Freelance Senior Web Developer & Technical Architect
MyHeritage.com have a great piece of kit for bloggers everywhere, the facial recognition software will tell you which celebrity party you’re most likely to be able to blend seamlessly into. Hours of fun… Thanks to the knowledge of this has to go to trippy, because I stole it from her blog 🙂
As human beings, we spend a large amount of our time wishing we were somewhere else, or doing something different. Minutes fly by waiting for a phone to ring; hours disappear waiting for lunch time; afternoons waiting to go home; days wishing for the weekend; weeks to start something new; months in the pursuit of a holiday in the sun; and years before you take your life its next new direction.
This entry of the continuing University Notes is the focus of just those moments in time when we found ourselves wishing we weren’t in lectures.
Germany
I wish I was in Germany,
because then,
I wouldn’t be,
here.
After the whole days break you’ve all been enjoying of no entries, it’s rather fitting to dedicate this one to holidays (breaks – see, like the link?). So, I’ve dug out some of the best drawings from the note book, by a man who may well become very famous for his artistic abilities. If you haven’t guessed who I’m talking about already, it’s the very under-appreciated-in-his-field Ben.
“BEN – HA HA.
He’s going on holiday, the week EVERYTHING is being set. Including coursework, on which they’re going to base the exam.
HAHA – BEN” — Kevin Blake
Well it obviously didn’t phase him too much, and since Ben eventually ended with a 1st it just goes to show that taking holidays mid-semester is exactly the right time to do it, rather than wasting the breaks in between. Stay in school kids.
For the second in the series of University Notes, I’ve chosen a particularly poignant poem spilt onto the page by my own hand, during a time of particular boredom where the clock would simply not move round within the normal boundaries of time. I am of course talking about Computing and Ethics lectures.
Hell
They say hell is being locked,
In a room with your friends,
But,
It depends if your friends take,
Computer Science.
Whilst tidying the boxes stacked up in my room today, I came across an old notebook from university. They’re mostly notes from the first year of uni, which mostly consist of really rubbish poetry and written conversations between myself and other students. There’s a double page spread of when we snuck Ali into a lecture (why!?), poems from myself and Luke, and some quite simply amazing artwork from Ben.
For the most part, these entries will undoubtedly mean nothing to anybody, but maybe they will – and my university experience is remarkably similar to your own…. Regardless, over the next couple of weeks I want to share some of my notes with the rest of you … and hopefully bring back a few fond memories of how we all got through the crisis of university before the bar opened 🙂
The first of many, a poem by Luke (I think). I believe this describes the mature students on our course. Full name not disclosed to protect the innocent…
Old
When you are old,
You ask questions,
And think you are clever.
When you are old,
People smile at your questions,
And think you are senile.
For the last two weekends, I’ve used the hot days to take in all London has to offer in the way of cheap music festivals that have high associations with things that are cold and tasty. It might seem like I’ve limited my options somewhat, but fortunately there have been two such festivals that fit the bill heavily sponsored by Innocent smoothies, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
The Ben and Jerry’s was a bargain price of 5 pounds per day (though Danesy got the tickets off of ebay for the slightly more normally priced 16 pounds). I had the pleasure of seeing The Wonder Stuff (of immense 90s fame) Jose Gonzalez, and some slightly less-knowns like Captain (fantastic singles out and about at the moment), Nerina Pallot and Vincent Vincent and the Villains. There was also a huge authentic wooden helter skelter in the middle of the park, and lots of little fair-type games around the outside. The positives being all important; I won a badge from magnetic fishing! 🙂 Sadly, I also got a bit of friction burn on my elbow from the wooden helter skelter. That’ll teach me for not wearing long sleeves.
The best part of all though… As much free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as you can eat! Did I forget to mention that earlier on? I started to feel ill but couldn’t get enough of ‘oh my apple pie’, or ‘phish food’. Mmmmmm.
The Innocent festival was massive. The north part of Regent’s park was literally jam packed full of people, as this one’s a free festival (for entry). We only got one free bottle of innnocent drinks (cranberry one). Still really good 🙂 And that had The Puppini sisters, Whisky Cats, Nouvelle Vague, and finally Arrested Development as the headliners. I like my guitars and melodies a lot more than Arrested Development provide – but they were still very good – and it was a great day out in the sunshine…. Even if it did take over 45 minutes to queue up for 4 glasses of pimms, they made up for it though with the various signs dotted about all over the place, like: “No glass. No selling. No barbecues. And definately no selling glass barbecues”. Well I thought it was good…
The great thing about both of them were the high morals that the companies (at least claim) they stand for. Lots of charity work across the world, and do no harm were the themes of both. Great use of recycling bins, bio-diesel fuels, no plastic plates or cutlery, bike racks etc were on hand at one or more of each of the festivals. I even came away from the Ben and Jerry’s festival with a tree! Well, it’s a seed, and it comes with fertiliser and you can grow it in the Ben and Jerry’s pot it came in. Really good weekends all in all – I can highly recommend them next year!
Free ice cream. What more incentive do you need?
The latest addition to my DS games family, Movietyme delivered me a copy of Brain Age today (called Brain Training in the UK). The idea behind Brain Age is a set of daily training tasks for your brain, which might involve mathematical, reading, perception, and reading skills to help stimulate the brain.
It doesn’t sound like your average game, but some clever marketing and people’s desire for a quick fix to being smart have already made the game a top seller in a huge number of markets, worldwide.
And so far, it’s been great fun 🙂 I’ve learnt the secrets of Sodoku and become quietly addicted, and got myself a highly respectable brain age score. I’ll find a place on my sidebar to update my brain age on the blog every now and then. Hopefully I can top my current score of .. 73. Yep, that’s right, I have the brain of a 73 year old. Old and wise. Actually, it doesn’t quite work that way as it’s the lower the better – it’s demonstrating that there’re dead brain cells beyond my years.
Hopefully the next few weeks will improve… Especially if I write clearly enough so that Brain Age can recognise my chicken scratch handwriting 🙂
“Will you find it?” said the posters across London, all week. I didn’t know what “it” was until I saw the pictures on BBC News. Apparently neither does anybody else outside London, though it’s been talked about non-stop all week within its borders. The Sultan’s Elephant is a production by the French Company Royal de Luxe, who aim to take theatre back to the people, from behind the closed doors back onto the streets and into the real world. And from the 4th – 7th May, the 40 ft high mechnical time travelling elephant packed up its trunk to visit the big city.The Sultan’s elephant is a Jules Verne story of a Sultan tormented by dreams of a time travelling girl. The Sultan comissioned an eccentric engineer from the year 1900 to build him a time machine so he could find the girl, and rid her from his dreams.So, that sounded like my kind of story really 🙂 It’s London’s largest ever street theatre production, includes a real life 40 ft tall mechanical elephant operated by a huge team of puppeteers, and a no less impressive “giant” girl. As I walked through St James’ Park looking for the elephant, I stumbled across the crowd of people watching the girl asleep in a huge deck chair. I didn’t think the elephant would be that hard to find, but there were still large groups of wide-eyed city workers rushing around asking “have you seen the elephant?”, “where’s the elephant going to be next?” like junkies trying to find their next fix.
I knew exactly how they felt.
I watched the giant girl as kids were allowed to take part in the performance by sitting on her arms while they swung back and forth, and followed the crowd as we all walked alongside, in front of, and around the giant. This led me to Horse Guard Parade, where the finale was to take place.
The elephant was just huge, about 3 stories tall and whilst not quite as large as Whitehall, it still made a hugely impressive view. I’m not convinced over its ability to time travel – but the elephant was certainly a work of mechanical, and imaginative genius. Seeing it for real made me very glad I’d come into London to see what the fuss was about, and I could fully appreciate anyone who had spend the last 3 days following it everywhere it went, cheering at every sound of the trumpet, and squirt of water from the elephant’s trunk. You couldn’t help but turn to your neighbour and grin, it was that kind of atmosphere 🙂
A really unique show and a great day out, all for the bargain price of “totally free” … Today has been a good day 🙂
We both liked the dunes so much, we decided it was a good idea to bring as much of it back to the hotel as we could carry. That meant filling our shoes, pockets, bags and ears. It also meant we should liberally apply sun tan lotion so we could get as much stuck to our skin as we possibly could too.
Yesterday we went into the glitz and glamour of playa de inglais. A resorty type area with a lot of great clubs and bars like “Rooney’s”, and “Beckhams Bar”. It also had a fantastic shopping centre that boasted landmarks from all over the world, Prague, London, Paris. I’m not sure if they were actually stolen and imported, or if they were cheap plastic imitation. But I was impressed.
“It reallly is a just pile of shit, isn’t it?” says Ali.
Shop hustlers outside each shop “what do you like to buy? Camera for 80 euros?” Yeah, because while browsing for something nice for the folks back home, I really want a new camera. I think they need to start smaller for the casual shopper crowd. Playa de Inglais DID have an internet café though, which meant we could print out our booking voucher and ensure our stay at Parque Luz. At last 🙂 Oblivious to the world, I sat down at the computer while Ali noticed all of the topless men pictures all around the walls. I think we found the world’s only gay Internet Café. Or maybe not, maybe there are loads of them. And there’s a need for more shops and services like it.
We also found a pub that proudly advertised that they aired all of the British soaps, Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale. I imagined a large group of obsessives all trundling down there every evening, with their copy of Heat magazine following along.
All of the glamour was a bit much for our fragile little minds to be honest. So we ended up back at the dunes. I discovered that while we were sitting on top of the dunes, if I were to push the sand away from below where Ali was sitting, she would move slowly down the dunes. Ali didn’t fnd discovering her shorts full of sand quite as funny as I did, but it was all in aid of science. So it was okay 🙂 After reading this out to her, she claims that it was more annoying she found it in her knickers. I don’t know what she’s complaining about.
So I went for a wander across the dunes, wanting to get to a point where all I could see were dunes. It was ace. The rain from the night before had created lots of nice sand plateau’s, and I quite rarely came across any other people. People had found dark stones and written charming messages like L (heart) G. Which sadly looked a lot more like LOG, and made me chuckle. I wanted to write a big message saying HELP! but after finding 4 dark stones, I ran out of patience.
We were both covered in sand by the time I rejoined Ali, and the wind had picked up a bit sending nice stinging sand all over us. Ali had some fantastic sand stubble by the time we found our way out of the dunes. So we emptied our shoes and headed back to the apartments.
A German sounding tour rep came and visited us a few days ago at the apartment, and asked if we were interested in a boat trip. He also managed to convince us that if we didn’t want that, we should go on a Jeep Safari into the mountains. You’ll meet younger people, we leave from a shopping centre better than the Faro 2, and you won’t be stuck on a coach with old people who are only interested in comfort. Thinking the Faro 2 was alright, liking the idea of a bit of comfort into the mountains, and not finding the idea of chatting to old people altogether repuslive – we handed over our 18 euros deposit, had the meeting point marked on our map for us, and away he went. “Where did he say we were supposed to meet again?” … “erm, I’m not sure”. “Bugger”
We rose and shone early at 8.00am, and headed for a Taxi into Playa del Inglis, the resort area just down the road from Maspalomas. At the early morning briefing, we got the same jokes that I’m sure are given to every group, every day. “We have to take this photo for insurance purposes, so we can tell the company who is missing when we come back down”. “We have something special for lunch today, the same as yesterday, and the day before” and so on. The Jeep Master was the perfect cheese that you’d expect to find on a Jeep Safari 🙂
Our group whom we were sharing the Jeep with were all German speakers. Not exactly a rarity on this little island. There must be some very cheap flights from there Gran Canaria as the language seems to be more widely spoken than English. It didn’t take too long before the GCSE German kicked in, and we were both able to pick up little bits and pieces of what was going on. The group was very friendly and did manage to include us – and I was glad that we ended up on that Jeep. We also had the only non-tour operator driver of the day. A guy from Switzerland who did very well, and not only got us up into the mountains safely, but brought us back home too.
Our “safari” took us up 1,200 metres, and to the centre of Gran Canaria, also to a restaurant in the the volcano crater. There are also a large number of villages in that crater. Undoubtedly for the rich farming area. I know villages are often built on the side of a volcano – this is the first I’d seen within it. Not that you could tell 🙂
We also went off-road for a bit. To the shouts of “off-road” as we bounced our way merrily along the dirt track getting covered in dust from the jeeps in the lead.
Not far into the safari – is when we discovered the merits of six people sitting in the back of an open framed jeep … during a thunderstorm.
The rain came down. The jeep behind us frantically tried to put up the plastic cover while speeding through the mountain roads. We didn’t have a plastic cover for our jeep. But Ali had a towel.
You might think we’d all be a bit annoyed by heavy rain, but it did make the trip even more hilarious than the camel ride. And they’re supposed to be the MOST hilarious. Bizarre.
And it wasn’t that heavy until on the way back, where we stopped the jeep and all ran for shelter inside the bins housing on the side of the road. It smells, but it’s dry. Pictures to follow 🙂
So, that’s the jeep safari in a nutshell – great fun – and I’m really glad we chose that over the coach ride. Doesn’t give me the usual “facts about Gran Canaria” to write here, butyou can’t have everything. Besides, the guide book has stuff like that. Christopher Columbus put in at Gran Canaria during his 1st, 2nd and 4th voyages across the atlantic. It’s quite possible that an ancestor of Terry Bull entertained him during one of his stays here. Terry Bull – TerriBull – Terrible. As one of the safari-goers pointed out. Ahh, brilliant.
Thanks to all for the gift ideas – it’s the shopping trip tomorrow (providing everything hasn’t closed for easter already) – so I’ll see what other useless tat we can dig up 🙂