happy christmas everyone

Hi there,

Been too busy playing halflife2 for the last few weeks to post anything much on here, so apologies for the silence, although its unlikely to improve before next year as I am off to my parents for christmas tomorrow and they don't have an internet connection now that my brother has moved out of home.

Anyways its christmas now, and here is an electronic christmas card I have drawn for everyone.



Have a great time over christmas everyone,

SMF.

[/me shakes head in disbelief]

I think some people need to get out more....

The Hamster's Valhalla - or Stories at dinner

I've been on a work course this week, at a place called Cranage Hall learning [more?] about the drug discovery process. Quite informative but the most uncomfortable chairs I've sat on in a while. I think it was a combination of the chair and the fact that we were working in syndicates and had to keep twisting round to see what was on the projector screen.

As we sat down to dinner on the first night we started sharing stories and anecdotes. The guy sat next to me in all innocence revealed that he wanted to get a pair of silk pajamas. This was unanimously greeted with laughter from the girls sat round the table and to be fair the blokes too. In hindsight I don't think he should then have mentioned the bunny slippers but I guess these things slip out when you are desperately looking for a new avenue of thought.

Much laughter and gentle teasing followed. The wine was flowing freely which only encouraged us further....

As the conversation meandered on, Ros mentioned that her daughters' hamster had recently passed on, and that she had put it in the box with the other one from last year ?!?. We just had to ask more. Apparently when the other one died about a year ago, she asked her daughter what she wanted to do with it, but she couldn't decide so it was put to one side in a nice box. We wondered if later in life Ros's daughter would be given the box which by then would have accumulated several more furry bodies, and what emotional consequences this would have.

However we then discovered what the original choices for funerals had been. Ros had offered burial in the flower border, under a little headstone or a full Viking Funeral Pyre with a little longboat made from lollysticks and cremated whilst floating on their pond. Now that would have been some way to go. We spent the next twenty minutes discussing little hamster-sized swords and what hamster Valhalla would be like. All the sunflower seeds you could stuff into your cheeks probably.

This was when we noticed that all the other tables of people on the course were talking about sensible things to do with work and suchlike and giving us some strange looks.

We retired to the bar to continue into the small hours.

Actual Reality?

I woke up at some unearthly hour this morning, and feeling tired, I reset the alarm clock and went back to sleep. I then woke up a bit later on and got up and was getting ready to go to work when the alarm clock actually went off and I really woke up for the first time.

Atleast I think I did. What if this entire day has just been some strange dream and in actual fact it is still sunday night/monday morning and I still have a full day at work to do?. How would I know the difference?. Does it make much difference either way. Probably not, but you never know.

I had another dream the night before that was very clear and rememberable. It was also the kind of dream where you wake up briefly and then are able to drift back off to sleep and re-enter the same dream. This one was one where I was lost in a big hotel, and I could not find my room. I remember walking up and down stairs, round balconies asking directions and then getting lost again and running down endless corridors, even ending up outside at one point trying to find whether there was another building I could get into.

I eventually ended up in a pub wrapped in my duvet without having ever got back to the room.

It probably means something really significant, but I can't fathom it out. Answers on a post card.

Sleep interupted

I'm a fairly light sleeper normally, such that I rarely sleep the entire night without waking up a couple of times. More often than not its because certain felines have [re]appeared on the bed. I don't mind this, though it has caused me to be able to identify which cat it is without putting the light on.

Scully always jumps on at the top of the bed nearest the door, then walks or leaps over me so that she is on my right as I lie. She then curls up on the pillow next to me and goes to sleep. Which is very scary if she has managed to get all the way on there without me noticing as I discovered on sunday morning when I opened my eyes to discover her peering intensely into my eyes from about three inches. I woke up fairly rapidly thereafter as you might imagine.

Valen on the other hand is a bit more timid. He always jumps onto the bed down near my feet and walks around me to get to where he wants to get. He always sleeps by my feet, or on the odd instance between my feet if I happen to have moved such that my legs are apart. This does mean that he is sometimes accidentally kicked into the night when I roll over.

I can also tell who is who by touch, Scully has slightly wirey fur, whereas Valen is much softer. It is also possible to tell who is who when they lick my fingers, as Valen's tongue is raspy like sandpaper whereas Scully's is softer some how.

Another bar joke

just read this one somewhere

f(x)=3X+6 goes into a bar and asks for a sandwich. Sorry replies the landlord, we don't cater for functions...

This blogger has the flu

I don't know whether it is a combination of the late nights and alcohol or sleeping in the coldest bunk room, but I have gone down with the flu. This is only the fourth time I've been out of bed since monday, and I'm not sure if its a good idea yet. Oh well.

Had a great time at Dalesbridge with all the other ops people last weekend. It was really good to catch up with every one and share experiences of the festival again. It seems like ages since we were all there but its only been a couple of months really. Still its reassuring to learn that many of my friends were experiencing the same kinds of emotions and concerns, and finding new ways to expand and learn from those shared thoughts. Some of the best bits were watching everybody play with the stress carrot whislt sharing.

Oh and we won the quiz too. So it just goes to show that all those evenings in watching Big Brother were worth it afterall Liz

Now I am just left with the sadness of it being another five months until we all get the chance to meet up again in another part of the country.

Home is where there is nothing to do

Its official, I live in the least uk's least cultured town or borough.

I have to agree with the surveys view as well, we have the lowest culture density in the UK. No theatre (not that I would go to a theatre if there was one mind), no cinema (which I would use), only one museem (about Silk of all things).

On the bright side, we do have lots of trees, open spaces, proper countryside right outside the window, as much fresh air as we want all the time, no parking nightmares, or bad traffic jams, so its not so bad really.

Subliminal music. and cats

Having just discovered the frustration of having typed a half page of blog only for the sever to swallow it and throw out some truely pointless error message, this is going to be shorter than it was originally.
--------------
Music plays a large part in my life. Its the first thing I hear in the morning when I wake up,
not withstanding the cats meowing which could mean any combination of the following: "feed me","give me some water", "let me out", "let me in", "give me some attention", "hello", "its dark out still", "sorry, did I wake you up?", "you are asleep on my bed, get off", "thats mine too!", "I've got something sticky on my fur, please let me rub myself against you to wipe it off", "are you pleased to see me?", "look, its a dead [insert appropriate rodent/bird/frog/worm/insect] that I've just caught for you", "its raining outside", "I'm wet, so you need to be wet too", "coming through", "play with me", and probably "feed me some more".
Music is also the last thing I hear before drifiting off to sleep at night and given that I sleep with the radio on, I'm sure it is secretly brainwashing me to buy all of these cds [/me gestures towards shelf unit over there, sagging under weight of hundreds of cds]

It does however keep me company and make the house seem more lived-in than it would otherwise. The problem with sleeping with the radio on is that the music enters your mind directly without your knowledge, and you find that the next day you are humming a song that you can't remember hearing before.

A couple of songs that have joined me recently in this manner are
Little Yellow Spider by Devendra Banhart

and Everything I've got in my pocket by Minnie Driver

Both albums are quite different, but each in their own way are fantastic. Devendra has a strange story-telling way of singing, painting with music I guess. Whereas Minnie has a very clean singing tone, that is strangely hypnotic.
This got me thinking about how my musical tastes have changed and evolved over the years, from its early heavy metal/thrash/grindcore/speed metal origins to the mellow nature of the music I now prefer. Even so I don't think there is a single album on those shelves that I couldn't slide into the cd player and lose myself in completely for a while. There are many that I wish I could disappear into completely.........

Grrrr Postmen

The post office have decided to introduce some new features to the mail delivery. The "great" thing about the post round here is that it seems to get delivered now sometime after 12pm, instead of just before 9am like it used to. Not really a problem as I am out at work so its still all there when I get back in afterwards.

However the only day of the week when they do manage to deliver the post bright and early is saturday morning when it comes at about 7.30am. Or in other words, my day off, when I was sleeping in having been out for a curry the night before. Grrrrrrrrr.

To make it worse, it wasn't even for me, but a box for the neighbours who were away.......

And don't even get me started on the fifteen items of junk mail leaflets that he pushed through beforehand. I signed up to the do-not-send-me-junk-mail list and I get nothing addressed to me any more. All of it is stuck through the letterbox as "specially hand delivered by the postoffice" and not addressed to anyone in particular. I was tempted to shove it into the postmans "letter box" but he had a close escape.

All I can say is its a good job its bonfire week

Grrrr Postmen

The post office have decided to introduce some new features to the mail delivery. The "great" thing about the post round here is that it seems to get delivered now sometime after 12pm, instead of just before 9am like it used to. Not really a problem as I am out at work so its still all there when I get back in afterwards.

However the only day of the week when they do manage to deliver the post bright and early is saturday morning when it comes at about 7.30am. Or in other words, my day off, when I was sleeping in having been out for a curry the night before. Grrrrrrrrr.

To make it worse, it wasn't even for me, but a box for the neighbours who were away.......

And don't even get me started on the fifteen items of junk mail leaflets that he pushed through beforehand. I signed up to the do-not-send-me-junk-mail list and I get nothing addressed to me any more. All of it is stuck through the letterbox as "specially hand delivered by the postoffice" and not addressed to anyone in particular. I was tempted to shove it into the postmans "letter box" but he had a close escape.

All I can say is its a good job its bonfire week

Sad news. John Peel has passed away

I got back from lunch just now to check the bbc news website to sadly discover the announcement about John Peel's death. I feel very hollow now.

Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies

I've listened to his shows on Radio1 for the best part of the last 20 years of my life, and his genuine passion and enthusiasm for music in all its various forms was fantastic especially when compared to his fellow DJ's and all the other playlisted music that pollutes the airwaves today. Forever pushing the boundaries and never afraid to play bands and the non-mainstream music that noone else would touch, the airwaves will be sadly diminished by his absence. My CD collection has been greatly influenced by the music I have heard on his show and I will personally miss that variety and exposure to new bands/music immensely.

There is a huge hole now in radio that I think very few people could fill, and its likely that I'll never find another radio show that will have such a big impact on what I listen to. (Andy Kershaw or Steve Lamaq come the closest and they are miles short). I now don't think there is any reason for me to tune into radio1 again, as it feels thats Tom Petty's song the last DJ pretty much describes what John Peel stood for and fought against.

Well you can’t turn him into a company man
You can’t turn him into a whore
And the boys upstairs just don’t understand anymore
Well the top brass don’t like him talking so much,
And he won’t play what they say to play
And he don’t want to change what don’t need to change

There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
There goes the last DJ

Well some folks say they’re gonna hang him so high
‘Cause you just can’t do what he did
There’re some things you just can’t put in the minds of those kids

As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see
How much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free

There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
And there goes the last DJ

Well he got him a station down in Mexico
And sometimes it’ll kind of come in
And I’ll bust a move and remember how it was back then

And there goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice.
And there goes the last DJ


We miss you John, and the music you championed for so long will miss you even more.



His favorite song seems the fitting way to finish this longish blog entry

The Undertones - Teenage kicks

Teenage dreams so hard to beat,
Every time she walks down the street,
Another girl in the neighbourhood,
Wish she was mine, she looks so good.

[Chorus]
I wanna hold you,
Wanna hold you tight,
Yeah teenage kicks right through the night
(Come On!)

Im gonna call her on the telephone,
And have her over cos im all alone,
I need excitement and i need it bad,
Cos its the best ive ever had.

[Chorus]

Teenage dreams so hard to beat,
Every time she walks down the street,
Another girl in the neighbourhood,
Wish she was mine, she looks so good.

[Chorus]

Im gonna call her on the telephone,
And have her over cos im all alone,
I need excitement and i need it bad,
Cos its the best ive ever had.

I wanna hold you,
Wanna hold you tight,
Yeah teenage kicks right through the night
(Alright!)

I wanna hold you wanna hold you tight,

Get those teenage kicks right through the night yeah!
Alright.

Where have I been?

Liz, Ok, ok I'll post something. Anything to be a more active poster than Mr Cullen

So where have I been. Well, nowhere really. I just could not think of anything to post. Well I still can't but I'll try. I do find it quite hard to open up and talk/post about stuff, even if its just what I have done today. Thats just the way I am I guess. Everyone else appears to find it much easier to disclose what are often very personal subjects/topics. I don't tend to bring those kinds of thing into the open in any situation, especially in the very public blog universe. Although I do see some parallels between myself and a few of the other infrequently blogging bloggers in this little circle of ours.

Over the last week I have been building a new pc from bits, which went very smoothly, apart from when I accidentally connected the harddisks power cable across the live-earth connection whilst it was switched on, resulting in a blue spark, the pc shutting off and a few choice words to flood the room. Fortunately the only victim of this accident was the 13amp fuse in the power supply's plug and not the expensive and very electrically sensitive pc componants.

I think I now have everything installed and running as it was on the old system again. It takes ages to reinstall and configure everything from scratch, especially when there is 150Gb of it. Not going to run out of space for a while on this new system though as it has > 0.6Tb of storage space.

I settled down this evening to watch Ray Mears doing one of his Bushcraft programmes. He was trekking across the Masai Mara with a native Masai warrior, who was going to show him some of the Masai survival skills. They settled down for the night, making a traditional masai camp, which effectively involved chopping down some really sharp thorn bushes and making them into a big hedge. They sat down by the fire and started to have some food. The Masai warrior reaches across the camp to poke the fire into life and what do I spot on his wrist?. A wristwatch. They seemed to live about 700 miles from the nearest road, in mud huts, with no electricity or any other obvious modcons, so why on Earth would they need a wristwatch?. Its not as if they need to worry about being late for meetings or anything is it?.

• 8am : Sun rise. Get up
  
• 8.05am : Check to make sure no one has been eaten by Lions in the night
• 8.15am : Breakfast
• 9am : Tend herd of cows and make lunch
• 11am : Meeting with Lions to discuss their concerns re Project Wildebeast
  
• 2pm : Pose for visiting film crew
• 3pm : Networking with the Hyenas
  
• 5pm : Go home for tea
  
• 8pm : Eastenders
• 10pm : Bed
  

what every ipod owner needs

Knowing that there is at least one I-pod owning reader of this blog, I thought I would share with the world at large the latest state of the art accessory for the i-pod.

So without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you, the I-pod Cozy. Available in several different animals including bear, dog, mouse and most amusingly bunny rabbit and fox, .

The ways of lvoe

Typos bend the mind in strange new directions. Take this one from Sally's blog: the ways of lvoe, which got me thinking as to what the ways of lvoe could possible be, and who lvoe might have been.

Some deep-thinking philosopher, probably sitting on a remote hilltop in a far-off land, pondering life, existance and coming up with important insights into the deeper depths of the human mind.

Things like :
the way to happiness is ...
always do this before/after that
check your boots for scorpions before putting them on
eat plenty of fruit/vegetables
and so on.

In the context of the blog, the ways deal with the path to happiness in married life. This kind of thing I guess, What women wish their partners to say more often, and the reverse. This is probably the most important though: Always make sure there is chocolate in the house.

Then it occured to me how different my line of thoughts would have gone if it had been a different typo using the same letters.

"I went to offer him the expereince of an expereinced, mature woman, wise in the ways of vole[s], in case there was anything he wanetd to know for his wedding night"

...the ways of voles would have been very strange indeed

Now thats a strange liquid

The three most common states of matter are solid, liquid and gas. Related to this is that these properties of a chemical substance usually exist such that its melting point is below its boiling point. Take water for example. It melts at 0°C and boils at 100°C. Ok, a fairly normal chemical.
These guys("Law-breaking liquid defies the rules") have just found a mixture of chemicals that starts of as a liquid but as you heat it to between 40-70°C it solidifies, then re-liquifies as you cool it down again.

This would be like taking a cup of water and heating it in the oven and taking out a cup of ice!.
Quite amazing really.

A Brief Glossary of Theatrical Technical Terms

Actors	Persons who insist on moving and/or talking when you are trying to illuminate them
Audience	Persons that occupy the lavatory and bar at inconvenient times
Band	"Musicians" who turn up three hours late for the sound check and blame you
Bar	Sensible place to look for engineer
Barn Doors	Used to stop animals in a barn escaping
Bar Steward	Anyone or anything of which you disapprove
Bleeding	Adjective applicable to almost anything
Boom	That made you jump
Bulb	Something you plant in the garden
Channel	Very expensive French perfume
Check	American method of payment
Colour Magazine	supplement to Sunday newspaper
Cross-fade	Vanish in an annoyed manner (much used by producers)
Cue	Long line of persons waiting to get to the lavatory or bar
Cyberlights	Vicious metallic adversaries of Doctor Who
Dimmer	Less intelligent
Director	Tells you where to park your car
Engineer	Person who performs the impossible, usually yesterday, and 25% under budget
Flies	Something to remember after visiting the lavatory
Flown Bar	Place to look for an engineer on an aeroplane
Follow Spot	Chase around after the dog
Fuse	M6 bolt used as "safety" device in equipment
Gaffa Tape	Alternative to nuts, bolts, safety chains, hook clamps, scaff, insulation, blackwrap, etc...
Iris	Flower grown from a BULB
Leko Lantern	Welsh Spotlight
Light	Not on time, anywhere south of Oxford
Microphone	Something for singers to aim away from
Mixing Desk	Place to make complicated drinks
Musical Director	Welsh Clergyman who sings
PARCan	Leaving your car outside the venue
Plug	Persuade critic that you play is better than anybody else's
Producer	ridiculous person who demands the impossible, usually yesterday, and 25% under budget
Profile	Abrasive instrument used by person paid to do so
Prompter	Not so late
Pyrotechnics	Producers method of communication at times of stress
Rank Strand	Very smelly beach
Refuse	1) Replace broken M6 bolt 2) Say no to producer, usually just before being given last pay packet 3) The empty Pizza boxes and Beer cans ;left at the end of a show
Socket	Hit it with your fist
Spill	What happens to beer if you are careless with it
Spot	Quantity or refreshment
Stage left & right	Everyone else's right and left
Tabs	Brown stripy cats
Teasers	Ladies who remove their clothes on stage
Technical Rehearsal	Chaos. Useful for producing nervous breakdown in Producer, who may then let you get on with your job in peace.
Throw	The effect of musicals such as "The Sound of Music"
Trackspot	Follow the dog, using a magnifying glass
Upstage	The art of demonstrating how much better an actor you are than someone else
Varilight	Sting of low voltage lights for Christmas Trees
Wings	Paul & Linda McCartney's Band

You think you know someone then...

Two good friends of mine from work returned from a couple of weeks of holiday today to announce to the world that they got married whilst they were away. You think you know someone really well, and that they are dead set against marriage and then they manage to pull something like this off without anyone suspecting a thing.

Anyway, belated congratulations to Barry and Sarah on their recent wedding.

They know how to live the high life though, as demonstrated by their honeymoon location, a small 2 mile x 3 mile windswept island off the west coast of Scotland somewhere, reachable only by a submerged causeway to one island and then a rowing boat to get to their island. Now that's what I call remote.

I'm always amazed at the near-reality levels of realism that can be acheived with computer generated images, as these two examples show. Soon it will be possible to completely artificially generate images that are indistinguishable from the real version. Some would say that we are there already. Who's to say they are wrong...

Returning home

Its been almost two weeks since Greenbelt finished, and I've finally managed to spend more than a few hours actually at my house. This means I might actually get to unpack things, pack tents away and put my feet up. Bliss.

First off I was at mum+dads, which mainly involved sleeping until lunch them watching dvd's and reading a few books. Very relaxing after the hectic days of the festival. Then I watched as my brother started doing DIY on his new house. It was very strange to see him sanding and painting the walls and ripping out the old kitchen.

I guess that we have now both completed growing up, having finally moved out of home (I left at 18, he left it another 13 years before deciding to start out into the big wide world) it is more strange for mum and dad to have the family home just to themselves. The peace and quiet will probably come as a nice change for them :)

I briefly came home on sunday but only stayed for a few hours as I had to go to a conference with work. Typically the weather was absolutely fantastic mon-thurs, just as I was forced to spend each day shuttered up in a lecture theatre with no windows. To cap it all, the conference centre bar was closed for refurbishment. Arrgh.

Today I was back in work to try and catch up with the 127 emails that had accumilated during the time I was off. Most were about things that had already happened whilst I was not there, and so were pretty much pointless at this stage. I wish there was some way that could make emails expire after the meeting/actions the contents refer too has expired, a best-before-date if you will, so that I have less to sort through. It would have saved me several hours of torment today......

How the blog got its name.

If you are wondering why its called the horse wrestlers tale, here is Snowy making the initial capture of said horse at Greenbelt the other day. Mind you it had been running free for quite a while and made another bid for freedom just as Liz and I arrived on the scene. As the horse darted for a gap in the barrier, I cut it off with a solid rugby tackle on the front legs. Having been fed a sugar lump or two to calm it down, the horse was escorted to the doping sheds for further investigations, before being released back into the wild.

In the beginning

And so it begins. If I can get near a computer for the next few days otherwise its going to be quite empty until thursday