Category Archives: General

Coo, what a lot of stuff

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I have been very busy over the last two weeks or so. I won’t go into detail but I would like to thank Becky and Dave for a lovely housewarming and birthday party that they had last weekend. I made my own burgers to cook on their BBQ and it was all jolly good fun. I also went to see Pirates 3 this week which I thought was very swashbuckling. It was almost as good as this video found by Colin:

Pirate video

Don’t let the song get stuck in your head!

I went to the Brake Road Safety Awards on Friday evening with work. The company that I work for won an award for our risk management product which I thought was pretty cool. Nothing like drinking on company expenses.

I am going to have a Pimm’s party. It is called Pimm’s in the Park and will be on Saturday 11th August at 2pm in St Andrew’s Park, Bristol. Everyone is invited, just bring along a picnic, some chums and a bottle of Pimm’s!

A week of busy

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I sit here hot and restless. The weather is threatening and I am sure I just saw some spots of rain on the glass of the window. I feel like my life has turned into a whirlwind of busy this week yet I can’t pinpoint why. I look back to when I last blogged and realise that it was only last Friday, yet even this seams like an age ago.

I have visited my parents, met up with Lauren who is a friend from high school and now works in the same hospital as my Dad, been bowling – a sport that I definitely need more practice at, done a five mile walk over Cannock Chase, ate in multiple restaurants, been to the gym twice, wrote two Facebook applications on their new Facebook platform, washed the car, visited the Festival of Nature in Bristol and many other things besides.

Successful bowling is very much a combination of skill and luck. Dad was surprisingly good at sending the ball down the alley to remove all the pins in its path. However he did manage to slip over while showing off and cut his hand. Stuart, my sisters fiancé, had a quietly accomplished bowling technique while my aunt managed to get the ball into the gutter 99% of the time. The other 1% was when she got a strike halfway through the second game.

On Thursday I visited Casa Mexicana on Zetland Road in Bristol. A subtly themed Mexican restaurant with bored waiting staff greeted James, Jacky, Ross and myself as we chose a table by the window. Our drinks order was taken three times by three different waiters although we couldn’t complain when it arrived – the sangria that Ross had ordered certainly had a kick to it. The food was spicy and good although I think they were a bit stingy with the rice that was served with my Chimichanga.

Facebook is a social network site that began with American college students and has now rolled out across the world. Last week they released Facebook Platform, a development API allowing programmers to connect to and produce widgets for Facebook. I have created two Facebook applications this week. The first allows users of PleaseGetMe.com to display their wish lists on their Facebook profile page. The second, LifeKarma, allows you to give good or bad karma to your Facebook friends – and lets them retaliate. Your karma score is shown on your profile and you can even access a graph of your karma rating over time. If you have Facebook then please give them a try.

I have signed up to Last.fm so if anyone else is on that then add me as your friend :)

Is anyone going to the QFC party in November? I was thinking of getting myself a ticket but only if others are going too.

Flying the flag for Serbia

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The coming of the summer months, note how I didn’t say weather, is marked by another round of euro-ballad-pop-rock music from artists that no one has ever heard of. Eurovision has always been a night to take the mickey out of other countries as well as our own pitiful entries.

My Eurovision weekend was spent in the company of my good friends down in Exeter where Roz organised an exciting party in the house of Reagan, Dave B and Damo. I was allocated three countries that I had to support, as well as the UK, which were The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania and Belarus who did surprisingly well in the competition by coming sixth overall.

I think this year more than ever the political voting spoilt the competition. Eurovision has always been a bit susceptible to national bias with Greece and Cyprus being the main culprits over the years. However with the introduction of the Eastern Bloc and Balkan countries into the EBU it has become far more prevalent. It was laughably easily to predict the set of countries that were going to be gaining votes. I would be willing to bet that it will be these same set of countries that rank highly next year. Not that I am a sore looser or anything.

Our entry, a cross between Steps, 5ive and Eurotrash, with stunning chorography and deeply meaningful lyrics came a joint second to last with France. Not only that but it also managed to set Damo’s surround sound amplifier on fire with acrid smoke pouring out of it by the end of the performance.

Roz bought the most amazing burgers from some farm shop near her flat. They tasted gorgeous and I am very jealous that they have such a fine purveyor of burger goodness so close to them. I think at the weekend I will have to go to the delicatessen on the Gloucester road for meat treats.

It was also great to catch up with my friend John (Prom) who has been absent from my life for a good number of years now. He is coming to the end of a philosophy degree at Exeter so good luck to him in the coming months.

Oh, Serbia won Eurovision – much to Becky’s dismay as she had to drink from The Cup Of Europe (a bowl of sparkling alcoholic fruit punch) whenever they were given 12 points

Here’s to a great weekend, it was nice to catch up with everyone again.

Cheques and chapters

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This morning I rang Albany, my uninsured loss recovery company, to see if I was ever going to get the cheque for £150 that they told me they would send me to cover my policy excess from the car crash last year. The nice lady told me that they had received the money from the third party insurer on Thursday and that the cheque was in the post.

I arrive home this evening and lo and behold the cheque was there waiting for me. Huzzah.

And so ends not only a rather annoying chapter of my life but also an otherwise uneventful Friday.

Gravatar enabled blog

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I have just enabled Gravatar on my wordpress blog after having seen the little icons on Petite Anglaise‘s site. If you leave a comment on this post (using my site, not Livejournal or Facebook or the other sites I syndicate this blog with) you will see a little icon appear next to your name like this: . This is your Gravatar and you can customise it by going to the Gravatar website and registering your email address. It then follows you whenever you comment on any Gravatar enabled website.

I have also turned on a few more wordpress plugins such as the ability to share a post with others through various social bookmarking websites or even by email. There is also a new subscribe to post feature which will, after you have left a comment, email you to tell you that someone else has left a comment – this is optional.

I am also thinking of including my twitter feed somewhere but I am not sure how long I will keep using twitter.

The incompetence of insurance claims

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Almost eight months ago a Canadian national, on holiday in the UK, crashed into the back of my old car – writing it off. Today, after many phone calls and emails, I have been told that the claim is closed and I have won. I get my policy excess back (£150) and also get to keep my three years no claims bonus. Yay! Why this took so long to sort out I will never know. I think the third party insurance company was just stringing us along hoping that we would give up. I also get the impression that my uninsured loss recovery company only ever did anything when I rang them up and pushed them into action. Hopefully I will get my cheque in the next week or so.

The whole process has left me feeling quite exhausted and it doesn’t really feel like I have acheived anything other than a bucket load of finance on the new car.  I think insurance companies should be given a maximum amount of time in which they are allowed to do certain tasks, especially when in this case it appeared to be such a clear cut claim.

Advance notice: Charity walk around Westonbirt Arboretum

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Hope for Tomorrow, a Gloucestershire based cancer charity, is holding a sponsored walk around Westonbirt Arboretum on Friday 15th June from 6.30pm. Their aim is to continue to raise funds toward the Mobile Chemotherapy Unit launched in February. Entry is only £3 for the short course (2.5km) or £5 for the long course (5km) including entry to the arboretum. There is no minimum sponsorship amount.

I hope to attend myself if I can find a few people to go with. Let me know if you are interested, it is a very worthy cause.

Queen Convention 2007

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Well well well, that was one of the most exciting Queen Conventions that I have been to in many years.  Thank you to everyone who made it so much fun. I have already put my photos online here:

http://gallery.durrans.com/v/queen/conventions/2007/

We were a little unimpressed when we first drove up but that feeling was very quickly quashed once we had got into the swing of things. Friday night is a complete blur – I blame it on the vodka. Pam had these “know your limits” badges. Gavin and I found that our limit was about half a bottle of vodka each. I thought that the Friday night disco had a really good selection of music compared to what is usually played. My belt wasn’t very effective so my jeans kept needing to be hitched up – especially during the breakthru train.

On Saturday we went out for a meal in a pub opposite Pontins. The place looked a bit naff from the outside but when we got in it turned out to be a really nice place. I had a gorgeous fillet steak that melted in the mouth and finished up with a lemon brulee that was to die for.

The Saturday night was pretty good, we all dressed up with bunny ears to fit in with the Easter theme. I really felt that I knew and could talk to lots of different people this year. Everywhere you looked there was a friendly face. I also got to meet some new people so that was cool as well.

By the time Sunday came around I was pretty tired but still really enjoying it all. I adjudicated the scavenger hunt that I had organised and that went really well. We are going to try and do that again next year. I also think, based on an idea from Becky, that a Blue-Peter style ‘make’ competition would be great as some of the cardboard scale models of Wembley Stadium circa 1986 that were created by the scavengers were truly inspired.

Gabriele made us a lovely spagetti carbonara for dinner and then we all dressed up as fairys to celebrate Fairy’s birthday. I had run out of vodka by this point so moved on to the on-tap scrumpy. I got pretty damn drunk on Sunday evening but it was all good and I had fun ;)

Great convention, great venue, same again next year!