Tag: Fun

So… This Fancy Dress Picnic

About a year or so ago now, I was stuck in traffic on a bus going past Clapham Common, when I saw these three creatures walking across in the distance…

The first one, in at the front – was this guy dressed up as a green sea monster – a bit like a loch ness monster crossed with a dragon of some kind. Well, he had this outfit on and he couldn’t *really* see where he was going, so he kept going off course and wandering around all over the place.

The guy at the end was dressed as a hammerhead shark, with these two hand-painted boxes stuck to the side of his head. He looked awesome – all dressed in grey – it was clear what animal he was supposed to be. Anyway – he had this really long tail that restricted his walking somewhat… making him really slow.

In the middle – keeping order in all this chaos – was this small girl, in a big pink dress, holding a pink umbrella with tassles hanging off the sides… she was a jellyfish see. And back and forth she ran; at the front stopping the Dragon and pointing him in the right direction and then quickly back to the Shark again to pull/push him forward.

( they may’ve looked a bit like this )

For 20mins I watched this spectacle unfold in front of me, the whole time wearing a great big grin on this face of mine…

“Wonderful…” I thought “…Fancy Dress during the day, people don’t do that enough.”

Which is when I had the idea for The Fancy Dress Picnic – 🙂

The idea stayed in my head for a week or so before disappearing into the far reaching caverns of my brain… until it was discovered again.
This time prompted by watching the quite frankly awesome NZ film, Eagle vs Shark* – on a flight over to the US.

*if you haven’t seen it – this screen kinda gives you an idea why I might’ve been reminded of the picnic – our protaganists meet (properly) at a ‘come as your favourite animal’ party…

So yeah – thusly the idea arrived back in my head again – and this time I kept hold of it; kicking it around through Spring and eventually raising it again in a pub in Chiswick with some friends who all decided that it was a fantastic idea for a party and that we should organise it immediately to coincide with our friend Clare’s birthday at the end of July… (or as close to as we could get) …and so!

The Fancy Dress Picnic!

Date: Saturday August 2nd 2008
Place: Clapham Common
Time: 1pm ’til late (Roger’s working on getting some bar space for later, later
The Theme: Come as your favourite animal

You MUST MUST MUST RSVP with the name of your animal that you intend to come as.

The reason for this is to prevent embarrassing moments for all and sundry – I mean – you’ve worn the same dress as someone else before right?

Well.. can you imagine all of us turning up as cats?
That’d be rubbish.

You name it, you claim it.

Me? I’m going as a Hammerhead Blue Shark

I’ve setup a facebook event, Roger’s blogged about it and together we have been working *really hard* to get this crazy day off the ground…
At the time of writing we have 30(ish) confirmed guests – ALL coming as different animals!

And YOU are welcome to come and join us 🙂

If you ‘dont do’ facebook then simply leave a comment on this here blog:

The animals that have been taken read like this:

  • Shark (blue shark now – can’t find a hammerhead costume)
  • Lemur (ring-tailed)
  • Turtle (Ninja)
  • Tiger (unspecified as to Bengal or Siberian)
  • Fawn (Roe, presumably)
  • Lion (-O?)
  • Macaroni Penguin (they don’t dance)
  • Bears, brown (family thereof – this is allowed under the new rule which I have just made up. But ONLY for real families. Birth and/or marriage certificates may be asked for)
  • Ladybird (spotted)
  • Squirrel (evil grey or timid red? Who knows..)
  • Kangaroo
  • Donkey (a seaside one from Brighton!)
  • Evil Herbivore (giraffe)
  • Meerkat
  • Bear (Polar)
  • Bee (bumble)
  • Chicken
  • Spider (house)
  • Dragonfly
  • Butterfly
  • Panda (giant?)
  • Rabbit (bunny)
  • King Penguin (must be distinct from the Macaroni Penguin or will be disqualified)
  • Flamingo (pink)
  • Cat (domestic)
  • Alpaca
  • Sloth Bear
  • Bat
  • Peacock
  • Peahen

The rest of the animal kingdom is there for you to choose from.

Much love and maybe I’ll see you on Saturday 🙂

EDIT – – – –

Thanks to my awesome Mobilistic Skillz –
We now have all of the directions to the venue available on your Mobile!

All you gotta do is open your phone’s internet browser and type http://mippin.com/fancy

Directions are all right there – Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

We interrupt this transmission…

…to bring you these EXCLUSIVE interviews:

http://qik.com/player.swf?streamname=4bd8da798ffe46a79443679fa3ae0dd9&vid=85995&playback=false&polling=false&user=whatleydude&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous http://qik.com/player.swf?streamname=9b66486ebff3425bba270b0c3d3a1746&vid=86044&playback=false&polling=false&user=whatleydude&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous
An Important Interview                               Important Animal Information

http://qik.com//player.swf?streamname=6c658a65f35045a3bb7fd852ae4b72aa&vid=86018&playback=false&polling=false&user=whatleydude&userlock=true&currentUserName=anonymous

International Essex Diva

Speaking Freely – The Rickmob

“I’ve just been to the Rick Astley Flash Mob at London’s Liverpool Street and it was frigging hilarious. I should be uploading a video as soon as I get in front of my laptop. Fantastic.”

spoken through SpinVox

_______________________________________________________________________________

EDIT – As promised, here’s the video:

http://qik.com//player.swf?streamname=573b322fb035442fa47201cb74490c6e&vid=54001&playback=false&polling=false&user=whatleydude&userlock=true&currentUserName=anonymous

EDIT 2 – Thanks to the immediacy of this post – I ended up appearing on The BBC’s ‘Pods & Blogs’ programme. I’ll see if I can get my hands on the audio and put if up for you…

Whee! 🙂

Reminder: Mobile Geeks of London III

Wotcha!

Mobile Geeks of London III is less than a week away and I am ridiculously excited…
It really is looking like it’s going to be the best one yet… 🙂

If you’re reading this and unsure of what the hell I am talking about:

DUDE! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!

First – Get yourself off to the facebook group, sign up and then add the event to your diaries folks!

Just so you know – the event is happening THIS Thursday evening, Feb 27th, upstairs at the All Bar One on New Oxford Street (closest tube – Tottenham Court Road).

Stuff you may expect to see:

– Nokias from WOM World
– Mobile gaming from Playyoo
– VoIP from Truphone
– Super SIM Cards from MAXRoam
– Internet made Mobile from Mippin

^ Those are all – to date – confirmed attendees.
I’m pretty certain there’ll be a lot more on show – all you’ve got to do is ask the the right person/s…

Remember –
You’re not coming to buy, you’re not coming to sell it. You’re just coming to use and play.
…and strictly NO BIZ/DEV!
😉

So yeah – looking forward to seeing you all there and if you can’t make it – SHAME ON YOU!
Maybe I’ll see you at the next one…

J.
PS – I’m TRYING to get me an uber-exclusive SpinVox Mobster that I can give away as some kind of raffle prize.
If anyone else is reading this who has anything they’d like to contribute to this little ad-hoc prize draw then do get in touch and we’ll go from there.

Top Banana.

The Five Projections of Love

Earlier on this evening I was kicking around on Jaiku when I came across this entry by my good friend Ricky Cadden, he of Symbian-Guru fame.

If you can’t be bothered to click through I’ll summarise:

On the move..

Ricky has just recently got engaged right and that’s all good.
He’s a very happy chappy indeed.

So his jaiku says that tonight he is organising ‘date night’.

And it *really* made me smile —->

Why?

Well this is something that he and his affianced decided would be something they do once a month, every month, whether they can afford it or not, for the rest of their lives.

And it certainly gets my vote as a relationship winner.

This kind of stuff properly warms my heart.
*grin*

So I mentioned to Ricky that it was a great idea and that I’d be adding this to ‘my list’.

That is, my list of love philosophies: Little guidelines and helpful tips to make sure that the relationship that you find yourself in is loving, caring and consistent.

I replied to the Jaiku that Ricky had inspired me to blog and lo and behold, here I am.
(We’ll conveniently forget all the other things I promised in my last post huh?)

And what nugget of information am I sharing? Well – a philosophy that is very dear to my heart – that was told to me by a very close friend of mine not soon after my Wife and I went our separate ways –
(and if you didn’t know that then there’s probably more stuff you didn’t know about me)

Today I give you…

The Five Projections of Love

The five projections of love are touch, time, words, actions and presents.

Every single act of love can be defined by one of the above.
We all like all five, all of us do… in varying ways.

But on average, we each tend to favour two or three over the others… on average.

Now, the thing about our favourite ways of projecting our love is that they also double up as our favourite ways of receiving love.

In that – If I give you something, like a watch or something, as a thank you for something or whatever, then that is me demonstrating my love for/to you.
That being the case, then the best way to speak to my heart, to show me love, would be to get me a present in return. That’s just in this example…

Another example I can give is from a former relationship –

…and this is something I rarely talk about in my blogs, (relationships etc), but, in an effort to make this stuff more personal and to also add a bit more clarity to what I’m talking about, I’ll carry on regardless…

In a previous relationship my ex would for instance:

Cancel her plans for the evening, get home from work early and clean the house – all through her love for me.
That is the best way she knows how to show her love. Why should she show it any different? That’s what being loved is to her…

Me on the other hand?
I wouldn’t rush home early, instead I would go shopping to buy her something nice to bring home and then when I’d home all I’d want to do was hug this person that I’d missed so much throughout the day.

Four completely different projections of love there. I was blind to hers and she may well have been blind to mine.

I’m not saying that that is what ended the relationship – not by a long shot – but when starting something new, or meeting someone new or even if you’re in a relationship right now, old or otherwise, albeit with a friend or a lover…
Keep an eye out for how they project their love.

By doing something similar to/for them back you may make them feel the most loved person in the world.
And THAT is a beautiful feeling.

It’s just about being aware I guess.

As I said – that’s one of my philosophies. Take it and do what you will.
Thanks for reading.. and just take a moment and think it over.

Remember:

Touch. Time. Words. Actions. Presents.

Which ones are yours?

PS – And you’ll notice too that some of the closest people to you may share your projections. Funny that huh? 😉

24hrs in San Francisco…

…and what a mission it has been!

I land and realise as I’m getting off the plane that I left my wallet next to the wifi hotspot at London Heathrow.

Whoops.

I check my emails and I have a converted voicemail – (cheers SpinVox) from someone who not only found it, but handed it in, got the details of the guy/department she gave it in to and then left her number too in case I was still around. Rock.

Go to customer services here – explain all, show them the email. They get on the phone. My wallet is fine but I have to pick it up in person.

Bugger. No money, no cards and no way of getting to the hotel.

The man standing next to me says:

“Where you staying?”
“The Clift” says I.

“Oh, I used to run their Limo company. Give me two minutes…”

“But I have no money! I can’t pay you dude…”
“I’m sorry Sir, but you lost your wallet right?
“Right.”
“And how much was in it?”
“About $200 US.”
“And it’s been handed in and all the money is there and all is good right?
“Yes.”

“Well that’s some good karma right there Sir so that means you’ve
obviously done something to deserve it. So hey, have some more –
Take the Limo to the Clift Sir, and enjoy your stay San Francisco.”

F**k. Me. Wow.

I get to the hotel. Can’t check-in, no credit card.

“But I have my passport?”
“No Sir, we need a card, sorry.”

I call up a random US colleague who I know is down the road at the conference. Explain all. He turns up, checks me in, gives me $200 ‘to last me’ and then rocks back to the conference!

I then unpack, shower and stuff (my room is awesome) and head on down to the Nokia party I got invited to. Get given a whole bunch of free phone stuff as well as an invite to their exclusive after party. Which I went to, made new friends. One of which I got really drunk with and we passed out in the hotel lobby in the hours of this morning.

Later that day, I get an email from my friend and colleague Dan Appelquist (Great guy, from Vodafone, runs Mobile Mondays) – he knows I’m in town – says would I mind picking up a parcel for him which he forgot when he
was here last week..

“Sure…” says I.

Dan then says I should hook up with this girl,

“Cathy, you guys are both in the messaging / Web 2.0 cross-over space. I think you would both enjoy meeting up and you might find some synergy to what you’re both doing. You’re both out at CTIA going to various parties (not that I’m jealous) so I leave it to you.”

I look at the email. I read it again.

DUDE!!!!

The girl I got hammered and passed out with in the hotel lobby the night before? …Yup.

Cathy.

Brilliant.

Small world or WHAT?!
Unbelievable.

And I’ve only been here 24hrs. Ha. Let’s not even talk about today when I rocked up the conference and EVERYONE is wearing a suit. Apart from….

ME!

Flipflops, torn jeans, sunny gs, t-shirt… Like this in fact:

Very amusing.

Felt like that scene from Pretty Woman..
Love it.

More to come soon – promise. But this place is awesome. At the time of writing I’ve been here 48hrs and I wrote this yesterday but lost my connection before I could post! Grr… Ah well.

More stories to follow…

🙂

Transparent Wallpapers

This is something that I think is pretty damn cool.

A colleague of mine has figured out how to make certain graphics transparent.
So that when you upload them to your phone, they seem to be just sitting on your desktop…

Make sense?

No?

Ok – Well allow me to share some screens from my N95…
First you need a blank canvas

—————————————>

Et voila!

Then you need a picture, your favourite will do.

Once you’ve got that, send it in an email to your friendly neighbourhood Graphics Designer…

Wait five minutes…

He then sends you back the graphic that you then save to your phone’s memory card…
Scroll to said graphic ‘use as wallpaper’ – go to your mainscreen…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… Ta Da!

Job done!

Not only can he do it with photos that you have –
But he can do it with any drawings that you may do too!
Take this picture of a ‘BattleFish’ for instance that a friend of mine drew recently…

See how the aforementioned expert takes said pic and not only makes it a perfect wallpaper for my N95 but also adds a funky little reflection too…

Cool huh? Now this can be done with most pics – my current favourite?
My very own South Park Whatleydude!

The only problem is – I can’t live without my active standby…

…which kinda ruins it a bit!

Ah well…

Anyone want to know this is done?
Anyone think they know how it’s done?
Answers on the back of a postcard…
I’ll be waiting!

The Mobile Geeks of London

Hello all,

Following on from an earlier post – allow me to tell you a story…

It started as a simple question ‘Hey, we both live in London, do you fancy a drink sometime?’
That question was asked from one avid Jaiku fan to another.
(Yours truly and a guy named Romek)

From there – it snowballed…
We found a channel on Jaiku specifically for UK Jaiku users – called JaikUK

Then – upon finding that channel – I decided that’d be a great idea if we had a Facebook Group too.
And so Mobile Geeks of London was born…

It was, at first, made as a ‘base of operations’ if you will for me and a few fellow ‘mobilists’ who I knew lived in and around our great city to come together and chat…
And then, word got out that two of the members were meeting for a beer.

“Sod it!” I thought “Why not make it a full-blown facebook event?!”

And so I did.
Next thing I knew – SMS Text News picked up on it and ran it as a story – and overnight the group went from around 10 members to 110!

The Date: Thursday 26th July
The Event: The first ever Mobile Geeks of London meet up
The Place: A Pub in London
The Attendees: Mobile Geeks!

It. Was Great.

The whole evening had this kind of unofficial theme of ‘Show & Tell’

Some folk were there showing off new software – some other folk were throwing new mobile ideas around and some folk were just showing off their various handsets… an iPhone even made it along!
Hehehe…

However, I must admit, I think that was probably the main lure for peeps coming along in the first place!

Everyone wanted to touch it!
Hehehe – Here’s some photos from the evening folks – enjoy!

Geeks – Phones – Beer – Heaven

James Body. He of Truphone fame.
With my iPhone and his E61i.
Which one do you prefer?

My new friend Peter (aka Romek).
He was the guy that originally asked me out for a Mobile Geek drink!
It’s all his fault I swear it!

iPhone-tastic!

All in all the night was a resounding success and I’ve received lots of messages of praise for organising it all.

I couldn’t have done it without my good friend Technokitten who was on hand to offer assistance when the whole thing started getting a bit out of hand!

So – if you’re a Mobile Geek and you live in London – why not join the group and maybe we’ll see you at the next meet!
🙂