Naquada

Ok so its very sad, but my new A6 is in the Audi compound awaiting shipment to the local dealer, meaning that I should get delivery on or around the 28th July.

Not quite happy with all the toys I already have in it, Sextons Car Audio will hardwire my Road Angel and my PocketPC GPS system into the new A6, meaning it will all be nicely wired in and no dangling cables. I’m actually quite impressed so far with the new Road Angel. Registration (which is needed to update the database) was quick, and was activated in a few hours, even though the site says one working day. I took it for a spin and it successfully spotted all the black spots and more importantly the cameras around here.. Obviously the real proof will be the trip up to Knutsford tomorrow, since I know that trip has a mix of cameras both very visible and not so visible.

I had to adjust the volume of the alerts, the voice is slightly quiet, but the warning blips are quite ear piercing at the higher volumes!! Currently set to 40%, I think it could go down to 20% to be kinder on the ears.

The only real struggle I’m still having is getting the Phatbox into the new A6, as yet its not compatible with the new all digital audio of the A6’s and the MMI system. If I can get that in there I may never need to get out of my car!!

So last night I saw Derren Brown: Something Wicked This Way Comes This Way at the Cambridge Theatre London. I’d waited a long time to see Derren ‘Live’, having missed his last tour, so I was very excited to be seeing this show.

Its a little hard to explain what happens in the show, since it would actually spoil it for you if you’re lucky enough to be going to see the show, and you really do just have to be there to fully understand some of the effects that take place, and how cleverly they are all intertwined . However I’ll try and explain the best I can in the hope that you’ll head down for some of the remain few dates (until July 2nd).

Being a Magician, or having that background I watched the show from two perspectives; The first as the standard member of the audience wanting to have a nights entertainment, and excited to be able to see such a ‘different’ kind of performer up close. The second was from my absolutely fanatical need to understand all the ins and outs of his techniques.

Derren bills his shows and himself as ‘a mix of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship‘, which is absolutely what it is. As Derren says, this allows him to lie and mislead you sometimes, without feeling guilty about it! A big misconception about Derrens shows (both TV and live) is that people assume he uses stooges (or people in on the act, and saying exactly what he needs to them to say), again with my background and watching the show, there is no need for him to use them (not that he does or has at any point), further enforced by him using my best friend in one effect.

The first half started with a thunderous round of applause as Derren walked confidently onto the stage. As with most of his live shows a ’selector’ was thrown into the audience to pick out helpers for each effect, this time in the form of a monkey in a yellow raincoat. A wonderfully nice touch was that Derren made sure that both the stalls and the circle where involved, in fact most of the evenings selection coming from the circle where I was. In fact my friend was one of the willing volunteers, during an effect into Derren’s ability to tell if people were telling a lie or the truth, moving into a nice little effect of reading a thought from his mind (a surname of a person in the distant past). Every effect was neat, crisp and very much bewildering in every sense, with probably only two of the effects that I honestly really didn’t have any clue on how he managed to be spot on with.

The show is really divided into two halves, as shows normally are, but this was very much more a Yin and Yang type of division between the first and second acts. The first half was very upbeat, funny and what I would call Derren’s normal style of work. The second half started a lot more darker with some fakir type effects (nail hammered into the nose and effects with broken glass) before moving back to a nicely done huge prediction effect, it was especially nice to have the mood lifted back to the light hearted and more mental work, as I’m not a huge fan of Derren doing the putting himself through pain and danger type of effects. Even though, the effects during the second half were still very entertaining and did work well with the other parts of the show.

The final effect really is pretty much what the whole show was all about. Without revealing too much, suffice to say a final prediction involving something from the very start of the show, turning out almost impossibly correct, and defying all logic as to how he could have predicted that single result. Clap hard at the end, as Derren then explains how the whole show was a single exercise of suggestion to get any member of the audience to select that single result for the prediction. Through showing a series of video clips taken during the show he reveals how he’d been suggesting and manipulating us all throughout the show to get that single response at the end. Deviously clever and absolutely un-spottable!!!

Gripping, clever, entertaining and absolutely recommended., One of the best 2 hours and 40 minutes I’ve spent for sometime!!

So this morning was an early start.. 4.30 start to get to Crewe for 9.. Unfortunately the train from Reading was delayed, meaning I will miss my connection at Stafford, resulting in a bit of a detour to Birmingham, getting into Crewe 30 minutes late for my pickup to the customer..

Still on the bright side tomorrows Saturday, and myself and Andrew are off to see Derren Brown in London: Something Wicked Comes This Way.

Should be great fun..

Well its been a while since I posted, mainly because I’ve been playing with my new toy, a Canon EOS 350D Digital SLR camera, its just amazing. I thought the photos would be better with a digital SLR, I just didn’t quite realise just how much better they would be.

I’m becoming very snap happy with it, and its starting to go most places with me as well. Meaning pretty much anything gets photographed, moving or not.. I ended up actually getting the silver 350D from Jessops, which comes with the USM ultra sonic lens rather than the standard non USM one, its slightly more expensive but since it comes with the USM lens I thought it worked out better.

Having never really had a digital SLR, there’s a lot to get used to on it, and I’m fast thinking that there is just more and more to buy for it. I’ve already got a 90-300mm lens, although I’m now tempted to trade it up to a 90-300 USM IS (with image stabiliser). Then there is the nagging want to have a macro lens for all those really nice ultra close shots.

I can tell already, although I’m going to have great fun with it, I’m going to be spending lots of money on toys for it!! The bottom line is though its a great gadget, and something I’m enjoying, so the cost really doesn’t enter into it..

Well you’ll remember a while back I posted a entry about a Sudoku site that I’d found, Sudoku Fun.

It seems now the sites so popular, including a link from Apple, that Hodder & Stoughton are publishing a Sudoku book in their ‘Teach Yourself’ series based around the site, sudoku puzzles and techniques for solving them. The book Teach Yourself Soduku is available for order from Amazon.

Sudoku, a simple Japanese number puzzle has taken the UK by storm, gripping pretty much everyone from young to old alike, I’ve even found myself leaning over the shoulders of a few on the tube having a look, and found myself trying to solve them.

Teach yourself Sudoku offers not only the most comprehensive collection of puzzles, it also gives ample support to the frustrated solver, covering everything from rules and strategies to websites and programs for the truly addicted.

The book covers the basics of Sudoku, but also provides different techniques for solving Sudoku puzzles, as well as foolproof strategies and tips for sudoku success.

The author, James Pitts is a computer scientist, compiler of the popular website www.sudokufun.com, and a self-confessed Sudoku addict.

The Sudoku Fun website offers a daily sudoku puzzle, as well as speed challenges, leader boards, and pretty much everythind for your sudoku needs.

Publishing date seems to be pretty soon, as soon as I see it on amazon I’ll pop a link up.

Well the hedgehogs are turning up earlier and earlier in the evening now..

Its been pretty hot today and they made straight for the bowl of water I left out for them..

Oddly I seem to become head of the hedgehog clan, as they have started to follow me round the patio when I’m out there, its a little odd to have a trail of hedgehogs running behind you as you walk up your garden!

Poor picasso is on his own now though more and more, for a good week hes been feeding alone most evenings, although hes eating enough for the entire family.

I did see this behaviour last year as well, just before there was an influx of baby hedgehogs..

..so maybe theres going to be more mouths to feed in the next few weeks..

So today I was at the IBM labs in Hursley. Its an amazing place, not only just from the amazing views and grounds, but also from the fact its not your average IBM office.

For a start its huge.. and I mean huge.. the mix of old Hursley House, and the new buildings cover was seems like a mass expanse..

I had a meeting in the main old house part of the site, and this is the view from the window, down over the gardens with the sunken gardens just out of sight.

Unfortuantly I didnt get time to see, or even find the museum, I guess that will be the task for next time I’m down there.

Its quite humbling walking round the corridors of the buildings. The walls are covered with pictures of the employees, and their inventions, Master Inventor seems to be the most popular, and you realise just how much stuff IBM have come up with over the years, and its strange the mix of the historic Hursley House, the grounds, and the leading edge technology of IBM..

Definately want to go back there and have a proper poke around what I think is one of the more relaxing parts of IBM..

So last week I took the plunge and got that Moleskine I always fancied. I’ve needed a book to keep some of the odd thoughts I’ve had during the day. Mainly on the mind and mental sort of magic I’m doing at the moment, which is my primary goal at the moment.

Its a great way I can make notes on stuff without having to rely on something with a power plug or batteries, which is a complete fundamental change for me.

There’s a ton of stuff on the web about Moleskinerie, the Moleskine is the legendary notebook that the European artists and intellectuals who made twentieth-century culture used: from Henri Matisse to the turn-of-the-century Parisian avant-garde, from Louis Férdinand Céline to Ernest Hemingway. Writer-traveler Bruce Chatwin picked up this tradition and made it famous.

A simple black rectangle with squared or lined pages, endleaves held by an elastic band, an inside pocket for loose sheets, a binding in ‘moleskine’ which gives it its name, this trusty, pocket-size traveling companion guarded notes, stories, thoughts and impressions before they turned into the pages of beloved books.

Chatwin used to buy his moleskine at a Paris stationery shop in Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie. He always stocked up on them before going off on one of his journeys. He had a ritual set up over the years -before using them, he numbered the pages, wrote his name and at least two addresses in the world with the promise of a reward in case they got lost. “Losing my passport was the least of my worries, losing a notebook was a catastrophe”.

He even suggested this method to his friend Luis Sepùlveda on giving him a precious moleskine before the trip to Patagonia that they were never to do together. It was precious because by then notebooks were no longer to be found. In 1986, even the last producer, a small family concern in Tours closed down. “Le vrai moleskine n’est plus” were the lapidary words of the stationer to Chatwin who had ordered one hundred before leaving for Australia Chatwin bought up all the Moleskines he could find but there were not enough.