Category Archives: Good
What Do I Want for Christmas? A Shiny New MINI
That’s right, it’s happened, I’ve thrown in the towel. The time has come and I’ve simply got to get back on the road; no more being an angry pedestrian, I need to take my rage to the roads again and how am I planning to do this? With a shiny new MINI.
What’s turning me from a humble pedestrian into a driver again? A few things, really, mainly the fact that my workplace has moved and buses are about as reliable as a solar-powered torch and also that in the new year I’m planning to move out of my flat to somewhere probably a little further out of town so I can get a larger place for less – clearly I’m going to need a set of wheels, and a stylish MINI seems to be the way forward for me.
I’m not really a fan of driving; I find it an unpleasant, stressful experience for the most part, and I can really do without the added expense of owning, insuring, maintaining and running a vehicle, but after just a few days of taking the bus, I’ve already had enough. It’s always late and I don’t really have the patience to keep waiting for it and then having to be in such proximity with other people for the duration of the journey. If I could do the walk, I would, but a nice little new MINI in black seems like the best option right now. Looking at the purchase and running costs, it’ll probably work out a bit less than the bus does anyway.
Designer Sunglasses – The Ultimate Accessory
I’m not really one of those people that spends a lot of money on clothes – that’s not to say that I don’t buy them when they’re wearing out or that I don’t have a wardrobe, but it’s not what you’d describe as an expensive one. It mostly consists of generic jeans, combats, band t-shirts and things like that. I consider a shirt extravagant if I’ve spent more than £20 on a shirt but one place I don’t believe in cutting corners is on accessories, which is where designer sunglasses can come in.
You see, I’m not someone that will spend a lot of money on clothing, but I still don’t want to look like I’m homeless, so I tend to up the game on my accessories – designer sunglasses, posy watches, nifty piercings and so forth so at least I look like something vaguely resembling someone with a job and some money. Plus, I’m a little photosensitive so it makes sense to actually have some good sunglasses.
It’s amazing how much of a difference some designer sunglasses can make, both to how few headaches I get and also the way that my image has been impacted. I now look like a guy who knows how to spend his money, but does so on the right things.
I suppose this is the difference between me and most people: I go through money like water, but I have the sense to spend it on good examples of what I’m looking for and my designer sunglasses collection is the perfect example of this.
Short Term Car Insurance – The Occasional Drivers’ Dream
I’m not someone who drives a lot; I’m not really a big fan of it, largely due to the fact that everyone on the road appears to be an idiot and the amount that it costs. There’s petrol which seems to become more expensive every day, there’s road tax and perhaps worst of all, there’s insurance. This is the reason I ended up selling my car, but sometimes I need to hire one since although I don’t drive much, I do occasionally need a car to visit my parents or for meetings and so on. It’s in cases like these that short term car insurance is the perfect solution.
When you hire a car, you’ve got to have insurance for it, but if I don’t have a car for 350 days of the year, why should I pay for a year’s worth of insurance? This is why short term car insurance is so useful. I can insure a car from anything from a day to a couple of weeks so I can drive myself to visit my parents, or to go to a meeting or even – if I ever take one – on holiday. It’s the ideal choice.
It’s little things like that that make me glad I spend so much time on the internet – if I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t know it existed and consequently would have to take public transport whenever I went anywhere or – worse – would have to pay for a year’s car insurance at a time. I wouldn’t be happy about that.
The Never Ending Quest for More Storage Space
I’m one of those people for whom there’s no such thing as too much storage space. In fact I never seem to have enough; from the ever-climbing pile of comic boxes, to the bookshelves that are always getting a couple of extra bits added on, to the CD wallets which seem to be multiplying and the piles of DVDs and blu rays that just don’t fit into the racks anymore, there’s never enough storage space and I’ve been looking into ways to deal with this.
Since the whole world seems to be becoming more and more geared towards outsourcing, that’s what I’ve decided to do with my storage. Anything that I’ve decided is not essential to my day to day existence has been moved into a nearby self storage unit and everything that I really need is in my increasingly Spartan room.
Where before it was filled with comics that I haven’t read for years, books that I’ll probably never read again and over a thousand CDs that are all ripped onto my PC and a load of other random stuff that I really never needed and should have thrown away when I moved, there’s now only things that I deem necessary in there, like the TV, the comics I’m currently collecting, books I might read again or haven’t read yet and my films and games. Basically, everything I really need is there and everything I don’t need but want to keep is in my storage space just up the road. It seems to be working at the moment and I’m very glad about that.
It’s always nice to have the space you need while not having to get rid of things you still want. Maybe I should just move to a bigger place but having some storage space will do for the time being.
Bulking Up With Whey Protein Powder
When it comes to the gym, I’ve always been something of a hard-gainer. I struggle ridiculously with putting on size and as I get older, it seems to be increasingly difficult to keep any muscle growth on without living on a diet which features chicken, some chicken and maybe a bit of chicken with some brown rice on the side if I’m lucky. This isn’t really what you’d describe as a particularly interesting diet and it’s not really the healthiest either, so I’ve decided that using whey protein powder to supplement a healthy diet is a much better approach.
Not how I want to look
Whey protein powder has one major advantage over eating loads of chicken – it’s not eating loads of chicken. That’s a good thing because there’s only so much chicken you can eat before you start to get epically sick of it and never want to see another chunk of white meat. At least when you’re drinking shakes made from whey protein powder, you can get the protein that you need while still having a balanced diet and the occasional treat. It’s also a great way of actually bulking up because any strength and exercise coach will tell you that what you need straight after a workout is protein.
Proteins are the building blocks of your body and after a workout, your body is most receptive to it. That means that getting some protein straight after a workout will help you get big and strong. This another advantage of whey protein powder – people look at you weirdly if you scoff a chicken breast on the way out of the gym, but no one thinks twice about someone downing a protein shake afterwards.
It’s definitely made my diet a lot more interesting now that I’m back in the gym and am trying to put a bit of size on. I’m not trying to look like Arnie used to, but I definitely think my skinny frame needs some more meat on it, and I’m hoping that this helps.
Not Growing Quickly Enough? That’s What Protein Shakes Are For
I’m not someone who’s known for my patience, so perhaps I have unrealistic expectations of looking like Leonidas a few months after joining a gym and lifting a couple of times a week, but even so, I really feel like I should be getting quicker gains. I reckon it’s got something to do with my stupidly fast metabolism, so I’ve decided to counter that with some protein shakes.
I was in two minds about starting a course of these things – there are always the horror stories that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend, they’re not exactly cheap and there’s always the concern that they just won’t work. Protein shakes have always been something that I was a little wary of, plus I wasn’t quite sure if I was ‘cheating’. I want the results, but I don’t want to get them via nefarious means.
Not quite how I want to look.
The thing was, exercise and healthy eating just wasn’t getting me any gains. I was getting stronger, but no bigger, so I decided that protein shakes were the way to go.
I’ve had nicer tasting drinks, but I do seem to be putting on some muscle by taking these a couple of times a day. All told it seems to be doing the job, so I’ve made worse investments.
Do I Need a 3D TV With LED Screen?
I’m something of a gadget hound and I really love my toys, especially multimedia related ones. My room looks like the Curry’s backroom with all the gear in there, from the overpowered PC to the TV setup which is a 1080p plasma TV, Sky HD, blu ray player, Xbox 360 and 1080p media player which plays all the stuff from my external hard drive. It’s all HD and it’s all very shiny. Unfortunately for my bank account, however, there’s all this new LED screen technology which boasts brighter, sharper pictures, smaller footprint and 3D capability in some cases.
The gadget lust is strong with these things, but do I really need it? The LED screen will be nice – it’s always good to be able to see Kate Beckinsale in a sharper picture – but do I want the 3D? I think ‘want’ and ‘need’ are two different things in this case. You see, I’ve been to the cinema to see films in 3D a couple of times lately and haven’t been overly impressed with it. Avatar looked great in a couple of bits (shame about the film), but for the most part, the 3D seemed unnecessary – in fact, it just highlighted the flaws with the technology and do not get me started on Clash of the Titans ‘just throw it in after the film’s done’ approach.
I don’t doubt for a second that 3D TV is the future, but my feeling on it is that the future’s not quite here yet. I might well upgrade the plasma to an LED screen soon though. Those Samsung ones look a bit shiny.
All the time people keep inventing new tech, I will most likely never feel that my setup is complete. That’s probably a little sad.
Look the Part with Credit Card Design
I had a slightly disturbing revelation the other day as I caught my reflection in a shop window as I was walking along – I really do look like I work in the media. That’s not a bad thing necessarily – I am a media graduate, after all – but I felt that my look was almost stereotypically ‘media’ for some reason. There I am with my messy haircut, designer piercings, trendy goatee and obscure band t-shirt all offset with a D&G watch and suddenly it clicked that I really do look like one of those people you often see wandering around London and you can spot them a mile off. I had a fleeting thought of looking into some credit card design just to really get that ‘successful’ look.
It’s a little strange for me, since normally I look like I’m homeless or on the way to see a band in some dive or another, but I quite like the idea of not being poor and not looking like it every now and then, and a custom credit card would probably help me with that. I’m not talking something ostentatious and 80’s and certainly not something like a photo of my parents or something like that, just maybe something a little dark and abstract like one of my Photoshop pieces, I haven’t really decided. In fact, I haven’t really decided on whether or not I’m going to do it, but if I do, it’s going to be something understated but still posy enough to make the investment worthwhile.
All in all, credit card design wasn’t something I’d really considered before I caught that sight of myself in the window, but it’s certainly an interesting idea and I might do it. If nothing else, my wallet’s not looking very distinctive these days.
Storage, Ipswich – the Perfect Revenge
Breakups can be rough on all involved, especially on the person who gets broken up with. This happened to a friend of mine not too long ago; he moved this girl in with him, they were going to get married, they’d even bought a cat, and what happens? She dumps him – not just dumps him, but dumps him for his best friend. This ‘best friend’ wasn’t me, I hasten to add, but you get the idea – it was a serious ‘dude, your life sucks’ moment. What do you do in a situation like that? Revenge, obviously. In this case, storage Ipswich featured heavily.
See, there are loads of ways to handle a breakup: there’s pining for the girl, there’s getting drunk all the time and walking through town at 3am with a bunch of people you don’t know (but who all have really cool hair) and singing ‘The Passenger’ at the top of your voice, there’s fighting her new beau, there’s sleeping with her friends, there’s loads of things. When it came to my friends’ situation though, we decided that we had to get a little meaner than that.
Their place was quite expensive and he doesn’t have the greatest job in the world, and she left in a hurry, leaving a load of her stuff behind. Do you sell everything of hers in a situation like that before she comes back? No, but there’s nothing wrong with making her think that, or, more accurately, think the place was burgled. The day before she came back to the old flat to pick her stuff up, we hired some storage in Ipswich (it’s a flippin’ huge room) and loaded everything into it.
When I say everything, I mean everything. Every. Single. Thing in that flat went into the van (it took three trips) and went into storage in Ipswich. The look on her face when she turned up was priceless; probably as good as my friends’ was when she dumped him for his mate.
The ultimate plan isn’t certain – maybe we’ll take it out of storage; Ipswich has plenty of places we could sell her stuff – or maybe we’ll just gradually post it back to her. The possibilities are endless.
Ultimately, nothing was resolved by this, but it made him feel better and in a situation like this, that’s the most important thing.
So Many Baby Names to Choose From…
When a couple have the first confirmation that they are going to be parents one of the first questions arising is; what will we call our future child? This question propagates to all the family and suddenly everyone is got a name for your baby. This fact confuses even more the future parents. What at the beginning was an election between three or four options now it became a big list of the most peculiar and different baby names you have ever imagined. I going to make a classification of the sources that most of the people take into account at the time to came up with baby names:
Family Members; One of the first option is to name your future child as the same as you or your partner or sometimes yours or your partners parents. This option that used to be one of the baby names preference, now it is decreasing in the recent decades.
Famous People; another common option is to pick up baby names from one of the famous characters of your favourite movie, TV series or program, or any celebrity that take the attention of the parents.
Historic Names; Sometimes people just prefer to go through history in search of epic and biblical names that could reflect the personality and character of their future son.
Weird Baby Names; In special cases, parents decide to go for the most weird and unusual baby names ever heard. I am talking about baby names taken from brands, expressions and all sort of strange terms that sometimes appear on magazines or TV.
If you are thinking about different baby names just have in mind how your future son will feel when he grows. Don’t let you go by fashion or trendy names of the moment, just have in mind that when your son will be a grownup, many things that were cool and interesting at that moment they will not be anymore.
