Subliminal.

Adverts are not my favourite aspect of existence. Bad adverts are REALLY bad. Adverts that have to carry small print are even worse - Just watch any mascara advert and spot the "filmed with lash inserts" disclaimer to see the pointlessness of it all.

I make no secret that I enjoyed the Smash adverts with the martians. There HAVE been a few that have been worth seeing, but for no more than their intrinsic entertainment purposes. The thought that any of them have made me buy anything is too sorry a conclusion to reach.

Sat, today, as I often do, with the TV blurting into the ether of my living room while I do something completely different..... two adverts dragged my attention away from whatever I was doing, and they compelled me to write:

In jeopardy style, give me the product to the advert:

a) Just pop it up your nose for a couple of minutes, two or three times a day, and start making the most of your summer!!

b) This isn't just music - This is [blank] (A blatant M&S rip off on behalf of Asda - hint: the blank is the name of the band!!)

PS: Big Brother kicks off tonight - I've heard there will be no "live stream" this series and that means I might actually get time to write/eat/wash/sleep during the course of this series.

Earwig.

Earwig oh again......

Here we go again .... geddit??

It's like a dingbat but more moronic.....

That's what you get when you get a drunken fox blog......

Yesterday's Examiner dingbat was:

O _ e r _ t _ o _

I came up with several ideas but the most serious one I could come up with was "painless operation" and if that's the case, whoever thinks these things up needs sacking!! Is "painless operation" a well known phrase or saying?? If so.... here is my response, in dingbat form:

abracadabra o_er_t_o_ not your posterior!!

Translated - spoiler (highlight it to see it): magic painless operation my arse!

Idiots.

The Old Ship Inn's first beer festival in Brighouse today... I'm glad to say that I made it there to sample their fine array of ales..... not all of them good, but then not all of them ordered by me.... miraculously - most of the ones I ordered were brilliant..... highlights:

Golcar - Dark Mild.
Elland - 1872 Porter.
Marble - Chocolate.
Marble - Ginger.
Brass Monkey - Silverback.
Brass Monkey - Monkey Pooh.

At a paltry two quid a pint on all the festival beers.... g'wan and fill thee boots.

Just a quick note to Emma - I love it when someone enjoys a punchline as much as I do..... magic cock my arse!!



I have lost count of the number of photos I've taken at Cupwith Reservoir, but here it is.... ANOTHER and one unlike any other.... melting snow and ice on some lovely colourful moss at the side of the water. Suck it up.

What goes.....

White, red, blue, red, white???

Answer: Me, in the snow, walking, and then catching man flu!!

I'm officially dying of man flu.

My lungs feel like I have started smoking again.... my temperature is all over the place.... I have the most feeble broken glass cough..... sleep pattern's gone to the dogs..... can't even raise the enthusiasm to stay awake long enough to watch a film (that being said, I've managed to watch (with some cunning rewinding over the bits I fell asleep in) Horton Hears a Who (very good); Bee Movie (Very poor); and Ratatouille (OK)) = lovely nested parentheses!!

On the plus side of being so desperately ill, I've managed to spend some time organising the mountains of digital media that I manage to accumulate in such a haphazard fashion. Electronic spring cleaning, you can't beat it!!



Early morning New Hey Road - This was Tuesday morning, but it's a shot I like. The streetlight phosphor orange glow is quite tasty.

Peril.

The perils of pressing shift-delete.

For those of you that don't already know, you can avoid your files making their final shuffle into the Recycle Bin by holding down the shift key while you press the delete key. This deletes the files instantly, thus bypassing the security net of the bin.

For those that don't know, I've spent 310 hours playing Pokemon Diamond (since October 18th to this morning). It's been a real labour of love and my creatures were just starting to really like me... I mean REALLY like me!!

For those that don't know - I am a complete idiot and accidentally shift-deleted both the Pokemon game and my progress save file.

D'OH!

Smash it.

Watching "Celebrity Come Dine With Me" tonight on TV.... I am treated to Caprice (Vacuous model type), Nicky Clarke (Foofy hairdresser type), Nancy Sorrell (Wannabe celebrity type that sounds like a man) and Jimmy Osmond (Long haired lover from Liverpool type) all enjoying a series of dinner parties together.

The time has truly come to smash TV. To kill it. Those rockstars of days gone by that hurled TV from hotel windows surely had the right idea.

I did watch it until it made me so mad that I plucked out my eyeballs with a corkscrew.

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on ... shame on you. It fool me. We can't get fooled again. - G W Bush!



A very oldie, but still one of my favourite pics that I have snapped. Using my old Samsung camera when I used to live in Birky, I caught a humble-bumble on my sage plant. A memory of summers past.

Sensible in principle.

I love to give positive feedback. All too often we are miserably and predictably disappointed by customer service experiences. For that reason, I am always happy to write about the better experiences and to promote the businesses that offer them.

I bought a crappy multi-card memory reader for my laptop. Increasingly these days, I find myself dealing with a mindboggling array of memory cards for an even more mindbogglingly array of devices around the house. It seemed sensible therefore that I might have a device that I could just plug them into without having to have a host of adapters and cables and software in order to read the information contained amongst them.

I've been using the reader for a while and now I find that it has caused physical damage to a memory card for my camera.... first it buckled the little plastic teeth that separate the gold contacts..... next the teeth fell out..... next the whole card kind of split in two.

It's a Staples branded card... I don't have a receipt and I don't know when I bought it.... How sensible then that they should choose to replace the memory card for me free of charge under the warranty, simply because it's a Staples branded item!!

It's far too sensible and simple.



I won't pretend to be any good at that exposure, aperture, and any of that other photographing jazz-a-ma-tazz, so most of these sort of things are experiments that go right or wrong.... this one's almost there. Bonfire night at the Jack o' Mitre, Scammonden 2008. They tell me the three days of fog that we've endured may end tomorrow in sunshine!!

Turtle.

A few beers with my cousin and the infamous Turtle of Huddersfield town, yielded a bag of home grown veg, the likes of which I have not experienced since I was a kidd-a-lee-dack. The turtle furnished me with courgettes (the size of marrows), spuds, onions, and a jalapeno - in return I gave some bottles of the Turtle's favourite brew, Batemans XXXB.

If you're in the vicinity of the Rat and Ratchet, they have some delicious Golcar Dark Mild on the go at the moment!! Fill your boots!! Also in fine fettle is the Phoenix White Monk - the perfect lunchtime tipple.


A quick shot from the beach at Formby. A young seagull in flight - I am really fond of the blankness of the sky behind..... it's not great photography but I like it.

Knock knock....

Who's there?

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife.

A man clutching jump leads and a pregnant sobbing wife, who?

It's not a joke, it's the modern day biblical tale of what happened at my house last night, or rather this morning at one thirty AM.

They wanted a lift to their car out on the dark moors to see if I could manage to help them get it started...... are you mad? Suffice to say, as much as I'd like to have helped them out in their predicament, I'm not about to go riding out into the moors with strangers offering money at any time of day!!

Bad times.


Deanhead church, in the area of Scammonden Dam near where I go riding my mountain bike. A truly lovely little part olf the world.

Can't post, won't post

Sure, I've actually been quite busy for a couple of days.

Against MY better judgement, my mum decided that she wanted a "real" roof on the conservatory. This, of course, changes the idea of a conservatory into one of an unfinished, highly glazed, extension. Neither a stone constructed part of the house, nor a wood and glass sunny lookout post.

Anyhoo.....

For the last couple of days, it has of course, been pissing down with rain, and the moor-grime has been rolling in and out with alarming regularity. What better way to spend this time, than running up and down a ladder carrying roofing slates?

So that's where I've been.

Of course, seeing as the majority of the work is now done (I was just the helper in this respect - I can not be credited with actually achieving anything other than putting things where they should be, when they should be there) the weather has taken an altogether more red hot and sunny outlook!! Sod's law at work again..... where's that Tupperware® box gotten to?

Other than that, I've been trying to keep warm.... the central heating has made a comeback this week, due to the inclement weather conditions of course.... I've been playing Age of Empires.... the Wii Fit hasn't seen the light of day.....

I have booked a weekend away..... for me and my lovely lady friend..... we're off down that London, for an (as yet) undisclosed purpose that (contrary to all women's first guesses) does not involve proposal of marriage!! We're going in July, so that makes the next few months quite interesting with July being my little trip..... August is a trip out to my cousin's wedding (we were also double booked to go to a wedding in Marbella but you can't be in two places at the same time).... and September.... well, I'm led to believe that my much-better-half has organised some form of weekend away to celebrate my birthday. I only hope that pony trekking is not on the menu!!

Here is something you might post, if you couldn't be bothered to post....

1) A top ten list.

Ten things I hate.

* Comic Sans font.
* Misappropriated apostrophes (I try my best and I know I am not always right).
* Jumbled font sizes, colours, and types.
* Social Networking sites (myspace, friends reunited, facebook etc etc).
* Racism.
* Pop-ups.
* Spyware and Adware and spam.
* eGears and eDirectory (more to follow, still working on resolving an issue).
* Slugs (although conversely, I quite like snails!?!).
* Nordic walking poles!

False start.

Bloody heck.

I got myself all geared up to go with Fred to the Barge and Barrel beer festival.... only to discover that it's not until next week.

That'll learn me!!

Other than that, I've done nothing... all day.... and all night too.....

Why did the FoX cross the road?

To get to the chip shop!!

Jibber jabber.

Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.
Too much Mario Kart and no beer makes an Arctic Fox go crazy.

I knew I bought my camera for a reason.... I haven't used my new camera half as much as I ought to have.... hopefully now that the weather is slightly more cheerful this is something I will rectify.

Here are a couple of (in my humble amateur photographical opinion) my better springtime shots...


Especially for my friend spice-the-cat... this lovely picture of a blackbird with its beak chockfull of worms heading off to feed its young 'uns - This is bokkeh to the level 11!!!!


Despite my abject disappointment at losing a clutch of robin eggs during a winter storm earlier in the year when my shrub blew down, the dunnocks have made up for it and nested in the ivy that hangs over from next door's garden. I took this picture of a very young dunnock chick... probably only a few days after it fledged... still too naive to actually fly away from a twinkle toed fox and a camera!! (note totally sure it's a dunnock... might be a sparrow... they're quite similar)

Belated.

I meant to get around to writing a little bit of an item yesterday.... circumstances conspired against me and culminated in the imbibing of a selection of the Drop Inn's finest.

I was woken this morning by my phone ringing at the ungodly hour of a quarter to eight. Who uses a phone at that time? It was, of course, the Sky engineer, who was calling to inform me that he would be arriving between ten AM and one PM today. Personally I think he was calling everyone on his schedule to say "If I have to be out of bed at this time of day, then you bloody well gonna get to know about it".

I grunt my acknowledgement of his declaration of alertness, and promptly fall asleep until I am once again awoken by my ringing phone. Nine thirty, and I decide to get up.

So, while I am waiting for the inevitable series of lemony unfortunate snicketty events to unfold, as two grunting, van driving gibbons crawl up the walls and across my roof..... I've got a bit of time to spare. I can complete the item that I had assigned myself yesterday.

Happy belated birthday to the late, great Spike Milligan. He would have been ninety years old yesterday. I've enjoyed a whole rash of shows on the spoken-word radio channel that nobody listens to, BBC Radio 7. which for my money, is the best thing the beeb have channelled their energy into, for quite some time. Some lovely items from the Goon Show, right through to the magnificent More Plain Tales From The Raj.

In tribute to this gentle, comic giant, that still manages to make me laugh, I thought I'd fly in the face of convention (and indeed the law) to bring you some samples from my childhood favourite Badjelly the Witch.


Bless the Spike!

Updates later.......... OK.... Here's the complete Badjelly the Witch book!!

Scruffy.

The weather has changed.

We've had a few nice days, it's been great cycling weather and I've taken full advantage of it. Looking out the window today, you would never believe that it's been so nice. We have fog, wind and that characteristic sideways rain that seems to be the signature move of New Hey Road in Outlane!!

I've locked the doors, taken the phones off the hook, rolled my dog-shaped draught excluders up to the draughty bits, grown a beard, baked some bread, and I'm not going out.

Managed a few cheeky halves of beer at the splendid Star Inn Easter Beer Festival last evening. That pub is a credit to the licensed trade..... sixty... count them.... sixty beers to choose from.... breweries from as far afield as Glasgow and Cornwall.... all on hand pumps. Splendid. I'll be going again tomorrow and if I get my way I will be going on Saturday too!!! Muhahahahah!!

I still want to write something about my new toy, the CycloDS. In the meantime, if you have a Nintendo DS then just buy a CycloDS Evolution, I got mine from TechWizad, and you will see how good it is.

Here's a funny fact.... it is now one whole year &to the day) since I quit smoking. In those twelve months elapsed, I would have smoked fourteen thousand six hundred and forty cigarettes which would have cost me somewhere in the region of three thousand eight hundred and fifty quids!! (that's a bewildering seven thousand six hundred and thirty three US dollars).

Whisky makes you frisky.

Brandy makes you randy.

And beer.......? I'm off to the festival of course!!

Yes folks, the first ever beer festival I attended was the Leeds beer, cider and perry festival, and that time of year is upon us again!!

During the course of this weekend, they'll be serving up a mouth-watering 150 ales and a choice of 25 ciders and perries. I am SO looking forward to it.

As if that wasn't enough.....

Next week is The Star's beer festival at Folly Hall in Huddersfield, and theirs (as pub festivals go) is the pinnacle my friends!!

Roll out the barrel.... hic!

Slack jawed yokel.

Ok, so I've been a bit "slack" of late.

I haven't been paying much attention to my blog, my updates are less than interesting, and the bowling cam has kind of gone into meltdown along with all the other features that I normally update.

I've been doing a bit of gardening..... I've been riding my bike a bit.... I've been listening to lots of digital radio (Radio 7 is brilliant - no music, just comedy, plays, books and the like).... I've been playing a wee bit of Pogo.... I've been playing a whole lot of Lego Star Wars on the Wii....... and I'm only seen with my Nintendo DS in my sweaty palms when I am riding my bike.

I am also in depression / denial (delete as applicable) to have heard nothing about my recent job application! Mr. Clack was right on the money with his reference to the "soul destroying" aspect of job hunting..... and I've only applied for one!!

And so it is........ today I bring you..... in place of the bowling cam, which of course has not seen much action during the "off season"..... I bring to you, the magic of Amaryllis cam!! They are fast growing bulbs, so I expect that it will be more exciting than the bowling for the minute..... currently the green shoot (for reference purposes only) stands at around six centimetres which is about two point three six inches on the old scale.

Here is the first picture, but you can check it out "live" as well!!

I Wish they would fix the frikking spell checker on Blogger.... not only has it not been working for ages, but it completely "gooses" everything when I try to use it or see if it is fixed yet!!!!

Happy valentine's day lover!! X X X

You wouldn't.....

... like me when I am angry.

Yesterday morning, I awoke to find that the rear window of my car was smashed. Vandalism? A freak accident as a result of a badly surfaced road spewing gravel everywhere and a boy racer speeding past? Who knows?

I search for my insurance details to find out whether I might have some sort of windscreen cover that might actually apply to the back window of the car as well as the front window... seems like a long shot, but it just might work.

Eventually I give up looking for my documents and phone the insurance company and play the "dumb" card, which isn't hard to do!! It transpires that I DO indeed have cover for the window, but I have to pay seventy pounds (140USD) excess, and the lovely tinting will have to be paid for out of my own pocket.... not cheap.

The insurance company give me another number to ring at the RAC. I phone them and a VERY helpful chap talks me through the process with the consummate skill of a genuine teleprompted sales operative. Someone will ring me to book it in to RAC Windscreens.

The call comes.... they don't have the glass in stock, despite their claim (We stock glass for more than 10,000 vehicles)....... it will be there tomorrow morning, but I can take my car down there and it will be locked up overnight and secure. I agree and take the car down there. I leave it with them.

This morning they call me to tell me that they have ordered the wrong glass because my car is non-standard and has a spoiler across the top of the window, which was added after it was made, which is absolute bullshit, but I am in no mood to argue..... In a deja vue-esque twist of fate, the correct glass will be there tomorrow morning, despite their claim that (We stock glass for more than 10,000 vehicles) or indeed their claim that (Our staff are highly trained and their work is guaranteed)....

What I can't understand is:

a) If they had the car all day yesterday, and coupled with the fact that I pointed out that this model of Honda is ALWAYS a problem, they didn't bother to check what they were ordering against the car they had in their possession.

b) How can a piece of glass which apparently isn't made, because the car has been modified after sale, be made available by tomorrow morning? It can't can it? They've just simply ordered the wrong one haven't they?

c) Would I go there out of choice or recommend their services to anyone other than my worst enemy...... not on your Nelly!!

Piss.

I am still bloody suffering from the effects of a cold..... wheezy lungs and a sore throat and blocked sinuses!! Is there any respite?

Managed to get out for a short walk today around the Rocking Stones Quarry, near where I used to live, and on to the, now abandoned and decimated, highest football pitch in England at 364m above sea level, at Scapegoat Hill. The wind was bloody strong, and it was very wet underfoot, but getting wrapped up and having fresh air gale-force fed into your lungs is exhilarating.

Despite playing far too much Nintendo DS for my health and or sanity, I seem to have almost finished my curriculum vitae.... the deadline for applications for this job is next week, and I really don't want to miss it. The more I've thought about the job, the more I think it would be a good career change for me. No, I haven't mentioned what the job is yet, and no, I'm not about to until I know that I either have or haven't got it....... I can't believe for one minute that, having not even looked for a job, the first one I see will be offered to me though!!

Let's just hope that if I get considered for an interview (and there's no reason why I shouldn't) that they hold them in the afternoon, otherwise I am cream, crackered!!

That'll learn ya!!

Some time ago, I bought a thingummyjig that plugs into my Nintendummyjig, and when you get some memory and stick it in this oojamaflip and plug it all together, it should allow me to play *coughs* copied games.

Well these particular thingummies and oojamaflips have sat idly by for a year or so, and I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet, give it a go and get myself some lovely new *coughs* copied games.... there's only so many times you can bathe your dalmation without getting tired of the routine.....

I went out today and bought the requisite memory card. I came home all excited and started downloading some *coughs* copied games. I plugged this into that and that into the other, and then got a cable and shoved an adapter into this and it was like some kind of crazy technological Russian dolls.....

Well, it was going ok..... I was getting some warning about something not being authorised, which of course *cough* it isn't...... I'm just coughing for fun now!!

I don't know what happened next... I think I might have pulled out an adapter or switched something off at the wrong time.... and now nothing works..... it just sits there with a white screen..... no errors.... no messages..... no clues..... just a smirking white screen!!

Bugger.... I hate those effing unfriendly errors.

Well, I've ordered another oojamaflip in the hope that I managed to overload it's quarter wave phase adapter and it melted the flux capacitor!!

That'll learn me for messing about!!

Fallout boy.

Well, it seems that the worst that my abscessed tooth could throw at me, is now part of history. The pain has subsided, and there is no longer a requirement to be shovelling bulk quantities of mix-n-match painkilling tablets.

What I am now left with is a two part abscess.... A deflated, watery outer part, with a rock hard poison core in the centre.

The flavour of this particular phase of toxic shock is none too pleasant.... it's like having had both lips exposed to the vacuum of space and then they've been mixed with something metallic and electrical... I taste like electricity!! What is that all that about?

But it doesn't hurt now, it just feels like there's an annoying grain of sand in my mouth, which has steadily worked its magic and caused a constant nagging annoyance. and it tastes like electricity.

Having played a seven hour solid stint at cricket today, I promise to get out tomorrow and get some fresh air.... honestly, guv!!

Staying alive.

Well, if you've managed to survive the New Year's festivities, which in my case was a pub with a decidedly dodgy Caribbean theme (complete with inflatable fruits and spuriously attired pirate wench barmaids!!)......

If you managed to survive the dried out overcooked turkey remnants (and any nasty bacteria that might have had chance to develop in it) from your Christmas dinner over the week following its initial incineration.....

Have you managed to avoid catching the flu and chest infections that have swept through the country?

Did you fall foul of the norovirus and subsequently spend two days, with liquids magically materialising from either end with a will of their own, looking for the nearest toilet ?

Did you go shopping in the sales and suffer road rage, shop rage, starvation at the hands of the overcrowded shopping mall food courts, death by queueing!!??

Did you wake up this morning and find that you could not get to work because of the snow? Did you get stranded in some North Yorkshire village with your traction control working overtime?

Well.....

If you've managed to avoid all, or even some of the above, and have made it out of the other side of the festive season with your sanity and health intact, then you deserve a medal. I can only imagine you are the only person in your office who is still fit to be at work, and you're swinging from the light fittings and going decidedly "Lord of the Flies" while nobody else could make it in to work.

Be warned: A new threat is looming... oh, wait, it's not a new threat at all, but the BBC have come up with a new catchy name for an old threat, and as such, it's made it back to the top of the agenda......

Cue Scottish family, playing on their Playstation and eating deep fried Mars Bars!! Obesity is now apparently a global problem... and experts are now calling it Globesity!!

No news is good news they say!!