» DIY Techno-hacks

Improvised Etch-a-sketch
Take:

- several GPS satellites in geo-synchronos orbit
- one GPS unit that displays where you have been
- an 8 metre Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB)
- twin 50hp Mariner outboard motors
- three bored blokes

and, most importantly,

- Plymouth Sound on a calm day.

With all this kit, you too can draw a rudimentary cock and balls on the GPS screen at 35 knots.
(Fri 21st Aug 2009, 15:01, More)

» Nightclubs

The Ettiquette of Dealing With Wankers
"We're going to a club in Cardiff for New Year's Eve" my dearly beloved announces.

"OK", bit of a trek from London I think, but why not.

"By the way, it's a gay club I used to goto with the boys", my dearly beloved faghag continues.

"Um, Ok" - I'm not gay, I just don't get it, I don't emotionally understand why some blokes find other men attractive, but live and let live.



New Year's Eve arrives, and we get to Cardiff, a historic city, full of culture, and pissed up Welshmen and women, who seem very similar to their counterparts in pretty much every English city.

We arrive at the club, which is heaving, and meet up with her friends. All is good, and I easily get to the bar and grab a beer, mainly because most of the people there are off their tits on class As.

I have a few more drinks and visit the toilets, still early in the evening, no problem.

A few more beers, and an hour later I revisit to find the gents packed.

The urinal trough is fully utilised with blokes wanking each other off.

Now it's a gay club, they seem to be consenting adults, all seem to enjoying it from a cursory inspection, and it would be none of my business apart from one pressing problem. Four pints of beer are being quite insistent that I need a piss.

I'm bemused by the ettiquette in this situation, it is something 'Debrett's Guide for The Modern Gentleman' is curiously reticent about, especially given it's target audience, but I digress.

Working on the basis of discretion being the better part of valour, I return to my group of friends, and ask a club regular, Matt, where you find a loo if you actually want to use it for the intended purpose of micturition without becoming overly friendly with a group of E'd up bears.

Matt tells me to follow him, and we return to the original gents.

The scene, which would have caused heart failure in many a moral crusader, or brought back happy memories to a number of Tory MPs, hadn't changed.

Matt then bellows out:

"RIGHT YOU BUNCH OF WANKERS, GET OUT THE WAY, SOME OF US JUST WANT A PISS!"

It worked in terms of getting some room, though I did have to dodge the result of someone getting too excited next to me.

Turned out to be a top evening, but it was probably a good job I was 5 or 6 pints down at that point as I think I'd have been far too uptight sober to relax.
(Wed 8th Apr 2009, 15:11, More)

» Festivals

World's Slowest Mugging
A dry Glastonbury, some point in the mid 90's.

A couple of years after graduating my group of friends finally had the money to do festivals with a small degree of comfort, before falling into the money pits of property ownership.

We had a nice little camp site setup on the Thursday, tents in a circle with an awning and tarpaulin in the middle, for some where to sit out of the sun or rain.

I woke up early, and wandered off to get a coffee, returning to find my mate Rod skinning up. Result, the sun is shining, I'm not in the fucking office, and I'm in the middle of a field sharing a joint with a friend. Life is pretty good.

At this point my morning took a turn for the slightly odd.

A couple of young blokes wander up, dressed as if about to enter a 'Thieving Scally of the Year' competition - crap trackie bottoms, expensive trainers, and baseball caps not being the fashion of choice for indie kids at the time.

"Oi - what are you doing on our groundsheet?" they asked, revealing themselves to be denizens of that legendary citadel of moral rectitude, Liverpool.

Rod and I calmly suggested they were mistaken, given we owned it, and engaged in some light hearted banter.

One of the scousers got bored and wandered off, at which point we realised there were a good dozen of them within a hundred yards. The other northern monkey had taken offense to my having been sat down.

"Get Up"

"What?"

"Get up so you can fight me!"

"Nah, I don't want to fight you" - this guy was 5'6", I'm 6'2". I have no interest in getting in a fight with anyone.

"Get up or I'll kick you up" - I stand up, and then sit down again. Rod and me are pretty damn calm, but I think it was down to the couple of spliffs we'd had by that point rather than natural cool. The lack of reaction isn't helping our case.

"Come on, I want to fight you" - the bad scouse stereotype then pulls a knife.

"I don't need this knife to take you" - he throws the knife away. At this point I'm considering taking him up on his offer, I have six mates and their partners in the surrounding tents, but there are still a dozen scousers nearby, and it would be a really bad idea.

"Nah mate, fancy a smoke instead?"

This continued for a while, until he finally twigged I would not fight, so he changed his approach.

"Got any money, give it to me and I'll go away" - great, we now have the world's slowest mugging.

"We don't have any money, sure you don't fancy a smoke?"

"You must have, give it to me and I'll go"

At this point Rod chips in, "Here's a fiver", which is grabbed with haste.

Instead of departing immediately, our guest gives us both a hug, apologies for his behaviour, and claims he'd taken a bad 'E', and then disappears.

So I feel I have empirical evidence for using the term "Thieving Scouse Bastard" as this is the only time I've been mugged.
(Fri 5th Jun 2009, 15:05, More)

» Stuff I've found

My Uncle's Ring
My uncle, let's call him B, was always going on with stories about stuff he used to get up to back in the day.

At one point he worked as a freelance security consultant for a small company known as the Oakenshield Partnership. Anyway B spent quite some time away from home somewhere over east, and by all his accounts he got into some quite hairy adventures - he keeps threatening to write a book about it, but it's all so far fetched I can't imagine anyone would want to read it, especially as he's considering the rivetting title of "There and Back Again".

While he was away he found a plain gold ring, although he is a little hazy as to how he came by it. I have to say that it has to be the jammiest find I've heard of.

He's now getting on a bit and decided to retire, moving to stay with some old friends, and he kindly gave me the ring as a parting gift.

Anyway I must go, as a old mate of B's is about to drop by for tea - he said he had some info on the providence of the ring, which could be interesting, and I haven't seen him for years so it'll be good to catch up.

I'll let you know if it turns out to be worth anything.
(Fri 7th Nov 2008, 12:35, More)

» Tightwads

Another Tight Bank
Back in the days that the UK had a financial services industry, I found myself working for a consultancy who despatched me to a client in the wilds of Newcastle that sounds like Northern Crock.

It was the strangest place that I've ever had the misfortune to work, mainly due to their penny pinching nature: -
- we were not allowed to make phone calls on land lines, as any call in excess of 50p had to be investigated by the departmental manager. As southerners, any call was likely to breach this limit, so it was forbidden.
- we were not allowed to use mobiles, as client staff weren't allowed them in the office (wonderful, no phones at all then during the day)
- we had an ancient LaserJet 4, no suffix, that celebrated its 10th anniversary of manufacture with us. This thing only printed 1 page per minute. We were there to produce 100s of pages of documentation that had to be printed.
- paper was carefully rationed, as the stationery budgets for each area were closely monitored. God help us if we took a ream from the wrong cupboard.
- the drinks machine dispensed vile ersatz coffee for the princely sum of 15 pence, apart from half an hour in the morning and afternoon when it was FREE. This led to the entire floor of over 100 people queuing up for its dubious delights.
- we were forbidden the use of the internet, on the grounds of cost. This is fine, unless you have a team of a dozen consultants who need to confirm their flights/trains back to London, who are also denied the use of phones.

This was all penny pinching at its finest, as they would have been paying my employers in excess of 10 grand a week for our services. I truely hated that client.
(Tue 28th Oct 2008, 13:59, More)