The new marketing slogan for the north of Scotland

Randomly at work we were discussing press-gangs and one of the guys was saying that they were very active in the local area for the Navy. He pointed out that you needed experienced sailors and couldn't just grab people whilly-nilly in London, rather you had to come up to places like this where "the streets were awash with seamen."
At that point the conversation descended into fits of laughter...

Oh, four tuna!

One of the blogs I watch is Amanda Bauer's Astropixie, and from there Phil Plait at Bad astronomy pulled the alternative lyrics to Carmena Burana. Well worth a look, laughter is almost guaranteed.

Sunday morning grin

Just had to share this one from UserFriendly.org.
I may well put up something about how ill informed (trying not to say stupid there) the worries of strangelets and rogue black holes are, but right now I'll let it slide.

Aside from that, it's a Sunday morning and while I'd rather be asleep for another couple of hours various doorbells rang earlier, none of them mine. But it's still a lie in from my normal 5 am wake up (or start to wake up). With me being such a morning person, it's probably a good thing that no one sees me until almost an hour later...
Well, time for the Lie In on Radio 1, probably the best two hours they do.

More geeky than c:/Spot/Run

I'll have a full post up soon but until then there is a great "cartoon-off" between the New Yorker and Randall Munroe of XKCD which includes this picture:

If I say that most geeks wouldn't get the joke you might get the idea of how geeky this is, but I laughed lots. The joke relies on a property of higher dimensions and string theory, although the New Yorker was also right about String theory...

In case anyone is wondering, the joke I mention in the title goes:
c:/
c:/Spot
c:/Spot/Run
Run/Spot/Run

I'll soon have photos of what I've been up to the last couple of weeks, it's been brilliant!

Family Guy does the Matrix

Almost sprayed drink all over my laptop.

*edit to add*
I'm going to add this to the last post rather than put this onto the 100th post because I'm vain and I want the hundred to be something REALLY good.

So in addition to the 99th, have a look at both the Nine Inch Nails album ( NiN.com ) for free music, even if you don't like it, download it then delete the recording - think of what you're saying to the recording houses about charging for music if the artist doesn't want it...
Also, listen to Wil Wheaton (Wes Crusher in THG - but don't hold that against him - seriously, he's good!) as the keynote speaker at the PAX 07 meeting from penny-arcade. (Google Pax Wil Wheaton - that's what I did) and listen to his talk. It's worth the time.
Aside from that, Lottie from the base is such a lovely lass, can't see why she thinks of herself as unattractive; wish I could make her believe otherwise (although then she'd never look at a guy like me) but she needs to believe in her own worth and she needs to understand that when she looks into the mirror what she sees is a good thing, not a question mark - as she seems to think she is.
Honestly, she's wonderful, better than the shite she's had to put up with.
Lottie, you're worth better than that arse-hole, give me a call if you can't see how.

A motorbike and comedy post

Warning! Bad language, bad taste and good humour ahead!

There's been a few things this week that have made me laugh. One of the best was when I was chatting to a mate online and she mentioned that there was a "Mock the Week" marathon on Dave (for non-UK guys, that's a TV channel). I was in work the next night and sure enough, there was another set of episodes on. If you don't know it, Mock the Week is an improv show, and theoretically there's about 4 or 5 rounds of comedy challenges for the various standups such as one comic does a version of a speech (Dubya addressing Congress, the Prince of Wales talking to his mother) and another translates what's actually meant, or various topics are given and they compete for quick-fire laughs and so on. One of the episodes, I swear they had three rounds, and one of them had just one topic that was covered for about 15 minutes. Like all shows of the type it can date quickly but some of the rest of it is still painfully relevant. I think I managed to give myself a decent stomach work-out with the amount I was laughing.
From youtube, here's a few, including an outtake. The BBC have posted a load but can't embed them.

These are from the final rounds, "scenes you'd never see..."

Soon to be another internet meme

The Bad Astronomy blog had a post saying "I'm updating the server, don't comment until the update is up as all comments will be deleted."
So, of course, all of us put all the stupid silly and funny things we could think of down on the comments. Some were bad (the link to a bad music site) but most were brilliant, and now they're all gone. You'll just have to believe me that my comment was witty and well observed. :D

In a similar vein, amazon sell pens, and Neil Gaiman's blog pointed over to the reviews of the humble Bic pen.

And finally....
The squadrons at work have phone based briefings and at the start of each one they call us up and count down to the time check. For most of the groups when they reach their own number (eg for XV, when they count down to 15 seconds) a cheer goes up.
T'other day at the end of a shift I was briefing 12 and heard the count-down get to 12. All was quiet to I went, fairly quietly, "Yay."
All I could hear for most of the rest of the count was cheers and laughter from the aircrew. Still makes me smile.