Scoville Units Unite

On Saturday, a friend and I attended an event which was an afternoon of polo and then a meal.

Anyhoo, the two amusing things prompting the title.

Firstly posh portaloos. They had hired the poshest portaloos I had ever seen. The sinks were bowls on a raised dais. They had motion sensor activated taps. To dry your hands there were no paper towels – only small disposable towels to be dumped in a bin and presumably washed afterwards. You don’t see these at T in the Park.

Anyhoo we then retired to an afternoon of polo. A game I had never seen played before. I can’t imagine why I played football as a kid. All you needed was a ball between 20-odd of you. For polo the entry-level requirements are a bit less – 2 horses and one of the eight of you to have access to a flat marked out area the size of three football pitches.

It was quite fun to watch for the first half, got a bit boring towards the end, but that was due to the play rather than the game of polo itself.

The commentator was highly amusing, some of the phrases that I remember were:

Joe’s riding Sue hard from behind to stop him playing with Bob.

And he’s just stepping down to examine the horses girth…and seems happy with it

The game was Scotland vs South Africa so hearing And you can know that only the white man is allowed to do that sent a shiver down my spine a bit even though they were referring to the jersey colour.

There was a meal afterwards. Starter was excellent on the second attempt (fish was first), the sweet was an amazing cheesecake. The main was cold steak with a large blob of fat in the centre. All in all a fun day and it was all free for me so I’m not complaining at all.

I have no idea who she is but I like her style

Games Workshop, in their infinite wisdom have re-released Space Hulk.

It’s ordered and now I can’t wait for September. It was suggested this was to renew the copyright by releasing it again.

In that case, I can’t wait for Hero Quest and Warhammer Quest which would be re-released in the next couple of years.

i finally managed to see Rob Deb‘s comedy show. I couldn’t manage the past two years but after seeing the stuff in SciFi Now was more determined to go. Being on earlier made it easier too.

He was really, really funny. Lot’s of nerdy material, references but also stuff non-geeks could get related to his attempt to appear on Britain’s Got Talent (but not the drivel on this show).

I did a search and eventually found his MySpace page. So he loses geek cred for having that as his only online presence, obviously. Was highly amused by a review I found.

Read what this cock has to say.

I could just imagine similar.

As a feminist, mother in law and lesbian I did not appreciate the comedy of Roy Chubby Brown.

Or the like.

Guess what, comedian is targeting his audience by saying it will be lots of geek humour, if you don’t know who Captain Kirk is you probably shouldn’t go along as you will probably be sitting there with a glazed look on your face you numpty.

Rob mentioned overhearing some people looking at his flyers and saying meh, it’s probably about capes n’ shit.

So hopefully he will still be kicking around next year and I can see him again.

Before Rob I also saw two other comedians.

The first, an Australian was ok, he had some good material but a lot was related to lols England sucks at cricket compared to Australia etc. Not only has it been done to death before but no one really gives a shit about cricket in Scotland. His other material was enjoyable though with his sperm test tale being very funny.

The second of the pair was pretty good. His stage persona was just verging on being more enjoyable than funny but his material was really good. Excellent on stage, ditching the mic and just going without.

These were free shows so at the end the comics had a whip round to pay for extravagances like food, rent and the like.

Looking at styles for a blog, a friend liked the Green Trilobita theme by Trilobita.

They wanted the palette changed to blues though so I made modifications. I couldn’t see any licence, but assuming it was GPL‘d I’ll put the modifications here.

I changed the following files:

Footer.php

Added text Colours modified by Alan Graham to show I had modified it.

Style.css

#left ul

border: 0px solid #00CCFF;
background-color : #00CCFF;

#left ul li.backLava

background-color:#0099FF;

#left ul li a:hover

background-color : #0099FF;

#sidebar ul

border: 0px solid #00CCFF;
background-color : #00CCFF;

#sidebar ul li.backLava

background-color:#0099FF;

#sidebar ul li a:hover

background-color : #0099FF;

#header

background-color: #00CCFF;

#footer

background-color: #00CCFF;

h3

color: #66CCFF;

h2 a:hover, h3 a:hover

color: #66CCFF;

.post

border-bottom: 1px solid #66CCFF;

#sidebar #searchform #s, #sidebar2 #searchform #s

border: 1px solid #66CCFF;

#searchform2 #s2

border: 1px solid #66CCFF;

select

border: 1px solid #66CCFF;

#commentform fieldset

border: 0px solid #66CCFF;

#commentform input

border: 1px solid #66CCFF;

#commentform textarea

border: 1px solid #66CCFF;

.commentlist

border-top: 0px solid #66CCFF;

.commentlist li, .commentlist li.alt

border-bottom: 0px solid #66CCFF;

blockquote

border: 1px dotted #66CCFF;

.day

color: #66CCFF;

ol.commentlist li

background:#00CCFF;

I had been moderately excited for the new Alice movie.

I just watched the trailer.

What the hell is Burton doing with all this ridiculous CGI? It looked appalling and out of place. Never mind that most of it was completely unnecessary, bah. CGI works if it blends in to the film, if it adds details but doesn’t stand out. All the grognnards complain about the remastering of Star Wars, what made it bad wasn’t that it was restored and remastered and cleaned up but that CGI was dumped in (and that Greedo shot first, obviously). It jarred against the style of the film and also made the rest of the film look dated. The previous remastering where they mainly cleaned up the print was a welcome improvement.

I had been looking forward to it, but don’t know if I should even bother now.

Amused today to read about some cretin who claims to be allergic to wi-fi.

Of course it will be no surprise to know the rag source of this garbage is the Hitler supporting Daily Mail.

Of course if such a claim were true the DJ would be in luck, with a profile and a paranormal ability he can go for the Randi $1million Challenge.

Given that previous claimants with similar abilities have not been able to tell when wi-fi signals are on or not his chance of winning is low, but surely it would make his illness bearable to live off a million dollars?

On a trip to the Ferry on Saturday I popped into Aitkens Wine. Looking at their vodka shelves I noticed 3 bottles of Blackwood Vodka.

Yoink.

I had a bottle before after searching for a few years and it was gorgeous. Later spotted some in a wine shop in Edinburgh for £20. Thought sod that and now managed to score these for £16 each. Seeing as they are now in administration I will need to keep one but one was opened Saturday night and was as good as I remember. mmmm.

Spent lunchtime today looking at the rumours of the re-release of Space Hulk

Rumoured Space Hulk contents

this is obviously exciting as if it is successful it means Games Workshop might look into re-releasing Hero Quest/Advanced Hero Quest/Warhammer Quest.

Speaking of Hero Quest, found a new free gaming magazine with a short article about it here – Irregular Magazine. No new information for me but good to see other people talking about it.

I have only briefly glanced at the reports on the death of Harry Patch, the last surviving British trench soldier from World War One. (One sailor survives: Claude Choules)

The reports have mainly went on about the war he fought in and ignored his insights into the situation.

Which is a shame, as he had wise words to say on the war

On a graveyard in France

Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war and I find it incredible that I am the only one left.

He described war as the

calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings…war isn’t worth one life.

Of course this is in stark contrast to Butcher Haig who callously sent thousands to their death due to his stupidity, lack of respect for human live and inability to understand that sending people over an open field covered in mines towards a machine gun isn’t going to work.

The fact that he has a fund in his name for surviving soldiers is a travesty of irony.

It is of course one of the reasons I avoid wearing a red poppy and every year buy a pack of Peace Pledge Union white poppies to sell on behalf of the Dundee Coalition for Justice Not War.