I meant to post this hours ago, so it’s almost academic, but I’ve changed the random banner on the site, for something a little more themed….

Well, it’s been years in the planning, but finally, Hartlepool is about to host the tall ships. and, I, as a normal resident who will have to get to work on the other side of the town for the next three days, I can’t help but think that these years of planning have simply gone into making the lives of regular residents a complete and utter nightmare.

I wonder how much of the planning went into sticking yellow lines on almost every street, and making the whole of the headland a residents’ only park zone…. that’s got to be great for the businesses down there.

ENough of the negativity – unfortunately, I won’t get chance to “cover” it, as I’m in Employment Palace for 3 days out of the 4, still, I’m sure I’ll nip down at some point and get some photies.

EDIT: Yes, I think I will take some photies. As soon as this light turns green, I’m outta here…

Tags: hartlepool, race, tall ships —

… just a very busy one who’s not had chance to update on here for quite a while. Therefore, I’ll attempt to give it a go now, taking recent tweets as source of my iinfluence.

2010-07-19 02:42:26: Just been freaked out by a light bulb and now can’t sleep.

a few mornings ago, I witnessed an odd phenomenon which I simply can’t explain, but it made me think something was wrong with the electrics… I’m sure you’re all aware of energy saving bulbs, and the fact they have electrodes at either end of the tube (and of course, the basics of how fluorescent tubes work). I was lying in bed, and I noticed a flash, then another one, rather like an ambulance going past with its lights blaring. This happened every few seconds. I looked up, and noticed it was the light bulb doing this, even though the light was completely off. I unscrewed the bulb, put it back in, and the flash never reoccured.

Ferr-eaky.

2010-07-20 19:19:37 Blossom Garden chow mein. Best food ever

This was altogether a fun and interesting day. Mainly because we were hit by another one of those freaky storms, similar to what happened in 2003, but not quite as severe. It was my first day of the second week of day shifts. The fun and interesting part came because everything broke at work. Twice. Unfortunately, my usual drinking establishment, which I’d planned to attend that evening, turned out to be flooded because of the severe storm, so Daddykins picked me up from work, made an excellent detour to the Blosson Garden takeaway. Regular viewes may know that this is my favourite takeaway in the entire world, and it didn’t disappoint. I also received a present from the postie…

Yes, it’s an Xbox 360 controller, but for Windows. I don’t think that there’s any difference between these and a wired Xbox 360 pad, except they come with a driver disk and a few windows logos splattered about the place. Still, I got it half price, so if I don’t use it much, I’m not going to be overly bothered. I found out that it makes “Flatout: ultimate carnage” playable. To an extent.

2010-07-23 19:09:49 Old tapes, beer, then indian. How can tonight get any better?

It simply couldn’t. I spent the whole night wallowing through as many tapes as I could lay my hands on… in fact, I started to write this post:-

For many years, Mercuryvapour Towers has been a place where things go to die. Music, records, computers, cassette tapes, and wasps, if my recent contributions on flickr are anything to go by. For several years, I’ve been able to make use of most of these things (barring the wasps), however, I’ve not been able to play cassette tapes. There are years worth of memories buried in these tightly wound reels of magnetised plastic, but seeing as I’ve had no way to access them, they’ve been kicking around in random boxes, gathering dust, losing their oxide, and sadly getting damaged.

During a conversation with Andy The Iridium fan over the value of cassette tapes (he bought a 10-pack of C120s the other week) and my discovery of a stereo 3.5mm cable, I connected his walkman to my computer, and managed to get a 2010 copy of “The Unknown Music”. He then mentioned he had a spare “proper” tape player and that he was happy to bring it round and loan it to me…

Well, that day was today! I now have it sat next to me, and I’m playing some of those old forgotten memories. Currently, I’m listening to “Everything I Do” by Bryan Adams, as recorded off “Radio Cracker” – a temporary radio station set up in Hartlepool for the Xmas season of 1991. It was the first and only Hartlepool based radio station for 12 years, before “Pool FM” got their temporary broadcasting license.

I still have the tape recorder, and yes, I’m listening to a tape while I’m typing this. Right now. Currently playing is a “The Sound of Silcence” I must have recorded off the radio in something like 1995… Home taping is killing music? Remember that? If I didn’t have these badly recorded radio versions, I’d have forgotten about the songs I taped, then would have never bought them on CD. Tee hee! Anyway, that’s a rant for another day!

Tags: audio, chow mein, lightbulb, tape, twitter —

Gah, will my childhood heroes please stop dying?

One of my favourite snooker players, Alex Higgins, has died, aged 61…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/snooker/8852020.stm

I might have a Guinness in his honour.

Tags: alex higgins, dead, died, snooker. player —

THE END: Ah well, that’s that all over with for another four years. This blog probably won’t be here by the time the next one comes along. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Good luck to the lucky git who won the sweepstake at work.

Normal programming will resume shortly, and thankfully, normal programming on TV will resume also. Except that Top Gear is very, very late.

Full time, for real this time: YAY WELL DONE SPAIN. Now get Top Gear on.

26:00: Goooooooooooooooal to Span. Iniesta. Forever. Booked for taking his shirt off. Tee hee.

Half Extra time Looks like it’s gonna be penners…

100:46 One of the guys in the blue football suits almost scored. But didn’t.

92:48 Some of the LED advertising hoardings have white dots where there shouldn’t be white dots. The sound also died temporarily on the Beeb.

90:00 Kick off. Again. Top gear delay inevitable. Sigh.

Full Time: Well, this is the 2nd World Cup final to finish 0-0. The other was in 1994.

86:59: Please don’t say this is going to delay Top Gear…

78:16: Can see this going to extra time. Oh…. joy.

69:15: Oooooh, unlucky Spain

66:13: Yet another yellow card. Currently, I’m eating some roast beef slices which have been in the fridge since the beginning of time. They appear to have the same taste as the plastic they’re wrapped in. Larvely.

62:45: “There is something brewing in this world cup final”…. Yeah, sorry, that’ll be last night’s madras…

45:00: Why does everyone keep missing that bloody octopus? He’s been lucky. Seven times.

Half Time: Well, that was predicably dull. It says something when you’d rather prick about deleting spam than watching the match.

39:56 I’ve just noticed that the light and dark stripes on the pitch line up exactly with the markings. I wonder if they’re used to help calculate the “distance from goal” captions when there’sa free kick? Tsk. I remember when they were purely decorative.

35:00 Well, there wasn’t a goal. Maybe it only workds if I leave the keyboard to go to the toilet?

32:10 I’m going to put some stuff in the bin out of the back. There will be a goal.

27:18: They’re still kicking a ball around. On 9th July, someone searched for “juicey n wet pussys” on this site. One of the orange guys just did a karate kick to the chest of one of the blue guys. Best moment so far.

23:20: I’ve turned my intentions to clearing some of the spam entries out of the stats database, as it’s absolutely huge at the moment, and it could do with a bit of a clean up. this may, or may not slow the site down to a crawl.

16:06: Two yellow cards already. Dirty match.

10:45: Every time I hear “Iniesta”, I always have to add, “For ever, come on and sing my song…. ALLL NIIIGHT LONG”.

07:30: Wow, look at all of those cameras behind the net!

05:22: Ah, the blue ones must be Spain. I do like BBC’s colour coded scoreboard.

04:27: Oooooh, them in the blue nearly scored.

03:45: I’ve just spammed Glen’s forum with a link to this page. I’m such a naughty boy, but hello if you’re reading from there anyway.

01:08: A free kick already. I have a feeling this match is going to be incredibly dull

Kick off: They’ve kicked off.

Random Thought: 4 years ago, I was on my first laptop, typing my thoughts into Glen’s forum because this site used Blogger, and I couldn’t update it in realtime. That laptop had no wireless built in. I believe I was connected via a 15-metre ethernet cable trailling all of the way upstairs. How times and technology have changed. I’m watching this footy in HD. I also dreamt that a pop group I’ve never heard of were firing fireworks at me and Gregg (who I’ve not seen for years, by the way), as we walked up Horseley Place. That dream was about as pointless as this match is going to be.

National Anthems: Bollocks to this, I’muted the telly, and am playing the video below and singing along. It’s awesome. Tinny laptop speakers don’t do it justice.

They’re walking on the pitch: I LOVE this music, it’s called “Fifa Anthem”, don’t you know.

Buildup 3: Jesus, what time is kick off? I’m sick of listening to ex-footballers rabbiting on about tactics and “dragging people out of the box”. Apparently, the Germans are marked. I hope they had a shower before they go on the pitch. Oh, it’s so warm in here. I’m going upstairs for a wash.

Buildup 2: You know, I didn’t even know who was playing? I just added a “uaregay” tag, which was supposed to be a parody of “Uruguay”. It’s Spain v Netherlands. Wow. I just realised how much I really don’t care! Did I mention I’m not drinking any beer for this? I only got up at 6PM. More BBC footage I’m afraid. I can’t hear Jonathan Thingy’s voice without thinking “Robot Wars”.

Buildup 1: Right, I wish they’d just get on with it. BBC are currently just showing endless video footage. Oddly, the match is also on ITV. Following ITV’s track record of abysmal coverage (see England’s goal missed), I won’t be touching them with a bargepole. I can’t remember if the last world cup final had coverage on two channels. I’ll probably switch over if BBC have Mick “Vuvuzela” McCarthy doing the commentrary.

Tags: dull, football, netherlands, spain, world cup —