A gift from a submariner uncle to his nephew. A set of Royal Navy Submariner Dolphins. I’m sure #1 will love it.
A Conversation
No, this is not my classic 1994 poem “A Conversation with Myself” this is a text conversation I had over a few days with a friend.
With you on that. Thinking of getting 2 or 3 classical CDs. For when I’m marking books. Any ideas?
Carmina Burana (omen). Planets suite (am I evil). Ride of the valkerys (apocalypse now). There is cd call heavy classics which is not bad.
There’s a particularly ominous jingle played on freethought radio that I’m humming to people to work out what it is. Got Planets already, how is it I am evil?
The opening of am I evil is Mars from the planets done on guitars. Other good ones: night on Bear Mountain and Danse Macabre.
What! How did I not know that? Over 20 years of listening to it and only now I find out it’s clever!
Haha! I read it somewhere and then it clicked!
Fuck me. Just done the same. Utter brilliance. Btw have you heard S&M by Metallica?
S&M? I’ve heard some: didn’t like it. I can see how the two could complement each other, but not how they had done it The strings seemed too high pitched and detracted from the deep guitars. Sounded like a gimmick and a throw back to 70s prog rock! Also a lot of was new stuff that is crap!
Agree. I heard snippets and thought it was shit. Also, not impressed with Metallica as possibly cancelling tour next summer because of currency worries! Wankers.
How far have they gone from being alternative? And Megadeth getting all religous? And Slayer apparently. Seems only Anthrax remain unchanged from the big 4.
You have to change to survive if you don’t have tons of money. We work to survive. It’s politicians who need to act on principles for the better of all. We are shall cogs! They have the chance to change things but won’t because of compromise.
Capitalism is dying?
Politicians are only there to look after their own and them selves. Look at them on Question Time! Full of shit and we vote for them. Don’t see a decent one there. Is capitalism dying? No, it’s evolving. I expect companies to take over from countries as the next step.
Interesting idea about companies. I hope not. Companies responsible to shareholders are essentially immoral. Maybe Jamie not voting is right? Should always be able to vote for “none of the above”. Mind you Belgium has coped without a government. Civil service just keeps grinding on. Perhaps I should invent moral economics. Governments as proper partnerships like John Lewis?
I agree with companies not being moral, but then through funding they control politics anyway. I think there should be a new politics, less weasel words. Or at least someone with vision. Your idea sounds good though.
Revolution time then? I’ll get my flag out. Perhaps the next wars will be over economics (or have they all been that recently anyway?). Quite like the aims of UK Uncut. Secrecy is a big factor in wealth. Perhaps we should have politicians who go after that. Going to need a beer in a bit! Blood pressure going up and my rant might last days! Can start influencing the next generation at work.
This economic crisis will change things. And I think for the worse. Companies and the rich will escape while the rest suffer. If only China really believed in socialism!
Agree with you there, and on pretty much everything else. Mind you we are establishment so how do we kick start the “evolving” process? Perhaps the youth will kick off as unemployment gets worse.
On a brighter side: are you going to see Dragon Tattoo?
Want to see Dragon Tattoo: David Fincher and Trent Reznor?! Of course. But don’t think I’ll get the chance.
Perfect Dessert
Today I come in praise of the humble Tunnock’s Tea Cake.
I have decided it is probably the perfect dessert. For me food must be chewy (soup is a no no) and have a range of textures. A dessert should be sweet, contain chocolate and satisfy the cravings after savoury food.
The Tunnock’s Tea Cake combines marshmallow, biscuit and chocolate. It is also mouth sized and so eatable whole. The textures are perfect. Just enough crunch and chew to make the whole experience uniquely fulfilling. The fact that it can be chomped whole makes it better and gets over the occasional problem of flakes of chocolate dropping from the tea cake as you bite into it. Of course, quite brilliantly it can be eaten as part of a calorie controlled diet and is low in radioactive particles and high in energy (food marketing is pure BS).
The world should give thanks (in a secular way just like Obama on Thanksgiving) for the Tunnock’s Tea Cake. It’s exactly what made Britain Great!
Blogtime
I’m so busy at the moment I just don’t have time to write anything for the blog. I am aware that this post is now a logical contradiction but I’ll keep writing.
Work is busy and having two kids means there’s no time for anything at home. Although I wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the mean time have a look at a web page with some Wackos. Only a few, mind. Given the billions of humans on the Earth the wacko total is probably quite high.
Gallery of Wackos
Cruel Advert
Clicked on a google news link to Telegraph website article about diets from the BMJ. Advert is brilliant.
Mobile Phones
I have owned a number of mobile phones and most of them were rubbish. Going to give you a rundown of them from the earliest.
Phone number 1 – sometime in 1999 or so:
The Ericsson A1018
The order of the next few phones is not remembered easily. But here goes:
The next was:
then:
And then the nifty fold-out keyboard:
Then we get to the first smart phone:
Then the brilliant and pretty usable N95, it was the last Nokia I owned that worked well:
Then the big memory but pretty useless N97:
Finally, a phone that works. The iPhone 4. Until then the iPhone specification was pretty rubbish. It took a lot of soul searching to convince myself that selling out to the walled garden of Apple was worth it. However, I have to say that the iPhone is brilliant. It works!
The holiday will be a failure
I had mentioned to WW that I really wanted some time playing GT5 this holiday with the steering wheel. I may have said:
If I don’t get to play GT5 this holiday it will have been a failure!
This means no kids or anyone for about 2 hours. The time was set. Monday afternoon. Number one son would be in nursery and WW and son #2 would be seeing friends so I had about 4 hours when I could play uninterrupted!
I needed to complete around 10 online races to get the money and just because they are there to complete. The four hours would be pushing it but I reckoned that without lunch I could have done it.
So I set up the PS3 with steering wheel and pressed play.
GT server down for routine maintenance 12 to 4pm
Arrgggghhh. The only races I could do offline was a World Championship and I didn’t want to spend the time and effort and have to save mid-championship.
I shut down GT5 and played Rock Band. The original save file is copy protected and so I had to start from scratch. Definitely didn’t do the easy or medium – straight to hard.
So far the holiday has been a failure. Going to try tonight.
Talk Talk Part 3
This will probably come as a bit of a surprise but I have been really impressed with Talk Talk. I know that they have most complaints out of the media providers bt I haven’t had any issues.
Download speeds in the evening used to be crippling. It just wasn’t worth trying to download any large files and almost not worth browsing the internet. However, since moving to Talk Talk our evening download speeds have really improved. What I do not know is whether that is down to Talk Talk or some other changes that have been made with the infrastructure in our area. The thing is I can’t be bothered to see which it is.
Now I’m looking forward to downloading iOS5 this evening and getting my iPhone up to date.
Death of the PS3
So it happened again. My re-conditioned 60Gb PS3 from Sony has died. We were watching Wall-E on blu-ray and we got about 2 minutes into the film when:
Pvvvvvvvvvvvvv
The Ps3 turned off and the red light just flashed. The unit is still under warranty and so will be replaced with another re-conditioned 60Gb model, which is good because that is a classic model.
WW agreed I can suggested that I buy a brand new PS3 as well. So Amazon had a great deal on a 320Gb version bundled with a game and blu-ray movie. So until it arrives I am in limbo.
I managed to get the GT5 game save file copied when I tried turning on the PS3 to check it was FUBAR.
Updates later.
Tues 3 Oct
New 320Gb PS3 arrived with Resistance 3 and a blu-ray film. Plugged in and now vertical next to AV amp. Looks very nice. I have noticed though that the disc grabbing motor is much noisier than the old version, the disc reader motor makes a bit of noise and the buttons are real buttons rather than touch sensitive. However, the fan noise is much quieter and so much preferable.
Firmware update completed and GT5 save file copied after a bit of hassle. I’d been saving game files on a SD card because the 60Gb has lots of lovely memory card slots. Had to transfer the files to a USB memory stick using my PC before I could get them onto the new PS3.
Weds 4 Oct
Installed lots of the extra GT5 files onto the PS3 to reduce load times. That took about 40 minutes. Planing to install every game I’ve bought from the store over next few weeks as I now have the space for them. Also looking forward to DLC for GT5 by end of October.
PS3 stand arrived so I don’t have to worry about it falling over. It’s much thinner than the old version and so less stable. Now have a few more USB ports and some snazzy blue LED lights if I want to impress WW.
Old reconditioned 60Gb now taken and on its way to console heaven. Just waiting for the return of the next one.
Fri 7 Oct
New old PS3 delivered. Sony have kindly replaced my recondition PS3 with another (although it was within warranty). I have not yet checked it works as I need to be free of children to do it. New PS3 is wired in so this 60Gb will have to wait until half term.
Tues 11 Oct
GT5 version 2 download released and so very excited. Just waiting for DLC.
Cars
We tried searching for films suitable for a sensitive 2 year old and all the interwebs came up with were:
So we bought Cars from eBay.
It’s brilliant. The sons love it and have watched it about 10 times in the last week.
As expected from Pixar this film is really well written and directed. The artwork is fantastic and the detail is awesome.
I said to wonderful wife that I thought the cars suspension moves the wrong way when they go around corners. She replied
that’s your issue with a film with talking cars?
Fair enough. Although I guess they could have cool active suspension so the side of the car on the inside of the corner is lower rather than higher than expected. Essentially a car rolls to the outside of the corner not the inside, hey you could have cool lever linkage also!
Anyway, great film and sons obsessed with racing cars! Brilliant.