Eye Smell Nice

While getting ready for a quick pint at the pub last night I decided to use some of my lovely after shave so I would smell nice for 5 minutes before being cloaked in a covering of alcohol and smoke. All was going well - I got the lid off, I pointed it at my neck and i pressed the top down. Then I cried. Just from one eye, my right eye to be exact. I forgot to check which way it was pointing and i sprayed into my eye instead of onto my neck. I'll tell ya, it didn't half sting! I'll pay more attention next time, but surely these things should come with a big warning sign on them...

Coulda done with an eye wash...

MaFt

Toxic Toiletries

T'interwebnet's working again.

http://www.health-report.co.uk/toxic_toiletries.html

This stuff makes me laugh!

Take the following from the 1st page:

"The purpose of this website is not to alarm you" - well, it looks quite alarming to me.
"Most of the chemicals which go into our toiletries are no different from the harsh toxic chemicals used in industry" - true, but surely the amount and/or concentration plays a vital part in all that. Surely 5mg of 1% concentration 'nasty chemical' is a lot less harmful than 5kg of 95% concentration 'nasty chemical'. I wonder if this website has heard of MEL's (Maximum Exposure Limits)? Even flour has an MEL
"Propylene glycol (PG) is a wetting agent and solvent used in make up, hair care products, deodorants, after shave and is often found in toothpaste. It's also the main ingredient in antifreeze and brake fluid" - again, it all has to do with how much and at what concentration. Water is one of the main ingredients of most nasty solutions that can kill people; shall we outlaw water?
"Safety warning labels advise users to wear protective clothing, face mask and gloves. If spilt on the skin to wash off with copious quantities of water and to seek medical advice! Accidental spillage on skin may cause irreversible health effects! If swallowed induce vomiting and seek immediate medical help!" - it also says this in the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for water...

The site then goes on to warn us that Aftershave contains alcohol. Wow, I always wondered how they managed to get aftershave to evaporate once you'd put it on your skin, I always thought it was Black Magic.

This site really wound me up! Talk about going over the top. If something is hazardous it doesn't mean it's not safe. Alcohol is dangerous, but when it's in a drink it's in such low concentrations that it's safe (if it's used correctly). Just like soap - don't eat it cos it's not safe to eat it. Nasty chemicals, in the right concentration and used in the right way do not pose a risk.

Sorry, rant over! I don't even remember how I found this bloody site...

MaFt

Just What I Need

Grr, t’interwebnet is down at work so I’ve decided to email this post. It just means that I’ll have to put up with a strange layout when it goes onto the blog. I can change this once I can get online again though. The obvious benefit is that Microsoft Outlook has a good spell-chequer.

I got another episode of Doctor Who watched this morning so I now only have two more to catch up on! The I have 8 CD-R’s worth of FireFly that Bli provided me with ages ago and about 5 other films in my queue… If Mini-MaFt keeps getting up early I may just get them all watched! I’ve had ‘Underworld’ from my brother for about 15 months now and haven’t even watched all of that yet…

So, that aside, back to the subject. I need a dump.

See ya

MaFt

Quit The Day Job

Forgot to mention, the Chucky NoSTARS debut CD is now available from www.chuckynostars.com - 10 tracks for about £9 i think it was. Mine arrived yesterday and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with it so far! Check out some tracks at their PureVolume site if you fancy a bit of dance-punk.

Later

MaFt

Tiredness

Well, whoever told me bringing up a baby was easy deserves a slap. Actually, I don't think anyone did, but I need to find someone to blame!

Mini-MaFt has colic at the moment which is quite painful for him and us... Yesterday I was up at about 4.30am with him so Mrs MaFt could get a bit of sleep. It had it's upside though, I got to catch up on Doctor Who - I now only have 3 more episodes to watch... However, I was knackered by about 3pm...

Last night he wasn't so bad, but he was restless cos of the warmth - stupid summer weather! Anyway, we're off out shopping in the sales tonight so Mrs MaFt can get out of the house. SHe'll be allowed to drive again in a couple of weeks so that'll be better for her. No for me though, I'll have to get me bike out for work again!

MaFt

Whiteley or Wongley

Sad to here the great Yorkshire hero Mr Richard Whiteley has just died. Afternoon TV will never be the same again. Poor Miss Vorderman, what's she gonna do now?!

Full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4625347.stm


Mr Whiteley, The Great Yorkshire Ambassador

MaFt

New Songs

Greetings :) Just a quicky to let you know there's some new songs on the main site. Head over to http://maft.co.uk then go to multimedia, then audio then have a look under Maft/Demo's.

Enjoy! All feedback welcome

MaFt

Owwww, The Irony!

1) Traffic jams when you're already late
2) A 'no smoking' sign on your cigarette break

These are NOT ironic - even if the song IS called 'Ironic'. Silly cow. The only way those two examples would be a good use of irony would be if

1) You were a town roads planner and you were stuck in a traffic jam when you were already late going to a meeting where you were talking about what good improvements you'd made to cut traffic jams

2) If you worked in the smokiest bar/club in the world and then when you went for your cigarette break and there suddenly appeared a 'no smoking' sign

And I'm not even sure if number 2 would even be classed as irony!

Anyway, to my point. The perfect example of irony is this:

I work for a fairly large pharmaceuticals company and, all morning, have been nursing the mother of all headaches... Owwwww, the irony! Owwww, my head!

MaFt

Hot Hot Heat (Not the Band)

Wow, it's like I've not been here for ages!

Saturday, the three of us went to Leeds for some shopping etc. When we came off the ring-road near the Yorkshire Post we got stuck in a shortish queue and we could see a bit of smoke/steam. Great, a car had broken down due to overheating (it was pretty warm over the weekend if you hadn't noticed). As we were about to pass it we saw some small flames and started to panic a bit! Thankfully we were past it pretty quick cos about 10 seconds later the whole car was up in flames. Poor buggers, it was a fairly new car too!

After getting sun-burnt a bit in Leeds, we headed back along the M62 to get home. Stupid idea. I hadn't realised that they knocked it down to one lane for about 100m so of course the tailbacks were horrendous! However, we were lightly entertained by the huge numbers of cars in the hard shoulder that had overheated! In total we counted 21 cars and at least four AA vans!

Yesterday it pissed it down in the afternoon, which was nice. Seriously, it WAS nice, it cooled me down a bit. It was also my first Father's day as a Dad. Mini-MaFt bought me all-sorts of bits, he even wrote his own card (although I think Mrs-MaFt may have helped him as it looked quite a lot like her writing..)

MaFt

An Early One

Do you have the time to listen to me whine about nothing and everything else all at once? I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it! Sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. It all keeps adding up, I think I'm cracking up! Am I just paranoid? Or am I just stealing someone elses lyrics?

MaFt

.04 Makes A Big Difference

Last night I tried using a free program made by Boss that converts wave files into a format that I can use with my Boss BR-8 8-Track Recorder. Surprisingly it's called the 'Boss BR-8 Wave Converter' - clever, aren't they?

Well, the version on the Boss site is version 1.00. However, this didn't seem to work... I kept getting the error 'Cannot Write File' (something like that anyway) after it had converted the wave file. This was really peeing me off, so after quite a bit of Googling I found version 1.04 from one of the foreign Boss sites and this seemed to work. 'Huzzah' I announced in victory.

This now means I can transfer my drum tracks directly to the recorder and also stick any other samples I fancy into my songs much easier. Still, it's weird that there is no other reference at all to this updated version on the main Boss sites.

Oh well, I'm off for lunch now! Just thought I'd share all this with you and if anyone wants the version 1.04 then let me know and I'll email you it as no doubt someone will find this post in their hunt for Boss BR-8/BR8 wave convertor/converter software :)

MaFt

This Sucks

Hello, 'tis I. Sorry for not posting very much... Well, Mini-MaFt is doing great and eating loads and pooing a constant supply of chicken korma. Both me and Mrs MaFt arepretty tired, but I guess that'll improve in about 18 years! Well, you can get rid of them at 16 now, can't you?! Lol!

So, anyway, I guess a lot of you would have heard about the girl who was found in Bradford the other day? It's bad enough that it happened to a 15 year old girl, even worse that it was apparently carried out by a bunch of teenagers of a similar age. It hitme quite hard cos my neice was friends with her, so obviously she wasn't too good when she got sent home from school. The girl who was found dead (the cause is as yet unknown, so I won't say murdered) was a pupil at the school where my mum works too. It sucks and I feel really sorry for the family, especially when the spot she was found is clearly visible from their house - along with the hordes of reporters too. My mum said that Sky News tried going to the school to interview her friends; I mean, how insensitive is that? Hopefully justice will be done. We'll have to wait and see.

Anyway, I'm getting myself down now, I need something happy to do :)

MaFt

Info

Right, well, that last post wasn't very informative, so here's a bit more!

Mini-MaFt was born at 00:48 on Sunday morning just gone after a gruelling time in hospital since Friday afternoon. He weighed in at 7lb 7 (about 3.37kg [according to my phone's unit convertor]) which is about 22cm of decent size middle bacon.

Bacon? Well, my only frame-of-reference for pounds and ounces is from when i worked at the deli in the co-op and a pound of decent sized middle bacon was about 3cm deep. So, Mini-MaFt is the equivalent of 22cm of bacon. Yum :) That's making me hungry now...

Ah, balls to posting a blog entry I'm off for some food! See ya!



MaFt

BABY

Tired. Mini-MaFt is ace. Midwives and surgeons are bloody great too. Tired.

Photo's andmoreposts soon.

MaFt

Bit More Serious

Ooh, a life changing, incredibly deep, serious post... I'm gonna be a dad soon. It's just hit me after getting a call from Mrs MaFt telling me the time the hospital are taking her in to start things off. A dad, me... scary.

It'll be reet, babies are easy; well, they are when you can hand them back to their owners - damn, that'll be us... hmm... 'Dad' doesn't quite sound right, I'm still MaFt and always will be.

We're calling him Mini-MaFt.

See ya

MaFt

Royal Moaners

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4598091.stm

If you can't be bothered reading it then here it is in brief. Royal Mail have been told that they're not aloud to increase the cost of a 1st class stamp to any more than 34p by 2010. They're currently 30p so that's more than a 10% price increase - which to me is pretty damn big!

Royal Mail are whinging that if this ruling goes ahead that it will severely affect the service they provide. I mean, how hard is it to put a letter in a box? Each letter has a description of exactly where it needs to go so they don't really need to think that hard...

My proposal is as follows: stop wasting my money from stamps employing people like these chatter-boxes in the picture below (who are clearly not working) and employ someone who does the job quickly and effectively. That way they won't need to increase costs at all.


Less Chatter-box, more mail-box

MaFt

System Restore Saved My Machine (again)

My sound dissappeared from my PC last night. There seemed to be a dodgy driver set on the Biostar site cos when I installed it, or rather tried to install it, it just wouldn't. At all.

I was left with no sound. Which is a pain cos my main use for the computer is my music!

As a last resort I used System Restore. To Microsoft's credit, it worked. I've had to use it a dozen or so times before now and every once in a while it won't work. This time it did, so I was happy :)

The only problem it caused was that I had to reinstall Zone Alarm as I'd put a new version of that on at the same time as installing the new drivers. It wasn't a big deal cos I could listen to The Ramones while I was doing it!

MaFt