Action Man vs. G.I. Joe vs ... Action Ken?

I just signed up for Facebook a couple of days ago there, as I already mentioned. I was uploading photos of myself and organising them a bit. I made an album called Action Ken which contains a variety of pictures of me engaged in a number of activities such as rock climbing, longboarding and so on. A Canadian friend (one Mr. Robert Augi) asked the question, "Do they make Action Ken dolls?" It got me thinking a bit.

First of all, I realised that Rob probably didn't realise the genius of what he was suggesting. I say that not to be unkind to my friend, but because being from North America he probably had no experience of Action Man while growing up. He more likely had exposure to G.I. Joe. (If you're interested in the history, you can follow the two links to compare them. They were made by the same company and G.I. Joe came 2 years earlier.)

The other aspect of Rob's genius was of course the Ken doll, from the Barbie world. Unbeknownst to Rob, my friends and I used to speculate about the difference between Action Man and Ken. If you put them side by side and had a look, Ken was pretty pathetic and a bit of a pansy really. We came to the conclusion that if they went to school together, Action Man probably beat up Ken most playtimes.

So, now we come to the crux of it all - Action Ken! With all the sad history and the over-feminine Ken role-model for boys who play with Barbie (hmm, dubious target audience, mind you) it's time for a more masculine, adventure-loving Ken. The kind of Ken who could give Action Man a run for his money and the occasional shiner in a lunchtime brawl. I think we could be on to something here.

Peeling Spuds

Do you ever find your brain working overtime when there's really no need to? I had this experience today. Mum's been away this week and it's fallen to me to be the official spud peeler for the troops. I can't speak for anyone else, but I imagine most people might daydream or imagine they were in a happier place while peeling the potatoes. Personally, I was trying to work out the best, most efficient, most accurate route to peel in order to achieve a suitably rounded spud. Here are some of my findings.

1) One approach I like is to take one long strip round the "middle" of the spud. After that you have two hemispheres which can be tackled one at a time. I try to go for a spiral from the edge of the area towards the middle and award bonus points for achieving it without the peel breaking.

2) A variation on this approach is to go all the way round the middle and then continue to tackle the first hemisphere on the same move. That way you could theoretically do the whole spud in two pieces. I suppose, now that I am actually writing this down, it could be possible to start at the top of one hemisphere and spiral out and then back in the other side to achieve the utopia of potato peeling prowess - the "oner".

3) The angle of cut with the knife affects two things - width of strip and amount of potato removed with the skin. Think of the extremes - a slight shaving will barely remove the tiniest bit of skin, whereas a 90 degree attack will cut the unpeeled potato in two. I don't know which part should be discarded in the latter case. I suppose it is generally agreed that the shallower the cut, the better. This maximises the amount of potato you are left with and that is, after all, what we're all about in the potato peeling business - delivering the peeled potato to you, the consumer.

Finally, I would just like to announce that this week is in fact the first time I have "made" (that should really be "prepared") potatoes from start to finish.

Just a Pump

I've been feeling really bored lately. I mean REALLY bored. So bored in fact it could border depression. Ever since I came home from France I've not been doing a great deal of anything. I've been looking for some programming work and following up some leads, but on the whole I've been sitting at home waiting for something to happen.

When I was thinking about how to describe the state of my heart just now I thought of the phrase, "just a pump". I don't feel a great deal of anything good or bad. I just wake up and then wonder if I should bother getting up - if it'll make any difference to anything.

Yup, pretty miserable post but that might explain why I've not written for almost two months until today.

Friends - Quality or Quantity?

I finally gave in today. I signed up for Facebook. It is quite a nice system with lots of cool features. I especially like the "Where I've Been" map which lets you show all the countries of the world you've lived, visited or wanted to visit. USA and Canada are split into States/Provinces respectively but the rest of the world seems to be just the countries.

I have been looking through all the contacts of all my friends and it's been pretty tiring work. It's made me think of whether it's all worth it. I mean, I could easily end up with a hundred contacts through the different groups of people I've met over the years. You only need to live in the Marmac warehouse for a year to meet about 100 new people.

I realised that there's no way I can keep up with everyone. It's already a bit hard updating my blog, flickr and youtube accounts before now adding Facebook into the equation.

I want to know how people are doing, but I also want to actually share life with people. It's easy to have a full Facebook but an empty life.