Chris Venus

Unemployed

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:56:44 GMT

I've not posted much here in some time but figured that I should post major life events and stuff and beg for help.

So, the major life update is that on Wednesday I was made redundant. Word spreads quickly so many of you probably know this already. I'm doing alright on the whole thing and looking at it as a good opportunity for a change that I'd been half considering anyway. That and its a good opportunity to sit around playing computer games all day.

The begging is just to ask if anybody knows of any jobs going anywhere in the oxford area... I'm looking for C#/.NET stuff, preferably with a web leaning (eg ASP.NET) but am willing to try new things. Do let me know if you know of anything.

Oh, and thanks to oxfordgirl who gave me a tip off which has led to an interview on Tuesday for a fun looking job. :)

Travel blog

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:08:53 GMT

Introducing venusintransit.

Everybody go friend me if you want to keep track of what's happening. There might be the occasional personal post in here while I'm away but mostly I'll be posting in the other journal.

As it says in that one, I'm all set now. The only thing I am pondering currently is if I want to make it a paid journal so I can more easily put pics in the post (I believe that the LJ photo thing is a paid thing, right?). If anybody want to contribute a couple of months LJ time to save me making the decision then feel free. ;-)

Oh, and a last note on the travel journal. Part of the point of it is to keep it separate from this one. So I'm not going to be linking usernames and such like. This journal is easily enough findable but I might as well try to keep them as separate as possible. Don't let that restrict you though. I welcome comments and anything else you want to put on there. :)

And since its not really relevant for the other journal I thought I'd put my amusing milkshake related travel story here. I decided to go for a milkshake in shakeaway as I often do. Often enough that they know me in there by now... I was chatting, I mentioned my holidays and one of the girls mentioned they were doing a very similar but longer trip and so there was much excited chat about stuff. And they've demanded I send them lots of postcards so they can stick them up on the wall and they've told me I have to come in for a milkshake when I get back and tell them all about it. It made me quite excited about it all really. :) Also quite amused that I got their address written down with best wishes and smiley faces on the back of one of their menus. I love oxford. :)

Travel LJ name competition

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:09:34 GMT

So I'm off travelling and I intend to blog about it. I have decided to stick with what I know for blogging (ie LJ or similar) but am considering a new account for my travel blog so that I can give it to work people and others without worrying about them getting to my personal stuff trivially.

I'm trying to decide what a cool name for this second account would be though and so thought I'd open it to the floor for suggestions. there won't be a prize except of course for some kudos and the fact that every time you look at my travel exploits you'll see your suggestion there. That's an awesome prize really isn't it? :)

So go for it... all suggestions welcome...

Solar Eclipse

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:55:23 GMT

I just found out something cool. While I'm in china there will be a solar ecliupse there. http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/TSE2009/TSE2009.html has the flight path and I reckon that being in chengdu on 22nd July seems very feasible. :)

I really do need to get around to properly timetabling out my china bit of the trip. mi_guida has made sure we have a good timetable for the hong kong onwards parts but strangely enough the btis where I'm on my own are badly to not at all planned. :)

Still, I'm doing shanghai-beijing-xian-chengdu-Jiuzhaigou-chengdu-yellow river. Maybe with a holy mountain in there somewhere too. So chengdu at day 17 of 26 sounds feasible. :)

I've always wanted to properly see the totality of a full solar eclipse. It'd be nicer if it was not as early in the morning but should still be awesome. :)

I am an example to all

Fri, 22 May 2009 13:42:42 GMT

Some might remember my interetsing time a couple of years ago at a game called Warfighters. For those that don't you may want to recap though only the first couple of paragraphs are relevant.

Well, I just heard from souldestruction (not sure if he has a better LJ name these days or not) that a friend of his was at war fighters recently and apparently I am being used as an example in the safety briefing on the subject of what not to do with your gun.

I feel strangely proud. And it makes me want to go back again just so that when they say that bit I can offer to show the scar around. ;-)

Summer holiday tech

Tue, 19 May 2009 16:53:27 GMT

On my grand summer travels I'm considering taking various bits of tech with me and I thought I'd solicit opinions and ideas from people on the subject... Things I am considering taking are roughly as follows:

MP3 player

This shouldn't be too much of a problem. Thanks to ext2366 I have an mp3 player that is pretty damned nifty. Main problem is it charges by plugging into a USB socket on a computer so if I don't have a computer charging it might be tricky... On the other hand I'm sure a cheap as chips mp3 player for keeping me amused on buses and things should be relatively cheap...

Mobile Phone

I wasn't initially intending to bother but mi_guida suggested it last weekend and seemed surprised I wasn't going to. As time goes on and I read various things on the web the more it seems like a good idea. There are suggestions along the lines of taking unlocked phones so you can use local sims and stuff like that to avoid roaming charges. My main problem being that I currently have a shiny G1 that I probably won't want to take (over-featured, expensive and would be upset if I lost it). My old phones were all retired for things like having 20 hours of battery life on a good day and such like.

So I guess under this section my big question is what is the best way to go roaming and where can I get a cheap functional phone from for as little as possible (anybody out there got old phones they don't want?).

One thing I do intend to set up is the ability to check my normal mobile's voicemail from anywhere in the world which will potentially solve half the problem if I can find a phone to dial my mobile on to access its voicemail...

Computer

I'm figuring that there is going to be a hell of a lot of stuff I want to write down on my travels to share with you lot and for the benefit of my own memory. I can take time and stop at internet cafes and such like to write things up but this of course eats into time I could spend doing *more* exciting things. So I was considering taking a cheap little netbook with me.

This Netbook costs 120 quid and looks like it would do what I want. do people think this is sensible? Do they think I'm crazy to do this? I figure it would be a good way to allow me to maximise the time I'm spending on trains/plains and automobiles by using it to write up my exciting stuff instead of just sleeping or looking bored the whole way...

Camera

A camera is a must really. I do have one that I bought about five or six years ago (I forget how long ago but its pretty damned aged). I'm considering getting a new one because that is quite old (4 MP, 3x optical zoom, smaller memory cards, doesn't take great pictures). I'm wondering if people have any recommendations... Photos are likely to be mainly web only (so megapixels aren't likely to be a constraining factor) and numerous (I'd rather have too many than too few). Of course cheap is good since I am assuming that everything I take with me has a fair chance of being broken or stolen. Any suggestions?

Also what other gadgets might I want to take with me? I think I've covered everything above but if you can think of more suggestions on things I should take I am more than happy to listen...

Also I might be asking questions about whether you think I should set up a different blog for travel adventures or just do it here... mainly I might want a wider audience (eg work people too), etc. I guess I could use my dreamwidth (is that the right name? I'm sure you all know the one) account for that. I've not used it for anything else yet (and I believe that crossposts easily too)...

Its all getting very exciting.

Random flash game...

Fri, 01 May 2009 13:59:50 GMT

I've just been pointed at a silly time wasting game.

http://chrisvenus.mybrute.com/

Go there and fight my awesome martial arts warrior. And its a pyramid scheme so the more people that go there and fight me (and thus become my pupils) the more XP I get. So even if just curious go have a fight so I can have a dojo full of warriors. ;)

Summer Holidays - the introduction

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:03:15 GMT

Well, it seems that my last but one LJ post made me look a bit of a plonker... You see having put the first hints out there about planning a bit of travelling virtually six months ago to the day I formulated some plans. I plotted, I planned and then I discussed it with friends...

Well, that's what I thought had happened. After that recent post and everybody going "Whu!!!" I realised that in fact I hadn't really said much at all. Nobody seems to have a clue what is going on but there is a consensus that it is jolly interesting and I should tell you.

Well, three weeks later I'm finally getting around to it.

So, the big plan goes something like this...

On July 5th I'll be leaving this country and flying to Shanghai. hendybear has offered to put me up for a bit so I am going to abuse his hospitality to recover from jet lag and acclimatise to the different culture and climate. From there china is only vaguely planned (ie no definite dates and places yet) but I have provisional ideas.

From Shanghai I'm goign to go up to Beijing and see the sights and then across to Xian to do likewise. From there I am wanting to go to Jiuzhaigou for the extreme prettyness and then make my winding way back east, hopefully via some buddhist temples atop mountains where I can learn the arts of kung fu, down the yangtze river and through the three gorges and ultimately ending up in hong kong for the 31st July.

On 31st July the solo part of the trip finishes and I meet up with other people in hong kong. This includes mi_guida (H) who is virtually a native there (having lived there for a year (or was it more?) about ten years ago. I think we will have two others at that stage, G and R (not the R that quisalan always talks about), but I'm not sure. I think R even has an LJ but I'm not sure what it is... I should mention I'm yet to properly meet either of those two as well. :)

After a week in Hong Kong the trip sees H, R and I heading back through china on our way to Hanoi, via Nanning. Hanoi will hopefully inclue a trip to Halong Bay which again is very pretty (part of my plan was got from just looking up UNESCO sites on the web).

AFter Hanoi we continue down vietnam to Hue and Da Nang (which I am told is famed for tailors so where I will pick up some nice clothes I hope). Ho Chi Min City (saigon) beckons after that and following that we head up into Cambodia, primarily for Angkor Wat though stopping off at the capital and Chambok eco-tourism center.

Then we hit Bangkok which I am hoping will be a little more stable than it is currently. If its not I suspect we'll spend more time in the previous places and then nip in to bangkok just to ninja our way onto the final flights which are on the 27th August. I believe we lose R at this point and H and I complete our holiday with a stop off in australia.

We're going for a week in sydney where H's godmother is (well, she is near it anyway) and I'm hoping to be able to bump into a couple of people I know (erikarn has suggested he might be in town for his birthday which would be randomly cool).

We then take a week up in the north of australia somewhere around Cairns. This is the final relaxation where I'm hoping to spend a lot of time on beaches learning the australian arts of keeping your beer cool.

The flights back are on the 10th/11th September and then I'll be collapsing somewhere and back to work on the monday like nothing ever happened. Well, except that I'll hopefully be bouncing at everybody for the next month or two (or three or...).

Its going to be awesome.

I'm very worried about getting stuff sorted but H is being a wonderful organiser - she had similar independant plans which mine have merged with so while I'm wandering around china she is making her way through moscow, mongolia and many other places before getting to hong kong. She has thus been wonderful in such things as compiling lists of things we need to do, timelines of when stuff needs to happens, what we need to do for visas and taking my list of places to go and making a plan out of it with dates and other useful stuff.

So yeah, that's my plan. Maybe some more stuff about it later. Things like why I'm goign to various places, more detail on it and that sort of things. I take requests if you want to ask me about anything big enough to post about. Or just ask me small stuff that I'll answer in comments. :)

So yay!

RPGSoc Society game character inspiration

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:10:09 GMT

The new RPGSoc Society game, crusade (http://crusade.chaosdeathfish.com/), is starting up next term and I am still sturggling for a character. I started thinking I wanted to play a politician but the politics aren't really doing it for me at the moment. So I thought I might play a military general til I read the horrors of being a general with more danger coming from getting to a war than the war itself (I exagerate). So then I became kind of stuck...

But then an idea struck me. The society game is all about joke references and stuff and I thought I might build a character on this concept... This idea partly came while listening to Know your meme: all your base are belong to us and thinking "I could make all their base belong to me..."

So now I turn to you for inspiration on what memes and such like could work well in a crusades era character and what I should make my game goals. I promise nothing in terms of using your ideas but its got to be good for a laugh to kill time to discuss this if nothing else, right? For the record its not just memes but classic film references that would work too - in the past I've referenced ghostbusters, flash gordon and many others as well as song lyrics and much other stuff. In fact, songs would be good because then when we do a compilation CD of songs that remind us of the game I'll be sorted...

Flying around

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:12:37 GMT

Well, as I've mentioned before this summer sees me going off on my first great adventure. Well, hopefully great...

The plan is to leave beginning of July (5th/6th ish) and go to china, meet up with people in Hong Kong at the very end of July (so just under 4 weeks of china for me) and then after a week in HK going off to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Then off to Australia(Sydney and then up north to the barrier reef).

I'm flying various bits and pieces of this and so I thought I'd see if anybody had any particular recommendations for or against any particular airline or any particular website that can be used to sort these things out or other such companies.

I'm flying here to china (shanghai is the current plan - hendybear, are you up for a visitor for a bit?) and then from Bangkok to Sydney, probably a connecting flight a week later Sydney to cairns and then from cairns back to the UK.

That's far more information than most of you probably need but if I'm asking for help I want to make sure you've got the full info....

Also for full comment whoring potential then people are welcome to suggest either a) things to do in and around Sydney or b) places to stay up near Cairns/the barrier reef (cairns is where there is a convenient airport but isn't set in stone as such if more awesome suggestions appear). I know I've got a few Australians on my friends list and I'm sure others who have holidayed up there...

mp3 player

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:43:45 GMT

I'm wanting to get a proper mp3 player for use at the gym. Currently I'm using my phone but I'd rather have something a bit more practical and stuff.

My current thought because of the fact that marketing means I'm not actually sure of the alternatives is a ipod shuffle. I believe they are about 30 quid or so (but apple can't work out how to update their store without taking it offline so I can't check the official price right now).

So, my question for LJ is what sort of recommendations you might have for mp3 players that I might want.

My rough thoughts on spec are:

1) cheapish - the 30 quid ballpark sounds fair. I'm fine with cheaper.
2) capacity - I'm not that fussed about keeping all my music collection on it. I believe shuffles are a couple of gig and this seems fine. I don't need the 40+gig capaicty of the big hard disk based ones.
3) size - something that will either fit in a pocket easily or clip on somewhere would be good. I suspect that is probably goign to be automatic. I like the idea of belt clip or other clip though.
4) compatibility - I want it to take standard headphones and work with any computer. I'd like the option of just dragging and dropping files if I want to or maybe using some software to manage what is on there. am I right in thinking that ipods *only* work through itunes?

Is there anything else I should be thinking about with respect to spec?

Edit: Other specs are for track control I'd like more than minimal control over track listings. Nothing fancy but random fucntions and skipping back (if I want to hear the previous track again) and forward (I'd hope a standard). I've a vague feeling I've seen some that are just plug in and it will start playing with no control at all...

Also if anybody wants to put forward the case for apple products I am willing to listen. :)

Random scribblings

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:43:24 GMT

This post is mainly for my own benefit. For various reasons I was curious as to how much of my writing is sitting around on the internet right now and so I thought I'd go looking. And to save myself doing it again I thought I'd save links to it all here so I could find it again if I wanted.

There is nothing new here in general though. If anybody can think where else I may have left stuff then I'd be grateful for pointers though I think I have everything here from shadow writers and can't think where else I'd have kept stuff (unless I can find web archives of any of my old star wars stuff but that is all less self container).

I actually enjoyed reading a lot of it, forgetting how awesome some of my old characters were (in particular my VA, stream, whose backplot I'd totally forgotten). and some of it made me cry with memories. And generally made me remember that I can write some good stuff and should do so more often...

I stress again these links are not here because I want people to follow them, just for my own benefit).

http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/7784.html - martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/46353.html - stream
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/72700.html - martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/79315.html - MArtin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/80972.html - Lat (Corporation)
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/120355.html - Martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/190714.html - Martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/207767.html - Martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/223191.html - Jonas Black (Conspiracy)
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/244364.html - Martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/281625.html - Martin
http://community.livejournal.com/shadow_writers/313076.html - Martin

Party plans for Saturday

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:55:59 GMT

Right,

I promised more details on what I'm doing for my birthday so here they are...

the plan is this:

Saturday 24th january from 7:30PM onwards you should be able to find me drinking in Raouls on Walton street in the downstairs bit where I have some tables reserved (though I believe they are not allowed to be reserved past about 8 o'clock so seating not guaranteed for those who turn up after that or if I turn out to have more friends than I expected). I suspect I will be there before 7:30 but I'm not going to be more specific on earlier time. :) I will be wearing a dinner jacket and I would encourage others to use the excuse to dress up posh-like but I by no means mandate it.

There are no plans to move on elsewhere at any point but if you do have problems finding us for any reason then my phone number is probably available from my userinfo page (contacts link). No idea if I'll have reception while in Raouls though.

Any more questions just ask:

Executive Summary:
Date: 24th January
Time: 7:30 onwards
Location: Raouls (downstairs bar area)

Quick star Wars post

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:32:27 GMT

Two star wars funnies:

http://vimeo.com/2809991 - Star wars as described by somebody who has seen bits nad pieces of the film only and reckons she knows the plot.

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=213643855&blogID=448411028 - Simon Pegg writes Star Wars fanfic. It is, predictably, funny.

A fun weekend

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:53:29 GMT

So I managed to post lots in november and since then I've posted five times. Not awful but half the point of november was to get me posting more. So now I am going to treat you to some random posts...

First I thought I'd mention last weekend. Mainly because it was fun and I did interesting things. I'd headed down to london to see mi_guida and we decided we should do something on Saturday more than just chilling out with buffy DVDs (which we did a lot of anyway). So having concluded we should go for dinner in town we turned to the thought of what to do in the daytime and we decided on the science museum. After a rather slow start to the day (and discovering that hte science museum website has some fun games (Energy Ninjas reminded me of the powerpuff girls except with ninjas beating up people who pollute the planet and Launch Ball reminded me of some of the physic engine games that bateleur occasionally brings to my attention. They are mainly educational but remarkably fun).

Err... those brackets were far to long so I decided to ake a break into a nw paragraph and kind of backtrack. So, after a slow start we eventually got to the science museum at about 4, 2 hours before it closed. We wandered around and did a fairly quick tour of a lot of stuff goign "oooh, that's cool" and so on and so forth. We spent some time in an area looking at biometrics stuff (it kept failing to recognise mi_guida's finger prints so we decided she should launch into a life of crime free of the fear of being identified by fingerprints) and we had fun wandering through the shipping section where they had lots of model engines and buttons to make them move. We judged many of these engines on important criteria like how cool they looked and the related "how steampunk they were". We decided that excessive brass rivets makes somethign look much more steam punk. My favourite was one that just had lots of levers and bits and bobs and tubes and cylinders that seemed to do nothing...

the tiem passed quite quickly and at 6 (or just before) we found ourselves being herded out. We did some floor skipping and after being told to leave on the second floor we went and browsed some of the first floor before being kicked out of there too.

We then went to leicester square looking for food. Most places had queues and we ended up in a cafe uno or some such place where we had nice italian. It has just occured to me that we didn't leave a tip but given we waited about 10/15 minutes before I had to find a waiter and say "can we sit at that table for two please since its not being used by anybody else" I'm not that guilt wracked.

The rest of the weekend was good for the company but nowhere near as exciting in terms of museums and west end food.

I did remember though that I actually quite like london. People may think me mad but I do think it can be a very friendly place sometimes. Though that may have been the sense of commonality we got from the other people queueing who, being a three, had to wait a lot longer than we did (we'd finished starters by the time they were seated despite them having been there before us).

Anyway, much buffy was watched and a good weekend was had. :)

Birthday plans

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:33:26 GMT

In a few weeks its my birthday and I thought this sounded like a fine excuse to go out and drink cocktails.

So the saturday after my birthday, which is the 24th January, I will be going out cocktailing somewhere. Exact location to be determined but this is just to let people know and also if people are definitely coming do let me know. That way if there turn out to be hundreds of people interested then I can think about booking somewhere or something...

I intend to declare a non-mandatory dress code which is black tie. THis is mainly because there are never enough excuses to dress up smart.

So, in summary:

Date: 24th January
dress code: Black tie
Location: Somewhere around the little clarendon street/jericho area, I expect.

Any questions, feel free to ask. More details nearer the time. Pass on to anybody who might care but isn't on my friends list.

You know what this post is...

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:59 GMT

Since I'm here...

Happy christmas everybody.

I'm going to bed now before santa turns up and can't deliver because I'm still awake and I'd see him!

Irritating phone calls

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:44:09 GMT

Last few mornings I've been woken by my phone ringing. I never get to it in time but the people phoning are always kind enough to leave an answer phone message. The problem I have with this is that the calls are at about 5AM (give or take a few minutes) and the answer phone messages seem to be in a foreign language (possibly indian but there are probably loads of similar sounding languages).

I'm wondering if this is going to keep happening or if they'll give up. I figure I'm off home for christmas soon anyway but if it does keep going I'm not sure what the correct course of action would be. I was going to try just phoning BT and seeing if they could help out with it somehow... Its that or just disconnecting my phone before bed every night but that seems sub-optimal...

LJ Search Engine time...

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:19:49 GMT

So, my dad mentioned as part of his christmas wishlist the following:

"My Great Grandfathe was in the 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers) and at the end of his twenty years service he received a "Long Service and Good Conduct Medal" in 1891. I thought it would be nice to have a replica medal with ribbon if they weren't too expensive. I should think that each soveriegn would have had a different one. His one would be Victorian."

A quick google offered up no obvious places to get this but I thought I'd ask you lot since, you know, a lot of roleplayers, a few re-enactors... I figured that one of you is bound to know where to get such things... :)

work distractions

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:13:44 GMT

Today I have been very tired at work due to a late night last night. Its not been too bad though. Just a bit sleepy and unproductive.

I've also been distracted by hot girl at work wearing hot outfit. This is also not bad. :)

And as a bonus piece of content I present http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/11/just-married.html which is the best first dance at a wedding *ever*. Well, apart from maybe the thriller at the wedding one (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=OPmYbP0F4Zw)... no, this new one is even better...

thursdays in leytonstone

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:45:07 GMT

So I have a question for people... can anybody tell me why it is that all doctors in leytonstone seem to be shut on thursday afternoons? I could understand maybe being shut one afternoon and being open on saturday mornings or something but 4 different doctor's surgeries were shut this afternoon and not one was found that was open... any suggestions on why thursday afternoons?

Emotional dreams

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:22:42 GMT

This morning I was in a very strange frame of mind. Last night I fell in love with a girl of my dreams. Yeah, no metaphor there, she was a girl from my dreams. The dream is mostly faded now but I still remember how much I was in love with this girl. I also remember that she started off as a fairly cute (in the non-sexual way) dragon. The reason its weird is because the emotions of that dream lingered far more than any of the images did. At the point I woke up I know I could only remember a couple of things about her. I'm not sure I ever knew her name. And given how bad I am at describing even real people that I know very well I can't tell you what she looked like in any real meaningful way. But despite not being able to remember any of this I could still remember how I felt about her and its weird.

Its weird because I know she never existed outside of my dreams and its weird because I know the feelings are not real and will fade and in fact already have for the most part. In some ways it was kind of nice though because it is a really great feeling to meet somebody knew and just totally hit it off with them and in some ways the loss is even quite nice because I know from experience that it won't last. And I think its that last part that is weird. The emotions have that same ephemeral feel as a dream has. Most dreams fade from memory pretty fast unless you make an effort to remember them. And even then I'm sure you remember trying to remember them more than remember the dream itself. And so the emotions I feel are fleeting things that feel unreal but are still there. Harder to shrug off as unreal because they are less affected by the rational parts of your mind.

It's all around a very weird feeling. On the plus side its better than getting the same thing except where the girl is real. That can make for some very strange moments in the morning. In this case though I'm just kind of hoping that I'll meet her again in another dream sometime. :)

Cutting political commentary (and other links)

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:52:09 GMT

The most comprehensive analysis of the Somalian pirate problem I've seen yet:

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/Somalia/

Edit:

It has come to my attention that there may be those unaware of some of the gems on weebls-stuff so I present a refresher for some and new treats for others:

Firstly http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/kenya/ is the original that the somalia is based on (with very cute lions and tigers). I had assumed everybody was familiar with this but on reconsideration this was a big hit many many years ago now...

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/special+edition/ is the Lord of the Rings two towers special badger edition

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/I'm+Spartacus/ is very silly. Its maybe too long but still makes me laugh.

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/magical+trevor/ - everybody loves Magical Trevor

Honorable mention goes to Scampi and of course Patrick Moore plays the Xylophone but I thought I shouldn't link too much stuff. :)

Second Edit:

To prevent cheats on NaBloPoMo by multiple video posts in one day I'll also stick in more links to what lead me to all this in the first place (including a shocking omission from the weebls stuff - thanks bateleur):

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/ultimate+showdown/ - the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. Not actually by weebl but the credits at the end let you know that (I seem to remember I got in trouble last itme I linked this)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MvfB-aQFqy0 - charlie the unicorn promo for their youtube live thingy.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXMYsMvs1A - actual charlie the unicorn you tube live thingy which I thought was much less good. :(

Gym Update

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:07:02 GMT

I realised that I've not really mentioned the whole gym thing recently. You'll be pleased to know its going well. I've been a bit behind on the amount I'd hoped to do (which is average 3 times a week) but its still going pretty well. I've actually been three times a week many weeks but with having time off due to being ill or injured I have missed some weeks and just been twice on others.

However, its all good. I'm quite enjoying it when I go but it does take up a lot of time. I'm getting up early to try to go to the gym in the morning which is weird and probably part of the reason I am very tired.

I'm intending to try to draw up a little chart to record how much I go to keep proper track. I've also now got a little training program so I can keep track of what I've managed to do and I'm trying to make notes on how much the hard work is so I can try to notice if its getting easier, etc.

For those interested my training goes something like this:

10 minutes on bike (I think I managed about 4km in that time last time)
a bit of time on three weight machines (for shoulders in two cases and legs for the third)
5 minutes on the rowing machine (I managed 1111m last time)
Mat work including "Plank", some thing I forget the name of with a big exercise ball thing, some other random one and crunches.
5/10 minutes on the running machine.

Since I'm mostly doing this in mornings it tends to get trimmed down sometimes depending on time. The run usually suffers first and then the bike going to 5 minutes. And yes, I know the distances and stuff on the machine are probably meaningless without knowing the difficulty the machines are set at but I am assuming there isn't really a standardisation so saying bike at level 6 and rowing machine at level 8 probably isn't useful. I must check at some point what sort of speed beginners do on rowing machines though...

Anyway, my phone is reminding me... I should go to bed now so I can actually be up early tomorrow for the gym... Getting up at 7:30 on a monday morning is just evil...

P.S. I'm still a couple of posts behind my target for the month but on looking back this is looking to be at least a third of my year's postings. :) I'm considering this a success anyway even if I don't hit 30 posts. :)

More random youtubeish stuff

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:43:59 GMT

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=50SEmXDh6Bw - Guitar hero played by a computer. Its kinda cool and makes me wonder if some people have too much time on their hands...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NlMYWuGUZlM - Bike Hero - Its... Errr... Well, its like guitar hero, the onscreen bits at least... In this case I wonder how much time people have on their hands and how people come up with the idea for that sort of thing in the first place...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7iOuYkbrx4w - And lastly a film trailer for the upcoming Titanic 2. Jack's back...

Yeah, this is more gratuitous NaBloPoMo filler. But the entire thing is about posting more stuff to my journal so I figure I can get away with that kind of thing. ;-)