Tour de Blackheath?

I'll have to find out exactly what it was but this morning as i drove through Blackheath hundreds of bikes along with a police escort rode past. Tailbacks were huge behind it... Wonder what they were all out for?

Too Much Stuff!

I'm a hoarder, I keep everything... It must be hereditary tho as my mum is a terrible hoarder as well. I've got every toy I ever had as a child in the loft. Including probably a small fortune in transformers. I only wish I'd kept the boxes. But who am I kidding I'll never sell them.

Now I've even more stuff since I've moved back in with my parents. Adding the stuff I accumulated living in my own house to the stuff I never took out of my room has resulted in a massive pile of boxes I've got to sort out... it's truly huge. And no room to put it. Looks like I'll have to break with tradition and hit e-bay with it.

Someone will always buy someone elses crodge.

Hopefully the sale of all that will net me enough money to afford a nice new bed as a single bed is doing my head in.

Bands

I'm pretty lucky as my sisters boyfriend is a member of a band so I get to see some pretty cool gigs, so i figure they need a little recognition, so please check out their Myspace:

Cursed as Angels

Also a really good band that my sister knows from her Uni days:

Nephwrack

Both went to Bloodstock (Sadly Cursed as Angels didn't play) so check out the photos and videos they took (Some were even taken by me :-) )

I've also uploaded some more Bloodstock photos to my myspace so check those out too.

My other on-line pressence

Despite this blog I have a myspace account:

http://www.myspace.com/roamingjay

Sadly not that well used (That's gonna change) , but it contains some cool photos and soon some videos too. Take a look at it, and more importantly take a look at my friends Myspaces too.

My current project is a new website... hopefully it'll be interesting, but it's time consuming writing a web site. So fingers crossed it'll be here soon... so watch this space:

http://www.roamingjay.co.uk/

Porn Lift

Seriously tho, this is an unfortunate name, so why would you put it on the side of a van! They must get some rather suspect phone calls from people.

My New Grotto (AKA Workplace)

Not my official start date yet, but an important meeting was on today in London that I was advised to attend so I could get up to speed.

Meeting went really well I didn't say much (Which was kinda deliberate being the new boy), but I gleamed a lot of information about the new clients as I could and surprisingly given it was an architectural discussion I understood a lot of it.

I'm really excited about starting here as it's such an exciting place to work. As you can see from the photo it's like working in a Santas grotto :-) It's hard to see how anyone could get depressed working in a place this :-)

Yet Another New Start

Well here I am again off to another new job... for those that know me it's no surprise as I've been unhappy in my last place almost since day one.

I've got a couple of days off to just unwind and get ready for the daily trek into London every day. This new job excites me, I've always been a good designer in the sense of engineering, but I've never tried anything where I need to be artistic as well... I can draw, and paint but not very well (Nothing you would be ashamed of, but nothing that would stand out from the crowd) . I've always said I'm a artist trapped in an engineers body, this new job will hopefully allow me to stretch that aspect of my skills further, as I'll be designing giant Christmas decorations (Think Shopping Centers, Oxford Street), so from an engineering point of view it'll be challenging to incorporate aesthetics into functionality and safety, something I've never had to worry about before... a plane has to be streamlined and aerodynamic, not beautiful.

Well lets hope I can find a home at my new place and settle down for a bit... This job is set to vastly improve my skill set, as not only do i need to be artistic, but I'll also be involved in architecture (Anyone who's a designer will appreciate the fact that a fully paid up architect earns £70k+, double what i get as a mechanical designer) . something Ive always fancied, but been unwilling to train another 8 years to do.

The Green Fairy

This post is a little late because i've had to download the photos off my camera instead of on my phone.



Drinking is definately the order of the day at festivals, most people go for beer, but not Naomi she's hitting the Green Fairy (Absinthe), and with her new green corset she'd make a pretty good mascot for Sebor... move over Kylie, Naomi's hardcore :-)

Nephwrack

Nephwrack played a blinding set on what was a tiny stage... Thankfully some heads up from other bands pointed out that the amp heads which were already set up were rubbish. So after persuading the crew to change them with their own they managed to get a decent sound out of them :-)

Alternative Karaoke

As you can imagine singing the spice girls at a heavy metal festival karaoke is a sure fire way to a painful death. So my sisters friend christian puts on an alternative Karaoke at these festivals. You have to supply your own air guitars tho :-)

Monster Tent

When paul said he had a tent big enough for all me up if wasn't kidding. It's a kick ass tent with 3 bedrooms and what i suppose you could call a lounge :-) once it's up it's the mutts... But my god it took all 4 of us 3 hours to put up!

Sardines go to Bloodstock

Woo hoo off to Bloodstock... We're going in my sisters car... I'm so surprised we managed to fit 4 adults... camping equipment... And clothes for 4 days... We're a little cramped tho! I'm really excited... Not only is it my first festival but i get to hang out with my friend Naomi :-) who i very rarely get to see :-(

Books are silent, but they say alot

I think in todays society books are becoming a rarer commodity, were it not for the resurgence of Lord of the Rings brought about by it being converted to a film (Pure irony in itself) and Harry Potter (Again converted to film almost as soon as the books are written!) I don't think reading would be considered "mainstream" at all these days, which is really sad actually, because I find that there's something satisfying about reading a book, the feel of the pages as you turn each over, the way your mind develops the characters within your mind. Or in the sense of a factual book how your mind links past knowledge with the new knowledge from the book you are reading.

It's something that is ultimately lost in film and TV, like a distillation that instead of leaving you with the purest concentrated form somehow leaves you with the essential properties evaporated and only the hardier essence remaining.

A book relies on ones own imagination to fill in the gaps and make the characters and their surroundings real... there's no better CGI than the human imagination :-)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that movies and TV are great for getting a story or point to the masses, but it's all too easy to miss the core of the subject... when you watch a film or TV and something occurs that you don't understand, or a word is used that isn't in your vocabulary you rarely investigate it as to do so would involve you either missing the story or having to rewind. However in a book, you are at leisure to re-read a paragraph, search the appendix or pick up a dictionary (I read LotR with a dictionary always by my side) and investigate further... if you read books like LotR and Harry Potter (For shame, something I have yet to read) and delve deeper in to the meanings of words and names it can display a vast wealth of untapped information, and shed a light on the thoughts of the author... the origins of the work. I'm not saying that authors plagiarise, far from it, you cannot plagiarise myth, folklore or religion (Although in the Red dwarf universe they did find the missing first "disclaimer copyright" page from the Bible), take the DaVinci code, as a mason I appreciate certain elements more so than others would as I can read deeper into the myth and legend that has been borrowed from freemasonry. I can also poke fun at the misinterpretations or rather deliberate changes from what i understand to be true.

Next time you read a book take the chance to look deeper into it's subtleties, rarely do authors just "make stuff up" on the fly.

Happy Birthday to Me

Well today is my birthday, and I have now reached the ripe old age of 28. Man I feel old, However the fact that I am now the proud owner of a PS3 (And a 32" TV to go with it!), hopefully goes to show that i'm still young at heart.

Had a wonderful meal at a Thai restaurant I'm very fond of... it's not everyones cup of tea, but the food is never boring. The staff were in hysterics watching a grown man tyring to "transform" a Transformer in between courses... I'm sure they weren't that difficult when I was 5. Again i must be getting old. My mother excused my actions by pointing out it was her "little boys" birthday today. So without prompting my desert arrived with 2 candles in it and the staff singing happy birthday to me :-)

Shooting Stars

The Percius meteor shower culminates on the 12th of August, and it being a new moon this year means it's perfect viewing time... so me and my dad went out in search of somewhere dark and away from city lights. No mean feat given our proximity to London, even though I'd say i live in the countryside it's still very difficult to find anywhere that's good for stargazing (It always amazes me when I go to Devon how many more stars you can see). Eventually we found a nice spot and began searching for incoming meteors... after what felt like ages my dad turned to me and said "do you keep seeing little tiny lines in the sky every now and then?" to which i replied, "yeah but they're so quick i can't see them properly, almost like my eyes are playing tricks on me" at which point a large shooting star shot across the sky almost on cue for us :-) After that we saw about another 4 large shooting stars and numerous "phantom" streaks which I can only assume are shooting stars that are so small they're difficult to see with the naked eye. Overall a good start to my birthday :-)

Manpad

For the first time in a long time i went to visit my mate matt in lincoln... It's a long overdue visit for me as it's been a good 5 years since i visited him last... he comes to see me about once every couple me moths... Recently i've had a lot on here and he's been down practically every weekend :-) he shares a house with two women (lucky git)... It's a fantastic place... Huge and compared to london stupidly cheap. He's got the best setup a man could ask for... HUGE flat screen TV 5.1 sound and a PS3... Suffice to say we only left his manpad in search of more beer and food :-) a bloody good weekend :-)

Sniffles

I've got a bit of a cold at the moment so i've good and got myself a box of tissues for my desk at work. Only thin was there's mu a single manly looking box amongst them... They're all pink and with flowers on (feel the irony for hay fever sufferers). Closest i could get to manly was a brown one with stones on! Dead professional looking.