Yesterday I bought a very special DVD – Round the Twist Series 1. Round the Twist was an excellent children’s television series shown in 1989/90, when I was about eight. It was a massive hit, very popular.
The program is a comedy about an Australian family who move to a haunted lighthouse and have many bizarre and hilarious encounters.
The first and best Twist family
Watching the first four episodes yesterday brought back many great memories and what’s great is they’re just as funny and entertaining as fifteen years ago!
Fifteen years is indeed a long time ago (apologies for everyone over 40 who doesn’t think so!), the characters must have fully grown up. Tom Twist (the dad) must be coming up to 60, the teenagers Pete & Linda in their 30’s and Bronsdon a little older than me.
You can find out what has happened to most of them on this interesting website. You can also read about Series 2, 3 and 4. I only remember Series 2, it featured completely different actors and was not as good – avoid, there is only one true great series.
The DVD is available in stores now, it’s a double disc, around £10, it’s great and if you were a fan as a child an essential purchase!
Now all the BBC need to do is release Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, another comedy classic, I’ve e-mailed the BBC Marketing Department. I won’t hold my breath on an exciting response.
To bring back those memories here’s the excellent theme tune.
Beautiful weather today, it’s only March and was like a summers day. A lot of people would enjoy the weather by sitting in their gardens, going to the country or the parks. I on the other hand was asked to go with a couple of friends to the pub to watch the Ireland – Wales game in the egg chasing 6 Nations.
I don’t like rugby very much but I did think it was a good game. Disappointed by the result, I wanted Ireland to win. Nothing against Wales, but I like the Irish International football team, so why not the rugby one?
I didn’t stay for the England – Scotland match, I’d rather not watch the two worse sides in the competition – even though England is my home nation (sorry, I don’t like rugby much!)
6 Nations of Egg Chasing is nearly over
Next weekend is the start of the football internationals. England play Northern Ireland on Saturday and Azerbaijan on Wednesday in World Cup Qualifiers. Both should be easy games for England (how arrogant!) although they should watch out for Northern Ireland & Leeds United super striker David Healy! :o)
I went to see Robots at the cinema yesterday. I had been looking forward to this for months since seeing the trailer back in the autumn. While the film wasn’t bad I wasn’t impressed. It was certainly not as good as the other computer animated features I saw last year – Shrek 2, The Incredibles & Shark Tale.
The film follows a robot who wants to be an inventor. He goes to Robot City in search of his hero. His hero is gone and has been replaced by a big bad robot determined to bring havoc to the industrial world.
The film had its funny moments, but was too much of a kids film for my liking. Unlike the films mentioned above, I will not be buying this on DVD when released.
Moving on, I’ve recently learnt about a great piece of software known as Coolstreaming which will LEGALLY allow you to watch English football matches over the internet for free!
The streams are broadcast from all over the world (probably everywhere but the UK!). These can be found on the Coolstreaming application and run on a Streaming Media Player. Windows Media Player will do, but it is recommended to use VLC (also free).
Coolstreaming can be downloaded here. VLC here.
To run this properly you will need at least a 1mbps connection, so if you have a crappy 56k dial up or even 512 broadband – stop!
Its very basic to set up, here’s a quick guide
1) Download and install Coolstreaming and VLC Media Player.
2) Start Coolstreaming, click on the properties icon.
3) In the box next to “application to open asf stream” enter C:Program FilesVideoLANVLCvlc.exe.
4) In the box next to “application to open asf stream” enter the location of Real Player (if installed) if not C:Program FilesVideoLANVLCvlc.exe.
5) Now double click a channel form the list, I recommend ‘Test sport’ (which is Star Sport) or Guangdong Sports.
6) It make take a few minutes to load and the quality will be crap. Wait 10-20 minutes and you’ll have a very good quality stream.
A few notes, if you are behind a router you will probably need to enable DMZ as the streams will be blocked by the routers firewall. If you are running a software firewall you may also need to open the ports and/or give permission to both Coolstreaming and VLC to access the internet.
As this uses up so much bandwidth you should not run any Peer to Peer programs at the same time, these will drain your connection.
Thanks to copey123 from WACCOE for originally instructing me on how to install this software – now I have another reason why I don’t need Sky Digital!
Lastly, I’ve mentioned on here before how I much prefer Firefox to Internet Explorer. I still do, but take a look at this, it appeared when browsing a website and apparently it’s a common annoyance. Pretty ironic huh?
I’ve been listening to a really great band lately – The Kaiser Chiefs. They have recently released an album entitled Employment, you may have heard one song of theirs on the radio or television already – “Oh My God”.
The band have only recently formed (summer 2003 in fact), but you could be forgiven if you thought they were far more experienced, after all they have already been asked to play at the Reading and Leeds Festivals this summer.
Their music is a blend of rock and indie, the best band to compare them to is Franz Ferdinand, another band who have received recent success.
The band have named themselves after one of the biggest football teams in South America. They are not fans of that team though; they actually support Leeds United (good taste as well as good musicians!). The Kaiser Chiefs are the team Leeds United legend Lucas Radabe started his career.
If you don’t like football or Leeds United, don’t be discouraged by this, they don’t sing about football (although they are planning on releasing a song for Leeds United!), in fact apart from the bands name there are no other connections to the sport.
I highly recommend this album, go and buy it … now!
Leeds played awful last night against Nottingham Forest, luckily they didn’t lose, the game finished 0-0 but listening to it over the radio was like listening to a game of chess.
Why is it that when Leeds get so close to success – this time promotion – they throw it all away by playing crap? Forest a poor side and will almost certainly get relegated, if Leeds had played at their best they could have annihilated them. Makes you think the players are just damn lazy.
An ex-Leeds player who is looking very lazy and a little bit fat is Harry Kewell. Kewell used to be fabulous in his golden years at Leeds but since moving to Liverpool he has become shit. All this time on the bench is taking its toll on his health and he looks overweight by footballing standards.
The fans used to sing “Harry, Harry Kewell” in the style of “Daddy, Daddy Cool” to him. I can think of a better chant in the same style. “Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? Harry, Harry Kewell! Harry, Harry Kewell!” The waste of space is now fatter than fellow Australian lard arse Mark Viduka.
Anyway, moving on from football, I went to the cinema last night with all intentions of seeing Hitch. When I got to the cinema I was persuaded by a friend to see another bad film Boogeyman.
The film is about a man who during childhood saw his Dad killed by The Boogeyman. Nobody believed him and assumed his Dad just left. In adulthood he returns to face the Boogeyman and unsurprisingly he does exist. The film is crap. Storyline is poor. The scare tactics are poor, anybody can make audiences jump unexpectedly. AVOID!!!
The only good thing about going to the cinema was that I saw a trailer for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I have never read the books or seen the TV series, but the film looks absolutely brilliant! I can’t wait to see it.
Lastly, I am seriously thinking of ending my Sky+ subscription. I currently pay a massive £41 a month for a large package. After much thought I realised that 90% of the programs I do watch are Free To Air/View (BBC1, BBC2, BBC Three, ITV1, etc).
If I want solely Free To Air & View channels I still need to pay Sky £10 a month for the privilege of using my own Sky+ box – something which is my own property!
What do Sky actually provide for this £10 a month? Software Updates? Customers with standard digiboxes get these for free anyway and the last update in July was full of bugs which caused havoc for thousands of customers!
Basically, Sky are holding me to ransom. Either I pay them £10 a month or they stop me using a piece of equipment I paid for and own. Sky are in the right though, I know I agreed to the terms and conditions when I signed up, I do think that it is unfair though.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO WATCH?
“My own equipment without having to pay for the privilege!”
Imagine if a car garage did that. You’d buy a car, but need to keep paying them £10 a month or it would just not drive. The £10 would not include petrol, servicing or a guarantee; it would just keep it running.
It’s a fucking rip off! I’m seriously thinking of buying a Freeview Personal Video Recorder which will offer the features Sky+ does. One off payment and no subscription meaning I don’t have to pay to use my own property!
Lastly, you may have noticed some parts of this blog entry are in bold. This is to seperate where a start of a new topic is mentioned. For example, some visitors don’t like football, all you need to do now is scan for the first non-footballing selection of text and read on.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
