Archive for the 'General' Category:

This Sunday we’re off on our 3 week African Dreams adventure, to help restore an orphan day-care centre.

Expect plenty of pictures and copy once we return, but until then, you’ll have to twiddle your thumbs, as slickhouse will be quiet for once.

See you all soon!

As you may already know, we’re travelling to Botswana at the end of July, to help an orphanage out for a few weeks.

I visited Tunisia back in February, but as it was in the North of Africa, we didn’t need anything in the way of injections. However, South Africa is a different story - requiring us to have everything but Malaria, via injections from the Doctors. Malaria prevention is an option, but in the form of tablets.

So, today after work, Anneka and I went to get our injections - one in each arm. We have to return twice more to get top-ups before we fly, though the worst is over.

I seem to remember everyone dreading injections back in School, but it’s a different story now - with barely any pain at all.

I’m sitting here typing this with my arms feeling numb-er-er more and more. Fortunately, I have some beer to hand that should numb the, well, numbness.

A useful piece of information for those undertaking charity work - the injections were free to us, as we are volunteering - saving us £150+ (each), which can be spent on the orphanage itself.

Hello Lincolnshire Echo/County News reader!

If you’ve stumbled across slickhouse.com by mistake, then you may be looking for the African Dreams site, documenting our trip to Botswana in July:

botswana.slickhouse.com

Those of you that haven’t read this week’s Echo/County News will have missed the two articles about our trip to Botswana. Take a look at the above sub-domain to learn more about our fund-raising!

I’ve used the name Lazlow as my online nickname for several years now. Many people utilise the semi-anonymity of an alias when signing up to forums; newsgroups; mailing lists; blogs and so on.

I chose the name Lazlow back in 2002 when we were gaming in what was dubbed, the ‘Geek Lab‘ at our Uni. In the past, I didn’t have a need for a pseudonym to identify me, but during online or LAN games, nicknames became compulsory.

If you’ve never heard of the real Lazlow before, then have a quick read of Wikipedia’s article. He’s basically a Technology Journalist from the US, who has provided a lot of the vocals and produced many of the radio stations for Grand Theft Auto, amongst other things.

I believe I originally opted for the name Fernando, who was one of Lazlow’s radio guests on Grand Theft Auto 3’s Chatterbox - but I then settled on Lazlow as I didn’t want people to associate me with a Latino pimp.

Why am I rambling on about my own alias? Well, whilst Googling for random words/phrases, I realised that my profile on bit-tech is 6th on google.co.uk and 5th on google.com - does it make me the number 1 Lazlow alias user? Probably not, but it’s something to tell the grandchildren in later life.

I’ve also highlighted something that I never realised before - Google.com and Google.co.uk (with the latter set as ‘Worldwide‘) produce different search results.

One final point is that Google’s spiders take a lot longer to update listings compared to MSN - not that I’d ever think of using an alternative to Google, no matter how many fewer characters it uses in its URL. But Google still lists slickhouse.com’s description as my list of header links, whereas MSN has updated it to reflect the meta I recently added.

Which search engine do you constantly use - and why?

For my 23rd birthday, my parents bought me a pair of tickets to go and see Ricky Gervais’ latest stand-up show, Fame. They also threw in a night in the local Hilton and valet parking, which was nice.

Anneka and I set off mid-afternoon from Lincoln, to check-in at the Nottingham Hilton by about 5pm. We arrived in Nottingham at about 4pm, but it took us a further 2 hours to park. If you’ve been to Nottingham you’ll understand me when I say it’s shite for car travellers. Apparently the mayor of Nottingham changed the roads to be a crappy one-way system to put people off driving into the city centre. It’s put me off for life and I’ll be sticking to rail transport from now on.

With that set-back aside, we headed out into the city, once the bags were unpacked, to grab something to eat prior to the start of the show at 7:30pm. We ended up in a large ‘French’ Cafe named Cafe Rouge - though to my disappointment, it wasn’t red. The service was slow, but the food was great.

The doors opened at 6:30pm but they were still queueing as we arrived at about 7:10pm. The show kicked off with Ricky’s usual supporting act, who’s name I always forget. But he was good.

Though Ricky made a dramatic entrance compared to his previous two shows, walking on stage wearing a crown and robe - with Matthew Kelly announcing that the King was here. Staring at the name RICKY for the remainder of the show was different:

It definitely echoed his fame and fortune, especially since making it big in Hollywood.

I know many people who detest the ‘iPodge’ but his humour converted Anneka from a hater to a believer in no time at all. The show just proved to me how hilarious he still is and always will be.

One final point - he did a very brief re-enactment of his dance as he walked off the stage, though on the Jonathan Ross show the week prior, he had a dance-off with Travolta.