Stupid Emails
17 August 2003
Fed up of receiving stupid emails from stupid people who MUST forward any chain email they receive? Just send them back this flash animation. You never know, they might just get the message.
Billys new words
17 August 2003
Billy is learning words at a seemingly incredible speed - so much so that he appears to pick up what you are saying subconsciously and will then use the phrase himself later.
This can be a problem.
He overheard Paula dropping something on her foot - and now everytime something bad happens to him he mutters "Oh balls" under his breath. We were in B&Q at the weekend and Billy had been 'altering' the front wheel on Annies 3-wheeler pram. As I lifted it up off the ground the wheel went rolling off into the paint section - speedily followed by Billy shouting "...oh balls, come here silly wheel, oh balls".
I'm only glad he didn't overhear me, as I think the language would be a bit stronger.
Brown Trousers
12 August 2003
Derren Brown plays Russian Roulette live! On October 26 world television history will be made. Derren Brown will play Russian Roulette live on Channel 4. He will pull the trigger. Who will load the gun? For your chance to be that person visit the Russian Roulette website
[Via Derren Brown]
Hot Discovery
11 August 2003
The weekend was hot. Damn hot. In fact it was record breakingly hot as temperatures reached 38.1C (100.6F). The kids found it difficult to sleep, and so did we. So we basically spent the weekend hunting out air-conditioned areas (the car, ELC, John Lewis) and tried to avoid the direct heat as much as possible. I hate complaining about sunny days, but when you have tired, hot and bothered kids not to mention us, everything becomes difficult.
Annie is now into everything and can crawl from one end of our front room to the other in a few seconds. She of course is obsessed with the VCR; why do kids find them so fascinating? She also learned to clap, putting it to good effect congratulating herself on blowing enormous raspberries.
We did however make it to the Lookout discovery centre and it was fantastic. We took a picnic that we ate in a really nice spot by the side of the childrens play area. Inside the discovery centre are numerous hands on science experiments and as you can imagine this was right up Billy's street. It comes with our seal of approval - and I guarantee that we'll go back soon.
Twins
08 August 2003
Congratulations to Alan and Sue who are now the proud parents of twins born on 4th August.
Matthew Nathan was born at 13:43 weighing 7lb 9oz and Rachel Zoe was born two minutes later weighing 5lb 1oz.
I shan't drone on the usual stuff about sleepless nights and nappies, just have a quiet wry smile to myself.
Thus spake Billy
04 August 2003
Billy got his lego out on Saturday and started constructing things.
He's quite imaginative and it's always quite interesting discovering what he has built. He finished what he was doing (some kind of vehicle) and so Paula asked him what he'd made.
"What have you made Billy?"
"A skidoo. It has three wheels and a steering wheel."
"...and what are those white bits on the back?"
"They are for knocking down ginormous hills. They are called ginormous knockers"
As you can imagine, myself and Paula fell about laughing, but the funniest bit was the serious look on Billy's face as he had no idea what we were laughing at.
Tea Scum
28 July 2003
We bought a new teapot on Saturday. It works a bit like a cafetiere but with tea leaves. Anyway after making several damn fine cups of tea we noticed that the pot produced rather a lot of "tea scum". This got me thinking and wondering what tea scum was and whether it can be eliminated from the tea brewing process. The internet being what it is, surely the answer was only a few clicks away, so armed with a cup of tea (complete with scum) I set off on a voyage of discovery.
The general concensus is that tea scum is 15% calcium carbonate and 85% complicated organic chemicals. The calcium carbonate is formed by the combination of calcium and bicarbonate ions. The "complicated organic chemicals" are a family of polyphenols and are anti-oxidants that are generally regarded as being good for you by removing oxidising chemicals from your body. This work came from a study by chemists Michael Spiro and Deogratius Jaganyl from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London.
The other main theory put forward by Ralph A. Lewin from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California is that tea leaves are covered with a waxy waterproof fat that dissolves in the hot water forming the scum.
So how do we stop scum? As most of the tea scum is to do with the calcium - it can be reduced by brewing with soft or distilled water and by not adding milk. Acid also reverses the calcium carbonate reaction, and so the addition of lemon juice should make a scum-free cuppa.
Dirty Billy
18 July 2003
Last night Billy and me were in the bath playing with water pistols. We had great fun recreating famous gun moments from the movies including "Hasta la vista, baby!", "You talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here." and my favourite was Billy's version of Dirty Harry's quote that went "Are you feeling mucky pup? Go ahead, make my day."
Cat Chat
17 July 2003
A Japanese company has invented a device to understand cats. Apparently Meowlingual translates the cat's emotion into phrases such as "I can't stand it". This is a follow on from Bowlingual for dogs. I am waiting for the Barnsley version (By-Eck-lingual).
Go-karts and Sloe Whisky
14 July 2003
Last weekend we visited Molly's grandparents in Wales. They live in a lovely house on the edge of Llangorse Lake. It has a brilliant garden that the kids loved playing in, and we all had a fabulous time.
Saturday afternoon we went to a hot air balloon display, and Billy and Molly had their first proper go-kart race. Billy seemed a natural at overtaking by cutting up the car in front and forcing them out on the bends. They both did a grand job at entertaining the masses resulting in them being allowed to stay on in return for a couple of lager shandies.
We had planned to do a spot of trout fishing, but in the end ran out of time. Billy, of course, was still adamant that we went fishing on the lake; so we headed off with bamboo canes, lengths of string and two safety pins. The only bait we had were a couple of raisins, and needless to say the fish weren't particularly interested. This didn't matter to Billy who was quite happy catching 'seaweed' and was convinced he had in fact caught the raisin after forgetting we put it on in the first place.
All in all a wonderful weekend and thanks to Roger and Roseanne for their generous hospitality (and of course summer pudding and sloe whisky).
Happy Birthday Billy
06 July 2003
Yesterday was Billy's 4th birthday. My little boy is growing up...
The day began with a rather rapid unwrapping of his presents. It reminded me of Edward Scissorhands cutting hair - but with strips of wrapping paper flying everywhere. He then moved onto opening cards which began in a rather civilised way with Billy saying things like "...oooww a cat with a fishing rod" and "...aaah a cuddly bear". This soon ended once he realised some of them also contained fivers - we then moved into a truly capitalist hunt for money with scant regard to the birthday cards containing it. All the cash he got was notes making the hunt trickier. When I was a kid any money I got for my birthday was always coins and so you could tell before opening whether the card in question would be financially rewarding.
At 3.00pm eight of Billies school mates arrived for Billy's party. All parents left at 3.01pm leaving us to keep the unruly four year-olds under control for two hours. The party went really well with the kids generally doing what they wanted in the garden. This was punctuated by a couple of preplanned games.
We started with a "pin the patch on the pirate" game won by Freya (4) - who also helped entertain us adults by singing American Pie in Billy's microphone - sure makes a change from the usual Wheels on the Bus and Wind the Bobbin Up. Next came the obligatory pass the parcel won by Ben. We finished with a pirate treasure hunt with several clues, each leading to the next. One hidden in a sand castle another under a slide, you get the idea, culminating with a box of treasure full of necklaces, jewels, badges and dozens of chocolate coins. I would highly recommend this as a way to finish a kids party as everybody wins and there are no long faces from the losers.
We managed to survive the party and I really enjoyed it too! I must brush up on my childrens magic for next year.
Retro Web Farm
04 July 2003
Fancy running your website off a Commodore 64? Contiki is an internet enabled operating system and desktop environment for very constrained systems, such as 8-bit homecomputers like the Commodore 64. Apparently it includes a web-server, telnet client and web-browser. Or would you prefer to use an Atari 800 web server? I feel a mini-project coming on...
More Derren Brown
01 July 2003
Apparently the bearded one has now managed the astounding feat of absorbing a Jaffa cake with his mind.
This comes courtesy of Seabass 7 a spoof news stories page that I find quite amusing. The site is in the style of the Onion - but is more UK based. It just needs to support RSS and my day will be happier.
Happy Holidays
29 June 2003
You may have been wondering (or maybe not) why RoysWorld has been a bit quiet of late. Well for the last 2 weeks we've been on holiday to Cornwall with the kids and our mates Morag, Jonny and Molly. I'm not going to bore you with the web equivalent of a slideshow, but the main highlights were as follows:
Biff and Sandy Go To Mars
10 June 2003
Yes, it's true, two LEGO astrobots will be the first on Mars. Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust are onboard the two Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft heading towards the red planet. Their job: "to tell their stories to the world through a series of entertaining, fun, online communications."
Mind Control
09 June 2003
On Sunday evening Paula and I went to see Derren Brown live at the Palace Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue. You may have seen him in his Mind Control series for Channel 4. The show was fantastic. It was brilliantly put together with a combination of traditional magic, mental magic, guesswork and a certain degree of luck. Due to the nature of his show some of the illusions will and do fail. Where he is really skilled is turning these failures into paths into other aspects of the show. I imagine each performance could go in a number of different directions dependant on how successful or unsuccessful each trick is and you tend to forget the anti-climaxes. At the end (after a standing ovation) he announced that he would be putting on a West End show next year - so assuming he's not refering to Miss Saigon or something I will be first in the queue for a ticket - and I would recommend you are too. I the mean time think of a number....any number....make it two digits and higher than 30....
Sticky Students
03 June 2003
Scientists have developed a super sticky tape based upon the hairs found on geckos feet. I just had to laugh at the quote from one of the scientists:
"We have also considered producing a large amount of gecko tape - sufficient amounts to enable a student to hang out of a window of a tall building. However it would cost too much money, and would not benefit us scientifically..."
Kids do Raiders
03 June 2003
Some kids back in 1981 put together a shot by shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Looking at the trailer it looks fantastic - and brings back heady days of running around with a length of rope for a whip pretending to Indiana Jones. It seems only yesterday the excitement of going to see it for my mate Jonathans birthday. I was 10 and remember thinking the 'melting' scene was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. I'm sure the Citizen Kane like ending is the root of my cynical distrust of government and authority.
Hello. My name is Roy. I live in rural Oxfordshire.
This is my blog. I write about things that interest me, make me laugh or that I want to remember.