Monthly Archives: August 2006

by | August 31, 2006

Getting tubby




The Giant’s Boot

Originally uploaded by rutty.

I’m at that age when I’m starting to realise that I’m getting older. I obviously noticed my incrementingage numerically as the birthdays have come and gone, but it’s only now that I’m actually starting to feel older.

I’ve always been lucky with my weight. I could stuff in the food and never put any weight on, and now I’m finding that my trousers are starting to feel a little tighter around the middle and I’m developing a bit of a paunch, as you can see from this photo.

I’m also noticing my general lack of fitness, along with my appalling eating habits. Such are the benefits of living within 50 yards of three take-aways and a Treshers.

I’ve taken the decision to get fitter and eat better. I’m not going on a diet – sod that! – but I am going to try cooking proper food with plenty of vegetables.

I’m also going to do some exercise, something I started tonight. I’ve been for a twenty minute run, and my aim for the next few weeks is to keep doing this every time I come home from work. Five times a week re-running the same route until I feel it’s time to start doing the old three miler that I had planned out.

After a few months of that I’ll consider upping the mileage a bit more.

I’m determined to enjoy life but I do have to take some action now to make sure that I’ll be in a fit state to do so. I bit of effort now will pay dividends later.

We’ll see where this goes.

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Filed under General Chunterings, Is this supposed to be good for you?, Photos and stuff

by | August 31, 2006

Cojones

I’ve just checked my site statistics and I noticed an interesting search engine referral. Apparently my site is currently at number five on Yahoo for the search term “bollocks“.

It’s quite fitting, I suppose.

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Filed under Geekery

by | August 30, 2006

Adobe Acrobat

Damn you Acrobat reader. Damn you to hell.

Just why do you require a reboot (or two) after every update? WHY? It beggars belief that a trivial program like yours deems itself necessary to interrupt my incessant internet surfing just to install some small update or other.

Thanks for nothing.

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Filed under Geekery

by | August 29, 2006

Northern Ireland




Queen Victoria

Originally uploaded by rutty.

I’ve had more holidays than usual this year, and I’ve just got back from my last one of 2006 – a short visit to stay with friends in the spectacularly beautiful Northern Ireland.

We stayed in Antrim, which is nice in itself, but we were lucky enough to be taken on a trip out to the north coast. If you’ve never been there then I highly recommend a visit, because I can’t remember seeing a more beautiful coastline. We visited the famous Giant’s Causeway and that was very interesting, but it happens to be on a really special part of the world. Go and see it for yourselves.

I really like the people up there. Everyone is really friendly – you can be walking along the street and complete strangers will just say “hello”. It’s quite strange to behold, but it just makes the whole place feel really safe even if there are still a few issues between various factions here. There are some very colourful characters about and I got to meet a whole bunch of lovely, friendly Northern Irish folk.

I’ll post a few more entries about this when I have the time, but you can always click through the photo on the right and explore my Northern Ireland photo set for the time being. I’ve only uploaded 146!

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Filed under General Chunterings, Photos and stuff

by | August 21, 2006

Synchronised Goldfish

How the hell did he train them to do that?

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Filed under The Interweb

by | August 21, 2006

Alias season four

I finally caught up with the end of Alias season four at the weekend and I have one thing to say: bloody hell!

OK, maybe I have more than one thing to say. I love Alias, and not just because Jennifer Garner is top of my list (Ben Affleck you lucky, lucky bastard). It’s such a great program and even though they’ve simplified the plotting a bit since season one it’s still the premier US drama series of the millenium.

Season four has been excellent. That’s pretty much to type but it’s impressive that they can keep the quality going over the that many episodes. There have been plenty of shocks and twists along the way and they’ve left an absolute corker for the end of this one. They have the knack of leaving a cliff-hanger at the end and this one had me going “Noooooooooooooo!” with incredularity.

Roll on season five. I’ve missed the start of the UK run so I’m kind of screwed until the DVDs come out. I’m far too honest, of course, to obtain through more illegal means.

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Filed under Entertainment

by | August 17, 2006

Zoomcloud

I’ve created a Zoomcloud for this site:

Interesting stuff. Each tag shown gives an indication of my twisted mind.

*edit*

It’s not showing for some reason. It made me sad.

*edit*

It didn’t like the automatic breaks that MT inserted into the javascript – it should be OK now.

12 Comments

Filed under Geekery

by | August 12, 2006

Squab update




Squab

Originally uploaded by rutty.

Further to my earlier story about the little baby pigeon that we encountered on our holiday, we’ve had a small update on it’s current condition.

Our friends have been to have a look to see how it was doing and it’s disappeared. This is good news. It had eaten the food that we’d left for it (or something else did, maybe) and left the shelter of the bushes. There were no feathers, blood or eviscerated carcus around to suggest that the local cats had discovered it, so we have to assume that it’s figured out that it had to feed itself, learned to fly and left the scene of it’s own accord.

No doubt it’s left evidence around on the bonnets of cars close by.

Farewell little pigeon. You were bloody ugly and bound to grow into a disease-ridden flying rat, but I shall miss you.

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Filed under General Chunterings

by | August 11, 2006

Whitby




Whitby sunset

Originally uploaded by rutty.

Our recent holiday involved a trip to a lovely East Riding of Yorkshire town called Whitby. It’s been a while since I’ve been there and I’ve always enjoyed this delightful little seaside town, so I figured it’d be well worth a visit.

We stayed in a lovely B&B found by chance in the AA guide book. I’d recommend it, but I’m buggered if I can remember what it’s called. Anyway, we just turned up unplanned and had a lovely time wandering around.

If you haven’t been before I highly recommend it. It’s one of those places that seems to be stuck in time, somewhere in the 1950s or something. It’s generally unspoiled by tourism, despite the fact that it’s jam-packed full of them. The town planners have done a great job of maintaining the charm of this harbour town, unlike the atrocity that is Scarborough just down the coast.

We had a great time walking around the harbour area taking in the lovely sea air and having some wonderful fish and chips at the award-winning Quayside restaurant. The fish here has been described as the best in the UK and I don’t think I’ve ever tasted any better. I had halibut and it was delicious.

Whitby Abbey is a bit demolished (damn you, Henry VIII!) but an interesting place to visit. I took more photos than is right, and you can see them in my Flickr Album.

The sunset you can see there was taken across the bay. I’ve enhanced it slightly using Irfanview, just ramping up the saturation a bit and it’s “improved” the reds. It’s my first effort at a sunset and I’m pleased with the result.

We shall return to Whitby for certain. It’s lovely, and much nicer than Skegness.

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Filed under General Chunterings

by | August 11, 2006

The Deaf Book-keeper

A Mafia Godfather finds out that his book-keeper has took him for ten million bucks. This book-keeper is deaf. It was considered an occupational benefit, and why he got the job in the first place, because it was assumed that a deaf bookkeeper would not be able to hear anything he’d ever have to testify about in court.

When the Godfather goes to shake down the bookkeeper about his missing $10 million, he brings along his attorney, who knows sign language.

The Godfather asks the book-keeper: “Where is the 10 million bucks you embezzled from me?”

The attorney, using sign language, asks the book-keeper where the $10 million is hidden.

The book-keeper signs back: “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

The attorney tells the Godfather: “He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

The when the Godfather pulls out a 38 pistol, puts it to the book-keeper’s temple, cocks it, and says: “Ask him again!”

The attorney signs to the underling: “He’ll kill you for sure if you don’t tell him!”

The book-keeper signs back: “OK! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Enzo’s backyard in Queens!”

The Godfather asks the attorney: “Well, what’d he say?”

The attorney replies, “He says your just bluffing, go ahead and pull that trigger.”

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Filed under "Jokes"