Sunday, August 15, 2004
Isn't it amazing how a person can be asleep whilst still murmuring "I'm still listening"?
My brother dropped in as he was passing by - post Cowes, he won quite a lot of races, and won in two classes (and somehow gained a huge flag to prove it). Typical him. Though the yacht apparently contained a ridiculous amount of experienced sailors - including someone who was "politely" asked to move away from the entrance to a royal sailing club, as the Duke of Edinburgh would be passing through. The be-blazered great and the good line up to greet him, and as the Duke ambles along, shaking hands and muttering his hellos, he fleetingly looks up, and sees this shabby looking man at the back. The DoE then cries out "Oh X, hello, how are you?". The commodore of the club looks mortified. The commodore and his underlings didn't know X (whom they had shooed away) had sailed on the DoE's yacht for 5 years - and the only mention he makes of it runs thus:
In a race, approaching a buoy with which the Duke had made contact the previous year, his tactician gives the following advice to the Duke. "We're coming up to the Blackdown [1] buoy, sir, which, as you may recall, you hit last year, sir"..."Sir, now I'd like you to steer two ticks to starboard, sir"..."Sir, 5 ticks to starboard, if you will, sir"..."Sir, ten ticks to starboard please, sir"..."Sir, hard a-starboard sir"...[The DoE] "Well bugger me, I've done it again".
[1] This name has been conveyed by 2 dyslexics, one of whom was probably drunk when he heard it, and the other has no idea what it should be, and as such shouldn't be taken as the actual name of the relevant buoy, merely indicative of a certain buoy.
The DoE also apparently, whilst sailing with a camera crew on board, messed something up and went down the companionway to vent his anger beyond the reach of the cameras. Except he was wearing a radio-microphone. His outburst included a string of variations on obscenities, such as "fucking fucketty fuck fucked" followed by something utterly mundane like "beachballs" [the grapevine breaks down on the precise wording].
And here was I thinking that being on the same island Prince Harry was reputedly on, and being near enough to get annoyed with the paparazzi helicopters [2], was doing quite well. That and going to uni with Princess Anne's son [did Sports Science (euphemism, euphemism), and according to the dinner queue gossip, the least objectionable thing about him is that "he's a bit short"].
[2] Well apparently he was on a boat fishing off the coast, according to staff in restaurants on different sides of the island (I wasn't sure if it was just one waitress winding up the tourists, but getting other people to corroborate stories would be too much effort for something so minor). Ok so a quick news search reveals nothing, except that he's supposed to be in Scotland at some point, and given Alderney isn't all that handy for Scotland, perhaps it was just a well planned hoax. But there was something interesting the helicopters.
Anyway, so yes, my brother was here, yes, he asked about my sailing, yes, I talked at him for ages, and yes, he very nearly fell asleep. But then he had probably worked harder on his sailing trip.
And while playing round on sailing websites (actually looking up bus routes, when the images are stored on a printing specialist's website, and said specialist happens to sponsor sailing stuff, and we sailed past their main boat in Gosport, and also saw her sailing by Cowes), I happened to discover that one of the people I went to uni with has won a scholarship with them. Bloody BMCs. Oh, sorry, hurrah, well done that girl.
And why am I being ambiguous about it? If you know any of the relevant bits (which are, to a certain extent, common knowledge), you can figure out who I'm talking about. Ok so this assumes you know what it is boat sponsors do, which given Skandia [Cowes Week], for example, isn't that likely. At least Aberdeen Asset Management [the Boat Race, so not actually sailing] make it obvious.
And speaking of printing (well I was two paragraphs ago, albeit briefly), I've been playing with the new scanner. So far I've managed to create a copy of the front cover of an A-Z, which is about 200kb. 1200dpi is quite detailed. The bit to right is a section of the cover about 2 millimetres wide. I hadn't even noticed the dirt on it, and can only just make out the dottiness.
Hang on, it's not as a gif or a jpg, so you might have to wait to see the results of it.
JPGed it now. It's not as clear, but you should get the point. Except the filehost's compression system has fudged it a bit more.
Prizes for telling me where it is. Ok, so prizes might consist of immortality in the comments section, but still it's better than nothing. Immortality in this context means until a computer somewhere crashes, gets reset, gets a virus, or someone presses the wrong button. Or I cack up the code.
Ok so it's not that hard as it's on the front cover of 3 different A-Z's, and how many green bits are there anyway?
I'm off to play with the scanner.
Oh dear, I've now got 95kbs worth of "this revolution is for display purposes only" (it was graffiti on the boarding over an arch under the bridge out of Cannon Street, by Vinopolis). My brother and I happened to see it, having hurried past it the other way. We both laughed, and then wondered how many other people just don't see it. Judging by the crowd, most people. I took a picture, thinking it was a bit silly to do so. But it's gone now, so maybe it wasn't that silly.
Anyhoo,
My brother dropped in as he was passing by - post Cowes, he won quite a lot of races, and won in two classes (and somehow gained a huge flag to prove it). Typical him. Though the yacht apparently contained a ridiculous amount of experienced sailors - including someone who was "politely" asked to move away from the entrance to a royal sailing club, as the Duke of Edinburgh would be passing through. The be-blazered great and the good line up to greet him, and as the Duke ambles along, shaking hands and muttering his hellos, he fleetingly looks up, and sees this shabby looking man at the back. The DoE then cries out "Oh X, hello, how are you?". The commodore of the club looks mortified. The commodore and his underlings didn't know X (whom they had shooed away) had sailed on the DoE's yacht for 5 years - and the only mention he makes of it runs thus:
In a race, approaching a buoy with which the Duke had made contact the previous year, his tactician gives the following advice to the Duke. "We're coming up to the Blackdown [1] buoy, sir, which, as you may recall, you hit last year, sir"..."Sir, now I'd like you to steer two ticks to starboard, sir"..."Sir, 5 ticks to starboard, if you will, sir"..."Sir, ten ticks to starboard please, sir"..."Sir, hard a-starboard sir"...[The DoE] "Well bugger me, I've done it again".
[1] This name has been conveyed by 2 dyslexics, one of whom was probably drunk when he heard it, and the other has no idea what it should be, and as such shouldn't be taken as the actual name of the relevant buoy, merely indicative of a certain buoy.
The DoE also apparently, whilst sailing with a camera crew on board, messed something up and went down the companionway to vent his anger beyond the reach of the cameras. Except he was wearing a radio-microphone. His outburst included a string of variations on obscenities, such as "fucking fucketty fuck fucked" followed by something utterly mundane like "beachballs" [the grapevine breaks down on the precise wording].
And here was I thinking that being on the same island Prince Harry was reputedly on, and being near enough to get annoyed with the paparazzi helicopters [2], was doing quite well. That and going to uni with Princess Anne's son [did Sports Science (euphemism, euphemism), and according to the dinner queue gossip, the least objectionable thing about him is that "he's a bit short"].
[2] Well apparently he was on a boat fishing off the coast, according to staff in restaurants on different sides of the island (I wasn't sure if it was just one waitress winding up the tourists, but getting other people to corroborate stories would be too much effort for something so minor). Ok so a quick news search reveals nothing, except that he's supposed to be in Scotland at some point, and given Alderney isn't all that handy for Scotland, perhaps it was just a well planned hoax. But there was something interesting the helicopters.
Anyway, so yes, my brother was here, yes, he asked about my sailing, yes, I talked at him for ages, and yes, he very nearly fell asleep. But then he had probably worked harder on his sailing trip.
And while playing round on sailing websites (actually looking up bus routes, when the images are stored on a printing specialist's website, and said specialist happens to sponsor sailing stuff, and we sailed past their main boat in Gosport, and also saw her sailing by Cowes), I happened to discover that one of the people I went to uni with has won a scholarship with them. Bloody BMCs. Oh, sorry, hurrah, well done that girl.
And why am I being ambiguous about it? If you know any of the relevant bits (which are, to a certain extent, common knowledge), you can figure out who I'm talking about. Ok so this assumes you know what it is boat sponsors do, which given Skandia [Cowes Week], for example, isn't that likely. At least Aberdeen Asset Management [the Boat Race, so not actually sailing] make it obvious.
And speaking of printing (well I was two paragraphs ago, albeit briefly), I've been playing with the new scanner. So far I've managed to create a copy of the front cover of an A-Z, which is about 200kb. 1200dpi is quite detailed. The bit to right is a section of the cover about 2 millimetres wide. I hadn't even noticed the dirt on it, and can only just make out the dottiness.
Hang on, it's not as a gif or a jpg, so you might have to wait to see the results of it.
JPGed it now. It's not as clear, but you should get the point. Except the filehost's compression system has fudged it a bit more.
Prizes for telling me where it is. Ok, so prizes might consist of immortality in the comments section, but still it's better than nothing. Immortality in this context means until a computer somewhere crashes, gets reset, gets a virus, or someone presses the wrong button. Or I cack up the code.
Ok so it's not that hard as it's on the front cover of 3 different A-Z's, and how many green bits are there anyway?
I'm off to play with the scanner.
Oh dear, I've now got 95kbs worth of "this revolution is for display purposes only" (it was graffiti on the boarding over an arch under the bridge out of Cannon Street, by Vinopolis). My brother and I happened to see it, having hurried past it the other way. We both laughed, and then wondered how many other people just don't see it. Judging by the crowd, most people. I took a picture, thinking it was a bit silly to do so. But it's gone now, so maybe it wasn't that silly.
Anyhoo,
And the observant amongst you might be a little surprised by someone complaining of a file size being 200kb. A kilobyte or megabyte, what's the difference?
As my phone has more memory than my first computer...
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As my phone has more memory than my first computer...
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