Don't You Just Hate It When...

You start using hair-gel instead of shaving-gel...

Animal Farm

Received this the other day:

Dear Reader

Petitioning the Prime Minister seems to be very much in vogue at present, with the media giving a great deal of coverage to Number 10's dedicated website. A new petition has been set up via that website in support of animal research, stating:

Animal research has enabled scientists to find treatments for cancer, vaccines and antibiotics. This does not advocate using animals unnecessarily but animal research is required because sometimes there are no other viable alternatives. In addition it is unrealistic to force animal research to stop by a certain date since nobody can predict future scientific progress in finding other methods that produce accurate results compared with those from animal research. It is for these reasons this petition calls for continued support for animal research.

If you would like to support this petition, it can be found at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/animalresearch/

Thanks again for your continuing support.

Yours

Jo

Jo Tanner
Chief Executive
Coalition for Medical Progress

Go on, do it for the kids!

MaFt

The Verdict.

Anyone else watching this? It seems pretty good so far actually but like most 'reality' TV there's a cynical part of me that thinks that it's not going to actually be that real...

The 12 jurors (some random 'celebrities') have to decide the outcome of a rape case. The case is fictional and is based on evidence taken form actors after an unscripted, ad-libbed 'event'. Because of this then surely the witnesses etc aren't going to be realistic as they know all along what happened and that none of it was real... Also, the jurors know none of it was real so they'll have to be very strict with themselves to treat it as such and not to just have fun with it.

Still, it's good telly and the first proper use of my DVD Recorder too! What would have topped it all off though was if they had got Judge Judy to preside over the case!

MaFt

How Do The Canadians Do It?

Why does Britain come to a total standstill when there's the slightest bit of snow?!

However, the really annoying thing is that, with working from home, I can no longer phone up and say "My bus hasn't turned up because of the snow so I won't be in work today".

MaFt

Mmmmm

There's nowt beats a freshly baked Pork Pie!

MaFt

The Cupboard Conversion

In a bid to create some more space in the attic Mrs-MaFt had this crazy mental idea to convert a cupboard on the landing into a computer area. I had this crazy mental idea to agree and actually pull it off!

First task was to get everything out of there - a set of drawers and a bunch of coats and other random crap. I did find my Voice Of The Mysterons badge though! And once that was done I got measuring - ya know, to make sure it was feasible and so that I didn't have any nasty surprises later on...

Phase 1.5 was to drill a few holes and stick some cables in fr the power. Phase 2 was to stick up a load of brackets for the shelves to sit on:


Just look at the lovely aqua coloured walls...

To cut the shelves I hired a magical saw that cut them itself without any kind of human intervention. As you can see from the photo below, I'm not telling porkies - you can clearly see that there are no hands assisting the saw.


The magical 'self-cutting' saw.

With the drawers cut to size and their perfect fit(!) confirmed I went about painting over the garish aqua with a nice, plain white.


White wash!

The next step was obviously to fit the shelves and then get those painted too. For the keyboard tray I just robbed the rollers from my old computer desk and used those - no point reinventing the wheel eh?


Shelves in place...


...and painted in matching white.

It was then time to move in. All was going well until I tried to put the monitor in... Erm... My measuring clearly wasn't up to scratch as it didn't fit... Neither did the 15inch monitor I swapped it for with Nephew-J... Damn, I'm going to have to buy a nice 19" Widescren TFT monitor. What a shame that will be :D For the meantime I'm using TightVNC to control my PC via the laptop. Works well too!

Anyway, here it is in all it's glory (sans monitor):


Ta-Da!

MaFt

Update

I'm not ignoring you all, I've just been busy with trying to get stuff sorted at home! I've been busy converting an old cupboard into a computer hideout but my monitor doesn't fit in there so I can't really use it yet (hence the lack of updates).

So, once I'm sorted and can pull a load of pictures off my phone I'll get the blog updated!

Cheers

MaFt