Random Musings - Day #84

Live Messenger vs ZoneAlarm Free
I've recently encountered problems with running Live Messenger behind a ZoneAlarm Firewall. Everything used to be fine and dandy until one day I couldn't connect to Live Messenger. After troubleshooting, messenger was claiming 'key' ports could not be accessed, which fingerpointed the problem at ZoneAlarm. I updated Live Messenger to find it work. But it soon stopped working again with the same problem. I've updated ZoneAlarm now and things are ok for the moment.

Rochester/Strood
Sir Thomas Longley was born in Rochester and was the Archbishop of Canterbury. A couple of things to do around Strood include Diggerland and Monkey Bizz.

Gambling on irony
It's ironic that former Arsenal legend Paul Merson has had his fair share of gambling addiction is the new face of Betterbet.
Apparently Merson is good friend with the main man there.

Shrewd Jade
It looks like Jade Goody saved a million in taxes as she got married before her death. The inheritance tax of 40% has been by-passed as her spouse Jack Tweed can pass on the money to her kids.

Hacking News
Romanian outfit Hackersblog have called time on the blog.
Oh dear, it looks like all the major browsers have one or more vulnerabilities found at pwn2own (cansecwest)

Glasgow Gyms
Heading of to Glasgow, next week and cheap hotel with a gym appears to be the Swallow Hotel. However that is two miles away from the city centre.
A couple of gyms seen include The griphouse and Morrison's Gym

Random Musings - Day #25

Chinese New Year is nearly upon us. That will be tomorrow the new year will see in the year of the ox. Some countries observe the day as a holiday. There is a calendar guide available which determines when subsequent new years take place. Not it is rarely on the same date every year. This used to be good UK guide. In London, most of the events will take place on the following weekend, as mentioned by the London Chinatown Chinese Association.

Independence Days. Every country has got one. Whether they have holidays for them is another thing. Here's is list from about.com.

Global/National Days. Well there are some weird and wonderful holidays in the calendar particularly from America including brownielocks and holidays.net. Even the UK have weird holidays

Back in 1998, People magazine had an online poll of the "50 most beautiful people". Except the online community had other ideas. Someone kept emails and news of the goings-on. There was an online campaign to Hank the angry dwarf off the Howard Stern show to #1 on the list. This started when someone entered Hank as a write-in candidate and really took off when websites such as this one. The end result was Hank came out on top. Not only that top 10 had a weird feel about as both Ric Flair (#2) and John Linnell from They might be giants (#9) appear after a big push from their respective online fanbase. Here's MTV review of it.

Here is a cute video of the Monkey playing the guitar! And here's the original flat eric in action. Here's one of the Levis Ad. Even Justin Timberlake wants Flat Eric back in this mash-up. Talking of Justin Timberlake, finally the full skit is back!

Lady Gaga is #1 for a third week in the UK Charts holding off Kid Cudi and the Crooners for a second week, whilst Tinchy Stryder with "Take me back" is at #3.

Legendary boxing and greyhound racing commentator Reg Gutteridge died yesterday.

Tiswas. A then-unknown Chinese star appeared on Tiswas.
Best moment on Tiswas was Sir Trevor McDonald surprised Lenny Henry as he was impersonating him as Trevor McDoughnut.

Random Musings - Day #7

The DLR have kept the opening of Woolwich Arsenal DLR station underwraps. But I've been reliably informed by a friend and this transport blog that it will commence running on January 10th with the official opening a couple days later. This section should be another way getting about from the southeast into London and presumably is in place as an alternative means to the area where most of London 2012 Olympics will be held.

Now I am totally down with the flu but I am fighting it with Vicks, my special ginger drink, multivitamins, fisherman's friend and lots of water. Keeping hydrated is probably the key to it all. Anyways spotted this nice little recipe, which actually sounds tasty.

Moonwalking. There's some good tutorials on how to do it properly. One from videojug is here. Another good video tutorial is from
glowsticking.com. There's even one from Borat... well not quite but I LIKE!

Another friend says he is going to do some running in the not to distant future and asked what do I recommend. Decathlon and Sweatshop are probably your best bets. (Have a look at my running blog for more details...

I hate Manchester United. On paper, it wasn't humanly possible to lose to a team, that's only won 3 times in 11 with a couple of those against crap teams in cup competitions. But somehow they pulled off a 1-0 defeat to Derby in the Carling Cup. Not pleased at all. That's Man U, off my list of potential Premiership teams (as a second club) to support... It was too good to be true. I should have realised that Nigel Clough, Derby's new boss was around and they would be up for the game, whereas Fergie, the master tactician that he is realise, it's a game of two halves (there is a second leg to come at Old Trafford) and 8-1 on Derby winning. Yeah let them win. It's a fix. I swear the game was a fix! I hate Manchester United!!

Monkeh (a.k.a. the Digital/PG Tips Monkey). A little flashback to those adverts from the ill-fated itv digital. Have a look at Ryan Giggs in a pinny.