Thomas Siefert (English)

Second Generation Apple TV (Apple TV 2) Problems

2011-02-13T08:34:00.006Z

This is not an attempt at a review or a list of features. There is plenty other reviews on the web, if that's what you are after keep looking. However you might find the information here useful anyway in your decision to buy an Apple TV, or not. I only want to list and highlight the problems I have had with this device and if a solution turns up, I will update my post.
I'm not the only one with these problems, I will post links to the Apple forums where these are discussed.
You might ask, why list the problems here then if Apple already runs a forum?
Well Apple does not actually answer anything in those forum, it's merely a place for users to interact with each other and if the discussion gets too critical of a product, it will be removed.
Also these problems are so rife that you will only receive a generic answer from their technical support, stating that it's a known bug and that it is being worked on.
Apple are keeping these things really quiet.

Having only been slightly tempted by the original Apple TV, the price got in the way, I finally succumbed to temptation when I saw the price tag of AU$ 129 of the new Second Generation Apple TV.

First hitch. If you live in Australia, there is no support for rental of TV shows.
This is not a missing or faulty feature as such, but you might still get caught out if you have only read reviews from the US where they have 99 cent rental of an episode of a TV show. While it's not promised in their Australian advertising, I still think it should be stated a bit more clearly, as Australia is an English speaking country (apart from the taxi drivers!) and people here read a lot of US reviews and advertising.
You can still buy TV shows in iTunes on your home computer and then stream them to your Apple TV, but no cheap rentals.

Secondly, again this is not a broken promise but more of a trap that few non-technical people are aware of. When it is advertised that Apple TV streams films in HD (High Definition), it's only in 720p, the lowest format that can be called HD. Most other streaming devices labelled with HD is actually the higher resolution of 1080i or 1080p. Same resolution as Blu-Ray.
In other words, even though your Apple TV supports HD, it's only in the lowest category. Movies streamed on this device will not have the same quality as a Blu-Ray.

Alright, the first two items are not problems as such, but more of a "gotcha" for the unaware.

First problem I encountered was picture "stuttering". Every 10-20 seconds the picture will freeze for a split second and then jump a few frames to catch up. The sound is not affected at all. It really makes the film completely unwatchable.
Contacting Apple support two months ago, only gave me generic response "We are working to solve this problem". I'm not the only one.

Apple TV lose the Home Share connection to the PC, this happens on a daily basis. I turn on my Apple TV to stream some music or video from my iTunes database on my PC. Apple TV just informs me that it can not find any home shares and that I should enable it on the PC I wish to stream from. The computer is running fine and so is iTunes. In fact only a few hours before I streamed something without any problems at all and now it's have just lost the connection for no reason whatsoever. A reboot of the PC seems to be the only solution. Again, I'm not alone.

Playing music and displaying photos on the TV is a great thing because you get to see all those pictures on you PC you never get around to see otherwise. The "random" screen saver however only shows around 50 photos or so before circling round and show the same 50 photos again. Then you have to stop the screen saver and then let it start again before it will start a new batch of around 50 photos. It's not just me.

Just this last couple of weeks I have noticed that My Apple TV will suddenly turn on for no apparent reason. The first couple of times I thought that I had forgot to turn it off, but now it has happened around ten times.

This thing is not really suitable for release, shame on you Apple.

Astrology is Nutty

2009-06-13T11:12:00.002+01:00

I will make this brief, astrology at best is silly at its worst its completely imbecile.

Want proof? Read this: Orbiter crashing into the moon

Then read the follow up to all the comments saying she is being silly: Response

People like these keep humanity in the dark ages.

Rampage

2009-04-14T07:08:00.001+01:00

Free iPod

2009-04-01T06:57:00.002+01:00

Bad Astronomer takes the reign from James Randi

2008-08-04T21:32:00.002+01:00

The Bad Astronomer, AKA Phil Plait, has taken over the post as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation after James Randi have stepped down from the post.

Phil Plait's post of the news can be read here and James Randi's announcement can be read here.

As a fellow sceptic, I have followed both Phil Plait's and James Randi's careers and writings for many years and I can only congratulate Phil on his new title and Mr. Randi on his choice.

Russell Coight

2008-01-21T17:29:00.000Z

There's two Australian men that you might know from TV, Les Hiddins, better known as The Bush Tucker Man, or, now deceased, Steve Irwin, known as The Crocodile Hunter. But have you ever heard of Russell Coight?
No?
Here's your big chance to get to know him, the three clips from YouTube below, makes up a single episode from his TV-series: Russell Coight's All Aussie Adventures.
Enjoy!

Would you like to know more?
Les Hiddins
Steve Irwin
Russel Coight

Gun Sale At The Church, Lyrics

2007-12-04T18:42:00.000Z

Looking at my statistics, I can see a lot of people have been directed here by search engines looking for the lyrics to the song "Gun Sale At The Church". I have myself in the past tried to find the lyrics on the web without success. Well look no further, here they are.
When I typed this transcript there where a few places where I couldn't quite make out the words and I had to give it my best shot, please correct me in the comments section if you think I got something wrong.

Gun Sale At The Church
(Written by Buddy Blue)

Well let's pack up the kids
and take a break, get away
leave the hustle and bustle
of living from day to day
and I know that the crime
in the city is getting worse

So I'm going on down to
the gun sale at the church

Well my lady's all set
to have us a real good time
Baby Johnny got fins
but he don't seem to mind
so the family’s all ready
to pray at the holy virg

That's set up in the middle of
the gun sale at the church

Well we'll ask the lord to
forgive us for all our sins
and we'll look at the latest in
gold plated firing pins

Well my two main men are
Jesus and old John Birch

So I'm going on down to
the gun sale at the church

Well we'll ask the lord to
forgive us for all our sins
and we'll look at the latest in
gold plated firing pins

Well let's pack up the kids
and take a break, get away
leave the hustle and bustle
of living from day to day
and I know that the crime
in the city is getting worse

So I'm going on down to
the gun sale at the church

So I'm going on down to
the gun sale at the church

So I'm going on down to
the gun sale at the church

Gun Sale at the Church

2007-05-25T22:23:00.000+01:00

One of my favourite bands playing one of their best songs, I just love the biting sarcasm of the lyrics.

Beat Farmers - Gun Sale at the Church

Would you like to know more?
Beat Farmers

Coffe Soap

2007-04-22T05:41:00.000+01:00

Introducing Shower Shock, the original and world's first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek.
A caffeinated soap? This will change society completely. Instead of taking that business representative to a coffee shop, you can just hit the showers.
I might just slip one into our shower, that way I only have to avoid the wife until she had her shower. Also I wonder if a bath tub filled with coffee would work too? That is one experiment I could easily perform on myself, combining my passion for cappuccino with foam baths, watch these pages for the result. I could even be getting some of that tan back that I lost when we left Australia, currently I'm whiter than white, I'm 150% caucasian.

Another lingual thing I always have found funny, when it comes to coffee science English and Danish prefer to have O's and A's swapped around:

In English: The active ingredient in Coffee is Caffeine.

In Danish: Den aktive ingrediens i Kaffe er Koffein.

Fever Dreams

2007-01-11T21:13:00.000Z

I'm just getting on top again after a couple of weeks with a bad cold. One of the first nights when the cold really kicked in was very weird with those fever dreams you only get when you are sick. I dreamt that I was sleeping with a bicycle on top of me for a cover and a shopping trolley for a pillow. Once in a while I would wake up fully, clear my fevered mind of this silly notion and then go back to sleep only to slip right back into my uncomfortable illusion of sleeping in a pile of vehicles of transport and retail.

I also dreamt back to the time when we were living in Singapore, I dreamt about walking around in Tampines Mall close to our house block. It was in a Electronic shop here that I first time saw one of the new iMacs when they were first put on the market. In my fever dream I suddenly had a bright idea for marketing the iMacs. With every iMac you would get a free fake moustache to wear when using the machine. Of course this would only be an attractive offer for men, so the moustache would be designed to be snipped in two with a pair of scissors so women could use them as bushy eyebrows.

It all made sense in my dream....

Intermission

2006-11-12T22:15:00.000Z

Since I'm in a lull at the moment on my blog, I'd thought that I might put it to good use.

So on the outside chance that you can answer YES to following points:

You live in or near Cincinnati.
You like Rick Springfield and would like to see him perform live.
You love bus rides.
You would like to help Sahara Aldridge overcome cancer.
You are not Michael Manning.

Then go to Michael Manning's website and sign up.

Update: Invitations to the bus ride have now been extended to include:

DETROIT, MICHIGAN

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

Adam Ant Book Signing

2006-09-19T22:35:00.000+01:00

Last Friday my wife saw an add in the Metro newspaper, announcing that Adam Ant, this Saturday, would be signing his newly released autobiography in Waterstone’s bookstore on Piccadilly.

I have never been chasing autographs of celebrities, but when she showed me the add, it took my right back to my younger days and I found myself going; “Ooh ooh, we gotta go, we gotta go!”.
So on Saturday we queued up for three hours in front of the bookshop so that I could get my freshly acquired book autographed by the man himself; Adam Ant.

That's me with my hand in the back pocket and impatiently drumming on the desk, while Adam Ant scribbles away. I must admit to being a bit tongue tied and all I could mutter was: I'm really looking forward to reading your book.

I really should thank my very patient wife Anna for waiting in line with me, it was Open House London weekend and we had already been in one queue earlier that day to see the Lloyd's building. After this she zipped off to stand in queue for another building as I cowardly retired to the Virgin Megastore to browse the DVD's and buy the CD: Stand & Deliver The Very Best of Adam And The Ants, including a bonus DVD with some of the promo videos from back then.

Sunday Anna was off to see some more buildings while I stayed at home to read the book and watch the DVD.

Dave's Penguin Joke

2006-09-14T22:08:00.000+01:00

My colleague Dave told me a joke the other day. He thought it was so very funny that he could barely contain himself as he told it. The problem was that I didn't laugh. He then tried it on several other people over the next couple of days and so far only one person have found it worthy of a laugh, although he might have been laughing at Dave, who still can't contain his laughter when he tells the joke.
Dave then suggested that I put the joke on my blog to hear what other people thought of it.

Here goes:

A penguin goes into a bar and walk up to the bartender and says "I can't find my dad. Have you seen him?"

And the bartender says "I don't know, what does he look like?"

Click here for Penguin Arcade Game

Thickest Liquid Ever

2006-09-12T22:21:00.000+01:00

Pitch is such a thick liquid that under normal circumstances you would never suspect its true nature. If you had a lump of it in front of you and took a hammer and gave it a good smack (infinitively satisfying and consistent with normal scientific procedure), it would shatter very much like glass.
In 1927 Professor Thomas Parnell, of University of Queensland, started an experiment. He melted a portion of pitch and poured it into a glass funnel with the tube sealed at the bottom. After cooling and left to settle for three years the tube was cut open in 1930 and the pitch have since been allowed to flow freely into a beaker placed underneath the funnel. In that time only eight drops have fallen and the ninth have only just begun to form.
Pitch can be made from plant material and is then called rosin and when it is made from petroleum it is called bitumen, which is one of the main ingredient of road paving.
Eight drops in 76 years? My private theory is that it is also the main ingredient in tomato ketchup.

Would you like to know more?
The Pitch Drop Experiment
Pitch
Bitumen
Rosin
Ketchup

Hello Dave

2006-09-04T22:25:00.000+01:00

Hello Dave.

Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin dead

2006-09-04T05:48:00.000+01:00

Oh No!

THE Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is dead.

He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said.

It is understood he was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest.

News.com.au
ABC News
CNN

Falkirk Wheel

2006-09-01T05:17:00.000+01:00

In Falkirk in Scotland, the height difference between The Forth & Clyde Canal and The Union Canal is 24 meters. Rather than taking up a lot of land and inconveniencing canal traveling people with time consuming entries and exits through a series of traditional locks, that only lift you in increments of 5 or 6 meters at the time, a lifting wheel was constructed.

A boat enters at the bottom and another boat enters at the top.

And then the wheel is set in motion.

Soon after you are on your way again at the bottom/top of the wheel and the four minute trip will only have consumed about 1.5 kWh, approximately the energy it takes to boil eight kettles of water.

Would you like to know more?

Falkirk Wheel Official Website.
Falkirk Wheel on Wikipedia.

Name That Machine

2006-08-22T22:24:00.000+01:00

I have been very busy at work lately and have also been away on holiday for a couple of weeks, that's why there has been a serious lag of posts here.

On our holiday we came across the machine on the picture above. It's not at an amusement park, it's something with a practical purpose, but what?

Betallica

2006-07-16T09:55:00.000+01:00

Sometimes when just browsing at random, you come across funny little things. Beatallica is one of those.
The band fuses sound and songs from The Beatles and Metallica catalogs. So far they have made two albums: A Garage Dayz Nite (2001) and Beatallica (2004).

The Beatles have The White Album and Metallica have The Black Album, naturally the otherwise nameless album Beatallica is better known as The Grey Album.

For legal reasons all their music is available for for free on their website.
When they in 2005 was sent a cease-and-desist note from Sony, which own a great deal of the legal rights to the Beatles music, the drummer and co-founder of Metallicam, Lars Ulrich (a fellow Dane), took action. He promised to help with legal negotiations and to get Metallica's attorney calm things with Sony.
Sony did not pursue the matter any further.

My personal favorite is: Hey Dude.

Want to know more?
Metallica
The Beatles
Beatallica

Star Trek II, The Wrath of Takeru

2006-07-06T05:36:00.000+01:00

He did it again! Takeru Kobayashi won the hot dog eating contest for the sixth time!
Read about it here.

The rest of this post is just a repeat of an earlier post (I'm a lazy git).

The other day driving home from work I got thinking about that small Japanese guy I saw on TV winning a hot dog eating contest. Some big fat guys had entered the contest too but they just couldn't beat this little guy.
The thought stayed with me long enough for me to look it up on the web when I got home. His name turned out to be Takeru Kobayashi and he won the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest five times in a row. His name and his all his winnings amused me to no end, those big fat guys trying to beat him had faced their no win situation, they had their Kobayashi Maru...

It also reminded of back when I was working as an electrician on a construction site many years back. Every Friday we would have a cheese burger eating contest. I ended up with the record in speed eating a McDonald's cheese burger at 47 seconds. Another guy could do it in 45 seconds but because he did not like cheese (what a wimp!), he ate hamburgers. So I could still claim the top position.

Want to know more?
Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest
Takeru Kobayashi
Kobayashi Maru

I'm Spider-Man

2006-07-01T02:54:00.000+01:00

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

our results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		80%
Superman		65%
Green Lantern		65%
Robin		60%
Supergirl		55%
Hulk		55%
The Flash		50%
Wonder Woman		45%
Iron Man		40%
Catwoman		35%
Batman		25%

Fact Generator

2006-06-29T19:24:00.000+01:00

Finally, an online fact generator.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Chuck Norris!

New Zealand was the first place to allow Chuck Norris to vote!
Only one person in two billion will live to be Chuck Norris.
The Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter is made entirely of Chuck Norris.
Peanuts and Chuck Norris are beans.
Americans discard enough Chuck Norris to rebuild their entire commercial air fleet every 3 months!
The only planet that rotates on its side is Chuck Norris.
Native Americans never actually ate Chuck Norris; killing such a timid prey was thought to indicate laziness.
If you blow out all the candles on Chuck Norris with one breath, your wish will come true.
Only one child in twenty will be born on the day predicted by Chuck Norris.
The smelly fluid secreted by skunks is colloquially known as Chuck Norris.

Tortoise Harriet

2006-06-24T13:20:00.000+01:00

When I was in Australia for the second time in 1997, I went to Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo (The Crocodile Hunter) and saw and touched this tortoise, Harriet, which back then was claimed to be 167 years old. It was said that it was collected by no other than Charles Darwin himself on Galapagos during his voyage aboard the HMS Beagle in 1835.
DNA samples told another story, while her age was confirmed, it also indicated that she came from an island that Darwin never visited. Still very exhilarating to have touched a creature that was alive when Darwin was young.

Last night, at the age of 176, she died.

Oh yeah, should you come past Beerwah in Queensland, where the Australia Zoo is located, I recommend a visit, it is not in any way as hyper or tacky as you would expect from something that could claim to be As Seen On TV.

Tortoise.
Charles Darwin.
Steve Irwin.
Australia Zoo.
CNN Story.

Smack Your Penguin Up

2006-06-18T13:34:00.000+01:00

One of my friends, a keen environmentalist, emailed this game to me once.

Smack a few penguins and then visit his website: Underview.

Supersize it!

Flash Games

Guess Where

2006-06-15T21:13:00.000+01:00

I really should write a blog post.....

It's long overdue.....

But I'm lazy, guess where I took this photo.

Lander II: Moon Rescue

2006-06-03T05:58:00.000+01:00

I used to love playing Lunar Lander in the arcade way back when I was young and handsome (now I'm just "and"). Later on my Commodore 64 I played Thrust, which was a bit like Lunar Lander except you were given missions to pick up stuff and could top up your fuel during the missions.
This flash game is a combination of the two and will provide hours of fun and although it messes up the layout of my blog page I forgive it.

Flash Games

2006 Eurovision Song Contest

2006-05-21T08:06:00.001+01:00

The band Lordi from Finland won the Eurovision Song Contest this year with the song "Hard Rock Hallelujah". I wonder what their Heavy Metal colleagues will say when shown the trophy shelf in the pool room and one of the trophies is inscribed: Eurovision Song Contest 2006.

I give Germany a thumb up for entering with a country song, and then two thumbs down for entering with a bad country song.

The song from England was crap, as was the song from Denmark.

Only In English Traffic

2006-05-18T22:21:00.000+01:00

Only in England can you be stuck in traffic behind a Rolls Royce with another one behind you and looking out the side windows you see two Bentleys.

Stonehenge Remote

2006-05-15T21:43:00.000+01:00

Press "Play" to see it spin.

Fast Lane of London

2006-05-04T22:03:00.000+01:00

There is no such thing as "The Fast Lane", only another traffic queue...

Best of 007 (Sean Connery)

2006-04-26T20:09:00.000+01:00

The first James Bond movie I ever saw was Goldfinger with Sean Connery as 007. Like a newly hatched bird that bonds with the first creature that it see, Sean Connery will forever be imprinted in my mind as The James Bond.
Not that I think the other guys did a bad job; Roger Moore was not bad, but he was let down by some bad scripts in the later years. When Timothy Dalton took over, the long line of bad script went unbroken and he had to take the wrap. Pierce Brosnan seemed to be more of a bad parody of James Bond, possibly because the scripts had deteriorated into an embarrassing mess.
I must admit that I can't remember ever seeing the next 007, Daniel Craig, in anything at all. I know there is a big controversy over selecting a blond actor to step into the shoes of everybody's favorite secret agent, come on! give the man a chance! Yet, if there is no improvement in the scripts, he might go the way of George Lazenby who only was seen in one movie.

Sean Connery handled the part with the tongue firmly in his cheek, yet you believed that he could be dangerous and would kill people if necessary. Not only did he get away with saying some of the most sexists lines to women in movie history, he did them with style (the lines).

The first really good line comes from the film Goldfinger:

Pussy Galore: My name is Pussy Galore.
James Bond: I must be dreaming.

This name, no doubt, inspired the name of a character in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and the following exchange:

Austin Powers: Come again?
Alotta Fagina: Alotta Fagina.
Austin Powers: Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just not getting it, it sounds like you said your name was a lot of um... never mind!

Of course she later realises that her name might invoke certain images in men's minds so at the end of the movie we hear that she has changed it to: Sandy Fagina, which admittedly sounds less inviting.

A few more, though not as good ones, sneaks into Thunderball:

Miss Moneypenny: James,how else will you recognize her?
James Bond: Can't miss. She has a mole on her left thigh.

[after making love to Pat, Bond sees something suspicious on the grounds, and gets up to investigate]
Pat Fearing: James, where are you going?
James Bond: Oh, nowhere. I just thought I'd take a little, uh... exercise.
Pat Fearing: You must be joking.

[Bond is standing in the doorway between their apartments as Fiona takes a bath]
Fiona: Aren't you in the wrong room, Mr. Bond?
Bond: Not from where I'm standing.

Then it goes full throttle in You only live twice:

[Kissy says she will be sleeping elsewhere. Bond shoves his oyster dinner aside]
James Bond: Well, I won't need these.

[Bond is captured by Helga Brandt]
Helga Brandt: I've got you now.
James Bond: Well, enjoy yourself.
[Brandt slaps him]

[about to make love to Helga Brandt]
James Bond: Oh the things I do for England.

[Being bathed by Tanaka's women]
Tiger Tanaka: You know what it is about you that fascinates them, don't you? It's the hair on your chest. All Japanese men have beautiful bare skin.
James Bond: Ancient Japanese proverb, "Bird never make nest in bare tree."

[James is in bed with a Ling, a Chinese woman]
James Bond: Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?
Ling: You think we better, huh?
James Bond: No, just different. Like Peking Duck is different from Russian Caviar. But I love them both.
Ling: Darling, I give you very best duck.

Tiger Tanaka: Rule number one: never do anything yourself when someone else can do it for you.
James Bond: And rule number two?
Tiger Tanaka: Rule number two: in Japan, men come first, women come second.
James Bond: I just might retire to here.

Once again this inspired a joke in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery:

Alotta Fagina: In Japan, men come first and women come second.
Austin Powers: Or sometimes not at all.

MoneyPenny: Oh, by the way, how was the girl?
[turns the lamp towards her, interrogation style]
James Bond: Which girl?
MoneyPenny: The... uh... Chinese one we set you up with?
James Bond: Another few minutes and I would have found out.

Mr. Osato: You should give up smoking. Cigarettes are very bad for your chest.
Helga Brandt: Mr. Osato believes in healthy chest.
[Bond eyes Helga's breasts]
James Bond: Really?

Diamonds are forever:

[to Tiffany while he's in bed with her]
James Bond: Presumably I'm the condemned man and obviously you're the hearty breakfast.

Sir Donald Munger: Tell me, Commander, how far does your expertise extend into the field of diamonds?
James Bond: Well, hardest substance found in nature, they cut glass, suggest marriages, I suppose it replaced the dog as the girl's best friend. That's about it.

Plenty O'Toole: Hi, I'm Plenty.
[Bond looking at her cleavage]
James Bond: But of course you are.
Plenty O'Toole: Plenty O'Toole.
James Bond: Named after your father perhaps?

James Bond: Weren't you a blonde when I came in?
Tiffany Case: Could be.
James Bond: I tend to notice little things like that - whether a girl is a blonde or a brunette.
Tiffany Case: Which do you prefer?
James Bond: Well, as long as the collar and cuffs match...

[holding up a finger, moving back]
Plenty O'Toole: Just give me one second, lover.
[she walks into the bedroom]
[Bond picks up her dress and tosses it onto a couch. He turns on a lamp and finds a goon pointing a gun at him]
James Bond: Good evening.
[other lights come on, revealing another goon, also pointing a gun at him]
James Bond: Well, I'm afraid you've caught me with more than my hands up.

Then a long break before Sean Connery returns in Never say Never Again:

Nurse: Mr. Bond, I need a urine sample. If you could fill this beaker for me?
James Bond: From here?

[Fatima Blush lands in James Bond's arms when she water-skis up the ramp to the bar]
Fatima Blush: Oh, how reckless of me. I made you all wet.
James Bond: Yes, but my martini is still dry. My name is James.
Not really that sexy, but very "Connery".

Fatima Blush: You know that making love to Fatima was the greatest pleasure of your life.
James Bond: Well, to be perfectly honest, there was this girl in Philadelphia...
Fatima Blush: Write this: "The greatest rapture of my life was afforded me on a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush," and sign it "James Bond, 007."
James Bond: I just remembered. It's against Service policy to give endorsements.
Fatima Blush: Write!

My memory is not that good, so I should probably mention that my research was done through the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), where I stole these quotes from (long live copy & paste).
Just find a movie you are interested in and look under: "Memorable Quotes".
If you are a movie buff like me, you might never leave IMDB again.

We Mean It!

2006-04-22T20:50:00.000+01:00

When I saw that warning, my first thought was: Oh yeah, how hot?

Answer: So hot that I had to keep my hand under cold running water for five minutes....

Car Park Trouble

2006-04-20T20:16:00.000+01:00

When you build an underground car park, you quickly realise that it might be a good idea to protect the pipe work and lights hanging down from the ceiling. You have spent a fortune on this so you don't want to see it destroyed, so you invest in a sign.

It doesn't take long before the first light fitting get knocked to smithereens, people in general are shockingly unaware about the height of their vehicle.
So you put in a metal rail to give entering cars a friendly bump on the roof before it get far enough into the car park to cause any damage to your investment.

Now you have problems with pigeons sitting on the metal rail making a slippery mess underneath, as pigeons have been known to do.
You have no other choice than putting some spikes on the rail to deter the winged rats.

Just as you thought you had reached the end of the road, idiots start turning up, forcing you to invest in yet another sign.

Robins Costner's Castle

2006-04-19T20:54:00.001+01:00

This Easter we explored some of the many old castles, churches and ruins of south-west England and there are many, believe me.... if I see one more castle, church, ruin or any combination of these in the next few weeks; I'm going to SCREAM!. One of the ruins was the Old Wardour Castle that was featured in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, you know the one with Kevin Costly and Mary Elizabeth Matro... eh..Mastren.. hm...Mastub... arrrrg!, the original Queen Bitch of the Universe from The Abyss.

A sign on the castle grounds (see photo above) shows the above-mentioned two actors in a scene from the movie and by comparing it to the castle ruin we just couldn't work out which angle it was shot from. By an amazing coincidence, the day after we got back home, the movie was shown on TV and we realised that the scene depicted was not shot at the Old Wardour Castle at all, but somewhere else. The scenes actually filmed at the Old Wardour are featured in the beginning of the movie, when Robin returns to find his father killed and his castle in ruins after the Sheriff of Nottingham has made a less than friendly social call. The garden feature grotto in the photo below is also seen briefly in the movie as a backdrop when Hans Gruber (The Sheriff) greets Robin's father, with a polite: "Join us or die!".

Brussels Sprouts

2006-04-17T17:10:00.000+01:00

The other day we walked past a traditional old English vegetable garden, were I took this photo.
These are Brussels Sprouts stalks where the sprouts have been picked off
Lucky that! Otherwise my wife would probably had made me eat them.

Want to know more? (somehow I don't think so).

Brussels Sprouts

Rats with wings

2006-04-12T17:54:00.000+01:00

We have an unsigned agreement with pigeons; They just walk all over the road as they please and when we come driving, they just scamper out of the way without us having to worry about them.
This time of the year that agreement seem to have gone out the window. Horny male pigeons are so busy courting the female pigeons that they forget to keep an eye on the traffic. Oddly enough the females do not seem so distracted by this macho strutting that they can't clear out of the way in time. Maybe it's because the male pigeon matting dance most of all look like a Mick Jagger stage performance. This inability to cope with traffic could the very reason behind the great success of pigeons in the city. Evolution (my car) kills the inattentive birds, leaving only the traffic safe specimens alive to multiply.
And multiply they do, in every major city you find these flying rats, shitting on statues, building ledges and my car (evolution). The amount of spikes and strings mounted on buildings to prevent pigeons from resting there is unbelievable. I can't help wonder (because I love useless trivia) how many tons of metal there's gone into pigeon-resting-prevention around the world . Woody Allen was right to call them rats with wings.
The solution would not be to kill the pigeons themselves and we can't kill the elderly people feeding them. Instead I suggest that we make all the green traffic lights at pedestrian crossings twenty seconds shorter, making it difficult to cross for slow walkers and eventually old people will give up going outside and just stay at home watching TV, traffic will run smoother and no more pigeons.

Old lady fined
Another old lady fined

The Beat of a Different Drum

2006-04-10T20:33:00.000+01:00

I don't mind people Marching to The Beat of a Different Drum, but why does it have to be a slow one?

Potato Western

2006-04-09T07:14:00.000+01:00

Everybody knows about the Spaghetti Westerns made in the in 60's and 70's by Italian film makers. Few know that Denmark jumped that bandwagon too and created what we in Denmark affectionately refer to as the Potato Western (Kartoffel Western).
As far as I know only two movies were made and they were never meant to be taken seriously, the casting of well known Danish comedy actors saw to that. Most of the outdoor filming were done in a gravel quarry, probably to achieve the arid desert look that you see in the Spaghetti Westerns. It's amazing how much it doesn't look like an arid desert at all, it looks just like a... well a gravel quarry. In other outdoor scenes, nothing have been done to camouflage the fact that the movie was made in Denmark and it just look like good old plain Denmark.

Are the films any good?
No! and yes, only Danes (and maybe a few Swedes and Norwegians) will like them.
They got that; so bad that it's good quality to them and the actors involved are loved by everyone regardless of what they do.

The Tough Boys of The Prairie.

Gold for The Tough Boys of The Prairie.

King Bluetooth

2006-04-06T18:16:00.000+01:00

Bluetooth is named after a 10th century Danish Viking king called Harald Blåtand. Of course his name has been anglicised to Harold Bluetooth, which I find a bit silly. To me Harald is the name of a tough ravaging viking, while Harold is a middle aged semi-bald English guy sitting in an armchair with slippers on his feet, reading his newspaper while puffing away on a pipe (married to a woman called Maude).
No matter, Bluetooth was named so because Harald Blåtand through diplomacy convinced different factions to negotiate peace with each other, which probably made his job as king a bit easier, it's not always "Good to be the King".
This is what Bluetooth does for wireless connections between phones, computers, cars, headsets and what have you, it makes all those devices, that conform with the Bluetooth standard, negotiate and talk to each other making your life easier.
As soon as I start my car my phone is automatically hooked into the car-kit, I don't even have to remove the phone from my pocket. On the street you see people with bluetooth earpieces hanging in their ears, oblivious to how silly they look. It's nothing new though, Uhura from Star Trek had a bluetooth earpiece before anyone else.

Now I'm just waiting for people to wake up to the fact that the other wireless standards have also been named for Danish kings, namely the Triplet Kings; IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g.

Want to know more?
Harald Blåtand
Bluetooth
IEEE 802.11

Troublewrap

2006-03-29T17:57:00.000+01:00

It doesn't matter which office you walk into, there is always an idiot hanging around in the deliveries section, popping the little bubbles on the protective plastic wrappers. I don't know what the fascination is but the facts are; bubblewrap attracts morons.
Before you accuse me of being judgemental I will just point out that more often than not, I am that idiot. In particular I love the bubblewrap with bubbles so large that in order to pop them you have to stomp on them with a foot so they go *BANG* making everybody in the office jump. Unfortunately I can only get away with doing the big ones once or twice a day before people loose their patience.
My recommendation is to start off with a sheet with only small bubbles, it will take quite a few minutes before people start sending you annoyed glances. Then stop for five minutes, to let people think you're done and then you pop a big one.

Thomas, 38 years of age (soon 39).

Admit it, you want to pop some bubblewrap now, don't you? Come on, just click here....

Elbow Grease

2006-03-26T11:23:00.000+01:00

This morning I was doing the weekly bathroom cleaning. To get rid of the damned mildew I still had to use quite a bit of elbow grease when scrubbing the wall grout at the bath tub, despite heavy use of enviroment damaging chemicals that probably will have my descendants curse me for centuries to come. Well... fuck'em, we prefer a clean bathroom.
The expression "elbow grease" had me reminiscing about my childhood, when I used to read the Donald Duck cartoon magazine on a regular basis. Scrooge McDuck always had Donald Duck polishing his coins with elbow grease when he had screwed up something. From the downtrodden reaction of Donald Duck when he was told to use elbow grease, I deduced that elbow grease must be a very smelly cleaning product.
Now I know better.

A Lesson in RTFM

2006-03-24T22:13:00.000Z

I can't stand listening to radio for any long period of time, I hate most of the music played there and I soon grow weary of the radio hosts and their inane chit-chat. So for the last couple of months I had taken to burning CD-RW's with music and audio-books for listening in my car, while driving to and from work. I gave up using my iTrip, a radio transmitter for the iPod, since there is too many stations crowding the radio bands in the London area, making it hard to find an empty channel. Besides iTrip and other radio transmitters, even with the very limited range they provide, are illegal to use here in England. So I have been burning and re-burning CD's week after week, what a bloody hassle it was.
Then the other day I had a flat tyre and was leafing through the car manual to find the lifting point for the jack, when I came across the radio section where the headline: "Auxiliary Input Plug" caught my attention. It turned out that a standard 3.5mm jack-plug had been installed in the glove compartment for easy connection of third party music players into the music system. Suddenly my car was the biggest and most expensive iPod accessory I ever had.
A classic case of RTFM.

Leprechaun 4: In Space

2006-03-20T19:31:00.000Z

Some movies are so bad that they are good, where the line goes is individual from person to person. Enter Leprechaun 4, looking the movie up on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) will reveal that fans of the Leprechaun series think that the fourth outing is so bad that it's not even good.

I have only seen the fourth one myself and I think it’s in the so bad that it’s good category. I only saw it by coincidence, one night when we were living in Singapore I woke up in the middle of the night and could not fall asleep again. My cure for that back then was to go into the living room, turn on the TV cuddle up on the sofa clutching the remote and then channel-surf until a B-movie was found and then crawl back in bed when my eyes began to droop.
I missed the beginning of the movie and didn’t have a clue of what it was I was watching. It took place aboard a spaceship and some marines, looking like they had been taken straight out of Aliens, were discussing how to get rid of a menace troubling them. Great, I thought, a cheap Alien rip-off should send me right back to sleep in no time. I soon realised that the alien they were chasing was a Leprechaun. Everybody was playing it straight, treating the Leprechaun as a fearsome intruder and I found that extremely comical. I saw the movie to the end without feeling the least bit like going back to bed and had a great time.
The other day I found the movie in HMV on DVD at a budget price of course and I bought it on the spot.
Finally I saw it from the beginning the full story.

The Leprechaun has kidnapped a Princess that looks like an extra straight out of the original Star Trek TV-series, scantly clad and ready to seduce Captain Kirk. The Leprechaun manages to convince her that she is much better off with him and his gold. Just as she agrees to marry him (jewellery never fails), the space marines “rescues” her, kills the Leprechaun and steal his gold.

Back on the mother ship and after a groin-bursting scene (yes! groin!) by the not-so-dead Leprechaun, the traditional kill-them-one-by-one scenario ensues.
A classic scene, not shown in the Singapore TV-version, is when the princess towards the end of the movie is flashing her boobs at the remaining marines and female scientist. It turns out to be the traditional declaration of the death sentence of her home planet; this is the most stupid excuse I have come across in any movie to show tits and this includes some very deranged X-rated movies... erm.. I... eh.. have heard about... In the final battle the female scientist also mangage to strip down to her undies, real first class schlock.

I might even check out the first three movies and the two further sequels, if this is the worst one of them, the others must be pure heaven. Warwick Davis stars as the Leprchaun in all of them and Jennifer Aniston co-stars in the first one, as victim I presume, and Ice-T can be found staring in one of the sequels to this fourth one. Ice-T must have a sense of humour after all behind that grumpy exterior

Warwick Davis; I salute you.

Want to know more?
Warwick Davis
Leprechaun 4

Punch The Wall

2006-03-19T08:17:00.000Z

Every once in a while, the world around you makes you wanna punch the the wall and scream.
No more, just visit http://khaaan.com/.

555-CARDBOARD-BOX

2006-03-17T19:05:00.000Z

Saw a bloke outside the supermarket today, selling The Big Issue while talking on a mobile phone. Apparently the main deterrent for homeless people not to have a phone in olden days was the need for a land-line.

Reminded me of a TV add in Australia were a tyre service company had joined up with the Salvation Army. For every tyre sold the company would donate a small amount of money to the Salvation Army to be used to buy tyres for poor people.
Can poor people afford to buy and run a car??? Maybe they are given a rope as well so they can hang the tyre from a tree branch, gives them something to play with while waiting for the big lotto jackpot (just like the rest of us).

Outback Tourist Traps

2006-03-16T17:19:00.000Z

If I have learned one thing from traveling it's; tourist attractions are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are gonna get.
I have been down countless caves where the signs at the ticket office promised world class stalactites and Stalagmites. All the caves were originally found a hundred years ago by bush farmers that initially used it as their garbage dump until the advent of cars brought tourism to the outback.

The placards will tell of an extensive cave and tunnel system that goes on for hundreds of kilometers, most of still unexplored to this day. Some might even throw in an unlikely story of bushrangers using it as a hideout from the authorities. The short story is some farmer decides that the hole on his land would fetch him a lot more money if he puts a sign at the nearest highway; This way to The Famous Golden Crystal Diamond Caves, knocks up a ticket booth at the cave entrance and then wait for the suckers (me) to come running.
When you turn down that dirt road towards the caves you already know you will be taken for a ride, but there's nothing else to see and you are bored. After driving 20 Kilometers, just when you are about to turn around because you thought you might have made a wrong turn somewhere, you see the next sign; Golden Crystal Diamond Caves, 15 Km. At this point you are already past the halfway point so you really don't feel like turning around. Finally there, you find that you have just missed the hourly guided tour of the caves, so you hang around for another 45 minutes until the next tour. Once down there you will hear the usual stories of how long the dripstones have taken to form, about the white bats living there and how the temperature is always the same.
Don't get me wrong, I do find these thing interesting it's just that I've been to so many caves now that promised something special, but all look like carbon copies of each other.
Oh yeah, they only charge entrance fee in order to preserve the caves as they were before humans began their intrusions.

Another time, on one of our many outback treks, we followed the signs to a meteor crater called something like; The Spectacular Outback Meteor Crater. Only to find a ticket shed in front of a circular wooden fence about ten meters in diameter. A sign proclaimed that the crater was first found by aboriginals thousands of years ago and their original name for the crater was something uncommon as; Mungawoollatagua, meaning; Star that fell from the sky during Dreamtime. A closer examination of the name by a professor in linguistics or just by asking an aboriginal elder, would probably reveal that the name really means; Hole we use for our morning dump. Any way this enterprising individual only had one problem, his place of business was to close to the road, if we had driven 20 Kilometers to see his hole we might have paid his admission fee but in this case it was; Close, but no cigar.

This brings me to our Nullabor crossing trip. Made cynical by experiences like described above and it being late afternoon with onset of darkness closing in, I was almost inclined to give The Great Australian Bight Marine Park and the whale watching spot a miss, when we passed the sign on the highway. The whole thing is so remote that only people who crosses the Nullabor really ever come there. We expected a tourist trap but were positively surprised. A reasonable admission fee included a nice shiny booklet and a ticket were the top was shaped like the tail-fin of a whale, I still use it as my bookmark.

A walkway had been built from the visitors center down to the water, to protect the area from intrusion of humans. At first we didn't see much other than some rocks sticking out of the water way out from the coast. Suddenly one of the "rocks" blew a geyser of water up into the air. It was the Southern Right Whales that comes to this area to nurse their calves before heading south.

Even at this remote distance you could comprehend the size of these animals, in fact the distance probably was the key to realising the size of them. So far away and you could still make out the mothers playing with their calves and brushing off horny males out for one last fling before the big emigration.

Fantastic, my advice is to never pass up chance of seeing whales, it really is an incredible experience.

Want to know more?
Great Australian Bight
Southern Right Whale
Bushranger
Cave
Stalactite
Stalagmite

Saint Patrick's Day in London

2006-03-13T20:36:00.000Z

It appears that the Irish living in London lacks the patience to wait until the 17. March and celebrated Saint Patrick's Day on Sunday the 12. March. It was only by coincidence that we passed the parade while window shopping.

I'm not sure about the significance of the caterpillar in relation to St. Patrick's day, other than it is green, but there you are...

There were also some people dressed up as a pint of Guinness, they made a lot more sense. I should have been faster with my camera phone though.

Want to know more?
Saint Patrick's Day

Toe Curling Car Trouble

2006-03-12T06:45:00.000Z

We all have memories of situations we found our selves in that makes us laugh or curl our toes in embarrassment or both.

One such situation was from way back when I was around 18 years old (gee, it's been 20 years already!), when I was hanging out with some guys very much into cars. Every weekend we would tinker around with the old wrecks they had gotten on the cheap.
I've never been into cars at all, for me it's just a means of transport, all I know about my company car is that it is a Ford Airbag, you know the make with a trumpet logo on the steering wheel and that's all the information I need. My lack of interest in cars didn't stop me from enjoying working with them tough, it's after all a machine and machines fascinate me.

Back then DIY auto workshops had suddenly risen out of the outrageous prices of car repair. You could rent a cubicle with or without a lift at a reasonable price on an hourly basis and any special tools you might need such as crankshaft remover, caliber fitter or spot-welder could be rented there. The sizes of these DIY outfits ranged from places with room for two to fifty cars, the first would be a small local mechanic trying to cash in on this latest fad in the weekend.

We favoured a particular medium size place with room for around eight cars, were the on-site owner/mechanic where very knowledgeable and would always have time to give advice. The bloke was almost a caricature of a mechanic, a bearded rugged appearance, always to be found in his dirty dark green coveralls with a cigar in his mouth (I made up the cigar bit, but you get the picture). Despite his looks, his advice hardly ever involved a big hammer and a chisel, because he actually had all the tools you could think of in his immaculate workshop.

One Saturday Bent and me were trying to get Bent's car ready for the Vehicle Inspectors cruel probings into secondary functions such as brakes, steering and carbon emissions. For the engine tuning we had signed out an expensive looking engine analyzer set on a small table on caster wheels for easy transport. We placed the instrument a couple of meters from the car with cables trailing into the engine compartment and connected the to the various appropriate spots. I was sitting at the back of the car making sure the small tube needed for the exhaust readings stayed in place and to keep the exhaust extractor hose from popping off. Bent was at the steering wheel attempting to start the engine. First time nothing but a click was heard, Bent fiddled around in the motor and got behind the steering wheel again for another attempt. This time the motor ticked over for half a second before dying. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move and turned my head to see what it was. Nothing but the trolley table with the analyzer on top could be seen in that direction and I was about to stand up a tell Bent when he, encouraged by the first engine cough, turned the key over again. This time the engine started with a roar and my world went into slow motion. The cables between the analyzer and engine were drawn tight and the trolley table began moving in the direction of the car. With a bump the table hit the front of the car and the analyzer was yanked off the table and disappeared into the engine compartment and with a loud "BANG" the engine went quiet. Bents vision was obscured by the open bonnet and did not see anything and he got out of the car, looking back at me with a puzzled expression on his face, asking: "what was that?". We both went to the front of the car and there in the midst of the mess of cables that had been tangled up in the cooling propeller was the analyzer face down. At this point everybody in the workshop were looking in our direction alerted by the noise and the mechanic came running out of his small glass walled office. He never even looked at us he only had eyes for his mangled up equipment, pulled from the safety of the cleanest workshop in the northern hemisphere into the dirty interior of a car 25 years past it's use-by date. He pulled a wire cutter from his pocket (he must have known what was coming when he saw two pizza faces) and started cutting the cables to liberate his analyzer. When he got the thing out I could swear he was cradling it like a baby in his arms as he carried it over to the table trolley. It didn't really look damaged and when he connected up a few cables, one of these miracles that the universe sometimes throw our way occurred, everything worked.
He turned towards us and said: "I don't ever want to see you two idiots in here ever again!". When we drove off, Bent remarked: "That's was the most embarrassing situation of my life, I have never felt like a bigger fool before" I agreed, though I could probably come up with worse.

Since then, every time I drove past this auto workshop I would feel a dread and half expected the mechanic to hang around the window just waiting for me pass by so that he could run out and shout IDIOT! at me.

Electric Nostalgia

2006-03-11T17:59:00.000Z

It's funny how a glimpse of something can start a nostalgic trip back in time. Seeing a picture of a Nixie Tube on "http://electricstuff.co.uk/" reminded me of the local candy shop when I was a child were the cash register had these tubes in the display. I was very fascinated by all the filaments coiled up in the shape of numbers inside a glass bulb and could stare at it for hours if not for my mother and her busy shopping schedule. I must have been an easy child to take shopping, other children would beg for candy and behave in the most unruly manner to get it, while I would just stand around staring into the cash register display.

Pavement Art by Julian Beever

2006-03-11T02:38:00.000Z

These pictures are all done with crayons on the pavement and seen or photographed from a certain angle, they appear in very realistic 3D.

I wish that I could do something like this. I would draw up a weeks worth of work on a monday, show it to the boss on tuesday and go home for the rest of the week.

See more here.

Pudding

2006-03-09T21:45:00.000Z

When I see a running woman with a deep cleavage showing, I always come to think of pudding. Very confusing, I don't even like pudding.

Take from the rich and give to the poor (me)

2006-03-08T20:26:00.000Z

There's lots of old castles around the English landscape and every time I see one, like Windsor Castle depicted above, I half expect to see Ivanhoe come riding or Robin Hood jump out from behind a tree in his green tights. I would really like that, Robin would immediately recognise me as a poor peasant and give me a bag of jewelry robbed from some rich rappers. I'm not exactly poor, but I'm certainly not rich either so I won't bog him down with too many details of my financial situation, I'll just thank him and take the bling-bling.

The Box Factory

2006-03-08T19:13:00.000Z

On our Australian transcontinental trek last year we came through Adelaide. Besides popping in at some friends (JackJack, Trax & Dazza), we also went past a box factory, I kid you not. The wife had through her work bought some boxes from them that she needed for a job and were so happy with the boxes that she wanted to buy some for herself. Whenever she mentioned the box factory I would say: "We just make boxes here". Even with her wide knowledge of Simpsons she didn't get it (and she has extensive knowledge, she had to pass a test before we got married) and I ended up buying the fifth season DVD box-set just to show her the "Bart Gets Famous" episode.

Guide: Many interesting and important things have been put into boxes
over the years: textiles, other boxes, even children's candy.
Milhouse: Do any of these boxes have candy in them?
Guide: No.
Milhouse: Will they ever?
Guide: No, we only make boxes to ship nails. Any other questions?
Martin: When will we be able to see a finished box, Sir?
Guide: Well, we don't assemble them here -- that's done in Flint,
Michigan.
Bart: Have any of the workers ever had their hands cut off by the
machinery?
Guide: No --
Bart: And then the hand started crawling around and tried to
strangle everybody?
Guide: No, that has never happened.
Bart: Any popped eyeballs?
Guide: I'm not sure what kind of factory you're thinking of; we just
make boxes here.

Want to know more?

The Simpsons
Bart Gets Famous

Star Wars Radio Drama

2006-03-08T17:12:00.000Z

I did the find of the year the other day at a charity shop: Star Wars The original radio drama, as heard on National Public Radio. All three of them on Compact Disc! Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of The Jedi, about 15 hours worth of the greatest adventure ever committed to film (disregarding the awful (well (to be fair), not-so-good) prequels of course). They were only £5 each and will provide entertainment driving back and forth to work in my X-wing fighter (it's really a Ford Airbag..... I think, that's what it says on the steering wheel anyway).

Also came to think about when me and the wife went to see the Special Edition Star Wars in Sydney. It was on the first night showing in Australia and people were dressed up as Storm Troopers, Princess Leia (nice buns), Han Solo, Boba Fett, Darth Vader and even a Chewbacca. I didn't notice any Luke Skywalkers, nobody wants to be a whiner.
Blaster fights were fought in the theatre and just in the last moment before the curtain fell (erm.. moved to the side) Leia was freed from the grasp of Darth Vader.
During the trailers some bright people were shining laser pointers up at the screen. This went on for a few minutes before a huge bearded biker looking bloke down on one of the front rows stood up and turned towards the packed theatre and shouted: "If I see any laser dots on the screen during the movie, you'll have me to deal with!". The whole theatre cheered and the only lasers seen during the screening of the movie was the ones put there by George Lucas (even if he did put in one too many in his new version).

Want to know more?
Star Wars
Star Wars (radio)

Sounds of Peas

2006-03-04T20:41:00.000Z

Tasmania, Christmas & New Year 2004-2005.

On a warm summer day I heard some clicking noises from the bushland behind my in-laws house. I went in there to investigate, I was sure it was some insects making those sounds and I wanted to see one close up. Even though I was surrounded by pops and clicks, I could not find any creeps to blame, only a scary looking fly-without-wings-thingy, that did not appear to emit any sounds at all.
I asked my father-in-law if he knew where to find the insects. He then explained that the sounds came from the pea-like pod growing on some plants found in the bushland.
The sun will dry the pod until it's brown and crisp and on a hot day the heat will finally make the pod crack open with a sharp click and spread the seeds inside on the ground.

I don't know if they tasted like peas as the wife refused to taste them and she's the one insisting that we have vegetables with every meal!

The Star Trek Hot Dog Eating Scenario

2006-03-02T20:52:00.000Z

The other day driving home from work I got thinking about that small Japanese guy I saw on TV winning a hot dog eating contest. Some big fat guys had entered the contest too but they just couldn't beat this little guy.
The thought stayed with me long enough for me to look it up on the web when I got home. His name turned out to be Takeru Kobayashi and he won the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest five times in a row. His name and his all his winnings amused me to no end, those big fat guys trying to beat him had faced their no win situation, they had their Kobayashi Maru...

It also reminded of back when I was working as an electrician on a construction site many years back. Every Friday we would have a cheese burger eating contest. I ended up with the record in speed eating a McDonald's cheese burger at 47 seconds. Another guy could do it in 45 seconds but because he did not like cheese (what a wimp!), he ate hamburgers. So I could still claim the top position.

Want to know more?
Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest
Takeru Kobayashi
Kobayashi Maru

The Little Difference (one of them)

2006-03-01T20:31:00.000Z

How come women don't fart as much as men? My wife claims that we work differently, I don't believe that for a minute. Yet, in eight years of marriage I have only detected five farts from my wife (yes! I keep count), three by sound, one by smell and one by her reaction when I farted myself, did the sniffing thing looked around and asked: "who farted?".
So what do they do with all that gas? I once tried for a day to keep all farts in, it required a concentrated effort and it was hard work. Also when pressure were building and restraint was in demand, people would say things like: "You look troubled, are you alright?" and all I could do was shake my head while trying not to pollute the immediate atmosphere with bodily produced gases. I had bad breath for a week after.
If a man does a high-legged fart in the company of other men, they will applaud him for his wit and charm. They might even express admiration for a particular loud fart and if he can change key halfway through he will be a legend. Women do not like this one bit and men know this so we try our best not to fart in their company. But please, all women, sometimes our shields are down and if one slips, couldn't you just be happy to be considered as "one of the boys"?

Want to know more?
Farts
Toilet Humor

Missing Australia

2006-02-28T20:48:00.000Z

Boy! do I miss the hard life in Australia. (Picture: Tasmania Christmas 2003)

Lunar Olympics

2006-02-26T12:57:00.000Z

According to NASA it is only a matter of time before we will watch Lunar Olympics from the moon on TV.
The low gravity will ensure spectacular ski stunts and crashes will happen in slow motion.
I guess all the events will be very slow indeed and that they would have to speed up the frame rate of the TV pictures, as to not bore people to death. They could always play stunts and crashes back at normal speed in order to show the impressive or gory details.

Lunar Olympics
Skiing on the Moon

Berry Decoration

2006-02-25T22:55:00.000Z

One of the differences between women and men is put in the spotlight when it comes to the decoration of the home. Say, take a bunch of branches from a tree, possibly a bush, filled with dried red berries, tie it to a nail on the wall and suddenly the room is brought to life. Men wouldn't have thought of that in a million years, the best we have come up with is the stuffed heads of animals we have killed while drinking beer.
Well, the wife thought our wall in the living room needed to taste the hand of "The Decorator". So we have one of those dried berry thingy branches on our wall and you only have to raise an eyebrow (not to mention high-legged farts) before the berries loose their grip and drop to the floor. We find those berries everywhere.
The other day I found a berry floating in the toilet-bowl, don't know how it got there but there it was. Despite three days of flushing and other unspeakable hardship it's still there. I have named it: "Unsinkable Molly".

Chuck Norris Facts

2006-02-24T15:14:00.000Z

The other day I came across another one of those phenomena that everybody seems to know about, but somehow has escaped my attention.
This time it's little known facts about Chuck Norris.

There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.
Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.
Chuck Norris does not get frostbite. Chuck Norris bites frost.
The quickest way to a man's heart is with Chuck Norris' fist.
Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Chuck Norris has 72... and they're all poisonous.
Chuck Norris has two speeds: Walk and Kill.
Chuck Norris doesn't shower, he only takes blood baths.
Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
Chuck Norris invented black. In fact, he invented the entire spectrum of visible light. Except pink. Tom Cruise invented pink.
On his birthday, Chuck Norris randomly selects one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.
Chuck Norris did in fact, build Rome in a day.
Chuck Norris invented a language that incorporates karate and roundhouse kicks. So next time Chuck Norris is kicking your ass, don’t be offended or hurt, he may be just trying to tell you he likes your hat.
Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.
Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Unless you're Chuck Norris. Then two wrongs make a roundhouse kick to the face.

Silverfinger

2006-02-21T19:00:00.000Z

Welcome to my secret lair Mr. Bond, James Bond. I believe you only have one round left in your pistol, choose your target wisely. MUAAHA HA HA HA HA HA!

Idiots & Maniacs on the Motorway

2006-02-20T21:57:00.000Z

Just had a thought on my way to work this morning.... eh.. ahem.. well alright..., I heard it on the radio: People who drive slower than me are idiots and those who drive faster are maniacs.

Durians

2006-02-20T17:54:00.000Z

When I first came to Singapore I had never heard of Durians before, so when I started seeing signs at shop entrances and at the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) with the text: “No Durians Allowed”, I was puzzled. The signs were not of much help, just the classic symbol of forbiddance, the red circle with a red line across and a pictogram of the offending object inside the circle, looking like a pineapple with spikes. Why innocent fruits were persecuted to the extent that it wasn’t allowed on the premises of retail and in the public transport system was a complete mystery to me.
Then I came across a Durian at a fruit and vegetable market and the riddle was solved. The fruit emits the most repugnant stink imaginable and not only that, the smell is sneaky too. The first faint whiff is kind of sweet and prompts you to inhale deep through your nose to identify the smell. This is when it gets you; I can best describe the smell as something between a banana and the ten worst farts you have ever smelled. This description made my aunt suggest that it was like monkey pooh, which I on reflection don’t think is fair; monkey shit is nowhere near as bad, honestly.
The fruit is green and the size of a rugby ball with some big spikes. The meat, which is the part of the fruit that is eaten, is a whitish/yellow and looks very much like the lard your find around the organs inside animals when they are slaughtered.
In other words, it smells bad and it looks bad, so how about the taste? I couldn’t tell you, the smell and the look repulses me to no end and I see no reason to experiment in the name of open-mind-ness. My wife of course told me I was a chicken for not trying and it took a couple of years before she admitted that she thought it tasted just as bad as it smelled and looked (I did momentarily plan to conjure a confession out of her by surprising her with Durian for dessert, but I didn’t have the heart and we would never have got rid of the smell from our apartment).
The fruit is an acquired taste, as you would have guessed, and is very popular in Singapore and Malaysia (and other Asian countries too, I presume). It is claimed that the best flavour is just after the Durian has fallen off the tree and enthusiastic connoisseurs take this quite literal. Late at night in an Asian jungle you might come across a man sitting silently on a chair with a machete in one hand and torch in the other listening with all his attention for the quiet bump of a Durian hitting the ground. As soon as the sound of a fallen fruit reaches him, he will jump up, knocking over the chair in his haste, turn on the torch and run as fast as he can towards the sound of fruity impact and hack open the Durian to devour the still warm flesh.
Most Asians are very hard working people and does not have time for nocturnal expeditions into the jungle and have to buy them on the vegetable markets, but they will have to provide the transport home themselves.
Once when we were travelling to Kuala Lumpur by train, a family dragged a whole sack of Durians into the carriage. After complaints from several passengers, the conductor told them to put the sack on the platform at the end of the last carriage. It was too late, the smell was there with us all through the eight-hour trip; it’s the kind of smell you cannot get used to and ignore.

Want know more?
Durian
MRT

Hattori Hanzo Kettle

2006-02-18T15:56:00.000Z

The other day when I put the kettle on the stove I forgot to put the lid on. As usual my vivid imagination kicked in and I got this image in my head of Lucy Liu in Kill Bill right after she lost the duel in the snow covered Japanese garden. The wife didn’t see the resemblance and rolled her eyes the way she does a lot around me.

Too bad Lucy’s character got bumped off, she may have been a bitch that had it coming, but I really liked the no nonsense way she ran her board meetings.

Speaking of kettles, I really like the old fashioned chromed ones, I love pulling faces and see them distorted on the mirror surface, It's a good way of passing the time while waiting for the water to boil.

Death by Laptop

2006-02-17T17:36:00.000Z

When I first heard about fuel cells possibly replacing rechargeable batteries in laptops, I immediately thought about the headlines we might see in the near future.

Nerd found dead in his dorm room, it is believed he died by accident when inhaling carbon dioxide from his laptop's exhaust in the confined room.

Or

Nerd found dead in broom closet, it is believed to be suicide as a goodbye note was found on his still idling laptop found in the closet with him.

I then learned that the by-product would be harmless water vapour. Isn't that actually supposed to be good for your skin? Either way, spotty nerds might soon be a thing of the past.

Want to know more?
Fuel Cell
Nerd

Toilet Games

2006-02-15T17:30:00.000Z

I used to play snake a lot when going to the loo. I know a statement like that invokes certain images, shame on you and your dirty imagination! What I’m talking about is the game called snake found on Nokia mobile phones. Sitting on the loo is pure downtime seen from an intellectual point of view and that’s why I always bring something to read when going. At work I don’t normally carry around books or magazines, I get my news from the Internet so I don’t buy newspapers either (although a newspaper can be a good emergency replacement for toilet paper in case you were not paying attention when you first walked in and sat down). What I always carry around is my mobile phone and this has turned out to be my saviour in my battle against toilet cubicle boredom.
Recently I was given a new company phone and to my great disappointment it turned out that Snake had fallen out of favour as application number one in mobile phone amusement. Instead the games; Street Race, Backgammon II and Golf Tour was installed as default. A quick glance at them made me disregard them as suitable for potty entertainment and with a sigh I resigned myself to a future where toilet graffiti would be the best exercise that would be provided for my brain cells while marinating in the unsavoury atmosphere of a public toilet.

During a session in a toilet cubicle, so new that no graffiti had yet materialised and the only reading material was the instructions on how to use the toilet paper dispenser, I pulled out the phone to give the games another try. To my big surprise I got hooked on the golf game (insert your own joke about fondling a stick and whacking balls here). In real life I have always considered golf boring at best and full of people dressing in silly clothes using expressions like; Par, Birdie and Bogey. Now I speak the green lingo of golf, I know when to use a driver or a wedge and I dream of doing a hole-in-one (which I always thought was a synonym for sex on the first date).

Damn Birds

2006-02-14T21:03:00.000Z

Look what they did to my boy, they massacred my boy.

DVD Rental Thoughts

2006-02-12T06:40:00.000Z

DVD rental stores suck here in England compared to those in Australia, the selection of titles available is not that great. As usual the movies are sorted under different categories such as; Drama, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi and so forth, just like they are in Australia. But here, when you go to the Horror section you only find twelve movies and a tumbleweed (which really belongs in the Western section). Also, whatever system it is that they use for sorting the films, it has certainly not been inspired by the alphabet. It's not that big a problem in the smaller sections, but in the larger sections with thirty movies it does get a bit tedious trying to find what you are looking for.
At best I find a DVD library divided into categories annoying, when I go to a rental store I usually look for some specific titles and it is not always obvious to me which genre the movies I'm after belongs to. A good example is: "Shaun of the dead" which is a Romantic Zombie Comedy, where does that belong? (incidentally, it is a movie that I recommend, it got a nice "Evil Dead 2" take on the horror genre). Couldn't they just put everything in one big section, sorted alphabetically and use colour codes on the boxes for genres?
Also like in Australia you can buy ex-rental DVD's after the big promotions have ended at a reasonable price, only here in England you can find new ones cheaper on sale! If I wanted a DVD that looked like some French guy had used it for spreading Foie Gras on his baguette, I would buy a new one at Virgin or HMV and I'd still have change left over for both bread and spread made from a tortured goose's liver.

Damn it's cold

2006-02-08T21:21:00.000Z

Currently I’m working on a construction site, were the main plant rooms are of the “open to air” kind with only three walls and a roof. Damn it’s cold; I can’t believe that I complained about sweating when I was working in similar plant rooms in Singapore and Darwin a few years back, I wish I was there now. The nature of my work doesn't require me to move around much, most of the time I’m just plucking away my laptop trying to get all sorts of unlikely equipment communicating with each other, all the while I’m doing knee bends to keep warm.
There’s a requirement that all people on site wears safety gloves. Fortunately the powers that be only cares about the palm of my hand and couldn't care less about my fingers. So in order to operate my laptop without errors of the “fat finger syndrome” kind, I have cut off the fingers on my gloves. Eddie Eight finger screwed up, he didn’t catch on to that it would be a good idea to remove the gloves before cutting the fingers off (he can still pick his nose, but he later received a bad cut to a finger from a frozen booger he had wiped off on his pants).
An Englishman is very understated in his language, he won’t say something like: “I’m freezing my ass of here” or “I can’t feel my feet“. No, when it is so cold that his nose falls off and drops to the floor to shatter in a dozen pieces. He will just bend over, pick up the bits in his handkerchief and stuff it away in his pocket while remarking: “It’s a bit nippy today”.

The worst part is that it has been pretty mild this year, so far....

Brighton

2006-02-05T14:35:00.000Z

Yesterday we went down to Brighton on the English south coast. Here's some fresh photos.

That's not a beach, where is the sand?

Does this mean that the doughnut was invented in Brighton? I'm not gonna say what the hole looks like up close.
Mmmmmm..... doughnuts....

The place to go.

A hangout place for evil carnies.

Ha Ha Ha Ha Staying Alive, Staying Alive, Staying Aliiiiiiiiveeeeee!

The national dish of England. If you go to Brighton you gotta have Fish 'n' Chips. I was very disappointed that it was not served in old newspapers, I believe the lead content of newspaper ink gives the dish a superior flavour. The brown stuff in the bottle in the background is malted vinegar, stay away from that, it's horrible.

View from the Brighton Pier.

Another view from the pier.

Want to know more?
Brighton
Doughnut
Fish 'n' Chips
Carny
Staying Alive

Road Blog

2006-02-03T18:35:00.000Z

Driving to work I heard a joke on the radio: "If space is a vacuum, who changes the bags then?".
At that moment I drove past a Smart Car and it struck me that it looked a lot like a vacuum cleaner. Next thought was: "I wonder where the bag sits on one of these?".

I decided to investigate. Every time I passed a Smart Car I looked at it as closely as I could without loosing control of my own car. They are not hard to study, there are plenty of them around London and since they drive at least 10 miles below the speed limit, you go past them all the time.
I came to the conclusion that the bags are all sitting behind the steering wheel.
The Smart Cars all seem to be driven by middle aged women of the kind that like to push the seat as far forward as it will go and still they lean as far towards the windscreen as the seat belt will allow. They have a half frightened look on their faces as if some psycho at any moment would swing an axe through their side window: "Heeeere's Johnnieee!".

P.S. I realise this blog post is rather rude towards middle aged women. I shouldn't make up my blog posts while I'm driving, sure hope the wife don't read it......

Blue Moon

2006-02-01T19:20:00.000Z

This photo was taken by one of my friends. What's wrong with it?

Ugly House

2006-01-29T14:11:00.000Z

London 2006. Who gave them permission to build this?

Edwardian (or is it Victorian?) architecture and 70's bad taste does not mix very well, you don't have to be an architect to see that.

Wall Flower

2006-01-29T08:50:00.000Z

Hong Kong 2005.
Where there's a will, there's a way.

'Our' Cats

2006-01-28T04:58:00.000Z

To me cats seem to be the most agreeable pet in the world, they are very low maintenance. You don't have to walk a cat and they are smart enough to not leave turds halfway between the bedroom and the bathroom for you to slide in on your way to a night session.
Unfortunately our lifestyle with a lot of travel doesn't really lend itself to pets, but we have been lucky to have some 'extra low' maintenance cats in our life.

In Perth (Australia) we had at least three neighbour cats come visiting on a regular basis. To begin with I think they just dropped in to drop something in themselves. See, there is no real soil in Perth, it's all sand. The house we bought had been a rental property where nobody had bothered looking after the garden and was essentially just one big sandbox, a cats paradise in toilet facilities. After we made up the garden the cats would still come by and instead of fertilising the soil they would spend a few hours sleeping on our new timber deck. Great company for us and when they grew hungry they would just leave and go home to be fed there.

In Singapore there's thousands of stray cats. I guess they keep the rats down a bit, at least the ones that are not as big as the cats. Eating out is cheap in Singapore so after work we often opted to eat out instead of cooking at home after a long days work. One night I was sitting on a bench under our apartment block, waiting for the wife to come so that we could walk over to the local food centre for dinner. A small red/ginger cat came over towards me looking very distressed and meowing like cats do when they recognise a sucker that might feed them. It looked like it just had its tail chopped off, it wasn't bleeding but it was clearly a fresh wound. It only had about five centimeters of the tail left.
A lot of the cats in Singapore seem to have either chopped of tails or broken ones, it could be done by cruel people or perhaps by accident, I don't know. Most people actually seem to like the stray cats and since most of the cats are very friendly towards humans, they must be well treated most of the time.
The cat was more distressed than hungry and when I started petting her she calmed down. When the wife came the cat was sleeping on the bench beside me. We left the cat and had our dinner never expecting to see it again. But the next day she was there again and this time she followed us up to our apartment, this happened a few times and we began to feed her once in a while. She never really grew dependent on us and there would sometimes be a week between her visits, which suited us well since we where taking every opportunity to go traveling in Malaysia on long weekends. When she was around she would spend most of the time sleeping in a chair while we were watching TV, getting a break from the rough life on the streets.
I fell into the habit of calling the cat: "Lille Skiderik" which is Danish for: "Little Shithead", my wife didn't like that name one bit so we stretched our imaginations as far as they would go and came up with the very original name of: "The Cat". If she was around in the morning she would follow me half way down to the MRT (train) always stopping at the same point, looking after me until I disappeared around a corner. I guess it must have been the limit of her territory.
One day we realised that The Cat was pregnant when we noticed she was struggling more and more getting through the bars at our entrance door.
In Singapore everybody has bars in front of their doors and windows, making apartment blocks look like minimum security prisons. This is in the country with the lowest crime rate in the world. I guess it comes down to the general paranoia of the Chinese culture, but come on! Who's gonna break in through the window twelve floors up?
Well where was I? One day... yada yada yada... The Cat pregnant... yada yada yada... trouble getting through the bars. Ah there we are... Late one night The Cat was behaving weird and was trying to get us to follow her and we did. Thanks to the low crime rate in Singapore you feel safe everywhere regardless of the time of night, so taking a walk at half past eleven was no worry at all. The Cat lead us across the neighbourhood to a nearby buddhist temple, she could just squeeze through the pillars that made up the surrounding walls but we couldn't. She came back out looking very disappointed that we didn't follow her and went back in. We had to give up getting in there with her as the gates to the temple was closed for the night. We went back home and shortly after she showed up back home as well. She refused to come inside and just sat there on the doorstep meowing. She was clearly ready to give birth and was frustrated that we wouldn't follow her. In the end I found a cardboard box and placed it on the patio outside our door and she crawled inside.
The next morning we found her there in the cardboard box with three kittens. One looked just like the mother red/ginger with stripes and a white belly, another was all red/ginger and the third one was all white. From then on it was a constant struggle to keep The Cat from dragging the kittens into our bedroom closet. They ended up taking residence in the neighbours shoe rack, that they kept just outside their door. At first I was worried that our neighbours, an Indonesian woman and her two grown up daughters, would take offence at the four cats suddenly residing where they kept their shoes, but they took to them as well. I had to hose down the patio two or three times a week to get rid of the stench of cat piss, but I didn't mind. Eventually the kittens grew up and left to find their own place in the world. The white one disappeared long time before any of the two other kittens and we suspect it was kitnapped (he he) by people who thought it would look good with an all white cat around the house.
The Cat did get another litter but this time she was better prepared. We never found out where she kept them this time round. Once in a while she would turn up with one of the kittens for us to see only to take it away again after a couple of hours. We thought she might have kept them a few floors up higher than ours, because we would sometimes see her coming down the stairs. This litter had the same colours as the litter before.

We have been back to Singapore several times since and a couple of times we have been out to our old neighbourhood in Tampines. We half hoped to see The Cat again, but we never did.

Blonde Joke

2006-01-27T15:42:00.000Z

I think this joke might be copyrighted, so rather than copy it into a blog post, I have made a link to it.
Enjoy!

Blonde joke

dit-dit-dit dah-dah dit-dit-dit

2006-01-25T20:07:00.000Z

When we first "landed" in Australia after our stint in Singapore, we lived with my wife's parents for a couple of months.
One night at the dinner table my mother-in-law asked if anybody knew what SMS stood for. I explained that it stood for Short Message Service and that it's a method of sending text messages between mobile phones (back then, I was probably still in the habit of calling them "hand phones" as they do in Singapore).
She was wondering because every day on her way to work riding on the Sydney train she would hear this bit of Morse code: "dit-dit-dit dah-dah dit-dit-dit" which, she explained, spells S-M-S.
She used to be a telegrapher on a ship and therefore knew Morse code by heart (she joined my father-in-law on his ship, guess she heard all the stories about sailors, ports and girls).
I wonder how many people know that the "new message" tones from their mobile phone spells out SMS in Morse code, I didn't.

Want to know more?
Morse Code
SMS
Mother-in-law

Contrails

2006-01-24T16:46:00.000Z

Ever since arriving in England I have marveled over the numerous airplane contrails in the sky. Everybody knows about the two big airports Heathrow and Gatwick on the outskirts of London. Less known is it (outside of England) that there are airports in Stanstead and Luton, both serving London, as well as a London City Airport (it is quite possible that everyone knew about these airports but didn't bother telling me). Five airports that all have a constant traffic of airplanes taking off and landing.
Living in Perth for three years have made me forget about all the airplanes that you see in the air space of Europe. Because of Perth's remote location, not a lot of planes passes over without making it a stop-over. So if a contrail is seen in the sky above Perth it's a big event and everybody will look up and discuss the phenomenon.

Boy: (looking up, pointing to the contrail in the sky) "What is that?"
Mom: (looking up, shielding eyes from the sun) "It's a bird."
Dad: (looking up, Ray Bans, no need to shield eyes) "No, It's Superman."
Mom: (looking concerned at Dad) "No, it must be an airplane."
Boy: "What's an airplane Dad?"
Dad: "I don't know Son...... I don't know."
[Silence as family watches the sky]
Dad: "Hey, let's throw another shrimp on the barbie"
Mom & Boy: "Yaaaaay!"

Beaches? We don't need no stinking beaches!

2006-01-23T21:15:00.000Z

The memories of going to the beach, when I was a child, mostly consists of my father sleeping and my mother, my sister and I looking for amber. The shores of Denmark are supposed to be one of the places where you relatively easy should be able to find chunks of amber. So when we went to the beach, the three of us would walk up and down the shoreline, eyes fixed down towards the sand. My mother has two very small ugly chunks of amber she found herself as a child on a beach and this was the incentive for us to find more. Of course with the greed of childhood naivety, my sister and me had the belief that if we found some amber we would become rich enough to buy all the candy in the world (just enough for an afternoon). We never found any.

Years later I'm working at a construction site on a new building. Our coffee and lunch breaks my colleagues and me spend on the flat roof, enjoying the summer weather.
One day after river stones had been spread over the rubber tarp that made up the seal on the roof, we saw two concrete drillers walking around looking down on the roofing like they were looking for something. We asked them if they have dropped anything and they reluctantly explained that they had found amber in similar stone roof coverings before. We sat down for our coffee watching them and less than five minutes later they found a piece of amber about an inch across. We then started prospecting as well. Shortly after I found a piece as well, my first amber ever and I found it on a roof ten kilometers from the nearest beach. We all agree not to tell other people on the site about our mother lode. The next few weeks we spend all our breaks walking around that roof with downcast eyes until it simply will not yield anymore. We left no rock unturned.

Want to know more?
Amber
Stone

Changes to the English Language

2006-01-21T21:17:00.000Z

Back when email were new to me and I still hadn't seen most of the jokes eight or nine times before, I received the text below. For some reason I can still laugh at it after all these years.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly,this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard 'c' will be dropped in favor of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replased with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter!

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double leters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' wiz 'v'.

During ze fifz year ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kurs be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ze fifz yer ve vil hav a rali sensibl ritn styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evriun vil find it ezi tu undrstand ech ozer.

Zen Z Drem Vil Finali Kum Tru!

Streets of London

2006-01-21T06:54:00.000Z

We need more signs like that around London. My favourite game of choice: "Don't step on the lines" has by necessity been overtaken by the game: "Dodging the poohs". (I thought I'd spare you a close up photo of a dog turd, so all you get is a photo I took of a sign in Hong Kong).

Hole

2006-01-20T21:09:00.000Z

Some times you put on your socks in the morning without noticing a hole near the toes. During the day one your toes will inevitably work its way out through the hole in your sock. This is of course only the beginning of a day long fight to keep your toe inside the sock. First you just kind of wriggle your toe back into the sock, but after doing this ten times you realise that further action is needed.
Off with the shoe, pull sock down a bit and bunch it up in the tip of the shoe. No luck.
Shoe off, pull sock down a bit and bend the sock material under your toes and back on with shoe. No luck.
Off with both shoes, swap socks in the hope that the hole now is located in a different spot on the other foot and no toes will be able to find it. No luck.
Ask everyone in the office if they have some dental floss (don't tell them what its for), pull sock down, tie dental floss around sock material. No luck.
Sticky tape, staples, blue tack, asking everyone if they brought needle and thread. No luck.
Aaaarrrrgggg! That's the kind of underpants I'm wearing today.

Got time to kill?

2006-01-18T21:22:00.000Z

If you are bored and got some time to kill, go to this webpage by clicking link below.
You will need to have Java activated in your browser.

Falling Stuff

London Buses

2006-01-15T09:53:00.000Z

Of all the vehicles in the London traffic, I find the Famous double decker bus to be the most annoying. I have no logical reason for this, it doesn't appear to be any slower on its "feet" than the normal size buses. It's not wider or longer than them, actually the "benda" buses are way longer and they don't tickle my temper the way a the double deckers do. The only difference really is the height of the bus and it's not like I would be able to drive over the top of the bus anyway, not until I have got a "hover-conversion" applied to the the car.

Ah well, another one for the psychiatrist.

What's in my juice?

2006-01-10T20:11:00.000Z

We just bought some fruit juice of the fancy kind. The carton says that they got "juicy bits" in them. "juicy bits" meaning pulp, I think.
One of them is a pink grapefruit juice, I certainly hope that they didn't put any juicy pink bits in that.

Want to know more?
Pink Bits

More from Down Under

2006-01-08T08:00:00.000Z

I just came across an excerpt from the Bill Bryson book "Down Under". Just click on link below to read it.

Excerpt from "Down Under/In A Sunburned Country"

The Squirrels in St. James's Park

2006-01-05T17:49:00.000Z

One of the tourist attractions here in London is the changing of guards at Buckingham Palace. A million billion people will turn up to watch the show, that is rather uneventful and boring.
Less than a hundred meters away you find St. James's Park. No changing of guards here, but hundreds of squirrels.

We live walking distance from St. James's Park and come through it when we walk into the town centre on week ends. We always bring a pocket-full of peanuts to feed to the squirrels. They are very tame and will feed directly from your hand. Sometimes they will even crawl up your legs to get to your nuts.... eh... that didn't come out right. What I meant to say was, they are so eager to nibble on your nuts that they will... oh dear... what am I trying to say here? I should make it clear that I'm talking about the peanuts that we brought along to feed to the squirrels. Ah well... I'll write some more and then come back to re-write this later, sure hope I will remember.

They know that they are cute, even though they are probably just rats with a good image and nice tail.
If you give a squirrel a shelled peanut it will sit down and eat it on the spot in a posture that will make every woman in a hundred meter radius go: "Oh! how cute!"
If you give it a whole peanut it will run off and bury it somewhere and then come back for more. I have read somewhere that Squirrels only ever find 10% again of the food they store this way. I can imagine this as they seem to have very short attention spans. If you spot a squirrel at a distance and hold up a peanut for it to see, it will start running towards you and halfway there it will forget what it was doing and suddenly shoot of in a different direction. If the squirrel then spots the peanut again, it will move in your direction again. It might get distracted three or four times this way on its way over to you.
Crows have been known to sit in trees and watch squirrels bury their food and then steal the treasure when the squirrel have moved on. In St. James park they are sometimes a bit more progressive. I have seen a crow watching a squirrel collecting nuts and as soon as it turned its back on the crow to bury the food, the crow would jump over and nip at the squirrel's tail, causing the squirrel to jump a meter into the air and then run away. The crow then have free access to the nut.

When you buy whole unshelled peanuts here they are called monkey nuts. I always thought they grew on bushes?

You can tell they are British by the polite way they queue up.

Want to know more?
St. James's Park
Squirrels
Monkey Nuts

May the Farts be with you

2006-01-01T16:00:00.000Z

This morning the wife announced that today was "Harrods Day". I couldn't believe it, only yesterday we celebrated "Oxford Street Day".
I love crowded department stores, NOT. It really brings the worst up in me, I fell like bringing along a rubber hose to clear a path through the other shoppers. Fortunatley there is a HMV shop in Harrods where my wife can park me while she runs around "saving" money buying things on sale.
As I'm doing the slow scuttle along the DVD display a small fat boy keeps pushing me so he can get to the DVD's he is interested in. I don't want to sound cruel, but in my experience fat kids suffer from a lack of self-restraint. I don't know whether it comes from a sloppy upbringing or just pure greed. The result is the same, an uncontrollable behaviour that is a pain in the butt and a face that invites you to slap his fat cheeks. I would never hit anyone, least of all a child, but I have a secret weapon. Farts, not the "trumpet" ones (that my beloved wife hate so much), but the silent ones (she hates them too) that really stinks. As the boys mother calls for him to come for the tenth time and starts walking over towards him, I just let a silent one fly and then move a couple of steps away. As the mother reach the boy she notices the foul smell and starts to look around. All she sees is a neatly dressed young man in his thirties studying a DVD case of the movie "The Sound Of Music". She then looks down at the boy, while her nostrils flares, then grabs him by his arm and drags him away. I have to imagine the rest, the stern conversation in the car on the way home about how she can never bring him anywhere anymore.
A tip: if the kid wears a duvet-jacket, try to bump into him so that the fabric flattens, just before farting. As the fabric expands again it will suck up the foul smelling air and the smell will linger in the jacket for hours.

I have gotten the fart treatment myself. A couple of months ago I was shopping in Waitrose, I was down an aisle trying to find some dried beans. A nice looking girl a couple of meters away from me suddenly let a trumpet fart rip. She never battered an eyelid, every person in the vicinity looked in our direction. Nobody said anything but I know what their conclusion was, seeing an average looking guy and a good looking girl.
Later I bumped into her by "accident" flattening her duvet jacket...

Want to know more?
Harrods
Waitrose
Farts
Beans
Farts & Beans

The Spanish wines of Argentina

2005-12-31T14:09:00.000Z

When we lived in Darwin we once held a BBQ and I had decided that I wanted a Spanish red wine to go with the food. It's not that the Australian wines are bad, I just find it too much of a pot-luck game to find a really good wine. It can be very hard to find wines from other countries because Australia is such a big producer of wines themselves and is geographically located so far away from other wine producing countries. When I lived in Denmark I found that I preferred Rioja wines from Spain. In my opinion you never go wrong with a Rioja almost regardless of the price.
So I went in search of a bottle shop with a good selection of foreign wines. Nope couldn't find a single bottle shop selling any kind of Spanish wines.
Do you know that sensation when you are really focused on a task and suddenly the solution is revealed right in front of you?
It happened to me there in a bottle shop as I came across a red wine from Argentina. It dawned on me that the main language of Argentina is Spanish and my conclusion was, right then and there, that in my hand I was holding a Spanish wine. Problem solved. It wasn't until I was sitting in my car on my way home that I realised how silly I had been.
The wine though turned out to be excellent, so once in a while I still indulge in "Spanish" wines from Argentina.
Sometimes smart people do stupid things and sometimes stupid people do smart things. I am not always sure which category I belong in.

Want to know more?
Rioja

Bloody Weather

2005-12-31T00:52:00.000Z

Heathrow Airport, London. 29. December.
"Will all passengers, arriving on the flight from Copenhagen, please report to the information counter near baggage belt four".
All passengers on our flight had reached the baggage belt with our flight number displayed and was now waiting for the baggage to appear. We were already three and half hours late due to the snow in Copenhagen. It couldn't possibly get any worse, could it? Two hundred people were queueing up at the counter when a new message came through the speakers.
"We are sorry to inform the passengers on the flight from Copenhagen, that due to the adverse weather conditions in Copenhagen Airport, none of the luggage was loaded on the plane. Please fill out a form at the service desk and your luggage will be delivered to your stated address as soon as possible".
The guy handing out the forms told us that normally it would only take a day for the luggage to be delivered, maybe two days or three days at most, but not more than five days, or so he hoped.
They all knew: the people who checked our boarding pass, the steward greeting us when boarding the plane, the stewardess handing out the bad tasting coffee during the flight, the pilot saying goodbye when we were leaving the plane, the guys in day-glow clothes and ear protectors down on the tarmac, the guy we were watching for an hour at the boarding gate while he was trying to free his baggage handling truck from a snow drift. They all knew that our suitcases were not loaded. They all kept quiet about it until the very minute where we were supposed to get our luggage back.
It does make sense of course, you don't want to take off in a plane full of pissed off people.
In the end it only took them 24 hours to deliver our suitcases to our home, but it was a less than perfect ending on a trip that should have taken a couple of hours.

White Christmas

2005-12-23T19:08:00.000Z

A white Christmas is almost a myth in Denmark. Everybody seem to remember landscapes blanketed with snow and frozen lakes. The facts are that a white Christmas only happened seven times in the last century (1901-2000)*. What people are remembering are Christmas cards, shop window decorations, countless adds showing snowy landscapes, and hundreds of Christmas movies. Brainwashing really works.

I found Christmas more exciting as a child. Didn't care much for the food only the presents mattered, not the soft ones though. Now I find myself looking forward to the food. Ah well, I still look forward to the presents, not the soft ones though.
When we arrived at our grand parents place, all we kids (my sister and I) would rush through the main entrance and rip through the hallway through the living room and into the dinning room where the Christmas tree would decorated, towering over a plethora of Christmas presents.
Never got that remote controlled car I wished for. I would always get one of those crappy ones with a trailing cable. There would be no batteries and back then all shops would be closed on Christmas Eve. So I would spend the night dragging the car around by the cable until one of the grown ups would step on it by mistake.
I never got a chemistry set either, I think my family had images of me blowing up my room if they gave me one.
Once I did get a plastic trumpet I wished for, think that got stepped on too. Same with the guitar.

Best thing ever was a tool box, now I could take things apart. The hammer would be used to simulate car crashes on my toy cars until they all were reduced to small metal and plastic bits, no longer recognizable as cars. Radios were pried open with screw drivers. Wires were cut with the cutters. Eventually the tools disappeared. It didn't stop me though, I'm still pulling things apart at every opportunity. I can't wait until something goes out of warranty and fails, it's my big chance to see how they work inside. I am getting better at putting things back together again though, in fact I'm doing it for a living.

Merry Christmas

*I knew that trivia from the label of the christmas edition of Tuborg beer would come in handy one day.

The Nullabor Thing

2005-12-23T04:45:00.000Z

"Doing the Nullabor thing" means crossing the Nullabor Plain on the Eyre Highway along the southern coast of Australia following the Great Australian Bight. The feat is not as big as it was in the 50's or 60's before the road was sealed, but it's still one of those thing you can brag about. There is not a lot to see and it's almost unbelievable flat, in fact those two things are what it's all about.
One of the days, while "doing the Nullabor thing", we were not overtaken once nor did we overtake anyone else for the eight hours we drove that day. I didn't count cars coming in the opposite direction, but they could probably be counted on two hands.
There is no towns to be found at all, only a roadhouse about every 350 Km. There is very few tourist attractions, as I write this I can only remember one and that is the whale watching spot at the head of the Bight (I'll do another post on this another day).
Trees are so few and scarce that you forget about them the minute you have passed them. This have given rise to the myth that there are no trees at all on the Nullabor. Maybe the myth comes from people who have never done the crossing themselves? Or maybe some very stupid people has done the crossing in the past: "Duh, so that's what a tree look like, I always thought they where called rocks", "eh... so what does a rock look like then?"

Roadkills are the main feature along the Nullabor, mostly kangaroos. I'm not talking about seeing ten or twenty dead animals during a day of driving, you can count them in hundreds. Driving after darkness has fallen can be very dangerous, because this is the time when the kangaroos are most active. Most of them are killed by the roadtrains, not many normal cars ventures into the night even when fitted with roobars.

Second feature on the Nullabor must be the garbage. The roadside is littered with bottles, cans and chips bags something like fifty meters into the bush. I can't understand the mindset of people who throw garbage out the car window, but if this is an indicator of the average human intelligence then we are indeed in deep trouble.
We passed a dead tree that had been decorated by sticking empty bottles and cans on all the branches, a fitting monument of protest against the pigs in our midst (I have no idea why I didn't stop to take a few photos of this tree).
Once we crossed the border into South Australia the roadside suddenly cleared up. No more dead marsupials and used beverage containers. It seemed to me that they had more fences in place along the road, preventing animals from straying onto the road. The state must also have a cleaning program in place to clear up the trash. I can't believe that people stop their polluting ways just because they cross a state border.

The only photo I took of the road itself. Must be in South Australia judging by the lack of roadkills and litter.

Want to know more?
Nullabor Plain
Eyre Highway
Road Train

Train Commuting

2005-12-21T22:55:00.000Z

I prefer trains. I can read or listen to music without having to worry about the traffic. Waiting at the station isn't all bad either.

Cleaning Bird

2005-12-17T00:38:00.000Z

After Crossing the border into South Australia from Western Australia we had to take the traditional border crossing photos. Coming back to the car we found this bird busy picking off the dead bugs from the front bumber.

It's a Magpie-lark AKA Mudlark AKA Peewee all depending on which part of Australia you come from.
Helpful little fella, I think he might be trying to make up for all the other birds fouling my cars over the years. If only more birds were like him/her

Want to know more?
Magpie-lark

Western Australia Meteor

2005-12-16T15:02:00.000Z

Nothing ever happens when I'm around. I'm the epicenter of boredom. I live in Western Australia for three years and the minute I leave something happens. A meteor the size of a basketball streaks across the night sky and can be seen just about everywhere in the southern region of Western Australia.
I haven't looked into this, but I'm sure if I did, I would find that the meteor was at its most spectacular when viewed from Coode Street in Mount Lawley (Perth suburb) where we used to live.

News article and link to video

Henbury Meteor Crater

2005-12-16T14:32:00.000Z

In '96, when I was in Australia for the first time, I spent some time in Alice Springs. My girlfriend, her flatmate and me rented a car for the journey deep outback to Uluru or Ayers Rock as it used to be called. On the way back we took a slightly shorter, but indefinitely bumpy, dirt road that took us past the largest of the Henbury Meteor Craters. It's so far from everything that you could probably spend days there without seeing other people, a truly peaceful place on earth.

Fast forward nine years.

The other day here in London my wife (the girlfriend from back then) and I were at the Natural History Museum. At the exhibition of meteorites we came face to face with one of the fragments from the Henbury Meteor. We had come full circle.

We saw the impact crater in one of the most desert places in the world and the meteorite in one of the busiest cities of the world. I wonder if it some day will the other way around?

Want to know more?
Henbury Meteor:
Wikipedia
Photo of crater
Fragment on London Natural History Museum

The art of opening a bottle of beer

2005-12-13T20:42:00.000Z

Before venturing Down Under, away from the safe surroundings of Denmark, I didn't know about beer bottles with twist tops. We don't have them in Denmark, you need a cap opener
At a party in Singapore some Australian friends where in the other boat, they didn't know of beer bottles without twist tops. They were hurting themselves, cutting their hands trying in vain to twist off the unyielding cap. They had brought the beers but had not realised that in order to access the amber fluid* inside, you need a tool. Being a Dane I knew all about the art of freestyle beer bottle opening. With two bottles you can use them to open each other by holding one of the bottles around the neck and use the other one as a lever against your fingers. Once the first cap is off you can replace it and use that bottle to open the other one in the same way.
This of course is only child's play, Danes will brag that they can open a beer with a page from a newspaper or a wet hot dog bun.

The newspaper method:
Fold the page about 1 cm (about half an inch) from the bottom. Fold that over tightly again, again, again, again, again and again until you have made a stick. Then fold that over in the middle.
Grab a beer bottle around the neck, use the newspaper stick as a lever and push it up against the cap using your fingers, around the neck of the bottle, as leverage.

The wet hot dog bun method:
Take a hot dog bun, soak it in water, put it in the freezer for a couple of hours and then open the beer as you would with a newspaper.

*If you find a beer bottle filled with amber liquid on the road, while walking home from a party, do not assume that it actually is beer! (see also: yellow snow).

London Car Fires

2005-12-13T18:06:00.000Z

The last three weeks I've been doing some driving around London. Having only arrived here a couple of months ago from Australia, I'm still getting used to the traffic conditions.
I listen to the radio while driving to work, since it's not considered safe to read a book while driving (this is why I prefer trains). Listening to the traffic report I have been very baffled to hear about at least one car fire on freeway every morning. In Australia some days it get so hot that you will get burns by touching exposed metal with your bare fingers. But in the six years I have lived there, I can only recall three or four times when I have heard traffic reports about car fires on the freeway.
What's going on here in England? Is it very expensive to get your car towed? or does the insurance only cover when the car has been damaged beyond repair? So now everybody carries a small bottle of flammable liquid and a box of matches in the glove compartment. When a headlight bulb fails, they douse the car with the flammable liquid, strike a match and PUFFFF.....

All these car fires have probably prepared the firemen fighting the Buncefield oil depot blaze. This humongous fire was put out in only three days. The first two days the fire was so fierce that all the firefighters could do was hang around holding up their hands warming them by the heat and say 'gosh!' a lot. Then they went to work and put it out in a day.

Want to know more?
Buncefield oil depot blaze

Winter Advice

2005-12-11T20:44:00.000Z

Winter is here and since I haven't been in winter weather for several years, it is time to re-freshen the old advices for living in a cold climate.

Get some gloves. Think about how silly it would be being found lying unconscious with both hands in your pockets after slipping on an icy sidewalk. You need your hands to break the fall when you do the slip 'n' slide.

Don't eat yellow snow!