Be Excellent To Each Other

Spent an enjoyable 5 hours in the company of our very own Mr Dave on Gears of War last night. Second time through on Insane this time and my main thoughts are:

The real question is, what the hell does the asterisked part say?

"In a matter of minutes. Probably" is the best my eyes could come up with.

Ah, very good, my eyes were trying to tell me it was 'As a matter of excellence', which seemed odd.

Via the internet? Not your close friend, then?

The Streaming Gubbins? I preferred their early EPs tbh.

Gah! Shiny Vista laughed as it gobbled up my most recent photos and spat them out into the digital ether.

Not uncommon. Seen a whole data centre that hosts services every single one of you use every day kept up by some portable aircon units when the aircon plant overloaded.

A major UK broadcaster that needs to "blank" certain sporting events because they don't have the internet rights had the blanking message played from my old portable minidisk player for 6 weeks as the normal unit had broken and we could only get a replacement on back order. This wasn't my shiny newer unit, but my old one which no longer could record reliably. Surfice to say it did a sterling job.

Then they was the time that a car crashed into the junction box outside a radio station I worked at knocking out the line to the transmitter. No NTL contract so at 11pm on a Saturday night we had to drive up to the transmitter and literally jerry-rigged a feed from our second transmitter using a portable receiver, a feed out of the earphone socket and some bare wires stuck in the inputs and held with matchsticks! It worked.

Shit like this happens. More to the point the person who took that photo should be fired because it's terribly unprofessional. Certainly photos in any broadcast areas, data centre I've ever worked in were strictly forbidden.

We was cooking up a BBQ in the garden at Mali Towers and then there was a big loud noise.

All of a sudden, a jet aeroplane with RAF marking came over the houses really low, then it went FUCKING VERTICAL and done a loop the loop and zoomed off again.

About a minute later, the same plane appeared coming in very fast and low, then over my garden started to gain height and it done a barrel roll and fucked off to the west.

I ate bambi burgers as well.

I could smell someone cooking a barbeque last night - must have been you!

That's where my air display got to.

Thought it might have just have been a remote controlled airplane of yours, Grim...

I've just had my Sky+ box installed by a grumpy, almost incomprehensible Liverpudlian, who, on finding out that I don't have my sky connected to a phone line insisted he couldn't install Sky+ without it, and that it was against the contract to not have it plugged in. I told him to install it, and that if sky wanted to complain at me, they could go right ahead because I'd just cancel my contract.

Anyway, bottom line is: he's left me with my old sky box and remote, with cables. Are these worth selling anymore? Is there any fun use I could get out of them myself?

He's right, it's a condition of your Sky contract it has a phone connection.

I doubt they'll ever notice.

I asked the guy why, since it being connected doesn't affected the operation of the box, and he couldn't answer. I don't like the idea that Sky want me connected even though I don't need to be. Never watched I, Robot? They'll do a firmware update and my sky box will attack me.

Was it a eurofighter?
I was at an airshow yesterday and that thing zoomed in and made a very loud noise.



The commentator said it has more thrust than it weighs, so it can fly directly upwards, which it proceeded to do.
I didn't get a photo of that because I was too busy putting my fingers in my ears.

They also had this one flown by Stewart Campbell:


And some nutters:

I've done radio interviews with the Eurofighter up and it was the loudest thing I've ever heard.

The aircraft is so aerodynamically unstable that the computers keep it in the air.

That's a silly name.

And now over to our reporter in the field, Mike Gain.

sunderland air show? you would have been mere miles from me.

It's so the box can ring home in the middle of the night and upload all your viewing habits/actions, the use/sale of which makes Sky as much money as taking money off subscribers.

Plus it's how it handles buying "Events", so they want it connected so you feel less barrier to doing so.

Nah, east fortune airshow, near edinburgh.
Still, mere minutes from you in a fast jet, I suspect

Usually those signs are there to stop cleaners unplugging things. I've seen Major Incidents occur due to cleaners unplugging servers so they can plug the hoover in...

I've had such an odd feeling all this weekend. I'm not bored, as I have hundreds of things I can do, all of which are fun, but whichever I do, I feel I should be doing something else instead that's more fun, or more worthwhile, which is all serving to annoy me, which is even more annoying since this is the only relaxing weekend doing nothing I have for months, and I want to just enjoy it, but my brain won't let me.

While walking across town this morning, I got passed by a car with a rather substantial mast. "James May is at it again" I hear you think, but no, it was a mast with a huge camera array on it. And google branding across the side. I now have a hunch that Google Earths zoomed in 3d mode is about to get an upgrade, because I can't think of much else use for that kind of information. Any other ideas?

It's one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of summer, long evening notwithstanding. I should be out gamboling in the fields but instead I'm gazing at job applications.

...

I might go for a pint instead.

Yeah, it will be for their new Street View function.

They have already implemented it for major US cities.

Yup. It's already online in America, or at least parts of it.

It'll be for the UK's version of Google's Street View

I've spent most of the day on the sofa going 'arrragh!' every time I try to move because my back still hurts.

On the plus side I've booked tickets to see The Dark Knight at 7.30pm in the Gallery, mwahaha!

Also I'm suffering that 'haven't been to the gym for a while' muscle ache that you get when you go for the first time in ages.

Bugger.. beaten to it - I swear those posts weren't there a minute ago.

I'm not a fan of Summer because of days like today - it's baking hot which meant wandering round car boot sales trying to find shade.

On the plus side, I picked up a boxed Speak & Spell and Castlevania SOTN for 50p each.

Does this mean that there'll be a me on that street, or is it sophisticated enough to remove the me. (Does not like pictures of me that much)

According to this article you'll end up blurry.

I saw this funny Google Earth image in which there was a cyclist riding down the road. If you clicked further on down the road you found him on the floor tangled up with his bike.

On a related note, google maps NEVER works for me any more. The maps just fail to load, and all I ever get is a blank screen. I've been forced to used multimap instead. Am I the only one?

The google streetview cars have been driving round the UK for the last month or so. I saw one in croydon yesterday and in Canary Wharf a couple of weeks ago.. Currently there is no streetview in the UK, correct? They must be setting up to roll it out here. Black car, about the size of a Corsa, with a 6 foot pole on top with cameras on, yes?

Works for me in all my browsers, in all my operating systems (I just checked).

This often happens to me too, and it is causing to occasionally have to use other mapping services, which is annoying, as Google Maps be da bestest.

I'd just like to wish Pundy good luck in his new job tomorrow. Hope everything starts on a good note for you, duder.

After playing the Fantastic Contraption, I had a jump across to b3ta to see what else is in the newsletter and found this in this weeks image challenge http://www.b3ta.com/board/8591013

Meh, Coke Zero's not all that

More bloody foreigners taking our jobs.