The recipe is out of one of my bazillion cook books called Roti. The games at 4 o’clock so were eating about 12 ish then heading over to Firhill. 

Any way, here are a few random articles that caught my eye this week;

How to pet a kitty, from Mathew Inman of The Oatmeal – Comic Genius.

Some Geek eye candy: Star Wars swimming costumes…

Finally, 3D printing with Lego.

So what’s been happening..?

Well Wales didn’t win the 6 Nations last season but the Ospreys did win the Magners League so that’s something. We celebrated 1 year of marriage in July. We’ve been to Canada to visit my wifes distant family and drive a 2011 Model Ford Mustang 5.0 GT Convertible (AWESOME!) and Gibraltar for my cousins wedding. We’ve decided to move to South Wales as soon as we can. I’ve pre-ordered Call of Duty:Black Ops (excited) and the cat has learnt how to jump up on the table (not impressed). Oh, and a Tory/Lib Dem ‘constructicon‘ type government got into power.

So whats going to happen…?

Loads of stuff. On the cheap. Without taking any more time off work until the new year. That’s correct. I’ve used all my holiday days and spent a fortune over the summer.

We have a couple of rugby gatherings, a Halloween night out (dressed as Iceman, Maverick, Goose, Viper and countless ladies in US Navy whites), Black Ops coming out, Autumn Internationals, Christmas, Snowboarding in the Highlands and all sorts of other shenanigans, like learning German and learning to play the guitar.

Finally, I’m going to try to keep my rants to a minimum. Unless someone really annoys me…

It looks like France are going to win the championship and rightly so. they have played consistently well and been cool headed through out the tournament.

Talking about consistency (or lack of), quite a few people I have spoken to have commented on the consistency of the refereeing this year. I don’t mean the sort of comments hurled at the TV after 5 pints of the good stuff either. Now granted, the losing side will piss and moan a bit about the refs decisions but you must start to wonder when your friends who support the other sides agree that you git a bum deal…

It also seems that the refs coming under fire all seem to be southern hemisphere refs. We all know that the southern hemisphere play a different style of rugby and everything is policed a bit differently but considering they all fall under the IRB then their shouldn’t be any difference. Now I know that there are about a billion Laws the refs need to know and if they were to enforce them all the game wouldn’t move along or be half as exciting, I just feel that there is such a difference in what each ref chooses to enforce that it seems a bit, well, amateurish.

Of course the roots of Rugby Union are set  in the armature game but international test rugby is not armature any more. All the clubs have changed the way they work to welcome the professional era. Players get paid a decent wage, sponsors are queuing up and funding is ploughed back into grass routes. So why does none of this seem to happen with match official?

The answer is ‘it does happen’. Refs have training camps too and answer to the IRB. In my humble opinion, the IRB aren’t asking the right questions of the refs. They are to busy making new laws to change how the game works to make it more exciting and pull in more punters. The problem with this is that if they don’t sort out the quality and consistency of the refereeing then the new followers coming through will be confused when a team is penalised heavily (yellow or red card) for  an offence in one game yet gets away with it in another with a wrap on the knuckles or isn’t even challenged about it.

Basically, sort the reffing out please. K? Thnx.

So I was happy to stumble across this by The Sandy Ravage. He doesn’t like boosters either. So when he finds these cretins he makes it his mission to spoil their game. Watch the videos below and check out some of his other videos for some great MW2 tactics. Cheers Sandy!

I have decided to do the same and I call on all you out there who enjoy a good fair game of MW2 to do the same. Watch the videos, learn the maps and their hiding spots and hunt them down.

**A booster is a cretin who spoils matches for everyone else by grouping together with their cockroach friends, in a hidden corner of the map and kills the others over and over again until they get the max score or a nuke. Both end the gamebut helps them ‘rank up’. There is no skill in boosting and it is a selfish act. Naughty boosters, naughty.

The Highlands are celebrating the best snow conditions in ten years. So we thought it would be rude of us not to venture up to Aviemore and check it out.

We left Glasgow at 5 am, setting the auto-cat-feeder with enough food for a hungry elephant. After picking up our hire gear, getting parked up and changed it was 10.30. We were at the top of the hill, ready to tear it up. Except we couldn’t see further than 50m at a push. The low visibility also made the start of our run appear uphill. It was a tad weird when we started to slide ‘up’.

The weather soon cleared and it was turning into a bluebird day. At about 11 we watched a successful world record attempt as more than 200 skiers and snowboarders set the new record for the most kilted skiers/snowboarders going down a piste. Unfortunately 2 snowboarders fell across the line in front of the 300 or so people gathered to watch the event. Yes, they were true Scotsmen.

By lunchtime and the wife and I had negotiated  Coire Cas,   the Gunbarrel, M2, Day Lodge and  Ciste Fairway to name a few.  My boots didn’t quite fit so my feet kept cramping up. The trip back to the hire shop was a trek so I decided to tighten my bindings and live with it.

By the afternoon we had our favorite pistes pegged and managed to get a few more runs in the glorious sunshine before the train closed. We headed off to the house we were staying at to meet up with the rest of the crew and exchange stories of landing mean Tomahawks and crazy 1080 triple BigMac Super Airs.

The snooker table wind break...

We stayed at Inshriach House, a fantastic  Edwardian Shooting lodge that has been restored and given a slight Alice in Wonderland feel! After abandoning the car in the snow outside the house (we had to dig it out in the morning…) we headed for the local pub for some great grub.

I was soon nodding myself awake thanks to the 4am start and the mountain air. We retired to the house and I slept like a log.

The drive back the next day was steady and pleasant. It was interrupted only by lunch in Pitlochry. Another early starting, long distance, adventure barely under our belts and we were already planning when we could do it all over again. The cat, at least, was glad we were back in sunny Glasgow.

I thought I would be writing about Welsh victories over the French this week but alas it was not to be.

You see umbrellas annoy me. The concept is admirable: a foldable, personal cover to keep the rain off you, but somewhere along the design of this simple contraption, the devil took over and designed the evil rain stick we have today.

 Lets discuss the basic idea behind an umbrella.

• to shield you from the rain.

So to shield a person from rain, it must be in between the source of the rain and the person. Simples…

Heres whats wrong…

First problem: Rain does not always fall straight down. Rain falls at different angles.

• In the first picture ‘perfect rainfall’ is assumed. The numptey will spot the sheep and avoid it.
• In the second picture ‘normal rainfall’ is assumed. The numptey cannot see the sheep and an embarrassing situation is but moments away.

Ok so you are unlikely to bump into a sheep on the high street. That sheep could be any thing: another person, an open manhole, a starving orphan or even the Labour candidate for Glasgow East. None of which you would want to meet, pointy umbrella end first. 

Second problem: The width of the umbrella is typically bigger than a person.

• In the first picture (viewed from above) two numptey approach with umbrella and plenty of space. They will pass unhindered, smugly thinking their umbrella is more superior.
• In the second picture (also viewed from above, keep up) we see a more ‘real life situation. 3 numptey approach each other on a pavement. There is insufficient space on the pavement for the numpteys to pass each other.One of them will end up on the road.

Third problem: The edges of an umbrella come to eye level and are pointy.

• Umbrellas come in many different shapes and size, styles and quality.
• All of them seem to have pointy bits of metal at eye level.
• At best they have a little plastic cap over the end of this pointy bit of metal.

Something this difficult to use and withe ability to blind, should require a licence.  But it doesn’t. They are available to every one. What is worse, the people who choose the umbrella as their prefered method of keeping rain off their heads have the spacial awareness of Maureen from Driving School, the compassion of  Herman Goering and the manners of an irate Italian. This is a scary situation folks. Whats worse is that they come out in numbers. Hundreds of them, all meandering aimlessly in the rain, head down, ignoring the screams as their devil stick collects eyeballs like the monster from Jeepers Creepers or Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. I don’t like umbrellas. I’ll stck to my hooded rain coat.

It perks up your day, comforts you if things aren’t going your way and warms you up a bit. A generally pleasant experience. Of course there are times where you would imagine that a nice hot cup of tea would not be available: 

A war zone for example, enemies around every corner, bullets flying and planes dropping bombs. Yet the British Soldier always has what they affectionately called a ‘Brew Kit’. The basic equipment and ingredients to make a hot cup of tea.

Whilst climbing a mountain then. Hanging off a cliff, thousands of feet up, getting buffeted by snow and ice propelled by high-speed, deathly cold winds. Surely a nice hot cup of tea would not be available up in these ferocious conditions? Not so. Mountaineers can buy a hanging stove, that locks on to your cup to make you a nice HOT cup of tea.

In space. Floating miles above the earths atmosphere, weightless and trapped in a tin can and unable to have a decent cup of H-O-T tea would be horrible. It was so horrible that an ex NASA astronaut has invented a special cup for tea and coffee so you can enjoy your brew in orbit.

You may have  noticed the emphasis on the word  HOT here. You see, I was curious to see where you could get a nice H-O-T cup of tea. My first though was my nearest branded high street coffee company who run the Deli at my work. Less than 20 meters from my desk. A coffee machine, tea bags, full fat milk, semi skimmed milk, skimmed milk, sugar, sweetener, cups, stirrers and someone to mix it in all the right quantities. Things were looking good. Until I got back to my desk and took a sip of my not so nice TEPID cup of tea.

A nice H-O-T cup of tea is available whilst hanging off a cliff or whilst in an active combat zone and even in space. But it is not available from a branded highstreet coffee company that run my works deli. So no, a nice hot cup of tea is not always available.