Pie Chart, Pie Chart

Woooo Millionaire!!!

Well whatda know? In an event more surprising then Manchester winning the super casino thing; I myself have just won a competition. I am now the proud owner of £1,000,000.00! {One million Great Britain Pounds} .



Now you may be slightly doubtful of this at first, but I assure you its all completely kosher. Its a competition/promotion set up by The Coca Cola Company, where by 20 people win "£1000,000.00{One million Great Britain Pounds}" each. And despite never having drunk a Coca Cola in my life; they've just e-mailed me to say I've won this random promotion.



You might like me be wondering how Coca-Cola have managed to have a £20 million pound give-away promotion campaign that, I at least, have never heard of before.



But if you think about it each of us 20 lucky winners, will be telling everyone we know (See I am already), so Coca Cola still get promoted. Only thing I don't quite get is why it wasn't a promotion requiring to say, buy something of Coca-Cola's first. All my talk about my massive money fortune will only encourage people to use e-mail more, as I was actually chosen "by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 29,031,643 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet."



In fact re-reading that it does seem a little fishy. And why exactly would Coca Cola have to join forces with the British American Tobacco group for this promotion? They're only mentioned once in the e-mail, but apparently its a joint promotion thing. I mean I've never smoked tobacco either, and I'm not aware of any obvious Smoking/ coke connection, does Coca Cola now have nicotine in? Or perhaps there's a new Coca Cola flavour cigarette. Either way, neither is mentioned in the e-mail, which if they existed would be a bit of an oversight.



I did wonder if BAT are just there for finical reasons. On the face of it Coca Cola should have no problem raising £20 million, I mean they have enough to spare to build a Prize/Promotion Award Department and name the road its on 'Coca Cola Avenue.' Unless of course that's just a happy coincidence; They were looking around for office space, and had the choice between Coca Cola Avenue and Pepsi Rules Road.



But all may not be so financially secure for Coca Cola. They may have been able to afford the re-naming of a road, but it would appear that they don't have enough for some spare e-mail addresses. The pour people running this promotion have to just use free email accounts because Coca Cola won't shill over the money for them to have @cocacola.co.uk addresses. Heck Coca cola won't even splash out for a proof reader, or even computer spell check it would seem. I'm not sure I can accept this randomly assigned prize from a company so clearly with financial difficulties.



Especially as their money situation is bound to get worse. Although the competition is meant to have had only the 20 winners, they appear to have sent it to 50 e-mail addresses. And those e-mails all begin with the same letter too... I think some idiot might have accentually contacted all 29,031,643 people telling them winners...



pfft, I'm not going to be the only fool left out, I'm sending my details to "winning_claimsagent001@yahoo.co.uk" asap. Wooo! I'm going to be a Millionaire!

Whats the password?

The university Library has just installed a barcode swipe system, where by you're not allowed into the building unless you wave your library card at a scanner. Which seems to me a little over protective; they've always had some turnstiles to stop people from running in or out and some security system system to stop people stealing books, but now they want to make sure that only university students are in there.



Now I could be wrong but I suspect that the people of Lincoln have much better things to do with their time then sneak into the university's library and look at the books. Most kids of a troublesome ilk won't decided that for laughs they'll go and look at some academic books they're not technically allowed to see. And as you can't actually borrow a book without a card all you could previously do was look at the book inside the building. Which hardly seems a massive security threat; library's aren't exactly the hang-out of choice, and reading a book inside isn't that bad surely?



Then again the security around here does seem to be a bit over the top. The changing rooms in some shop here (can't remember which) has three separate locks on the doors! Three? One wonders who complained that one lock wasn't enough, and then also requested a third because they didn't feel safe with two. Which seems to be paranoia in the extreme, especially considering there's a huge gap under the door large enough for any idiot to crawl through. Even with twelve inch deadbolts on the door anyone with the ability to lie down has incredibly easy access.



Interestingly as well as the locks the room also has a 'Press for Assistance' button. You know just in case you can't fit your jeans on, and you need some help. Of course you might think this is in case someone collapses on the floor, but the buttons so high you'd never reach it from there. I think the most likely reason for the assistance button is in case you can't re-open the door when you've uber-locked it.



However, going back to security, I suppose its not just here that has stupid security. One of the train stations I passed through recently had a big wooden door on the station with a huge sign saying "Security by Safe Force"(Or something) and a huge shiny padlock on which seems smart (unless its just a cupboard of brooms). Of course all the signs and shiny locks mean nothing if you lock the padlock around the clip on the door, but not also the door frame. Essentially making it nothing more then an insurance-waving decoration.



Still. Makes more sense then on a Library.

Its raining, I'm rambeling.

I don't like the rain. Stupid rain. It's all cold and dark and wet and just generally rainy. Not to mention the worst thing about rain. Its noise. I was writing my short film screenplay earlier until I was distracted by the rain. Each drop of water banging on the window was going "Look at me, look at me! Stop your work and LOOK AT MEEE!"



Rain does have a problem though. See no-one really cares about rain that much. Technically it brings as much life and use into the world as the sun; we eat plants and they need water just as much as they need light. Yet everyone's far more appreciative of the sun. When it rains we all run indoors. We hide our heads and move quickly away mumbling about the stupid weather. Yet in the sun we lie down, expose as much skin as possible, and start praising its heat and warmth.



Not to mention rains portrayal in films. Whenever there's an assassination in a film they'll show it raining. Whenever someones marriage breaks down it'll be raining. Whenever anything dark or dramatic or ultimately negative happens, it'll be raining. In fact I've often thought how easy it must be to be a weatherman in Hollywood; "Tomorrow if you feel sad or unhappy, I'm afraid you can expect a cloudy day with very heavy rain fall. But if you've got a big celebration, you're feeling on top of the world, or just have plans to walk in slow-motion down a street to a cheerful sound track, well it'll be a gorgeous sun like you've never seen. Goodnight."



I think this is why rain is so annoying. It wants our attention, because all we do is ignore or negativise it. If your chief competitor got its own day named after it, and songs that cheer it along, giving it hat-based prizes, you'd get a bit noisy and jealous. Especially if you get a song telling you to 'go away' as well. anyone would make annoying noise in that circumstance.



But really it should learn to control itself a bit more. The sun has been the more important one for years, rain should really have got over it by now. Okay so the un has been worshipped as a god by many different civilisations and cultures, but rain has been called a god too. Yes, that civilasation may have worshipped bread, ducks and rocks as gods also, but it still kinda counts. And think of all the rain-dances performed? Everyone loves a good dance performed in their name. Take that as your recognition.



Its not that I don't want rain to protest. I think anyone would, but I should just learn to accept it. I readily agree that rain is over-looked and underappreciated, its just that its noise is annoying. And whilst I support its cause I don't do work all that often, so when I am I'd quite like it to be quite for a bit. And in fact if it also would keep its protest down when I want to listen to something or when I'm trying to sleep that'd be nice. In fact if it could also stop raining when I'm out walking anywhere that'd be pleasing. I mean I do support its cause and all, so it would be good if it'd support me and be less noisy and well, a little less... rubbish.



In fact it could just try being a bit more like the sun. The suns all quite and nowhere near as wet. Although I suppose the sun does cause skin cancer. And rather then keep me awake at night, its the sun that wakes me up in the morning.... Not to mention sun burn...



Hey! What's the suns big problem? Everyone likes the sun, yet its actually being rather evil. Rain may be annoying but I think I might actually like it more then the sun.



Stupid sun.

Silly, odd or mildly amusing titles of Nanowrimo novels

Having failed to really get going on this years Nanowrimo I found myself looking though the list of titles. Here are a selection more interesting then most. I've put a link to the author after each title in case you want to read it.

• Friends Help You Hide the Bodies (maurice)
• where the devil shovels coal (mermaid_radio)
• The Amazing Lance and his Sleepy-Time Adventures (Neliamne)
• Alpha Male, Beta Test (rpatty)
• Secret Agent Sixty-Two (feline)
• Plan B (Tentative) (idunno)
• Goat (MichelleP)
• My Pants Are So Tuesday (ezral1)
• Pretentiously "Untitled" for Now (Holly_Jahangiri)
• I Have No Title (damina)
• The 5 People I'm Going to Meet in Hell (jodyl127)
• The Twice-Failed Quest (Aerden)
• Child of God (maybe) (Darice)
• The Popcorn Kernel (Betty)
• The Business of Ferrets (Zippygirl)
• Afternoon Snack of the Living Dead (Mousme)
• All the Good Titles Are Gone (AnnChovi)
• Memoirs of a Slightly Psychic English Teacher (omouse)
• Undercover Godmother (hoosier_red)
• Left to Right, Horizontal then Vertical (Omnipresence)
• A Plumber's Guide to Growing Up (Loonstruck)
• The Evil Robot Monkey Chronicles (beth)
• The Amazing Adventures of (a yet-to-be named) Superhero (Otla Felc)
• The Incredible Inter-Dimensional Adventures of Dr. Robert Soong and his Pulchritudinous Lab Assistant, Valerie (justgabe)
• Bugger Me If I Know (No,that's not really it) (subgirl74)
• I Can't Dignify This Drivel With A Title Yet (Shake)
• 660, The Stepfather of the Beast (Suibhne Geilt)
• part of some of the whole truth of the matter (vrgrrl)
• The Treasure Map of the Future (seafauna)
• The Yet-Untitled Ironic Suicide Note Novel (nortylaK)
• Time, Destiny, and Other Headaches (Dark)
• Untitled-With-The-Word- "Thunder"-Somewhere-In-The-Title, or "Napoleonic Killer Robots" (Lizbetann)
• I am a perfectly normal human worm baby. (StephieSama)
• Songs and Stories about Dental Hygeine. Volume III (a_fuzzy_bunny)
• The Dark Evil Walking Dead Undead Army of Evil Darkness (DrFrag)
• And Then The World Broke Apart (banai)
• Snakes Don't Climb: A True Narrative That Has Been Entirely Made Up (Cathy Marciniak)

(These probably arn't the best titles from the site but with 1,500+ pages to go through I challenge you to prove me wrong.)

Postman Pat gets Asbestosis

Apparently the Post Office aren't very happy about this website, the online home of the Asbestos Watchdog. This is because the watchdog are a group of people encouraging you to send them asbestos though the mail.



There are several things you could say are wrong with this; the Post office unsurprisingly is mostly concerned with the sending through the mail part. I however take issue with other instructions on the site; it suggests when sending this through the mail to use a "tea-spoon sized sample". This I suppose is to make sure no-one sends them a large bucket of asbestos, but they say nothing about what to do with the tea-spoon after you gather the sample. Should one wash it? Throw it away? Lick it clean? Being as it tells you to "wear gloves and wash your hands", you'd possibly want to err on the side of caution. But would leaving the spoon on the washing-up pile be potentially life-threatening? People could be unnecessarily throwing away a tea-spoon from a wedding
gift tea set when washing it over in the next week would be more then
enough. They should really make more instructions here.. How safe is safe? Should the spoon be washed more then once, just washed once thoroughly only used for guests you're not that fond of? Or is asbestos perfectly safe to eat? These questions go unanswered.



Also the site asks that you send your sample in a bag along with a £20 donation. A donation? Donation implies a voluntary giving, expecting no return. If you have to pay £20 that is a fee. If the amount was variable then maybe it'd make sense to call it a donation; but a fixed amount for a fixed service is paying. When I go into a shop and buy a DVD I am paying them stupid amounts of money for something that cost a fraction of the price to produce. I can't try to argue that the price is too high, because that's how paying works. I either accept their price and leave product in hand, or go home without and buy the DVD online.

If you pay a set amount and get a set something in return that in my book is called paying. Calling it a donation doesn't make it so. (Like say, calling things a loan when they're not).



Anyway, back to the Post Office who claim that sending asbestos through the post is dangerous and irresponsible. Well personally I think it could actually be a good thing for the Post Office. Tell all the staff about it and it might provide actual motivation for them to send post through the system quicker. No-one wants an asbestos parcel hanging round the sorting office, and I'd bet postmen would deliver the post quicker too. Who knows, people might get their morning mail actually in the morning.Not to mention those who find it interesting to go through your letters and remove things would probably be slightly discouraged.



In fact sending asbestos through the mail seems actually quite a good thing; just sending it to a place that doesn't require a compulsorily 'donation' or fails to instruct you in after-use tea-spoon care. I sense an intresting business opportunity...

Flashback to Lost

When the people who write Lost sat down and started on it I bet they spared very little thought to the negative effect such a show might have on student scriptwriting. Or to put it another way; the positive effect they've put on telling a story using flashbacks.

Reading other peoples scripts from my course a scarily large percentage of them feature flashbacks, or flashbacks within flashbacks, or flash-backs within a flashback, flashing-back to a flashback. I've absolutely no idea how they expect anyone to ever understand their plot; most of them don't even have any link into the flashback, so you're pretty much left guessing where you are in the time line.

Clearly someone should have said:
"Remember, its okay for the Lost writers to make it up as they go along, and worry about endings or making any form of sense later. They have several years to tell their story in. You have 10 minutes. Make it make sense."
Really when writing a 10 minute film it would be smart to make that 10 minutes the most exciting collection of minutes in that persons life; not 10 minutes where they sit about reflecting on exciting things that happened a while back.

Of course that's a total over oversimplification; Flashbacks are fine when used well. Its just not when you use them because Lost does. Also in my complaint list were the frequent shots of topless men; very long winded romancing stories; overuse of guns and the appearance of non-related polar bears.

Well I'd better get over this flashback hating soon. Aiming to watch The Prestige tonight.

How to make a very dry pizza.

1. Get some dough. This should be mushy and smell strange and be covered by a bubble of clingfilm.
2. Pop the clingfilm and then find a surface. This surface must be clean so if necessary clean it. It should also be large enough to make a triangular circle on.
   
3. Now get loads of flour and sprinkle liberally all over the surface. It makes you wonder why we cleaned it doesn't it?
4. Take dough and squish badly. Sprinkle more flour everywhere. Then do more squishing. This is called needing. Well it would be if that's what you were doing. Its what you're trying to do. But what you actually do is called squishing. Sprinkle some flour to see if that'll help.
   
5. Then add more flour, this time to some wood. Using the wood squish the dough to a sort of triangleish circle shape. Don't worry to much about the shape at this time. You'll deform it picking it up anyway.
6. Peal a cheese. Then leave it to dry.
   
7. Pick the doughy circley trinagley mess up. Done well this should deform and stick to the surface. Should have used more flour shouldn't you?
8. Place the doughy thing onto a metal thing which should be a bad fit.
9. add tomato stuff slopping it down so it goes everywhere. Spread the tomato gunk around the dough with a spoon, reclaiming the spread about bits if there's no longer enough. (You are permitted to leave the bits that are on your eyebrows if you wish.)
10. Add the pealed cheese. Again slopping the ingredient down randomly works well. Give yourself bonus points if a cheese slice lands on the tomato on your eyebrows.
11. Try to fold the dough over on itself. This should cause tomato to try to escape and be difficult unless you actually levelled the dough evenly in the bit when we shaped it.
12. Place thing in oven. Leave to cook for an amount of time.
13. Take out and eat. Complain about high levels of dryness. Lots. Because it will be really dry. No-one knows why it'll be dry. Perhaps you'll die.

Have fun.

Fireworks Night

To celebrate November the 5th today I shall let a firework have a platform for speech:

"Bang, screech, boom, swoosh, explode, screeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaammmmm, disappointing silence, pretty colours, boom, bang, rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-boom, blow-up with stars, kerblamo."

(Please make your own Awwww!'s and Ohhhhh!'s. Thank you.)

Ginger Bread Men

I think there should be a new law stating all ginger bread men should be labelled on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is soft and 10 is hard. This is a direct result of the incredibly disappointing man I bought today.

I know one of the bakery's round here does very nice ginger people, soft enough that they don't even stand up straight, but not quite loose enough to break without some force. I think I'd rate them at about 3. Clearly however, whichever that fantastic bakery is it was not the place I went in today. I chomped down on their product instantly fracturing three teeth, without even making a dent on the baked man's head. If my system of number ratings had been involved I could have seen the 10 warning and saved myself from this steel like monstrosity. I eventually cut into the thing using a diamond saw and a team of eight assistants. I've also submitted a piece of it to the patent board as a new idea for bullet proof clothing. I also tried actually eating some. It was like eating nails. I could of died.

And this is why we need a system people. Health and safety is at risk; If a ginger bread sized hole were to appear in a train track right before a train was to pass you would expect anyone to leap into action, plugging the hole with a ginger bread man from the nearest shop. But whilst a 10 man would hold and carry all passengers to sweet smelling safely, a 3 rated man would be disastrous. Without the rating system you wouldn't know which is which, and placing the wrong type on the track would result in a catastrophic accident and the waste of a perfectly made ginger bread man. And does anyone really want that?

On the joys of sellotape

Sellotape is great stuff. I mean truly great stuff. Duct tape or Gaffer tape tend to get all the major credit, but sellotape is just cool. Okay so it may not be as strong as those other types, but its see-through... that's gotta be worth extra points. I mean, if you break someone's window and try mending it with duct tape, they'll notice immediately, sellotape however is see-through so it could give extra vital seconds in which to make your escape.

That is of course, only if they don't spot the huge discarded ball of stuck-together-sellotape you threw into the corner. Its actually been proven to be a mathematical impossibility to use sellotape without the stuff bending over at some point and sticking to itself.

In fact one of the greatest skills of sellotape is sticking to itself; I think that's probably the thing it does best. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any situation that actually calls for sellotape to be stuck to itself; most of the time you wish to stick it to other things, but its good to be top in something. And anyway, sticking to itself does come in slightly useful...

How about those times it decides to do that endless role trick it does; where it hides the edge of the tape inside itself, even though you only had it a minute ago. There really is nothing quite like the feeling of running your nail round and round the roll trying to feel the bump of the join; knowing it must be there somewhere, but totally failing to find it. There comes to be a point in time, when you've run each finger around in both directions and still you can't find it. You can even find yourself wondering if the end has somehow fallen off, or if you've thrown it away or its stuck it on the underside of the scissors.

Of course when you do find the end, you'll have lost the scissors, because they've managed to stick themselves to your elbow along with a spare bit of tape, which you wont notice for hours. But because you've now got the tape unravelling you decide to break it by biting, a technique that invariably goes horribly wrong. Whilst the tape may break, a small triangle of it will stick to your lip, a piece thats large enough to feel, but small enough not to see. And in your efforts to flick it off your lip; the selotape will decide to stick to itself again. At this point you may wish to give up on sellotape, but you shouldn't.

Without selotape things could never be put together on a semi-permanent basis, unless you used the far less practical glue.
Presents couldn't be wrapped. Things at school could never have been made. You'd never be able to find years old craft makes. Makes which are now held together by yellow, unsticky, and slightly smelly, selotape.

So don't forget good ole' Sellotape: Number one object for sticking to sellotape.

University of Lincoln Fire Alarm Procedure

On hearing the fire alarm please follow the guide below; remember during a real fire alarm the noise will be far to loud for you to think properly so study this now:

1. Check if this is a 'real' fire or not. Many a time has been wasted evacuating for those pretend fires which are really not that dangerous and can safely be ignored. To establish the real-ness of a fire the tutor should leave the room and look around the corridor. In the unlikely event no-one else knows either return to the seminar group and ask the students.
   
   
2. If the fire alarm continues and you are still unsure on the realness of the fire remain as you are and maybe have a discussion about whether or not to move. Remember time is not really a factor here, if there was a fire you're all going to have burned already waiting to see if its real or not.
   
   
3. On deciding to move make your way slowly to the nearest door and complain vigorously if you have to go down a flight of stairs. If you are on the 3rd floor or higher try to persuade a group sit-in. Fire is extremely accommodating for laziness and is known never to attack a group.
   
   
4. Make sure everyones belongings are removed from the room, then lock up anyway. This means no-one dressed in a fire costume can sneak in and steal stuff.
   
   
5. Loud conversations should then be held about the stupidity of the event and how it would be better if we could just burn in peace. Conversations should also feature comments about the loudness of the alarms and the amount of noise everyone else is making.
   
   
6. All people should then walk slowly down the stairs complaining that they can't use the lift. The amount of complaining should be doubled if the stairs have only been ascended in the last ten to fifteen minutes.
   
   
7. When on the ground floor go outside and move to a small way away from the building. This distance should not be greater then half the length of fires reach. If asked to move further ignore instructions.
   
   
8. Whilst waiting to be let back in a register may be taken. To assist this action spread around the building or wander off to get a coffee. If you smoke take the time to light up, this makes the outside more smoky then inside and could help confuse the fire.
   
   
9. On confirmation of a lack of fire everyone should try to re-enter the building via the fire escape they came out of. These should be shut, but just open them up, its not like they'll set the alarm of again.
   
   
10. When you are allowed back in again make sure everyone travels up the same staircase. Impose a regular speed by having the slowest people at the front. Several people should forget which floor they are on so as to walk against the direction of the majority. Complaints this time should be kept until you are back in seminars, a good five minutes can be wasted discussing having to walk up and down the stairs so often.
    

We thank you for taking these rules into account and trust you will not die here at Lincoln.