New Year's Eve

Playing my "Get Out of Work Early" card today. Whoopee!
Have a Happy New Year Everybody!

Limbo

It's that limbo time between festivities. The bit between Christmas and New Year when we carry on with the gluttony, try to fix all the broken toys, assemble the ones that we really didn't have time to do on the day, possibly get round to reading the manuals after working out how to use the gadgets by trial and error, think about sending off the warranty registration cards (maybe not).

We were going to host Boxing Day for the family this year, but since Novelist Supermum wasn't up to it, due to illness we went to my Brothers place instead. This had the least environmental impact, since three groups of the family were already there from Christmas Day. So rather than having them all move down the motorway to us, we went to them.

Another good day, plenty of food and exchange of gifts. Samwise got a Playmobil yellow submarine, and Frodo got a cabin cruiser - complete with drug dealer, bimbo and two midgets (OK so it's meant to be a family). They spent last night playing with them in the Kitchen Sink whilst I prepared tea. We have a rock crystal table lamp.

Boys were knackered when we got home. Frodo threw up yesterday morning - seemed to be exhaustion and not enough to drink, rather than illness.

I've been at work for two days, and will be in again on New Years Eve (hopefully that will turn out to be a half day). Relatively quiet at work. My strategy is to provide the cover when there's not many people in, then take the rest of the week off after New Years day, when the kids are still off school.

Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house,
Nobody stirred,
Except for the two parents struggling to assemble a 3 foot square model playset of the Tardis Interior...

Only took an hour and a half to assemble. Decided to do it now rather than have impatient boys waiting for it tomorrow. (OK, so we wanted to play with it first!)

I've just enjoyed some chestnuts roasted on an open fire. Delicious, coupled with the Jack Daniels that is enhancing my enjoyment of Pirates of the Caribbean, which is currently showing on the box.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how clean or clear our chimney is. I swept it myself yesterday, but the other rooms that adjoin the same chimney breast all smell a bit smokey.

Posted the last of the Christmas cards to the neighbours this morning. Noted that once more I missed the last post abroad - only 1 card ever goes that way, if I ever remember in time. Nipped out to the shops, picked up a couple of bags of smokeless fuel. Then spent the rest of the day cleaning, hoovering and tidying, whilst the hobbits dragged out all of their current toys to make a pre-Christmas mess.

Boys were bathed, and had new pyjamas hand delivered to them by Father Christmas on the start of his rounds. Samwise wasn't fooled by my outfit, but I threw doubt on his convictions when I denied it later, claiming to have just seen a sleigh going up the street. Their both fast asleep now, waiting for the real chap to show up.

Goose is defrosting in the kitchen. A few more pressies to wrap later, or rather clad in a loose formation of Christmas paper and sticky tape.

2 months of preparation finished - all ready for tomorrow. It'll be over before we know it.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Neighbours Party

One of the neighbours regularly throws a party just before Xmas, and invites most of the street. I went round with the boys at about 17:30, and didn't leave until 22:30.

Two very tired little boys last night. They had a great time with the other kids that were there. 3 boys were defending a bunk bed whilst 5 or 6 others assaulted it from below. Weapons employed were plastic swords, battle axes, a light sabre and several long cardboard tubes.

I spent my time gassing with the neighbours about the recent parking restriction notice. I also found myself informing them that the sounds of demolition they'd been hearing recently was the concrete being broken up in our back yard.
"Was that YOUR skip?" - must have been an irate car parker - it was only there for a day!

Two young ladies treated everyone to a violin recital - Samwise sat right in front of them to listen. Frodo didn't bother as he had discovered a video game upstairs.

Food was great - several vats of different types of curry had been prepared. I managed to catch one from toppling off the stove before it went over a tiny child's head!

Got into trouble when I got back for keeping the boys up too late. Lie in this morning made a pleasant change.

Night Flight

I'm a bit knackered this morning.

Yesterday morning I spotted one of the neighbours looking at a sign that had been tied to a signpost at the entrance to the street. He was taking a few notes.

I took a look at it myself last night. It's a planning notice to implement some parking restrictions at the entrance to our street. A good idea in terms of road safety at the corners of the road junctions, but they seem to want to extend the restriction a little too far up the street (in my opinion).

So I was up late last night emailing the council with my views.

I've had a few late nights recently. I ended up posting my Xmas cards at about 00:30 on Monday night/Tuesday morning. As I was walking back home I spotted a blue light on the pavement, and a peculiar buzzing sound.

On the pavement in front of me was what appeared to be a piece of Alien Technology. On closer examination it turned out to be a miniateure helicopter, that was having trouble taking off.

I picked it up, then it dawned on me that it was probably being operated by remote control. I looked all around but couldn't see anyone. I then looked up to the flats above. Nobody at first, then one of the chaps from the Indian Restaurant poked his head out of the window of the flat above.

It turned out that on attempting to fly the helicopter out of the window, he had discovered the limited range of the controller, and it had immediately plummeted to the ground. I tried to launch it upwards for him, and back into range, but no joy.

"Piece of shit!, Thanks mate!". I left it outside the door to his flat for him to collect.

Working Weekend

What a weekend! I'm on call this week. I've been called out on both Saturday and Sunday morning, one a minor problem, the other a false alarm.

In addition I had to carry out a code release on Saturday night, which would have normally been an early shoot, but one of the servers went a bit wobbly, so we had to bounce it. 4 or 5 hours work became 7 hours.

To finish off I'm in again on Sunday night for another release, followed by some catchup patching.

Managed to squeeze in a little Xmas shopping in between the work, and was up to 3am on Friday night applying Xmas Wrap, Bubble Wrap and Brown Paper to presents, to create parcels ready for posting on Saturday morning.

I was going to finish off the Xmas cards this morning, but after being called in it's going to be the usual late night frantic scribbling on Monday night to get them in the post early enough. As usual I've probably managed to miss the last posting date for anything going abroad - New Year Greetings it is again then!

Every year I contemplate why I do this. I heard a program on Radio 4 proposing that we should all just cross those people off the list who have become "Christmas card list friends". I'm not going to do that, it's still a way of keeping in touch, however small the gesture.

I also like the idea that even if you haven't paid them the slightest bit of attention for another year, then for that minute or so whilst you write the card you are actually thinking of them.

Here's to all my friends, no matter how little I see them!

Dad Dancing

It was the office Christmas party on Friday.

This year it was held in the Crowne Plaza hotel. Meal was good, lots of free booze, disco and a Blues Brothers act - who inevitably went through every song in the film.

There were some other corporate do's, other than our own being held there, so there were more women than men in the place, for a change.

Got down onto the dance floor for some serious "Dad Dancing", for most of the night. Attracted the attention of a bottle-tanned young lady for a while - she just looked like a pair of white eyes in the darkness to start with. She gave up eventually, to look for someone who was more available.

Phoned home a couple of times to point out that the full version of "Here Come the Girls" was being played, and that I was very, very drunk.

The bosses were having a "flash the cash" competition, so we finished off with a couple of glasses of champagne in the bar.

Walked a couple of miles before I could find a taxi with a light on that would stop. Perhaps trying to flag one down by waving a brolly wasn't such a good idea!

Got back about 3am. Did the traditional decoration of the Christmas tree on Saturday with a raging hangover (i.e. doing this with a hangover appears to be the tradition).

Liverpool Santa Dash 2007 - Photos

Well I did it - managed to complete the Liverpool Santa Dash a week ago today.

Got up early to beat any traffic, and got into the office, where we had agreed to meet up and change into our Santa outfits.

It was absolutely chucking it down with rain. I thought that it was going to be a complete washout. As I watched out of the office window I saw cars arriving one at a time in the various car-parks around the area. From out of each car clambered at least three Santas. Those that weren't dressed for the occasion opened up the boot, pulled out a sack and changed into their costume on the spot.

Soon a red-clad crowd was forming in front of the Liver Buildings. (One or two die-hard Everton Santas were refusing to wear red, and had all blue suits).

The other lads turned up, so we got changed and went to join the growing crowd.

The rain had eased off by then. Took a few photo's, then at 09:30 precisely we found ourselves shuffling towards the start line at Mann Island. A big cheer, a chorus of "Merry Christmas!" and we were off.

It's a Fun Run, rather than a race. Since I'd done absolutely no training whatsoever I'd decided from the outset that I wasn't going to push myself too hard. One of the lads in the office regularly runs marathons, so I thought that there was no point in trying to keep up with him.

Having said that, we pushed ahead a bit early on, until we got to a spot where the crowd had thinned out a bit, then settled down into a gentle jogging pace. There were some stages where you couldn't do anything but walk, due to the number of Santas in front, but we managed to complete most of the 3.1 miles running, rather than walking.

I took a lot of photos en-route. At one point I ran ahead a bit, then turned to take some snaps of our "team". Couldn't tell one Santa from another when I turned round.

It felt rather surreal running down the middle of the road on familiar streets. Even more surreal being one of 6,000 Father Christmas's (that's how many finished the run).

The rain held off for the duration of the run, the sun even came through the clouds for a bit. Not that this helped much - a Santa Suit gets pretty warm. Better than being wet through though - I suspect that my skin would have been dyed red if we'd got a soaking. I've probably caught some sort of Industrial disease from breathing through the artificial fibres of the beard.

Worst bit was as we neared the end, we knew that we would finish on Castle Street, but we kept having to take a 'Dogs Leg' every time the street came into view.

Our team of 4 had split into two groups of two by the time we got to the last few streets. Our marathon runner crossed the finish line first, but was beaten by myself and his brother to the free T-shirts and goody-bags.

Back to the office to get changed - although our marathon runner insisted on staying in costume for the rest of the day. We finished off by replacing lost fluids in the Pig & Whistle.

Observations made in the pub.
1. Today would have been a good day to pull off a bank robbery.
2. At the end, we all looked like Dan Akroyd in "Trading Places".

Do it again next year? I reckon that I will.

Nothing Acts Faster Than Darkdwarf

So go out and get some nothing now!

The title of this post came from yet another way to waste time on the internet - The Advertising Generator.

Results seem to work best when you put in your own name.

30th NaBloPoMo Post

This is my final NaBloPoMo post for 2007. The badge says it all...



Actually, on checking I see that this is my 31st post - I must have posted twice in one day earlier in the month.

NaBloPoMo - Did It!

This is the last post for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month - Post every day for the month of November. That's all you have to do).

I did it (if you don't count the fact that I didn't hear about this until 2nd November - I'm counting my Hallowe'en post as 1st November).

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible - back to irregular blogging...

Santa Dash

I'm taking part in the Liverpool Santa Dash.

Myself and 6,999 other jolly Santas jogging through the streets of Liverpool early on a Sunday morning.

A couple of work colleagues roped me into it, as they've done it for the past couple of years. (Here's a site that shows photos of last years event)

I'm picking up my costume tomorrow.

Should be a laugh (Ho! Ho! Ho!) - I'll take my camera.

Chris Moyles

Tuning into Radio 1 this morning, on the way into work, he said that he was broadcasting from Liverpool on his tour of the north.

If you're a Lardy Loud Mouthed DJ Stalker, he's staying in the Malmaison hotel.

I passed a tour van, parked in the car park, and his tour bus is now parked outside the hotel.

7% and Rising

Since Novelist Supermum isn't available (see previous post) to promote her new sci-fi,futuristic romance novel, this post creates a small amount of publicity for it.

Hospital Trip

Having a bit of a weird day today. It's supposed to be a 'study day', working from home. Unfortunately Novelist Supermum's hangover on Sunday has developed into serious back and stomach pains, so I took her to the G.P. this morning, who then had me rush her into hospital.

She's having a load of tests and scans today, so I'm running around like a blue arsed fly dealing with the kids, and sorting out a minder (Grandma) for the rest of the week.

She's got a book release tomorrow - I'll have to contact her publisher to tell them that she's not going to be available for any promo.

Sounds like I've sat on my phone again. An old pal just sent me an email to ask me "hows things?". He's had a voicemail that lasts for ages and sounds like me talking to the kids.

Children's Novels

Began the tidy up of the house in preparation for Xmas today.

This wasn't helped by a sore head, and a weary body, due to a number of bottles of Staropramen in the Everyman Bistro on Saturday Night.

Got the bulk of the Xmas shopping out of the way on Saturday afternoon. Only a few people left to buy for.
Spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the children's book section at Borders, leafing through novels by the likes of Anthony Horowitz, Eoin Colfer, Roald Dahl etc.

There's a fantastic range of children's action, adventure novels and fantasy these days. I do still buy them (or have them bought for me) as I enjoy a good lightweight, escapist. read. I spotted a new book called Iron Hand by Charlie Fletcher, which is a sequel to Stoneheart - both of which look promising.

Late Night / Early Morning Ditty

With apologies to Judas Priest - here's a little ditty to keep up my efforts for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)

Posting after midnight,
Surfing till the dawn,
Geeking till the morning,
Then I Yawn, Yawn Yawn

Blogcrowds Problem Resolved

Looks like they've fixed the Blogger Template problem at Blogcrowds.

SWAT and Viz

The film that we're watching on five US tonight is called SWAT.

Apparently it's based on a '70's TV series. I don't ever remember seeing it - perhaps it was on "the other channel" :)

The film is utter pants - but entertaining all the same. It's reminded me of Viz comic's SWANT team (Special Weapons and NO Tactics) , which prompted me to look up this trip down memory lane of Viz characters

Blogger Template Problem at Blogcrowds

Something's up with the blogger templates at blogcrowds (all of their templates are generating a "bandwidth exceeded" image) so I've had to switch to this layout/colour scheme for the time being.

Missing Discs

Following today's news headline, it didn't take some wit very long to post an advert to sell two data discs on ebay.

Sledgehammer by Night

Got back early from work, and found our friendly landscape gardener hard at work breaking the last of the concrete in the back yard/soon to be a back garden.

I gave him a hand, taking a few turns with the sledgehammer. It's quite fun doing this when the day light is fading, since the sledgehammer creates sparks as it whacks the concrete.

Cardboard Guitar

Frodo had a school project to make a musical instrument. We took an old tissue box, some elastic bands, a piece of card, paint and stickers to create this ornate little axe.
Samwise joined in and made a couple of shakers.

Decisive Action

As an office worker I regularly have to make tough decisions.

Do I iron all of my shirts for the following week, or do I just iron a shirt at a time, as I need them?

I'm on the early shift next week, so to save a little time in the morning's I've opted for the former.

Family Occasions

Sisters Birthday yesterday and Parents Silver Wedding Anniversary (Mother and Step-Dad) last week. Will be meeting up with Bro' & Sis' (and their families) and taking Parents out for a celebratory meal tonight.

An Honest Mechanic?

Driving home from work yesterday, I spotted a car in front of me with large lettering on the rear window that said "Warning, bits may fall off!".

I wondered what this was about? I could see that the car had a company logo on it.

As I drew nearer I saw that the car belonged to a Mobile Mechanic!

Either somebody's having a laugh, and he doesn't know, or he's just a bit too honest for the good of his business.

Steam Punk Ray Gun

Visited Worlds Apart and Forbidden Planet on my lunch break, to see if they had any Dr Who figures that we hadn't got yet for the kids.

Whilst browsing around Forbidden Planet I came across a limited edition (number 471 out of 500) Steam Punk Ray Gun that they had for sale.

No marked price, and I strongly suspect that it's non-functional (although the makers website does say that in the event of malfunction it doubles as a wonderful cudgel).

Bad Joke

There's a chap at work who is notorious for puns and the telling of bad jokes.

Here's an example:

When I was with my last company I was driving up the motorway and my boss phoned me and he told me I’d been promoted.

I was so shocked I swerved the car.

He phoned me again to say I’d been promoted even higher and I swerved again.

He then made me Managing Director and I went right off into a tree.

The police came and asked me what had happened. I said “I careered off the road.”

GROAN!

Monkey Nuts

Grandma Gandalf bought us a packet of "Monkey Nuts" a week or two ago.
We got about half way through them and put the rest in the cupboard.

She's bought us another packet, so I've taken this one to work to share out.
They're going down well - nobody has had these treats for a while. There's peanut shells all over the office.

There's some amusing labelling on the packet.

Ingredients: Peanuts and Shells 100%
WARNING! May contain Nuts.

Study Day

I've managed to get the boss to agree to me having two study days a month at home, to help me study for some professional exams.

Today was my first study day. Spent the morning studying at home, and the afternoon studying in the local public library.

Fitted in around the studying I took Frodo to school, and Samwise to nursery school, then Frodo to his evening physiotherapy session (Samwise came along to play in the waiting room). Cooked tea, fed the Hobbits. Got everything ready for tomorrow. Spoke to sister for a while regarding arrangements for parents silver wedding anniversary this coming weekend. Now at 22:30 I've got to nip out to the back yard that one day soon will be a garden and move the kids sandpit so that the landscape gardener can carry on breaking up the concrete.

Next study day I'm going to try hiding in the library all day!

Remembrance Sunday

I thought that for today's entry on my blog I would mark this day by pointing you to the lyrics of a song called The Remembrance by Jake Thackray

(I bought an album of his in 1987, with this song on it, amongst others. I still enjoy this record today.
More on Jake Thackray in Wikipedia)

Took the Hobbits to the up to the park for a bike ride in the pouring rain this morning. Stopped to listen whilst the minutes silence was going on - a little bit uncanny to hear in the rain, although the boys didn't last more than 30 seconds before making a noise.

We were too far away to hear the last post playing anywhere.

Later on I noticed a number of members of para-military youth organisations (aka brownies, cubs, scouts and guides), who must have been to a parade earlier, and were now out in uniform at the shops

The Goose is Getting Fat

Started Xmas shopping today.

No problems figuring out what Santa will bring the Hobbits this year.

We went out and literally filled a shopping trolley to the brim with Dr Who toys - this caused a few comments as we wheeled the trolley around the shop (envious adults I reckon).

Craig Who?

Just in case anybody's wondering what the reference to Craig Shergold in my previous post was all about - then just check the info about him in Wikipedia

Virus Hoax Spoof

I haven't had one of these for a long time, they plagued me in the mid to late 90's as well meaning friends, new to the internet, sent me alert after alert.

A friend sent me a hoax alert today, which prompted me to look up a spoof that I found around the time I was being pestered on a daily basis by these things.

I found a couple of variations of the spoof, and in the tradition of virus hoaxes have cobbled them together, made a few amendments, and turned it into my own.

Enjoy...

*** READ THIS, HAVE A GOOD LAUGH, BUT DON'T SEND IT TO ANYBODY AT ALL ***

will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, reprogams your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your video recorder and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.

It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It will mix Lucozade into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit trousers and hide your car keys when you are late for work. It will program your phone auto dial to call only 0898 numbers.

will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your petrol tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your credit card.

It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of , it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.

It moves your car randomly around car parks so that you can't find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold.

It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bath. It will cause your toilet to flush while you are in the shower. It will make a batch of moonshine in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase schoolchildren with your new snowblower.

And if you don't send this to 5000 people in 20 seconds, you'll fart so hard that your right leg will spasm and shoot straight out in front of you, sending sparks that will ignite the person nearest you.

Craig Shergold is alive and well, and doesn't want any more cards!

Sarah-Jane

A discussion with a couple of work colleagues yesterday, regarding childrens television programs, led on to us discussing the various presenters on the CBeebies channel.

The conversation between three middle-aged men with children inevitably swung around to talking about Sarah-Jane Honeywell.

I must admit that I didn't actually know her surname until yesterday, but one of my colleagues seems to know more about her than seems healthy for a married man :) He pointed me to her website.

IMHO she's obviously a product of stage-school, and has a cute, but sometimes odd look, somewhere between a pixie and a goblin.

Whilst I was Googling some info for this blog post I discovered a much better summary about her by The Splund than I can probably write.

WikiForms

Not much to blog about today.

Got WikiForms to work for the Wiki that we've implemented at work using pmwiki.

I've implemented a simple Issues Register using the given WikiForm sample, just to try out the functionality. Seems to work OK.

Fireworks

Took Frodo to tonight's firework display at Sefton Park.

We caught the 86 bus to the corner of Smithdown Road and Ullett Road, and walked about a mile to the Review Field where the display was held.

The usual battery-operated glowing novelties were on sale. This year the most popular one seemed to be the "light sword". I tried 3 different traders, just to check out the prices, but they were all the same extortionate rate of 4 quid each.

Frodo chose a blue one, and I bought a green one to take home for Samwise - who's still a little too young to stay up past his bedtime and watch the sky explode.

We had 40 minutes before the fireworks started, so I killed this time by teaching Frodo how to fence with his photonic weapon.

2 minutes to go and "Daddy I need a wee", so we legged it to a quiet corner of the field for this, and then back again.

The fireworks were splendid, as usual. Frodo sat on my shoulders and was cheering and applauding as each batch died down, then flared up again. Lots of "oohing" and "aahing" before the final fusillade, and then darkness.

The "light swords" proved to be very handy for picking our way across the field in the dark.

We hiked back down Ullett road, and despite the large numbers of people heading the same way, managed to catch an 86 back home.

The "light swords" again came in handy when crossing the road, and also for waving at people in the restaurants and cafe bars that we passed.

I've been driving in my car...

A couple of photos of our new car.

Goldfish 2

Goldfish 2 has been released.

I blogged about this software when I first discovered it, and used it to build a website.

The beauty of it is that it really is drag and drop - you don't have to know much at all about HTML.

The previous version was available for Mac, and was only a Beta Test version for Windows.

Goldfish 2 is now available for both Mac and Windows.

You can import sites that you created with Goldfish 1. I suspect however that in order to properly take advantage of the new features it might be better to build your website again from scratch. I did this with the Goldfish 1, to reconstruct a website that I'd already developed with another tool, and it didn't take too long.

Goldfish 1 had a lot of bugs with text boxes, especially when entering large volumes of text, such as novel excerpts (although this may have just been in the Windows Beta). Hopefully Goldfish 2 has ironed these out. Another reason to rebuild from scratch, rather than import, since the buggy text appears to get imported too.

Looks like you can't just use the Goldfish 1 license, and have to pay a fee to upgrade to Goldfish 2 (about 20 quid).

There's supposed to be some online documentation - but it doesn't seem to be ready yet.

The templates now look really good - you can now have template areas (e.g. header, footer, side column, navigation bar etc) as well as template pages.

Also they've taken on my suggestion and have implemented favicons (I had to figure out a workaround method to use them in Goldfish 1).

I'm going to fork out 20 notes and pay for the upgrade. I'll blog about this again when I've given Goldfish 2 a go and got a result.

NaBloPoMo

Chaotic's last blog entry has inspired me to join in with NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).

I have to post one blog entry a day for the month of November. - OK so I failed at the first hurdle, since I didn't discover this until today, and hadn't posted yesterday. (I'll count my Hallowe'en post as the first one).

I'm not going to have a theme - just random posting about life, family, thoughts, rants, stuff I've found that I want to share, bad jokes etc.

There you go, that's my first post done.

Hallowe'en

I've never agreed with the practice that came across the Atlantic, mostly via Television, of encouraging greedy children to go around after dark knocking on strangers doors in the hope of obtaining a few sweets.

Not so bad the ones that go around accompanied by an adult, but still pretty intrusive when people that you don't know turn up on the doorstep demanding confectionery.

We avoided the "Trick or Treaters" this year by disconnecting the doorbell. Reckon that we had about 8 or so calls tonight. They all gave up fairly quickly, except for one bunch who hammered on the door and rattled the letter box for a bit.

I'm no killjoy though. I've always enjoyed Hallowe'en, and this year we had a smashing time getting up to a few traditional activities with our little Vampires!

HelloJohnGottaNewMota

Picked up our new car today. No it's not a Cortina! it's a brand new VW Touran.
Looks very black and shiny right now - give it a few days for a layer of dirt to take the sheen off it.

It's been a bit of a struggle getting it delivered when we wanted it. What was that quote by Mark Twain again? - "There are lies, damn lies and car salesmen".

Breaking Rocks

We've asked a pal, who's a landscape gardener by profession, to help us transform our back yard into a garden (and are paying him for his services).

We're looking forward to having grass. To prepare for this the concrete floor where the garage/shed used to stand has to be broken up.

Spent a couple of hours today helping him do this, with a whizzer (aka angle grinder), a sledgehammer, a pick and a giant crowbar. We've now got about half of the ex-garage area broken up.

I'm now aching, and have a few blisters on my hands. Now I know why this sort of activity is traditionally a punishment for convicts. Owch!

Stardust

I read the book last year. Now I've been to see the film.

I went with Impworks and Novelist Supermum who both liked it too, and have each blogged about it.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought that it followed the book (by Neil Gaiman) pretty well - until today when we took another look at the book and realised what had been changed. This doesn't detract from it being a good, fun, fantasy film

Lady Boys Photo

Last month I blogged about a works night out. See Lady Boys.

We all had disposable cameras, but unfortunately the photos on our camera either haven't come out, the camera has been mislaid, or somebody has destroyed the evidence!

I've finally tracked down this little gem from our night out:

Dr Who - Close Up

We got up and got out early(ish) today, to take the Hobbits, dressed in their new Dr Who shirts, to the Dr Who Up Close Exhibition at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

We didn't tell them where we were going. Samwise started to get excited when he saw a poster on a building as we approached, and by the time we got to pay the entrance fee both boys were literally jumping for joy.

As well as the usual static displays, there was a real live Ood, a Cat-person and a Scarecrow. We got to meet all three. Samwise shook hands with the Cat-person and the Scarecrow, but was a little more wary of the Ood who was "holding his ball".

Frodo kept his distance, and just waved. They both had a go at operating a Dalek.

When we got to the end we went back in for a second look, before heading out through the inevitable shopping area. The toys on sale there are about 3 quid more than they are in Toys-R-Us, and they only had one new thing there (a Dalek-Sek voice changer mask). We bought a couple of posters and some badges.

Eventually we had to leave. The BBC were holding an event in a small circus tent, with loads of free swag designed to encourage parents and children to read together, so we wandered around this and watched some of the show.

We also had a quick look around the rest of the museum. An old ICL valve computer caught my eye - I took a photo and hope to sneakily add it to the Technology Refresh knowledge base at work.

There was a shed full of locomotives and steam engines, and another full of aircraft. I spotted a Japanese Kamikaze flying bomb (which for some reason hadn't been labelled?).

Here's some photos of the Dr Who exhibition.


Big Ben - after being hit by a Slitheen Spaceship


The Face of Boe


Cyber-Controller


"Daddy, Daddy - the Cyberman Talks!"


Cyberman


The Empress of Racnoss


The face of the Sycorax (Mask in a props-box)


The Lazarus Machine


Daddy tries the Lazarus Machine. "My name is DarkDwarf and I am 43 years old!"


Samwise at the controls of a Dalek


Exterminate!


Don't Touch!


Judoon


Clockwork Robot


Samwise Meets The Ood


Scarecrow


Samwise meets the Cat-Person


Samwise meets the Scarecrow


Don't open the airlock!


Burn with me!


Frodo and the Face of Boe