OK, Catch up time!

Wow, just realised its 2 months since i wrote on here so better do a bit of catching up. So last time I wrote it was october 23rd and its now december 28th! Bloody hell well ill just go for the important stuff! Lets start off with the business! Wont be too long tonight as i am very tired but here goes!

SiMILE Media Solutions

Well SiMILE is going pretty well still we are working toward the naval documentary. The TV studio crewing is going well and from next month we are charging for the service through the university. We are also negotiating the coverage of graduation for the university which will make lots of work for us going into the summer. We also recently got awarded new hardware by the university so will be moving into the office properly at the beginning of january as we can work from there once the machines are delivered. So watch this space as we slowly move in, bringing with it new business telephone numbers and everything!

Other Stuff

In other stuff I have been really busy outside of the business aswell. Drama socoety have managed to rope me into a show, so i am now Pepe in West Side Story, still only 4 lines and some choral singing so not too bad! Also have had some awesome night out with the drama society aswell including ABC night, with nintendo characters as our theme (I was a controller!) - I am on the far left

I also hosted a karaoke party for drama aswell which was amazingly cool and went down so well that more are in the works.

 

Another, rather surprising development which happened end of novemeber has been the change in relationship status! Long story short I found out someone i knew from the bus i used to take to and from school is at Keele university in her final year as a physiotherapist. Seeing as keele is only about 25 mins from stafford we decided to meet up for a coffee and a reminisce, things have since moved on from that first fateful afternoon and kate is now my girlfriend, there is a much longer version of the story but that is very very long and frankly i cant be bothered to write it all here but to keep people content here is a picture of the two of us taken at my cocktail party that i hosted last night (more about that in a moment!)

 

And christmas.....cant finish the blog post without christmas! Well its been an interesting one, Dads been in hospital with a dodgy foot which has meant a few changes from the norm but has still been alll good, we had lunch at the gateway hotel in nottingham on xmas day which was awesome, even had a visit from santa on the big xmas lunch day, other festive holiday activities have included taking mums godson, so technically my godbrother, who is 5, to see reindeer at a local garden centre, and the obligatory xmas shopping. Hosted a cocktail party last night which was exceedingly cool also.

 

But i feel i am rambling a bit so i will sign off now, coming soon is my new years party so a new update will probably follow after that!

 

till next time!

Ben

The Club

Ok, so I admit it....the flu was more like man flu....a cold....still hanging on to it at the moment but doesnt stop me functioning. But down to business...ok....last blog was wednesday or thursday or something so life from then....OK Here we go:

THURSDAY

Well the film shoot at Trentham went well, VERY well, the people in project OARSOME really are awesome, the rowing club we were filming for it was for the kids of Stoke on Trent and they have some "World Class" rowers there 3 to be exact (world class in rowing basically means if you continue to imporve at the rate you are then when you get to adulthood there is a good chance you will be racing in world ranking events!) so thats pretty spectacular. Now after that I was dropped off at Leek Road and went over to Drama, Drama was fun, cast of West Side was announced, Ian got Tony so congrats to him :-). Then I was about to go off to the stage management side when i was asked to stay with the actors and do more improvisation games like i had done in Stafford a few weeks running, so that was all a good laugh, making as many people improvise embarrasing stuff as possible, and it all ended in a TOTALLY chaotic scene of 35 or so drama people improvising a school bus trip in random acting styles that changed very regularly. After that it was ember lounge time and time for drinks and chats and john heath writing everyone silly post it notes (Mine was "Elephants do it in their trunks" and Jess who was sitting next to me was issued with "Naked Eskimos are frigid) so all good fun generally!

FRIDAY

Well friday morning was an early start as we had to be at the TV centre by 9am, and we got there on time too. We did a filming shoot with Christine King (Vice Chancellor of the uni) as she needed to do a forward for the review of academic year 05-06 and an introduction to a DVD about the holocaust, that went nicely and we looked all professional (especially in our uniforms), photos were taken of the "studio in action" etc etc etc. Following that it was time to do some more re-hashing of the Sports Video we are making, followed by.....wait for it.....SiMILEs FIRST CORPORATE LUNCH!!!! Hell yeah SiMILE are on the way up, we treated ourselves to a Weatherspoons burger before sam went off for the weekend you see was his birthday today (Sunday) and he had a big contract to negotiate yesterday (Saturday) so lots for sam to do. Andy and I delivered the first final copy of the sports vid to james tallentire over in press only to find out his hometown is my hometown...how cool is that! Then work finished for the weekend. Friday evening for me was spent in a pub chatting to andy frost from drama about studio technology, drama, and just about everything else we could during a nice couple of pints of EXTREMELY nice cider. Now i havent drunk cider for a long long time, so i got nicely consumed by alchohol, not stupidly...but enough for that andy thought was a perfectly funny quote to come out of my mouth, that quote was:

The Windows registry is like communism, in theory it should work perfectly, but in reality, its wank.

So yeah, nicely tipsy would be my state on friday...but then we move onto saturday......

SATURDAY

Now Saturday was possibly the funniest day I have had in a very very long time so here we go. The day started off with a quick trip to the shops to collect a few essentials for a tea party i was due to attend at Jess, Ian and Charis's house (where nicola and carla both live also might i add). So, knowing they would go down well, especially with Jess who was by this time desparate to eat ANYTHING bad for her after a 2 week detox with ian, I bought scones, jam and clotted cream. Then it was off to the office in Stafford to pick up my evil monkey, where i ended up staying for 90 minutes catching up on work stuff, Im SOOOOO boring! but anyway picked up my evil monkey (yes my cuddly toy version  of evil monkey form family guy that was bought by Rob Goodall for my 21st. If you dont know the evil monkey....here he is:)

After the office and a short time at home...it was time for tea, so off I toddled to stoke with my scones. When i arrived i was confronted by a fairy (Ian) and three girls (Charis Jess and Nicola) in whimsicle costumes, Jamie who, like me, was dressed fairly normally and an AMAZINGLY large amount of cakes and tea. Enough for probably 15 or so people to all have a snack, so naturally I asked who else was coming, and the answer was....just us. AMAZING! So lots of tea was drunk, lots of cake and scone was eaten, and lots of Disney was sung. Then it was time to collect ed, who was coming down for the night to go out in Stafford for me, but the tea party wasnt quite finished so ed came back to the party with me, meeting Jess, Ian and Co for the first time. So the party continued, which moved to SingStar on the playstation, at which point ed and I decided to join those lot on their night out, so we went to get some alchohol from bargain booze. This started to be drunk and the house got ready for going out, Pop Idol was watched and everyone was happy, ed took a few photos too!

 
Ian as a fairy for the tea party

Me at the sober stage

Nicola, Ian and Jess's housemate

then the drinking got a bit more serious. And we started on....yes....

Monopoly....Stoke Edition (this involves LOTS of drinking) and we started playing, it was much much fun, drinking drinks...other peoples drinks...saying truthes, doing dares (well only ian had to do dares cos he was unlucky and his two dares were to:

Give Jess a lapdance....something i think he didnt really mind doing...Jess found it slightly disturbing and I just found it HILARIOUS!....and he also had to.....

Answer the door with his trousers down, something else he didnt particularly mind doing!

After drinking Monopoly it was off to the club...not just any club, THE Club, Hanleys premier Gay club. Now The Club used to be a regualr haunt of mine when I worked at Alton Towers, cos most of my friends there were gay and in the 2.5 years since i last went it has hardley changed at all. The music was very good and we all had a really good night, finishing only at 3am and finally getting to bed at 4am. So we get to:

SUNDAY

Got woken up on sunday a little bit bleary from the night before by Dad ringing me to find out when i wanted them to turn up, 1pm was the instruction given, and the house began to rise, much quiet as we all recovered from the night before and soon it was nearly midday so I took ed to the station as he needed to return to Leeds, though this did mean he didnt actually step foot in my house....or my town when he came to visit....only getting as far as stoke and staying at ashford street! Then after dropping him off came back to Stafford and met with mum and dad, who took me out for lunch which was nice. Then a case of a few bits of work before settling down to write what has turned into this mammoth posting!

 

Well I think I might be done now. This week is a busy week 2 jobs for the uni, social with drama on wed, screening of bouncers with drama on tues, and im sure ill find other stuff too! But im sure ill speak to everyone soon!

 

Byeeee!!!

Oh......a P.S. this week I nearly forgot about musical poster of the blog post....well a week on saturday Ella and myself will be joining Ian and Jess at the Apollo Vic....seeing wicked....so...in celebration...here is the poster:
                        

 

Now i am goin!!!

 

Bye!

Flu Glorious Flu!

Well...not so glorious but anyway. Due to flu related laziness short post today. hmmm since gobble what have i done....well the uni work is hotting up now just a week till our next gig so will be in uni alot over the next fortnight. Errrrr.......films going well, have another shoot on thursday at 4.15 for the project OARSOME......errrrr......i have flu......errr....i went to drama last night....always good fun!.....errrrrr.......flu is making my voice sound all husky like that bloke off radio 4 that fran fancies in black books......errrrrr......i think im done......i must go write our work proposal for the weekend....oh joy!

OPh btw, no musical mentioned today, so no musical picture, however i will treat you to the one pic i got hold of after gobble, so here is the lovely Jess Maynard and the lovlier Ian Dunscombe at Gobble last week! Enjoy!

So until next time.....byeeeeeeeee!!!!!

 

Ben x

Ok, I'd forgotten how good Gobble is!

Well since saturday its been non stop, and so here is my third blog in quick sucession YAY!

Ok, so I left you after the trauma that was saturday. Sunday came along and it was time for andy and I to go filming once again, this time at Rudyard Lake in North Staffordshire near Leek, (for those of you who are fans of Top Gear, this is the lake where Mr Richard Hammond sank a "dampervan" and Jeremy Clarkson capsized a "ToyBota"). We were filming the disabled canoeing squad from a few weeks back (whitby and seb coe etc etc etc) and the organiser wanted slightly more adventurous shots this time......the result was this:

Yes, that is me, up to my shoulders in a lake in october, with a £2,500 camera in hand about to be run over by a boat! The things i do for bloody SiMILE Media Solutions! LOL! 

Following on from that that camera i am holding doesnt work anymore....the lake just got too much for it and it decided to die on us, thankfully as we are on a university job the repair bill will not be falling into my hands!

On another SiMILE note, here is our official model modelling one example of our new SiMILE Media Attire:

Yes, SiMILE Media is now BRANDED....how cool is that!!!!!

oh, and for those of you who liked that picture...here is our model again, this time modelling a camera:

 

Fast forwarding to this wednesday, well what fun! We got up very early (ok ok 8.30am) to do more filming, this time at Trentham Lakes with another rowing team, however it rained...so they didnt come along....and we kinda got stranded and what does a film team do when thunder and lighting strands them.....take pictures of course!!!!!

Yes, it was actually raining THAT hard

But andy was enjoying it.

 

Ok this was meant to just be a work update, but finally before I go, and because it is in the title, I must apologise for my state at Gobble last night, i was far too drunk, it was not pretty and i hope I havent gone too far down in peoples estimations!!!! I really had forgotten how fun Gobble is, especially when you with the Drama Society, yesterday we went in painted masks (ie masks painted ON our face! :-D it was terrific fun and i shall be 'gobbling' alot more regularly.....just drinking less when im there! I might make a bigger gobble update later in the week depending if i get any of the pics that were taken/can be bothered!

And before i leave, of course, it is musical of the blog post, where i feature a musical poster in each of my blog posts, now today to celebrate the Drama Society deciding to put on West Side Story in Stoke on Trent later this year I feel this poster is appropriate:

Have a wonderful time everybody!

Ben x

Oh dear oh dear oh dear!

Wow, what a day, such a day that i felt i had to share it as a day of days in this year of years (sorry i feel a 'rent' quote coming on, because "How do you measure, measure a year?" could it be "525,600 minutes"?)

But i digress! Today has been a big day in the history of SiMILE, we have had our first studio shoot. We provided (along with High Pitch Media) coverage of the results show for the Stafford FIlm Festivals 48 hour film competition. Well.....what an ordeal! First of all we were meant to have a full rehearsal on wednesday with the event oiraniser and all the footage we needed etc etc etc, well he never showed up...instead i ended up only a quick meeting with him on thursday at which point i got told that i wouldnt get the nessecary footage until saturday (yes...today....the day of the shoot!).

So we prepared as much as we could and got to today....we finally got the footage about an hour before we were due to 'air' the programme. So naturally with so little time to prepare there were a few problems, mostly in regard to aspect ratio, which unfortunately the presenter made clear to the audience were in no uncertain terms our fault, even though it really wasnt and all the issues that were brought to our attention were either non existant or completely not our fault! but anyway the university were impressed with us and we did the best we could with the situation! The next studio presentation will be on 25th October which is a conference hosted by Advantage West Midlands, this show will be streamed LIVE via the universities web servers and, of course, I will provide everyone with a link so they can watch SiMILE Media Solutions first LIVE broadcast!

Ok rant over. However i will leave you with 2 things, first is this....it is a HILARIOUS story that i have nicked of my friend from Houston, Lauren Uhyrek, so thankyou so much for this lauren it made me really laugh my head off and i needed that today....here it is:

 

HELL EXPLAINED BY CHEMISTRY STUDENT...this is clever 
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. 

The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well: 
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? 

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law gas (cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

 
One student, however, wrote the following: 
    First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving.  I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.  Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. 
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. 
This gives two possibilities: 
    1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 
    2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? 
If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over 
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct..... leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God." 

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A" 

And finally to leave you with a picture of the musical i have mentioned in todays blog, that musical, described as "The musical phenomen that defined a generation" (what  GREAT reveiw line!) is Rent, so here is your picture!

 

See all you lovelies sooon!

 

Ben x

Something extremely good is definately happening in Oz

Ok, the test worked, so now onto the main post for the evening. First of all many apologies for the lack of pastage recently I have been exceedingly busy with the business and to be perfectly honest havent had the time or energy to actually write here! Ok first of all lets look at what i wrote last...so i actually can work out what I have done since then!!!.........Ok, so last blog i was off to see The Wicker Man....Jesus...was it THAT long ago??? right ok im gonna have to abridge my life so I wont go in chronological order or anything I will just blab on abotu what I can remember.

Ok well the best event since then by a long long way was Wicked. Those of you who know me know I have wanted to see this bloody thing since it opened on broadway 3 years ago so when it was announced it would come to london 12 months ago naturally tickets were GOING to be bought. Then in April, after months of casting speculation and the producers basically announcing they would have a fairly unknown all brit cast an email went out that was more fantastic than anyone could have expected, the picture just said it all:

the producers had announced that Idina Menzel would recreate her Tony Winning performance as Elphaba (The Wicked Witch) when Wicked opened in London for a limited run. Ok that meant tickets would definately be bought for the very start of the run so as soon as booking opened I was awarded by my parents with 2 3rd row tickets for the day after press night as a 21st birthday present. The show started previewing, my mate laura mcgowan went to see it and came back not being able to talk about anything else....this show was gonna be great! and it was....I went last thursday with Jess H and wow, I cannot begin to describe how spectacular this show is, yes ok the plot is not the strongest but the music is fantastic and the scenery, lighting and staging are just out of this world, i dont want to spoil it for any of you who are going to see it so if you WANT to know about the spectacular finale of the first act then select the text below to reveal!

Ok, so at the end of the first act during the song defying gravity, elphaba decides she will defy all those around her and strike out alone in an awe inspring song that end with her rising high above the stage (with no strings attached!) to bawl out the final words of the first act screaming at her enemies to look to the western sky as she makes the first of many decisions that will eventually make the understood bullied green girl the infamous wicked witch of the west!

Ok, you can look back now. I will stop talking about Wicked now as people will get bored but seriously see this show...and see it before the end of the year as Idina Menzel has just such an amazingly powerful voice. The website is www.wickedthemusical.co.uk. If you happen to be from a different country, the show is currently open in London, New York and Chicago and on National US tour, and productions are apparently opening in the coming year in LA (definatley opening Feb 07), Germany, Holland, Australia, Japan and Toronto. I will leave the subject with some photos of the show for you tho!

Ok well the day after Wicked was pretty damned good too, I went straight up to Leeds to see Ed and go and see an american band I have wanted to see for....well since i think year 11....so a LONG time, the Goo Goo Dolls, and they didnt dissapoint, ok the set was a little on the short side but they did ALL the songs that count (Iris, Slide, Broadway) and loads of songs from their new album (Let Love In, Stay with Me). It was the first date of a fairly lengthy UK tour so if you get the chance listen to some of their music (www.googoodolls.com) and go see em, I mean who wouldnt....they rock!

Ok, lets move away from social life for a bit and move onto work life. Work is moving......nice and quickly but very slowly at the same time. We have 2 big contracts that we are awaiting go aheads for and they seem to be taking FOREVER!!!! As is the delivery of our new uniform....yes we are getting uniforms here at SiMILE Media Solutions, we have the swatch showing how our unis WILL look like eventually:

So thats how we will eventually look we hope!!!

On the busy side of the business we are doing lots with the university at the moment, we have  about 6 bookings in the television centre, the first of which is tomorrow, and have been commisioned to do a short film showcasing disabled sport in the region. So there is PLENTY of work to be getting on with!

Uni is now back so the place is alot busier than it was just a few short weeks ago, I am once again a member of the drama society, though no matter how hard they tried i am not on the comitee this year (tho i was voted onto it without standing for election at the end of last year, so I immediately stepped down) I felt i could give the comitee what they would need from me with my work comittments as they are this year. For that reason I am also not audition for any shows, at leats this semester, though if the planned Variety show takes off i will appear in that. I went to Stoke drama to see everyone on wed, was good to see everyone again and I ended up at ians till about 1 i think playing singstar with ian, jess M (M to distinquish form Jess H :-P) and charis which was funny cos none of them knew i actually could sing! I tell you something, its bloody funny playing singstar with 2 drunkards (charis and jamie), a very very outwardly camp guy (Ian) and 2 quite shy about singing girls (Jess and Nicola).

 

But anyway I think i may have now babbled on enoughand can quietly go back to a land of producing, accounting, and listening to musicals on my computer no matter how much the housemates take the piss out of me.

Oh a few bits of news for you all about musicals, because as you know i do love them so LOL. If you are a student and buy your UCAS Extra card for £10, Ticketmaster are currently offering buy one get one free tickets for the 5.45 friday performance of Avenue Q at ALL price levels, so you can get 2 TOP TEIR best house seat tickets for £47.50, that pays for your UCAS extra card and STILL saves u about £12! Chicago is doing similar also. And on the me organising a west end trip. I am still hoping to do that, but it will prob be in the xmas hols now ill start sorting it in the next few weeks so keep you eyes peeled. If anyone is interested I should be off to see Wicked again before the years out as my sis wants me to take her, and Rach Beattie (my friend from staffs last year who has now gone to LA) wants to see Idina when she comes over in December so her and her fella tom will prob come too and i think ian and jess m from drama may wanna come but anyone is welcome just let me know soon as i will be booking soon!

And to leave you.....just because she is SUCH a good damned singer, one more pic of Idina Menzel in what i think is the best musical out in the west end at the moment (Yes it beats Avenue Q!)

 

See you all soon!

 

Ben x 

Testing Testing 1..2...3

I am trying out blogging on Windows Live Write (Beta) so here is a lovely test post (complete with image no less!)

Ooooo more changes

well thought i would add a little addendum into my blog. Its Saturday and im in nottingham at the moment waiting for another little tripsy out. Tonight we are all off into Nottingham to eat copious amounts of carvery followed by the cinema, going to see the Wicker Man, which should be interesting, I've never actually seen the Wicker Man, even though its one of those 'must see' films, so as a film student I probably should have rented it by now, but anyway. Also today I have had my hair straightened, this time chemically....by my sister...worked pretty well too, ill get some pics soon hopefully!

Im organising a big theatre trip to london for all my friends too, at the moment we are looking at a probably Mary Poppins by the votes I have had so far, if you want to see something else you have to make your voice heard! If your interested go here join the facebook group and email me so i know you wanna come, along with which show in the west end you wanna see.
On the West End front, the show I am off to see at the end of the month, Wicked, has started previewing, it looks amazing and bar a few technical hitches is apparently going on well. YOu can read Martin Ball, a cast members blog here and find out more about the show, or visit its website www.wickedthemusical.co.uk. Before christmas i am now expecting to see 3 london musicals, wicked this month, the group trip next month, and Spamalot, the monty python musical, in November with dad and ella.

Anyway enough ramblings, this was only meant to be a quick post so I will leave you all, next week I goto PLASA in london (A big theatre trade show) on monday, get dvds finished on tuesday and wednesday with a meeting with the bank manager on wednesday also, and then thursday and friday I am in the new studio in training on the lighting rig, so ill speak to you all soon!

The big cull... face fungus and masculinity!

Well another week is coming to a close and I feel its time for me to do a slight update. This week has been taken up preparing our second DVD release, the Squab Pie Charity Dance show, while finishing off and prepping for delivery the first release, the LES november '05 show project. The latter is now complete and just awaiting the wrap around for the cover, but the suppliers we use for the special paper are out of stock so we are awaiting stock on that. Squab Pie is just about ready but after a few quality concerns we are just re-rendering sections of the show to ensure the best quality. On the business development front we are going well, have a meeting with NatWest Bank on wednesday hopefully we will have our bank account shortly after, and we are all registering for tax shortly aswell. I am also registering with the Information Commisioner as a Data Controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act, and accompanied by the company documentation arriving this week I have now gained the following titles, Data Controller, Business Support Manager, Partner and Chairperson, quite an impressive list!

In other aspect havent been up to too much this week, Sam got back from thailand on wednesday, with sophie, his gf, in tow so its been a full house again, been shopping to tescos for foodstuffs, the usual stuff.

Yesterday I underwent a transformation, the beard has gone from my face and hopefully will stay that way for a while, but of course that all depends on whether I can actually be bothered to shave on an at least every other day basis so watch this space and see how the lack of facial hair pans out.

In other news also yesterday Andy underwent a transformation also, except his was a bit different, you see Sophie decided she wanted to make up andy, and so he very quickly became Andrea, looked very nice too...piccies here:















So there he is, the gorgeous andrew, he liked his new look so much he even went to Tesco in it, which was rather funny, no strange looks though, which was weird.

Anywho, this weekend is another veriatble feast of fun, with pub friday and saturday night, cinema on saturday and ice skating on sunday, all joins together for a fun packed weekend. Then next week on monday im off to a big industry show in london called PLASA with Rob N, got my ticket and everything. Stay tuned ill update you all soon!

Sherwood Forest becons.....AGAIN!

So last time i blogged it was ain a small window where NTL was working, well a bit better news, NTL is working better now, although an engineer is still coming over tomorrow as they did say there is a fault on the line so hopefully it will be even better soon! Shower still isnt sorted, but hopefully landlord will come on monday and sort it for us, i do hope so cos i want a decent shower!

So, the weekend, well went back to loughborough, after picking up andys ladyfriend from that station and dropping them off at the house for a weekend on their own, on friday evening for an evening in the pubs with mates, so we had rob newbould, jess, ashley, kat, Biddy, matt and beka eaton and of course, ed, and ed brough friends too, in the guise of Jo, the girl from Leeds who went to arizona with him, and also Emily and Becky, 2 sisters who were friends of Jo's, who all work at Calke abbey near derby, all good fun and drunken humour and good times were had, well until the end of the night when Emily and Becky went back to their car to find their alloys had been stolen, so being the gentlemen that we are, Ed and I, with Jo in tow, called the Police for them and waited and made sure they were ok before we all retired to homes for the night.

On Saturday i was rudely awakened by Staffordshire Police, who were looking after the alloy wheel case, they had tried emily and beckys home with no answe so were calling the phone which reported the crime.....mine, promplty went back to sleep for a bit after that! Finally arose late morning and just bummed around for a bit, then about 4ish went over to eds for the hell of it....and ended up fitting a new built in fridge for the family with ed and trevor (eds dad) and was then handsomely rewarded with a very nice chinese meal. By this time rob had joined us and we all decided to go to my house and play dance mat and jam on piano, computer, guitar, saxophone and singing, then ashley joined in and played dancemat with us and added human beatbox to the jamming session. Unfortunatley XBOX dance mat is alot harder than PS2 and my sister won against us all! So we now owe her a bottle of Malibu! We then all went to the park (this is 1am by now) and made up obstacle courses, which was fun....i won! YAY! Then it was retire to bed time again and suddenly it was sunday!

Sunday came and it was a 9.30 wake up call (mean to be 9 but what ya gonna do!) and we were at eds for 10, quickly joined by will gardner ready for a day of bicycling in sherwood forest, but first ed had to pack his car as he was going up to leeds for a job interview after and wanted to move stuff up there too. So Rob and Will and I played poker for a bit, joined by Kat who was picking up Biddys coat, Kat won....by a long way, but i need to learn more poker i think!
Then it was off to Asda for food then Sherwood forest, we ate out food, then nearly went to go ape instead of bikes, but in the end bikes won, we hired and went riding, after getting bored we turned off the beaten track into the forest and had an ace time just cycling round the forest! The went to the playground for more frollocking before time came to say goodbye to ed so he could goto leeds, i took rob and will over to their cars in costock then it was time for back to Stafford, since i have been back here its been not much so until next time...........

While its on....

Well NTL seems to be working just about ok at the moment, so time for an update. Had a pretty busy week this week with work and much other stuff, so here goes! Tuesday was our return to work after the bank holiday and it was visit from the landlord day, our shower is a little bit knackered at the moment and so he came round to have a looksy at it. It is broke so he is coming tomorrow to give us a new one, on top of that we found out on tuesday that SiMILE Media Solutions is now an official company, registered with companies house, so from 25th August 2006 we have been known and will now be trading as SiMILE Media Solutions LLP, go us! The work is coming slowly through at the moment, hopefully will be doing some work in nottingham in november, and the corporate stuff is coming along too.
Tuesday night it was off home for the evening so met up with ed and went to see Miami Vice, was a pretty good film, story was a bit long but the photography on it was really really good :-)

Wednesday comes along and i had to be in Ruddington at 8am for some test at Pharmaceutical profiles, was due to do a medical trial with them, but unfortunately i wasnt suitable for that one, whe trial was for an anti blood clot drug and cos i have had nose bleeds in the past i couldnt be used so away from them back to the grindstone, I am working on the dance show DVD at the moment and am just deciding whether to put it to DVD using Sony DVD Architect or Adobe Encore, at the moment Encore is winning but that does mean I have to learn it first so classroom in a book is coming out and i am working my butt off on that. Also on Wednesday on the way back from nottingham to stafford has a little incident with my car, coming out of uttoxeter, tried to avoid a piece of roadkill just as my phone went off, which startled me and i mounted the curb, no harm done to the car or the curb and noone else involved, but bang, the tyre blew, so that was £75 at Kwik fit for a new tyre....bit on the expensive side there, should have just gone to big city tyres in nottingham, but oh well.

So it comes to today, been doing more Encore learning today and had a trip into the office, to check post and try and get our web login details, we have 100mb of space on the uni web server for our website, but i dont know the password, and neither it seems, do IT so they are sorting it out for us,hopefully, so watch this space for news of the all new simile-media.co.uk

Finally, if you are reading this from blogspot, then you will notice this blog is now officially ad supported, these ads are targetted to the blogs content, and i also have links to firefox and google adsense, and a search box. So if you ever want to download firefox, or sign up for google adwords, or do a websearch, doing it from http://bmacrow.blogspot.com will hopefully earn your best buddy ben a little bit of money.

This weekend im back in nottingham again, going cycling on sundau in sherwood forest, all are invited, and just general fun stuff with ed and the gang so looking forward to all of that.

Until next time!!!!

Service Suspended

Due to an NTl fault on our line our house's internet is currently out of action, so no blog, no facebook, no msn, no nothing.

Service will resume as soon as possible (when NTl get their arse's into gear!)

I'm available on my mobile if you need me tho!

That is all

Its a Bank Holiday!

Wow! Its Bank Holiday Monday and I cant see any rain and i CAN see the sun!, what are the chanced of that....especially being so close to "Oh so sunny" Stoke on Trent, so will i be taking advantage of this sunnyness? Will i crap, im lazy, totally lazy so I have the day slobbing round the house, Andy has gone to see his ladyfriend in Manchester so right now is probably finding out that although it is now PHENOMINABLY big and new, the Arndale centre still wreaks of nothingness and cheap crappy 60s buildingness (referring mainly to the huge tower of flats over it, much like Viccie centre in nottingham.

I was going to goto Derby on the train to kill time, but my dad rang this morning to say that ella and him were driving up to see me, which is nice :-) and they are taking me out for a meal later, which is nice also. Of course i do have pennance to serve through this nicety of a visit and a meal, my mothers old Sony Viao is being delivered and I have offered to open it up and try and fix the problem where the graphics card just decides anytime between 7 and 27 minutes is enough for the screen and so very nicely stops it working. So in a bit i am going to try and pretend i am a sony laptop engineer and get the service manual for my mothers lappytop.

Got told last week upon asking that i can have money instead of my usual theatre tickets for christmas, which is good cos I can put that towards my "visit rachel in L.A." fund, im trying to get over there for a week or 2 in easter time-ish, i recon ill need about a grand for it tho, for flights and car hire with a couple of hundred quid for food and entertainment, specially as rach said she would put me up so i would just feel bad frankly if i didnt repay the favour with a treat or two! Ill prob see if she wants to goto magic mountain, cos thats always fun, and i am planning on before i leave ringing the applause store, who now have a US section and trying to get a ticket or two to some show recordings, if I could get into a session of Whose Line is it Anyway? well that would just be fan-bloody-tastic!

Yesterday was spent actually doing so much of nothing that it still felt like morning as the sun set, so my body clock was fairly crapped up but its all good cos i have now slept so much in the past few days that hopefully i will have a nice productive working week, minus wednesday morning when im at Pharmaceutical Profiles having tests done to work out whether i can then test a new medicine, which will be nice, especially the £1600 they pay me for it so that will go into 3 funds......bens fund for L.A., bens fund for making his computer work a bit nicer, and bens fund for living!

Right i think its about time to leave now, tidy the old bedroom before father and sister appear on my doorstep wanting to see the new room i have for this year so for now i say see you soon!

me

P.S. It was never going to last long....bank holiday in stafford, close to stoke on trent....yes....its raining

Go Ape! in Sherwood Forest

Wow! What a day, bit insane but oh well! Started off by getting up and doing the usual morning stuff before heading off to loughborough to pick up Rob and Karen, Rob was on time, Karen was not, as usual so off to her house to pick her up then to my house where we were meeting a few other people. So we get half way to my house and my brother calls me....it seems that Kat and Biddie, Kats sister and Kats Sisters friend have beaten me to my own house...so i havent warned my mum n dad that they were turning up...OOOPS my bad but its all good and we get home to find everyone chatting merrily. Then the final two turn up, Ed and his Arizona friend and we all have a chat before leaving for the days activities. So to sum up we have a group of 10 in 2 cars, there is me, Andy Beksa(housemate), Ed Lax and Steph (Eds friend from Arizona), Rob Newbould and Karen, Kat and Biddie and Sarah (Kats lil sister) and Katy (Kats lil sisters friend) making a happy bunch of 10 happy campers who all pile off to ASDA to buy food. We buy lots of food, lots and lots in fact, £20 of picnic stuff and then off to Sherwood Forest!

We got to the forest and straight away devoured our picnic food (after everyone realise that it was now about 3pm and hardly anyone had actually eaten anything so far) lots of brie, cheddar, ham, branston, bread, sausage rolls, mcvities caramel digestives, cookies and more. The brie was a bit off and the apple juice opening didnt go too well, Katy decided the lid wasnt and so the whole carton pouring mechanism should be removed not just the lid. Pictures of our lovely picnic....













Then we decided to join the 5 year olds on the adventure playground, and adventure we had, there was a pole, some monkey bars and a weird thing with two wooden beams that made you look geriatric when you walked over it. Oh and a big wooden deer that was quite a challenge to mount, but we did and 6 of us got on it at the same time, much to the amusement of a family and their small kids, who didnt seem to mind the occasional swear word or rude gesture as the mountain of bodies on the deer increased.

Next it was time for the days main activity, Go Ape! an aerial assault course in sherwood forest which is possibly the most fun you can have in a climbing harness, it basically consists of like 7 big challenges where you climb a rope ladder, traverse cables and cargo nets then re-enter the ground on a zip line with a thud and a brown patch on your trousers, I think we pissed off the safety people a little bit but thats just ed for you, much fun was had, especially when my glasses feel into the foliage below from 30 foot in the air!

Following our wonderful time at Go Ape we all decided hunger had set in again and so food was in order so off to nottingham to the corner house where pizza hut fed us, not before we waited in PArliament Street Car PArk for 10 minutes, so we could get the cheap clubber parking of course.....more pictures:
, ed andy rob and i were all very hungry so ordered this meal deal where for £5.50 each we got 4 starters, a large pizza, a medium pizza and 4 desserts. Well our starters got stuck in the lift?!?!?!?! (yes thats what they said) so they gave us 2 portions of each, they ran out of large pizza bases so gave us 3 mediums instead of a large and a medium and so we were pretty damned stuffed by the end.

Finally it was time to leave for home, tho home for me meant stafford, via newton linford to drop off rob and then leicester to drop of sarah and katy. The bit og blogging and now im off to bed. So all in all a good day....know 3 new people so hello Katy, Sarah and Steph who are all tres cool and hope i see again soon (well wont with steph she off to dublin as i type virtually then off to hungary next weekend) for drinking and merriment.

Next week the activity is go karting, yes ben is behind a RACING wheel WOOOOO!!!!!

C ya all soon!

(oh yes....only one problem with go ape for you men our there......warning that sat on myself within the harness alot!)

Welcome

Well its time i started one...yes....my very own weblog ot sure what to say yet so ill just do a general life update.

Well im back in Stafford running my business now its going pretty well...see it at www.simile-media.co.uk. We are getting some decent enquiries in so hopefully it will be all good soon.

Anyway this little post was just to make sure this is all working so ill update u all real soon!