Back on the Flickr Memory Maps group again, an interesting discussion cropped up that discussed how buildings like the Whitehouse and other buildings that the US government considers sensitive.

Check out this photo which centers over the Whitehouse.

Fortunately should you wish to see what the White House looks from above for whatever nefarious or otherwise reasons, why not check out The Eyeball Series, a collection of of detailed maps of locations that the US government would rather you didn’t check out too closely…in case you’re a terrorist or something.

Bookmark to:
          

BBC - Derby - Features - All change at American Adventure

This stou almost made me cry. When I was 19 and in need of money after the Amsterdam fiasco, I decided that i’d always fancied working at local theme park The American Adventure, so I got myself a job on the rides department. Ok it was no Alton Towers, but it had decent rides like the Missile and a BIG Log Flume and Rapids…and various other rides which while not as excellent as the aforementioned ranged from fun to utter poo.

I have paticularly fond memories of speeding the octopus upto dangerous speeds whilst playing hard acid techno over the PA, until I nearly got rumbled and stuck on the ultimate shame for a week, the junior pirate ship ride (8 hours of this screaming child hell contraption was pure torture), that and the Vintage Car Ride…aaarrgghh.

Eventually I was granted the trust of drip-nose moustachioed supervisor Dave, and got the big pirate ship ride everyday, and soon learned how to give perpetual 15 minute rides by pressing the stop and start buttons quickly at the highest point of the ride.

The place was filled with nymphomaniac 16 year olds, and baseball hatted chavs, and they were just the staff. The scutters that would fill the queueing systems every day made you wonder at the gene pool sometimes.

Such nostalgic ramblings lead me to the article I discovered today.

Visitors to the American Adventure theme park, near Ilkeston, are likely to notice some changes this year - three of the park’s biggest rides are being closed: the log flume, the missile and the rapids.

It’s part of a re-branding exercise by the park which is aimed at encouraging younger families to visit the site.

OH MY GOD!! They are losing the only three really good rides they had. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but if I were to make a choice about what theme Park I’d be taking my (not oo distant) future family to, it would be a choice based upon the fact that there would be some banging hardcore rides I could go metal on while my kids were on the kiddy rides.

Mr Lloyd refuted the suggestion that closing some of the popular rides would actually make the park less attractive and said aiming at families was very much the park’s new strategy: “We’re trying to keep the family unit together. We’ve found that 15-to-18-year-olds don’t want to be on a day out with their parents, they want to be out with their mates and there are plenty of attractions suitable for that. We’ve decided that we are not in the white-knuckle market.”

Fine well, don’t expect mew to bring MY young family when i get back to the UK.
Though given that I knew just how many of the ride attendants were off their faces on whizz and e’s all day when I was working there, I’m not sure I’d fancy taking them anyway.

Alton Towers it is then.
American Adventure RIP

Bookmark to:
          

A very Happy New Year to my blog users. Well some of them anyway.
Happy New year to Lenka, Sideshow Dan, My neighbours Are Hoors, Tim in Japan if you’re still there, Chris in Singapore, and everyone else who reads and comments. My new years rez is to begin posting every day, but with the baby coming I’m wondering whether I’ll have time…or whether this will turn into a gurgling new father thing..who knows.

My first 6 months on here were full of enthusiasm, my 6 months were somewhat lacklustre not helped by the adminship of ajarnforum.. I want to get this place sorted and regularly seen again.

My greetings do ot extend to the various spam merchants who have forced me to switch off comments (for the time being), and have used my blog to increase their page ranks on google in their affiliate programmes for viagra, online poker and varous other things that most people do not want to see. I have now sorted it so that all comments with a url attached must be approved by me first so although I will still get them my blog os not embarrassed by them actually showing uyp anymore. A big newyear fuck you to the asshole who just posted 400 comments in one day. Horrible people.

Bookmark to:
          

There are 600,426,974,379,824,381,952 ways to spell Viagra

It looks like spam will never die all the time that this is true. A detailed analysis on the different ways and tricks that one can spell the name of the little blue giver of erectile strength

Who is this idiot who keeps filling up my comments boxes with this viagra spam?? Or is it some kind of crazy viagra robot?

Bookmark to:
          

Trainspotting blamed for UK flops

The success of Trainspotting did “a lot of damage” to the British film industry, star Kevin McKidd has said.

It also did a lot of damage to my mates, who sarcastically quoted the movie as thy chased their first fire breathing lizards. It wasn’t a pretty sight 6 months down the line. Although, I can never truly blame a film for the actions of a few individuals, it brought heroin to the forefront of many young peoples’ minds and it came right at that moment in the party scene when smack was just emerging as a very popular subversive way to chill out after a night out on E.

The rave scene gave young people a new view of drugs, a million miles from the ‘Heroin Screws You Up’ campaigns of the 80’s, government films about heroin addicts on toilets, which in someways, Trainspotting was almost a parody of.
There’s
a scene in Trainspotting where the old world meets the new world in a club in London, and this gave the film it’s uptodateness, otherwise it could have been set 10 years before, well, that and the soundtrack, Lou reed and Iggy Pop aside!

Heroin had been the last thing on most people I knew, it was all about the pot, e’s and whizz. The notion to buy Heroin was at the bottom of our mind, when all of a sudden this film comes out and suddenly it’s a viable alternative to some.

Oh well, I never went there, some did and it screwed them up - heroin is it’s own punishment I guess, and it was a bloody good film….

Bookmark to:
          

New Doctor Who Series On the BBC Will NOT Feature The Daleks

This is an utter disgrace! For those of you unfamiliar with veteran British Sci-Fi series Dr. Who, the Daleks were the all-time classic enemy of the time-travelling Doctor. Resembling studded pepper pots with sink plungers coming out of them, the Daleks were infamous for their high pitched cries of “EXTERMINATE”.

It seems that the estate of the Dalek’s creator has fallen out with the BBC over production control rights, with accusations that the BBC wants to make the Daleks “too evil” (as if they were all fluffy in the first place.) At the other extreme they didn’t like the BBC’s plans to produce a sketch involving ‘Gay Daleks’.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks that Dr Who is bigger than this silly argument.

Reinstate the Daleks at once!!

Bookmark to:
          

Wired News: E-Vote Printers’ High-Stakes Test

I’m not one to bang on about US politics. There are far more people that know and give a flying feck about it more than me, however, what is the deal with this e-voting? On the basis that the last US election used dubious technology to “elect” the current idiot in office, then why are people complaining about these bloody machines having to have a paper trail so that there is someway to track fraud.

Come to think of it what’s wrong with a hand counted ‘X’ on a bit of paper like most other countries in the world? I guess it wouldn’t make such exciting TV..

Bookmark to:
          

Why do all these goddamn plugins for movable type never work the first time I try them. I follow the instructions to the letter. I put all the right alterations into the script (it’s not that much, just 2 URLS and a path to 1 file,) and then stick it in the plugins folder. So why on that left side of the screen can’t I see a photo? It’s not like I screwed the URLS up because the div tags are blank where the output is supposed to go…wtf is going on….sorry rant over…I’ll find some dumb shit to keep you amused now….

Bookmark to:
          

They were all trampled to death when the horses broke out of the corral
Six children
Sixty hooves
+
‘Ah quietly axplode, unremarkable.
and Ah say to she
from tha soun echoin down tha
chamber: murdah murdah murdah
an then she turn to me
in tha belly of tha camp…’
+
W(I)e have gun and tha
gun holds the me by my
hand, sayin ‘everything
you have be(lie)ved is a ___.
And every lie you breathe ‘neath
(y)our eye bleeds into this dusty sky’
+
An tha gun looks me in my eye
with it’s smokin’ pupil an says
‘it’s time to die’.
+
There has always been
an us in me
as sure as we… she opens my mouth
and out pops a little gun
there is a dragon in your dream
she wears on her skin
perfume
and out pops a little me
through the skin of both of you
there are two
where there is one
and I have come undone
+
‘Ah ask her why she gotta go
and she smile
and tha black of tha gun is rubbin off
on her thigh
and Ah see the gun’s got her by her black hair
the stuff ‘tween her legs
an tha gun disappear up there
she says ‘where are you?’
‘where did you go?’
she lookin at me like she
can’t see me…
she can’t see me
we’re not here
the I in me
the we in her
the hour is dead
the camp is still

Bookmark to:
          

Central shopping centre in Hatyai is a typical Thai department store, full of dull unimaginative designer labels, cosmetics, and shoes, and wifey Kan loves it. She’s immersed in it right now. The one saving grace is that the store has is the book and stationary shop on the 3rd floor. In this little oasis is a single free internet computer with a broadband connection and a coffee shop which does wicked mochas. So that is where I am right now, and for one of the very few times in my blogging career I genuinely have NOTHING better to do.

The music’s shite, the browser’s old, as in it can’t even run Gmail, and the monitor is the size of one of those early TV sets….ok it’s 15″, but I’m so used to 17″ that I can’t get my head around things looking right in 800×600. Oh well, I’m getting dirty looks from some chinese looking child who probably wants to play on Sanook.com so better go I suppose.

Bookmark to: