Short yet undeniably sweet.

Apologies for the lack of updating. Been crazily busy. Reading dissertations, finding kick ass places to go mountain biking and, oh yeah, getting ready for the exam type things I have coming up.

I promise when I have a spare bit of time I’ll post properly.

Until then, if you have ever, like me, been sitting in a park when all of a sudden a squirrel comes running right up to you, climbs up your leg and sits on your lap. Then proceeds to take crisps from the bag you were eating and scoff them right there in front of you. While this is happening a tourist walks past and starts taking photos and giving you commands in some language you don’t understand until finally the blank expression on your face gets through to him and he walks away. If this, like me, has happened to you, you have probably wondered what the cockpit of Concord looks like.

Sliding.

Used to be so easy as a kid. You just run real fast, then jump and put your feet a bit in front of you.
It was easy, you could do it on ice, lino, wet leaves, wet lino, grass, mud, muddy lino and wet muddy ice. Sliding used to be cool , it used to be fun, it used to make me smile.

Then I got to university. Now when I think of sliding, I think of some stupid weir in some dusty country that I’ve just engineered and wonder if my calculations are right.
Do I grin when I do this? No.
Can I put on my ‘light up’ LA Gear, and go run in the park, in the rain. . . in shorts!!!? No.
Do I wanna go to the pub, forget about some stupid flimsy – ooops my weir has been washed away – maths problem?? Yes.

However, the call of the wild – and by this I mean the dull throb at the back of my head that tells me to keep trying – will not allow me.
Alas, I shall engineer this weir, and be a better person for it.


Crackheads, everybody hates them. And this is why.



Living in a democracy is brilliant. It allows free speech, freedom for all and a platform on which debate leads to decisions. America, home of democracy; protector, enforcer and sometimes induced of democracy; would surly hold its head up and proclaim in loud clear voice that as far as democracy goes, America has it nailed. And you know what, as far as websites like this one go, I can’t really complain too much. This is democracy at its finest, its most pure, its most delightful extreme.


Turning our attention to something a little more serious for a moment. The War. I don’t mean the Coke war here, taste tests have already ruled that one out. I’m talking about the pre-emptive war that we are currently holding against Iraq. ( hey peeps, it’s a good job India and Pakistan haven’t gotten wind of this pre-emptive strike thing or we could have real problems on our hands!)
The war is not smart reporters stood in front of buildings wearing clean pressed shirts. It is not a ‘body count’, it is war, people going out of their way to kill each other. I’m not getting all hippy here but when a war changes from soldiers shooting at each other to civilians becoming targets then my back starts to get up.
This is neither the time nor the place for me to get on my high horse about war, but I do think it is necessary once in a while to remind ourselves what is happening over there. Dead people lying in streets, children injured, pools of blood and fire. This is war. I’m not holding judgement on this war, I’m holding judgement on all wars. We should be better than this.

Warm enough to boil a monkeys bum your honour.

I’m almost entirely sure that the hotter it gets, the slower time passes. Hot days just seem to last forever, some days it’s because you are just chilling out in a park with friends, and others, like today, it is because you are in a little room at the top of a house and it is all but impossible to cool down. Either way, I like it.


I had a very humbling moment today when I realised that my pc is now so old, it wont even run some screensavers. This is – I hate to admit – a little embarrassing. However I bought a trifle for dinner today and failed to eat it all in one sitting, so the level of shame in my life is at an all time high!!

Sometimes you find something, and you really feel like you should understand it. That you should get the joke and be ‘in’ with the crowd. Yet, I read this, and just felt like I was on the outside looking in. This is probably a good thing.

Revision is upon us. Friends cease to talk, washing ceases to be washed. Stress levels rise, coffee is brewed and weekends become a blur of tension release, late mornings and constant evaluation of how much you know compared to how much you should know.
6 weeks until my life starts, 6 weeks until I have to grow up and become responsible, 6 weeks until my parents stop buying me food for fear I will starve to death and start charging me for the food I eat.


So soon I have to decide how I’m going to earn my way in the world. Will I get an office job, will I be ‘head python catcher’ for a game park or . . . hope upon hope. . . will I land a job like this.

A quartet of errors.

So there we were, setting off once again on our early morning cycle. ( yeah yeah, I know, I seem to go over the same stories again and again!!)
Predictably, I got a puncture. We stopped and fixed the puncture.
15 meters down the road. Ron gets a puncture. We assume these happened at the same time and while I was fixing mine, his tyre had chance to deflate.
Then, not 5km further on and lo and behold, we have puncture number three.
Punctures thrice. 3 is the number of punctures. 2 is not enough and 4 is just plain wrong.

So we figure we have blatantly had our run of bad luck for the day. We keep on going and get to a lovely little pub. There are hump back bridges and a lock, it’s all very quaint. Then, and would you believe it. Puncture number 4 looms its ugly head. We have only gone 6 miles, and 4 punctures; it’s just plain crazy.

After fixing number 4, and subsequently running out of puncture repair patches, we decide to head home for fear of having to push. AGAIN!

Stopped off at Halfords on the way home to check out some Kevlar reinforced tyres, they didn’t have any in but I managed to find some on the net, so hopefully these melancholy days of fixing bikes by the side of canals will be behind me.


I don’t know why but I’ve noticed that in hot weather my hair goes even more curly than normal. This causes a great deal of anxiety in me as I’m not particularity fond of my curls as it is. Although they have often been described as ‘endearing’ and ‘cute’ I don’t believe either of these. Yeah yeah, some people pay a lot of money for curls yadda yadda, great, good for them, tell you what, lets swap and then we’ll all be happy.
Man, if only there was some way I could design my own hair, that would rule.


I leave you with this article. It’s getting late and my bullshit detector went off so I haven’t read it all yet, however, from the bit I did catch, it sounds like another unhelpful article on a serious issue which uses minimum – and bad! – referencing to convey a wholly inaccurate message.

Then again, I haven’t read it yet, so I’m as bad as the author for jumping to conclusions without doing my research!

Too Easily Satisfied.

Hey everyone, you have to go and check out Coqui, she had the grace to link to this site so I thought I’d repay the favour. Quality photographs and a mighty fine read if I do say so myself.

A good book, a bad car and a common myth.

I wanted to post a dark and depressing blog today. I’ve been reading for the past week one of the best books I’ve ever had the pleasure of finding. It’s called Another Day In Paradise and is a straightforward account of aid work from the people that have done it. Compelling, sometimes disturbing reading.

When I haven’t been reading that I’ve been researching war, civil war, death, destruction and gloom.

However, I’m not going to go on about it for two posts in a row cause not only will you get bored, I’ll depress myself. So instead we should all play this game. It’s so simply addictive that you have to love it.

Remember the post about modding cars, remember how I said you should start with a good car. Well I could have eaten my words today when I witnessed the rolling atrocity that was a ‘beefed up’ TVR Tuscan Speed 6.
I stared. I had to. It was compelling. What was he thinking? WHY would you spend all that money and then just ruin it like that. I was staring so hard that when he pulled away from the lights he gave me a nod. Somewhere, a tear was shed.

Sometimes you read something and just refuse to believe its true. I mean, I don’t mind them not liking the song but saying these. . . things. . .about it is just rude. Although I don’t agree with a lot of the list so I suppose we are probably approaching it from different angles.

I love this though.

I’ve got to go brave the cold now as I’m at the library, the sun went in hours ago and I’m only wearing a t shirt!!!

It's not all about cheap goods.

It’s funny how one minute you can be broadening your horizons, learning new things and gaining a new perspective on how the future might be. Then the next you’re just back to staring at a pc screen and wondering where the morning went.

This kind of hypnotic lull often reminds me of another form of mind-bending phenomena.
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Hypnotism.
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Never done it myself but I saw it at a pub once and it looks kinda freaky.

Are Nigerians secretly hypnotising themselves to search for more interesting ways to earn money? Have they finally broken free of the shackles of the West, or have they just been smoking too much opium?


I was speaking to a lecturer today about how easy we find it in the West to exploit Africa. Every day we make decisions in our lives which have a detrimental effect on people in another country. Most of the time we even know that there are alternatives but we choose not to follow them. Fair Trade products are available in most large supermarkets and yet they make up only a small percentage of sales. People see that they are Fair Trade, and just don’t bother. We have become so comfortable that we are almost blasé about other people. They are not around us, we can not see the suffering, they are not dieing on our doorstep and we do not have to watch them bury their babies. We spend money on fancy gadgets when that same money could help inoculate children against disease, we buy ‘luxury’ items while others go through a day with only a handful of rice.
Everyone does it, regardless of how much you may think you don’t. Think about all the money you have spent in the last month on ‘stuff’ that you don’t really need. Ever thought about giving that money to charity instead??
I’m not saying you are a bad person, just that we have, as a society, managed to shut out the parts of the world we don’t like the look of. We can happily ignore the plight of millions because we are OK. It’s not big, it’s not clever. It just is.
America has spent so much money fighting this war that they could have gone a long way towards helping out our fellow Africans. No, money is not the answer to Africa’s problems, but it would help.
People are the problem, Full Stop. And this really got me thinking.

Fllthunkture repair kit.

Plunk plunk fizz.

What you looking’ at. . . . .whuboff!!

Fllthunk fllthunk fllthunk.

All the above are the sounds of failure. However, only that last is the sound of a puncture. A puncture on the rear wheel of my mountain bike. A puncture on the rear wheel of my mountain bike when I’m 5 miles away from home.

It was early, half seven to be precise. We set out on our thrice weekly ‘before work’ cycle. We got to where we usually do and decided to go further as we were making good time. About another half mile down the canal and the muffled fllthunk of a slowly deflating tyre started getting louder. Minutes later, I was facing whence I came and pushing.

Moral of the story; pushing your luck, inevitably leads, to just pushing.

What to believe Wardy, what to believe??

The parting words as I left my housemates room. He is trying to land a sweet job in South Asia but just found a web site basically saying that the people he was going to work for are slave drivers and are only out to rip you off.

So this got me thinking, on what do we base which information we believe.

As we trundle through life we are always being challenged on what is, and what is not, true. Even great minds get it wrong, and seeing as it is the great thinkers that set the scene for the rest of us, it leaves us in a bit of a quandary.
The television tells us things and most people automatically believe what is said because it is seen as an ‘honest’ form of media. ( maybe not Channel 5 though eh)
The internet is full of cooks and crazies and newspapers can be little better.

It would easy to go though life, thanks to the internet, believing that CS Lewis was selling our souls and that when we vaccinate our kids they are injected with micro micro chips.
( I really wish I was making this stuff up sometimes! )

Well maybe not ‘easy’ to believe but I’m sure someone out there would buy this stuff in a second. I mean, I’ve seen Trisha, and if that is the general level of things to come then soon the whole of the country will believe that Dale Winton is more annoying than Mick Hucknall. Please people, we’re talking Mick Hucknall here, not Carol who does the weather on BBC’s Breakfast.
Carol, I can handle it if it’s going to rain, you don’t have to tell me this through side splitting laughter and blatantly acted jolliness.

So what should we believe? Well as a general rule I tend to believe anything that is said to me while I’m drunk, this is because these things are so obviously plausible. Such statements as “Wow Wardy, you’re a really good dancer.” And “I think she likes you.”
I believe most of the things I hear in lectures. Such as “The horse I rode to work on was called Sexy.” ( again, I wish I was making this up! )
And not much of what I see on telly. “Residents claim that it is bad road design, and not people driving too fast and with too little skill while eating or talking on the phone, that is causing accidents.”

These rules have got me this far. Here’s hoping they get me a little farther.

Then again, I am sucker for The Onion.

Chitty Chitty Lame Ass.

I was walking through town today on a trek around the charity shops when something caught my eye, there was a car at the traffic lights, stationary, yet the hub caps were still spinning!!

Now you would think this would look sooo cool I would run over and maybe try licking them. However, the car was some dirty old red polo and the .. . . ahem “bling bling rims” only highlighted how normal the car was. It just didn’t look cool. It was the Jimmy Saville of cars. Old, battered, but still trying to be flash.

I just laughed. Stared some more. Then laughed again.

Truly the guy driving didn’t know a thing about cool, and truly, I am someone who obviously does!!!

The thing about car modding, and it might be me here who just doesn’t get it, is that almost all modded cars look crap. All you have to do is flick through a copy of Max Power to see a whole range of crappy looking cars. They are normal, average looking cars, somehow made to look worse. If you want to mod a car, you should start with a freakin ace car, and then do it up. That way you get the reaction of “what a freaking ace car, and what freaking ace mods!” and not the reaction of “what an average car, and what a generic spoiler”.

Yanks can modify cars, no two ways about it. They are good at this. I think its because they have more imagination. You wouldn’t hear a yank going “well, blow me Barry, Terry just got a Nova, why don’t I buy a 206 and buy a bigger and more generic spoiler than him.”

When yanks modify cars they look like this and this.

When brits try and do it they end up looking like this, and lets not forget this.

However, when the brits get it right, and when it’s some real engineer doing the work and not some dehydrated dope fiend, the results are worth the wait.

But the king, and I do not use this term lightly, The KING I say, of modding cars has got to be this hero of humanity. This guy knows a thing or two about being an individual. Just look at the dashboard. This guy rules, if I met him I would shake his hand and get a photo of me and him, stood in front of the car, shaking hands. . . and smiling.

The ironic thing about modifying cars, is that it all started because people didn’t want to drive around in a car that looked like everyone else’s. But now, they all get the same mods done. It’s like wearing a Kappa tracksuit ten years ago to stand out.

And finally peeps, let it go with the spoilers, they aren’t even the same colour as your car and I can see where you bolted it to your boot. Honestly . . .just let it go.

So please people, stop trying to make you cars look cool and just buy a decent car in the first place. There is only one car in the whole of my trip into uni that I have any respect for and it’s a Mustang. Someone went to the trouble to get a proper car in the first place, and then has obviously spent money making it super sweet. So congratulations to you, and shame on everyone else.

Oh, and for all the trouble makers out there that want to know what kind of car I have. It's Here.

The build, the facts, and the tragic ending.

Avoid war zones, this was the priceless piece of information given to me today by a lecturer. I could have probably worked that one out on my own, given time, but he just jumped right in there and spoiled the surprise for me.

The space bar on my keyboard is in the process of breaking so now you have to hit it harder than usual to get it to work. Doesn’t sound that annoying but I’m hoping any of you that have used a keyboard for more than 20 minutes at a time will sympathise with me.

I don’t really have anything to share with you today – as apposed to every other day where I have radical insights into the problems of both the individual and society as a whole – but I shall leave you with this. . .

. . . I have taken a lot of grief in my time for not answering my mobile. Yes, sometimes I just cant be bothered to answer my phone, when I’m doing something else for instance. Say I’m, heaven forbid, in the middle of something and my phone rings, my first reaction is not “Golly gosh, how am I going to safely replace this radioactive isotope back in the chamber before voice mail kicks in and I am perceived as rude!!!!”
Also say, good lord, that I am having a conversation with someone - face to face!!!! - and my phone rings, I will not instantly ignore the person I’m talking to and answer my phone.

I like my phone, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I see it more as a tool than an overlord whose every wish I must obey. You wouldn’t expect me to let my dinner go cold so I could talk to you, nor would you expect that you could butt into any conversation, ruin any television or instantly make me drop everything I am doing at a given time and talk to you. But somehow, because someone is calling you, that is exactly what we are supposed to do.

So where am I going with this, well, while people say I’m annoying for not answering my phone, if I did, I would be equally as annoying. The facts are right here.



That’s all for today folks. I’mgoingtogoandfixmykeyboard.
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Hmmmm, when I was writing that joke I kinda forgot the funny.

Derren Brown, eat your heart out.

Of all the stuff I have read on the internet, this has to be one of the coolest. I’ve linked to this before but I went back and read it properly and it rules.

The language is amazing, its like reading a really good book, but these guys were for real.

By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known.

When an order is issued by the Communist State, and is not obeyed, a sickness will be discovered to ensue. Where obedience fails, the masses suffer.

To be obeyed, one must be believed. If one is sufficiently believed, one will unquestioningly be obeyed.

Degradation and conquest are companions.

And this is only a handful that I picked out from scanning through. These guys knew what they wanted, and they knew how to get it.
It’s just that their methods were somewhat. . . unorthodox.

The two things about finding crap on the internet.

Found this which I thought was quite cool and it got me thinking about the Two Things of Disaster Management. I reckon they are:

1 – Never say never.
2 – Don’t get complacent.

But then I thought these were a bit lame so I modified them to:

1 – Run away from loud noises.
2 – Know who to blame.

Pro Plus just aint what it used to be.

Yet another day where I’m meant to be working hard and yet, somehow, I just cant get in the mood. I’m sat under an open window, the sun streaming in, its warm, I’m surrounded by A4 paper, a highlighter, a dirty mug, assorted pens, screwed up paper, a sealed tuppaware box which contained tuna salad over two weeks ago and is yet to be washed, empty wine bottles and my newly restored mp3 player and headphones.
It’s not like I don’t realise that this work HAS to get done. It’s just that some days you can crack a good 10 hours out no problems and still want to go on, and others, like today, you cant.
This isn’t to say that I’ve had a fully unproductive day, I’ve done a lot of reading, its just the pulling together of the project that hasn’t been “full steam ahead”. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

An Easter Promise.

The most amazing thing happened on Sunday. I was sat at my computer with my broken mp3 player, surfing the internet and looking for a good deal on a new one, when I had a brainwave.
My pc would basically just not recognise the player after the “magnet” incident so I loaded up some trusty McAfee software and tried formatting it again.

It worked.

Pretty short sweet and lame ending to a story which I now feel I should have dragged out for a bit longer, but you know, lifes too short.

Suffice to say, it broke on the Friday and was fixed on the Sunday. The miracle of Easter lives on!

The Death of a Friend.

I killed a close friend today. I have not left the house without him in about a year, he goes with me everywhere, he keeps me amused, he makes me laugh, he makes me smile, sometimes he makes me angry but only when I ask him to. He keeps me company when I’m lonely and he entertains when I have company. Yet today I put him too near a strong magnet and my sodding mp3 player is now a worthless piece of junk.

www.advancedmp3players.co.uk here we come.

And this comes no more than 2 weeks after my ace family bought me some new earphones as well.

Grrr and such like.

Nearly Forgot

Or maybe I was meant to forget, ohhh dunno. Or maybe I do. . . can't remember.

Actually I can't remember anything past meeting that Russian at the Hi Tech Weapons Factory a few years ago. And I now have this scar over my spine and sometimes I just freak out and kick Democrats in the head for no reason.
Must be a lack of sleep.

Anyhoo.

More stuff to watch.

Thought I’d treat you to some more sweet animation.

This one is about the last meals of people about to be executed in Texas.

This one is an alternative look of the moments before the big bang.


Both very good in their own way. On the second I think you have to click “Watch this film” you cant link to the animation itself.

Today I walked home in the sunshine and avoided the piles of hailstone which had fallen only minutes before. Gotta love England.

And I totally broke about growing my hair. It was about the time that I took as long as I was in the shower to get my hair looking ok, and then glanced out the window and noticed the rain which made me think “oh no, this is gonna ruin my hairdo” that I realised enough was enough and the curls had to go. So now I’m just another short haired nobody, traipsing around Coventry in a ripped coat.

Enjoy the films, I’m going to get some sleep.

The Story of Cub: The Go-Man

The Story of Cub: The Go-Man

Stung by the system.

So a full 5 weeks after getting back from a field trip we are now told that we owe £50 for the privilege. Gee university, thanks a lot for that one. Man, surely it would be easier to pay a yearly wage for things like this to cover what the university has to pay for my education . . . .oh wait. . . .

I was finally allowed to make myself coffee in the Resources Room. Almost 3 years down the line and I have been granted this privilege, and only because it’s half term and all the sensible people have gone home. ( replace the word sensible with ‘brainy’ as they have already finished their work!)

My hair is now too long, too curly and too annoying. I’m gonna really have to think about whether it’s worth growing it. The effort:cool ratio is just way down at the moment.

Electrics still buggerd . . . . . formulating a plan.

Piano or Guitar???

I was thinking last night which of these instruments I would rather be able to play. At first I thought it would definitely be guitar, so I could badly parody my favourite musicians. ( Jason Mraz and Speechwriters LLC, how I love thee! ) But then I thought about it a little deeper and settled on the piano. I was thinking it would just be the best thing in the world to walk into a smoky bar, order a whisky, sit at the piano and start banging out some good old fashioned rock and roll. Maybe tuning it down a bit with some Sammy Davis Junior, slipping in a bit of Savoy Brown and then gently ending on the Blues. Man, real life will just never compare to the cool stuff I wish I could do.

The electrics in our house are SHOCKING!!! Dum dum.

Remember how I told you that you can get an electric shock in our kitchen by simply touching the screws in the switch fitting. Well yesterday, the light in the lounge blew which meant that there was now no light in the entrance, lounge, hall or landing. This meant when you get in at night, you have to blindly find your way to the upstairs bathroom before you find a light that works.
The lights in the house have a life of approximately a month, it gets tedious changing them all the time but now we are sat in the pitch black it seemed a good time for another mass light exchange.
So there I was, stood on a chair, at the top of a flight of stairs, straining to reach the improbably high light fitting. I had hold of it, I was twisting the bulb, it was sticking, I twisted harder . . . . . and then pulled a foot of wire out the ceiling, along with the base of the light fitting and a box with lots of other wires going into it.

We are so screwed.

I’m going to have to call the landlady and explain to her that the wiring in the house is shot to pieces, lets just hope upon hope that she even bothers to pick the phone up this time. Although seeing as she has NEVER answered her phone I’m not holding my breath.

Linkage.

Go here to try and escape from a room along side your boredom.

Go here for simply the hardest online game I think you will ever find.

And go here for Action Comics Number 1.

Would you adam and eve it.

I just won the lottery, I am now a fully fledged multi millionaire.

And just before that I was talking to a girl who looked just like Sooz from AsIf and she asked me out so I said yes. That must be because my hair is now straight and looks really cool.

Cant wait till I get my 1st.

Random stuff.

A bouncer charged me to get in a bar last night a full 15 minutes before they should have started charging on the door. I explained to him that the reason I was there at 9:45 was so I wouldn’t have to pay to get in.

He could have cared less.

I paid.

Still resent myself for it.

I bought some chips yesterday and when I asked the guy for vinegar he just laughed at me. Yeah, thanks mate, wait till I’ve bought my chips before you let me know that they will be almost uneatable without vinegar on them, nice one.
I thought I’d have another go at kebab meat as well to see if its improved in the couple of months its been since I last tried it.

Suffice to say, it hasn’t.
So I had kebab meat and chips with no vinegar. It’s hard to get lower than this.


And yet. . . .

Today I ate tuna and pasta for the 15th day in a row. And I have been counting.

If you hold down Alt in Word and press 0179 then you get the cubed sign, as is meters cubed. Handy that.

Had a dream last night about hippos that were actually bulls, and then woke up and realised that male hippos are called bulls. The mind boggles eh.

Wish I was 8 again and had no responsibility and could amuse myself for hours by just pretending to be a cowboy or something. That would be cool.