Andy's Land of Adventure

Things that have amused me...

I thought I'd share a few images that I've taken over the years that have amused me...

Sound advice if you ask me

The enemy had no idea where to attack first

I wouldn't advise the chicken soup

Putting It Back In Order

Oops, yeah, I missed one

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A Good Few Weeks Ahead

I like films. I like films a lot, so I'm very excited about seeing this little lot of the next few weeks (in order of excitedness)

Die Hard 4.0

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Shrek the Third

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - At Worlds End

Vacancy

I'm sure there's others too that I've forgotten about too. It's going to be a good few weeks. You've gotta love those Summer blockbusters

Night ride of doom

It's been a weekend for two things, partying and riding bikes through the streets at night. Both Friday and Saturday ended with Roz standing drunkenly on the stunt pegs on the back of my bike as a pedalled us frantically through South London. Friday saw us rolling down from New Cross, through Peckham and onto Herne Hill, whilst Saturday was much easier coming from Streatham via Brixton. Good thing the numerous policeman that we passed didn't seem to care. I would have thought that they just didn't spot us if it wasn't for Roz's continual screaming, waving and shouting at passers-by. How inconspicuous! Check out the clip from Friday's journey (it's more for your ears that your eyes)

She wants to ride her bicycle

Last week was Roz's birthday, and wanting to get her something nice I got her a brand spanking new bike. Yeah, it's not very 'romantic', but she's never owned one before and never learnt to ride, so I figured that if I taught her it'd be something she'd always remember. Anyway, suffice to say she was very excited by it all, and she seemed like she really liked it, and as you'll see from the above video, was doing ok for a first go. Maybe she's a natural or maybe it was my technique, who knows. Over the weekend I'll be showing how it's really done though and what 'fast' really is when I take mine out tomorrow and Sunday... not that I'm a show off or anything *ahem*

C'est a fini... almost

The bike is as good as finished... Unfortunately there were a couple of upsets along the way - namely a buckled wheel and a broken brake, but it's getting to the point where it's as good as done; and I'll tell you what - I'm bloody happy with it!

It All Came Tumbling Down

Last night, a building around the corner from work 'imploded'. I thought it was pretty cool, but I guess the guy who was trapped in there until 1:30am this morning probably doesn't agree

At Long Long Last

I finally completed the paint job on the bike

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

Word on the street is that blogging is joining MySpace in the land of 'things that are just not cool anymore' and will shortly be deader than the dodo, Doni, Di and Dando. "What's going to take it's place then" I hear you scream, but have no fear. The blog may be on the downfall, but the vlog is on the way up! For those of you who don't have their heads permanently attached to the Internet, where as 'blog' is short for 'web logging', 'vlog' is short for 'video logging' and is exactly that. Instead of typing loads and loads and loads and loads all day, people are now turning to the likes of YouTube and powering their blogs through video instead. I see the appeal, so I'm going to give it a go for a while and see how it works out. Sure, there'll still be some writing to accompany the video, but much less. The ever increasing RSI in my fingers thanks me for it.

So, to kick off this new vlog I'm going to show you what I've been working on all weekend; the new paint job on my bike. How do you like it compared to the old design (image below the video). Personally, I think it's much better. I just have to neaten the edges and I'm done.

Oh, and apologies for the quality but I was covered in paint at the time and didn't want to go inside to get my camera so I recorded this on my phone. It'll do for now though. Enjoy the future!

How To Create An Olympic Logo

Scarred For Life

Did you know that the top tattoo parlours won't let you have a tattoo done if you've consumed alcohol in the previous 48 hours? I didn't! I bloody well do now though! I was a little miffed to say the least when I hot footed it down to Into You on Saturday, only to be told that I couldn't have it done and would have to re-book which means another four weeks of waiting. Oh well, it's not the end of the world I suppose, and at least now I know not to go for a couple of brewskis after work on that week. Apparently on occasion the thing that they use to sterilize the needle can react badly with the alcohol in your blood so they won't do it.

M'eh. I was hoping to have it started before Roz comes back this week, but I'm sure she'll now be happy that she can come along and watch me wince for a couple of hours. I've never really thought about the process that goes into tattooing before and I had a look at it on some Internet sites. For some reason I always had it in my head that the needle was "cut-drawing" on your skin, but have since realised that you're being pierced with an inky needle over and over and over and over. Lovely. It could be worse though I suppose. I've seen some scarification videos recently. Why anyone would do that is beyond me.

For anyone not in the know, scarification is the process of removing skin to reveal the flesh underneath so that it leaves a permanent scar. It's the new 'mega hardcore' body art, but I can honestly say I'd never be tempted. It makes my toes curl just thinking about it. I got sent a video of an even more extreme version of scarification. It involves cutting off the skin, then pouring gunpowder over the wound and lighting it which apparently makes the wound blacker... this is not for the faint-hearted - http://modblog.bmezine.com/2007/05/27/gunpowder-scarification

Flying The Olympic Shame

It's hit the media hard in the last few days and is probably the most debated topic since the question as to whether or not to create Sarah's Law, and that's the unveiling of the 2012 Olympic Logo. The official press release stated:

"It's bold, it's fresh, it's different. It exudes a dynanism in a non-conformist, angular expression, using eye-catching colours and the Olympic flame is clearly visible with the '0' representing the flame."

No, no it's not. It's crap. Really really crap. I never feel bad expressing my opinion, even if it goes against the majoity, but this time it seems like people are on my side. All you have to do is check the official online petitions to keep or scrap the logo. At the time of me signing the 'scrap' petition there were 14,850 signatures whilst the 'keep' petition has a whopping zero. Not one person wants this logo kept by the looks of things, and it's pretty obvious why. It's the worst use of £400,000 that's ever been spent in my opinion. I mean, £400,000 is no small amount of money. Hell, I could have done one a hundred times better for a hundredth of the price. It's the perfect expect of designing by committee and it's just bad bad bad.

If you look at it carefully, it looks a bit like Lisa Simpson giving head

I urge you all to sign the petition now and get rid of this logo before we become the laughing stock of the world - http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/change-the-london-2012-logo.html

Good Old eBay

I'm sure you'll remember that a couple of weeks ago I was given the chance to test and review the new LG Shine mobile phone that it turned out that I didn't really like. Well, my review was apparently the best (I knew all this writing would pay off eventually) and I actually won the phone.

The thing is though I wasn't really a fan of it, so there was only one thing to do really. eBay! Good old eBay. It's brilliant for getting rid of stuff that's lying around or for times like this when you've got quite an expensive piece of kit that you don't want. Three days of bidding after putting the phone on there it had sold for £121. Not bad for a 50 word review. That's almost £2.50 a word. If only all my writing could generate that I'd be writing substantially more I tell you.

On that front, I must apologise for not really writing a lot recently. I just don't have the time to write everything for two blogs (this one and my training one), and for the next ten weeks I need to update the other one on a daily basis which doesn't leave me a lot of time to write on here, and being as I said that there's no more "training talk" on here, well, that means that the bloggable content for here is less than it used to be, but I'll get back on track soon. At least I'll try to.

8.7%

8.7%

Woo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Confused????