What a Cnut.

I'm in need of help converting a pdf file of email contacts into a csv file. Should any of you clever people out there in the world be able to do this for me I'd be very grateful. Drop me a line at rossalandouglas[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll whip the pdf file over to you.

Have been made to the layout of my blog to improve the look of it. Archive now in a drop down menu. Slideshow added. Labels and tags in a cloud. Hope you like them.

I know it's a rocky road to write about anything work related as it could mean I end up getting shitcanned for voicing my opinion on anything to do with my new job. This, however is no longer a worry as I was one of the two people responsible for the wording of the blogging policy. The general gist of it is as follows... "Write whatever you want, just don't name names." So from here onwards anything to do with my work will contain veiled references to people I work with. We had our opening night on Saturday with a private function for friends and family and all went smoothly. A good time was had by all and there was no drama. The new crew are a good bunch of people to work with and I can see myself settling in nicely. Some of them are old friends and some are new people to me but they all seemed perfectly reasonable and able to do the job. First off there's The Big Boss Lady who is a very old friend of mine from way back in the mists of time and her hubby, who sha...

I spilled my coffee all over myself at the end.

The reason I'm writing to you Lord is to ask a small request of you. I realise that you're a busy entity, what with the universe to run and all, but this really is something that needs your immediate attention. As I'm sure you know, I live in Scotland (Good job by the way it's a lovely place, the work you must have put into the Highlands was above and beyond...) and we as a nation are undergoing a crisis on a magnitude never known before in these here parts. The trouble is that it's way to hot. There's a heatwave going on just now and we as a race are ill equipped to deal with it. More than 35% of the population is ginger and the rest are fair haired, have pale skin and burn like sausages on an unattended barbecue if we are in the sun for more than 21 seconds a day. When I grew up in the 70's I only ever had one bath a week unless of course there was a family gathering going on, in which case we were scrubbed to within an inch of our lives so we didn't s...

For those of you who just can't get enough of wallpapers... More Wallpapers available by clicking the links below. This Weeks Desktops . Wallpapers .

Ahh, those were the days... Days filled with witty banter that would make Oscar Wilde chuckle gaily into his handkerchief and order a round of sherry for the whole bar whilst the well to do crowd sat ribalded and enthralled by tales of charm so sweet an... Nope, fuck it, I can't keep typing this without laughing at the imagery so hard it hurts my kidneys. Anyway, to get you up to speed on the trials of life as experienced by yours truly I've quit my job and have a couple of days off until I begin work at a new place. The old place was, to be perfectly blunt, a breeding ground for bigots, bawheads and belligerent old bastards that was slowly driving me insane. The new place however is under new management and is the dream of a dear friend of mine who is stupid enough, Oops, I mean willing enough to hire me as a manager. In other news... I'm now a reviewer for an international news agency and as such will be working during the festival fringe reviewing comedy shows and judgin...

Here's a nifty little hack for bloggers who want their tags to show in a nice neat tagcloud rather than the in line look. Coded by, and posted on the blog of, phydeaux3 this code is easy to install and works a treat. To get the coding for the tags as a cloud click here .

It's 4:32am and once again sleep is eluding me. I've thought about going for a walk to the park across the road but I always feel that the people on their way to start an early shift judge me for playing on the swings. There are generally only two kinds of adults who play in swing parks in the wee hours and neither is the kind you want to deal with in the early morning. The first type is the drunken man who is on his way home after a night on the tiles. Generally affable and good humoured the drunk, upon seeing you, will ask if you want to play with them. Memories of The Bad Man are forced to the front of the mind of the passerby and more often than not they take to their heels without a second thought. Trust me, I know this from having been both these people in the past. The other type is the most dangerous. The female drunk. Avoid this person at all costs. Do not attempt conversation of any kind and never approach them. If you're lucky the least you'll get away with f...

If upbeat and catchy pop is your bag you should check out The Ting Tings album "We started Nothing" as it's as upbeat and catchy as you can get without stepping over the, very fine, line between good music and aural torture. If you're anything like me the first song on an album can make or break it and in this respect The Ting Tings do not fall short. The first song, Great DJ, is possibly the catchiest song I've heard since The Farm released Groovy Train . Great DJ is followed by That's not my name , a tune that defies even my jaded old pop pallate and manages to make me join in on the chorus. From then on in The Ting Tings manage to produce a finely honed album that does what all good pop music should do, make you tap your feet, and does so with a touch rarely seen these days when music is churned out through a giant music mincer in a factory where Simon Cowell is the head slaughterman. More often than not the second and third album are what a band ends u...

Yet another post of my favorite wallpapers. To get the full size image click on the thumbnail. Ducati 1098 on the track. Valentino Rossi on board the Honda NSR 500 Mick Dohhan sliding the Honda NSR 500 MV Augusta F4 Kevin Schwantz on the Lucky Strike Suzuki Barry Sheene leads the way. Barry Sheene painting. Nori Haga on the Yamaha world super bike. Kenny Roberts on board the Yamaha 500cc Shelby Mustang Shelby Mustang Shelby Mustang.

Showering at 3am is probably not good neighbour relations but, after lying in bed for three hours now and not drifting into the land of nod, the time has become irrelevant to me now. Cigarettes, and a strange scrabbling noise from the windowsill of the bedroom possibly caused by a roosting pigeon, are my only distractions from the thoughts that buzz around in my head like a swarm of malicious bees hell-bent on keeping me awake. Soft music has failed me tonight. There is no point in using music to drift away when the lyrics only cause more random thoughts to pop into my head. "God Dammit! Why won't you let me get some sleep." I curse, to only myself and the thing that is making the noise on the windowsill. There is no reply from the thing and the only thought that passes through my mind is "Exactly who are you talking to?"

that kept me going at work in the last few weeks. Small Mercy's like a wireless connection to the Internet which allowed me to escape from the miserable surrounds, even more miserable decor, and still more depressing customers whenever the doom and gloom got to me and I felt like walking out. The other way of escaping I found was the jukebox. Which, despite being mostly populated with the latest dance chartoppers, golden oldies, seventies music and the eighties big-hair-and-make-up shit that was dull then and is even duller now, actually managed to keep me sane. Top tunes these last few weeks have therefor been as follows... Jeff Buckley - Lilac Wine . Peter Gabriel - Biko . Madness - Our House . Queen - Killer Queen . David Bowie - Starman . Pink Floyd - Wish you were here .

through the myriad of pages contained on the interstitial webulator I stumbled across a nice little series of videos on youtube. Entitled "No risk, No fun" the videos showcase the many varied ways we humans get our kicks.

See if you're infected by watching this video... I lasted about a minute.

That four years have passed since I first started writing this blog. Oh the times I've had, I could tell you. Or, you could read about it. It's your call really. I can't force you. What I can do however, is write a post that contains a small selection of my favorite posts I've written over the last four years. Ha! Got you. [1] So, without further ado, I present to you, my best bits. *********************** 5/22/2006 How to talk to your cat. While flicking through a copy of woman's weekly that a co-worker had brought in to read while she was on her break I stumbled across the craziest advert I have ever laid eyes on. "HOW TO TALK TO YOUR CAT." "Open up a whole new communication between you and your cat." If you're a cat lover like me, and wish to communicate better with your pet for a deeper, more loving relationship, then you'll want to out how to talk to your cat. And that's where a new guide -"Your talking Cat" - can ...

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge a...

When standing behind the bar at work, I'd say that the people who frequent the place are more often than not brainless idiots... It's been about three weeks since I started my new job and without fail whenever a new face (new to me anyway) comes in the most popular question is "What football team do you support?" [1] To me this suggests one of two things. Either A.) They are brain-dead. Or B.) They are mindless idiots who measure a man, not by his deeds or his actions, but by which colour the overpaid Prima Donnas kick an inflated pigs bladder around a field he supports wears. [2] Both of these things are not good. Not good in the extreme if you ask me. I mean what kind of retard judges a man based solely on the football team he supports? Yes, you got it, the kind that likes to drink heavily, watch football and beats the shit out his girlfriend on a regular basis. In other words, my customers. Seriously, what is the mindset of someone who will come to a judgement on...

That no matter how hard you wish and plead to the fairies, or kiss a lucky cloverleaf, or click your heels together and recite "There's no place like home... There's no place like home... There's no place like home..." or pray to the very Gods themselves... You cannot transport yourself through the sub ether (Or whatever the correct terminology is) and materialise on a beach in Mozambique. This was not an easy thing to accept at the time, as I was standing behind a bar trying not to scream in someones face "YOU'RE AS INTERESTING AS A SECOND HAND TEABAG! GET OUT MY SIGHT BEFORE I STAB YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A PEN!" , so I focused my concentration and tried for somewhere closer to home... Specifically, Wales. Don't ask why my mind chose Wales, because I don't know. Of all the places I could have chosen that are closer to my house than Mozambique, which is six thousand and forty three miles away, at the time Wales seemed as good a place as any. D...

Here are some big wave surfing wallpapers for you. To download the full size image click on the thumbnail. And for those of you who just can't get enough of big wave surfing here's a truly amazing video documenting the evolution of the sport itself from the early pioneers of Pipeline, Waimea bay to the modern day surfers of waves such as Mavericks, Jaws (or Peahi as it is also known) and what some have claimed is the perfect wave, Chopu. By all means whip yourself over to google video and download a copy of this movie as I can honestly say it is one of the best surfing videos ever made.

To stay up all night to watch baseball. And it takes even more dedication to stay up until 6:30am to watch the longest allstar game in history, which is what I'm doing now. I'm going to be shattered later.

Last week after getting home from work I received a text message from my friend Steff at roughly midnight. The message read... "I just met my 22 year old daughter." "What the fuck has he been smoking?" I thought, immediately wondering whether or not I could get my hands on some. "It must be damn good stuff if he thinks his daughter is 22 years old, as far as I'm aware Zoe is only 12." I thought. About a minute later my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was Steff. "Alright man?" I said. "Whew man... Just whew." He replied. "What the fuck are you on about? 22 Year old daughter? Have you been drinking?" "No man... I'll tell you what happened..." Steff then explained to me that he had been at his Mothers house doing a couple of odd jobs for her and having finished had left and began to drive to pick up his other half, Wendy. When he was roughly halfway towards his destination his mobile phone rang. On the other end w...

Many of you out there in t'internet land are fans of the six year old boy genius that is Calvin (and his friend Hobbes) so I've decided to post a few wallpapers of him and his faithful companion. To get the full size images click on the thumbnail. Calvin and Hobbes read the funnies. Calvin and Hobbes take a walk in the snow. Pulling Faces with full colour background. Calvin and Hobbes doing homework. Getting a hug. Various Pictures. Doing a little dance. Pulling faces white background. Sledging. Pulling faces black background. Sleeping.