Yesterday I travelled into Central London to go and visit the Motorexpo 2008, the world’s largest (according to their website!) free-to-visit car show at Canary Wharf, giving people the chance to see the latest vehicles from some of the world’s leading motor manufacturers such as Jaguar, BMW, Porsche, Aston Martin and more…!

I took the liberty of taking a few snaps of the event which you can see in my photography section, or see a sample of a few below;

After reading Thomas Hawk’s blog post about a new little hack for flickr which Daniel Catt put together I had to try it out for myself! It searches through all your photos and puts together all your most commonly used tags and makes a pretty and colourful tag cloud!

Here’s mine below;

If you want to try it out for yourself you can find it here.

A quick blog just to inform you that my laptop died for good on Sunday, and I’m in the process of ordering a new one. I’ll write about it properly once all is sorted, but for the mean time until my new laptop gets delivered (could be a week or so if not a little longer), I’ll be offline to an extent, ie. not on MSN and such.

I’ll still be checking my emails daily, thanks to Myles, so you can still get in touch with me through that, or on my mobile!

 So, toodles for now, more news soon hopefully!

Yesterday I purchased Casino Royale on DVD, and later that evening decided that I would watch it. Well, of course before you want to watch a new DVD, nowadays you are put through an unskippable promo about how you shouldn’t steal stuff, as it is a crime, and thus also not download movies as thats bad too…

…I wonder if the film industry has yet to realise that in order to watch said promo, you need to have actually purchased the DVD before hand, making the promo itself pretty useless, as it seems to be informing the wrong target audience.

It’s not just DVD’s though, it also happens when you go to the cinema. You go out and pay for the film and then sometimes pay a stupid amount of money on sweets and a drink, sit down and then you get greeted with a lovely anti piracy message telling you to go to the cinema instead of watching downloaded versions with people standing up to go to the toilet.

So, while watching the trailer about not watching a pirated film with someone getting up and going to the toilet, while someone is actually getting up to go to the toilet infront of you, the film industry is threatening you that they will get a crack squad of SWAT guys to burst into your house and arrest you if you don’t go to the cinema rather than watch a downloaded version… even though… you’re already in the cinema waiting to watch the film you’ve paid to watch, if you had downloaded it to watch it, there’s a pretty high chance you wont be sitting in that cinema seeing that message…

Just remember folks, next time you buy a DVD or go the cinema… remember… you should have instead brought a DVD or gone to the cinema, as piracy and downloading is bad… oh… wait a sec…

Hopefully not too somber; Inspired by my Project Management class the other day, I explored the inter-web for the chances of dying from various ‘accidents’ or ‘incidents’. Then I came across a website which gives a big long list of various ways you could have died… in America… in 2003, some of the more… random ones… follow;

Lightening - 1 in 6million
Earthquake - 1 in 9million
Flood - 1 in 11 million 
Winning the Lottery - 1 in 14million
Confined to or trapped in a low-oxygen environment - 1 in 18 million
Occupant of three-wheeled motor vehicle - 1 in 22 million
Fireworks - 1 in 26 million
Ignition or melting of nightwear - 1 in 97 million (Not really sure the causes to make that happen to be honest!)
Contact with venomous snakes and lizards - 1 in 145.5 million
Radiation - No chance of that happening!

So apparently in 2003, there was more chance of being hit by lightening, hit by an earthquake and drowned in a flood than win the lottery… but it’s good to know that Radiation wasn’t a high factor - boy is that a weight off of my mind!

Source: http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm (Numbers Rounded)

Cycestrian - cy-ces-tri-an / Pronounceation [sigh-est-ree-an]  / noun.
–noun 1. a hybrid of a cyclist and a pedestrian. 2. someone who travels either by cycling and walking

So, first things first, cyclists. Now, the last time I looked, bike lights are avaliable from many stores, Halfords for one, yet it would seem that 3/4 of the cycling population in Kingston have never even heard of them, let alone purchased one. Here’s my thing, driving along a road at night, and coming towards me, in the distance, is a shadowy figure floating towards me. No, wait a second, its a cyclist… with no lights. The amount of times I’ve come across someone riding a bike at night on the road with no lights is ridiculous. Now, with being only 30mins from Central London, you can expect the roads to be busy at pretty much any time of the day. Now to be riding a bike with no lights at night in Kingston is completely insane.

Now, its not like Torquay where there is 1 cyclist per 10,000 people, here it seems more like 9,999 per 10,000 people. (Well, that maybe a slight exageration - but you get what I mean). However, when you do see the lonely Torquilian cyclist, at least they have a light so they don’t increase the risk of death, whereas here they seem to have a death wish.

Now, onto the other half of the cycestrians - the Pedestrians. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a pedestrian myself obviously, but when you are walking behind slow walking people I just want to scream and/or punch them. It wouldn’t be as bad if they walked slowly to one side of the pavement, but its never that simple. Its normally in a large group of people all huddled around taking up 110% of the pavement space, the only way to get past is to walk onto the road and get hit by a bus.

But, it’s not just people who are walking in the same direction as you - but also people who are walking towards you. Again, in a group but also as simple as a couple or a trio of people, who seem to think that you are able to simply walk right through them as they fail to work out that if they are already filling up the pavement, they have to move in to let someone past. Arrrh!

Merry Christmas everyone! I can’t believe it’s this time of year again - it only feels like Christmas was 10 months ago or so! What? IT WAS!?!?!

Hmm, well, must be a time zone difference thing. Either way, its Christmas! Or - atleast there are some people who think it is… Let’s set the scene, November 1st, the day after Halloween, and we go shopping at our ‘local’ supermarket - Harris Teeter, and the first thing we notice - Christmas products on sale! Now, we think its a bit early, but we go along with it…

Today however in the bookstore on campus, they were playing music from a radio station, and, nevertheless, they were Christmas songs. It’s November 5th I would like to add. It’s a bit strange, but again, we go along with it… buying a few campus t-shirts and such with Christmas songs on in the background… its all good.

When I got back to my flat, being bored as always, I could either do work or do nothing. So, I decided on the latter… after a while I decided to check out the same radio station’s website which was playing in the bookstore. What do I find? Christmas songs - all weekend. They’re even playing Radio Jingles saying stuff like “Wishing you a very Merry Christmas K104.7″. Even while I write this, ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’ is playing in the background.

The question is. When is early, too early?

Yesterday we went to Discovery Place here in Charlotte. It’s like the Science Museum in London if anyone has ever been. Anyways, the building was split up into different exhibits, mainly being about, the body, physics and such, illusions, a rainforest area, and the main part being all about Movies! The movie part was a featured exhibit which is going around the country, whereas everything else is pretty much standard. The ‘normal’ stuff though was pretty good - some piccies in the gallery of course!

The movie part had costumes and props from alot of films, such as Pirates of the Carribean, Star Wars, ET, I,robot, Titanic, Indiana Jones to name a few. Pics below, and more in the gallery of everything from there!

From left to right, Indiana Jones, Keira Knightley’s Dress in Pirates of the Carribbean, Catwoman

From left to right, I,robot, I,robot Drawings, Star Wars

Find more photos in the Discovery Place album in the gallery by clicking here

But no! It wasn’t over just yet… we could also pay a little extra to make and appear in our own ‘movie’. So, we did, along with a family. There were a few sets and we basically were all given mini acting parts in each to tell a story… watch it below!

OK, it was a couple nights ago, but I still remember part of it vividly. For whatever reason I’m back at school (Westlands that is), but obviously it doesn’t look like Westlands but some big castle or something, as buildings and such always look completely different in dreams - even though - I knew - its was Westlands… anyway, I was there with my mates, and Mrs T organising some sort of party or something, anyway, for whatever reason I suddenly have to go feed my cats. Now, I don’t have any idea why they were at school, but hey, I went and picked up thier food bowl, put food in it, but when I put it back down I squased one of my cats… The reason is because for whatever reason I was dreaming that my cats were like spiders, the size of spiders and everything, andso when I put the bowl back down, I accidently put it onto of one and squased it… yea…

 So that was my amazing crazy dream. Other than that I’m here surviving through what would seem to be an insect bite every hour… well.. not that much, but I do keep geting bit everyday by a couple! Damn them! But, everything is going fine, the majority of our lectures are ok, one may be slightly of concern though, but it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes…

This weekend we’re all going to the mall on Friday, a Car show thing at the uni on Saturday and then an American Football game on Sunday! So, theres no rest for the wicked!

As promised I’ve put some pictures up in the gallery, click on each folder to see other pics, then click on each pic to see a larger version! I’ll keep putting more up as I take them!

What?!?! Who!?!?! Why!?!?!

 Yes, you arn’t dreaming (or having a nightmare - which is more likely in this case) - this actually is a new blog post! YES! Brand spanking new! I can’t really believe it either! (Well, I can, cause I’m writing it….) ANYWAYS! This one is gonna be short and sweet, I’ll post another one in a few days - honest(!)

 The reason for the lack of posts, the last being 2 months or so ago… is, well, I forgot the password - how foolish of me. Yes! There is a lost password button I could have - and did press! However, it regenerated a new password and emailed it to my email address - but, since updating the site .com address a couple months back all of that email was getting lost and I could do was change my email to my hotmail one… simple right? Ha! Not really, Kingston Uni was blocking the ports I needed to access the admin area to change the email to get my new password…. so… I’ve been helplessly lost - waiting to come back home to change it! - Which I have! Yay for me!

 What? Why didn’t I change it at easter when I was home… er… I forgot?

 Anyways there’s loads to talk about… America, Exams, Ending Uni (the 1st year anyways!), ABC1!, and er… there is other stuff, I just can’t think at the mo!

I’ll write about that stuff (or atleast some of it) in the next post… but for now I just remembered I should read Myles’ blog as its been out a couple days! (I expect some cross promotion from you aswell Myles - AHEM) hehe….