i am sparticus: Words

Sunday the 29th

• I managed to fix that annoying flickr image bug bellow, turns out that if flickr was labelling the photos with more than three numeric characters preg_match was DULL DULL DULL. You don't care, it's fixed, bask in the wonder of five proper photos up online now, some of which do a slightly less than appalling job of reflecting God's good creation.

• I'm on a sexual orientation training seminar tomorrow. This means I get to say to people things like "hey, I'd love to do that, but I'm on sexual orientation training all day tomorrow".

• I saw Theirry Henry today while sitting in Marylebone High Street Starbucks. Hannah (whom I live in the house of) merely saw Robert Vaughn and Abs from Five. I think I win.

• Speaking of Theirry Henry, I have a theory about their being only one good French person at a time. Currently though other than Thierry I can only think of Jean Calvin. Any other suggestions?

Letters to the Indepedent I considered sending in today

Dear Sir,
On a day that two children died in Corfu, the planned quota forcing faith schools to accept more different faith children is dropped and 60 civilians are reported as killed in Nato raids you chose to open the first five pages of your newspaper with your green paper on climate change. Fantastic stuff, I'll be sure to remember to vote for you next time around.
Yours,
Mark Walley

Dear Sir,
My copy of the Independent dated October 26th lacked any news on pages one through five. Was this meant to be the case or should I be asking for a refund?
Yours,

Dear Sir,
If your definition of news as "newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events" changes overnight does it therefore cease to be your job to let us know of this new information? I'm assuming yes.
Yours,

Dear Sir,
For years I've been stuck playing the Daily Mail game¹ with just the Daily Mail, thank you for now making it possible with another newspaper
Yours,

Dear Sir,
Am glad to see you that you have embraced the medium of the weblog, but is the first five pages of your newspaper really the best place for it?
Yours,

¹ Scrounge (never ever buy) a copy of the Daily Mail. Go through it and count the number of positive 'this-is-good-news' headlines. Award yourself a point every time you find one. If you score more than five points then, well, look it just won't happen okay? The lowest I've scored is 1 and that was titled "Finally, some good news!".

See This Through and Leave

I saw The Cooper Temple Clause last week live at Koko. As is pretty much standard for them they were mind blowingly fantastic. Also as seems the norm for their gigs most people still haven't quite worked out that you now have to dance during Panzer Attack, not hit each other. And also as is now normal for every gig I go to I felt suitably old for the entire event. This wasn't helped by every at work the next day saying "you went to a rock concert? really?". Get over it. The one good photo follows:

A Joke

Now Working! (thanks Ben)

So a few days back I was looking up on Google the recipe for pizza, and low and behold, Google not only gave me the recipe for pizza but it also gave me a little pull down menu to specify what sort of pizza recipe I was looking for. When I tried it again yesterday though it had gone, however it seems to be back now. This isn't the first time Google has surprised, the other day I typed in "Hello in Spanish" and low and behold, it told me straight out. This seems to work with a few languages (although oddly not French).

Anyway, this got me thinking, what would be really great would be if Google started a joke search function. Whereby you'd search for the word "joke" and then any other words you'd like to be involved in it. It'd then throw out some hilarious jokes for you to use. This would have a million practical applications, the most obvious of which would be making this website a whole lot funnier. Say I was to write something like this:

Apologies for not writing anything witty today, but that's because I'm saving it all for my amazing new stand up comedy routine I'm about to do. It's going to be called "oh so Danish" and be about the joy it is to eat pastry in the morning.
On an unrelated note, I saw David Hasselhoff in the back of a Taxi the other day, and that person who I think is Germaine Greer (but not together).

Now that's unspeakably dull, but imagine if I could just type in "joke 'david hasselhoff' 'germaine greer' pastry danish" into google. All of a sudden there would be some fantastic witty punchline waiting at the end to catch you out.

I don't think that Google have time to do this though, which is a lost for us all. Fortunately though I have no social life so I wrote the code myself.

Albania

Interesting fact about Albania:

There are only four sorts of poisonous snakes in Europe. Albania has all of them.

Excellent stuff I think.

Friday the 23rd

• How did the information that Roddy Woomble's solo album came out two and a half months ago slip by me? I blame everyone but me. Mostly Sarah though because keeping me up to date on everything hip and Scottish is her job.

• I'm going to Norwich tomorrow. Scum.

• The new Damien Rice single is fantastic. Well, it's better than anything you can do. In related news, I've yet to persuade anyone famous and musically talented to read this drivel. In related news to that, I've yet to meet anyone famous.

• And while we're on that subject, there's been a rumour going around since I came here that Ewan McGregor lives in the local square and has been seen on the street outside work. No-one has seen him themselves but they always know someone who has. In doing some research on the area (which contains approximately 309 young people in it) I found out that writer Ian McEwan lives in the square which leads me to conclude that London is not ready for people with Mc surnames. I fully expect to start hearing about how someone's cousin yelled YOU SHALL NOT PASS to Sir Ian McKellen when he tried to get away without picking up one of the free London rags outside Warren Street.

"When do you think it'll stop raining?"
"May"

Ctrl-S

Sometimes as a geek I get asked by people the following question: "Where has all my work gone?". Generally the look on people's face is something like the one I'm pulling for you all now. Obviously though this being the medium of word and as I can't be bothered with taking a photo this is entirely lost on you all, however it's an awesome face so I thought I'd mention it. Anyway, the standard response to this question is "you're a computer illiterate fool, did you really think that the correct answer to the question 'Do you want to save the changes to "Figures for the last 3 years for funding"?' was 'No'?". Of course, having just done that myself I am now slightly more sympathetic. And by sympathetic I mean incredibly joyful that I now have another two hours of work for myself. Joy.

Postman Pat Vs Fireman Sam

Andy asks:

"Who would win in a fight between Postman Pat and Fireman Sam?"

Ah, the classic "who would win in a fight" question. Since the dawn of time man has mentally waged one animate object against another in the struggle to work out the fundamental question of life; who can kick the most ass? Homer posed the question when he threw the Achaeans against the Trojans, Shakespeare pitted the Montagues against the Capulets and Franklin W. Dixon the Hardy Boys against the pirates, or possibly the smugglers. Sometimes the fights have been spectacularly mismatched and the outcomes have never needed debating sometimes things have been so close that no-one dares side one way or the other (He-Man versus Lion-O?). Unfortunately for stop-motion fight bookies this current paring falls into the former category; Fireman Sam would clearly kick Postman Pats ass. What follows is an unpleasant, but necessary, breakdown of why Pat is doomed.

Fireman Sam is a Fireman. Postman Pat is a postman. If there is an emergency and you need to get hold of a fireman you dial 999 and then say "fire brigade please". If there is an emergency and you need to get hold of a postman do you turn on your computer, go on the internet, look up your local post-offices phone number, get put on hold for thirty minutes and then get mysteriously disconnected. Do you know this doesn't matter? Because no-ones wants a postman in an emergency. Firemen regularly run around, cart big heavy hoses up high ladders and pick up people and carrying them out of burning buildings. Fireman Sam by all accounts is an expert in all this. Postman Pat drives around in a van all day dropping off letters to people. Occasionally he has to pick up the odd bag of mail or drop off a package to clearly visible strain. It's debatable whether it's physically possible for him to actually hurt Fireman Sam.

If we try and balance things out by allowing them to use their vehicles in the fight then things just become further stacked against Pat. Pat does have a very shiny red post van, but then Sam does have a very shiny red massive fire truck. You could further try to balance things out by allowing Pat to use his implements of the trade; a bag and a black and white cat, but then you've got to let Sam have his implements of the trade; a protective suit, a powerful hose and a fireman's axe. For all the damage a black and white cat could do my money is still going on the man with an axe.

Of course, once Fireman Sam's dispensed of Postman Pat there are going to be reprisals from the greater Greendale community. They seem a close bunch and I doubt they'd let one of their own get beaten on in that way. Pontypandy has got Sam's back though so any action that's coming his way has got to get past them and in a fight between a sleepy Yorkshire village and a Welsh town with five firemen isn't going to be much of a fight.

Postman Pat is not without complete disadvantages though. He's got the advantage of height on Fireman Sam and lacking a neck he's impossible to strangle, but these are small things in light of his greater fighting deficiencies. You lose Pat. You lose.

Pirate, Ninja, Your Face

"So anyway, my friend of mine is having this way awesome party right. It's fancy dress like, and the theme is, get this, Pirates Vs Ninjas! How cool is that! It's because someone else had a Cowboys Vs Robots Party which was like the best party ever. Lol. Oh my word, I can't believe I just Lol out loud, how cool am I?"

I don't want to diss the whole Pirate, Ninja, Cowboy, Party scene or anything, but I'm starting to think that maybe people could push the boundaries a bit. Once you've heard your first "who'd win in a fight? A pirate, a cowboy or a ninja?" conversation you've heard them all (and for the record it's obviously the ninja, as evidenced by this rewording of the question "who'd win in a fight? A drunk sailor, a cattle herd or a trained assassin?"). It's not like history isn't full of famous archetypes that can't be borrowed for the sake of having a good party. So, if you're planning a something vs something party sometime soon, here's a list to help you stay at least mildly original.

• Knights
• Musketeers
• Swashbuckling Outlaws
• Huns, Vandals and other generic Barbarians
• Cossacks
• Whatever the hell William Tell was
• Vikings
• Spies

Now hopefully this time next year iamsparticus won't be asking where on earth are all the Knight - Vikings - Swiss Crossbow Men parties.

Next Week: Kids Tv Programmes people don't talk about that much.

Wednesday The 4th

• I think that September 2006 has been my worst month for actually updating this website in a long time. One of the golden rules of having a blog though is that you should never apologise for these sorts of things, but just carry on regardless. Also you shouldn't call them a blog because that's an ugly ugly word. Ah whatever.

• Apparently I have to tell the world who would win in a fight between Fireman Sam and Postman Pat. I tell you, I've done my research and it nigh-on blew my mind. There will be stop-motion violence and it will be very jerkily gory.

• I made this really awesome joke earlier whilst playing Pro Evo with a young person. Someone else points at Patrick Viera and says "isn't that Sol Campbell?" and I say "No, that's Patrick Viera" and then I say "Did you just say that because he was black?" Which may not sound funny, but when you're one of only two white people in the room it had slightly more wit to it.

• Oh yeah, that reminds me, I'm getting excellent at Pro Evo now. And by excellent I mean my ass only gets kicked slightly. The trick is to make a break for it and then when the goalie inevitably comes out to try to get the ball tap square while holding L1 to lob it over them. Or try tapping X while you're about to shoot to dodge around them.

KIDS

This is the sound I heard as I sat on my bed this morning tying my shoes: "MONEY MONEY MONEY, IS THAT ALL YOU HEAR FROM YOUR CHILDREN?" This is the sound I heard as I tried to find a jumper to wear in my cupboard: "MONEY MONEY MONEY, IS THAT ALL YOU HEAR FROM YOUR CHILDREN?". It turns out they were shooting an advert on the pavement outside my house. An advert with a guy with a big American voice who sounds like he should have been doing adverts all his life, mostly for hernia creams. I hope they show it on something other than day time LivingTv but unless it was secretly ironic I doubt it