1550 And Out

It occurs to me that it's not right to just stop... leave you hanging. So this is me saying that I'm not stopping, I'm not hanging. I've just got bored of blogging.

So farewell and many thanks to everyone who's stopped by here over the years. Especial thanks to all who've commented. I've had fun and I hope you have too.

I fully expect I'll be back on the interwebhighway in some form at some point, and so maybe I'll see you there.

In the meantine, this is me, signing out from World of Lint, farewell.

:-)

Handbag Pushers

Like many people, I'm watching The Wire on DVD. This makes me aware that Baltimore is very like many European cities (eg Athens). I will explain:

In The Wire, gangs of black fellas hang out on street corners and sell drugs to passers by. In Europe it's exactly the same except that for some reason the drugs are replaced by handbags. I don't really understand why this is. My best guess is that each handbag contains a dose of heroin. The bags are the equivalent of the little glass phials used by the tv dealers. The European guys are cleverer though and have worked out that the police can see the drugs through the glass and so a handbag is a much better thing to hide the heroin in.

An alternative theory (not mine) is that they are selling handbags to finance organized crime. I think this is unlikely unless the crime they are organising is to steal more handbags (which is how the drugs trade works).

I don't think that The Wire would have been as successful if it been about handbags instead of drugs.

Although, and this has only just occurred to me, maybe it is an allegory about the european handbag trade! Yes, I think that's it.

Learning To Read

We are in Athens at the moment. It's been my first time in Greece and I must confess I've been a little surprised at how foreign it is. Or at least how foreign it seems... It's the writing, you see. They still actually use ancient Greek letters out of maths lessons. They use them for writing though, not just for algebra. On signs, menus, books, newspapers, everywhere.

I've had to learn to read all over again!

It's really rather like when I learnt to read English as a tiny child. I have to spell out each word letter by letter and then try and see what kind of word it forms. If I'm lucky it makes a Greek sounding word. Translating this to English is then a separate problem!

(quite a big problem as I can't seem to remember more than "hello" and "yes")

I'm definitely getting better at it though. And it makes a fun competitive game to see which of me or K can work out a given word the quickest.

Incidentally, we've been on a cruise for the last week. An actual cruise on an actual cruise ship! More on that when I return to England.

Photo Recursion

So I'm in this restaurant in Bruges and the cameras come out and people take photos of people and sometimes you take photos of yourself and sometimes you take photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself taking photos of yourself...

Further running

My third Great North Run passed safely and I got my time down to 2 hours 13 minutes, 2 minutes faster than the last year. One of those was because I didn't need to stop for a wee. Afterwards I seem to have gone a little insane as I have now entered myself into the 2009 Edinburgh Marathon, in May. Not sure how well I'll do, but I figure that I'm probably fitter now than I have ever been before and so if I was ever to do a marathon now is the time to go for it.

But it might kill me.

GNR No 3

Great North Run tomorrow. I've kept to my training schedule and my third ten miler last Sunday went pretty well so I'm confident that I shouldn't have too many problems tomorrow. Famous last words... My main worry is that it might be a bit cold and rainy before the race but I've got a plastic sheet thing for emergencies so hopefully it'll be alright. I'm not sure I'll beat last year's time but hopefully it won't be much slower.

See you on the other side!

Poor Excuse for Laziness

If you're wondering why my posts have become somewhat sporadic... it's the credit crunch / world financial meltdown / toxic debts / etc. Or maybe laziness. Or X-Factor. But it's probably the crunch. Everything's the crunch.

100 Kazoos

Hope&Social's Blues Bar gig ended somewhat inspiredly/erratically (delete according to personal preference) yesterday afternoon when they handed out 100 kazoos to the audience to replace the brass on the final song (whose title I have temporarily misplaced). This might have worked well except that the kazoos were quite cheap and not too easy to play until you got the hang of it. I was brilliant at kazooing but the rest of the audience seemed to have some problems. The band said they were going to record the song but if they did I'm not sure it will go down as one of the best live audience performances ever made. Not even the best one they've made.

It was fun though.

I was in the little boys room when I heard them announce in the main room that they were handing out the kazoos. I therefore had to finish my business very quickly in order to head back and grab an instrument. It was worth the rush.

And I made sure to wash my hands first, in case you were worried.

H&S Weekend

York has a brand spanking new music venue, The Duchess. It's in the building that used to be The Stonebow Snooker Club. Now it's a venue. We went on Friday night for the first time, to see the essential Hope&Social. It felt like being in another city! It's big, looks good, sounds good and has decent beer. I'll certainly be going back regularly.

And in the meantime we're off to the teeny tiny Harrogate Blues Bar this afternoon for a second bout of H&S.

Serious Merger Implications

In the news today, it looks like HBOS and Lloyds could be merging. This would create a big bank but I've realised that it could have quite serious repercussions in York. Outside M&S at the top of Stonebow, a merger of the two branches would actually block the road, impeding access to The Duchess and Fibbers. Here's an artists impression of what the merged bank might look like:



I'm glad I've had the opportunity to get this problem out in the open. The BBC seem to not be mentioning it. Censoring, fascist scum.

It starts...

Well, it's about bloomin' time. But good news nonetheless. Harmonix have finally put out the long-awaited patch for (PS3) Rock Band that lets it use the Guitar Hero 3 guitar. And it works perfectly! Finally we can have two-guitar Rock Band (or even full 4 player if I had any friends!). Haven't actually tried it properly yet mind other than a quick test to see if it worked.

Now all I need is a GH3 patch to use the RB guitar. I'm sure it's on the way. Maybe.

And one thing's for sure, I'm not buying a second drum kit so they'd better bloody make sure the RB drums work with GHWT.

A music book I won't be buying

Looking in the window of Banks's Music Shop today I spotted a book of guitar tab. It wasn't Travis or the Foo Fighters. It was something else, something wronger. It was a book of music from Guitar Hero. It lets you play all the songs you've learnt to play on your fake plastic guitar on a real guitar instead of a fake plastic guitar.

Now, maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't the whole f***ing point of guitar hero that you do it on a fake plastic guitar rather than a real guitar? It helps you avoid the world of broken strings and lost plectri. Computer games are not an introduction to the real world. When I was a kid I spent hours (minutes) playing Advanced Lawnmower Simulator on my Spectrum. It was great because it let me have all the excitement of mowing an actual lawn with an actual petrol lawnmower but without having to leave my bedroom. It didn't in any way inspire me to go out and get my own petrol lawnmower. And I never saw garden centers selling ALS branded lawnmower instruction books in them. And believe me, I visited a lot of garden centers when I was a kid. Apologies if it's garden centre by the way.

So my point broadly is that the Guitar Hero tab book is daft and stupid and you should boycott it lest this stupidity escalate.

And I'm not planning to buy "The Yie Ar Kung Fu Guide to Martial Arts" or "Leisure Suit Larry Teaches Humping" either.

Chocolate Post

Do you ever post chocolate bars to yourself in your work's internal post because it's nice to receive chocolate bars in the internal post? I don't. But I considered it.

Portal Music

I'm as normal playing catch-up in the world of computer games, still pretty much being caused by my semi-obsession with finishing all the Final Fantasy games. But at the weekend I found the time to play through the wonderful Portal. Everything I'd read about it was true - it was funny, clever, fun and completely innovative. It was also refreshingly short. Hard to say much about the best bits of it without spoiling the game for those who haven't played it. But I will say that the end-credits have provided me with an amazing ringtone.

Possibly even a geekier ringtone than the Blakes 7 theme I was using before.

Bad Detectives Boys

We watched Bad Boys last night. I haven't seen it since VHS and so it was pretty much like watching a brand new film since I didn't remember the story at all. It's good, not a classic, but fun. It got a lot funnier once I started to do the following thing. You can do this too if you want! Every time Will Smith is on screen, prettend he's Robert Powell. And every time Martin Lawrence is on screen pretend he's Jasper Carrot. It makes it hilarious.

Let's shampoo the dogs of York...

York must have very clean dogs. I say this not as a complement to the lesser girls of York but instead because of two things I have seen today.

The first thing I saw was a van driving round the ring road that contained a mobile dog cleaning service. If you phone them up they will come around to your house and clean your dog for you. I found this quite an odd idea but not as odd as the next thing.

The next thing was a shop on Tadcaster Road called Metro Dogs. They offer self service, coin-operated dog-washing machines. Yes, I did just say "self service, coin-operated dog-washing machines". You read it right the first time, you are not drunk or dyslexic. Well, maybe you are and if so, good for you. Well done on being able to read the vodka label.

I really can't believe there's a big market for coin-operated dog-washing machines. Dogs are supposed to be smelly and dirty. That's the whole point of dogs. If people wanted a clean pet they'd have a cat or a fish.

So if this was being dragondenned to me (it is a verb!) I'd be saying, "sorry, but I'm out" at this stage. There do seem to be franchise opportunities available for any readers outside of York though. Details are on their website if you're interested!

I don't see why people don't just throw their dogs in a canal to clean them like they did in the old days. Much easier.

Similar/Dissimilar Films

We were thinking tonight about two things. In both cases, you have to think of two films where one is a sequel to the other.
1. Which film and its sequel are most similar?
2. Which film and its sequel are most dissimilar?

I have answers but I don't want to influence you so I'll post them in the comments.

BMX shame?

I think I am actually going to be quite ashamed if Team GB wins gold in the BMXing. That's like claiming credit for being best at hopscotch or kiss-catch.

If I had GPS in my legs

On the TV at the moment is a combine harvester that doesn't need a human to drive it - it is all automatic based on GPS readings. Quite clever. I actually start to wonder how people could ever navigate before GPS came along. I guess they did it in the same way that people kept crappy diaries before blogs came along.

I was wondering though whether I could have the same technology (the combine harvester not the blog) installed in my actual legs, to help me when I go running. I'd just input a route and then sit back and let the legs do all the work. My brain would be kept free allowing me to spend time composing poetry or admiring wildlife. What fruits might emerge from such an endeavour!

I figure I could also even simplify the route planning process. Rather than having to trace one out on the internet (and again, I ask, how did people know how far they were running before the web?) I could just type in a target distance and the GPS magic machine would plan a route for me, hopefully avoiding the car GPS pitfalls of being told to drive through rivers or fall into pits.

I might even be able to harvest crops along the way.

So if any scientists are reading, you can have this idea for free, dragonden it if you want (and that is a verb, I won't hear anyone say it isn't), just make it happen. Technologise my legs. I'm willing to spend up to 100 English pounds buying it when it's ready so I could become the $200 dollar man! And who says inflation is ever upwards. Just witness the price of series 4 of Buffy on DVD. When it came out several years ago it was about Seventy Quid. Now it's available for around fifteen. Inflation? Pah. Stick Buffy in your basket.

1997 Comedy = 2008 Reality

It's slightly surreal to watch Brass Eye on DVD and then when it finishes turn straight to Newsnight on actual TV. It's hard to see the join.