Tuesday 30 November 2010

Jousting!

And so it came to pass that I needed to transport my new blades from college to a boathouse on the Cam so they could get to Ely. I decided that walking was slow and boring, so at 0600 a couple of mornings ago I did this:

I was pleasantly surprised how easy this was. I didn't crash once! But anyway, the point is that this gave me a fucking great idea for a new sport.

Jousting. On a bike.

Or, cycling with a massive fuck-off spear.

I mean, I like bikes and I like weaponry. What could possibly go wrong?

LOOK HOW HAPPY THEY LOOK! Look at the JOY on their faces!

But yes, I think that would be awesome.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Bike jousting exists! There's even a youtube video of it! :-D
Oh my god! :-D



ANYWAY, the other reason I was cycling round at 6 in the morning was because I said I'd sub into a couple of CUW outings in an eight. I mean, I can sweep OK, right? It'll be fun!

Problem 1) I had not swept since the boat race (end of march)
Problem 2) I have never rowed a stroke on bowside in my life. And I was on bowside. And they were doing pieces.

It was weird, I just felt so naked with only one blade.
I wasn't happy.
Things only got worse when we pushed off. I panicked, big time.
Yeaaaahhh. Definitely been in a 1x too long...
It's a bloody good job I wasn't in a IV or something because I probably would have capsized it trying to make a leap for the bank. So then we did the outing and I completely couldn't work out the feathering-on-the-wrong-side thing so I ended up (a) rowing like a complete tool (Catch? What's one of them?) and (b) rowing with square blades the entire time. I don't think the people sitting behind me weren't very amused, with it being about -6°C and me throwing litres of water at them every stroke. (Sorry guys). But it's OK, no one died.

In conclusion, I've decided that bowside is THE DARK SIDE and it's sick and wrong.

Sick and wrong.

And sorry CUW VIII for messing up your outing by being a tard.

Oh, as an aside, I like to get on my bike with a bit of a flourish, which is how later that morning I ended up kicking a very well dressed English-student type in the stomach with my walking boots. Oops.


But anyway ANYWAY. I'd like to now take the time to have a little bitch about the weather. Namely snow.

I am definitely getting old y'know, because the first thing I thought when I saw it was snowing was "Oh great. Fucking snow. Now it's going to take ages to get everywhere and I'm probably going to die on my bike". And the stupid cold. Yes, very much completely bored of winter and it's STUPID COLDNESS. That and the deluge of "Snow in Cambridge! :-D :-D" photo albums that suddenly clog up my newsfeed on facebook. Cambridge looks the fucking same every year when it snows i.e. it looks exactly like Cambridge with white stuff superimposed on top of it.

And yes, I am a complete miserable bastard. I also hate all the stupid Christmas music everywhere. Just GO AWAY. It's NOVEMBER.

In essence, my feelings are summed up by this (via Sarah Allen - cheers Sarah).

In fact, the only good thing that's cheered me up is The Fucking Weather. That site has actually been made for me I think.





















Though, putting my grammar-nazi hat on:






















 Oh, and you know what else pissed me off this week? Fucking Weetos.
Yeah, you just sit there looking all smug.
I thought I'd take advantage of the fact they were half price in Tesco to try them. I mean, chocolate cereal - how can you mess that up?

MOST. DISAPPOINTING. CEREAL. EVER.

I swear they must be made of gravel or something because these things never go soggy. NEVER. Blurgh. What a waste of £1.24 that was. Especially as GOLDEN GRAHAMS were on offer too so I could've got those instead.

And you know what's worse, I had to eat the bastarding offensively crunchy cereal from this:
What's with stuff that does this? I KNOW it's a bowl because I am not a badgering retard. Why do you feel the need to write what it is on it? That's just some graphic designer who couldn't be arsed with making some nice swirly pattern or something so decided to insult my intelligence instead. Well THANK YOU VERY MUCH for bringing to my attention that fact that this bowl-like ceramic receptacle is, in fact, a bowl as I first suspected. I feel much better about myself knowing that I can identify simple kitchen utensils correctly.

Twat.

Oh yeah, and I've had about 3 weeks of continuous work-fail. All I need to do is find a function to fit the red curve, but the best I seem to do is this:
FOR FUCK'S SAKE.


It's what the luminosity of a pre Main Sequence star of 8 solar masses does as you go backwards in time along its evolution, if anyone cares. (For the layman - what the brightness of the star does before it becomes a run-of-the-mill normal star like our sun. The kinks are from where nuclear fusion begins, stuff like that). But all you really need to know is that it's a STUPID WIGGLY LINE that is currently ruining my life.

And breathe.

And TOO MUCH MATHS CHAT RAILTON.



Finally, to conclude this rather overly ranty post, I saw this in my kitchen:

That is a definite fail on the "Wheel of taste" right there. You really have to watch that trace amount of salt. I also love it when they give serving suggestions of really low-calorie foods with it covered in cheese. "Why don't you smother your 5 cal rice cake in Nutella? Or peanut butter? Or fucking lard? It'll taste better that way!"

IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. 

And with that, good night.

18 comments:

  1. Get a 1000 or so points from the red line. Shove them into R. Use linear regression with a fuckton of potential x functions (ax^2, bx^3, csinx ETC.) to get something close. Tweak it.

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  2. Or model it as two tiny sin curves superimposed on a skewed one or on a reflected Morse potential.

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  3. OK, I understood the first comment, but have *absolutely* no idea what the second one means... I think this is what happens when you spend all your maths degree doing fluids and no time at all doing numerical methods...

    Have had more success splitting function in two so I can deal with the v. exponentially bit on the RHS seperately... Shame it took me such a looonnnng time to realise this!

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  4. I am going to repeat the immortal words first spoken by Katie Wood (I believe... if not it's something she would probably say):

    ahem

    "Bowside is wowside. Strokeside is jokeside."

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  5. I WILL NOT BE MOVED.

    Bowside is evil, I'm telling you.

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  6. A few things ;) :

    Bow side is *clearly* not The Dark Side, everyone has seen Star Wars and The Dark Side clearly use red lightsabers, and stroke side is red!

    Bike jousting is an excellent idea, so excellent infact that we created a form of it using blades at Manchester University - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-M-CZvJpSw

    Snow - if it's going to snow, at least do it properly! What's the point in snow if I can still drive to work? I do like sculling in the snow though.

    I'm going to nominate Crunchy Nut Clusters with chocolate swirls as one of the most disappointing cereals too, the chocolate doesn't even taste chocolately and somehow makes the usual Crunchy Nut awesomeness vanish :(

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  7. I AM LORD VOLDEMORT and I row both sides. Therefore both sides are evil. End of story.

    It is indeed fucking cold, -3 to be precise, and I am about to go sculling. (Therefore, as you will probably already have observed, sculling must be evil too...)

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  8. @Tom: Excellent! Video: embedded :-)

    It really is awesome when you're doing an outing and the stern of your boat gets a lovely layer of snow on it. But yes, agreed. There are some veryr disappointing cereals out there. I'm especially angry that they managed to mess up what is essentially just chocolate+cereal.

    Bring back lucky charms, that's what I say. They were ace.

    @Frankie: OK, how awesome would a tshirt with this:

    http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EfUSULxNI-YRUp2op8cEeqhOUKt9mm8nnLi4V_LV0v0?feat=directlink on and the legend "I'm a sculler" on it be????

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  9. I remember Lucky Charms! Though I think I used to just eat the marshmallowy bits and then leave the actual cereal :D

    I remember liking Pop Tarts quite a lot back in the day too, full of sugary goodness!

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  10. Thanks Anna. I just nearly sprayed coffee all over my keyboard... (brilliant - let's get some done!)

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  11. Mmmmm. Marshmallowy bits :-)

    If I can find a bloody working scanner in Cambridge I'll get on it (and also put "LIFE: Have a cup of tea and try again" on mugs). And maybe the jousting one too. I like that one :-D

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  12. That swirly maths graph thingy. NO ONE WILL EVER CARE. Stop wasting your time with this shit and start reading HEAT magazine like everyone else. It's much more fulfilling.

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  13. The X-Factor makes me sad. I'd much rather watch a double bill of Time Team and Scrapheap Challenge!

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  14. @Tom: I LOVE SCRAPHEAP CHALLENGE (How did you guess?) Not seen Time Team for years though, shame.

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  15. Proper Job!

    The one where they mad actual flying airplanes was incredible!

    Dick Strawbridge is a bit of a legend too. I can't believe he did so well on Celebrity Masterchef! :D

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  16. I agree with Xfactor and Heat comments from the nay-sayers. BUT my Godson is the executive producer of XFactor and gets his name on the credits.... does this mean I should defend it in comments on other people's blogs?

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  17. @Rebecca: You should probably disown him or something...it really is awful stuff! :-O

    :-)

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  18. Anna, thought you might enjoy this bike jousting from Jackass:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS9elDU_RGo

    Gets better by the end...

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