Bloggage is going to be light this week as I'm on holiday. Well, not so much holiday as a week off work pottering about with Miss C. I don't think the picnic we had planned is going to happen, what with all the floods and all tho....

Guess it's just going to have to be eating, shopping and drinking lots of alcohol instead.

Labels: Personal

How cute. I was sure it said "honey pot" the first time I read it tho. What sort of question would that have been to ask a lady?

Labels: Amusing

And the lesson today - if it looks spikey, don't mess with it.

1347 of them in case you are wondering....

Labels: Weird

Some of these made me chortle - reasons to not be given a UK visa.

Labels: Amusing, News

Creation of an island. Must be a bit of a surprise to come across in the middle of the ocean.

Labels: Interesting

So London has an hour long blackout and the government release a carbon footprint calculator to try and prompt people into using energy more wisely. It's nice to see the government trying to make people change their habbits - although a little direct action would be good too. Considering the calculator was virtually unusable last night due to the hammering it was getting, seems a lot of people are interested in being a little greener.

I came in at just under 2.5 tonnes (considering my lifestyle, makes me wonder how David Miliband got 2.76 tonnes as his result) which isn't bad. Mine is basically split in two - my electricity bill is about one half and the odd short haul flight accounts for the rest.

About the only way I could reduce that further is switching to a renewable electric supplier but unfortunately I'm tied to Powergen and although they have a green scheme it only supplies 50% of your electric from renewable sources. My heating is also from overnight storage heaters and switching from my current scheme would cost me about £40-50 extra a year by my reckoning. Apparently that amount is enough to offset about 4x the amount of electric I use so switching for me is pretty pointless really.

So I switched my attention elsewhere and have been considering this as an investment. The interest may not be as high as some other bonds that are available but my money would be put to good use and I'd be helping an ethical bank grow.....

Labels: Environmental, Personal

I suppose a rotating wall is sort of interesting but half a million pounds worth of interesting?

Wheras this would just be pure class.

Labels: Arty

Labels: Politics, Video

This will keep you busy for a while - Nodes.

Labels: Games, Timewaste

This article about Chinese gold farmers did make me think about things a little differently. Guess I'd never really considered the lives (or lack) of the people doing it before.

And that's virtual gold farmers by the way.

Labels: Interesting

Bunnywarez - for all your bunny hat needs. The ninja bunny headpeice is especially fetching for all those covert bunny missions....

Labels: Amusing, Weird

These pieces of shadow artwork are quite impressive.

Labels: Arty

French wine growers get serious and warn that blood will flow if wine prices are not raised. Deadline ran out this weekend...

Labels: News, Politics

I have absolutely no idea what you are supposed to be doing but it's fun to play with for 5 mins.

Feed the Head.

(link via The Presurfer)

Labels: Games, Weird

Huh? That said, I prefer it to the party political broadcasts we get before elections over here. And I swear I heard his voice in my brain during the first bit of that video....

Labels: Politics, Video

I used to post a lot of the environmental stories I saw online but it seems there are just so many about these days that I rend to skip them. From zero carbon houses for the UK, whole solar comunities in the US and more green skyscrapers than you can shake a stick at. Green is defintely in it seems.

This new initiative caught my attention today as it made me think about my own energy saving effort at home and at work. My new environmental push at work has already had a fairly good impact. The first small changes I've made will already save over £50 on electric and produce a quarter of a ton of CO2 less each year.

Of course, some people aren't so keen on turning things off and have tried to prove how small savings are 'pointless'. I'll agree some of the savings are small but considering it takes two seconds of effort and the total when multipled a thousand times or more, is it really that much to ask?

Labels: Environmental

Kung-fu Popeye - not much more you can say about this really.

Labels: Amusing, Video

Pretty impressive stuff - you'd never guess it was a painting.

Labels: Arty

As much as I think it's rather daft when I see people walking around with there trousers around their arse cheeks, I think this is a little over the top....

Labels: News

Breast milk cheese? Can't say the thought of doing that had ever crossed my mind before.

On a related topic, I'm surprised we actually need a law to allow women to breastfeed in public. I always thought they could anyway.

Nothing at all against it myself although I remember an occasion or two when a good friends wife - a very attractive young woman I should point out - started nursing with me and her husband in the room. I felt guilty and like I was betraying him if I even glanced in her direction. Silly I know but seeing your best friends wifes norks just seemed a bit of a no no...

Labels: Interesting, News

Might try and have a look through this list of useful websites when stuck on helpdesk duty tomorrow. Aimed at UK people mainly I'm afraid.

Labels: Interesting, Internet

Ooooh I so want this fantastic lamp on my desk at work!

Labels: Cool, Gadgets

Really been one of those days today. Just glad I made it through without anyone noticing I accidentally shaved part of my eyebrow off this morning.

What? It's easy to do I'll have you know....

Labels: Personal

So, Apple have released Safari for Windows. Looks ok I guess but nothing grabbed me and made me want to use it after taking it for a quick spin. I found the fact that if they are trying to push it as the fastest browser around, making the default startpage one that takes quite a while (relatively speaking) to load a little daft....

But before you say anything I am giving it a proper try. This was posted using Safari as it happens.

EDIT: Ok, tried it, don't like it. If nothing else it's using 162MB of memory at the moment and that's still going up. Can you say memory leak...

Labels: Computers, Internet

Another Blog-Monkey comes into existence and is provided a little nurturing Google juice by uncle BlogMonkey.

Labels: Internet

I've been trying to improve my DVD collection with a few eBay purchases and I just know the lovely Bunni will approve of my latest acquisition.

Labels: Film

Lots of facts about the full moon.

"46. The honeymoon is named after the full moon in June. As it fell between the planting and harvesting of crops this was traditionally the best month to get married."

Labels: Interesting

Interesting to see who wins in this battle Sony vs The Church of England. As they say, is any publicity bad publicity.

Labels: Computers, News

No sooner have I finished posting about giant robots than I head into town and find a new remastered version of Transformers: The Movie has been released and is on sale for £3.95. How could I not get it?



The video quality is pretty good although the audio for voices briefly fades to almost nothing on a couple of occasions. I really really hope Michael Bay pays homage to the original in the new film and has at least one fight scene accompanied by a cheesy rock track!

Labels: Movies, Music

Can't beat taking a half day off work (especially when that means a 10:30am finish) and going to a near empty cinema. I don't go to see films at the cinema very much anymore - probably a year since I last went - but I thought Spidey 3 deserved to be watched on the big screen.

Not a bad film but not amazing either. Lacked a little of the humour of the first two but I guess it was supposed to be darker. And once again every villain and there gran gets to find out his secret identity - bloke may as well not bother wearing a mask. And WHY is evil Peter Parker some sort of disco king?? Loved the Bruce Campbell cameo tho.

On the topic of superhero film, I was quite interested to hear this news. The comics aren't bad and the 'superhuman vs alien invasion' plot could be quite fun. Guess I'll wait and see how good a job they did on Transformers first however...

Labels: Film, Personal

Or rather 'on the news' in this case. I'm sure people know about the lively debate over the London 2012 logo and the fact that the designers tried to give people fits. I'm not getting into that debate (the design is plainly fairly shite).

Well the BBC asked for a few contributions but foolishly put this entry up from B3TA user The Coast of Yemen (but soon pulled it). Then they went and put it on the local news. You'd have thought someone there would have twigged....

And if you don't know why it's funny, you really don't want to know. Believe me.

Labels: Amusing, News

Unleasing the power of the internet to help return lost property....

Labels: Internet

Thirty seconds of arse kicking entertainment.

Labels: Games

Graves to be re-used. Maybe they should give a little more thought into the growing trend for green burials, especially considering you often end up with some nice woodland, something the UK is lacking.

Labels: News

A while ago I was sent an invite for the Joost beta by the nice Mr Poons. It was good but unfortunately at the time there was little in the way of content - just a dozen channel with a smattering of programs on each to allow some basic testing. I watched a few anime episodes and then put it to one side.

A few weeks back I launched it up again and found they had increased the available channel and programs. I eagerly perused what was on offer but unfortunately this time the system didn't seem to be coping well with the load and I was unable to watch anything more than the first few seconds of any program.

This last week however I've been pleased to find the problems have been ironed out. The content is still a little limited but I've been working my way through the first two series of Lexx. Ah, you can't beat a little bit of twisted sci-fi.

I think a lot of people (especially youngsters) are going to be dissapointed with Joost. They'll log on expecting to watch episodes of Heroes or Lost and I don't think they'll find them. Major earners like that just won't be released by production companies. Those same companies are going to have hundreds of thousands of hours of less desirable TV though. Shows that never made it past one series. Stuff from the 70's. Series well past their prime. Shows so bad, unappreciated or unknown that you only ever see them at 3am on some dodgy cable channel.

Those are the sort of programs that will end up on Joost I believe. I'm sure there is a gold mine of this stuff and I for one and quite looking forward to sifting through it when Joost finally goes live to see what I can find....

Oh, I think I also have unlimited invites to Joost to offer as well should anyone want one?

Labels: Computers, Internet

50 ways to be romantic on the cheap. That's my kinda romance.*

*above may not be true, especially if it's my girlfriend reading this in which case I'm definitely not cheap in any way. Honest.

Labels: Interesting

Acoustic Kitty, the CIA spy cat. Cost $10 million and gets run over by a taxi on it's first outing. Gotta laugh haven't you...

Labels: Weird

I'm sure this is really erotic if you're a toaster...

Labels: Video, Weird

Some quite cool lego artwork from this guy.

For those of you that prefer playing with your lego rather than being arty, how about giving your lego men a little more firepower and using them in your Brikwars battles!

Labels: Arty

These earings appealed to the internet geek in me. Not that I'm saying I'd wear them....

Labels: Amusing

The statue of liberty story. Although I knew th basics of the story already, interesting to read the full tale.

Labels: Interesting