The end of 2004 was dominated by the Asian Tsunami which occurred on Boxing Day. This carried over into January 2005 with various fundraising events including the Tsunami Relief concert in Cardiff. This was just the start of the big charitable events, with Live8 happening later in the year, highlighting the need to Make Poverty History in 2005.
BBC 2 broadcast the controversial Jerry Springer: The Opera on 8th January, while Celebrity Big Brother got underway two days prior on the 6th.
The countdown to Easter started on Shrove Tuesday, early this year on February 8th.
The IOC came to check out London ahead of making a decision and ultimately awarding the country the Olympics on July 6th, just a day prior to the London bombings.
Snow came at the end of February, and it was time for me to set up SnowCam to keep an eye on the situation. If we get snow in 2006, expect a return! Special coverage continued with HoleWatch as the gas man paid us a visit.
March saw the end of off-season as Chessington and Thorpe re-opened, although I didn’t get to ride Slammer for ages: it had a lot of rather serious breakdowns (an S&S curse?). Similarly, I didn’t get to ride Rush until the ECC Trip after I returned from the Lake District.
Alton Towers gave us Rita: Queen of Speed, although they briefly renamed her celebrating Charles and Camilla’s wedding day. Just one of their crazy marketing stunts.
After an absence of sixteen years, Doctor Who returned and turned out to be fantastic. Channel 4 won the rights to show Lost, although it was so good I ended up buying the DVDs rather than wait for the once-weekly episodes.
Not everything was good: The BBC revealed their ugly new weather graphics and people were unimpressed.
Webwise, I found Audioscrobbler, NASA World Wind, Creative Archive, Google Desktop and Talk and the bizarre DressKevin.com.
2005 was the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, leading to a host of events in the summer and a spectacular finale in Trafalgar Square in October.
My big trip of the year happened in July as I visited Greece, principally to present a paper at INC 2005 but also to do some sightseeing on the island of Samos and in Athens. I arrived back home just in time for the Claygate Flower Show and to read the latest Harry Potter book.
Greece wasn’t the only place I went in the second half of the year though. As well as Devon, I visited a variety of theme parks including the bunny-infested Oakwood, Alton Towers and Drayton Manor and Flamingo Land with the ECC, plus Lightwater Valley and Legoland. Alton put on a great fireworks display despite all their legal problems. However, sadly Professor Burp bowed out at Chessington at the end of their season.
Probably one of my biggest achievements of the year was passing my Transfer Exam in September, meaning I’m well on track for finishing my PhD in the next few months.
There was a rude awakening on December 11th, but the end of the month saw Christmas and a visit to London’s Fair at Hyde Park for some final coaster riding on 2005 earlier today.
2006 looks to be a fun year, with plenty to look forward to.
I just got this from Sapan:
Now that another year has gone by, and I have had a chance to reflect on these past 12 months…My heartfelt appreciation goes out to all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me “forwards” over the past 12 months. Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed and healthy.
* Extra thanks to whoever sent me the email about rat crap in the glue on envelopes - because I now have to go get a wet towel every time I need to seal an envelope.
* Also, I scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason. Because of your genuine concern, I no longer drink Coca Cola because I know it can remove toilet stains, which is not exactly an appealing characteristic.
* I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS.
* I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.
* I no longer go to shopping malls because someone might drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.
* I no longer worry about my soul because at last count, I have 363,214 angels looking out for me.
* Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward an email to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.
* I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl on the internet who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time).
* I no longer have any money at all in fact - but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special on-line email program.
Yes, I want to thank you all so much for looking out for me that I will now return the favour..!!
If you don’t send this email to at least 144,000 people in the next 7 minutes, a large pigeon with a wicked case of diarrhoea will land on your head at 5:00 PM (GMT) this afternoon. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of my next door neighbour’s ex-mother-in-law’s second husband’s cousin’s beautician.
DO IT NOW OR ELSE…!!
rotfl
I’ve just finished decorating our Christmas trees with my Mum. In fact, she didn’t turn out to be a very good decoration so we took her down and hung baubles on them instead.
Here they are in all their glory:
I think I may have overdone the Nativity animals a bit:
Christmas Number One time again, eh? So, what’s it to be? By the looks of it there’s a choice of either another dreary Westlife cover, the novelty Is This The Way To Santa’s Grotto, or the results of a reality TV contest.
But wait… there’s also the JCB song by Nizlopi. Admittedly nothing to do with Christmas, but at least the lyrics go a bit deeper than the dross.
Come on, make JCB Christmas number 1!
Stupid, stupid router. I’m getting fed up with resetting it every few page views in Firefox. As for the supposed uPnP support, XP recognises it but doesn’t seem to use it. I can’t stand any more MSN Messenger file transfers being sent through the grindingly slow Microsoft servers rather than going p2p.
In short, if you ever buy a router don’t buy the cheap unbranded ones like I did.
Anyway, I’ve bought myself an early Christmas present: A new Linksys router from everybody’s favourite techy store Maplin. Just gotta wait for the postie to bring it and I’ll be rejoining the rest of society in getting a decent internet experience. Hell, I even splashed out an extra £20 for a Wireless router. Oooohh, Chrimbo is techy heaven…
Thorpe’s Project Stealth hit a landmark on Friday (yes, landmark, not landmine) as its first train was launched and made it safely back to the station.
Roll on 15th March…
