Love-Love by Julien Berthier - Sinking Boat at Canary Wharf

In the midst of all this financial chaos, it was rather amusing to find (in a wry sort of way) on my walk to the office "quarterly briefing" this morning to spot this art installation (bizarrely called "Love-Love") twisting in the breeze in the middle of South Dock...It's total coincidence too (barring unprecidented artistic precognition) as it's part of the planned event "Drift 08" taking place along the Thames currently - apparently it is (despite appearances) actually perfectly sea-worthy, and can be moved around powered by an electric motor in exactly this configuration - I bet that raised more than a few eyebrows when it was sailed up the Thames..."Non, non, I am fine! Really!!!" ;)

Apparently, the French artist responsible - Julien Berthier - has actually now sold the piece (although probably not to a wealthy London Banker) for £50,000, but it's staying put for the time being if you want to come and take a peek at it spinning mournfully, perpetually suspended at the moment before total catastrophe...(the boat that is)...

Clandon Park - Tim and Gayle's Wedding

So Friday was the wedding (as Flyingpops has already mentioned), this meant the alarm going off at practically the normal sort of time in the morning thanks to Flyingpops' Mum and Charlie (the hairdresser) arriving at about half eight...I made up my mind (with a lot of unhelpful worrying from Flyingpops) as to which shirt/tie combination I was going to wear and selected a nice pair of cufflinks (camper van-shaped ones in the end) and then had about 3 hours to burn before we actually needed to set off (sooo much quicker for a chap to get ready to go out than for a young lady... ;)

So I busied myself packing everything we were going to need for the night, charged camera batteries etc. and then relaxed playing the 360 until it was time to actually put on the suit and leave the house...about a mile from Flyingpops' folks house we pulled up to a fairly blind junction in the woodlands near Holmwood and were just craning our necks to check it was safe to pull out when a taxi zoomed up behind us and very rudely honked it's horn, it was only as we pulled onto the estate that we realised it was carrying Flyingpops' dad, running extremely late from his own barbers appointment in Reigate!

After that it all pretty much went off without much of a hitch (although some nerves were evident as Flyingpops and I were doing one of the readings and we weren't sure quite when we were supposed to be doing it)...we were pretty much the last people to arrive, but everyone was still milling around outside - the venue was the stunning "Clandon Park" just outside Guildford -

- the weather couldn't have been much better (cool and bright - perfect for events requiring suits etc.)...we all filed in, passing the ladies being stopped at the door to put small bits of plastic on their shoes -

- (even though the floor appeared to be largely made of solid granite) -

- and then in for the quick civil ceremony in an amazingly tapestried room (no photography allowed though) -

- our reading was practically the last bit of the show, and thanks to our practicing we delivered a polished performance (or so said practically everyone I shook hands with afterwards - although for some reason quite a number of them seemed to have concluded that we had either chosen it ourselves or actually written it personally, neither of which could we claim credit for, those responsible being the bride and Edward Monkton respectively)...Anyway the canapés and wine came out (nor did either seem to stop for the entire duration of the photography) -

- which took us on to what appeared to be the old wine cellar for the house, where we sat down to a fine dinner/speeches etc...



When this was all concluded we were then kicked out to enjoy the glorious gardens and a spectacular Surrey sunset while the DJ set up for the evening's entertainment -

- and the staff prepared more snacks -

- probably the only down-side of the whole thing was having to leave in time for the staff to have all our mess cleared up by midnight, but all good things must come to an end... ;)

Well, or so I thought until I woke up on Saturday barely able to walk thanks to a "dancing" injury...(feeling better now though, thanks for asking)... ;)

Civil Wedding Reading - A lovely love story

Tim & Gayle will be married by the time you are reading this ... and Fink and I have had the honour of standing, together as man and wife reading the following...


A Lovely Love Story by Edward Monkton

The fierce Dinosaur was trapped inside his cage of ice. Although it was cold he was happy in there. It was, after all, his cage.

Then along came the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
The Lovely Other Dinosaur melted the Dinosaur's cage with kind words and loving thoughts.
I like this Dinosaur thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
Although he is fierce he is also tender and he is funny.
He is also quite clever though I will not tell him this for now.

I like this Lovely Other Dinosaur, thought the Dinosaur. She is beautiful and she is different and she smells so nice.
She is also a free spirit which is a quality I much admire in a dinosaur.

But he can be so distant and so peculiar at times, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur.
He is also overly fond of things.
Are all Dinosaurs so overly fond of things?

But her mind skips from here to there so quickly thought the Dinosaur. She is also uncommonly keen on shopping.
Are all Lovely Other Dinosaurs so uncommonly keen on shopping?

I will forgive his peculiarity and his concern for things, thought the Lovely Other Dinosaur. For they are part of what makes him a richly charactered individual.

I will forgive her skipping mind and her fondness for shopping, thought the Dinosaur. For she fills our life with beautiful thoughts and wonderful surprises. Besides, I am not unkeen on shopping either.

Now the Dinosaur and the Lovely Other Dinosaur are old.
Look at them.
Together they stand on the hill telling each other stories and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs.

And that, my friends, is how it is with love.
Let us all be Dinosaurs and Lovely Other Dinosaurs together.
For the sun is warm.
And the world is a beautiful place

Day before our Wedding...

At 1.00 today my brother, Tim will marry Gayle and become the next Mr and Mrs Goodall .... having married Fink angel earlier this year, I really can’t wait...there is so much I need to blog about our wedding, the preparation, share our suppliers with the world, the day itself and the honeymoon (including the dolphin post), but for now, I just want to share with the world the emotions that I was going through, the day before I got married...

The build up and day itself were totally electric and I felt like I was walking on air for weeks – totally untouchable and extremely positive about everything. When Scott arrived, we knew there were only a few days left and I had to force myself to get the beauty sleep to prevent bags under the eyes in the pics! I had gone through the anxiety dreams of the car not turning up, or Fink hurting his knee and was well and truly bouncing off the walls with excitement (think of Tigger and you get the picture). Each dream was filled with such happiness and there were absolutely no doubts in my mind that this would be the start of our next chapter and the best days of our life!

I had lots of fun planning our wedding and had spent hours talking to mum about colours, tables, flowers, dresses, and the tiny detail that when pulled together, really do create the most incredible day. We had hired Oxted community hall for our reception and could only get in at 19.00 the night before, so I handed complete control over to Fink, the best man and my family who turned a fairly standard hall into a shrine of Fink and Net memorabilia (and one of the best receptions I’ve ever been too). I had made everyone a little folder, with photos and descriptions of how to decorate the tables and hall and they went above and beyond my expectations in pulling it all together. In the very early days, I said I wanted our wedding to be personal to us, so every item introduced from favours, to the cake, had a hint of our personalities and had gone through a rigorous analysis to make sure it fitted in with the overall theme... (Including hunting high and low for purple toilet roll!)

So, the day before the wedding... fink and I were up early and went into Redhill to purchase one last gift.. We came back, Scott packed the car and then I said a tearful good bye to Fink (the next time we were to meet, would be at the end of the aisle, before taking our vows). Scott drove me to dirking, collected the suits, whilst Fink stayed at home writing his speech ... then he dropped me at my parents, whilst he went off to finish his best man duties (get the car washed etc)... At mums/dads you could feel the anticipation, similar to when you were young child on Christmas eve, waiting for Christmas day when you get to wear your best clothes and yet your parents are all calm (even if they don’t feel it, you would never know!) Dad pottered around making sure the driveway looked good, and mum made the finishing touches to the most incredibly spotless house you have ever seen (photographer arriving the following day). An old school friend stopped by for a chat and then came in with her husband and baby for a coffee.. and since they were also coming to the wedding we chatted about hair, outfits and the fact her son had to wait until the following day before he wore his new coat!

As time ticked on, Charlotte arrived for the pampering... a manicure and pedicure for me, manicure and false nails for mum and not to leave dad out – a man’s manicure for him! By 8.00 all was finished, a quick dinner of jacket potato and salad, then I went to bed at 9.00 – in my old room (which had been decorated) for the all important beauty sleep..... ZZZZZ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I woke up at about 4am – with dad getting a drink, then slept through till 7 – when Dad got up to take his bathroom slot... When I came down the stairs, I didn’t feel nervous, anxious or even stressed.... just happier than I’ve ever been in my life and unable to stop smiling!

As I’m typing this, I have a lump in my throat as it brings so many memories into my head.. I know I’ll be shedding a tear tomorrow when I see Gayle in all her beauty, and then when they say their vows. Having been together for 8 years, lots of people said being married would not be any different, however I have to disagree. Being married isn’t easy, you have to constantly work at it, but when you make you promises to each other and declare your vows in front of your friends, family, the church and then with the exchange of rings, you know it’s for keeps, and you get a warm, glowing feeling of contentment knowing that no matter what happens, you’ve got each other. .. Forever..

Fink's Links #32

Another week uncoils itself from the present and prepares to collapse into temporal oblivion, and (just to save them from the singularity that roars after us as we fly just quickly enough into the future) I'm pulling these links along with us for a while -

Firstly, a nice piece on the future of photography (with some surprising developments in the pipeline) from New Scientist...

A staggeringly effective warning sign...(one would imagine)... ;)

Now let's do a bit of urban exploration and see how entropy is treating an abandoned Grand Central station in the former USSR...(page loads a bit slow, so be patient)...

Some really very clever Atari 2600-style cartridge fronts done for modern games (like GTA, Bioshock and Portal)...

Some pre-and-post comparison shots of the effect of Hurricane Ike's arrival...
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/ike/photo-comparisons/bolivar.html

Check out what Singapore airlines did with their brand new airbus A380...rather a nice way to travel (if one absolutely must board an aircraft)!

An excellent guide (containing the sagely advice "Don't try this") to using Thermite to securely wipe your hard drive...

A startlingly accurate pie chart...

Guy photographs himself every day for 17 years (time lapse movie)...

The birth of the emoticon - 18th of September, 1982 (at 11:44am)...

...and finally an extremely painful ad placement fail...ouch...! >;o

More of the same sort of thing same time next week and previous weeks links can be found here... ;)

Where do all the Memes come from?

Really odd, I was just thinking about a posting about how it's almost impossible to keep on top of all the Memes in the tubes without hanging out at a certain amount of quality sites where all the "chatter" takes place around the shared content...and then someone goes and makes an interactive timeline of Memes that goes back to the birth of the internets...(it even includes the original inspirational "item" in question, or a story about it)...

So I won't bother then...! >;P

Weekend update

So, the weekend is over (again), but we have a long one coming up next weekend thanks to Timmy and Gayle's wedding being on Friday, so that's something to look forward to... ;)

This weekend was pretty busy, saw Jinx (for about the first time since my wedding) on Friday night (we played games and caught up on what we had been up to in the meantime)...Saturday morning Flyingpops and I were just in the middle of making the house a bit more child friendly when our hairdresser arrived (half an hour before we thought she was supposed to) which led to a procession of hour-long hair colouring and cutting (in preparation for the aforementioned wedding) for various female members of the family, punctuated only by little Emily and Oliver crashing into me, smearing me with half chewed/melted (insert food-stuff here), or getting dirty or into trouble in unexpected ways in the garden - a pleasure to see them, but I think we should cut down on the high-sugar snacks they get as a treat when they do come round...oh and we ploughed through about 4 loads of washing (the sun was bright but quite weak, which meant the last load came in still quite wet and got hung around the living room to finish off drying)...

Saturday night I made pasta (bolognese with lots of garlic and herbs), and managed to overcook Flyingpops' pizza (she didn't mind), and then we watched "The Other Boleyn Girl", which was very enjoyable apart from the fact that the plot line follows almost exactly the same thread as "Carry on Henry" which made my mind sort of hop between the very serious subject matter (start of the Church of England/beheading etc.) and "Bom boooom"/"Do you want some more cream? My jugs are on the table" sort of comedy...

Sunday morning I went and did the shopping (so Flyingpops could have some extra shut-eye), got very frustrated with Mr Tesco as he had shuffled the fruit and veg aisles (for no good reason that I could see), the stuff for a roast dinner is now in two different ones, instead of all neatly together...Flyingpops said it might be in preparation for Christmas, but I dunno...the rest of Sunday was spent helping Flyingpops to get ready for her 2 night trip to Geneva (starting tonight flying out from London City Airport with Swiss Air), playing Splinter Cell on the 360, cooking up a roast dinner and then catching up with the week's action on "The Restaurant"...

Oh and this morning on the way in to London I managed to break Flyingpops' coat (which had got stuck down beside her seat on the train) - I broke one of the studs from the cuff pulling it out (which made her rather annoyed), but as her suggested alternative would have been to just leave the coat there, I think a coat with one stud missing has got to be better than no coat at all...and I can't have her getting cold in Switzerland!

Indian Summer for England?

Well, what a lovely surprise! After two really very nice days in town (working, obviously), I check the weather report on the BBC and the weekend is actually forecast to be jolly nice too! If it weren't for all the hair colouring (for Timmy and Gayle's impending wedding) going on this weekend I might very well have suggested getting away in Colin the Camper for a lazy weekend!

Still going to do my best to enjoy it...maybe a last minute BBQ or something of that ilk would be in order... ;)

Fink's Links #31

Well, can there possibly be any more good things left on the internets? Let's go and find out!

Let's get the cats out the way first with a spooky video entitled "Ninja cat comes closer without moving"...(or learn how it feels to be a bird on a bird table, checking over your shoulder every few seconds)...ulp!

Can't let that one go by without a nod to Ninja Dog "Sofia" demonstrating that no human can hope to keep her in captivity...woof!

Now let's take a little walk around an exquisitely preserved 300-million year old forest (that is roughly the size of Bristol)...

Find out what happened to an autistic child and his father when they were swept out to sea by a rip-tide...(double ulp!)...

Snort and chortle at some Entomologist humor...

Check out a novel approach to malware and virus protection from the ever looping self re-enforcing stereotype that is Japanese culture...

Enjoy a picture entitled "Never mind the graffiti, check out the road sign" (duck)!

A screen grab of a very amusing day on the facepunch studio forum pages (they pretty much all got banned as a result)...still laughing from that one...harsh mod! They were only having a giggle... ;)

Sign yourself up for Queen's University Belfast's "Jedi Knight" course (it costs £23 a pop and the course lasts one day - if only all those padwans had known)...!!

A rather expensive chess set (well, actually it couldn't really be any more expensive than it's constituants)...!

Be amused (sounds unlikely I know, but yes, really!) by Kansas City Library's car park...

Check out this picture called "Evolution" (actually, I'm not too sure that is the case, but anyway)...

Some fairly amusing Engrish signs for Tourists...

The difference between Harry Potter and Star Wars (completely worth the read just for the last line)... ;)

Now 20 memorable photographic fakes, courtesy of the Telegraph (sorry, another cat snuck through)...

...and finally an amusing demographic targeting fail...

More of the same sort of thing same time next week and previous weeks links can be found here (if you remain unsatisfied)...hope not though... ;)

My New View...

- had a desk move over the weekend, and now, instead of Canada Square (and the O2), although I can still see that if I look to my left (albeit through a glass meeting room), my new main view is now over East London, looking towards where the new Olympic site is slowly creeping into existence...and look, the sun has even come out to let me take a nice picture... ;)

Google - a life on the ocean waves?

Don't you just love Google, their latest wacky idea (the "data-barge") is to pack up their supercomputer(s) and pop them onto floating "water based data centres", thus killing three birds with one stone - cheap water cooling, free energy from the motion of the waves and of course (most importantly) tax free status thanks to not being in any one particular country...absolute genius...

Times Archive Blog

This is quite nice, Rose Wild from the Times Archive is blogging interesting little tidbits from the last 200 years of published articles, like for example, their review of "Tess of the D'Urbavilles" from 1892...or the amusing tale of the Bishop and the Sea Monster...definitely one worth subscribing to I think... ;)

How long you would survive chained to a bunk bed with a live velociraptor?

I could survive for 1 minute, 16 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Created by Bunk Beds Pedia

US Election register - Canary Wharf

Spotted this today, lurking at the foot of the escalators in Cabot place - a registration desk attempting to attract US citizens (those that are hiding in alien territories) to sign up ready to vote (in their "abroad" capacity) and influence the results of the US elections...not that they can have honestly missed the fact that it has been taking place (since about January)...are they *ever* going to get on and actually resolve the matter?

In other news, yesterday the Leehman bank told all their employees they were going to be out of a job, the immediate result was that all the pubs and bars around the Wharf filled up with frantic looking people clutching cardboard boxes full of desk ornaments...and today, sadly, the tube trains did actually feel a little bit emptier...whatever is going on with the world...?  A colleague even spotted someone carrying an empty suitcase who got off at Canary Wharf...

Let's just hope that whoever does end up getting elected to the White House puts stabilizing global economy as priority one...working somewhere like this you can't help but see the very tangible effects, happening just across the road...

Weekend Update

Where did the weekend go? It seemed to vanish waaaay too quickly...Saturday was largely eaten by the heaps and heaps of washing that seems to have accumulated over the last couple of weeks (thanks to me being away/Flyingpops entertaining guests last weekend)...well, I say vanished - apart from an exciting time when we tried to find the source of a rather unpleasant aroma in the back of the Golf, discovered that the carpets had got very damp (somehow?) and some deer food (that had obviously slipped under the seat during our trip to Longleat!  How long ago?) had started to go mouldy and smell (not surprising)!  So we vacuumed the entire car out, then sat there with two of Flyingpops hair driers (in the middle of the road) blasting the carpets until they were dry-ish - at this point I thought it might be an idea to run the internal heaters for a while (just to be on the safe side) but having run them for no more than five minutes with the doors closed - when Flyingpops tried to start the car to get it out the way of the neighbours drive we discovered we had managed to flatten the battery...(which *can't* be right)...

So, Colin to the rescue -  drove him next to the Golf and discovered that his leisure battery was flat as a pancake too...bah...finally, with a real stretch (thank goodness we bought the most expensive, longest jump leads in the world) we managed to connect him up via the main battery and get the car to start so we could at least move it from blocking next door's drive...I mean, we don't drive the Golf a whole lot - it's just popping to and from the station each day (about 5 minutes each direction) so I guess the battery doesn't get much chance to charge, but I was rather suprised to kill it with 5 minutes on the heaters...oh well...!

Saturday night was Tim's Stag do Part 2 (the revenge) which involved much beer/football, some arm wrestling and then a rather good Thai meal...Tim and I got the train back to Redhill and then took separate cabs home (where I fell asleep on the sofa until about 4am when I decided to go to bed and wake Flyingpops up with my snoring...sorry babe)...!

To make it up to her I went and did the Tesco shopping on my own in the morning, we then watched the F1 (very good race) and then I popped Flyingpops over to (and from) Fanny's Farm Shop (I kid you not) for Gayle's hen do (sandwich/tea/cake and Cava in a tree house), during which time I played a bit of Bully on the Xbox 360 (really enjoying it, about half way through now but a bit stuck on "Lola's Race" - my arm gets too tired tapping the dash button and I loose it on one of the last couple of corners - it's about a 5 minute long race, stupid! Think I'm going to have to cheat and do it using a moped or something)...and then Sunday night I cooked a roast but Flyingpops was too full of sandwich and cake to eat much of it (oh well, more for me!)...then we watched Wife Swap (typically inflamatory pairing of a gay pair and two homophobes, but it actually worked out much better than expected)...then bath and bed...

Fink's Links #30

Another short (and exhausting) week this week, so that's my excuse for a limited offering (mostly funny stuff this time), but none the less, let the week's-worth of web wonderment commence!

Firstly, lets learn how to make some amusingly yukky looking "jars of monstrosities" ready for Halloween

A funny picture series called "What the supporting role is doing"... ;)

Take a look at some of the worlds strangest fences and a few brick walls too...

Worry, as we discover (uh oh!) they know your bank card PIN! Is nothing safe any longer??

A picture called "Spider on Frog on Turtle" (I think it's actually a tortoise)...make sure you read the description... ;)

Meet the Tardigrade, a creature that can survive - unprotected - in the vacuum of space...

A shot entitled "Just keeping a tally"...

A bit of a mixed message going on in the Tokyo subway...

...and finally an excellent "Safety Fail"... ;)

More of the same sort of thing same time next week and previous weeks links can be found here (if you remain unsatisfied)...hope not though... ;)

Retrogeek

This is just so *super awesome* (albeit for a very select number of people out there), some guy has found (stuffed in his parent's garage) a huge pile of magazines that were published back in the 80's, all computer/gaming related and starting with the ones put out just after the release of the ZX81 he is very kindly sticking the most interesting bits under a scanner and uploading them to his new blog "Retrogeek"...

Excellent stuff...enjoy... ;)

Large Hadron Collider

Can't believe everyone is being so silly about the LHC, apart from that facinating article about it managing to shut itself down, really...? What was it going to do that doesn't happen with much more energy when all sorts of high speed objects (with occasionaly very violent results) attempt to pass through the planet Earth at the speed of light?

I can remember standing, as a young child watching a very worrying display in the Science Museum showing me exactly how often I was probably being hit by showers of nasty particles caused by Galactic cosmic ray particles smashing into other objects in the Earth's atmosphere (to very little effect)...I will admit that I was a little unsettled, especially upon discovering that they were radioactive (growing up at the tail end of the cold war)...but it's not done me a huge amount of harm so far and if that kind of event is weaker than what is going on at the LHC...(to quote Stephen Hawking - "Collisions releasing greater energy occur millions of times a day in the earth’s atmosphere and nothing terrible happens")...

Still, it is a great story..."Swiss black hole consumes planet"...not that anyone would even have time to write the first letter of the headline if nature somehow did manage to defy Stephen Hawking's brain... ;)

Happy Birthday Mum

Sorry we can't be with you today, but we'll celebrate over the weekend.. in fact, it's probably better that I don't sing as my voice is terrible!

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Mum,
Happy Birthday to you

Thank you for being the best mum in the world (especially with all of your help and patience planning our wedding earlier this year)

;o)

Paddington Marmite advertising campaign

Some of you will know, that I work for a rather large media agency in London and am interested in advertising campaigns .... so when an email with this link dropped into my inbox this morning, i had to share it with you (since I think it's quite cool!)

http://paddingtons-kitchen.marmite.co.uk/

Enjoy

Tim's Stag Weekend

Wow, what an epic...Ten hours in the car to get down there (terrible traffic), almost ran out of petrol (only 20 miles remaining when we pulled in) turbo shandy beer ping pong when we finally arrived...Saturday morning was spent down the beach splashing around and throwing things about, Saturday night saw pirate costumes, a swearing taxi driver, a blow up doll, one major collision with a table, a lot of spilt beer and a split eye (for the best man, but luckily we had plenty of eye patches to hand - stuffed with toilet paper to stem the bleeding), a nice Thai meal followed by trying to blag our way into a club for free (and failing) then the husband-to-be getting pinned to the floor by bouncers, ripping his costume and cutting his knee as he tried to steal back the best man's coat (as he had managed to mislay his ticket) and then the best man got stuck (on his own) in town waiting for a taxi until about quarter to four in the morning (making everyone feel rather guilty)...Sunday we got lots of little electric planes stuck in trees (thanks to high winds) and had to shoot them loose with a BB Gun, played Guitar Hero, then went and ate a hearty meal of roast beef watching the Grand Prix...played poker and gaffer tape bondage during the afternoon and collapsed into delierium in the evening...Monday morning we headed home early and got stuck in *more* traffic thanks to a lorry falling over and blocking the entrance to the M25...and then discovered that my train ticket and security pass had vanished over the weekend (resulting in a frantic, and thankfully successful ripping apart of the living room)...so all in all a fairly eventful weekend! Got lots of incriminating pictures to go through properly when I get home tonight...can't decide if I dare post them on Flickr... ;)

Free Cthulhu Fonts

Not done any role playing (other than on a console) for a number of years now, but when I stumbled across this excellent archive of free fonts suitable for use by creative gamesmasters to produce their own props and handouts for Call of Cthulhu (the RPG based on the works of H.P.Lovecraft) I just had to share...only wish I had had access to these back in the day! I was pretty much lumbered with "Times New Roman" and "Script"...pah... ;P

Aftermath

Aftermath
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

Bleugh...

Barbie Girl song...

I found this on Youtube (whilst hunting for the Barbie girl song for my niece)...  

Have a listen... I found it really funny ;o)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76WbGWxNFQ4

But when my niece comes over next.. I think i'll have to play her this one as my sister would not take too kindly to her singing the one above in school!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEzh10_xoqw

and does anyone remember this cartoon... I loved it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0G4lE04-cU

Made it to the beach

Made it to the beach
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...massive messy surf...

Finally!

Finally!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

Made it...ten hours on the road...zzz...

Mission!

Mission!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

On the road since ten am, covered four hundred miles and still only in blooming Swindon! Estimated time of arrival in Cornwall...five of us in the car already, one more to pick up...

Home Alone

So, Fink is away on the stag weekend with my brother... having detoxed in preparation I must add..

I've been jealous all week (even packing Fink's case for him), but sadly, my thoughts of Cornwall, (Cornish Pasties, Cream Tea and surfing) probably aren't the same as boys on a stag do, so I'll be staying at home (in the warm)

This is the longest that Fink and I have been apart since getting married in March, so I'm beginning to wonder how to spend my time? As my thoughts move to the Home Alone movie, I may find myself jumping on the bed, setting up a DVD to protect against the Pizza delivery boy and set up marble traps to protect against the evil men!

I've arranged a girly Sat evening, and am out in London tonight with work mates.. My only real concern is who is going to cook my Sunday roast? Every week, Fink and I sit down at 6.30 for roast... being vegetarian, a minimum of 8 veg are served and nut cutlet or vegetarian alternative... I'm going to starve! .. that is unless anyone takes pity on me and decides to invite me over! ;o)

Off we go!

Off we go!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...and straight into a traffic jam on the A23... :(

Fink's Links #29

Links a day early this week, thanks to the start of Tim's Stag do tomorrow (which I will attempt to moblog as we go about it, so watch this space over the weekend if you are interested)...!

First off this week, take a dip into a guide (published in 1736) to the gutter slang "Thieves cant"...

Next, watch as the Earth is hit by a massive asteroid (courtesy of the Discovery Channel)...

Join Banksy as he takes a road trip across America drawing pictures...

Take a little peek at the pointy-end of a cluster bomb?

Assess your chances of getting out alive (Star Trek edition)...

Spend some time checking out the guy who decided to build a clone of the Apollo mission guidance computer...gets a bit hardcore, but even the overview is worth a peek... ;)

Wired's Howto blog explains how to keep streamed MP3s for later...

Now how about a little walk around a Russian Cold War Nuclear bunker?

Learn how archeologists are going to use Muons to peer inside Mayan ruins...

Scientists building the worlds most powerful magnet, able to withstand forces equivalent to "200 sticks of dynamite concentrated into a space the size of a marble"...

Be suprised if you missed this, but watch the Mythbusters guys use 2100 paintball guns (linked together) to paint a picture of the Mona Lisa...

Check out a triple layered Klein bottle (from the British Science Museum's collection)...

See (the suprisingly sensible) approach to protecting German firemen from flames, reported in Modern Mechanics magazine, Feb 1931...

Find out about America's Pluto Missile project - "a locomotive-size missile powered by an unshielded nuclear ramjet that would travel at near-treetop level at three times the speed of sound, tossing out hydrogen bombs as it roared overhead"...nice!

Following the theme, how two US students went ahead and worked out how to build their own A-Bomb (in 1964)...

Watch this video of the incredible innespace dolphin jetski...

...and finally an excellent "Pen Fail"...

More linktastic goodness at the same time next week and previous weeks links can be found here (as if you needed any more)... ;)

Fallout 3 - Not long now!

Wow, absolutely can't wait for Fallout 3, the next in the pipeline from Bethesda - the crew who put out the Elder Scrolls games (the absolute classic "Oblivion" among them)...it seems like an age since I watched that first (incredibly atmospheric) teaser trailer and now here we almost are - European release date is the 31st of October! I almost feel like taking that Friday off and paying for Flyingpops to spend the weekend at a Spa...(and before you get excited, I did say *almost* sweetheart... x ;)

Best news of all, initial (disappointing) reports were that the game was going to be pretty small and very quick to complete (30 hours or so, which after all this development time would have been a bit of a shame), latest news is that (the map at the very least) has now grown to roughly the same size as the Oblivion map (i.e. absolutely colossal) and there are now around 200 possible endings, dependent entirely on player actions throughout the game...not only that, but they have managed to continue with their tradition of employing extremely fine voice actors (Patrick Stewart playing the King in "Oblivion") - Fallout 3 has Liam Neeson voice acting the part of the main characters father...oh come on and hurry up October!!! Not been this excited about a game since (the terrible let-down that was) Thief 3...

Mmmm...Free Muller Yoghurt...

...today outside Canary Wharf tube station -

- I got a tropical crunch...very nice indeed... ;)

Google Chrome - My new web browser!

Don't forget it's Google Chrome launch day today! It's a new, built from the ground up (rather than evolving organically) web browser with some absolutely amazing new features -

• Threaded processing (so one Javascript crash can't hang your entire browsing experience)
• Web content gets locked into a sandbox in it's own memory space, so far less chance of memory leaks and bad performance
• Permission to data on your hard drive is strictly controlled, so much less to worry about from Spyware/Malware (and they are also giving away free automatically updated blacklists of evil sites to help to stop you from being tricked into giving up personal details
• Sandbox sessions can't get at Windows to change code or steal financial details/passwords
• A total privacy mode exists where nothing you do is ever recorded or kept stored on the hard drive
• The new start page automatically populates with your 9 most visited sites
• Each tab has it's own address bar which will auto-suggest (only very sensible) selected sites or related searches

Check out the "comic book" introduction to the project (which goes into much more detail than I have here)...

Really looking forward to this! Bring it on Google!

Update - Grab it here...

Update update - someone has already discovered an easter egg - type in "about:internets" to the address bar... ;)

Redhill Bus Station - Display

Wow...look! They have managed to get the display that shows when the next bus is due (partially) working! It's only been missing/down or sitting in "test mode" for four and a half months and all of a sudden, here we show it displaying when the next three 435's are due, none of the other buses of course, but at least the 435 is one of the ones I am interested in...the only thing that confuses me, however, is that it was working absolutely perfectly before they tore down the old structure...so quite why they couldn't just carefully unplug it, smash the old building down and build the new one and then carefully plug it back in again (until any replacement system was ready) is a bit of a mystery...? Anyway, just pleased that there is a little progress towards making my journey home a tad easier...of course, if this new system is going to be a real-time accurate indication of where buses actually are (rather than just when they are "due") then I take it all back...the wait will have been worth every minute! We shall see... ;)

Weekend update

Well, had a pretty busy weekend (apart from managing to find a few hours on the Xbox 360 - Dark Sector and Bully at the moment, Bully being much the better game but Dark Sector has it's moments)..Saturday morning/lunchtime saw brother and sister in law (plus kids) come over to join in having mass hair cuts (and push cars full of barbies/Action men around)...Sunday morning, after doing the Tesco shopping, was spent nipping into South London (dodging speed cameras) to visit Grandpops and Hazel to fix some problems with their firewall (and install them some novelty Tomtom voices)...

Mustn't forget to mention that we have had a marriage proposal (and acceptance!) in Canada (very many congratulations to Sal and Jas!) which you can read about on their blog here (they are going to be flying back to Blighty soon so I imagine there will be some sort of celebration to be conducted upon their return)...then *this* coming weekend is another long one (for me anyway) as we are going to spend four days down in Cornwall to help Timmy celebrate his stag do, I am being picked up from home at 10am on Friday to begin the process of collecting all the attendees from around the South East (must remember to pack my stuff)! In fact, when Flyingpops was looking at the calendar yesterday morning, she announced that we don't actually have another completely free weekend now until October...!

Busy busy busy!