Less Of The BIG And More Of The Small

This Is BOOJUM! After All

Where would we be if there were any consistency to the blog?  In the kingdom of predictability, painful predictability at that, is where.

     So, from all the worrisome big themes about war, death, murder and handing in library books late, we transition smoothly to nanotechnology, and the destruction of your planet at the metaphorical hands of micro-machines.

NO!  Art - I walked into that one, didn't I?

     Let me make that clearer: microscopic machines.  Tiddly fiddly gadgets that only come to full resolution underneath an electron microscope.

Like these gears

     "But Conrad!" I hear you quibble, "What do we have to fear from such minute mechanical contrivances?" 

     Grey Goo, is what.  Art?

NO!  Where's that Tazer -

     Never mind the vodka, get the -

There you go:  annihilation at the atomic level!

     Okay, here you have the march of the machines.  In reality an assembler would be a rather shoddy piece of equipment that falls apart quicker than a soggy sandwich, thereby limiting the rate at which it replicates.  So, manufactured in North Korea, one hopes, because if the Germans or the Swiss were responsible ...

Saving Private Ryan - The Goofs

If any of you out there possess a memory for the more pedantic activities of Conrad, you will surely recall the unabounded relish with which he tackled the IMDB list of "Goofs" for "Where Eagles Dare", not to mention his willingness to share this project with you the reader at the scantiest of prompts.

     Now, I have come across an even longer list of Goofs, that for SPR: WED came in at 9 x A4 pages of comments whereas SPR comes in at 16.  I anticipate the breakdown will be a little different from the 1/3 correct 1/3 arguable 1/3 utter drivel ratio in WED as this film is a lot more serious, but I've already come across some utter drivel already.

     Not a quick job, I have to say, as Conrad needed to copy over the pages, strip out un-needed comments, then put it all in chronological order.

     Don't worry, you will be hearing more about this in future.  O yes indeed!

You What?

Whilst the Twits have been keeping a low profile, the Foobs have been making up for their absence.  Art?  And get it right this time:

What the hell are they talking about?

     Firstly, what is "The Bradford Exchange UK"?  I do not live in Bradford, do not work there, do not travel through it on a daily basis and in fact my life would be unaffected were Bradford to suddenly disappear*.  Then, again, why has "Liverpool FC" come up at all?  Conrad possesses no knowledge of, interest in or understanding of football, except that the Offside Rule is there to stop players loitering around the opponents goalposts.

     BAH!

One Of My Shortest Responses Ever -

Another Foob offering:

In full: Ever wonder what the cast of "Game Of Thrones" looks like in real life?

NO!

Shamelessly Neglected Dog

When the rest of the household are off busy doing domestic chores, Edna feels it necessary to seek solace in the presence of your modest artisan, thus:

     She couldn't sit on my lap due to the trayful of books there, so chose to curl up alongside.  The instant she got a call from Wonder Wifey, however, she was off, Conrad completely forgotten.  Thanks, Edna.  Such disregard can hurt, you know.

Toward The Two Hundred Target

I refer you to the BBC website with the daft title about "Can you be trained to read 200 books in a year?"

     Well, yes, absolutely.  Step One would be giving up my job, giving me perhaps 16 hours per day of reading time.  Step Two would be to read all day long.

     Meanwhile, back in the real world, I've just finished "War of the Foxes", "Magic Words" and "Bomber Offensive".  The thing is, I usually have several books on the go at any one time, and thus tend to finish several simultaneously.

     This is the current crop, some barely started, some nearly finished.  There's a pile of about 30 sitting on top of a bookcase that I can't be bothered to picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Offshore Wind Farms

I caught a glimpse of one of these fields on an advert and it rather stopped me in my tracks.  "Where did this science-fiction landscape suddenly come from?" was my immediate thought.  You have to admit it can be striking:

Sheringham Shoal

     and also rather sinister, all that immense machinery in action without any human intervention. Well, almost.  That comparatively tiny square structure at dead centre?  That's the substation, crewed by one man and a dog.

To give a sense of scale

In An Ideal World

More peculiar television programme titles (all these are going towards the track-listing of my band's first album).

     And the channel is called "Ideal World".  What's the programme?  "Vibrapower Slim Blockbuster".  I don't think a picture Googled from the internet would be SFW here, so instead you can have - a Coypu.

"Nooooo!  The shame - reduced to appearing on BOOJUM!"

*  Unless disappeared via a Grey Goo incident, of course.