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Boredom Becomes Me

Hmm music related boredom time-filler… worth a go, I would say. Tagged are those I’m curious to hear from…
I’m extra bored though, so you’ll notice each scene has 3 songs. This is because I wanted to pretend to be scientific and ran the test 3 separate times start to finish to see if I got a similar set of answers each time… Like I said, I was bored. Anyone tagged can do it as few or as many times as you like…

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

If your life was film what would the soundtrack be?

So, here’s how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)

2. Put it on shuffle

3. Press play

4. For every question, type the song that’s playing

5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

7. When you’re finished tag some other people to do it!

Opening Credits:

a) Kosheen – Hide U

b) Announcement by George Wein (Ella Fitzgerald @ Newport Jazz Festival)

c) 433 er0s – Sudden Death

Waking Up:

a) Moby – Tomorrow Never Dies James Bond Theme

b) T. Rex – Zip Gun Boogie

c) System of a Down – Highway Song

First Day At School:

a) R.E.M. – Monty Got a Raw Deal

b) Blur – On the Way to the Club

c) The Lion King – The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Falling In Love:

a) Lenny Kravitz – Straight Cold Prayer

b) Snoop Dogg – Murder Was the Case

c) The Corrs – Radio

Fight Song:

a) Bruce Springsteen – Sinaloa Cowboys

b) The Beatles – Something

c) Green Day – She’s a Rebel

Breaking Up:

a) Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire

b) Dire Straits – Your Latest Trick

c) Phil Collins – Both Sides of the Story

Prom:

a) The Mars Volta – This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed

b) The Ataris – Ray…

c) The Ataris – Song #13

Life:

a) Coal Chamber – Loco

b) Pendulum – Tarantula

c) Cypress Hill – A Man

Making Babies:

a) Damien Rice – I Remember

b) Bob Marley – Reaction

c) Stiff Little Fingers – Wait and See

Mental Breakdown:

a) Aretha Franklin – I Apologize

b) Bloodhound Gang – Asleep at the Wheel

c) Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows

Driving:

a) Chumbawamba – Tubthumping

b) KoRn – Justin

c) David Bowie – Drive-In Saturday

Flashback:

a) Limp Bizkit – My Way

b) Johnny Cash – Luther Played the Boogie

c) Anti-Flag – I’m Being Watched by the CIA

Getting Back Together:

a) Woody Guthrie – We Shall Be Free

b) Simon & Garfunkel – Homeward Bound

c) Alisha’s Attic – Indestructible

Birth of a Child:

a) Placebo – This Picture

b) Mr. Scruff – Mushroom Jazz

c) Tears for Fears – Change

Final Battle:

a) Phön – Nix Ausser Asche

b) Stateside Hombres – Come Outa Here

c) Kittie – Wolves

Death Scene:

a) Arctic Monkeys – The View from the Afternoon

b) Golden Earring – Burning Stuntman

c) Jools Holland & His Rhythm and Blues Orchestra – Hop the Wag

Funeral Song:

a) [spunge] – Idols

b) Lenny Kravitz – Butterfly

c) Puddle of Mudd – Control

End Credits:

a) The Miles Davis Quintet – Blues by Five

b) The Blues Brothers – “B” Movie Box Car Blues

c) AC/DC – Kissin’ Dynamite

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So, what do I think? What do you think?

Looking at it all, I’m only going to comment on (a) as it seems to be the only one with a chance of actually working. The later tests just got more and more weird, with the occasional working track and the rest just plain random.

My view is that if the film was written around that soundtrack it would be extremely cool in a sort of random, funky-weird way. Whilst a lot of the songs could be appropriate for their ‘sections’ if you take an extremely in-depth and abstract look at them (let’s face it, if you think long enough, any song could be argued for most roles) a lot of them would just force the scrip to be as weird as a writer could make it.

Examples of that include:

  • Springsteen’s Sinaloa Cowboys as fight music – not a standard approach.
  • Woody Guthrie’s We Shall Be Free as a getting back together song… interesting approach if it hadn’t been played in the film up to that point and therefore isn’t being used as a memory-jogger.
  • Arctic Monkeys’ The View from the Afternoon just wouldn’t work for a death scene as far as I can work it out. It would be fun to see if it could, but I just can’t envision it. Maybe short, sharp, static shots of each step of the death could work, but it’s not easy to me, which is why I’m not in films, probably.
  • Equally, Idols by [spunge] would make for a weird funeral tune, unless it was particularly upbeat and ‘out there’. Which could be fun.
  • Closing with Blues by Five is nothing less than a stroke of genius by the random generator.

Looking across all three playlists there seem to be a couple of key areas that are always unexpected: Prom; Fight Song; Birth of a Child.

I can only presume these are for three reasons:

a) Prom: I’m not American

b) Fight Song: The thought of me fighting and surviving any length of time is simply absurd (and laughable)

c) Birth of a Child: Not likely

But maybe I’m thinking too hard about it.

In general I think it’s hard for Mental Breakdown not to work with nearly any tune, as it can be made random enough to fit, equally so for Flashback, depending on what it was a flashback of.

And there we have it. The gauntlet has been thrown down. Over to you good folks to fill your bored moments with music:

Mike, Diko, Rob, John, Duncan, Alex, Bear, Ste, Gash, and Bear-cub, the challenge is yours…

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Worthy Cause

I don’t normally go in for these sort of things, not because I’m a tight-arse, just that I find the majority of the sponsored events lacking in certain areas. But for some reason this one really appeals to me.

http://www.jonobacon.org/?p=907

There’s the link. To sum it up, Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager, author, musician, and Open Source legend, amongst other things is going to record, mix, and release an entire album’s worth of original music in his home studio in just one 24 hour marathon session.

The music when finished will be released under his usual Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license on http://www.recreantview.org – his central internet location for all his recorded works – check it out.
Except where stated, all the main instruments (acoustic, electric, bass and drums) are played and recorded by Jono himself – no small amount of talent I’m sure you’ll agree!

So, go ahead, read his post, sponsor him – it’s all for a good cause.

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Gutted

Back in Egypt, in Cairo at the moment. Probably here for a week or so, trying to get the RSE Website in order a long with a few other bits and pieces. Don’t know where I’m going to actually get to do this yet though, as the internet here and in the neighbouring spots doesn’t seem to quite be working right. Also means I’m going to have to use OS X for a lot of it, especially the testing, as I still can’t get a workable Flash Player for PPC Linux that would let me test the YouTube Integration and other cool things we’ve got planned. Shame really.

The flight back was good with no real holdups or issues. Arrival in Cairo though soon told me that for some reason my Egyptian SIM Card is unable to make calls or send SMS Messages, so I need to try and get that sorted out later on. Also, I’m pretty sure the taxi driver robbed me blind on the fare, not as bad as I’ve been done before, but bad. Still, it was late and I was tired so I can’t be 100% sure of my accuracy there.

The one massive downside to my travelling yesterday was my shock and horror while I was reading.
For the last few days I have been reading Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia by Joesph D. Pistone – yes, it’s the true story that the film starring Johnny Depp is based on.

It’s a fascinating read, filling in a whole number of gaps the film could simply never manage to incorporate. I got through it at a rapid pace and then, suddenly, in Milan I hit a snag.

Two sentences didn’t quite match up going from page to page. I sat, staring, trying to work out what I’d missed when it hit me. Page 97. The page I had just read was Page 272. It had jumped back in time.

But, I thought, no big deal, it can’t be more than a page or two, just a simple printing process slip up, right?

Wrong.

What I have instead is 47 pages of stuff that I’ve read before, and it doesn’t simply continue at Page 273 after this weird interruption, instead it actually manages to omit the following 47 pages (273-320) and continue again mid-sentence.

Now, I probably could have carried on reading from there and filled in the gaps on my own, but I didn’t want to do that. Luckily for me, I had made an impulse by at Heathrow of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins which I’ve heard a lot about and thought it was worth a try. At first glance it seems pretty interesting, although it is set to be more difficult to understand than Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time judging by the first couple of chapters. But that’s not always a bad thing. I still miss finding out more about the Donnie Brasco story though – I am going to email the publishers (Hodder) later and see if I have any chance of a replacement at some point in time. But given that I’m not going to be back until probably at least June, even with a positive result it could be a while until I manage to finish reading it. 🙁 Still, I’d recommend it, just double check all the pages are there and in the right order before handing over the cash!

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The Lager Revelations

I’ve mentioned this briefly before, but thought I’d best bring it up again for a proper mention.

A while ago, I wrote a post detailing how I was tired of being weak, giving in, and drinking what I consider to be shit beer (largely known as ‘lager’). I was sick of putting up with second best and opting for an alcoholic beverage I didn’t always particularly enjoy drinking and when I could have had a better option (albeit a stronger drink) but felt compelled by the ‘beer’ in the name. All on a sub-conscious level…

I also mentioned how I’m not entirely opposed to all lager outright, and would be willing to try ones that I haven’t already tasted, but on track record whilst some European / local lagers can be acceptable for a few drinks, they don’t quite make the grade in which I could consider lager acceptable across the board.

However, whilst in Slovakia skiing I had somewhat a personal revelation regarding lager. It didn’t involve lofty singing nor bright rays of light illuminating me in a moment of clarity, rather just thoughts and opinions that formed as the week progressed.

Before travelling there I had already heard a lot of positive things about the local popular beer there, called Zlaty Bzant (I think, although my spelling could be off) and, to be fair, I was quite excited at the prospect of trying it. I was also excited at the fact that there’s a decent vodka culture by all accounts in Slovakia, which would provide my main fuel.

As the week progressed I started off feeling quite ill so I figured instead of hitting the vodka I would just partake in a recreational ‘beer’ or two. No harm in that, and I occasionally extended that theory is the week went by. We all chipped in the first day to food and drinks and part of the drinks make up was tins of Budvar and tins of Zlaty Bzant. All fine. I had a tin of Budvar one night, tasted fine. I had a tin of Zlaty the next, that tasted fine. Occasionally I would have a tin and then go out for a draft and it would taste horrible, borderline undrinkable for me.

Odd to say the least. Oddest part about it was that it worked both ways.

If I was to have a pint on the way back from skiing with Mike and George etc it would taste pretty good (the way draft should taste) but if I was to follow it up with a can or another draft, I struggled.

Now, I don’t know if it was the generally lower temperatures that lager is considered to run at (I am not opposed to drinking my beer ‘piss-warm’) was a factor, or the sheer number of bubbles it contains that caused this weird effect, but I just couldn’t hack it.

And so it came to me: If I am to endure lager at all (occasionally it can serve as a refreshing drink, particularly in warmer climates) then I can only take 1. Anything more than this will remind me I am drinking lager by the fact that the taste becomes apparent and I ‘wake up and smell the bacon’. If there is a simple choice between only lager on the beer-front or decent vodka / whiskey / whatever on the ‘hard-side’ of the bar, I should be more of a man (grrr) about it and stick with what I know and enjoy, and can enjoy for the length of the evening / morning / afternoon / week, without having to swap drinks mid-flow.

If I’m going to have a ‘beer’ that is going to be lager, I need to make sure it is just that – a ‘beer’. A break should then be enforced during which time I could eat, have some recreational drinks (water, juice, teeth-rotters) and then after a set time frame (1 hour)? I can start to drink the truly enjoyable stuff.

It was an important lesson.

It will be interesting to see if I’ve actually learned from it and stick to it the next time such a situation arises. In the meantime though, consider this:

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‘Love All the People’ by Bill Hicks

A collection of letters, stage routines, and some lyrics written by Bill Hicks throughout his life, right from some of his earliest shows right through until some of his final material before his death in 1994.

Anyone who’s listened or seen any of his routines before will recognise much of the stage routines, some of which get a little bit repetitive when reading a book like this, although it is interesting to see the different ways in which he approaches the same topics a few years after originally doing the material. And it doesn’t detract from it being funny, but if you’ve read essentially the same paragraph half an hour before it is tempting to skim the current one and move on to stuff you hadn’t seen before.

But for me, the really interesting stuff comes through all the things I hadn’t heard or seen before, his letters to various people, his own personal comments / stories / thoughts on life, the universe, and everything, and the few pages of lyrics either as poems or song lyrics for of the bands he was a part of or hoped to form allow the man’s intelligence and just how broad his mental scope was on dealing with issues.

Whilst many of his points are ‘way out there’ in comprehension, simply because they fly so clearly in the face on everything one is taught and told and has reflected in society, he makes his points well, and provides arguments that are often difficult to counter.

Definitely worth a look, although from what I’ve heard if you are looking for a book about Bill Hicks and his life, Agent of Evolution by Kevin Booth should come closer to what you’re after.

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Beard

Priest Jailed for Exorcism Death

I’ve never felt the need to praise a priest before but… Good Beard.

Of course, the reason he’s in the news is not so good, but it does provide a somewhat skewed look at logic.

The poor nun, who they decided need exorcising of evil influences (presumably the devil) has basically been told that the solution to her ills is to be chained to a cross and be left there for a while and eventually the demon will leave, presumably through boredom. Either that or she’s been told not to eat in preparation for the cross-hanging (judging by the fact that she starved to death).

Now, I hate to be cynical, but wouldn’t you expect that a christian so devoted with their religion that they would become a nun would also have at least a slight idea that hanging from a cross doesn’t do you any good? Did they not get around to studying Easter yet?

As ever with the BBC News, the reference to other things I didn’t know about aids me in my chuckling:

“In 1999, when the Vatican issued its first new guidelines since 1614 for driving out devils, it urged priests to take modern psychiatry into account in deciding who should be exorcised.”

Indeed, take psychiatry into account, but not reason and logic.

Personally, I’m shocked that the Vatican actually has guidelines for driving out devils, secondly that there’s no mention in the article as to whether those guidelines include ‘chaining victim to a cross’. Something I feel I should try and research.

“After hearing the sentence, Corogeanu said: “We will appeal and hope that it will succeed. We didn’t expect this sentence, but this is the judge’s decision. We will pray to God for help.””

What did he actually expect? A new car? Nice holiday? How about a worthwhile sentence…

The guy receives 14 years, basically for murder, although they were convicted of manslaughter. I’m no lawyer, but once more, if we can go back to the issue of the cross and easter… but to me, chaining someone to a cross must entail some forethought of what could happen.

It’s a crazy world, but a great beard.

For those who didn’t get the link, here’s the picture (from ProImage):

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New Blog, New Location

Given a few difficulties that I’ve managed to stumble across in the whole process of trying to self-host my blog, I have decided to abandon hosting the actual blog on my home server for now (mainly because the connection can sometimes go down for quite a while when I’m not around) and have instead finally bought a slightly better package from 1&1 to host the blog on here for now.

In the process, I decided to try yet another different blogging system, and in the course of looking found this one I’m writing on now – Serendipity. At first glance it actually looks ideal as a blogging platform, with lots of usable plugins and easy to configure. This, combined with the ‘Embedded?’ option which shows pure content if you were running it inside a larger CMS – I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds exciting… if you’re a sad fuck.

The downside to doing all this, besides not being able to host the thing myself, is that it looks like importing databases into the 1&1 interface is going to be awkward, so until I can get easy access to my server again (which, judging by London, means when I’m not in the house) I’m going to struggle to move the old WordPress blog across in an easy way. What will probably end up happening is I’ll just place a permanent link to the ‘Old Blog’ if I can’t find a workable solution before I go back to Egypt.

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General Update

WARNING: In the current absence of my own working gallery, and a few things that have occurred, this features quite a few pictures. Sorry if they take a while.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and a fair few things have gone on that are worth writing about, so here goes. As to what the inspiration to write this is, the main reason is the simple fact that I’m on a train to London, anticipating much frolicking, and want to fill the time.

I have a feeling this could get quite lengthy, so here’s a quick summary of the main sections (in the order they will appear) so just head down to the appropriate heading if that’s what interests you:

  • Diving
  • Gadgets & Electronics
  • Travel (Slovakia)
  • Random Thoughts that aren’t worth the time of day

Diving

  • Wastwater

    Last weekend (10th-11th) and the early part of the week saw me getting a good amount of diving in everyday, all of which was pleasure diving in every sense of the word, which was nice.

    On Sunday, myself, Rory, Jonathan Alder, and Sarah went down to Capernwray and got a couple of easy dives in practising some skills but generally just having a bimble. Most of those folks, for various reasons, hadn’t dived in a while and it was nice to get back in and dive with them all. The weather was nice (if cold) and I for one had a very fun day.

    On Monday, Jon, Sarah, my sister and I headed up to Wastwater for a couple of dives there, seeing as the weather was nice and Capernwray was closed. Actually, to say the weather was nice is a huge understatement. It was beautiful, as some of the attached pictures hopefully show. Myself and Jon did 2 dives, the first one in which Sarah came along whilst my sister was surface support, then they swapped roles for the second one.

    Being the only people there, and given the lack of rain, the water visibility was really good for Wastwater and made for two really enjoyable dives. I took a few photos, which eventually will be up in the gallery along with some of Jon’s.

    Tuesday just saw Jon and I get a couple of extra dives in Capernwray before he headed off back south. The weather every day was immense, cracking the flags yet still cold. Really nice.

    End of the Lake Shot When We Arrived.

    Sun Rising Over the Far Hill

    Me Taking Some Photos of the Gnome near the Pinnacles

    Pretending to Be Artistic

    Blatant Advertising

Gadgets & Electronics

  • New Phone

    I’ve gone and got myself a new phone – a Motorola Razr V3i (not sure of the exact version number, but pretty sure it is a V3 – pictures below). I’ve wanted one of these things for a good while, as, basically, I always thought they looked the balls.

    Getting hold of one and actually playing with it helped strengthen this in my mind. Whilst I had to get used to the differences in button location between this and the Nokia, along with how the menus work, I’m pretty sure I’ve got comfortable with it now after a couple of days and certainly believe Motorola have come up with a much better user interface than the Nokia one. It’s intuitive, heavily customisable, and does things as it’s supposed to. Like using any new interface, it took me a while to get to grips with the different naming and terms used for odd functions, but by and large it works a breeze. I haven’t yet tried to Bluetooth or USB it to my Ubuntu installs, but if what I’ve read is correct, that shouldn’t be too difficult to sort out and get working.

    The camera, whilst I’ve not really used it, seems to be pretty decent (which, compared to the old, old Nokia I was using before, wouldn’t be difficult). Hopefully I’ll get chance to use it a little over the next few days, but at the end of the day I’m rarely going to use it except on nights out when I don’t have the digital with me. It also features a video, which gives me something else to waste time on. But, most importantly considering it’s a phone, it seems to have pretty decent noise-filtering and a solid mic on it so people can actually hear what you’re trying to say to them in a busy environment. Again, I haven’t been in a situation to really test this properly, but no doubt London will provide that opportunity.

    Overall, I’d have to say first impressions are a lot more impressive than I’d expected it to be, so well done Motorola, looks like I found a new mobile brand of choice for a while, seeing as I was getting tired of Nokia.

  • Eve Online

    This last week saw T Dave head out as part of a small group of TGRADS under the leadership of Mark Weston in ‘Operation Teacake’ into the 0.0 systems of Geminate space for a prolonged 0.0 ratting session. The journey out was good and smooth, with some nice screengrabs I need to post. Once there, we headed out into the belts and went our separate ways. An hour in, TD gets ambushed and podded by members of The Arrow Project who are apparently trying to claim that region and clearly operate a NBSI policy. Fair play I guess, I should have watched local closer.

    So TD cloned back deep into empire and missioned for a day or so before getting the opportunity to jump back out (with the help of Mark) in to the region, where I’ve successfully managed to go ratting again over the last couple of days, personally favourite moment being my solo take-down of a 900k BS in my trusty Caracal. Considering I haven’t ever really flown the Caracal before, I’ve been impressed with what it can achieve on a cheap setup, but I can’t wait until I manage to bring my Dominix or similar out here to take on some of the bigger spawns. Had one or two close shaves with Pirates entering the systems, but largely it’s been pretty safe. It certainly is nice to be part of a larger organisation such as TGRADS and IVY.

  • Borked Server

    I’ve somehow managed to break my home server’s ports access. The Apache server still runs, as I can access the webpages using http://localhost from the server itself, but external access to it seems to be borked, ever since I tried to install a Wildfire Jabber server on there. I’ve posted help thread to the Ubuntu Forums, but my thinking is I might well have to backup and go for a reinstall of the entire server to see if that solves it. That could take time, but I need to have it fixed before I go back to Egypt. I backed up the databases last night, all the filesystem comes when I get back from the Big Smoke. Not looking forward to seeing if my backups were correct…

    In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to do things in reverse and post this to Blogger and / or Facebook and transfer things when I get everything back online.

Travel (Slovakia)

I figured for this segment I would follow a similar line of though to my London posting of previous times, albeit with additions / subtractions from the original layout. See where we get to.

  • Location

    Stunning scenery, particularly after the snow had come down. Very ‘local’ but nice. The house and accommodation is great, always nice and warm and with everything you could need for the week. Sledges were a welcome addition to the fun once the snow started to fall. Whilst there wasn’t any snow the night we arrived, by the next morning there was a good amount down and it continued to fall. We frolicked and walked around it was childish and… FUN. A lot of fun. Which is why I’m excited to now be heading south where the snow is falling! 🙂

  • Skiing

    I hadn’t been skiing since the Second Year. That’s nearly 10 years ago. As such I wasn’t up for anything too adventurous anyway. Mike was in the same position as me, George had skiied about 5 years ago, I believe. Everyone else was new. So the first day, as the snow was all powder anyway, we didn’t even try to ski. We just played. Second day we went down to the local nursery slopes and the like to try and remember how to do it. I was amazed at how quick the basics come back. Then it was time for some impromptu teaching of the others, George taking the lead as the most experienced. Hopefully everyone had fun, because I know I did. Later on in the day things started to get a bit icy, which didn’t look good for the next day when we went up to the main resort in the area, which had some nice fun runs, although all quite short. I have a feeling there was at least one longer run but not enough snow had fallen to open it, but I could be wrong.

    Even so, as it was, the runs available were quite icy and hard work until I got used to working out where the icy patches were. After that it was easier, but not too easy. Still, it was fun 🙂

    As seems to be the pattern in the country, things at the ski resort were still pretty damn cheap.

  • Transport

    Flights to Poland were easy, and the transfer to the house was good, although we didn’t know where it was. Still, we got there and it was entertaining. The journey back to the airport seemed rapid by comparison, but then it was light. It will be nice when the local airport accepts more flights though.

  • Food

    Cheap, simple, solid, hearty. Pretty much as expected. With the exception of whatever Jo ordered being a tad strange by the time it arrived, everything I had was tasty and filled a gap. Salad is obviously not so important.

  • Alcohol

    As with the food, dirt cheap. The St.Nicholas vodka was worth the extra pennies, although the vodka in general is quite harsh, certainly not smooth, and more like Absolut and some of the Swedish / Scandinavian stuff if comparing it to what I’ve tried before. As for beer, well, I had a slight revelation whilst there that I think deserves it’s own post. Fair to say, I thought that while Zlaty was okay, it wasn’t a proper beer-substitute 🙂 Sorry, John. can’t argue with the price though.

    As it ties in – drinking games. I never played the ‘Who Am I’ game before, but it’s become a firm favourite. The rules are simple, the possibilities endless. Sorry again to Jo for giving you Hosni Mubarrak, that was tough, but if you hadn’t dropped and looked at John Cleese you would have been fine. And still, I had to guess Pee Wee Herman… Still remember Ewan McGregor….

  • Music

    Not really applicable, seeing as it was just what we had on my laptop or folk’s digital music players. One piece of music of note is the weird, apparently Slovakian version of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ on the first morning. Alternative

  • Overall

    Brilliant holiday, many thanks to Mike for organizing. Could have been longer, but it was nice to get a taste for the place. Nice group of people to spend the week with, good to see George again after way too long. It sucked to be a bit under the weather the first couple of days, but compared to others I think I got off lightly. All in all, a lot of fun. Can’t wait for the next one.

  • Photos

    Random Thoughts

    Word of Warning: This is just a collection of thoughts and is likely to contain items that may cause offence / revulsion / indifference. Read on as you like.

    • John O’Gaunt

      The pub, not the man. I’ve just been in there for a few pre-train pints and wanted to mention just how much I like the place. It has atmosphere… and balls. I didn’t have time to get anything to eat, but the food looked and smelled good, the beer is brilliant and has a few constantly changing pumps; and the general atmosphere is just plain nice.

    • Train Toilets

      Having just visited the train toilet (a news item I’m sure you longed to hear) it struck me whilst looking down into it just how fucking small the output is. Judging by the heavy loads I’ve been dropping down this week, I really doubt I would dare to drop a turd down one of these things. All I’ll say is I’ve blocked bigger toilets before.

    • UK and Weather

      We’re really not very good at it are we?