It does't get any more random than this... In September I was at our local park with the kids and I managed to lose a part of Amy's camera - the rubber eyepiece cup - it costs about 12$ to replace (http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Rubber-Eyecup-Digital-Cameras/dp/B0009HAHD4) and it's not exactly essential to the camera function so I never bought a replacement.

Well bizarrely enough I was at the park with the kids today and I found it sitting in the woodchips under the swings, It needed a bit of cleanig but it's as good as when I lost it.

The Dark Side Of The Earth




Comet 17P/Holmes Dust Cloud is now bigger than the sun



I grabbed some photos of my own from my back yard, but they can't compete with NASA and ESA, except on cost, my setup cost

Most other news outlets are going all sensational on the title with phrases like 'Chinese Toys Laced With Date Rape Drug', but lets be fair more people are using GHB recreationally than anythign else, indeed the most common 'date rape' drug' is plain old alcohol.

Howeverthe story is still the same, it started with an Australian toy company which created a craft toy that consisted of coloured beads coated with a water based adhesive, you laid out your pattern and sprayed them with water and they all stuck together. In Australia they were marketed under the name 'Bindeez' and were recently awarded the 'Toy Of The Year' prize, in north america you can find them sold under the name Aqua Dots, yesterday most of the online stores were still selling them but I can't find any links now. At some point in the design and manufacturing the non-toxic adhesive was substituded with something else which contained substances that would metabolized into GHB.

But who would eat glue?

Oh yeah kids.

Amy and the kids dropped by imeem today, mainly because we had planned to sign some financing documents at the bank. Amy was lucky enough to get a free parking spot near the office but beyond that things just didn't seem to go right, the agent who I'd been working with at the bank wasn't there because she'd had an accident, the papers had some major mistakes in them, I started getting sick and headed home early. Then after dinner Skye managed to split her chin open on the side of the bath and Amy decided to take her to the emergency room to get stiches, this was complicated by the neighbour who had decided to park their car in front of our driveway which delayed us by maybe a few minutes, but more imporantly there's a strike by nursing staff at most of the hospitals in the area so after 5 hours Amy and Skye are still waiting to get seen....

Still it was nice to have lunch with the family and the Margaritas at Tres Agaves were very nice.

Even at my most extravangant I still managed to spen 100 times less than this guy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/25/large_bar_bill/

An unnamed businessman and around 18 friends last Saturday set an "all-time record" in alcoholic extravagance by working their way through £105,805 worth of booze in London's Crystal nightclub, the Telegraph reports.

During the marathon spendfest, which kicked off with a bottle of Pinot Grigio (£25), they quaffed £80,000 worth of champagne, including a six-litre methuselah of Cristal (£30,000), two three-litre jeroboams of the same (£9,600*), four bottles of Cristal Rose (£2,400), six magnums of Dom Perignon (£4,200), 36 bottles of Cristal (£12,960), 12 bottles of Dom Perignon Rose (£4,200), 15 bottles of Dom Perignon 1999 (£3,600), and three magnums of Dom Perignon 1995 (£2,700).

The revelers also appear to have indulged in a bit bit of vodka and Red Bull action, blowing £1,400 on a single bottle of the former and a modest £76.50 on 17 hits of the latter (that's £4.50 a can, in case you're wondering). Mercifully, they evidently gave their livers a brief respite during the booze marathon by ordering eight bottles of upmarket H20 Voss Still - an absolute bargain at £6.50 each.

The final tally was £81,471.50, plus £13,951 in tax and a cool £10,382.74 for service. Nightclub spokesman Fraser Donaldson admitted: "I have been in the nightclub business for 20 years and this is an all-time record."

The identity of the high-roller is unknown, although he's reported to be "based in Dubai". According to the Telegraph, other Crystal members include Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who has herself been known to enjoy a energetic night on the tiles. ®
Bootnote

*This and other figures are the total price, so that's £9,600 for two jeroboams of Cristal, and so forth.

I caught a trailer for the Sci-Fi channel's new version of Flash Gordon featuring a pretty good cover of the awesome Queen music, there wasn't much to see, but the music brought me back so many memories that I'm marking my calendar for this new show. Ideally I'd love them to base their remake on the gloriously campy 70's movie, with it's cool outfits and art deco design all over the place. The movie is of course one of those cult affairs that really was awful in so many ways and yet utterly transcends the poor acting and cheezy action scenes to be something that's eternally watchable.

I just hope they stick with the Queen theme tune, it's a pretty competent cover.

http://www.scifi.com/flashgordon/gallery/index.php?p=38&cat=episodic

Wow how the time has flown!

So we spent a few days at a birthday party on top of a mountain in Healdsburg, we didn't actually stay at the party house for all 3 days, instead we headed into town to sleep in a motel, at least until monday night when the rest of the ravers left and we could get some good old fashioned rooms. The party was great and people seemed to like the fact that I stepped away from wall to wall trance and kicked off my dj set with The Cult. Skye and Orion both helped me out and were a hit in their own way, as the party was winding down I made a point of playing a second set using the Pioneer CDJ's. I've never really had the chance to learn to use these properly and I think I'd need another few hours to really get to the same level as vinyl.

Then we headed out to the Sonoma coast to a house we've rented. The great thing about renting houses is that they usually come with decort, books, movies and music which reflect the owners tastes and you can get a bit of insight into their tastes, and expand your own by checking out what they've left behind, sometimes you end up with very little respect for the property owners, but sometimes you want to meet them and thank them for enriching your life....

Anway, I think we did well here, in addition to a ton of books which I'd like to read, but won't have the time to read the music has served as a worthwhile background for our short break.
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Philip Glass - Songs From The Trilogy
The Roots - Things Fall Apart
The Shins - O Inverted World
First Ladies Of Jazz
The Welcome Matt - Right Outside Your Door
Beck - Mutations
Josh Fix - Steinway, The Hard Way

Anyway, the weather on the coast has pretty much been overcast, the sun breaks through enough to give you sunburn if your not careful, but we've been lacking nice sunsets since we came to the coast. Yesterday we heded even further north to Mendocino, you may never have been there but the odds are you've seen it on TV and not realised it. According to Wikipedia over 250 episodes of 'Murder She Wrote' were filmed there as well as a ton of mediocre movies like 'Karate Kid III' and 'Dying Young'.

The town is more artisitic than its screen pedigree would suggest.