Lemsip conspiricy

November 15, 2004 //

My nose drips, my throat is sore, I sneeze for an occupation and my eyes are ichy. I think I’m dying!
This was my reaction (being a standard guy) last week when I caught ‘a bit of a cold’. In my defence it wasn’t just a bit of a cold, it was a full blown cold, with slightly above average temperature and everything!
As is so often the case, the major sympoms of this hit at the weekend. I had an inkling to my possible predicament on thursday, and being fairly organised for once, I put some Lemsip in with my pack-lunch for work on friday. This was a lifesaver.
However I was slightly put off by the claims on the box for Lemsip, they went something along these lines:

Headaches [tick]
Aches and Pains [tick]
Runny nose [tick]

Now seeing the funny side of most things I noted that this could easily be mis-read to be claiming to give you these symptoms.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked at these in this light, because, sure enough after leaving work and getting to the train for my trip down to my parents I had; a headache (fairly normal with a cold), a runny nose (a staple of a cold), and an aching lower back. Now this was the worry bubble for me, you see I’ve never, in all my 24 years of life on this planet, experienced aches and pains as being a symptom of a cold. And to top it all off I had a sore throat too!
This was something that led me to believe that perhaps the criminal masterminds at lemsip had made their ‘Cold and flu’ hot drink powder give you all these problems. Exactly as it claims on the packet. PLUS of course the sore throat, thus tempting you to ‘upgrade’ to the new and more expensive product in their line.
Very suspicious indeed!
So be careful out there gentle reader, somethings could well be EXACTLY as they appear!

Also in my humble opinion its much better to ‘stop and flop’ when stricken with a cold than trying to drug yourself up and power through.

*It is very probable that this is all rubbish ramblings by Rob and Lemsip is not run by criminal masterminds [I have to put this is because I never got round to writing a disclaimer about humour and opinion]

Categories Health, Humour, Life

Not as it should be

November 4, 2004 //

The ‘Recent cool stuff’ section of my links isn’t working properly, much to my annoyance, so I’ll just quickly blog about these two sites I’ve found.
The first is mildly interesting, it’s an anonymous online confessions service, where anyone can look at whats been ‘confessed’, but you don’t know who said it. Some are fairly shocking but most are just normal. It’s an interesting thing to read to pass the time if yu’re bored and also helps the vast majority of us realise that our lives aren’t that bad and we aren’t as screwed up as we thought we were. The address is rather nice too: grouphug.us

Now the next site I’ll mention is just plain fantastic, as can quickly be deduced from the address: thingsmygirlfriendandihavearguedabout.com [things-my-girlfriend-and-I-have-argued-about].
This guys humour is not just up my street, its standing outside my door bearing gifts in the form of chocolate covered treats. This I discovered this lunch time, and since then have decided must be only read with an empty mouth.
Not that it was a total disaster, but I narrowly avoided the embarrassing situation of spraying a partly masticated sandwhich all over, and in the vicinity of, my computer. This wouldn’t have been a cause of embarrassment simply becasue of the mess. No, It would also have been awkward when relating the particular passage that tickled me so, knowing full well that it would have been greeted with – at best – luke walm chuckles, and at worst blank stares, from the rest of the office.
If you’re that curious the section in question was as follows:

The Terror Of Lids: Yes, the rewards are high, but it’s a game where the price of defeat is savage. Sometimes Margret, after grunting with it herself for a collection of ‘hnggh’s, will hand me a bottle or a jar that has a screw top along with an impatient, ‘Open that for me.’ If the gods lie content in the skies above England at that moment, then what follows is a rapid flick of my wrist, a delightful ‘click-fshhhh’ gasp of surrender, and my handing the thing back to her FEELING LIKE A HERO OF NORSE LEGEND.

It of course goes on to tell of how this is so rarely the case.

Categories Random, Website

Searching for something

November 3, 2004 //

Having a program called Urchin hidden in the background of this website is rather cool for the reason that it tells me what search terms people used that resulted in a hit to randomtask.co.uk. Some are fairly predictable, ‘Silly tasks’, ‘Random ock’, ‘the health benifits of apples’ and things along those lines that could be quite easily related to this site.
However some of the other searches that have lead here really do highlight how far search technology has yet to go. For example:
‘Pictures of a dogs reproductive system’… Or ‘Striptease classes’? Well these people were quite obviously disappointed when they clicked on the link to this site. In some ways this makes me feel slightly guilty, I feel that I should have some kind of disclaimer ‘If you came to this site via a search engine it’s quite probable that there is nothing of interest to you’ or something along those lines.
There was a stage when I was tempted to take ideas for my posts from the searches that led here. There was a good example of this when a search that led here was for ‘endorphins in exercise’, or something similar, because this is something that I know a bit about and would be interested in finding out more.
Well as you can see I have yet to do anything along these lines, partly because of the close relation it seems to have with stable doors and a definate lack of horses.

Categories Technology, Website

Low net time

November 2, 2004 //

Recently I’ve not been on the net very much at all… And it occured to me as I was reading one of the many blogs that I’m slowly becoming bored of, some of these people seem to spend a stupidly large amount of time on the net looking about for ‘stuff’.
Of course the alarm bells of hiporcrisy should be ringing because I have spent lots of time online in the past, and probably will do again in the future (say when the uni breaks up for holidays and classes like breakdancing aren’t on any more). Now where’s all this talk leading?
Well good question. This sudden outbreak of Real Life means that, on the plus side I’m out in the Real World, meeting Real People and the like, the downside is that some of my good friends that I can only keep in contact with via the internet (for various reasons) are missing out. In fact I’m missing out too, I’m not trying to say that these relationships aren’t two way or anything…
The problem I think with leading a balanced lifestyle – or trying to – is fitting everything in, time is precious and other great words like that.

… I seem to have lost the plot of this post a bit…

If I find it again I’ll do a bit of hack and slash editing.
Until then you can worry about my sanity and suggest that I get more sleep (which I really should).

Categories Random, Thoughts

Friday once more

October 29, 2004 //

The end draws near of a pretty hectic week, but a good week, a cultural week even.
Chicago was fantastic, Jennifer Ellison was supprisingly good! Although her liverpudlian accent did slip through on a few occasions (like), she definately did a good job as Roxie Hart. The only disappointment in the show from my perspecive was the complete lack of tap-dancing… I was promised tap-dancing damnit!
Anyway that was very enjoyable, got back at about half-past midnight though. Tiring.
Robert and Elizabeth on Tuesday was fantastic, it’s always amazing to see friends putting on a stella performance… Even if the musical was a bit long winded the performance was thoroughly enjoyable!
So one more to go, Balm In Gilead this evening, and I’ll definately be having a bit of a lie in tomorrow!

Categories Diary-esq

Culture week

October 25, 2004 //

This week it seems will be an unusually cultured affair for me, I’ve got Robert & Elizabeth the musical on Tuesday, Chicago [not Chicargo as previously posted] on Wednesday and Balm in Gilead on Friday.
This unfortunately also means its going to be a rather expensive week but with the magic of the credit card it won’t start to hurt until next month some time. You may be wondering why all the theatrics, well the fact of living with three [beautiful] actresses kinda has a lot to do with it, (they’re in the Tuesday and Friday deals) and it just happened by coincidence that I’m going with my cousin to Chicargo in London. Which I’m really looking forwards to, I’m trying to make sure that I make full use of living so close to the city as I know its very easy not to.

Badgers and Marmalade
And good night.

Categories Diary-esq

Comment Spam???

October 22, 2004 //

Well I was rather shocked this morning to check my email and find that comment spam is finding its way to my little corner of the internet. To be honest I thought that blogs had to be around for a lot longer and be more popular before this kind of thing happened, as you can see I’ve only been blogging for 3 months and 7 days, and I have a readership of approximately 4, all of whom are my friends (hi guys:)). This whole spam thing is rather rude but at least the content of the comments is sometimes rather good:

  • No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till
    all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.
  • Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole
    existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of
    setting man free from men.
  • Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts
    is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

I’ve installed a spam blacklister, this should hopefully let me moderate the comments before they come through, but let my reader base comment as normal (all four of you).
Who knows, if I get enthusiastic enough I may but a ‘random spam words of wisdom’ section in the side menu, that’d be like a quote for the day kinda thing.
It is unlikely but still, it’s also an idea.

Categories Website

Foolish mistake

October 20, 2004 //

Well, I upgraded the stats counter (behind the scenes stuff) to 0.4.4, which didn’t go quite according to plan. It was failing to record any visits after the upgrade so I decided to set the BBC_DEBUG flag so I could see what ever messages were coming up. Unfortunately I accidently set the BBC_KILL_STATS flag first time round… and incase you can’t guess that means that all the previous visiting information has been wiped.
On the positive side I did get the counter working again (was a file that hadn’t copied across properly) and there is still a different counter supplied by united hosting which still works and has all the stats.
So not really that much of a problem, I’m just glad I didn’t blunder with something more important!

Categories Website

Linkies

October 19, 2004 //

I hope you keep an eye on the ‘Recent cool stuff’ section of my links bar as I try to update this with, well with recent cool stuff I’ve found. I try to update this fairly often, the most recent cool link to make the grade is CDdance.com, a UK based dance CD music specailist. I know at least one person that’ll be interested in this link 😉

Categories Website

Task for the day

October 18, 2004 //

Todays challenge (or whenever you happen to read this post) is this:
You have to use the phrase ‘Well I couldn’t eat a whole one’ at the earliest oportunity.

For example:

Random:Do you like children?
You:Well I couldn’t eat a whole one.

Have fun!

Categories Random
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