What I'm watching

I'm watching 'Man Stroke Woman' at the minute. It's mostly hilarious, some episodes are online here. I loved the 'making love soundtrack' sketch, I don't remember which episode but it's season 1.
This is probably the only good show that's come out of BBC3, but it almost makes the channel worthwhile.

igoogle finally has new themes, which is awesome because they include a Street Fighter II one! It seems to change daily, and has all the characters from the timeless classic. Check this out

That made my day. Although it must be noted I'm probably still drunk.

P.S. When are they gonna put a Street Fighter game on the DS?

Idiot

Just seen this in the news. Not to be disrespectful to the dead, but what an utter moron.
There is no way anyone could fly a kite, let alone a fucking plane when under the influence of that drug.
And to take a 13 year old kid up with him, that's complete idiocy. Where do these people come from? And how the fuck did he get a license in the first place?
I despair...

More photos...

I've discovered a cool little program called Photomatix - it merges three differently exposed shots together to create a nice variance in colour, and you can do all sorts of other little tweaks.
Here's some of the best results


Bristol and the Avon river from the Clifton Suspension Bridge


Bank of England building in central London


Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The first suspension bridge in the world!

MI6

For the past year I've been considering what the hell I should do when I graduate, even though that's still a while off.

Since I watched a Bond film and started reading Day of the Jackal, the secret services popped into my head.

Check out this test to see whether you have what it takes to be an 'operational officer' (that involves going undercover in places like Afghanistan).

Is it really that easy? I got 8/8 in about 5 mins. I know it's not an official test, but surely that should be more challenging, so as to deter people like me applying and wasting valuable government time. Or maybe they're simply dumbing down, to accomodate graduates who don't have to lift a finger to get a degree (that's me as well).

The last 2 weeks

Wow, it's been a while.

Since I last posted I have:

.Gone out and got very drunk
.Been back home for the weekend
.Got lost in the countryside
.Been horribly ill
.Read 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' (pretty good)
.Watched the newest James Bond film (rubbish)
.Done absolutely no coursework
.Got a place on an exchange year in Spain next year (can't wait for that)
.Re-installed Windows (what a fucking bitch that was)
.Rediscovered bacon

...amongst other things.

But now I have a coursework due in on Thursday, for which I haven't decided on a title yet. So here I am, procrastinating once again.

It's good to be back!

My photos

I've been playing around with my camera this week and I've created a flickr account.

Some of my favourites so far (click for large)

Thought for food

Pizza is great, a fine culinary creation. Versatile, tasty, relatively healthy and easy. Despite this I've never been convinced of pizza's greatness, it wasn't quite up there with prawns, risotto and bacon sandwiches.

I had a realisation today - pizza has a shortcoming (for me at least). I'm a bit of a hoarder, and this applies, in a fashion, to my food. I'm one of those people (although I'm not sure if there are others) who likes to save the best bit until last. When I get to the end of eating a good sandwich, I'll make sure the last bite is the soft middle of the slice. I don't want any crust polluting the final moment of deliciousness.

You can't do that with pizza though. Try eating a slice of pizza backwards, so you get the nice, soft, gooey bit from the middle last - it'll only end in tears.

And that is why I will never consider pizza a true giant in the culinary arena.

Amazing photos of the 2008 Greek riots

Monkeys turn

Flickrvision

I'm doing a piece of coursework to be handed in on Thursday, my stumble button is taking quite a bashing...

Ice Pressure

Boon Boon Boon Bada Doon Doon

Boredom

I invented a new word today - "Yawnacity"

Used to measure the dullness of a lecture/public speech.
Yawnacity is gauged in yawns per hour (yph).

Sterotypes play out

I've recently been wondering what's wrong with young men in London, I've noticed a worrying tendency.

A few weeks ago I was at the SU bar, which (to my dismay) was putting on a karaoke night. There was a girl circulating the bar trying to find contestants, who eventually made her way to me and my friends.

Naturally, we made our excuses and refused to sing, as tempted as I was...

Then, as she walking away, my friends started admiring her. The words 'fit' and 'hot' came up, more than once.

Hang on a minute, this girl seemed nice enough but she was distinctly average, she wasn't overly pretty and she had very bushy eyebrows. She wasn't even wearing a revealing outfit, which can often fool us blokes. So what had they seen?

Then the penny dropped. She was posh. I've noticed it numerous times since, and when I thought about it, before that night. A lot of guys seem to be drawn in by nothing more than a home county accent. Indeed one of said friends' girlfriend is a vacuous, dull specimen, but she's got that oh so proper Kent accent.

A girl can have nothing going for her, but if she sounds like she may own a horse, go skiing at Christmas and say 'Daddy' instead of 'Dad', well that's all we go for, apparently. How depressing.

My window

My camera was delivered yesterday, I took some test shots out of my window.

What the?! London buses aren't actually red, they're just painted red! And what's that number on the top for, government tracking from space? I'm onto you, Boris.

Nice trainers, mate.

The 12x zoom looks pretty good, this guy on the bus is about 40m away.

Oh and I made this

What I've been watching

Friends (I know, but the gf has the box set)
Scrubs Season 8 (I'm beginning to tire of this)
Lost season 5 (is shit)
The Myst (terrible film)
Planet Earth (Best wildlife docs ever made)
QI (Quintessentially Inglish)

What I'm about to watch:

Office Space
The Kite Runner

Overslept

I read the whole of The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) yesterday, on the tube and then in bed last night. In fact I was reading until about 4.30am - that's why I'm not in my lecture now. I just couldn't stop though - I'm one of those people who has to stop at the end of a chapter, but that makes it so much harder when it's a good book.

The Kite Runner is a very sad book, with some heart wrenching turns of event. It gives a brilliant portrayal of Afghanistan's transformation since the 70s, without spending much time on the details of the country's history. It's also a great tale of friendship and human nature, sacrifice and self-interest. Overall a great read.

Some other books I've read recently:

Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) - A must read
The Name of the Rose (Umbero Eco)
The Godfather (Mario Puzo)
2001 A Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke)

And one complete disappointment - Catch 22. What a terrible book.

Wolves, Namibian Coast

The Namibian 'Skeleton Coast'. There's a herd of seals on the beach, in the middle of the shot. You could just about make them out on a large screen.


This is taken somewhere near Alaska. I can't put my finger on what exactly I like so much about this one, but it really stood out.

I went to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition today at the Natural History Museum. This was definitely not the week to go, getting off the tube I saw a massive crowd in the station...what was going on? Two words

Half
Term

I fought my way through the massively long exit tunnel to the museum, and once again fought my way to the calm of the exhibition - it was paid for, luckily, so no pesky kids!

Anyway, some of the photos were amazing and I spent a good hour browsing them, I'll put up my two favourites.

Cartoon

Saw this on the times website and it made me laugh.
It's a pretty accurate illustration of the current public opinion towards...bankers (sorry)

It's my birthday today!

Not much to shout about really, I've not been particularly excited about today since I was a kid. It's been pretty much like any other day so far.

-Wake up, shower, check email news etc., have breakfast, go to classes, go to the bar in between classes, come home, lounge around, have some lunch. My girlfriend's taking me out somewhere later on, apart from that not much exciting going on. Although I did go out and drink verily last Friday to celebrate.

I'm getting a new camera but it's somehow being delivered to the wrong place, so hopefuly I'll be putting some pictures up here in a couple of weeks' time.

Going to the natural history museum tomorrow to see wildlife photographer of the year - > http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/

1

I was going to make this first post about the inspiration for this blog, but I'm not really sure of what it was, exactly. Or what it will be about.

So, a bit about me, and we'll take it from there.
I'm 24 years of age, currently studying and living in London, UK.
Interests: Cooking/food, reading, films, comedy, squash, swimming, languages, nature, travel.

I've been living in London for two and a half years now, originally hailing from South Yorkshire. I miss the down to earth, no nonsense nature of Yorkshire and it's great people, but I still enjoy the unpredictable strangeties of the capital city.