Hamdango

21/05/2013

My eldest brother got married on Friday, he's the first of the five to take the plunge! We all had a great day in Inglewood Manor where they wed.

It was a really awesome day and here are a few of the best photo's:

Groom, the best man and the cutest man

The bride and groom

Our side of the family

+Rebecca & I

The first dance

Mother and her son's

Us rowdy lot!

16/05/2013

Eurovision Song Contest 2013 - Come on Sweden

England has never taken the Eurovision song contest seriously ever since I've been around. For the last few years we've been sending gloriously irrelevant acts that were famous many decades earlier to go and compete for us. Some of them weren't even English!

It's just not a big deal here, often it's mocked.

Last year not long after +Rebecca and I moved into together I learnt that it's not like that in some of the other countries involved. The internet wasn't installed and we didn't have a proper TV aerial but +Rebecca really wanted to watch it!

We got a crappy indoor aerial, pulled the TV into the kitchen and pointed it out of the window. We got a half decent signal. We blew up a tent mattress and watched it on that whilst eating crap and it was really fun.

And the best part, Sweden won!

It's being held in Malmo on Saturday and again we'll be watching and hopefully Sweden won't do bad again. Who cares about England? England doesn't.

Bring on the 30 hideous songs!

Before that though, there's the small case of my brothers wedding - It's gonna be a good weekend!

Jag gillar det.

Pics of the Day - Week 18 2013

#245 - Sunday 12 May 2013
Exactly Jackson, exactly.

#244 - Saturday 11 May 2013
I learnt that I can kart in the rain but it was still awesome fun!

#243 - Friday 10 May 2013
We had to pull an all nighter in Manchester after missing our train after the gig!

#242 - Thursday 09 May 2013
Awesome Dave McPhearson gig!

#241 - Wednesday 08 May 2013
He's a proper shifty character

#240 - Tuesday 07 May 2013
I saw the universe in my coffee!

#239 - Monday 06 May 2013
Lovely weather for a BBQ!

15/05/2013

Pics of the Day - Week 17 2013

#238 - Sunday 05 May 2013
England was sunny so we headed to Chester!

#237 - Saturday 04 May 2013
Getting Jackson out of his garden cage was harder than it sounds.

#236 - Friday 03 May 2013
Coffee Cooler Friday!

#235 - Thursday 02 May 2013
Why would anyone through a teabag at a wall?

#234 - Wednesday 01 May 2013

#233 - Tuesday 30 April 2013
Don't smoke kids!

#232 - Monday 29 April 2013
I was still feeling the hangover and so it was an evening of watching Lost

04/05/2013

Cool Websites: Get a little perspective

I've came across a couple of awesome websites over the last few weeks.

They not only please the coder side of me with their genius and creative use of CSS and JavaScript but they offer really great eye opening experiences.

I believe these websites could be used to really good effect in schools, they provide a really amazing way of learning. I won't say much more, here they are:

Distance to Mars

Here is today

The scale of the universe

03/05/2013

Does a hangover last more than a day?

It was one of my best mates 30th birthday last Saturday. If there is any excuse for going to Liverpool to drink copious amounts of alcohol and getting well and truly drunk then it's a friends birthday.

As you can see, we had a top night:

As you'd expect, Sunday was a case of lying on the couch with no pants nursing a killer headache and oscillating between watching crap tv shows and eating even crapper food. The day was a wipe out.

What isn't so obvious is the effects alcohol can have not just the day after but the next couple of days after the wild night out.

I have myself a schedule of things that I like to do. Swimming, Coding & Learning Swedish at least once every 4 days and I like to write every day.

I use The Daily Practice to keep a log of these activities and it has highlighted something interesting, drinking has effected me well past just the Sunday of sleep and junk food:

Routine: Before drinking night out

Routine: After drinking night

As you can see, on Sunday as I recovered I did nothing at all that day.

I was still feeling pretty tired on Monday when it was time to go back to work and therefore I skipped going to the pool. That had a knock on effect as it meant I didn't have time to learn Swedish on Tuesday as I was playing catch up on swimming and writing.

Even by Tuesday evening, I just couldn't bring myself to doing some coding in the evening after work. I've watched a lot of American TV over the last couple of days.

It's only feels like I got back to my normal levels of energy and focus on Thursday, over half a week since the night out!

....and the morale is?

I might not do as many jagerbombs and play 4 Kings next time I'm out with the lads.

Diet Success - The Secret

I've figured out the key to +Rebecca's diet.

She cooks normal sized meals for us both but then leaves 70% of the food on her plate for me to finish.

I won't complaining tonight when we're having our Domino's and film night!

02/05/2013

Finishing my drafts will rid us of this null

I've not been posting too much lately. Time has been sparse and I haven't really thought of any cool things that I'd like to write about.

This morning I've realised that I've got 19 draft posts that have been started to some degree. My goal is to finish or delete these - either way, they're going to be dealt with!

Time to boss it!

...like the no faced man in the knock off illuminous one piece.

29/04/2013

Pics of the Day - Week 16 2013

#231 - Sunday 28 April 2013
More from Jon's 30th

#230 - Saturday 27 April 2013
Jon's 30th!

#228 - Friday 26 April 2013
Ready for the weekend!

#227 - Thursday 25 April 2013
She really is a keeper!

#226 - Wednesday 24 April 2013
Jackson has developed into a sock thief!

#225 - Tuesday 23 April 2013
A bit of early morning Swedish :)

#224 - Monday 22 April 2013
My new funky binary watch! :D

Pics of the Day - Week 15 2013

#223 - Sunday 21 April 2013
A quiet picture week...I'll improve.

#222 - Saturday 20 April 2013
Who left this on my computer?

#221 - Friday 19 April 2013
Healthiest shop we've had I think, because I had nothing to do with it.

#220 - Thursday 18 April 2013
Thank you Rebecca for my 24hr clock :)

#219 - Wednesday 17 April 2013

#218 - Tuesday 16 April 2013

#217 - Monday 15 April 2013
Been seeing this screen a little too much lately.

22/04/2013

Putting the challenge back into reading the time.

Reading time is no longer a challenge.

To be honest, I haven't had a problem with reading time for the most part of my life. There was some confusion a while back when I didn't understand an army sergeant in a film telling his soldiers they'd be moving out at twenty hundred hours.

Overall though, I acquired the skill pretty early on in life and it has been a relatively smooth road ever since.

Until Now...

After scanning through Amazon for unknown reasons, I've ended up with these two delightfully geeky new ways to display time.

24 hour clock

Thanks Rebecca :)

Apparently they used to use these one cycle clocks at sea, I'm not sure what the story is or whether I'm just making this shit up. Any way, this is now sitting in my living room and I keep finding myself looking at it and mapping out the day on there. See My typical weekday

Rebecca has had to say on a few occasions already 'stop staring at the clock!'.

Binary Watch

Reads: 12:05pm

This is a binary watch, so each LED is either on or off and from the lights I have to work out what hour and minute it currently is.

This is going to be a challenge when somebody puts me on the spot and asks me what the time is and it just happens to be something horrible like 11:47am.

'Excuse me, do you have the time?' 'ehh, ummm, it's eh 2 past something'

Geek.I.Am

21/04/2013

My typical weekday

06:50 - 08:45
Swimming or Swedish
Until recently this was not a known time of the day for me. I'd roll out of bed and go straight to work. Now though, I swim three times a week and learn some Swedish the other two.

08:45 - 09:00
Breakfast time.
For the most part of my life breakfast wasn't present in my day but after a good workout it's really needed.

09:00 - 12:00
Working.
From these hours I'll be sitting at a desk coding on my laptop with a coffee or two. As long as I am working on something exciting or challenging then this is a highly enjoyable part of my day.

12:00 - 12:15
Lunch.
If it can be microwaved then it'll do for me. Normally a microwave meal or some left overs from the night before is on the cards.

12:15 - 13:00
Writing & Reading.
With the rest of my lunch break I will spend it either writing a blog, writing my diary and/or reading some news, etc.

13:00 - 17:30
Working.
I find normally that it is easier to put my headphones in, listen to some great tunes and really wire in for a good few hours in the afternoon without interruption.

17:30 - 18:30
Dinner
Rebecca and I will drive home, she'll cook up some awesome food while I am relegated to dishes duty. Dinner is a good time for us to sit at the table and talk to each other, mainly about how are days where and what's on our mind.

18:30 - 21:00
Coding and Writing
On Thursday's, a few of us are still getting together for our Kitchen Coding sessions which are really fun. On the other days I still like to try and find time to code and do some writing.

21:00 - 21:50
Couple's hour
I work with Rebecca and we see and talk to each other all day long but it'll always be in-between doing many other things, so we make some time just to chill with each other, watch a TV show on the couch or talk.

21:50 - 06:50
Bed Time!