Todays nice robots are...

 

Huey, Dewie & Louie DD

Word of the day. Crapsifruit.

1.
a. - Alt. of Crapsifruit. ~ (Crap-see-frute)

To be a bit crap and slightly fruity. (See John Inman.)

Time...

I've just done something very, very silly. I worked out how much time I spend commuting to my current job in Paddington. Wanna know? Well I'll tell you sweet reader. It's 4 and a half hours per day. Now that dearest, is a whopping 22 and a half hours per week. I basically travel for one day for every five. Now that's not right is it.

Off sick

Today I took a day off work because I felt like shite but I was determined not to waste it sitting about watching daytime teevee and drifting in and out of consciousness so I set about a few odds 'n sods that I've been meaning to do for a while. Here's a handy list.
Today I...

• Learnt how to crossfade images in Flash using XML
  
• Priced up a new bathroom online
• Dropped off some old clothes at the homeless shelter down the road
• Watched a whole episode of 'Diagnosis Murder' (Which frankly made me feel worse.)
• Discovered how to burn disk from my wonderful new DVD recorder & PVR
• Rediscovered joy in the humble, but mighty, custard cream

• Groaned as Hilary Clinton beat Barack Obama, winning New Hampshire's primary
• Cheered as Apple announced plans to drop the price of tracks on iTunes in the UK
• Had a poo
• Added a new entry to my blog. This one.

And it's only half three.

How to write with feeling

The other day I was talking to one of my new-temporary work colleagues about hospitals and the like and the subject of the Hickman Line I once had to have inserted into me came up. For those of you that don't know what a Hickman line is it's basically an intravenous cathater (usually used in the administration of chemotherapy) that gets inserted through the subcutaneous fat in your chest and fed into your superior vena cava (I think) so stuff can be pumped in to you. In my case the 'stuff' was a nutrient mix that looked rather like loose mash potato... in a bag. Anyhow, when I got the part of my tale when I asked if the mirror could be adjusted so I could watch the surgeon inserting the line whilst I lay prone on the operating table, one of the guys listening to my thunderously interesting story asked me, quite openly and earnestly, how it felt. All I could say on this matter was that 'it felt weird'. How crap is that!
Now when George Orwell was asked how it felt when he was shot in the throat whilst in Spain he replied:

"Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense."

Man I wish I could be more lucid at times.

SAL 9000

Trawling YouTube I came across this clip of SAL 9000 & Dr. Chandra. 

Today's nice robot is...

SONNY from I, Robot

Sonny is an NS-5 robot designed by his creator Alfred Lanning, to be different from the other model NS-5's (he has blue eyes not gold) because Dr. Lanning wants him to carry out a very special request. Namely to shove him out of a high window. Now before you all start jumping up and down shouting, "But this is Nice robots Mr. TeaIsLife, not Evil robots!", Lanning orders Sonny to do it as his last request in order to get Will Smith involved for some strange and rather convoluted reason.
Now Sonny is a REALLY nice robot all things considered. As the plot rolls along it turns out that Sonny (previously suspected by Will S. of murder) is living with the deep, dark tormented secret that he killed his creator as an act of kindness. Aawww... Poor Sonny huh? He just wants to be liked and work out who he is and everything but everyone keeps pestering him and trying to inject little nano-killer-robot things into his head. What a bottomer.
Anyhow, Sonny (though not the most interesting of robots) does look mighty cool in the film and turns out to be quite a kick-ass bot later in the day so all's well in Nice-Robot-Land I feel.

NICE ROBOTS

So, as a follow up to my barely-successful, award losing series EVIL ROBOTS, I thought I'd delve once again into the robot barrel and see what examples of niceness I could dredge up and let me tell you, there are quite a few. You see robots are supposed to BE nice and nice they are a lot of the time. So, without further ado I present to you oh ever faithful reader, the first in my equally spurious NICE ROBOTS series.
Enjoy.


Today's nice robot is...



SAL 9000

The erstwhile counterpart of the murderous barn-pot that was HAL 9000 in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Oddysey, SAL 9000 was, like her 'brother', a supercomputer designed by Dr. Chandra for use as a reference system for HAL With her gleaming blue 'eye' and her sultry, Indian accented voice SAL was a far more comforting character than HAL for one reason above all others. She never asphyxiated anyone and bunged 'em out an airlock. That kind of thing will really put a crimp on your day after all and she frankly wasn't that kind of computer. She was nice. If she'd have done anything she would've let poor Dave Bowman back in whilst looking at HAL with a kind of 'I'm not angry HAL, just disappointed' look whilst HAL looked at his feet and shuffled about mumbling something about being 'sorry' and that he'd try to re-connect Frank Poole's oxygen pipe...
So there you have it. HAL 9000 - Evil. SAL 9000 - Nice.

The cosmic balance is restored.

FILM REVIEW - 28 WEEKS LATER

It's shit.

Lego Nose

I think this could be the BEST photo I have EVER seen. True genius.
(Taken by Zig Zag on Flickr.)

So that's that over then.

I finished the new Harry Potter book this morning and I've got to say that I new that was going to happen. I worked that 'twist' out from the last book so, to all those who didn't go along with my theory I can only say hah! WHO'S YOUR DADDY. I really enjoyed this book and (apart from a rather protracted dull bit in the middle) it's pretty bloody good. Better than good actually.
Nice one J.K.

Drunk spacemen

To be fair if I was in charge of a few billion dollars worth of technology, sitting on a couple of thousand litres of rocket fuel with the eyes of the World and the hopes of hundreds of scientists, mathematicians & engineers upon me and THEN blasted into outerspace... I reckon I'd have drink or two.

Facebook

So, I've finally caved to mounting pressure and signed myself up to Facebook. So far it's looking quite interesting. All my college friends are on there as are a few mates from Brighton. I've had a few chats with some old work colleagues and been turned into a zombie.

Flood

These have to be two of the most dramatic pictures I've seen in relation to the current wave (pardon the pun) of floods we've been experiencing here in the UK. They look like they could be stills from some big budget disaster film with their scrawled, red, graffiti and ominous shadowed passer-by.
The whole thing is pretty scary and I'm put in mind of John Wyndham's excellent book 'The Kraken Wakes' when the BBC talks of the Thames bursting it's banks. Let's hope it's not the shape of things to come eh?

HOORAY!

I just had a KIT-KAT and I got a whole finger of chocolate! If you don't know how brilliant that is then trust me, it's the Holy Grail of the KIT-KAT eater.

Olympics 20... er...

Well apparently this is the new logo for London's attempt at the 2012 Olympics.



The logo is "available in four colours – pink, blue, green and orange - the new emblem is modern and will be dynamic, evolving in the years between now and 2012". And, yes you are right. It's shit isn't it. It took me ages to work out that it said '2012' and it looks like an 80's Wella ShockWaves hair product. Wolf-Ollins shat it out and they're supposed to be good! Still, at least we've got 5 years to get used to the bastard.

Why couldn't we have had something understated like the beautiful stylised maple leaf that came with Montreal in '76 or the structured and uplifting Soviet entry from 1980. Mexico's is frankly a thing of beauty and even London's from '48 is better.










One of the best comments I've read relating to it comes from the Guardian website - "Pretty much sums up the ambiguous vacuousness that is England these days where the image is so blurred and without meaning you need a consultant to help explain what it says and represents." He's got a point don't you think? The colours are bizzare (Steve just pointed out that it looks like they've chosen them to keep printing costs down) and are far from pleasant. And I've been so incensed by how crap the whole thing is I didn't even notice the sheer rubbishness of the word 'London' in the top left. Who the hell put that together! Looks like someone did it on the train on the way home. I've heard talk of the SS, 80's anti-war propaganda graphics and even Lisa Simpson giving head. The problem is that it seems to say something to everyone but 'London Olympics' to no-one.

Bye matey

I think I've posted this picture of Pat before but I thought I'd pop it up again today in tribute to him. He was in his 18th year (pretty impressive I think) and had only really lost his 'bounce' in the latter 18 months but a full year after the vet gave him three weeks to live and two cancer operations later we finally decided that something had to be done. The tumors in his mouth were causing him pain and preventing him from eating food (his number one favourite past-time) and he wouldn't have survived a third operation so we took the humane course.
The vet was absolutely wonderful and came to our home to administer the injection. It was an emotional moment for all but mercifully quick. He looked so peaceful as they rolled him in a blanket to take him away for cremation.
So, thanks matey. Thanks for all the unconditional love you gave us, thanks for the all the times you made us laugh like drains by getting your head stuck in the back of the tumble dryer, the infamous 'balloon incident' and for slug-balancing. Thanks for being my little ginger buddy.
Bye Pat. I'll miss you terribly.

Hilarious

I was just in the toilet here at work and some bloke came in, stood at the urinal and parped whilst having a wee. I nearly gave myself an aneurism trying not to laugh. I'm 33 years old, why do I still find that funny?