As everybody knows (don’t you?), David Sneddon was the winner of last year’s Fame Academy. So, when it was mentioned on Celebdaq last night that you would be surprised at what you’d find on www.davidsneddon.com, I was obivously curious and decided to have a look.

Admittedly, I was surprised, but the guest on the show was Joe Mace, children’s TV presenter. Therefore, the content I discovered was, well, not what you’d expect to be mentioned on BBC Three. Can I now sue them for destroying my mind? I suspect not.

Because I never read dialog boxes and always just click OK, I’ve managed to install some of my laptop software in Portuguese. Oops. So I’ve just typed into Google Translation the default power management option, to see if I can work out how it is setup. Apparently, I’m currently on “Maximum performance with piles”. I suspect a little has been lost in the translation.

Anyway, as no-one else want to post here right now, that’s your lot for the mo. Come back soon for much more from the world of…well…me. Or add another hit to the 12000+ already accumulated at www.sjhoward.co.uk. In the mean time, be good…or at least get good at being baaad (oo-er)! Bye!

Originally posted on The LBSC

It’s a title that’ll only be relevant the first time you visit. But at least it’s a title, and at least it is relevant to you. If this is the first time you’ve read this. Otherwise, sorry about the title, but thanks for coming back for more. Here’s a little puzzle to screw with your mind (not literally) and start my post for today…

You are on a game show. The aim of the show is to win a car. You are stood in front of three doors, one of which has a car behind it, two of which have goats behind them (for no other reason that it’s traditional in this particular puzzle). You are asked to choose a door. The presenter then opens one of the unchosen doors to reveal a goat, and asks if you want to change your mind about which of the remaining two doors you have chosen. Here is the question…Should you switch doors?

Well, the answer is yes. This fries my brain, as I couldn’t grasp the fact. I could only see that there were two doors left, one with a goat and one with a car, therefore it’s 50:50 and makes no statistical difference whether you change or not. But it does make a difference. See here for a detailed explanation as to why it matters.

What did you do on Saturday? I got hot and sweaty serving the every whim of complete strangers. I was even asked to punish one person, but had to get someone to help me (It’s not something I’m too experienced in). When one lady invited me to her car, JRC came with me to help me get it in there. But he seemed strangely quiet when she invited me back to her house, and positively ran off when we got the rope out. The joys of working at Homebase .

Sadly (not really), those joys are to soon end. I handed in my notice on Saturday. Please don’t cry. My last contracted day is Saturday 13th September. The reason for this can be summed up thus: BAAAAA. Not the bleating of a maniac murderous sheep, nor the start of a familiar refrain ending in “humbug”, but actually my A-Level grades. Yes, I did six A-Levels which classes me officially as a geek. But I’m a geek and proud. This also means that the sporadic posts here will be coming live from Stockton as of 4th October, as the good people of the North-East attempt to make me more, well, doctorish. In just five short years I could be operating on you. A thought that should, at the very least, make you think “BAAAAA!”. Unless you’re a mental patient, who might be thinking that anyway.

Joy of joys, the DTI has published HASS figures again. These are published annually, and are records of accidents people have in the home which cause them to end up in hospital. I used to rely on them heavily in my high-school years for public speaking competitions. Now I see them more as a stimulant to the medical mind. I would personally like to meet the single person who landed in hospital last year following an accident with a cape. Clothing can be hazardous, as any male who’s done their fly up too fast whilst drunk will tell you (strangely, I know on a personal level three people who have done just that). I would have been willing to bet that a sponge would be around about the safest thing in anybody’s home. Oh how we all laughed at Mr Burns’s demands for a spherical sponge so that the corners were not so painful. And yet, last year, almost three times as many people ended up in hospital from a sponge-related incident (11) than accidents with high voltage cables (4). If you’re into home security, here are some cold, hard facts: Padlocks? Pah, they only landed 13 people in hospital last year, they must be crap. And newfangled burglar alarms don’t fare much better – only 16 people hurt themselves. Try installing – dum dum dum – a doorbell. 62 people were admitted last year in doorbell related incidents, but that still doesn’t top the home security chart. Want to keep intruders well out of your home? Want to cause some Tony Martin style damage? Then equip your burglar with – a key. 87 key related incidents last year.

As I’ve used enough stats now, I’ll leave the HASS figures there. Except to wonder how 11 people injured themselves with artificial limbs. Or how 3 caused an accident with talcum powder.

For all of you people who were worried about my toe – come on, I know you’ve had sleepless nights over it – I’m happy to report that it’s feeling much better, and can now answer your questions and is happy to read your get well messages emailed to toe@sjhoward.co.uk.

You see, I’ll have a lot of sympathy for broken toes when I’m a doctor. In fact, I’ll be sympathetic to almost anyone. As long as none of the twelve people who arrived in A&E with sex or marital aid related accidents aren’t referred to me. Because then I’ll just point and laugh. Really, I’m sure I’ll be very good. Trust me, I’m a doctor (well, on my way at least).

Originally posted on The LBSC

I really do not have much to say at the moment. Erm…my driving licence arrived. Whoopteedoo. I bought a TV card for my PC, more to annoy my brother than because I actually wanted one (He keeps saying he wants one, so I bought one…for me!). It’s fairly handy I suppose for recording things without having to set a video or anything – just right click the program in Digiguide and select Record One Off or Record Series. Maybe it’ll help me to watch things that I mean to watch and then forget, if it automatically records them.

That’s pretty much all I have to say right now.

Love and Kisses,

The Huggable Tillyoshea.

Originally posted on The LBSC

Given that nobody’s posted recently, I thought that it was about time I explained why I haven’t…though I can’t speak for the others. In my case, it’s because I’m a lazy git. No, really. Anybody want to join me?

Originally posted on The LBSC

I had fifteen minutes to spare. Now I only have eight. Special people will note the significance of the time.

I also know the same Anna – she is in my English class. I don’t think she understands my warped mind. Yesterday, we did some group work analysing texts (Ok, I admit it, I get a kick out of the fact that analysing has anal in it). The particular text our group had to analyse (tee hee) – our group consisting of me, Anna, Danielle, and the Moustached-One (an annoying female) – was a memorial to a man who had been brutally murdered (tied to an iron bed frame and burnt alive, if you must know). Bearing in mind that the other texts were, on the whole, amusing IMHO I made the ironic suggestion that it was a comedy piece satirising funeral speeches, and made reference to the text to support the argument, such as “Souls? Everyone knows they don’t exist! It must be satirising the church”. All were amused, except for the Moustached One and Anna, who clearly didn’t ‘get’ the joke.

Which brings me on to other amusing things in English. Such as my fiend. I did a denotation vs connotation pictorial analysis (hee) of the word ‘fiend’, which is now roughly above my head on the wall. Which leads to clearly amusing comments such as “I think she’s staring at your fiend” and “Your fiend’s still sticking up”. You get the idea. Again, only about three of us understand it, and I still get dirty looks from the Moustached One every time I speak. I am also regularly physically attacked as there are only three males in the class, the other two are off regularly and when I attempt to combat any “typical man” comments, I am somewhat outnumbered.

How did I start all this? I dunno.

Exam meeting tomorrow – the moment of dread. Luckily, John only gets in at two on a Thursday and so will presumably not be present, and so will not be able to celebrate the first anniversary since the last one. Just to reiterate, a fiend was not liberated in any way during that meeting. I also urinate frequently.

Anyway, of the eight minutes I had to spare, I’ve now used…well…twenty. Oops.
Just one final thought…if anyone can impregnate the entire contents of the chemistry and maths A-Level syllabuses in by head in about, say, a day then I’d appreciate it.

Now I’m off to watch the final episode of Season Two of 24. Ahh…the joys of broadband!

Originally posted on The LBSC

The sentence below this one is true.

The sentence above this one is false.

(Mind explodes)

Originally posted on The LBSC

Just for your general information, here is a list of twelve things I have learned over the past few weeks that have surprised me. No particular reason you’d want to know, but look-ee anyway:

1. Of Alcoholics Annoymous’s famous twelve steps, only one mentions alcohol. Despite their much-repeated claims that they are not a religious organisation, step six is: “We are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character”.

2. Humans have been cloned at least twice already. They were not, however, carried to full term – effectively, they were “aborted”.

3. Licking toads cannot make you high – bufotenine is not, as commonly believed, hallucinogenic (sorry).

4. Jesus was almost certainly not crucified. In the original Hebrew of the four gospels, only John refers to Jesus being crucified – all the others say he was hanged. It was only 800 years after his death that Jesus was first depicted in the form of the crucifix.

5. Start with any number, eg 32345364397. Count the number of even digits (4), the number of odd digits (7), and the total number of digits (11) – put these together to form a new number (4711) and repeat the process: 1 even, 3 odd, 4 total => 134. Repeat again: 1 even, 2 odd, 3 total => 123. Whatever number you start with, provided you do this enough times, you will always get to 123. This is one of a number of “Mathematical Black Holes”, which are impossible to explain.

6. Animal species are becoming extinct at the same rate they always have – there is no evidence to say that humans have increased this rate.

7. In the vast majority of studies, those who had not participated in AA meetings or attended any other form of treatment had a higher rate of addiction recovery than those who had.

8. At least 50% of US combat soldiers soiled themselves during battle in WWII.

9. Studies have found that parents have little or no long-term effect on their children’s personality, intelligence or mental health.

10. Latin America and Europe have each accounted for a greater number of terrorist attacks than the Middle East and Asia combined.

11. In five places in the Bible (I Samuel 25:34, I Kings 14:10. 1 Kings 16:11, I Kings 21:21 and II Kings 9:8) men are referred to as he “that pisseth against a wall”.

12. Look at an accepted, traditional map of the world, the kind you get on wall maps. On these maps, it appears that Greenland is approximately half the size of Africa. In reality, Africa is fourteen times bigger.

Anyway, that’s my little (!) post for now, hope you learned something!

Originally posted on The LBSC