And this happened

So, this happened.

Yet another fitness attempt

Rihanna's new song is all about sex. How naughty.

I'm building a new blog over at this address. It's titled "Project Sort Your Fucking Life Out Foss" because it's all about me sorting my life out and becoming even more awesome than I already am, which is VERY AWESOME INDEED.

I'm keeping it seperate from this blog because fitness posts on here make me fail. And I want to keep this place for all the stupid crap. PSYFLOF is more serious, and will be a log of my journey from fat lazy twat to awesome beefcake twat.

See you there, chumps x

JoCo

Why yes, this is Me, Ryan and Jonathan Coulton at the JoCo Bristol gig. Thank you for noticing.

The closure of Geocities

Earlier this week, Yahoo closed Geocities.

Geocities was a free website hosting company, launched in 1995. The servers comprised of virtual neighbourhoods and blocks, where pretty much anyone could have their own website. If your website was music based, your neighbourhood would be sunsetstrip. Sci-fi sites went into Area51. You then had your own block under there ie www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/3635 (sunsetstrip ftw).

Most geocities websites comprised of bright text, centred over a dark background, with transparent tables, animated gifs, marquee tags and horrible MIDI tracks. My first site was on geocities! It was horrible, ugly as fuck, and as a full time web developer I'm embarrassed by it. But that doesn't stop the closure of Geocities being a terrible idea.

So what if there was a lot of rubbish on there? There was also a lot of useful information and a lot of memories, too. How many old tech manuals were on there? How many broken links have Yahoo created by removing Geocities? How many Geocities websites were created by people who have since died?

It's a piece of history, and a reflection of the state of the Internet at that time. Yahoo should at least have made a proper backup or snapshot of the site, but all they did was point archive.org in the right direction and say "get on with it".

As Jason Scott puts it: "Help me save Geocities. Not because we love it. We hate it. But if you only save the things you love, your archive is a very poor reflection indeed."

More awesome Jason Scott speak here.

rrrrooooowwwwrrmmmm dakakakakaka

I've been playing Battlefield 1943, that's what. And I have a hot new woman. Ka-ching!

And what the fuck have YOU been doing with YOUR life? Huh? *dismissive wank*

:*(

Mum died on June 29th, and her funeral is tomorrow. I'm going to be one of the pall bearers along with my brother, cousins, uncle and stepdad. It's probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I'm dreading it :(

Thank you to every one of you that has shown me love and support over the past couple of weeks. You're all very special and I really appreciate your kind words.

x

Foss? Where've you been?

Duuuude, I had a birthday. It was like the 30th birthday I've ever had.

Then I spent a lot of time getting drunk. And I bought a shitload of books about how to improve my memory and increase the awesome power of my brain. I've just started a book about Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which is some clever stuff.

And I really like honeydew melon.

My email to colleages

I sent this out office staff today...

Hello, you!

Some of you may be aware of my impending old age; more specifically, this Saturday I shall be turning thirty (for those of you (Rob) that don't understand the concept of using numbers as words, I mean 30) years of age. It's a fairly important birthday (as those that end in zero often are), so I thought I'd do something different, possibly even social, to make a nice change from sitting fully clothed under a cold shower, sobbing uncontrollably. Of course it will have to be somewhere public to provide as many witnesses (alibis) as possible. After all, I don't want a repeat of 2006.

As I've been working here since I was 18, I've known many of you for several years and have come to consider most of you as "colleagues". In fact I must admit I've even grown to like a handful of you, so I feel it'd be a great honour for you to help me celebrate my birthday. Plus it might make me look important if I'm seen hanging around with intelligent, attractive people (ie that lucky 25% of you).

Given Cornwall Council's inexcusable failure to open a branch of Hooters in town, I thought kicking off the evening in Harveys might be a viable (although inferior) alternative. Sure, the drinks are expensive, the atmosphere is depressing and the bar staff are judgemental, but at least the drinks are expensive. Please feel free to bring friends or partners (or mail order internet brides (Rob)). I think it's probably best to head there straight after work so we don't get stuck with the cheap seats, or end up talking to Les.

I am aware of the "recession", so if you'd like to save some money I recommend trying to pay for drinks using a drawing of a spider - see http://people.msoe.edu/~gormand/canihavemyspiderbackot3.gif for details.

I'm off work next week, so I feel it's only fair to apologise in advance for any of the following possibe occurences: Drunkenness, bravado, debauchery, nudity (voluntary or otherwise), swearing, brawling, teabagging, carpetbagging, spillage, throttling, cigar smoking, "cottage cheesing", chortling (and/or laughter-snorting), geese (sacrificial or otherwise), conversation, alcoholism, vomiting (with or without accidental teleportation), destruction of reputation, rumour-milling, backstabbing, ninjery, piracy, excessive gesturing, and chips.

So, for those of you (Rob) that need a recap, I'm saying drinks, Harveys, this Friday May 22nd, around 5pm. I hope to see you there.

Please pass this message on to anyone I may have missed, especially if they have a sense of humour.

Cheers :-)

Foss

My jaw hurts!

I've had the same three songs stuck in my head for over a week now. Not just the main melodies, but the entire thing, bassline, drums, rhythm guitar and all. When I lie in bed at night, it's almost as if I'm having auditory hallucinations. Seriously, this shit is so vivid, it keeps me awake. I need a volume control for my imagination. And as if that's not maddening enough, I've also been gently chattering my teeth in time with the brainsongs, so my jaw is aching too. I'm a danger to myself.

Oh, holy shit, would you look at this! It's an update! I have nothing interesting to write about, but someone complained about my lack of posts so I thought I'd better write something - anything.

This week I have mostly been making Google my bitch. Well, not all of google, that would be crazy. I'm not running around the Googleplex slapping employees arses and screaming "You belong to me now". I'm not involved in a long and complicated plan to blackmail Larry Page or Eric Schmidt with ill-gotten pictures of them involved in bizarre sexual practices with Gary Glitter and a tub of swarfega.

No no, I mean I've been working some magic with ASP and our company's Google Mini search appliance - getting our intranet to send requests to the Mini, and have results returned in a manageable XML format using the MSXML2. Then I'm taking that XML feed, wrapping some pretty CSS around it, sticking on a bow and presenting it to staff as if it never left the original server.

Of course, if staff weren't so LAZY they wouldn't need a search engine. Can't be arsed to look around for procedure H2? That's ok, we'll spend a few grand on a search engine for you. But for future reference, it's listed under Procedures. Yeah, I know, it's complicated. Don't you worry your pretty little head about it.

Ah thank fuck it's Friday. If the weather stays nice tomorrow I might go get drunk up the park, spend an hour shouting at some trees, fall asleep and get massively sun-burned. I think Aimi's in town for some birthday drinks in ze evening. It'll be good to see Tom and that lot again.

On Sunday I'll visit my parents during the day, and in the evening I'll drown myself in a bath of my own puke. Lovely.

13:37

Holyshit you guys it's L337 o' clock!

Quick update

Me n Kirk have gone healthy. We haven't drank alcohol for a week and I haven't smoked either (Kirk didn't smoke anyway). We've been doing an hour fast walking, and hitting the weights. I now weigh 68kg, and can bench-press 5 reps at 67kg (that's all my weights so I need to buy some more). And you know what?

It feels awesome.

700 posts, 7 things

Well, Detweiler tagged me on this damned 7 things tweet chain, so I have to carry it on. It's the law, and if I don't post it, 7 million people will die in the next 7 days as a direct result of my laziness. And as this is my 700th blog post, it seem fitting to bestow upon you this utter shit that you probably couldn't give a fuck less about. So here goes.

7 things (you may or may not know about me)

I'm very proud of my taste in music. Not necessarily some of the music I listen to, because some of it is, by regular standards, fucking terrible. I mean, I really like McFly even though it's bog-standard pop cheese, but shit off cockneck; I like it because it makes me happy. I like Evanescence because her voice makes me cream my boxers. I like Mr Bungle because his voice makes me cream my boxers. I like Prodigy because it's fucking wicked. I like Keane because it reminds me of some very good times in my life. I like metal and funk and jazz and pop and trance and alternative and punk... I like all kinds of shit, and I like that I like all kinds of shit. I know most of you people out there are the same, and can listen to just about anything, so I hope you're proud of your wide and varied tastes too. That said, I have always hated country & western music with a passion. But I think Dolly Parton is awesome - not her music, just her.

I'm immensely shy around people I don't know, while totally hitting the other end of the scale when I'm around friends. I'm not sure if it's part of being British and I don't want to embarass myself in front of strangers, or whatever. But I'll totally make a twat of myself in front of my mates, and I'll have a damn good time doing it. The only exception to this rule is with music. If I'm singing, or playing guitar in front of strangers, I'll still make a twat of myself and love it. And as always, this extroverted behaviour is multiplied when booze is involved. I can be a very loud drunk around friends. But if I'm in a nightclub (which is very rare) and I'm expected to meet new people, I clam up. I'd much rather sit in a corner talking to one or two friends, but the nightclub noise makes it difficult.

I'm too nice. I let people walk all over me, and I'll bend over backwards just to please most people. If someone needs a lift back from Plymouth at 2 in the morning, I'll get out of bed and drive to pick them up (this has happened). If some old lady down the hall needs me to go do her shopping for her, I'll do it (again, happened). I know it's nice to be nice, but sometimes I take it too far and people take the piss for it. This has landed me in several very bad, one-sided relationships. I should toughen up and learn to say "No". And "get a fucking job or do some housework".

On the plus side, I give quite a bit to charity and I've been doing youth work as a volunteer for 10 years. Yeah that's right, now you have to love me.

I still don't have any tattoos. I have a fear of permanence. I got my lip piercing instead of a tattoo because I figured I could take it out if I got sick of it. That was 10 years ago, and I'm still not sick of it. I keep thinking "well, I don't know if I'll find a design I like enough to keep for the rest of my life" but I know that's bullshit. I've wanted a tattoo of a lizard, on the upper left part of my chest, since I was in my early teens, yet something in the back of my head keeps screaming "WHAT IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND?!?!" and I never book it in.

Cous cous makes me heave. I can't stand the smell, the texture, the taste... Even the look of it makes me want to start laughing carrots at the carpet. When the guy behind me at work brings it in for lunch, I have to concentrate on something else and try not to let the smell overpower me. Sometimes I have to leave the room for a while. If aliens invaded with the soul intent of eradicating cous cous for the rest of eternity, I'd be a happy bunny. Evil fucking stuff. It should be locked away forever, in a vault on the moon, along with Noel Edmonds and country and western music.

I like made up words. I like making them up, and I like using other people's. From Mr Burns' "velocitator and decelematrix" to Trys' "elsewise" via somebody's "twunt", words that aren't real words are like honey to my vocabularBEE. See what I did there? Yeah, I know, you're amazed. But I'm also a bit of a spelling and grammar nazi, which is one of the reasons I hate MS Word so much. Anywayses, the best made up words are definitely swears. Thundercunt, fuckknuckles, cockstick, they're all good with comedy and they roll off the tongue.

I love learning new stuff. I loved School, but I realised it waaaay too late. I loved Maths, Science, Music, English, French... I still love it all now! I love learning new languages - especially insults - but am often too lazy to study it by myself. If someone's helping me, I'm in my element, but if I'm on my own with a foreign language book I get bored after a few minutes. Science and Maths are different though. Physics books are wonderful, especially when they confuse the shit out of me, because I love trying to get my head around it all.

When I was supposed to be studying my French, Chemistry and Maths A-levels, I went up the park and got stoned with my mates instead. Everyone used to say "School Sucks" and somehow they convinced me. I wish I'd tried harder back then, but there's no use worrying about it now. No use regretting it when I could be spending that time learning new stuff instead!

Damn, writing this post was hard, and has taken me well over an hour. Now I have to think of 7 other twitter users to tag....

@fatherjack
@toralya
@jack_franklin
@sniffyjenkins
@imarco
@zombiepresident
@akelaa

You guys have to post 7 things now. Go!

Edit - @TBMimsTheThird did this awesome list of 7things posts.

Fuck money

Home Information Pack - £420
Broken TV - £260
New vivarium and extras - £140
Xmas and new year pissups - £300 (ish)
That Jizz In My Pants song - priceless

There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's what was supposed to be my holiday fund.

Wales

LivElin : Wales is the most significant area for sheep raising in Europe.

Andrew Foster: Uh-huh, "raising", that's right. There's a lot of sheep "raising" going on in Wales.

And fucking. They do a lot of sheep fucking there. In Wales. I'm saying the Welsh fuck a lot of sheep

You know shit is bad when...

I'm on my way to bed, but I'm hungry. So I check the fridge. I spy a 3 day old doner kebab in there and, after thinking about it my internal monologue kicks in.

"No, Foss, that's 3 days old. That's a stupid idea. Why is that even there?!"

"Yeah, good point. Wanna eat that block of cheese?"

"Game on!"

So I'm waiting for indigestion and vivid nightmares about spiders. G'night.

Dylan Moran

I saw Dylan Moran tonight on his What It Is tour. He was bitter, twisted, and very very funny.

A++++++ would buy again.

Healthy Eating

As you probably know I've got myself into a bit of a healthy living situation. I say a bit because it's really not that amazing - I'm not a health freak, I just eat better than I used to, I smoke less and I do weights.

Diet is a very important part of maintaining health and well being. A good diet can help prevent heart disease, mental illness, seagull attack, lethargy and really bad farts (Howard). Please refer to this page from the food standards agency for more information, and view in particular the Food Wheel (although these cuntrags call it the "eatwell plate").

In an effort to inspire some of you to do the same, I'd like to show you how easy it is to eat healthily. Here's a picture of my fridge, as an example of the cheap and easy-to-prepare foods that could help put you on the path to healthinessicity. ness.



Please remember, ketchup comes from the tomato, which is a fruit, not a vegetable.

Spaff your face off

Hello you, nice of you to stop by. I know, I haven't updated in a while, daddy Foss is a slacker and deserves to be kicked in the neck or something. I've been busy though, ok? I have more important things to do than update this blog. Things such as move back into my flat, single-handedly put my desk back together with no instructions, go out drinking all afternoon & evening on a Sunday, and feel completely rough for it today.

I've just changed Slimey's water. This means she's likely to shit in it again. She likes shitting in her water for some reason, and it's usually when I've just washed the bowl out and refilled it, so I have to go do it again. She's not in the flat yet, though. I'll move her in this week, I reckon.

I'm going away to Dad's this weekend for a fireworks party. It should be a laugh, but I'm dreading the drive up there and it'll cost a fortune in petrol.

Back at the flat, I can leave the seat up and not feel guilty about it. Hah, fuck you, social acceptance.

But right now I'm back in Rezare. I should be sorting out a bunch of stuff to take to the flat. I really should. But I'm knackered and can't be arsed.

Happenings

What a knackering weekend...

I finished work early on Friday and headed to the flat. I had to be there for the BT engineer to get the new phone line sorted, but BT being BT didn't give me a definite time. "Between 1 and 6" they said. I must say though, the engineer was very helpful and explained loads of telecoms stuff to me. Open mic night was that evening, and I stupidly had drinks before I went on so I fucked up the songs. Apologies to anyone that witnessed my horrible rendition of First Of May. You Look Like Shit went down well though, as always. When I get my guitar back from the flat, I'm going to practice like a motherfucker.

Saturday I took Elin into Plymouth to buy DVDs and a cabinet for the bathroom. We also met up with Rob & Anwen. Three awesome friends all in the same place, good good! In the evening I got hammered on cocktails (cheers, Millsy), sang karaoke, watched Juno and crashed on the sofa. Today I worked 8:30 - 4:30 with a hangover and bad guts. Yay!

Right now, Slimey is taking a bath. She has a couple of mice defrosting on top of her vivarium - I should have fed her earlier in the week but I totally forgot, like an irresponsible father.

Payday on Tuesday. This is a very good thing, because I'm completely broke. I should also be getting broadband at the flat tomorrow, but I haven't had my username and password through yet.

I'm really looking forward to moving back into the flat once Elin's gone. I mean, it's great having her around, she's one of my best friends and I'll miss her when she's gone, but I'm also going to love having my own place again.