Snack on this

The last few weeks I've really started to enjoy my Cadburys Whole Nut chocolate bar. I often rotate it with StarBar, Double Decker or a packet of crisp. But really the Whole Nut is my current favourite bar.

The only problem I have with the Whole Nut is the amount of nut that is given. I've often sat at my desk having finished whichever filling sandwich I had that day and felt a little bit more the peeved and the nut situation with Cadburys Whole Nut and wanted to blog something about it.
Sometimes I might get a segement or two that are nutless. Thats not a Whole Nut in my eye's. That's Dairy Milk. I've see more nuts on the bus ride home after work. (Or a bus ride in the next town, but that's a private joke for the missus and involves some escaped mental patient.)
There have been times when in the shop Whole Nut purchasing, that I've felt the back of the bar to try and feel how many nuts are under the packaging. (Best 'fondling nuts in public' joke get kudos - Ed)

Today I got a shock. My Whole Nut (extra size as it is a Friday/payday) had lots of nuts in it. So much so I think I got over 2.1 nuts per segement. That has to be a World Record. It's a better feeling then opening up a monkey nut and finding three peanuts.



I'm very very happy.

Crazy World

Sometimes life on Earth amazes me. It amazes me at just how mental it can be sometimes.

Take for example the recent fantastic game Mario Galaxy on the Wii. Some of it's level design is so insane you have to stop for a few moments to ask your self "am I really supposed to do that? Lets try....Wow, I was"
Then I think the people who designed this level, what the hell were they thinking? They must go to work while taking acid, having not slept for three days and live somewhere really obscuse lke i a lighthouse or Runcorn.

Or I learnt while reading the astounding Bill Bryson book A Brief History of Nearly Everything (excellent book about everything, go buy it) There is so much mental scientific crap in there. The one that stood out to me was some really old chaps wanted to find out the mass of the Earth. First of all who the hell wants to know the mass of the Earth? Whats that knowledge going to accomplish? But whats more mental is someone actually figured out a way to weigh the Earth's mass. Someone went away, and made up a plan on how they could go about doing what people wouldn't normally do.
Obviously the scales in the bathroom wouldn't work so someone figured out by hanging a weight on a piece string over the edge of a cliff you could find out the weight of the Earth.
(I don't know if this method works, but people seem to believe it)

And take today. The BBC are reporting on a domestic dog that can do fancy balancing tricks. Now I don't know what is more crazy, the fact that the BBC are reporting on this or that someguy one day tried to balance four cups on his dogs paws or can my dog balance a cup of tea on his head while balancing a gold ball on a spoon which is in his mouth (see pics). What madness does a man have to go through to think up this stuff?

Crazy.

Chip and Pin and "How is my service"?

I don't know how widespread this new phenomenone is, but I have recently noticed down at the local Co-Op that the chip and pin machine is asking me questions. It want's to know "how was my service?" "was I served fast?"

I would like to know, it this just something that is happening in my local Co-Op? Have you noticed it Co-Ops near you? Or is it even limited to Co-Op stores, is it found in other stores with chip and pin?

So next time you are at the shop and when the customer in front of you leaves finishes being served, have a look at the chip and pin machine and see if it asks you anything?

And for those who dont believe me I'll try and get a photo of the chip and pin machine next time I am being served.

Everyone shhhhhh

I'm at work and typing this very gently. The guy next to me is asleep. Its a very busy office we have here.

But it is quiet funny as he keeps waking up for a few seconds then gently nodding back off.

hehe

OpenID's

I was recently asked about openID's after one user had thought that it was not secure and quite frankly seemed pointless.
I also thought the same when I first seen openID support on my blogger comments. I figured if I could just write in any url then I could be anyone. I wanted to how is that secure?

Well ladies and gentleman, openID is a little bit of a magician and works in mysterous ways.

(Here is my reply to the above blog entry)
The way open ID works is, say you comment on a blogger blog with your wordpress URL, the first instant you submit your comment, openID checks your computers cookies to see if you are already logged on to wordpress with that URL username. If you are logged on under the correct URL/username then your comment gets posted. If you are not logged on to wordpress then your comment is rejected.

The simpliest way to try this out is to log out of wordpress, find a blogger blog to comment on - say this one. Submit your comment and your wordpress URL. What will happen is openID will check your cookies, and if you remembered to log out of your wordpress account, you will be asked to log in to wordpress first.

So unless you know the password to the url you submit you cannot post under that url.
Which is great now, as all those people with wordpress blogs but blogger accounts to post comments on blogger friends, no longer need to worry about logging in to blogger. Just carry on using your wordpress openID.

You could also try it out by submitting a comment under a url that doesnt belong to you, say a friends. OpenID will see you are not logged on under that username and reject your comment.
Cool eh! And safe.

The reason you may not have noticed anything at present will be because you have “keep me signed on all times” ticked on your blog.

So unless someone can log on to your account with your own password they cannot post under your url. Very secure and no way of fake posters.
So now anyone who comments with openID I will know is genuine.

The power of cookies. It all seems fancy and magical.

Now I want a cookie.

Visit http://openid.net/ for more info, which sites already support openID (you might already have an openID) or how to get one.

More photos from my Birthday weekend

Ok, my birthday is now 9 days old, the next weekend is closer then the previous weekend but if I didn't post these now I never will.

So here are some extra photos from my birthday weekend, my family (and new nephew Dylan), travelling - we spent about 10 hours travelling over the weekend, thats alot of time sitting - and other random photos.

The running theme for this birthday was "Eyes Closed."




Everyone was getting in on the act. I think it all came from this one guy.


All in all I had a very fun and tiring birthday. just another 340 odd left till the next one.

Enjoy the slideshow.

Another video and some praise

After spending a whole evening, about 5 hours, trying to figure out how cut and shrink a movie I made at the Justice from the weekend, by converting, researching editing suites, downloading freeware and getting very annoyed, Olly has come to my rescue.

So a massive thanks to Olly. For those that haven't checked out Electric Pig, mainly those newcomers to my blog, I highly recommend Electric Pig.
One of my favourite and longest blogs I've been reading. Go check out his adventures in Japan.

But here is my last Justice video. The first taken from the night, the opening few minutes, enjoy...

Cleaning out

The last few weeks I have been on a bit of a weekend clear out spree. With our move to Spain coming up I wanted to make sure that the garage me and the missus are living in was as tidy as possible when handing it back to her parents.

A few weekends back it was time to clear out the food cupboard.
The cupboards were getting so full I was finding it hard to put in new tins of food, etc (this was actual one of the main reasons for the clear out to)

It turns out that the missus, having partly lived in the garage for a few years now, had never done a clear out and there were a few things past their sell by date.


A look at all the things to THROW AWAY

Some jars had best before dates that went back as far as August 2001. Thats alot of not clearing out.

All the empty jars for recycling. Yes everyone should recycle.

I had to pour all the off contents down the sink. This did make the sink smell funky and looked a bit like this.

Here is all that went back in to the cupboard.

Time to get going

Seeing as I spent ALL NIGHT last night trying to figure out how to chop down a video I taken with my digital camera and then work arounds involving converting, I have forgotten to upload the rest of my weekends photos.
I'll do that soon, promise and I know that flickr won't stop me this time as I have just upgraded to a Pro account. Check me.
And I never did figure out how to chop the .mov file or converter, stupid videora and it's non compatabilty with digital camcorder sound files.
If anyone knows how to use Avidemux2, convert .mov files from digital camcorders (specifically audio with pcm_u8 format) or can advise on which paying software I should get out of ulead, Pinnacle or Serif Movieplus please email me; itsmoirob [at] gmail [dot] com, or leave a comment.
Thank you!

But what this means now is that I will have to write about something rather then just posting 100 pictures.
Now there's a problem.
I have just recently joined 20something bloggers, (and no, not just in an attempt to make me feel younger then I am) and have found some very well written bloggers through there, Marggot to bed, Rage and Biscuits, Apollocreed and J-Money to name a few. So I feel like I should really up the ante now.

So here goes....

Upping the ante...

A great blog post....

A great blog post to up the Ante
I recently bought some insoles for my shoes. The inside leather had been worn down and was starting to make my feet uncomfortable. So I bought some insoles. I followed the dotted line cutting for size 11's put them in my shoes and thought that was the end of that.

A few days later I have started to find that the size 11 dotted line wasn't quite so perfect. The insoles keep slipping about in my shoe meaning that alot of the times my heel or the tips of my toes are annoyingly hanging over the edge of these insoles.
Which most importantly annoys the crap outta me, but also gives me a funny lobsided walk.

No, not me walking lobsided but a photo of the insides of my shoe.

So there you have it. Possibly the greatest work I have ever done.

I should just give up now.

Justice gig Birthday weekend

*Ok, I really should do all this in date order, but seeing as my flickr basic account only allowed me to upload a batch big enough for my Justice gig photos and that I couldn't be bothered uploading the rest on Picasa, my Justice gig thing will have to come first and the rest of the weekend will follow.
PS my apologies to anyone on dial up, I've not worked out how to do the READ MORE link through Blogger yet, so all photos/vids are going to be on front page.

The lead up to the gig was pretty rushed. After limiting myself to just a few drinks with my pops in order not to be too drunk and sleep through the gig, we managed to get a pizza, rush home get changed, scream at the downed internet, find address of gig and ticket reference via phone, running to bus stop while eating said tiny pizza we made it to Liverpool on time. (Although I was a little dazed when going for pregig drink having fell asleep on bus and still being groggy)




Group shot

The light show was pretty intense at times. The lighting guy did a great job.

There was much dancing.

And Justice made me think this was what a DJ set by the Mighty Boosh guys would be like



And if you haven't bought it, Justice's album Cross is pretty sweet (if you like that Daft Punk electro dance kind of thing)

Infact you may of heard there track D.A.N.C.E, which I tried to record.
PS apologies for the jumping camera, do you know how hard it is to not dance while a really dancey track is being played?...Very hard!


Here are all my photos from the night.

(Some guidance on the above slideshow. Move cursor to top of frame for skip/speed settings. Move cursor to bottom for thumbnails of set. Click photo for more info/link)

Also big shout to Fancy, the warm up guys for Justice. They had possibly the campest lead singer since Freddie Mercury. Just think of a rock band and their lead singer singing like that Chris Rock character in 5th element and you have an idea. They were very very good, even if the crowd didn't get them.


PS If anyone knows any good free software I can use to chop down mp4's if they could let me know that would be great, thanks.

What a weekend

What a packed, tiring but pretty awsome weekend.


Due to the prebooking ways of Lazer Quest Inc, I didn't get to have the lazer gun shooting evening I hoped for, although it was nice just to have a few drinks with some old friends who I hadn't seen in a while.


I am currently trying to upload about 100 photos from the Justice gig from Saturday. I am also uploading a video and trying to figure out how to edit too long videos to stick on youtube, if anyone knows how to chop up mp4's gimme a shout.


Also I'm pretty tired. My new nephew was allowed home at the weekend. Welcome to the World Dylan.
He was quiet most of the time, but kept us all up a bit too much last night/this morning, so I'm feeling a bit tired.
Also just to prove to my dad that this is my blog, who found me after adding me to Skype and joing the 20th Century, "hi pops."

I'll have more photos of the Justice, travelling and the weekend throughout the week. Now it's rest time.

Dude! You made me LOLZ. Noob!!!11

Three words;

Lazer. Quest. Night.

This is going to be so much fun. More fun then having a Nintendo 64, a few friends round and a copy of ...



Although the last time I played lazer quest I was only 12, I hope I've not out grown the arena. It would be annoying if I kepy banging my head.

Anyway, I'm off to practise my barrel rolls, slow motion diving through the air and quick draw.

My birthday and more celeb news

So I had a really good birthday and got some really cool presents. A very generous gift from the missus parents and a new shock and water proof camera off the missus.
The new camera, an Olympus 725 SW, has some pretty cool features, for example it has 25 or so different shooting settings for example potrait (someones face), landscape (nice mountains), potrait and landscape (for photos of the face of mountians?), candle (for erm candles, possibly birthdays?) museum (which just basically mutes the camera).
It also can take photos under water. Which we have tried by sticking the the camera in a full sink and took some shots, but really I need to try this out in really underwater conditions ie a pool or the sea....only a few weeks.

I also have a trip back up North coming up at the weekend. Mainly to celebrate two birthdays. My own, plus my sister is having a baby today. So good luck to her, Paul, Megan and Megans new baby brother Dylan Jack.
But I'll be able to test out the camera fully at the weekend (except for the underwater tests) and hopefully at a Justice gig that's happening that my friend has told me about.

In other news, after my gratitude given towards popbitch in a previous entry, more good news has come for the World of gossip sites;

A statement on the Holy Moly site said there had been a "definite change in the perception of paparazzi pictures".
It will no longer publish photos of stars being chased or in "distress", while photos of celebrities with their children will also be banned.
However, photographs of celebrities at press launches and premieres and "idiots who go to places like The Ivy" will continue to be included on the site.

I know that I can't stop gossip magazines being published, but I think if the people who read them and agree with the above statement, should write/email in to their favourite gossip magazines to show how they feel about the situation, and perhaps if enough people write in to enough magazines then some action will be taken by the magazines and the paparazzi will stop their cruel hounding of celebs in difficult times.

Vide ot_ape

If I had to describe this song I would say it's like that female friend all males have who you love and think the World of but never would have sex with for spoiling it all. (Although secretly you have thought about it!)
So in short The Song You Wouldn't Have Sex With.

RED BLUE GREEn +


had a niggling feeling that this never really got seen much.
Its a kind of video thing to go with Videotape using lots of wierd techniques we were messing with.
Nigel and I really enjoyed making it at the end of last year.
It appeared at the end of a webcast which i think was lost due to transmission problems.
So here it is (roughly) for you to see again.
x
Thom

Things to do today

A shortie list of things that I should be doing today;

Going to party (not done yet)
Tasting Bacardi (not done yet)

You know I don't give a .... it is my birthday.

Go and have some cake on me.

A few steps forward and more wait

So me and the missus have taken another few steps forward to our big move ov er to Nerja.

A few days after securing our apartment for the next year, we have now started to get a joint Spanish bank account. The nice guys over at Halifax let us transfer money free from an English to a Spanish account. Which is helpful. I just hope the fee for converting in to euros is low now.
But the bigger and more important step is that we have booked our flights out to leave.
One way of course.

So as of April 9th at 0716 - I think - we'll no longer be in the country*

So I'm pretty excited. Not long left. I just keep trying to think up mini milestones to approach to make the length of time seem shorter, for example my birthday tomorrow, a trip back up North, the missus finishing work, the missus finishing school, one final trip up North...then that's it. Wooosh.

* this is of course depending on how long the pilot wants to take to fly the plane.

Good news is good news

As some of my previous readers might know I have a huge dislike of all celebrity magazines and gossip columns.
I hate the fact that these forms of tabloid and media will often go to great lengths to report the personal problems of many celebs. And the greater the problem/more fragile the celebrity = the greater the coverage.
My greatest hatred is that of the paparzzi who I think are shameless vile people who really should fall of the face of the Earth and die a horrible horrible death. And I am trying to be nice here.

A few other bloggers have gone over the same thing so I won't go in to too much detail here, but today I did read one thoughtful coulmn written by Popbitch.

For those that know, Popbitch is a UK based email newsletter. It is the only thing I read about Popular Culture. On many many occasions Popbitch have had celeb stories that weren't printed in gossip columns and magazines until much much later.
(Yes I agree there might be a slight of hyprocasy in my entry now, but popbitch does it's reporting in a totally different way ie its contributions, and it never keeps the paparazzi on their payrole.)

So it was with great pleasure that in the latest edition of Popbitch I read;

>> Back to bedlam <<
Laugh at the celebrity inmates

The Sun's Bizarre column had this breast-obsessed take on Amy Winehouse's rehab issues: “It's chest what we all wanted to see – Amy looking almost back to her best. She took a break from rehab... She returned there two-and-a- half hours later, flanked by police. Maybe they were investigating a robbery at a chicken fillet factory.”

Heat's website uses that heart-breaking photo of Britney crying in the street before being carted off to the psych ward to illustrate their “Britney News” section.

Kerry Katona, the wretched bipolar halfwit manipulated across the media by the Dark Lords of PR, is in a MTV reality show amusingly titled Crazy In Love, with promo adverts of her in a straitjacket.

Come on, surely there are enough sane self- important celebrities left to harangue?

Obvisouly the magazine sells it's publications based on what it's readers, us, want to read about. If we keep buying the latest copy with images of Britters being taken off in an ambulance then they will keep printing that.
But hopefully the editors and the people higher up in these magazines who keep their eye on Popbitch will take note of how low they are scooping to sell papers and will change their ways, even if it's slightly.

Random scenes from my phone

Here are some photos I have had on my phone for some time.


The missus' cat hiding in the wash bag.



Watchout under those bridges.

Singalong with The Radioheads.

Wet or cold

Have you noticed how sometimes things can feel so cold that they seem wet or damp?

Well take that image and apply it to something edible, like bread for instanc,e and your in a whole new World of confusion.

Which was how I was feeing when I got home after being the shop and opened the loaf to make myself a cheese and pickle sandwich.

Que lots of touching the bread and pressing the bread against the cheeks of my face with a look of puzzlement to try and tell if the bread was wet or just cold.
I don't know what made me think of using my face as a dampness test, I think it's just all those soap powder adverts where the mum is using her face to feel her washed towels.
That's educational TV for you!

In the end I dared to believe that the bread was dry, just cold, and made my sandwich. It tasted normal. Just a little softer then normally, whatever that means?

Yes it is quiet

OK, so there isn't much here at the moment. I do have another blog (if you wish to see point your browser here.)

When I moved blogs a few years ago I tried out Wordpress and Blogger. Blogger, at the time didn't offer much, was rather basic and a tad annoying at times.

In the last year and half Blogger has changed alot and progressed, where as Wordpress is still the same old.

So for the next few weeks I'll be mirroring my posts on both blogs. Mainly to see how easy I find it doing a variety of different blogging methods.

But I will be promoting this blog everywhere where I used to advertise my old blog. Mainly to get in some numbers so I can see how good stats are working.

But if you want a taste of whats coming up in the next few weeks have a read of some of my current posts over at the Other Blog, otherwise hang tight and I'll start posting proper items soon...

Help needed

While I go through the motions of changing the blog design, it would appreciate some reader feedback on colours and design.

So what are your thoughts?