeks recently after impulse buying them in Sainsbury's. Must be my Welsh roots coming through.

Saturday was breakfast in bed for her (what can I say? I'm a softie) - but toast or cereal may have caused some problems, given her condition. Given that she runs a gluten-free cooking blog, it seemed a good place to look for ideas - and I tried out her banana breakfast omelette. With some honey and strawberries on the top, it was gorgeous, and being so simple but healthy - it's highly recommended.


_{Mine looked better ;)}

Lunchtime we were in Oxfordshire, on our way to Bicester when we decided to stop off for something to eat. 'The Acorn', set halfway between some motorway services and the shopping village, looked suitably appalling, so we drove aimlessly around the most obscure country roads we could find for a while before stumbling upon The Ben Jonson



This was a gorgeous gourmet pub (albeit with a lack of decent cider) which, at first glance, looked like the kind of place you'd read a review of in the Sunday Times - encouraging you to visit it on a day trip from your Home Counties manor. The food was certainly of that quality - without costing too much more than one would expect from a town centre pub (where the food is little better than ready meals, as you'll soon discover if you visit the kitchens).

Dinner was on me again - and lacking an oven (the door's still broken) I had to improvise a little. Still, I think that carrot & parsnip mash, loaded with lemon pepper and topped with butter-fried potato, leek and peppers went down beautifully. I even arranged it all nicely too...I've been getting so bored here that I've taken to garnishing the plate even when I'm eating alone. Fun eh?

Nothing too exciting after that (also I'm tired of typing) - other than the strawberry, banana, honey, sugar and milk smoothies. If there's a better bedtime drink, I'll eat my hat. Once I find a nice hat. Someone find me a nice hat.

Also, I want my chocolate back :(

Shopping & Shopping

To save me from the crushing boredom that is Reading on a weekend, Julie-oh came all the way down from Birmingham to visit this weekend - despite the fact that she'll be here again on Friday for our little sojourn in the countryside of Northern France next weekend.

As with all seemingly kind acts made by a member of the female of the species however, there was an ulterior motive - and I was dragged off shopping yesterday to Bicester Village, a designer outlet place over in Oxfordshire.



As you can somewhat see, it's a quaint looking place - the entire place would look just like an Oxfordshire village, were it not for all the frazzled folks running around with shopping bags.

I couldn't find myself any hats at all (I'm after proper hats, ones that can be doffed, or tipped), and the shirt (reduced from £600 to just £140) in the Versace store that I fell completely in love with, was still a little out of my price range. Paul Smith also had some shoes I could have killed for, but again, £250 (after massive reductions!) was a bit much.

As such, the day was spent traipsing around trying to find a suit for Julie, which meant entering all the women's clothes stores, which closely resembled hyena pits given the large discounts that were available. We couldn't find anything she liked still, so it was a long drive back to Reading empty handed for her (I found a gorgeous top reduced from £50 to £6 ^^)


_{I never realised hyena could look so cute :)}

Today, The Oracle was the destination of choice - and we still didn't find anything there for her.

On the plus side, I got Thornton's chocolate, which is utterly magnificent and hedonistically gratifying.

On the down side, Julie's just driven off with it :(

Dancing on the tables

So as I've mentioned, I spent the a while last month over in Seattle, working away studiously. I must admit however, that there was the odd night out drinking along the way. Every night, to be perfectly precise. I won't bore you with stories of under-dressed women dancing on the bar and riding bulls, nor will I draw out the mundane tale of the Scotch Whiskey vs Bourbon challenge.

Instead, I'm just going to tell you about one particular night. Thursday night. This will probably be a long post, but I promise it'll be worth it.

I've had this post written a while, but was waiting on the videos I reference below. Still no sign of them, but when I get them, I'll put them up too. Maybe.

Things started well, as per usual, with a small trip to the hotel bar of The Westin, where I was staying. Aside from having the slowest cocktail-making barman east of Finland, this was fairly unremarkable - although they did insist on ID'ing me every single time I went there (night after night), even when I was only buying a hot chocolate.


_{The Westin - I don't remember it looking quite so technicolor}

After that we jumped on a coach and headed off to the TechReady Party - which was hosted on the dockside, in a large warehouse. Given that the attendee list featured around 5000 men and two women, and that warehouses aren't famed for their heating or comfort, you could be excused for thinking this wouldn't be much of a party.

If you needed any more convincing, then looking at the 'map' given out at the start (four Space Zones (!!) ) would have been enough to send anyone of a weaker will packing. I stuck to it though, and made my way through to the karaoke section - to hear a fully international audience united in their love of butchering classic songs. You've not heard 'Smoke On The Water' 'till you've heard it in an odd Russian accent.

Once my ears had bled enough I headed on through to the Lunar..something...whatever - where the Randy Oxford Band were playing some of their own stuff, and hosting a jam night. There wasn't much I could play (no trumpet, keyboards far too quiet...) but I did feel it my Gallic duty to join in somehow, so I decided to have a crack at playing one of the lovely basses on stage - albeit, upside down, as they only had right handed basses. Some guys I was with were nice enough to take a video:

--

[I'll add in the video when I get a copy, sorry folks]

--

Now, videos when I'm sober are fair enough, in fact - they're encouraged. The problem is - just like the rest of the week, the alcohol was all free, and freely flowing. The difference this night though, was that a very nice waitress had latched herself onto our group.

At first, she brought us all a lovely fruity cocktail - which was very pleasing and tasty, and was consumed pretty quickly. As she offered us another one, one of the fellows I was with remarked "..but could you make it a bit stronger this time?". Everyone laughed, and she did so. Then she offered us another drink, and remembering the laughter he said the same again. And again. And again.

An hour, maybe two, passed, and the night was drawing to a close. The jam session had mostly ended (although a couple of stragglers were still up on stage with the main band) and anyway...I was a little too tipsy to play most instruments. There was however, one instrument I could still play - and it was one small enough that I could also indulge my itch to dance (with a 99:1 male/female ratio, they'd decided not to include a dancefloor):

--

[I'll add in the video when I get a copy, sorry folks]

--

At some point after this video was taken, one of the band was heard to state "Get on out there and get them going" to me. Naturally I took this to mean "Go and dance on the tables", which undoubtedly was a good idea in front of all of my peers and colleagues. Seemed to go down well anyway. Also, for the record - I did NOT kick that speaker off stage. It fell. And it was fine anyway.

At some further point the party ended. Or, everyone pretended it was over so I'd leave...either way - we got a coach back to the hotel. On the coach I got a phone call from my team-mates to tell me that they'd had enough, and were 'quitting' - so I thought to myself 'I suppose midnight's late enough...up at 7am tomorrow to see Bill Gates talk anyway'...and made my way up to my room, undressed, and got into bed.

Five seconds later, I got another phone call, which as far as I can best transcribe, went something like this:

"AAahf we lof gooo noawnaaa tohoooash ooo ahod a [and on]...Hello, sorry, I think he's a bit drunk. We're outside the Westin if you fancy coming out"

"Sure", I said, "wait there for me" - and got out of bed, got dressed and popped outside. They were nowhere to be found. I tried ringing the two guys I knew were out, got no reply, send texts, got no reply...and decided to give up again.

This time I got as far as the door to my room before my phone rang again - they were at a bar just around the corner. I popped along there where I met a bunch of Brits, and a Polish chap I'd met on my trip to Prague a few months back, who was also out drinking.

We had some more drinks, and eventually moved on to a bar which, eerily, had no discernible name. In there, our Polish friend hooked up with a lovely looking local with very nice breasts in the time it took me to order a drink and blink a couple of times. Someone called over to me:

"Hey, he works fast"

In no time they had their arms around one another, and were soon kissing and swapping various fluids at the bar. It wasn't long - mere minutes in fact - before they were polishing off their drinks and leaving together. I shouted over the bar to one of the fellows we were with:

"Bloody hell, she was keen"

The barman overheard this little exchange and looked towards the door with an amused grin on his face. He turned to us and said:

"He didn't just leave with him did he?"

"Him?"

"Yeah, that guy's been hanging around here for months, trying to pick up men"

Well, we tried to get out and save our Polish friend, but he was already long gone. I sent a text message...it may even have arrived in time. We didn't see him again that night - and he was reluctant to talk about it afterwards.


_{I don't have a picture (or memory) of the guy/girl, so here's an artist's impression.}

You might think that, with 2am (the time when Washington state shuts down) swiftly approaching, a 7pm start that evening and a 7am start the following morning, we'd take this experience as a cue to go home. If you think that, you're probably not British.

After some cajoling the barmen told us that they did know of one place we could go...a club that stayed open till 6am - perfect! And when we got there I was extremely pleasantly surprised to find a buzzing dancefloor, a well stocked bar, and plenty of women lounging around - some less dressed than others.

Well, we paid our $5, and entered - getting a lovely stamp that wouldn't wash off. After gravitating towards the women who looked lonely, and in need of some company, we popped over to the dancefloor. A short time stumbling around there left us thirsty, and so we gathered together and popped along to the bar, and ordered our various drinks.

The reason, it soon became apparent, that Washington closed down at 2am, was that no-one can serve alcohol after 2am. So we had five Red Bulls instead. Things got quite surreal after a while - with a club full of drunken people dancing away at 3.30/4am, all with soft drinks in their hands. I'll never forgot the girl slumped, semi-conscious at the bar, holding a glass of orange squash.

That Bill Gates speech the next day by the way? Great - although I wasn't really up for breakfast beforehand.

Friend Wheel

Whilst clicking around Facebook earlier today, I noticed an application that looked so cool I actually took the unthinkable step of adding it to my profile. Disgraceful I know - but this one's actually got some class, and pretty colours too.

The Friend Wheel is a simple little idea - it simply scans all of your friend, and maps them out according to which other friends of yours they know. It then draws in the links between your friends.


_{Click to embiggen}

The results are quite surprising (as well as making a nice picture) - I can see how easily my friends divide into groups (Home, Work, IC, etc), but I can also see that groups I never thought would intersect have a few stray lines going between one another.

The next, and even cooler step - would be for my Friend Wheel to be joined up with the Friend Wheels of every friend within my wheel. Unfortunately, that would require them all to sign away their privacy, and some extra code to be written...so that's unlikely to happen. Still though, we can dream.

In other news, the front door of my oven fell off yesterday and smashed all over the floor. What the hell? Things like that don't happen. Ovens are meant to be reliable. I'm very upset.

Comment Emailing & Bonus Comic!

After much hacking around with PHP I've finally accomplished the trivial task of having an email sent out to the team when a comment is posted over on Tie-Dye Heart. So, now you've got no excuse for not leaving the odd comment whenever something tickles you or gives rise to a thought.

It was, as I've said, a trivial task, but due to various issues it took me a while, and as such I've written up a little guide on ComicCMS for anyone else out there using ComicCMS who wants to get comments and emailing working.

I also put up a little bonus comic, Critical Mass on Tie-Dye Heart to celebrate, which I'm sure the artists will kill me for once they see it (the reason they do the drawing, not me, is all too obvious) - but I didn't want to waste their time with something so trivial as drawing a graph.

Enjoy, comment, smile :)

My precious desk...

Late last week, I was called into the MTC - the Microsoft Torture Chambers™ (found just below the Undercoft [yes, we actually have an Undercroft] in the Thames Valley Park campus). I was led past all the Adobe, Google and Sun developers screaming in agony, led past the Implant Center™ where the new hires go to be 'inducted' and led past the Chocolate Bunny Making Institute™ where...well, I won't go into that here.

Normally I'd have stopped at the Ministry Of Truth™ in order to share my opinions and technological expertise with some foolish developers who were thinking of using a competitive product, so you can see why I was slightly worried as I went deeper and deeper into the bowels of the MTC.

I was right to be worried, for there was bad news awaiting me. I was to be moved from my precious fixed desk, and instead to be left at the mercy and whim of the hotdesking area. Admittedly, I'm only in the office a couple of times a week nowadays, so I can see the logic, but I was still heartbroken.

No longer will I work in an environment full of my personality and quirks, instead I'll now be sitting at a bare and corporate looking table, grinding away with my work. Or, ideally - I'll actually be outside, talking to developers, rather than wasting my days on Outlook. That's one of the management excuses for moving me anyhow.

I took a couple of snaps some weeks ago, when I was trying to find the author of the latest addition to my open whiteboard, where anyone and everyone was encouraged to leave whatever was on their mind - always giving me a smile as I walked in of a morning to discover the latest mysterious quotes of pieces of art. The latest was the lengthy text to the left (click to zoom):



Neither will I be surrounded by the various XKCD, Tie-Dye Heart and Cyanide & Happiness comics that currently litter the area around me, along with odd news clippings and Microsoft freebies:


_{For some reason, I only took a photo of some of the XKCD ones}

And, whilst I'm grabbing photos from Ben's camera, here's one of myself presenting at some University in Wales (I forget which one...Newport possibly). Note the ultimately cool Logitech Airmouse I'm wielding.



It's not all bad though, I'm working from home today, due to the aching muscles and inability to move, both of which are the result of yesterday's marathon. I could get used to conference calls in bed and development by the light of the TV...

Reading Half Marathon (aka: ouch)

So, yesterday was spent doing one of three things:

• Walking a few miles to collect/after returning the lovely rental car (Peugot 207)


• Sitting in a room, filled with geeks and gadgets, computers and consoles, eating junk food and playing games


• Driving aimlessly around the middle of England trying to get from one major city to another

I walked about 7 miles and got home at about half midnight.

Now, I'm not a morning person. So, waking up at half seven this morning to get myself showered and dressed for the Reading Half Marathon, I wasn't in the best state. Walking another three miles to get to the start line didn't help, and walking a couple more to sort out various registration things also hindered me a bit.

The Half Marathon (13 and a bit miles) started at 10:05. I was walking from one place to another from 8:15am until...10:05. Nice. It was also a surprise to me that there was no water at the start, so I ran the first three miles feeling very dehydrated. The crowds at the sides were fun, as were some of the novelty runners (Elvis had a mp3 player and some speakers) and the various bands about.

Over the 13 miles I discovered many things, and thought about many others. Most of the thoughts were something to do with "ouch", but that was fine as it was always a new place on my body - some of which I wasn't even aware could hurt previously to today.

One thing I thought about and never managed to think of a reasonable explanation for was the disbursement of crowds along the various pavements. Obviously some bunching near pubs and bands is to be expected but why, on identically residential streets, were there long gaps with barely any crowd, and then a large gathered crowd. Was this co-ordinated? Herd mentality? One to look into.

My key takeaway from the Marathon, the one thing I truly learned, was that the Government needs to give some more jobs to the unemployed. 'Morale workers' we could call them. These chaps would wander around the street giving support to various people walking past. "You're doing fine, it's 4pm, work's almost over". "Brilliant trousers there sir! Love it". That kind of thing. People would be a lot happier if we had these guys to cheer them on as they went about their day to day life, and it would be a lot more useful than simply giving them benefits.

As three hours in the bath didn't help, I'm going to try watching some more TV to soothe my aching limbs. It won't help, but I am becoming rapidly addicted to Lost. Just a pity that the TV's downstairs, and my legs aren't big fans of stairs at the moment. Think I'll polish my lovely new tin medal whilst I'm down there too.t

Oh and, did I mention the 3 mile walk back home? That's dedication. Dedication to acting like a student and refusing to either queue for a long time to get a shuttle bus, or pay for a taxi.

LAN!

Yesterday, Will and I headed off to Birmingham for Aston CompSoc's second birthday celebration - a LAN party. It's amazing to think that it's been two years since we sat in a pub and decided that Aston needed a computing society, and it's great to see how far things have come from those early days putting up posters around halls of residence offering people the chance to play some PlayStation games.

Still though, the biggest get-togethers and the most fun happen when it's time for LAN, and we thought we'd leave Reading, with it's 'professionals' and boring town centre and head up to Birmingham for some student fun.

As such, I headed off at 8am for a three mile walk to collect our rental car, and then drive us up to Birmingham. Unfortunately we neglected to take into account my complete and utter lack of any sense of direction. So, after a diversion towards Swindon, we continued up through smaller A roads all the way to Birmingham.

Despite all this, we were only an hour and a bit late - which was perfect as everyone was just finishing getting set up. As such, we avoided most of the: "Hey, you work for Microsoft...why can't I connect to the LAN?" type of questions.

There was much geeky fun & games, a Pac-Man birthday cake for CompSoc and even a pairs quiz. Will & I managed to double the score of any other team, being Kings amongst geeks, and won the grand prize of...some O'Reilly postcards and a craft magazine. They also offered us some MS t-shirts, but as I have 1,000 in my office, I declined.

Can't wait to get back to Uni and get properly involved with CompSoc and other such things next year...although I am having lots of fun here too :)

After all that, it was a 3 mile walk home from dropping the car off back at the rental place, at midnight. Not great when you consider what I did today...