Gnarly Dude

After a weekend of surf lessons, I can now speak 2 words of the language, Gnarly and Dude. I'm still not sure what they mean though. Surfing it turns out, is not quite as easy as it looks. Of course there is the whole balance thing, which is, simply put a bitch, but there is the whole movement of getting up. It invloves dragging out a board, hoisting yourself up on it (and falling off quite a bit), paddling, then doing a kind of press-up (at which stage, falling off is again an option) and then a squat to get standing (during which, falling off is always a good option). This is absolutely knackering.

After about 3 hours of this, I was starting to get the hang of this. I could get up on the board (by this, I mean go from standing in the water beside a board to lying on it), catch a wave (yes, probably the wrong term, but get the surfboard to move in on a wave, its not easy, a whole load of paddling involved), and get standing. However 3 hours of this meant that I couldnt use my arms for the rest of the weekend. Even my drinking arm was suffering.

Well, maybe standing is a slight exaggeration. Getting to the press-up then the kneeling was proving ok, with less falling off than I had at start. I did manage to stand, but usually for about 2 - 3 seconds, and then it was just long enough so that I could fall on my arse from a higher position into shallow water.

Gnarly.

 

Floating

Ok, I tried this whole isolation tank experience, and yes, it was a bit lonely. So what was it like?
Well I was shown to a room with an isolatin tank and a shower, the guy left and basically you shower and then get in the tank. The tank is like a decent size kids paddling pool, with about a foot deep of water in it. The water is full of salts which are meant to be good for your skin (I do have a glow about me today, though that could be the radioactive Indian I had after) and also allows you to easily float on the water. The water is also at body temerature, so you dont actually feel it.
A lid over the tub completes the kit, which you close, switch off the light and lay there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing (music switches off after a few minutes) and feeling nothing. This goes on for an hour.

So what do you do? Well I found internal debate to be interesting. A decent ethetical debate on utilitarianism versus hedonism. As in, its like a public bath, the utilitarian view is that I shouldnt fart. The hedonistic view, farting would relieve pressure and bring me happiness so I should. It is an ethical dilemma. Any one want to help? Mail Me. By the way, for thouse of you who guessed, 90% of you were wrong.

Other than that, what is it like? While in the actual tank it is very relaxing, just lie there and daydream. For me it felt like I was continually moving, spinning clockwse and then like going down a waterslide slowly (theres not enough room to spin round, and unlike the episode of the Simpsons the tank did not move).

Where it really got interesting was when the hour was up. When the music started again it was very disorientating. Opening the door was weird. For about two hours afterwards, I was fairly spaced out, You feel disconnected from your body and distracted by everything. The nearest I can compare it to is that its like an acid trip without the hallucinations.

Definately worth it. I'll do it again.

And they cant park either

Reading today in the Times, apparantly men are more intelligent than women. In a report to be published in the British Journal of Psychology, men on average score 5 points higher in IQ tests than women.

In the IQ tables for people with an IQ of 125, there are twice as many men as women scoring this high. By the time we get to the 155 level, there are 5.5 men for every 1 woman. Sorry, for the women reading this and wondering where the other half went, this really means there are 11 men for every 2 women.

Am I going to get my arse kicked for this? Just quoting what I read. Not saying nothin'

Floating

Well, I posted about floating before, and yes, I could link to it, but could I be bothered searching through the archives of the utter crap I post?
Anyway, I am back in Newcastle and this time I was able to book a session in an isolation tank. If you were really interested you could check out the place I'm going to here. Or you could read Cons and search through his archives of the crap he posts. I seem to remember him writing about a guy who spent days experimenting with LSD in an isolation tank.
No LSD for me, no sir, in the words of Begby "I wood nae poy son me bodah wi' tha' shi'". Just good clean healthy floating in some one elses bath water for an hour.

The next one good idea

I may have had another one. Looking now for investors and parnters in this enterprising scheme. Any takers email I_like_pyramid_schemes@3br.net for all the info

Gone commercial

Since the one good idea bombed, this blog is now going to make me millions. So content related adds. You can now buy Gainfords? Did I just pimp myself out?

Happy Birthday to Me

My blog is one year old tomorrow. Cards, good wishes, and presents in the form of large sums of cash can be sent.
Party? Yes of course. Read the Free Beer post.

A weekend in London?

I may get to spend this weekend in London, instead of moving house like I would, well not prefer, but need to get done. Since Gate Gourmet sacked a few people (well ok, in the region of eight hundred), Brittish Airways cand serve that rather tasteless airplane food any more.
And have cancelled all their flights.
Which is now affecting other airlines using Heathrow.
Where I'm flying out of today in a few hours.
Ok, a rather oversimplified version, click here for the full story, but I really dont want to spend a weekend in Heathrow.
It hasn't hit Aer Lingus yet, and I guess RyainAir will fly anyway, probably with a load your own bags policy but it is spreading. Come on Aer Lingus, keep your flights going until about 6.26 tonight. Oh, and have the 6.25 to Cork leave on time.

Ah well, going to Heathrow soon, which I am sure will be pleasant with the crowds stuck there since yesterday.

So I dont blog enough

For the 1 or 2, ok, 1 person who thinks I dont blog enough, I think today is proving you wrong. So stop after this, and savour the moment. Dont read any further. Save the next few for a later day. And enjoy. Although you can skip ahead and read the Free Beer one.

The One Good Idea(tm)

It would be great if we could have that One Good Idea (tm). You know like the guy who invented ring pulls. Or the genius who decided that wheels on luggage might be a good idea. Perhaps not. Luggage on wheels might be hard to patent. The guy who invented velcro. The game tetris (though he didnt copyright it). The little obvious thing, that we take for granted now, but the guy (or girl, though probably guy :) who invented it is now sitting back on the piles of cash. The guy probably called Dyson who invented the vacuum cleaner that doesnt loose suction. Perfect example
Well i've had my one good idea. I'm sure of it. Its been staring me in the face for ages now, and i am going to make a mint. May have to break a few laws to get it to work, but then what are the laws of physics and chemistry to an inventor to be such as myself.

And what is it? Did I not learn from not patenting my Chocolate Monaghan Man? Well, I was in the hotel, ironing shirts, moaning for the millionth time that I hate ironing shirts. The hotel room had a trouser press and I thought why the hell couldnt it have something to do my shirts for me as well. And there it was, staring me in the face, an automatic shirt ironer. I'll make a mint. There are thousands and thousands, perhaps millions of men out there who wear a shirt to work, and most of them hate ironing. Here we have it.

So I started to think about it, how would it work? Well a trouser press is 2 hot metal plates that press the fabric between them. Now as this is getting 4 layers of fabric (think about it), and shirt would only have one, could we get away with one plate? So if we got the shirt over a hot body shaped device (yes, I know my body is hot, thanks) would that work. It would need to fit different sizes of shirt, so an inflatable one. I planned to test this weekend with a few of the long sausage shaped ballons, but to move on to a stonger rubber (somewhere between beach ball and car tyre). Inflate it with hot air inside the shirt to a reasonable degree of pressue (not too much, we dont want the shirt to rip as mine does when I flex my muscles - quit sniggering). Also, since the shirt would need to be buttoned up, we can add that extra layer of lazy git to the sales pitch. Just pull off your shirt, no need to unbutton it, throw it on the floor, wash it if you're feeling energetic and then throw it over this device, hit a button and a few minute slater put the shirt on. Genius I though. I am going to make a mint.

So I decided to search the internet for some details on ironing. Would this work, do we just need a warm suface. Would I be better using a porus material for my inflatable device and perhaps pump small amouonts of steam through it (trick with shirts if they're not too badly crumpled is to hang them in the bathroom while you shower, the steam will smooth them a bit). I was on to something here. I knew I had it all. The idea, a good chance my device would work, and a market. Hotels have trouser presses, and my market is all men, often rich business men, and men who hate to iron. The ultimate present for that lazy git in your life. And my market is women as well, no longer would men like me set high up on their lists of criteria for the perfect women as some one who can and will iron my shirts.

http://www.siemensappliances.co.uk/swf/dressman/dressman.html

Allow me to say how much at this stage I hate Siemens.

Yes, my idea, with a bit of research and expirementation would have worked. Patents alas were not to be pending. The fortune was not to be mine

Free Beer*

Yes, I am giving away free beer*. Please feel free to leave a comment detailing your preference in beer and I'll see if I can arrange it. And now does one get this free beer* I hear you cry? Well I imagine I hear you cry, alcoholics the lot of ye, I'm sure you're all salivating as you read this. Well it's easy, you open a box and take your beer*. Simple
Goes like this. A number of boxes in my appartment will have the aforementioned free beer in them. Simply pick up this box (probably on the weekend of the 13th and 14th of August) can carry it to my new appartment / house. unpack everything and put it away, except for one thing. The beer, no need to put it in the fridge, take a seat, open the beer* and enjoy.
See free beer*. How nice am I.

* Subject to terms and conditions. Applicants must be over the age of 18. People with heart conditions, bad backs or any other whingey complaint need not apply. My appartment is up 4 flights of stairs and the boxes will be heavy. People who open the box and take a beer without first carrying the box to my new gaff and unpacking it will be treated to the best kicking available in Cork. Also free.

Feed Me

At last, under much pressure from the thousands of fans of this blog, ok, well one, Conor asked me to, I have set up RSS feeds. http://feeds.feedburner.com/gerry or http://gainford.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

RSS, it seems, stands for really simple syndication, and if you have a reader, it will tell you when I update this page. No need to check the page (as I'm sure you all do on a daily basis) to find I havent posted anything in weeks. Today like waiting for a bus, the 3 posts come at once.
Also, alot of sites have feeds like news, the lunchtime blog etc, so you can keep up to date with a load of sites easily. For more info, search for "RSS" or "RSS Reader" in your favourite search engine. I'm not recommending any search engines. I'm still waiting on the royalty cheque from the last post.

iPod Sucks.

Well, not really, the iPod is still cool, and way up on my list of favourite toys, along with my horse riding Barbie i have had for like forever. But the headphones suck. Really suck. Those little trademark white earbuds that come with an iPod are crap. They are uncomfortable unless you keep the covers on them, and the covers tend to fall off a dozen times a day and you eventually lose them. Also the sound, well its not great.
One argument is that well, they're free. No they bloody well aren't. I paid quite a lot for my iPod and that included the headphones. Its like saying the battery is free, so its ok not to supply one. Imagine waking up Christmas morning to find Santa Claus the old git, had a bit much whiskey and forgot the battery for your iPod. Apart from anything else, you cant buy batteries down the local 24 hour Esso, its an internal Apple one.
Well, the headphones are as much a part of the iPod as the battery. Without them its not much use. Face it, unless you have some way to connect it to your stereo (the leads or fm transmitter required do not come with the iPod) without headphones its no use at all. So its part of the package, and if its going to be expensive (as it is) should the headphones not match the quality of the rest of the iPod (except the battery, which though I have the 15 hour one, is still not great compared to the competition).
Its like buyiong a new Porsche 911, with expensive rims, to find that the tyres are old remoulds, very near bald that leave you sliding all over the roads. A car is no use without tyres and if I buy a top end one I expect top end tyres. Well with the top end mp3 player I got headphones which are more suited to been given away free in a pack of cornflakes.
Ok, enough moaning, its still really cool.

I can see your house from here

I've been messing about with computers and such for a year or two now, and it takes at this stage a fair bit to raise my interest. The Creative Nomad Jukebox a few years ago (one of the first hard disk based MP3 players - iPod type thing) was one. The Apple iBook was another. The colours just looked cool. Mostly though, I install things and get them to work, rather than being an end user and dont get that excited (though I did when I finally bought an iPod).

And then there was Google. Google (who are not paying me for this plug - donations are gratefully accepted by the way) have just released a Beta version of Google Earth.

Basically Google Earth is a program showing a satellite image of the Earth. It also gives you the option to fly in and go closer, zooming in on any part of the earth to view satellite images. Zooming in closer, you can (on the cities where they use better pictures) zoom in on the houses, and see your car parked outside. Any closer and you'll be able to see the git trying to break into your car to steal the iPod you left on the front seat.

Now this in itself is pretty cool. Its alot of satellite pictures, but I guess it does break down to just number and clever manipulation of images. Where it really gets good is the list of options on the bottom. Show roads, places to stay etc. There are no roads shown for Ireland yet (as us culchies havent got that far advanced yet), but it has major potential.

Your house looks like this....



And then there is GMail, the google mail. I've started to use it a bit, and I have to say its great. The grouping emails by conversation, the archiving, the google search are all great. The front end is fantastic. When writing a mail it even starts to fill in addresses for you. For web based email, I have to say its the best I have seen yet. Not to mention the 2.4 gig of space you get.

And finally there is Google Ad Sense. Which I may have to put here :) I'll make a fortune. No, its content related adds, so you find that when you are emailing some on, the adds that appear on the page are related to the content of your email. So when your mail conversation is about diving, the adds are for dive equipment (you thought I was going to say something else there - didn't you) or if your emailing about a trip to Philadelphia you get adds for hotels there, car rental etc.

So there it is, my homage to Google.