Haiku

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Piff Poff Poof

...And as if by magic the pubs are now smoke-free!

In case you didn't know, the UK smoking ban is now in place. Soon it'll be illegal to fart in public too.

Now, go buy my stuff!

MaFt

The Promised Pictures

Well, here they are, the promised photo's of our local Harrier Jumpjet! Shoetree and his lovely lady-wife came over yesterday so I took them for a drive to see the plane too :)




Well, here they are, the promised photo's of our local Harrier Jumpjet! Shoetree and his lovely lady-wife came over yesterday so I took them for a drive to see the plane too :)

MaFt

Harrier JumpJet

We were driving up to Queensbury yesterday along the Brighouse & Denholme Road and I happened to look out of the window. TO my surprise, there was a Harrier JumpJet in someone's garden. Not a toy, an actual real Harrier JumpJet!

To confirm I wasn't going mad, we stopped on the way back to make sure... And it was still there - a real, full-size, not a toy, Royal Navy Harrier JumpJet.

If you don't believe me then head over to The Raggalds pub and it's opposite there. I'll try get a photo at some point!

MaFt

Driving Me Mad!

Someone recently bought Mini-MaFt a 'My First Remote Controlled Car' as a "your not the special baby anymore but we feel sorry for you so here's a present" gift. However, it doesn't use RF as most radio controlled cars do, no, this one uses Infra Red.

Not a problem really - the car functions adequately in both forward and reverse using the supplied controller. It also functions adequately using any remote control in the house... You can be flicking channels and this little toy car starts rolling along the floor with it's lights flashing away!

The thing is, it always catches me off guard and makes me jump when flicking between episodes of The Simpsons!

MaFt

Pig (Part II)

OK, even if the whole 'eating a full pack of mini batenburgs' thing wasn't piggish behaviour then I think this might be:

Today we were in Morrisons and I noticed that Creme Eggs we only 18p - a whole 2p cheaper than in Woolworths just over the car park! I had to by five. It would have been wrong not to!

I ate four of them, it would have been five but I gave one way to a homeless child. Well, not quite homeless, I gave it to one of Mini-MaFt's friends, Master-O - he was most pleased! I might get some more tomorrow ;)

MaFt

Lifetime Guarantee

Whoever thought up this one was a flippin' genius! I mean, normally you get a one year guarantee on something that you can guarantee will break after one year and a day. However, the cunning marketing people at far too many companies obviously realised that instead of spending all that R&D money designing products that fail exactly one year and twenty-four hours after their first use, they could do it another way.

Simply give the product a 'lifetime' guarantee! You see, it is guaranteed to work for the product's lifetime - as soon as it breaks, it's guarantee has passed! The products lifetime is over and so, therefore, it it's guarantee. Clever sods, aren't they?!

And so, in keeping with this fine tradition, I offer a lifetime guarantee for this blog. It will always be here, right up until it's not!

MaFt

Is This The Behaviour Of A Pig?

Mrs-MaFt has just accused me of being a pig. All I did was eat a pack of five mini battenburgs - I hardly feel that it deserves such a personal insult...

I blame the pregnancy hormones!


Mini Battenburgs

MaFt

GET VOTING!

I've been designing a couple of t-shirts over the last week or so - please go vote for me cos I might win £500 and get my shorts printed!

http://www.dshirt.co.uk/profile.php?usr=maft

MaFt

Rollercoaster

These last two days have been a rollercoaster of mixed emotions.

Yesterday morning we found out that a good friend of Mrs-MaFt and myself had died suddenly and very unexpectedly. She was only 31 and has left behind a husband and 3 young boys (11 weeks, 3 years and 5 years). We still can't really believe it but have to try and get on.

This morning was the total opposite as it was the extraction of Mini-Mrs-MaFt - a beautiful little girl weighing in at 6lb 8oz. Mini-MaFt loves her to bits (which is a good thing!). Pictures below - I'm tired and off to bed!

Fact For The Day

Dinosaurs and humans lived on Earth at the same time.

[please note that this post worked better when the images linked correctly... have a read of this to see them: http://www.creationists.org/mananddinos.html]

How else can you explain the images on these Inca burial stones from 500-1500AD?



Or this Aboriginal painting from Queensland



Or a Buddhist temple carving in Cambodia from around 1200AD:



If dinosaur bones were only din the last 200 or so years then how come there re some damn-good depictions of them knocking about from waaaaaaaaaaay before then? The simple answer: they lived only thousands of years ago as opposed to millions and at the same time as humans!

MaFt

Makka Pakka

Makka Pakka, Makka Pakka, Makka Pakka!

Eh?! What? You obviously haven't seen 'In The Night Garden' - created by the very same mentalists who did the Teletubbies.

Mini-MaFt likes it but hasn't quite grasped how to say 'Makka Pakka' yet, instead it comes out as 'Paki' which he shouts at the top of his voice... Living in Bradford, I'm now scared to take him out of the house!!!


Makka Pakka

MaFt

Due Date

Well, I feel like David Beckham at the moment. We have a date for the Caesaeaeaserereasn Section (lots of problems with Mini-MaFt's birth so we've been told Mrs-MaFt can have a CS again!) - it's really weird cos the consultant said to us "so, is the 26th April OK for you?" but I was expecting them to just give us a date! I can make it to the big football game after all!

So, Mini-Mrs-MaFt shall be extracted ('born' doesn't seem to describe the process effectively) a week on Thursday. We just need to decide on a name so I can get their domain name and website sorted a-la Mini-MaFt's site.

See ya

MaFt

Older, But Not Much Wiser

I am now 27... In fact I've been 27 since last Tuesday. I feel older, but I wish I was a bit wiser!

MaFt

Reboot

Nearly six years later I've finally got around to editing our wedding video. It's taken a while but it's now ready. Why's it taken so long? Well, originally Brother-T was going to edit his video along with another video tht was made of the wedding but he never had time to get it done - so we just had both recordings running back to back on VHS. Now I have the technology I've been able to rip the original tapes onto the computer and mix the two tapes together... six years later...


Last night, after checking all 1hr 32min 53secs of the video for the second time for any mistakes etc, I decided it was ready for exporting. It was about 11pm so took the decision to leave it all rendering over night as I knew it would take about 8 hours - I could do it quicker but that would involve spending money on a new processor, which would also need a new motherboard to sit in along with new RAM and a new case too... I can't be bothered spending all that just to speed up video rendering!

Anyway, I got up this morning to check it had done it alright and my 'start up windows' were showing. "Great", I thought, "my computer rebooted before it finished". After checking the system logs it turns out that at 3.22am my PC rebooted. The reason? Windows had installed an update and said it needed to reboot in order to complete the installation; it would do this automatically for me if I didn't press a key in the next 15 seconds. Well, Mr Windows XP, at 3.22am how the heck am I supposed to see that when I'm in bed fast asleep? Idiot!

What's the point in having the option ticked for only installing updates when I'm ready if it just goes ahead and does it anyway?! So now I've got to export it all again while I'm doing my work...

Annoyed? You bet!

MaFt

Lame Excuse?

One of the down-sides to working from home is the sever lack of blog material I encounter. Working at Leeds Uni was great as I used to commute via bus, train and foot every day. When I was at Nektar I had loads of time doing nothing (and getting paid for it) so blogging was easier. However, now I'm working at home I tend not to come across any peculiar folk that I can write about. Unless, that is, you're interested in the Jehovah's Witness who called round the other day; or the seemingly unendless cold callers telling me I'm entitled to a government grant for free cavity wall insulation - free if you're on benefits. Although I'm told they offer a 50% discount if you're not - hardly free though, is it? Twice they rang today! If you think that having regular phone calls asking if we sell the finest Indian spices is fun then let me know and I can blog about that for you too... I could tell you about Kia the cats smelly breath as she huddles up next to me on the couch, but it's hard to explain the smell with words - if you've ever done a dissection then I can tell you that her breath smells like the innards of a pig, actually, no, probably more like the innards of a chicken.

So, anyway, I'm babbling! Catch ya later!

MaFt

He's A Really Happy Man

Why does Postman Pat always wear his uniform? I know a guy who used to be a postman and outside of working hours he dressed like a normal person. What sort of impression does that give to children? Postman Pat is one big lie and it's about time something was done about it...


Postman Pat (in case you didn't know)

MaFt

Walk, Fly, Fly, Fly, Drive, Sleep

Yesterday was our last day at CeBIT and involved, as the blog entry title suggests, walking, flying, flying, flying and eventually sleeping. After our final bit of reporting in the morning we got our stuff and waited for our taxi to start us off on our trip back to the UK. It was only a short taxi ride though as instead of getting the 40 minute taxi to the airport we got the 10 minute taxi to the heliport where we got a helicopter transfer to the airport - much more fun! We then flew, by plane, from Hanover to London Stansted and then I flew back from London to Manchester.

Three flights in one day - I have a feeling I'm not going to beat that personal record for some time...

MaFt

Make Your Segway

Well, CeBIT is great so far. I've got a bit of spare time in the press office so after writing my reviews thought I'd show off by posting this picture of me on a Segway!



One thing that has annoyed me though is Google and Blogger picking up on the fact I have a German IP address and trying to be 'helpful' by making all the text German... Grr... Luckily I've used Blogger long enough to be able to guess what the links are for!

MaFt

You're So Vain You Think This Blog Is About You

Is it just mine or do everyone's MSN conversations take bizarre twists and turns within a short time? Yesterday I was talking to Bli and what started off fairly normal (a broken car) soon turned a bit weird (poo-powered terrorists)...

Note that the colours have been changed to protect the innocent and the poor spelling left intact to protect our status as retards:

Bli says:
my car blew up on the way back to work the other day
MaFt says:
nasty
Bli says:
lot of smoke n stuff .. head gasket blew
MaFt says:
scary. did it go bang?
Bli says:
it did
MaFt says:
cool
Bli says:
on a very busy main road
Bli says:
with lotsa cars trying to go round me without getting too close
MaFt says:
you must smell...
Bli says:
nah .. prolly thought i was a suicide bomber
MaFt says:
wrong colour.
MaFt says:
but you DO have a beard...
MaFt says:
anyway, how can you be a suicide bomber if youve not killed yourself?
Bli says:
damn foiled again
MaFt says:
surel you would just be a potenial sicide bomber? in which case we all have that potential
Bli says:
a failed suicide bommber .. used the wrong fertilsier
MaFt says:
yeah, you can't just use your own poo... muppet!
Bli says:
oh rrreeeeaaalllly...?

Right, that's it for now, I'm off to Germany,

See ya!

MaFt