There is no doubt – this is the best thing on the internet ever! As usual I have caught onto something several months after everyone else. Have a look at line rider.
Draw a few lines and send the scarf wearing sledger hurtling down your creation. After that use this link and see what is possible* with the game.
* Some poeple have way too much time on their hands!
Recently I bought a widescreen monitor for my PC. I usually use pictures from the camera for my desktop wallpaper and now they are all in the wrong aspect ratio 🙁
I modified the attached image to fit my desktop and decided to share it online (blogger squashes it a bit though) as I know my mum will like it.
Today I was lucky enough to accompany Chris on a flight over the South of England. The weather was really good and there were a lot of other people in the air – in planes, microlites and even hot air balloons. We flew from Redhill, past the office and then over to Guildford. Then we flew down to the south coast to have a look at Brighton, Beachy Head and Eastbourne before going back to Redhill.
We flew in a 4-seater Diamond Star plane with a single propeller. My seat had similar controls to the pilot’s so I was able to have a go at flying once we were safely airborne. The idea was to fix on a point in the distance and to keep an eye on the position of the horizon relative to the top of the “dashboard”. I think I managed O.K. as there were no screams from Chris. Whilst flying down the coast the plane wanted to head out to sea and I needed to do a 30 degree (wing angle) turn. It was the steeper turns that I found more daunting and it was difficult to keep a steady altitude.
Chris did a few 60 degree turns during the flight and during these we experienced about 2G – I tried lifting my arms and they felt really heavy. I took a few photos during the flight and I might put them up on the website soon. I was once again reminded how green England is… and how flat it is “down South”!
Many thanks to Chris for the flight – I owe him at least a pub lunch now!
I know everyone who saw the mentos/diet coke fountain video were very impressed with it. It seems coke and mentos were too – they helped the makers out and there is now a sequel!
It doesn’t really work for me but take a look at let me know what you think.
A weekend of mixed fortunes…
Jessica entered the South East TAGB competition on Sunday but wasn’t able to bring home a trophy. She competed in the inidividual pattern and team pattern event. I went along to cheer her on but we both came away feeling the event was badly run and lacking in fairness. As in any sport there is no point in arguing with the referee or judges, but I witnessed a lot of mistakes during the day.
Perhaps the worst part of the competition is the weight restrictions on the categories. The weights for ladies are arranged so that the majority of people end up in the heavyweight class. It costs £10 to enter the sparring competition and if you are weighed and need to change category they will demand a £10 fine if you wish to stay in the competition. There is no allowance for height which plays an important part in a sport that has the highest points for a kick to the head. As a result a shorter person who is re-classified post weighing can pay £20 to be bashed on the head by someone much taller and heavier.
In the evening I played my first badminton match of the season…
C&P 5 Oakhill 4
My badminton partner and I have a tendancy to create large point leads in games before somehow self-destructing and losing. Our first game against Oakhill went exactly to form – we were 10-4 up in one game and still managed to lose i t 15-13.
A badminton match in the Ravensbourne league involves two teams each mad up of 3 pairs. Each pair plays all three pairs on the opposing team resulting in 9 “rubbers”. A rubber is the best of three games. Me and Chris lost our first two rubbers and as we went on for our final rubber the team scores were 4 rubbers each. Thankfully we managed to pull it out of the bag and win the final rubber in 2 games. Hopefully we can continue to improve as we play Catford Wanderers next Sunday.
I have created a post listing some interesting Podcasts, but as the majority of them are technology related I have posted it on the tech blog (to keep Jessica happy). Take a look 🙂
A busy end to this week… on Wednesday me and Jessica went bowling with some of our Taekwondo class and on Friday we went to Thorpe Park with some work colleagues.
About twelve people from our Taekwondo class made the trip to “City Limits” for some ten-pin bowling action. I had already identified this as an opportunity to actually beat the black belts at something and two were there for the challenge. My chances looked uncertain as Terry claimed she had never been bowling before, but Lynda’s first few throws looked dangerously professional. In the end I managed to win the first game and came second in the next one. It looked like I had the second sewn up but Terry came back with about four strikes in a row! Some hustling going on there I think.
Thorpe park was excellent – we had fears that the weather was going to spoil the day but the only rain was whilst we were queuing (undercover) for the front row of Nemesis. Stealth was quite an experience… I am not sure what I thought about it as it was very intense but also over quite quickly. The acceleration was breathtaking and it felt faster than “Rita Queen of Speed” did last year at Alton Towers. I got a bit wet on the Ribena Rhumba Rapids so decided to sit out the log flume. Only Steve was daft enough to go on the “Tidal Wave” and we stood on the bridge spanning the track to watch. Steve’s boat caused a larger than normal splash and managed to soak half the bridge and the only person occupying that half – Jessica 🙁 
I have added some pictures of both events to the picture library.
On a completely unrelated note:
Jessica spotted this young fox on the steps of our flat this morning. The rain was coming down and I think it just wanted some shelter… it looked quite relaxed and didn’t seem to care that it was in plain view of everyone.
After seeing it on Diggnation I decided to give the South Park character designer a go. This is as close as I could get to something that looked like me – hopefully Jessica will have a go at creating a version of herself.
I’m at home today whilst Jessica is at Taekwondo because I pulled a muscle in the (previously mentioned) sparring session and probably won’t be back in action until Thursday 🙁
A sad event happened this weekend when me and Jessica found that our local Chinese restaurant “Tak Zahn” had closed down. We had hopes of one day becoming regulars and getting extra starters etc. thrown in with our orders – Jessica managed this with her previous take-away in Isleworth. Before finding out there was no hope, we’d decided to celebrate our 20 month anniversary by actually getting a table in the restaurant instead of getting take-out. Such a shame we will never sample their spicy chilli beef again 🙁
We went along to Anna’s Thai restaurant instead and had another excellent meal. The swan featured on the left formed the centre of our starter platter. Extra credit for the super-cheery waiter who served the majority of our food.
Jessica is going to enter the South East Taekwondo championships so she attended an extra sparring class this morning. I thought I’d have a go too and was reasonably pleased with my efforts – I think I will leave the competing up to Jessica though. I am currently working on a website for the club alongside one of their black-belts. I’ll post a link when I feel it is ready for exhibition.
Ahoy! Today be talk like a Pirate day so ye should all be addin’ ‘me hearties’ t’ every sentence, me hearties. I decided t’ share these pirate chat-up lines I found on t’ internet me hearties.
Wanna shiver me timbers?
’tis a fine treasure chest!
Prepare to be boarded!
Avast! If ye can’t find a parrot, why not take your guinea pig for a walk me hearties?