Sexy Octopus

A man goes into a bar with his pet octopus and says "I'll bet £50 that no one here has a musical instrument that this octopus CAN'T play'
The people in the bar look around, and someone fetches out an old guitar. The octopus has a look, picks it up, tunes the string, and starts playing the guitar.The octopus' owner pockets the £50 with a rye smile.
Next, a guy comes up with a trumpet. The octopus takes the horn, loosens up the keys, licks it's lips and starts playing a jazz solo. The guy pockets yet another £50 and his smile widens.
Jock, who has been watching all of this nips home and returns 15 minutes later with a set of bagpipes under his arm. He puts them on the bar and says nothing.
The octopus takes one look at the bagpipes and pounces, ripping and pulling with all of its legs. Puzzled, the octopus' owner says 'whow! What the hell are you doing? Why don't you just play the damn things?
The octopus says, 'Play it? Hell if I can work out how to get these pajamas off, I'm gonna fuck it!!

Geek Day - Northern Lights

One of the great things about living in high latitudes is the chance to watch the Aurora (Northern lights). The classic shimmering curtains of light are caused by the ionization of particles in the Earth's upper atmosphere by solar winds. In high latitudes (c. 70 degrees) activity is going on most of the time and all you need is darkness and a clear sky. To see the Northern Lights a bit further south in somewhere like Bergen (c. 60 degrees) requires an increase in solar activity associated with coroneal mass ejections (CME) more commonly known as sunspots. Wikipedia has a great article here so I won't go into it in to much detail.

There are a couple of excellent websites that can help you predict when you are there will be increases in solar activity and when that should relate to northern lights where you are.

NOAA is probably the best with good basic info for the general public and lots of more detailed stuff for nerdy folk. I had a great intro lecture from John T on how to use the various graphs etc the other evening when we were out.

Spaceweather.com also has some good forecasts for auroras, meteors etc. and this site from the Univeristy of Alaska in Fairbanks also offers a good prediction and some very nice maps. There is a really good intro to photographing the Lights here.

All of this did not help us (John T, Emma, Oli and myself) when we headed out to Øygarden last week to photography what was predicted to be the best activity in months. We find a great spot, there was very little light polution, the sky was fairly clear and the predictions were good.

We saw nothing! But we did learn that the sun takes a VERY long time to set even in August.

I guess that is something to look forward to in the winter.

The sun takes a very long time to set in the northern hemisphere in August



And even when it did, there was no Northern Lights, just a few wispy clouds :-(

Surfing with a difference

Those crazy Norwegians prove that you don't need a beach or even the ocean to go surfing. This is from just outside of Voss, 1.5 hours from Bergen. There is some more of the same here.

And here to show its not just Norwegians that are at it.

Update coming soon

Not too many postings at the moment, but there is lots going on in both jobs and my personal life. A couple of big news posts coming soon - bear with me

John

A man goes into a bar...

So a man walks into a bar and says to the bartender "Give me two single whiskies
"Sure" the bartender replies, "do you want them both now or one at a time?"
"Oh, both now" replies the guy, "one's for me and one's for my little friend here" and with that the guy pulls a 12 inch tall man out of his jacket pocket. The Bartender looked at the little man in amazement and asked, "Can he drink?"
"Sure" replied the guy and with that the 12 inch tall man supped back his whiskey.
"That's amazing" replied the bartender, "what else can he do? Can he walk?"
With that the guy flips a coin along the bar and asks the little fella to get it. Sure enough, he runs down the bar and retrieves the coin, picks it up and jogs back to the guy.
"That really is amazing" replied the bartender, "Can he talk?"
"Of course" says the guy,
"Hey Jim, tell him about that time we were in Africa and you called that witch-doctor a wanker
__________________________

There is this guy who walks into a bar and notices a man 12 inches tall playing the piano. He asks what it is all about and the barman tells him he'll tell him later.
So he asks the barman for a drink and the barman says, 'Before you get your drink you get to rub the magic beer bottle and make a wish.'
'OK,' says the guy.
He goes to the bottle and rubs it and, boom, out comes a genie, who says, 'You have one wish.
'The man thinks about it suddenly there are a million ducks crowding the bar, qwacking and flapping.
He tells the barman, 'Hey, I didn't want a million ducks, a asked for a million bucks.'
The barman replies, 'You think I wanted a 12-inch pianist?'

Thursday Fashion - Facial hair

I have never been a big fan of moustaches but it occured to me the other day that a lot of the World's tyrants had furry upper lips

Add to those jokers Pinochet, Franco, Castro, Lenin, Bin Laden in fact the only ones missing from the list are Bush and Thatcher.

So if we accept that moustach equals tyrant then this guy must be the World's most evil bastard - at least for crimes against taste and decency

Some stop motion fun

This week some stop go animation
These people have way too much time on their hands - awesome

And how about a game of Tetris