TRNTO

I'm going to continue to write this entry in ten minutes, McQuackers rang and said that number 77 is throwing out a purple rug..... we could do with one of them!
BEAUTIFUL.

Now to update my long forgotten blog....

We (Clare, Deano and myself) arrived in Toronto on the 20th of September two thousand and seven. We flew with BA(satards) they forgot to put our luggage on the plane , so they gave each of us $70 and said that our bags would be dropped out to John's house the next day. And they did!! Bad start, good ending ey!!!
Since the bag incident, we have found an apartment, a telly, a set of AWESOME speakers 5.1 surround sound (wha!) wireless internet, mobile telephones and one futon.
I never realised how hard it is to furnish a whole apartment. We have even measured up for curtains and assembled the futon :

We've been to gigs, Gruff Rhys. I met him, Deano took a photo, but now his camera is dead so i can't post it right now. Broken Social Scene was excellent too. Best bit: when there was a stage invasion and some arsehole thought it'd be a good idea to jump off the stage, obviously when he did, the crowd parted and he fell on his face, excellent. Oh yes, BSS also bought everyone in the room a shot of Tequila which all 600 of us drank in sync. SWEET.

That's all.

1 sound bloke + 1 arsehole = 1 super arsehole

+

=

(the bloke from Humanzi)

Things I've figured out.

Over the past twenty four years. Mark Orford has figured out some interesting things. All by himself! Some of these things have been extraordinary, some have been less interesting. Here's just a few of his discoveries.

* Color coding your cd collection is generally a bad idea. Sure it looks nice, but if your cd collection is quite extensive you might end up with your favourite cd on the lowest shelf. Meaning that it's harder to get to. Tip: put all your favourite cds on the most accessible shelf. This also means that if an emergency occurs i.e. a fire, your favourite cds can be easily rescued!

* If you're watching Coronation Street on UTV it's quite easy to skip the ad breaks! How? Easy, TV3 also show Coronation Street, but start the broadcast afew minutes earlier, possibly to attract more viewers. So if you flick over to TV3 when the ads start on UTV you've already cut the ad break in half.

* Never dry another dish again! O.H.M.I.G.O.D.M.A.R.K.H.O.W? Easy peasy good reader! Simply wash the dishes in very hot water, put them on the draining board and they'll dry themselves in only a couple of minutes! Wow!

* You're on the way home from work, you get on the train, you're tired but there is hardly any seats. Surely there is no way to get a seat!? **WRONG** In a city there are a good few stations situated within the CBD (Central Business District) So, depending on which station you get on at, look out for the person who is most likely to get off. Tip: Tourists will usually get off in the CBD so stand near them while they're sitting down, once they get up... GO! Sitting down will have never felt sweeter.

* If you're walking down the road and have a blind corner in front of you, you may well be in store for an awkward bump with complete stranger. Egg on face! No! Watch out for approaching shadows, this will give you an indication if there is someone about bang into you. This will work even better if there is a cyclist on the way!

**update**

Eating : Bread

Drinking : Water

Location : Prison

Reading : A book

Inroducing- The biggest cunt in Ireland... Eddie Hobbs!

Take a while and actually look at Eddie there.


Done?

What an absolute prick.

Things figured out. Week 2. Teletext/Aertel

Many years ago, in an age before the internet, the bbc invented a thing called teletext. It was a revelation. Until now most people would say that magic invented Teletext. Most people should read the following.....

Teletext is broadcast in the "Vertical Blanking Interval" (VBI) lines of the television signal. This is an area unused by the actual television - it has been left to give the television's electron beam time to return to the top of the screen, these days it is more historical than anything else.
This picture shows you what I mean...
The electron beam scans your television screen from left to right, then flies back to scan the next line. It actually scans every other line, doing this some 300 times for each 'field'. Then the beam needs to return to the top left to begin scanning the missing lines, or the next frame (this is known as 'interlacing'; there are 625 lines on a PAL/SECAM television (of which around 576 are 'visible'), and 525 lines on an NTSC television; there are 25 complete frames (30 for NTSC) every second, and each complete frame is built up from two fields, every odd line and every even line).
This return-to-top takes slightly more time than a simple fly-back, and this is why the VBI exists. The VBI is larger then you might expect, as it also includes unmistakable synchronisation data so each and every television knows exactly where in the broadcast signal each frame begins, and can lock on to that, knowing also when each line begins.
So, then, we have this 'blank' bit of the television signal, right? Wrong - just because the television doesn't display this part of the signal doesn't mean it is mostly junk. You can hide all sorts of stuff in there (don't get paranoid, it's mostly just boring 'test' information). One thing tucked away in the VBI is teletext. If you were to 'play' with the Vertical Hold on your television, until the picture started to roll slowly, you would see a few lines of blinking and flashing dots of all sorts of colours, towards the bottom of the VBI and above the normal picture.
Phew!!!! Who on earth would of known that such a brilliant system worked so easily! It wasn't magic afterall just sheer genius.
Teletext was the english version, after a while RTE introduced Aertel to Ireland and went "on-line" 22nd of June 1987.
My personal favourite memory of Teletext was staying up all night waiting for Teletext to tell me the Fabrizio Ravenelli had signed for Tottenham..... my wait was in vain as eventually he signed for Middlesborough (what a cunt). Feel free to leave your favourite memories of Teletext/Aertel Below.

The week in weather

Today will be mainly a mix of heavy showers and sunshine. Tomorrow will be pretty much the same as today.


In the early part of next week, there will be blustery winds which will keep the temperatures in the mid to low teens. If you had to describe it in a funnier way you would say the weather will be like Gary Glitter.

There will be no point in dressing like the man above as it's gonna be pretty much like last
week. Which is a shame.

Things figured out. Week one : What was the last Beatles album?

Was it Abbey Road or Let it be?
Let it be was recorded in 1969 and was supposed to be a documentry about the band recording an album and was meant to culminate with the bands return to live performance, however it actually turned out to be a documentary about the band fighting and generally annoying eachother. Upon viewing this material the band the decided the album and "the documentary" were a load of shit, so they scrapped it. After this they went into the studio again, this time with George Martin, and recoreded Abbey Road. Which they released later that year, 1969. This turned out to be the last Beatles album that they recorded. However! in 1970 (the band had split by this stage) they all realised that they spent way too much money on the Let it be project to simply let it gather dust. So they gave the tapes to Phil Spector, and he somehow ruined it even more. So! Abbey Road was the last one they recorded, but Let it be was the last one they released. get it? got it.

"Oh yeah, it was the end of an era"

Tim Wheeler has announced that "Twilight of the Innocents" is going to be the bands last full length album. From now on they're going to be releasing digital only singles. Apparently Ash having been getting royally pissed off with having to wait to release new material, having completed Twilight if the innocents poor old Wheeler and co had to sit about since January waiting for there record company do get up off there arses and release it.
The lead singer had this to say "We've been one of the best singles bands of the last two decades and we're still younger than a lot of bands on the current scene. I'm excited to push this claim further by dedicating ourselves wholly to the art of the single for the digital age."
So no more Ash albums eh? That's one less thing to worry about then.

First post

This is my first post of my new blog. I don't really know what I'm going to write about and i suppose this one doesn't really matter because no one is going to read it but me, and more than likely my brother, the king of all things blogworthy John.
So i think I'll leave it at that, and try and think up something a bit special for my next post.