Sunday, 18 November 2012

The Prince and the Crisps

Now then!

Apologies for the break in blogging, it's been a busy week this last week.  I was a Presiding Officer at one of the polling stations for the elections on Thursday and that always means about three days disrupted - an early night on the Wednesday, long day Thursday, and then recovering on the Friday.  Nevertheless it's a really nice opportunity to meet some different people and I always enjoy doing it.

Anyway, I've uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel.  It's a bedtime story I often tell my son called The Prince and the Crisps, which I made all by myself.


It's not the most intellectually challenging of stories but to be fair it is for a two-year old and I thought I'd record it as it's all too easy to forget stuff like this.  Only the other day I was thinking about how hard it is to imagine our son not being able to walk or do all the stuff he does now, yet it was only Christmas Day 2010 when he first walked.  All too soon he'll be grown up and without any kind of record this kind of stuff will be forgotten (by me anyway, I have the memory capacity of a dead goldfish)

Hope you enjoy!

Sunday, 11 November 2012

Anyone got ideas for my evil twin...

I'm gearing up to do some (hopefully) regular videos of me and my evil twin Joel (if you don't know what I'm talking about, check the test video out here), I've now received a free tripod thanks to my best mates father (bizarrely I was sat in the passenger seat of my fiancees car, thinking "I could really do with a tripod for my videos", and then my mate rings me and goes "I've got you a tripod!") and I've been and purchased a newer, bigger and faster SD Card for use.  I never knew before having a video camera that SD Cards came in different speeds, but apparently so.  I now have a 8Gb SD Card which is surplus to requirements so if anyone wants to buy it for a few quid let me know - it did work fine recording videos to be fair, and it'd be fine for photos of course.

Of course now I'm suffering with writers block and can't come up with anyone funny to record - well perhaps one thing, but I need a pie for that (you'll see)

Apart from that it's been a nice and quiet weekend, broken up by visiting St Stephens shopping centre in Hull on Saturday afternoon, which is not for the faint of heart!  I usually try to avoid shopping when it's busy but I needed to get started on the Christmas shopping - less than seven weeks to go - so I braved the crowds. There's a new shop called Menkind in St Stephens which is full of fun gadgetry and the like, one of the shop staff was chasing passersby with a remote controlled inflatable R2D2 which was very funny.

No Downton Abbey tonight!  I've got used to staying up slightly later than normal on a Sunday evening to see the latest goings on.  It's probably fair to say that the third season wasn't quite a good as the first two, but still well worth watching.  Roll on Christmas special!

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Joel is here!!

Finally, my new video is up!


Here's the video of me introducing my evil twin, Joel.  The quality admittedly isn't as good as I'd like, but I'm sure as my camera and editing skills improve future vids will be better.  I do have some excellent ideas (thanks to a few folk) for future videos, stay tuned!

Birth of the Federation update - My mighty Ferengi Alliance has defeated the Klingon Empire, technically there are two systems full of angry Klingons that I haven't actually conquered, but as they rebelled and left the Klingon Empire, they can't actually do anything except stay there.  The Federation has taken a heavy hammering, and I've finally started to get to grips with the Cardassians.  Only slight problem is that they do appear to have somewhere in the region of a 150 ships ready for a fight, fortunately the computer AI is not playing them very well and instead of laying waste to my own colonies their fleet seems to be busy guarding the far north of their space (while I busy myself conquering the south)

Ultimate Ferengi victory is expected soon.

Don't forget if you really want to you can subscribe to this blog (and for that matter to my YouTube channel too), I haven't got a blog subscriber yet, perhaps if you do you may get your own video (and yes Kirsty, I know you're still waiting for yours - sorry!)

Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Cloned - coming soon!

Tomorrow I should have a new video up on YouTube, introducing my evil twin Joel.  I've been playing around with my new camcorder, and after a lot of mucking around, firstly with various freeware video editors (none of which I found were up to the task - sorry!) and then with a trial version of Adobe After Effects CS4 I've succeeded in cloning myself.  It's a bit of a new departure for me, I do have a tendency to go for the quick solution but I've had to learn some new stuff and be patient to get this done, and I think it's good overall.

A taster of what is to come!

The actual quality of the video isn't fantastic, do be aware, but the cloning effect itself is pretty good and it isn't too obvious where the join is.  I hope to improve with my future ones as I learn how to work the camcorder and the software.

Anyway it's going to take about 3 hours to upload to YouTube so I'm going to do it when I go to bed, I'll post the link tomorrow.  Or if you can't wait, check out my YouTube channel in the morning.

Birth of the Federation update - the Federation and the Cardassians were a bit silly and declared war on me.  Since then I've crushed both the Klingon and Federation fleets (admittedly losing almost all of one of my fleets in the process, but the ships that did survive are now very experienced in combat and therefore even deadlier and tougher to kill) and given the Cardassians a bloody nose.  The Klingon homeworld is under my control and I'm finishing them off before I turn my full attention to the Feds and Cardies.  Long live the Ferengi Alliance!

Monday, 5 November 2012

Stairs and toddlers

My son is just getting to the stage that he's regularly using the stairs (supervised that is) and to be fair, he's pretty good at it.

The only problem we have is that sometimes... he's a bit lazy.

Especially when he's just got up in a morning, and the procedure is that we go downstairs, we pop some cartoons on, change his nappy, give him a drink, and let him wake up a little with a cartoon or two.  The when he's up to speed we can play a bit and then start thinking about breakfast.

Now the standard way to go down the stairs is that I go in front, holding his right hand while he holds the bannister with his left hand.  Sometimes to make things a bit livelier we'll count the stairs as we go down them. (we have 13 stairs from the ground floor to the first floor landing by the way, if you don't count the fact that the landing is actually on two levels)

But, if he's feeling lazy, he wants to be carried.

Now I've often only just woken up at this point and not necessarily fully up to speed with his needs and desires.  So I may try to encourage him to descend the stairs in the normal manner.

In which case he jumps at me.

He hurls his fragile toddler body at my side, requiring me to grab him before he falls past and tumbles down the stairs.

To be fair it's fairly unlikely that he would tumble past me, but even so it's a way to get your heart pumping in a morning!

What have I been up to?  Well I've been continuing to play Birth of the Federation - for those wanting an update since my last post, my Ferengi Alliance is now one of the largest empires in the galaxy and we're busy pounding the Klingons into dust.  The Cardassians have conquered the Romulans, and are busy fighting the Federation.  We're nominally friends with both the Cardassians and the Federation, making us a huge amount of cash, despite the fact that both parties pretty much hate me.  I don't really care as long as they leave me alone while I finish off the Klingons, then I'll turn my attention to them.  I really want to test my fleets against the Cardassians as they are the biggest threat to me, even so I can't really think that they could win.  But it's huge fun to play anyway.

I'm mucking about with videos as well, I really need a half decent video editor, once I've got what will hopefully be the first of a series of videos I'll get it out there for people to look at.  I've had what are (I hope) ideas for vaguely funny videos - you'll be the first to know, I promise.

I'll finish this post by saying that if you haven't experienced Adam Hills, check him out.  He's an Australian comedian who is hilarious.  His website is at http://www.adamhills.com/ and there's tons of videos of him performing on YouTube as well.

Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Peace and Harmony and video editing

I was watching Peppa Pig with my son the other day, and it was a brilliant episode called International Day.  Basically all the kids at Peppa's playgroup dress up as different countries and start fighting.  Madame Gazelle breaks up the quarrel, saying "Stop quarrelling! Do you think this is how the countries of the world behave?"

I can't help but feel there was a hidden message in that one somewhere :)

It's Halloween (or Samhain indeed)!  And I have a bowl of chocolate in my hallway.  It's been really hard these last few days to let those packets of funsize chocolate treats go uneaten, but we've largely managed.

And now we've only had four kids!  Shocking.  I guess I know what I'm having for breakfast.

(Actually I'll be having marmite on toast I expect - I got a squeezy jar of Marmite at the weekend, it is wonderful!)

After watching What's Up Elle's YouTube channel, I've been really keen to try some of her trademark cloning for myself.  Being a cheapskate - sorry, being someone wanting to achieve value for money - I'm trying to work out how to do it with free software!  I've got half an idea so far with an old version of Windows Movie Maker (Microsoft basically took out a load of features from Windows Movie Maker when it was updated to Windows Live Movie Maker, so the old version is actually more powerful) but I've been messing about with it for quite a while now and I want to get an hour of Birth of the Federation (with the All The Ages mod) in before bedtime.

Currently I'm playing the Ferengi and I've got a nice little corner of the galaxy in my command with a load of minor races under my belt, I've only encountered the Federation so far who are behaving themselves, probably because if push came to shove I think I could take them.

Tuesday, 30 October 2012

Cake and head flicking

Firstly, I made a new video!

Recently I've been around my other half's mums house for a few evenings, washing clothes as our tumble dryer is temporarily out of action (belt snapped).

Anyway, I saw some cake and had to make a video about it.  You can see it here.

Or just watch it below.



Apart from that, I have this habit when I'm excited of kind of flicking the hair towards the back of my head with my fingers.  I haven't done it for ages but while I've been watching some TV at my other half's mums (Hornblower is surprisingly good) I've caught myself doing it at the end of a couple of TV shows.

Anyone know why I do it?  Very odd.

Temporarily not thinking about myself for a minute, it's seriously scary what's happened in the US with Hurricane Sandy.  I know that I'm not prepared sufficiently if there's an emergency around here, despite this part of Hull being hit with flooding only 5 years ago - and North Hull being hit with a flash flood only about 2 months ago.  Must do better.

Let's finish the post with a picture of my son standing on his head.


For the observant folk, that's a book by Marcus Brigstocke in the bottom left corner of the picture - or M-A-C-U-S B-I-G-S-T-O-C-K-E if my son's reading it.

The guy will just have to leave the R's out of his name until the little one can say them.

Thursday, 25 October 2012

My son, Marmite, and YouTube - I'm tired and not up to creative titles...

The little one hasn't been too well today, not sure 100% what's up, I suspect a bad cold or possibly an upset tummy because he's eaten little and drunk virtually nothing all day, until just before bed he starting having a bit to drink at last.  Bizarrely he wouldn't touch rice pudding (one of his favourites) but couldn't get enough crackerbread's to eat, go figure.  On the plus side I got some squeezy Marmite today so I'm back on Marmite on toast.  It's really weird, I don't like it but then I miss it when I run out?!?

I have a YouTube channel to recommend, What's Up ELLE - http://www.youtube.com/user/whatsupelle - I came across Elle's channel because she made the Baby Gangnam video, and she's actually done a load of cool stuff, her and her two clones.  Elle's not afraid of looking silly and has made some cool videos.  Plus her smartphone goes "Bing" every time someone subscribes, so go subscribe to her channel.

I wonder if I repeatedly subscribe and unsubscribe and subscribe again if her phone keeps binging.  It might get really annoying.

But fun to do :)

Tuesday, 23 October 2012

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)
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