Archive for March, 2008

I love it so

Published by
Dan
at March 31, 2008 in General. 18 Comments

I frequently write about Amy and Evan on this blog, but it’s been a while since I mentioned my third child. I’m talking, of course, about my beloved iPod touch.

There were those who said that my fascination with it would not last. That once the novelty value of having it had worn off I’d relegated it to the back of the gadget drawer alongside the ice-cream maker and the hydo-electric beard buffer. But how wrong they were. I use it now more than ever.

Oh iPod touch how I love thee, let me count the ways:

    Video

    One of my common complaints used to be that I didn’t have any time for TV, but with the iPod touch this is no longer true. Now whenever I am faced with a dull five or ten minutes to fill I can whip out my iPod and watch whatever show I want. I have developed a voracious appetite for superhero TV cartoons. My main passion lays firmly in the Warner Bros/DC camp, with Batman, Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes and Justice League being regular fixtures in my day. I do occasionally stray from the fold however, and enjoy the odd episode of Xmen: Evolution and Ben 10 as well.

    I am, at heart, a twelve year old boy.

    Whether I be bored in the office, sitting in the car waiting for the kids to wake up, or taking care of business on the toilet, I always know that the ability to watch Batman beating the crap out the Joker is just a button push away. It doesn’t get much better than that.

    Of course I get all my videos completely legitimately. But if I didn’t all I would have to do is locate the TV show on surfthechannel.com, downloading it to my computer using the video download helper plugin for firefox, then convert it to an iPod video using iSquint.

    Internet

    I always log in first thing in the morning to see if anyone has commented on the blog while I slept. To call this routine obsessive compulsive would be to vastly understate it. Some people can’t operate in the morning without a cup of coffee. I can’t function until I’ve seen if some chap I don’t even know in Arkansas has validated my self worth by typing a couple of words into their internet browser.

    With the iPod I don’t have to go downstairs and fire up the laptop to do this. Now all I need to do is reach over to the bedside table and check my comments from the comfort of my own duvet. Then, after seeing if the internet loves me or not I can make the decision whether it is worth getting up.

    See the effect you people have on my life? Comment damn you, comment!

    Podcasts

    I’ve been doing a lot of walking in preparation for our 78 mile hike in July. Although I’ve not been as good at this as I could have been over the past couple of weeks, l since the beginning of February I’ve been walking roughly 15-25 miles a week.

    There is no way that I’d have been able to do this if it hadn’t been for the iPod. Fifteen to twenty five miles at a speed of 3.5 miles an hour equates to up to 7 hours of walking a week. Can you imagine if I’d have to spend that amount of time alone with my own thoughts? I’d have thrown myself in the canal with boredom after the first forty five minutes. I’m one of the MTV generation baby, I need constant stimulation 24 hours a day.

    My current favorite podcasts include The Bugle, The Adam and Joe Show, and Martin Kelner’s Piss Poor Podcast. I recomend each and every one of them unreservedly.

    Stalking

    Do you want to know what time it is where my friend Greg lives? It’s 10:24am. And the weather? Well it’s 1°C and snowing. I get a perverse pleasure in knowing this sort of information. I could even look at his house on Google earth if I wanted. In fact I think I’ll do that now. Mmmmm Gregory, I can see your chimney.

And there’s more! I use the notebook to record blog ideas, the photo album to show people pictures of my kids, and YouTube feature to watch kittens fall off tables. I could even check my stocks and shares if I had any stocks and shares, instead I just make do with checking other peoples.

And I even heard a rumor that you can actually listen to music on it too! Sounds a bit far fetched to me, I’ll have to check the user manual and let you know.

“It’s all Greek to me” Sunday

Published by
Dan
at March 30, 2008 in Competiton time. 11 Comments

Here’s how it works. I’ve take a short film synopsis and fed it into Bable Fish, an online translating service. I then translated the synopsis from English into Greek, and then from Greek back into English. The resulting gobbledygook is posted below and your task is to try and identify what movie the passage refers to.

I’m thinking about retiring “All Greek to me” Sunday for a while as I’m not too keen on having two regular weekly features running concurrently. This won’t be the last one however, but it may be the penultimate, so get your guesses in quick.

Made for least from the cost of SUV, the first film of [director] finds 22-years fast employee [character] of attitudes ([actor]) that is called in the work for the precious day far. There it is from the customers that oscillate from upset as insane, in order to we do not report in order to it reports [character] ([actor]), the employee from the television next door of shops. Actually, it was employees intelligent dialogue, that with reports popular-culture, what they raised the [film] in order to they strike the place between production - Xers and they converted the [director] from the school abandonment of films in auteur indie. (USA, 1994)

Last week’s winner was Craig. Which raises an unfortunate problem as his presence on the internet is rather limited to say the least. The best I can do is point you to our poker site which he hasn’t even updated since February of last year. The lazy bastard. He does however have his own Wikipedia page. However according to that it appears he died in an avalanche in 2003. I wonder if his girlfriend knows.

———

In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.

Especially for Oli

Published by
Dan
at March 30, 2008 in Photo posts. 10 Comments

Attempting to persuade myself that flash isn’t evil.

jump

kiss

Gravatars

Published by
Dan
at March 29, 2008 in Blogging. 12 Comments

Just in case you’ve been wondering why little pictures show up next to some peoples comments and not others in my comments section, it’s because those people have loaded up a avatar on gravatar.com.

This was a very boring post I know, but Rattling the Kettle stole the joke I was going to use.

Crash, bang, wallop, what a picture!

Published by
Dan
at March 28, 2008 in Photo posts. 19 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about photography recently. People are often very complimentary about my photos, but the sad truth is that about 70% of the quality comes from our camera rather than me. I’m not being falsely modest here; I recognize that I have a fairly reasonable eye for a shot, and that I’ve become far more technically able in the last year or so (I now remember to take the lens cap off on six out of ten occasions for example). But I have a long way to go before I’d consider myself a proper photographer.

I’ve been watching Boston Pat’s project 365 where he takes a photo every single day with a mixture of admiration and jealousy. It strikes me as a wonderful way of both honing his skills and chronicling his day to day existence. Of course I could never do something so ambitious. It’s not that I’m too lazy; far from it. It’s just that Kerry won’t let me. Yeah, that’s it. She’s deliberately holding me back because if I become better than her at photography it will mean that she only holds superiority over me in intelligence, looks, common sense and general cleanliness.

But despite all this I have been making moves to improve my photos of late. I’ve bought another lens, I’ve borrowed a flash from Oli, and I’ve also been getting the occasional photography magazine.

The magazines have been raising a lot of questions for me. Questions such as “Who would pay £1166 for a camera tripod?”, “Why is every second photo in the magazine either of a hawk or a beach?”, and “I wonder how much those ‘models’ advertised in the back pages charge?”

But the question that’s posed me the greatest dilema is “How much photoshop is too much photoshop?”.

One of the magazines I bought had a tutorial in which you transform an image from this, into this:

photoed

I may have gone a little overboard on pepping up the colors, but there’s little doubt the second one looks better. But is it still a photo or is it now art? To some the distinction is meaningless, photo’s are art and that’s all that there is to it. I get that viewpoint, I sympathize with it, hell I even have that viewpoint. But I want my photos to be honest too.

I try to be truthful on the blog because I value it as a record as much as I value it as a creative expression. Sometimes I am tempted to bend the truth or to put words into people’s mouths just because it would be somehow more entertaining. But I’ve always resisted these urges. I only embellish the truth when my lies are so outlandish that people will instinctively know that I’m talking out of my arse. Similarly I’ve played with photoshop in the past, but never in an attempt to deceive.

Don’t get me wrong, I do doctor many of my photos. But only by tweaking the sharpness, or the contrast, or making them black and white. In the image above though I made both the zebra and the mountain in the background bigger, and then shifted them about so as to get a better composition. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that level of manipulation.

“So don’t do it then!” You say. And you’re right, the solution is that simple. But the whole thing has raised a question within me about documentary versus art, and it’s one that I’m finding stimulating to think about. And as you all know, there’s nothing in this world I enjoy more than stimulating myself.

An experiment

Published by
Dan
at March 27, 2008 in General. 19 Comments

What’s the point in having guinea pigs if you aren’t going to do scientific experiments on them?

I took two guinea pigs and exposed them to an episode of America’s Next Top Model in laboratory conditions.

pigcomic copy

There, it is now a scientifically proven fact. America’s Next Top Model is officially shit. Next week, The Jeremy Kyle Show.

———

In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.

Squeak squeak squeak

Published by
Dan
at March 26, 2008 in General. 13 Comments

Did you know that other than human beings, guinea pigs are the only creature in the animal kingdom that are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies? And did you know that potatoes are deadly poisonous to a guinea pig?

Well I do.

And do you know why I know all these exciting guinea pig facts? Because I am now a proud and responsible guinea pig owner, that’s why.

There is a secret to persuading reluctant spouses to allow you to buy livestock. All you have to do is wait until they are in important business meetings and then bombard them with begging SMS messages on their work mobiles. It’s a little known fact, but that’s precisely how Siegfried persuaded Roy to let him get an albino tiger. Kerry should count herself lucky.

But what’s better than one guinea pig?

Two guinea pigs!

And what’s better than two guinea pigs?

One guinea pig and one pregnant guinea pig! Huzzah!

Yes, soon we will be hearing the pitter patter of little guinea trotters. There were only two females left in the shop, and one of them was up the duff (the store policy of caging both males and females in the same enclosure may be a little unwise in my view). It’s not fair to keep just one on it’s own so I bought both.

Of course I could have just left without buying either of them. But I had the kids with me and Amy would have been heartbroken. Anyway, we raised a litter of guinea piglets back when I was a child and I remember them being simply adorable. They are born with all their fur you know. Plus the pet shop told me I could just bring the offspring back to them when they were about six weeks old and they would take them off my hands. A plan with no drawbacks.

I’m not sure when Max (for that is her name) is due to give birth. But I have a stack of clean towels and some hot water on permanent standby just in case. We already have the birth plan all figured out: we’re hoping for a home delivery, but are open to the possibility of medical intervention if required. The father won’t be present so we’re going to have Evan cut the cord. We’re also currently in talks for Americanmum to act as Doula, but the negotiations have hit a stumbling block due to Max only being willing to pay in sunflower seeds (although to be fair I think you get twelve seeds to the dollar these days).

I haven’t subjected the poor creatures to a photo shoot yet as they have had more than enough to contend with today. What with Evan constantly harassing them shouting “WOOF WOOF!!” and Amy sticking lettuce leafs in their eyes I’m sure they already think themselves in some sort of obscure circle of Dante’s inferno.

I should have some photos tomorrow though.

———

In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.

Guest Post Tuesday: Becky

Published by
Dan
at March 25, 2008 in Guest post. 26 Comments

It’s a big blog world out there and there’s a lot of people saying a lot interesting things. What’s more, there are many funny and intelligent people out there that don’t even have blogs. I know, I don’t understand it either. After all, what could possibly be better than writing a blog?

Why, getting someone else to write your blog for you of course!

This is the first in what I intend to be a series of guest posts. Some of them will be written by established bloggers, some by people who have never blogged in their life. But all of them will be write by people I admire in some way. When it’s boiled down to its very essence, blogging is all about showing off. Showing off our kids, our writing, our photos, or our knowledge. With my Guest Post Tuesdays I’m hoping to show off some of the cool people I know, both in the Blogesphere or the real world. I’m also hoping to expand the horizons of this blog a little, to get a few different perspectives and a few different voices.

Please let me know if you think this isn’t working out, or if you think a weekly guest post is too frequent a schedule. I’m playing it by ear here and any feedback will be most gratefully received.

So anyway, here we go…

—————————————

Transvestism - a Guide for Straight People

1424341267_283c12d8a7Hi, my names Becky, but mainly Simon. I’d better explain.

I’m a transvestite, and although I spend most of my time as a man, I tend to blog under my female alter-ego, Becky. My blog is over at www.beckysweb.co.uk. Good, got the plug in nice and early!

As a medium, blogging has become almost all-pervasive, but there is a certain degree of “ghettoisation” between the various blogging communities. So, for example, there’s not much crossover between the “daddy bloggers” and the “tranny bloggers”.

It doesn’t take too much effort to work out that Dan’s firmly in the daddy bloggers camp, he’s just confident enough in his own masculinity to read (and link to) a tranny blog. Even though he does like music by Ben Folds Five (which even Ben Folds himself described as “punk rock for sissies”) I’m pretty certain he’s as masculine as any nurse. Well, any bearded nurse.

Anyway, when Dan wrote to me asking to take part in this guest-blogging con trick, I thought it would be a great way to break out from within the confines of the tranny blogger community and educate the straight masses about some facts about trannies. This is my tranny outreach work, if you will.

Five Facts About Transvestites

  1. Transvestites are men who gain pleasure from wearing clothing of the opposite sex and/or emulating femininity.
  2. Trannies are cool and fun people to know.
  3. Think about all the men you know. One of them is a tranny. No not him, he’s just a bit camp. That other guy, the one you wouldn’t suspect at all. Yeah, him!
  4. Famous transvestites include Eddie Izzard the famous comedian, and Grayson Perry the Turner prize-winning potter. Johnny Vegas, whilst known for comedy and pottery, is NOT a transvestite.
  5. If you laid all the trannies in the world end to end, they’d fill up two Wembley stadiums to the height of Nelson’s Column, or the equivalent of 1000 London buses travelling to the moon and back for 10 years.

Five Misconceptions About Transvestites

  1. Trannies aren’t gay. Well, mostly. There’s probably a higher percentage of gay and bi types in the tranny community than the non-tranny community. Basically if a tranny says he’s not gay, believe him… if he tells you that no trannies are gay, don’t believe him, and start to suspect he might be over-compensating.
  2. Trannies aren’t mentioned at all in the bible. Except for a bit about men not wearing women’s clothes, but we tend to ignore that bit as it’s in the same chapter as stuff about not wearing poly-cotton fabrics, and the necessity of burning prostitutes.
  3. Trannies don’t have “Heroes-like” super powers. I thought once that I could control time and space, but it turned out I’d just had too much coffee.
  4. Trannies don’t all want to become women. Some do, but they call themselves “transsexuals”. The transsexual/transvestite thing is muddied by the fact that some transsexuals start off calling themselves transvestites. This is a bit like a caterpillar trying on the wings to make sure they fit, before the inevitable happens. A lot of transvestites aren’t caterpillars at all, they just like borrowing the wings.
  5. Trannies aren’t weird… well, mostly. I’ve met some pretty weird people at tranny clubs, but then again I’ve met some pretty weird people in my local shop. At least trannies don’t tattoo every inch of their body and buy two litres of the cheapest cider they can findÖ well, mostly. I’m sorry I’ve forgotten where I was going with this point.

So, there you have it. Consider yourself educated about trannies. If you require any more information I’m happy to take questions via email. I’m off now to find out how much Dan is paying me for this… bye!

Becky EnVérité
Kingís Lynn, March 2008

A quickie

Published by
Dan
at March 24, 2008 in General. 12 Comments

Just a few points today.

Firstly thanks to Karl over at Secondhand Tryptophan and Whit at Honea Express for allowing me to call into their radio show last night. If you want to hear what a bumbling Englishman sounds like when he has to contend with the Pacific time delay you can listen to the whole thing here. If you don’t then just listen until I phone in at around 45 minutes, then turn it off in disgust at my amateurism and charity peddling.

Secondly, on Tuesday I launch a new regular feature on this blog. Some of you know what this is, some of you don’t. I’m still unsure if it’s going to work or not, so please mosey on round here tomorrow and let me know what you think.

And thirdly, just take a look at this cheeky chap. Who ever said that eating Cadbury’s cream eggs in bed was a bad idea? Getting chocolate all over the bed-sheets is what Easter is all about.

At least I hope it was chocolate.

IMG_1730 copy

“It’s all Greek to me” Sunday

Published by
Dan
at March 23, 2008 in Competiton time. 14 Comments

Here’s how it works. I’ve take a short film synopsis and fed it into Bable Fish, an online translating service. I then translated the synopsis from English into Greek, and then from Greek back into English. The resulting gobbledygook is posted below and your task is to try and identify what movie the passage refers to.

A pretty tricky one this week. Could it be the first “All Greek to me” Sunday to have no correct guesses?

Goodbye, order! Hello, summertime! But for the [character], the [character], [character], and [character], these interruptions are not no day in the beach. That’s because they’re all that function in a club of countries that is founded from [character] and the family! And with the annual talent club’s you present right round the corner, [character] where the competitive instincts. Dump [character] as collaborator and it begins to seek [character] in order to it links her onstage this. The [character] is from convulsed that [character] has agreed with [character]. How it could make this in? The things heat above in the turfs of high society. Will [character] and the [character] realise that they’re it meant it is? Or be already too much late for their in order to a last song joint?

Last week’s winner was Oli. He doesn’t have a blog as such, just a rarely updated Livejournal site. He does however have a excellent online photo gallery which includes a rather wonderful array of floppy faces.

———

In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.

« Previous Entries