This is apparently from the US equivalent of the Tellytubbies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9PqjMSNfkU

Does anyone want to come to the tummy party?

Pat

F*£king Legend!

“What the hell?” You might ask. Well, if you did then I guess you’ve never seen Kevin Bloody Wilson live, because if you’d seen him you’d know he ends up coming back to that song salute several times during a set.

You’d also know that he’s fecking hilarious!

Last Tuesday evening the Old Server Team Crew (consisting of Jimbo, Gib, Tony and myself) trundled along Saffend sea front and to the Cliffs Pavilion Theatre for a night of entertainment. And entertained we were.

After a long and taxing (for old man Tony anyway ;-) ) walk up the steps to the Cliffs, we made it to the bar to grab a nice chilled pint to start the evening off. Alas, it seemed for some reason the Cliffs figured it only needed 2 rather slow bar staff to cater for many, many beer hungry attendees so by the time I’d got served I ended up getting 2 pints each rather than one.

A quick necking later we were in the theatre itself, whereupon James revealed that he’d actually bought us tickets in the 2nd row! This was both great and worrying news:

• Great – We’d be right there in front of the action with an awesome view
• Worrying – We’d be in full “have the piss ripped all night” view

You might think that I’m being a wuss with the worrying (Yes, yes we do – Squage) but it’s with just cause: the last time I was close to the front of a comedy gig I had my face licked to death by a mental, sweaty canadian. Phil Nichol’s a frightening man.

Anyway I needn’t’ve worried as both Kevin and his support act were lovely and only ended up picking on one poor bugger who’s birthday it was (who was amusingly unimpressed).

Speaking of the support act, she was great. None other than Kevin’s own daughter, Jenny Talia (yes, Jenny Talia) was damned funny herself, following in her father’s footsteps of performing her own damned funny and clearly-not-for-kids tunes (highlight probably being “The Bastard Song”) with some great chatty bits inbetween to the great entertainment of everyone there.

We like her stuff so much we decided to buy two of her albums between us… and even got a photograph with her:

I was worried that my phone camera wouldn’t quite do the job in dim light, but as you can see this picture is PERFECT so that’s lucky!

After a short interval (and an obligatory pint) we sat back in our seats for the main event… who did not disappoint.

From “Do Ya F*** On First Dates”, through classics like “DILLIGAF”, “It Was Over”, “Five Seconds Of Foreplay” and “The Public Hair Song” to a sing-along version of “Santa Claus You C***”, Kev was definitely on form. That’s not even mentioning the great stand-up bits inbetween songs, or, of course, the ever-returning “Nigel” (who I believe is a f***ing legend).

The man himself, although thanks to the Nokia 6300 you can hardly tell…

All in all, an awesome night. It was their last date on the current tour so they’ll not be back in the UK for a fair bit, but if you ever get a chance in future, SEE THEM.

I’d not laughed that much in such a long time… we were all still laughing as we left the theatre, on the drive home and indeed I spent a good part of Wednesday morning laughing at my desk. The last bit was possibly because of the Kevin Wilson and Jenny Talia MP3s I was listening to, to be honest…

Jimbo: I salute you for booking those tickets. Tony: I salute you for driving us there and driving a drunk us back. Gib: I salute you for the awesome 5 litre barrel of joy you provided me yesterday – although that’s not really relevant to this post.

Right, lunch break over. On with writing envelopes and playing with Excel. Live the dream.

Tarrah,

Pat

Yo,

Pat’s been really busy (or at least that’s what he tells me… quite how “watching lots of 24 and Firefly” constitutes “being busy” is a mystery to me) so hasn’t had time (see previous comment in brackets) to blog anything.

(Look, if you must know I’ve been doing more than that – and not feeling at all creative enough to write anything of interest – Pat) This blog might not be very exciting then. (Oh, er, yeah, good point. Erm… best keep it short – Pat) Yeah…

Pat went for snowboarding lessons at the Milton Keynes XScape centre with James and Leanne from work, plus two of James’ mates (Becks and James “Riggs” Brown) last week. To cut a long story short:

• James, Leanne, Becks and James are great
• We had a great laff
• PAT CAN ACTUALLY SNOWBOARD QUITE WELL (ok, so it was only a beginner lesson but oddly he learned rather quickly… unlike his lame Surfboarding attempts (Hey, I got on the board in the end! – Pat) Yeah but you spent more time on your back end… (Oh, amazing work. With great wit like that you can hardly tell I’m stressed and tire-er… I mean that you’re stressed and tired – Pat)
• James, Becks and Riggs went on a huuuge climbing wall whilst Pat and Leanne watched on – both having injured themselves doing the boarding (at least that’s Pat’s excuse)
• Pat ended up on a mental bungy ball ride thing, that only that day he’d stated he’d never do because “they’re the sort of things just set up by some dodgy outfit in the middle of a carpark”. A believe the phrase “Best £10 EVER!” was uttered by him, whilst upside down about 200ft in the air (Other “select” phrases were uttered too… – Pat)
• Pat and the gang are keen to go and do the more advanced snowboarding lessons ASAP (well, aside from the two James’, as they’re already pros :-) )

Snow boarding dude and dudettes (Pat, Becks and Leanne at the end of their 3 hour lesson):

Leanne and Pat back on safe ground after being catapulted 200ft in the air:

Awesome.

Since then Pat’s been at work, a bit ill, in Colchester catching up with Gary, Sarah and Sally via the medium of curries, a mental back-garden firework display (including the obligatory “massive rocket that doesn’t quite make it out of the launcher quickly enough and explodes at the height of the house covering the entire garden with pretty colours as everyone ducks for cover” moment) and some on-air cohosting of the Sunday Hitcall on SGR Colchester… and is now back at work.

He’s pretty tired and stressed and generally cheesed off today, but he IS pleased that he’s doing a certain something tonight:

Going to see Kevin Bloody Wilson at the Cliffs Pavilion in Saaaffend.

Bring.
It.
On.

Toodles,

Squage

…they really suck.

In particular when I start listening to songs that remind me of lying under the stars in the middle of Australia… makes me wonder what the heck I’m doing now.

It’s perfectly possible for me to just sod off out to, say, NZ and just work in a hostel / for a tour operator… or who knows what else.

I mean, it wouldn’t really solve the big “Hmm, what do I really want to do in future?” question, but at least it’d be good fun and chilled.

Heheh, you know, it only seems to be Monday mornings where I start thinking like this. Not exactly productive, but hey that’s Monday mornings for ya ;-)

I might have a watch of this again to cheer me up.

Toodles,

Pat

P.S. Twas a top weekend this weekend – DJed George and Stef’s wedding reception over in Gloucester, which was hilarious fun! Congrats again you two :-D

Spooky, huh? :-)

Pat (who was definitely not bored at work at any point today)

“Yep. That’s it. I’m not longer a Systems Engineer. I’m unemployed.”

The above is what I’d written 365 days ago. Yep, it was a year ago that I quit work in order to go on the Big Adventure. To be honest, it seems like longer than that.

Not sure how I feel about it to be honest. I think I feel a little sad that right now I’m stuck in an office and definitely not heading on a plane to the other side of the world in the next couple of weeks, but on the other hand I feel really happy. Happy that a year ago, despite my feelings of concern, I did it. I buggered off around the world. And what an amazing time it was.

For the record: I’m definitely doing it again. I just don’t know exactly when :-)

Aaaannnyway, onto more recent times: in the past month I’ve been doing the following things:

• Working
  It’s been two months at my former-and-now-current employer and I’ve finally settled into the swing of things – and despite the occasional rocky day (where I wake up thinking “Aaah why am I not traveling the world right now instead of working in an office?”) I’m finding things ok. It’s really not too bad.
• Gyming
  Amazingly I’ve kept up my gym visits over the past two months – probably because I’ve been going before work and not after work (which rarely used to happen through spending the day convincing myself of reasons why I shouldn’t go). Despite the occasional bad week, I’ve definitely been doing well. I just need to cut down on eating and drinking quite so much!
• Socialising
  Lots. Gary and Sarah’s wedding (which was lovely), visiting Paul and Em (hilarious weekend in Ireland), visiting Kate and Jen from traveling (awesome weekend in Nottingham), catching up with Lev and Jess (and recording some rather amusing audio bits and pieces (more info to come on that one), to eating some damned fine home made curries round Gary-from-work’s house with some of the work lads. Photos are available in the usual place, of course.

Tonight I’m going Go Karting for free. There are definitely benefits of being a member of my gym…

Toodles,

Pat

This is going to blow the industry away. Especially that “Save” thing…

A New Kind Of Design Software

(Thanks to Pauly G for passing me the information on this valueles-er, priceless tool)

Pat

Howdy “Dodgy Sketches Of New Site Designs” Fans!

I’ve been spending a bit of time sketching out site designs for Squage.com and have finally come up with something that might just be good. Alas, its current form is that of a doodle. However, seeing as I’ve been have verbal diarrhea on this blog of late, I figured another fairly pointless post wouldn’t hurt.

So here’s the sketch:

It’s set below a sunny, grassy scene by the sea, with the content sort-of “underground” below it.

The little Squages at the top will be forming a kind of scene, with each one doing something that represents the section of the site they represent (e.g. there’ll be a Squage DJing some tunes to represent the “Sounds” section of the site).

The big Squage on the right will represent the section of the site you’re in at the moment (“Pictures” in the example above), and sits above the side bar (an “in the foreground” underground bit), with the section’s subsections listed.

It’ll be all in colour… I’m trying to go for a cartoony, fun feel to the site. It largely depends on how good I can get with CSS, I guess. Oh and whether I go mad with frustration at Paint Shop Pro 8 crashing every 5 minutes before I get it finished.

So, here goes…

Pat

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/09/28/half-workers-snooze-job

(I’m not referring to the snoozing bit, just fyi)

I’ve been looking for a Winamp plugin that actually did compression / limiting etc PROPERLY for a LONG time… and on checking out winamp.com recently, I finally found it.

It’s rather humbly called “STEREO TOOL”, rather than “FECKING GREAT PLUGIN WOT CAN MAKE YOUR OUTPUT SOUND ALL TASTY, LIKE” and if (like me) you’re a bit of a saddo and like to have your songs sounding as though they’re playing on a radio station, you really should go here and download it.

Couple it with Sqrsoft‘s very tasty Advanced Crossfading Output plugin and you’ll be laffing all the way to the bank (where you’ll take out some money in order to buy that £100 boxed set of old Radio Caroline Jingles…)!

Pat

P.S. I’m actually interested in this for some podcast / online radio ideas I’ve got, not because I’m a sad case. Well, not only because I’m a sad case…