MaFt's (Almost) Daily Blog

MOVED RSS FEED!

MaFt — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:44:00 +0000

A while back I changed the hosting of the blog so if you use the RSS feed you will need to change the link to point to: http://maftmaft.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default - sorry for not letting you know earlier...

How Do The Canadians Do It?

MaFt — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:47:00 +0000

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

MaFt — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 08:41:00 +0000

There's nowt beats a freshly baked Pork Pie!

MaFt

The Cupboard Conversion

MaFt — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 08:06:00 +0000

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

MaFt — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:55:00 +0000

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

Steven Spiel-MaFt

MaFt — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:59:00 +0000

Blimey, I've let a week slip by again without any posts... So, I'm not sitting here with a pint of Wells Banana Bread Beer bringing you up to speed.

So, basically I've been getting lots of work done - both paid work and unpaid work. I've been a busy bee getting a load of video editing done but have hit a potential stumbling block... Disc space, or rather the lack of it. Never the mind though as I've worked out a way around it - it took a lot longer to work this out than I believe it should have though... I'm just putting the finishing touches to the bonus disc of the Punk Worship DVD I'm doing so once that's burnt I can get rid of the raw footage which will free up enough space (about 30GB) so that I can finish off my wedding video and Brother-A's wedding video.

Once those are done I'll have enough free space to do the main disc of the Punk Worship DVD set, for which I'll need about 45GB just for the raw footage. Then when that's done I can get cracking on Mini-MaFt's First Year DVD and a tonne of other odd little recordings I need to sort out.

It's scary to think that I can happily sit and manipulate 20GB files when only 7 years ago my first computer had a (then) massive 6.4GB hard drive. Big Brother-T said at the time "you'll never need all that space but if you've got the money you may as well have it". Well, now I have 18GB free space out of the 320GB I have available - and I cleared about 10GB the other day just from odd video files knocking about...

Space, the final frontier - I'll never have enough...

MaFt

Vegetarian Haggis

MaFt — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 09:57:00 +0000

I'll try anything once. Well, maybe not anything, but most things. When Dougsy the Scottish Beast came down for PW2 last month he brought with him a gift. That gift was a Vegetarian Haggis made by Macsween of Edinburgh.

The other day I finally got around to cooking and eating it. After removing the outer packaging and inner packaging I was faced with this:

The instructions said I could either oven it for 45 minutes, boil it for 45 minutes or microwave it for 8 minutes. Being both a modern man and a lazy man I opted for the microwave approach. This involved having to cut the haggis up into slices:

...slapping it in the microwave...

...and, after 8 minutes, removing the now cooked haggis:

Then came the scary part. Actually eating it! It was quite nutty and stodgy although I think I only managed to finish one slice of it... Don't get me wrong Dougsy, I certainly appreciate the gesture but vegetarian haggis is one thing that is being put on my "I've tried it once, and only once" list. Cheers though!

MaFt

New Year, Old Jokes

MaFt — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 10:11:00 +0000

Yesterday we decided to take all the decorations down and rearrange the living room. While we were taking the tree down we realised we had not pulled any crackers! We'd put them on the tree as decorations but owing to us eating out on Christmas day (if you were about to ask, it was pretty crap) and being at various family members' houses for the rest of the week we never had time for them.

So, in case you were wondering on the quality of the gifts and jokes that we had, here is the run down of all 12 jokes and all 12 gifts (in no particular order):

Gifts:

1. Fiddly Metal Toy Thing - one of those little things you fiddle with for hours on end and then finally manage to complete it, only to discover you can't get the thing back together...

2. Wax Crayons - set of 4 (yellow, green, blue and red) wax crayons. Presumably for use with #10. Small, fiddly and hard to hold unless you're a mouse.

3. 'Purple' Pen - a low quality, purple-plastic pen that actually writes in blue. Has a smooth click action for extraction/retraction of the nib. Good, all-round use and can also be used along side #2 with #10.

4. Whoopee Cushion - more of a 'squeek' than a 'parp' but then it's easily portable due to it's small size. You can't have everything, can you?

5. Green Plastic Hair Clip - one for the girls I guess, but I find it hard to imagine an outfit that it would go with. When I do manage to imagine an outfit it may go with it's a truly hideous one...

6. Tape Measure - A whole 60 inches / 5 foot / 150cm. Useful for measuring things less than 1.5m. Not many other uses really.

7. Set of Marbles - 6 marbles in a stunning red bag. Pretty useless really as the rules of marbles clearly state that you need 13 in the middle of the ring and then you need ones to play with... Still, it could be used to add to your marble collection (if you have one).

8. Whistle Lips - simply pop it in your mouth and blow it to make a noise like the secret Thistle Whistle only not as loud and without the Scottish Sea Dragons...

9. Playing Cards - small pack of cards for mouse-sized hands. Crackers seem to cater for very small people. I'm presuming it's a full set as I've not been bothered to open them yet to check; I doubt I ever will either.

10. Notepad - small (mouse-sized?) notepad with special 'silver reflective cover'. Contains 50 sheets (well, I got to 27 and figured I was roughly half-way through) and suitable for use with items #2 and #3.

11. Pink Water-Pistol - holds approximately 7ml of liquid and has a range of around 6 foot (180cm) depending on the Strength-of-Squeeze Factor and other GCSE Physics constants.

12. Star Pencil Sharpener - sharpen pencils and other objects of similar girth. Not suitable for use with #3 but will work with #2 (although no guarantee is given).

Now, onto the 'jokes'. It will soon become clear why I have put the word 'jokes' in quotes... Each 'joke' had a number in the corner, presumably so the monkeys packing the crackers did not duplicate a 'joke' in each set of crackers.

1. What lives at the bottom of the sea and shivers?     A nervous wreck.
2. What do you call a crate of ducks?     A box of quackery.
3. Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?     The breast stroke, sir.
4. Why can't you play cards in the jungle?     There are too many cheetahs.
5. What do cannibals play at parties?     Swallow my leader.
6. How do you get down from an elephant?     You don't, you get down from ducks.
7. What would happen if pigs could fly?     Bacon would go up.
8. How do you get two whales in a car?     Over the Severn Bridge.
9. Why does a giraffe have such a long neck?     Because its feet smell.
10. How do you start a bear race?     Readdy, teddy, go.
11. What's sweet and swings through the jungle?     Tarzipan.
12. Why did the jelly baby go to school?     Because it wanted to be a smartie.

Boom boom! That's the noise the writers of these 'jokes' will be hearing if I ever met one of them... Not that I own a gun, or condone the use of violence...

Happy 2007!

MaFt

More Spaces Than Ever Before

MaFt — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 16:27:00 +0000

Most people who chat to me via MSN will probably be able to tell you that my keyboard sucks. The space bar tends to be a bit reluctant to do any work so you would quite often have to decipherwhatexactlyiwastyping! However, Mrs-MaFt bought me a shiny new keyboard for Christmas (amongst other things) with, wait for it, a fully functioing space-bar! The possibilities are endless!!

See ya

MaFt

More Daftness

MaFt — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 11:57:00 +0000

I'm sure that old-age is making me lose my mind. I mean, 26 years old IS pretty old really - I'm probably a third of the way through my whole life...

I did another stupid thing yesterday although not quite as girly as being scared of a spider! I was hoovering up in the lounge (ok, maybe it IS as girly...) and there was a big bit of stuff on the floor. The hoover didn't pick it up first time so I tried reversing over it, you know, just to make sure. It still didn't manage to suck it up into the spiders new abode. So I tried again, both going forward and in reverse. Still no luck.

So what did I do? I bent down to pick up this bit of stuff to make sure that it wasn't stuck in the carpet and after confirming that it wasn't stuck in the carpet I put it back on the floor and tried to hoover it up again. Why I didn't just put it in the bin when I'd picked it up I have no idea... Perhaps it was just to make sure the hoover was really working, perhaps I'm just daft... It can't only be me that does it, surely?!

Her With The Hoover

DaFt (my new name?!)

Spider!

MaFt — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:45:00 +0000

T'other day, while I was tidying the cellar head and generally sorting out a mass of tools and junk that had been dumped there over the last few months or so, I came across one of these:

OK, it wasn't quite as cartoony as that, but artistic license allows me to use such images. I'm not a big fan of anything that creeps and crawls unless I can easily destroy it with a something the size of a BIC Pen - so this one was out of my league as it had a span of about 15mm; far greater than the preferred method of destruction. In my panicy wisdom I resorted to vacuuming the little blighter up. Problem solved, and how easy was that?!

It wasn't until later on that evening that I realised the spider could simply crawl back out of the bag/hose once I had switched it on... So much for my wonderful plan! It's amazing how thick we can be when we panic about something so pathetic as a spider.

MaFt

A Decade Has Passed!

MaFt — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:09:00 +0000

Well, 10 days rather than 10 years... I'm still dead busy hence my complete lack of Blogness! But all is almost done! PW2 went really well and the decorating at the Mother-In-Laws is coming to a close. Once that's done I can get cracking on all the video editing that has been building up since Summer 2005...

That's about it really, nothing of interest has happened! I'll try make the blog a bit more interesting in the near future too!

MaFt

So Much To Do!

MaFt — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:57:00 +0000

Both Mini-MaFt and Mrs-MaFt are ill... great... puke and poo everywhere! Seriously!

It has just dawned on me how much I need to get done this week! Not only have I work to do but I also need to get some decorating done at the In-Laws. Then on top of that, tomorrow night we're off to St Georges Hall in Bradford to see 'Love So Amazing 2' - a collection of modern worship stuff. Mum and Dad are singing so we're off to support them. Ro, Punk Worship bassist, is operating the projector for the night so he's gonna spam it with PW2 adverts so I'll have to get a photo of our massive promo!

I also need to get the laptop's prepared for various events at church this week: Thursday is Brigades Christmas event, Saturday is PW2 and Sunday I'm on the rota to project the normal worship service... Thing is, I can't get hold of the church laptop until Wednesday and I'm STILL waiting for people to send me what they want putting on it!

So, that's about all!

See ya

MaFt

Mini-Mrs-MaFt

MaFt — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:37:00 +0000

Those who are a bit more alert may have noticed that for a while the sub-title for the blog has said "... dad of one (and another one on the way)..."

Well, here's the other one:

She's due May 1st 2007 :) We're well chuffed!

MaFt

Beat The System!

MaFt — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:58:00 +0000

It's December tomorrow and that means Mrs-MaFt will soon be demanding I get the step-ladders out and risk life and limb balancing on them with Mini-MaFt running underneath me getting the Christmas Decorations up.

The Mother-in-Law has been sorting through their lights and all that lot over the last few days and found that most of them don't work - most of which they only bought last year. However, they bought them at the wrong time.

It got me thinking that if you don't mind having your decorations put up a week or so late every other year then you can beat the warranty system and show the big light companies that "you're the man". Well, here's my great money saving idea:

December 20th 2006: buy new Christmas lights with 12-month warranty. Put them up, get drunk and enjoy Christmas.

December 10th 2007: put your decorations up a bit earlier and if they don't work then they are still within their 12-month warranty period and you get them replaced. If they do work, then great, you've not lost out on anything!

For the following years: if you need new decorations then get them as late as possible to ensure you have some time left in your warranty to get them replaced the following year if things go wrong.

Dead simple isn't it? I have far too much time to think...

MaFt

Punk Rock 101

MaFt — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:13:00 +0000

"It's stupid, contagious
To be broke and famous
Can someone please save us from punk rock 101
My Dickies, your sweat bands
My spiked hair, your new Vans
Let's throw up our rock hands for punk rock 101"
'Punk Rock 101' - Bowling For Soup

I had a message via MySpazz yesterday saying how the Punk Workshop I was running sounded like a great idea and this guy was going to try get some of his friends to come along.

Now, hopefully, it was a simple typo that was supposed to read 'Punk Worship' and the poor lad wasn't actually expecting a workshop on how to be punk...

In case I am actually mistaken and he WAS wanting a punk workshop then below is my quick guide on how to be punk depending on your age:

Young Punk:

ensure your wardrobe consists solely of: atticus, lowlife, vans or black clothing
deny you are 'emo'
slag Green Day off for 'selling out' after releasing [insert any Green Day album title here]
listen only to the latest 'cool' bands
claim loudly that [insert last week's 'cool' band here] have sold out because they got radio airplay
only go to see your mates bands and download their cd instead of supporting them
have a MySpace page with your friends made up of bands you've never seen and your school chums
explain to everyone that being 'punk' is about not following fashions and thinking for yourself then go around dressing the same as everyone else...

Old Punk:

hate new punk rock groups for at least one of the following reasons: they have good quality recordings, they're in it for the money, they're too young, it's just not '77
wear an old, tatty leather jacket with some dodgy 70's bands Tipp-Ex-ed onto it
go on constantly about '77-'79
show how much you 'hate the system' by working 9-5, 5 days a week, for a multi-national company that exploits cheap labour in China
explain to everyone you meet that 'punk' is about not following rules or a fashion but then dress the same as every other punk and slag off various groups for not fitting the punk rules that, according to your own beliefs, don't exist anyway...
never shut up about the time you saw [insert any 70's punk band here] at [insert any small pub name here]

OK, so that was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but some people annoy me! Having said that there are 2 'types' of punk person that I respect:

1) The young punk who'll go to see old bands and respects the fact that this is where their current 'new' bands got a lot of their inspiration from
2) The old punk who accepts that times change and will go to see and support the new punk bands

That's all for now, I feel I may have babbled! Anyway, it's not 'punk' to moan about stuff that's not government (old punk) or fashion (young punk) related...

MaFt

The Separation of Work & Home

MaFt — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 14:36:00 +0000

It may seem kinda weird but since I've been working on a PC all day long at home I hardly ever seem to have any inclination to use my own PC! While this in itself is no big deal it just means that loads of stuff I need to do keeps getting put off - like the pile of camcorder video's I need to edit and burn to disc, websites I need to make etc etc.

I suppose it's like when I made drugs for a living at Nektar I never wanted to come home and make drugs. Now I work on a computer all day I hardly want to use one in my spare time. But, hey, at least I can make all the drugs I want to now!

MaFt

Damn...

MaFt — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:29:00 +0000

MySpace Quizzes

Bugger...

MaFt

The Greatest Band In The World!

MaFt — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:20:00 +0000

On Saturday night I, once again, witnessed the greatest band in the world playing live.

Scru', Jim and me headed over to Leeds Uni to catch the Rancid gig. Absolutely fantastic stuff! About 30 songs covering all their albums over the last 15 years as well as a couple of Operation Ivy songs thrown in for good measure. You can't beat the best punk band in the world coming back for their encore branding acoustic guitars - how weird it seemed but it sounded awesome.

Rancid

A good night was had by all. And a sober night too, flippin' £2.70 for a can of Carling...

MaFt

Tinkle: August 2001 - September 2006

MaFt — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 08:46:00 +0000

There was a stuck on a lamp post near our house yesterday saying:

We'd not seen her since Tuesday night andshe fits the description... Bit gutted really cos she was the first thing we got when we got home after our honeymoon so she was a part of the family from day 8. I know she's only a cat but it's still sad.

Here's a few pictures in memorium:

Rest in Peace, puss.

MaFt

Just Warning You...

MaFt — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:31:00 +0000

I've just switched to Blogger Beta where I can now add labels for each post that I make. So, I'm starting to go through all the posts to add the relevant labels to each one. However, if you subscribe to my RSS Feed then you may find that it suddenly seems to repost everything all of a sudden... This is because the posts have to be re-uploaded to add the labels and the feed thinks it's new...

So, sorry if you see lots of posts, but you have been warned!

MaFt

Top 10

MaFt — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 08:27:00 +0000

According to MediaMonkey these are my top 10 most listened to songs:

Welcome to The Black Parade- My Chemical Romance
Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson
The Darkest Places - MxPx
Blessed Be Your Name (live) - Punk Worship Band
Stars - Dude Fish
Punk Rock Princess - Something Corporate
You're Beautiful- James Blunt
The Story - MxPx
Friendly Fire - 3Dbs Down
Divide, Devoid, Devine - Chucky No Stars

What a mixture eh?! Wonder how different that list will be on my laptop... That's for another day!

MaFt

Izzit Cos I Is Black?

MaFt — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:27:00 +0000

Well, the blog has gone all black n orange! My two favourite colours. Well, not my favourite colours, more my favourite colour scheme! More changes to come, this is just the start for now!

I'm finally gonna get around to updating my site - well, that's a massive over-statement, the plan is actually to just change the main page to make it either a link to the blog (regularly updated) or the main site (badly updated) - at some point I'll actually update the site a bit but since Mini-MaFt has been born I've not had much chance to write any songs so it's a bit pointless so far! Still, it'll get done.

I recorded the vocals for OPEN YOUR EYES last night which sound pretty good. Just a few more finishing touches and we should be able to get some samples up and get them off to the printers too.

Right, break over, back to work!

MaFt

All Up In Smoke

MaFt — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:26:00 +0000

We had a bunch of people round last night for some fireworks. What started off as me, Mrs-MaFt and Mini-MaFt quickly ended up being both our families and a whole bunch of other people too! Still, I'm not complaining - it was fun and Sister-In-Law-H's neighbour made a fantastic corned beef and potato pie.

We'd bought some fireworks from Tesco - just kiddy ones so no big bangs or anything and so had Sister-In-Law-H. I got a text at about 5pm from Brother-T saying 'Got shit loads of big fireworks and rockets see you later'. Well, they were big and there were lots of them, however, they were just bigger versions of the kiddy one's we had bought! Brother-T was gutted that he'd spent forty quids on 'pretty-pretties' of which only two banged. The rockets were good though!

So, it just goes to show that just cos you pay more and they're bigger that that doesn't mean they're gonna be any better! The big-ass fireworks required us to be 25m away from them as opposed to the 5m ones we'd bought originally. So, even though they were bigger they looked the same cos they were 5 times farther away...

MaFt

Almost Recorded

MaFt — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 21:52:00 +0000

Yo, spent most of the day in the crèche at church recording both the drums and guitars for the Punk Worship CD. We rn out of time for getting the vocals done so I'll be getting those done during the week either on my 8-track or down at Ro's... No doubt you'll be kept updated!

Anyway, I'm off to catch up on Torchwood.

MaFt

Enough To Drive You Mental!

MaFt — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 08:07:00 +0000

Yesterday, wherever I drove I seemed to get stuck behind either a learner doing 20mph in a 40 zone or a bus that wanted to pull up every 100m at some imaginary bus stop. Why people don't give me priority on the road I have no idea...

Hopefully today will be better as there's no school traffic to get caught up in!

MaFt