For Gatso and friends, 0 STTs in 1 month.

[boldie]

Nice Work Thomas, but the Ochils are my back garden and you aren't exactly selling them.

nice landscape admittedly..the people are pillocks though, right?

[Eck]

Nice Work Thomas, but the Ochils are my back garden and you aren't exactly selling them.

nice landscape admittedly..the people are pillocks though, right?

Obviously with it being an old port town place is full of Dutch immigrants.....miserable gits every one of them.....

[boldie]

Nice Work Thomas, but the Ochils are my back garden and you aren't exactly selling them.

nice landscape admittedly..the people are pillocks though, right?

Obviously with it being an old port town place is full of Dutch immigrants.....miserable gits every one of them.....

[thetank]

Nice Work Thomas, but the Ochils are my back garden and you aren't exactly selling them.

Sorry but very house-proud 

I think one of the best views of them is along the Bellsdyke Road towards Grangemouth, or coming up on them through Skinflats. One of those super-wide panoramic shots where you put together a few photos might work well there.

I think they've photoshopped some green over a few farm buildings on that first picture of yours, it looks less like Scotland and more like the Shire.

The second photo is absolutely superb. The mountain looks immense in the background, with personality almost.

The third is a bit too kitschy cute for my tastes. 

BTW is it the BK in Springkerse you are working in?

I'm not in the Springkerse one, although I work the occasional shift there. I'm in the city centre.

[thetank]

Days 21, 22 and 23 - Widening the net

My wife's birthday yesterday, and I forgot to buy her a present in advance. I did exactly the same last year, and covered by telling her the present was a shopping spree. I didn't think that one through at all, birthday girls can spend quite a lot on shopping sprees.

So I learned by my mistake, and just admitted that it had slipped my mind this time. She knew I was ditzy about remembering dates when she married me, so cannot complain now. I picked her up a DVD and some chocolates while I was on my break at work.


A week on Saturday there is a home game that I was keen to attend. I haven't played any live poker for an absolute age, and was looking forward to some banter with pals. I can no longer go, as it turns out the world of burgers and chips cannot spare me for one evening.

Indeed, I have to work Sunday morning too, with just eight hours between my shifts. I know this is against working time regulations. When I mention this fact, I just get the "everybody has to do it occasionally" line.
When I insist it is illegal, I get the "Fine, I'll just have to cancel my weekend away so I can cover for you" guilt trip. I don't want to be the guy who makes him do that. I also don't want to be the guy who squeals to HR, so I just have to suck it up.

My weeks holiday starts tomorrow, and so I will be able to move the job hunt into a higher gear. I didn't think of this before, but there's no reason I can't commute to either Glasgow or Edinburgh if a position has sensible hours. It's time to widen the net.

[thetank]

Days 24,25 and 26 - Fads are bad

I've fallen out of the, early to bed, early to rise, routine in the last week or so. Consequently, I have not been doing the writing work I should have been (including blog entrys)

The wife is worried that I could just be going through another fad. I get all excited about something for a couple of weeks/months and then lose interest. It's happened before with activities such as gardening, cooking, chess and even poker to an extent.
She always takes the piss out of me for the time I changed a tyre, and then asked her later the same evening what she thought of me becoming a mechanic.

I just find the world very interesting, and am lacking a bit of direction at the moment. Writing, particulary fiction writing, appeals to me because you can immerse yourself into a particular area of interest, and then a completely different one the next week.
I may or may not get the chance to investigate and experience all I want to before I leave this planet, but if I don't I'll only have myself to blame.

I'm determined that this course is not to be a fad. I just need to work on my organisation, something that's not going to happen instantly.
I take inspiration from an interview I recently read with emerging songstress Duffy. Talking about her formative years, she says something along the lines of..

"if I didn't do something every day that somehow furthered my goal of becoming a singer then it made me desperately unhappy"

That's exactly how I want to be, not desperately unhappy, but motivated enough to not let a day go by without doing something constructive.

[thetank]

Day 26 and a half - A little drunk

Wah-hey 

[turny]

tank imo the best writer blonde has to offer amongst some great writers.

keep it up please 

[Rod Paradise]

Day 26 and a half - A little drunk

Wah-hey 

Sorry folks, you can blame me & Swordpoker - Tank's first real drink since the wee yin was born.

Imagine getting home drunk from a mathematics lecture at Glasgow Uni

[boldie]

Day 26 and a half - A little drunk

Wah-hey 

Your best work yet my friend

[Tonji]

Day 26 and a half - A little drunk

In the best tradition of Ernest Hemmingway et al 

[Eck]

Days 24,25 and 26 - Fads are bad


She always takes the piss out of me for the time I changed a tyre, and then asked her later the same evening what she thought of me becoming a mechanic.

I did LOL 

[thetank]

Day 27 - Simon says

I ventured into Glasgow to attend a lecture by Simon Singh. He's the only person who has ever written a book on Math that topped the UK bestsellers list, and he specialises in presenting science to the layman.
Being one of the aforementioned laypeople, I find this rather groovy. I enjoy the feeling of smugness that comes with understanding something complicated.

I was also using the evening to catch up with a couple of pals. When walking to the lecture, I felt somewhat embarrased when I had to point at a rather impressive looking building and ask one of them "What's that?"
My friend/tourguide informed me it was the University of Glasgow. I lived in this city for a whole year, what a crime that I had previously missed it.
To be fair, the University doesn't sit on any road running between my old flat and a poker venue.

Click to see full-size image.

The lecture itself was quite interesting. It was all about probabilities, and how intuition can be misleading.

To give you a taster, I'll try to reproduce one of the things he showed us....

Listen to the following youtube link with your eyes closed. It's a short clip of Led Zepplin's Stairway to Heaven played forwards, and then the same piece played backwards. It's about a minute long, make sure you don't peep until it's over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwBdpESvSKM

Did you hear any words?
Listen to the clip again, this time with your eyes open.

The point Simon Singh was trying to make is that the mind often sees or hears something just because you tell it to, we are naturally drawn to finding patterns that perhaps don't really exist. In this case, instead of hearing backwards gobble-de-gook, we hear a satanic message.

He ends with an anecdote of how he improved a Katie Melua lyric. I've found a clip of someone else telling the story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21iUUe-W8L4

All this plus free tea and biscuits, well worth the £0.00 admission.

[thetank]

Found a youtube link of Simon Singh doing the Zepellin thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bG7EFhMw8w&feature=related

[thetank]

Day 28 - Fillings

I turned up at the dentist around 3 o'clock for the first of four power tool sessions. I walked there, as it's not too far from my house, but got caught in a snowstorm on the way.

I resembled a yeti when I walked in the door. The dental nurse asked me if I had been caught in that little flourish.
"Yes." I joked, "They'll be no need for the anasthetic today as my jaw is already frozen."

Later on, when I was seated in the chair, the nurse repeated this joke to the dentist. At this point, the wimp within me surfaced and thought it prudent to clarify that I wasn't being serious. I'll take all the gum numbing injections you've got thankyou very much.

I imagine NHS dental professionals don't get much positive feedback or compliments from the people they've just helped. No matter how good they are, it's always going to be a uncomfortable for the patient, and I imagine plenty of people resent their dentists.

At the end of the session, when putting on my jacket, I told them "That was nowhere near as bad as the last time I had fillings, you guys are really good at what you do."

It was not altruism or any sense of fairness that prompted me to say this though, I had another agenda.

With my eye on the next three sessions, I figured there's value in endearing myself to the people holding the drills. If they like me, they might go easy on me, or so my warped logic suggests.

Seeing the pretty Irish lady smile, that was just a bonus.