The Debate Rages On!

Which is cooler. Zero gravity, or throwing cats.
Now, most people have easy access to a cat which they can throw. Not so many of us can quickly and reliably experience weightlessness. This has often meant that this debate could never be answered. Untill now.

Why can't we all just get along, and enjoy both at the same time!

This is what the internet is about.

Cast your mind back if you may, to when I was harking on about The How And The Tao Of Old Time Banjo. Well the guy who wrote the book mailed me and thanked me for drumming up support.
Now, I'm not one to let a kind gesture like that go unnoticed, so it is without further ado that I bring two of my favourite things together: Music and Nice People.

Patrick Costello is so cool that not only has he released one book on the internet free of charge, he has put a second one on too. The How And The Tao Of Folk Guitar Volume One: Getting Started is now free for the world to enjoy. This means that if you want to learn how to play folk guitar, you can get first rate information, free. He is also releasing the second and third books in the series under the Creative Commons licence so you will be able to get those free in the future too.
It is people like Patrick Costello that make the internet great. Everybody sharing the knowledge they have with each other, no string attached.
If you already play the guitar, go and look for fresh ideas; if you are wanting to learn, what better place to start.

I know quite a few people that are learning to play the guitar and I expect you all to check this book out.

Help out the good guys people, it doesn't cost you anything and in your own little way you are helping to shape the internet into a bigger, better thing.

Cheating and stupidity.

We would awake. The crisp morning sun would beam through our thin curtains lighting the room with a welcoming glow.
We would roll over, pull the duvet over our head and try to fall back to sleep.

I've always preferred sunrise to sunset. I can see how sunsets have become more popular as you are usually awake to witness a sunset, and so appreciate it. But sunsets represent the end of something. Watching sunsets marks the end of a beautiful day or the end of a memorable year. Sunrise gets shunned. But to me, sunrise means more. You have to make an effort to witness a sunrise. You don't witness a sunrise by being drunk one night and just happening to be watching the sky when the sun goes down. To catch a sunrise needs a bit of effort. To me they mean more, they mark the beginning of something. They are the start, and sunset is the end. I'm all for fresh starts.

Apart from when you've had a bit too much to drink the night before. In that case, sack sunrise. Who cares a bit about its beauty or majesty, turn it off. Make the light go away, shut the blinds, get me a glass of water, and make it night again.

I didn't appreciate one morning at the cottage. The only happiness they brought me was thinking back to the night before and remembering the laughs that we had.

Laughs like playing board games.

First up was Pictionary. The lads (me and Chris) got fully owned by the gals (Katie and Jo). It was painful to watch us lose. Chris is a graphic designer and with my imagination I thought we would have this game sewn up.
Not so.

We even cheated and still lost.

Well, I say Cheated. That is a strong word. It brings with it connotations of deceitfulness and dishonesty. We didn't so much cheat as we did strongly imply what a word may be. . . through the use of pictures. . . and some letters. . . . letters which may or may not have spelt the word we were trying to guess. . . . repeatedly.

But it all came unstuck when after a seemingly superhuman effort I guessed Leisure Centre in all of nine seconds. (damn you alcohol for clouding my judgement of time!) The gals asked to see our picture, and well you know. . . we didn't have one.

Busted.

So the rest of the game was played with all decorum and we got our assess whipped.

But the night after when we played again. . . this was a different kettle of fish.

The word was Dragonfly. It was an Allplay, so we were against each other to see who could guess it first. Chris and Jo were drawing, me and Katie were on interpretation duty.
The timer was started. Chris started on his abstract construct of what he sees as a Dragonfly. I got as far as Moth before taking a large swig from my whisky and wondering where the hell he was going with this.
Sure doom was looking us in the face. Chris has started on a tangent which no doubt was meant to 'help' me. My guesses were becoming more erratic, time was nearly out, the page was starting to resemble an entomologists scrap book, when from out of nowhere our deliverance sounded.

Imagine, if you will. What a whisper would sound like if it were not so much a whisper, as a cough . . . and if the volume didn't so much resemble the volume of a whisper, so much as that of a cough. . . . and if the whisper didn't sound so much like " wsshs" so much as "Dragonfly".

Imagine if you will, girls trying to cheat at Pictionary.

Whisper-coughing the word, loudly, when the opposition are sat no more than a meter away is not recommended practice for increasing your chances of 'getting away with it'.

Needless to say that Chris and I went on to take the game with a commanding lead. A lead so commanding in fact that it has been rumoured that we cheated. This is a rumour that we shall neither confirm nor deny. Needless to say that if we were cheating, we got it down to a fine art and for the whole game nobody noticed.

That is of course, if we were cheating. Which we were not. Not at all. Not once. Never.



After picturing ourselves out we though a game of Scrabble would calm things down.
Oh ho ho . . .wrong.

Before I tell this story. You have to remember that I was drinking the finest single malt Scottish whisky. Laphroig aged 15 years. Sweet and surprisingly mellow to start, with a slow burning peat smoke flavour building up towards the finish. This stuff is gorgeous, not my favourite, but a fine fine whisky none the less. This was a high pressure environment I was in, we were playing board games for heavens sake. I had consumed maybe more of this whisky than my cognitive capacity would have liked.

I had a great word ready. It was Wessex (a place in England). There was one E on the board and I had another. The move before mine Chris put a word down and I no longer had room for my super word. My W would have joined our too words together. I was gutted, I could see nothing else on the board. I would have got a double word score for this, and now, nothing. After longer than was socially acceptable sat looking at the board I had to throw my problem over to the other players. I could see no alternative.

I told them of my problem and a silence descended. They sat there looking at each other, confused faces one and all. I could see pity in their eyes, 'I know' I thought, 'my letters suck'. I could feel their condolences reaching out for me across the table, an almost unified sigh of regret that my letters, did indeed, suck.

Katie turned to me, she looked me straight in the eye, I could tell that this was where my game ended. I would have to pull out, put my letters back in the bag and make coffee for everyone. She took a controlled breath. "Wow" I thought, "she's taking this a bit hard".
With all the pity in the world, she looked at me and said,

"Why don't you just have Essex. . . . . Numbnuts!"

Awwww, Damn.

It was looking me in the face the whole time. The worst part about it was that I didn't even twig straight away and had to check that I had all the letters.

Man alive, sometimes I embarrasses myself.

Needless to say, I lost at scrabble. . . twice.



More tomorrow.

Wardy gets all academic.

Would you belive it. Check this bad boy out.
Who says I can't be serious when I want to.

To whoever it was that did this search, I hope it helped.

Dawn of the brain dead.

Setting off on Thursday I was expecting to be able to just kick back and relax. I thought this trip would chill me out. I was hoping for a nice sit down in the country, a couple of red wines by the open fire, intellectual conversation and a general feeling of well being.
Boy, was I disappointed.

It all started in Loughborough (pronounced Luffburra for the American contingent). Katie and I stopped off at Safeways to get some drinks in. As we were leaving the shop we were presented with a display of child-parent trust that would change my entire outlook of the weekend.

They were dawdling. Nobody likes being stuck behind dawdlers. As we ever so slowly followed Gran, Mum and Kid out the automatic doors my mind was on the car journey ahead of us. Mum was holding Kids hand. They approached the doors. The Kid was looking forwards. He was looking forwards. He was looking forwards. He just walked plain as day into a wall.

Just like that. Wham!

Don't laugh Wardy. Crap, Katies gonna laugh. Look away. How did he not see the wall?? Parents are Very close by, for the love of God don't laugh! Walk away, walk away from the parents and walk away from Katie. Katie is giggling, walk away from her, walk anywhere but just walk and don't laugh!

Don't laugh Wardy!

This poor kid was led directly into a wall by his mom. They were holding hands and I'm guessing that the Kid wasn't leading. I will never know how neither of them saw this collision coming. Yet for a good 10 meters the impact was inevitable and neither of them tried to rectify the situation. Wham!

From that moment, my relaxing weekend away was changed from the calm tempered, red wine sipping, open fire stoking, fresh air breathing experience I was hoping for, into a riotous four days. Not a day passed in which I did not laugh with all my breath. It was a far better break than I could have hoped for.

Here of a select few of the highlights.

Dawn.

We stopped at a service station on the way down for a pick-me-up coffee. As we went to pay for the goods we were met with a suspiciously jolly Brummie. You know the type, the ones that overcompensate for hating their jobs by being everything and more management want them to be in the vain hope they will get promoted and no longer have to serve rude business types their complicated coffee orders while fending off advances from the 'chef' who works behind the hot sausage rolls and pies counter.
I digress.

Dawn was obviously a woman. I mean no disrespect by this. Just to clarify that even from a distance, you would assume she was a woman. There was no doubt in my mind that Dawn was a woman.
I went to pay for our coffees and was presented with a grin as wide as her midlands accent was annoying.

"€œMy names not Michael."

- Cue me, stood, looking shocked.
- Still looking shocked.
- Trying to think of something to say.
- Feeling helpless.

"Oh, did you forget your name badge and had to wear another one then?" cue nervous laughter.

"No."
"My names not Michael."

- Cue me, just stood there. Lost for words.
- Still stood.
- Waiting to pay for coffee.
- I'm confused too now.

"Oh, how much is the coffee?"

- Clever, just ignore her, pay for the coffee and get the hell away.

"It's £3.60. But if they ask, my names not Michael."

- If WHO ask. The doctors?
- What does this woman want of me. Give me my coffee and let me go. I thought the motorways were meant to be the safest way to travel by car. Apparently they didn't take service stations into account.

"On the receipt, it says I'm called Michael, but I'm not. I've borrowed someone's card."

- Finally I understand. On the receipt, which she has not yet given me, it will say I was served by Michael, not Dawn. I will look at this receipt for all the time it takes to put it in my pocket, which I can't do because she is yet to give it me.

Instead of just telling me to ignore the name on the receipt, which I can image would be important for one in a couple of hundred thousand people, she just sends out crazy signals and expects me to join dots that I don't even know exist.

My names not Michael.
That's great love, but instead of playing impossi-puzzles with you can I just pay for my drinks and be on my way. Guessing an unimportant error on a piece of paper I wont look at, before you have even given it to me, was not on my top ten list today.

I blame the businessmen for turning normal workers into this.


The Jolly Locals.

I went into the local video store to buy a Scart adaptor. The guy who served us was the single most cheery man I have met. He could not have been happier to see us. He was delighted that he had what we were looking for. He was over the moon that we were buying something. He was overjoyed that we had nearly the right money. He was ecstatic that were happy customers. He was great.

Then I had to have an obligatory look in the charity shops. We found some funny stuff to buy, it came to the earth shattering total of 50p. At the counter the lovely dear couldn't quite get her head around us trying to give her a full pound, when it only came to 50p. She kept on counting the coins as if to clarify to herself that we had given her too much. She insisted we didn't have to. We assured her it was no bother. She looked so surprised it made it all worthwhile.


There is more to tell about the weekend, including "Cheating at board games, Why girls shouldn't try" and "My train carriage is flooding, how nice."

But before this post gets too long to be interesting I'm going to end it.

More tomorrow.

ps - apologies to Dawn. I try to avoid being directly rude about people but the title of this post made me laugh. sorry lass.

Sweet money, and bitter blood.

Once again the world shows that it likes to keep a balance in all things.

This weekend was yet another example of why you shouldn?t get too down when things are rough, and you shouldn?t get too happy when things are good.

I found out this Friday that I got the job I wanted. Yehaa and all that. This should mean that in about five months I will have mastered the basics of snowboarding and will be able to go on holiday somewhere snowy and actually have a laugh, as apposed to still being in the ?falling down while learning? stage.

So, we have a new job. This = Good.

Well that afternoon I took my bike out into the peaks for the first real test of its performance. (yes, another story about my bike, lucky you). All was going well, I was definitely faster than usual, confidence levels were high, storming along the top of some crags, my brain registering and evaluating every rock and making split second decisions about which route to take.
Well, that was the theory.
But where the body was willing, the brain failed. To me, the riding, and the pain were not separated by time, My brain was too shocked to register the flight and commit it to memory. One moment I was riding, the next I had face planted a rock, absolutely sure that I had broken my nose.
As luck would have it, my nose did not break. This is thanks solely to my helmet. The front of my helmet stopped my face from being too closely introduced to the rock. So while my soft squidy nose took the initial impact, my helmet quickly took over and stopped me messing my features up.
After a quick breather to compose myself, we set off and finished the ride. Oh yeah, we also had to cycle back up to the top of the massive hill because even though we had two cars and were going to shuttle run it back to top, someone forgot the keys.

. . . oh yeah. . . that was me. . . sorry Ez!

My first major ?new bike? ride and my first major fall. Lets hope I don?t keep this up eh.

So, I fell off my bike. This = Bad.

If I have learnt one thing, it is that you shouldn?t get smug when things go right, and you shouldn?t get down when they go wrong.
The world really is in balance, just ride it out.

Linkage.

Every now and again I like to post up some of the more interesting parts of the internet that I have found. Then I e-mail the post to Blogger, then I spend the next 15 minutes sorting out all the html that gets messed up somewhere between me hitting send, and the post getting published.
Every time.
Without fail.

Every been a child. Ever dreamt of having your own secret underground hideout" I still to this day dream of having a secret underground hideout. I saw recently on some Dream Home program this place in Turkey that had been built on the entrance to a cave and the house opened up in the kitchen to a huge cave complex. It took about five to seven seconds for me to fall deeply in love with the house. Image it, your own cave! How superhero cool is that. Finding some unexplored part of a city that you can take refuge in just rocks. The instinct is just built into us. Exploring is fun, even more so when you are doing it in secret under everyone"s noses. That is why I fully, and with all my heart, love this story. I found it a while back and forgot to write about it. It has everything that my heart craves, adventure, secret clubs, mystery and an out of this world "we know who you are" ending.

Man, I wish I was invited.

Luckily for me though, I have found a way to inject this adventure into my life. Thanks to advances in modern technology we can now experience what is usually reserved for backwards thinking, hooch drinking inbred rednecks.

While all this wishful thinking and daydreaming is nice, I still do find the time to get out into the real world every now and again.
It was during one of these excursions that I learnt something very important.
I was sat talking to a girl and she assured me that cooking is the way to a woman"s heart. I thought she was kidding at first but she assured me that if a man shows he is handy in the kitchen, he scores big points. This came as a bit of a blow as I"ve been stockpiling expensive diamond rings and air miles to romantic destinations to aid me in my "wooing". After thinking carefully about it I went on to sell all this expensive crap and found a website that can help turn my easily bored, analytical mind into a fine food super machine.
Now all I need is a date to try my finest cuisine on.

Unimaginable knowledge.

There have been a few baddies over the years trying to amass such a thing.
If only they had been alive in the future then it would have been so easy.

Brewster Kahle (founder of the Internet Archive, my favourite source for free and legal downloadable music) just delivered an amazing presentation called Universal Access to All Human Knowledge. He basically wants to archive all the information ever created in the world. Notes from the presentation taken by Cory Doctorow can be found here.

Can you imagine having free and quick access to all the information in the world. Man alive, I can waste time with the best of them on the internet, but to have literally all the information in the world at my fingertips would be too cool for words. I don't know what I'd do with it like, but it would be nice to find out.



For the nay-sayers out there, let me whet your appetite for universal knowledge with this book which is available online thanks to the Creative Commons licence. Sit back, buckle up and get ready for the might that is The How and the Tao of old Time Banjo.

I think we have a banjo in the attic somewhere. I might just have to get it out and see if I can rip chords with the best of them.





Changing direction slightly. President Bush is so god-awful stupid that this is probably true. It wouldn't even surprise me if this was actually the President but names had to be changed to protect the uncommonly dumb.



Lastly, this is just another example of why we'll tolerate the French, just that little bit longer.

Hair and Bikes.

Two of the subjects that have been taking up space in this blog recently.
Lets go through them in order.



Hair.



I decided to get a haircut as my graduation is coming up and my hair was
moving away from "cooky cool" to "Hasselhoff cool". I got some pictures of
what I was after and booked myself into a salon to have a word with one of
the guys. We chatted about what would and wouldn't work with Gene Wilders
rejected hairpiece and he had some grand ideas. Seeing as it wasn't going to
cost me the earth (a sign a should have noted) I decided to just go ahead
with it. The plan was to take the bulk out of the afro I was sporting and
leave a smaller fro with wispy bits sticking out aka medusa.



However, once the cut was finished and the 'product' reared its ugly head,
my stubborn curls got their revenge. The wispy bits just refused to be
wispy. They curled straight back on to themselves and disappeared back into
my now very much smaller afro.



This means I have now gone from zero maintenance but subject to taste hair,
to high maintenance but subject to taste hair. Not a good move.



I'm determined that my hair will look good long. It just has to. I've lived
with short hair for way too long to have to deal with it again. So I'm back
to growing my hair. Luckily he didn't fully crop me so there is a fair bit
of length there, once pulled straight.



Note to self, trying to make yourself look cool doesn't work.

Take what you've got and roll with it.



Bikes.



I got my first air today. . . SIR!



Oh yes, the obligatory "Point Blank" esqe quote to kick things off. But I
did indeed, catch my first air today. While exploring the local woods I
found a bike trail fully set up with cambered corners, jumps and all. I
found a jump that had 'beginner' written all over it and got to work. My
progress was in three distinct phases.



ONE.

Rolling over the jump at speed and summing up more and more courage to go
faster each time and finally get a wheel off the floor.



TWO.

Getting the front wheel to travel a fair distance but not really feeling
like I was 'jumping'. More 'hitting the ramp at speed'.



THREE.

A real life jump. Landing on the rear wheel first (most of the time), and
feeling like a champion.



I've got to get good at this jumping lark, it just looks so groovy on the
telly.



I want a piece of that.

How badly do I wanna get Beatified!!!

When did the Catholics start having all the fun eh??


While Gods messenger on earth sat slumped like a turnip in a barrow full of spuds, 'struggling for breath', he got to beatify some stiffs. Now in the side box it says that Beatification (how fully awesome is that word) requires that a miracle have occurred.

Yet I went to Italian-born (and mystic) nun Maria Ludovica De Angelis' write up on the Vatican website and it doesn't mention anything about a miracle. Which I, albeit being a mere unbeliever, assumed would be rather important. This seems to be the only thing the individual themselves have to do to be considered for Beatification.

And yet, nothing.


Now I'm not saying that she wasn't a top lass. But rules are rules, and
these are Gods rules.

Well they probably are, I don't know a lot about the Catholic faith, maybe there was a Saint who got the Beatification process explained to him one day over lamb.


So then I looked up French monk Joseph-Marie Cassant, lo and behold, his Vatican write up contains no mention of a miracle either. In fact, this guy basically did nothing other than be a nice guy. I quote "The sheer ordinariness of his life has been noted by some".


So now we get on to Frenchman Pierre Vigne who founded an order of nuns, again, no mention of a miracle. Sorry peeps. It does mention that his dad was an "honest textile merchant" which is good . . . but miraculous. . . I'm erring on the side of no.


The Pope it would seem, is just getting his own back at God. "The pope has now beatified some 1,340 people, more than all his predecessors combined, Reuters news agency says." I don't blame him. The poor guys a wreck. He probably thought that when he was ordained he would get it easy. After all, he is basically Gods squash partner. He's got about a gamillion people praying for him and he still needs somebody to wipe his mouth. God wont heal him, but he wont let him die either. The poor guy just keeps on getting rolled out every time the Vatican has something to say.



I'm all for the pope. He knew what he wanted to do and he went for it. But now he's just a frustrated old man, mumbling his way through speech after speech. Beatification is probably his little way of having fun. He can hardly do a bungee jump to raise money for a school, nor can he join in a sponsored Macarena.



You have to make fun for yourself wherever you can find it. So if the pope wants to keep on pushing the boundaries of Beatification, then I'm all for him.

He must have sat there going "ohhh, let me think, a guy that didn't do anything and a mystic!! Oh yeah, that's a good one!"


Then when this furore from this ceremony has settled down, a little grin will draw itself across his face as he laughs and thinks, "I've got it! A litigator and a modern artist! That should turn the Basilica into a hoot."

Urban Freeriding. Council Style.

I have discovered a mecca. It was staring me in the face all the time. Every
time I drive home, I saw it, but never really appreciated what I was looking
at.



Behind my house, is an undiscovered wonderland of mountain biking track. It's
not a massive place, just one small hill. But it has all the essential
elements, mainly nice tight trails that weave and bob through woodland.

Added to the excitement are the felled trees that are often laid across the
track by the local deviants for no more reason than 'havin a laff'. The car
parts founds in strategic piles where the casual police officer would not
notice a wreck straight away. The nettles at shin level, the needle thin
branches teasing onto the path at eye level, the occasional large rock at
tyre level.



The place was surrounded by council estates, that is, until one of them was
pulled down. It is this strange mix of natural beauty and chav playground
that makes the routes so interesting. The splashes of colour under the
foliage are rarely flowers. More discarded Dyson vacuum cleaners, car brake
lights, or WKD bottles. Falling into the shrubbery is not advised.



It looks like the paths get a lot of use. There used to be a real problem
with trails bikes going up there and tearing the place up. I have to say,
hat off to them. Some of the drops are truly impressive and there are recent
signs of use. Who ever is riding up there has some serious skill.



Me, I'm going to stick to my trusty mountain bike and work up the guts to
attempt some of the crazily steep bits and jumps.





Oh yeah, I might try and stop talking about my bike as well





don't hold your breath.