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

Nocturnal

Working from 18:30 to 01:00 tonight, carrying out a Disaster Recovery exercise.

Much of it is waiting around waiting for somebody to press the panic button, or complete their part of welding the system back together - then it's Go-Go-Go until our part is done.

I probably have to spend more time giving status updates to all concerned than I do in actually getting on with the job.

My green light should come on around 21:30. Hmmm - now could be an opportunity to try out the Team Hammock, if I can be bothered to set it up in the middle of the floor. Danger is that it might turn out to be too comfortable.

A Walk in the Park

We went on an outing to Calderstones Park with Samwise' Nursery School last Friday morning. He had a great time running about with the other children, and trying to catch a pigeon.

A few more snapshots of London

Here's some more pictures, taken whilst we were whizzing around London in our car the other weekend. Along the Embankment, across Lambeth Bridge, back across Westminster Bridge, hung a right at the statue of Boadicea, over Tower Bridge, U-turn then back over Tower bridge then navigating around the "Monopoly Board" to find the A40 - M40 and headed home.