Disassembling a 5x5x5

Check out this site for amazing pictures of dissassembled 5x5x5 cube. Includes photos and instructions about disassembling and re-assembling, as well as some great arty cube photography. Very Cool.

Photo of partly disassembled 5x5x5 cube by ZWNJ.
Used here under the Creative Commons license.

Travels with Tigger

I found this great site ages ago - Travels with Tigger. This Tigger has been travelling for almost 10 years and has been keeping an online photo blog of his awesome adventures. I showed this site to Mr and Mrs Cookie and they thought it was totally cool.

Mr and Mrs Cookie have had a great time travelling to different cities around the world and have taken a lot of photos. They are just waiting for Peter and I to get our act together and build them a website. For now though, they are happy to make appearances on our blogs.

Mr and Mrs Cookie on the beach at Brighton

Scrabble World Championships 2005

This article is now quite old. I had meant to post it ages ago. Oops.

There are two reasons I wanted to post this article about the Scrabble World Championships. One reason is that I love Scrabble. It's a great game and so much fun. Well, if you like word games that is, which I do.

The other reason is because it reminded me of speedcubing. There certainly are some parallels between competitve Scrabble and competitive speedcubing. I'm sure any of the competitive speedcubers reading it will see what I mean!

The two activities have actually proven to go quite well together. My speedcubing buddy, Dan Harris, is the current UK speedcubing champ and and is doing quite well in his recent adventures in competitive Scrabble. Also, ever since we discovered we both like Scrabble, whenever we meet up we always have Scrabble games going in the background in between our speedcubing sessions.

What do Chupa Chups and Salvador Dali have in common?

Often when I go to tourist attractions I like to check the Wikipedia entry to get some background and further info. I am able to do this on-the-fly wherever I go because I have a local copy of Wikipedia on my iPAQ (iPAQs are awesome and Wikipedia is awesome so it makes sense to combine them!).

Anyway, Peter and I went to a Dali exhibition recently in Bruges. While there, I checked out the Wikipedia entry on Salvador Dali and learnt an interesting bit of Dali trivia. According to Wikipedia, Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo for the Spanish lollipop company!

I found this very interesting for two reasons. One reason is that I didn't know that Chupa Chups were Spanish (I had assumed American), and the other reason is that it's totally cool that a lollipop company had their logo designed by one of the most famous surrealist artists. Although I guess he might not have been quite as famous at the time he did this work.

Hever Castle, Kent

Last month Peter, myself and and some friends had a fun day trip to Hever Castle in Kent. Here's a selection of Peter's photos (click on any photo for a larger version).

Hever Castle was originally built in the 13th century and was formerly the Boleyn family home. It has since had many other owners and fell into a state of disrepair until it was bought and restored by American millionaire, William Waldorf Astor.

Fortune cookies

Peter and I had dinner at an Asian restaurant the other night. At the end of the meal we were given fortune cookies. The two 'fortunes' were:

"Marriage is a wonderful invention; but, then again, so is a bicycle repair kit."

"Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up."

The second one is kinda cute, but the first one... huh? Maybe if Mr Cookie had been around he'd be able to decipher for us. I'm sure he's eaten more than his share of fortune cookies.