Slipping

So, I was stood around in the kitchen.  Nothing particularly exciting, my other half was working on making tea and I was chatting to avoid doing chores.

Anyhow, it turns out that I have slidey socks.

And when I kind of leaned on a counter, my socks decided to slidey slide on the laminate flooring, and sit me down on the floor at the speed of gravity (32 feet per second?  So for me that's something like 0.125 seconds to sit me down from standing?)

But of course to do this, physics had to push my legs forward, so that I ended up karate kicking the kickboard under the oven, leaving it with a huge crack.

I'm actually quite pleased with this in a way, because I've had a hate-hate relationship with the kickboard, it's not fixed, just balanced upright so whenever you stand near it it takes the opportunity to topple forward onto your toes.

Plus, my son thought it was a great opportunity to climb into my lap, which was very cute, but made standing up even more difficult when my socks were still attempting to replicate ice.

Anyway, a video I wanted to flag up to everyone is Nyan Cat.  This is a geek cult video, referred to in The Guild's music video "I'm the one that's cool" (another great video to watch).  If you haven't seen it before go watch it.

Basically either you'll turn it off after ten seconds or your brain will melt.

I probably ought to be reported to someone, because I let my son watch it on my tablet.

Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!

We'll see what condition he's in tomorrow.

Farewell Ceefax!

Tonight a mark of culture ends.

The Ceefax signal is finally being switched off, after being launched some 38 years ago.  I remember as a teenager surfing Ceefax and Teletext on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 channels.  I remember before that, a little kid watching Channel 4 early in a morning where bizarre artwork made out of blocks was shown (apparently it was called 4-Tel on View)

The 4-Tel man with the logo all crumpled up into a floating ball. Yeah.

Back as a teenager, I remember playing Bamboozle on Channel 4.

The Bamboozle guy was kinda freaky.

And getting the latest gaming news on Digitiser.

It's probably hard to explain to younger folk who probably didn't really ever use Teletext or Ceefax, but it was kind of the Internet of its day.  You went to certain pages by typing in a three digit number, and I remember typing in random numbers to see what came up. The 700s were usually pretty interesting simply because they were pages that didn't have the normal stuff on eg news, weather, sport.

The text services was great for broadcasters who, at that time, hadn't gone into 24 hour television shows, and filled the night hours with news, weather and the like (not to mention the infamous Teletext adverts!)

For more teletext remembering go check out http://www.mb21.co.uk/ as well as the websites listed at the end of this post.

I have to mention that the latest episode of the Guild is out - go see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpDCq2rifbs&feature=plcp


(Thanks for the above pics to:
www.gamesasylum.com
www.tvwhirl.co.uk
cultsoftware.blogspot.com)

Downton Abbey is so addictive (kinda like Gangnam Style)

Why is Downton Abbey so addictive?  I've watched the first episode (recorded so I can fast forward through the adverts - I don't mind the odd advert but there does seem to be quite a lot in a typical Downton Abbey episode) and it took about 30 minutes for me to go from "Not really bothered about this" to "Oh my god is she going to get married? Oh no, Tom's drunk - ah he's been drugged. Matthew, good lad!" and going from scene to scene desperately hoping that this wasn't the last one.

Now, two episodes in, I can't wait for my next fix of period drama / soap goodness tonight!  Very strange.

I watched the Guild Season six launch show last night, featuring Felicia Day, Kim Evey and the director of season six, Christopher Preksta.  The show was very good (although they had one or two technical issues, primarily with showing the community synopsis videos - they still got around them though) and really psyched me up for Tuesday and the release of the first episode of Season Six, I can't wait! Despite the fact that my video didn't get featured (not surprisingly!) I really enjoyed it and the "winner" (not a winner because they're not allowed to have competitions in the US?) produced this fantastic 8-bit synopsis video.

In other news, Gangnam Style by Psy looks as though it's going to be the new Number 1 on the UK charts today.  Views of this hit music video by the South Korean rapper have shot through the roof - when I first saw it, there was 51 million views (a decent amount by anyones estimation).  It is now standing at over 325 million views, which is more than the entire population of the USA, and with something like 38 million of those views being in the last 4 days it is extremely popular right now.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go here.

And when you've seen that, go watch the many parody videos out there.

Like this one - the Oregon Duck and his friends put in way too much effort making an excellent and extremely funny video. Well done guys!

Or the baby one if you're a parent :)  Their channel is actually pretty cool so it's worth checking out too.

Dawn Park Patrol Returns!

My dad returns once again with an update to the adventures in the Humber Bridge Country Park!

Before I hand over to him though, there's a Geek and Sundry Google+ hangout taking place tonight to celebrate the launch of season 6 of The Guild.  It's to take place at 3pm Pacific time, which is something like 8 hours behind GMT.  But I'm not sure how summer time affects this.  I've seen a couple of people say the hangout is taking place at 10pm UK time so I'm going to be on for that.  I'm looking forward to seeing who won the community video contest (I know it wasn't me! My effort can be seen here) and basically getting pumped up for the Season 6 launch on Tuesday!

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch The Guild.

Over to you dad!

-------

It was a pleasant autumn morning, the sun brought a welcome cheer to cloudy skies, foul weather was alleged to be forthcoming but for now the morning looked good to the eye.

The Dog’s were in attendance as usual, big balls of fluffy loveliness on the outside, and hidden not too deeply within, DOG’S!

Charming beautiful lovely gorgeous cuddly creatures, and also DOG’S!

You could almost forget that they are DOG’S such is their fluffy gorgeous etc-ness – aren’t they Beautiful!?

Indeed they are, and also, they are DOG’S!

One does one’s best to keep long sensitive noses away from erm, things ‘too indelicate’

for the fair readers eye to consider, you know what I mean, animal droppings, rotting animal corpses etc, things which appear all too attractive to a long sensitive nose and almost demand to be sniffed (or worse!)

Yes, we are talking DOG’S here.

DOG’S which despite being fed a luxurious diet and being over weight, nevertheless appear to be starving and which simply MUST devour all manner of impossibly revolting material at any opportunity.

DOG’S apparently (and yes, I’ve looked this up on the internet – it’s true!) will sometimes eat erm ‘droppings’, both other animals waste material and also other dog’s um similar erm, quite, no, don’t think about it.

Despite many theories, No one knows why they do this.

I discourage them intently, I really do, but I can’t be with them 24-7 as they are free to come and go through the dog flap. And to watch their every move whilst out walking you would need eyes in the back of your head.

Be all that as it may, I believe the culprit this time was one or both of two well rotted rabbit corpses which we encounter every day whilst walking.

We have a constant battle. The DOG’S ‘Need’ to stick their noses into these remains, and possibly devour them and I equally need to stop them doing so.

I think that Maeve got to one of the ‘remains’; it was only for seconds but that may have been enough.

Days later Maeve did not want to eat.

Her guts were bubbling and griping. She was not happy.

Silly damn dog.

What you don’t want with a big fluffy gorgeous hairy DOG, is for that DOG to have the screaming shits!

No better love does a man have for his dog, that he trims her (censored description of an unclean posterior) and gives her a bath.

Maeve is now considerably less hairy about the nether regions, and she smells much better too.

For some reason the crazy bird seed droppers were thin on the ground this week and park benches were free from offending material. Fear not, the patrol goes on (weather permitting)

I am thankful for small mercies.

It's up! My video is up!!!

Hello!

I mentioned earlier in the week that I was producing a synopsis video of seasons one to five of The Guild (of which season six is coming out on the 2nd of October) - I've just done it! It look my loads of takes, and I had to scrap the "characters on sticks" idea I had originally as it was taking up too much time - the time limit for the video was 90 seconds which sounds loads but really isn't!  Plus you wouldn't believe the number of times I said a word wrong or got mixed up, luckily my other half was listening and was able to point out errors so I could improve.

Anyway, it's now on YouTube!  Do feel free to watch, video below:

I will be in the very near future uploading one of my first attempts which is FAR too long (like 8 or 9 minutes) but if you really want to watch it it will be here later tonight, probably in about an hour or so.

I would appreciate views, likes, and perhaps even subscriptions to my YouTube channel if it's possible for you to do so - it might give my video a boost, the best one will end up on The Guild Season Six DVD.

Cheers!

I'm nearly ready!

For anyone that runs their own website, today I found a really cool tool for you.  Nibbler carries out an automated free test of your site, and tells you basically how good it is - it covers technical specs, if the website has been tweeted about, and basically gives you some guide as to what you should work on to make your site better.

If you want to see the report for my blog it's here.  One of the cool things about the checker is that it gives you "badges", like achievements in games, good and bad ones.  They even run competitions sometimes to get bizarre badges.

Which is why I'm about to say "Ni! This is a dead parrot! Brian!"

And deoxyribonucleic acid.

(I'm really pleased I wrote that right - my dad used to be an industrial chemist and I wouldn't want to have misspelt a chemical!)

Read their blog too, it's really cool. Almost as good as mine! :)

Anyway, so far I've got a score of 5.3 out of 10 for my blog, 885 points, and 12 badges, including W3C Rebel (basically my blog is so bad at complying with web code it's James Dean) and Ink Waster (I'm missing a print style sheet apparently - so don't print my blog or bad things will apparently happen).  It promises to be very addictive as I try to fiddle with stuff to increase my score.

So apart from that, I've nearly got my stuff together to do my Guild synopsis video on Saturday.  No details yet though, you'll have to wait until you see the video.

One thing though I'd really appreciate - when I do post the video, I'll tell you where it is and all that.  It'd be a big help to me if you just watched the video, and maybe Liked it if you've got a YouTube account (or a Google account, they're the same thing), I'd really appreciate it.

Bye for now!

Warning: Blogging Is Seriously Addictive

I am so addicted to blogging.

I love being creative and being able to get stuff out there, it's so cool.  But it's difficult to try to impose quality standards on yourself to make sure that what you put out is half decent.

I've had this blog going for just over a month now and I wanted to thank you all for reading it.  Over the time I've had something like 110 unique visitors to my blog and somewhere between 700 and 800 pageviews.  Not exactly a massive amount but from nothing just a month ago I'm very happy.  Something like 25% of visits are for more than a minute too so not everyone is just coming on, going "oh my god" and leaving.

Just 65% of them :)

Interestingly after the UK the most popular countries visiting my blog are France and Canada, so if you're from France or Canada - thanks! Bonjour!

My dad is going to be producing a guest blog in the not too far distant future so stay tuned for that.

But it's weird how much effort I put in to getting the blog promoted.  I've signed up to numerous blog directories, I've got a t-shirt with my blog address on it, a load of blog business cards and a handful of blog postcards (all very cheap - thanks Vistaprint!)

We're having a bit of a clear out at the moment prior to the launch of Mists of Pandaria next week, so I'm tempted to do a bit of a giveaway to people willing to promote my blog for me.  I'll have a look round and see if I've got anything anyone would want.

Apart from blogging I'm getting stuff together for making my The Guild Synopsis video on Saturday.  For those that missed my last post, The Guild Season 6 premieres on October the 2nd, and they're asking for the community to do video synopsis of seasons 1 to 5.  I've got a draft script but I just need to make my props.  As mentioned in the last post, if you'd like to help do let me know.

Anyway - got to go and play some WoW!

Volunteers welcomed!

Had an amazing day yesterday.

I was honoured to be asked by my friend Alex to be his best man at his wedding.  The weather for the day was absolutely perfect, tons of people turned out and all had a great time.  My son's mind blew up when he discovered that he could walk up to a plate of chocolate brownies (at the chocolate fountain), take one, and eat it - and attempt to repeat this another seven or eight times.  He also massively enjoyed running RIGHT ACROSS a rugby pitch.

Apparently I look like Winston Churchill.

All in all it was a great day and most importantly Alex and his new wife Julie were (and I'm sure still are) very happy.  Congrats guys!

Changing topics, season 6 of the Guild is coming out on October the 2nd.  If you haven't seen any of this hilarious web show, go watch some.  Very funny.

And to celebrate the launch of season 6, the show's creator, Felicia Day, posted this:

Basically, she wants people to submit 90 second videos outlining the plot of seasons 1 to 5 of The Guild as if to someone who hasn't seen the show before.  The more creative the video the better.

The best one will go on the season 6 DVD and be shown on the prelaunch show on the 29th of September, but all videos will be featured on the Geek and Sundry playlist.  Deadline to get videos in is the 25th.

I'm going to do a video but if anyone else wants in on the action let me know - you might want to be in a video, or speak in a video, or shoot the video, or edit it, or maybe you've got some cool props, or some cool ideas as to what we could do in the video?

Saturday 22nd September is when I'm planning to make my video, so if you want to get involved, get in touch before then.  Various contact paths to get to me:

Mike on Facebook
Mike on Twitter

Right - time for me to get the little one up!  Have a good Sunday folks.

Not about SEO. Seriously, do not read this post if you are interested in SEO. In fact, don't read this post because it will make your life worse.

I would guess that there is a lot of interest in SEO.  Even on my tiny blog, I have had new Twitter followers and viewers, quite possibly because I mentioned SEO in my post on Sunday.  if you are one of these people and you've stuck around for this article, thank you and welcome.  If you don't know what SEO is, go read my post.

So, what shall I blog about today?  I've been feeling very creative and geeky lately, possibly because I've finished watching The Guild which is a fantastic web show.  Go see it if you haven't.

I'm toying with the idea of doing some kind of PC game review show on YouTube, I think that it'd be quite fun to do (and cheap as well), one problem is that I am a committed mumbler.  My voice is quite dull and I very easily slip into a mumble to make things worse.  Will have to work on that first.

Okay, what I'm going to blog about today is going to make your life worse if you read it.  This is your warning.  Before you read any more, go change to a different website.  Shut your PC down.  Do not read the rest of this post!

I warned you.

I thought about this when I was a kid, and it has blighted me on and off ever since.  And it will do the same to you.

Last chance - go to YouTube and check out Geek and Sundry, it's really cool! Or the Jeff Lewis 5 minute Comedy Hour, I'm really enjoying that as well.

...

Okay then.

Have you ever thought about breathing?  About how your body automatically breathes?  It just does it, you don't need to think about it or anything, isn't it great?

From http://www.radpod.org/2007/02/02/double-aortic-arch-type-2-subtype-3/

Now try to think about something else.

Go on, clear your head.

Except you can't, can you?  You're thinking about breathing.  And you start to wonder, what if it isn't automatic?  What if you have to tell yourself to breathe, or your lungs will fill with carbon dioxide and you'll die.

Time for another breath.  Are you going to consciously work your lungs?  Take a breath in?  You are, aren't you.

Next breath - this one, to prove to yourself that it's an involuntary reflex, wait for your body to breathe, don't tell it to.

But it's not, is it?  You can feel your lungs wanting to exhale, but nothing's happening.

You'll have to breathe again! Consciously! Voluntarily!

How long will this last?  Five minutes?  All day? THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?!?

...

...

Told you not to read this post :)

Is this one funny?  Can't decide if it's funny or creepy. Tomorrow's will be cool, it's going to be about fish!

Until then,

Thog

Windows is downloading updates...

Little tired this evening - have been for a few evenings, in fact.  GP rang up today and told me to go in for an extra blood test next week as my iron level is a little low, so I've got that to look forward to.

Apart from that, it's been a good day.  I really enjoyed reading up about the Mars Rover and what it's up to at the moment after making its successful landing on the red planet and blasting a little rock with a laser (I'm now imagining it featuring in a Wh40K story about the Mechanicum...)

I particularly liked the press release at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120811.html - although the article is about the pretty cool colour pictures of the Martian surface, it does mention the rover "undergoing a brain transplant" which I translate as being the Nasa term for updating your motherboard drivers.  I wonder if it's Intel or AMD?

To stay on geeky subjects I've started watching The Guild again.  Last time I got halfway through series three and then stopped for some reason, but this evening I've just got through series one and reminded myself just how cool it is.  For the uninitiated, The Guild is a internet TV show about a group of people that play games together in the same guild.  While the show does take things to extremes, WoW players (and players of other MMOs) will recognise something of MMO life in the show, especially the characters.  I want to be Bladezz (but I'm probably Vork!)

If you've no idea what I'm talking about go to http://www.watchtheguild.com/ - each episode is only 4-5 minutes long so you don't have to worry about spending your evening watching something you might or might not like.  It'd be interesting to know what do non-gamers think of The Guild?

For construction folk, remember the Yorkshire & Humber Construction Best Practice Awards are currently open for submitting entries.  There's a ton of categories so there's something for everyone.  Go check it out at http://www.constructionsectornetwork.org/best-practice/best-practice-awards-2012/ - the website says that the closing date is Friday 24th August but I've got a tweet saying that the date has been pushed back to September 14th so if you thought it was too late to enter think again.

Okay - I've got a long day tomorrow promoting G4C in the Yorkshire region (get in touch if you want to get involved by the way, more info about this construction best practice initiative for newcomers to the industry in my last post) so I'm going to do some chores and get some sleep.  Night!