museum

hi there

well, i don't know about you and where you are in the world, but here we had a public holiday today. what to do with it? there was washing (dishes and clothes) that needed doing, for sure, and there's the small matter of my ongoing project to "sort stuff out" around the house. as in theory winter is here, doing things about the house seemed to be the most sensible thing.

no chance. it was still pleasantly warm enough in the sun to be out and about, so we opted to take the boys on a little surprise adventure. it's one we were sure they would like, and indeed as it turns out they very much did! where did we go on this adventure? well, the first stop was the excellence of the Gautrain station reasonably near us.

the Gautrain runs a reduced service on public holidays (one every 30 minutes or so) and the "feeder bus" things don't run. they also don't run the buses on weekends. i can only assume that this is a decision made on the basis of how much they would have to pay staff to run the service on such days. on our experience, bizarre and unfortunate - we were expecting it to be quiet, with people away for the long weekend or staying indoors away from the cold. if anything, it was busier today that it was as i experienced it on a normal verk day, suggesting that people are taking to it as a preferable means of social visting.

i mean, i understand that the Gautrain was built primarily to get commuters between Johannesburg and Pretoria off the under pressure (to say the least) highway, and indeed as an option to get to the airport stress-free, but the scope and the will of people is there to use it for non-business purposes. hopefully at some point, then, the buses will run for it on weekends and on public holidays. if they did today, we wouldn't have even needed to take my car to the station!

anyway, as per my lengthy post from a couple of weeks ago, the Gautrain stations really don't do things for people waiting for a train on the platforms or even inside the building, so it was time for a bit of messing around outside whilst we waited for the next train.

sorry, no pictures from the train ride to our mystery adventure destination! whereas James, myself and my (considerably) better half had all been on the Gautrain before, William hadn't, and we were far too interested in his excitement at doing so to be bothered with pictures!

for those of you who read my earlier epic post on the Gautrain, and indeed those of you who observed the title of this post, there probably isn't a great deal of mystery to where we were going. yes, much to the delight and surprise of the boys, our destination was the National Museum Of Natural History, which i spotted on my last trip that way.

as i suspected, James was pretty much impressed enough with just the dinosaur bones on display outside, never mind what was inside!

the reason for us picking the day today to go here was that, oddly, it's only open on weekdays, even if that weekday is a non-religious public holiday. it is, quite frankly, so amazing that they should arrange something for at least Saturdays so that families can go and see what's inside.

as for what is inside, well, what follows are a few selected pictures from the some 300 odd we took! whoops, got a bit click-happy with our blueberry phones! here, for starters, are the boys sat above something that to me looks like a velociraptor, but James says that it isn't a velociraptor and he did tell me the right name but i have forgotten, except that it might start with a d.

and here's a picture of James sat on his own, only this time from the blueberry camera thing of my (considerably) better half. this means that the pictures are of considerably better quality, which they should be since her device cost a fair few thousand more than mine!

as for what's inside the museum in general, many wonderful and excellent things, really. far more than the rather dreary, official webpage thing suggests. exactly why the website is so dreary is beyond me. maybe they don't want to show off all the exhibits so as to encourage people to actually visit, although the website hardly suggests "come along" and the opening hours are tricky. it's probably dull as it is a government thing, then.

basically, you get a record of "natural" history. granted, yes, a "made up" history museum would be ace, featuring as it would mostly an account of the world as Mel Gibson thinks it might have happened and the added bonus of Terminators criss-crossing time, but natural history did us just fine. who, after all, does not love dinosaurs? 

the museum mostly takes you on the path of evolution, or if you will the development of life on this planet of ours. all the displays of findings - fossils, reconstructions, what evidence has been found - is truly staggering and breathtaking.

some look to the stars and the skies to see just how insignificant we possibly are. me, i say we have made an error in judgement that we currently know more about the moon than we do what's in our oceans. for all we know, colonies of these massive crabs may still wander around the seas!

when one sees something like the early forms of life - basic cell structures and what have you - and how they have developed over millions of years (even allowing for the 'phantom time hypothesis'), you get a sense that what caused life to start here doesn't really matter at all. i don't particularly care if you believe that we were placed here by God or what Deity you believe in, if you believe that we are the result of some scientific thing, stardust from an asteroid or put here by aliens, to be honest. when you see the fight, the effort, the struggle and indeed the sheer fluke ways we have got life to the point we have now it truly does give one a sense of perspective.

it also gives class displays with buttons to press. 

the boys, we were delighted to see, had a truly amazing, eye-opening time at the museum. James has an astonishing thirst for knowledge and learning, one that we are always happy to try and help him quench. he has so far, and hopefully shall continue this way, never tired of learning new things. 

William, at this stage of his life, certainly has the fascination with new and unusual things, but is not perhaps as willing to learn and understand as James is. he just wants things to "do things" that amuse and interest him. well, didn't we all at that age?

you wnat more pictures of that dinosaur that to me looks like a velociraptor but apparently isn't a velociraptor as such, but all the same seems to be related to it? of course you do. here's one of those "perspective" pictures!

and here is a close up of the chap, or indeed the "lady velociraptor that isn't a velociraptor as such" if it is a girl dinosaur.  

yes i probably should take the time and effort to look up the proper name for this dinosaur, since i clealry like it a great deal. James, however, is in bed, and if i google "what's the name of that dinosaur that looks like a velociraptor but isn't one" i will no doubt just get a load of nonsense back.

i have a theory that the myth of dragons came about when, back in the era they were spoken of, people stumbled upon dinosaur fossils and bones and had no idea what they were. if you see a dinosaur fossil, it looks dark to the point you could interpret it as "a bit burned", so why not assume it's a massive flying lizard that emits fire?

away from dinosaurs of as yet undetermined name and the development of life on this planet, there's a huge amount on display of both present and, in the grand scheme of things, recently departed forms of life. the boys, for instance, were most impressed with the look at apes and "sapiens" as such.

something that certainly interested all of us was in the picture below. ladies and gentlemen, the extinct thing that is perhaps the most famous extinct thing that is not a dinosaur. yep, the dodo!

well, OK, that mammoth thing is probably just as famous an extinct thing that is not a dinosaur, but the saying is not "as dead as a mammoth", is it? i was quite impressed to see the above, and i hope the picture does it some sort of justice! if you are in a position to get to the museum, it's worth going to see this, along with all the other stuff!

a possibly controversial, in this day and age, inclusion at the museum is a section on how one exactly goes about catching and carving up whales. environmentalists and fans of Star Trek IV all go on about how we should protect whales, and they are no doubt right to do so. what one rarely sees, however, is information on exactly why the Japanese get such a hard on about hunting them down. if it was out of some sort of Predator fantasy, you would have thought sharks would be more challenging than a big massive whale.

this poster, for those interested, shows off exactly what the Japanese do with these whales when they have caught them.

they do substantially more than just show off the whale as a trophy, then, but i am not at all convinced that the above justifies them hunting them to the point of reported extinction. make your own mind up on that one, i guess.

moving around, and William just could not get enough of the birds and butterflies on display. loads and loads of them, as it happens!

his interest in them is admirable and wonderful, and entirely fitting with some thoughts i have on exactly what sort of character traits he is developing. whereas i keep my copy of The Silence Of The Lambs under lock and key, this interest he has in bugs, specifically grabbing them and trying to give them to ladies as "gifts", suggests that some of my DNA or whatever it is contained enough knowledge of the novel and film that William has taken to seeing certain things as "quite natural". we will watch how this develops with interest!

after a good walk around for over an hour, it was time to head home. not, of course, without going and checking out the magnificent dinosaur skeletons on display outside once again! 

i am pretty sure these are not actual dinosaur fossil bones but rather recreations. the value of dino bones might not be as high as you might think, but then again they would not be the easiest thing to replace if someone decided to walk off with them. who, exactly, would steal a massive set of dinosaur bones? i've had enough nights on the lash to know that big and massive things look totally awesome to take home with the right level of substances in you.

now then, here are another ste of bones that have got us a little bit puzzled. well, James a "little" puzzled, the rest of us totally baffled.

it's certainly some sort of aquatic life, that set of bones is, but we have no idea on the name. James remembers seeing it in one of his books, but can't remember the name of it. i would say "as it's dead now it does not matter what its name is", but i am pretty sure this is the kind of sea dwelling fish thing that many believe lives to this day in the realm of Loch Ness.

here's one of those "perspective" shots for you again, see if you can spot the boys in relation to the skeletons!

after a brief(ish) stop for lunch at the McDonalds near the train station, it was time to head home. the boys were really very well behaved on the train and on the platforms, which made the day all the better. to show off how well behaved they were, they even posed for a picture and looked the same way at the same time for it! 

oh, go on then, a couple of pictures from on (or if you will be pedantic, in) the train. first up James and is Mummy having a nice chat as the world goes by the window!

and then, although i cannot imagine you would have all that much interest in seeing me, one of William and i sat across from them two. 

William, as you can see, does not look all that keen on posing for a picture. can't blame him really, he was far too interested in watching everything out of the window, with a particular level of excitement when we went through a tunnel.

to that end, i did manage to get one of them "arty" like pictures of him watching the world go by. well, as "arty" a picture as one of them blueberry phone camera things lets you take, i guess!

all in all, quite a magnificent day out! if we are lucky enough to get a public holiday on a weekday again soon we will certainly consider going back up for another look around. this would be a good idea in particular as one of the halls was closed off for some sort of floor polishing, meaning there are even more amazing things to be seen!

if you've hit on this blog as a result of one of them google things to find out about the museum, then hopefully your answer is yes, go! via the Gautrain, it's a 10 minute walk up Paul Kruger Street straight out of the Pretoria station.

whether you were at verk, on a public holiday or just a general holiday, i can only hope that you too (and indeed U2, bless them) had as fantastic a day as we all had!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Stone Roses - Made Of Stone Blu Ray and DVD

hi there

some truly fantastic news has come along in the shape of the much anticipated Made Of Stone film is released on DVD and Blu Ray on 21 October 2013. i kind of wish it was 21 June 2013, but never mind, the reunion took long enough to happen i suppose!

yes, kids, you read that right. it's a 2 disc Blu Ray set. this means that you will have, in theory, 100 GIGABYTES OF THE STONE ROSES to enjoy. it is for this kind of thing that scientists and that bothered to invent new technology.

what do those 100 Gigabytes contain? who knows, for at the moment, as you can see in the below close-up, they are keeping the extra features a secret at the moment!

you can pre-order the Blu Ray set from amazon for £13.88 or if you prefer the 2 DVD set for £12.98. there's also a 1 DVD version available for £11.50. the 1 disc version has a black cover instead of the red one shown here.

yes, if funds permit, i will be purchasing all three variations of it. and so should you.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wheelspins, donuts, handbrake turns and Uncle Trevor

hi there

as you will have worked out from a post earlier this month, it seems that everyone in general and my family in particular have simply stopped sending any sort of pictures to me. actually, they've pretty much stopped sending anything. if it were not for adverts for Nigerian cock pills and someone convinced that i am the right person for a job that requires one to speak Mandarin, my email thing would have next to nothing to do. ho hum.

thankfully, every now and then someone posts a picture up on that facebook thing, and if it's of interest i will gladly pinch it and put it here. this picture shows off my Uncle Trev having a go in a car bought by someone who i know, but will leave anonymous here.

looks quite smart that! Trev looks good in it, as i am sure the anonymous owner does. on that note, nice purchase Colin!

of interest in this picture, other than the fancy wheels and Uncle Trev, are of course Ruby, who apparently is not allowed in the car, and of course Gran, who probably showed Trev the best way to maximize the "screech" sound when doing a handbrake turn in this new car.

glad to have caught this picture, and how splendid to see you are OK Uncle Trev! hope you've had a look at the DVD by now!

UPDATE! Trev has just added a picture featuring the anonymous owner of the car!

i am not at all sure you should be taking pictures of yourselves whilst driving, but then again what i know about driving is, frankly, dangerous!

nice Thelma & Louise pose, though!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the further art of Spiros

hi there

i do love how every time my chum Spiros goes off to a Spur to eat i somehow end up entering the kids' colouring competition.

somewhere on this blog is the delightful picture of Gene Simmons out of Kiss that he drew and entered on my behalf. this time he seems to have arguably gone one better with this masterpiece.

i should be thankful, i suppose, for the fact that he does not write or draw anything too obscene on these things with my details on. exactly why he was inspired to declare my love of netball, indeed "all games for girls", is a bit beyond me really. it's probably in some small way related to the amount of babycham he drank as he ate.

the "Kiss" entry from last time did not win anything, i presume, as they never called me. fingers crossed that i get a call after they have judged this one. it will be class if i get awarded an ice cream or something.

cheers Spiros!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

warning signs

hi there

OK, and first off an admission for those of you reading this that have seen some, if not all, of the pictures below. they have been floating around the internet, or if you will net of inters, for some time now. i think they turn into something called a "meme" or similar.

i post them here, or "reshare" them on this fine net of inters for my own amusement, and i certainly hope for yours too. full on credit and what have you for whoever first introduced these to the entire world!

first up, and as we approach days where we are closer to the end of our lives than we are to the start of it, some of us give up things that were ace in our youth. trying new music, perhaps, or the books that we read. sometimes the things we do for fun early on in life are just beyond us as the years pass by.

not the case, it seems, for this lady. not the case at all.

i suspect i know one or two (dozen) people who will in their twilight years have pictures of them taken looking pretty much like the above, except in those pictures the bong will be performing its function. kindly note that i did not specifically name John Payne in this regard.

i am not sure, going on the title i have given the above, that the above carries any warning sign of anything at all. the below picture certainly does.

you probably know someone, possibly a lady, that really, really likes cats. you may know of such a lady that would either like, want or perhaps even need a new coat. in a spur of the moment thing, you may see something that combines those two elements in a shop and proceed with what you think is an excellent transaction. it is, as you can see below, not.

oh dear! what might look OK and even seen kind of cute in a store looks horrid on a practical lady. that's the nightmare jacket of 101 Dalmations right there for you! i can only assume the lady in question really liked, or possibly totally hated, cats to go out wearing it!

on the subject of animal based clothing, here's a big massive warning for you next. before you go out on a night, consider please if what you intend to do might leave a door open to you being detained or even arrested for doing it. once again, please note that i did not specifically name John Payne in regards of this kind of thinking.

if you come to a conclusion that "yes, arrest is a possibility in the light of my planned evening activities", then it might be jolly wise not to wear the cow outfit that evening.

i can only imagine he had a particularly intense amount of fun in the holding cell not long after the above was taken, in particular with those udders.

now then, take a look at the below.

an impressive amount of technology, isn't it? now consider this - all of the above, plus a television and plus a computer with internet access (effectively giving you both all known knowledge of the human race and all the porno ever made) is now part of a device not much bigger than a packet of cigarettes (although thinner than that) that's called a cellphone, or if you will a "smart phone". when you put it like that, the technological leap of the last decade or so has been nothing short of spectacular.

take a moment to consider how impressive the above is. the concept, not my writing. now take a moment to consider that no one thought to tell the dude below any of this.

that is very cool indeed, is it not? i like making mix tapes rather than relying on an iTwat device, but i have not ever thought to take the boom box / ghetto blaster with me. this chap should at least consider getting a walkman (yes, you can still buy them) at the least if he's not prepared to go the whole way and get one of them mp3 player things.

the chap should really unplug the headphones and let everyone in that canteen hear the vibes, mind.

and speaking of iTwats, this next one. the great Denis Leary called this one around 1996 or 1997 when he spoke of the demise of Dunkin' Donuts, populated then with what he vividly described as "haiku writing mother f*****s" sitting around eating finger sandwiches whilst writing poetry on computers.

we have all seen complete and utter dicks working on computers in coffee shops, restaurants and similar. perhaps the saddest, most tragic case i ever saw was someone working on a spreadsheet in a restaurant when it was clear his party of people were there to celebrate his son's birthday. blimey, fella, that is time you are never going to get back, but will one day find the time to regret what you did. a lot.

normally, the people who do this - let's for ease of reference just call them dicks - huddle over their laptop or "tablet" and get on with it. why they don't just get takeaway and carry on at home is beyond me. that would be particularly true of this bloke right here.

i mean, just what's that all about? i know a lot of people with those iTwat devices like to sit in public and show off the fact that they have spent a lot of money on a restrictive device with the logo of a bitten apple on it just in case anyone is impressed, but that's taking it a bit too far, isn't it?

going back slightly and considering takeaways, this is a rather impressive sight. yeah, yeah, we all know that fast food is bad for you. for some reason the people who devise the menus for fast food places are maniacs that thing everything should contain the upper maximum level of salt and that sort of thing. it tastes pretty good, though, and as thus far no one who has avoided fast food takeaways their whole life has turned out to be immortal, why not indulge every now and then?

that said, there are warning signs that your health is taking a knock from a fast food lifestyle one of those signs, for sure, is the inability to be able to stand in a queue to get fast food.

unless the chaps in front of her were taking an incredible amount of time deciding on exactly what they wanted from the vast range offered by Burger King, having to take a seat in a fast food queues should be telling you something. i at this stage in my life have never felt the need, for instance, to take a seat whilst i place an order at KFC. if nothing else, it would be disrespectful to The Colonel to do so.

a saucy or rude one to finish this all off with? certainly. in this world things often do not do what it sounds like they do. news reports, for instance, often refer to an actual miss in regards of two vehicles nearly colliding as a "near miss" when of course a "near miss" means "hit". another term that doesn't quite describe what it does is, of course, blow job.

as this lady here demonstrates with her go at one.

i am sure someone somewhere explained to her exactly what that term meant, but only after letting her work it out all by herself. or perhaps we are to assume that the person who took this picture was the rather optimistic gent who suggested a blow job to her in the first place. if that's the case, i bet she does not do another one, her gums must knack after that!

hopefully some of you have found these an entertaining diversion for a Friday!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rather crap and pointless Man Of Steel toys

hi there

toy designers and manufacturers sometimes get really funny ideas when they licence a film tie-in. one can only assume that they seldom get to see the film they are basing toys on, or otherwise just take wild gueses at what the characters would do.

this was particularly true of toys for The Avengers, which featured Iron Man and The Hulk riding on sort of quad bike things. neither character, transport wise, would ever really need one of those, and i cannot recall seeing them even considering using anything with wheels.

along comes Man Of Steel, then, and for some reason we have a bizarre range of toys featuring the hero of the film, Superman. i recently showed off an action figure i bought and warned that toys like this would turn up! have a look at this lot.

sorry the picture is not the best, but i think you can get the idea. they are basically toys of Superman in flying machines of some description. inflexible ones too, or in the case of the one at the top stuck to the flying machine. erm, Superman needs a machine to help him fly, does he?

for what it's worth, here's some free, and i would have thought obvious, market research. when it comes to superhero toys, all the kids (and, yes, their Dads) want is action figures. ones that you can move their arms, legs and feet on. some accessories are nice too. they don't want preposterous things that make no sense (as is the case with these) and they certainly don't want the super hero stuck to these objects.

the above will be bought by two types only - those on a "grab and go" mission to buy a present for a child, and those who buy all these things and leave them sealed for the "collector value". the latter will, oddly, have more fun and joy than the former.

this crap is just disappointing. it wastes shelf space, wastes an opportunity and kills the market, as few will willingly buy it. they should go back to the Star Wars model of success - action figures of every character (you can at this stage only get Supes and Zod; no Russell Crowe or Kevin Costner toys in sight) and some accessories that make sense to the character and film. George Lucas did not make billions from merchandising by welding Luke Skywalker to a bike.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

help help, my facebook profile has been hacked / cloned and other myths.

hi there

the intention of this post is not to belittle or insult anyone. sorry if the tone comes across like that in some parts. i am just getting tired of seeing the "my account has been hacked" or "my profile has been cloned do not accept any requests" comments floating around the grand social network. as far as i can work out, the whole thing is nonsense, or at least nothing new. people have been setting up "fake" profiles since the whole thing began, after all.

first off, "hacking". if someone has hacked your account, that means they have got hold of your login name and, most importantly, password. they have then gone into your account and done whatever. you somewhere along the road have disclosed your password to someone. silly.

what is not hacking is when, despite all the warnings, you click on things that look shiny or exciting and give whoever owns the application (if you will, "app") permission to do what they like with your details and your friend list.

there is no such software that allows you to see who has been viewing your profile or anything you have been doing. got that? good. when you see a link to something that says you can see this, it is a lie. they just rip the details of yourself and all your friends, and them bombard them with an invitation on your behalf so that they can get even more information.

the same is true of these "you have to see this video" invitations, and indeed those "share this picture to stand the chance of winning an iTwat device" things. they are all con tricks, and when you click "accept" in either greed or curiosity you are willingly allowing someone to access your details and pester your friends.

on facebook, as in the real world, if it looks too good to be true then it is likely to be just that. stop clicking on rubbish assuming that "it's on facebook so it must be true".

now, flavour of the month seems to be the idea that people are having their facebook page "cloned". a fake facebook page in your name is, apparently, set up and they set about re-inviting your existing friend list to this fake one to ask them for money.

there are some major flaws in this con trick, but first, if for no other reason to make this post all pretty with pictures, here's how to tell if you have been "cloned" and indeed how to make sure you are not.

first, before you run around with status update about how you've been cloned / copied / "hacked" and that no one should accept invitations, how about you check to see if there's a fake profile for you? how do you do that? search your own name!

no one, alas, seems to have decided to pretend to be me. that's a good thing, i guess, but also a little bit disappointing. i mean, it would be kind of flattering, in a sense.

moving on, and if the above is not the case for you - as in there's a fake profile you find when you search - then report it at once! if there's no fake profile and you wish to ensure that no one sets up a tribute act to you, here's what to do. on your profile page, click the pen next to the "find friends" button and select "edit privacy".

this will take you to the below menu option, which as you can see for yourself controls who can see what in regards of all details.

honestly, i don't mind my friends seeing who my friends are, as you can see below. if one friend tried to contact another and that other one didn't like it i would trust that other one to either ignore the person or tell them to "do one". you can, if you like, set it so that no one can see anything by just selecting the "only me" setting.

note, however, if you click on those "see who has been looking at your profile" or "share this pic" applications, then you will still give access to those people. so, once again, don't click on rubbish like that.

as for this idea of people cloning profiles to ask your friends for money, well, it's just stupid when you think about it. anyone pretending to be me and asking my friends for money will no doubt simply get the response "f*** off you twat". your friends and family might be a bit more polite than that. i mean, are they really going to act only on a facebook request?

even if you have a friend or family member who is as much of a simpleton to say "yes OK", then how exactly is this impersonator going to get the money? exactly.

the press and various forms of media love making mountains from flat ground when it comes to facebook. it is as secure a service to use as you choose to make it. if you spread details all over, or click on silly things and give permission to someone to use all of your details, that is hardly a facebook security flaw.

the truly paranoid should just get off facebook, and indeed the internet, to tell the truth.

hope this has been of some help to someone!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a further miracle of the post office.....

hi there

wow, we received post again today! i cannot recall us getting this kind of service since before the ill-fated and unfortunate, yet idiotic, strike earlier this year. things are on the up.

in the post were two editions of Time magazine - yes, the weekly one. one of them was the current edition i was expecting, the other from some arbitrary date in May that the Post Office in its infinite wisdom had decided not to deliver at the time. ho hum.

also in the post, and i would bet of more interest, was a card for James. one rather similar indeed to the one that arrived for William yesterday, as James was pleased to see!

as it turns out, it seems that neither this card nor the one William got yesterday were the missing, if you will delayed, Valentine's cards. although there are no markings, they are clearly from after February. oh dear.

why is this, then, still called a miracle of the post office? well, when you think about it, a rather unfortunate incident for me in our bathroom (see previous post, 'adventures in drilling') could have been considerably worse, athletically speaking, if the post office had indeed cocked around with the time-space continuum enough to have made it Valentines again. it remains possible and indeed plausible, then, that only a towel rack/bar thingie broke and no "misunderstandings" took place purely because of the post office flatly refusing to deliver Valentines Day cards, no matter how late.

more importantly, James really, really likes to get things with his name on in the post, so he was delighted to see this arrive!

cor, blimey, i've made up for the lack of recent updates in the last few days, have i not? hopefully Gillian and anyone else wanting to read them have got what they wished for.

in the mean time, my hand feels somewhat battered, bruised and sore from the old school screwdriver antics of earlier today, so you will please forgive me if i sign off this post now to nurse it!



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

adventures in drilling

hi there

i fear, if not suspect, that this could be an incredibly dull and boring post. sorry in advance if that indeed is proven to be the case. i am quite aware that i should be doing other things right now, in particular involving the rather large quantity of boxes i purchased yesterday, but i am just knackered. i am sat here with coffee, Marlboro, Led Zeppelin (who for some reason i am all of a sudden drawn to listening to) and indeed the will to tell of my latest exploits.

there's no easy way to put this - i recently broke the towel holder thing in our bathroom. i think, going on my purchasing adventures since, it is in fact in the trade called a "towel bar". i kind of grabbed it and it kind of snapped off at one end. here is the first of many pictures to illustrate this.

now, i know exactly what you are all thinking about the above, coming as it does not long after a Valentine card was received in our home. no, i did not grab it and snap it off in self-defence. no, it was not whilst i was using the bathroom at 3 in the morning with the door closed - it was early-ish Sunday and the door was open. and no, there was neither an athelte nor a firearm anywhere near me. it just kind of happened as i put a towel on the rack/bar.

a towel rack/bar is a most excellent way of keeping towels near a shower for the purposes of getting dry after a shower. this snapping or breaking was most unfortunate, then, and was something i needed to address.

the first major problem i faced was getting the broken bits off the wall. i am led to believe that messing around with screws and nails and things in tiles is a dangerous business. well, dangerous in as far as your average tile is prone to cracking - physically not spiritually - at just the hint of interference.

this would be somewhat difficult since, as you can see below, the thread in the head of the bottom screw had been subject to some apparent violence when put in.

that, reader, is a tricky thing to get out. if you can't get the screwdriver to "lock" on to that bit, you've had it. in particular if it's stuck in a wall plug (or anchor or socket, the plastic thingie some put around screws in walls), as was the case here. more on this part just now.

another problem, of course, was going to be finding a new towel rack/bar that looked exactly like the one that i snapped. i wanted identical for two reasons. first, as you can see below, the one end was rather unsnapped and thus i was going to save myself an awful lot of bother if i just put one new "arm" on the end that did snap. secondly, going on my adventures with toilet flushes (see posts earlier in the year), if i put a new looking towel rack/bar in our bathroom, then my (considerably) better half would no doubt have insisted i put the same in the other bathroom, so everything looked the same, nice nice.

it was with good fortune, then, that i found the exact same set as was in our bathroom already in one of the first stores i visited! it was the only one left, too. i really did only need that arm thingie to put on what was left of ours, but i bought the whole set. mostly, it has to be said, because that's how they sell them, just as the full set.

my major problem, then, was the damaged screw in the wall. i sought advice on the internet on how to remove it, and i did not like the advice i was given at all. they proposed i purchase all sorts of fancy "screw removal tools" which i had no interest in. the internet also suggested the somewhat advanced approach of simply smashing the tile in, digging out the screw from the wall, rebuilding the wall, replacing the tile and pretending that nothing was ever there. this last one appealed a bit, as it could have been a bit like that bit where Batman retrieved a bullet from The Joker out of a wall in The Dark Knight, but i suspect my (considerably) better half would not have seen it like that.

i was pretty sure that i could get the bastard thing out without either new tools (ahem, perhaps not as you will see) or without having Gary Oldman visit me and pretend he saw nothing as i put on a cape and mask and smashed the wall in, and so i had a go. this meant a welcome return of one of my most favourite things ever.

yes, my pliers. as you can see from the above, i have not had a great deal of use for them since i was instructed to get a proper handle on the window in my car. it is totally rubbish, by the way, winding a window up and down with a handle instead of using pliers to force the thing to do what you want. quicker, more efficient and less likely to break the window, yes, but total rubbish.

did the pliers get the screw out? partially. it got it some of the way out, but a barrier was that plastic plug or anchor thing the screw was encased in. i decided, despite what i said above, to get a minor new tool to see if that would help.

that, ladies and gentlemen, is a cripper or cripoon or crimper or something like that. i don't know, i threw the box out and cannot remember what it said. it looked like it was the right size to grab the screw with and yank it out, though. it looks and all sounds like it is something you are supposed to use with electric cables or similar, but it looked more to me like the sort of thing to do the job.

it did, i am happy to say, help a great deal. it got a fair bit of the screw out, and thus assisted the pliers with removing it. eventually, it was out far enough to batter it around a bit with a hammer, which saw most of the screw fall out of the wall and leave only an insignificant bit of the screw in the wall. the bastard thing it is.

before we go on with how i managed to get the little bit of screw remaining in the wall out, i am pretty sure you wish to see another picture of me using a pair of pliers as a needlessly complicated piece of smoking apparatus. here you go.

i, with some optimism, once again consulted the internet to see how best to rid myself of a troublesome, broken screw embedded in a wall. i expected to get more of this "just smash the wall in to get it out" business, but was pleasantly surprised to read the general advice. "just screw into the screw that's there to put your new one in" was the most frequent thing i read, and so i decided to give that a go.

this all struck me as being a bit William Tell or Robin Hood, really, smacking with a degree of precision a drill into the back end of a screw partially hidden in a wall. still, as the title of this blog posts suggests, i was keen to venture a go at this, and i had the tools too.

whereas i had the tools, i did and do not have any particularly great level of knowledge of what you are supposed to use to do what with. all the drill bits, as you can see, are the same but different to me, in particular with regards to shade and texture.

i would be sure that they seem to be made of different substances for the purposes of drilling different surfaces - wood, metal, brick, tiles, that sort of thing. i did not have a clue, however, which one was for which.

whilst out purchasing the new towel rack/bar/thing, i could not but help notice that drill bits of the same size and composition were sold in batches. this gave me a degree of confidence, as it happens. i have not yet, oddly, broken one of my drill bits (drillbits?), meaning that i must have been doing something right up to now, or otherwise if i did break a bit then clearly that was the way you were supposed to do it, hence buying ten or a dozen of the same thing at once being the way it is done.

shiny things always make things better, so i decided to have a crack first with one of the bigger shiny ones, hoping of course not to break the tile, fragile as it is supposed to be.

this section, by the way, is the part where i fear it may get all boring, if you are not bored already. just how exciting, after all, can a number of different drill bits be? this part is going to be nowhere near as exciting as the pictures of me with the pliers. don't say you haven't been warned.

the slightly big shiny one did OK, making a rather nice grating noise as it connected with the remnants of that utter, utter bastard of a broken screw stuck in the wall. it was not getting through much of it, though, at least not as quickly as one might have hoped. and by one i do mean me.

time then, to give another drill bit or drillbit a go. it's only fair all of my tools should have a fair chance to prove their worth, after all. i went with this one next. 

as you can see, this one has elements of shiny to it, but also some sort of darker element or aspect. is shiny or darker the better drill part to use for for walls or tiles and a screw stuck in it? i have no clue, or at least i had no clue. it was worth giving it a go, though.

i must say the go was well worth it. i am not exactly sure what the darker bits are, but i do know that they have some wild flint-like properties, as some ace smoke and the feint smell of burning came along as it did its thing.

as i stopped to clear the debris away, and yes to make sure that the whole wall wasn't on fire, i could see that this one was doing the job rather well, and in a time that i found most agreeable. on that front, i will happily confess that part of me wished i could be stood there still drilling away with this option. the "drrrrrr" noise it makes has a class bass feel to it, and there is something wonderful about all this smoke and sense of burning comes along. however, my (considerably) better half was around as i did this, and she seldom gets impressed by things like that, so i thought it best to stop. especially, as it happens, since everything was all but ready to put on the new handle thingie for the towel rack/bar/whatever.

as you can see, the evidence of the actual screws gone, leaving behind just two holes ready to get new plug or anchor things and screws. minimal damage too - in particular the title itself is not cracked or damaged beyond where the tile rack thingie arm thingie was put in the first place. ooh, Kashmir is on. not sure if this or Immigrant Song is my top Led Zep song, will be back in 8 or so minutes.

anyway, where was i? oh yes, tiles. they are nowhere near, it seems, as sensitive or as prone to breaking as i had been led to believe. reasonably sturdy would be my conclusion. i mean, sure, if you took a hammer to them the way that Robert De Niro took his boot to the heads of people that displeased him (unwisely displeased him, in retrospect) in GoodFellas, then yes i am pretty sure they would break. also, i didn't in the strictest sense drill into a tile from scratch - i worked on the holes already drilled. still, i may well have a go at drilling some more tiles, even if for no apparent reason beyond that i can.

the hole was not quite ready to accept the new plug thingie for the screw, so it was time to unleash another drill bit thing. i felt it only fair to allow the shiny ones out of my collection a chance to prove their worth, and so went for the Moby M-5 sized one from my collection.

a hell of a drill bit, that, isn't it? anyway, that cleared out the remainder of the hole and the broken bastard of a screw to let me continue on my merry way.

you may think that the tale is coming to an end around about now, but no it isn't. there's a slight twist, although happily it is not a crappy one like you'd find in a film from Mr "hey i have seen The Twilight Zone, i can pad a 20 minute episode out to two hours", M Night Shyamalan. it relates to encouraging the screws and the wall plug/socket/anchor things going all the way into the wall.

now, the advice i had seen all over the place is that one is supposed to hammer these things in. my view on that was no thanks. i suspect that the original bottom screw thingie was knacked in the first place by someone hammering it. there was also every chance that if i took a hammer to it, mindful of the De Niro reference above, i would end up smashing the tile, the new arm thingie for the towel rack/bar thingie, or indeed both. the head of a screw has a space for a screwdriver after all, so i thought it best to try and screw it in before grabbing my ace hammer.

the twist? well, neither the screwdriver bits on my class drill or indeed the most excellent elecrtic screwdriver that my mate Lance got me were of a shape or length that allowed one to use them on this particular job. the only way i was going to get this done the way i wished, i.e. hammer free, was by going old school.

yep, a trusty old regular screwdriver. kind of like the sponge and a rusty spanner sung of in that song by The Smiths, only featuring a screwdriver rather than a songe and a rusty spanner. i was aware that this was going to take a good deal of phsyical effort and force from me, the things being pretty tough to get in. and you would want them to be tough, too, for you want them to stay in and hold up whatever it is you are busy with.

how did i get on? you tell me!

voila! i am really rather chuffed that i managed to do this one! both James and my (considerably) better half suggested that i call the chap who did the oven (see recent-ish post) and other things, as he was and is rather good. it seemed, however, a reasonably basic job, and one that i could do without the cost of getting someone else to do it. the evidence, as far as i can tell or day say, seems to indicate that i was right to have a go at it!

here's one of them "arty" shots of the finished towel rack/bar thing, then. a bit like the ones my mate Steven Legget takes and posts at random, although his usually tend to be of mesh or mesh like things.

does it, erm, you know, does it work? well, i cannot for the life of me imagine why you would be interested in what sort of towels we have beyond showing you how the towel rack/bar thingie works, so to that end here's a look at the towel rack/bar thingie doing its thing.

i've just been to have a courtesy, curious look and yes, it still a few hours later looks exactly like you see above. unlikely, then, to break or fall off any time soon, i with confidence hope!

well, there you have it. that's why i am knackered. i suppose now that i've written this up i should really get on to other things. i will do so just now.

what will my next project be? no idea. bonus if it involves a drill and tiles, i suppose, but to be honest i would rather it wasn't repairing something. i don't have the best sense or skill when it comes to DIY, and i do think it's blind luck rather than talent that sees things like this work out OK for me!

if this has been of some sort of interest to you, nice one and many thanks indeed for reading!


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!