The Art Con

TV advert: *deep theatrical trailer voice* ‘The one DVD no girl can live without’ *swoosh* in comes flying picture of the Sex and the City DVD … … I think I can live without that.

Take a listen to the new theme tune for the new James Bond movie here. I think it was ripped from a Spanish radio station.

I lost my watch this week. I was quite upset about it. Not upset like oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die-and-ball-my-eyes-out type sad, but just oh-this-is-a-mighty-great-inconvenience type sad. And my wrist felt weird while I was at school. It felt all…floppy. No seriously, my watch isn’t that big, but any watch stops your wrist from bending that extra bit, and so without it your wrist just feels floppy. Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that I went out and bought a new one. Not a new wrist silly, a new watch. And I can now tell time again without having to get my mobile out. Life is good.

So, in case you haven’t guessed yet, school’s started up for me. I never did an official ‘Ahh it’s the end of holidays and school’s starting again’ blog, but it’s going ok thanks. I find myself eating a lot more chocolate croissants then I used to though. But that’s what you get when your college is right next to a bakery.

Digital speed painting. You know, when people make ridiculously amazing pictures on Photoshop.

Anyway, the thing is, it being back to school time and all, it proves for a boring life. Which means a boring blog. Me=boring. Blog=boring. Everything=boring. Chocolate=yummy.

Oh, and the LHC thing broke again. Something about another ‘magnet failure’. I think I might be able to help out, I’ve got a couple of fridge magnets that I’m willing to part with if they’re really in need of some. Might need to charge a small fee, but I’m sure we’ll be able to settle on something. So if you know anyone in the LHC team then you can tell them they can come and contact me here.

So before I go, what’s a blog without some life changing advice:
- Be careful of paper cuts
- Watch out for low ceilings
- When there’s free pens, take them
- If it’s dark, switch on the light
- And she doesn’t sell sea shells on the sea shore. She sells them in a corner shop next to Starbucks.

You’re alive! The big metal clunky machine thing (aka The ol’ LHC) didn’t kill you! Congratulations. So it’s been 3 days since the world was supposed to end. But the things is, it’s called the Large Hadron Collider, and no colliding has happened as of yet. So you never know… Anyway, I know nothing about what it does, or understand any of the Physics-type talk that people go on about, but it sounds cool, and the world hasn’t ended yet (you can always double check here if you’re not sure). So in light of celebrations I did a little doodle.

My trip to IKEA. Purpose? Brother needed to go university shopping, I wanted to ride on the big trolleys and shout ‘For Sam! For Frodo!’. And what’s an IKEA trip – or any shopping trip for that matter – without a free gift? So I got: 2 mini pencils, a paper tape measure, and a green pencil…I’m not sure if that last one was supposed to be free or not.

So me and my phone had some fun taking pictures. People were giving me weird looks wondering why I was taking pictures, but I was bored and I thought I might as well. Anyway, so the thing with IKEA is, I don’t understand any of the signs.

I mean, what on earth does ‘HAKE’ mean? Does it actually mean something in another language? Because if it does then fine. But the least they could do is give some translation dictionaries at the entrance along with the mini pencils and tape measures. The names wouldn’t be such a problem for things like beds, wardrobes, or scissors but when I see something like this:

I kinda want to know what it is in English. I can’t remember what name they gave it but it’s some kind of octopus hanger I guess. And then there’s these weird alien pod things:

Who would put these in their house I don’t know. But even if someone did, what use is it really? It hangs from the ceiling. Like floating dustbins. What would you put in there?
Then there’s the pillow section.

There’s pillows for side sleepers, back sleepers and stomach sleepers (so sorry to people who sleep in any other way, because there are no pillows at IKEA for you). My dad looked up at the signs, asked my brother ‘So…are you a side, back or stomach sleeper?’ And I shouted across the room, ‘I’m a side sleeper!’ Now everyone in IKEA knows I’m a side sleeper. Yep, all 16 of them.
And when it was time to go home, IKEA wouldn’t be IKEA if it didn’t give you some life lessons in the car park:

Everyone, it’s OK to change your mind. I thought it was an ad for something meaningful. You know, like some charity thing, because when there’s a heart with arms involved it’s gotta be something serious. But no, it was just talking about refunds. It’s OK to change your mind.

Thinking about getting a Zune after my iPod dies. Who can resist a 120GB version? All it needs to do is knock the price way down, and make it available in the UK (which shouldn’t take too long).

I’m going to attempt to watch a regular TV show again. It’s called Spooks. Season 7 is supposedly starting up soon, but I don’t know when that is. But since the DVDs are cheaper then other TV shows, I’m going to go buy Season 1 and see if I like it.

Nobody could’ve missed the big news of Google’s new internet browser Chrome this week. Nobody? Good. The logo looks uncannily like a Pokeball, and when I click the middle I half expect Pikachu to pop out. But it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon. Anyway, the point is Chromey’s impressive and it’s only in beta. It’s super fast and makes hot chocolate for you. Ok, so maybe it doesn’t exacltly make hot chocolate for you but it does have lots of awesome features. Privacy’s a little iffy at the moment, but it’s taking the place of my number 2 browser. It’s not a Firefox replacement just yet because of extensions and whatnot, but it’s the perfect replacement for Internet Explorer. Seriously.

Alice Pieszecki is the chosen character for The L Word spin-off. Apparently. I’m still not 100% convinved. More like 90-95%. The only place it’s been announced is on this so called ‘Variety’ website, but no word from Showtime or OurChart (Edit: Oops OurChart have said something) Either way this crazy idea of a spin-off is still happening. I just hope they have a better theme tune this time round.

Tennis talk: US Open. Federer’s in the finals. Murray vs. Nadal semi-final has yet to be finished. But Murray leads 2-0. It carries on tonight Sky Sports 1 at 9. Along with the Women’s Final with Serena Williams vs. Jankovic. I wonder if Murray will beat Nadal. I wonder what happens to all the ‘old’ tennis rackets that the players use that just get chucked to the side. I wonder what happens when you mix purple paint with green paint.

Look who’s all good and tagged all her blogs. Yep, me. See. Me. Good. It ain’t easy you know. And I had to fight the temptation of tagging them with completely irrelevent tags like, monkey, toast on wheels, jacuzzi, cheetos!, idontlikespoons and evil potato head. You know things like that. So yes, the tags are all relevant, in a way. It’s a miracle I know. But I hope I haven’t messed up the whole tagging system. Someone should buy me a ‘Congratulations on your 25th anniversary’ cake though (because blatently they don’t have cakes that say ‘Congratulations on tagging all your blogs’). You bring that and I’ll get the drinks. And by drinks I mean juice because it’s oh so much better. Unless it’s pineapple. Then it’s not.
Anyway so visiting back to my first blog I started to think ‘Man, that first blog must’ve been years ago.’ When really it turned out to be earlier this year. Close enough. 25th February 2008 at 22:47.

There’s this computing magazine that has a free subscription. And to get it you have to fill out his long ass form (it’s not that long really). But I’m now the ‘IT manager’ of my dad’s company. My turnover is less then £1 million a year, and I have 1-49 people working with me. So I thought that was fine and dandy and that I’d get my free magazine easy peasy. But I got an email saying that before I get it they have to make sure I meet their ‘criteria’. Whatever that means. I better meet their effing criteria because I worked hard on trying to make my job sound real. Especially since at first I insisted on putting ‘CEO of Microsoft’ as my job title, but then decided against it as, well, I don’t think they would’ve believed me. And then I chose ‘Leader of the world’ but that didn’t seem like a good idea either. So I had to settle on IT Manager.