Amateur Ramblings

Red Lorra Yellow Lorra

Hope y'all had a nice Xmas day. We're in the Midlands, recovering from a devine duck dinner and making plans to assult the sales in Birmingham tomorrow.

I'll sign off with a snippet of the Queen's speech (as re-imagined by Adam Buxton).

Sister Sledge

Thursday night's snow has stuck around. This gave us the chance to go outdoors and enjoy ourselves.

Gemma bought what might have been the last three sledges in Leeds, and texts were sent to rally the troops. At the alloted hour we met at Roundhay Park: us; Andrew, Michelle and Scarlett; and Paul, Sarah and Dougie. Yes, our Chapel Allerton friends have taken custody of Gemma's mum's black labrador.

 

And we began by having a little fun. Olive enjoyed being pulled along in a sledge, and we quickly spotted Dougie (along with Paul and Sarah) on the brow of the hill. We had a few sledges (is that a verb?), and watched the arrival and departure of what appeared to an extended family filming a music video).

But things quickly went downhill (pun purely optional).

Dougie had managed to cut his foot, and was dotting a red trail in his wake. The injury didn't seem to worry him as he played fetch with Paul, but Sarah was pretty concerned and eventually they left to seek some veterinary advice.

By now the Davies' had arrived, but Scarlett was patently unkeen on careering down a hill in a red plastic tray. She was cold. The air temperature of 0^oC was augmented by a biting northerly. And by now Olive had decided that she also would prefer to be indoors. Her nose started to run, and her eyes and lungs started to cry. Loudly. We decided to call it a day, and headed over to Paul and Sarah's for warmth, lasagna and wine.

Once we had all warmed up the mood lifted, but Olive then decided that she did not feel like sleeping in her travel cot. Gemma and / or I spent a significant portion of the evening sitting with her, and when we eventually turned in around midnight, we found that the only way we could keep her from blarting was to let her get into bed with us. She usually has twelve hours sleep; I think this would be close to our combined total on this occasion.

If Web Services Were Vintage Paperbacks

Stéphane Massa-Bidal (AKA Rétrofuturs (Hulk4598)) has imagined covers for books that would fit into the above genre. Here are they:

This collection reprises M.S Corley's book covers set.

Via BoingBoing.

The Web For Beginners

Cassetteboy hasn't done much, but I have enjoyed his small collection of video mash-ups. Here's the latest - a short talking heads piece where the question 'what is the Internet' is addressed.

Via A Welsh View.

A Room With A Viewing Figures

Andrew explained to me that his household has recently been enrolled by BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board) to help contribute to the UK's viewing figures.

They have a black box hooked up to their television set, which takes note of everything they view. And each time they watch telly they need to 'log in', so that BARB can get a demographic breakdown to apply to the raw data. Scarlett does not count, being under four, but guests can (and must) be added by age range.

This makes them pretty powerful by my reckoning. There are only around 5,000 homes that have had a BARB black box connected to their televisions; the number of individuals that inform the country's viewing figures is approximately 11,500. Therefore each of these people is worth 5,000 of the viewing populous. As I say, pretty powerful.

Anyway, the Davies' participation in this scheme caused me some discomfort on Saturday. You see, Michelle watches The X Factor. And I very much don't. And I could not bear the thought that I was adding 5,000 to the show's viewing figures.

Well, in the end Michelle 'logged me out', changing guests to one. Although I did notice that Andrew remained logged in, even though he doesn't much care for the raucous moneyfest.

Although Michelle is generally one of the coolest people I know, she does have a weakness for some absolute trash TV. She also adds 5,000 to the figures for Loose Women.

A Walk In The Park

On Saturday we went over to Andrew and Michelle's house in Wakefield for a pre-Xmas get-together. Dean and Rachel came over for the afternoon with their two children Nathanial and Isabella.

Although I bumped into the latter coupling in the week when I met up with Gemma at the German Market for lunch in the beer tent, it was good to have longer than then an hour to catch up with them. It felt like I hadn't seen our hosts for ages, but really it's only been a few weeks.

One of the items on the agenda was a walk in nearby Thornes Park. Eventually, as it was getting dark, we decided to go for it and donned our warm coats and hats. Olive used the great outdoors to try out both her ever improving walking skills and her new shoes. Since taking the following footage, Gemma has thankfully removed the squeakers from each shoe.

I also managed to take a few pictures before the camera battery died. Although technically poor, I really like the below shot of Olive pottering along. Definite album-cover material.

After the walk, the Viponds headed back to Bradford whilst we got fish and chips and settled down to watch the 2009 Comedy Awards.

The Conchord Has Landed

Sad but not wholly unexpected news over on Chortle (my new source of comedy news); Flight of the Conchords have announced that they won't be writing a third series.

I think this decision will help protect their legacy. There's definitely something in this 'quitting while you're ahead' theory.

I'll leave you with a live version of one of my favourite Conchords song, Business Time, which featured in the first series.

Street Life

I thought I'd wrap up the week by leaving you with a couple of photographs I took earlier this year of the views I can get outside the front of my house.

 

 

Have a good weekend.

Alphabet from the Air

I really like Thomas de Bruin's Google Earth Alphabet series, and admire the time it must have taken to put the mosaics together.

There's upper case, lower case (pictured above) and numbers and punctuation. It makes me want to fire up Google Earth and compile an aerial alphabet of Yorkshire. (Via BoingBoing.)

Also on the subject of a letters, Dave Gorman has put together a collection of single-letter shutter graffiti by an artist called Eine. Very urban!

 

Spacebook

Over at Geeks are Sexy, they are speculating on how the Facebook status updates of the characters of Star Wars might look: