bookmark_borderCross Country

My Dad (who gets his second mention of the day) is a P.E. teacher. He wasn’t sadistic at home, in fact he was a pretty darn good Dad to have if you ask me, and as he’s my Dad it’s only my opinion that counts (ohhh and my sister’s).

I didn’t go to the school my Dad teaches at, instead I got one of his friends as my P.E. teacher. As such I guess I was singled out for a little bit of teasing in P.E. class. Such as when practising the shotput, failing miserably (I wasn’t very athletic as a child), and being told that “My granny could piss further than that McLean.. “.

Anyway, I digress. As with most kids we too ‘enjoyed’ the rigours of the cross-country run in January, in hail, snow, or whatever Arctic conditions there were that day (and remember that this is Scotland, a damn sight closer to the icebergs than England). We enjoyed the camaraderie that it built – “pick him up, pick him up, if McIntyre see’s us he’ll make us do an extra lap again!”, and the joy that is communal, exhaustion-related vomiting. Those were the days.

Unfortunately we only got to run around the football pitches, unlike Scaryduck, who recounts another hilarious tale from his childhood. (Let your lunch go down before you go read it though).

bookmark_borderYa spoon…

Mike has some guests this week, one of which is Anna who has been persuaded from her little red boat onto dry land.

She recently posted about roses and spoons.

For some reason we used “Spoon!” as an insult when we were at school. Wish I could remember why…

Anyway, her list is funny in a “mouthful of coffee spat out all over keyboard whilst work colleagues look at you like some deranged idiot who is giggling his head off” kinda way. You have been warned.

bookmark_borderHey Dad!

My Dad has just spent some time recording some of his LP’s to a digital format on his PC. Cue the finding of a record deck, then the purchasing of new needles, then a pre-amp, then the right cables etc etc etc. He has gotten it working now and soon I’ll be able to download all the songs of Rabbie Burns at my leisure.

However it seems that technology is ahead of him. A guy named Ofer Springer decided to see if he could optically scan a vinyl record (on a flatbed scanner) and digitally ‘record’ from the image, to extract the music (via some clever decoding software): Digital Needle – A Virtual Gramophone.

Fascinating.

I’m a cheat

Yesterday I asked you to spot a link between one of my posts and Worzel Gummidge.

You all failed miserably (when I say all I mean the three of you who tried, thanks for that…).

But I kinda cheated because unless you had seen Equilibrium you wouldn’t now that Jon Sean Pertwee was in the movie and of course his dad was Mr.Gummidge.

[Updated courtesy of Lyle… dammit]

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Sweet tooth
I missed this completely, so thanks to Scotblog for pointing it out. It seems that Nestle were going to pull production of condensed milk – a sweet thick milk – and so jeopardise the tablet (and banoffee pie) industry in Scotland.
Thankfully they have reversed their decision so Scottish tablet is saved from a sticky end.

Genius or madman
Steven K.Roberts, creator of Behemoth, “A freewheeling lifestyle aboard a computerized recumbent bicycle”, and Microship, “Integrated Platforms for Open-Ended Technomadic Adventure” (likes to use the word “gizmological”). I say genius, what say you?

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