So I am writing this post on my iPhone. However this is mainly out of lack of choice - it appears that the hard disk in my laptop has gone to the big platters in the sky. This means I am left with my iPhone.
This is combined with a lack of wind.
I have also read most of my books.
I am bored.
So I have decided to craft a list of things I am looking forward to for when I return. Best seen as a list to distract and comfort me on return from the cold.
I am looking forward to: (in no particular order)
1. Not be constantly sweating.
2. Sleeping through the night without waking up and feeling like I am doing my best impression of a bowl of ice cream in an oven.
3. Red wine.
4. More red wine.
5. Beans on toast.
6. Home made granary bread.
7. Lots of vegetables, I’ve yet to see a carrot here.
8. Bitter/real ale.
9. Having a computer back.
10. Fast reliable Internet access everywhere.
11. Service in a resturant.
12. Strong UK winds.
13. Big epic UK sessions.
14. Playing on my wave board.
15. Scrambled eggs.
16. Cold drinkable water form the tap rather than warm bottled water from the shop.
17. Meals that aren’t just meat+chips+salad.
18. Not putting on sun cream every 2 hours or so.
19. Wearing my flexifoil jacket.
20. Chatting to my dad.
21. Chatting to my mum.
22. Chatting to Bailey.
23. Chatting to Mike.
24. Playing World of Warcraft and dinging level 80.
25. Playing on my xbox and sinking my teeth into EndWar.
26. Driving my car rather that relying on beach buggies, Taxi’s or busses.
27. Taking the skills I’ve learnt here in the waves and using them at home.
28. Hanging out with Karl.
29. Organising a trip to France, Belgium and Holland to kite surf 3 countries in one weekend!
30. Sitting on our damn comfy sofa.
31. Seeing friends.
32. Listening to music on my speakers and feeling enveloped by the sound.
33. A nice hot bath.
I might add to this later. I think I is important to note that I love it here in Brazil, it is great fun and I am loving the kiting, the company and the food. It is just important to remember what it is I love about where I live and going away for an extended time allows o e to do that. Oh. And read a lot
I am currently sat waiting for breakfast so thought I would write some thoughts down!
Brazil is excellent, my kiting has improved and Emma is now able to water start and travel a healthy distance on the board. It is fair to say that she can kiteboard. The next thing on the list of things to nail is staying upwind which should be no issue as she can do it on land and snow. I have some things I want to try like 360 inverts, backloop kiteloops (can almost land them) and a whole host of unhooked shenanigans! The water here is nice and warm and the wind good but part of me does miss Littlehampton beach for a punchy epic flat water session We have been really lucky to have great accomodation and really nice people to hang out with. It has been funny showing them land kiting videos and watching their eyes pop put of their head (having never seen it before)
Christmas was good albeit different. A group of us had various meals out with the pinacle of the day being spent hanging out at the beach by the lagoon drinking coconuts and eating ham and cheese sandwiches! I would, as my twitter feed suggested, be a liar if I said I didn’t miss a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings! As for presents, Emma bought me a share in Apple Inc. which is pretty damn cool. The certificate will arrive when we are back home. Emma loves a good massage so I got her two deep tissue massages for when we return and various massage related items for when we are here.
I still think my iPhone rocks. I have however stumbled across a curious situation. Gaming. I love playing games. I love my iPhone. It is therefore safe to assume that I would love gaming on my iPhone right? Not exactly. I have various games on here and a whole selection of games I’d like to buy but I just don’t play them. There is some mental barrier that seems to stop me seeing the device as a games machine. This will probably pass but it is a curious gate that I want to get past. I think what doesn’t help is so many games extolling the virtues of tilt controls when they make control soft, soggy and down right frustrating to play. A bit like trying to tie shoe laces with boxing gloves.
Hope everyone that reads this is having a great holiday!
I wonder what the other blowhard pundits seen here have to say about making fun of Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff’s accurate predictions in 2006 and 2007 about the economic meltdown and its causes? (Ben Stein should probably stick to his subject of expertise, which is claiming that “science leads you to killing people”)
This video sequence offers a compendium of appearances (covering the 2006-2007 period) by Euro Pacific Capital president Peter Schiff, who is a frequent — and frequently disrespected — talking head on cable news shows. What astonishes is not just the accuracy of his dour predictions about the economy but the sheer arrogance of every other person appearing on these programs.
I don’t know who comes off as worse — the supremely snotty Ben Stein, or the well-named Arthur Laffer. I just wonder how Ben Stein feels about the financial markets as an investment now.
This is an astonishing compilation of clips. It just keeps getting more outrageous as it goes along.
Every time Schiff says something sensible, the pundits surrounding him snort and howl. They treat him with undisguised contempt and hatred, as though he had just called for ending the laws against homicide or reducing the age of consent to three.
We love Mega Man. In fact, when Mega Man 9 was announced, we ran around picking up random telephones looking for a way out of what we thought was surely The Matrix. Seriously, how could something so good happen to us? It seemed like a dream. And now, this trailer for a fan-made Mega Man movie by Eddie Lebron is along those lines. It’s like the guy broke into our office windowless prison cell and picked the small lock we have on our diary. Then, he read that diary.
But, in all seriousness, what is the deal with Dr. Wily’s ’stache? That thing looks rabid and might need to be put down.
I completed all the daily fishing quests in Outlands. I’ve almost completed the Northrend Fisherman quest. I’ve also racked up over 1000 fish and improved my cooking. All these have been good side activities whilst waiting for Dave. I also discovered that Popcap have released a version of Bejewelled for WoW. This has been fun using this when unable to do anything else.
The other day Mr. Pinchy dropped and provided me with a chance of completing another achievement - the magical crawdad. The first time I invoked Mr. Pinchy, he turn mad and attacked me. The second time the following happened:
Whilst doing some quests with Dave, I saw this kite in the game:
I know it is just a computer game, but it is good fun and enjoyable when you manage to do things others haven’t. I’ll never be a bad ass end-game raider so I shall suffice with the things others don’t have the patience for: fishing, cooking and first aid
So I got back into WoW over a month ago to prepare myself for the impending drop of the expansion.
Back then I was a level 67 Orc Warlock, 225 Enchanting, 270 Tailoring and 250 Fishing. I leveled the character up fairly quickly with the rest bar giving me a nice quick path to level 70. Having ding’d level 70, I managed to find some people (including Dave) to go to Dire Maul and complete the Dreadsteed quest. This was a quest line I’d been trying to complete for a long time. When finally done myself and another guy in the guild left with our Dreadsteeds. This was the final photo shot taken:
Later that day, with cash reserves and some grinding, Dave helped me get my flying mount which ended a pretty good weekend of WoW playing. I then proceeded to get rather addicted to the in game achievements (although not to the extend that Dave did) which dropped in Patch 3.02. We decided to race through and try and complete each and every instance in the game we could “duo”. So we have been bashing through those and have a fair number of them complete. I also started to try and “power” level tailoring and enchanting having hit 375 in tailoring and 335 in enchanting. I then noticed the achievements floating about for Fishing. The more I read, the more intrigued I was. Some of these looked bastard hard. For instance, going into a 25 man raid instance to fish out one of the bosses. It required various items from the world to complete - a parachute and water walking. After one failed attempt I managed to nail it:
I’ve completed various of the other achievements with only about 8 remaining for fishing. I am going to get myself the salty title. Yesterday I even managed to obtain Old Crafty and Old Ironjaw (involved sneaking into the enemy city and fishing there. Every time an Alliance dude went past I crapped myself!)
My aim is to complete all the fishing that can be done in the Classic world and the Burning Crusade so that the only items left are those that can be completed when I finally get around to starting to quest in Northrend. The closest I have gotten to the new content is a new Death Knight:
It is pretty damn good fun playing WoW at the moment
Put a few hours into it now and feel that I really have to spend some time on the single player before I venture online and get my arse royally beaten down. I know Bailey gets the game today so we should be playing some skirmish games.
As to the game. A quick review: fast, frantic, hard and fun. The voice control works really well.
In light of the plan to blog more often now, I thought I’d take 30 seconds out and quickly note my weekend.
Friday morning I went to get vaccinations for Brazil.
Friday evening, I ordered some pizza, picked up some beer and played some Warcraft with DaveG. Was a good giggle and I think we ended up nailing several dungeons: Wailing Caverns, Mauderon and Razorfen Kraul.
Saturday I got up with the aim to go kiting. It was hanging on weather but due to the injections the day before, my arms felt like they had run into a baseball bat several times over. Wishing not to get my self in grief I decided not to go out flying. I dropped Emma at the station and then drove up to Birmingham. Had a nice drink with Alex, Lauren and Bailey and then drove up to Mike and Helen’s. Had a great evening gaming, chatting and have some cheeky beverages.
On Sunday I left Mike and Helen’s and headed down to EKS. Was good to see various kiters but with it being ropey weather, I declined a fly and decided to get in the warm and head over to DaveG’s. We hung out, did some geekery type things and then ran the whole of Dire Maul (East, North and West) which felt like quite the gaming achievement. I then raced over to Bailey’s flat. When I say race I actually mean try-not-to-die-as-the-rain-turned-torrential-and-left-large-pools-of-water-in-the-road. Had a cheeky shower and then headed out to Nandos. Mike, Helen, DaveG and Laura met Bailey and myself for a cheeky bite to eat. It was a good giggle and I very much enjoyed hanging out with the guys. Afterwards Bailey and I went to see Saw5 which was an enjoyable film if not a little gruesome. Headed back to Baileys where I was crashing for the night where we watched Top Gear on iPlayer.
So the world continues to rotate, my love of twitter increased and I have realised that I’ve not blogged for a while.
I shall start with something that have not changed: Bloc Party are my favourite band still, I also still adore Biffy Clyro - Puzzle album. I’m still flying kites as much as I can and still working for the same company. I’m loving living with Emma and very much looking forward to going to Brazil in December for a month. We are definitely getting married next year and that should be quite an event.
So what have I been up to?
At the beginning of October I was best man for Mike and Helen’s wedding. It was an excellent even and I very much enjoyed the honour of being there, able to make a speech and see various people. Mike and Helen seemed to have a fantastic time which was excellent.
Mid-September saw the stag do of the afore mentioned wedding. We went surfing, coasteering and to the worst strip club in the world.
We had Emma’s aunt Ally come visit which was very enjoyable. I felt privileged to be the first to high-five her ever in her life. We spent time on the beach, spent some time playing Wii and had a great evening meal.
Last weekend Emma’s mum, my mum and Emma had a bunting fest leading to vast quantities of bunting being produced. Then Ben and Corrie and Francis came over and had some food. Was a good weekend and the evening meal was full of laughter. The fact I had a bitching session at Littlehampton helped!
This weekend Emma and I met up with a load of people on Westward Ho! beach. Was a great weekend. Flew the new 10m Flysurfer Psycho 4, 8m Flysurfer Outlaw, 12m Peter Lynn Synergy and my own 11m Sonic. Was a great land session on both days. Although there was a broken back, a broken collar bone and my own sore hip, I think the weekend was quite successful. The only thing putting a dampener on the whole thing was the knackered alloy as a result of hitting a brick. Added an extra 3 hours on top of the journey out there although the service station staff were excellent. We also dropped in on David and Claudie some relatives of Emma’s on the way back.
I’ve also been playing some World of Warcraft and Dead Space. EndWar comes out soon which ought to be good fun.
We have been really lucky to have great accomodation and really nice people to hang out with. It has been funny showing them land kiting videos and watching their eyes pop put of their head (having never seen it before) 
