Friday 30 May 2008

Overheard #44

An impromptu sports day, possibly on the South Coast:
"Come on fatty, hurry up and start jumping!"

Wednesday 28 May 2008

Dandy Racquetball

"Scoring is bourgeouis." But watch this anyway:

Robert Newman's History of Oil


It may be 45'23" but blimey...

Monday 26 May 2008

Overheard #43

OK, so this was 'overheard' off The Apprentice (S4:E9), but it was just too good:
"It's quite an emotive piece, which you can't replicate when you're in a people carrier."

Saturday 24 May 2008

Square Arrow Triangle Dance*

So I stumbled across the AMVI theory via Neatorama and it seemed like an interesting idea:

AMVI: Associative Musical Visual Intelligence

"Associative Musical Visual Intelligence is a type of intelligence that's difficult enough to define, let alone test. Many creative people can associate across sensory domains: they "hear" hints of shapes and can "taste" the essense of colors. At its most extreme this phenomenon is called syntesthesia. However, I believe that creative people subconsciously employ elements of syntesthesia every day when attempting to think of things in new ways. This test attempts to measure one's ability to associate musical phrases with abstract shapes and symbols."

So I take the test (disclosure: I do have A level music and Grade 8 flute but at the time of the test I had also sunk a couple of fairly large gins) and get 95% (19 out of 20) which is :



Maybe I'm wasted in investment banking. At the very least, I should pick up the saxophone again :)

* this will mean nothing unless you take the test - in fact, I'd be interested in your scores -> comments please!

Skinny Latte Anyone?

The perfectly pleasant Michael, who runs the Costa stand next to Citypoint, has suddenly got a lot to live up to:


(Insert your own gags about lightly steamed milk; I've got Eurovision to watch...)

Friday 23 May 2008

Ding Dang Dung

Yikes.

It seems to be time for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest already. Since the success of the magnificently inappropriate Lordi in 2006 and bespectacled radical Flump Marija Serifovic in 2007, I have absolutely no idea who might win. To be fair, neither do I give a flying muskrat. What I do know is that they will be hard pushed to scale the dizzying heights of Teach-in from the Netherlands in 1975. Now I'm pretty sure they weren't miming, coz that ain't allowed, so the sync on the video must be terrible. Anyway, enjoy:



Despite the fact that the start of the middle eight is a dead ringer for the Grandstand theme, get a load of the pianist's trouser/boot combo as well as the fact that the guitarist on the right is clearly about 8'3" and wouldn't have been out of place in the aforementioned Lordi. Genius. Altogether now:

"Ding-a-dong every hour,
When you pick a flower,
Even when your lover is gone gone gone..."


Awesome. Especially the face on the xylophonist* at the end.

* I imagine it might be some sort of vibraphone but 'xylophonist' was too good to resist. How many times a year do you get to put that in a blog post, eh?

Overheard #42

The summer weather brings all sorts of other issues:

Turns out the trouble was that I was nippling my iPhone.

Wednesday 21 May 2008

Overheard #41

Part of a heated discussion regarding the re-branding of equity research templates:

The fundamental problem we have is that you're not allowed to tamper with the cat's arse.


Obviously.

Sunday 18 May 2008

Radio Four Was Invented In 1783 By A Greek Ornithologist Called Trevor

I just passed a very enjoyable half hour catching up with this David Mitchell-hosted comedy quiz,

Radio 4: The Unbelievable Truth

in which Lucy Porter was excellent on the gay mating habits of giraffes. Next week promises Adam Buxton, Ed Byrne, Lee Mack and Tim Vine; I shall prepare the needle and thread for my sides...

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Dubstep Allstars In Their Eyes

I remember last year flagging up Fairtilizer after stumbling across it chasing some Klaxons shit or other. Anyway, they very kindly emailed me this dubstep playlist which is very much of the bomb, in my humblest of opinions:



The Rusko and Benga tracks are particularly, er, vibrant :)

Friday 9 May 2008

Bananas

Freyja is very funny at the moment. She especially likes (and gets the terrible giggles to) the song I sing when she brushes her teeth. Now this is not your regular classic Dad version of "This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth..." (repeat ad infinitum)

Hell no.

For some reason which currently eludes me but which I imagine I ought to think about, I have somehow led her to believe that teeth should be brushed to the strains of the Banana Splits theme tune:



So far, so great-fun-remember-it-well-happy-days-thanks-very-much. Ah, but wait, there's more. You see, I couldn't remember the words to the TV show theme tune so I just sung the the ones we used to sing at junior school. Which were ever so slightly rude...

And so now I have a dilemma - do I adapt the teeth-brushing song to reflect the actual TV theme tune words and risk Freyja noticing and refusing to brush her teeth ever again and costing me a fortune in dentistry bills? Or do I carry on in the vague hope that she is laughing too much to pick up on the puerile WWII era genitalia references?

Vote now, if the thingy wotsit below works. If it doesn't, just feel free to tarnish me as a terrible parent and go about your day:

Overheard #40

Local pub or local butcher? You decide...

I don't have a problem with the killing, it's the sawdust...

Thursday 8 May 2008

London Gondola

What a fantastic idea, beautifully recreated:

More here.

Can I Have A Lens With That Please?

This is great for us types what sport the funky eyewear:

Official Google Reader Blog: Reader Accessibility

"We have now integrated this functionality into the main Reader interface. So with this lens in hand (your pocket) you can continue to hit j and k to move through articles, and when you find the print too small to read you can press = or - to enlarge or shrink the font of the article you're reading."

Hurrah! My eyes are not actually that bad but anything that helps with the end-of-day squinty ache is a hit with me...

Wednesday 7 May 2008

Give It A Flickr

Right, after some Holmesian detective work, I have discovered why our Flickr photostream had not updated since the end of March. It turns out that this coincided with us starting to use the Uploadr application (rather than the web interface) which, for reasons I cannot at this moment fathom, does not take your content/privacy preferences from your Account Profile. Why? I don't know - it bothers you for your username to go and grab your tags and sets data, so how hard can it be! Pfft. So it happily sits there defaulting to 'Moderate' (rather than 'Safe') which means that Mr Clapham Omnibus needs to sign up for a Flickr account to view things. Most irritating when you are trying to share your new bundle of joy and that.

Anyway, all of which geekery brings me to say that I have hit the relevant bits with a spanner and there are now loads of pictures of Theo and Freyja (and the odd one or two of the snow) which can be found here:



No login, no guest pass, no hairwash night*

Enjoy.

* that's a private joke for Freyja - she reads this on her Eee, you know...

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Recognise Anyone?

Yeah, you know who you are...

Friday 2 May 2008

What The Qwerty?

This is an astonishing balls-up by Dell:

Try touch typing on this

"Looks normal, right? Look at your own keyboard... notice anything different? Okay, maybe you don't. But try actually typing on this and it all becomes far too apparent. The whole of the bottom row of letters (Z, X, C...) is one too far to the right. The Z should be below and between A and S, not S and D.

You're looking at a brand new Dell Vostro 1310, ordered the day after its released, and delivered on 30th April 2008 in the UK."