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Showing posts from July, 2010

Chirpy chirpy tweet tweet

Evenin' all. If you cast you peepers a little to the right.. bit more.... bit more than that... there you go. Yes, I have (as previously mentioned) joined Twitter. Thought I might as well get some useful information from people who, er, twit and hear it first hand, from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Or bird's, er, beak. Confusing this, isn't it? Rest assured, I'll still be posting pointlessly long, meandering, things that seem to take an eternity to reach a conclusion, so much so that you (and, in fact, I) have forgotten what they were about by the time we get there, that... Erm. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Anyway, if it's short I'll twat it, if it's longer or I need a REALLY GOOD RANT, it will still be here. If you're a twot also, let me know your, er.. (really should have looked into this before I started) handle(?) and if you follow anything you think I should be following also (baaaaaaaaaa!), let me know. I did get a follower after jus

Drum roll please....

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls.... I give you..... the Qualcast Panther!!!!! I hardly need to say anything else, do I? Nifty piece of kit eh? eh? eh?! Bet you're jealous. Hopefully, now that I'm starting to get the pathways on our allotment under control, keeping them trimmed will be a breeze. As for the name.... Panther! Awesome. Are there others in the range? Tiger? Leopard? Cougar? (Maybe not...) Tabby? Anyway, week off, but I'm off for a meeting. Have a spiffing day! (Chris Evans show on Radio 2 again.)

Chandhok given the Sak(on) again

Poor guy. He looked a bit lost chatting to the BBC F1 crew last weekend after Yamamoto pinched his motor, and it seems the same thing will happen to him again this weekend, as Hispania continue to "rotate" their drivers (and they haven't even got to Christian Klien yet). Tough gig being in a small, cash-strapped team. Still, being the only Indian driver in F1, I'm sure he'll get a seat somewhere if Hispania decide not to bother with him at all next year. Big old marketplace is India, and F1 likes big old marketplaces big time. (Tootling out of *gasp* the laptop tonight (via headphones) are a fine selection of mash-ups. Oooo. Get me. I'm so street.)

Lofty ambitions

I'm on holiday! Hurrah! Unfortunately, there are more than enough things to do, living in a 100 year old house. I was supposed to be painting the windows this week, but so far the weather has made that a tad tricky. Removing a sash window does have the unfortunate effect of letting the outside in. Having noticed yet another mark on the ceiling in the spare bedroom, I've spent a large part of yesterday and today crawling around in the dark hell that is our loft. The roof is, I think, original, hence it's slabs of slate, nailed to strips of wood, then cemented to the wood on the inside. At least, that's how it was a century ago. Most of the cement is now on top of the ceiling to the rooms upstairs, slates have moved and Cumbrian weather gets in. Have I mentioned it rains a bit here...? I'm pretty sue you shouldn't be able to see a thousand points of light inside you roof space. Anyway, the current leak was quite close to the outside of the building, meaning

Home Alone

You might have noticed from my previous post's timestamp that I am either a) Bunking off at work and blogging or b) Not at work and blogging. Happily for my employers, it's b. I'm supposed to be painting windows, but having looked at the weather forecast, I might well be out of luck on that front until at least Thursday. Still, there's a leaking roof, loft insulation to lay, a front door in need of painting (handily under a porch, thus avoiding the elements) and sundry other mundane things to sort out too. Might well be a full week.... Oh, and having realised that by the time I've finished cutting the grass on the paths at our allotment with shears its time to start at the other end again, a push along lawnmower is due to be delivered. But most importantly, you need to remember that: FERNANDO IS FASTER THAN YOU

Top Top Gear

Top Gear last night was awesome. From listening to the radio this morning. Chris Evans seems to think so too. It was a masterpiece of entertainment: Hammond racing two nutter snowmobile dudes around a ski resort, Captain Slow becoming extremely quick in the Bugatti Veyron, and then Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz blasting to the top of the leader-board in the reasonably priced car, and clearly loving it. To be honest, it could have ended there, but then Clarkson narrated a fantastic piece about Ayrton Senna, including numerous past and present F1 drivers putting him at the top of their list of all time greats. A hugely over-excited Lewis Hamilton then got to drive Senna's McLaren MP4/4 and clearly couldn't quite believe it. Well done Top Gear - you excelled yourselves. POWERRRRRR!!!!! (Actually listening to the radiogram this morning! BBC Radio 2 is currently playing the Pet Shop Boys)

Alonso "wins" German GP

Ferrari have tonight confirmed that, should Fernando feel that his shoes are a touch dirty, Felipe will pop round to his house so that he can wipe his feet on him. The ever affable Brazilian seems once again to have wound up with a driver in the other red car who he has to (quite literally) play second fiddle to. Without a fiddle. This time though, Ferrari managed to make it so bleedin' obvious, that the race stewards have handed them a $100,000 fine. Still, that would buy you what? A Ferrari wing mirror, two second hand wheel nuts and a Prancing Horse key fob. Maybe. I don't know. I'm just speculating. Anyhoo, what I'm TRYING to get at is that it's a fairly paltry fine for what was a flagrant (and that's a top word, isn't it?) breach of the rules. But... was it the wrong thing to do? We'll come back to that, shall we...? The German GP looked likely to be a corker, with the 6 drivers most likely to win it occupying the first 6 places on the grid. B

Well, hello.....

Life. It's a funny old thing, isn't it? Just yesterday, I was wondering if anyone ever read any of my stream-of-consciousness babble. And then I found an email im my Inbox from the blogger team regarding how you look at stats for your blog. Turns out 29 viewers showed up yesterday at Grumpy F1. Now, I know there are "bots" that scour the web finding out what you're up to so they can include you in searches. Or something. I need a good tech blog. Shame I don't know anyone (only kidding, Jompet). Well, the visitors came from the UK, US, Germany, Venezuela, Latvia and Canada. Crikey. I'm sure the German viewers are loving my impartial views about their country's drivers. And the fact that Vettel is on on pole. I'm intrigued. Who are you people?! Did you actually like GrumpyF1? Feel free to leave a comment.... (Playing this evening - The Art Of Noise, "Below The Waste" from 1989.)

Home soil head start for Vettel

Just when we thought it was all change at the front, it wasn't. Alonso and Massa looked set to finally lock out the front row of the grid in their Ferrari's, when a blinding lap from Sebastien Vettel gave him pole for tomorrow's German GP. The rain of the last few days held off, but there was still drama when Liuzzi got his wheels onto some soggy AstroTurf and suddenly found himself saying hello to a concrete wall by the pits. He's OK... his car probably isn't. Championship leader Hamilton was on the back-foot after shunting his car in practice yesterday and only managing a handful of laps, and it showed as he'll be starting in 6th tomorrow. So the grid is: Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Webber (who decided the track itself was a bit dull and took to the run off area on his final run), Button, Hamilton, Kubica, Barrichello (now the proud owner of a "I beat the Stig" T-shirt from his team), Rosberg and Hulkenberg. Home hero Schumacher could only manage 11th aft

Jompet? You bet.

It seems my friend Chris over at jompet.com has suddenly had an very nasty dose of postitus, and has uploaded a ton of things about strange, techy stuff and a review of Avatar, having done nothing for ages, thus rendering my link to him hugely incorrect. This is exceedingly good news, as we all believed he was at death's door with a nasty dose of food poisoning. Clearly he is well enough to type up articles, although he could have been doing that whilst sat on the bog. Oh dear. I have now planted a hideous image into my own brain which carbolic soap probably won't wash out. Brrrrrrrr. Welcome back Chris - missing the office banter since the great desk reshuffle at work. Cock. By the way - the article about the holodeck thing? Can't be Star Trek. No-one mentioned that the safety protocols had been disabled or that some....thing was in control. (Still Tangerine Dream....)

Jacques attack?

The surly one might be coming back to F1 (not, not Ralph). Jacques Villeneuve is apparently applying to run an F1 team next year in partnership with some people who actually know what they're doing, called Durango. It seems the Canadian with the multi-coloured hair, mood swings and a penchant for irritating Michael Schumacher (which is a good thing, right?) might be returning to F1 at the age of 39 and resuming hostilities with... well... just about everyone. He was World Champ in 97, so assuming the current drivers remain, that would give us Button, Hamilton, Schumacher, Alonso, JV himself and maybe Vettel? Webber? Who knows?! At least 5 ex champs racing. Happy days. Now the FIA have to decide who to let on to the grid next year. Go on, get Jacques back. It'd be great to see him scowling at people again. (Tonight is ambient electronica night in the Jenwis music room (just next to the library, round the corner from the pool room and the smoking lounge) and I'm chillin'

Still diggin' it

As per usual, the weather forecast was mostly incorrect for yesterday, and the afternoon featured only a couple of light showers. Hence, me and Mrs Hamilbutton were able to spend nearly 3 hours digging our allotment. Yeah. Groovy allotment. Far out. Etc. One bed done, 4 to go. (The well kept bit on the right isn't ours, by the way). Tropical rain forest paths between beds reducing steadily also.... We have however encountered a small problem. Whilst our new compost heap had recently become a des res for slow worms, having heaped more and more onto it we discovered this week that it is now a slow worm hotel, 5 star, swimming pool, bijou restaurant, the lot. On pulling back the plastic sheet yesterday, they were at least 5 of the wriggly gits there, doing that writhing together bit that REALLY freaks you out. Oh, and there was a frog who was either very brave, very stupid, unaware of where he was due to it being dark, or attempting to show a bit of reptilian based solidarity. I suspe

Please explain #1

Today, I am mostly puzzled by the following: Say something bad happened to you, then whilst you were recovering, something else bad happens to you. Or, you lose you wallet, then the same day, you lose your car keys. Double whammy eh? So (and we're getting to the point now, honestly)... if you had something bad happen to you, or alternatively, you lost your wallet. Would they be instances of a whammy? Never hear of a whammy on its own, do you. It's always a double whammy. Please explain. (NP: A mix tape of stuff from the 90's. Oh look! Bjorn Again!)

Oi! Chandhok! Sling yer hook son!

Bummer. If you're reading this little ol' blog because you take part in my Fantasy Formula 1 contest, you know the Karun Chandhok is a handy points winner at a low, low price (Do I sound like a DFS ad?). Well, not at the next race in Germany he won't be. Hispania have dropped him in favour of Yamamoto, who was just SO much better when he replaced Senna last time out. That was sarcasm, by the way. Karun has been pretty tidy and reliable. I can only assume that Sakon has some used £5 notes in his pocket he needed to get rid of. (Ooo, get me with my contemporary listening. It's the Manic Street Preachers "4st 7lb")

What's that funny noise?

OMG... It's the unearthly sound of me backtracking. Whilst I like a good ramble (had you noticed?), I've increasingly started thinking that Twitter is a good idea. Stop it - I can see you checking your calendar. It isn't April the 1st. Weird isn't it? In my very first blog I extracted the Michael out of this tweetling malarky, but now.... I'm not sure. Am I am a completely hypocritcal arse? Well, yes, obviously. But you already knew that. Hmmmmmm. Grumpy F1 on Twitter. What do you think? I might have to learn to edit things down a bit though. Actually, let's try it now. Entire post in tweet version.... Used 2 think Twitter crap, now not so sure, might use. What u think? Easy. (NP New album by OK GO, Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky. Strangely distorted.....)

A snake a snake oooooo it's a snake.....

Only it isn't really. Our new allotment mentioned previously didn't get any attention last weekend as we had visitors. After the delight of the Grand Prix we strolled up to do a bit of work and lifted the plastic sheet off our fresh compost heap to find two of these little fellah's on top. I say we. It was Mrs Hamilbutton, who made the sort of high-pitched squeaking noise that really pisses off dogs. They're 30cm or so long, although one was bigger, and we later saw a teensy one that was probably less than 10cm. They are slow worms, which is funny, as they are neither slow (trust me - I tried to pick one up) or worms, although Mrs H wasn't that bothered with my explanation as she repeatedly said "snake" throughout in a gaspy kind of way. Apparently, they're a kind of lizard who lost their legs (which was careless, frankly). They eat slugs and insects, so they should get fat on our allotment. Not quite sure what they'll do when we've got it all

And the winn(g)er is...

A picture paints a thousand words.... Still, won't stop me, will it? Well, what a cracking afternoon's entertainment. The BBC's coverage of the British Grand Prix was spot on (thanks guys) and I especially enjoyed the pub quiz. To quote Al Murray's pub landlord when offering darts to Button "You any good at Arrows? Nah, neither was Damon Hill". An interesting story had bubbled up overnight about the Red Bull wing issue. In short, they had two new front wings, Vettel's broke, so they took the one off Webber's car and gave it to Seb. For a guy feeling the pressure about wether his team are favouring the other side of the garage, this must have brought down the red mist for Mark. Luckily, he's better at controlling his temper than Alonso, and he took it on that big Aussie chin of his and decided the best way to answer that was to go out there and win it. Straight away at the start he made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going to take any crap f

British GP qualifying - Bad for Button

Oh dear. Whilst everyone seems pretty thrilled to be at a revitalised Silverstone for this weekend's British Grand Prix, Jenson Button is probably wondering what the hell went wrong at his home race during qualifying. McLaren tried to rush through the blown rear diffuser pioneered by Red Bull, but couldn't get it working properly and wound up having to revert to their old system. Whilst Hamilton was able to recover to a reasonable 4th place, Jenson wound up in 14th. Vettel sang the praises of the new circuit from his car immediately after getting pole, whilst Webber finished just behind him in second. There was then a vast (in F1 terms anyway) 0.6 second gap to Alonso in his Ferrsri, fresh from yet another waving-at-someone-like-it-will-make-a-difference episode. Whilst it may be pouring at home in Cumbria, it's 25C and Sunny at Silverstone, and tomorrow afternoon we find out if the Red Bull team can actually get both cars to the end without them breaking down or crashing i