My humblest...

... and most heartfelt apologies for not keeping you fine folk up to date on my humdrum existence, but, in my defence, I have been rather busy. You see, this last week I've been filming for a documentary down in London and have been mingling with the delightful men and women folk at Sky and the BBC news departments. Wake up was around 06:30am each day and we did not get back to the hotel I booked (which I'm told was in the roughest part of London) till late on so I've been swamped with travelling and work. Anyway, that's the excuses out of the way.

I've been learning -and re-learning in some cases - a few new magic tricks; mainly card ones. For those interested you can see them on my YouTube page (which I will eventually get round to adding to the list of websites on the right).

You may recall I blogged not so long ago on my late night spending sprees in ASDA... Well, this one took the biscuit: An HDTV. In my defense, I've had a 28" behemoth CRT in my room for the last God knows how many years so I was in need of a change and, Hell, there's no harm in future-proofing is there. Here is the gorgeous beast:

I have owned a 32" Samsung HDTV for a couple of years now and have been over the Moon with it so when I saw this sleek little number for £200 I just couldn't say no. The money for the documentary came through too so if anyone asks, this is for research purposes, you catch my drift? *nudge nudge, wink wink*

Currently looking at buying a 120GB iPod classic as my music collection now overwhelms my poor little 30GB iPod Video. It has served me very well but its time has passed and I must move on. I shall give the ol' Video one to my parents who have been toying with the idea of getting a big MP3 player for themselves. Now, what to get engraved on the back...? If the engraving is free from Apple then you bet your arse I'll want to take advantage of it!

Anyway, I think that's all for now.

Jambo out.

My two penneth... Or rather 10 pence...

Another little video for you - this time it's a simple coin trick. You will have to forgive me, I am still getting used to using iMovie so this is the best I can do right now. I promise to be more adventurous and exciting in the coming weeks.



Jambo out.

A little video

I promised some video content a while back and this is all I have so far but I'm hoping for it to be the first of, well, not many but certainly a few!



Jambo out.

White goods

I don't know what it is about doing my shopping between 12am-4am but I do it every time. Maybe it's the fact that it is far less busy. Or maybe it's because I enjoy late-night driving. Whatever the reason, I do it. Regularly. I get lambasted by others who suggest going at a more reasonable time; however, I am a night owl so this is a more natural time for me to be doing the grocery shopping.

Back on point, I love shopping in the wee hours of the morning. One thing I love to do is to wander around the white goods aisles and see how much things cost. I look at all of these things on display and I think: "I don't have one of these... But for only £'x' I can't afford not to! What will happen when I want 'y' and I don't have the means to get it?!". I'll keep an eye on the prices and if an item drops by even the most minuscule of amounts I feel compelled to buy it. This has happened many times in the last few years but the latest two late night white goods purchases I am very fond of.

The first was a coffee machine which cost £7. £7 for a coffee machine! Madness! It works very well, uses a filter basket which means no money is squandered on filter paper and more precious pennies can go on getting some lovely coffee instead! It's a sleek little black number too so it sits proudly next to the toaster tempting me with its curves and promises of instant gratification.

The second is an item I bought today: An upright bagless vacuum cleaner. At £36 it's up there with some of my more expensive frivolities (along with a 5.1 surround sound set-up and a convector heater) but it is already paying dividends. Now, I share a flat with an old friend of mine and our old vacuum cleaner was appalling - a truly ghastly contraption seemingly intent on ripping up carpet and spewing the remains all over the place like a Terrier pup. The new model though has all of the attachments one would expect with a present day debris sucker, something our old mutt never had, and makes cleaning troublesome areas such as behind sofas and under tables far more agreeable.

The reason I bring these two contraptions ups is because these are the only two that have required assembling by my good self. The coffee machine was simple enough but the putting together the vacuum cleaner was far more taxing. Almost two hours passed before I was able to even fit the cylindrical chamber to the blasted thing. Now, thankfully, it is all set up and ready, raring to go when called upon. The whole ordeal has really made me realise: Vacuums suck.

Jambo out.

Let's get nerdy for a moment

I've just had what can only be described as the greatest game of Halo 3 ever! Now, I don't want people assuming things about my character so I'm going to come out and say it: I'm a massive nerd. But, I don't want to flaunt it in someone's face, so this will probably be the only time that videogames get mentioned on here - the place for discussing games is usually a forum not a blog. Anyway, back to the game!

I'm currently involved in a Halo Tournament (please don't judge me) over at TGN as part of some sort of gaming equivalent of the Olympics. My flatmate and I entered with high hopes and we won our first game, dare I say it, fairly convincingly. The match tonight, however, was incredibly close. I'll let you see for yourselves:



The match started off badly for Team Blue and just seemed to get worse. We were always just about hanging in and we managed to kill ourselves a couple of times; however, after some clever use of wits and cunnings, we managed to somehow bring it back to 49 - 49. eMatt and I were hiding in the main base next to the lift deciding our next move. Suddenly, my partner in crime spots some movement and pokes his head out for a clearer view. I kindly remind him that the sniper rifle was in their possession and he retreated back round the corner, a bullet whizzing, neigh, skimming the peak of his helmet. We hang back a bit until I see some movement on the radar: "They're right below us!" I yell. I heroicly leap down, giant hammer in hand, and realise that I've stupidly hurled myself in between my two enemies. I notice on the radar that the enemy closer to my back is more of a danger and fling myself round and flail the hammer madly at the encroaching red target. Game over. We won. 50-49. I allowed myself to jump to my feet and let out a battle cry: "YYYAAAAAAWRRR!" A manly hug with my flatmate and fellow Blue-Team-Brother and we sit back down with a celebratory bottle of Grolsch, knowing our work had been done. It was an epic moment and is definitely up there with my favourite Xbox LIVE moments.

Jambo out.

Clarity begins at home

I've had a couple of messages from people who are confused about the whole Twitter thing. A lot of the queries stem from roughly the same point: Why have a Twitter account and a blog? Well, in the simplest terms, the blog is to elaborate on my thoughts and offer pearly pieces of bonafide wisdom while the Twitter account is to tell the world what I'm doing/thinking at that moment in time.

Twitter is what is referred to by techy types as micro-blogging:

Microblogging is a web service that allows the subscriber to broadcast short messages to other subscribers of the service. Microposts can be made public on a Web site and/or distributed to a private group of subscribers.

- TechTarget.com

I've nearly always got my mobile on my person so if something tickles my fancy (as the actress said to the bishop) I can post it instantly on Twitter and if I deem it worthy of extended prose then I will elaborate further on this here Blog. Hopefully this tidies things up.

Speaking of tidying up, I've got a whole load of tidying ahead of me today. The bedroom is in dire need of attention and the bathroom and kitchen are so grotty I've been showering and eating elsewhere for fear of catching something from the toilet seat or cutting board!

I was experimenting with other forms of delivering blogs earlier on. I've dabbled in podcasts before and had a fairly successful show that featured on iTunes. However, it is video blogs that have been catching my eye for some time. Watch this space, Internet folk - watch this space...

Jambo out.