Climbing the RSS mountain
As of 9am this morning, this is my unread count…
Looks like it's time for a large pot of coffee, iTunes on quietly (so as not to wake Lorna) and lots of reading.
Vox Hunt: I Miss This Show
Video: Show us a clip of a TV show you miss.
These three acheived a level of pure visual comedy (the show was very much an adult TV version of comics like The Beano) that has rarely been neared since.
Torn - mimed
This came up on the Ravens GuildChat list earlier (which is pretty off-topic for a World of Warcraft guild, but there you go…) and I just couldn't resist reVoxing it:
My brother and his wife bought me this DVD for Christmas and I was in tears of laughter watching this sequence the first time around.
QotD: MmmCookies
Did you order Girl Scout cookies this year? What kind?
Y'know, one day Vox is going to realise that it's an international service...
They're called Girl Guides over here, and they don't bake cookies biscuits.
So, no. Never.
Back to the 50s
Here's an even earlier pic: my Dad (far right) with his National Service buddies serving in Suez…
QotD: Totally Obsessed
What is your current obsession(s)?
Submitted by eijsr.
Currently, getting some sleep. I seem to be in a semi-perpetual state of sleep deprivation right now.
Enter Mechanical March
So, March. That's one sixth of the year gone. How the hell did that happen…?
Still, moving on, I'm very proud of myself right now. As Lorna will happily tell you, at length, I'm not the world's most mechanically talented people. It's just not my strong suit. I'm better at it than my Dad, for whom the simplest of flat-packs was a nasty challenge, was or my brother, who just pays people to do it for him, is, but I'm only good by comparison.
Last night, one of my headlight bulbs went. This made me nervous. For one, it's illegal to drive around with a headlight out, and I'm the sort of clean-living guy who gets done as soon as I step out of line. For another, last time I tried to change a headlight bulb, I remember it being a bit of a nightmare. In the end, I had to get Lorna to do it for me.
I stopped off at Halfords in Sutton. I spent a while working through the guides to find the right bulb for my Megane. And I installed it. Just like that. I stood with oily hands in the Halfords, slightly amazed at my own marginal competence, and gaped at the working light.
Of such material are life's small victories cut.
QotD: The Best Blend
What's your favorite blend or brand of coffee or tea?
Tea-wise, it's jasmine all the way. I find it a wonderful mid-afternoon de-stresser. I drank loads of it in a Chinese restaurant in Bristol last year, and something went "click" in my taste buds. It's been a major part of my beverage intake ever since.
Coffee? I'm on a bit of an Union Coffee Roasters kick right now. I find their coffee to have a flavour a notch above that of most ground coffees, and it's really perking up my work days right now.
QotD: First Celebrity Crush
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Submitted by Glory.
I have destinct memories of being obsessed with a card I had of her from a bubble gum collection, and having no idea why I was obsessed with it. All I knew was that looking at it made me happy and gave me an odd feeling of longing.
Puberty (and the metal bikini) were many years away.
QotD: Best Day
What is your favorite day of the week?
I'm really struggling with this one. Friday would be an obvious choice, but I spend so many Friday nights on the A12 or M4 that I rarely look forward to them. Nobody with any sanity looks forward to midweek days. Monday can be cool, when I'm enjoying my job as much as I am, but that just sounds, well, disturbed.
The Lords of The North (Bernard Cornwell)
The 9th century is a time of intense struggle, with the idea of England being born in the south, and nearly being destroyed by the Vikings before it takes root. King Alfred ("the Great") not only defeats the Norsemen, but steadily brings the whole country under the banner of Wessex. The first two books take us through Alfred's near total defeat and fightback, through the lens of Uthred, a young Saxon from the north who was raised by Vikings.
This books sees Alfred put on the back-burner while Uthred heads north to deal with personal quarrels, and gets caught up in the machinations of a would be king of the North. It's a page turner, as one would expect from Cornwell, with a huge twist in the middle that caught me completely by surprise. But it's not a book I can recommed to those who aren't already reading the series. It's a book of tranistion, tying up plot threads from previous books, and clearling the decks for the next major steps in the major arc of the books: the rise of King Alfred. We pay occasional visits to that story, and get ideas of how it's going, but this feels like an attempt to reconnect Uthred with his roots before returning to a struggle that is only just becoming his own.
An enjoyable read, sure enough, but only as part of a series. It's too clearly a chunk of filler between the key events in Alfred's reign to stand alone as a novel. Pick up The Last Kingdom and start from the beginning.
Brief Lives: Newton (Peter Ackroyd)
Take this brief, but enjoyable, biography of Newton, the founding father of modern scientific thought. Ackroyd plunges the depths of his genius and his obsession, and sheds new light on familiar stories, as one would expect. But he doesn't shy away from the areas of his life that cleave less to the modern idea of what a scientist should be: his deep, abiding and ever-so-slightly heretical Christian faith and his life-long flirtations with alchemy.
He also doesn't play down the difficult, arrogant and insecure nature of the man, and delves into the conflicts with others and periods of seclusion that defined his life. What makes this book, like earlier efforts in the series, so compelling is that they take the greatness of the subject's work for granted, and delve as best as one can, into the reality of the man behind the work. And that can't help but be fascinating.
In The Beginning...there were Barenaked Ladies
The Barenaked Ladies/YouTube video I blogged a couple of days ago, combined with general video-related noodling here in the office this afternoon have reminded me of this:
Little did I know…