4 2 B WITCH U

What better way could there be to celebrate the fact that Prince is set to release two albums on 29 September, one with girl group 3rdEyeGirl and another solo record, than to share very Prince hairstyle from 1978 to 2013 with s a single handy animated gif? It would also appear that Prince has been trying to grow a moustache since 1978

Looking at the papers this morning after last night's first Kate Bush gig for thirty five years, it struck me that you wouldn't need to animate her gif as she has had essentially the same cut for all those years.

Rod Steward - similarly conservative - has a haircut that is actually older than his wife.

Notes:
1. "4 2 B WITCH U" is a song that I wrote in the style of Minneapolis' finest purple person.
2. I wonder if they remastered the version of Kate Bush's The Kick Inside that is charting at the moment? I remember trying it again on my original vinyl a while back and finding it almost unlistenably stingy with the low frequency information known to the world as bass.

North Atlantic Tweety Organisation

.@NATO is an international political and military alliance keeping 900 million citizens secure. See our vine: https://t.co/i8ButhGEpt
— NATO Wales 2014 (@NATOWales) August 26, 2014

It seems to me that this message from out masters implies that they do not have a very high opinion of members of the public's attention spans.

close call

I was just walking out the door to the quiz, when I remembered I  hadn't written anything here today.

That is rare enough an event to serve as today's post.

this kind of thing is my punch bag baby

I went to Bikram Yoga this morning. Facebook has told me that Floyd Mayweather did it this week as well in the run up to his rematch with Marcos Maidana in three weeks time, thus confirming once more its unlikely badassery,

The 8am Sunday session won't be an option for me once the rugby season starts again in a fortnight as I will have duties getting the Bomber to 10 o'clock kick offs.

He's still asleep at the moment. In two weeks time he will have waking up duties as well.

making good

When I went home yesterday lunchtime I was astounded to find the Bomber repairing his jeans with needle and thread. He learned to sew when they were doing fabrics in art apparently. This is all to the good as far as I am concerned. I certainly can't do it.

I can, however, do chicken and sweetcorn quesadillas, so that is what we had. This morning - my Riverford fruit and veg box having delivered blueberries - we will have them in pancakes served with bacon and maple syrup. It will be as if he is still at IHOP in Orlando.

round house

Ever since the Bomber did it I have thought it would be a good idea for more girls to learn muay Thai.

Quite seriously, this sort of thing would have taken the spring out of the step of the guy I tried when I was on jury service in very short order.

Tim Vine

“I’ve decided to sell my hoover... well, it was just collecting dust.”

Tim Vine has won the Funniest Joke of the Fringe award in Edinburgh for the second time and talks here about the work that goes in to polishing his one liners.

Back in the day when there used to be comedy in G-Js (and when G-J's was even open) he was one of the comedians who came along testing new material away from the spotlights and television cameras.

He was great even though all he did was read through a huge pile of jokes (in a notebook or on cards? I can't remember) ticking ones that went well, occasionally jotting a comment on efforts that could have gone better, and drawing a line through the failures.

"Exit signs, they're on the way out."

bombastic

Ben and Rayburn

The Bomber is back from  Florida and sleeping the sleep of the just after flying through the night to Heathrow. I will have to stock up on fun size confectionery, mango juice, Weetabix chocolate chip crispy minis and the other cornerstones of a nutritious breakfast that I don't really have much call for when he is away.

Whisper it from the mountain tops

We are pleased to announce Whispersync for Voice, a new way to enjoy your Kindle books.

You can now read a Kindle book and pick up exactly where you left off with the professionally narrated audiobook from Audible. With more than 25,000 audio companions to choose from, you’ll never have to put a good book down.

Nice one Amazon. I used to dream of a service like this when the Bomber was small and I read him Harry Potter when he went to bed. Nowadays we could carry on in the car on a long journey, driving down to Wales perhaps.

Got a Kindle Fire HD or an Android device? If so, you can also read and listen simultaneously with real-time highlighting. It's called Immersion Reading and that's what it does: Immerse you in a story by narrating and highlighting the text as you read. It sparks an extra connection that boosts engagement, comprehension, and retention, taking you deeper into the book.

That would have been handy when he was learning to read.

My Dad left his reading glasses at home this weekend when he came up to visit me, and picked up an off the shelf replacement in Sainsburys. I fooled around with them as well and was surprised to see that they sharpened up my vision. Whispersync couldn't come too soon.

The Congestion Charge

I went online this morning to pay the Congestion Charge after taking my Mum and Dad to Paddington on Sunday yesterday so that they could take the train back to Cardiff.

However, not only is "the Congestion Charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a vehicle within the charging zone between 07:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday" it turns out that by crossing at Vauxhall Bridge and driving on the edge of Hyde Park I stayed exactly on the border and wouldn't even have been liable for it on a weekday.

The charge was introduced on 17 February 2003, which gives an indication that surprises even me of how often I drive into town.

sixes and sevens

My Mum and Dad were up visiting me in London this weekend so I took them along to the first day of the World Club 7s at Twickenham on Saturday, thinking that Dan Fish (my father's sister's great grandson) might be turning out for the Cardiff Blues after he  got six tries for them at Stoop last week in the Premiership Rugby Sevens.

As it happens he wasn't. He played for the Blues "proper" 15 man side against Exeter on Friday and Cardiff  put a more junior side out at Twickenham.

Not all the teams are familiar so here is a breakdown of where they are from:
Auckland Blues - New Zealand
Vodacom Blue Bulls - South Africa
DHL Western Province - South Africa
Buenos Aires - Argentina
NSW Waratahs - Australia
New York - USA
Seattle - USA
Cardiff Blues - Wales
Kuban Krasnodar - Russia
RC Enisei – Russia
Gloucester – England
Harlequins – England

It was a great day. At first i thought Cardiff might be hopeless as they got beaten by Buenos Aires in their first game, but I wasn't giving enough credit to the Argentinians who went on the win the whole thing today. while Cardiff won the plate.

The real revelation for me though was seeing two Russian teams and two teams of Yanks playing wonderfully expansive and entertaining games and doing very well overall. If you had told me that a few years ago I would have thought you were off your head.

A froward man soweth strife

Appeal typeCrime
Incident Date11/08/2014
Incident LocationKings Road, SW19
DescriptionDetectives investigating a violent aggravated burglary in Wimbledon which left a man with significant facial injuries, have today, Friday 15 August, released new CCTV images of an outstanding suspect fleeing the scene.
The footage, taken about a minute after the attack, depicts a panicked suspect fleeing through Wimbledon Theatre car park, at a point where he is removing surgical gloves which were worn during the crime.
This is the last moment he is picked up on CCTV.
Anyone with information is urged to call the incident room on 020 8649 3159; Or if you with to remain anonymous call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

That is too close to home. I must have parked in the Theatre car park a thousand times myself. There are more horrible details in the Telegraph here if your stomach is strong enough.

The Tragic Gift that Keeps on Giving

The conflict in Iraq started a century ago. One hundred years ago on June 28, to be exact. So did the civil war in Syria. Along with Russia's dismemberment of Ukraine. The bloody collapse of Yugoslavia. The disastrous Soviet experiment. And the enduring fight between Israelis and Palestinians.

All of these conflicts, and much more, grew out of World War I.

This is a very provocative piece, but I think that there is a lot to be said for it.

put your lips together and blow

Hearing of the death of Lauren Bacall yesterday took me back thirty odd years to an afternoon I bunked off from Chemical Engineering in Uni to catch a double bill of Angels With Dirty Faces and To Have And Have Not that the American Studies department were putting on.

Also dislodged is a memory of Burt - a friend from when I lived in Whitton, who worked at Heathrow airport with VIPs - telling me she was the friendliest and most charming celebrity he ever escorted.

So that is what Vine is for....

"The Best Cross What Has Ever Been Done In Wales"

Intellectually I know that the world's most expensive player, Cardiffian Gareth Bale, turned out for Real Madrid in a cup final in Cardiff City's ground yesterday, but I still find it difficult to believe.

The darkness drops again

This is appalling. Part three is out now, but I can't bring myself to watch it yet.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This Sort of Thing Is My Bulgarian Bag Baby

The Bulgarian Bag was invented by Ivan Ivanov at around 2005. Ivanov, a former Bulgarian Greco-Roman Olympic athlete, was working as a U.S. Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling coach at the Olympic training center in Marquette, Michigan and was looking for a training tool that would allow his wrestlers to improve explosive actions and dynamic movements involved in pushing, twisting, swinging, pulling, bending, rotating, squatting, lunging, and throwing.

Ivanov was inspired by the tradition of shepherds performing strength acts with sheep and goats on street fairs in his native Bulgaria. The shepherds were often forced to carry lambs and weak sheep around their shoulders when they were wandering with their herds, and were showing off their strength at festivals. Ivanov based the design of his tool on the body of an ovine and saw its use as a modern interpretation of the old tradition.

That is last week's Virgin Active mystery solved then John. "Ivanov was inspired by the tradition of shepherds performing strength acts with sheep and goats on street fairs in his native Bulgaria." Obvious really, in hindsight.

pot plants and crisp packets could be spying on you

Abstract
When sound hits an object, it causes small vibrations of the object’s surface. We show how, using only high-speed video of the object, we can extract those minute vibrations and partially recover the sound that produced them, allowing us to turn everyday objects—a glass of water, a potted plant, a box of tissues, or a bag of chips—into visual microphones. We recover sounds from highspeed footage of a variety of objects with different properties, and use both real and simulated data to examine some of the factors that affect our ability to visually recover sound. We evaluate the quality of recovered sounds using intelligibility and SNR metrics and provide input and recovered audio samples for direct comparison. We also explore how to leverage the rolling shutter in regular consumer cameras to recover audio from standard frame-rate videos, and use the spatial resolution of our method to visualize how sound-related vibrations vary over an object’s surface, which we can use to recover the vibration modes of an object.

"Allowing us to turn everyday objects—a glass of water, a potted plant, a box of tissues, or a bag of chips—into visual microphones." This is the age of Dr Strabismus.

"We will raise the flag of Allah in the White House"

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings.

US military aircraft conduct strike on ISIL artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.
— Rear Adm. John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 8, 2014

"Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible."

Lord Salisbury 1887

The Gower

I was sorry to hear that the Gower has closed. I often went there with Sean. I remember the first time distinctly. It was for a crafty under-age pint after the family had moved to Penylan. I got lost on the way home and left my sheet music to the Doors' Light My Fire behind never to be recovered. When would that have been? 1977? 

A huge building for a local boozer, with a snooker room and a skittle alley. We shall not see its like again.

on top of old smokey

Chef and writer Amy Thielen recommends pickle juice and vodka shooters "to kick off a party"

Typical that I would have to come across this beguiling notion just after finishing off the Pitt Cue inspired pickled sausage that John brought up last weekend and pouring away the brine. What a waste.

Another find in Haute dogs, fried pickles and savoury doughnuts: how Britain fell in love with midwestern food, may well be Swansea's The Smoke Haus.

One for the to-do list next time I get down to Skewen.

One star is “eek!”

The Bomber called me on Facetime (his iPod to my iPad) yesterday afternoon. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt with an intricate pattern on the arms, and - for a moment - I thought he might have got a Polynesian half sleeve tattoo! Never a good look on a thirteen year old.

He gave me a tour of the apartment in Florida that they are staying in and even ventured out to the pool. It was the first time I have ever really got the potential of video conferencing. Apple's Facetime being free, it also caused me to brood darkly later on about the amount of money the Burglar and I pay for the company's various telecom needs. I bet it is not too far short of a grand a quarter if you include mobiles, which seems a lot in the age of Skype etc.

One star is “eek!”
Two is “meh.”
Three is “A-OK!”
Four is “Yay!”
Five is “Woohoo!”

As we young people say.

Inlay, inlay, lay across my big brass bed

To the dentist yesterday, for what I thought would be a bog-standard filling replacement but Caroline O (curator of my Hollywood smile) found a crack in the tooth so I have to go back in a fortnight, have an inlay fitted and be relieved of, just shy of, five hundred notes.

Watcha gonna do?

We won the quiz in the evening though. The prize is a fifty quid bar tab. All I have to do is triumph ten weeks in a row and refuse to share the money with the team to cover the repair to my molar.

Though I will have to take it in drink.

Simples.

Tom's Fantastic Floating Home

The man-cave has a new presiding deity. When I was looking for the episode I missed last night in Now TV's 4OD, I noticed that YouTube is now available on the little white box; easily the best net fiver I ever spent - see Icons passim.

Sir, Did any of your readers notice the striking resemblance .....

Orlando Bloom defends mankind, swings at Justin Bieber. I can understand that.

phoning it in

Last night when my brother arrived we were due to go to the launch of Janette Mason's album D'Ranged at the Hideaway. Phil who played on my stuff in the 80s (the EIGHTIES!) is in the band.

We probably did go and we are probably off to Borough Market today, but I am teeing this up on Friday in  case things get messy and I can't get to grips with the interwebs.

getting a handle on it

I usually go to yoga on the weekends, but I bowled up at 6:30am  this morning as my brother is coming up tonight and staying until Sunday.

I've been 284 times now - see Icons passim - without ever feeling the need of a strabismo-mat that would talk to me.

Fingers crossed John and I will be hitting the gym tomorrow. The new plates they have got there have handles: Strabismic on the surface, but a genuinely useful innovation. I wonder that no one thought of it before.

Tomorrow's session - if it happens after the drinks planned tonight - is more likely to resemble Daniel Genis's Barbells Behind Bars, 10 Years of Prison Weightlifting than yoga etiquette.

Cycloc

I tried to put a cycloc up in the Bomber's room last night. Initially I failed because it didn't come with any bolts for fitting it to the wall so I ordered a pack of M6x70 Loose bolt shield anchors online from Screwfix and drove round to pick them up. (That is a very impressive service by the way.)

When I got back I found that I needed at 12mm masonry drill but to fit them and that my set only goes up to 10mm. By then the shops were closed so I tried drilling 10mm  holes on the off-chance. That off-chance was no-chance, so I ordered a 12mm bit online.

I've picked it up this morning. It looks about 18 inches long. I seem to have lost my sense of scale looking at a photo of it on the interwebs. I hope it will work with a bog standard drill.

I'll have to go home and try it lunch time, as I am going out for a drink with the Burglar after work and will be in no condition to be driving rotating machinery when I get back.

So now you know.

"Stellar Stella" Geddit!!??

After reading the rave reviews for Gillian Anderson in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire yesterday, I realized I had only a small chance of getting tickets, but then remembered that there was going to be a live broadcast of it at the HMV Curzon, so I pounced. Even that was a close run thing. There are very few tickets left this morning.

Coincidentally Broadcasting plays and exhibitions to cinemas is a sure-fire box office smash, says Peter Bazalgette in the Independent today, referring to the report Estimating the Impact of Live Simulcast on Theatre Attendance: An Application to London’s National Theatre.

I've never found myself in the cross hairs of a simulcast before. If it is good I might start attending regularly.

That said, as I will be unable to order a strong continental lager at the interval without giving it the full Stanley Kowalski (Icons passim) I may well find myself barred in future.

Cream, sha boogie bop

I just stumbled on this. I need to file it away as it will definitely be worth looking at again when I have a guitar of my own to hand.

Coriander Services

1. Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thy image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant we beseech Thee that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, bishop and doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

2. The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect. "One day Vignola sent Bill Gates an email. (Thorpe couldn't recall who Bill Vignola was or what he did.) Whenever Bill Vignola typed his own name in MS Word, the email to Gates explained, it was automatically changed to Bill Vaginal. Presumably Vignola caught this sometimes, but not always, and no doubt this serious man was sad to come across like a character in a Thomas Pynchon novel."

Smart Fashion

A full 80% of respondents believe that technology will seamlessly integrate with fashion trends in the future, while 72% were open to wearing clothing that tracked their health. With the success of Nike's Fuelband this latter number might not be surprising, but with 66% of participants also saying they'd feel comfortable donning wearable tech that served other useful functions it's possible tech could become fashion sooner than we think.

I went to the gym in my kit this morning, but forgot to bring a clean t-shirt so I am sitting in the office typing topless. I will venture out to the market shortly to see if any vendors and selling clobber. Short of that M&S will have to take the strain.

Strange that no Strabismus-lite fashion visionary has come up with a high tech solution to this sort of dilemma. Perhaps in future an  Amazon drone could fly in through the door and drape a shirt over me automatically.

Amazing Spaces: Shed of the Year

I watched Amazing Spaces: Shed of the Year on Thursday night, discovering to my incredulity and delight that it was a series not a one-off-show. We live in a golden age of TV.

I am off to IKEA later today for man cave inspiration. "Opening" the kitchen to the garden, is the mystery to be solved. Decking and artificial grass may be involved.

if tube lines were people

‘A groovy, beardy, leftie, Guardian reading graduate with a lovely job in Digital Media and an accent that makes girls knees shake. Dreams of barge holidays and going to Alex James’s farm for a cheese festival. Voted Lib Dem last time and hates himself for it. Has recently set up a micro brewery in his airing cupboard and grows hops in his small patch of garden in Highgate.’

reigning champion

Judo is back in the Commonwealth Games for the first time since 2002.

I have just realised that this means that Winston Gordon (Icons passim) who won gold at -90kg at those Manchester games is still the reigning champion although is twelve years at the top will come to an end this week.

Not a bad outing though.

X-10 home automation

The (deep breath) electric curtain and blind motor with automatic dawn to dusk feature (Icons passim) is now installed and working. I haven't caught it in action yet. The curtains drew when I was in the kitchen last night and they were open when I got up this morning. The temptation to announce "ah Mr Bond, I've been expecting you" the first time I am there when it happens will probably be irresistible.

A phrase from the instruction manual interests me strangely.

The controller is compatible with X-10 home automation type systems.

http://www.uk-automation.co.uk/pages/Control-X10-with-an-iPhone-iPod-iPad-or-Android-device.html

Dance off

We won the quiz last night.

 - the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. ... By God! I don't think it would have been done if I had not been there.

It was decided in a dance off very like the video above. These things are usually settled by a single nominee from each team competing to see who can answer a tie breaker question the most quickly. I think alcohol may have been involved in the elaboration of the format.

I was glad this morning that - unlike knotweed - The Sleeping Drunks Billboard hasn't made it from Japan to SW19 yet.

Japan is one of the hardest working countries in the world. So, at the end of the week, Japanese salary men and women let their hair down with very surprising consequences: Drunk Sleeping.

By the end of a Friday and Saturday night you can find thousands of people sleeping on the streets. In Tokyo, this is considered normal behavior, so we decided to address the issue.

The idea: Turn Sleeping Drunks into human billboards against excessive drinking. Armed with white duck tape, printed headlines, logos and a call to action, we turned every sleeping drunk into an anti-drinking billboard.

With very little budget (duck tape and several printed cardboards), we hijacked some of the most advertising-crowded streets in Tokyo.

As honor is paramount in Japanese society, we shamed people into drinking moderately or risk becoming our next Sleeping Drunk Billboard.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

I have just paid the deposit for the Bomber to go to the Portugal Rugby Youth Festival with the school at the end of March next year. I do hope he will be sufficiently rested after Rutlish's Spring half term ski trip to Sansicario, Italy in February 2015.

The Summer term finishes tomorrow and he will be in Florida with his mother for most of August.

Are we driving him too hard?

James Garner

I was sorry to hear that the ever amiable James Garner has died.

Either Support Your Local Sheriff or The Wheeler Dealers - both from the 60s - would be a great treat to watch this Sunday afternoon as a tribute to the great man,  if you can get access. The former is on iTunes I think.

High Hopes

I have learned a great deal this last week, not the least of which are informal fallacies.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Reading these quotes, I am beginning to think that the great Derek Parfit may be the funniest man who ever lived.

Next time you're found

With your chin on the ground

There's a lot to be learned

So look around

Just what makes that little old ant

Think he'll move that rubber tree plant

Anyone knows an ant, can't

Move a rubber tree plant

But he's got high hopes

He's got high hopes

He's got high apple pie

In the sky hopes

So any time you're gettin' low

'Stead of lettin' go, just remember that ant

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

When troubles call

And your back's to the wall

There a lot to be learned

That wall could fall

Once there was a silly old ram

Thought he'd punch a hole in a dam

No one could make that ram, scram

He kept buttin' that dam

'Cause he had high hopes

He had high hopes

He had high apple pie

In the sky hopes

So any time you're feelin' bad

'Stead of feelin' sad, just remember that ram

Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam

Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam

Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam

All problems just a toy balloon

They'll be bursted soon, they're just bound to go pop

Oops, there goes another problem kerplop

Oops, there goes another problem kerplop

Oops, there goes another problem kerplop, kerplop

the so-called “non-identity problem”

We have in the studio Bertrand Russell, who talked to us in the series “Sense Perception and Nonsense: Number 7, Is this a dagger I see before me?” Bertrand Russell.

Russell: One of the advantages of living in Great Court, Trinity I seem to recall, was the fact that one could pop across at any time of the day or night and trap the then young G. E. Moore into a logical falsehood by means of a cunning semantic subterfuge. I recall one occasion with particular vividness. I had popped across and had knocked upon his door. “Come in,” he said. I decided to wait awhile in order to test the validity of his proposition. “Come in,” he said once again. “Very well,” I replied, “if that is in fact truly what you wish.”

I opened the door accordingly and went in, and there was Moore seated by the fire with a basket upon his knees. “Moore,” I said, “do you have any apples in that basket?” “No,” he replied, and smiled seraphically, as was his wont. I decided to try a different logical tack. “Moore,” I said, “do you then have some apples in that basket?” “No,” he replied, leaving me in a logical cleft stick from which I had but one way out. “Moore,” I said, “do you then have apples in that basket?” “Yes,” he replied. And from that day forth, we remained the very closest of friends.

It is impossible to read the hilarious Reason and romance: The world’s most cerebral marriage, without being reminded of the  Beyond The Fringe bare plurals sketch I quote above. The Bare Plural (Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics) long having been a standby of choice for a gag wrangler stuck in a tight corner.

Semantic giggles aplenty:

As they approached the restaurant they passed a wedding shop. In the window was one of those meringue bridal dresses, all petticoats, hoops and trains. “That,” said Janet, jokingly, “is what I shall be wearing tomorrow.” “Do you mean that exact one,” replied Derek, in all seriousness, “or one just like it?”

"Today, Parfit is considered by many of his peers to be the world’s most important living moral philosopher."

Of course he is.

bar for the course

Aland wooden bar. What do we think? Perhaps I could actually use it in the house as well as having it available to take outside for barbecues etc?

be careful what you wish for

I have added Amazon's Universal Wish List to my systems so I can add items from any website to my list. I thought it would come in handy for assembling odds and ends now I seem to be (for the first time in my life) in home improvement mode. It seems to work fine (though I notice the the widget on this 'blog only displays native Amazon content).

The first thing I put on it was a Croydex bath panel with a hidden sliding door. I have had a gaping hole on the side of the bath ever since part of the existing panel had to be drilled out to give access for replacement of the shower pump some time ago (icons Passim). At least this new model panel will mean nothing will have to be destroyed next time a pump goes out of commission.

A little later I noticed a Google ad on a site offering me 30% off it at Plumbworld. How did Google know? From my search history I guess.

I'm  telling you this story as the government's emergency surveillance legislation is being rushed through all its Commons stages in just one day with no discussion at all after a shameful stitch up by the three main parties.

If I am ever raided I image the bathroom will be the first port of call for the storm troopers.

An offer from the WRU

I have got an email saying that my electric curtain and blind motor with automatic dawn to dusk feature (Icons Passim) has been dispatched but I can't see why my new Man Cave project shouldn't be extended into the garden.

Box Office Mojo

Maleficent Worldwide Gross as of July 13, 2014 = $668,994,000

Edge of Tomorrow Worldwide Gross as of July 13, 2014 = $350,550,000

Total as of July 13, 2014 = $1,018,544,000

If you have been reading this 'blog for years on end and have the memory of an elephant, you may recall a 2006 story about the Bomber's mate Jonnie's Uncle Simon (Icons passim) the second unit director then of X-MEN The Last Stand.

I thought of him I last week when I read in a magazine that Malificent has become the top grossing film of Angelina Jolie's career, because I remembered that he was the second unit director on that as well and that it opened on the same day in the UK as Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow; another film on which he did the same job.

Thus, a little research shows me that, two films he worked on that hit the multiplexes at the same time on this side of the pond have made over a billion dollars to date at the box office between them.

Not unsuccessful in career terms, one might conclude.

Boys, our troubles are over

Electric curtain and blind motor with automatic dawn to dusk feature

Song to the SIREN

Siren police IT project's £15m failure a 'debacle'

Surrey's police and crime commissioner has called for one of Britain's most senior police officers to be held to account for the failure of a multi-million pound computer project.
A report into the £15m system to log crime information found oversight of the project was "not fit for purpose".

Surrey PCC Kevin Hurley said Mark Rowley - chief constable at the time - should take responsibility.

But Assistant Commissioner Rowley, who is now at the Met, defended his role.
The Surrey Integrated Reporting Enterprise Network (Siren) was commissioned by Surrey Police in 2009 but was abandoned last year.

The report, by auditors Grant Thornton, said it was was an "ambitious project that was beyond the in-house capabilities and experience" of the police force and police authority.
Mr Hurley said: "Mr Rowley is no longer employed in Surrey, but if he were I would as PCC be considering how best to hold him to account.

He is now employed by the Metropolitan Police Service. I will be writing to the Mayor for London Boris Johnson and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to take action as they see appropriate."

Siren was specifically designed to log crimes and store intelligence on criminals and suspects.

But Mr Hurley scrapped the project after the force concluded that it did not represent the "best long-term option for the force and the public".

Mr Rowley said he noted there were "no criticisms of individuals or their conduct" in the report but said he agreed with its recommendations.

"I'm sure that all those involved in leading this project as officers or from the Surrey Police Authority share with me regret and disappointment that Siren did not realise the benefits for the public we sought," he added.

The force spent £14.8m on the project from its inception to 31 March 2013. The money was spent on staff costs, training, software, technology and consultancy.

This is news to me but it explains a lot about why they are still running legacy software including ours.

In which I boast

They ran a Sports Day in Rutlish yesterday as a way of coping with the industrial action.

The Bomber won the 400m in 59.01 seconds which makes him the school's all time Year 8 record holder for that event. It would also put him, if it was recorded at an official athletics meet, in the top 40 in the UK at Under 15 this year, which ain't too shabby when you consider that he is still only 13 and, out of the rugby season, his training regime is essentially limited to slouching.

What would he do on a proper track, in spikes and under the charge of a good coach I wonder?

Ronda Ronda Garden

Kao tone (muay Thai straight knee) to classic judo (uki goshi throw followed up with kesa gatame on the ground). I was right all those years ago about them complementing each other.

all seven and we'll watch them fall

"Neymar may come to regret this sponsorship deal" - the best internet virals and memes http://t.co/c6WL2m3Ia1 pic.twitter.com/6KOzxi1Uo3
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) July 9, 2014

Mundial

If you write a book called Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany, and Brazil Win, and Why the U.S., Japan, Australia--And Even Iraq--Are Destined to become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport, you are probably due a hearing on a day when England are already out, and at the end of which Brazil or Germany will be in the final.

Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life - Updated Edition and One Night in Turin: The Inside Story of a World Cup that Changed our Footballing Nation Forever are two other  football books I have read in the last few breathless weeks. Both are recommended.

smokin'

My BBQ beer can chicken turned out well enough in the taste stakes, but I, my house, and my clothes smell like they've been smoked this morning.

Over the weekend I was forever, fiddling with the kettle smoker. Now I think that perhaps the trick is to leave well alone.

It is to all intents and purposes impossible to take the vessel's body off the fire to get at the charcoal without the chicken falling over. My next beer can chicken will be done in the oven.

The modus operandi from now on will be to get the charcoal thoroughly started, get the meat on, then ..... leave it be.

After a couple of hours flavouring will be complete, and I can sort any under-cooking out in my conventional kitchen oven.

That way I come up smelling of roses. Sniffing myself this morning I was reminded that my Uncle Willie ran away to sea as a boy and worked as stoker in the merchant marine. Evocative but scarcely Proust's Madeleine.

a plan comes together

I went to Brixton Market yesterday according to plan and then to see Chef (I am listening to the soundtrack now). This can be a great place to live if you put yourself about.

The North Remembers

As the tour begins .....

Can you tell what it is yet?

"Rolfing is a method of hands-on body work."

What can I say? It made me laugh. Become a Rolfer.

drunk history

It all started with one drunk night. Actor Jake Johnson – the dude who plays Nick on New Girl, but has also been in seemingly shitty but actually funny movies, like No Strings Attached and 21 Jump Street – was playing quarters with his fellow-actor friend Derek Waters. Johnson was wasted and decided to tell Waters a story about Otis Redding.

The next day Waters and his director friend Jeremy Konner (who was Jack Black’s assistant at the time) called up Johnson with the premise for Drunk History: "You get belligerently drunk and tell that same Otis Redding story. They’ll film it, get re-enactors to play the historical parts and it will be a viral YouTube success."

Jeremy was right.

That is all I know about Drunk History so far, but I am intrigued.

we gonna rock down to Electric Avenue

Esquire

The Brixton renaissance has been happening for some years now. No longer run down and only famous for its prison, Brixton has become, among other things, a thriving hub for foodies.

At the heart of that is Brixton Village Market.

Formerly the Granville Arcade, the market has become a go to for not only the best food in South London, but a flavour of things to come. Honest Burgers opened their first London store here and the Observer has called the market “the most exciting, radical venture on the British restaurant scene right now”.

Having seen Stevie Wonder at the weekend at a venue I can walk home from, as well as having annexed the Hideaway in Streatham with brother John recently, it has struck me I am not making as much as perhaps I can do of Sarf London.

The deceptively simple expedient of going in to Stockwell on the Northern Line and then out again on the Victoria door-to-dooring me to Brixton in twenty of your English minutes if TfL is anything to go by, suggests Brixton Village Market for Saturday, followed by Chef at the Clapham Picture House on the way back.



What do we think? Does that sound like a plan? It pushes the beer can chicken back to Sunday, but watcha gonna do?

Sweet & Smokey Beer Can Chicken with DJ BBQ

This is what I plan to put in the smoker this weekend, weather permitting. DJ BBQ? Oh dear. "You Stay Classy San Diego."

harpejji

The unusual laptop instrument Stevie Wonder was playing yesterday is a harpejji.

The harpejji is an electric stringed musical instrument developed in 2007 by Tim Meeks, founder of Marcodi Musical Products, and is a descendant of the StarrBoard. The instrument aims to bridge the gap in sound and technique between the guitar and the piano. The playing surface has an isomorphic keyboard layout arranged in ascending whole tones across strings, and ascending semi-tones as the strings travel away from the player with a five octave range from A0 to A5. The first harpejji model, the 24 string d1, was produced from January 2008.

How did we answer questions like this pre Google?

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/calling-festival-clapham-common--music-review-9572040.html

The day dawns

Game of frowns

It is raining. We are catching up with the great Peter Dinklage via online boxed set.

"Whereof One Cannot Speak, Thereof One Must Be Silent."

We brought in a guilty verdict on an indictment of two counts of sexual assault and I have been released from jury service. Sentencing is on August 31.

The details will be kept under my hat.

By Royal Appointment

There is an advantage to my Surface and the Bomber's XBOX running on the same Microsoft account; now I have bought Game of Thrones from XBOX video the two of us can work through it together and in parallel.

We are up to the end of episode five now, and the deal is that we will reconvene on episode eight this weekend. Truth be told I didn't realise that there would be quite so many boobs and buttocks being quite so vigorously twerked in it when I came up with this scheme for bonding with my thirteen year old.

Calling Occupants

On Sunday, gates will open at midday. The music will start around one hour later and Stevie Wonder will be last on, finishing at around 10 at night.

The main stage times are on http://www.callingfestival.co.uk/line-up/stage/main-stage and the Pepsi Max stage times are on http://www.callingfestival.co.uk/line-up/stage/pepsi-max-stage.

The trick, for me at least, is not arriving so early I get over relaxed before the main event. How does aiming to get there to kick off with Paloma Faith sound? She is on at twenty past four, so maybe aim to arrive around ten to?

Loss of earnings and other expenses

Length of jury service	Time spent each day	Maximum daily amount you can claim
First 10 days	4 hours or under	£32.47
First 10 days	Over 4 hours	£64.95
Day 11 to day 200	4 hours or under	£64.95
Day 11 to day 200	Over 4 hours	£129.91
After day 201	4 hours or under	£114.03
After day 201	Over 4 hours	£228.06

Day 2 of jury service. Nobody ever got rich from it that is for sure.

According to the testimony

I shall be reporting for jury service at 9 o'clock this morning.

The Cloud

"Nobody understand the cloud. It's a fugging mystery!"

A birthday is a day for looking back and getting some perspective. Now that Hollywood is making mainstream sex farces about cloud computing and online voice search, I have to acknowledge that what we do is scarcely esoteric any more. (The technology that is, not the sex.)

Sex tape is released on 3 September.

99 problems

"Willie John was a senior figure and he said, 'look, I've been out here twice before, we've played pretty well but we've been intimidated and we're going to have none of that. If anybody gets into trouble, you all get involved wherever you are and you all hit the nearest South African to you, the referee can't send off the whole team' and that was what Willie John said to us."
JPR on the '74 Lions

Wales and South Africa kick off again in a couple of hours. History suggests that there is only one language these people understand.

Massive, Underground Trampolines Will Bounce You To The Ceiling Of Caves

The mention of trampolines may bring back fond childhood memories suburban backyards or local YMCAs, but Bounce Below—a set of three enormous trampolines within the Llechwedd caverns in Wales—brings trampolines to whole new terrain...literally.

Located near Blaenau Ffestiniog, a small mining town in Northern Wales, the tourist attraction is set to open on July 3rd, including a triad of giant trampolines with 10-foot-tall net walls and a 60-foot slide that links them. "From the bottom platform you go on a net walkway with a spiral staircase coming out on the other side of the railway line," explained the creator Sean Taylor in an interview.

"It's a one-hour activity where customers get dressed up in a cotton overall and are given a helmet," said Taylor. "They then jump on a train and travel inside the mountain. They then disembark into a cavern twice the size of St. Paul's Cathedral."

To accompany the attraction, the cave will be lit up by an incredible display of lights that morph the walls into surreal hues of purple, turquoise, green, and pink. The lights and trip inside the mountain may be as much of an adrenaline rush as the jumping itself.

This and the NATO Summit in the Principality. My cup overfloweth.

free burger and chips!

The smoker is assembled and I will be back to the white tie nightlife this evening.

brinkmannship

A charcoal smoker and grill has arrived as an early birthday present. I think I will skip the giddy social whirl for one night only to assemble it. It may then need seasoning, but come the big day it will be ready to go. Pitt Cue Co. - The Cookbook will be cracked open and a  new era will begin.

Perhaps it will get me back in the garden. I'm not saying I've neglected it necessarily but "every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats out there, he gets stronger."

The best possible taste

We won the quiz last night. One year on, according to the WBI time machine, from when I drank myself insensible on 11% proof stout.

Regular readers will now we are off to a Brazilian restaurant tonight to watch the World Cup.

The world’s greatest restaurant festival opens this Wednesday until Sunday!

The Festival of Me just gets bigger and better.

Oh, Mr Porter!

I met up with Andy M yesterday. He told me that Gregory Porter - who has been added to the festival line up for Stevie Wonder on Sunday week - is great live. I must make sure I catch him.

Andy came along to see Kevin Spacey in the one-man show Darrow at the Old Vic. That - as expected - was top stuff. It amused me last week to find that Darrow - a TV movie starring one Kevin Spacey - is also among the horde of DVDs I have bought but never watched over the years.

South Africa 38-16 Wales

The Bomber has announced that he will not be watching next Saturday afternoon's Wales/South Africa test match.

"There is a primary school summer fair I want to go to."

That is a pretty damning indictment of yesterday's drubbing in Durban.

I will be taking my medicine as usual though.

beard the lion in his den

Just as England are set to kick off against the All Blacks, here is Bruce Springsteen taking on a Kiwi (Icons passim) at her own game on her own turf. I'm not sure if he comes out on top either which may not be a good omen.

Next up Wales - L Williams; A Cuthbert, J Davies, J Roberts, G North; D Biggar, M Phillips; G Jenkins, K Owens, A Jones, L Charteris, AW Jones, D Lydiate, A Shingler, T Faletau Replacements M Rees, P James, S Lee, I Evans, J Turnbull, G Davies, J Hook, M Morgan (boo!) - versus South Africa.

Word Cup fever

if you dont know a lot about football but you still want to join in with all of the excitement that the world cup awards brings us every year, then here are a few tips and tricks for you to use for yourself to help you blend in more easily and maybe even make yourself look like a actual footballing expert as well.

as soon as the referee blows on his throat flute to get the football match started make sure you say one of these things:
come on football
kick off
lets get this event started
good luck
i think that we are going to be in for a great game
i hope that our football team gets the points that they require
i am enjoying myself
football
if a player gets a tackle on him shout some of these things as loud as you can:
keep your knees to yourself you italian idiot
put your shorts back on and get up
it is a good job that he has got plastic shin sheets on the bottom of his legs or he would have to be carried home in a wheelchair
this cant be happening
why isnt he moving anymore
great tackle
when a goal is scored take your top off and scream any or all of these things:
brazilio
what a goal
that is the type of strike that i like to see
he striked that one like he was kicking a ball at a prison
brilliant
right off the top of his head
slam dunk
yes
homeward bound
that is 1 point for us
kiss my knee
directly into the net
three men and a little lady
climb onto my back

Hat tip Spike.

Also, from the extensive background reading I do on your behalf:

HARRY RENNIE, A SCOT WHO KEPT GOAL for Greenock Morton in the 1890s, toughened up by throwing himself onto wooden boards for half an hour each day. John Burridge, a journeyman who played for 29 clubs in England and Scotland between the late 1960s and late 1990s, sharpened his reflexes by asking his wife to throw fruit at him when he wasn’t looking. Gigi Buffon credits his agility in the goalmouth to the time he spent vacationing with his family—his sisters and cousins would tie his hands behind his back and force him to turn somersaults. “How many knocks on the head I took! But I like to think it was that way that I overcame the fear of throwing myself about, diving on the ground even when there isn’t snow to soften the landing,” he wrote in his autobiography. Ronald Reng describes the Argentinean keeper Germán Burgos’s extreme training to overcome natural survival instinct. To keep from turning his head away from the ball, Reng writes, “the goalkeeping coach tied Burgos’s hands behind his back and shot hard at him from close range; all Burgos had to do was parry the ball with his face, again and again. Sometimes his nose broke.”

The methods were not always so brutal. Peter Shilton sought out a dance teacher to purge wasted movements from his technique, writing that the dancer “taught me to keep my feet light and close to the ground, moving them as if skating on ice.” His goal was to become “like an object which can be seen shimmering through a heat haze.”

Feed Me!

Forbes

Feedly is currently suffering a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, it announced earlier this morning on its blog.

You may have noticed that you can’t access the website or load any of your feeds via the app. Feedly explained in a short message two hours ago that the DDoS perpetrator is holding Feedly to ransom and asking for money to stop the attack, Feedly has refused to comply.

CEO of Feedly, Edwin Khodabakchian, said in a short statement: “Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can.”

This is quite incredibly inconvenient to me and my daily checks. Actually it is ridiculous to be so dependent on it.

crossing the river through feeling the stones

Impressive displays from Matthew Morgan and James Hook make it mission accomplished for Warren Gatland as South Africa Tests beckon

The Bomber and I watched Wales 32-12 victory over Eastern Province Kings in Port Elizabeth on the Sky Now Box last night. So far so good as far as the tour is concerned, though I still roundly boo the usurper Matthew Morgan whenever he touches the ball. I don't know how long I will be able to keep that up if he continues to play so well but I will do my best.

Roll on Saturday. The Bomber's schedule for that is All Blacks v England 8am, South Africa v Wales 4pm, and then England Italy in the World Cup at 11pm. I may well bale for the last fixture.

Rik Mayall RIP

Hey kids, stop snogging and pay attention to me. If you're a wild eyed loner standing at the gates of oblivion, then hitch a ride with us,'cause we're on the last freedom moped out of nowhere city, and we haven't even told our parents what time we'll be back!

Gosh, I guess we're not the young ones any more.

Ben Waters

Unless you have already booked, you can't see Ben Waters at Ronnie Scott's this weekend as the gig has sold out. There are still some tickets left for his performance at the Old Ruts on Friday though.

He has played alongside many of rock 'n' roll's true legends including Jerry lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Procul Harum, Mick Hucknall and Ray Davies as well as appearing on Jools Hollands’ “Later” several times.

Travelling the world for over 20 years has seen Ben play in every type of musical venue possible from seedy clubs to major festivals and the Royal Albert Hall and he is now fulfilling a lifelong ambition to play at the legendary Old Ruts!

Ben & the band will play 2 x 45 minute sets and a curry will be served between sets

Funny old world. I am as surprised as you are.

Hotter than July

BBC

Stevie Wonder's song Another Star will provide the theme tune for the BBC's Fifa World Cup coverage.

The song, with its Latin American vibe, will be used as the opening sequence for all of the BBC's World Cup programmes for Brazil 2014.It is the first time the musician, 64, has given his approval for one of his songs to be used in this way.

It's all coming together. Here's a video of a trbute version at my local, The Hideaway.



My revision in peparation for June 29 continues apace. It turns out that the author of Groove and Flow: Six Analytical Essays on the Music of Stevie Wonder is an academic at Surrey University now. Can he expect a call?

picaresque

Hero's welcome for runaway D-Day veteranThe 89-year-old war veteran who slipped out of his care home to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy has arrived back in the UK to a hero's welcome.

This Torygraph story has tickled me this morning as I'm 66% of the way (thanks kindle) through reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.

“A classico is a classico and vice versa.” Mario Jardel

On the way to the William Morris for a sun-downer last night, I popped into Katavento (our very own Brazilian Icons passim) to  check on their plans (having been tipped off by Suely) for the World Cup and was told they are going to be showing the games on a big outdoor projector TV while serving up a barbecue. Churrascaria I hope and booking advised.

Brazil play Mexico at 8pm on Tuesday June 17th. I'll see who else wants to come, but it is certainly another day ticked off in the fortnight Festival of Me.

a class act

Dutch fans at Wales game thank 146 Welsh soldiers who died liberating Hertogenbosch from Nazis in WW2. @fcbusiness pic.twitter.com/05TC4Ialr6
— marcwebber (@marcwebber) June 4, 2014

That is a wonderful gesture. I may even support Holland in the World Cup now, even though they beat us 2-0 last night.

London Welsh got promoted in the rugby though. It wasn't all gloom.

I can make it at home for nothing

<injoke>That's you at the farmers' market that is Johnny boy</injoke>

Oh, and your decking has been up for seven years (Icons passim though the pictures have disappeared).

an edgier version

BY DAY he’s a respected city architect – but by night he’s a lethal weapon.

At the age of 46, Stephen Franks, of Splott, Cardiff, has just become the unlicensed boxing British Heavyweight Champion.

Like professional boxing, unlicensed boxing has regulations – there is a referee, a round system, gloves and Queensberry rules – the difference being that it is not covered by the British Boxing Board of Control. Supporters say it is an edgier version. There are also fewer controls relating to age and ability.

In his day job, Stephen is a partner in the Cardiff branch of HLM Architects, but in his spare time he has won each of his nine boxing clashes and has now been crowned champion after beating 31-year-old Londoner Mark Smith at a fight in Weston-super-Mare.

Steve Franks was a class mate of my brother Vince. That's St Illtyd's for you; an edgier version of school.

Everything is everything

Warren Gatland says his squad selection for Wales’ tour of South Africa shows that size isn’t everything.

The Kiwi coach has been renowned for picking big players during his reign, in particular packing his back-line with giants like George North, Jamie Roberts and Alex Cuthbert.

But now he has bucked that trend by selecting the diminutive Matthew Morgan - all 5ft 8ins, 11st 7lbs of him - following the Bristol-bound back’s scene-stealing display in Friday night’s trial match.

And he has also included 5ft 8ins, 12st 10lbs Scarlets winger Jordan Williams, who scored two tries for the Probables in their 55-7 victory at the Liberty Stadium.

“I’ve been criticised in the past for picking big players,” said Gatland.

“But it’s never been about that. It’s always been about picking what we think are the best players.

“Sometimes at the highest level if you are big and you are fast and you are skilful you are probably always going to have the advantage over someone who is a little bit smaller.

“But I thought Matthew Morgan came on in the second half and made a massive impact.

“He was the most dangerous player on the field during that period, so you have got to sit up and take a bit of notice. He was one of the last names added to the squad, but he deserved it and good luck to him.

“He’s definitely got something to offer. He can change a game.

“The beauty about it was he came from nowhere when he came on. I suppose that’s the romance of the trial.

“Someone can produce something, do something and get their name on the touring sheet and I thought that was special about Friday night.

“He was definitely an outside bet, but he came on and lit the place up.

“The way the game opened up a little bit in the second half you saw some of his skills really come to the fore to be able to do what he did to catch the eye. It wasn’t just catching the eye of the coaches and the selectors, but also the crowd as well. They were really getting behind him.”

Morgan, 22, has played the bulk of his rugby at fly-half for the Ospreys, but it was as a replacement full-back that he shone for the Possibles.

“He has played a lot at 10, but maybe full-back gives him a little bit more time and space on the ball,” said Gatland.

“You put someone like that in the team and you’ve got to use his attacking ability and encourage him to bring the ball back.

“You have to exploit the ability he does have when the game breaks up. You know you have to play a bit different if he is involved and try to let him use the skills he has got.

“There are one or two players carrying knocks and that has given him the opportunity.

He has to make the most of it. Go out there and make an impression.”

I'm struggling to find this Matthew Morgan fairy tale as romantic as everyone else, because it was Dan Fish he came on to replace as the Possibles' full back at half time.

thicker than water

Arriving back in Cardiff I was delighted to discover that Dan Fish, the possibles full back, was my cousin's grandson and thus - according to some quick internet research - the second cousin once removed of the Bomber (also a full back). He also has an old school CV of St Illtyd's College, St Albans RFC and Glamorgan Wanderers before graduating to the Blues and Wales U20s and Sevens.

He didn't make the cut but it added a wonderful frisson to the game.