Eccles Recreation Park, about 0700 29 September 2011
According the the weather people it is going to be a warm day. The fog was low lying and moving around.
The origin of wine
A foible of mine:
I only buy and drink wine from regions I have visited
Fortunately I have been to Bordeaux and other great wine producing areas but I just decided about a year ago that I might as well impose a restriction just for the hell of it. Should someone offer me wine then I will drink it from anywhere. For me, this rule just makes choosing wine a little more interesting.
Places I can’t drink:
- South America
- North America (apart from Florida)
- Asia (apart from Hong Kong and Singapore)
- Africa
Individual areas that I can drink:
- Most of France
- Bits of Spain
- Cyprus
- South East Australia
- Southern Portugal
That’s about it. Hey, as the Great Sheldon said “if your going to have foibles you might as well make them bizarre”.
Bands I have seen
This is a memory test. Trying to list the bands I have seen live. I guess this page will be edited as I remember the hazy days of long ago before children.
1st Concert
Iron Maiden (support: White Dwarf) 10 December 1988, Wembley Arena
After that:
AC/DC, Wembley Arena, Donington, Wembley Stadium
Aesthetic Perfection, The Underworld
Alice in Chains, Cambridge Corn Exchange twice, Download ’13
Asking Alexandria, Wembley Arena
Bon Jovi, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium, Twickenham
Bullet For My Valentine, Wembley Arena
Combichrist, Wembley Arena
Dan Reed Network, Wembley Arena
Diamond Head, Milton Keynes Bowl
Elvis Presley (kind of), Wembley Arena
Evile, Brixton Academy
Faith No More, Wembley Stadium
Gary Moore, Wembley Arena
Great White, Wembley Arena
Guns ‘n’ Roses, Wembley Stadium twice and Milton Keynes Bowl
Iron Maiden, Cambridge Corn Exchange twice and Earls Court
Jose Gonzalez, Shepherds Bush Empire
Killing Joke, O2 Academy Islington
King’s X, Wembley Arena
KMFDM, O2 Academy Islington
Level 42 (the shame), Wembley Arena
Lostprophets, Brixton Academy
Madonna, Wembley Stadium
Megadeth, Wembley Arena, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Milton Keynes Bowl, Brixton Academy
Metallica, Wembley Arena, Earls Court, Donington, Milton Keynes Bowl
Ministry, Brixton Academy
Motley Crüe, Wembley Arena, Donington
Nine Inch Nails, Wembley Stadium, Brixton Academy
Prince, Earls Court
Peter Green – Chatham Theatre
Queensryche, Donington
Rammstein, Wembley Arena
Senser, Portsmouth somewhere, Underworld
Skid Row, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium
Slayer, Wembley Arena Earls Court
Suicidal Tendencies, Wembley Area
Testament, Wembley Arena, KoKo
The Almighty, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Milton Keynes Bowl
The Black Crowes, Donington, Brixton Academy
The Darkness, Wembley Arena
Treponem Pal, O2 Academy Islington
Ugly Kid Joe, Wembley Stadium
UK Subs, The Square
Van Halen, Wembley Stadium
Wat Tyler, The Square
White Lion, Wembley Arena
Winger, The Astoria
Wolfsbane, Cambridge Corn Exchange twice, The Marquee
Yngwie Malmsteen, Shepherds Bush Empire
For the Download 2013 list click here.
Negative Quesitons
This is another of those annoying language things that stems from my rather literal language processing unit. See my previous post about starting letters. I am not far enough into the spectrum to follow instructions or comprehension literally but I do struggle trying to answer negative questions in a true manner. Once again there common usage issues that I believe to be amazingly wrong but most people seem to accept them.
If something is amazing then the following:
Is that an amazing aircraft manoeuvre?
is easy to answer. Yes for agreeing with the statement and no for disagreeing. However the question:
Isn’t that an amazing aircraft manoeuvre?
is remarkably hard to answer. I believe the vernacular is to answer “yes” if I am saying that it is an amazing manoeuvre. But if I answer “yes” then I think I am agreeing with the statement which is
Is that not an amazing manoeuvre?
and that reverses the meaning of my answer. Arrrrggghhh! Similarly other questions can confuse me enough that I answer very differently. So, if I had just seen an amazing manoeuvre then the following would be the conversation:
“wasn’t that an amazing manoeuvre?”
“It was amazing”
This means I have not answered an impossible question and also managed to keep my head from exploding with diverse logic implications.
Other examples are:
“aren’t you going to the cinema?”
“isn’t that band great?”
So, please don’t ask me perfectly normal questions, it just hurts.
PS3 Insurance no more
The other day I got a letter from Domestic and General who are the people who underwrite my PS3 insurance. My payments are to increase from £4.99 to £7.99! That’s a 75% increase! Now even given the ironic situation of times past I have phoned D&G and cancelled my policy. Somehow £60 a year seemed ok but nearly £96 is ridiculous. I’ve also cancelled my Sky+HD insurance as I’ve just had a new box.
Now, if the PS3 dies I’ll buy another. They are cheap enough. Then I’ll do my best to fix my classic 60 Gb model. It’s lovely! Lots of USB ports, PS2 backwards compatibility (suck on that you later model users), multimedia card slots and SACD playback because, yes, I bought some of those!
Now I just need to remember to back up my game saves regularly.
Red Grapes
Here are some red grapes, spotted while walking the dog.
Looking in the mirror
Here’s a tip for some of you drivers out there. It stems from my experiences as a motorcyclist and now as a driver, although now I’m not travelling quite as fast. The bike was an 1100cc machine and my car is a diesel estate!
I noticed in the past that whenever I was coming up behind a car on a motorway and that car was indicating to pull out into my lane that the driver would (I assume) check the rear view mirror or door mirror. Now, if the driver looks once and gets a snapshot of the road they would see me in the outside lane. What would be interesting is that the driver would have no idea of how fast I was travelling unless he/she spent a long time staring in the mirror. To get an impression of speed the driver would have to look again in the mirror to see how my position relative to him/her had changed in the time that had passed.
I believe it is for this reason I had cars pull out in front of me causing me to brake many times. It is quite simple that to judge a speed you need two reference times to see position change. Hence drivers need to look in their mirrors twice before pulling out in front of traffic in the next lane. Most drivers are ignorant of this fact of physics given that cars still pull out in front of me and I’m now in a car.
Perhaps drivers don’t care about other road users and I’m in the minority. Gosh, I think I’m better than most.
Whose next top model?
My wife and I have finally given up on %%%%% Next Top Model, where %%%%% is a variable string representing one of the following:
America’s, Britain’s, Canada’s, Australia’s
I estimate I have seen fourteen series of America’s Next Top Model, three seasons of Australia’s Next Top Model, two of Canada’s and four of Britain’s Next Top Model. Now I will watch no more. Finally I have become bored with the format. It was fun watching young women argue and shout at each other while living in the same apartment. It was fun learning about the industry of fashion, which is still one that I think is mostly a crock of shit. I don’t see that fashion does anything useful. It was fun watching girls cry when their hair is cut short on the advice of the experts, but finally I am bored and moving on to other things.
It always struck me as interesting that the girls who shout the loudest are usually the ones who fail. See also X Factor and other such shows. Those who have humility are usually the ones who succeed.
No MORE. Thanks Tyra Banks for the show but it is time to move on.
An aside: whenever I have spoken to pupils at work, it is a boys’ school, they like to claim I am “gay” for watching a modelling programme. This is interesting, as I explain, because what I am watching is half naked women and commenting on how they look and NOT getting hit by my wife. They don’t get it.
Latest Tech
Here’s the latest tech I’ve bought. I’m a bit of a Logitech fan so this was always going to be something of theirs.
Really nice sound and rechargeable batteries to carry it around.
Ambition
Think I’d like to break into the top 10000. Doing ok at the moment on Angry Birds. Have spent far too much time playing it though.
Now I’ll have to keep going!
Just put an iPhone dock in the kitchen and cleaned the microwave top as that’s where it goes. Then looked at wall and thought I’d wipe it. Whoops! Now have to clean the whole wall! Shouldn’t have touched the wall.
This is not a dirty house I should point out. How often do you clean your walls?
Update: 29 August 12:00
Wall now clean, although from picture you’ll have to decide if I cleaned it or just re-dirtied the clean bit!
Independence Day
Another dog walk another thing of interest. Nice weather front formation. Dark clouds preceded by clear bright skies turning to overcast.
FFRF
Signed up to the Atheist out of the Closet campaign on Freedom From Religion Foundation website. Also starting to listen to their podcast. Like it.
They do very good work in USA making sure church and state separation is maintained. We could do with something like that over here, but our parliament is hard wired for religion. Our head of state is the leader of our church! We have bishops in the House of Lords ffs. When can we get rid of that? Current plans are to have representation from all major religions in the Lords. How stupid. When do you know to stop? How do you choose which religions? How big do they have to be? Remove all religious representation and let them lobby like everyone else (not that I’m keen on lobbying groups).
Summer?
It’s been grey all summer holiday apart from 2 days and now it’s rained for the last 24 hours. I don’t actually mind. Hot weather does me no good and 23/24 Celsius is just right for me.
I have noticed that whenever I edit an old post I get tweets sent saying such. Although not really annoying it does mean that minor adjustments get tweeted.
So I have adjusted my automatic Twitter settings so that when I edit old posts they will not be tweeted. Just did an edit of tags (or at least added some) and now have lots of tweets about these. Should have studied the WordTwit settings a little more closely when I installed it. Issue should now be sorted.
Mind you, virtually no-one follows me and pretty much no-one reads this website!
Treasure
Treasure the things you love.
Exciting life
How exciting is my life? This exciting: I love my new washing line cover!
Now you see it.
Now you don’t!
How to survive
This is what’s going to get me through the next few years of raising children. Good choice ww.
Son’s computer drawing
Title says it all.
Trying to be quiet
It seems that I find it impossible to be quiet when needed. Not an ADHD thing but just a clumsy thing.
My house is quite small (compact) and I am normally cooking while my wife is putting my youngest to bed. So I’ll be washing up and trying to stir food quietly. It just doesn’t end up being that quiet! I unintentionally bang saucepans, drop cans and crash into the furniture. The more I try and be quiet the more noise I seem to make!
The kids sleep fine if there’s a constant noise but struggle with sharp bangs and crashes. This is probably an evolutionary thing (evolution is real, get over it you religious morons), constant rain or rustling is not a danger but sudden noises spell the end so run away.
So I think this phenomenon is the “don’t think of your name in lights” syndrome. When you try not to do things you end up doing them because you are thinking about the things you shouldn’t do. Richard Wiseman mentions this in his book Paranormality. For instance, on the last lap of a GT5 race I am mostly thinking of not crashing but I tend to spin off more in the last lap than at other times!
Trying our best not to do something often ends with us doing that exact thing. Oh, I’m trying to not buy a 3D tv at the moment!