I’ve just been reading through the blogs over at IGN, and I came across a fantastic entry which describes a pamphlet given to the author by a chimney sweep. It’s hilarious. It goes as follows:

“This is not a joke pamphlet. It was actually handed to me be a chimney sweep last year — and I only just now rediscovered it again and scanned it. Apart from looking like the soulless and much too matter-of-fact drawings in airplane safety pamphlets, I just can’t help but laugh out loud when I see the shit (literally) that happens to this troubled woman:

It’s raining into her chimney. Leaves are falling into her chimney. A squirrel is crumbling nuts into her chimney. Embers are escaping her chimney and setting the roof AND her favorite fir tree on fire. A bat is flying into her chimney. A skunk is running down her chimney, farting as it hones in on a bird nest that some naughty swallows have built right above the flu. Below the nest: a family of dirty mice. To make things even worse, a racoon is stealing heat; impudently warming its tail as draft, smell or noise lines escaping the chimney let the poor lady know that something’s not right.

But the final insult to all this injury is the pigeon on top. Not content to compete with the swallows and build another fire hazard nest, this gray little bastard is actually casually leaning back to take a crap down the shaft.

If only she hadn’t wasted her money on that purple cashmere turtleneck sweater! If only she had capped her chimney.

If only she had capped her chimney.”

Original blog entry can be found here. I didn’t just link to it, as it contains a whole bunch of other stuff that wasn’t relevant.

It’s SUCS election time again! That means that SUCS needs a new exec committee, comprised of 4 members - President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Publicity Officer. This year, as many of you will know, I was President. It’s been a heck of a lot of fun, but also much harder than I thought it was going to be. I’d really like to be on the exec again next year, though, to continue working on the stuff we’ve been doing this year. I also want to try and arrange a bunch of events to get our members involved - in particular, a LAN party, which we’ve been promising people for a while.

This year, I’m running for Publicity Officer and Secretary. I’d really like to be the Publicity Officer, but I think I’ll still be able to do most of the things I’d like to do if I was Secretary, so that’d work too. For those of you in SUCS, and eligible to vote (you must be in SUCS and must be a current student at Swansea University), please vote for me! If you’re still not convinced, I’ve put something of a manifesto online at http://sucs.org/~frosty/election. You can vote at https://sucs.org/vote/.

I haven’t blogged for rather a long while (yet again), but I’ve really been wanting to. I’m going to try and start posting more often, as there’s a whole bunch of things I’d like to talk about.

The conversation went something like this:

09:46 saya is gutted the posty isn’t abbot
09:48 Dez: saya> you want the postman to become head of a monastery?
09:49 talyn256 writes a new Catholic children’s programme, “Popeman Pat”
09:49 talyn256: Delivering letters to the valleys in his little popemobile
09:50 frosty: tal: ~ and everywhere he goes, there’ll be knock- ring- communion through your dooooor! ~

So, I present to you… Popeman Pat! Click the picture to embiggen it.

My newest form of procrastination is making animations! I’ve been playing about all afternoon with a whiteboard, a webcam and Monkey Jam, a Windows app for making stop motion videos. A similar, and better-looking (but not free) alternative on OS X is iStopMotion. I recorded the video with MonkeyJam because my external webcam doesn’t work with a Mac (it’s the EyeToy camera from my PS2!) and then edited and added music in iMovie on my MacBook. A whiteboard is a cool way of doing it, because you only have to redraw little bits, and not the whole image. Anyway, enjoy.

‘Birdy’ on YouTube

Here’s a quick recipe for you, now the evenings are starting to draw in, and it’s getting cooler and rainier outside.

I use Green & Blacks instant hot chocolate to make this, but I guess you can use whatever you like best. I’d recommend using one that’s fairly high in actual chocolate, though, and not too sweetened or milky.

Heat up some milk in a pan - keep stirring and keep an eye on it, otherwise it’s likely to boil over or burn to the pan. Put however much hot chocolate you’re supposed to into your mug, along with half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a pinch of hot chili powder (you may have to adjust this to suit your tastes). Pour in the warm milk, stirring constantly. Then sit back, and drink. Mmmmmm……

Nice as an occasional alternative to normal hot chocolate.

Me and Hannah have been being arty, and have painted a painting to go on the wall of my bedroom in our house in Swansea that we’ll be moving into shortly. We took a photo of ourselves with Photo Booth:

and then painstakingly recreated it using acrylic paints on canvas. With our bare hands and everything. And I think it looks rather snazzy:

…frosty!

Let’s just hope I’m nothing like Samson, and all of my 1337 skillz weren’t contained within my hair.

I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of Photobooth!

UPDATE: There are two more new ones here and here. I love this program!

I found this meme on Flickr earlier today - people take a photo of the contents of their bag, label everything, and then post it to the ‘what’s in your bag’ group for everyone to see. It’s rather materialistic and consumer-whoreish, but interesting nonetheless. At the time of writing this, there are nearly 2,250 photos in the group. Wowzers. So, anyway, I thought I’d join in. Here’s my entry:

What’s In My Bag?

I realised the other day that I’d written no code over the summer (despite wanting to write rather a lot), and figured I should probably start getting back into it what with another year at university growing ever nearer. So, to that end, I present Frosty’s Marvellous Password Generator!

UPDATE: I’ve re-written FMPG in Python, because it’s betterer. The download link now leads to the new version. download

Frosty’s Marvellous Password Generator does exactly what it says on the tin: generates a password! It hasn’t been extensively tested, and probably isn’t terribly well written. It’s pretty much the first thing I’ve written in Python, so hey!

Note: you need Python to run it!