22 April 2010
Harem Pants
Those very baggy Plus-4s looked stupid on MC Hammer and they look even worse on you! With the possible exception of a eunuch in a medieval brothel or a transvestite actor in pantomime, there is not a single person on this planet who looks good in them. The especially applies to middle aged women, going to the office and steroid pumped, gym monsters going clubbing.
21 April 2010
Volcano Update
As a geologist it's pretty exciting to see Earth sciences topping the news, especially when it rates above a general electon in the UK. To quote Bodie "every now and again mother nature pops up and reminds us just how insignificant we really are", or something like that. Imagine if this was a proper volcano like Krakatoa or Pinatubo or something even bigger like the ones that laid down the thick ashes in the Balder Tuff (try 20 cm rather than 2 mm). I think maybe I will stock up on tins of beans...
I also have to say that I am absolutely amazed by the number of people I have heard saying "I didn't even know there were any volcanos in Iceland?" Holy crap the whole island is a freckin volcano. Didn't you learn ANYTHING at school?
Anyway I exited Holland by train and ferry on Thursday and then got the overnight train to Aberdeen. Spent a very nice few days staying with Katharine in her newly reclaimed flat, we visited the dunes at Ythan and looked at a few house. Very nice. I was able to video con into work from the Buzzlightyear cupboard in Gregors house and it's actually been a reasonably productive time.
Today the announced that they would start flying again so its time for the fun to stop. I am sure that the fat cat will be delighted to see me and there is so much going on in work that its time to get back. I am interested to see what the volcano does over the next few weeks and how the World reacts...
More rants and reflections to follow when I have a few moments spare
I also have to say that I am absolutely amazed by the number of people I have heard saying "I didn't even know there were any volcanos in Iceland?" Holy crap the whole island is a freckin volcano. Didn't you learn ANYTHING at school?
Anyway I exited Holland by train and ferry on Thursday and then got the overnight train to Aberdeen. Spent a very nice few days staying with Katharine in her newly reclaimed flat, we visited the dunes at Ythan and looked at a few house. Very nice. I was able to video con into work from the Buzzlightyear cupboard in Gregors house and it's actually been a reasonably productive time.
Today the announced that they would start flying again so its time for the fun to stop. I am sure that the fat cat will be delighted to see me and there is so much going on in work that its time to get back. I am interested to see what the volcano does over the next few weeks and how the World reacts...
More rants and reflections to follow when I have a few moments spare
20 April 2010
Jump Around...
This weeks Wednesday movie is all about big jumps! You may have seen many of them in isolation but this is a great compilation
And it's definitely worth hanging in for Number #1
The movie is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9F1QT86b1U
Courtesy of Gareth
And it's definitely worth hanging in for Number #1
The movie is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9F1QT86b1U
Courtesy of Gareth
17 April 2010
The End of civilization might actually be quite “civilized”
If you had asked me a week ago where was the "most unlikely place I would be on Friday" then itting on a cross channel ferry would have been fairly high on the list. But here I am.
I flew out of New Orleans on Wednesday. By the time we took off we were already aware that most of the airports in Norway were going to be closed due to the Icelandic counter attack on Europe in the form of plume of volcanic dust. “You bust our banks and bankrupt our economy, have 100 millions tones of ash, you bastards!” Well you have to go some way to top the devastation and carnage caused by Bjørk!
So by the time we landed in Amsterdam on Thursday lunch time all flights into Norway and the UK were cancelled and the dust cloud was moving south and Schipol was next. A quick look at maps of the plume on the internet could tell you that it was going to get worse and would certainly not be sorted by next morning as the “experts” were optimistically predicting.
Jens and the other guys from Statoil got busy and tracked down on of the last rental cars in Holland with a view of driving back to Norway. Good job moving so quick, within half an hour all the hire cars in Holland were gone.
I had an alternative plan, I was going to get to Aberdeen. I tried to get onto the Euroshuttle but tickets disappeared while I was trying to book it. Then I tried the ferry from Hook to Harwich, I missed the Thursday night one because of problems with my Norwegian bank cards but I managed to secure a place on the Friday one using Katharine’s card. I then booked an over night train from Harwich to Aberdeen, although by then all the sleepers had gone. I wasn’t sure if I was over reacting but hindsight has indicated that was exactly the correct thing to do, in fact I should have moved faster.
Now the planes are locked down for the next few days, my guess is it could be mid week, but the experts are still predicting tomorrow. No way! All tickets on ferries from Holland are now sold out until Monday, the Eurostar is booked up until mid week.
In days gone by, there would have been long queues outside the ticket offices, people would have got fractious, fights would have been kicking off etc. That is strangely absent here. All of that has played out in a virtual world. Everything is booked up because people got on line fast and made bookings. All of the scrambling to get over one another happened in the silence of cyber space. By the time anyone got to the ferry terminal it was all done and dusted. A few people had turned up optimistically at the port, but nothing like it would have been in the past.
This is good because there is a superficial civility to it. In the anonymity of the web no one was punching anyone else and you didn’t have to watch stressed parents with over-tired children squabbling with each other. At the same time there is a clear IT apartheid, where those with smart phones and laptops gobble up the available resource while those without are left stranded at the airport for a week. Maybe when the apocalypse comes it will all be fairly civilized, at least until the internet goes down.
Although having said that, the ferry is packed and there is nothing civilized about the Dutch Rugby team at the bar…
I flew out of New Orleans on Wednesday. By the time we took off we were already aware that most of the airports in Norway were going to be closed due to the Icelandic counter attack on Europe in the form of plume of volcanic dust. “You bust our banks and bankrupt our economy, have 100 millions tones of ash, you bastards!” Well you have to go some way to top the devastation and carnage caused by Bjørk!
So by the time we landed in Amsterdam on Thursday lunch time all flights into Norway and the UK were cancelled and the dust cloud was moving south and Schipol was next. A quick look at maps of the plume on the internet could tell you that it was going to get worse and would certainly not be sorted by next morning as the “experts” were optimistically predicting.
Jens and the other guys from Statoil got busy and tracked down on of the last rental cars in Holland with a view of driving back to Norway. Good job moving so quick, within half an hour all the hire cars in Holland were gone.
I had an alternative plan, I was going to get to Aberdeen. I tried to get onto the Euroshuttle but tickets disappeared while I was trying to book it. Then I tried the ferry from Hook to Harwich, I missed the Thursday night one because of problems with my Norwegian bank cards but I managed to secure a place on the Friday one using Katharine’s card. I then booked an over night train from Harwich to Aberdeen, although by then all the sleepers had gone. I wasn’t sure if I was over reacting but hindsight has indicated that was exactly the correct thing to do, in fact I should have moved faster.
Now the planes are locked down for the next few days, my guess is it could be mid week, but the experts are still predicting tomorrow. No way! All tickets on ferries from Holland are now sold out until Monday, the Eurostar is booked up until mid week.
In days gone by, there would have been long queues outside the ticket offices, people would have got fractious, fights would have been kicking off etc. That is strangely absent here. All of that has played out in a virtual world. Everything is booked up because people got on line fast and made bookings. All of the scrambling to get over one another happened in the silence of cyber space. By the time anyone got to the ferry terminal it was all done and dusted. A few people had turned up optimistically at the port, but nothing like it would have been in the past.
This is good because there is a superficial civility to it. In the anonymity of the web no one was punching anyone else and you didn’t have to watch stressed parents with over-tired children squabbling with each other. At the same time there is a clear IT apartheid, where those with smart phones and laptops gobble up the available resource while those without are left stranded at the airport for a week. Maybe when the apocalypse comes it will all be fairly civilized, at least until the internet goes down.
Although having said that, the ferry is packed and there is nothing civilized about the Dutch Rugby team at the bar…
15 April 2010
A note on men and fashion
Top fashion tips from someone who knows nothing about it...
This week I thought I would take a look at men's fashion and in particular that particular breed that is indigenous to this scandic land "the pretty boy".
Having been raised on a farm in the arse end of nowhere I was very much brought up on the principal that the term "men's fashion" was an oxymoron. In fact I am pretty sure nobody ever said that because it never occurred to anyone I knew to put the two words "men" and "fashion" together in a sentence. Since those early days I have travelled a bit and seen the World and I know that its not actually unhealthy for a guy to want to look good from time to time.
However, I think I still carry the scars of my childhood and when I see guys who spend more time, effort and money on their hair than their girlfriends do, I am still highly sceptical. When a group of blokes spend their Saturday afternoon in clothes boutiques rather than drinking or playing sport, I get worried.
As every women will tell you, looks are less important than a "good sense of humour", so who are these boys dressing up for? Like peacocks who's tale is an evolutionary dead end, the application of too much hair gel is less aimed at impressing the opposite sex as out doing your friends.
So, just as every guy I have ever met who was a "good dancer" was also an utter sleaze ball, then girls I will finish up with two questions: 1) "how can you love a guy who will always adore his own reflection more that he loves you?" And 2) is your bathroom big enough for two people to spend that much time in front of the mirror?
This week I thought I would take a look at men's fashion and in particular that particular breed that is indigenous to this scandic land "the pretty boy".
Having been raised on a farm in the arse end of nowhere I was very much brought up on the principal that the term "men's fashion" was an oxymoron. In fact I am pretty sure nobody ever said that because it never occurred to anyone I knew to put the two words "men" and "fashion" together in a sentence. Since those early days I have travelled a bit and seen the World and I know that its not actually unhealthy for a guy to want to look good from time to time.
However, I think I still carry the scars of my childhood and when I see guys who spend more time, effort and money on their hair than their girlfriends do, I am still highly sceptical. When a group of blokes spend their Saturday afternoon in clothes boutiques rather than drinking or playing sport, I get worried.
As every women will tell you, looks are less important than a "good sense of humour", so who are these boys dressing up for? Like peacocks who's tale is an evolutionary dead end, the application of too much hair gel is less aimed at impressing the opposite sex as out doing your friends.
So, just as every guy I have ever met who was a "good dancer" was also an utter sleaze ball, then girls I will finish up with two questions: 1) "how can you love a guy who will always adore his own reflection more that he loves you?" And 2) is your bathroom big enough for two people to spend that much time in front of the mirror?
14 April 2010
Point Break
11 April 2010
Money Laundering
"I washed the clothes in your washing basket" she said, so I thanked her.
She repeated the statement and I could tell by the look in her eyes that this was more than a visiting girlfriend who was bored and helping with laundry, something was wrong.
It turned out that in addition to washing my clothes she had also managed to wash £1000 in 10 and 20 pound notes. The money was to pay for my new van and had been rolled up in a bundle and hidden in the pocket of a pair of shorts at the bottom of the basket. Living in Liverpool did that to you. I can only imagine the shock of opening the washing machine and finding the drum filled with cash. This was 1993 and a grand was a lot of money back then! So we made a washing line in my bedroom and the money dried out fine although the phosphorous in the washing powder made the notes glow under the UV lights that were popular in shops for detecting forgeries at the time.
I had a good friend in Liverpool at the time called Dave. Dave was an awesome character, frighteningly intelligent and also very unique. He had dropped out of school at 15 and spent a big chunk of the 70's stoned. He figured everything out from first principals and could fix anything from TVs to lorry gearboxes. He was totally disinterested in wealth and there were a constant stream of people at his house, getting him to fix all sorts of, which he always managed and never charged them for.
This was Liverpool and while Dave never did anything illegal, in fact he had a very strong moral code, he did end up being involved with all sorts of extremely "interesting" people. Often because they needed problems solving and the usual options were not available to them.
So over a beer I jokingly told him about the "money laundering" and he retorted with a much better tale...
At sometime in the early 80's a guy had turned up at his house and needed some money laundering, literally. A few years prior the guy had come upon £25000, presumably not through legal means, because he had buried it in the woods for safe keeping. When he came back to dig it up, he got a nasty surprise. A badger had got there first, burrowed into his stash and made a cosy den in the cash. After a brief and bloody engagement with the animal he extracted the remains of his loot, the only problem was that it stank. Horrendously!
What to do? When you have tried everyone else and you have nowhere else to turn, contact Dave! So he turned up on Dave's doorstep with a binbag full of very smelly money and asked for help. Always a man for a challenge, Dave invited him in. Over the next few weeks they tried everything, they washed it by hand, they put it through the washing machine, they tried various chemicals to neutralise or even just mask the stench but nothing really worked. In the end they broke it down into small bundles of £500 and went to every building society and bank in town dressed as scrap metal merchants and opened accounts. You can only imagine the response from the well dressed counter staff as they had to count piles of freshly washed, but strangely odorous cash. But it worked, or at least it should have. The postscript was that the witless owner of the cash promptly forgot the details of half of the accounts, including the false name he'd used and where he'd put the money so most of it is still sitting in unused accounts from building societies, half of which no longer exist.
He probably would have been better off leaving it with the badger!
A whole new dimension on the term money laundering
She repeated the statement and I could tell by the look in her eyes that this was more than a visiting girlfriend who was bored and helping with laundry, something was wrong.
It turned out that in addition to washing my clothes she had also managed to wash £1000 in 10 and 20 pound notes. The money was to pay for my new van and had been rolled up in a bundle and hidden in the pocket of a pair of shorts at the bottom of the basket. Living in Liverpool did that to you. I can only imagine the shock of opening the washing machine and finding the drum filled with cash. This was 1993 and a grand was a lot of money back then! So we made a washing line in my bedroom and the money dried out fine although the phosphorous in the washing powder made the notes glow under the UV lights that were popular in shops for detecting forgeries at the time.
I had a good friend in Liverpool at the time called Dave. Dave was an awesome character, frighteningly intelligent and also very unique. He had dropped out of school at 15 and spent a big chunk of the 70's stoned. He figured everything out from first principals and could fix anything from TVs to lorry gearboxes. He was totally disinterested in wealth and there were a constant stream of people at his house, getting him to fix all sorts of, which he always managed and never charged them for.
This was Liverpool and while Dave never did anything illegal, in fact he had a very strong moral code, he did end up being involved with all sorts of extremely "interesting" people. Often because they needed problems solving and the usual options were not available to them.
So over a beer I jokingly told him about the "money laundering" and he retorted with a much better tale...
At sometime in the early 80's a guy had turned up at his house and needed some money laundering, literally. A few years prior the guy had come upon £25000, presumably not through legal means, because he had buried it in the woods for safe keeping. When he came back to dig it up, he got a nasty surprise. A badger had got there first, burrowed into his stash and made a cosy den in the cash. After a brief and bloody engagement with the animal he extracted the remains of his loot, the only problem was that it stank. Horrendously!
What to do? When you have tried everyone else and you have nowhere else to turn, contact Dave! So he turned up on Dave's doorstep with a binbag full of very smelly money and asked for help. Always a man for a challenge, Dave invited him in. Over the next few weeks they tried everything, they washed it by hand, they put it through the washing machine, they tried various chemicals to neutralise or even just mask the stench but nothing really worked. In the end they broke it down into small bundles of £500 and went to every building society and bank in town dressed as scrap metal merchants and opened accounts. You can only imagine the response from the well dressed counter staff as they had to count piles of freshly washed, but strangely odorous cash. But it worked, or at least it should have. The postscript was that the witless owner of the cash promptly forgot the details of half of the accounts, including the false name he'd used and where he'd put the money so most of it is still sitting in unused accounts from building societies, half of which no longer exist.
He probably would have been better off leaving it with the badger!
A whole new dimension on the term money laundering
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