(no subject)

[clo_again]

Whoa. An idle click on tennisslash when I'm not expecting the different layout? Should not freak me out as much as it did. That's... weird. Not that I go there much or at all hardly, anymore or ever really, since that's what flists are for. It's just... weird.

You know, I need to start writing tennis slash again so I could open a tennis slash comm on IJ. A proper one, not just mine. Which I will finish shifting fic to...sometime. Later maybe. On a tangent note, I finally got the internet working on my desktop again yesterday and my IJ layout doesn't work right on this screen. Dammit. This is what comes of working in percentages instead of pixels. I wonder if it would work if I changed it to pixels? Mmm.*

(If the interweb explodes in the next five minutes I think we can safely assume the answer to that is 'no'.)

The only other thing of note I accomplished yesterday, besides spending the entire day in my pyjamas because I'm lazy, was working out how to make my own wallpaper and floors for The Sims 2. Much glee was had. This at least puts off me spending money I don't have and shouldn't spend on more expansion packs for a while longer.

Which means I can spend it on a new duvet cover if I find the one I like when we go shopping later. I doubt I will because it was months ago I saw it and I missed the sales but I can hope until we get there and there's no sign of it.


ETA: * It worked. This makes me pissed that I faffed around with percentages for ages the first time I did it.

*

ETA again: I watched Derren Brown's The System last night and oh my *god*, he played us all for suckers. And it worked. (Though howinhell did he apply that 'system' to those journalists and racing people? Was that just him being freakishly clever?) I actually believed he'd lost all that poor woman's money for a second though god, what if the original horse had won? There had to be a set-up in there somewhere but I don't care because it was awesome when he explained it all with that little smirk.

Though *nine hours* flipping a coin just to film a row of heads. Nine freaking hours*. Derren you are insane and wonderful and your beard is so delightfully evil.

If I became famous tomorrow? Derren Brown is the person I'd most look forward to meeting. Not Roger Federer or Simon Pegg or Neil Gaiman. Derren Brown. Because he is just... just evilly awesome.

*

I also watched Primeval which was so, so bad (slow motion? Really? You didn't hear what we said about Torchwood series one then no? You must've been some distance away because we were yelling pretty loud)except for the parts where it was actually good. You can see this show really trying to be good and having good ideas, it's just... the editing was bad last night and considering Helen and Lester are the only ones whose acting I enjoy and they have the least screen time? Yeah. Claudia/Jenny/whatever-her-name-is is awful; I thought she'd got a bit better over last series but it was like back to basics at the start of this one. I've got nothing against her with Cutter (no matter how much he comes across as married to Stephen and they were so having a lover's tiff last night, it was *hilarious*) but crikey woman, try not to make me wince with every stilted line you say.

Still it's entertaining and it's not like I was ever expecting it to be actually *good*. Throw a group of cute people together and have them hunt for dinosaurs; the acting can be as bad as it likes and I'd still be there because *dinosaurs*. Heh.

Comments

[chickybee32.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Been meaning to tell you for a while - when we went to Lee's work Xmas break up at the horse races, there was a horse called - no shit - Rodger Roddick.

I immediately went into hysterics. Then Lee had to explain to his boss why I was laughing without giving away my slash fetish.

[clo.livejournal.com]

*is dying of laughter* THAT IS AWESOME. :D It's like the entire world conspires to make them an OTP. If I won the lottery this week, I'd buy that horse and then I could have a pet called that with the totally legitimate excuse that it wasn't me who named him.

Oh Lee. ^_^ He puts up with all this and he *still* gets an Inmate Invasion of his wedding. We'll have to be on our best behaviour. Not that that's saying much. :D

[chickybee32.livejournal.com]

It was GREAT! Although he's not sure he's gonna take me to any work functions ever again.

*snort* He knew what what he was getting into when he proposed. And totally innocent the guy ain't.. there's been talk of a bucks vs hens paintball match. Plus his main concern is convincing me not to walk down the aisle to the Imperial Death March. I think anything else is of little to no concern.

So yeah.. free reign for Inmate chaos!

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

Could you give me a quick synopsis of the Derren Brown stunt, to see if I can figure out at least the horse part.

[clo.livejournal.com]

I think the horse one and the horse-people/journalists must've been two different things, because I can't see how the horse one worked for the journalists - I think they were just the usual Derren smarts, knowing which photo they'd pick out of 500 and so on, to illustrate that nothing is impossible (though it was pretty damn impressive even for him; it was something like a million to one odds that he'd do it).

A quick synopsis of the horse one would be: Derren told one woman which horse would win a certain race; it did and he told her another one and another one, until he'd told her five, all of which had won their races. Based on that, he got her to bet £4000 on the horse he said would win the sixth... and then explained his system to her *after* he'd placed the bet using her £4000.

(If you want to guess how it was done, stop reading. But I'm such a sucker for believing in Derren that I didn't even come close to working it out.)




Basically; it was filmed all the way through as if this one woman was being told the winners of certain horses races, until at almost-end Derren explained that actually they'd started with a group of 7,776 people, one six-horse race and divided the 7,776 people into six groups. Each of those groups was told a different horse would win. The group who got the winning horse was split into six again and each of those told a different horse wold win another six-horse race. This went on and on, with groups of people who didn't win dropping out as they went along, until there were only six people left for the fifth race and then only the one person out of that six who was told the right winner. After Derren had placed her bet for her, he explained it all and told her actually he'd just picked a random horse from the sixth race and he had no idea who'd win.

She was not amused. Even less so when the horse Derren said would win... lost. But it was okay because Derren actually changed his mind and bet on the horse that *did* win, which was the part where I suspect trickery because he couldn't know.

And he played the audience for suckers too, because it was designed to make you believe he actually knew the winners. *sighs* Fiendishly awesome little man.

[fionaandlossi.livejournal.com]

I think I know what the horse thing is a variant on and I've seen it done but dude, I so wouldn't use money on it. It's very similar to the knowing which picture people are going to chose thing.

I imagine he must have put £4000 on all the horses, it's the only way to do it, plus it fits in with the other races and he could probably claim not to a have cheated.

I'm also amused by how much that resembles the Scoop6.

Fiona