Archives for category: Random Cool Stuff

From “The Mirror”:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13832640_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-F—-THE-NAZIS–SAYS-CHURCHILL-S-PARROT-name_page.html

SHE WAS at Winston Churchill’s side during Britain’s darkest hour. And now Charlie the parrot is 104 years old…and still cursing the Nazis.

Her favourite sayings were “F*** Hitler” and “F*** the Nazis”. And even today, 39 years after the great man’s death, she can still be coaxed into repeating them with that unmistakable Churchillian inflection.

Many an admiral or peer of the realm was shocked by the tirade from the bird’s cage during crisis meetings with the PM.

But it always brought a smile to the war leader’s face.

Churchill bought Charlie – giving him a boy’s name despite the fact she was female – in 1937.

She took pride of place in a bizarre menagerie of pets including lambs, pigs, cattle, swans and, at one point, a leopard.

He immediately began to teach her to swear – particularly in company – and she is keeping up the tradition today.

The blue and gold macaw is believed to be Britain’s oldest bird.

The title was previously thought to belong to 80-year-old Cokky the cockatoo.

But it can be proved Charlie is at least 104 and was born in the 19th century.

Peter Oram bought her for his pet shop after Churchill died in 1965. But he was forced to move her into his home after she kept swearing at children.

For the last 12 years, she has lived at Mr Oram’s garden centre in Reigate, Surrey.

Centre worker Sylvia Martin said: “If truth be told, Charlie is looking a little scruffy but she is very popular with the public. We are all very attached to her.”

James Humes, an expert on the late PM, said: “Churchill may no longer be with us but that spirit and those words of defiance and resolve continue.”

So, purely by accident, I have run accross someone’s wireless network. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me until now to look for such a thing, but I have found it, and with a little help from www.dnsstuff.com and www.whatismyip.com, i managed to figure out that my unwitting benefactor has Road Runner, so I did a little research, and… wa-la! I’m currently briskly downloading the rr.com newsgroup listing. This is especially nice because my roommate is currently downloading Sims 2 on Shareaza and is pretty successfully hosing our connection and giving me something like an alloted 3k/sec. Solution? Piggyback on someone else’s connection! Hooray!

I’m pretty proud of myself today. Besides the wireless, I was pretty productive. I wrote four pages of script for daniel, longhand (which is the most i’ve written in… four months?) and i also managed to figure out some pretty nifty stuff for my project for work (i know it doesn’t look like much, but look a little bit closer at the image in the center. it was generated by an asp script. i was proud of myself when i figured that out.) Working from home is soooo nice, by the way. It feels like I have so much more time. I think it also helps that I don’t have to worry about the hideous drive home anymore. Those 25 miles really take it out of me.

Anyways, I’m going to go browse someone else’s roadrunner connection. Toodles!

After I got home from work, I fell asleep until midnight. Accordingly, I have been awake ever since. To fill up my time, I watched the first three episodes of Nip/Tuck, which was fucking great. I really enjoy watching television shows on DVD, especially the really good ones. If you find yourself a well-made TV show on DVD, it’s like watching the coolest, most involving movie, simply because you have so much time to get caught up in the characters and the evolving plotlines…

…we’re packaging it with this. or, hell… whenever i make a portfolio/reel, this is what i’m going to use.