What you lookin' at..?

What you lookin' at..?
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...Torquay Slag in JR Ewing mode...about to be told off for smoking a cigar! Heh... ;)

Vodka Luge..!

Vodka Luge..!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

Could be fun! ;)

At the Camden Centre...

At the Camden Centre...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...waiting for the bouncers to let us in, and it's raining! Bah!

So, to start...

So, to start...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...the evening, a few beers in the Lincoln Lounge relaxing with some reggae

vibe...unfortunately the place where the party is doesn't open until seven... ;)

Test moblog before...

Test moblog before...
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...tonight... ;)

Nature Christmas Party...

...okay, I'm going to try and moblog the party tonight (assuming the technology works okay), so stay out of my way if you don't want your picture on the internet...hehe... ;)

Cool Podcasts - ABC's Lost and Top of the Pods

I made two excellent podcast discoveries yesterday evening -

• Ryan and Jen's ABC's Lost podcast - RSS Feed here (it's been running a while now, the archive I can see from Juice goes as far back as the Season 1 finale...I have listened to 2 of their shows thus far and found them rather enlightening, each show runs for about an hour and a half though, so make sure your batteries are fully charged before setting out (mine ran out this morning, but I did stupidly set off with only 1 bar)! Looks like the stars of the show are listening in too, Jorge Garcia (who plays "Hurley") even gave them a call in the talkback section! Amazing! Anyway, if you want to be on the cutting edge of what the Lost fanbase's current hypothesise (purgatory, loosing things, Peter Pan, Earth 2, special powers, symbolism etc. etc.) are about events on the island, definitely tune in...it's perfect nutshell summary/intellegent speculation followed by a highly interactive listener talkback section released closely following each episode's initial air date...)
• Top of the Pods - RSS feed here (oddly funny UK based blog where two guys take listener submitted lists of their top ten whatever and read them out while making amusing comments, sounds lame, but it works...I laugh... ;) Not as funny as Chris Moyles, obviously, but if they were I guess they would be with him in New York instead of in their bedroom... ;)

If anyone out there has any other feeds that you think I might like then feel free to leave a comment, not sure how many people are enjoying podcasting at the moment though, might still be a bit of a geek enclave... ;)

Advent Calendars...

It's December 1st! So out with the advent calendars...We have two, one was a gift from my folks and the other, in a fit of amazing organisation (brought on by a total lack of choice last year) was purchased about a month ago in Tesco...(it's a Cadbury's variety one (so a different kind of chocolate each day))...nice!

Not that I really eat chocolate, but I still like to go through the motions...

I guess it is an appropriate time, therefore, to wish you a very "Merry Christmas" especially as it is also the office Christmas party tonight...(free booze (beer/wine are free, spirits are a quid a shot), free food (South East Asian buffet), chocolate fountain, mini-casino and Vodka luge! Theme - Las Vegas ;)

Podcast review...

...tried a few more out this morning on my way in...

• Nature podcast (they last about 25 minutes and nutshell what is in each weeks issue with interviews with some of the authours, really interesting stuff with a question and answer interview style, but then I am a bit biased... ;)
• New Scientist podcast (about 18 minutes long, the two I listened to were definitely being ridden quite hard as marketing vehicles, the interviews seemed to be only with New Scientist staff, and they only covered a fraction of what was going on in the magazine, still alright though, if you can put up with all the "Looking for a great gift idea for this season? How about a New Scientist subscription?")
• Space.com podcast (again about 18 minutes long, according to their demographics I am typical of their readership and thus their output should appeal to me, however, I found their podcasts to be detail light, full of irrelevent pop-style songs/music (including one extremely sad effort that I am guessing was composed just for the purposes of this broadcast all about how comets are made of frozen dust) and far too long considering the lack of actual information, sorry, but I'm looking for something aimed a little higher, in an intellectual sense...)
• Radio 7 - Big Toe podcast (whoops, turned out to really be a kids show, but they did interview an astronaught, so I listened to that bit then turned it off)...

If you fancy getting into podcasting, check here for a good "getting started guide" (all you need is an MP3 player, oh and btw - contrary to popular opionion it's nothing to do with either Apple or iPods, it evolved quite separately) and then go here for an index of feeds available...if I find any other good ones I'll let you know... :)

If you fancy a feed manager (I think I'm going to need one!), this is the best one I have played with - Juice - it's free, looks good and is easy to use...

Dunno why I haven't mucked around with this before! It's cool! :)

Red Sky in the Morning...

...Shepherds warning?

Was still blooming cold though, despite the cover...

Had a quite long power cut last night at home...power cuts used to be so rare, but this must be the eleventh one in the last week! Most of them are just tiny blips, enough to re-boot my PC and kill all the clocks on the exectrical appliances around the place, but this one had us scrambling for torches, in fact the first source of light we found (Flyingpops genius) actually led to some tiny electronic tea-lights (containing blue LEDs) that we keep in the bathroom! After the last little lot (3 on Saturday night) she also had the foresight to have the number of the electricity board in her phone, another general problem, normally we get off quite lightly thanks to the proximity of the local hospital, but this one was obviously something pretty serious...it's funny quite how quiet it is in the house with no fish pump, PC fans, TV etc. etc. running...was actually quite strange...

Podcast C500 style...

Decided to try out some of the BBC's Beta podcast trial broadcasts from their various radio stations this morning...

They don't offer all their shows, just a few, but it was great to be able to pick and choose what to listen to, and where, and when...

My choices?

Radio 1 - The Best of Chris Moyles (He's in New York at the moment)
Radio 2 - Chris Evans - The Best Bits (Patrick Stewart was in the studio)
Radio 4 - In our Time (what is being done to prove the existence of the elusive "graviton" by modern physicists)

Chris Moyles was the funniest (and seems to be deliberately put together for podcast listeners), Patrick Stewart is always a pleasure to listen to (not going to comment on Chris Evans) and "In our Time" was very interesting indeed (three excellent speakers - Roger Cashmore (Former Research Director at CERN and Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford) Jim Al-Khalili (Professor of Physics at the University of Surrey) and Sheila Rowan (Reader in Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Glasgow) who all managed to speak in easy to comprehend terms and yet be brilliantly enlightening for the physics novice)...

I guess I kind of made my ideal morning Radio line up...I'll be giving positive feedback to the Beeb on this service (since they are asking) and hopefully they will roll it live across the board... ;)

Eden Project in the snow

Wow...thank you BBC -

Hemp no more...?

Well, Tony's Hemp Corner (yes, finally found his home page! Although the homepage appears to be all that is left of it!), has undergone another rebranding exercise, this time into the extremely low key "Organic Health Foods - Organic Cafe", but if you look *very* carefully at this picture you can pick out at least one tell-tale sign that all is not quite as it seems... ;) (rainbow hemp leaf stained glass affair in one of the upstairs windows)...

I wonder if he got done by the police finally?

Anyway, the weekend was good, managed to complete about 70% of the Christmas present shopping (the rest we have either already done or can easily do on the interweb) on Saturday, it's good to go and do it at this time of the year as the shops still have all the gifts in to look through (apart from Woolworths which was in absolute chaos) go much later and it's all empty shelves and damaged packaging...Nipped into Asda and Tesco in Crawley too as they are running some sweet beer deals at the moment (2 cases for £16 in Asda) to stock up on Christmas booze (wine and port also cheap)...put the house back together after the double glazing installation and then had Flyingpops dad over on Sunday morning to fix up some electrics around the place - fitting a fused switch for the outside lights in the living room (which involved drilling a hole through the wall with a rather large drill and much shenanigans with a wire coat hanger), fixing the outside light at the front of the house and installing a timer (so it comes on at sunset) and swapping over the pull chord mechanism in the bathroom...feels like everyone is having holidays at the moment too, my folks have just flown back from Germany (Christmas markets and meals in micro-breweries), Flyingpops folks are zooming off to Lanzarote today for a week in the sun (cooked them dinner last night to make life a little easier for them, and in thanks for the work around the house) and the US having Thanksgiving late last week...(how envious?) so I'm really looking forward to my break, last working day of the year is the 16th of December...bring it on... ;)

Bum Rush

...Oh, thank you Simpsons, I now completely don't understand the Americanism "Bum Rush"...meaning, as I thought, based on Will Smith's "Wild Wild West" (wiki-wiki-wild!...ahem...) - to mean (and I quote myself) "to have the shit kicked out of one in an uneven contest of strength" the SkyOne episode aired this evening seems to hint that to "Bum Rush" is to throw a tramp/drunk person with force out of a drinking establishment...it does make me wonder what US dictionaries look like... ;)

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

All in all I think I dedicated about a decade of my life (between various groups of players) to the position of Call of Cthulhu GM (the paper and dice RPG), it's been about 5 years now since I last ran a session, my own interest subsiding somewhat, but after such a long break, and with global interest on the wane (or so I thought), here I find myself, all of a sudden, facing a *perfect* XBOX conversion of the RPG - completely summing up the feeling, the atmosphere, the **terror** and the hopelessness made so real in Lovecraft's work...Quite honestly, I'm thrilled that someone actually had the bollocks to make it and do so as perfectly as I would have done (had it been my job to do so)...it's nothing less than the survival horror event of the decade (in my humble opinion... ;) and a beautiful and realistic first person shooter to boot...

It's based (almost 100%) on the story "The Shadow over Innsmouth" but has some wonderful departures (like a really, really scary "thing in the attic", some very convincing "Yithians", a terrifying escape from the "locals" after an unquiet night in the town's hotel, and taking out "Dagon" with a deck cannon from a US Navy warship, classic!)...I'm at about 92% complete now, and I really don't want it to finish...(Luckily it looks like they are making a 2nd game based on "At the Mountains of Madness" which is one of my favorite stories, it reads a bit like the screenplay for "The Thing" at the start, so it should be a good!)...

Anyway, Dark Corners of the Earth has been sitting in the top 10 on GameFAQs for a while now, but got a lacklustre and poorly researched review in the (usually trustworthy) Edge (I'm getting a bit sick of game reviews being based on 20% complete games or 20% effort), and I've laughed and laughed at those on the forums begging for help - "What, if anything, is a 'zthulu'", "Who, or what is a Lovecraft?", "This game is stupidly difficult!", "Why can't I focus when I am injured?", "Why does everything go strange when I am looking off the top of a building?", "Why can't I aim my gun when I am insane???","Why do I have to apply bandages and splints when I am injured?"...and most amazingly, from Edge (oh dear!), that reloading the gun was too difficult (it's one button press instead of it being automatic btw)...I know it's not real life, but think how hard would it would be to reload a real shotgun standing up to your knees in seawater in the middle of the night while a DEEP ONE IS SHREDDING YOUR FACE...Yes, I think the reviewer rather missed the point there...one button push isn't much of an inconvenience really (and it was good enough for Half Life...*shrug*!)...If you can't put up with a re-load button then stay wrapped in your Doom 3 duvet in bed, Mr Edge reviewer...it's not safe out in the cold...you might slip over... ;)

Dorking Window Company update #2

...well, could I be more impressed? Probably not...and that really says something...quite honestly, if I had been tasked with doing the job myself I couldn't have done any better, the attention to detail, the clean lines, the perfect "make good", it's just the very best service I have been yet privy to...even considering the cold, cold weather-the utterly professional staff worked a swift and perfect miracle...Awesome... :)

Hailstorm!

Hailstorm!
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

Argh! The skies have gone black and hail has thundered down on our position, leaves are blowing through the house, and still the is no glass on the back wall...(on the ground floor at least!)...

Finishing off...

Wow, look at that! Perfect finish... :)

Cleaned up and treated...

Cleaned up and treated
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...all ready for the builders filler to go down...(much better!)... ;)

Ant sign...

Ant sign
Originally uploaded by finkangel.

...discovered under the doorway! The plastic will keep them out, but as a precaution I'm going to pepper the ways with Ant powder...