For Our Protection

For the last week or so I have been wandering around central London on my current mission of securing a job at the end of my PhD. This has obviously involved a fair few interviews, and more than a fair share of coffees beforehand to steady the nerves!

The problem with this excessive pre-interview coffee drinking is that the inevitable happens - the bladder blues. Okay - you may say to yourself - not a problem... there are plenty of restaurants, cafes, and public restrooms located around the city. Correct. However, stumbling blocks soon become evident on your way to urinary heaven:

1. The good old "toilets are for customers' use only" remarks are quickly thrown back at you by many restaurant owners. So no luck there then.
2. Spending a quick penny? Well that will cost you TWENTY pennies please sir. Oh, and only in the form of a single 20p piece or two 10's. Bloody ridiculous!! Especially when the change machines never seem to work when you need them to... I can't see why they go to the effort of putting a change machine next to the barrier machine that takes your 20p.... why not just combine the two and save everyone the hassle and embarrassment of pissing themselves even by the slightest amount whilst fumbling for that elusive 20p piece!?!
3. Queues. When you DO find a good and free toilet it has invariably been discovered by many, many other people before and as such you can look forward to a healthy sized queue.

But wait - there's worse. When you DO find a toilet and DO manage to get in there, us men can expect a whole host of nightmares. For a long time now I've wondered why it is that full grown men are incapable of hitting the target... why is it that after years of practice they still can't aim? I've come to believe that perhaps it all boils down to involuntary and built-in reactions left over from a far more interesting period in the human history. Kind of like how cats can't resist playing with a piece of string - men can't resist the urge to spray their bodily waste over every possible surface of public loo's. You might think that urinals are the safest bet in this case - with no part of your body having to touch anything.... but you're wrong. That guy standing next to you will subconsciously see your shoes in the corner of his eye, and "oops" your drenched before you even realise the mistake that you've just made.

Its not all bad though. Kind hearted Americans (probably women in fear of their male colleagues' health after hearing about such atrocities) have started to introduce protection. Little things such as seat savers to place over the loo seat in case the previous occupant was a particularly evolutionary retarded specimen. In fact, some toilet facilities even go to the lengths of having self cleaning loo seats. Genius.

Now if only Britain would realise that the era of gentlemen-like politeness was over a long time ago. I honestly think there's a serious opening in the market for a health-conscious company to make a killing in the UK public toilet industry.

Keep Fit

For the last week I've been a good boy. I've been exercising for exercising's sake. Every evening I go for a 15-20 minute run with my brother and then do an ever increasing set of stomach crunches, jack-knives, leg raises, and pushups.

I thought I would put this up on my blog whilst I'm still being good about it... but I think that with the healthy competitive edge between my brother and I, it looks set to be a regular affair. I'm actually quite pleased that I'm "winning" so far. My brother is 20 whereas I'm 25 - yet I can still out-train him. But only just - he's definately catching up!

I would say that I'm an "above average" type of guy when it comes to exercising - during my university term time I train in Thai boxing several times a week - and that is usually a hell of a workout! But I've found that during the holiday time I relax just a little too much.

Well not anymore - Mr. Motivator woud be proud!

The root of all wrinkles

Apparently it's possible to alter the general shape of various parts of your body simply by given said part a certain stimulus on a frequent basis. For instance, it is possible to buy a shaped hard cushion for you to sit on day in and day out so that you can firm up and shape up your arse.

Following on from this it is thought that wrinkles are a problem that starts from a very early age. Take the typical "crows' feet" that a lot of people get around their eyes from the middle ages and onwards. This is believed to be a result of daily screwing up of your eyes when you're washing your hair. Most people don't just close their eyes, they REALLY close them tight because they learnt at a young age that shampoo + eyes = pain.

Upon realising this I have now taken to not closing my eyes at all whilst washing my hair. It hurts like bugger, and my eyes remain bloodshot in protest for several hours after every shower - but I'm confident that I'm on the virtuous path to wrinkle free skin.

quick - no one's looking!

Inspired by an office colleague who earlier today sent around an e-mail declaring that he needed to scratch his groin area but couldn't because there were people around, I'm wondering why it is that we develop habits that we know are embarrassing? For example - at an early enough age, most of us realise that picking our noses in public is not good manners. Yet an awful lot of people still do this in private. You would think that the habit of not picking your nose in public would start to rub off on your private time. Apparently it doesn't.

Before I get a torrent of comments (i.e. two) about this please note that I do realise that some things just need to be done and it's not a case of whether its good form or not - an example of such a situation would be how men have to stare intently at a scantily clad, good looking woman. It just needs to be done.

Recent Post Image in my Signature

Outside of my work colleagues I find that most of my viewers are led to my blog by my text links that I add to the posting signatures in the various BB forums that I'm a member of. So in view of this I thought it would be kinda cool to use an image instead of a simple line of text. I also thought that it would be good to have this signature picture automatically update with the title or date of my most recent post.


So I played around with Graphic Converter on my Mac and managed to come up with this simple image. Underneather the "Latest Post" text is a space to add the date of my last post. I was intending to give the name of the post - but to be honest, at the moment I'm too lazy to include into my little script a long title handler... and so at least by using the date I'll always know it will fit into the space provided!

So how do I code it? Well for those that are interested this is a simple piece of php scripting - using the built-in imagejpg functions that come with all versions of PHP. Essentially I give the script a default image - and it then merges the date text onto it. Simple!

At the moment though I'm cheating a little... I was going to add the script to a website that I own and then integrate it into my blog template by disguising it as a small/invisible image. The problem I have is I can't find a way to have it ONLY in the latest post. So at the moment I make a point of running the script just after I've posted.

If there's anyone with knowledge of the blogger.com template system and who thinks they could help me with this then I'd appreciate it!

Socks

When I was a kid I was growing up in a household with 4 other males and I have to say that there was literally havoc when it came to sock laundry.

(Note that underwear laundry is a completely different subject, and due to the horrific memories, near skidmark incidents, and stifling encounters associated with this topic I won't be dwelling on this area at all in this post)

How many people out there were bought the generic "Wilson" branded black sports socks by their parents? I can guess that a lot of people are already nodding in agreement with me about this point at least. But imagine 5 males in one household all owning identical black wilson socks - all in the generic 3-12 sizes.... in my books sharing socks with brethren is only topped in the "most disgusting forced habits" as sharing (shudder...) underwear. You know that after a few wash loads you're never gunna have any confidence that the socks you're wearing haven't shared others' feet before.

I think that is why now, at the age of 25, I'm now retaliating. My sock draw now contains socks where every single pair is unique! The most multi-coloured and horrendous pairs of socks now line my sock draw. There will be no mistaking these beauties! Indeed my favourite has to be the ones similar to these:

Except that my pair are coloured more in the sense of the mid-90's opening scenes of BBC's Top of the Pops! Wicked. I also have a pair that is strikingly similar to the outfit worn by Beetlejuice - you know the one I mean....

I think however that this revolution in sock wear had come slightly too late in my life. Soon I shall be embarking upon my first 'real' job and for some reason I have the notion that prospective clients and bosses will not fully appreciate the effort that has gone into my choice of socks.

So I beg any prospective parent out there... let your child express their identity through their socks at a young age whilst they still have the freedom to do so. Failing to listen to this advice will only cause heartache, foot disease, and an unhealthy sexual obsession with tube socks.