Rabbits

Because Wendy likes the video...

Nokia N95 Cheap with E2Save

I couldn't wait any longer. I've bought the Nokia N95 with E2Save.com.

I've spent ages looking at different offers on the web, but in the end I've gone for the Orange "Dolphin" tariff, which costs £35 a month for 500 minutes and 500 texts. Seeing as the N95 is designed for lots on internet stuff I've bought a 4MB a month bundle which costs £4 a month.

The handset itself cost only £89.99, which isn't bad for something which, sim-free, is around £500. I should actually save money overall as I can now bundle my broadband in for free saving me about £22 a month! In fact I will pay £4 to get it upgraded to an 8meg line.

So overall for mobile and broadband I should be saving around £5 a month. Plus I still get Orange Wednesdays (not that I've ever actually used it yet - they only allowed it for broadband people recently - I intend going with the little miss once a week).

With E2Save you actually get cashback on a number of your bills too. However, it must be said, that looking at the reviews of E2Save (which is a CarPhone Warehouse company - so at least secure financially) they seem to have very poor customer services and actually claiming the cash back seems to be torture.

So E2Save - good deals and potentially very cheap with cashback, but bad customer services and difficult to get said cashback.

I have a referral code, so if you want to buy from them I would be very grateful if you use my code - once you sign up you get a referral code too and can make £20 on every phone purchased through the site.

http://www.e2save.com/?money4me6879471

Golden Compass preview

We went down to Oxford Town Hall today to see Philip Pullman give a discussion about the Golden Compass - the movie adaption of his book "Northern Lights" from the trilogy "His Dark Materials". Also talking were the producer, Deborah Forte who bought the rights to the books 12 years ago and Michael Fink, the visual effects supervisor.

We didn't get to see any actual clips of the movie, but Fink did show us some of the proceses that went into making some of the special effects. So we saw some animation testing of Pantalaimon as a ferret and a mouse which looked quite cool. We also saw the ship that takes them North and the Mrs Coulter's sky ship.

Apparently they won't be shying away from the anti-relgious theme of the book. Philip was keen to point out that the book wasn't anti-religion, rather anti-organised political religious theocracy (at least I think that's what he said). That said, I guarantee there will be religious types denouncing the book as blasphemy and there will surely be organised book burnings in the US bible belt.

So we know the book in the UK as "Northern Lights" whereas in most other countries it is "Golden Compass". Apparently the person who changed the title was the same publisher who changed Harry Potter's "Philosopher's Stone" to the "Sorceror's Stone". i.e. this person is an idiot.

Philip's favourite scenes in the movie are when Lyra first meets Iorek Byrnison and when Lee Scoresby and Serafina Pekkala are flying in Lees' hot air balloon and Lyra is lying asleep.

How will they represent Dust? Fink was very elusive about that, so I'm not really sure what the answer is.

I would have liked to ask if they will continue to use Dakota Blue Richards in all three films as by the time they get to the third film she'll be too old. Unlike Harry Potter where the characters grow older with the books/films, Dark Materials takes place over a short time period. I would also like to know how they found an English girl called Dakota Blue? What a daft pretentious name to give a child. Odd considering there's another precocious child actor by the name of Dakota Fanning who probably could have fitted the role, had they not been looking for an unknown. As it was, someone asked a similar question, but all they would say is that the next two films were not yet confirmed but would probably go ahead.

I think it's going top be a great film and am looking forward to seeing it!

16th

Okay, so Scotland might be rubbish at most sports, but, somehow, we are ranked 16th in the world for football!

We're playing Georgia this afternoon in the European qualifiers - where we're top of the group ahead of France, Italy and Ukraine - let's hope the Scottish losing streak ends!

Scotland - officially useless at all sports

In the battle of the lanky, orange, healthy socially advantaged gits vs my short, tubby, narrow arteried countrymen there could be only one winner. Cr@p!

Market Harborough

Do I know anyone that lives there?

Teaching English in Scottish

Sorry Ireland

On behalf of the nation of Scotland I apologise for our poor show against the French. :(

Rubgy - bad idea?

With the Six Nations being on at the moment, I'm getting kind of tempted to take up rugby again. I'm 27 now, the last time I played was for Carnoustie HSFP when I was about 20. My memories from that one season include:

1. Feeling like my head was about to explode and having to put it under a running tap for about 10 minutes after my first summer training session on the beach.
2. Scoring 2 tries on my debut against Waid and getting into the Guide and Gazette with some kind of headline like "Youngster Score Twice on Debut" (I think they thought I was about 16 - Kev my still have the cutting).
3. They thought I was some kind of new star - but I never scored again!
4. That 7s tournament where I had to go and lie down for about 2 hours after the first game. "It's only 7 minutes each way - I can manage that!"
5. Sexually deviant Royal Marines with an unsettling penchant for young blond wingers...

Obviously something has happened to my memory over the past 7 years as there are some very good reasons for me not to play rugby:

1. I'm skinny and fairly weak.
   
2. I'm not a particuarly fast runner.
   
3. I'm aerobically very unfit - one sprint and I am shattered.
   
4. I'm not very good at playing rugby...
   
5. I was always rubbish at tackling
   
6. and spin passing to the right
   
7. and taking passes
   
8. and catching high balls
   
9. and kicking
   
10. Sexually deviant Royal Marines are everywhere!

However there are some reasons to play:

1. I like rugby
   
2. I should try to get fitter rather than just accept the wheezing.
   
3. It is a good excuse to try and bulk up a bit

So there are some reasons to play, but they are more than outweighed by the reasons not to play.

I think I'm one of these "take something up then forget about it again" type people. Yeah, trying Ju-Jitsu again at Uni was a great use of my time!

Maybe it's some kind of "late 20s" crisis? I think it will be rugby or wargaming. Or maybe both? Hmmm....

Well, maybe I'll join Oxford for their summer training and try to get fit before the next season. I'll also try to gain some weight. Apparently I am 72.5kg at the moment.

YouTube News

One thing that YouTube does is give lazy BBC reporters something to write about.

For some reason the BBC News website keeps reporting on videos on YouTube that have apparently become incredibly popular. What 50,000, 100,000 views? Maybe 500,000? Nope - some of the crappy videos they are telling us about are getting a few thousand! That's like Z list movies for YouTube.

BBC Scotland is one of the worst culprits, reporting on a clip of a couple of guys doing Proclaimers songs which got 5000 views! Yup, read it in astonishment - a whole 5000!

The most recent movie to feature in BBC Scotland is about a movie of pictures of Edinburgh, which has, so far, got 13,000 views. "Huge Hit" says the BBC. Hmmm, me thinks not.

Imagine if someone from Scotland had made the recent Ladybird Sex on my Hand video. 625,000 views so far! That would be stop the press stuff! My God, how many times have mating ladybirds landed on me and I haven't made a video of it. So many wasted opportunities! If only I'd realised how perverted YouTube users are!

Investing

I thought I should start acting maturely and look to the future, so with the end of the tax year looming, I have opened an ISA. To be honest, I still find some of the ISA stuff a bit confusing. However after looking at a few options, then getting bored looking at these options, I opted for an ISA with ING. It wasn't necessarily the best rate, but it seemed to be the most convenient for someone who isn't really sure what they are doing with their money. Because the end of the tax year is looming I need to invest a lump sum (up to £7000), so have decided to take the plunge and invest... £10!

I actually started investing in shares last year (with Hargreaves Lansdown) and am doing reasonably well. At the moment I am up about 26%, although they've dropped quite a bit in the last few weeks. I think I was up between 35-40% a few weeks ago. My stocks are fairly volatile, but most are performing well so far. I will profile them here some time.

It's the shares that I don't really understand. If I sell them now do I have to pay tax on my gains? Or not because they are less than the capital gains tax allowance of £6000? Can I just transfer these shares into an ISA and they are protected?

Let us never forget...

... the potato revolution!

Wooden Spoon Prank

This made me "laugh out loud"!

Please Vote for us!

The voting code on ComprehensionClothing is now working, so please go to the site and click on the logo to vote for our site!



This is what the counters look like (but you can't click on them here - go to the t-shirt site then click on them. Ta!):

Return of the gamer

I went into Games Workshop yesterday. Since I have pretty much decided not to sell my miniatures, I am actually considering trying the whole GW thing again.

Yes, you are hit by the odour of unwashed bodies once you pass through the doors of a GW shop, and yes, there are grown men, surrounded by kids, shouting loudly about Space Marines in that slightly odd way that only grown men in GW shops do, and yes Wendy left the shop because of the aforementioned smell, but, I am still tempted...

..the models are so cool. I want to paint again!

It may be slightly geeky, but geeky is the new cool.

Well 'ard

Well 'ard
Originally uploaded by major_grooves.

Went to the Zodiac last night to show Miguel's mate what Oxford was all about. Based on last night's experience, Oxford is all about crappy music and nob-head guys in nightclubs.

I had to resort to putting on my "well 'ard" face (see above) for most of the night, which soon got those punks out of my face....

Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry!

Walk ears

walkers_ears
Originally uploaded by major_grooves.

Had a haircut today. Same old, same old!

I have the feeling someone's been talking about me behind my back - as you can see, my ears are burning.

ComprehensionClothing MII released

Today I decided to go ahead and release the Joomla-powered new version of the site.

So, I present to you again: www.ComprehensionClothing.com!

Before I could release it I had to upgrade to the latest Joomla version, play around with htaccess files, do SQL exports and generally fumble around until it worked. I have a couple more things to do from the admin side, and there are more t-shirts to be uploaded - the US female section is, as yet, empty.

Overall, the site is a HUGE improvement over the last site. I'm hoping it will pull in lots more visitors. I am considering paying for one bit of software that will kelp with the SEO, but I will check that with Kev first. I need to install some visitor statistics extensions so I can see if anyone visits the site.

Once the site is fully populated I can start the cunning marketing ploy!

Vote for me! If you check out the site, please help it gain exposure by clicking on the "Vote for me" links on the left hand side. I don't actually know if they work properly or not because it won't let me click on them...

Auctioning your childhood memories

A while back, my parents brought down most of my Games Workshop models that I used to play with and paint when I was a kid, the intention being that I would put them all on Ebay and sell them all. Since then, however, they have pretty much stayed in the boxes that they were brought down in.

I could really do with the quick cash to pay for that Nokia N95 I would like to buy next month, but I find it really hard to contemplate selling my models.

These models represent years of memories from me. They range from the first, badly painted models I bought when I was about 10 or 11, through to the finely painted Blood Bowl teams I had when I was 16 or 17.

I have loads Space Marines, a Chaos Man o' War Fleet, a small Dwarf Warhammer Fantasy Battle army, a Dwarf Blood Bowl team a Wood Elf Blood Bowl team along with all the respective games, plus Warhammer Quest, Heroquest, Advanced HeroQuest, Space Cruasade and so many more models. Some of my stuff is very well painted - I even won a couple of prizes in my day - and all-in-all I reckon I might have a few hundred pounds worth - more than enough for a fancy new phone.

But once it's sold it's gone - all those memories. I still even harbour thoughts of one day taking it back up again... maybe a few games of Blood Bowl?

Is it worth keeping them? The chances are I will never do anythign with them. I would keep my best painted models (see below) to remind of the modelling days. But is it worth keeping a Dwarf Warhammer Fantasy army that I could probably sell for about £100? Should I sell the Norsca Braves just because I might never play Blood Bowl again? If I had a huge house with a study I could put them on display!

Tough decision. What do Curtis or Josef think? Stupot? Neuba? Sell or horde? Or should I just start playing Blood Bowl again? Maybe we could arrange a nice tournament? Dad - as someone who parted with a collection dear to your heart when a child, and then got something back only recently, what would you do?

I think whatever happens the Blood Bowl teams will be the last to go. Mind you, I am quite proud of my Dwarf army, despite never actually using them. I could probably sell a lot of the less sentimental ones. Damn I have too much connection to these things!

Here are some of my "display" collection - I will never sell them. (click on them for the full pics)



Don't know what to do....

Pain and pleasure

Pain: Scotland succumb to one of the most pitiful defeats I have ever witnessed. 3 tries to Italy at Murrayfield in the first 7 minutes?! That is so shameful!

but on the other hand...

Pleasure: Ireland tank England!