New Year's Resolutions

The whole New Year's Resolution thing is clearly tedious and pointless. If you must change something in your life them do it straight away rather than waiting for January the first ... and why make such a big deal about it, do you really think the world is interested?

On the other hand, here are mine.
1) Update blog at least once every week. (Phew, nearly failed that already)
2) Reduce email inbox to less than 1000 items.
3) Stop whinging about Indian food/restaurants.
4) Go to the gym at least once a week unless away on holiday.
5) Boycott Robert Mugabe, should he come to visit.
6) Paint the kitchen.
7) Eat more apples.
8) Don't take up smoking.
9) Avoid the cliched belief that any list has to have a round number of items.

Beware of the Dinosaur

Today, while shopping for a birthday card for my nephew's 2nd birthday, I noticed a fun looking "You're 2 today!" dinosaur card with moving eyes. Perfect. However on closer inspection, I spotted a small warning box on the back of the card.

This card is not suitable for children under the age of 3 years

Whatever next?
I found a brightly coloured train card instead - it would have been a disaster if his Mum's childcare business was shut down over the careless display of an unsafe card.

Jesus Christ, Come On Down

I'm sure you must have noticed the ipod television advertisement at the moment with the music "1, 2, 3, 4, tell me that you love me more". Well, something had been nagging away at me about that song, and I have now realised what it was.

"What did god give us Neil?"
"God gave us life Nigel"
"Sure did"
"1, 2, 3, 4, John the baptist knows the score"

God Gave Us Life - Half Man Half Biscuit - Back in the DHSS.

1, 2, 3, 4, tell me that you love me more
1, 2, 3, 4, John the Bap-tist knows the score
Not just a bit similar, even rhymes and matches syllables.
I think it is probably a desparate attempt to convert the legions of HMHB fans to join the ipod generation in reverence to the new god that is the Apple. God may have given us life*, but bear in mind that when he also gave us a tasty looking Apple in the Garden of Eden, all was not as it seemed.

*alternative religious stories and scientific theories are available.

Rise of the machines

I noticed a "weight and age" option on the cycling machine in the gym, so now I am quite worried as to how it correctly guessed my age in years and my weight to the nearest pound.

Weston Beach Race

In October Weston-super-Mare hosted one of the more bizarre annual sporting events. Not some stupid for stupid's sake cheese rolling or bed racing extravaganza, but an admirably genuine attempt to create a big global event within the obvious limits of Weston-super-Mare.
You may have heard of the Weston Beach Race, but it first came to my notice this morning.
It starts relatively sensibly as an impressive 1000+ competitors on motor bikes race along a long, flat, slightly damp stretch of beach with a huge roar of engines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB7pDwmqDJs
Then, whoever's idea this was, they got carried away. After the long straight the competitors turn into an intimidating circuit of sand dunes, some at least 15 foot high - here they are at the first dune in 2006:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f1qaAZjduc
Obviously human-made sand dunes are not the easiest thing for a motorbike to scale, and, unsurprisingly, it doesn't take long before the amateur competitors (anyone who wants can enter) plough into the first sand dune and get stuck, or stall their bike on top of it, or topple over the top and spend a while lying down under their bike on the downslope, or, most likely, find themselves stuck in the huge queue waiting to make a fool of themselves.
Meanwhile at the front the first 20 or so riders whizz on round through all the sculptured dunes and jumps to return to the start line. It takes the top riders about 10 minutes to get round back to where they started, but this is not the end as amazingly this event is a 3 hour endurance race, so once again the top riders approach the first dune, which is still a scene of carnage, dodge the still-stricken riders and carry on round.
The end of the race fitted in nicely with the rest of the shenanigans. After two and a quarter hours of the 3 hour race the man with the chequered flag appeared and the race finished. A look over at the sea confirmed the reason for the premature conclusion, as the support vehicles parked on the beach were gradually becoming submerged by the approaching tide. Possibly that should have been foreseen.
The highlights of this event, and the supporting circus of other foolish events, can be seen again today at:
21/11/07 12:00 Sky Sports 2
21/11/07 18:00 Sky Sports Xtra
21/11/07 21:00 Sky Sports 2
21/11/07 24:00 Sky Sports 3

Not so Hot Mail

I am pleased to note that hotmail's new taste filter is working well :


This message has been blocked for your safety.
Don't miss Cliff Richard‏
From: Ticketmaster (ticketalert@mailservices.ticketmaster.co.uk)
This message may be dangerous.
Sent: 18 October 2007 18:06:42

Beware of the pig in pig's clothing

In Sainsbury's recently, I noticed, and obviously had to purchase, the new Pigs in blankets flavour potato crisps.

They have a real sausagey feel about them, you get the same nagging thought that you are eating something that would normally only be fed to farm aninals, and the flecks of greenery in them are similarly probably trying to hide something rather than just enhance the taste.

However the blankets appear to be missing. There is no obvious bacon hint in the flavour. It seems likely that the flavour makers in the crisp department came up with a reasonable sausage flavour, whilst the marketing people decided "Pigs in blankets flavour" would sell better than "sausage flavour". And, you've got to hand it to the marketing department because I wouldn't have bought sausage flavour or mentioned it on such an influential blog ... and someone somewhere realised that no-one in their right mind would make a repeat purchase, hence the "Limited Edition" tag.

So, the recommendation is to rush out, buy Pigs in Blankets flavour crisps, and then enjoy their quirkiness but you probably shouldn't eat them.

pasta_rogue returns to save the world

We can all do our bit to stop global warming. However most suggestions we hear are pretty miopic or limited. Obviously I have been unable to post in the past few months as I have been giving my full attention to worrying about the planet.
So, here are my top 10 tips for saving the World :

1. Build more roads. Blindingly obvious, free flowing traffic much less polluting than congestion. And, of course, remove all road humps.

2. Penalise families. Probably the single most environmentally unfriendly thing you can do is to have children. Any couple having a child nowadays are responsible for all the emissions that child ever causes and additionally for half the emissions of all their grandchildren, a quarter of emissions of all their great-grandchildren, etc ... At a conservative estimate of 1.7 children born per descendent, having a child makes you responsible for 6.7 peoples lifetime emissions. We urgently need green taxes to penalise families and marriage.

3. Stop using gyms. Exercise is very bad for the environment, as it vastly increases breathing rate and the production of waste carbon dioxide.

4. Legalise assisted suicide. If someone volunteers to stop producing carbon dioxide, why do we attempt to stop them?

5. Don't drink bottled water. Increasing numbers of people choose to buy expensive dirty water, bottled straight out of the ground, shipped in from France rather than drink the free clean water that is conveniently piped straight into their kitchen.

6. Always buy products packaged in non-biodegradable plastics. You may have heard of Carbon Sequestration, methods of locking carbon away so that it cannot end up as carbon dioxide, well you can do your bit towards that. As plastics are generally polymerised carbon compounds, the more plastic you can get into landfill sites, the better for everyone. However watch out for the biodegradable warning on packs, as some scurrilous companies try to bring in these awful new plastics which rot to produce loads of carbon dioxide.

7. Bury people. Once they are dead, obviously. Cremation creates a lot of unnecessary emissions.

8. Live underwater. With the oceans being a huge natural carbon dioxide sink, if we all lived underwater we could easily deal with all the CO2 we produce by having it absorbed into the ocean so that it would not end up in the atmosphere.

OK, I haven't quite made it to ten reasons, so I can offer some balance with my favourite counter-arguments to doing anything at all :

9. There is a lot of dramatic rhetoric delivered about how terrible it is for the polar ice caps to be melting, but there is an underlying presumption that the poles should be covered in ice. The only reason that they are covered in ice is because we are in an ice age. It has been a fairly long ice age so perhaps we should happily allow it to finally come to an end.

10. We also hear often that we shouldn't interfere with nature. Well, to me this sounds like a reason not to change our actions in order to affect what is happening to the environment. Humans are as natural as trees, flowers, elephants, warthogs and hurricanes and should be allowed to continue exerting their natural effect on the environment.


I hope that clears everything up and the world can now stop obsessing over this.

Snooker Lucre 4

Anthony Hamilton 7-13 Stephen Maguire
Finally, quality showed through in an Anthony Hamilton match. He was lucky to get 7 I thought.

Semi Final:
Shaun Murphy v Mark Selby
Both players will be relieved to sneak through 13-12 to get this far and it should be a fairly even match. Murphy has been here and done it before, but is looking unconvincing so far. Selby's temperament has proved good through some tough tests and his form has looked better than his opponent's. Selby should be a small favourite providing he adapts well to the crucible semi-final one table format.
Selby current Betfair odds 2.62 - my fair odds 1.86 or shorter

Snooker Lucre 3 - At war with the Hamilton

Ian McCulloch 8-13 Anthony Hamilton
I was scuppered by Hamilton once again. Despite Hamilton being pretty hopeless during the first two sessions, McCulloch defied belief by matching his abysmal level of play to leave the match level at 8-8. Hamilton then played the final session pretty well to my growing anger! It has been suggested that McCulloch was quite keen for Hamilton to beat him as it made Dott (who McCulloch beat in the first round and who McCulloch strongly dislikes) look bad and appear to be worse than Hamilton. Then again that may just be me making excuses.
Quarter finals
Anthony Hamilton v Stephen Maguire - I hesitate to write this after the last two rounds ... but ... Hamilton is the one poor player left in a high quality quarter final line up and I feel I must remain true to my ratings systems by flagging up the value bet once again.
Stephen Maguire currently 1.41 on betfair - fair odds 1.21 or less.
Other than this I have had a small dabble on Mark Selby who should be a warm favourite to beat Ali Carter although you may be able to back him at about evens. However, not big enough value to be a bona fide tip.