Archive for the ‘WWW’ Category

1. Darts, arrows or spears – poisoned for extra deadliness
2. Pit fall (optional spikes, snakes or water)
3. Quick sand
4. Boulders falling from ceiling
5. Funnelled Tunnel of Wind
6. Gas – Poisonous or Explosive
7. Blades – Scything or Circular
8. Swinging logs
9. Jets of flame
10. Flooding Chamber
11. Giant Crushing ceiling block or walls
12. Giant lens focusing sunlight into a deadly death ray
13. Giant Rolling Boulder of Doom

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The Annual Girandola at the Castel Sant’ Angelo, Rome (1775-76)

Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797)

1. Finish short story for ASTONISHING ADVENTURES MAGAZINE – Success
2. Work on my novel – Failed misserably
3. Tidy my flat: Mostly except one room which is a tip
4. Reading – lots of it: Not quite lots but some
5. Catching up on some DVD watching: Caught up
6. Go to the cinema – Saw "Run Fat Boy Run"
7. Work on my impworks web site: Failed but did some last night
8. Finish writing my first facebook application – Failed Misserably to touch this
9. Make some pictures with Vue: Success
10. Taking some photographs for Wordless Wednesday: Took four pictures and I used the only one already
11. Write at least one new python script for Vue: Failed
12. Go to the Liverpool 800 exhibition: Failed
13. Fail to do 50% of the above because of either sleeping in, getting a cold or bad weather: I’m blaming a cold that took out 8 days of my break

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1. Yesterday my Wordless Wednesday picture was of this vase full of nuts and I promised I’d post an explanation.
   
2. I was walking in Newsham Park in Liverpool a year ago. As I went under a Horse Chestnut tree a gust of wind brought a liberal shower of Horse Chestnuts down on me. Fortunately it was a chilly day so I had a thick hat on. The one at the front is new and shows what they looked like when they fell on me.
3. I don’t know why but I collected them up – it seemed like the thing to do. I probably wasn’t thinking straight – I’d just been nutted by a load of nuts on my nut.
4. I dried them out, got rid of a few bad nuts and put the 122 that remained in a glass vase from Woolworths.
5. If I were a modern artist I’d sell them to a gallery and call it "What the sky looks like when it falls on your head"
6. The Common Horse Chestnut tree (Aesculus hippocastanum) was introduced to Britain from the Balkans in southern Europe in the 17^th century. They have distinctive oval leaves. A typical mature Horse Chestnut tree is around 25m tall although some reach 35m.
7. The nuts are inedible but much sought after by children. In Britain we call them Conkers and children play a game with them.
8. Now the science bit: They weigh 0.6kg (1.3lbs) so the average conker is 0.05kg (0.01lbs).
9. They have a volume of 0.55l or 0.0005m³ (0.12 imperial gallons 0.15 us gallons) giving an average volume of 0.0045lm³ or 4.5cm³ (0.001 imperial gallons 0.0012 us gallons) each. That gives a density of 1090kg/m³ (68.1lbs/ft³).
10. Assuming the tree is 25m tall a conker falling from the top of the tree will take 2.3s to hit the ground. Assuming the conkers on average fell from half that height 1.6s to hit the ground.
11. The velocity of that theoretical falling conker will be 16m/s (51ft/s) or 56km/h (35mph).
12. The impact energy for our theoretical conker is 0.6J (0.8 foot-pound force). As a comparison the impact energy of a brick falling the same distance would be 370J (500 foot-pound force). Or if I was a journalist being hit by a conker is equivalent to being hit by two three millionths of an elephant falling out of a tree.
13. I’ll take getting conked on my cranium by conkers over elephants any day.

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1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

What the sky falling on your head looks
like; and you can forget collecting any ruddy larks.

1. When they say it will only take a minute of your time it never is. I wouldn’t mind but they’ll never give me an address for me to send my bill.
2. 99% are a waste of my time and the company paying for its time. I don’t need new double-glazing tested to withstand the long artic winter.
3. When they pretend to be calling on behalf of a company you actually deal with for something important but can’t tell you which one or my name. The law has two words for that – False Pretences. I also have two words for it but I’m too polite to say them here.
4. That they call at times their statistical models say they will catch me and make a sale. Otherwise known as dinnertime and when I’m in the shower.
5. When you ask them nicely to go away they’ve been told they have to keep trying. They’ve been taught we are too polite to hang up. I’m not too polite I apologise and do it anyway then I feel bad because I’ve been rude and that makes me angry for about five minutes. Then I think why am I the one who is angry and hope their boss has an accident at a demonstration of stone cladding double glazing and ends up with an attractive new look.
6. That an over-paid marketing executive is so uncreative; so burnt out; and so lacking in ideas at their job that they think this is the best way to make me like their brand and buy their mythril framed double-glazing. If you can’t come up with a better strategy why not get work doing something you’re good at. Something honest. Like robbing banks.
7. I’m signed up to the Telephone Preference Service (UK) so the ones that call me are they’re ignoring that. Basically I only get the really unethical cold callers with the cheapest scripts, Dickensian sweatshop conditions and the staff who’ve already taken the most stick.
8. They have to have my number either from a company I’ve given it to for some important reason or be using hardware that calls banks of numbers. One is a breach of trust the other is an abuse of the phone system. At least when you get an obscene call your not the only one getting abused*
9. Friends use answer phones to screen calls for cold callers and I hate speaking to answer phones. The beep makes me a gibbering idiot. I can’t put words together in the right order. I’m more coherent speaking to an attractive woman than an answer phone. The only worse thing is an attractive woman’s answer phone.
10. Sometime I get more cold calls in a month when I’m in than I get calls from people I know. Make your own punch line up for that one.
11. When the phone rings and you’re expecting a call you get a bit excited. A bit like a small child, maybe it’s an attractive woman calling, but no it’s a cold call to sell me raspberry ripple flavoured double glazing.
12. A section of the most talented and well educated part of many developing countries population is sat around trying to sell me antique style double glazing because it’s cheaper to employ them than to come up with a smart targeted way of selling me double glazing for my car. The only experience of westerners workers in foreign call centres get is from cold calling. We hate their calls and they think we’re rude, obnoxious, angry bores who need double glazing. . That’s great form of cultural exchange.
13. That’s a great message to send when one of those workers is the leader of their nation in twenty years. One day one of them may have nuclear launch codes.

* This joke was "acquired" from Margaret Smith

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I ment to post this link last night but I was lazy. Came across the BBC’s online program catalogue. Not as detailed as say IMDB and I found a few obvious mistakes that a bit of simple data house keeping would have picked up (eg Between the Lines was a TV series from 1992-1994 but it also picks up a radio progam in 2001 and 3 documentaries in 1965 as part of the same series as they share the name) but this is a project still in beta. Not a bad resource for finding basic information out about a show.

1. Finish short story for ASTONISHING ADVENTURES MAGAZINE
2. Work on my novel only another 20K or so to go
3. Tidy my flat
4. Reading – lots of it
5. Catching up on some DVD watching
6. Go to the cinema
7. Work on my impworks web site
8. Finish writing my first facebook application
9. Make some pictures with Vue
10. Taking some photographs for Wordless Wednesday
11. Write at least one new python script for Vue
12. Go to the Liverpool 800 exhibition
13. Fail to do 50% of the above because of either sleeping in, getting a cold or bad weather

Bonus 13 – 13 smileys to celebrate 25 years of the smiley

   Traitional   Wink   Noseless B-) Sunglasses  Wide Eyes   Unhappy    Kiss :-< Forlorn
:-\ Undecided -:-) Mohawk :-{} Wearing Lipstick   Tongue stuck out  %-^ Picasso

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