For those who live in London and might be attending the Bloggers Banquet...

Firstly, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, read this.

As the self-appointed transport organiser... I'm planning to book coach tickets for 10 people this evening, at £2 each, on the assumption that:

1. at least 10 people will be going
2. most of us will want to stay overnight
3. no one wants to spend £20 on the train if the coach return can be only £2

The coach times will be 12:30-14:30 for journey to cambridge and 12:45-14:50 for the return.

The plan is that people can 'claim' them once they are certain they'll be going (which means you'll have to pay me even if you change your mind later, mwahaha). Will book more as more people made definite decisions, as long as the cheap tickets are still available. Don't blame me if you decide too late and end up having to pay more :)

Please comment NOW if you have any objections, either with the whole process or the times. I will book at 10pm. Please also comment if you wish to have one of the initial 10 tickets :)

this evening I feel like a...

...very happy bean on happiness drugs

my exciting life...

It would appear that the last time I blogged properly was over 2 weeks ago, so I guess an update is in order...

Well, generally I've been working from home most days, which means so nasty early mornings and commuting, always nice :) Also spent a lot of time with my dear Helen - 18 days so far this month, in fact! :D

Anyway, I can't actually remember much about stuff before the weekend, apart from Helen and I getting locked in Brockwell Park and Emilia's first party. But you probably already know about those from Helen's blog so I'll move on...

23th Friday. For some reason Emilia decided that her dad's flat wasn't trashed enough the previous week, so she called in more people for a second party! Well who would say no... So Helen and I made our way to Chelsea after curry for dinner, equipped with one bottle of vodka and two bottles of wine, and almost getting run over by a car on the way... The party itself was great fun, and I drank bit more than I had hoped... ah well... Don't think I was the only one:


Lots of hair:


And I was soon tired...


So the next day, we all woke up at reasonable time, started clearing up the house and getting distracted by the tea-bag game (we throw tea bags out of the 5th floor window, aiming for the parked cars below) :) Didn't get to leave until almost 3, getting home at 4, which meant that I only had an hour to change/eat/rest/etc before leaving again - this time to see Reel Big Fish, for the second time this summer! (it still is summer Helen :p)

The journey was reasonably exciting - Tulse Hill to pick up Helen; train to Kings Cross Thameslink to pick up Toby who travelled from Cambridge; train to Kenti... erm, I meant... St Albans... that's right, due to my highly careful planning, we took an alternative route to Kentish Town, via St Albans... it was a trip that Toby, Helen and I all thoroughly enjoyed :) and we even bumped into my UCPO friend Nigel on the way back into London! So thanks to me, we got to Kentish Town at 8pm, met up with Mike, Mike, Huw and George in the pub who were there for an hour waiting for us :)

Went into The Forum at 8:30pm, just before supporting band The Matches came on. Have to say I didn't really like them that much myself - rap metal is the genre, I think... VERY loud but still amusing to watch :) RBF appeared soon after, being brilliant as ever :) My five favourite songs (Everything Sucks, Sell Out, Don't Start A Band, Beer, Take On Me) were all played, and we all bounced constantly, except for when I had Helen on my back... Photography attempts weren't very successful, this was the best I managed:


and one of my crazy friends - Huw, Mike & Mike:


So yeah, that was a busy weekend - managed to sleep in till 12:30pm on Sunday to recover :D

While on way to Helen's house today, we randomly bumped into Robert Bailey, director of my chamber orchestra at CYM 4 years ago, who now also teaches Rose the cello at JAGS, very random...

Things to look forward to:

1. 8th-9th October: Toby/Hane/Rosie's housewarming party in Cambridge
2. 12th-13th November: Bloggers Banquet in Cambridge
3. 12th November: UCPO Reunion Dinner at Selwyn College Cambridge. Not entirely sure how I'm going to do both this and the banquet, but at least they are in the same city... maybe I'll just change into my DJ halfway through banquet for the dinner, then come back at midnight...
4. 24th November: Helen's Birthday :D

thought of the day...

A very personal message...

Well, I guess you can try to break the encryption if you are really really bored...

4300a036848e9a7d9ad7faaa63b24f19
d287d8ae66bc0d44cff212dcfd99bab5
b1348f665bb1cd733800574b47cdf19c
bd4da7b2a34db761e74c2343ab9620dd
724c8e95a22485a666d051291b853f3c
b5a9c53cdae13e219612935dd7be7ae7
b21f8ca49a2808a43ac387e60bdaabe5
d4dab26e8277d3b9fe67fcab122de01a
191a2cb4ff772df03d7c5fd2970a2053
bdd8ff3676901054dcec044a818b1f9d
660d266e0606f50e759288b4ededf205
fdcd47e32b51b07f0eff3ee61eaceb12
4ff41e461337b79d141de5e41197a1c0
39fd4f6fee39f9f7fd2d4e3e75b5609d
bbde731c33f7570260d42631157f7b5f
571ea7547ab6fd8a4d5dcecda7d56662
57a77b35a4cd24a3245a12242de9e4ed
5bbc8c46c3270db0cd757e7753e515b9
99bd148e6f808477b032cb2548ade4df
8781b4b19222c0b25fa7ffa2a2e52bb6
bd40d73fde16592ffdf6e9169cbaaaf4

But I'm sure most of you are more sensible than that, so go have fun with zombies in Urban Dead instead... :)

Have a nice day.

wish list

A few things that I want to buy, in the near future...

iPod Photo 60GB


ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition


Western Digital Media Centre 320GB External Hard Drive


Dell Latitude X1

Bloggers BBQ II, 'Prince Michael' & Spyware

As many of you already know, last Sunday was the 2nd Bloggers BBQ, hosted by Helen (isn't she wonderful), which lasted roughly 10 hours :) Once again I'm too lazy to write anything, so here's a selection of photos, possibly somewhat biased... :)

Not long after arriving, I was greeted by this sight - sheep marriage, quite common these days, apparently...


Get rich scheme No. 391 - steal shoes and sell them on ebay:


This is no way to treat the newly-wed...


Hane arrived with a leash: a present for Sarah, apparently...


"Who's the master now?"


The hierarchy of power soon became confusing...


Toby likes bending over...


Magic Carpet - the future of British public transport...


Invasion of the spider:


Some people just don't give up...


So yeah, that was a fun day :) For more photos and/or what really happened, you may wish to look at other people's blogs: Helen, Richard S, Simon, Dave, Richard L.

Now onto the next topic. On Tuesday I went into work for the first time in ages, only to find that there had been an uninvited visitor the previous week, who broke in by smashing glasses and stole two laptops, some calculators, and, erm... pens... Sounded bad, I thought, but it turns out that he was actually caught before he could leave.

This man, whose name is apparently "Prince Michael" (or so he claimed), was silly enough to turn on all the lights when he came in, so he could see what's worth stealing... The security people at the entrance to the business park obviously noticed, and called the police, who soon surrounded the building. Rumour goes that the police arrived with a dog; this "Prince Michael" tried to take on the dog with an office chair but totally missed, and instead was attacked on the shoulder...

All sounded very amusing :) but only 'problem' was that there's now a shortage of computers in office and as a result I'm happily working from home :) 'tis only till the end of this week (i.e. today...) though.

Spyware! Well, indeed... and I have removed over 1000 of them this week, isn't that exciting... On Wednesday I found my way to West Dulwich (via Helen's house to pick up some CDs first) and met Sarah (HB), whose computer was being viciously attacked by spyware, and they even came out to haunt her in dreams... Those of you who know me well would know my weapon of choice - a big hammer :) [boring details removed...] three hours later I left, with all traces of evilness gone from the computer :)

Impressed with my effort, Helen decided that her own computer needed some attention, so the next day I was on my way again, with my dear hammer, obviously. [boring details removed...] this time it only took two hours (and muffins, cheese and crackers), and obviously I won again :)

However I believe one of the spywares from Helen's computer managed to escape to my brain somehow... which gave me serious headache all evening :( but it did mean that I got plenty of sleep, over 9 hours in fact!

Now, back to work... and I'll leave you with something amusing - Skype prank :-)

Recent happenings, in pictures

Last weekend was mostly spent constructing garden fence with parents, lots of drilling and sawing, most fun! And I got to use trigonometry for the first time in ages - needed to measure sides of a triangle to determine an angle using inverse cosine, how exciting! :) It was very hard work though - left my muscles aching for good part of the week... Oh and I found a dragonfly too, managed to take some really nice photos - one of them can be seen in the previous post.

Bank holiday Monday was more of the same, but I managed to run away from the hard work in the afternoon and escaped to Helen's house for a relaxed evening.

Went to see Annie Get Your Gun with Helen and her dad in Bromley Tuesday evening, with yummy pub food beforehand :) I would have taken some photos had I remembered to bring camera...

On thursday I travelled up to the foreign land known as Muswell Hill to meet up with Sophie, who had just spent the last 8 months in China and SE Asia. We had a really fun and relaxed day - sat in a coffee shop for few hours drinking coffee and eating ice cream, then went back to her house to watch random movie and TV. I'm so jealous of the nice view from her street though:


In the past week I also went to Brockwell Park with Helen twice, for late afternoon picnics. With ice cream both times :D Oh, and I also took some really nice (I think so anyway...) photos. Here's what the park looked like when we arrived on Friday:


and when we left...:


And more garden fence stuff took up my time today, but that's all done now :D Just got to think about how to get rid of the pile of rubbish...

Yay, Bloggers BBQ 2 tomorrow!