Bringing video games to life

Had a great ride with Rob on Sunday (thanks Rob) amongst the talk of art and magic and fairies at the bottom of the garden that need feeding plus a thousand other subjects the topic of a French guy called Rémi Gaillard came up. I have been following Rémi on You Tube for a few years now but the gist of what he does is make videos that are both very funny and challenge social norms, here are a few of my favourites

Where does all the water go?

I have never seen so much standing water in our woods so rather than ride up there I went out with the dog and took some nice pictures instead. You can click on any of the pictures for full size perspective.

I think I will let it dry out a bit before riding up there.

This is one of the images above inverted, I like the effect.
Click on the picture for full size perspective

And the same image with colour removed and leaf space ship effect.
 Click on the picture for full size perspective

Rob and I followed the stream the other weekend but could not follow it far enough to see where it went, it disappeared under a fence and off into a field towards the bottom Calcot Hill.  The stream is at the bottom of the dip by the really boggy bit that we do when we link our woods with Rough Common, anyone know where it goes?

Me and the Cav

My kids have become a bit of a whiz with Photoshop and put together this little piece. You can actually see the fear in Cav's eyes, he knows he is beat ;)

The eagle eyed amongst you may recognise the picture of me as from the Hell of the Ashdown back in 2010.

I may even get back on the bike one day soon!

Tax is taxing

Well that day has rolled round again and the self certification form fest that fills me with joy is due.

As usual I have turned the place upside down for those important documents that say clearly "do not destroy" and boxes and boxes of receipts and bills and stuff that I really should file more carefully, or at least put them in one place.

The miracle that is the internet has now allowed me to turn chaos into beautiful bureaucracy with only a few red cross errors flashing up to steer me on my way.

Anyway all filed and completed with one day to spare!!

Now where do I send the invoice for my pen pushing time today?

I bet I know one blog reader who has not done his yet, he still has all day tomorrow yet - you know who you are ;) 

 

The world just got smaller

To further underline my total hypocrisy when I start raging against the evil capitalist system here is an example to show my evil credentials as a fully paid up member of the capitalist club and my blatant disregard for the environment in the pursuit of profit.

I am awaiting a shipment of goods from China and am having them air-freighted over using FedEx, on line tracking reveals their crazy journey:

A nice little van picks it up from the factory in JIAXING CN

The van drives to the airport and it gets put on a dirty great plane SHANGHAI CN

The dirty great plane flies over the Pacific Ocean and lands in MEMPHIS, TN

In Memphis it then gets put on another dirty great plane and flies to NEWARK, NJ

From New Jersey it goes on yet another dirty great plane and flies over the Atlantic Ocean and lands in STANSTED GB

It is currently resting in customs awaiting clearance

So what you say?

Well while the package is resting in customs I have just sold part of the consignment, destination - Tokyo...

So when it arrives here FedEx will pick it up and drive it back to Stanstead to do the journey again in reverse.

That is me, capitalist pig with no regard for the environment in the pursuit of the evil profit. I also rage against the machine when it suits - hypocrite of the highest order :)   
  

Roller Disco inferno baby

This morning I swapped two wheels for eight and went roller disco baby yeah!

Well actually I took the kids to the local roller skating rink which opened a couple of years ago. My youngest children are quite accomplished skaters and wanted dad to come along, what could possibly go wrong?

The last time that I strapped wheeled boots to my feet was well over a decade ago so to say I was a little rusty was a bit of an understatement.

I laced the boots up, so far so good.

I met an old friend of mine who is an ace skater - no pressure then

I made it to the edge of the rink, yay.

I made it round once

And then again

And again, this was fun.

It is amazing how age blunts the memory, simply skating around is such simple unadulterated fun I really should do it more, hey I am going to do it more, roller skating peleton anyone?

 

How many people read this blog?

How many people indeed... The answer is quite a few, not as many as the heady days of the old site but to be fair we don't have much content on here yet, here are some stats:

We started the blog in June 2012

• Page views June 2012: 502
• Page views July 2012: 394
• Page views Aug 2012: 200
• Page views Sept 2012: 68
• Page views Oct 2012: 33
• Page views Nov 2012: 263
• Page views Dec 2012: 136
• Page views Jan 2013: 247

Page views all time 1,843

The most viewed pages by far are, as you would expect, the ride pages and the picture pages which account for a round 1,000 of the page views with the remainder being split between the posts on the home pages.

The most popular posts?

1. Carnigor is now posting on the Two wheeled carnival
2. What is a two wheeled carnival of love
3. How worn are these brake pads

I have no way of knowing who reads these but someone is somewhere.

What is quite interesting is the countries that we get visitors from

United Kingdom	1916
United States	71
Canada	44
Germany	13
Russia	12
Barbados	7
Poland	5
Sweden	5
Ukraine	4
India	3

Do we know anyone who has been to Barbados? ;)

Here are some more interesting stats

Since starting this blog I have covered 1,453 self propelled miles and burned 92,135 calories

950 miles on the road bike
290 miles on the mountain bike
213 miles on foot

Longest road ride 70.8 miles in on July 7th 2012 ( I am guessing Dover?)
Longest road duration 8hrs 07 mins July 7th 2012
Most road climb (during one ride total) 2,444ft

Longest MTB ride 27.5 miles June 16th 2012
Longest MTB duration 6hrs 12m June 27th 2012
Biggest elevation climb (during one ride total) 3,188ft Nov 18th 2012

Surely we can top this in 2013?
  
More stats soon stats fans, I love data me.