Wingsuit flying. Wow!

Have you heard of wingsuits? I hadn't.
Click once on videos to play here, and double click to open in a new window (this gives you the option of viewing them full-screen).
Most of these videos are of base jumping, and one is of aeroplane jumps.






I discovered wingsuits from Shankyrich's journal on h2g2. You'll find there a link to yet another wingsuit video.
It's fantastic stuff.

Nutty

So, we've all heard those silly tales of nut packets with the warning sign Warning: Contains nuts. Well, I blooming well hope so. That's what I'm paying for, isn't it? But you can understand. It's EU regulations, and the law cannot allow exceptions. Imagine, if you will: All foods which contain nuts or nut traces must display a warning sign on the packaging. (Unless it is obvious that the food contains nuts.) How do you define obvious?

But it does get a bit silly when a packet of mixed nuts says Warning: May contain nuts. May? I suppose they're just sticking the same sign on everything, regardless of how likely it is to contain nuts. May is a beautifully catch-all word, covering the full range of probability.

Now, though, we move on to the next level of absurdity. The packet photographed above warns us that it may contain nut traces.

Yes, I suppose that is a possibility.

Internet People

I got well under half the references. Perhaps not even a quarter. I think that's a good sign.

The 60s/70s Party at Luke and Colm's

I hadn't planned to go to the party. Not worth the effort of dressing up, I thought. It was Simon and Michelle who changed my mind. "You'd have such fun taking photos of everyone," they said. They were right. They also said that Ruth would be wearing a blonde afro. That, I thought, would be worth seeing. Since I made up my mind to go only moments before leaving the house, I was not elaborately dressed. Odd for me to be the least weirdly dressed person at a gathering. I told Colm he looked like Jack Sparrow. Is that a compliment? And there were more: Best dressed lady: And, after many attempts, I managed to get a photo of this lady.

A small crowd dancing

At one point, most of 'em went for a walk around the estate. I didn't.
There really was a lot of wig-swapping going on.
They even got me with one. And there are no prizes for guessing who came as Elvis. His dancing, though, was unusually restrained.

Dancing Elvis

And I wasn't the only one taking photos.

A Photo Shoot

Hey! Someone else wore shorts. That means I could've done. Bah! But at least I stayed in bare feet. Most of the time, at least. We shall title this picture, Sarah takes evasive action. Well, we all had fun. I left early, and walked home, still in bare feet.

Messing with the new digital camera: I go for a walk

Okay, I was being a bit silly. But the camera is brand new. So there!

Isn't this lovely?

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I didn't think that sort of language was still used. Not yet elected .... Beautiful.

The Rostrum (interim posting)

The new rostrum was installed in the Kingdom Hall a week ago, and is working well. This post will be supplanted in due course by a better one, I hope. We do have a video of the rostrum actually working, but we're having trouble uploading it.

So, a photograph:

And another:

And this video shows something of the internal workings, but it's not at all clear, I'm afraid. I'll record another some time.

Demolishing the Treehouse

The treehouse was rotten and unsafe, and needed to come down. So Daddy started some work on it. Then Simon arrived, and got enthusiastic. When I came home from walking in the woods, I started taking photos. The one above is taken over the top of the garage roof.

"Is the recording with the orange light on or off?"

The treehouse has been used as a store for general junk for a while. There was a busted leather sofa in there, for one thing. There was also sacks of straw and hay for use as duck bedding, and cardboard to put under the straw to make it cleaner and easier to remove all the bedding at once and chuck it on the compost heap.

Does my voice really sound that silly? Or is it just when I hear it?

As with most acts of violence, there was a certain amount of fun to it. But it was sad, too. That treehouse has seen many happy days. We slept in it many times. Some summers, we were there almost every night for months. It was big enough to sleep five in comfort, and six at a push. I slept there alone for a few weeks too, when we had visitors in my room. (Well, my room and my brother's, but he was away somewhere else. I forget. It was a while ago.)

In case you're wondering, at this stage, I did do some work myself, including some axe-weilding. It just wasn't recorded. The treehouse is left now with the rotten external platform gone, and with the fireman's pole felled. All the vertical supports from the ground still stand, as does the treehouse roof, though the walls are gone.

Demolishing the Treehouse (part 1)

And so we did a bit of work. The camera was acting up a little, so the audio and video are not quite in sync. I think the batteries were failing.

Some disturbing videos

I thought I'd share with my readers (assuming, of course, that there are any) a few things I've come across recently. Be warned that these videos contain content which may harm delicate minds. Readers of a nervous disposition or those likely not to shrug off a traumatic experience are encouraged not to read further.

Proceed with caution!

 

We start with the most innocuous: The song "Marvin" set to clips from the television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxey. Enjoy!

 

Now this is disturbing. Colin Baker as Marlene Dietrich. Very very strange. Be warned now that you will not be able to erase these images from your mind after seing them.

 

And, saved for last, we have Leonard Nimoy singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins". You have been warned.

Overheard: From MailMetro

A little letter to Dublin's free Metro newspaper:

You know how sometimes you pass someone on the street, and you hear just a few words of conversation? That happened to me yesterday. A chain of primary school children went past, and I heard one boy say, 'Tony Blair's trousers'. At first I wondered what on Earth he had been talking about. But then I decided I didn't want to know. It would spoil it.

I think that's rather beautiful, don't you?

And so I have a blog.

I'm not sure why, but I suspect I'll find a use for it at some stage. Most of my blogging to date is in my h2g2 journal, but I might use this occasionally.