Return of the King

Number one son is now back and all my bandwidth had disappeared. It was kind of scary being the only bloke in the house. I suppose I'll have to get used to it when he goes off to university later this year. To celebrate his return we went out and saw Shrek 2. (actually we didn't really go out to celebrate anything - but if it makes him feel good where's the harm?). Shrek 2 is a good film. Lacks the impact of the first one because you are expecting "Shrek" behaviour. But very funny nonetheless. The rendering has come on a whole heap. The scenes with people in them were particularly impressive. In a few years we will have photo-realistic people and then the shares in actors are going to drop a bit.

If they can make a Brad Pit movie without Brad Pit (or one where you can't tell whether he is in it or not) then his value will be somewhat reduced. Then we will have lawsuits where actors sue the studio for putting "them" in movies that they are not being paid for.... How come whenever anything new comes along it is always the lawyers who get rich?

On the other hand, the actors might prefer it. No months away from home shooting in unpleasant corners of the world. Just a week in a sound studio doing the voices and then home again. And you don't even have to keep fit.

 

Anyone Seem My Trim?

One of the good things about blogging is that at least you can convert bad things that happen to you into good blog entries. Or not. Anyhoo, went to pick up number one son from his tent today and drove over a pothole on the way, denting the wheel and losing a wheeltrim.

If anyone finds a trim like this on their travels can you please get it back to me. It is obviously mine. I'm going to get it sorted out when the time of the MOT is upon me (i.e. in a week or so). I suppose I'll have to buy a whole new set of trims since my car is very old and they don't sell them individually. I think I might wander down to a scrapyard and see if I can prise one off a dead version of my car. Failing that, there are always car parks I guess......

 

Working on My Stuff

Lots of ideas and not time to get them sorted. I'm going to put a list of things into Outlook so I don't forget any of them. I do this around every six months and then go through them and cross off the ones I've done. Kind of a very long term task management thing. Made some good progress on the Smartphone notes though.

We are having some horrid weather at the moment. But it does make the sunsets more interesting...

 

Back In The Office

Back in the office today after the fun of last week. "Oh, have you been away?". The cheek.

Had an interesting meeting with some guys from Geography. They want to chuck a load of Smarphones into the sea. This may sound stupid, but is actually rather sensible. Each will be attached to a global positioning system which they've modified to make it ultra accurate. Then they'll be able to track the movement of the tides and stuff. When they want to know where the phone is they just send it a message and it passes back all the position information. I'm going to give them a hand with the Smartphone programming. Now, does anyone have a job lot of phones that they don't mind getting wet?

 

Honing the Routine

I'm working on gags for the degree ceremony next week (I have to start early to make sure that all the material is premium quality). I've already dismissed one:

"...so I opened the fridge door and my girlfriend sang 'Mama, he's making ice at me'..."

On the other hand, I quite like that.

 

Dad the Taxi

Took number one son et al to their camping site today. We drove through some of the heaviest rain I've seen for ages. Fortunately when we arrived things had abated a bit and so base camp was established in reasonably dry conditions. The place that they are staying is idyllic, I've put a picture on the Spoke blog for you to admire.

Then home to pack up my bits and bobs for an exam board tomorrow in Doncaster.