Fun to see you all for the Christmas gettogether!

I had a great time, was good to see you all, although we were not very successful with the Christmas shopping, at least we got ideas for ourselves hey?

Rosspo, the betrayal!!!! What a black day it was with the toffee, I shall have to remember that for your stag do!

Nice mixture of red red wine, and Guiness.

The Machinist

Wow... Christian Bale is really on form with this... he has been damn good in quite a few films so far...

I thought the transformation/weight loss thing was amazing, you couldn't pay me enough to make me want to do that!

However, the idea (not saying what) that makes up the general gist of the film has been done before.

I still think his performances in Empire of the Sun and American Psycho are his best.

A new addition to our family, Welcome Bella!

So there is a new addition to our family, little Bella, who is about 7 weeks old, and as you can see, is just about the cutest thing on the planet!
She is in effect, the spiritual daughter of Bess our beloved old family dog who died at the excellent age of 15 some months ago.

Bella is apparently quite a little character, quite hyper, and active.

I look forward to seeing you can outplay the other when I see her next!

Well I am back from Tuscany

And it has pretty much rained for a week! Over in Tuscany I was in the outdoor pool, catching the beautiful golden light thta the region is famous for. Drinking marvellous coffee, eating wonderful food, and to finish it all off, some exquisite wine.

I love the language, and culture... in short I reckon I could live there.

So here I am, working again (time to win the lottery)!

Had a disturbing dream last night, Nicky had twins!

Woke up in a cold sweat!

Hi Everyone

As you are no doubt aware, I have been incredibly busy just recenty with trips to Europe etc, so I just wanted to say thankyou for all making it to Alton Towers for Nicky's birthday, it was great, except for the rain, and my fear of some of the rides!

I am now looking forward to my holiday in just less than a weeks time, hurray!

And finally I wanted to record my latest strange dream. I was sat at my desk at work, and all the code I had written had bugs, each bug was attached to a packet of toffee, in the draw of my boss, who was kind of like Willy Wonka. The packets of toffee were all lined up and filed, and he kept throwing one at me for every bug he found. Whats that all about?

Darth Limpets Cider Homebrew Extravaganza

Great fun, cheers DL, still don't think I can get back on cider though.
Good to see Chudplug, and Mrs Plug on good drinking form.
The IToy was great fun, Kung Fu mayhem, a great keep fit toy!
Was good to see everyone.

It will be good to see those Half Yard of Ale piccies up on the web!

My first scary trip to the dentist

AAAGGGHHH, no pain, but a lot of discomfort, like when they put at least three drilling type implements in your mouth all at the same time.

The three most unpleasant aspects were however, the bits of tooth spraying out of my mouth, the dribbling like a gimp, and the choking and drowning sesation.

No more sweets, drink more milk, whatever else, just keep brushing my teeth!!!!

(And that was only one filling!)

Newbury Beer Festival

The wheel of time turns, and we found ourselves back at the Newbury Beer Festival.
To summarise, the hog roast ws perahps the best I have ever had, the first one I was allowed to help myself to crackling, yumm!!
We didn't play any drinking games this year, or make Bert eat things, which was a shame, but the organisers appreciated our plan to start with the beer at the top left and work our way down.

I know Darth Limpet would have appreciated a greater range of ciders!

Finally, some advice on good hog roast technique:
=> wait for fresh pig
=> don't be first in line
=> have more than one, its great!

Just a further effort to enhance our growing little community

Some time ago now I introduced my most esteemed compatriot Darth Limpet to a number of online tools which I hoped would enrich his life. I had been using these tools myself, and appreciated how they let me express thoughts and opinions.

The first of those tools was obviously www.blogger.com, and the second, Flickr for online photo sharing.

Now it is time for the next life improving tool, certainly for someone as forgetful as me.

Backpack allows you to create reminders, todo lists, and mini web pages, and you can get automatic reminders texted to your phone. It will help you organise your life.

And you can try it for free!

Blogging about a blog, hmm

Outstanding,

Rosspo launched a search on the web today for the 'Newbury Beer Festival', which is looming now.
Now, he used Microsofts web search MSN Search (and usually we would not forgive him for that), but in this case the first result to show was one of my blog postings, (at last, fame on the web), perhaps the first time I have ever appreciated Microsoft!!!!

IQ Tests

I am obviously so stupid that I don't even get IQ tests.

I have had three separate scores of 109, 127 and 136 over the last 6 or 7 years,
with the lowest being admittedly while I really couldn't be bothered to do it watching Anne Robinson, the other 2 occasions were under more controlled situations.

My most recent scored 127 off a web site test IQ Test.

How can you get such different scores, I know (spacial awareness is a low point for me)!

Load of old bollocks!!

Napoleon Dynamite

Saw Napoleon Dynamite last night, even had Nicky watching it. A very funny film, we both thought it had many similarities to Australian Films, some quirky filming, and it reminded us a little of an Australian series for kids form the early 90's called 'Round the Twist'.

Worth watching definately!

Holiday in Cornwall

Hi all, sadly my holiday has come to an end.

I had a great time, saw some amazing sights, and enjoyed my first attempt at surfing (something I hope to do regularly in the future)!

As it turned out, I was over confident and kept falling off the board, but Nicky was a good squatter and beat me!

Was good to see the family at my cousin Sophies wedding too! Congratulations Sophie and Mike.
See Rossputin Flickr Images .

House of Flying Daggers

Have been meaning to blab about this film for a while. I thought it was a lot better than Kung Fu Hustle despite its slant towards being a love story.

The fight choreography was a lot better and the cinematography was breathtaking at times.

I am not quite sure however why the baddies ran around with their swords pointing the wrong way!

My Sponsor Pack came through for Seamus at Monkey World

Excellent, now I have a season ticket for a year to go see chimps and monkeys at Monkey World.

In fact with any luck, I am going to combine a visit to see the chimps with the beer festival on the Purbecks this weekend. You can't get much better than beer and monkeys!

Hmm Smoothie Maker

Excellent, one of my long time aims has been met, I have wanted a smoothie maker for ages, but Nicky never let me get one. My reasoning is that it will help me eat more fruit, because I am lazy, and fussy with my fruit. Oh yeah and smoothies taste great.

Anyway, finally just bought one with a disapproving Nicky looking on, and my first smoothie (apples, banana, grapes and vanilla) was superb!!! Yum!!!

So its bombing day tomorrow again I suppose

Oh well, I suppose I will go in early to try to avoid it. If it weren't so hot I would wear my Die Hard vest and stop those lunatics myself.

Seems my boss has the right idea, he is going to be driving round in lovely Italy, eating home cooked food, drinking beer, and generally avoiding extremist fundamentalists!

Conspiracy Theory

Hmm, strange, now there are satellite images, at least up to a certain zoom level.
Either it is hunting season on bears, so the satellites are getting through the screen of bear shit, or something else exactly as strange happened!

Now I just wrote this morning to Darth Limpet, Rosspo and Chudplug about Microsofts site being screwed since Friday, (lacking a css), and by the time they look that is fixed as well.

Like Darth Limpet says, perhaps I am a known agitator, and am being watched!!!!

Summer BBQ 2005

Its been a couple of years since we did the last one, and lets just say the weather wasn't quite up to it this year!! But we managed it, the bbq found a little house under some shelter and we had brolly boys and girls to help, see www.flick.com/photos/rossputin, or www.flickr.com/photos/limpetboy.

Thanks for coming everyone, was good to see you all there! The homebrew was pretty successful really, and the half yard of ale, (cheers Darth Limpet).

Lets hope we can get back to playing in the garden next time.

Why bears definately shit in the woods in Thatcham/Newbury

As I emailed to some of you recently, google maps is good stuff, but I noticed one thing...

Click on hybrid mode over Newbury and Thatcham, and there are no satellite images for either Thatcham or Newbury.

As I suspected, bears in the woods chuck their shit at the satellites as they pass overhead, blocking their view. Thus making Thatcham and Newbury the darkest places in the universe, and probably terrorist hotbeds!