Author: iandick

Charity Challenge – the results

QuizThursday saw us trying our best at the work charity challenge. 28 teams took part with 6 in each team. Lets cut to the chase – we didn’t win. Thankfully we didn’t come last either :-). In the true tradition of work based events we don’t know where we came as they only had time to announce last and first place. Highlight of the night had to be the bingo that nobody could win. After trying 5 times to get a winner, they were left with 2 players (it was Irish bingo so everyone stands and if a number is read out on your card you sit down). As they read out numbers both players sat down on the same numbers – after this happened 3 times they checked the cards and realised that they had the same cards. So they tossed a coin. A winner was found. He then decided he didn’t want the DVD player so it was handed back to charity. Class.

‘Rock on Tommy‘ was very funny too. You need to see the other photo’s to figure it out. Let’s just say the question master was less than impressed.

 

The worlds most intelligent community is…

Glasgow. How bizarre. Especially when you compare this news to the list of the most deprived areas in Scotland. The top ten are all in….Glasgow. Definetly looks like an us and them attitude – pretty poor that the council spokesman gets all excited about some crap broadband award but fails to speak on the poverty issue.

As an aside, the website detailing the poorest places (called the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD)) is actually very impressive. Requires a plugin but well worth the 2 meg download, although I can think of far better ways of spending the exec’s money.

Summer Of Sport

Its begun – the best summer of sport in a long time. Euro 2004 kicked off yesterday with a couple of entertaining matches. Don’t know about the silver ball though. Looking forward to the rest of the matches though, especially the France – England game tonight. Come on France ;-). BBC has a really nice way of viewing match highlights – the Virtual Replay. Choose a match, choose an incident and then watch it from any angle. Lovely.

Next week Wimbledon begins (Martina in the singles), we’ve got the rest of the F1 season (Button’s first win tonight?) and it will all be rounded off with the Olympics in August. Can’t wait.

Ghost Town

Voted yesterday in the Euro elections. First time in the new house. I couldn’t believe how quiet it was – the guy taking my name was checking off those who had voted and from what I could see there was only 5 or 6 names ticked out of around 30 on a page and this was at 7:30PM. Shocker. We reckoned in the office that someone only needs around 1 in 10 people to vote for them to get elected. Thats 1 in 10 of the whole population, not just those that voted. Yikes. Looking at the results, thankfully the BNP have taking a kicking and it looks like Labour have suffered badly – and finally they are admitting it’s due to Iraq. The tories must be kicking themselves – the first time in years that they get to turn the knife into Labour and the UKIP turn up and nab some of their vote. Stop laughing at the back.

Good to see Libdem’s gaining also – might reduce some of the snide comments Charles Kennedy has had to put up with.

Aiport Express

Apple have announced the Aiport Express which looks to be the ideal solution for easily adding wireless to your home. Coupled with the new version of iTunes you can stream music to any speakers. A good example can be seen here. This is really tempting. What would seal the deal would be a laptop and then I could be sitting in the garden surfing to my hearts content.

But then reality kicks in – the weather isn’t good enough to justify the outlay as I would get a day a week if I’m lucky in the great outdoors. I’ll stick to my guns and upgrade the desktop later in the year. My current pc is 3 & 1/2 years old. In fact this is my oldest pc so far without an upgrade. With Half-Llife 2 & Doom 3 later this year, it has to be done.

Gardening

Spent a good bit of the weekend in the garden – I must admit I never realised how much effort it would take. Just digging a border around the front lawn was knackering and also meant 2 trips to the dump with 16 bags of refuse. But the weed killer on the front lawn has worked so the grass seed has been planted – I’ll do a photo update every few days to see if the seed works.