To Eat or Not to Eat...

This is Shakespeare's Globe.

You may recognise it if you've seen the Doctor Who episode 'The Shakespeare Code'.

Attached to it there is a Shakespeare themed restaurant, called the Swan.

Now, along three of it's windows there are Shakespeare quotes written which relate to food or cooking.
This is the first.

From a scene in Romeo and Juliet in which a servingman explains to Juliet's Father his method for choosing chefs.




Here is the second.

Again it's from Romeo and Juliet where the nurse tells Lady Capulet that the chefs need more ingredients.

And finally...

Now this one isn't a quote from on of his plays, but it something that William Shakespeare (The 17th century's Quentin Tarantino) said when he was working at a cafe in Brixton before he made it big as a playwright/ celebrity neck brace enthusiast. Records show that he moved from Stratford-upon-Avon to London to hit the big time, but like a lot of starlets he didn't have much immediate success so he had to take the cafe gig. His job was to stand outside shouting out the specials. Other things he is supposed to have said include "Bacon Sandwiches, 2 for 1" and "Soup of the day: Chicken!".

After six months in Brixton Shakespeare got his first play performed and soon went from 'Will the washout' to the 'Billy Big Shot' as he is known as today.

The Wedding House

Due to an accident in geography, my nearest shop happens to just sell wedding stuff.
This is what it looks like.

This is a bit annoying as it doesn't sell any of the stuff you need from a local shop. In order to rectify this I sent them the following email.


Dear Wedding House,

I like your building. It is very pleasant to walk past.

I am writing to you because you are my nearest shop, meaning if I want milk or bread I have to walk all the way to the 7/11.

Basically, it would be massively useful if you could start to sell groceries.
I mean you should keep doing wedding stuff but you should also have a fridge in the corner for people to buy everyday things.

Thanks. 


 I sent this email three weeks ago and they haven't even had the courtesy to reply. Talk about rude.

Official Cookie Stolen

Official Cookie Jar

Whitehall was shocked today when it was discovered that a cookie had gone missing from the Official Cookie Jar (pictured right). 

The Official Cookie Jar was first used when Prime Minister William Gladstone said "I feel a bit peckish" during Prime Ministers Questions in 1870. So fond was he of the Official Cookie Jar that in fact many people believe that the only reason he became Prime Minister a further three separate times was so that he could again be in charge of the Official Cookie Jar. 

When, this morning, a cookie was found to be missing a full investigation was launched. 
At first the investigation was fruitless, as there were no fingerprints on the jar and the CCTV was down due to a technical malfunction.

It was then decided that all ministerial offices should be searched for traces of crumbs.

Henry Jackman

The search was almost immediately cut short when a video was uploaded to youtube showing a red gloved Henry Jackman, Minister in charge of deciding what angle hats should be worn at (pictured left), removing the lid, taking a cookie out and pocketing it, replacing the lid and walking away. 

It is unknown who shot the footage, and as it was done secretly, from a phone, it could be anyone.

When cornered by the press Henry Jackman said "I have done nothing wrong, I don't know where the cookie is and anyway it isn't even me in the video, that man was wearing a tie, and I am clearly not wearing a tie".


The location of the cookie is still unknown.

Review of Play for Today by Ultrasound

This is a bit weird. One of my old teachers (Ms Best) has released an album (Play for Today) with her band (Ultrasound). I suppose I should be relieved that it was a music teacher rather than, say, a geography teacher.

I bought the album.

I hadn't heard any of the tracks or read any reviews, but I felt I had to buy it out of a odd sense of loyalty.

I'm glad I did though as the album is very good. It sounds well produced and all of the tracks have an epic feel to them. In a GCSE music lesson Ms Best once told us 'Don't shit in your own back garden', and she seems to have followed her own advice here.

For me, the stand out track is 'Between Two Rivers', which just hit me perfectly.


Here is a picture from the back cover of Ms Best pretending to apply make up.

It also came with some free stickers but I have absolutely no idea what to do with them.
Either way it's a decent album.

5 stars.

Bad Combinations

I know it's basically good to try new things. (Except things like murder obviously).

But recently I only seem to try things that are a combination of things that shouldn't ever be mixed. 

Exhibit A.

Macaroni Pie.

I happened to be in Scotland recently and saw this in Greggs.
My first thought was "Macaroni Cheese‽ In a pie‽ That sounds incredible!".
I know that a lot of people would of thought "Macaroni Cheese‽ In a pie‽ That sounds horrible!".
And they would be right.
It was disgusting, I could barely finish it, if I wasn't so hungry I wouldn't have.
For the sake of your own well being please never eat one.

Exhibit B.

Several weeks later I saw this in a pub.
Well, I like stout, and I like Chocolate. I expected it to taste like a fancy Hot Chocolate. Instead it was just a bit urrggg.
It wasn't as bad a the Macaroni Pie, but then again nothing is as bad as the Macaroni Pie.

I should of really learned something from this but if I ever see Ice Cream flavoured pizza, there is no way that I'm not trying it.

It's Armless.

All through my life people have a told joke when they've heard my name.

And it's this mans fault.

Upon hearing that my name is Louis Strong people say "You're missing an arm!". I first heard it before I could talk.
I understand it is a bit funny but I've heard it too many times.

If I ever have a son I will name him Neil so that he is victim to the same joke.

I don't think that my parents diberatly chose the name because the joke would follow but I suppose it is possible. Although I have heard my dad describe this as one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever.

(I know it isn't spelled the same but still).

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this is that today I realised how ironic it would be for me to actually lose an arm.

What a wonderful world.

My Favourite Hearse

I know that most people probably don't have a favourite hearse. But I do.
It's like having a favourite cash machine (The cockney cash points) or a favourite number (43.2×10¹⁵), you don't pick a favourite unless you happen to see an incredible one.
And I saw an amazing hearse.

It happened about three years ago, just a normal day. I was walking home from somewhere.
In the distance I notice a hearse. At first I thought it was a normal hearse, just a long black car driving slowly with flowers and stuff.
But then I spot a weird shape on the roof. I'm not sure what it is yet. I think it's made of flowers.
Closer now, yes it is definitely made flowers. It looks like a box, no it looks like tower. It's sort of mostly black with a layer of white on top. What is it?
It is a floral pint of Guinness.

I was amazed. I had never seen anything so incredible.
Here was someone who thought "Just because I'm dead that doesn't mean everybody has to be sad, I'm putting the 'fun' into 'funeral', putting the 'cor' into 'corpse', putting the 'ha' into 'hearse'". (I know that last one is a bit of a stretch).

At this point I was straining not to giggle at a funeral, I felt quite bad but this was brilliant.
Then it got better, because as the car went passed me, revealed in the window, three massive floral letters, spelling out one word.

'NAN'.

I could barely contain myself.

Paintjobs.

I like dicking about with MS Paint.
I like that I can a make a false image and have it look really shody and fake, that really pleases me.
I've demonstrated on here in the past with licence I designed for the Licence to Kill post and the picture of Anne Boleyn playing football.

Here are a few other examples of my mad paint skills from the past year or so.

1) For Christmas I put on my green jacket, posed as a Christmas tree, then added the decorations in paint afterwards.

 2) For my friends 20th birthday I put his face onto every face on the cover of Sgt. Peppers. Partly because the first line is "It was twenty years ago today" and party because it is quite funny.

 

3) Seeing as I have a toy dalek I thought it would be cool to get a picture of it threatening me. So I took a picture with surrendering on one side, then I took a close up of the dalek in the correct position, then I seamlessly patched the two images together.  

4) These last two aren't strictly paint but anyway.
When Facebook started allowing you to have a cover at the top of the page it didn't take me long to come up with this.

5) Along similar lines, on Google + you can have several small pictures instead of one big one. So I made it look like I have a really long arm and a massive hand. As you can tell from the colour of the wall behind, these are three separate images and the one of my hand is really a flipped picture of my right hand.

If you have any requests for things I could make in paint, please let me know.

Licence To Kill

Within the fictional world of James Bond to become a double 0 agent and receive your Licence to Kill, you have to kill two people.
This has some worrying consequences, for a start, does this mean that serial killers are allowed to go on killing after their second murder?
Secondly, in between the wannabe double 0s first and second kill they are technically a wanted murderer. What if they get arrested before they get to the second kill?

Also, if a licence carrying agent gets annoyed with someone in the street they are legally licensed to kill them, it would be a shame if a spy killed someone just because they were having a bad day.
And do people within James Bonds world call the police to report an "unlicensed killing"?

By the way, this is what I imagine a Licence to Kill looks like.

If you own a Licence to Kill you probably have to carry it with you when you want to kill.
It's no good saying "No really, I am allowed to kill people, I just left my licence at home".

Boleyn Ground.

Every so often I walk past West Hams football Ground in Upton Park.

I'm not really into sport but I was curious as to why it is called Boleyn Ground, so I did a bit of research.
The most common belief is that she stayed on the land once when it used to be a castle.

But then I dug a bit further and found that the real reason is because for the first six years of the teams existence, she was their star striker. Here is a photo that proves it.

She wasn't a great player, records show that in her entire profession career she only scored four goals, and two of those were because the keeper was scared of how Henry VIII might react if he saved them.

Despite this she was very popular among her team mates, who would note how she was never late.
It is fair to say that during this period she was the teams most dedicated player and then, after a spat with her husband, their most decapitated player.

People shouldn't ask for my opinions.

I often fill out online surveys and usually see them as a chance to have fun.
I'm not the only one, occasionally you hear about surveys to find what people hate most/ what people find most boring/ what people find most irritating, and so on. The number one answer is usually 'filling out surveys'. 

The following examples are from when my University has wanted my opinion on improving the course.

 Did you enjoy the practical side of this module?
"Yes. Deconstructing a thingy was really fun."

What did you think of the teaching of this module?
"There was very little teaching. And I often wasn't paying attention."

How could the maths lessons be improved?
"If the maths taught could be related to real life situations. That would be good.
Like in primary school. 'Jane has three apples, she eats one. How many apples does Jane have?'
It could be 'Jane has three apples and four imaginary bananas. She eats one apple and finds an imaginary tomato. How will Jane cope?'"

And this when the guild (our student union) asked 'What should the guild start doing?'
 "Handing out free cash."

A survey on the BBC website asked 'What do you dislike about the iPlayer site?'
"Well, it only does TV and radio.
It would be good if I could use it order food or buy DVDs or practice word puzzles.
But no, you decide that watching TV and radio is enough. Well it's not enough for me!
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I have been visiting other websites behind your back.

Please forgive me!"

I may add more examples as time goes on. 

How Ernie Rough discovered the structure of the atom.

During an A level physics mock test, the following was asked.

"Describe how Rutherford discovered the structure of the atom".

This was my answer.


Early 20th century celebrity scientist Ernest Rutherford, or Ernie Rough as his friends called him, wasn't happy with the plum pudding model of atoms that existed at the time. 
So Roughnuts, in a move that was completely ground breaking, decided to fire some alpha particles (also know as Helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold. Gold of course being his favourite colour.
What Ernie observed was that although some of the alpha particles were being deflected straight back as the plum pudding model would suggest, a lot of them passed straight through the gold and some were being deflected at strange angles.
From this the Roughernator determined that most of an atom was empty space and that all the all the important bits were packed together in the middle. And that is why the Ruffian is still considered to be a top notch scientist.


I should point out that although there is a lot of nonsense in there, the science is correct and I got the marks for it.

Chavasse Park

I love living in the future. As I write this on my phone, I am sitting in a park three storeys above ground level.

I am at a jubilee concert at Liverpool 1. I don't really care about the jubilee, but I do like free outdoor live music events. And it's not as if the music is especially royalist, the last song played was the theme to Pirates of the Caribbean.

I've been aware of this park for ages but not visited. But I'm glad I that have because some of the views are amazing.

 Despite the clouds you see the weather is really nice.

Here is the stage.

And this is what the park looks like from ground level.

The music was great too, kudos to the Liverpool University wind band.

Wibbly Wobbly.

On Friday during a lecture we were asked to suggest ways of shortening the assembly time of any given thing.

I wrote on my notepad...
"Assemble whilst travelling near to the speed of light so that time stretches. It wont mean that you make it quicker but it will mean that the time taken will be shorter relative to everything else".

Right, now I realise I got that the wrong way round. The time taken to assemble the thing would be longer relative to everything else. So you would have make everyone else travel near to the speed of light while you assemble the thing, and I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.

My excuses for getting it wrong are

• I was really tired that morning 
• I am not an expert

I could still be wrong, I'm not sure.

Of course, to actually travel at the speed of light you would have be completely massless and that could make assembling the thing more difficult.

Maybe I'm over thinking it.

Richmond Park

This is a big map of London we have.

I love this map. I can stare at it for ages to see how different bits of the city fit together.

But now we're going to focus this bit.

Richmond Park, which made news in the summer as the location a dog getting filmed chasing some deer whilst the dogs owner shouted at it.


I have never been to Richmond Park.
But it always catches my eye on the map (especially since I drew an arrow on it) because of this.

Right, it isn't really visable, but what it says in the circle is "Queen Mothers Corpse".

I find that really interesting. It doesn't say "Queen Mothers Grave" or "Queen Mothers Memorial", so therefore I can only assume that the Queen Mothers dead body is just there on display.

Whilst I'm sure that the royal family could hire the finest corpse preservers on the planet, she did die over ten years ago. Is a ten year old corpse really an appropriate thing to have on display in a park?

Although as I said I haven't been there, and I haven't done any other research.
So it could have been removed since the map was made in 2007, or could of been a joke by the cartographer.

Either way if I ever go to Richmond Park I am definitely going to search for the exhibited corpse.




Update: It turns out it says 'copse', which is a small woodland. But please let's all instead imagine there is a rotting dead body in the middle of Richmond Park.

Shopping List.

Today, during a lecture, I decided to find out how nosey the guy sitting next to me was.
So I took out my little pad and wrote down 'shopping list'.
I preceded to write 'Pepsi' and 'satsumas', fairly normal shopping, and then turned it up a notch by adding 'heroin'.
He didn't notice.
I continued to write absurd and strange things broken up by clusters of normal things.
Eventually I ran of space on the page and just left it on the desk between me and him.

Here is the full list...

About 5 minutes passed before he glanced at it. It caught his eye.

He tapped me on the shoulder and said "Tinsel and lipstick, Are you secretly a cross-dresser?"
My response, "Sometimes".

He then listed all the drugs I'd written and said I must have quite a weekend planned.
I said "It's amazing what you can buy in Asda".



So basically he wasn't nosey enough to read over my shoulder while I was still writing the list, but he did read it afterwards. I think that gives him a score of 4 on a scale of 0-10, where 0 is completely ignoring and 10 is News of the World.

P.s. Apologies for my poor handwriting.

Five things I love about Liverpool

Firstly, I should point out these definitely not the only, and probably not the best, reasons I love Liverpool. They are just the ones I want to point out.

In no particular order...


1. The Guinness Wall.



I should point out that the clock is either broken or set to the wrong time. Either way, I've never spotted it showing the right time.


2. The Echo Game

This is quite a simple idea so I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this is already a common thing, but in Liverpool City Centre there are many of these newspaper vendors.

(To save their privacy I've disguised their faces, I don't know if you can tell.)

Anyway, the local paper is the Echo and the vendors will intermittently call out "Echo!", and I like to then say "Echooooooooooo". So I echo their echo. It amuses me.


3. The City Councils 'no nonsense' attitude.

I imagine the conversation in the office went like this.

"The information on that sign on Mount Pleasant is no longer correct, Should we replace the sign, or remove it or what?"
"Nah, just gaffa tape a bin liner to it."

4. Sefton Park


5. Finally, it's socially unacceptable to buy the Sun.

Story Telling: The Princess and the Heat treated plain carbon steels.

I have to write a formal lab report and the brief includes 'story telling'. Here we go.


Once upon a time there was a magical prince who was trapped in a scary castle which had three plain carbon steel doors.
The first door had been heated to 860ºC then allowed to cool.
The second door had also been heated to 860ºC then quenched by dropping the hot metal into water.
The Third door had been heated and quenched like the second one, then heated to 650ºC again.

The princess, who wanted to rescue him, only had one good lance that would break if it was used on a door that was too hard. So the princess, knowing that only one lance meant only one chance, went to the lab to find out which door she should try and break down.

Initially the princess used the Jominy test to determine the Vickers Hardness. The test involved making an imprint with a diamond at set distances from the quenched end then comparing the results for the different samples. From this the princess found that second and third doors had a much higher Vickers hardness.

Next the princess carried out the Charpy impact test, where the samples were hit with a big heavy pendulum and the energy absorbed was measured and from this the princess found the third door was ductile, the second door was brittle and the first door had some plastic deformation.

The princess deduced that although the second door had a harder surface than the first, it would break under smaller force.
So the princess went back to the castle, broke down the second door with her lance then saved the prince. And they lived happily ever after.