Andy's Land of Adventure

How To Create An Olympic Logo

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

In The News Today

Some things I just don't understand. One such thing came to light this afternoon when I was looking for something on the BBC news site, and that was the most popular recent search terms that people had looked for. All I can say is "what the hell?"

As far as I'm aware there have been no major news stories about oranges, a chocolate factory or polar bears in the last few days (weeks or months for that matter), let alone a magic key or waking the dead. Waking the dead? Is that really the sixth most popular search term today?

When I was in Romford on Sunday there was some nutter up on the roofs of a shop at a busy intersection throwing tiles and tools at traffic, then, when he ran out of tiles he started kicking chimneys to bits and throwing them down instead. A dozen or so police cars, a couple of fire engines, numerous ambulances (he was apparently quite a good shot at hitting buses), about a kilometre of police tape, a S.W.A.T team and countless people held up on their journeys and could I find a single thing about it in the news? Could I heck, but apparently waking the dead and chocolate factories are worthy of peoples search time. What's going on in the world I ask you!!!

The Great "How To Get Happy" Debate

Talking in my last post about all the things that I want to do reminded me of something else. It's the whole drink vs drugs question that arises from time to time. It's quite a controversial subject, but hey, you've got to talk about these things don't you!

Point 1 - Death
Let's take a little look at the global death toll for drink vs drugs in 2006. Drug-related deaths accounted for approximately 2,675 deaths last year. Quite a sizable sum you might think with an average of one death per three and a half hours on average, but then lets look at alcohol. Alcohol accounted for over 21,000 deaths in 2006, that's one very 25 minutes, almost 10 times as many.
You're bound to have heard countless stories about people drinking themselves to death, but what about weed. Ever heard of someone smoking themselves to death?

Point 2 - Price
Living in London I know that to go out and get a bit drunk on a Friday night would cost me in the region of £60 - £100 depending on the venue and the kind of night that it is. If I was to go and spend that same amount on Class A and C grade drugs (weed or skunk at about £15 and eighth, E's at about £2.50 a time or coke at around £30 to £60 a gram*) then you could buy sufficent to get baked or high or jolly for a whole week easily. Also, drinks prices are going up and up along with everything else. As the market becomes slowly more competitive, drug prices are actually coming down.

Point 3 - After Effects
You know you bad you feel after a night out on the drink? You know, the hangover. Well you don't get that with drugs. The reason you feel so bad after drinking is because the alcohol dehydrates the brain causing the brain-pain. Class A and C drugs, for the most part, don't cause these effects so you can go and and get very merry on your drug of choice and not feel crap about it in the morning.

Point 4 - Profitability and The Law
Think of it this way. Alcohol comes in literally thousands of flavours making the producers of it literally billions of pounds a year. These billion pound companies do what all other billion pound companies do; pay a shit load in tax. And who gets this tax? None other than the same government that makes our laws and regulations. Then, along comes something like weed, a substance that is proven to have significantly less of a negative effect on the human body than alcohol does, and it's made illegal. Why? Simple reason. It's a plant, and you can't really patent a plant can you? Being a nice taxable drug, alcohol gets away with the harm it causes to thousands of peoples lives each year, but something new comes along that's better for you but not taxable; that's a big no no!

Point 5 - Addiction
Where do people who get addicted to alcohol go to? That's right, the AA. Did you know that the AA is a massive religous cult? No? Neither did I until I looked into this more, but check out their Twelve Step Program - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program. It's scary reading. They get people when they're at their lowest and turn them to "God" for help. It's disgusting. Now, where do drug addicts go? Not to some group, but to rehab. Hell, even Robbie Williams has been to rehab. It's got to be better than sitting in a room and confessing to a load of strangers that you have a problem.

Point 6 - Religion
Alcohol is man made. Weed is grown, weed is nature. Are the people outlawing it saying that God is wrong?

So what's the answer. Well that's up for you to decide, I just tell the facts

Nine Minute Warning

I've got a question. Every morning at 7:45am I'm woken my my phone alarm playing Dee-Lite's 'Groove is in the Heart', and every morning I whack the snooze button, stretch out and roll back over. Nine minutes later, the alarm goes off again at which point I turn it off. The question is, why nine minutes?

I'd understand if it was five minutes, or ten minutes, but nine? I just don't get that. The only reason I can think of is because people don't like to get up at odd times. Consider the situation. It's 7:58am. Do you get out of bed? Of course not. Instead you think "I'll just wait until 8:00am and get up then". Then, when you look at your clock again and it's 8:01am, you just can't get up and have to wait until 8:05am because there's 'no way you're getting up at such an odd time'. And as I expect no-one sets there alarm for a peculiar time like 7:27am then the nine minute snooze is to make sure you're perky (or at least awake) one minute before a 'normal' time that you can get up.

On a similar subject, by is it that the parts of the clock with numbers on them can drop the word "minutes" when you're talking about them? It sound perfectly normal to say "five past", "twenty past" or "ten to", but with all other numbers you need to add "minutes" on it. So "twelve minutes past", "21 minutes past" or "16 minutes to" as "twelve past", "21 past" and "16 to" just sounds plain wrong. Is this a laziness thing that's evolved over the years as most people will round up or down when asked what the time is? You know what I mean. It's 1:14 in the afternoon and someone asks you the time. You don't say "it's 14 minutes past one". No, instead you just say "quarter past". Is it laziness, is it because you only glance at your watch so don't know that accurately? Who knows. At least if you say that you're not one of those people that says "it's time to get a watch". Tossers

Photodynamic Therapy And Positron Emission Tomography

Like probably countless other people all over the globe, once in a while I get an email from Friends Reunited saying that I have "new friends" or that my "friends have updated their profile. First off, I didn't really enjoy school. I got a hard time from the pupils and teachers alike, was too clever to hang with most of the cool kids, though knew too many of the cool kids to hang with the geeky kids and had too bad of a nickname to ever wain attention from any of the ladies, so to call the majority of those people my "friends" is a long stretch to begin with. It's only since leaving school and going to university, and now living my life the way I'm living it that I realise how crap it all was and how the only real "friends" I had then are the ones who've bothered to stay in contact now and who I meet up with whenever I go home, namely Fred (it's short for Ian, or something... I never really understood that), Conan (yes, that's his real name), Laura R and, well, that's it, and Laura I rarely speak to now.

Despite this, when the email comes, I occasionally take it up on myself to see how a few people are doing or what's going on in their lives. I'll be honest though, this is generally a chance for me to snidely look down on some of the people that gave me a hard life back in the day who are now having a crap time, or are in a rubbish job, or, like the majority of people from Burton, shacked up in their council flat nursing their three illegitimate children and living on a diet of cigarettes, White Lightning and Trisha. Who says there's no justice in the World.

Today though, I saw the profile of one Ryan Mewis. Now Ryan was one of the clever trousers at my school and like myself was one of the minority that actually went to university. It was obvious he was going to do something very scientific in life, and by all accounts, he is. Here's how the start of his profile reads:

Well I graduated in July with a first and not wanting to join the real world just yet decided to stay in Hull and do my PhD. Not a bad start there Ryan. Well done on the first - let's read on.

Thus far it is going well- I am synthesising novel chelators for use in both photodynamic therapy and positron emission tomography Erm, what? That's a shower of word-shite that is (thank Becky for the phrase). When I read that it makes me wonder "has he just written that to confuse us all", because if he has, then he's damn well succeeded. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all bitter about the fact that I don't understand a word that he's said, as I'm sure I could talk about the strengths of integrated Python and tal:block coding until I'm blue in the face without him understanding a word, but it's hard to sound quite so confusing in one sentance as he has done. If I had to have a go, I'd probably say that I, erm... no, nothing that I do can be turned into something that sounds quite that bad; not without a lot of thought anyway. One day... one day

Always Take The Weather With You

One thing will never fail to astonish me about London, and that's the weather. Apart from more tropical climates, I'm sure London the only place on the planet that can have torrential rain one day and be lovely the following day. Today, I had the opportunity to prove that, as yesterday I was woken by the sound of gale force winds and blistering rain as is slammed against my bedroom window, so for some reason, I videoed it...

...Then, this morning on the walk to work, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky...(cue video two)

I think I've just come to accept now that the good weather in London is back and forth more often than A-listers are in and out of their relaxational paradise... sorry, I mean rehab!

Erupted With Pleasure

Google never ceases to astound me. I was using Google Maps to have a look around Dedham as I'm going there this weekend with Roz and I zoomed right out so that I could see the whole world. I zoomed in at a random area of the Atlantic Ocean, and look what I zoomed in on.

What are the chances of zooming in on landmass in the middle of the Atlantic, let alone an awesomely cool volcano. I love technology so much!

Ring Ring

Ok people, I need you! Well, that's not precisely true. I don't need you, but I need your responses. I'm on the hunt to find the best ever ringtone and I need to know what you have as yours so that I can find the best one around.

Personally I have two, depending on the person that's calling me. Generally it's The Cardigans - My Favourite Game, but if it's one of my top friends, they have the Theme to Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers. Incidentally, my alarm that gets me up in the morning is the Theme to The Mysterious Cities of Gold as I have a thing for those old 80s cartoons, but there's a whole post coming about that later.

So, if you're reading this, don't just skip it by. It takes a couple of seconds to leave a comment with your ringtone so please do. There might even be a prize for the best one, but that would be telling!

152 And Counting

As of today, January 30th 2007 (I can't believe how fast this month has gone incidently) we are now 152 days from July 1st, and I can't wait. I expect most of you know why already, but for those who don't, it's when the English "no smoking in public places" ban comes in. How I long for that day. After this weekend, when twice I woke up stinking of musty cigarettes I've come to dislike them more and more to the point now when I really dislike smelling it in the street. Shame it will be allowed in outdoor places too. If I had it my way, we'd be like some parts of the world where tabacco is completely outlawed, but no, like alcohol in that it's a nice taxable drug that the fat cats can make loads of money off, so that will never happen - though we (or I at least) can hope!