Communications

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Thank You!

I know I am a grumpy git. I know that I am now old fashioned. I know that I moan about too many things and should probably just accept the state of things as they are and move on.

However – It doesn’t take much energy to say thank you when you cut me up on the roads and pull in front of me.

I don’t mind how you say it:

  • you can flash your hazard lights
  • you can wave out the back window
  • you can wave of your side window
  • you can hack into the DVLA database and find my address and send me a gift voucher

Just say “THANK YOU”.

Most of the time you have pulled in front of my car while I’m travelling at more than 50mph and I’m trying to leave a safe distance between me and the car in front because I am normally carrying the most precious cargo possible. You have deemed this a suitable place into which to drive and not worry about a conscientious driver trying to be safe – acknowledge your arseholeness.

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Thank God For BMW

About six years ago I found myself perplexed! I would see a car out of the corner of my eye and think “ooh, there’s a nice looking car”. It would only hit me when I looked properly that it was a BMW. I hadn’t liked any BMWs until this time and I found it distressing that they had changed their general style and were now good looking.

Finally this balance has been redressed. The latest BMWs that I have seen on the roads are back to ugly. I think they look stupid. All is well with the world again and everything is correct.

An Aside
The Range Rover Evoke is a horrible looking car. The designers are genius because it seems to be the latest fashion accessory. Ugly but selling, perhaps they should be pink as well? If I had designed it I would be crying with laughter all the time. The BMW X6 is just as bad.

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Change

I started gaming just after I persuaded my parents to buy a Commodore 64 for “educational” reasons. We’d had an Atari in the house before then and so I could play pong and tennis but the C64 was my first proper computer. I remember buying games on cassette tape for £1.99. These games must have been below 32kB as that was all the RAM on the C64 and it was tape drive.

Since then I have progressed from the Sega MegaDrive through all versions of the Sony Playstation. I was a little shocked but not really surprised that the latest GT Academy came in at a 3GB download! Wow, we have moved on so much. [yes – I know that Blu-Ray disks hold about 50GB but its just amazing to see this in real numbers]

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Fulham Five Day

5th May 2012

The inaugural Fulham Five Day. A date where members of the F5 aim to replicate activities from 20 years ago.

the inaugural, annual F5 Day called so to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the formation of the F5

Here’s some of the activities the 5 got upto on the Inaugural Fulham 5 Day.

Have called back and told them to lock the door and hide all the toilet paper- said I would explain later. In keeping with the F5 tradition I am going to have a completely normally day. I expect emails from the rest of you so I can send emails back saying tut tut.

I will purposefully leave my dinner out this evening, down here that will be covered in flies and maggots by morning. Just about to book my flight so I can break into Mazza’s apartment! I will call as many people as I can a c**t and be surprised when they are offended!

Celebrating by not doing any examination lesson preparation. Going to spend 2 minutes looking at past papers and then say “screw this”. Put “Killing in the name of” on loud and lie on the floor in the dark with my sunglasses on. Possibly head to the chippy after that for sausage and chips and coming back via the off licence for a few cans of Murphy’s. Will piss in the kitchen sink in the morning and check how cooked the spaghetti is by throwing it at the wall. Might even burn an important letter for the guy downstairs later in the week! Going to turn on the games console, play Attack Sub and Desert Storm and will then settle in for a Madden fest playing the Redskins. After that I’ll let Jase play Phantasy Star for a complete weekend! Will wait for Ades to come in later and try to sleep with Mazza. Going to take appointments for the doctors surgery when the phone goes at 830 in the morning.

Sorry to arrive late, but I spent the weekend sitting on Jason and ferrying breakables out of his room after he downed a bottle of Smirnoff.  You should see the state of his sofa…
I’m looking forward to 5.5.55 when I suggest we all rent a flat in Fulham below some rowdy students and turn the tables on them.

 

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Son’s First Post

))))))))))))))))))))))))));()5;)())))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))?)))))))))!))))?))))

……:::::::::::::::::::://///////-

[Quite obviously typed by #1]

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One Season

The following programmes were cancelled after just one (or two) seasons. It’s a disgrace.
I do understand that tv shows have to make money but surely there should be some space for critical acclaim.

  • Knightrider
  • The Cape
  • Painkiller Jane
  • Terra Nova
  • Dollhouse (two seasons)
  • Firefly
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    Still Life Study

    Number 1 took this photo. I guess it shows his main interest: Nutella! Perhaps it signifies the path of growing knowledge?

    20120506-073050.jpg

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    3D Running Route

    My iPhone app that records my running outputs to a website and from there you can get a Google Earth 3D view of the run. That’s pretty cool.

    Nice!

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    iTunes Albums

    I spent a few hours at the weekend sorting out my iTunes library and then changing it back. I’ll explain:
    My car stereo lets the iPhone plug into it. I can then browse the library and select songs and playlists etc. from the stereo display. Unfortunately the display doesn’t have many characters and so long album names scroll across which takes some time. If there are two parts to an album and I’ve jogged the select wheel while going over a bump then I have to wait ages and concentrate on the stereo display while the album name scrolls across. This is a touch unsafe and irritating.
    So I decided to rename all multi-part albums with a 1 or 2 prefix so that I could see which part I had selected quickly on the car stereo display. Doing this took a while as I have my music library on my NAS drive and iTunes takes a while to adjust the music tags and then copy the new files to the phone.
    That night I slept rather uneasily. It was distressing me that my albums were not correctly named. It seemed wrong.
    So the next day I set about changing it back. Again it took a while but I feel more relaxed about it now. The albums are all correctly named and I’ll just have to be careful when selecting these songs in the car.
    See my music collection here.
    When I mentioned to WW that I had changed everything back to what it should be she said “I thought you’d do that”. I guess she knows me very well.

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    Geek Wife

    WW stated the other day that she would like some new T-Shirts and that she would like some “geek” ones! I’m overjoyed.
    Her reasoning goes a little like this:

    Everyone can buy a Superdry top and everyone knows it’s a Superdry top. If I can find a top that’s relevant to me and not obvious then that is a little more special to wear.

    I couldn’t agree more. We did have some problems browsing the CafePress website because some of the designs looked nice but then had the TV show name as well meaning they aren’t obscure enough. There was a Lost t-shirt that had the Dharma logo (nice) but then also had the Lost logo (annoying). You want people who know to know and those who don’t to just think it’s another t-shirt.

    For instance a t-shirt with

    Redrum

    written on it is cool whereas one with STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING is a little too obvious. I want people to work hard to discover the reference! My current favourites are:

    Who shot first?

    So say we all

    What would Adama do?

    Bartlett for President

    African or European swallow

     

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    Comparatively Refreshed

    Wow! Son #2 just slept well! I feel much better having had about two weeks of him only sleeping for 45 minutes at a time and then waking crying because his teeth hurt. He’s even been awake and crying for a couple of hours in the middle of the night.
    Last night he woke at 8:30, 12:30 and 3:30 and then finally at 7! It was, all things considered, relatively normal for a 11 month old.
    That means I have had a few chunks of sleep of about three hours each. Brilliant. Having been tired since October 2006 this takes me back to normal levels of sleep deprivation.
    Let’s see what tonight brings.

    29 April Update
    Last night was about the same. #2 only woke 3 times for milk and so once again we had a normal amount of sleep deprivation. I’m feeling almost human.

    30 April Update
    Back to very disturbed from just disturbed. Every 45 minutes until about 01:00 and then he slept until 6. Back to feeling hungover but without the benefits of having had a great night out.

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    One Of The Rules

    I broke a cardinal rule today. Car windscreen wipers should ALWAYS be left at the “off” position when the car is turned off. I didn’t do that today!
    20120425-172638.jpg

    The only time it is ok to keep the wipers in an “on” position is if you are driving a Le Mans prototype car or similar endurance car.

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    Local Names

    When ww and I talk about routes for walking the dog we give names to parts of local footpaths so we can say the name rather than give a six figure grid reference. Here’s a snip of Google Earth with some arrows pointing at vague features.

    Map of places that we have given names
    Local Names

    A – Sports Field
    B – Across middle field
    C – George Corner (it’s where our dog did his first “on walk” poo)
    D – Bushy Bushey Wood
    E – Solar Farm Path
    F – Rotary Hill
    G – Cock Corner (there’s a graffiti picture of a penis)
    H – Burham Route Road Return
    I – Burham Route Field Return
    J – Burham Route Path
    K – School Path
    L – Middle Vineyard
    M – Vineyard Hill
    N – Sheep Path
    O – Aylesford Corner
    P – George Gate (The dog once ran so fast he couldn’t stop at the gate and hit it hard)
    Q – Pylon
    R – Stake Corner

    I’ve missed an arrow by I and J and this is called Burham Route Near Stream.

    So there you have it. A list of terms used in a single household about the local area that is of no use to anyone!

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    My Favourite Car

    The best and most fun car I think I ever drove is the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ60 (Australia edition). I spent a glorious weekend driving around Fraser Island off the east coast of Australia with Pom, Mel and ww.

    Gorgeous Truck, Fraser Island
    Gorgeous Truck, Fraser Island

    This truck definitely wasn’t the newest on the island. There was gaffer tape holding up the passenger windows and broken bits all over it. There were loads of newer Toyotas and other 4x4s racing the fishermen to the best sports areas but I’m glad we had this one. It made us feel like we were really getting into the wilderness. Also, it made us rather relaxed about getting it dirty.
    Pom and I took it in turns to drive over the world’s largest sand island. It’s a place where there is an 80kph speed limit on the main highway (or beach as we would call it) and you just have to go slower inland. Where in the world do you have to check the tides before you can drive the highway?
    We had a couple of close shaves! We entered some soft sand within the first hour of being on the island and the truck slowed but didn’t quite stop and we continued on. From then it was rather uneventful apart from placing the bottles of wine in towels so they didn’t break as we went over the bumps and they jumped about in the boot. This truck was a hoot to drive.
    On the way back to the mainland we had a bit of an issue with a large wave that spread water up the beach and over the highway. I swear we were close to turning over! The truck lurched sideways and bounced around a lot. It was very exciting. On the ferry back to the mainland lots of people were laughing at just how dirty our truck was. It proved we had a great time.
    Once back on the main land I drove along the beach (why use tarmac?) and we tried to find somewhere to rejoin the main road. Someway along the beach we came to a blockage. A tree had fallen over and there were two choices. Drive into the sea and hope or turn around and go back the way we came. I just drove straight on into the sea. We probably went about a foot deep and then with luck on our side we managed to get out the other side and keep driving. It was hilarious at the time although later that night we would whistle about it!
    Here’s a glorious shot of the Toyota:

    Gorgeous truck in a gorgeous location (Fraser Island)
    Gorgeous truck in a gorgeous location (Fraser Island)

    I want one.

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