In next months issue of Empire magazine Chris Hewitt reviews the new DVD of Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile. Talking about the DVD extras he finishes by saying :-
Oh, and yet again that Hanks fella comes across as the nicest guy in the world. Just once, can’t the guy be caught DUI with a dead hooker in his trunk?Chris Hewitt - Empire
I bought a Psion 3a PDA many years ago, primarily to keep track of stock prices in the spreadsheet application. It was a wonderful little piece of hardware and at £400 expensive at the time considering that it only had 2mb of memory on board. You could expand it by buying either Flash SSD or Ram SSD but I never needed to. Yes, 2mb was indeed enough for what I used it for. Data, Word, Agenda, Time, World, Calc and Sheet applications, all well written and easy to use. I used the graph capability in Sheet to track moving averages in stock prices, looking for a Golden Cross.
The Data application was used to keep track of contact details and the book’s, LP’s, CD’s and video’s that I had bought. I also started to keep a database of quotations. Whenever I heard something that I thought was funny, witty or profound I tapped it into my little Psion 3a. The collection just grew and grew over the years.
Yesterday I found the export of this data in a text file on my iMac and I decided to put it on a blog page. I was going to just use a little Ruby magic to wrap HTML tags around the data and dump it into WordPress. This isn’t very technical I know, not being in a database, but it would have done the job. Then I found that Dustin at Zombie Robot had written a WordPress plugin which does the job. I just did a little tweaking of the PHP code so that it matches the same style as the other quotes on my blog.
Theory and Practice of Juggling
I bought 3 juggling balls from I think it was the Innovations catalogue many years ago. Juggling was described as being a reliever of stress. This was back in the days of yuppie flu, when everyone was carrying filofaxes and saying ‘lunch is for wimps’ etc. The instructions were printed on a little piece of paper with little diagrams showing the basic cascade. It was something that looked real easy on paper, a little harder in reality.
Even doing a basic cascade proved difficult. My weaker hand, the left, always seemed to throw the ball out at odd angles, making my right catching hand dart out from its usual position. Of course I practiced standing against my bed so that when I did miss a catch I didn’t have very far to pick them up. I was not very good at all the balls would collide in mid-air because I had thrown two, more or less, at the same time. The cascade would get smaller and smaller and higher and higher as I tried to make all the catches. I did somehow manage a reverse cascade and juggling two balls in one hand but that was about it. The more I practiced the less I improved and the more irritated I became with it all. I was still buying juggling balls and have them dotted around my flat but they are unused.
A few months ago I was listening to Penn Jillette’s podcast. Yes, that’s right the big guy from Penn & Teller. He was talking about Chris Bliss, an American comedian unknown on these shores, who had done some comedy juggling. This routine is supposed to be the most watched video in internet history. Everyone was apparently raving about this routine saying how great it was. Penn said that Jason Garfield had put together his routine… but with more balls. This is aptly know as the Chris Bliss Diss video.
So, having an interest in juggling I checked out Jason’s web-site. Which is where I found this book for sale. In fact it seems to be the only place you can buy the book on the internet.
Now Jason is a sport juggler so don’t expect him to juggle and eat an apple. He is dedicated to juggling in the same way that Bruce Lee was dedicated to martial arts. He practices juggling, he has built his body for juggling and fuels it to make him a better juggler.
The book, as you can imagine, covers all aspects from beginning to tips for juggling competitions. I’m not going to list out what is in the book, if you’ve read this far then you’ve probably made up your mind about purchasing it. What I will say is that the techniques that Jason describes make a lot of sense. You do read through it thinking, “Why couldn’t I have thought of that?”. You do think that the juggling practice that you’ve done so far has just been a waste of time. He does encourage the use of a video camera to record yourself as you juggle so that you can spot flaws in your technique. With digital still cameras having some form of video capability this isn’t as expensive as it sounds and will no doubt improve your juggling.
If you have any interest in juggling then this book is a good start considering that it is written by one of the worlds best jugglers. Don’t just take my word for it watch some videos of Jason juggling on YouTube.
But remember, no matter how closely you follow this book, no matter how hard you work, no matter how good you get, juggling still won’t get you laid. You might be better off getting a book on how to play guitar.Penn Jillette - Juggler
Carl D. Patterson
Review type: product
hReview version: 0.3
I’ve been a Kiss fan since Harry Sime (not his real name, that was Nick) asked if I wanted to tape Kiss Alive II. We met on a Friday night and cycled out of town to his house. I had a brown Scotch cassette tape in my pocket and we made the recording on his fathers Sharp Hi-Fi. Back in those days this was just a turntable, tuner and single cassette deck, all horizontal, way before manufacturers decided that stacking these things was the way forward. I remember his father being none to keen on me using a cassette that had already been recorded on. But he relented. We looked at the album cover, at the fire and the blood and Harry told me the names of the band members. When the taping was done I cycled back home not realising quite how important that tape would be and how it would change my life forever. Well, maybe not my life but definitely the direction of my musical taste. Kiss Alive II was the first record that I bought with my own money. Philip Evans and myself both went to Terry Blood’s record store in town and we both bought a copy one after the other. I stayed loyal and bought all the albums, then started buying a few of the singles. But the singles were nothing to write home about, just copies of songs that I already owned in plain covers. With the pocket money burning a hole in my jeans I bought Alice Coopers Greatest Hits and my musical taste spread out from there. But I always bought any new Kiss album when it came out and went to see them on the Animalize tour when they played Manchester Apollo.
Back when I first started listening to Kiss the chance of hearing them on the radio was remote, seeing them on television was remoter still. Until late one Saturday night there was a program showing American rock bands on BBC2 and Kiss were included. To say that we, Mr. Evans and I, were excited is putting it mildly. I think at this point we might had been fans for a year or more and had never seen Kiss move. We had only seen photos on albums covers and in magazines. They only showed about a minute or two of footage from an Alive II concert but that was enough. This was all back in the days before VCR’s and back when televisions were built in wooden cabinets. The memory can play tricks over time but I’m sure I remember Gene curling his tongue around the microphone. Then again I can’t even remember what song they played.
Now Gene Simmons has had two series of Rock School on Channel 4. Who would have thought it!
When I first heard about the Speaking In Tongues DVD I was undecided about buying it. I had started to buy some the Kiss DVD’s but was still a little unsure as I think the cheapest I found was £18. So I put it at the top of my Amazon rental list and it stayed there for at least 8 months. Then I found it on Play.com and finally bought it for £7.99 which, for only an hour I suppose is still a little steep. But with the rental disc being nowhere in sight it was a no-brainer.
The footage covers a lecture tour that Gene did in Australia back in 2004. He has become something of a motivational speaker, just telling the audience of fans that what has worked for him, in his life, may also work for them. This is done with a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude. He isn’t forcing these ideas down your throat, he is just telling his philosophy on life and how to make the most of it. This is all inter-cut with pictures of Gene when he was younger, a tour of his house with his children, making of the Firestarter video and the A**hole launch party. So the Simmons wit and wisdom is, I guess, a little thin on the ground.
The way that the film is presented is pretty bad. It looks as if someone has used some no-budget Windoze editing software and hacked it all together. Some of the actual footage is of pour quality and to make matters worse each of the famous Simmons quotes are zoomed across the screen in large letters many times after they are said, just to ram the point home, as it were. Split screens also zoom around and it just becomes annoying after awhile.
Luckily Gene is entertaining throughout :- funny, smart and business savvy beyond belief. The hundreds of scantily clad ladies also help to make the hour pass quickly.
Basically, if you are a huge Kiss fan then you’ll own this already. If want to know more about what makes Gene tick then read Kiss and Make-Up which will entertain and inform you more for less money. If you’ve just seen Gene in Rock School and think that this is going to be a similar product then you had best avoid this like a woman whose only ambition is marriage.
Money is not the root of all evil. LACK of money is the root of all evil!Gene Simmons
I’ve been a fan of Paul Merton since I started watching Have I Got News For You a couple of years ago. His style of improvised comedy suits the program perfectly. The producers of the show give him free reign to venture off on surreal tangents. When I heard that he was going to be at The Lowry I booked a ticket immediately.
Just to make the journey less interesting I checked the directions page on The Lowry web-site. I certainly didn’t want to be driving around trying to summon any sense I may have of direction as I did going to see Rich Hall.
I arrived about an hour before show time and had a wander around the Outlet Mall and the Quays. Practically all the shops were closed. I was looking in the window of one closed shop, an autograph/collectors kind of store. The item that caught my eye was a case containing one of the guitars that Nine Inch Nails have been auctioning for Katrina charities on eBay. The instruments in question are all beyond repair having been deemed casualties of the live show and are all signed by the band. They all have wining bids of over $1,000 so I don’t know how much this display item would cost. There was no price on it. It was mounted in a glass case with a couple of CD covers, a tour itinerary and a little brass plaque showing the concert that the guitar was from. It was certainly a surprise to see one in Salford.
7:30pm, or thereabouts, Paul Merton walked on stage and introduced his chums for the evening - Jim Sweeney, Richard Vranch, Lee Simpson, Suki Webster and special guest chum, Steve Steen. The show, being improvised, is different every night. Someone on stage asks a section of the audience for an Olympic sport, a kitchen item and a film style and the chums have to improvise a scene. They do have various ‘games’ that they play. At one point Paul Merton was led out of the theatre, so that he could hear what was being said. The audience were asked for an occupation and various other things. We came up with ‘The man who grouts the tiles on the space shuttle Tracy with porridge using a spoon’, Paul then had to guess what this was based on the improvised routines. I think you really had to be there.
The other interesting routine was we had to name an Olympic sport and an animal. The javelin and a goat was selected from the various suggestions. Three of the chums then played the part of a professor who was a leading authority on teaching goats to throw javelins. They all had to act the same and when Paul asked them questions the first one would say a word then the second the next and so on. So even the three playing the part didn’t know where the routine was going to go or what to say next.
It’s okay for me to say the odd funny line here or there but to be funny on cue must be a little draining. I guess the more practice that you have, as an improvisational comedian, the easier it is. They have nothing but my admiration.
On Sundays and Wednesdays in London I meet up with my mates, have a laugh and get paid for it. It is the best job in the world.Jim Sweeney
Related Links
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Paul Merton - BBC
Have I Got News For You - Wikipedia
“Lots of practice”
Words fail me.
According to the BBC and other media today an 12 year old girl is due to give birth next month. She apparently became pregnant at the age of 11 when she had unprotected sex with a 15 year old boy. GMTV this morning reported that she was drunk at the time. Which isn’t surprising as she is said to smoke up to 20 cigarettes a day.
“I think I’ll be able to cope as I’ve had lots of practice looking after my brothers,” she said in an interview. “I’m enjoying being pregnant - even though I get a bit of a sore back and sore ribs.”
Has no one mentioned to this girl that the birth will be like having a bowling ball ripped out of her lower intestine.
Thankfully the ‘father’ has been charged with rape but what good will that do? With the judicial system in this country he’ll get a pat on the head and a book token for showing initiative. Now, it’s an extreme view, but I think he should be castrated. Spending the rest of his life sitting down to have a pee would remind him of his complete and utter stupidity.
I’m starting to think that it’s genetic. If a girl has children in her teens then those children will be more likely to have children while still too young. If your parents never had children then the chances of you having any are real slim.
But I’ll tell you this. Where’s this idea that childbirth is a miracle came from. Ha, I missed that fucking meeting, okay? “It’s a miracle, childbirth is a miracle.” No it’s not. No more than a miracle than eating food and a turd coming out of your ass. It’s a chemical reaction, that’s all it fucking is. If, you wanna know what a miracle is: raisin’ a kid that doesn’t talk in a movie theatre. Okay, there, there, there is a goddamn miracle. It’s not a miracle if every nine months any yin yang in the world can drop a litter of these mewling cabbages on our planet. And just in case you haven’t seen the single mom statistics lately, the miracle is spreading like wild-fire. “Hallelujah!” Trailer parks and council flats all over the world just filling up with little miracles. Thunk, thunk, thunk, like frogs laying eggs. “Thunk, look at all my little miracles, thunk, filling up my trailer like a sardine can. Thunk. You know what would be a real miracle, if I could remember your daddy’s name, aargh, thunk. I guess I’ll have to call you Lorry Driver Junior. Thunk. That’s all I remember about your daddy was his fuzzy little pot-belly riding on top of me shooting his caffeine ridden semen into my belly to produce my little water-headed miracle baby, urgh. There’s your brother, Pizza Delivery Boy Junior.”Bill Hicks
It’s always a pleasure to watch Kristen Johnston on the small screen. Apart from 3rd Rock From The Sun, which finished ages ago, she has been absent from our screens for far too long. This week she returned to our screens in ER as Dr. Eve Peyton. The character she plays is a no-nonsense nurse manager who could quite easily chew Luka Kovac up and spit out the bones. Similar in a way to Sally Soloman.
Oh, how exciting. I am SO glad I get to be the woman. Next planet I get to be something BIG… WITH HORNS!Sally Soloman
[about her breasts] Hmm, they seem to have greater power when they collide.Sally Soloman
How nice, it’s the gift that keeps on sucking.Sally Soloman
Grave of Carl D. Patterson
by K.C. Bolton
I was searching for web images, for a web-site I’m constructing, and I remember reading sometime ago that the Google Images haven’t been updated in sometime. So I decided to test it out by trying to find some of the images that I’ve used on this blog. I don’t actually know how the images are selected, whether it uses the ALT image attribute or whatever, but I wanted to give it a go. So I put carl d patterson into Googles search box. I didn’t find any pictures that are on this site but I did see a lot of images :- school kids, some idiot called Nathan Wohlstein who has tried to fiddle his Google rank, Ms. Rodgers Red Hot Readers and lo and behold a grave bearing the name Carl D. Patterson.
The stone says, “Beloved Husband Dad - Grandpa Carl D. Patterson U. S. Navy - Korea June 6, 1928 - April 26, 1994″ it was photographed by K.C. Bolton on 23/11/2003 and is at Greenlawn Memorial Park, Southwest, Bakersfield, Kern County, CA.
This reminds me of a book I heard about called Are You Dave Gorman? by Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace in which Perrier Award nominee Dave Gorman has a drunken bet with Danny Wallace that there are other Dave Gormans in the world. There are indeed and he spend half a year tracking them down throughout the world. I personally haven’t read it yet but it is now next on my list of books to buy.
Back to the image that I found. I can’t see how the image could have been found by Google. The image simply sits in a directory which seems to list all the grave stones in Greenlawn Memorial Park, Southwest, whose surname starts with p. I always thought that Google, or any web spider for that matter, could only work on links from actual web pages. Then again I suppose that any spider will only do what a browser does and will index the files in a directory listing without any trouble.
After Christmas I bought a book called Who Do You Think You Are? by Dan Waddell after seeing an episode of the BBC Two television programme of the same name. I thought that I could trace my family tree back through the ages as the celebrities did in the series. Of course I haven’t quite got round to reading the book yet as I am still working through the back log of others that I’ve purchased and not read. I also thought that it would be an excellent excuse to purchase an Apple iBook or PowerBook as it would no doubt involve taking copious notes in libraries and so on and I wouldn’t want to have to resort to pen and paper.
Possibly I’ll just have a little dig on the inter-web to see if I can find who this chap was and if there are any others. It’s funny that I could find someone with my name and initial. I did know that someone had the www.carlpatterson.com domain name registered so I’m glad that I registered this domain when I did.
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.Mark Twain
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.Isaac Asimov
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.P. J. O’Rourke
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