thoughts, ideas, projects and musings
Archive for April, 2007
April 25, 2007 at 8:39 am · Filed under life
Today, I’m being interviewed by DeGroof for your delight.
If your income suddenly doubled, how would your lifestyle change?
I don’t think it would change my plans or my ambitions particularly, but I do think it would mean I realise them a little quicker. Instead of saving, I’d be able to do whatever I wished immediately. That would be nice.
I guess the only major change would be that I’d be tempted to buy a second property somewhere.
What was the best meal you’ve ever eaten?
An easy question. My wife and I got engaged at The Fat Duck restaurant which was voted the best restaurant in the world. (It’s now number 2). It was then inkeeping with our engagement that we celebrated our marriage with a meal for two at The French Laundry restaurant, in Yountville California - another much lauded restaurant. It was staggering : 13 courses of the finest food and best wine you can imagine. We were very well looked after and got to meet Thomas Keller afterwards. Thoroughly recommended.
Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?
At the age of 12, I met Gerald Ford and whilst at university, I met Mikhial Gorbachev. I’m curiously proud to say that I’ve met leaders of the world’s two superpowers (well, I know one isn’t a superpower now, but you get the gist)
What was the worst date you’ve ever had?
Not a fan of dates, or many other dried fruits.
One-eyed : Cyclops :: Two-faced : ?
Politician?
Thank you Steve for your excellent questions. I hope I’ve given them due consideration. And so it’s over to you :
I am also contractually obligated to post the following rules:
1. If you want to be interviewed by me, leave me a comment saying “Interview Me”.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions of my choice.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to my questions.
4. You will include these rules, and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
April 24, 2007 at 4:27 pm · Filed under digital life
Gotta love these.
These little cards, printed with your own Flickr photos and text message, are about the half the size of a business card. Moo will even add your meta data, so each can have the photo title or other information. Sweet idea, just £10 for 100 brightly coloured cards.
Click the image to get yours use this link to moocards at moo.com
April 23, 2007 at 4:26 pm · Filed under life
An office conversation went a little like this : What’s your favourite song? It’s virtually impossible for me to answer. It’ll depend on the time of day, the time of year, my mood, so much. Easier, although not without heart-searching, is to name my top 20. I’ll do that another time for you.
One criteria I have used to identify a ‘top track’, is it’s versitility. Tracks that stand up to the mauling of a cover version are, in general, good tracks. Stronger still are those tracks that seem to survive cover into a different genre. Some are even revived by the process.
And so it was that I came across four excellent cover versions in the last year or so, all of which take the original track into a new genre.
Nirvana in bigband style? Listen to Paul Anka singing Smells Like Teen Spirit
Joy Division with a chill accoustic treatment? Try Nouvelle Vague doing Love will tear us apart
Radiohead as funk? Get your head round Mark Ronson’s version of Just
White Stripes as Jazz Funk? Gotta be Joss Stone doing Fell in love with a boy.
Fantastic.
April 17, 2007 at 9:28 am · Filed under life
It struck me today what a talented bunch of friends I have.
The National Novel Writing Month competition (NaNoWriMo) is held each November with each participant attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in the month. Last time round, 80,000 people started, 13k people finished with over 980 million words in their collective novels. Two friends, Calum and k_sra gave it a go last time out and I’m tempted to try the same this year.
A university friend, Euan, is also a published novelist. I’m impressed and rather humbled by their collective talents. I’m tempted to try in November but, as Euan has already expressed, my first attempt is likely to be drivel, so maybe I should write my first novel now and follow it up with a much better effort in November?
50 thousand words? I struggle to find a 100 to write here.
*Novel Writing Friends Worldwide. The url is available if you fancy it. Picture taken by lo83.
April 16, 2007 at 8:13 am · Filed under digital life, life
Hard to argue isn’t it? Look at the little lovely!
kittenwar is an ridiculously cute website showing mock battles betwix live living kittens. Not real wars of course as I understand most legal jurisdictions rule against that kind of thing. Dudley, my black cat, has won an impressive 3057 battles.
He’s all grown up now and is still a daft pilchard.
On a related note, I’m rather intrigued by the names that people give their pets. Mine are an obvious homage to Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, but really, what inspires someone to call their beautiful little kitten “killer“?
April 15, 2007 at 1:55 pm · Filed under life
My formative years were spent in the town of Rickmansworth, close to a slightly bigger place called Watford. Of both, that’s the most interesting thing one can say. They were vanilla, plain flavoured places where one grew up but nothing else happened. It was here that I first followed football, with Watford being my chosen football club.
Nothing much happens to Watford FC too, or it didn’t until the nearly 100 years of it’s history had passed. The 80s were a marvellous decade for Watford, our yellow kit was almost fashionable.
And again, in the last 2 years, things have started to happen. Promotion, cup semi-finals, it’s all go. And yesterday we went to a semi-final. We lost of course, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.
Enjoy it as if you were there by clicking through to this youtube link. Don’t worry about the guys in red, it’s the smart chaps in yellow that you should be cheering along.
April 8, 2007 at 7:10 pm · Filed under life
Way back, when this jon was actually a geologist, I carried out a mapping exercise around Loch Buie, Isle of Mull. If that sentence made no sense, allow me to expand a little.
Before the late 90s or there abouts, if you were studying Earth Sciences at university anywhere in the UK, you had to complete a mapping exercise in the summer between your second and third years. The process was to identify a 5km by 5km block of the world somewhere, complete field research on the area and produce a geological map. The map was, in my case, also accompanied by a 10 thousand word mini-thesis on the geological history.
There were many problems with this type of project work. Your heart said “go somewhere warm”, countered by your head with concerns of cost. We were students, it needed to be cheap. Secondly, it was incredibly dangerous as one would be out for 8 hours a day, alone and in quite nasty terrain. All said, we survived, but the practise died due to health and safety concerns.
The trick too was to find an area that already had a map – yes, exactly. Nearly all the world is geologically mapped, so getting a copy of the one in already in existance certainly made life somewhat easier. You couldn’t copy it of course (that would be plagarism), but it was an incredibly useful guide.
And so, 8 weeks later, my map of the Laggan Peninsula, Loch Buie, Isle of Mull was produced and a reasonably competant piece of work it was too. I knew that area of the island intimately. No stone was left unturned (pun fully intended). Even now, some 14 years after I completed my work, I don’t suppose anyone, even the landowners, know it as well as I.
Today though, an interesting email came my way, asking questions about what I had found there and proposing a field trip. I’m delighted and scared : It was 14 years ago and even though the rocks were formed 65 million years prior, what if they’d changed? Never-the-less, it might well happen. jonthegeologist rises again!
April 6, 2007 at 5:01 pm · Filed under digital life
Only operational since August 06, Jessica Hagy’s blog entitled “indexed” is thoroughly excellent and well worth a peak. Her medium is 5″x3″ index cards and her subject matter is life.
Entertaining.
As a result of the popularity of her site, Jessica can now be found at BBC Online Magazine too.
April 5, 2007 at 3:26 pm · Filed under digital life
I popped back to wordpress.com a week or so ago and spotted the 4-column fjord template and decided to get cracking on it. It’s still recognisable as Peter Andre Jensen’s work, rightly, but I’ve made a few edits which tailor it to my purposes.
- Extra width to the content column – after all, that’s the focus
- Removed the comments from pages – they’re for me only
- Created two sidebar options, 1 for blogging, 1 for pages
- Added icons to the meta, it just looks nicer
It’s not completed of course but I’m pleased with the progress so far. If you’d like a copy, please shout. The picture is of the 12 Apostles in Victoria, Australia and so the theme edit is named.
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