I was flipping through some old CDs today, and found the whole of the logfiles for this site for 2005.
I already had the 2006 logfiles to hand, and also the 2007 ones up until 10th September. And, I thought, what a ripping wheeze it would be to do a huge stats run from the beginning of 2005, up until that day…
The results are here. Turns out, the busiest day is Thursday, and, the busiest hour is from 6PM - 7PM.
My word. Considering I was claiming it was going to be a shit day, it actually went really good.
No sooner had I pressed “Send” on my previous post, Daddykins awoke, and came downstairs. Before I even had a chance to plead with him to take me somewhere, his first words uttered to me were “Get your shoes on”…
“…why? Where are we going?” I replied. It seemed a bit of an odd statement considering he’d only been awake a few minutes.
“Don’t know yet” was his reply.
I was shocked, and delighted. Me and Daddykins were going on a proper day out for the first time since at least 1997. Sure, we’d been places before, but not for a proper Father/son type thing. There had always been “complications”. OK, I’m sure it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t got the new car, but I’ll not use that as an excuse. I’m sure my dad took me out because he loved me… yes, that must be the reason.
Needless to say, I took my camera. My dad must have had some idea where we were going, as we headed in the direction of the North Yorkshire Moors. Well, when I general, I mean DIRECTLY, even taking the necessary shortcuts Daddykins had picked up during his many years working around that area.
This narrowed it down to a few places… three, in fact. Whitby, Grosmont, or Goathland, the real-life village which is the setting for Heartbeat’s “Aidensfield”. Whitby was quickly ruled out, which is just as well, as it’s expensive, probably crowded, and there’s nowhere to park easily. I remember this from when we used to go to days out to Whitby as a child. We (being me, my mother, nanna, and any other freinds/relatives who tagged along) would get dropped off, then my dad used to disappear somwehre with the car, sometimes taking half an hour to return, after parking it in some obscure back lane for free.
So, Grosmont, or Goathland. I was indeed correct. Daddykins took one look at the parking situation in Grosmont, and thought “sod that”… I didn’t quite work out why, either the car park was full, or it was too expensive. Either way, we kept going, along the same road, through Grosmont, and onto Goathland. As we approached the centre of the village, our path was blocked by a policeman. Daddykins rolled the window down (or rather, pressed the button that brings the window down). and asked him what was going on…
“Oh, they’re just shooting a scene”, he replied. “Won’t take long… they’re averaging about 3 minutes per take”. Woooo! They were filming, there and then. I could hardly believe my luck. Daddykins got chatting to the copper.
“So, where’ve you came from?” The copper asked, to start conversation.
“Hartlepool… West View”, daddykins replied, quite correctly.
“Ohhh, West view Road?”, the copper replied.
Turns out that the guy’s grandparents lived on West View Road, near the Brus, and he used to eat in the (now demolished) Brus Cafe. What are the chances of that happening? It’s not quite as amazing as the time I stayed in a hotel on the Isle of Wight, and the owner knowing Eric Wilkie who used to drink in the Queens, and a good friend of mine and especially my dad. Even Coatesy knew him. Eric, you may remember, is whose front room I spewed up in on the Millenium night.
Er, anyway, I’ve swayed way off topic there. Back to Goathland. The take eventually finished, and we were free to go on our way, to the car park. It cost £2 to park up for the full day, which I consider entirely reasonable, though in previous visits, we parked for free on the edges of the road, but these are all now yellow-lined. Bugger. Either way, we parked up, and headed for the site of the filming…
Here’s one of the takes…
After I took this photo, I was told by some anonymous woman in a Hi-Vis jacket that I couldn’t take photos while they were recording. That, to me, doesn’t make much sense. 1) my camera is silent when taking photos, 2) I was in a public place.
I’ve always wondered how the law stands on such matters. I must admit, I was 100% compliant with her request - personally I just enjoyed watching the recording, and was happy in the knowledge that between takes, I could photograph what I wanted, most of it appearing very similar to what I could have shot during the takes - same people, same equipment, slightly different stance, maybe. It’s all a bit academic anyway, as I only took 6 photos while watching the filming. Ah well.
That was an added bonus to the day I wasn’t expecting in the first place.
We spent a big portion of the day at the train station, as they have steam trains there, and Daddykins loves them. As expected, the whole place is kept in a retro style, with old fashioned advertising placards dotted around.
The first thing we did when we got there was get some refreshments. Daddykins can’t function without his morning cup of coffee, and considering we’d went straight out, he never had chance to have it. I was surprised he’d went as long as he did without collapsing into a caffiene-deficiency related coma. Either way, we watched a total of 3 trains come in and out…
… each of them looking like that one. It’s a shame there’s only a few of these things running anymore, as they’re certainly impressive. And huge. And noisy.
During the wait between the trans approaching, we went for a walk up the side of the hill, which formed the valley that the station was in. Before you leave the station, however, was this gate…
Penalty for leaving the gate open, £2. I’m sure that this sign was added when two pounds was actually a lot of money, and actually a bit of a deterrent. Never mind though, as everyone who went through it did indeed close the gate. It wasn’t a hard walk, and the view for reaching the top was stunning
There was no mobile phone signal, however, even at the top of the big hill, which I was a little surprised about. I wasn’t planning to call anyone, it was merely an observation.
After we watched the trains, it was time to take a last walk around the village, and take in the scenery.Something which is clear with this place is that they will never need anyone to mow the lawns, as there’s sheep everywhere…
I thought it was great personally. Although this was a novelty for me, being an outsider, I could imagine that the residents would get really rather sick of their fluffy white prescense…
As this point, I went into Ye Olde Gift shoppe, and bought Daddykins a little momento of the day, as a thanks for the day out - another model car for his collection. 20 years ago, the roles would have been reversed - he’d have been the one buying ME the toy car, but he collects them. And he has a lot of them.
On the way back, I took more photos, and finally managed to get a decent shot of Roseberry Topping
And that was pretty much it. On the way home we went to the chippy, only to find that it was completely packed. Therefore, the day was completed with a trip to the Brus Chippy. The chips were very nice, if a little expensive, and a little unforgiving with the portions.
The full set of photos can be viewed here.
It’s just coming up to 11AM, and Daddykins isn’t even up yet, so the chances of actually doing anything decent today are becoming weaker and weaker. Something I forgot to mention in the earlier post, so might as well mention now is that yesterday, we bought something else from Euro Trade…
For the last few months our toilet has had a crusty brown rim, made of limescale. And we’d tried everything to get rid of it. Except limescale remover, naturally.
While in ETW, I spied some Toilet Duck limescale remover… 2 for £1. It wasn’t until we got it home, we found that it was actually industrail strength stuff, with “Only to be used by professionals” plastered all over the bottle. Um. How hard could it be to use Toilet Duck for christ’s sake? Answer: not very hard at all. The limescale remover did indeed do the job of… um… removing the limescale, and now our shitpot is lily white. And so is the area of the blue bath mat where I spilled a little of it. Whoops.
It’s currently 6:30 AM on the morning of Friday 14th September 2007. I am slap-bang in the middle of the worst shift transition known to man - yesterday I finished at 8AM, after 3-4 weeks of night shifts. In a couple of days time, I will be starting at 8AM for 3 days of day shifts. What a complete pisser. My body clock is struggling to cope as it is.
Yesterday, I arrived home from work, to find Daddykins already up and watching telly. This was a first. I’ve never known him up before I’m home. After a copule of hours, we went to Teesside Park, as Daddykins wanted a few electrical components from Maplins. I also wanted a trip in the new car, which rocks, by the way. Needless to say, I took the camera. I suppose it’s becoming a bit of a strange addiction, this photography lark. The journey from Hartleoool to Middlesbrough is possibly one of the most uninspiring routes known to man, yet still I managed to take 139 photos, using up 379Mb of a 512Mb card. These aren’t on flickr… yet.
Anyway, back to yesterday. After visiting Maplins, we had a look in PC World. It was at this point, I remembered I needed a new CPU fan, explained in greater depth below (I bet you can’t wait), but I didn’t know what type of fan I needed, so this was quickly aborted. Pish.
We left Teesside Park behind, and nipped over the Tees to another one of my favourite places, the Euro Trade Warehouse! I love that place. The whole point of going there was to purchase a new bin for the back kitchen. The old blue one was a few years old now, and so was the collection of teabags and onion peel which adhered themseles to the base of it.
We got the bin, and around £40 worth of other stuff. There seemed to be less “junk” in than normal, though we normally go around Xmas time. I bought some cherry tic-Tacs, which I’d never seen before. Probably because they were from some far-away land - the ingredients on the side of the box is totally incomprehensible. And they don’t actually taste of cherry. Hmmm.
After loading the car full of cheap purchases from ETW, we went on to our penultimate stop of the day. Halfords, so Daddykins could buy some touch-up paint for the car. When we bought it, the garage pointed out a couple of places where the paint was damaged…
The final stop was to be goold old Netto. I’d not been in there for at least a couple of months, so I went in looking for a couple of things. One thing I really don’t like about Netto is that they only get certain things in for a few days, and once they’ve sold out, they’re gone for good. One thing which they had last time I went in were these things called “Jacket Chips”…
I swear to you, these things are heaven on tinfoil. As you can see, they’re a cross between roast potaoes and chips, resuling in a “slab” of potato rather than a chip. I went in there today to see if I could pick up another bag of these, but alas, no. These were one of the tings they old had a limited supply of, and now appear to have gone for good. Bugger.
One thing they HAVE started doing, however, is their own line of Microwavey Ready Meals. Now, anyone who knows me can’t fail to notice that I like nothing better than to slap something frozen, usually chicken curry in the microwave, and watch it spin around until it’s burned on the top, yet still frozen in the middle.
I bought three of these, as they were 3 for £2.50. I got home, and cooked one of the chicken curries to “perfection”, doing my usual trick of adding a little water to the rice so it doesn’t completely dry out. My review of it…. edible, but bland. Out of 10, I’d give it a “meh”.
After watching some terrible Norman Wisdom film on TV, I conked out on the sofa at about 2PM, not waking up until about 7. At about 8PM, I received a text from Coatesy, cancelling our plans for today…
Today was meant to be another in the series of “Jamie And Coatesy’s Days Out” (previous parts, 1, 2, 3), but this fell through again, with just over 12 hours to go before he was due to pick me up. This means I now have a completely free day. Also, I have the £20, which I was going to lend him to fill up his car, sitting right here, saying “SPEND ME”.
That could come in handy, if I’m honest. I currently have two minor PC repairs to do, as mentioned earlier, so I might get those fixed.
The first is the laptop mains lead. It’s completely goosed. The mains cables are exposed. Thankfully, not down to the actual copper yet, but you can see the live,neutral and earth cables clearly. I tried to cover them up with green masking tape, but that didn’t last long. The second, as mentioned earlier, is the CPU fan on Windowcam3. It’s been disconnected and sat in the front room for over a month, as the CPU fan had almost completely stuck. I don’t even know if you can get the fans separately, or whether I’d need a completely new heatsink. I hope to god it’s not the latter as they’re an absolute bastard to fit.
I am also hoping to get my dad to take me somewhere. It’s looking to be a nice day (it’s now almost 8AM), so hopefully I can convince him to take me out somewhere so I can upload another shedload of pictures. I might as well update my progress all day, so back soon.
Well, OK, strictly the title isn’t true, it’s still in eistence but it is no longer in our possession. At approximately 14:31:19, on the 10th of Spetember 2007 (give for take a few seconds, after all, I did say approximately.), it was picked up by the dealership, and driven away, never to be witnessed ever again by my eyes…
This was my last view of it, as it disappears out of sight, behind the neighbours van. The red and white trade plates disappearing off into the distance, taking the rest of the car with it. Sob. It’s a sad day, I’m missing it already.
Now, of course, there’s the replacement, which hasn’t arrived yet, and haven’t even seen. We will get that later today. Hopefully.
Anyway. Enough about the car for now, despite the fact I’m excited about it.
This weekend, I have been mostly tidying. Yes, I’ve been through one of my phases where everything gets sorted, I end up filling the best part of a wheelie bin with rubbish, everything else goes into a box or bag. I suppose it’s because of the memory card incident the other night, which eventually turned up, but I also personally like to a little bit of “life laundry” now and then. I’m a hoarder, and anyone who’s been within Mercuryvapour Towers will know this. Life Laundry are those brief periods, where I think “do I really need any of this shit?” before getting rid of it, and slinging it in the wheelie bin. Something which was also needed was a good old desk tidy, was my desk…
You can actually use it now. You can put things down on it without having to search for it 30 seconds later, because a pile of something has toppled over. It is no longer a health hazard. The stale, sticky beer has been mopped / scraped up, and I no longer have coins stuck to the desk. All good.
Another bonus is that I found about £3 in loose change, both on the floor and on my desk. Some of which went to buying a Cornetto from Barbaras later in the day. Lovely.
Also, a little bit of computer talk too. I’ve cleared off my hard drive, and moved a load of stuff onto an external drive - these are things like unfinished “projects” - the masters of my vlogs, etc. will live on there for now on - things which take a lot of hard drive space, which could be used for better things. It’s also the first time I’ve moved the original “Queens Demolition” video file from my main hard drive since I recorded it 2 years ago. I think I can class that project as dead. Maybe I’ll edit it, split it up and put it on YouTube. There’s nothing like a good demolition to get the hits rolling in. The only person, however, who was really interested in seeing it was Wayne, and just, like before, he disappeared off the face of the earth in January, this time, probably for ever. It’s a sad way for something like that to end, but the whole thing smacked of inevitibility.
Um, that was a rather random, rambling change of subject. Just for a bit of funsies, I’ve hooked up both of my external drives, and I now have 909Gb accessible to this machine. That’s-a-spicy-meatball. If you ask me how much of it is backed up, however, I will turn away and whistle, or pretend I speak foreign, or something.
EDIT: The reason it was driven away, £100 trade-in for it. Just in case anyone queries why.
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