Job-tastico

I'm on home! Hooray! And I'm on holiday! Hooray! No work, no commitments, no stupid dogs. Hooray!
I just know that in a week a day, I'm going to bored out of my mind. While I could spend the next few weeks playing through deus ex again and again, I'd much rather use it to do something interesting. Thus if anyone needs any web design work doing, I'll do it. If anyone has any other work they'd like to suggest to me, then feel free to tell me. In the mean time, I'm going to finish some more website skins.


How You Think

I was thinking the other day, about thinking.
I seem to think in two ways, most frequently I think in the form of a conversation, with myself arguing against someone else (except obviously the someone else is just me putting on a phoney mental accent). This may sound odd to some people, or indeed all people, as I have no idea if this form of thinking is normal. However, whether or not this is normal is something that I couldn't care less about, as it works for me, and I've persuaded myself that I'm not schizophrenic.
Anyway it works something like this.
My brain as me: "I wonder if it's possible to teleport?"
My Brain as other person: "of course it isn't, how would it work?"
Me: "well if you could destabilize your body somehow into subatomic particles and then move them, and they re-establish them."
Other Person: "But how would you keep all these billions of particles cohesive when they were in transport?"
Me: "glue?"

Anyway it normally goes on a lot longer than that, with me arguing backwards and forwards. The imaginary person my brain is posing as seems to vary between different people depending on how I'm conversing with myself. If I'm thinking about a controversial topic, then generally i'm thinking/talking with someone who is opposed to my view on the topic. If I'm explaining something then generally I'm explaining it to someone who takes a while to catch on (for some reason, if I'm ever thinking like this, I generally end up thinking to Chris Moyles off Radio 1. I should really stop listening to that show if it has that much effect on me). And if I'm just thinking of random things, then it's generally friends.

Anyway, as odd a way to think as it seems, I find that it works incredibly well. Because I have to explain or argue a point with (seemingly) someone else, it forces my mind to think of ways of making it simpler, or making it a sounder thought.

The other way I think, is in monologue format suitable to be written down. This should be very handy for blogging purposes, however my brain lacks an autodictate function, or even a decent memory, thus rendering all my great mental monologues nothing more than really annoying memories.
The other annoying things about this way of thinking is that I often get diverted by something else, and lose all train of thought. And they never really end properly.


Stuff you should get

If someone wishes to purchase me A Short History of Nearly Everything and troublesome words both by Bill Bryson then I'll gladly thank them profusely. I'll design that person a website or make them a kite or possibly wash their car. Or something.

I would of course, buy it myself, except I found that I had more money than I thought, so I bought Dogma on DVD (which is such an excellent film) and The Darkness album (which is coming in the post due to fopp putting the price up on it). Thus I am now poor again. Although not really poor, just "can't go out and buy cds for a bit poor".


Updating Really Quickly

As so much has happened lately in the lives of Stetler and I, of which so much hasn't be blogged about, I thought I'd briefly update everyone on everything.
So, In chronological order

Things that have happened to us over the last few days

  1. Helen won a competition to design new signs for her college building! Hooray! This, A) proved how clever she is, and B) netted her a fair amount of cash. Woohoo!
  2. We went to T in the Park! We only went for the Saturday, so we missed out on Kinesis, The Darkness, The Cooper Temple Clause and many others, but we still saw loads of ace bands. In vaguely chronological order we saw The Rain Band (Seem alright), The Zutons (Excellent!), Snow Patrol (Alright), The Kings of Leon (The hair makes me laugh, although I don't see the fuss about the music), Har Mar Superstar (I can't describe how disturbing this guy was), The Cardigans (Alrightish) and Idlewild (Have seen them play better, and the crowd were far too violent, but the new guitarist looks like Conor from Kinesis). Then we saw The Flaming Lips, who were standing in for The White Stripes and who were so awesome it was unbelievable. They opened with Seven Nation Army, which included some inflatable robots, lots of ballons, approximately twenty furry animal suits, two blow-up suns, two santa clauses, and a police siren. Hilarious. They sung a song called "thank you jack white (for the fibreoptic jesus that you gave me)". I really really want a fibreoptic jesus now.
    Anyway then came REM. Who were absolutely amazing as well. They played loads of groovey old stuff I hadn't heard in ages (Coyahoga! Find The River!) and 2 new songs, both of which sounded rock tastic. They didn't play "Be Mine" or "The Sidewinder Sleeps" or "Shiny Happy People" or "nightswimming", which was kinda dissapointing, but they played everything else you could have wanted. And they finished with "It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)", and I knew as many words as Michael Stipe did.
  3. It was Helen's birthday! I can't remember all the stuff she got but it was all pretty cool. If you really want to know ask her. Oh and I got a kick ass mug!
  4. I went to help out one of the local school's Year 6 class, and they had a sex education lesson, which was very funny. Two things stood out.
    1. The video they watched was hilariously politically correct, with comments such as "If you want to have children, that's unless you don't want to have children which is great of course no-one is forcing you to do anything, but if you do have children that's great. Unless you don't but that's great."
    2. When questioned "where do the fallopian tubes lead to?" a kid replied "the womb" "well what's it's scientific name, it's U something" "U... U... Ukraine?"

And I think that's everything.


Why is my room so hot?

Does anyone with like a degree in room temperature thermodynamics know why on earth my room is so stupidly hot. Seriously, I'm so hot I can't even bother to do one of those lists things, where I make up stupid reasons as to why something is like it is.
It's 23:35 according to my clock and it is hotter now than it was 4 hours ago, when the sun was up. The radiator isn't on. The windows are open. There is no source of this heat. Yet I am sweating my pants off. It's no wonder I'm always tired, I can't go to bed because it's a sauna.


Miss Stetler's Birthday

Happy Birthday To You, Happy Birthday To You, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR HELEN. Happy Birthday To You

She's 21! Gosh.


How To Make A Kite

You will need:

  • You will need
  • 2 Straws
  • Sellotape
  • String
  • Scissors
  • Pencil/Pen
  • Crepe Paper
  • Glue

Instructions

  1. Cut one Straw so it?s about 2/3rds the length of the other straw. (Diagram 1)
  2. Sellotape the straws together to form a cross. (Diagram 1)
  3. Cut slits, in the end of the straws. The slits should all go from side to side and they should be about 2 cm long. (Diagram 3)
  4. Starting at the bottom of the cross and leaving about 2 inches of string, thread through the slits in order, finishing at the bottom of the kite. Make sure the string is tight. (Diagram 4)
  5. Tie the left over string around the remaining string at the bottom.
  6. Sellotape the ends of the straws closed.
  7. Put the kite down on a sheet of crepe paper, and draw around it leaving a 2cm gap between the kite and the border. (Diagram 5)
  8. Cut out along the border
  9. Cut out on the corners to make kite fit. (See Diagram 6 for rough guide).
  10. Place over Kite and fold sides over.
  11. Glue in place. Sellotape if needed
  12. Decorate with ribbons or whatever. If string isn?t long enough, tie more on.

Beta Testing Typepad

I'm on the list to beta test Typepad.
Woohoo!.
To put it simply typepad is the new blogger/blogspot. It's derived from Movable Type and getting on the beta test list is akin to a golden ticket to willie wonka's chocolate factory. But with less chocolate. And Less ompa-lompas.
I shan't be bloggign much about it here due to various thingies I agreed to preventing me from blogging about the details, but I'm going to put it to good work by
blogging about Eastenders! I always seem to have stuff to say about it, and no-one really cares about it. So perfect blogging fodder really.
Oh yeah and ignore the layout, I'm going to alter it in some future stage.


You're really growing on me

I read two articles in the Daily Telegraph today, about The Darkness. One was an interview / live review that concluded that The Darkness are from a long time ago of spandex and guitar pornography, have lots of extravagance, and are destined to be big. The other article was an album review, which said that the songs had names from a long time ago of long names and stupid hair, have lots of extravagance and are destined to be big.
Now where they differed was in whether or not they were any good. The first article concluded that the Darkness were at least somewhat ironic, thusly you could enjoy them merely. The other article concluded that they were not ironic in the slightest and deserved to be shot due to their crimes to serious music.

What neither of these articles mentioned in their discussions about 70's/80's influences, big hair, spandex, jetpacks, guitar solos, mullets and all importantly irony, was the fact that the Darkness rock the socks off a camp hiker wearing thigh high socks.

Both articles were written as if music didn't exist, but bands were rated on appearance, performance and irony factor. Who cares whether or not they are ironic? They write fantastic songs! (8)I believe in a thing called love! Woohoo!
Bring on the spandex!


The coolest thing I ever saw

It's a JCB! On a boat! How amazing is that?


About, Navigation, And Other Details

This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.

Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.

Things I Found Interesting

People I Generally Find Interesting

Last Words

This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.