Telephone call

Just a little silly sound clip formed of sound effects recorded to form part of the afore-mentioned Stanley & Miller recording…

I’ve been bored.

Telephone call random by richietheg

December 10, 2011  Tags: , , ,  Posted in: Radio   No Comments

Stanley & Miller Reborn

A few years ago (six years to be precise), me and a friend wrote four short radio skits for an RSL radio station we were involved with at the time (I’m stil, slightly, involved with this station as it happens). The production was Stanley & Miller: Local Detectives and charted the misadventures of two private detectives as they went around their work. Think like The Detectives but not quite as good.

I mention this for no real reason, other than the fact that currently for my course, Case 1: The Case of the Missing Pig, the first script, has been rewritten. I’m rather annoyed that the original productions have gone missing (except for Case 2: The Case of the Missing President, which is actually my favourite one but not really one that I can rewrite for use) as it’d be really interesting to hear the difference between the two. As it happens, I can put the two scripts side-by-side to compare once it’s fully done, but that will have to wait.

I can’t actually remember why I decided to write this post. I’m sure it will come back to me soon… I think I’m just wasting time waiting for a lecture to start…

Case 3: The Case of the Missing Wheat was an interesting one. I won’t tell what it was about as it could well work with a rewrite should I ever do the whole series again.

Case 4, one I can’t remember the actual title for (actually, I made up Case 3‘s title here and now as I couldn’t remember that one either) was another interesting one, where our heroes are told something that only made sense when they realised what had gone missing, byt they wouldn’t have lost it if they weren’t told what they were. Or something.

UPDATE: I’ve found the original recording of Case 4. And here it is:
Stanley & Miller Case 4 by richietheg

 

We started work on a second set of scripts, covering the potential change in narration rather spendidly (“My voice broke, so I had to get a new one”), but the story was rather far-fetched, even for Stanley & Miller. I don’t mind retelling the story here as I doubt I’ll use it. They went to the moon after NASA found something there that should be right up their street. Turns out it’s the phone box from the end of the street that had been missing for a week or so.

Right, enough talking about it, I need to sort some sound effects out (something which the original didn’t actually have…).

I do have some new theme music for it though, courtesy of ‘trustno1′ on Jamendo: http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/434170. Nice bit of 70s music. (The idea of which based through Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, and his take on the 70s cop show music.)

November 28, 2011  Tags: ,  Posted in: Radio   No Comments

Just another lecture…

Yesterday was just another day at university.

Oh yeah, Phill Jupitus was one of our lecturers, telling us all about his exploits on BBC Radio 6 Music’s breakfast show, how he really dislikes Chris Moyles and Chris Evans, radio commercials, and Ofcom (“Ofcom can suck my balls”).

Pretty good fun really. Even if when we saw Phill walk through the coffee bar in Weymouth House he did look slightly bemused as if he was thinking ‘where am I and why have I been brought here?’. He is the third comedian I’ve seen live – I’m counting this as it because I saw him, he is a comedian, and he was live, even if it wasn’t an act he was doing but a lecture.

Those who know what I look like will be able to see me in this photograph; to the right of Phill is a bloke in a grey top – I’m the one in the green top behind him. Yes, I was deliberately trying to hide, and yes, it is luck that I managed to hide in such a way that you can actually see me. I don’t like my photo being taken.

Photo © BU. Click image or here to go to BU page where image came from and their information on Phill’s visit

November 4, 2011  Tags: , ,  Posted in: University   No Comments

More musings on the Internet how it used to be

Firstly, yes, I know. Half the old posts are here, half aren’t. Give me a break, okay?! I’m surprised I managed to do what I’ve done thus far.

It’s actually been quite interesting, looking at my old posts, something I haven’t really done. I had forgotton some of the things I’d written (and I will admit, some posts have been edited slightly and some aren’t going to be transferred). One of the post was entitled ‘Musings on the Internet how it used to be‘, in which I commented on a website that I happened to visit which had a link to a ‘large’ image with a warning about its size and that browsers may not be able to cope.

Which brings me to today.

One thing that I like about the BBC News website is that they don’t use CSS ‘properly’. By that, I don’t mean that it’s not valid code or anything, (although I am now curious to know… bear with me… I’m really surprised now – it doesn’t… oh well) no, what I mean is that when I was doing web design at college, and I see this around quite a bit too, CSS is so you can change the whole site design in one easy go, so your pages are kept to the same design as you go across your website. The BBC News website don’t seem to have grasped this, which is a good thing.

It means that when you search for archive news since their website started, such as this article about the safety of the Pacer trains, you see their old site design. Click on that link now, go on – I’ll wait. Just make sure you come back because I’ve still got stuff to say and unless you’re a train geek who is interested in a news article from 1999 then you’re not going to be interested in the actual article.

Welcome back! See how narrow that website looks on your monitor? How pixellated the banner at the top of the screen looks? The weird thing is that the text size for the article isn’t (noticeably) a different size to what it is now. The site now is just wider than it used to be.  Incidentally, in case you were wondering (because I was so there’s an outside chance you might’ve been), the old BBC News website does have valid CSS code.

October 28, 2011  Tags: , , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Stupid Joke

While going through all the posts on my old site and transferring them to the new, I came across the following draft post. Not entirely sure why I didn’t post it at the time, but will post it now. (Not even sure of the date that I ‘drafted’ it I’m afraid).

Q: What do you get when you cross a penis and a potato?

A: A dic-tater.

October 26, 2011  Tags: ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Life goes on

Wow, two days with two consecutive posts…

I have never managed to find a theme that I like for WordPress. There seems to be a theme of the Internet that personal sites are dark – black background, white text. I don’t like that. So, trying to find a theme that is a light colour, and also fills up the width of the page has been difficult. I still haven’t found it.

If you are reading this post in the future, I am liable to have changed it again. Quite liable in fact.

Anyway, just need to boot up my old laptop and get the backed-up archive of my old site over onto this one and I’m almost away.

Brilliant.

October 25, 2011    Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

So, yeah…

So, yeah… I said that this site would be back up and running by ‘the end of the day’. I was very wrong. However, you may be interested to know that… actually, I can’t think of anything interesting. Seriously, normal service will be resumed at some point. Maybe.

October 24, 2011    Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

Hello world!

Right – I’ve reset my website as it wasn’t fully working…

At this particular moment in time, I need to go out and get something, so should you chance across this site in the meantime, that’s why nothing is here.

Hopefully by the end of the day it’ll be back up and running.

Maybe.

September 22, 2011    Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything   No Comments

“Reacting Magnesium and Hydrochloric Acid, Richard Graham 10D”

This is brilliant.

I found some old schoolwork on a CD while clearing out some stuff, and came across this. Obviously, I knew back then how to make a PDF file from a Word document, and I do remember this. Old schoolfriends will probably remember the Science teacher whom I’ve forgotton the name of – she was the one whose classroom was downstairs opposite Mr Berry and Mr Hayes classrooms, if anybody can remind me. This was a piece of GCSE coursework (yes, proper coursework!) that I handed in when she showed us an experiment one day. Unfortunately, I was off sick this particular day so didn’t see the experiment, and the teacher was very helpful in explaining to me what happened so I could do the writeup.

So this is what I ended up with. I’ve put the text here for those who can’t be bothered to download the PDF, and to be honest there’s not much difference except a very large font size (to increase the page numbers), and a nice scientific bit of clipart on the front page.

Reacting Magnesium and Hydrochloric Acid
Richard Graham 10D

Introduction
This reaction is between Hydrochloric Acid and Magnesium

Aims
To find out what happens when Hydrochloric Acid reacts with Magnesium

Prediction
I don’t really have a prediction, as I was absent from school when the reaction took place, and therefore don’t know what happened, or what we were supposed to predict.

Method
This is where I have a bit of a confession to make. I haven’t actually got round to doing this investigation until the day before I was supposed to hand it in (even though it was handed in late too), and when it came to it, found out that I had lost my sheet with the method on it. However, I am doing this to get myself out of a detention, and when you think about it, a investigation handed in – albeit crap, is better than no investigation handed in at all. However, if you read on, you will get a decent(ish) analysis.

Analysis and Evaluation
In the reaction, the magnesium reacted with the Hydrochloric Acid, which caused a reaction. The reaction was between the Hydrochloric Acid and the magnesium, which reacted when it was put into the Hydrochloric Acid. The acid caused theMagnesium to react, which gave off Hydrogen Gas. Of the two test tubes, the one with the highest acid concentration caused the fastest reaction between the Magnesium and the Hydrochloric Acid, which reacted with the magnesium giving off Hydrogen gas. The one with the least amount of acid concentration still gave off the same amount of Hydrogen gas, as it was still reacting in the same way, with the same amount of magnesium and the same amount of acid solution and the same amount of glass in the test tubes and the same starting temperature and the same teacher doing the experiment and the same other stuff. The reaction between the Magnesium and the Hydrochloric Acid happened because when the Magnesium entered the ‘Acidic Zone’, its atoms were bombarded with hits from the Hydrochloric Acid, and therefore came away from the clump of Magnesium solid. This reaction, between the Magnesium and the Hydrochloric Acid, was an exothermic reaction, which means it gave off heat during the reaction.

Evaluation:
Was the evidence good enough? No.
Explain any wrong results? As mentioned before, I was away when the experiment took place, so I can’t explain any wrong results. Sorry.
Were there enough results? No. The more results there are, the better conclusion you can come up with.
What could you do to improve it? Everything, because I didn’t do it, so doing something would be an improvement.

The End – Or is it?
probably not, as I’ll probably have to do it again as it is a load of…… No, I’d better not say it before the 10:00 Watershed.

October 26, 2010  Tags: , , , ,  Posted in: Life, the Universe and Everything, Old Website   No Comments

Snow, January 2010

I’m actually quite irritated today.  We’ve just had two weeks off work for Christmas. I’ve got nothing against that, but I was beginning to get a little bored, as per usual during extended times off work. So, I was actually looking forward to returning to work on Monday. Monday was good. It was what is known in management terms as a ‘Staff Development Day’, free of students and on this particular Monday was free of ‘academic staff’ (lecturers) who were all up at Petroc Barnstaple for their training – sorry, staff development. There were a few things going on, but generally it was quiet and I managed to get on with stuff I needed too.

Yesterday, there was a little bit of snow around, but not too much. There was some forecast for the afternoon, but generally it looked as if it was OK. Nope. At around 10.30 Mum phoned me and told me that it was beginning to get a little heavy up in North Molton, and that I should make sure I’m careful to get home. At around the same time, a global email was sent to all staff informing us that because of the weather in Barnstaple, they were closing and sending people home. It was suggested then that I should probably go home myself, so about an hour and a half in to my second day back at work I started back home.

To be fair, the weather was quite bad and it was probably good that I went home and there were some pretty heavy spots of snow on the Link Road on the way back. I did video this – as well as my journey into work yesterday – but the video is upside down (because of the way that I attach a camera to my car windscreen) and will need a bit of work on it before I view it here.

So today, a day off. Most people would be glad I suppose, but not necessarily me. OK, an expected unexpected day off (it is unexpected, but it was expected at the same time. Confusing I know, but I assume you understand what I mean) is usually a good thing. But after two weeks being bored at home doing nothing to have a further couple of days – tomorrow will probably end up being the same – it’s not really for me.

Anyway – I did get some photographs around North Molton earlier on of the snow. It’s been quite deep really as you can see in a couple of the shots – over 6 inches; I went to measure it to tell somebody what the depth was but it was only a 15cm ruler and I lost it in the snow. It’s still in my front garden under the snow.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/richie.g/SnowJan2010

January 6, 2010  Tags: ,  Posted in: Photographs   No Comments