Scottish Roundup Meetup

So I was the Pleasance last night with a few other Scottish bloggers, which was nice... There were a few new faces and a few old faces - it was great to catch up with folk. It was also amusing to find out just how small a world it is again :-)



Other than the occasional shower, and flyer, it was a very pleasant evening with lots of things being discussed - from politics (meh) to the future of the roundup to who was getting the next round in...



I am thinking we definitely need a caption contest for these... Now, is that a hand being waved, or am I getting flipped off here?


I can just imagine something outrageous being said here, the reality is probably some random political witterings... Shame...

BrewDog Burbling...

The Metro this morning has a wee article about a (probably exciting) new offering from BrewDog - the 18.2% "Tokyo" beer. (Which I haven't tried yet)...

A 330ml bottle of Tokyo , made by BrewDog, contains six units of alcohol, which is twice the recommended daily limit.

Would that be the entirely made up limits that we found out were all lies in 2007?

Of course, the fake charity Alcohol Focus Scotland is quoted as saying something dreary about how we're all doomed.

What would we do without all this nannying? Perhaps taking some personal responsibility? But that would do the nanny types out of their public funded jobs, which would not do.

Godzilla wouldn't stand for it, and neither should we! Get the piano wire and a locate a robust lamppost!

I for one welcome our new beery overlords!

Drinking with The Devil

Well, the first I knew that The Devil was in town, was when he wandered in to my / our / his local...

I wasn't brave enough to take a picture though, in case he possessed my camera...

A pleasure as always.

My favourite Nokia product

Here's a scan of my favourite Nokia product so far:



And the reverse side:



Yep, that's Nokia as in phones... Sako is part owned by them. Here we have a flattened box for.222 Remington cartridges, which would appear to be a popular choice for the hunting rifles made by Sako...

I wonder if the hippy types will give up their phones knowing just how diverse Nokia's interests are...

I have a sudden urge to visit Texas again, and do some more shooting.

A westerly view

I was at the pub last night (shock, horror) and noted some new beer mats - duly scanned in today...



My drinking buddies and I feel that for a west coast brewery, the "I'm still enjoying this beverage so please don't remove it, I'll be back in a minute!" was a bit long winded, and not the natural language of the west...

So we came up with the following:

"Just gonnae no!"
"Hands off my pint ya cunt!"
"This is my pint, there are many like it, but this one is mine!"
"Here you! I'm coming back for that!"
"And leave ma seat alane an a'!"
"Haw, touch ma pint and I'll chib ye!"

Feel free to make some suggestions in the comments.
If you're from the West brewery and reading this - the dunkel is a decent pint, keep up the good work! (And please don't spank me for scanning in your beer mat).

Don't mess with Texas

I went on holiday to Texas to see friends, eat BBQ and steak, and shoot guns.

Austin was warm and sunny, as usual - 80F (ish), and rained only the once. My timing was near perfect - warm enough to be pleasant to be out - evenings cool down fairly quickly though. Certainly not as hot as it gets in the summer 100F for weeks on end.

Amusingly enough, I hired a car (well, more like a tank) for the duration - a Chevy Blazer. I don't drive in Edinburgh, but obviously it's hard to get around a city like Austin without your own transport - and one can't impose upon friends for transportation all the time, particularly since they're at work, or up to whatever they get up to. The last time I was behind the wheel was the last time I was in Austin, which was about 3 years ago. They've sprouted some new freeways - toll roads, which make going places a lot quicker than the parking lot otherwise known as I35. And I only nearly crashed once.

Here are some pictures of my remarkably anger and stress free vacation...

Austin:


I worked in Austin, almost 10 years ago, during the .com craziness. It was all very stressful, I didn't make my millions there, but did make a lot of friends.

BBQ:



The evil people at The Salt Lick have opened up a new pit BBQ and restaurant up by Round Rock. I have made the pilgrimage to Driftwood a number of times for the fab BBQ, and now excellent MEAT can be enjoyed after a much shorter drive to Round Rock. They were doing a $3 off the family style (all you can eat) which is pictured above. Plates like that keep coming to the table until you stop them. Family style is best enjoyed in large groups and (obviously) when hungry.

Guns:



I'll not post pics of my targets here - they're online elsewhere. My shooting was fairly crap, but then again, I haven't shot anything in 3 years. For the record, everything hit the target card. Most hit close to the centre, but I have done better in the past. I was rather rushed though, Red's Range was closing early for maintenance so a blitzkrieg session was had. 50 rounds through a HK USP 40 S&W pistol, and 50 rounds through the (pictured) .223 Colt AR-15.

The 2 weeks I spent there were ab-fab, with many thanks to my hosts. I definitely could have done with staying for another week or so - particularly since there were a few people I didn't manage to see. That and I returned to find work in the middle of another cluster-fuck.

At the third stroke the time will be

1234567890

Huzzah!

Huh?

Holibags

Well, even large angry people get to take holidays. I returned, yesterday, from Durham. It's a small city with a fucking ridiculous number of hills over a short horizontal distance. It's a rather picturesque place, although it seems to be plagued by joggers.



I spent time with friends in the pub - now, I do this in Edinburgh too, but it is a group of friends I don't see often enough, and obviously it was a different pub. A change of scenery, and all that.

One morning I pottered around in the Botanic Gardens, which had a nice soothing effect on me. I came across a giant water lily. Next to which, they had a picture of a small child sitting on a giant lily...

Something like this:



(I gleefully plundered that image from the interwebs). Conveniently, there was a mother with small child sat at the entrance to the hot house where the lilies were, so obviously I asked her if I could borrow her small child to sit on a lily...

Needless to say, this did not go down too well, so this is the best I could do:



Anyway, whilst in that neck of the woods, my friends and I went to Diggerland! (Watch out, there's annoying muzak on that site. Bastards.) I was driving a JCB, which was brilliant.



Well worth a visit - for kids of all ages. One of the gang was doing so well at digging holes, the chap told him to fill it back in... I was amazed at some really small kids being allowed to drive some fairly large plant around the site... Don't tell the Health & Safety fascists.

So, with all this done, I headed back to Embra yesterday morning on the National Express East Coast service, first class, natch. I had to evict someone from my seat, which was a pain, but then, I had gone to the trouble of reserving the seat, and he was clearly a chancer. There's always one. That and there wasn't nearly enough coffee served on the train back home.

Normal angry ranting will resume shortly.

Coolest thing - a remix of Radiohead

A chap on a mailing list posted this remix of Radiohead, Nude, from their album "In Rainbows".

For comparison, the original version of Nude is on YouTube

Ordinarily I hate Radiohead - all they seem to produce is music to open a vein to. I make no apologies to Doctorvee, who along with a load of other people, seems to like them...

That remix has to be the coolest thing I have heard in a long time - mostly because it appeals to my inner geek. Hard drive speaker array... Sinclair Spectrum... Epson Dot Matrix Printer, HP ScanJet... An old GPO Oscilloscope. What isn't there to like?