Archive for Interesting Tales
Birmingham International Comic Show 08
Last weekend Sarah and I attended Birmingham International Comic Show 2008 - hosted at the Think Tank – and had a very good time. Admittedly we were a tad disappointed when we first arrived as it wasn’t as extensive as we’d pictured. But once we’d looked at the list of lectures being given by famous artists and writers from the industry, we realised there was actually a lot that we could get out of it.
1. Sarah sketching on the train. 2. Our hotel room. 3. View from the balcony.
4 & 5. More views from the balcony. 6. The Think Tank.
7 & 8. Think Tank interior. 9. My flash fails me in the main hall.
10. The smaller hall. 11. “God, are you still here?” asks Sarah.
We came away from the weekend with lots of ideas for improving our own webcomic, and as we had only been running for a few weeks we’ve decided to start again from the beginning.
One of the most interesting parts of the weekend for us was talking to independent comic writers and artist who had their own stalls. Sarah and I have set ourselves the objective of returning without our own stall in two years time. Maybe we’ll see you there…? 
Damocles Gulf Crusade – The Movie
Behold, the video of our trip to Nottingham, courtesy of Graham.
Hmmm, ok, embedding the video isn’t working…but the link is here.
The video from the year before last can be seen here.
Happy Birthday to Spam!
This Saturday, 3rd May, will see spam celebrate it’s 30th birthday (boo). There’s an interesting web page here about the origin and content of the world’s first ever spam message. Quite an interesting read actually, as it includes a sample of the reactions – both positive and negative – of the initial recipients.
October Wedding
Dave has become the first member of the PCRC to permanently fall from bachelorhood, by finally wedding his fiancé Catrin this weekend just past. They had a lovely service in Portswood church, Southampton, and a great reception in Highfield church centre (although unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for all of it). The entire event was very well planned, with a lot of attention to detail – my favourite touch was the music from “Return of the Jedi” closing scene as they walked back down the aisle.
I wish I’d taken more photos, but you’ll have to make do with three, one of which isn’t even mine.
1. Lee, Sam and Edd awaiting the arrival of the happy couple outside the reception hall.
2. Official wedding photos were taken in front of Highfield church.
3. The PCRC pose for a group shot.
So here’s wishing Dave and Catrin a great honeymoon, followed by a long and happy marriage!
Reincarnation Forbidden in Tibet?
Last night I watched a program about Chinese development of Tibet, and as a sort of passing comment, the narrator mentioned that it will soon be illegal for the Tibetan Buddhist monks to be reincarnated without first obtaining government permission.
Regardless of whether you believe in reincarnation or not, I think this is fairly intriguing. How would they “prove” that a child was the reincarnation of a Buddhist priest? What would the penalty be? Death? It’s not like that would stop repeat offenders! There doesn’t really seem to be any way to punish this “crime”, or even to prove that it had been committed in the first place.
Google didn’t turn-up too much about regarding the story, other than this article, which was then endlessly re-quoted by other sources. However a quick search off the BBC news website revealed this.
So it would seem that the actual law relates to declaring who is the next reincarnation of important Buddhist figureheads, like the Dalai Lama. As of September 1st, children cannot be declared a reincarnation unless central Chinese government approves the candidate first. So the story is not quite as bizarre as it originally sounded, but still an odd abuse of religious freedom. 
24th Birthday!
I’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who showed up and made my birthday outing on Saturday a big success – I really enjoyed myself, and it seems that everyone else did too! Thanks guys! :D
My Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=45387&l=26f5c&id=622180577
Graham’s Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/grahamgilchrist/Chris24thBirthday
Sarah’s Photos: http://literarydeadkittens.wordpress.com/2007/08/19/birthday-bash/
John’s Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12355&id=660912203&ref=mf
Coffee Overdose
This doesn’t really have a lot to do with anything, but I was intrigued by the tale of the girl who overdosed on coffee. Futurama told us that if you drink 100 cups of coffee in a day, the 100th will allow you to move at super speed while the world moves past in slow motion. 
A friend once said he wanted to try and drink the 100 cups of coffee to see what would happen. A quick calculation showed that the LD50* for instant coffee was likely to be in the region of 85 cups. Of course I don’t recommend that anyone tries to find out, as you’ll suffer horrendous side effects long before then! Oh, and my friend never did get round to making an attempt, so my estimation remains unproven.
* LD50 for a given substance is the dose that would prove lethal to 50% of a test population who ingested it.
Play Options > Repeat All
I kinda feel like my life is on repeat at the moment, as this weekend we went to Studland Bay in Dorset, which is also what we did around this time last year. Not that it’s a bad thing of course, since Studland is pretty nice. We were lucky with the weather too, in fact it was so sunny it seems to have had a weird effect on my camera – all the pictures came out with a bit of a blue tinge. Speaking of photos, click on the thumbnails below:
1. Alex assembles the beach shelter while the Police patrol in the background. Well, he does look suspicious…
2. Despite the sun and our 11am arrival, the beach was pretty deserted, and largely remained so for the rest of the day.
3. We buried Wilkie. It seemed like the right thing to do.
4. This year’s mighty sandcastle…
5. …unfortunately it was destroyed in a wet sand fight!
That’s it for another year! As a last word I’ll say that if you’re looking for a coastal day-trip destination, you could do a lot worse than Studland Bay!
Isle of Wight Festival – 2007
It should be obvious from the title, but we paid a return visit to the Isle of Wight Festival this year. We had a three-day weekend ticket and Bex was kind enough to put us up again; the proximity of her flat to the festival fields making this a stupidly convenient arrangement.
It was easily as cool and well organised as last year, with a lot of good acts and some blisteringly hot weather. Bands that put on a especially fine show where as follows: Groove Armada, Wolfmother, Snow Patrol, Keane (the bits I saw), Muse (apart from the encore – more later) and of course the Rolling Stones (even if I did only recognise about 4 or 5 songs). I’m not sure what else to say that wouldn’t just be repeating last year’s account, or reiterating what other people have already said. So I think I’ll take a brief photographic interlude before I mention the one or two minor bad points.
1. Arrival. 2. Looking for a good spot. 3. Groove Armada.
4. Friday night crowds. 5. Snow Patrol 6. Jimi Hendrix sculpture.
7. The Red Arrows treated us to a fine display on Sunday afternoon. 8. The waiting crowds. 9. Keane (I think).
10. The Rolling Stones. 11. The Rolling Stone again. 12. The festival funfair at night.
13. The Rolling Stones once more. 14. The firework finale.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a very good time and will definitely go again next year (if Bex will put us up again ), but a few minor things bugged me about this year’s festivities. Firstly, where did all the chavs come from? There seemed to be a load this year for some reason. Here’s another question; why pay £105 to walk around a field without a shirt on, ignoring the bands, getting really sun burnt, drinking cider and generally looking pissed off? Couldn’t they do that in a local park for free? Bloody chavs, I hope next year they spend their ticket money on a ‘Bullet in the Head’ voucher (redeemable at all good gun shops) instead.
Secondly, people seemed to be a lot more careless with their rubbish this year. There was so much spread across the grass by the end of each day, it made sitting down a little risky once night fell and you couldn’t see anything. There were large red wheelie-bins spread liberally across the site, and if you can’t spot a huge red oblong then, erm, how do you make it through a normal day without dying?
Of course you’ll notice these two complaints were about the other people there – I can’t really fault the festival itself. My final whinge regards Muse’s ridiculous half an hour encore. Great for Muse fans I’m sure, but when you’ve been in a field for nearly twelve hours and they won’t open the Newport exit next to the stage until the band is done, it gets a little annoying. So you’ve got a distortion pedal for your guitar? Well aren’t you the f**king king of all things musical? Now get off the stage, we want to go home! :p
It may seem like I spent more time complaining than praising in this blog entry, but I really did have fun. If I haven’t mentioned some aspect of the weekend, just assume it was awesome. 
And on that note, I’ll see you all there next year (hopefully)!
The Opposite of Undercover
I saw something odd whilst riding the queue from the motorway…no, hold on, “riding” makes it sound like the traffic actually moves faster than a metre per ice age…let’s start again. *Special Effect* I saw something odd whilst enduring (that’s better) the queue from the motorway into Fareham. An unmarked black police BMW forced its way down between the two lines of traffic, blue lights a-flashin’. Okay, nothing odd there, except that it was followed about 30 seconds later by an unmarked Vauxhall of some description, possibly an Omega. Another 30 seconds later, and a convoy of four smaller unmarked cars – again all with blue lights flashing – forced their way down in a line, before disappearing across the roundabout towards Fareham. Finally, once I was actually on the A32 heading back into Gosport, a grey estate whizzed by, heading towards the roundabout, completely the flashing light convoy.
Intriguing, huh? Either there was some serious sh*t going down or all the unmarked police cars were just out for a bit of a race… If anyone knows the truth, I’d love to know, as I’ve never seen that many undercover cars in one place before. Then again, maybe I have and just didn’t notice because they were, erm, undercover….
