Week Off

I have to confess that this week I have failed to carry out a task. This is mainly as I was working in order to replenish some of the funds which is an unfortunate necessity in life. I went back up to my old stomping ground in Yorkshire and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, got to see some old faces and there is promise of further work. Good times.

In other news, I hit Cardiff where I saw another set of old faces and took part in fairly aggressive go karting session. The large crash that occurred in our final session, I still maintain, was not my fault.

So, that's about it. I did see George Alaguya (BBC News presenter) in Westfield today which was pretty exciting but I think this week's task needs to make up for a taskless week. Therefore, I'm going to master lockpicking in just one week. Wish me luck and I'll leave you with my latest, albeit poor quality, evil face photograph.

Acting

Hello world. This week's task was a tad on the boring side, at least for those hearing about it. The aim was to learn about how websites are coded using html and css code and I actually found it pretty interesting. Quite some time was spent listening to fairly boring American accented chaps on youtube going on about stuff that was occasionally so complicated, I didn't believe that it was actually for real. Still, I have produced the site on the right from the bits and pieces that I picked up and just to prove how awesome I am, here is the coding that I had to type out from scratch. Well worth knowing about!
In other news, I was chilling out with James Corden and Julie walters this week. Those who don't know already (and I may have been going on about it quite a lot), I managed to bag some work as an extra. Chilling on set with the big guns was quality even though it was a film about Britain's Got Talent winner
Paul Potts. Hopefully my acting skills were noted and you'll probably be seeing me in the next Bond film.

The picture featured on the page by the way was from Gun Hill Riffs latest gig. Good fun it was too and thanks to all who came. Finally, I had wanted to get a more active task in for next week but I've landed some proper work which will be helping me pay for this year so it may have to be another smaller task. As such I'm going to leave this week's task as a surprise! Bet you can't wait. 

W

Times Tables

Well. The task for this week got off to a slow start. I won't lie, it's pretty difficult to get yourself motivated to learn your times tables. I tried various methods including printouts of the tables themselves, going down them in order but by far the saviour of this task was the times tables app I downloaded on my phone. Words cannot describe how addictive this is. It takes the form of a timed quiz and as a result of almost constant use over the last two days I am now well good.

When I say mastered it's all relative, exemplified by my mistake in challenging my father to take the test. He immediately beat my score and the gloating still rings in my ears.

In other news, our Halloween party occurred this past Saturday and a good time was had by all. I donned my Jedi outfit and in my opinion the force was with me.

It was also mindblowingly comfortable. This makes me think the record attempt for longest wearing of a Jedi outfit will be all the more easy.

Incidentally, I have recently had an increased number of people commenting on my likeness for a certain member of the Inbetweeners. Am I becoming him or something?! This is a photo of me...

This is the alleged lookalike (who unfortunately I must admit may have been the reason why a girl outside the BBC the other day looked over at me and barely managed to mask a massive grin (my flies were not wide open. I checked straight away))...

I think I look more like WWE wrestler The Miz...

I am not particularly pleased either way but that's life. Anyway, the tasks have been a bit bookish recently so I'm building up to an exciting one again once I have been boring for one more week. The task I shall be doing this week is learning about computers. Specifically html. I barely know what this is but I'm told once I know the basics I can pimp out my blog a bit. So the proof will be in the brand new look next week.

W

Bow Ties

Greetings. This week's task as you may well know was to learn how to tie a bow tie (with ease). The 'with ease' part is an ambiguous term but the proof of my newly acquired skill can be seen at the end so you can judge for yourselves. Either way, I am now fully equipped to attend formal events the way they should be attended.

I've been reasonably busy this week with various bits and bobs. First of all, Gun Hill Riffs wowed audiences again with our latest gig. More accurately, we played a short acoustic set to a sparse audience made up of  mostly 14 year old children at a hard rock club in Reading, in which someone had recently been stabbed. It was reasonable fun. We will move onto bigger and better things however, the next billed gig being at Southill Park in Bracknell again on the 8th November. Come along if you feel like it!

Secondly, I have made my first tentative steps towards learning the wonderful language of Spanish. Those who have even a slight knowledge of the Spanish language however, are discouraged from comments designed to elicit examples of my learning. It is early days and phrases such as 'Go on, say something in Spanish then' will not be allowed until I have given such behavior my blessing. In all honesty, I have so far only read the introduction to my 'Learn Spanish' book and nothing else.

More thoughts on my world record attempt. I am soon going to be donning my jedi outfit for a fancy dress party and it has been suggested that a good world record to beat (or indeed set) would be to wear the costume for as long as possible. We're talking at least a week. How feasible this would be I don't know but I think it's worth giving Guinness a ring to see if they're up for it. I'll keep you posted.

So that's me for this week. My task for the next week will be to learn my times tables properly  and up to a high number. My mathematical deftness is sadly lacking and I think it's about time I put it right. Until then, the following should act as a nice tie in.

W

Busy week

First of all, I dropped my ipod in the bath this week. It was fully submerged for around 2 to 3 seconds. Bottom line is, after an evening in the airing cupboard  contained within a Tupperware box full of rice, it revived and is now as good as new. Far from this being the main news of the week, I nevertheless thought that after 6 years and counting of exemplary service, my ipod deserves some recognition.

But to business. This week's task was to investigate phrase origins and had a great response from some of you, requesting investigation into several common phrases. Pretty interesting reading it was as well. For instance, the phrase 'to have a field day' developed from 18th century military exercise in fields, unsurprisingly. And the phrase 'with bated breath' is simply an adaptation from the original 'abated breath'. In other words to bring down, lower or depress your breathing in response to an exciting situation.

As was pointed out to me, a great deal of these phrases come from falconry - under the thumb, wrapped around your little finger and fed-up. But there are plenty of other ones. A selection of these are as follows...

Hang fire - Comes from when guns used gun powder to ignite the spark from the iron plate when a gun is fired. Sometimes, the powder didn't fully ignite straight away and could go off a few seconds later or sometimes even longer. This became known as 'hang fire'.

Bootleg - From when cowboys used to keep illicit materials such as guns and alcohol literally inside the long legs of their boots in the wild west.

Let the cat out of the bag - Shady origins for this one but the most widely recognised one refers to when people used to sell pigs. Crafty farmers would replace the pigs with cats in bags to act like a pig. Presumably the buyers, too stupid to look in the bag at the time would get home, looking forward to unwrapping their pig and would get a great surprise when a cat popped out.

Someone did ask me the origin of  'never pat a rabid dog on the head'. Now I'd never heard of this one but I looked it up dutifully. I couldn't find much, but to be honest with you, it's pretty self explanatory - don't pat a rabid dog on the head because it might bite you and you'll get rabies. That's just good advice.
 
Anyway in the process of   looking at these a special mention should go to William Shakespeare for making loads of stuff up. All of a sudden, sorry sight, good riddance, in a pickle (my personal favourite) and in stitches were all courtesy of the big man as were a few words... bandit, assassination, blanket, bump, scuffle and puking.

If he can simply make up words, I see no reason why I cannot. I have been trying to get my own word - frell - to stick in peoples' minds for many years now. It means 'fridge smell' and can be used as a verb, adjective and noun. (to frell, frelly and frell). Simply put, it refers to the unpleasant smell that builds up in fridges, causing innocent fridge items to become sullied, or frelled. Let's all start using it.

I'm aware that this is becoming quite an essay so to tie things up, a few little bits of news before I go. I have finally managed to secure residency in London. Moving into a nice house in West Acton before the week is out! Tremendous! Also I have joined the gym finally which is just as well because I've signed up to the Wokingham Half Marathon in February. I must be mental.

Big it up to Alan Davies by the way who was awesome on saturday. And one final plug... Gun Hill Riffs have a gig on the 21st October at Facebar in Reading. Tickets are £5. If anyone wants to come let me know!

Next week's task.. How to tie a bow tie.

W

Balloons!

 Hello! I've been making balloon animals. It's well fun. You may say that's not particularly productive but I would disagree. You never know when one of these might come in handy. Impromptu childrens' birthday parties etc....
Here are some of my masterpieces.

A poodle

 A monkey (Honestly the photo doesn't do it justice)

Not a lot else has been happening this week. I may well be moving to London finally though, maybe start of next week as long as all the reference and contract stuff can be sorted. It is my birthday tomorrow unfortunately which means I will be edging ever closer to 30. (I'll be 27). Off to see Alan Davies at the weekend so I'll review his show for those thinking of seeing him.

Other than that I'm going to getting a bit educational with my task this week and looking at the origins of common phrases. If there are any that you've ever wondered about then let me know and I'll look into it.

W

Interesting times

The past 7 days were kicked off, as expected, by the speed flat mating. A singularly odd experience.I'll take you through it. I was ushered into Sway Bar in Holborn by a bloke who I'm pretty sure was the lead singer from Elbow. He gave me a sticker on which I was instructed to write my name, budget and preferred area, then sent me in to look for people wearing 'flat available' stickers. To be honest, the caliber of the participants wasn't high - exemplified by the guy who had written that he wanted to live 'somewhere cool' on his sticker. Still, the beer was cheap and by the end I'd made some unexpected new friends that I would never have made in normal circumstances. Worth doing.

 The rest of my week has been spent variously eating out in Chelsea and getting expensive parking fines, more flat hunting (I'm getting closer) and discussing the theory of relativity at some length in the pub with my mate Tom. Personally I'm not convinced and some day I'll prove that time is in fact constant, time travel is not theoretically possible and Einstein was quite simply wrong.

Onto my weekly task. As you may or may not be aware, I set myself the task of learning how to broadly draw the political map of the world from memory. I also said this would include capitals. In retrospect this was an outrageous addition and as such, the capitals will have to wait for another week. As for the map, I've managed it. Good fun as well. Below is the video evidence should you not believe me.

Next week's task... balloon animals.
Until next time.
W