Archive for January, 2008

Romanian Child Slaves Freed in Slough

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

A gang of Romanian child slaves were freed today in Slough. Smuggled, into Britain, working in slavery as pickpockets and slaves the little urchins were freed in a daring dawn raid. Poor sods; fancy having to live in Slough !!!

At least Gareth McCleary managed to escape.

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Break Dancing News

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I hear that Forest have signed Gareth McCleary from Bromley FC. Untried at the professional level he played for England Colleges Under 19s scoring twice in the 7th European Tournament for Youth & Amateur National Teams in Italy in 2006. Gareth has also played for Oxford City. Bromley signed him from the mighty Slough in January 2007.

As part of the deal there is a sell-on clause included and Forest will play Bromley in a pre-season friendly at Hayes Lane.

A far cry from the days when we bought the leagues first one million pound player, Trevor Francis.

My guess is that he’ll mature into a great player then we’ll sell him on to Spurs, that seems to be the way of the world these days.

Either that or he’ll go on to join strictly come dancing….

The Tomb

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

F. Paul Wilson’s The Tomb introduces the character Repairman Jack and is an absolute cracker of a novel. Jack repairs things, not your toaster or your car, but any injustice that is beyond the reach of the law. Featuring a lost amulet, an ancient curse and a horde of Bengali demons, in The Tomb Jack must put more than his life on the line to save the ones he loves.

If you like Steven King, you’ll love this (Steven King is president of the Repairman Jack fan club). Soon to be a major film The Tomb is a roller coaster of entertainment. Hop on board, I guarantee you’ll enjoy the ride.

And all I am is wired

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

I just watched 5 hours of season one of the HBO show The Wire back to back. A damn fine series. The Wire has got to be in the running for greatest TV show ever.

The show has the texture and pacing of a novel and is set in the city of Baltimore. Reaching levels of realism never seen before in a cop show (a lot of the actors actually came from the streets) it knocks programs like The Sopranos into a cocked hat.

Each season focuses on a different aspect of urban life. Season 1 focuses on the battle between the police and the pushers, Season 2 the plight blue-collar workers, Season 3 the political scene, Season 4 the school system and in the fifth and final season the press.

With brilliant acting, storyline and characterisation, it is as much a social commentary as a cop show. All in all the show can only be described as a masterpiece. Go watch it.

As an aside, Dominic West who plays McNulty, was born in Sheffield.

New York Cheese Cake

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

Posted by ShoZu

Coming soon to Greasy Truckers Party Food.

Psi Power

Thursday, January 10th, 2008


Levitation, levitation, levitation….

© Calvin Ternent 2007

Full Metal Hawkwind

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

I just stumbled on this on You Tube. Hawkwind’s Assult & Battery/Golden Void as the backing to a Full Metal Alchemist video. Bizarre. Then again it should keep both me and Calvin happy for a while.

With two main characters in Full Metal Alchemist having a surname of Elric, a track from The Chronicle of the Black Sword might have been more appropriate. Any excuse to listen to Needle Gun again. Well Jerry Cornelius was an aspect of the eternal champion, as was Elric. A good enough connection for me.

The Feed Is Freed

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

RSS Feeds are a useful way of keeping tabs on changes to websites and getting information on a variety of topics of interest to your screen without the need for trawling through a myriad websites. A bit like the internet equivalent of fast food, without the fries. There are many ways of subscribing to and reading feeds. Some browsers, such as Firefox (or my browser of the moment Flock), have the ability built in. However by far and away the best way of accessing RSS Feeds is to use an aggregator (a.ka. RSS Reader or Feed Reader).

For the last couple of years my aggregator of choice has been FeedDemon. Easy to use it is widely held to be the best of breed when it comes to bringing you your daily fix of RSS Feeds. I just learned today that Newsgator who own FeedDemon are making it available as a free download. Bah humbug, if like me you already paid the piper to subscribe, whoopy doo for everyone else.

Give it a whirl. Now it’s free there’s no excuse not to.

FeedDemon can be downloaded from http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx.

Another interesting freebie from Newsgator is Newsgator Go!. This allows you to read your feeds on your mobile phone and is synchronised with the feeds you add to feed demon. This is available for Blackberry, Java Mobile Smartphone (including my Nokia N95, huzzah) and for Windows Mobile. Windows mobile phone owners can also get it to play streaming video and audio too. To get this go to http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NewsGatorGo/Default.aspx and click on the aproprate free download link. Sign in with an existing newsgator account, or create one if you’ve not already got one. You’ll eventually get asked to accept the software license agreement. Accept this and an e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address you registered. Open this mail and get a link you can type into your phones browser. Do this and you can install the application on your phone. Enter your Newsgator username and password when asked on your phone and as though by magic your feeds will appear before your eyes in miniature. Fantastic. So now not only have you got internet fast food, you’ve got it to go to.

Blogged with Flock

One HD Format To Rule Them All

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Following on from Warner’s announcement of switching exclusively to Blue Ray, New Line Cinema, has announced an immediate switchover to the Blue Format. Not too surprising as it is owned by Time Warner, which is the parent company of Warner Brothers.

New Line Cinema have the Lord of The Rings and Austin Powers series in their portfolio. So that’s Austin, Dr Evil and Gandalf joining Bugs & Mickey in the blue corner.

Yeah, baby, yeah.

A Search Engine is Born

Monday, January 7th, 2008

The public alpha version of Wikipedia’s search engine Wikia Search became available today. Following the same philosophy as wikipedia, this search engine is community-driven and open-source.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has stated that Wikia search will attempt to transform internet search bringing transparency and openness to search results. Currently internet search is dominated by a few large companies operating under a cloak of secrecy with virtually no accountability for how results are served up or pages are ranked.

Note that at the moment Wikia Search didn’t manage to find any references to any of my blogs (The George Lite Zone, Greasy Truckers Party Food, Coded Languages or Stroll On) when searched for. Obviously they must be veiled by the cloak of secrecy. Still, it is only the alpha version of the engine, so I’ll give it a chance for now.

To use this search engine the URL is http://alpha.search.wikia.com/. The main page for Wikia Search is http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia.

Tip: If you’re a Firefox user you can add Wikia Search to your list of search engines by going to the wikia main page then clicking on the dropdown list of search engines. You should then have an option to add wikia search to your list.