Pauly's 'Stoney Soapbox

Priorities!

Tue, 13 May 2008 18:24:39 GMT

Wedding video and new jeans

Tue, 13 May 2008 08:47:55 GMT

Had a slightly rum Saturday night out but then a lovely Sunday afternoon to follow. Felt a bit queasy on Saturday so although we went out to Folkestone in the day, and had lunch at The Whole World Cafe (felty queasy before we went there, certainly not their fault), and then out again in the evening to Hythe, I came home early and left Clare out with friends. Picked up a bit when I got home, and finally got all my wedding video DVD plans in place, foudn some software that will burn to DVD for free, without putting a cheeky watermark encouraging me to pay money. Just could not get DVDStyler working this time, so no menus or anything, but I think I know what I'm doing now.

Here's some video, a short snippet of wedding footage, that I was using to test the DVDness. Not sure it really gives much idea of how lovely everything was, but have a look anyway:

Sunday I was feeling much better again, we went out for the afternoon in Hythe. First the all new Red Lion - it really is nice now, but they were CLOSED on a hot Sunday afternoon. And they have a huge garden, madness. Next The Three Mariners, lovely again, bit quiet / local though maybe. Final stop The White Hart on the high street, sat in their courtyard garden, smashing, two thumbs up for them. Home in time to watch this week's Lost, seems to me to be all change again in their back story, hmm.

DB2 training for me yesterday and today, first bit of training I've done for years!

Oh, the new jeans; Clare was after some For All Mankind jeans in the americas; they're hundreds of pounds here and should be half price there. Key West is expensive, which mostly negated any savings. If she will take a chance on a pair of ebay, they're WELL CHEAP. Possibly a gamble, might end up with a fake pair, but we'll see. I've put the jeans over there in the side bar, check them out -->

No it's not trampy and dirty buying things like this second hand. We might even wash them before wearing them. Next stop some new(ish) underwear for me...

Some optimistic estimates in this online auction I feel

Sat, 10 May 2008 16:13:37 GMT

These all sound a bit high to me, found an auction of rock memorabilia:

Soundproofing from Abbey Road GBP850+, signed KISS album, GBP3-400. Madonna platinum album GBP500+, these things are so common, our old office was stuffed with them. Guess if you have a particularly good album it's interesting, or one that you worked on, but otherwise there's no way I'd buy one of these.

No I'm not just bitter because lots of people are seeing Madonna today in Maidstone , for free, lots of people from work too. Hope you had a great time if you were there. Bah.

Oof Frank Zappa's guitar, GBP70,000+... Happy bidding!

Hibbett's Edinburgh festival show confirmed for The Medina

Fri, 9 May 2008 19:24:05 GMT

Meanwhile the PLANS for "My Exciting Life In ROCK", our Edinburgh Fringe Show, are moving along. I think I've pretty much worked out which songs and which stories will be featured, as well as how it's all going to hang together. I've not tried it out properly yet though!

If you fancy coming along, it'll be at the Medina, August 4th-9th - I'm hoping to do some previews beforehand too, but I'll let you know about them when I know myself!

The three rules of vegetarian food

Fri, 9 May 2008 19:08:18 GMT

From Neil, I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing this here, it's spot on. We were discussing pies:

A veggie one would be possible, were it not for the first of the "food

industry 3 laws of vegetarian food", i.e. "don't make it any fun", so unfortunately veggie pies have to be in a kind of tough brown pastry which is actually made from the bark of a particular species of pine.

The second law is of course "make it a bit more expensive than meaty food, even though there is less in it", and the third law is "even though the choice is limited, as soon as something good emerges and people like it, try to stop making it"

Whatever did happen to Linda McCartney Southern Fried Grills? Perhaps these were the elusive foodstuffs that were supposedly vegetarian but were really made out of meat?

Speaking of crazy urban whatnames, there's a rumour sweeping our office that a local business has been cloning people's bank cards, supposedly two people at work had this happen to them, and now everyone else who's visited the same business (which I won't name here) is panicking, waiting for the fake payments on their statements.

Man I'm hating Lost today

Fri, 9 May 2008 19:03:51 GMT

Listening to Jay and Jack's Lost podcast, why do I keep doing this to myself? They're just so ALIEN, they're discussing morse code, as featured in a recent episode, and they're having a serious discussion as to whether it's pronounced "morris code" or "moors code".

IT'S MORSE CODE YOU DIM TWATS!

Popbitch is in good company..

Fri, 9 May 2008 14:31:44 GMT

Some prostitutes just moved into the flat below popbitch's office, lovely!

... and be careful. as of yesterday the first floor turned into a brothel. with "lovely lisa, 21".

so popbitch is now sandwiched between a betting shop/brothel and a pie company :)

Our actual first day in Key West

Fri, 9 May 2008 07:41:57 GMT

I realise that my previous post about our first day in Key West a) didn't contain any info, b) had things from our second day on the map, and c) has slipped down the page and no-one will read it. So here at last is the first part of our journey. Clare did I miss anything?

So, back from Key West then and trying to write up all my thoughts from the position of a desk, an office, England, very far in space and mind from where we were. We travelled to Key West (Florida, USA) for Clare's bro Kevin's wedding to Guiselle, the wedding was on a Sunday, and we had a few days either side for a holiday. We settled on six nights instead of seven or more to save money, as we couldn't find a package (where two weeks can be the same sort of price as one), you never can find a bargain when you want one can you? I'm not much of a traveller these days, and generally like to come home after a week anyway, but we had a really great trip and I could have done with it lasting a bit longer.

The holiday started extra early for me, while Clare was off on the Wednesday, I had to be all packed Tuesday night, to take my bags into work, and head to Gatwick right after. A busy day at work and a hastily called 4pm meeting meant I just scraped out at half past, meeting Clare at Westenhanger where she even had a beer waiting for me, lovely! We were staying overnight at the Moat House, Gatwick, booked through work, and of course I HEARTILY RECOMMEND IT! We were intending to go for the on-airport Hilton but the savings were enormous on the one we picked, so that's that. Tea and a few pints of real ale in the nearby Ye Olde Six Bells were great, that's something we could not have walked to if we'd stayed on airport. I don't think I ever go near an airport unless I'm actually at an airport, so it's good to find there are real villages and things nearby, it's not just acres of car parks. Nice hotel, nice room, the bar was open, what else do you want from an airport stop? Our transfer the next morning was free, and while it could have been quicker (by not going via other hotels in the area) nothing to complain about at all there. We got to the airport, checked in, and went for a civilsed cooked breakfast, with no booze, lordy!

The flight there was uneventful. It wasn't comfortable or fun, I would not fly Delta again if there was another choice at about the same price, but we went for the cheapest deal we could find this time so we paid our money and we I took our choice. The plane didn't have seatback TV's, just little screens suspended every so often from the ceiling. We were too far away from these, and Clare could not hear anything through the supplied headphones, man was she furious! She didn't miss much though, daytime flight, shared TV, of course they're going to show only childrens films, pretty poor. I didn't bother with The Water Horse or some half cartoon fairy princess movie, but I did quite enjoy National Treasure: Book Of Secrets. I'd not seen the first one, but will now, it's The Goonies meets The Davinci Code, and I quite liked both of them. I don't think I slept on the flight over, I read a Lovejoy Paid and Loving Eyes (nice and light for packing purposes, and I've got two copies of it for some reason, so intended to leave it there) and ate my airline snacks; they remembered my vegan-ness. Almost no free booze though. Free soft drinks, with $5 upgrade to a cocktail if you wanted. A free glass ... (1916 words)

All holiday photos now here

Wed, 7 May 2008 08:27:39 GMT

In a flickr set, there are a lot of duplicates though and no title for most of them, so even if you care what you're looking at, you won't know.

Still writing up all the bars and that that we went to, as I like to do. I am slowing down / fizzling out though, this epic may never see the light of day. We did have a great time though.

Day two in Key West

Sun, 4 May 2008 17:11:01 GMT

A placeholder for write up and photomap and that.

[map]2008-04-26[/map]

See also Day one in Key West. Done some work on my GPS importing now, even locations in the Western hemisphere should work now! Explains what went wrong with my Fareham map...

Folkestone double death plunge smash horror tragedy!

Sun, 4 May 2008 11:01:19 GMT

Yoinks, yesterday someone chucked themselves off the roof of Bouverie Square in Folkestone, and today the end of our road was sealed off by police because of a "scene". Police were stopping anyone getting close to what had happened, so a) we had to walk home via a circuitous route, and b) no I didn't get any photos / videos / close up viewing details of what had gone on.

Actually wrote that yesterday and then Clare made me think about whether I should write about things like that or not. Of course I should, this is for me to remember where I was and what I was doing and things. Any local events are worth a mention. Perhaps making a horror death map tour of the town on google maps or something would be going to far, but it might be interesting to see local murder points, or the inevitable floral tributes. Look, what's likely to happen first, I write publish something insensitive and gory, or I just get too dull and other people stop reading?

I didn't go out of my way to find out anything about the Bouverie Square (newish town centre shopping complex, Asda, Starbucks, HMV, etc) suicide, I first overheard at work that something had happened "opposite SAGA". Although I was back in work, jetlagged and holiday-hungover, Clare had another day off and was spending part of it walking to Hythe, so right past SAGA HQ. Clare wasn't answering her phone, but she spotted it and called me back, she'd been in to town and heard all about the tragedy there from someone who worked in Asda.

Further details emerged on the way home, I had borrowed a car from work and gave someone else a lift back to Folkestone, he'd been on Facebook and the other gossip networks and heard from people who'd apparently been there, and there were seemingly plenty of witnesses, some of them holding up their camera phones as it all happened (although an apparent eye-witness has checked in to say this is NOT TRUE). So that's why I don't have any firm details, I'm not googling for it in case someone more awful than me has a YouTube clip or something.

Going to be a fairly lazy day today, hopefully I will get round to sorting my holiday photos and trying to remember some details of what we actually did while we were in Key West. Yesterday we had a bit of a day out - it's a bank holiday, so a free day, so let's do something different. We ended up in Ramsgate - it's rubbish, but the harbour side cafes were OK on such a nice day, and it does have a Pizza Express. We tried a few pubs, but could not find ANY local beer, how odd. So we headed back after lunch and jumped off the train at Deal briefly - much nicer there, went to the very cool The Bohemian pub / bar, and happened to be at the station at the same time as The Orient Express. Well, the English leg of it anyway. Lots of people suited and buoted on the platform, very odd.

We came home from Deal quite early just to stay in and catch up on Lost and House and loads of low quality quiz shows on Strange halo effect around the sun, did you get it here? It was mad, I have tried to photo it but couldn't get back far enough. How do you get further away from the sun?

[flickr]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2348/2459190757_69eed83605.jpg[/flickr]

Aha, reflected in my new shades! We really did see this in the sky though.

[flickr]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3134/2459190759_9523540f0c.jpg[/flickr]

And we're back from Key West

Thu, 1 May 2008 19:32:40 GMT

Got 550 pictures to filter and upload, and put on little maps and that. Had a great time, full report to follow. Been travelling for about 20 hours, just trying to stay awake until normal bedtime, then into work tomorrow.

Our first day in Key West:

[map]2008-04-25[/map]

Pirate museum

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:00:32 GMT

There's a pirate museum in Key West, Florida. If you're going to Key West any time soon, why not call in there and tell me how it was? Some more Key West links, in case you or anyone know is going.

Sloppy Joes a bar with live music, with live webcams from in the bar, and from the stage.

La Concha, a hotel, with webcam from the rooftop bar, the highest point on Key West apparently.

Loads more Key West webcams, including live from the Hog's Breath bar, and crowd shots in Duval Street.

Did I mention we will be going to Key West soon?

Richy is doing the London to Brighton

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 09:16:34 GMT

Sponsor him!

Hello,

I'm taking part in the London to Brighton Bike Ride 2008 on 15/06/2008 to raise money for British Heart Foundation and would really welcome your support.

Please take a moment to sponsor me. It's really easy - you can donate online by credit or debit card at the following address:

justgiving.com/richarddickens

All donations are secure and sent electronically to British Heart Foundation. If you are a UK taxpayer, Justgiving will automatically reclaim 28% Gift Aid on your behalf, so your donation is worth even more.

Cheers!

Rich

Here is Richy, how could you not sponsor this face?

[flickr]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2057/2258176004_61162da424.jpg[/flickr]