MDF

One of my favourite building materials is medium density fibreboard, otherwise known as MDF. Over the last few weeks we have been making some progress with the house and have been concentrating on finishing the hallway and stairs. A couple of weeks ago we clad the ceiling in the hallway with oak faced MDF and it looks very classy in a kind of seventies nautical sauna way. There are a couple of light boxes recessed into it which I made with white melamine faced MDF, and they too look fab. Today we got started cladding the stairs with another very interesting MDF variant made by Fibracolour - it is basically MDF which is solid black throughout its thickness - it looks like welsh slate and even has little flecks in it a bit like you would find in slate. Going to seal it with Osmo PolyX Oil which is absolutely the best stuff for sealing wood, easy to apply, easy to repair, and pretty much bulletproof. Have just ordered a grands worth of floor tiles for the hall, kitchen, loo and bathroom. Looking forward to seeing it all come together.

Fast broadband

This is fun. Providing you have wickedly fast broadband like me and get a result like this (11906 kb per second) of course. Actually, I know I can get even faster speeds when my connection isn't being shared with the 6 other computers on my network as it is at the moment. I'll try again later on when the chaps in the office have all shut down and gone home. Do your own speedtest here... and see if you can beat me , ha ha.

Pat Rae

Pat Rae is a delightful lady who lives in a higgeldy piggeldy house somewhere behind the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill. She spends her time making sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints which she is currently exhibiting at a little gallery in Northcross Road. If you get a chance, pop in and see her - she's jolly nice and you might even buy a pot or painting or something.

Farkin Agents

I wandered past this delightful view on the way home from Sydenham woods on Sunday. OK, sure the agents are vying for business, put this is taking the piss. Isn't there a law against this sort of thing? If i lived opposite I would sneak out in the middle of the night and chop the lot down. I mean, just count them... fourteen - it's utter madness.

St Patricks Night

Last night I went to see the Cosmic Sausages do Saint Patricks night at the Page 2 pub in Nunhead. I was so full of spaghetti Bolognese when I arrived that I could barely drink my Guinness, but I persevered and after a while it started to go down quite quickly. Wasn't long before the Irish contingent started singing along and soon enough the foot stomping and shrieking started. It was a good night out, and I even had my arse felt up by a couple of old dears.

Jedi

Alison got back from Morocco yesterday, and was bearing gifts as usual. We now all wear djellabas whilst slobbing around at home in the evenings. The idea will wear off soon. Mine is black and when I put it on I feel like saying "May the force be with you". Here's a picture of Oscar in his.

Re yesterdays broken laptop: The hard disk still won't spin up.

Last Chance

A mate of mine delivered an iBook to me yesterday that was making strange noises and displaying a flashing question mark at startup. I asked him if he had a back up of the drive, because I know that sound quite well and it almost always means terminal hard drive failure. Fortunately, he had backed up not too long ago. Tried all the usual things and a few others. Drive definitely dead. So I dismantled the laptop which is a bit scary and eventually ended up with a pile of bits, about 30 tiny screws, a magnet, assorted bits of plastic but most importantly the drive itself. Fitted the drive into an external enclosure and tried to fire it up. Still dead as predicted. One last chance.. I have put the drive into plastic bag and put it in the freezer for the night. I still don't expect this to work because I don't think the head is jammed, but apparently, the freezing process causes a the drive head to contract slightly and can release an otherwise kaput disk. Will report back tomorrow.

Consolation

Am surviving thanks to a bottle of homemade Hinton Ampner Apple Brandy, kindly donated by mate Dom.

Update - 20.30hrs - Luke, who has just been to the pub, came round with a spare Guinness for me (still in its pint glass) - nice one.

Luxury

Poor old Alison is hard at work again, this time staying in the Noire d'Ivoire, a riad in the heart of Marrakech. Meanwhile, back in London, the highlight of my week was when Oscar decided to do a pooh in the bath - whilst sharing it with me and Ellie. We even had the spa jets running. It was horrible. Seriously.

On a lighter note, did you know that:

Most lipsticks contain fish scales.
All polar bears are left handed.
A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed people.

Suck On This

A Coca-Cola Campaign from the mid eighties that went horribly wrong, when someone noticed a hidden picture painted in the ice-cubes - a woman performing "an oral act". Unfortunately for Coke, the campaign was already all over Australia at and had to be withdrawn... click here to see the artwork

QR Codes

QR codes ? What the hell are they ? A QR code is like a barcode but can hold loads more information. With a simple application installed on their phone, users can take a photo and watch the code convert to real text or direct them to other content. OK, so the practicality is what? Well, quite a few things actually. Imagine, you're given a business card with a QR code on it. Snap it and all the donor's details are instantly inputted into your phone. No mess, no fuss. McDonald's have QR codes on all their food wrappers so that patrons can photo and then view the nutritional info on the phone(yeah right!). Loads more innovative uses are springing up all the time... how long til it reaches the UK (given that there are already English versions out on the web)?
You can read more here or click here to make your own.

Freebies

From time to time I pick up a few old iMacs that people don't want anymore, sometimes they are broken but fixable, sometimes they are OK for basic stuff like email and web. Anyway I have just thrown two in a skip, and have 4 left that work. I've given one to Ellie, and she is already an experienced surfer ( ceebeebies website is her fave), and she is getting to grips with Kidpix and textedit. The great thing about these old iMacs is that the mouse is small enough to fit in a kids hand and only has one button. The mac itself can be set up in "simple" mode, and for the most part you can leave the kids alone to get on with stuff themselves.

iMac number two is going to Lola, and numbers 3 and 4 are up for grabs. They are the first iMacs made - very basic with system 9, but useable..

Question is - who wants one ? Just come and get it.