Hot Chocolate and...

Well OK, it's late... Having read some more about the adventures of Julius Ceasar has rather sharpened my mind than make me ready to sleep, so I've gone for the Hot Chocolate approach... So to finish the teaser off, it's Hot Chocolate and... Blueberry Liqueur

The Hot Chocolate is from Tesco, but the Blueberry Liqueur is from Fonthill Glebe Wines. Picked up a 20cl bottle from the local farmers' market before Christmas and the 20% ABV liqueur is a nice little accompaniment to the aforementioned bedtime drink aswell as over ice cream...

That was so nice I shall have to have another :D

Bollocks

When I found no music from a band/artist beginning with the letter V in my A-Z music collection I uttered the word "Bollocks" to which Kalina asked

You have some interesting and unique words over there, what does "Bollox" mean? Like, does it mean shit or something? :p

To which I replied

Kalina - According to our home-grown comedian 'Brummy', Jasper Carrot, bollox are zits. So next time you meet an English chemist/pharmacist just ask "have you got anything for these bollocks?" ;)

Nah, I'm joshing ya, actually it's slang for balls and accordingly affords itself the privelege of being a cuss word too :)

Well, International folks, would you like to see the word in action? (You may need QuickTime6 too see this) Do you wanna see some English people uttering the magic word? I only just mentioned the VW Polo bomber ad the other day, and then I find this little gem of theirs... VW/Bollocks

Thanks again to Kontraband ;)

Fake faded Jeans

Now, I've never been much of a fashion victim, sorry, dedicated follower of fashion and everytime fashion trends happen I steer well clear of them. My most favourite clothing trend to avoid has been the fake faded jeans epidemic; You know, the jeans that look worn, lived in, used, like someone has had an active life, done things...

Fake, all fake. That biker/metal group of friends I used to hang out with as a babe in arms bought me up with the attitude of the "originals" - jeans that you worked and played in. The jeans never got washed and had a real character (life!) of their own.

Now, 2004/2005 step in Howies, "Cardigan Bay's third-largest clothing company". They summed it up a good and proper when they said, in their Autumn/Winter catalogue...

"We think a jean's history should be created by the person wearing them and not a chemical process in a factory"

Ha. What say, fake jeans wearing person? Image is nothing, Life is Everything.

Just out of interest, did you see what Howies had to put up with from the denim nazis

Oh and, checking out to see who else mirrored my sentiments, someone else thought that faded jeans are for assholes though whether they saw Abercrombie & Fitch's HUGE collection of fake worn denim at as much as $125 a pop I don't know.

VW Polo bomber ad

Well, after the rather cool Hate Something, Change Something Honda ad and the funky Citroen C4 ad we now have the VW Polo bomber ad. This is something else. Believe me.

There is some debate as to whether this was supposed to get out or not, but you can check out the news over at wizbangblog.com

My own opinion? I have none. Offensive, disgusting, funny? Who knows, but at least everyone gets to see what all the fuss is about ;)

I need Chocolate

11:20 - Been working since 08:00 and had about ten cups of tea (Clipper fairtrade) and half a dozen slices of toast (Warburtons wholemeal with Anchor butter - more on the environmental/ethical reasoning later ;) ) but now I am suddenly overcome with the urge to buy and devour chocolate.

I'm offski to the local shop, will report back on things chocolate...

12:18 - It's good to have the Co-op just around the corner (about 300 yards or so) and their selection is quite good. And best of all I was impressed with seeing the Fairtrade chocolate - a Dark Chocolate and the Fruit & Nut Milk Chocolate, which I grabbed. No milk chocolate, just fruit & nut.

Strong nutty scent (almonds), chewy raisins and very creamy milk chocolate. Nice. And I ate the lot too :D

The other thing about the Co-op is they print all the consumer information on their products' labelling. Apart from the usual warnings, like "This product may contain nuts" (on a bag of nuts) this chocolate has a caffeine warning - that whole bar was a 30mg hit...

I don't think I can handle the 200g Cadbury's Dairy Milk with Turkish centre... I think I'm gonna be sick...

Look at this huge pair of

Binoculars

This particular pair of binoculars are 13x70 with a zoom to 36x70 and night vision optics so, although you can't see in total darkness like infra-red goggles, you can see in low light conditions.

I was going to go for a pair of 8x30 binoculars or even some 10x50s, but when these 13-36x70s came up at the right price I grabbed a pair :)

The detail on the surface of a full moon is great on full zoom but with the magnification a tripod is definately advisable.

Looking forward to doing some plane spotting when the Farnborough Airshow comes round again. In the meantime they shall be gathering dust.

Buy binoculars, they're fun :D

The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon

OK Brits. If you get the chance watch BBC2 at 9pm tonight (Friday 21st January) there's an interesting documentary on entitled "The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon"

I think I missed the first one last week, but there's tonight's episode and another next week.

It's about the recently discovered works of the film pioneers Sagar Mitchell & John Kenyon - quite a few hundred of their short films were found stashed in drums in the basement of a derelict shop in Blackburn, Lancashire in 2002. There's about 26 hours of film and it has been restored by the BFI (Britsh Film Institute) and the BBC.

The 100 year old films illustrate late Victorian/Early Edwardian Britain and show, of all things, the first footage of Manchester United in action (I bet everyone is standing up ;) and other moving images of pre-WW1 Britain.

There's more info about the programs over at the beeb and also the BBC's original report of the story back in 2002.

Bloc Party On

Bloc Party are one excellent band and tipped to be hot in 2005, whatever that means. First heard Bloc Party whilst watching Soccer AM one Saturday morning when the track Banquet accompanied a feature. Check out the page for the Banquet MP3 - good stuff. And the Banquet Lyrics are included below ;)

Their LP Silent Alarm is out on the 14th February and they're touring the UK in early March. Thing is - the concerts are totally sold out already. Oh well, looking forward to seeing 'em at the London Forum on Friday 4th March :D

And if you check out the bandmembers' bios at the official Bloc Party website you'll notice Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths and Black Sabbath being amongst their varied influences...

Bloc Party - "Banquet"

A heart of stone, a smoking gun
I can give you life, I can take it away

A heart of stone, a smoking gun
I'm working it out

Why'd you feel so underrated?
Why'd you feel so negated?

Turning away from the light
Becoming adult
Turning into my soul
I wanted to bite not destroy
To feel her underneath
Turning into the light

She don't think straight
She don't think straight

She's got such a dirty mind and it never ever stops
And you don't taste like her and you never ever will
And we don't read the papers, we don't read the news
Heaven's never enough, we will never be fooled

Turning away from the light
Becoming adult
Turning into my soul
I wanted to bite not destroy
To feel her underneath
Turning into the light

And if you feel a little left behind
I will see you on the other side

And if you feel a little left behind
I will see you on the other side

Cos I'm on fire
Cos you know I'm on fire when you come

Cos you know I'm on fire
Cos you know I'm on fire so stub me out

Cos I'm on fire
Cos I'm on fire
Cos I'm on fire

Southampton Stag Night

Well, that's another weekend over and that was my mate's Stag Night in Southampton on Saturday too.

Now, Stag Nights are normally seen as raucous events but when you have a bunch of friends with well above average IQs "Neanderthal tendencies" are happily missing. We hit the pub for a couple, met some new people in the group and then headed off to the curry house.

On leaving the pub, the best man, whom I'd not been introduced to, sparked up a mad comedy conversation about "wouldn't the female bouncer look nice wearing nothing but an earpiece - Phwooar!". When we got the curry house and I sat down next to him he admitted that he thought I was just some random geezer walking down the road LMFAO what a nutcase LOL. Oh, and we got lost on the way there too.

The curry house was good - Popadom Express - don't let the name fool you as to the quality of the place - slightly colonial yet very contemporary feel to it. Food was good, service was good, the Polish serving wench was cute and so was the fiery red-head.

Shame about the lager though - Don't like lager or Grolsch at the best of times, but at least they could have had some Kingfisher or Cobra... or even some Tiger or Singha beer would have better accompanied the meal.

And the toilets were in the middle of a maze in the basement - lucky I took a roll of twine with me and didn't find the Minotaur going for a piss ;)

Then the best man got us lost again on the way to the lapdance club. It wasn't half as seedy as places used to be, the girls were all very pleasant and mega cute too. If only I could have taken a photo of the pole-dancer for you - Wow, bendy lady and what a performer...

And that was it, all very civilised :D The wedding reception may be another matter though...

A to Z music collection

Was thinking the other day...

Is there an artist for every letter from A to Z in my music collection?

I'll be right back with the answer... gotta thumb through my CDs... All LPs here, no EPs or singles counted...

A - Alkaline Trio - "From Here to Infirmary"
B - Butthole Surfers - "ElectricLarryland"
C - The Clash - "Combat Rock"
D - Dr. Octagon - "Dr. Octagaonecolygyst"
E - Electric Light Orchestra (E.L.O.) - "Eldorado"
F - Fun Lovin' Criminals - "100% Colombian"
G - Girls against Boys "Venus Luxure No.1 Baby"
H - Helmet - "Aftertaste"
I - Iron Maiden - "Powerslave"
J - Joy Division - "Heart & Soul"
K - Korn - "Life is Peachy"
L - Layo & Bushwacka - "Low Life"
M - Massive Attack - "No Protection"
N - Nine Inch Nails - "Things Falling Apart"
O - Orbital - "In Sides"
P - PreFuse 73 - "Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives"
Q - Queens of the Stone Age - "Songs for the Deaf"
R - Rammstein - "Mutter"
S - System of a Down - "Toxicity"
T - Tricky - "Pre-Millenium Tension"
U - Underworld - "Second Toughest in the Infants"
V -
W - Weezer - "Weezer"
X - Xmal Deutschland - "Tocsin"
Y - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Fever to Tell"
Z - The Ziggens - "Pomona Lisa"

Bollox, looks like a fail in the V department. Not even a single to back me up here. I did have a copy of Voivod's excellent "Nothingface" vinyl once upon a time until my mate accidentally swapped it for some cheesy old disco hits LP. Mission for the day... get back my Voivod LP :D

Anyone got any suggestions for a band/artist begining with V to fill the void in the collection?

Stairs

Being in the office yesterday & today there's one small but significant difference from being in the studio; Stairs, steps, a staircase. This may seem unusual to the casual viewer but, having spent the last 5 years living in a bungalow, stairs are bit of a novelty to me.

Anyone else live in a bungalow and miss their staircase?

A day in a different box...

A day in the office, not the studio...

Got up, got washed, drove all of 4 miles in 30 minutes... could have walked that.

Living a hundred yards from a forest is so much more appreciated compared to the commerce and industry of a grubby little town that, strangely, I have grown quite an affection for... masochist!

09:00 First impression: It seems that the whir of my 20db stealth fan has been replaced by the dull moan of an old server droning to itself in the corner... then I crashed an NT machine with my new "Girls Against Boys" CD. Not seen the BSOD for some time. I would like to have shown you but for some reason I couldn't get a screengrab... ;)

Where's the volume control on the keyboard? Why just one speaker? Why does this mouse have a cable attached to it? Desktop PCs... aargh, no...

No tea, no sugar...

No plants to pour my old coffee into...

10:45 Heavy feet pounding on the mezzanine floor corridor...

The kettle is just one yard away, where's the fun in that? What about my exercise, the usual stroll to the kitchen? No wonder I've only taken 92 steps...

A different view outside 'my' window and artificial lights overhead...

"In like Flynn" comes 'round again, now "Go Be Delighted"...

11:00 Where's the arms on this office chair?

11:29 Random fax rolls in, mmm interesting... CCTV and rental cars.

11:55 Change the record, need to feed me some Korn. Oh dear. lucky I backed everything up before putting the CD on; it's another Blue Screen of Death. The footnote of the BSOD says "contact your systems administrator or technical department" So I did and advised myself to hit the on/off switch.

Loud sales types arrive at office nextdoor and they've got more decibels than my music... strangely enough the words coming out of the speaker are "shut up, shut up, shut up, or i'll f**k you up" made me chuckle :D

12:54 Phone rings. Mute switch, mute switch, where is it? Must stop Jonathan Davies swearing, if only for the duration of a business conversation...

13:09 Just publishing an article for someone and I see the web address www.anker-systems.co.uk ... is it just me or does anyone else find this funny?

Talking of which there was mention of a Reverend Ankers on TV the other night, to which I speculated "What, William?" and then, lo and behold, there was the man of the cloth himself with the TV caption "Reverend Bill Ankers"... LMAO (see, he does exist)

13:19 Doing some graphics work now and "your system is low on virtual memory" - whoah, haven't seen that in years... 128Mb RAM used to be big once. Stupid business machine, where's my trusty old Athlon?

15:01 Back from a lunchtime walk into town; rain, wind, ambulances, ignorant car drivers, Farnborough ghost town... I take back what I said earlier about somehow liking this place. It's a mess, an urban planning cock-up and they're just about to do it again. Will keep thee all posted on that one...

Nice healthy lunch from Bur Gerking - burger, fake cheese, re-constitued potato pulp, mayo and fizzy sugar drink without cocaine in it. Done another 2500 steps though, that's 25% of my RDA ;)

Select noise for afternoon's entertainment...

16:22 Maybe I should flip a coin - heads I fall asleep/tails I die of boredom...

17:00 Had enough and went home in the rain and dark

So, shame shit, different place. How was your day? :D

100% pure squeezed

100% pure squeezed orange juice tastes so good, don't you think?

Normally there's some good deals on 'fresh' orange juice to be had in the supermarkets here with 3 cartons for £2. But this 100% pure squeezed, not from concentrate orange juice tastes so much better. And no GM ingredients too :D

Parkour, Free Running - "Jump Britain"

Thursday night, Channel 4 showed an hour long documentary entitled "Jump Britain" (buy the Jump Britain DVD or the Jump London DVD) about the rise of Parkour, or the sport of Free Running. Great programme and an interesting sport with the co-founder, Sebastien Foucan, and a bunch of British guys doing some amazing moves.

The basic premise of Parkour is free running, jumping and moving in fluid ways with the environment and a lot of the guys doing Parkour on Jump Britain were climbing up walls, jumping over obstacles, rolling, balancing, vaulting in the most sublime ways, checking out the urban environment to see ways of using rails, gates, walls, pillars etc to perform some interesting manouevres; a bit like skateboarding without the board.
Anyway, the main feature of the show was these people doing their thing across Britain - free running the Giants Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, the Bull Ring, Birmingham, Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, and Festival Hall, London amongst other national landmarks.

Last time I did a big jump was over a hedge and onto a busted concrete path - twisted my ankle LOL (and don't mention the BMX jump last year where I bit the dirt and chipped my shin bone in the process. Now I have 661 pads - just the job)

There's no doubt people will get into this parkour/free running thing because it's the new cool bandwagon to be jumped on, but just like BMX and skateboarding are cool, owning a board or BMX does not equal cool. Like BMX and skateboarding this is another sport that requires practice, skill, style and discipline.

There's some good info about on Parkour or Free Running, like the Urban FreeFlow Global Parkour Network and the UK Parkour Association. Don't know if it's for me, though, still need to get tricky with my bikes first :)

Media Player stole my WinAmp

MS MediaPlayer's an arrogant 'little' program isn't it?

Yesterday I attempted some very basic video editing and, as a result ended up 'having to' upgrade to MediaPlayer 10. After install/upgrade I skipped through the nag boxes and now, when I slot a music disc in the drive, no longer is there a selection of programs to choose from... my weapon of choice is always WinAmp (WinAmp lite version because it doesn't hog valuable system resources :) but now the MS usurper has taken over.

Having tried to set program access and defaults has so far proved unsuccessful... the system doesn't even recognise WinAmp as being installed as an alternative option for media playback. I will look into this later when there's more time to demote the parasite back to its rightful place.

Sound Off like you got a pair

Sitting on a picnic bench outside a cafe in Mudeford, Dorset yesterday on a bright and breezy Winters day when out comes the waitress with two plates of food for somebody...

Waitress: "Number 57?"
Everyone can hear.
Waitress again: "Number 57?"
Random family possibly with ticket 57: "mumble, murmur"
Waitress yet again: "Number 57?"
Random family with ticket 57: "Mumble, mumble, yeah that's sort of ours" index finger raised a bit to indicate "it's over here, please"

I turned 'round to the bro-in-law, and in my best impression of (R) Lee Ermy (Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket) called out "Sound off like you got a pair"

Some people are too big for their fat egotistical boots, but for god's sake "little people" speak up please and "sound off like you got a pair".

Onion Rings

So there I was, chatting online, when all of a sudden, "the munchies" struck...

There was no food in the house, or at least no real food, yet in the cupboard there were the leftover Christmas nibbles - chilli nuts, peanuts, pretzels, chocolates, Bombay Mix, crisps and... Onion Rings. The urge for onion rings took hold of me and the packet was swiftly whisked away to sit open in a prominent position next to the monitor...

...the conversation continued, the onion rings were tasted, then munched, before I knew it I felt strangely compelled to continue eating, more, more, more, I couldn't help myself, they were finally COMPLETELY DEVOURED. I even recall saying "I know I'm gonna regret this in the morning"...

Teeth brushed, mouthwash gargled, went to bed still tasting onion rings.

Woke up, brushed teeth, gargled mouthwash and still tasted onion rings.

Ate breakfast (bacon & fried egg sandwich), drank tea, waited, brushed teeth, gargled mouthwash; Hmmm... onion rings. And that wasn't all, there was a strange buzz... like I was stoned or something...

OK, let's check the packet...

"Fried onion flavour maize snacks"... that's it - fried onion flavour. Flavoured foodstuffs are never quite so good. Let's spin the bag over and see what's in 'em...

! Allergy advice - contains milk, wheat, gluten, yeast, sulphites... sounds scary - WTF are sulphites?

Ingredients: blah blah blah... Fried Onion Flavour Seasoning (onion powder, salt, lactose, sugar, flavour enhancers: Monosodium Glutamate, Disodium 5' Ribonucleotide; dried glucose syrup, flavourings, yeast extract, garlic powder) ...blah, blah, blah

So, there was this perpetual taste of onion rings that would just NOT go away after teeth brushing, sleep, more cleansing and more than 12 hours of passing time and I felt a bit weird; could it have been the Monosodium Glutamate (MSG / E621) or the Disodium 5' Ribonucleotide (E635)? And which ingredients were the sulphites? (Spell-checked this post and it tried to substitute sulphites with salivates...?)

That's it. No more artificial flavourings or additives if I can help it. I shall read and digest the article 20 ways to cut out chemicals

Oh yeah, and only REAL onion rings from now on :D

First MTB ride of 2005

Last night it pissed down with rain and hail. This morning it was clear blue skies, sunny and cold. Having hit the hay at 4am, getting up to ride at 10 am seemed like a great idea, so I blasted off into the woods on my mountain bike, cycling through mud, filth and last Autumn's fallen leaves.

Cycling past the barracks made me a bit nervy - the sound of gunfire could be heard as I set out from the house. It could have been an exercise but the red flags were flying, yet luckily no stray NATO rounds whistled across my path from the old brick rifle range.

The birds sang, the kamikaze squirrels were out (there's always at least one) and there were plenty of people down by the Fleet Pond letting their dogs provide more dirt to cycle through. Yeah, that's an unfair, sweeping generalisation but at least my cats bury theirs.

So drifting past the old NGTE was good, sweeping down through the woods to the Basingstoke Canal, along the towpath and up into the north end of Fleet for a pedal through the Velmead Woods and up to Windy Gap to stand by the trig point and look out over the Farnborough Airfield.

Then through Long Valley over sand and rocks to the Rushmoor Arena; probably covered about 12-13 miles and only seen/crossed 4 roads. Still about 5 miles from home but this is the first ride in weeks and it's getting to feel very tiring.

Past the Army Golf Course and finally on to the back of the Airfield and along the A325 to Farnborough to show the townies how much crap the bike's covered in and make them wonder...

Finally get home and I felt totally knackered. It started off as exhileration and ended up as exhaustion. So, a good start to 2005 but a lesson to be learnt - have some breakfast before doing a 20 mile mountain bike ride and definately don't cycle when you've got some stupid virus :D