Mucking around

Christmas Lights Competition 2015

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Standards are high at the annual Christmas lights event. It’s important that every entry is a strong in order to outperform the competition.

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Taking apart a Nokia 105

New year reflection led me to the conclusion that perhaps having email, twitter, facebook and the Internet at large following me round in my pocket all the time wasn’t a great idea, so I thought I’d get a phone that wasn’t afraid to revisit issues of self-identity. The Nokia 105 makes phone calls, sends texts, has an FM radio and not much else. I’m very happy with it.

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Hot

Last night I dealt with the heat the only way I know how.

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A Phonetic alphabet for the 21st Century

With the help of @domeheid and @gasmanic. Try using this next time you’re spelling something out over the phone. Aye Bee Cellar Dvorak Eye Faroe Gnat Heir Iain Jalapeno Knot Llanfairpwllgwyngyll Mnemonic Not Ouija Pharaoh Quay Rote Sea Tchaikovsky Umm Vowel Why Xi You Zhivago

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Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines Dead?

According to Ian Betteridge,

‘Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no

But is this long-standing principle of journalism now dead?

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Birthday Shinbash

A few shaky photos from a magnificent 18 hour birthday stint.

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Modified external lamp

I picked up an outside light, the kind that you plug in and stick in your lawn, going cheap at B&Q. Although it said it had blue LEDs (I’ve never claimed to have much style but anything with blue LEDs in it is an unforgivable faux-pas) I had a roll of white LEDs at home. It was a nice sealed unit (no IP rating but it looked solid enough) which I thought would come in handy for stickig on the outside of my boat and shining at things.

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Peacock Experts — video

One of the great things about my workplace is that we have unlimited peacocks at our disposal a number of my colleagues are qualified peacock-ologists Here’s a short video of just one of the peacocks, along with some commentary about their feeding habits and behavioural characteristics (something about baked beans, pretending to be a bike and the thing from Jurassic Park, I don’t know it went over my head).

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Aeropress explosion (and copycat Gaggia)

Respect the aeropress. If you don’t pay it enough respect it will explode, sending coffee EVERYWHERE. STOP PRESS Not wishing to be outdone, the Gaggia espresso machine had a go too. I should add that this happened to a colleague.

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Animals and Documents

A friend asked on Facebook why there were no documents penned by animals. He claimed that ‘not a single one was to my knowledge written by an animal other than a human’. I disagree. Here are some notable quotes I have collected on the subject. ‘A cat could no more write a thesis on the plight of man than a man could on the condition of being a cat’

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