Wednesday 27 May 2009

Woosh zoom

I’ve mentioned on here before that there are some strange flying vehicles that I see around here. Yesterday I heard a very strange helicopter propeller noise.

I had a quick look outside and saw this

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What appears to be a mini helicopter 

It hovered around for a bit and I got a better shot and on closer inspection it looks like a go-kart-esque helicpter

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Idea for the next Mario Kart perhaps? 

It looks like the helicopter forgot it’s roof. You can even see the pilots and passengers heads.

So a little while later I heard an even louder helicopter noise. I need to check if it was “Dia de Costa Helicopter” or something?

This time when I looked I saw this monster

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Looks a bit like Airwolf! 

Things then got a little heated and there was a helicopter stand off. Or chopper off. Or propeller off.

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“Get outta my airspace Big Guy!”

I really wish that I had tracked and zoomed on that last photo a bit better.

Soon after that both ‘copters disappeared and I went back to making a den for Liz Lemon.

Tuesday 19 May 2009

Aprendiendo Espaňol es muy dificil

My Spanish is not going as well as it should be. The classes I was taking last year have stopped. Christmas kind of broke things up, the class took a break anyway and I was in England for a while. When I returned my work picked up quite a bit which meant it left me with little free time. And work will always have to come before anything else at the moment.

I’ve tried various ways of being able to study from home. I subscribe to a podcast that I was listening to regularly, until my headphones broke and I had to wait to get new ones. Now I’m just waiting for this period of visitors to die down so I have some free time.

I’ve found twitter handy for learning. I follow a few Spanish people and have tweetdeck set up to show their tweets. That way I can learn and read actually Spanish like how they would speak it.
Another little way I’ve been learning Spanish is by having a module on my igoogle home page. One that displays a Word of the Day.
Not only does this module give you the word, its pronunciation and obviously it’s meaning, it also puts it in to a sentence.
I find these help me with my word structure a lot.

There is one problem though with Spanish. Any word you learn and think you know off by heart can change so much within a sentence. A lot of Spanish is about how the sentences are implied rather then literal said.
The one I can never get is siento. It can mean either saying you’re sorry or sit down. What if you wanted to say just sorry and not sit? Or sit and not sorry? What if you wanted to tell someone to sit down so you can say sorry? And if you said it would they think you were telling them you were sorry they were sitting?

Another example was from my igoogle module yesterday. Here it is.

Word of the day
Es claro, verdad?

Claro here can mean light, pale or fair. (Claro can also mean about 25 other things according to google and used to me “understood” as in “that’s clear” in sentences in the same sense you or I might say “that’s clear” when given instructions)

But anyway, the sentence given says “she has black hair and CLARO eyes.” But as you can see they’ve changed the meaning of claro, which they only just explained mean light/pale/fair they now say means blue/gray/green eyes. They didn’t say that before.

GAH!

The one thing that annoys me more then all of this word sex-change type of business is the fact that I can’t use my Spanish here.
Every time I go to a bar, restaurant or shop and try to speak in Spanish the person will always reply in English.
I understand that this town is a town built on tourism and such and it’s good that businesses employ bilingual employees for times when people might not speak Spanish but I just wish that if someone was putting in effort trying to speak your language that you would help them out and first try speaking back to them in your that language.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Score

Last weekend I was doing something that Cristiano Ronaldo was wanting to do. Playing football in Spain.

It’s well known that Ronaldo wants to move to Real Madrid to play football in the Spanish Sun. But I have a few words of warning for him.

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Nice tan

I now support, not only a t-shirt tan line from the same day but also I have sun burn around my knees. Slightly embarrassing.

Time to start topping up that tan me thinks.

So Cristiano Ronaldo, if you’re reading, wear sunscreen
(link to video as I knew you were thinking of that.)

Wednesday 13 May 2009

Grilling time

I was back in the UK recently and amongst many things, meal, meeting friends, drinking, I did something I haven’t done in a long time. Something which has prepared me in some way for my up coming BBQ.

I grilled some toast. 

And I don't mean just sticking some cheese on top of toast and grilling that. I mean taking bread and turning it to toast with a grill, not a toaster. How 1990's.*

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Motherhubbard toast in a Monday to Friday grill

As you can see this was in early stages of toast cooking.

And I hope this won’t put off people eating BBQ’s at mine but I did burn one piece of toast.

Fingers crossed that the BBQ goes a little better.

*My family weren't very Tech Savvy when I was a kid and we were late adaptors to toasters.

Friday 1 May 2009

Can I Digg it?

With it being an extended weekend and my visit back to the UK later this evening I have declared the office ‘Dress Down Friday.’

And for this occasion I will be accessorising.

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Nice hat
I’ve decided to try out a hat for the next few days/weeks/summer.

So I will be heading back to Runcorn for a few days to celebrate a birthday. And I was investigating the weather (what else is a Brit to do but worry about the weather)
Seems I’ll be missing out

weather 
Stop hiding Sun

Not good. Not good at all. At least my hat should keep me dry.

But your all here for your Friday Digg fix. Today’s a video fun packed feast to get you through your one day extended rainy weekend. Happy May!

We Didn’t Start the Flame War. This video should be the very first thing any new persons to teh interwebs should see. For bonus epic pwnage read the comments in Digg. How’d they do that? [video]

TV edit of Snakes on a Plane. This is how not to sound repitivie you mother f**ckers. Although it’s a fight between “monkey fighting” and “monkey frying.” Which one is it? [video]

Denise Richards’ Fun Bags. I ain’t saying no more about her Fun Bags as I’d get in trouble.

Durex Warranty. Nice design. [photo]

Japanese Food. It’ comes in very small packages. [photos]

6 Random Coincidences That Created The Modern World. I wonder the World would be if just one of these didn’t happen? [article]

A Real North West England Urban Legend. Man breeches “muscle squeeze and squat ban” (WTF??). Two words. Purple Aki! [news]

The Dark Knight 1960’s. Why so serious? [video]

Ferries Bueller Fight Club Theory. Great idea. I wish it was true. [article]

Empire State Building:Made by hands. Photos from when ESB was built. The good old Healty and Safety-less days.

Pumpcast News. News at your local gas pump. Funny skit. [video]

And finally. From this weeks popbitch, again.

 “A story about a big squirrel and a baby squirrel.”


JUMP little guy JUMP!