Baseball Funny

Lindsay is directing these days, and here's her latest and greatest video

Baseball Fantasy Camp with Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins - watch more funny videos

End of the night takedowns

When I was a little younger, I used to always hate to leave a party early, just in case I missed anything. I'm old enough to need my sleep now, so it doesn't bother me so much anymore, but I still wonder what I might have missed out on.

If you're the same, and you were at Heidi's birthday party last weekend, I was lucky enough to film the second last event (the sucking all the helium out of the balloons moment didn't come out so good in the pitch darkness of a rainy night), so you no longer have to feel like you missed out.

Apologies in advance for the drunken slurring of words - to be honest I had no recollection of this incident until I reviewed the camera the next day. And watch with amazement as the talent of Ms Klassen shines through......

That was some weekend

So we managed to pack a few things in this weekend. Saturday morning we headed up just north of Loveland to a hot rod/custom car show.



We had planned on just an hour or two, but there were fields and fields of pretty amazing cars, so we obviously blew way past the initial time we allocated (and we had to stand in line for about half an hour to get something for lunch). It was worth it though, as there were plenty of top notch cars there.



Then after a quick blast back down I25, and a shower, we grabbed a couple of drinks and headed over to Neil and Lauren's Housewarming Party. It must be the summer for parents, as Neil's Mam and Dad are across as well, so I think that was the highest Geordie concentration in Denver for a while.



There was definitely a lot of bouncy castle action (and some of it not even involving any kids).



We actually managed to stay out until midnight, along with a few other likely suspects, and I think everyone had a blast. I know we did...

Mr Batty Speaks (but only for 5 minutes)

Where 2.0 was this week, and Pete had the chance to do a 5 minute Ignite presentation on Whereyougonnabe (20 slides, auto-forwarded every 15 seconds). If you follow him on Twitter, or spoke to him in the last few weeks, you'll realize that the short format is harder than being allowed to speak for a longer time period. It looks like all the hard work paid off though - his talk is at the 35 minute mark below.

Vote For Pete

Vote here (and I quite fancy visiting when he wins)

Jack Richard Tonkin Arrives into the World

First off, apologies for the lateness of this post. Blame my usual inherent laziness combined with a quick trip at the start of the week. But, we have a new Tonkin in the world - Jack Richard, born on January 25th at 9.16pm. He weighed in at 7lb 10oz and measured 20.5 inches (presume that was his total length given his age, rather than him getting out some early bragging rights...)

Aly's doing good, Tonks is surviving the increased responsibility without exploding in a stress filled mess, and they're home from hospital enjoying their family time. Congrats guys - you did good.

Liam Jeffrey Ash Arrives

In a rare up to the minute report, Liam Jeffrey Ash arrived in the world at 9.30am this morning, weighing in at 7lb 12oz. So, congrats to Kimmie and Ash - we'll be cracking open the champagne tonight in celebration (as promised). No word yet on whether his first request for a Vegemite sandwich quickly followed....

Update - there's an official web site here (and just for the record, Mac's are great ;-)

Beatrix Olivia Mary Armstrong, Welcome to the World

On Saturday July 12th, Rachel finally had her latest addition to the family pop out, and both new baby and mother are doing well. I don't have any pics yet, but I'll post when I do receive them (trust me, I asked). I did get the "I managed to be shopping at 5, and had the baby at 7" comment though, so I think Rach was pretty happy about that (not sure if that was coz the labor was short, or the fact that she managed to get some extra shopping in before being holed up inside for a few days?).

In related news, Faye decided to have her baby a little early yesterday, so welcome to the world Mia Hall as well. Mother and baby are doing well (and you have to be impressed with a girl who calls work 4 hours into her labor to let us know she's not going to be in the office that day!).

And in related news, if you haven't heard already, Tonks and Aly have joined the "we're having a baby soon" gang - estimated delivery around the end of January, but given recent experiences, it could be earlier or later. Congrats!

UPDATE - pics arrived from Rach

Galerie Montmartre

Many years ago, when I was fresh off the plane, there was a ridiculously cheerful, helpful and knowledgeable person who helped me survive in a foreign country (and get paid pretty close to the date that I was meant to). Her name was Shelley Trbuhovich (otherwise known as Princess) and we've been friends ever since.

She, along with her husband Stephan (who happens to also be one of the coolest people in the world - funny how that happens), left the US a good few years ago, and set up their own business doing something completely different - selling vintage art posters at Galerie Montmartre.

Well, it seems that the company is doing pretty well now, moving from the original online stores to their own "space" last year, and both of them enjoying every minute of it. Shelley was interviewed by the local press recently, and they posted the interview on the web here.

So, if you ever fancy some original vintage posters, you now know where to go (and they ship worldwide).

The Other One

The other Aaron I know (apart from myself, although presuming that I know myself is probably a little presumptuous) went live today with an initial release 10 webisodes. I haven't had a chance to view any yet, but I'm highly recommending it anyway. Check it out here.

Fav pic of the recent holiday

017
Originally uploaded by Neil Stone.

As Neil said, you can take the boy out of Newcastle, but you can't take Newcastle out of the boy.

Both Tonks and Neil finally got their photos uploaded, so check them out.

JB's Bachelor Party/Pub Crawl

You don't realize how you miss a decent pub crawl until 50 of your closest friends all pile down Colfax for a bit of an event. This one happened to be to celebrate the impending wedding of JB/Tartley/Jon/insertanothernamehere. A great turnout was further compounded late in the evening for Dana's engagement gig, resulting in even more people taking over the bars and sending barstaff into a little frenzy.

Luckily for us, the Aussies left their whistles at home (although a certain wife of an Aussie has the capacity to use the natural whistle approach to round up the troops). The bars were the usual eclectic mix of places we wouldn't normally set foot it, and places we wouldn't normally leave until thrown out at closing time. The weather did it's usual Denver in Springtime thing - sunny most of the day, somehow turning into a decent snowfall for the periods we were expected to walk between bars.

Oh, and we had a Nun with us, and it turns out s/he was an expert cowbell player....

Pics are here

The Epic Journey

You might have met Glenn. We've worked together on and off since I got off the plain 10 years ago, often on the same projects. If you think you might have met him, but can't quite remember, you haven't met him. He's the guy we all used (along with Mr Bland, obviously, and occasionally Mr Penn) to check out how much the new girlfriend could take of our friends, and whether or not they could survive in our social circle. It was a pretty brutal baptism of fire, but all our current wives (oh how we've grown up) passed the test and we're better off for it.

So, anyway, the fact that Glenn managed to convince a female to spend the rest of their life with him is often a mystery to us, especially as Jill is actually one of the coolest people in the world.
And so, a week before she was due to give birth to their 4th child, Glenn attends a conference on the other side of the country. As you can imagine, planes, trains and automobiles ensued after "the call". Full excruciating details are here (and trust me when I tell you it's worth a read).

And congrats to you both! And welcome to the world little Goodrich - just take after your mother and you're going to be just fine ;-)

What? No Posts?

I could list the usual excuses, but I'll leave that for another time. At least it's not me on the road this week(unless you call a day trip up to Fort Collins to grill some Uni students as to why they want a real job as being on the road), so I'm thankful for some things.

I think the most notable thing this week has to be the resurgence of Nixta - it appears the ease of use of Tumblr has sent him into a posting frenzy, which more than makes up for my lack of posts, so check it out. He's bound to slow down, get pissed off or lazy soon, so you better be quick ;-)

Also in the news this week was the emergence from "stealth mode" of Mr Batty's latest creation whereyougonnabe.com - initial demos got very positive reviews, so I'm waiting for my Alpha or Beta testing status to be confirmed (I begged, but wasn't promised a thing). Unfortunately, being on my own this week meant I had to stay home Tuesday night, so I missed the whole thing, so sorry Pete. It even won the exit poll (see, you just can't get away from election fever over here).

And Happy Birthday Ella (although technically it's tomorrow, the 7 hours difference make this perfectly on time). I'll give you a call later on! 8-)

Spatial Networking

Despite a brief rumour that he was taking up professional wedding photography, Mr Batty finally decided to end his 6 month long swan around the world to start up a new company - Spatial Networking.

Stay tuned for what it's actually going to do (maps and space and social and networking and stuff), and of course, good luck Pete.

Lance and Steph Get Married

P1030009.JPG
Originally uploaded by Aaron in Denver.

And we had the pleasure of attending, along with a lot of other smiling happy people. It was a great night, we even got there on time (just...), and despite the weather not co-operating at the last minute, everything went off without a hitch (that's what it looked like from where I was sitting, anyway).

I did manage to take a few photos, so they're here, and the video below when they were all arriving (9 groomsmen and bridesmaids - a new record for a wedding I've attended).

iPhone's Extra Functionality?

Still resisting, despite an ongoing full pressure assault (mainly by myself on myself, in my head - although Nick did post a comment on Pete's site that he still can't believe I didn't get one - trust me mate, it's day to day).



Oh, and might I take this completely inopportune moment to announce that FROSTIES IS BACK!!!! And Mr Hartley at some point in the past decided that he'd start updating his site again. The world is a better place, although I'm not really into the whole discussion on how to write musical notes. If you've ever been anywhere near me when I felt compelled to sing, or try to play an instrument, you'd understand. Not pretty, and definitely not clever.

Random Quotes

So, I've been on a bit of a social networking blast lately (which I think of as some sort of weird experiment to see where most/any of my friends are, and I'll try and summarize at some point in the future). And I didn't actually Facebook anyone's "mom" by the way - it's just a pic.

So, today was Facebook day - absolutely shocking on the number of people I know on there (thanks Bex!), but given it started off doing schools and colleges in the USA, I'm at a slight disadvantage I think. Anyway, it did turn up a "Newcastle" network, with about 100 people from Shields, and way more from Whitley Bay (not sure how that works - if someone wants to explain it, feel free), and then looking at a couple of peoples profiles, I came across the following quotes, which I thought were worth a post (but I have had a couple of drinks, so apologies if you're bored with them).

"If alcohol kills millions of brain cells, then why does it never kill the ones that make me want to drink?"

"God kissed Britain on its coast and the result was Whitley Bay" (Even though I'm biased, I still don't quite agree completely with this.....)

"It's better to have syphilis than be a Leeds United fan..."

Wedding Season is Almost Upon Us

This summer is going to be a bit of an epic, now that last years engagements are coming to their natural fruition. Not only are the weddings going to make for some great weekends, there's always the trips to Vegas, or Pub Crawls (I'm sure literally) along Colfax to test the liver performance (not to mention the influx of friends from various continents to join in the celebrations).

So first up is Neil and Lauren (June though, so still a bit of time to try and get the belly small enough to fit into the suit), so in honor of their unusual obsession with music (and because I know they're the other readers apart from my immediate family), I've dedicated the following to them.

Pete Gets (another) New Blog

Going for an all time record in number of blogs and web pages created (rivalled only by Mr Goodrich, but his don't count as he never actually deploys them), Mr Batty has set up a new one that he's actually keeping up to date (more posts than days in existence so far). I'm guessing the extra spare time he has is a direct link to the extra output, so at least there's a chance of him keeping this up for at least a week or two. Site is here if you're interested (and he's tracking to see where you're coming from.....).

Wallstrip Hits the Big Time

So I've been meaning to post this forever (and maybe even add a Wallstrip widget on here) for the last few months, but it's another one of those things that sorta fell by the wayside. Anyway, given today Lindsay is talking about Lindsay Corp, I thought it would be worth a mention.

So, if you haven't head about it, they do a video blog (vlog even...) of stocks that have recently hit a high on the stock market. Not very interesting you might think, but they add in a decent amount of humo(u)r to make it watchable, and it stars Lindsay Campbell, survivor of a self inflicted spell in the Penn household (and pictured here with another survivor, Mr Al Brown, dancing man).

Anyway, here's the vid.

You Tube Catchup Time

One of the problems with not having any time to post during the week is that you end up with way too many vids to post directly on the site (not through laziness you understand, just I know how you all hate to scroll down too far..).

So, one post, and a few links so that if you're interested, you can click through and watch. Colbert gets the post, as I'm not sure I've ever posted him up here before, and just so I don't come across as a total Apple fan who doesn't recognize there may be the occasional flaw in some of their stuff (another 2 years with Cingular is probably going to make Kathy shiver in fear..).



Other vids

The iPhone close up, Bush's Legacy, Drunk Stewie, and lots of Craig Ferguson here, here, here, here and here.

Oh yeah, and this one I couldn't resist - 8 year old twins strutting their skateboarding stuff (they're even smaller than Wee Dod was in his video!)

Rob's Injury

I promised I'd post a pic of Rob's multi-colored hand (prior to Op), so here it is. Oh, and the pics from Lauren's going away get together are now up on Flickr here.

Friday Updates

Another shocking week for updates - going to try and catch up with cool stuff from CES, MacWorld and Detroit over the weekend, while huddled in front of the fire until another (very) cold front passes through.

So, this is a quickie, about nothing connected at all.

MyBlogLog got bought by Yahoo - hopefully lots of cool integration with Flickr and the other tools they have, but we'll wait and see. In case you forgot, they're the people who kindly supply the info over to the right about who has visited the page from their wide and varied collection of fellow bloggers (and hello if you're here because of them). I've actually used the site way more than I ever thought I would, and ended up some damn fine sites that I never otherwise would have even considered (how's that for a plug?). In my list of daily reads while stuffing my face with an awful sandwich from the shop downstairs, if that tells you anything.

My Slingbox is up and running. Works great on the PC in the house, haven't yet got it to work outside of my network (I had to do some techie things with the router to open up ports and the like, but still no luck yet), and trying to work out if the Mac version is either not quite as good yet, or if my Mac is too old to process all the data quick enough for a decent viewing experience. Another weekend project I think to look into all this (along with finally taking down the Christmas tree lights!).

Photos need loading from Laurens going away get together, and Brent/Troy/Brother-in-law's birthday party at the bowling alley downtown (I bowled an astounding 135!!! so was pretty pleased). Another weekend thing. Speaking of Lauren's going away, this is where the Iron Monger revealed his latest injury (photo to come soon I hope). Proving how hard he is (I think it was all that wind in the hills of Consett that did it), he felt no pain, but couldn't grip anything. Fast forward to yesterday, where an operation involving sleep, 6 pins, a few cuts and some rebuilding of the thumb and wrist area where required to hopefully get him fully fit again. So get well soon Rob.....