I have been making icons! Hope you like.

1-6 The magnificent hair of Mrs Slocombe
7-12 1930s cinemas
13-24 Honey
25-54 House - episode 1.4, Maternity

Teasers:



All here at my icon journal, 10000pixels.

I am - shock, horror - using up annual leave by having last Friday and tomorrow off.

( My long weekend so far, and a rant about Kingdom )

I have one day's worth of freedom left. Not sure what to do yet. But I won't be getting up early.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. (Please note: If you simply wish to comment on something I've said but don't want to participate in the meme, that is fine. I will only give you five words if you specifically comment with 'Words!')

bmax67 gave me five words:

( Five Words )

Hope that was entertaining :) Thank you for listening.

My Wii Fit and the accessories I'd ordered arrived in the week. They all came to work on the same day, and luckily fit in my car. I ordered the Wii Fit, plus a blue silicone cover for the board (I figured it would be easier to keep clean), a bag for the board, a shoulderbag for the Wii console, and a yoga mat & bag. I am incredibly pleased with all of them.

I tried out the Wii Fit on Wednesday, just to check it was all working etc, and played some of the balance games. Fabulous! Then yesterday I had my first major play, doing some exercises from all four groups. Some are utterly brilliant, some are fun but I'm not very good at them, and some are really fustrating. Mostly I love how these things are set, ie the graphics, the cheering crowds, and so on. Some of it's a bit cheesy but it's always fun.

Yoga I did the breathing exercise, the sun exercise and a balancing exercise. I like yoga cos I got really good results, three or four stars each time. Said I had good balance.

Balance Games I tried the balls-in-the-hole game again, and one one time I got past the S-shape board. Am definitely getting better. Did OK at the football headers, but they come too fast for me. The tightrope walking continues to utterly fustrate me. Maybe if the first level was just about getting across the tightrope in the required time it would be better, having to jump over the chompy thing is my failing every time.

Skiing Managed to get my first penalty-free run of the slalom, my results for this are generally all over the place but it is fun. But I find if you start out lousy, it's difficult to correct it further down.

Ski Jump I love how steep this looks on the introductory graphics, ie so steep you would run away in fear if you saw it in real life. But I love this game, and I got a few jumps of more than 100 metres in.

Hula Hooping I had a hula hoop as a child and I was always good at it, so am well used to the swing-your-hips thing. I love the cheesy dancers in the background, but I can only catch hoops from one of them.

Jogging Well, I completed this one. Not particularly well, it kept criticising my rhythm and my fluctuating speed. But I like the setting of running round the grounds of a big old house. And I'm glad they have a bar at the bottom showing you how far you are, ie half-way round, three-quarters. Wonder how far it actually corresponds to in metres.

Step ZOMG I loved this! I like step, I went through a big step phase at one point. Step is a good workout but you do need stamina to keep up for a whole class. On the Wii, the step (ie the balance board) is smaller than a normal step, and it's just one routine of a few minutes, but it scores you as to how many of the steps you kept up with & how well. It has those foot diagrams - like the old-fashioned floor guides for ballroom dancing - that scroll on the screen, and the setting is a bunch of steppers onstage doing a routine in unison, with the crowd cheering them on. I think I went through this one about six times in a row, gradually getting better, but I kept repeating it because it was so much fun to do and to watch rather than as a concerted attempt to get better at the exercise.

I managed 1 hour 1 minute in the time piggybank (which always looks like a toaster to me), unlocked a few more things, but still have a fair bit left to investigate. My calves are a bit achy today, which is usual for me, my calves need LOTS of stretching before & after and it seems I didn't do quite enough. But am looking forward to getting on the Wii Fit again, hopefully I can do some more before next weekend.

It's Kittytime! I stole this from somewhere and I thought you might like to see.

From karaokegal and drunken_hedghog

List the top ten things you want, right now at this very moment. Silly, serious, insane, it doesn't matter.

1. An electric or hybrid car (don't know enough to be more specific here, any particular recommendations?)
2. A puncture-proof, theif-proof bicycle, and all accessories pertaining thereto.
3. A little house with a separate study, and a vegetable garden which tends itself when I'm away.
4. Someone to go on holiday with, who likes doing interesting things rather than sitting around all day, and who recognises the need to do things in the evening.
5. A travel pass giving me unlimited travel on public surface transport in the UK.
6. Real marmalade, ie sharply-flavoured rather than sweet, with thick-cut peel.
7. Membership of a gym which is inviting to attend and is free from people showing off their coiffured bleached hairdos or their superhuman ability to perspire.
8. Free access to online databases of back issues of journals, newspapers, movie/video footage etc containing lots of lovely stuff waiting for me to discover
9. More bookshelf space! (as always)
10. Some yummy Hotel Chocolat goodies, with all the taste and none of the calories they usually come with.

MySpace Graphics

Happy birthday michelleann68! Have a fabulous day ♥

I found a new media database to hunt around in. This one has the news archives of ITN/Reuters, including lots of old black & white newsreels as shown in cinemas in the middle of the 20th century. So I went hunting through, and I found what I was after - film of Ran Laurie (in the Boat Race, sadly not in the 1948 Olympics) - so I thought I'd share some stuff.

Definitely a resemblance to his youngest son!

I totally fail at any editing skills so these are the full newsreels; file sizes range approximately 35-45MB. The timings in brackets (mins:secs) indicate where the relevant items appear in the newsreels (you might find the other news items interesting, some of the commentary is rather idiosyncratic). All are owned by ITN/Reuters and are here strictly for educational purposes.

14 March 1935 Cambridge Boat Race Crew Train At Mortlake (3:36-4:42)

8 April 1935 Cambridge Win The 1935 Boat Race By Four Lengths (4:05-6:27)

25 July 1935 Cambridge Boat Race Crew On The Danube (0:57-1:37)

2 April 1936 Oxford & Cambridge Practice On The Thames (2:10-2:08)

My newspaper clippings of the same races can still be found here. Hope you enjoy :)

Stolen from karaokegal

( Fifty Questions )

But unfortunately not news of a launch. The launch of STS-127 has now been scheduled for NET 11 July, thanks to the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate leak and upcoming Beta Angle Cut-Out, hopefully Endeavour will be good to go by then. Not that I would have been able to pay attention if the shuttle had launched today, so busy at work - my busy day of the week in our biggest week of the year. Bleh.

It's not nice to wake up to the news of a launch scrub, but I found these recently so some small compensation here. Both are videos I've been trying to track down, and I was so pleased I was finally successful.


From last month - STS-125 launch and ascent from Mission Control Centre, Houston.

--


From STS-124 last year. I saw some of this video last year at the presentation in Bradford. (I think the audio's out of sync a bit, but it doesn't matter for most of it as it's mostly voiceover commentary).


Hope you enjoyed. I'm off for some ice-cream.