Tag Archives: awesome

Update

Weekend of awesome

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Done so many wonderful things this weekend with wonderful people at the 10th annual coast party Damian hosts. A few brief highlights (in no particular order):

Spent time talking, singing, dancing and hanging out with some of the loveliest people in the world (the whole wide world)
Drove a Porsche
Ran 12 miles
Tried ‘rock’ fish (Huss, a white fish)
Threw actual rocks at other rocks
Contributed to the construction of a giant sand village (chief Architect: Nicky. Chief Engineer: Pob)
Got bowled out in one ball in a game of beach cricket, sulked
Swum in indoor and outdoor pools
BBQ-ed
DJ-ed for 3 hours
Danced for 3-4 hours
Told many embarrassing story about ‘Banana Oops’ Damian
Got styled as Bowie (check out my current FB profile pic)
Acted out all the moves to ‘I’m on a boat’
Ate fresh apples off a tree
Lost a sprint race
Won a push-up challenge
Failed to ignite a grass-filled moat/trench defence at midnight on Saturday
Learned how to play an exceedingly complex board game designed to halt the rise of Cthulu (Arkham Horror, I think)
Was impressed by Serena’s mad poetry skills.
Failed to play any poker due to an inadvertently early bedtime
Failed to go to bed till morning due to an advertently late bedtime
Referenced FoTC at every possible occasion
Tried to take some good pictures with my recently acquired Nikon D-80 (need to work out depth of field).
Discovered I actually like marmite. Never thought I did.

Amazing weekend. Massive props to all involved. Big up yourselves.

Music

Offspring @ Brixton – mini gig review

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offspring at brixton In a word, awesome. I didn’t particularly know the support acts (Broadway Calls and Rival Schools), but (despite being alright) they paled in comparison to the 80 minutes of high-paced, high adrenaline action the Offspring delivered. Can’t help but think they deliberately mess up the levels on the support acts to make the headliners sound better.

I persuaded Matt to come with me, and despite the fact he’s not a fan, the Offspring’s 20 years of performing and recording (!!) resulted in enough tunes for him to recognise and nod along to. Having lost some weight I was able to do the jump-up-and-down-headbanging-thing (bouncing? that’s not very rock) without injuring my knee, which was pretty satisfying when they played Self-Esteem.

Huge fun.

Amusing to see Dexter play a song on piano too (vid not mine, but courtesy of YouTube). In a separate note, Noodles (whose chat is pretty awful) was one of the most precise guitarists I’ve seen for a while.

Technology

Satnav is wonderful

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The TomTom One XL warped us through Bristol, Bath and Basing countryside, helping us when it was dark, raining, trafficky and generally too much hassle for maps. We didn’t encounter any significant issues despite using it for journeys large and small, intricate and simple. It is definitely weaker when you have to encounter private roads (e.g. going to shopping centres etc), but you should definitely be doing some thinking yourself when you’re driving, so perhaps that’s for the best.

The comedy voices (Jean-Luc, Yoda etc) were, as previously blogged, invariably dropped in favour of someone more normal. I’d always want to switch back to Jean Luc for the end of the journey, though, as being told to ‘engage docking procedures’ always made me smile.

BUT: I still haven’t convinced Amanda. I think she gets satisfaction from the process and mental discipline required to plot out and follow a route in the old school way. So it may be a while before we source a SatNav device for use in this household, but again that all depends on how well the driving instruction goes…

…which is OK. But I need to practice my maneuvers. Part of me feels I need to book a test so I have a deadline to work towards; most of me feels like I really don’t have enough time to get ‘good’ enough to persuade the DVLA to give me a license. [sigh]. More work needed.

Television

BBC’s Merlin == awesome

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Did anyone else bear witness on Saturday? Ok, so the CGI dragon is a little ropey, but it has all the ingredients of awesome. Hopefully they’re done with exposition for now and can get on with some real drama… Very glad its set up for a 13 episode run as am sure it’ll sell well beyond the UK and earn itself new seasons.

Was anyone else a bit weirded out to see Gwen Cooper shifting forms?

Film, Internet

The Interwebs is amazing (pt 54)

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Pat was going on at me to watch the new Iron Man trailer, so when I caught it listed (atypically) on The Superficial, I naturally checked it out. It is awesome, Robert Downey Jr seems to be an inspired piece of casting and I’m getting increasingly excited about a character and film I didn’t give two hoots about. It may also be that Toby R & Pat and people telling me how amazing the new spate of Marvel films are going to be is sinking in…

But the bit that makes the interwebs cool was when I googled “Iron Man Theme” because I couldn’t remember where I heard the rockin’ riff at the end (and I didn’t want to pay Shazam any money, and yes, shame on me)… And found this. Music and lyrics included. The awesome randomness of the Interwebs.