a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at July 15th, 2005

I’ve had some major laptop issues recently (the damn thing often refuses to turn on) leaving me with half of the previous memory, which I hope to rectify quickly by buying/ordering a new memory chip tomorrow. Because I just don’t like having to do things on a computer even more slowly than usual. I appear to be suffering from a worryingly common fault on Sony Vaio’s where the 2nd memory chip slot breaks, I’ve seen a few DIY fixes (bits of broken cd to push it, wrapping it in tape, even soldering the connections) but I think I’ll just buy a 512mb chip for now, and then if I do get it fixed then at least I’ll have gained a performance upgrade from my few days of frustrating laptop ownership.

I also bought GTA:San Andreas today, so I may well struggle to pull myself away from it in my quest to blog anything and everything about Amsterdam. I’ve found that there is something surprisingly satisfying about giving Carl Johnson bigger muscles, and hanging with ‘ma homies’.

Posted by Bone at July 14th, 2005

So me and Tigg were enjoying a leisurely stroll around the great city that is Amsterdam (before the rest of the group had even got out of bed) and as we approached an archway to Dam Square we spotted this odd little mosaic high up on a wall.

I don’t think it exposes my geekery too wildly to say that its a character from space invaders (or it could be Pac-man, I can’t be quite sure, actually I’m swaying more towards Space Invaders now). I just thought it was really cool how an image from a computer game (however old it is) was on what was probably a centuries old building. And that it was created in such a well crafted tiled mosaic seemed to make this form of vandalism so much more socially acceptable. Maybe it will inspire a wave of mosaic graffiti the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the bad boys of Rome were tagging the Forum. Maybe not.

Posted by Bone at July 13th, 2005

I thought I might as well begin near the start at the hotel that me and Greeno stayed in the night before the flight. Takeoff was at 06:10 and I figured that to try and stop a migraine I should try and get as much sleep as possible before we got there, and a single room costs pretty much the same amount as a twin so Greeny might as well come along.

We stayed at the Bewleys Hotel which is located about 5 minutes walk from the Terminal 1 building, which was great, excpet we were flying from Terminal 2 (all KLM flights are T2, I think) but with the help of the Sky Bridge we were able to walk to Terminal 2 in about 10-15 minutes.

The hotel was very nice, nicer than the Crowne Plaza next door, where I had stayed a couple of years ago. It was a modern leather sofa type of a place, with granite-esque floors (or maybe they were real, I can’t remember). All very bright and clean, with friendly and helpful staff.

The room (£69 a night with additional costs for off-site parking) was pretty big, so much so that it had 2 double beds in it, which was nice. The bathroom was granite/avonite and chrome, with a powerful shower (in the bath). I was quite surprised that we could only use 1 bathroom socket at a time, as Rob wanted to charge his toothbrush, and I wanted to charge my razor, but we couldn’t which was a tad annoying, but not exactly that inconvenient. Another odd thing, you couldn’t remove the tray for the tea and coffee making facilities (a kettle) without taking the stuff off the tray, as the drawer in which they were contained didn’t pull out far enough…

The lack of air-conditioning is a hefty drawback of the place, as it was a hot night and even just under a single sheet I struggled to sleep and got all sweaty.

There restaurant and lounge bar served good food at reasonable prices, I had a ceasar salad that was pretty darn big, and filled with decent non-processed chicken. We also enjoying the first pints of the holiday, the first of many.

By 3:40am we were on our way to meet the rest of the guys at check-in.

btw, the beds at Bewleys can take the strain of someone jumping up and down on them as Rob enthusiastically demonstrated within seconds of getting into the room.

The Bewley Hotel Group

Posted by Bone at July 13th, 2005

I’m back from my kerr-azy long weekend in Amsterdam with the boys. From leaving home to getting back my holiday lasted 5 days 40 minutes or so, and it was quite the adventure. A lot of blog space will be taken up with tales from the Dam (although it has been agreed by the group that some stuff won’t be muttered outside of ourselves, so it may be a bit PG-13 at times, we do have reputations to protect, y’know?).

Much like a dike without a finger in it there is going to be a veritable flood of pictures from the trip, especially considering we used 7 disposables, 1 roll of film, 50 digi shots from Tiggs funky Fuji, a load on Tyson’s digi cam, and a few on Smoothie’s new Sony that he got as a birthday present from the girls. All in all, about 250 shots we reckon.

This will probably turn into a bit of a guide to Amsterdam when I’ve finished with it, so I might tie it all together and make it available as a download on rapidshare or something.

Posted by Richard at July 7th, 2005

I feel that the events of today should not pass without comment on the blog. As a Londoner I’ve found this all pretty shocking, from the initial reports of power surges that had caused explosions and shut down the underground, to the awful realisation that this was a terrorist attack upon the city that I love. My distress at hearing about people killed on the buses and trains that I use so frequently in the capital was made more vivid by its contrast with euphoria I felt yesterday upon seeing London chosen to host the Olympic games in 2012. I can only hope that those injured in the attack recover quickly, and that those who have lost loved ones do not suffer themselves too much. Further to that, I hope that London itself does not descend into a paranoid daze, but instead remains as the vibrant city that so pleases its residents and those who visit it.

Posted by Bone at July 7th, 2005

To Amsterdam!

I’ll be back on Monday evening but won’t post until Tuesday sometime, not that I’ve exactly been regular recently…

Posted by Claire at July 7th, 2005

Yo! Clairey’s back in the blogging zone! Mate, these last 2 weeks have just been so crazy, I’ve barely had the chance to sit down, never mind in front of the computer!

So I didn’t go to Green Day… sob sob. Was totally my own fault though, don’t drink guys! This statement lasted about 24 hours, as the next day I was back on the liquid refreshment for my leaving parrrrrrrrrrty. Which berocked as to be expected. Then messed around for a couple of days, working at the school etc etc. Boring. Then I went to Edinburgh to see my friend who moved up there. Was classic. And the beginning of a heavy drinkage week to leave York for god knows how many months in true styley! VERY eventful weeks dudes.

So I’m back in the LD now. Enjoying eating real food, not uni shit and getting loads of sleep! Also doing some major paid work which is just grand. Just bought an I-Pod too! Yay! Off to Milton Keynes this weekend. Was SUPPOSED to be seeing Oasid on Sunday, but there was a balls up on tickets so to cut a long story short, I’m not going. Never booking a ticket for Milton Keynes again. The place is blatantly doomed. 3rd time lucky for Stereophonics in September. Not going with Bone et al, they’ll probably be at the front, whereas I was too late booking and possibly got tickets out of the stadium or something knowing my luck. Knew I shouldn’t of walked under that bloomin’ ladder!

Not that I should complain on a day like today, when you look at the horrors taking place in London.

Posted by Bone at July 1st, 2005

My day was pretty empty again today, even though I actually spent pretty much the whole day being active in some way or another.

• I delivered oil

• I bought boxes for my brothers stuff (he moves out of his flat this weekend)

• Shopped at Marks & Spencer, it’s amazing how you reach that £35 mark and get your free 6 aberdeen angus quarter pounder burgers, isn’t it?

• Paid off Dads credit card bill, not with my own money of course, don’t be crazy.

• Sorted out a hotel for a night before the flight to Amsterdam, just a week to go now!

I’ve been looking at my stats and I’ve decided that the people at Yahoo! love me, nothing wrong with that at all. E.g. if you search for student blog city university then I’m top 10, doesn’t that seem a little odd that out of about 2 million pages I’m in at no.9. Even more oddly, for a student of Leicester University, if you add in london to that search then I’m no.4, happy days. Also, my review of “Say hello to sunshine” by Finch seems to be getting a rather wide airing through the portal that is Yahoo!, if they keep giving me hits then I may well begin preferring them to Google (who also give me a fair amount of random hits).

I am still getting a worrying amount of hits from people searching for “blackbootyinmotion” which I assume requires no description. They’ll be sorely disappointed when they realise that I very rarely talk porn on these hallowed pages, the only reason it came up (….sorry) before was because in the gostats rankings I was just above them, about a year ago.

Well, wasn’t discussing my stats and hella standard day lots of fun.