Vrooomy Vrooomy Racingtons

It’s FORMULA ONE TIME

I love Formula One, not sure why. I just find it amazing that you can have over 15 cars, with over 80,000 parts each, and end up with them doing a 5 mile lap within a couple of seconds of each other.

They manage that, and I can’t turn up to a party within half an hour of any of the other guests.

Bahrain qualifying starts in just a few minutes, and I shall make some wildly innacurate and poorly deducted predictions on the season ahead.

This season is going to be all about team mates,  Michael Shumacher and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes, Jensen Button and Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, and Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa at Ferrari.

The first driver from any of those to dominate his team mate, will have the best chance of winning the title. I haven’t listed Red Bull’s drivers there, because I don’t believe they’ll have quite the pace early on to be right there at the top. If they have, then I think Sebastian Vettel will outclass Mark Webber and the other teams may find that they’ll be fighting for the constructors trophy only.

Still, for Bahrain.. I think Alonso for pole. Race win as well.
(I hope to god I’m wrong)

Hamilton will beat Button in qualifying, but they’ll be more evenly matched in the race.

McLaren will win the constructors trophy in a fight with Ferrari.

I don’t know about the championship. I’d love it to be Lewis Hamilton, but I think it all depends how much of a fight Massa puts to Alonso.. if Massa is up to it then Alonso won’t be able to start a runaway lead. Saying that, I don’t think Massa is up to it. Maybe at first, but once Alonso is settled in there will be no touching him.

Best of the new teams? I can only say.. Who cares?

(Rough post I know, but it’s actually started now so I have to go.. I can always change it later to make it look like my predictions were spot on.)

EDIT: Less than five minutes in, and I want the BBC to sack Jonathon Legard. He annoys me *SO VERY MUCH*. He says everyone is ‘ON A CHARGE’. All the time. ARGH.

Oh and Chandok, is doing really rather well considering he hasn’t had any practice. Ku’dos to him.

Though he does remind me a bit of an Indian Mr. Bean:

He just looks like Rowan Atkinson to me. In a nice way.

EDIT 2: First qualifying session over. Best performance for me was Chandhok, yes he was last, but for the amount of laps he did, he was fast. Worst performance was Heikki Kovaleinen and Lotus, may as well have been last for the experience he has.

EDIT 3: Well I was wrong. Red Bull have pace, Vettel is on pole.  Hamilton managed a good 4th, but McLaren look like they need something new to get them in a race winning position. Though, we don’t know tyre wear or reliability yet. No less excited for the race tomorrow. Oh, and yes Michael Schumacher was dissapointing, but expectations couldn’t have been higher, so that’s not his fault. Just needs some time to get comfortable again.

Tags: F1, Formula One

Mars Bars

Yesterday, I took ownership of a Mars Bar.
Last night, I dreamt I had two Mars Bars.
This morning I have no Mars Bars.

I did not eat the Mars Bar.
Where is the Mars Bar?

Why, at the moment in time, does nothing else in the world appear sadder than losing a Mars Bar?

Tags: mars bar, mars bars

Snippet

I apologise for my lack of posting, but as my grandmother once said (via MSN of course) “If you ain’t got nuffin good to post, post nutting at’ll”.

I.e., I’ve been at work for a month without any money, and I didn’t think anyone would want to read that I was sulking because I couldn’t afford a pint.

Anyway, two things tonight:

1, In King’s Lynn town centre, I was walking slightly behind a group of slightly loud youths, and  in the distance I could see more youths appear to be fighting.. and young girlish wails.. one of the youths said to another:  “If that’s a group of guys attacking that girl I’m going to go mental, bugger another assualt charge, it’s worth it”.
I then felt better about the world. Police should have that mentality.
(I should point out, at the same time, I was also planning some form of Ninja action, I just realised it was merely kids fooling about quicker)

2, I required the use of certain facilities as I got off the bus tonight, and so I popped into the local pub, and went to buy a pint (I always feel it’s wrong to use an establishments facilities without purchasing a beverage as remuneration.) and the bar man said “Do you have any I.D. please mate?”
I look young!
I DON’T LOOK LIKE AN OLD MAN
Result.
If it had been an attracive young lady then I would be doubly pleased.

Still, I had forgotten my wallet, so I didn’t get to sample a delicious pint of London’s Pride. Shame.

I’m exhausted and achey, so good night all x

Tags: london's pride, poor, tired

My ‘Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′ rant.

Why is it that this game got almost exclusively 9/10 reviews?
Why is there no criticism anywhere?

I’m not saying it’s not a good game, I’m just saying why isn’t it better?

Is no one else bored of the scripted, linear campaign modes in every Call Of Duty game since the series started just over SIX YEARS AGO?

I don’t think that games should have to be like movies, the same everytime you put the disc in, why can’t you have different paths to the same objective, or different objectives for the same goal?

In fact, I think they missed a golden opportunity in the storyline for MW2.. there is a mission where you are undercover with a terrorist group and have to take part in a massacre of civilians. You have to go along with this (or skip the mission entirely, but that doesn’t affect the story in any way). Why not have a fork here? So you could go along with it and deal with the horrible emotional trauma, or kill the terrorists and prevent the massacre, but risking the overall mission. As it is, it pretty much just provides a bonus mission for the sick, twisted, and sadistic. (If you haven’t played the mission, to see what I mean, watch this video)

Even just a choice of different missions would be an improvement, so if you get stuck on one, you can do another first and come back to it.

Or more features, like being able to select what weapons you want to start a mission with.

Special Ops is a step in the right direction. The thing that struck me though, was why give me a few guns on a tarp at the beginning? Why not just let me pick from ANY of the weapons in some sort of selection screen? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it before in games. I’m pretty sure I can do it in Rainbow Six: Vegas. In fact, you can do it in the multiplayer side of COD.

I actually spent six hours playing through the special ops yesterday on veteran, and it was fun.

Much much more fun than playing the campaign on veteran.

It occured to me, that the campaign on veteran often boils down to doing the same thing repeatedly, in pretty much the same way, and trying to remember where the guy who killed you last time was (He’ll probably be in the same place, doing the same thing. It’s easier to program like that.).

Whereas, in special ops, because we didn’t have to do the same thing each time, and many of the maps are more open, we were using strategy and team work to beat the missions! Which was fun and not frustrating and repetitive.

Bigger maps, with choices of objectives (or at least, a choice of order of objectives) and a team mate who actually helps makes it infinitely more fun.

You don’t need a human team mate even, just look at Conflict Desert Storm, or the Rainbow Six series.
Mix those games with Call Of Duty and you have a winner.

(Oh, and improve the way people act when they’re shot as well. Make it more like you’ve just killed a man, and less like you’ve just flame thrower’ed a patch of nettles. Shouts of pain, better blood effects, icky injuries, all of these should be there. I noticed it somewhat in the level killing civilians, but it should be throughout. I worry that it’s bad for peoples minds to let them forget that they’re playing a simlation of killing other humans.)

Tags: COD, Modern Warfare 2, Rant, video game

The Great Historical Bridge Competition

Construct a model of the famous Iron Bridge (as in the picture below)

The first cast iron bridge. It's a bridge, and it's made of iron. Hence, Iron Bridge. Wonderous.

That, more or less, was my 13 year old sister’s history homework. So in the spirit of making bridges out of the latest and greatest of modern materials, her and her friend cast aside all forms of sense, and any appreciation of physics, and chose chocolate fingers as their building medium.

I took issue with this approach, and decided to see if I couldn’t do better using the traditional approach of cardboard, sticky tape, stainless steel wire, and pretend science. This is how it went.

Like a bull in a china shop, Emma rushes into an early, yet costly, lead

Meanwhile, I'm being so intelligent, I'm thinking in squares.

As well as chocolate, Emma's bridge is made of cardboard, and wishful thinking.

An insight into the mind of a genius. I also sometimes think about goldfish.

Ignorance is bliss.

The finished scale model, fully labelled and minutely detailed. A success for Timmington.

It's not about winning, it's about taking part. And hilarious failure.

I think I won that one.

Don’t read this. It’s boring. It’s a boring boring week. And I’m bored.

I was too tired to go to the pub today.
Which is a shame.

And quite pathetic, because my only reason for being exhausted is that I had my first day of work yesterday. Which being a Sunday, wasn’t even a full day.

I’m beginning to suspect I’m not as fit as I once could claim to be.

In any case, I’m there tomorrow at 8, which is the earliest I’ve ever gone to work. A new record for Tim. Amazing.

In other news, I’d kill for people to talk to on MSN because I’m the most bored I’ve been since…literally the last time I said I was bored in a blog.
Which was probably the last time I wrote a blog.

I don’t actually like the word blog.
It sounds like bog.
I’d rather say “last time I wrote an entry”, but everytime I used the word I would fear I might become prone to accidental innuendo or other word based peril.
Nerd news: Just realised I could plug my external hard drive into my xbox and watch the vast amounts of British comedy programmes on there. With surround sound where available. Not quite a substitute for a rewarding hobby or a loving relationship, but it keeps my eyes busy whilst I’m awake.

Right, I’m going to go and keep reminding myself I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, go to the job centre, then rush back to get my brother to take him for an appointment in town.

I foresee a boring yet stressful Tuesday.

P.S. Just realised, haven’t actually mentioned on here that I got a job before did I? I started Sunday. At Milléts. The high street camping and outdoors shop.

P.P.S. In case you’re wondering about the accented é, it’s because I think they should rebrand themselves as being French and upmarket.

Tags: bored, boring, kill kill kill me now because im bored, milléts, pub

A historical account of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, circa 1520

The Aztecs, or “Mexica” most famous leader could probably be said to be Moctezuma II. Born in 1467 to become the leader of an empire, he died in 1520, a prisoner of Spain.

It may be argued that these events, some 500 years ago, would have little or no bearing on the events of say.. Friday 15th January 2010.

But you’d be wrong.

As on that day, myself and a group of five more friends (Latticey friends that is. By that I mean, friends I have accrued through meeting in the Lattice house. Not friends that have naturally consist of an ornamental design made of strips of wood or metal) went to London! ON A TRAIN!

People familiar with my tangled web of neurotices* may notice three things wrong with that:

1, I practically have a phobia of cities
2, I don’t go anywhere outside of my lattice based comfort zone
3, The 505 bus aside, public transport scares me

I thought about it though, and I thought.. well… we’re only really going to an Aztec exhibition at the British museum.. and I am going with a group that includes a six foot tall fairly scary looking close personal friend.

The view from the train! and Jane's pointing hand. It's a pity, if it'd been taken a second earlier you would have seen a herd of majestic wildebeest chasing a flock of startled tax assessors. Just out of shot.

SO I WENT And nothing bad did happen. Good things happen. Things like pints and Chinese food and casual touristy friendliness**.

In case my memory became hazy, I took the precaution of taking lots of out of focus pictures.

First of all, we went to the Aztec exhibition.
Much was learnt.
Much was seen.
Much was old.

Knowing that most of my loyal readers (or more accurately, people looking for porn who accidentally got linked here from a popular youtube style porn site. No, I’m not making that up. My server logs told me. Weird.) are already experts on 15th century South America I didn’t feel the need to take any pictures. Except for the wonderfully reasonably priced gift shop.

Where you can buy such things as these beautifully crafted thin plastic trays:

Only £28 and £30 respectively!

That's me. Tim. Hi.

Inside the British Museum. I'd like to have my room like that.

Terry (left) and Chris (right). Note the jaunty angle. That's called "jauntery photographery" in the trade.

Pints, in "The Princess Louise"

The bar in the pub. Poorly photographed.

Chris, Terry and Del. Obviously when it comes to using camera phones, I fail.

Jane, with a pint of Kiri. In the best Chinese restaurant I've ever been to. Or else, it was mediocre, and I was very drunk. I hope it was good though. It'd mean I didn't have to be very drunk to go back there.

A classic example of the table surfaces used in the Chinese restaurants. Also, a classic example of me fiddling with my phone and taking accidental pictures.

I don't know what happened to his face, but this is Chris, with pint. Nice.

A *slightly* less blurry Hobbit.

Hobbit shows us his pornstar pose. No, we didn't ask to see it. But there it is. In all it's weird and twisted glory.

Another pub, McGlynns. Courage best was served, and it was good.

Courage Best. For those of you that don't know, it's a pint. A pint of beer. In a pint sized glass.

Jane, Chris, Terry, Del, Hobbit in a row in the pub.

Me and Terry, merry in the pub. After some pints, but before some more pints.

Myself and a guy at the bar. Called Justin. Justin the friendly guy at the bar. That's his full title.

I thought I should take a picture with the friendly bar staff of McGlynns. Richard. THANKS FOR THE FREE CRISPS RICHARD

We went to three pubs in all, had some lovely pints.
In the Chinese restaurant I actually used CHOPSTICKS successfully

Oh! and on the train home I walked between carriages for the first time! Not quite so successfully… you press a button and then both doors open in sequence. Except the second door when I tried, so I kept getting stuck between carriages, and Terry had to come rescue me. Three times.

The last pub we went in was McGlynns at King’s Cross, and I can thoroughly recommend it to all (See, that’s the sort of endorsement a free packet of crisps gets you. Good eh?)

*is that a word? It should be. Sounds amazingly intelligent in my head. Like vertices, or hippopotenuse. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, it means the longest side of a herd of hippopotamus. An animal famous for it’s triangular herd formations. According to me anyway.

**What does that refer to I hear you ask? I don’t know. I just liked the phrase. Happy ring to it.

Tags: aztec, british museum, lattice house, london, moctezuma, photos, pictures, the princess louise, train

Timmington’s 2010

It was an interesting year. Full of highs and lows.

Love affairs, visits to exotic locations, new jobs and promotions… these are just some of the things that did not happen to me last year. Or the year before.

But I’m hopeful for this year.

Right now I should be on my way to a new year party, but I’m too tired, and instead I’m sitting here trying to work out what I want to achieve this year, and how to go about doing it.

I should list my goals here, but that would make it worse when I failed to achieve them.

Tags: 2010, goals, new year

On the day before the eve of Christmas Eve…

Yet again, I have done nothing blog worthy.

I've recently been experimenting with new ways to write legal documents. I now use tables instead of paper, and sign my name only in condiments. This example is the back of my giant wooden credit card. In case you're wondering, yes, it is woodchip and pin.*

This week I managed to:
- order two new suits
- go to the pub
- write and send one christmas card

That is all.

Tomorrow I have to pop into town for an early appointment at the lack of jobs centre, and then attempt to buy christmas presents, but actually fail miserably, ending up spending all my money on suits.

It’ll make for an interesting day, up until the point I eventually realise you can’t buy many suits with six pound coins and a tic-tac box full of five pence pieces.

Still, I can dream.
Mainly about this:

A safari suit, modelled by some guy.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually think I can afford it.. despite it being cheap as chips (well, cheap as 40 cones of chips. Or 40 kilograms of McCain Chunky Homefries**. Or two very large cotton chips, carved into the shape of a two piece safari suit.). It also is probably a couple of inches too big for me in terms of chest size (I am of course, still a tiny tiny man.). I may buy it anyway however, so that if ever I over eat and become larger, I will at least be able to enjoy the handsome lines of style and the  ‘I-just-killed-a-lion-with-only-a-high-velocity-rifle-and-a-zebra-striped-land-rover’ look.

Now, suits aside for a few minutes (Only a few though, I’m in a suity mood.), I actually had other things to say in this blog. I don’t remember any of them. I think it was something to do with christmas or easter. It’s christmas on Friday so I’m going to go with that, and share my christmas based wisdom with you all.

Christmas

Christmas is good.
Snow makes going to the pub more difficult.
Elf is the best christmas movie.
Presents are difficult to buy.
I like the excuse to eat and drink in excess.
Dutch police hate reindeer
The best christmas song is “Fairytale Of New York” by The Pogues & Kirsty McColl.
The second best christmas song might be by Hot Pantz.
I’d like to give you one.
I’d really like to give you one.
I’d like to give you for christmas.

That’s all I have to say about that.
I haven’t evean dreamt about much lately.
Except for one dream in which I bombed a law firm, but I dare not share that in case it wasn’t a dream and I was in fact confessing to the real life murder of three people.

Before I go though, I feel I should report the worrying fascist activity going on at my family’s dinner table lately..

Sister: Joe’s written ‘Nazi’ on my shopping list!
Me: Oh he didn’t did he? You can’t do that to her shopping list! Pass it here and let me have a look! That’s very bad of you.
*looks at shopping list*
Me: Right, but you had in fact already drawn a swastika on your list before he wrote ‘Nazi’ on it?
Sister: Well yeah… but it’s my shopping list….

I think I should probably end on that note.
Goodnight all.

*Probably the worst pun I’ve made all year. I feel like I should apologise, but I can’t. You wouldn’t read this if you couldn’t handle tacky wordplay.
**You may ask why I bothered to make that a link. The answer? Purely because I imagine people like to click things. I click things all the time. Sometimes I open MS Paint just so I can enjoy clicking the little red “X” icon to close it again. Try it. It’s more fun than you’d think. It’s a bit like having a little servant with an easel in the next room, and every so often you ring a bell and proclaim the urge to paint a picture, and as soon as the easel is set up and the paints set out, you say “Actually no, I no longer wish to paint a picture. I shall return to staring at my wallpaper instead.” and he scurries away. Like a guinea pig carrying tiny books.

Tags: christmas give you one for christmas, dream, fascist, large wooden credit card, safari, safari suit, suit, swastika, xenophobia

Too dazed and confused to think of an adequate title.

I haven’t updated this in over a week.
I think I’ve been too busy.

I say I think, because I really don’t remember monday to wednesday. Maybe I went to the pub or something?

Thursday and Friday I had college then pub.
Saturday I watched the snooker and ate After-Eight mints.
(And managed to break my PSP. Just when I was getting into playing Pirates as well. I vowed never to forgive myself. )

Then Sunday I did almost absolutely nothing.
(Except managing to repair my PSP, and forgave myself.)

Now I just can’t work out whether to go to town or not. On the one hand I have lots of presents to buy, and a pub to frequent. On the other hand, I’m lazy and probably low on money anyway.

I also need to do the christmas cards I was definitely going to do yesterday.
+ Tidy my room.
+ Do some washing.
+ Stop being in a dazed state of madness.

Oh, and I should probably note down the dream I had last night.
Not particularly unusual (at least by my standards) but noteworthy all the same.

Dream:

From what I can remember I was in a stairwell of a London tube station. On a camp bed. My head was killing me, and I had family around me generally jabbering and being entirely unhelpful.

After what seemed to be hours of lying there, I heard a commotion which woke me up from my dazed state.

Hundreds of commuters were running towards me.

I thought *sigh* and tried to gather up all my essential items I had littered around my bed.

Then I recognised one of the commuters. It was Bradley.
I said “HEY BRADLEY!” and he told me he was in a rush, but that he was also a closet post man. At this point he handed me a package, and told me it was from Adam and Lauren, and that I must use the items within to prepare for their christmas party, and be ready at once with wine and cigars.
He then left, in quite a runny pointy fashion that I couldn’t describe without making him pose for an embarassing photo. Which I may later.

This was odd. Not least because Adam and Lauren don’t use friends to deliver parcels to people sleeping rough during the Monday morning rush hour.

At least I’ve never recieved one.

Now I was fully awake anyway, I thought I’d open the mysterious package.
Inside I found… a full length coat. A PVC leather effect one. Rather swanky. I of course put it on immediately.
AND!
Two fake eyebrows, made of brightly coloured green plastic.
But that’s not all of course.
There was also an upside down fake moustache (which in hindsight could have been non-upside down, had I not put it on upside down.).

Wearing my new found style, I went for a walk. Around Lynn. Which included much generic shouting at youths.
But then I got to Westgate, to browse.
During my browsing however, a man pulled out a gun on the staff.
And realising he had not noticed me behind him (probably due to my incredible green eyebrowed upside down haired goth disguise) I realised that instead of going home for a nap, I would have to tackle him.

This I did rather unsuccessfully, as the remainder of the dream consisted of me holding on to a large man muttering swear words under my breath and wondering why our grappling appeared never to end.

Weirdly that dream seemed even less coherent than normal.
I shall go now, and attempt to get dressed.
Merry Monday.

Tags: adam, bradley, dream, lauren, pointless