Office airconditioner’s knackered.  Ordinarily I’m not one to be worried about such things (unlike some of my co-workers, who regard 16 degrees as “a heatwave”), however it’s presently got 2 particularly useless options.  You can either get it to dispense warm air, or it’ll put out hot air.
We rang the building maintenance people last week about it, and received the entirely unhelpful response: “Yes, we know about that – everyone on that floor’s got the same issue, so rest assured it’s not just you.  We’ve got engineers working on it …

OK so one of the joys of living in Camden (and indeed in London) is that there’s plenty of tramps about, and occasionally they’ll leave bits & pieces about the place.  Found this lot out on our doorstep this morning.

Looks like a nice night – couple of cans of Kronenbourg and an Onken mousse…  Kroneys aren’t as strong as Carlsberg Special Brew, so it won’t have completely overpowered the light & subtle taste of the mousse.  Looks like they’ve hooked into a packet of menthol fags, for the post-dinner treat.  …

Following on from the book list @Mooley made me make the other day, I thought I’d step out into further territory of subjectivity and cliche, and make the obligatory list of my 10 favourite films.  So here we go.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that the exercise wasn’t so much trying to work out what to put in, as much as what to leave out…

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — this is an absolute no-brainer, and really I wondered if this still qualifies as a film: it’s more of a set …

I’m sure the plodding count of my Facebook collection is completely riveting reading for all concerned, but it seems a shame to have celebrated reaching 800, to then let 900 paddle past without mention.
So firstly, congrats to Sam Brooke, my former Patrol Leader from 1st Torrens Park Scout Troop (Anacondas Patrol) for being #900.
It’s probably also worth clearing up a statement I made last time – many people have raised eyebrows at my “friending policy”, and to that end I’ve stated that in order to make it onto the list …

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bitch about fashion availability, but this concerns the potential purchase of a pair of Awesome Trousers.  My life’s goal is the acquisition of Awesome Trousers.  I can’t seem to back this claim up with readily available photographs, but it’s true.
Anyway, I just got an email from a company I’ve bought cool stuff from in the past announcing their limited run of only 86 pairs of Awesome Trousers, and it pains me greatly to say that by the time I’d clicked through & tried to add them to …

Just read in an interview with Ross Noble the following statement about my home town, Adelaide:
Whereas other cities have spread themselves over several streets, Adelaide has not felt the need to do that. They’ve just gone, “Yeah, one street should do it. We’ll put the shops up one end and the restaurants down the other.” It’s perfect.
What a champ he is.  Can’t wait to see his gigs in September (yep, FINALLY got tickets to see Noble on consecutive nights… just to find out).

I’ve hinted in prior blogs about being an avid reader (and subscriber) of the great British magazine, Viz.
One of the things that appeals most to me is the outright stupidity inherent in a lot of the material in it.  The “Top Tips” is always a favourite, however I’m a massive fan of “Letterbocks”.  It’s never clear whether any of the letters written in are real reader submissions, whether it’s all stuff dreamt up in Viz Towers, or a combination of both.  What I definitely love though is the sheer arse-wittedness …

My mathematics career (if you could even loosely call it that) was never likely to be stellar, I’m afraid.  I muddled along OK for a while, taking in probability & basic calculus** pretty well, as well as imaginary numbers & matrix transformations.  It got a little bit thicker in amongst trigonometric calculus, but I managed to hang on for long enough to get into uni – amid the endless cries of “But we’re never going to ACTUALLY USE this, are we?” from many of my contemporaries.  Once at university I …

For some reason I was recently alerted to a new word for my vocabulary.  Ordinarily this is an opportunity to be relished, and customarily this initiates an intesne but short-lived campaign for me to try to work my newfound linguistic extension into the earliest possible conversational window it will fit into.  Unfortunately options for this word are more restricted than some others.  The word in question (and please don’t ask who I was talking to or how this came up, because I genuinely don’t remember) is “feague“.  Wikipedia cites a …

On Saturday afternoon (about a month ago now) when Housemate James & I returned from our mission to Essex, we got into Liverpool Street Station and thought, “We’re in no particular hurry – lets wander about and have a look at some of the buildings in The City, for a change”.  So we did.  It’s not a part of London I get into very often, and being that of a weekend the place is pretty much deserted it’s not altogether unpleasant, either.  Though you could tell it’s a place where …