m4rcus

Google Calender is wrong!

2007-05-27T21:49:00.000+01:00

For those of you that use the country holiday function in Google Calender... it's probably not worth it as it seems to be a little wrong! It told me that mothers day this year is today... it's not, it's actually next weekend. I had to find the answer on wikipedia which was.

France (except if it coincides with Pentecost day, in which case Mother's Day will be shifted to the first Sunday of June)

How crap is that? At least it means that the card that I sent over to my Mum who lives in France will now get there on time as it's not turned up yet.

Give Blood... it's good.

2007-05-03T21:35:00.000+01:00

Today, randomly at 4pm I decided to give blood for the first time. I wasn't some freak who at 4pm decided to give blood, but Mike in the office had an appointment to give blood. An appointment for giving blood? Anyway, the next hour was spent not working but more checking what I was getting myself into... and it seemed fine. I even managed to get my mate Darren in on the game too. So after work I headed down to Pompey football ground and signed up. After filling in a form with some very dodgy questions which basically means if you're gay you cannot give blood. There's then a test for iron in the blood, seems I have some, so onto the laying on the table and having a needle, which was huge, was jabbed into my arm and the letting began. 6 mins 17 seconds later (they have a fancy machine) and 470ml of blood had been removed from my body. It's true to say that I was fairly nervious about the whole thing up until the blood started to flow, then I was fine. 10 minutes of laying down (as it was my first time) and I was done. It was then onto the drinks and biscuits.

Go give blood, it's easy and it makes you feel good, though this might be due to the lower amount of blood I had in my system...

Read up about giving blood here http://www.blood.co.uk and read up on blood and what it does here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood

Stag Do... and how not to annoy a lap dancer

2007-04-30T19:56:00.000+01:00

It's now Monday night and my arms and hands still hurt from the karting on Saturday... The Stag Do sort of started on Friday night for the people who had to travel down, as the weather was good the good old burning of food over a pit of coals was the order of the evening (along with far too many drinks) I passed out about 12 midnight.
Saturday, the Stag Do proper... we all met at the Karting track. 12 eager men getting excited about racing each other around a track in a small kart. With Matt, the groom, as my team mate I was the first to set off in the rolling start, 7th in a field of 11. By the time 3 laps had passed I was out in the lead which I apart from one lap I held til the change over half way through. Matt took over and then had to race his dad for first place... It wasn't until the last few laps that Matt over took him and drove on to victory. I got the fastest lap by the way!
From there it was on the road, the road not the race track, must remember the road. The hotel was in Bournemouth and at £25 a person, we were not expecting too much... but The Kingswood Hotel was okay it had a bed and a shower which was just enough. It was then off into town for a quick drink or two and for Matt to get his boxers taken from him due to a hen party... After a bit of food, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the night out.

Spearmint Rhino was the first port of call. This was the first time that I've ever been to a strip club and I'll be honest... they're odd, they only seem to be there for the lonely perv and the stag/birthday group of lads. The women walking around sorting peoples drinks seemed to be nicer anyway... So then, on to 'how to annoy a lap dancer'. I picked a girl that I wanted to dance for me and off we went. It was all going rather nicely until half way through and she asked if I'd been to the Isle of Wight being that I'm from (near) Portsmouth. My reply was one of 'why would I go there it's full of inbreds and hicks', the dance went crap and it wasn't until the end that she revealed she was from there.... oops.

We got Matt a dance, on stage and a photo of this, which was expertly taken by a bouncer. When I get it from Matt I'll post it on here... The rest of the night was spent in Elements, which to be honest was a shit night club, but they had beer and music. After getting to sleep at about 5am and that was that.

Jay Jay

2007-04-02T18:59:00.000+01:00

Just over two weeks ago now, my parents dog Jay Jay passed away in his sleep whilst at the vets.

I admit that the first time my parents said that they were going to be taking Jay Jay off the previous owners hands as she was not able to cope with him, I was against it. The first time I met him he greeted me with his nose in my crutch... something he did to everyone. There he was, a very lively dog who snorted a lot, with a very dodgy hair cut. His snorting was due to an injury from when he was a pup, which meant he only had one working nostril. As his hair grew out (of control) he reminded us of a character from a book I used to read as a child - What-a-Mess. Jay Jay liked nothing more than to be outside all day running around the garden and standing sniffing the air. Once his hair was out of control, to cut it took several hours, once done, he looked no bigger than a whippet and looked like a pup. He was a great dog... I'll miss him a lot.

The moon, France, head plants and sunburn...

2007-03-11T23:14:00.000+01:00

The other Saturday night it was a night where you could see a full lunar eclipse... you've probably seen something about it, so here's the picture I managed to capture on a midnight walk in Old Portsmouth. Not the best shot... but I'm still learning how to use the camera. My Dad on the other hand with the use of his telescope managed to get an altogether better picture :(

I'm now in France at my folks. I arrived last Wednesday via Easyjet for the bargain price of £45 return, and instead of driving to the airport and getting charged silly amounts for parking I took the train! It's must have been about the 7th time I've taken one, apart from a London tube...

The first few days over here I've been helping my Dad to put in a shower unit in the downstairs bathroom where the bath used to be... there doesn't seem to be a lot of progress, even now, but when you look behind the scenes at the plumbing and concreting that we've been doing there's been a far amount.
Yesterday we took a trip to La Mongie, the closest ski resort to my folks, and it's the biggest in the French Pyrenees. It snowed on Thursday and a little bit on Friday, which was nice as the picture on the resort webcame looked all too brown, not good for a ski resort. So early on Sat morning we set off for the mountains. We met up with Bruce and Polly, who live about 1.5 hours away from my parents. They moved out here to set up business, more on that in the future.
The sun was out, and out in a big way... I forgot to put on some suntan cream and I now have a rather red nose, cheeks and the sides of my neck...
For someone who took 10 years off from skiing and then skiied Lake Tahoe in America for the past three years, I seem to have been spoilt, I've not had to ski on ice in around 13 years... and ice sucks! Thank fully there was only a small amount of it, but it didn't stop me from finding somewhere else to hurt myself. The blood in the photo is a result of going only a little off the piste and trying to ski where it can only be described as soft snow under a layer of toast. Yes toast, it was bloody difficult to even go in a straight line... which I didn't all the time, and ended up breaking through this 'toast' like top surface with my face.

Nav's 30th

2007-02-25T19:39:00.000+01:00

Last night it was a trip to Bournemouth for Navids 31st birthday party. I took my new camera along to see what I could come up with without doing anymore reading of the manual... They were mostly blurred and grainy photos, great... it will mean that I need to read it all, probably several times :(

Click on the photo, for some birthday shots... and click on the video for a video of Nav being rubbish at blowing out his candles...

Short rant and a new camera

2007-02-24T15:08:00.000+01:00

After the events that happened here, I tired to claim on the holiday insurance. Something that has so far proved to be impossible, so much so I'm going to go to the FSA and see what they come up with. My advice is to not use Drakefield Insurance Services Limited, who run gotravelinsurance. I've tired to explain to them that the French Police (who have guns!) do not issue a report for a lost item, but they don't care, they want a report...

This week I finally got round to getting some contents insurance for the flat and specifically asked Virgin Insurance, as they do up to 60 days abroard insurance, if they would have paid out. If they didn't I'd get some holiday insurance that would pay out, no, wait, already tried that. As it turns out after a chat to the claims department, they would have been 'happy' to pay out as I'd done everything I could. Also if you don't pay your years insurance in one go they split the cost with a 0%APR, which is nice.

Once I'd got the flat insurance I decided to go and buy myself a new camera and hope the FSA would get Drakefiled to pay up. If not then it would hurt my pocket a little. I had one brand in mind, Canon, and for a long time I was just going to go for the Canon 850 IS. The 900 didn't really interest me as the 850 has IS - Image Stability. It uses motors and things to adjust one of the lenses to remove camera shake.

After a lot or research I stumbled across the Canon G7. It's a sort of a mini SLR without the SLRness, but with the ability to attach a huge flash and extra lenses. After reading the review on this website I was sold on the idea. It only cost an extra £50 over the 850 from Amazon and an extra £140 from Jessops, so I went to Amazon. How do Jessops keep going?(!)

After spending what seemed like several hours of reading through the manual I was brain dead. There are so many settings it'll take a while to work out how to use them all.

So now I have a camera, insurance that will cover it and a steep learning curve ahead of me, unless I use the Auto setting, but then there is not a lot of point in buying it in the first place.

I'll post some pictures up in time, along with a review of the Canon G7.

Not a good sign...

2007-02-19T22:41:00.000+01:00

Driving home tonight this light flicked on for a bit on my dashboard... once I got home I had a look at the dip stick and found there was not much oil left in the engine... oops. The underside of the car was covered in oil, arse. A quick trip to Halfrauds in Simons car and some oil and a new filter in hand I set about finding the leak. I hope I did find it as it seemed to be the oil filter, it was covered in oil. A quick drain later, which didn't take too long due to there not being too much oil in there and the removal of the old filter, I cleaned it all up. One kitchen roll later, thankfully we'd been to Makro and got hundreds of them, the area was 'clean' and I fitted the new filter. I also remembered to replace the drain plug before filling it with oil :) One tip if any MR2 owners are reading this is that when you come to fill the car with oil again a cheap/free funnel is an old plastic milk bottle, with the bottom cut off, it saves spilling it all over the engine and having that burning oil smell whilst it all burns off the exhaust. One thought is why do my hands smell of oil when I was wearing disposable gloves...?

Simons Birthday

2007-02-18T18:32:00.000+01:00

Last night a load of us went to Jongleurs (only took two attempts at trying to spell that) to see a bit of comedy for my flatmates 31st(hehe) birthday. When the tickets were booked they stated, may have restricted views, which normally means a post in the way or someone with a big fat head. We were slightly surprised to find we were at the front. Needless to say the seats on our table filled up from the furthest away from the stage in the hope that it reduced the chance of getting picked on by the comedian. The comedy was great, all three acts were fantastic. After the comedy, there was the usual 'disco' which meant jumping around like loons for ages. We all found out that we are not a young or as fit as we once were... okay maybe more so with me with the fitness. From there it was on to the casino, to which I walked out £5 up, which could have been more than that, but I gambled it away :(

Breakfast was great, as I cooked it... Cooking 5 fry-ups was a little tricky but I managed it and the bacon was only slightly dry.

Here are the photos from the night - Simons Birthday

I'm back online

2007-02-14T22:38:00.000+01:00

Bloody PCs... Sometime last summer my desktop pc decided to die due to the power connector burning out on the motherboard, I didn't bother to fix it due to having a laptop... Sunday night however after a day of website design it too decided to choke and then die. The drive decided it had had enough and started making loud clacking noises... £35 later and a 60Gb drive I then had the problem of trying to get Windows back onto it as my friend Navid broke the CD drive by dropping the whole pc... Shara tells me it cartwheeled three times before coming to a stop. As the pc is a little old there was no way of using the USB port... so Darren steps in to attempt a network installation... which didn't totally work, so he resorted to the easiest method of ripping out his cd drive from his laptop and putting it in mine. It worked a treat and I now have a working Laptop and a desktop which I sorted myself. Let the crappy task of reinstalling everything begin... (sigh)

Winner!

2007-02-10T10:52:00.000+01:00

For the first time in all the games of Texas Hold'em poker that my friends and I have played, last night was the time that I was chip leader. Out of an £80 pot I took home, well into my bedroom, £30. Some might ask why we don't play until there is only one winner, and for that I'll have to say it's because when your money is in chip form we tend to be really tight with it... a 5p somehow turns into something a lot more valuable. It's a strange effect when you do not buy into the game because you have to get rid of two discs totalling 10p. There was some good foutune there last night, apart form me, which reminds me I must check my lotterly ticket. Ben was down to 40p and had already been all in once and he won the pot, which was about £20, this was much to the annoyance of the people who were still in on that hand for it seems that when someone is down to only a few chips, they cannot possibly win a hand. Simon was predictably out first, I'm glad he's now taken my spot for being first to be out and James, who's read books on the game, lost some money, finally! Though I'm still not even... it's about a night in with drink, chat and a small (we really should remember that) bit of cash.

Final standings... Me (honest) , Steve, Ben, Jimmy D, James(honest)... and then the others who lost all their money.

*click the word 'chip' above and read some interesting facts about poker chips...

The Bells...

2007-02-08T21:55:00.000+01:00

So living in Old Portsmouth is nice enough... that is until you get to a Thursady night and it's bell ringing practice at the Cathedral. Church bells at the best of times are a little annoying, especially on a Saturday or Sunday morning sometimes starting around 9am, but people practicing when they are out of tune is a bit like watching the really bad bits of Pop Idol in the initial stages with the people that cannot sing. The difference however is that lack of comedy watching these fools attempt to sing, we just get Clang, Clang, Clang... and have to put up with it. I'm not sure if an RPG into the tower would be a good thing or not... but it seems okay to use one for fishing...

Still it's the weekend starts tomorrow night which will entail myself losing money at a game of cards... it's the opening night of the Pembroke Chambers Texas Hold'em Poker Evening, which should be fun.

Ear Muffs on Men... Yay or Nah

2007-02-07T21:10:00.000+01:00

It's a bit cold out... Temperatures are hovering around freezing, and there's the promise of lots of snow tonight/tomorrow, honest. I planned on cycling to work tomorrow so got the bike out and had the plan of cycling the 7 miles from the flat to the top of Eastern Road and then onto James and Sarahs. It wasn't the most direct route, but when I do actually cycle to work, hopefully I'll encounter the least amount of traffic, which means the least amount of people that are half asleep at 7:00 in the morning.
So I left the flat, which I'd have had to do sooner or later as a car parked directly opposite had its car horn stuck on, and headed out along the sea front, into a head wind. I wear cycle helmet, just in case someone trys to run over my head, but because I have a big head, I cannot wear a hat of some sort at the same time. Tonight as the wind was doing it's best to inflict pain on me this posed a problem. Take the helmet off and wear the nice warm hat the covers my ears and risk my head bouncing off the road should I get knocked off, or stick a bit of paper (chewing gum wrapper) in my ear and turn around and go home. For me, the pain was intense, like a knife being wiggled in my ear, 40 mins later and my ear still hurts.
So on the way back, which wasn't as bad due to the bit of paper and the wind being behind me I mulled over the idea of buying some ear muffs, and then thought more about if these are for men or only women...
A quick Google later and I find these, not ear muffs, but Ear Bags (wtf!) I have little ears so I doubt they would work for me... apart from the fact you would look more silly than if you had proper ear muffs on. So my questions are, can I really get away with proper ear muffs, and can you get them so they are not all fluffy?!?!?! Simon suggested the alternative... wear some headphones... without the music playing of course :)

2006-12-28T22:55:00.000+01:00

My time in France this holiday is coming to an end, which is a shame as now the fog has gone it's been beautiful here. It reached 24°C in the back garden yesterday, which meant time for sunnies and down to a t-shirt whilst putting up a satellite dish with my Dad. They've not had TV for 11 months, apart from the shows of Eastenders and Top gear that I recorded and sent over and more recently, downloads from the internet. Check out UK Nova is you're an ex-pat looking for some home-grown TV. The new satellite dish should, once a universal digital LMB is brought and installed, allow them to watch FTA (free to air) and FTV (free to view) channels via the Digibox that was given to them by my brothers friend Marcus. Until the digital LMB is installed there is only one English speaking channel, CNN, which seems to be on a continuous loop.

Rokxy, my parents new pup, didn't like the dish as I was walking over to where we were installing it, kept barking like mad at it, then running away as fast as she could. You'd be surprised at how fast a 6 month old pup can run! Here she is looking at some cows in a nearby field hoping they will come over and play with her... she has a lot to learn. Check out the blue sky!

Today the weather was much the same, we went off to Marciac to see the village and had a Ferrari Dino follow us in... then slightly spookily in the Tabac (newspaper shop for those who don't know) on the front cover of Auto Plus was the new Ferrari Dino. The day ended with taking a trip to the docs as my Grandad is now ill, he's got bronchitis. Hopefully he'll make a full recovery before he flys back later next week. For me, I fly back to Blighty tomorrow, where I see from the weather forecast it is raining... better than fog I guess.

Joyeux Noël

2006-12-23T21:57:00.000+01:00

So why is the festive title in French with a picture of Tintin? Well I'm in France this Christmas to celebrate along with my folks as this is where they now live. I've been here for several days now and I've not seen the sun. This is not due to me getting totally trashed on the local wine, but, as like back home it's really foggy!
The trip started a few mornings ago when I went to pick up my Grandfather at 3am, ready to catch the 7:05 flight... this is something I would not recommend as it means you arrive in France an hour and a bit later with the tiredness that you've just flown back from the West coast of America. The fog on the way up was really bad, sometimes driving at only 30mph on the A3. You'd still get the odd idiot travelling past you at 60-80mph where the visibility is really crap.
We flew from Gatwick to Bordeaux, fog bound airport to fog bound airport... If it wasn't for driving on the wrong side of the road and seeing my folks again I'd say we were still in England.
Hopefully tomorrow the sun will come out, maybe the day after, who knows. More importantly I hope my Mum gets better as she's bit ill for many days now.
That's the last few days, the last few months have been a slight roller coaster of a ride for me, so here goes...
Late in August I started working for a company based in Havant called Wartsila Propulsion. This part of the company design and manufacture ships seals and bearings, Wartsila as a whole are a global company in the ship design and manufacturing business. My role here is to draw round things all day... which beats the square things that I used to draw. Okay both of those tasks are a little more complicated than that, honest.
I'm now living back down in Old Portsmouth. I'm sharing a nice 2 bed flat with my mate Simon whom I've know from school. The rooms are huge, which I need as I have a lot of crap... well I thought I did, until Simon moved all his stuff into his room, omg he has some crap. It's got a massive lounge with parquet flooring, which may sound flash, but is bloody slippery especially if you are trying to get up off the sofa from a lying position when you need bed after night on the piss... or if you are Sarah, it is somewhere that you can pass out on. The best bit is that it has two off road parking spaces and a garage... which naturally is full of boxes. Okay that's not the best bit, the best bit is the walking distance to Gunwharf, Guildhall Walk and the abundance of local pubs in the area. The most local pub is The Pembroke, which you can just see from the lounge. The pints in there are reasonably priced and the bar staff on a Saturday night are very easy on the eye! Must go back there asap...
Ah, nearly forgot, my good friend Navid, whom I've know since I was 11 (how long ago!), married Shara. The wedding was on a Tuesday, which you might think is odd, but as they had only met 10 months beforehand getting a weekend wedding was practically impossible. A Tuesday wedding, worked really well and it meant a day or two off work... Weddings on the other hand they make people disappear... where is Nav, has anyone seen him since the wedding? Also, Sally, whom I've known even longer got married to Andrew. Strangely in both sets of official photos you cannot see me in any of them apart from the group shots...

Nearly 12 months ago, my freinds Darren and Jodie went on a round the world holiday. Their time is almost up as they are back in the country on the 27th. I cannot really believe it's been a year since they went! Where has the year gone, what have I done it a year? I must do more next year...

On a note about the previous post, I've still not got any money back from the insuranc company regarding my lost camera... Their initial reason for not paying up was because I didn't get a police report, this is something that the French Police do not give out for lost items. They then wanted the phone number of the Police station so they can phone them up and ask them themselves... which I did, ages ago and I've not seen the all important cheque in the post. Something to add to the 'to do' list for the New Year...

Ps (can you put a postscript on a blog entry?) While looking at the webstats for this site a few places keep coming up a lot. Sunnyvale, California... who there keeps looking at this blog, seriously it's not that interesting?!? Plus there is someone in Manchester, but I might know who that is... :) (edit: nope it's not who I thought it was...)

Balls... and the Pyrénées

2006-08-17T23:17:00.000+01:00

Today was the day that we set off to check out the mountains to the south in preperation for the skiing over the winter. La Mongie is situated in the Haute-Bigorre area of the Hautes-Pyrénée. The day started off bright and warm, the pup was in the middle of a hyperactive run around when I put my Canon Ixus 700 camera on top of the car to go and play with the pup... Once everyone was ready we got in and drove off... 20 minutes later it suddenly dawns on me that I've left my camera on the roof. We did stop to check to see if it was there but there was no hope :( We then headed back just to make sure, but to each side of the road where my folks live is a ditch, full of grasses. We stopped at the likely places, bends etc, but it is nowhere to be found. Balls!

So with me a little pissed off we then headed back to the mountains. It's about 50 miles to get to La Mongie. As you start to go up into the mountains out of the valleys the roads start to get steep, but there are still cyclists that think that cycling to the top is a good idea... The resort is not at the top of the mountain, which is a good thing as when we did get there it was very very cold due to the wind, so I'm not sure how much fun that will be in the winter time.
This photo is several pictures stitched together, with the main resort just behind the green hill in the centre of the picture (not the big rock). The photo does not do it justice as to how steep the slopes are and how many crevices there are running down the hills. This resort looks like more of a challenge after the serveral years of skiing at the resorts of Lake Tahoe, which seems quite flat in comparrison.
Looking the other way at the top gives you this impressive view, which will be even more so when covered in snow. Not long now...

Leaving on a jet plane...

2006-08-15T22:17:00.000+01:00

So tomorrow I need to be up and out the door for 5:10am, to catch my 7:00am flight to Bordeaux from Southampton. It's gone 10:00pm now, so I'm going to get a lot of sleep. I'm off to the South of France to see my folks and help them out a bit with their new place. I'll be ripping out a bathroom an putting a new one in... something I shall be doing down my Uncles house once the builders have been in... below is the stage that we are at so far...

This was how the bathroom looked... and this is it with just the toilet left in place. The outer walls need to have a second wall put inside of them and the floor need relaying. Once this is done, the new bathroom can get put into place.

As for the rear bedroom, this is how that looks right now...

The ceiling had to come down as it was falling down a little... this was not your plasterboard type ceiling, but the old school stuff with strips of wood in it. Then it was decided that the wall covering needed to come off too... These two jobs created so much mess at times it was impossible to see across the room. Still once the plastering has been done it'll look like a brand new room.

If Blogger hadn't have been playing up then this would have been posted last night... so I'm now in France. It's been foggy, hot, and raining today... so not too unlike England. It's now midnight here, 11pm back home, but it's time for bed as tomorrow we take a trip to see some of the local ski resorts, ready for the winter :)

News....

2006-08-05T08:47:00.000+01:00

(a banner made by my cousin Monique)
Just a short note to say that I have been offered a job for one of the interviews I went for. I'll wait until the letters and stuff come through until I give more details, but lets just say that I'll mainly be designing round things... which is a change from the box shaped items I've been involved with in the past. So if Nav does not turn up tonight for his stag do (dont ask why he might not), then we can all celebrate the job. 5 hours until the drinking commences...

Top Gear is back on... and on a PC near you!

2006-07-18T00:15:00.000+01:00

So after five weeks away due to the World Cup, Top Gear is back on TV, and also on a PC near you. Yep, the good old BBC have added something quite cool to their website. Click here and it'll take you to the site. Sorry Darren, but I think that you have to be in the UK to see it. The quality is not great, but if you're in your lunch hour with not a lot to do, it should be enough.

Update...

2006-07-08T13:58:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while since I updated this here blog... What have I been up to? Moving out of the house down town for starters, the owner decided to sell the house, which is a shame as it was in a great location. I've also left my job at Bigneat. Further more, along with My Dad and Brother Matt, been for a really long drive down to the Pyrenees to take all my parents household stuff to their new house. They are now expats. Then there was the long journey back, 1180 miles later (round trip) the trip was over and I was knackered!
So now what am I up to? Trying to get another job is the first thing on my list. I've had one interview, but the role was far too junior for me. Others are on the horizon, so its fingers crossed time. In the mean time I'm steadily moving where I'm living, and in time will be moving back down town... At the moment, I'm at my uncles house and he has a pool, which I'm off for a dip in as once again it's hot, which is odd as this is England.

Nav in broken cup shocker!!!

2006-05-31T22:32:00.000+01:00

Nav broke my cup tonight... and then tried to hide it in the bin before I saw it... he's now planning on leaving the county and going to L.A. until he can get over the guilt.

Well the leaving the county thing is for his work... two weeks in L.A., how cool is that, even more so as he can take the Misses. And the hiding the cup thing was more, 'oh, I've broken a cup'.

More exciting news as it comes in...

Best Man...

2006-05-01T12:00:00.000+01:00

Yep... I'm now going to be one of them... A task that completely scares the shit out of me! Well, my friend James managed 49 seconds worth of best mans speech for Steve and Louise's wedding...

So, I'm best man to Matt and Lou. I used to work with Matt at my current company and we used to go to the same school. I have about a year to sort stuff out (forget about things), then the final few weeks to make sure things run smoothly (panic) and then the speech (hide somewhere). I cannot wait... I'll keep you posted as to how things go.

30 Zone

2006-04-26T23:24:00.000+01:00

So the other weekend I turned 30. I spent the time over in Northen France with My friend Caroline and my folks who've moved to France but were visiting Ray and Trish. We stayed at their lovely farmhouse B&B, or Chambre et Table d’Hôtes as it is in French. Check out their place here La Guetterie. It was a very nice and relaxing break, even if the weather was a bit rubbish. It was nice to see the folks again as I'd not seen them for a few months. Jayjay the dog was looking a little older and still just as messy. As with all trips to France you have to get beer... and it was quite amazing at how much you can get in an MR2 including two smallish suitcases and two laptops...
Last weekend my friends and I went out drinking in Gunwharf and I think the getting drunk part was a success as you can see from the photos to the right. Turning 30 hasn't changed me much, I thought I'd get up and change my life in a few ways but as of yet I've done nothing... Which makes me think of my friends and I and what we've done by 30... So here goes with a short list - Many are married, or are about to be married, some have had a child, some even two! (Congratulations John and Angie!). One is divorced, two are 4 months into their year long round the world trip. We've all got beer bellies , apart from one who must have a tape worm or something. Some have been made redundant in the past, one is still a student! (PhD student mind you!) We're all turning into grumpy old men/women, moaning about most things and wondering if the ever expanding waistline is a good thing and how to stop it without doing much. Thankfully, all, apart from the two travelling, are employed and have somewhere to live... Time seems to have started catching up on us and the years ahead are going to go past so fast I think it's time to finally do something more interesting for myself... 'watch this space' as they say, I just have to get off my arse and do something.

Update... Finally

2006-04-09T17:42:00.000+01:00

So then, since my last post what have I been up to..? Just a bit really!

Lake Tahoe 2006 - I had to take the last two days off from skiing as on a fantastic powder day I did my ankle in. The night before Jed and I met a local lass and her mate, whom we went skiing with the next day. We skied at Homewood, a resort that I've not skied before... The overnight snow made skiing fun/difficult as in places, it was up to waist deep! So on one run my right ski stopped dead and I carried on skiing on the other ski for a bit then wiped out in style. Skiing the rest of the day was okay, until I took my boot off and my ankle didn't work properly. Nothing damaged, just hurt a lot... Spent my days off hanging out with the local lass. On the final Sat we had a boys night out and I drank so much JD and coke that I don't remember walking home, and thankfully woke up in the right house, but still fully clothed. We then had a night in San Francisco, this was fun, everyone spent a small fortune on clothes and gifts. I nearly t-boned a taxi on the way to the airport when I ran a red light... it was close! (sorry Jamie and Jed!) The flight back was great, we flew Upper Class on Virgin Atlantic, thanks to Debs. Lay flat beds and decent food, it was great!

Warsaw - I was back in the UK for no more than 40ish hours and I was on a plane again to Warsaw, for my friend James stag weekend... I was so jet lagged I went straight to bed when I got there. I got up for dinner, then by midnight we were in the bar drinking and went clubbing with some girls from the UK that were staying in the same hotel... many drinks and vodka chasers meant that some of us got back to the hotel by 5am... Up for breakfast, then back to sleep for me... The second night was more clubbing and getting in late... When I finally returned to work, it was a little difficult to get back in the swing of things!

So since then I've mainly been working and I've always had some event to got to on the weekends... Steve's birthday was fun, they played some great old school songs so dancing like a mad loon was the order of the night. The night was made more entertaining due to James getting thrown out of the club we were in. Then there was Navid and Sharas engagement house party in Bournemouth, where there was much drinking. Then there was the UK side of James Stag Do, then putting up fence panels with my friend Matt and more just going out due to birthdays and it being a Saturday night...

James and Sarah's wedding - Friday 7th April.
It was a fantastic day, James was very nervous to say the least... and Sarah looked lovely in her wedding dress. The ceremony was great, the meal was perfect, the evening do was great fun. It all flew past and wrapped up around 1am, 11 hours after the drinks started flowing... I thought I'd wake up with much more of a hangover than I did, but it was just a dull pain, which was good, but not great for driving...

So Darren and Jodie missed out on all the above due to having their year out travelling the world - as seen here. Before the wedding Darren recorded a little video clip for James and Sarah as they were in Kuala Lumpur... I noticed something strange... Darren bearing a slight resemblance to Will Young, see what you think. Darrens the one on the left, no right...

Well that's about it I think... I've added some new bits to the right hand side, photos! Click on the link, then once the show has loaded, click on the picture to move onto the next...

Lake Tahoe 2006

2006-03-03T00:00:00.000+01:00

We’ve had it all, great sun, rain, and now lots and lots of snow…

The house we rented in Tahoe City is great, just what we wanted and all within walking distance of the nightlife*. Here’s an early morning view from the rear yard.

The first few days out here were drenched in sun. Northstar the first day and Alpine Meadows the second, then back to Northstar for a few days. All were great days out on the slopes.

The weather changed at the beginning of the week, a massive storm front came up from the south and made Monday a day off due to rain. Tuesday however was a different story. It started snowing around 3am and didn’t stop all day. It was a powder day and everyone had a fantastic time at Northstar.

Wednesday we went to Squaw Valley. After the snow we received down at lake level we were a little disappointed with the amount at Squaw. The wind was high, but the sun was out. The skiers among us went down went down KT22, which is the old Olympic run from 1966. The start of the run is very steep and a little worrying, but we all made it down safely, if a little slowly.

On another run I smacked my left knee on my right boot twice within around three turns. A day later my knee still hurts like hell so I took today off. Snow started falling again overnight making driving up to Alpine Meadows to drop the others off a little slow and hazardous. On the 20 minute drive there were two vehicles that had gone off the road. The snow report says there is going to be 10-20” of snow at lake level by the end of Friday… which should be fun on the mountains tomorrow.

This weekend is the start of the North Lake Tahoe Snow Festival. We’re to expect some fun in the resorts and in Tahoe City at night. Expect some drinking and hangovers in the mornings. Jamie started early last night and decided to walk into someone else’s house… his shoes are still there as he was reluctantly dragged out by Jed as he was convinced it was our house… it wasn’t.

*American après ski is nothing compared to Europe, and mainly only takes place on the weekends…

Ouch!

2006-01-26T14:53:00.000+01:00

So then, a skier I am. I started off many many years ago skiing with the school. After Uni, my friend Richard thought that snow boarding would be better. I gave it a go for several years but to me there was just something not right about it. So a few years ago in Lake Tahoe I decided to give skiing a try again. I'm now back to the two planks of wood instead of the ironing board…
This weekend I spent a small fortune on something that I should have brought a year ago. I bought some ski boots… and they weren't cheap… but wow are they comfortable! First of all I tried the local ski shop, Filarinskis. I know I was pushing my luck with it being a Saturday morning, but they really should get some sort of list going. I got bored of the lack of organisation and drove to Snow & Rock, the competition just a few miles away. Here there was a queue, but they had a list and a pager to make things run smoothly. Trying on boots is fun, in a womans eyes, but this is just a pain in the arse. Comfort and fit is what you are after, so those boots that you liked the look of in the catalogue might not fit very well at all, which they didn't. Anyway, an hour and a half later I have some boots that are soooo comfortable, that have had the foam liner heated so my feet fit nice and snugly. Up until that moment I thought all ski boots were just an instrument of torture.

So this is what they look like… bare in mind that most of the time the boot is covered in snow and has the ski trousers covering the top part of them… still they'll look flash at the bar :)

A Leap Second...?

2005-12-26T22:29:00.000+01:00

Yep, 2006 is 1 second further away than everyone thinks. The leap second is "... used to synchronize precise atomic clocks with the more variable rotation of the Earth" So there you go, make sure you set your watches correctly...

Click here to read more...

Christmas Dinner

2005-12-26T15:25:00.000+01:00

So, the task was to cook a Christmas dinner for seven... a roast dinner for my new house mates and friends. I didn't let on that this was actually the first roast I've ever cooked, I just thought I'd give it a try.
All went well in the near 100°C kitchen, cooking two chickens to feed the masses. This was until Sarah pointed out that I'd not started to get the roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudds ready... Thank you Sarah for pointing that out. From then on Sarah helped as we tried to work the combination in the oven, which was just that little bit too small...
All in all the food turned out great. The chickens turned out just fine and even the parsnips were nice once Simon remembered they weren't on the table after most people had finshed eating.

How Motorways Work

2005-12-14T23:45:00.000+01:00

Check it out, some people might learn a thing or two... best bit, The Middle Laner, wish I had a camera for the day there was a Police car sitting in the middle lane of a deserted motorway...

M

Bonus Print - Where's the bonus?

2005-11-24T21:05:00.000+01:00

So you go and take a nice series of pictures of a lake, 11 in total. You stitch them together and you get a picture like the one at the top of this blog. Getting this printed this out, large format was always my aim. Until recently the only non bloody expensive way was to get a specialist printers to print it. The trouble with this was that they only guarantee the print for 3 years before it will start to fade...

So onto my gripe with Bonus Print. I sent of my 12 Meg file wanting to get it printed out at 36" long by 8.5" using their 36"x24" print option. Knowing that they use an Epson large format printer and Kodak paper I thought everything would have been fine... They weren't, check out the first picture, this is the original, the second it what Bonus Print produced for me, notice the yellow. There is none in the digital picture at all.

I phoned them and they agreed to reprint it. I received the reprint this week. Admittedly most of the yellowing was not there, but there was a much more fundamental problem... there were vertical stripes, the type you see when a cartridge is running out or one where the one of the holes is blocked. So I rang them up again to ask them if they had a Quality Control person, the reply was yes, so I replied 'Sack them'. He agreed, as he knew what my problem was as the discovered the problem after many prints had been posted. Their explanation was that the printer had been set to 360dpi which produces stripes... wtf? Anyway, this company in Germany it the only other 36"x24" prints that I can find on Google, so off it goes to there, lets hope they know how to use an inkjet printer - how hard can it be?

One day I'll get my picture and frame that I've made myself up on the wall...

Grumble over... Just don't use Bonus Print...

Ninja...

2005-10-28T17:38:00.000+01:00

Here, try this, made me laugh... click on the link or the pic so you can see the picture better and follow the text... How did someone find this out? Why didn't I know about this when I was younger and could appreciate it more? Where could I use this stealth today? How come you look so cool with a t-shirt on your head? (not that I've tried it...)

Credit - Vern Reid

Halloween

2005-10-26T17:59:00.000+01:00

So then, it's nearly that time of year where he Yanks celebrate Halloween in a big way... When I suggested to my friends that we should dress up and go out on the piss, the comments were along the lines of "NO, it's only a bloody American holiday thing..." and so on. But wait James, check this out click me it's not something that America came up with at all... anyway, the point in the original question to my friends was, lets go drinking, this time I'll be on time :) To add to the lure of a night out drinking is the fact that there will be numerous (lots and lots) of women dressed up as Devils in short skirts etc... Last year around 15-20 ran from one pub to the other down Guildhall walk... eye candy for some... but not others ;)

I did come across the following pic and thought it would be a bad idea/bad taste if someone did decided to dress up this way... the instructions on party poppers state 'point away from face', clearly this woman cannot read...

Urban Dictionary... Portsmouth

2005-10-21T23:05:00.000+01:00

If you've never heard of the joy of Urban Dictionary then click the title to find out. Here you can type in your own words, or define ones that you feel should be in there... Like if you are a Southampton supporter, you'd write about your football arch rivals, Portsmouth... and leave lots of nice comments... but wait, check out the link for Southampton. You can even vote for each comment that has been left.

Portsmouth
Southampton

Graffiti

2005-09-15T13:17:00.000+01:00

After being inspired by GTA, where you can tag walls etc... I went out and created some of my own...what do you think? Who says computer games influence us...?

Okay so it wasn't me... but try www.letterjames.com, it's quite clever!

Londons Fittest Firefighter Event

2005-09-04T22:01:00.000+01:00

Location - Covent Garden
Temp - 30+
Smog - loads of it, it's London...
My brother Matt took part in the Londons Fittest Firefighter Event against 35 other heat winners. The event is something I could never do, just read on to see what they had to do...
1. Row 500m
2. 30 Sit ups
3. 30 Step ups with weights
4. 10, 50kg deadlifts
5. Put full fire gear on
6. Climb a ladder, slide down pole
7. Put full breathing apparatus on
8. Drag 2 lengths of hose through fire house
9. Attach hose to line
10. Climb 5 flights of stairs and pull hose upto top then run down stairs again.
11. Carry 2x 25kg drums 10m 4 times
12. Enter Crawling Gallery, rescue casualty
13. Return BA set
14. Carry 30kg casualty across the finish line...

Out of the 35 other competitors Matt came in 5th! Check out the photos to see just how hard it was... by the way, all this took just 10 mins 3 seconds!

(more photos here)

Virtual Lake Tahoe

2005-08-28T01:36:00.000+01:00

Check it out, virtual Lake Tahoe of the following images...

(you may have to allow an activex control, this is fine as it's only a quicktime plugin)

Where in the world...

2005-08-27T22:57:00.000+01:00

No not PC World, but where in the world visitors to my website come from! Check it out...

M

Intelligent Design vs Evolution vs Flying Spaghetti Monster

2005-08-04T22:12:00.000+01:00

So you may have read in the news about those stupid Americans trying to teach people that it is in fact an Adam and Eve world, and not that we came out of the sea... There is now another theroy which includes global warming... Flying Spaghetti Monster. Check out the site by clicking on the picture and make up your own mind :) I've brought the t-shirt!