Tremendous Hair.

I woke up this morning looking like this:



There's a reason why I work from home mostly.

Happy New Year.

I almost forgot to wish you all a happy new year and fill you in on the joyful festivities I had over the festive period. My mother slipped on some black ice at home the Saturday before Christmas and broke her ankle and leg and knackered her ligaments, resulting in her being kept in over Christmas and poor Mitch driving the MacKenzies and Nichols to and from hospital to see her for the duration that we were there. She got out on the 27th though and is in plaster for 6 weeks then needs physio. Merry Christmas! So I headed back to London a few days after she got out and when I arrived I wasn't feeling too well- turns out I had caught some nasty bug from my 6 year old nephew which at least wasn't the dreaded norovirus that the world and his wife seem to have caught (see i.e.good across on the links for a lovely description of its symptoms), which was nice for me at least. What wasn't nice was being stuck indoors freezing cold with a fever and feeling like I'd run a marathon the previous day. On my hands. Paracetamol did the trick until Friday when I was forced into getting some Co-codamol (codeine AND paracetamol) to help me function at some level. It's gone today though! Just in time to get back to work. Nice. Happy New Year indeed!

Pour Brig II.

Since I know at least one of my millions (sic) of readers is a SFII fan, here are the links to my favourite vignettes on probably one of the best video game franchises ever. Oh and Brig- you look not unlike Ken! Or rather Ken looks not unlike you. And that's a compliment. Whoever thought of these and got them up and running for our perusal deserves a pat on the back.









Ah, now if that doesn't take you back to spending days, nights, weeks and months wasting, sorry I mean playing, your life away on Street Fighter II then I don't know what will. You might well cringe at this though...

Or laugh at it. I did the latter. I may also have wondered what joypad moves he pulled off to manage it, but that's for 14 years ago. Honest.

PhD.

I passed! I passed! I passed!

Uber-Geek.

No, this isn't a post about Richie I'm afraid. Just another boastful entry about my Scrabble score. Today I finally managed to break through the 500 point barrier. To say I'm pleased at my geekery would be an understatement.

Look!

I'm hard.

28

New favourite quote #11.

"Goodnight Mom"

Mitch a minute ago after I tucked her in and told her I was going to bed as she lay napping on the couch, 12/12/07.

I'm not sure whether to laugh or be worried...

Tuna kiss.

So I asked Mitch for a kiss, which she objected to giving me. So what did she do instead? Leaned over, pretended to give me a kiss then promptly cupped her mouth over my nose and blew her manky tuna and celery breath right up my nose. I feel violated.

Social networking, Sonic and my youth.

So social networking is all the rage these days- facebook, myspace, bebo and so forth are all worth stupid amounts of money and used by stupid amounts of people. I put my hands up, I love playing scrabulous on facebook and it is a great way to keep in contact with people as well as finding people you haven't seen in donkey's years. However, even more fun than any of that is finding ancient console games that you haven't played since you were 11. Like Sonic! Anyone with a facebook account can play it here. Anyone without a facebook account can play it here. It reminded me of Saturday afternoons spent in Perth walking from the Scottish Power shop to John Menzies to CA Games in the hope that one of their console advertisement games would be available to play. Scottish Power had Sonic, John Menzies had F-Zero and CA Games had the holy grail of SNES gaming, Street Fighter II Turbo- imported from America! I remember watching a Street Fighter II tournament of all the supposedly best gamers in Perth in this crammed little shop and being quite jealous that I wasn't involved. In saying that these guys were in their twenties and clearly total geeks so in retrospect there's not so much jealousy going on now. I do still love Street Fighter II though- I think it's unmatched in terms of one on one fighting games. That's not bad going for a game that's about 14 years old or so. Or I've just not gotten over it. So, in honour of my misspent youth (and not so youthful) game playing, my favourite games in no particular order are:

1. Street Fighter Two Turbo (SNES)
2. Goldeneye (N64- is there a more fun four player game?)
3. Championship Manager (PC/Mac- I've lost months of my life to this)
4. Pro Evolution Soccer 4 (XBox- probably my favourite football game)
5. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation- so good!)
6. Mario Kart (SNES- Best. Driving. Game. Ever.)
7. Final Fight (SNES- although a poor relation to the arcade version that allowed you to play Guy)
8. Smackdown (Playstation- Royal Rumble option was AMAZING!)
9. Tetris (Gameboy- everyone's favourite right?)
10. Urban Strike (Sega Mega Drive- how much fun was it flying about Washington?)

Man, why can't there be one system that plays all the old console games you love with interchangeable joypads? Now THAT I would buy.

Personality test.

I'm always interested in personality tests that I either find or get sent to me on the web. I usually find them fairly easy to manipulate depending on what I feel like I want to be told that day. So this morning I became an animated leader! Look! PersonalDNA told me so. Or something. Scroll over each colour and you can see what it means.



Confidence
84

Openness
44

Extroversion
90

Empathy
26

Trust in others
100

Agency
22

Masculinity
90

Femininity
60

Spontaneity
60

Attention to style
48

Authoritarianism
12

Earthy/Imaginative
ImaginativeEarthy
74

Aesthetic/Functional
FunctionalAesthetic
64

Hmm an animated leader makes me think of Optimus Prime rather than a guy who jumps about a bunch whilst telling people what to do. I think I prefer my interpretation.

Birthday.

Since it was my birthday a few weeks ago I figured it would be a good idea to do a belated birthday blog of sorts.

People I'm not displeased to share my birthday with:

Adolf Dassler, founder of Adidas.
Charles Bronson, American actor.
John Barry, English composer.
Bert Jansch, Scottish folk musician.
Gerd Müller, German footballer.
Adam Ant, English singer.
Dolph Lundgren, Swedish actor.
Hal Hartley, American film director and writer.
Pablo Aimar, Argentine footballer.


People I'm not best pleased to share my birthday with:

Lulu, Plasticated British actress and singer.
Roseanne Barr, American actress and 'comedian'. The inverted commas are mine. She's about as funny as cot-death.
Ian Wright, English footballer. Celtc's best ever signing.
Robert Miles, Swiss record producer, composer and musician in trance and ambient music. Worst. Music. Ever.


People who had the misfortune to kick the bucket on my birthday:

Henri Matisse (he at least had the good grace to do it before I was born so as not to detract from my celebrations)

St Pancras.

St Pancras reopened yesterday, so I went along today for a wee look with Richie and Duncan. It's amazing! The roof looks fantastic and there is a very good meeting of old and new in it. I was so impressed I took a bunch of pictures, primarily of the roof. It has self-cleaning glass you know. Why can't our glasses be made of self-cleaning glass?







I like St Pancras. Although the Baby Betjeman cafe was crap- no veggie breakfast and it took an age to get a tea and a coffee. Still, it wasn't like there wasn't an amazing example of restored Victorian architecture to gawp at while we waited. When life gives you lemons and all that...

I know I know!

I've already boasted about getting a good Scrabble score on Scrabulous on Facebook on here, but I managed another belter today that I feel obliged to share with you all. I managed to get all seven letters out on one move, as well as on TWO triple word score squares! I played unitages and garnered a total of 122 points for my troubles.

LOOK!:


I'm such a geek.

Sorry for the hiatus.

I was away for a little while, doing 'stuff'. Lots of exciting things of course- so exciting that I took my eye off the ball and neglected to tell you all about what I was doing over the last few weeks. Oopsie. Here's more or less how I look these days for those of you that have forgotten:


Turns out I was on Crimewatch! For being so AWESOME! Or not. Looks too chubby round the puss for it to be me I reckon. The picture is courtesy of http://flashface.ctapt.de/

A thing of beauty.

I love Scrabble. it's one of my favourite games. It saddens me that I no longer get to play it face to face very often, so imagine how pleased I was to find that Facebook had it in an application called Scrabulous. Pretty pleased. Not as pleased as when I played the word 'tentacle' for all 7 letters out and a 50 point bonus. I was very pleased about that. Not as pleased as after my next go which will be ANOTHER 7 letter word out and ANOTHER 50 point bonus! LOOK!


I love Scrabble. I suppose you'll be wanting proof of my play though?

Here it's!


Who would have thought the word 'invalid' would make someone so happy? And before any of you start trying to burst my bubble- I play the games for a couple of minutes over the course of a few days. And yes, the thesis is *nearly* done. Honest.

Still, two 7 letter words in a row. That NEVER happens to me. I'm so glad blogger allows me to document this milestone in my life.

Blog referrers.

As is ofen the wont of the wont of the blogger, I checked my site visitors earlier and found some interesting facts. Since I endeavour to be a generous kind of fellow, I think I'll share them with you. Since they say that a picture says more than a thousand words (or words to that effect), I've taken a snapshot of the referrer details for visitors to this blog. You can have a squadge here:



According to the left-hand column, scwr.blogspot.com is my best link friend. I'd heartily recommend you visit there too- you'll struggle to find a more eloquently written blog that merges the mither tongue with English anywhere on the web and without the pretension so beloved of most 'writers' churned out Edinburgh way. Plus I like the title of the blog.

Mostly the referrer information is fairly standard or obvious stuff like "sunday clocks" or "sundayclocksarestriking" or "sunday clocks are striking". Nothing too odd there I hear you say. True. Then it turns out that people have visited my blog after searching for "electronic mouse killer", "billy ocean" & "dickie davies picture" (this pleases me immensely) and "rugby sodomites". WTF?! Rugby sodomites?! Are you joking? WHEN DID I WRITE ABOUT THAT?! Other than just there of course which will inevitably now double the chances of my site getting visited again by some rugby fantasist deviant. Other than Duncan Connors of course. Hur hur. (Sorry Duncan.)

Constructive criticism.

On Friday night as Mitch and I were cutting through Marble Arch subway (not the underground) where we passed two jakeys (hobos for my American readership) sharing a bottle of vodka and a bottle of lemonade discussing the issues of the day. As we walked past one remarked to the other: "My darling, what are you doing with him? What is she doing with him? Makes me sick. I mean, come on! What a waste!" in perhaps the finest cockney accent this side of Dick Van Dyke. At first I thought he was talking to somebody else, until it dawned on me that it was us he was referring to us! It hadn't occured to me until Mitch started laughing before then going through the various other stages of grief- anger, denial, depression. Thankfully she stopped short of acceptance, otherwise I'd have been in trouble. She was all for going back and giving the gentleman in question a sermon (the other grief stage of bargaining if you will) on why she was with me, but I managed to convince her otherwise. I found it very entertaining though. It's not often I get my physical appearance assessed so brutally by jakeys. I think with that level of constructive criticism London will be good for me right?

My Political Compass.

Well, since it is 2am and I can't quite sleep, I thought I'd take my political compass test. Apparently I'm quite left-wing and libertarian. Interesting.

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -8.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.03



It is of course very reassuring to see that I am diametrically opposed to Thatcher though.



And the following reveals that I am much like the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. Watch out, I'll be fighting the good fight!



Do your own test here and please feel free to post your results in the comments page, or wherever you see fit.

Londonium.

I've been told on several occasions recently that I've not posted enough pictures or said enough about London and how I am getting on down here, so consider this post as my way of making it up to you all. Mitch and I took a walk on Valentine's evening after a lovely wee meal in Strada by St Paul's (which will feature heavily in the following pictures since it is my favourite building in London). We walked round St Paul's,


across the millenium bridge,


on to the millenium walk along the South Bank,


where I tested the zoom function on my camera...


before we then kept on walking until we passed Blackfriars Bridge,


until we saw the Houses of Parliament!


with that lovely purple lighting at the bottom- where could that come from we wondered? Although not really, since it was patently obvious that it was related to this:


The London Eye! Aye, it's big right enough.


And allows for fancy looking pictures to be taken with the minimum of effort, or artistic talent,


before normal service is resumed.

Mitch and I then walked across the bridge leading up to Westminster, took a wander around Parliament Square, along St James' Park where we debated as to whether we were behind Downing St (we were, but it was awfy dark) and then walked along Wateloo Place to Picadilly Circus,


before we wandered along to a wee cafe called Stockpots West End where Mitch wasn't overly keen on getting her picture taken.


We then made out merry way to Charing Cross Station where Mitch got the Tube home and I settled for the train to Beckenham, but not before I took another wee picture of the wheel, this time in a different colour.




There we are, I do have a load more of other pictures (mostly St Paul's I admit) that I'll post in time, but for now that'll have to do. I have work to do!