bookmark_borderWHOOOOOSSSHHHH

“Believe it or not, that is the sound of an invasion, yes, that is the sound created by…” (Sorry that track started playing just as I was typing this – can you name it? – now, where was I?)

Ohh yes. That is the sound of your weekend as it zips past. Yesterday’s DIY orgasms produced a large load in the shape of a wardrobe (which I will NOT be taking on our trip to Everest, thank you Peter), and today as we are non-smokers we decided on a post-coital trip to IKEA (which is slightly masochistic, let’s be honest). This was rendered only slightly disturbing by the fact that we were meeting my Mum and Dad* there.

We spent the usual £30 in the marketplace on.. the usual nothing; candles, some storage boxes and the like. Then we grabbed some lunch, as I’m a sucker for Swedish meatballs, and headed home. A quick coffee later and it was back out to Homebase to try and find some wood to make a headboard … sigh…

Dinner at the Cricklewood Hotel (chilli chicken with cashew for me, delicious) and then home to take advantage of the clear skies and set up the telescope (I hate it when it’s cloudy, you just can’t see into number 73’s bedroom properly…).

Right now I’m editing ID3 tags and filenames of 20GB of MP3s, halfway done, rapidly losing the will to live.

Otherwise it was a quick weekend, we did some other things quite a lot too, can you guess what? 😉

* Similarly… well sort of.. last night we were discussing putting some photos up in our ‘almost finished bedroom’. We browsed through a few old albums and picked a few out. It was only after we’d picked them out that a thought occured to me: I’d really rather NOT have my parents, and hers, staring down at us whilst we … well you know … shag.

bookmark_borderThank you Black & Decker

Armed only with my cordless screwdriver and a hammer, we tamed the beast that is an MFI “Tall Robe with 3 drawers”. We bought it about 5 years ago (somewhere in Aylesbury) and it has travelled from our flat in Aylesbury, to a flat in Watermead, to a flat in Bothwell, to our house in Hamilton. All that moving and only one little ding on a corner of one of the shelves.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow we start training for Everest (the mountain, not the double glazing). Should be a doddle.

bookmark_borderOffline

Turn off, log out, shut down: Steve Cisler goes offline.

“Some people can’t understand it; others envy me because they’re so tired of e-mail and spam and Nigerian 419 letters.”

It’s an oft pondered thought here at Snowgoon Towers and views are frequently proferred by her ladyship on this topic, as always they are insightful, thought provoking and very evocative:

“If you don’t get off that damn computer I’m gonna take it outside and beat it with the bloodied stump of your arm!!”

OK, that’s not true, but we* all know that’s what she** means when she says:

“Ohh you on the computer again?”

* Married men with blogs ***
** she who must be obeyed
*** I’m generalising here, obviously we are not ALL that bad…

bookmark_borderLess is more

Design-wise I’m a minimalist. I like clean edges, simple straight colours, lack of clutter. My watch is probably a good indication, and I’ve even researched how to use this approach for technical writing (my day job – an interesting article this one, applicable to much more than writing technical documentation). Web design also tends towards to minimalism, although it is shifting slightly as functionality increases (like any good product should).

One well known designer in this area is Arne Jacobsen (there are others), if you’ve never heard of him, just think of the egg chairs in the film 2001, or perhaps St. Catherine’s College.

IKEA too has done it’s bit promoting the ideals of minimalism (although we seem to have a lot more stuff since we started shopping there) and it has a good team of designers, yes shopping there is a pain, but that’s only because it is so popular.

Ideally I think I need to find some sort of fusion between Japanese and Scandinavian design, both are similar in style despite having radically different histories. Ohh to be able to attend the Stockholm Furniture Fair, or do I need to get out more?

So, what prompted all this? These pictures of the SAS Radisson Royal. I stayed there when I was in Copenhagen a couple of years ago, and don’t have any pictures of it… I spent about an hour wandering around the hotel the night I arrived (my room overlooked Tivoli but I never got there). I remember every detail of the corridors, the lobby, and the room itself. It felt so comfortable being there.

bookmark_borderAtom(ic) Blogger

What is Atom?

I was faffing (sp?) about with Blogger yesterday and spotted something that said Atom, but I never got around to checking it out (vaguely an RSS bell was ringing in my head).

I’m not really sure what the impact of this will be, but I’ll dig around later on… but right now, it’s late..

bookmark_borderOnly in the UK

The Naked rambler completes his trek. Bravo that man. I think his motives were correct, and he never deviated from his core ideals – more power to him for that.

However I do think that this is a uniquely British thing (eccentric? Maybe… slightly mad… definitely), no, not the ‘naked trek’ bit, the ‘naked trek in the middle of winter’ bit. I can only assume he is.. let’s say… more than adequate in the middle leg department, because let’s face it (and you guys will know what I’m getting at) the cold is not your best friend when you are THAT exposed…