Mosaic meme

A meme via When the dogs bite

If you want to play too, type your answer to each of the questions below into a Flickr search. Using only the first page, choose your favorite image, then copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows). Leave a comment if you play, so i can have a peek.

The questions:

1. What is your first name? (Neil)
2. What is your favorite food? (Sushi)
3. What high school did you attend? (Wheathampstead)
4. What is your favorite color? (Black)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (Alison Goldfrapp)
6. Favorite drink? (Beer)
7. Dream vacation? (Hunt House, Swaledale)
8. Favorite dessert? (Lemon Sorbet)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (Astronaut)
10. What do you love most in life? (Walking in the woods)
11. One word to describe you. (geek)
12. Your Flickr name. (thermalsatsuma)

Happy birthday Leighbobster!

Games may be on hold
Wait 'til Zach is old enough
To whup his pa's ass.

Happy birthday Nichole!

Travelling Tree Frog
Ex pat blogger, would be scribe
At home in London

Driving away from the car wreck of the day

Well, maybe not quite that bad, but still ...

The shower door expired yesterday, or at least two of the fixing joints did, and the replacement shower curtain that we got as a temporary replacement proved to be utterly useless. As soon as I turned the shower on, it flapped into life, wrapping around my legs and failing to stop any water from spraying out of the cubicle. A replacement door is likely to cost $hilariouslylargemadeupnumber pounds, of course, but hey, ho.

The journey to Birmingham this morning was suspiciously easy until I got to the M6 where three lorries had performed a creditable impression of a concertina on the other carriageway. Nasty. Work was hectic, mainly setting up our internal systems documentation on a Sharepoint wiki site for ease of use but I also managed to generate several hundred maintenance renewal schedules without noticing that the inflation percentage had been set to 4.6 rather than 0.046, thus showing on the document as 460%. I know that the UK economy is up the creek without a paddle, but I don't think it's quite that bad yet.

For anyone that has been following the saga of the goddamned cracker over at Pharyngula, you might be interested in today's Freethought Radio podcast which features an interview with Webster Cook, the student at the centre of the controversy who has received hate mail and death threats for the heinous hate crime of ... not eating a communion wafer. In other news, Ray Comfort renamed his rather trite christian blog 'Atheist Central' with the result that the atheist commenters went on strike. The average number of comments per post has dropped from 250+ to 30 or less ... ho, ho.

Home now to a lovely spag bol, a glass of wine and the spectacularly daft Bonekickers on the telly to laugh at.

Sunday links

Videos and Pictures

• The Periodic Table of Videos is an excellent project by the University of Nottingham to create a short film about each one of the elements showing its properties. Make sure you check out Sodium - this is what science education should be like!
• Talking of education, Ants, terrorism, and the awesome power of memes is an entertaining and informative talk by Dan Dennett
• Birds of a feather really do flock together
• Delia Derbyshire was a true pioneer of electronic music - check out a recently discovered recording of an early dance track that was decades ahead of its time
• Target Earth - a National Geographic photo essay on meteor impacts
• Wonders of the post industrial world including Fridge Henge

Neat Stuff

• Playhouses for cats
• Free comix including Cthulhu Tales and Ninja Tales
• Time travel posters - I particularly like the one for Feudal Japan
• View your flickr photos in a nifty Castle Wolfenstein mashup in Wolfenflickr

Batman Special

• Where does he get those wonderful toys?
• Why Batman could exist - but not for long
• Batman writes the theme tune, sings the theme tune

Games

• I like browser games. Bite Fight is an ongoing war between Werewolves and Vampires in a similar vein (ho, ho, I am satirical to Ikariam, Duels, et al. Go hunting, earn gold and blood, level up your skills and build up your stronghold. Fangtastic.
• Defender of the Favicon - an actual playable game of Defender in a browser bar favicon. Amazing.
• Splashback - burst droplets by creating chain reactions. Addictive
• Wipe out the world by evolving a deadly disease in Pandemic II. Top tip, watch the tutorial, play in full screen mode and concentrate on spreading your disease by different transmission vectors and resistances before evolving all of the really nasty and fatal symptoms. My best result so far was Fatal Lethal Infectious Death Syndrome that killed everybody with a combination of liver failure, haemorrhagic fever and encephalitis apart from Australia, New Zealand and Greenland who closed their borders and developed a vaccine. There's nothing quite like seeing the message 'North America is devoid of life'. Catchy.

The cat sat on the mat ... no, really!

Frank the cat seems to have the super feline ability to sleep just about anywhere he chooses, including a hard wood floor in the studio, on top of my clothes pile, on the pergola in the garden and of course on the mat by the front door. He also makes a good door stop.

And relax ...

After a rather trying week at work I have spent most of today doing not very much, thank you very much. I did hoover the rug this morning before my usual Wii Fit work out and I have just cut the grass outside and sucked up the pile of dead leaves that are the legacy of the high winds the other week. It's a bit too windy to have a barbecue, and the sky looks a bit grey as well, but the weather forecast is looking promising for some sunny weather next week.

Apart from that I have snoozed (with some very odd dreams about fixing computer problems for a troll like albino gentleman called Mr Oxnard in an office full of bits of paper) and pootled. I've had a bit of games drought after finished GTA IV, apart from completing the excellent Puzzle Quest on DS, so on a whim I installed Planescape : Torment this afternoon which runs very nicely in a Parallels window on my Macbook now that I've copied the cds onto the hard drive and pointed the ini file at them. I'd forgotten quite how strange and involving it was, and I'm looking forward to exploring the weirder bits of Sigil again. It strikes me that it is also reminiscent of Memento (although it predates that film), with waking up having no memory apart from cryptic messages tattooed on my back.

Saturday nights seem a bit empty with no Doctor Who, so I suppose I should dig out some DVDs or something to watch. Mind you, it rather depends on wresting control of the TV from Jamie who has developed a serious Oblivion habit at the moment, restarting the game and trying different character types to find the best one.

It Only Works Because You're Here

For all IT support people everywhere ... :-)

Who watches the Watchmen?

I can't help it. I know that I shouldn't get excited by hype and movie trailers, but this one is looking very cool indeed.

Thoughts, anyone?

Life imitating art

I know I should save this for Caturday, but the resemblance to the 'Simon's Cat' video is too good to pass up ...



I've just had exactly the same sequence of miaows, sofa scratching, poddling with claws and headbutting in the face, and the only reason is that Frank is after some food. :-)

What else? I've just rehung one of the baskets on the pergola because the wire tying it in place had worn through, presumably as a result of the wind blowing the basket back and forth. No damage done, and it still looks spectacular from my vantage point on the sofa.

Simon's Cat 'TV Dinner'