Oh, OK. I’ll admit I’m a bit sad at his passing. I enjoyed some of his programmes such as “Game For a Laugh”, and “Beadles About” (now to be titled “Beadle’s not about any more”, and the original “You’ve Been Framed”, before it went all childish, with the funny shaped house, and was replaced with Lisa “Yorkshire’s Very Own Pudding” Riley.
This is a first. I’m typing a blog whlst completely in the nude. All I’m wearing is a pair of glasses. You’ll also be glad to know that, for that very reason, the webcam is currently disconnected. Well, actually, it wasn’t for that reason, it was for a totally unconnected issue to do with my hard drive, but that isn’t worth mentioning. I just thought that I’d scare everyone away by either grossing them out, or scaring them away with utter nerd talk.
Um.
For the rest of you who totally ignored that last paragraph, yes, this is another installment of my life, being typed at a time when I really should be sleeping. I am happy to say that I am back in touch with everyone who I want to be. It turned out that Coatesy’s mobile was indeed disconnected… unfortunately, I had forgotten that I’d actually had two numbers for him, and yes, I’d sent it to the wrong one I didn’t even know I had two, until he popped up on messenger the other night (for the first time in months) and informed me about “stuff”. All that concern, and it was of my own doing. Grrr. All this was sorted out on Friday. I went round his house, had a few (um.. .quite a few) beers. I can quite catergorically say that his beer fridge is remarkably cold.
Firstly, he introduced me to his laptop. A perfectly normal looking laptop, except it has a green line going down the screen. This is cured, however, by the use of a bulldog clip on the top of the screen. This made me smile immensely.
The first part of the night was spent wrestling with his wireless internet connection. The reason for this is that there are plans to visit Blackpool some time in August, and trying to find the hotel he wanted to stay in was an even longer job.
He had seen it (or stayed there, can’t remember) some time last year for a stag do, but he couldn’t remember the name. The hought it was “The Royal [Something] Hotel”, and could remember its red front… Well, that Firstly, it was narrowed down to the area of Blackpool. Using Google Earth, he managed to get it down to the street. Great, all we had to do was type the street name into Google, and surely we had the hotel…?
No.
This road isn’t even a particularly long road. A few dozen properties, nothing more, nothing less.
Turns out that this was, strangely, incorrect, and it wasn’t that one that he was thinking of. there was another one, which we had to find by typing the individual numbers of Hull Street into Google, and eventually we found the correct one. I’ll post more on this in the future, as although we have dates, nothing has been booked yet.
After that, we had a go on his xbox, and the game “Buzz” - one of those quiz game things. Normally I’m quite good at these, but this one was about films. Not exactly my top subject. I still enjoyed it despite getting absolutely trounced.
Next, however, was my turn to be the trouncee. The night was completed with a purchase of good old “Track + Field” from Xbox Live. It’s the first time I’d actually seen Xbox Live in action, which is quite surprising, obviously, considering I spend my working life around the bloody things.
Anyway, Track + Field did appear to be the same as the original arcade game, and not some cheap remake. According to some of the high scores, there are also a few bugs (a few people completed the 110m hurdles in 0.2 seconds) and they’re removed the “Chariots Of Fire” music at the end of a round. As I mentoned, I did actually win this one.
Not that I’m gloating, or anything…
I then came home, and pouched an entire bag of Asda’s sublime Jalapeno Pepper flavour “Party Snax”. They are, quite literally, a complete bag of awesome. Sorry for the bad English, but I can’t think of any way to describe them.
Chris also left a comment on the site too. It doesn’t look good for his job prospects. I’ve yet to speak to him properly due to the shifts I’ve been working. the taxi driver the other night, who happened to be a friend of mine and Chris’s thought he had moved away…
Moving off on a tangent, you may also notice I’ve had a bit of a shuffle around on the site. I’ve moved the categories and the adverts around. Glen also mentioned a few days ago that he was having problems with the site, possibly the adverts causing a crash, unfortunately, he wasn’t forthcoming with any further info, and seeing as nobody else has reported a problem, I don’t know what’s causing it. If it’s widespread, and it turns out to be the adverts, I’ll (reluctantly) take them down. Feel free to contact me through email should you experience any issues.
EDIT: I am 100% unhappy with the positioning of the banner when it comes to sub pages. This will change shortly.
Right, that’s my update on the last few days. And, for those who have been spending the last three minutes thinking about me naked, think yourselves lucky…
Oh my. The crap photo CD makes its first appearance, and it’s a corker.
EDIT THE SECOND: As always, there’s a little bit of an update. Remember I posted the other day about seeing a fox outside of work? Well, there’s now a dead fox outside of work, presumably knocked over, as my place of employment is on quite a busy road. I’ve not seen it yet, so this is how Colin from work described it…
“A few days ago, it looked like a ginger carpet, now it just looks like a muddy ginger carpet”.
Poor thing. I might sneak out and get a photo or two, unless the council clean it up by then.
Well, today, I’ve been at work. But less about that.
Today started off at 8AM. I awoke, fresh as a daisy, which was a bit disheartening considering I didn’t start work until 2PM. Oh well. This gave me some time to watch the footy highlights, and also watch the pool on Sky Sports. Those six hours positively *flew* by. Ahem. It also gave me chance to dry off my trousers which were still damp after being removed from the washer the previous night. Other highlights included watching Countryfile, listening to Just a Minute, devouring some sossy rolls, and topping it all off by having a nice warm bath. Before I knew it, it was time to gather my things and jump into the taxi which would whisk me off until the fiery bowels of work.
I picked up my coat which had fallen off the table and onto the floor. I never hang my coat up, I usually just leave it lying on the table, though in this this particular instance, it had left the confines of the table and went hurtling to the floor. I put it on, and then instantly wished I hadn’t. It was covered in sick. Dog sick, to be precise.
One of my precious dogs had decided to rewind their breakfast all over it. Before I knew it, my hands were covered in foul-smelling Chappie-Chunder. And so were my freshly washed trousers. Oh, you BASTARD. With the taxi fast approaching, I quickly removed my trousers, and left them in the middle of the floor. The coat went upstairs, and in the bath. I quickly emptied my pockets, but some of it had soaked through, leaving me with a handful of sticky, greasy coins. Joy.
No sooner had I slapped up my reserve trousers on, I headed off out the door, muttering to myself, whilst clutching a carrier bag filled with my bait for the day. A curry and a bottle of coke. I wonder how long it took you to predict that.
Soooooooo. Along came work, and I won’t go into any more detail, as that would be considered bad (chicken) karma……… now THERE’S an in-joke I’ll be scratching my head over in years to come… Oh, but on the way home, I saw a fox, for one the second time in my life (here’s the first)
Right, anyway, that takes care of that. Now, onto the real news. The first is that my next door neighbour for well over 20 years has finally abandoned his abode, and no longer lives next door. They (he and his wife) disappeared without even saying a goodbye, which I’m gutted at. You’d have thought, that after being neighbours for so long, they’d have at least knocked on the window and waved. Or something.
What’s even odder is that he appears to have left his cat beind…
(Archive Picture)
Strangely, there’s somebody else moved in next door already, so hopefully they’re taking care of him. I’d hate to think he’s just been abandoned and left to fend for himself. He’s a great little cat, always comes up to me and miaows his little furry head off, and doesn’t stop until I tickle him under the chin.
I have a distinct feeling I’m going to miss him living next door. We grew up together in every way, shape and form. I have audio tapes going back from when I was nine, and he couldn’t have been more than 4, singing the “Denver, The Last Dinosaur” theme.
It just seems that every one of my friends have disappeared for some unknown reason. Wayne vanished without a trace again, back on 7th Jan 2007, Coatesy has completely vanished. I haven’t heard from him since November, and his last email from that date was slightly worrying. I’ve not spoken to Chris this year either.
Wow, in fact, I’ve just realised. I have had absolutely no contact with ANYONE outside of work this year. That’s alarming. Cue Chad, and his “Get Out More” rant. I’ll look forward to deleting reading it.
OH! On another subject entirely… I’ve finally seen it. It’s taken me ten years, but I’ve finally seen it. Yes, I have seen…… THE VIDEO TO “ANGEL” BY THE QUEST PROJECT! And I also know the real reason it wasn’t released, and it’s heartbreaking. First off, let’s have the video:-
Now, since I first discovered Youtube, I’d been searching for the video, in the vain hope that one day it would appear. I wasn’t even sure if it had a video, though the previous single “Initiate the Creative” had one. These searches, rather like the “One 2 Many” one, would take place every few weeks, and they’d always turn up empty.
That was, until today. Obviously, I’d found it, but it hadn’t been up for more than a few hours, and I was the *27*th viewer. Those who know me always knew I have had a superstition about that number. I’ve mentioned it in a post previously, but I can’t find it.
Secondly, the reasoning behind its non-release…. the takeover of Island records.
Jonyrokstar, the original poster of the video, and member of The Quest Project, states that “Angel was never officially released. Island got took over just before it was due to be released, so everything got pulled. They had actually pressed the whole shipment of cds for the release as well. SO, they’ve either been trashed & scrapped, or sent to the moon by rocket or something.”
Well, you heard it here first, though I’m truly gutted that something like that could have happened, and I have a feeling that it’s going to be one of those things that keeps me lying awake at night.
And, on that note, I’m shattered. I’m off to bed.
EDIT: Jonyrockstar mentioned this post on this facebook too, so er… welcome, if you’ve came from there.
OK, I normally do this on New Years day, but for whatever reason this year, I either forgot, or couldn’t be bothered. Therefore, in the middle of January, I give you… the official Mercury Vapour Statistics for 2007!
Successful requests: 1,219,973
Average successful requests per day: 3,342
Successful requests for pages: 360,340
Average successful requests for pages per day: 987
Failed requests: 59,263
Redirected requests: 43,818
Distinct files requested: 64,338
Distinct hosts served: 55,976
Corrupt logfile lines: 152
Data transferred: 23.76 gigabytes
Average data transferred per day: 66.66 megabytes
The Successful requests are only up ~60,000 from 2006, though the bandwidth used is a lot higher. In 2006, it was only 14Gb. It’s a bit weird how the average data transferred is 66.66 Mb. How very odd. Maybe someone’s trying to tell me something.
Anyway, this means that, for the first time in 8 weeks, I’ve updated the Mercuryvapour Stats page. I know some of you actually enjoy reading it, therefore I apologise for my laziness in updating it. It’s just that I have a few tools that give me “realtime” stats, so I don’t pour over the logfiles as much as I used to.
I’m surprisied at the growth of the data transfer side of things, especially as over the past year I have relied on flickr for part of my hosting. I have used it to host a lot of my blog images, while the postings are new. After a few weeks, I begin to host the image here.
I have had a lot of bandwidth stealing taking place, something I’m not too bothered about at the minute, as I don’t come close to my allowance limit each month, and I doubt this will change anytime soon. I am planning to capitalise on this soon, however. Even if it’s just a few extra hits.
“jamie scribbler” comes mainly from Chad searching for this site through msn.com.
“hot pussy” comes from… um. I have no idea.
“mercury vapour co.uk” goes without saying
“steetley hartlepool” comes from my Steetley gallery
“kamasura” appears to come from my own error… this bad spelling of a CD single I own. I’ve only just noticed it, so I don’t know if I’ll bother replacing it with the correct spelling or not.
I will be doing another “since 2005″ run on the stats shortly, but for now, I don’t have my external drive plugged in with the rest of the logfiles on it so I can’t do it now. I’ll remove it from the site until I do update it.
I hope this has been enlightening to some of you. I also hope it’s been as dull as ditchwater for those who don’t like this type of post.
