The place where I document the stupid stuff I do
This photo was just too weird not to publish. Such a pity the Wyandotes weren’t facing each other too. They’ve got names but I can’t remember them. Pretty sure one is called Buffy and I think one is called Blanche.
Buff Orpingtons at the top of the picture and Wyandotes at the bottom.
It finally happened, something finally changed in the google servers that took yours truly, moi, watashi, to the number 1 spot. Ahhh, I never thought this day would come, a tear is in my eye as I write this blog.
God bless google, god bless wordpress, my hosting partners and all those [ one ] people that wished me well on this mission. Mark…this is for you 🙂
In my previous post I valiantly declared that my non-waterproof iphone [ see here ] probably just needed a new battery and all would be tickety-boo. Well, it turned out to be almost the case.
Above is the phone with the new battery part way soldered in. It was with a dry mouth, shaking hands and the warning of "don’t short the li-ion battery to the case or explosions will occur" ringing in my ears that I donned soldering iron and non-lead solder. I was using Bill’s soldering iron initially but it was a pre-77 iron and really wasn’t up to the job as it lacked the fine point required for modern electronics. If you’re wondering how I know it’s pre 77 then it’s because I had to wire a plug onto it and the wires were red, black and green. Verrrr old.
After I’d almost completely destroyed the iPhone motherboard and solder was spread across all contacts, the heat-sink, the motherboard, my desk and a pile of receipts to the right of my keyboard I decided that the tools just weren’t up to the job. A quick trip to Maplin secured me a nice new soldering iron, a solder sucker, some de-solder braid and some unleaded solder – one must think of the environment and all that. Back to work I went and this time it was much more successful.
When I powered up the handset I noticed that there was considerable water damage in the screen which just made things look crappy. In a moment of what can only be described as sheer lunacy I decided to take the whole thing apart and "Isopropyl Alcohol" the screen so that it would be a whole new groovy iphone and I would be the toast of Olde Wigan Towne.
This is the iPhone with the screen disassembled. People forgot to mention that you need a clean room, sixteen arms and a fucking clue to reassemble this thing. Not a hope. I had the screen cleaned up and back together in a thrice. The handset powered up and there was nothing – the touchscreen had ceased to work. So apart it came again, only this time I managed to crack the display and also snap the wire connecting the front button to the motherboard. The new glass was a tenner and I could repair the wire – so I wasn’t massively concerned about this disaster. I reassembled the screen in a different order [ and yes I do realise I should have taken photos as I was disassembling it 🙁 ] but was all for naught. I decided it was third time lucky. Disassembled, rearranged and was in mid reassemble when I managed to tear through the connecting strip from the motherboard to the radio circuitry. Game over. Bastard!
The last resting place of Darren Steele’s first generation iPhone.
9th Nov 2007 – 23rd July 2008. Rest in Peace.
The picture above is an artists impression of the moment my iPhone ended up in the Rochdale canal. The image above isn’t exactly accurate as it was in my pocket at the time so there should be a fat northern bloke attached to the jesus phone. Additionally my hazy memory does not recall a large red arrow nor a white "splosh!!" hovering above the canal.
It’s all Simkiss’ fault. Inviting us out for a boozy do at Rochdale Hornets Rugby match, force feeding us beers in the Dog and Partidge beforehand and then dragging us all down to "The Ship" in Castleton which serves beer AND is right next to a canal. What kind of moron builds a pub next to a canal – it’s just an iphone disaster waiting to happen.
Anyway, it wasn’t all bad. A quick youTube search reveals it’s probably just in need of a good soaking in rubbing alcohol and a replacement battery which is currently on order.
However in order that I may not be without an iPhone for too long I managed to acquire a 3G version today, got it all synced up and then knocked a glass of vimto over on top of it. It’s still working which is an improvement on the waterproof-ness of the last one.
Anybody willing to take bets on how many months the new phone will last me? I’m guessing about 3.
Quite a while ago Emma, myself, Amelia and Charlie all went to the zoo. Unfortunately there was this was this fat computer programmer who wanted to make some extra cash by selling dinosaur embryos on the black market. The result was that the electric fences were all out and as you can see the T-Rex and the errr big bird thing escaped. We barely managed to pose for this photo before we had to break out the guns, reboot the unix box and get helicoptered out alive. Believe me it was quite a day, I’m currently in talks with Spielberg about making it into a huge blockbuster movie. The working title is "Southport zoo, the day the dinos escaped" – but I think something snappier is needed, perhaps with Jurassic in the title or something.
The mission to make sure that somebody googling "Darren Steele" gets to me and not the gay choirboy that was bullied and ultimately hanged himself is proceeding nicely. My ranking has risen to the dizzying heights of number 2 on the google search results but I suspect it will be a little tricky to displace the bbc in the number 1 spot.
Hope springs eternal and all that.
They’ve arrived!!! They’ve arrived!! I very nearly, but didn’t quite, poop in my knickers [ see earlier ] with the excitement of receiving a box of 40 portions of the best noodles on the planet. Paul Simkiss dropped by for lunch and relieved me of a bowl before walking off with four packets. Jason Howarth has taken delivery of five packets and I’ve already had some. So my supplies are rapidly dwindling! It’s making me hungry just thinking about them. I can’t think of anything better to do with a bowl, a fork and 500ml of hot water. Get in!
Myself, John and my Mum went up to the boat on Sunday. It wasn’t a very pleasant day as you can see from my wet hair, and the wind was rubbish to begin with but we had fun nonetheless.
The picture above is me clipped into the spinnaker halyard hanging off the side of the boat. That is what spinnaker halyards are there for right?
The wind picked up a bit later but whilst it was still relatively calm the three of us worked out how to fly the spinnaker, which is something none of us had done before. It took quite a lot of messing around but we finally got it up even though we did kinda do it a little wrong as I now think the spinnaker bag should have gone up the mast. Tis but a technicality that I have to discuss with Keith. Below is a happy me with the spinnaker full of wind. It’s a real pity that we couldn’t have got a picture from the shore as it would have looked very impressive.
After working out how to fly the spinnaker we decided to do another downwind run which meant we only got off the water at about 5.30 or 6pm. It was quite a long day, so much so that Mummy Steele had to have a snooze on Monday whilst Amelia was in bed. The famous Steele siesta.
When Emma and I lived in Hong Kong I used to regularly breakfast on these spicy flavour Nissin noodles. Everyone that came to visit was subjected to a taste of these wee beasties and nobody was ever disappointed.
I stocked up on them during my last trip to HK for the rugby [ HK Blog ] but today they ran out. It only took a few minutes of smurfing the web but I finally found them here. So I ordered 40 packets of them.
Happy days are here again!
I’ve been driving around a fair bit recently heading up to the Lake District to sail my boat and travelling down to Reading to go to the office and the thing that I keep noticing is the petrol price is always 104.9p per litre or 115.9p per litre. Why do they have to keep putting the 0.9 on the end of it?
Do oil companies think drivers go "tskkk, just look at that, it’s 115p per litre now. Still at least it’s not 116p". Well, people really aren’t that fucking stupid now are they. It’s like when people advertise their house at £299,999 because then it’s not advertised for £300k and it "sounds cheaper". Fucking imbeciles the lot of them.
So dear petrol stations and home sellers, let’s call a spade a spade and stop fannying around with 0.9p or knocking £1 of a £300,000 pound house. Jesus.
Rachael, Chris, Me, Louise and Helen.
Bunch of psychos the lot of ’em. Taken at the beer festival in Bispham Green. May 08.
A long time ago back when I was suicidally stupid rather than today when I am just a bit of a thickie, Aggy and I went to California for a skydiving holiday. We’re both alive to tell the tale so it didn’t go too badly.
On the final day we had videos made of us doing our solo jumps. You’ll notice my exit from the plane doesn’t go too well and I somersault for about five thousand feet. I meant to do that, seriously!
All good clean fun.
A long long time ago, in an employ far far away we had to make a stupid corporate video for Openwave. It really was a complete waste of time and money.
Still we had a laugh making our little part of it, and it was better than working.
The line up is Me, Abigail Kroon-Herbert, Martin Bradshaw and Denis Gershongoren. The man behind the camera is Robert Wakeling.
Somehow, and I’m not too sure how, but somehow, I managed to lose the SIM card that I use for doing data stuff whilst travelling. It’s invariably in a phone in my cupboard somewhere – or tucked into that condom pocket of a pair of jeans that I haven’t worn for a while – nevertheless, I can’t find it and it’s pissing me off.
So I called those helpful little girls and boys in Carphone Warehouse and mentioned that I’d lost it so they passed me over to the O2 sales team who told me it would cost me 15 quid for a new SIM. I’ve lost hundreds [ well probably not hundreds but quite a few I reckon ] of these little rectangular plastic bastards with a little bit chopped out of the corner and never has anyone asked me to pay 15 pounds for the privilege of receiving a new one. In fact, it happened just a few months ago when I lost my phone and SIM that is from a direct contract with O2. They couldn’t be more helpful. A new SIM was sorted out and sent out to me the next day. Could it be that due to my average bill on that SIM being about 200 quid they were pretty keen to keep me as a customer? Or could it be that unlike Carphone Warehouse, O2 seem to have a fucking clue?
So they want me to give them money so that I can use the SIM to generate data on their network which they will then charge me money for. Fuck that! If they want my cash then the bunch of pricks can send me a new fucking SIM, Jesus!
The situation now is that I’m waiting for the contract to end [ September ] and in the meantime have to pay them the line rental on the SIM – ho hum. Then promptly on 7th September I will jam my foot into the anus of Carphone Warehouse and tell them I’ll be taking my custom elsewhere.
Carphone Warehouse have crap customer service and I’ll not be dealing with that bunch of pricks again…once I’ve cancelled my contract.
The Q1 mission can be regarded as a partial success but thanks to "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins I ran slightly "over budget"
The mission was to read 13 books in the first quarter of the year, which for the mathematically astute amongst you would boil down to a book per week. I was in the middle of reading my 13th book [ The bastarding God Delusion ] when the month of April arrived. For those of you that have read Dawkins’ masterpiece you’ll know why I struggled.
So in no particular order, the 13 books completed by 8th April were…
MY Booky Wook – Russell Brand
Biography – Eric Clapton
Humble Pie – Gordon Ramsay
Flashmans Lady – George Bernard Shaw
Flashman and the Mountain of Light – George Bernard Shaw
Quicksilver – Neal Stephenson
A Year In The Merde – Stephen Clarke
Merde Actually – Stephen Clarke
GB84 – David Pearce
Wintersmith – Terry Pratchett
Number One Ladies Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
Tears Of The Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith
The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins
Emma and I were driving back from our Easter break with Sharon and Stewart in Edinburgh. Easter flipping Sunday and the Scottish police are out with their cameras generating revenue instead of sitting at home with their kids celebrating the day that the good lord climbed out of his cave or something.
The only good thing is…see that fella behind me in the big silver car – well we were racing and as the photographic evidence proves – Steeley wins!!
Here we have a good close up proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that Darren was driving when the skirt wearing haggis eating braveheart watching cock monkeys took the picture. Seriously – 89mph and they get all arsey. Unbelievable.
Myself, Jason, Paul and Uncle C have just returned from a week of carnage in Hong Kong. We went out to watch the annual HK 7s tournament and see which one of us would be able to last the drinking distance. If you’re interested the winners podium would be
1) Howarth
2) Steele
3) Simkiss
4) Wignall
The guy in the picture above is Kavin Oh [ and of course me ] who is my facebook buddy and resident of Singapore. He was over there with his wife and managed to liberate one of the spare tickets I ended up with.
Everyone had a good time and more importantly everyone got home safely.
Happy days!
Oh, and as a final farewell – you know that Mr Howarth who is allegedly number 1 on the podium….. lightweight
In a true Alan Titchmarsh meets Sarah Beeny stylee I spent the weekend giving my greenhouse a bit of a revamp. As can be seen from the "Before" picture the place was a bit of a health hazard with odd bits of paving making up the floor. Some might argue, and I am of course referring to my darling wife here, that this is what a proper greenhouse should look like…but not I.
The newly revamped greenhouse has a light smattering of plum slate chippings at 70 quid a tonne [ robbing bastards ] with a lovely geometric pattern of paving stones forming a centrepiece. This bijou little residence is now home to 70 germinating onion seeds, a bunch of pepper plants and some other stuff that I planted that I have since forgotten. So that’ll be a nice surprise in a few months.