Last Sunday we finally got round to having a flat warming. There were 12 people (including me and Jessica) so we escaped to the park after everyone had received a tour of the flat. A few pictures from the park can be found here.

Duncan had brought his softball (and bat) along so we had a couple of games of rounders. It took a while to establish the rules but thankfully we did this before we started playing. Me and Jessica took the role of team captains first (see pictures for the result) and there was an awkward moment where we picked teams and everyone experienced flashbacks to P.E. class. In the second game Chris and Richard were the captains.

Thanks to everyone who came… there were worries about the weather and if anyone would turn up but in the end it was a really good day 🙂

best of craigslist : Why Geeks and Nerds Are Worth It…
I include this link as Jessica has been asking about it since I told her I had seen it on Diggnation. Hopefully it will prove to her that calling me a geek is inaccurate – there are far worse sun-fearing techies in this world… I play two sports – enough said.

Me and Jessica had a TV that was taking up space on the floor in the spare room and we wanted to get rid of it. I tried to give it to the local TV shop but they didn’t want it. I thought it would be a shame to throw it away as it still works and taking it to the dump just adds to the pile of hazardous materials.

I had a look at FreeCycle and put a post on the Sutton mailing list. Two days later and we have got rid of the TV and there is a lady in Surrey pleased with her free TV 🙂 If you want to get rid of some stuff I recommend you check out your local freecycle list as an alternative to throwing it away.

Space Invaders

Another fantastic video, you can also find pong if you search YouTube. I know I said there would be some more news and less videos… I’ll post my experience of freecycling tomorrow – no bikes involved.

Dominoes

Whilst I was looking I saw this too. I’ll try to avoid linking to videos too often though – there are plenty of places that already do that. Back to proper blogging soon.

BakuTen – house of dominos

I found this video through digg and it seems there are loads of these domino videos around. Pity we can’t tell what the commentator is saying. Also, I have not given Jessica the birthday pictures yet – once I do you can expect a blog entry from her.

On Sunday we had Matt and Steve over to be fed and play Risk. Me and Jessica prepared a starter and main course and Steve supplied a cheesecake for desert 🙂

We set a 2 hour time limit on our game of Risk and Jessica was the eventual winner when the limit was reached with us all still in the game (I think she had 14 territories). No one would have picked Jessica as the winner – she only had a few battles (whilst shouting “Banish the infidels”) and quietly took over most of Asia. Myself, Steve and Matt had some fairly large scale battles on the other side of the world with my proudest achievement being to hold every territory down the centre of the board – cutting the world in half. Hopefully we can play again soon.

Yesterday was Jessica’s birthday and I made her a meal to celebrate. My attempt to make her mother’s “Chicken Pilau” was OK but needed some more curry powder. I made up for this with the profiterole dessert shown to the right. We managed to eat half of them last night and hope to finish them off after TaeKwonDo this evening. I am sure Jessica will write an entry in her blog as soon as she has the time.

Finally I just wanted to share an image from James’ BBQ, taken on the day that England went out of the 2006 world cup. James doesn’t like the football so this was the viewing experience offered to those who came to his BBQ. In fairness we could have gone inside to watch the match and we did for England’s disappointing exit on penalties. I thought the picture looked pretty funny though – you would have thought BBC employees would be watching in HD!

If you like small cute mammals – take a look at these hamsters. I can only assume they are looking at something above them – it reminds me of the stories of helicopters flying low over penguins causing them all to fall over.

Last night at badminton I tried out the new rules that may be introduced at my club. To summarise the rules (for doubles):

• A point is scored on every rally regardless of which side is serving.
• A pair only has one serve – on winning the serve, the server is decided by examining the pairs score – an odd score means the player on the left serves, an even the right.
• Players within a pair only switch sides when a point is won on their serve (this is the same as the current rules).
• The first pair to 21 points wins (except as below)
• If both sides reach 20 points the winning team is the one that gets two clear points ahead or reaches 30 points first.

There is likely to be a survey of club members to see if they are willing to change to the new system. Feelings were mixed with the majority of players hating the new way of scoring. I thought the new system would be too confusing but I grasped it pretty quickly. Games are shorter now and mistakes are punished more readily- but there are upsides and downsides to both of these. I think the best move would be to go with the new system to keep us in-line with the rest of the world.

On the way home I saw a small mouse/shrew thing (fuzzy picture attached) whilst I was waiting for the bus.

Our house move went reasonably smoothly and we are now trying to unpack those last few boxes so that we can invite people over without making them sign a safety disclaimer. Thankfully all Jessica’s things fitted in the van (pictured) easily and I only had to drive to Isleworth once. Driving the van was not the most pleasant experience (1st gear seemed to do nothing) but we returned the van and got all our deposit back thanks to our bump-free travels.

The phone line should be connected next Monday and then broadband will follow 2-3 weeks later. I will try to put up some new pictures before then but the web-based uploading facilities (that I have to use at work) are painfully slow and involved.

In the meantime, have a look at this neat picture trick.

I just ran a spell-check on this post and it suggested I replace “Jessica’s” with “cheesecake” – fantastic!