Meeester Nik

Please respect the caviar!

2008-11-17T16:52:24Z

A very literal translation. They clearly haven’t got a clue what they’re singing. Nonetheless it’s so catchy you’ll be whistling it all night, if not trying out some of those fabulous crazy dance moves.

Christmas party
Thursday: Too much to drink, so much dancing. Aching knees, whistling ears. All in all, though, a fab night, even if the bar did run...
Mobile clubbing
I came out of the tube at Liverpool Street this evening and walked straight into the middle of an enormous flashmob. The whole concourse...
Eurovision 2009: Sofia
OK, so a long shot this one, as I think the first minute will put off a lot of voters, but get past what your...

Eurovision 1982

2008-11-16T17:56:16Z

On Friday night we discovered the best song EVER recorded by humankind. Austria’s entry for Eurovision 1982, which we were watching with Mark and Bill over curry. Genius. And just look at the crazy dancing. That stage is polished and still they don’t fall over, even with his gangly arms and sideways kicks.

Anyhow, they came ninth, which is a very poor showing. Nicole won for Germany with Ein bisschen Frieden (translated to A Little Peace when it got to number 1 in the UK), despite Austria only giving her one point.

Wendy Craig took time out from filming Butterflies to sing for Switzerland.

But there was some real durge in there, too. Finland sang an anti-bomb song that deservedly got nul points, Yugoslavia pitched up three women of whom only two actually looked like women, and Portugal really didn’t know what was going on.

If there was a prize to be won for pulling faces, though, it should have gone to the guy in beige prancing around behind Spain’s entrant. I suspect his trousers were too tight. Skip through to two minutes if you haven’t got time to watch it all.

Technorati Tags:
eurovision, eurovision+song+contest, 1982

Eurovision 1981
To Mark's tonight with Rich and Bill to watch the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest. Yes, a strange night out, but good fun. Back then Eurovision...
Eurovision 2008: Our votes
So if I reckon the UK on the whole can't pick a winning Eurovision entry, how did our party do? We voted each song and...
Eurovision 2007
So we lost Eurovision. We deserved to. Flying the Flag was a terrible song. It was a terrible performance. It was stuck in the 80s,...

Bitch slapped

2008-11-14T10:27:31Z

This really kicks off at 1 minute 53 seconds. I can’t believe we used to watch this stuff.

No related posts.

Two days (not) running

2008-11-13T12:20:47Z

One woman has already missed her flat viewing as she can’t get there on time. Another one got grabbed by a client in the next carriage who detained her for a chat on the way to the buffet. The woman in the seat across the aisle from me said that some embryos needed to be ‘put back into the injection tube’ (whatever that means) as she wasn’t going to get there any time soon.

And neither am I. Anywhere. We’ve been sitting at Harold Wood for close to an hour now due to broken signals all the way along the line between Goodmayes and Ilford.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck here answering my emails (hallelujah mobile broadband) listening to the inane details of everyone else’s lives as they narrate them into their mobiles.

Perhaps I’ll make up something juicy and broadcast it to the carriage myself.

UPDATED: 12h19 and I’ve finally arrived at work, over two hours late. On the plus side, a woman two seats back and one to the side from me managed to get her car insurance sorted out after a long time on hold, and the woman in the seat in front of her applied for a new bank card, in the process telling everyone at our end of the coach her name, branch, account number, sort code and birthdate.

Running faster
I should have been paying bills today. Ground rent, the AA, station car park, ISDN line, cable TV, broadband, electric bill. Ugh. They are sitting...
Late nights, long days
The tube was particularly unpleasant. I pushed my way onto a packed carriage at Liverpool Street and ended up standing next to a man who...
Five days and counting
The wheels are well and truly in motion. In the six years I've been at the mag, I've seen about 50 people leave, and signed...

The trains

2008-11-12T19:14:38Z

It’s been something of a record this week. It took a good two hours to get into work one day on a journey that as the crow flies is a mere 35 miles. That was nothing compared to today. Rich got to the station and they were turning everyone back at the gates. The points had failed and there were no trains going anywhere.

So he came home and we worked from here.

Working at home is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand you don’t have any of the distractions you get in the office - no ringing phones, nobody wandering up to your desk, no half-heard conversations going on at other desks. It means you get a lot done, and since eight this morning I’ve popped out 3,840 words, including most of a feature for the next issue.

So that’s all good.

But on the other hand you have to try and keep up with your other jobs, do your emails through a browser rather than a proper client and sit by a window looking out on the garden where you’d rather be pulling up carrots or harvesting this year’s beetroot or playing with the chickens, who have been standing at the front of their run looking up at the study window waiting for someone to come down with some corn for them to peck at.

You also end up working much longer as there are no defined ends to the day. I’m just packing up now, at gone 7pm, having not spotted that the end of the day - technically 6 - passed an hour ago.

So, let’s keep our fingers crossed for better trains tomorrow. For one thing it’ll get us away from the fermenter. We’re brewing wine this week, and its air lock is sputtering out a vaguely winey gas at regular intervals from where it sits in a corner of the kitchen. The cat’s not too keen on the noise and I can’t say I’m too enamoured with the smell. I’m sure we must have the whiff of a wino whenever we leave the house.

The trains… again
Yesterday was another day spent working from home. The fourth this year caused by problems on the trains. This time around it was a mile...
The trains
Well there's a surprise. The meticulously-planned works that have kept Liverpool Street station closed since 23rd December have over-run. The bridge they were removing...
Lack of trains
I was very proud of myself, going to bed late after last night's film and the inevitable faffing around involved in coming home, arriving home...

Palin’s chances in 2012

2008-11-07T18:50:36Z

Now that the US election is over and the Republicans have been comprehensively trounced, the talk has begun of who may run against the incumbent in 2012. Palin’s name is being bandied around with worrying regularity.

But it’s not all in favour. While her die-hard supporters would love her to run for the highest office in four years’ time, those in the party who dislike her way of working are finally starting to talk about what went on behind the scenes in this year’s campaign.

And why not? They have nothing more to lose now they’ve lost the presidency.

McCain, in his concession speech, said that the loss was all his own fault, perhaps because he knows he can never run again and his deputy has a chance of making it next time. According to Palin, meanwhile, saying she caused the failure of their campaign gives her too much credit.

‘I don’t think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain’s loss to me,’ she said.

But clearly some believe she did have something to do with that loss, and now they’re starting to talk. About how she wouldn’t prepare for TV interviews, how she had tantrums at bad press reports, how she gave a briefing wearing just a towel and how she didn’t realise that Africa was a continent, not a country.

Even Fox news, which is traditionally sympathetic to the Republican cause, reported the unnamed insiders’ vented feelings.

Here’s the report:

That’s scary.

It’s not inconceivable that she could run for office in 2012, but Palin’s biggest problem is what her supporters see as her biggest asset: her strong views. Palin is a polarising force, and I suspect that in the next four years, out of office and with plenty of time to plan its next campaign, the Republican Party will come to the realisation that it needs a moderate candidate to unify both sides of the party.

Palin, strong though she may be, probably isn’t that person.

A bad news day for the Republican campaign
Every day brings more unfavourable press for the Republicans, which can only be a good thing for the Democrat campaign. Much of it seems to...
McCain asks Russian envoy for money
McCain is running on public funds in his campaign for the White House, yet Reuters reports his team soliciting contributions from Russia's ambassador to the...
Quotes from the US vice-presidential hopeful
From this morning's Telegraph: At the end of last month, Palin was interviewed by Katie Couric, the main news anchor for the CBS television network....

Two Photoshop portrait processing tricks

2008-11-07T08:33:16Z

Dreamy Photo Effect

Simulate the effect of expensive lenses in Photoshop.

(tags: photoshop photography)
Post-Processing Tricks: Vintage Effects

Sinulate blown and faded colours using Photoshop’s curves control.

(tags: photoshop photography)

Creative freebies and Photoshop water tricks
Free high resolution paper textures Great for giving backgrounds some depth in Photoshop and web pages. I was looking for something like this a...
Non-photography day
I've seen a few notices for Non-photography day stuck to lamp-posts and switch boxes around London these last few weeks. They're large, but discrete, and...
Magic tricks and galloping chairs
I spent last night on Emilie Ems' fold-out settee, which made getting up this morning a far more pleasant experience than it might otherwise have...

links for 2008-10-31

2008-10-31T23:06:08Z

Vicar went to hospital with potato stuck in bottom

"The clergyman, in his 50s, told nurses he had been hanging curtains when he fell backwards on to his kitchen table.

He happened to be nude at the time of the mishap, said the vicar, who insisted he had not been playing a sex game.

The vicar had to undergo a delicate operation to extract the vegetable."

(tags: vegetable medical ouch)

News for the day
Radioactive elevator buttons found in France "Elevator maker Otis will replace hundreds of lift buttons in France after authorities found radioactive materials imported from...
Oscar is confused
Poor old Oscar is properly confused by the cat flat. He goes out into the outhouse and then stands at the little door sniffing the...
Vicar of Dibley may return as woman bishop
The Vicar could be back as a Bishop, it seems. In breaking the news, Dawn French also talked about that infamous jumping in the puddle...

Four eggs, two rabbits and a fox

2008-10-30T09:40:43Z

Four eggs in one day

The change in the weather these last few days has been unbelievable. Tuesday morning, I was cleaning out the chickens and it was warm enough in the sun to do without your coat, even at half seven. Then the arctic gales blew in and now your fingers feel like they’re about to snap off. The little puddles on the path through the nature reserve are freezing over; so is the water in the bird bath.

The chickens, bizarrely, seem to be thriving in the cold. They’re all malting, and Gerry in particular is shedding the feathers around her neck. Every morning when we open up the nesting box to check for eggs there are a few more of them tucked into the straw. She’s starting to look like a dowdy old woman with a scruffy, worn-out boa round her shoulders.

Despite that, egg production is actually up. They’re supposed to lay eggs on two out of every three days, but apart from one barren day a few weeks back we’ve had two eggs every single day since 11 September. One was enormous: 40% heavier, and much larger than the ones we usually get. It was one of Barbara’s - you can tell from the colour - so how she sat down the day that popped out I don’t know.

On Wednesday morning, the day after the weather turned cold and with little piles of snow still on the ground, we opened up the box to find four. Someone had laid two in a single night. How, I don’t know, but we’re not complaining.

It’s still cold now, and while that’s put the cat into semi-hibernation it doesn’t seem to have done the same to any of the other wildlife round about. The mice are still active in the garden, with something knocking off another one every night or so. I put a huge one in the bin this morning. Its stiff little tail was six inches long, and its body like a decent sausage roll. And last night we cycled into town, riding back along the river through the reserve at eleven, scattering startled rabbits in all directions as we went.

Then we got to the university bridge. We turned the corner and pulled on the brakes, coming to a stop beside an enormous fox, as tall as a Labrador and as slim as a greyhound. It stood there and looked at us as we did the same in return, its eyes caught in the amber glow of the streetlights and flashed by the green lamps on our bikes.

We stayed like that for a minute or two, nobody moving, until slowly he turned around and slipped into the bushes, still just a foot or two from our bikes, where he stayed until we cycled on.

Riding through the floods (or not)
I was late for work this morning. Why? Because the route I cycle to the station was flooded. It's been raining for days, and...
Cluck cluck
We picked up the chickens on Saturday morning, so the coop is no longer echoey and empty. Barbara, Margot and Gerry, after a little...
Happy campers
We were so lucky with the weather. After half a week of moving Rich's belongings from Ipswich to Chelmsford, we took off with the tent...

Creative freebies and Photoshop water tricks

2008-11-06T13:47:07Z

Free high resolution paper textures

Great for giving backgrounds some depth in Photoshop and web pages. I was looking for something like this a few weeks back for a project I was working on. A bit late now, but here for next time.

(tags: textures free paper graphics)
How to create realistic raindrops in Photoshop

Use selection tools, layer effects and highlights to make it look like your image has a sprinkling of water.

(tags: photoshop tutorial)
How to blur water in Photoshop

Can’t take beautiful smooth waterfall shots because you haven’t got a tripod? Do it in Photoshop instead.

(tags: photoshop tutorial)
How to create convincing reflections in Photoshop

Surprisingly easy, effective way to put any scene on to water.

(tags: photoshop tutorial)

Two Photoshop portrait processing tricks
Dreamy Photo Effect Simulate the effect of expensive lenses in Photoshop. (tags: photoshop photography) Post-Processing Tricks: Vintage Effects Sinulate blown and faded colours using...
Water, water everywhere…
Drifted downstairs far later than I would have liked and in the absence of any real orange juice on account of not shopping for a...
The Magic Water Filter
These things really exist. Apparently. Lunch today, talking flat design with a couple of German friends. They live in a snazzy block that was designed...