Not one of those groovy hippies, I’m more a wannabe hippy who tends to have an opinion on pretty much everything

Well nothing much has really happened to me that’s been exciting enough to talk about, but what i can tell you about is my marine tank.

A few weeks back i mentioned about my hair algae issue. Its slowly getting worse, so i decided to take a water sample to my local Marine Shop as i don’t have a phosphate test. Anyway it’s quite high, all I can think it’s going to be down to is too much frozen food and some of the silicon leaching out of the tank.

I bought a tub 100mg of RowaPhos which should hopefully help lower my Phosphate levels but I think it’s going to need to be changed regularly for a few months to get the levels right down.

I was also talking to a mate who wanted to get some retro t shirts printed so we’ve been thinking of getting a large batch of t shirt printing sorted and we would try and flog them any where we can eBay car boots things like that. We’re kind of hoping that we could get a good mark-up on them and either get some more printed up at a later date or just make enough profit to make it viable once.

I’ve had a quick look into t shirt printing companies both on and off line and it appears that buying over the net is cheaper and in a bulk of around 100/150 products

Last night I was left on my own so I thought I would try some online poker. I’ve seen varying websites before such as Full Tilt Poker (I love their TV ads), PKR and 888.

I decided to go with 888 as I’ve seen them covering more of the gambling scene.

I have just been playing free games for the time been just so that I can get familiar with it but i reckon by the end of the month I’ll be playing with small amounts of money.

If i can make a little money from playing poker online then I’d be happy, I’ve deposited £70 into my 888 account and to be honest once that’s gone it’s gone, I’m going to keep a tally so that I know what’s winnings and what is my original deposit.

The Yellow Tang i bought at the weekend isn’t eating any of the nori that I’m putting in the tank, which worries me slightly but he is taking some of the pellets that I’m putting in so I’m not too worried at the moment.

Online Poker

A couple of days ago a flyer came through my door advertising a carpet and uphostery service, I originally dismissed it and went to put it in the bin with the rest of the junk mail however I then got to thinking about my own carpets. They are starting to look a bit shabby and dirty although they haven’t been down that long, only about 2 years, could they do with cleaning would they actually look any better and would having them cleaned damage my carpet and wear them out more?

I decided to give them a call and find out what they could do for me, after initially explaining the size of the rooms in which the dirty carpets were I was given a fairly good price, less than I thought so I asked about the process and the chemicals used. There are a couple of methods they used either Steam cleaning which uses detergent and hot water, dry cleaning which uses solvents and water extraction which uses shampoo.

I decided to go with the water extraction although it takes the longest to dry the chemicals used are milder. All I had to do on the day was move out some of the smaller items of furniture and electrical equipment, the cleaner moved the rest around while he worked once done (only took a couple of hours to do 2 big rooms) I went out for a few hours then when I came back it was pretty much dry. All I had to do then was go over with the vacuum cleaner and suck up a few bits of fluff.

All in all my carpets look a lot better, not like new but nearly so I won’t need to think about replacing them for a good while longer.

Whoo, I’ve just been playing bingo online and just won £320. Well it wasn’t one big win it was about 3 small ones but I didn’t think it was bad for around 15 minutes work and £30.

I signed up and got a free £20 for depositing £10 so that was my £30 total.

I’ve never really been into bingo or bothered trying it, I’ve placed bets online before for the Grand National but hasn’t everyone, so Bingo was something new to me.

It was really easy as the computer Auto Dabbed the cards so you don’t really have to do anything and it automatically claims for you if you have a winning ticket so theoretically you just need to buy your tickets and you could then go and make tea, but half of the fun is watching your numbers come up.

Think i’ll now be taking a trip down to bristol this weekend to spend my windfall.

TV on the Radio’s “Dear Science,” has only been around for six weeks but iTunes is telling me I’ve listened to it over a hundred times since its release date. Its that kind of album: accessible enough that you’re singing along from the second listen but complex enough that you’ll make at new discoveries every time you play it.

It won’t surprise many TVotR’s fans that their latest effort is a work of genius, but it will throw many, me included, that it’s this kind of genius.

Previous TVotR recordings were, to put it mildly, a little bit out there. There was almost always a strong tune and worthwhile lyrics but it was sometimes hard to find them amidst the layers of found and sampled noise, kaleidoscope mix of musical styles and Tunde & Kyp’s fuzzed up vocals. Until now TV on the Radio were pretty much what you might expect from the “Experimental New York art-rock” label they’ve so often been tagged with.

“Dear Science,” pulls that pigeon hole from the wall, smashes it with a hammer then proceeds to dance all night on the remains. It’s a big, blustering album with TVotR’s funk, jazz, hip-hop and rock influences being raided for their most entertaining rather than most esoteric qualities. There’s half a dozen tracks that would do the lads proud as singles, and the album as a whole is a gem that’ll bring them a lot of new fans.

Long term fans needn’t fear the band has lost their edge: dark lyrics and a sampling/instrumental style that make you feel like the combined contents of a music shop and a junk store are being thrown are both in evidence. This isn’t a band that have sold out, they’ve just taken to partying rather than playing with pocket calculators.

Barring a seriously good late upset in December I think “Dear Science,” is album of the year, and hopefully a lot of new fans will be receiving it in their Christmas stockings this year. Well done Tunde Adebimpe, David Sitekand Kyp Malone, with Sitek taking additional credit for being the man in the producer’s chair.

I may be in touch with my inner hippy but I usually draw the line at reading romance novels: I’m all for Love in a general sense but if the specifics mean reading about some 18th century governess who gets kidnapped by a pirate that looks like Fabio you can leave me out of it, thankyouveryfuckingmuch.

My friend Noel is quite aware of this and pestered me to read The Time Traveler’s Wife anyway, and may Lord Shiva bless him for pestering me until I gave in. What a book. I haven’t been quite so leaky around the eyes over a love story since I watched La Vita é Bella at the tail end of a three day Ecstasy bender.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire, a couple who could register a patent on the phrase “meant to be together”. Clare first meets Henry when she is six years old, Henry first meets Clare when he is thirty six, and it’s pretty much love at first sight for both of them. It might sound like the type of affair that would inspire an anti-paedo campaign from the Daily Mail but the central conceit of the novel – Henry’s genetic disorder that causes him to spontaneously time travel – ensures it’s not as twisted as it sounds. Honest.

In many senses it’s a remarkably straightforward book that charts a love affair from inception to conclusion. But Audrey Niffenegger performs a remarkable literary sleight of hand by weaving fantasy, in the form of Henry’s inadvertent time travelling, throughout. It’s a simple – and at first glance rather silly – premise which rapidly draws you in and sends the story soaring to heights that will make even the most red-blooded, beer-guzzling, hairy-chested bloke feel a twinge of romantic vertigo. If you’ve ever thought “we’ll be together forever”, even for a moment, you’ll respond to this beautiful book.

I’m quite a bit behind the times when it comes to The Time Traveler’s Wife (it was published in 2003) so I’ll leave the gushing there for now, but if your girlfriend has been banging on about this book for months or years and you’ve caved enough to look it up on the Internet let me add my voice to the choir in saying READ IT NOW! If you’ve got the slightest bit of romance in your soul you won’t regret it.