Whisky
Whisky is a great drink.
It's spot on. There's so many tastes and nuances between different malts,
and dare I say it, blends. My four personal favourites, in no particular
order, are The Glenlivet 12 (a bit mainstream, but it does the job),
Glenmorangie
15, Highland Park 12 (lightly smoky but full of other flavours),
Gordon
and MacPhail's Connoisseurs Choice Brae of Glenlivet 1975 (this one
is smooth as I don't know what). I have to confess I am something of a
whisky snob and don't drink blends, but do ruin a nice whisky by adding
a small ice cube to dram.
Incidentally, I am sure drinking whisky is condusive to weight loss should you like a tipple and wish to become sleeker. Think about it....there's more alcohol and less volume in a glass of whisky than a pint of beer. And whisky has so much nose and so many flavours so it doesn't give me the munchies either. Damn, I could go a nice malt right now.....is 1500 too early for a whisky?
Anyway, read about it at The Whisky Magazine or better still buy some. I buy my whisky at the The Whisky Castle in Tomintoul.
Books
Want to buy books on
the net? It's much easier, if rather clinical, sterile and unromantic,
than visiting the shops in person yet incredibly effective! Try these sites
- second hand books at: Abebooks
and Usedbooksearch
and I usually buy new books at Amazon
(UK) and sometimes at Sports
Books Direct.
Incidentally whereas buying books online is cheap and convienient I'd much rather be buying them at an independent local bookshop. Sadly many places in the UK lack such booksellers, partly due to the internet and partly due to the homogenization of the British high street.
Read about books at Booksurfer, Bookslut, Sparknotes and the Guardian bookpage. And click here to see a list of books I've recently read.
Football
Middlesbrough FC are
the football team I like best. Read about their ups and downs (mainly downs,
but of late more ups!) at their
official site or their fanzine Fly
Me to the Moon.
Dutch football news at
the Dutch football magazine Voetbal
International. Willem
II (Willem II), Heerenveen
(and here) and
De
Graafschap are the Dutch teams I look out for.
Scottish lower division
football's great (plus you can get a pint at half time)...I've been
to see Elgin City,
Peterhead,
and Brechin
City play. Nice grounds good atmosphere. I've also been to see Ross
County, but the jobsworth stewards wouldn't let me in for a beer so they
don't get a link.
Other footy stuff:
I went to see FC Toulouse
in France once. Nice shirts.....for the anally retentive there's all manner
of stats at the RSSSF soccer
stats website and there's football news at the
BBC and
football365.
Have a look at Aki
Riihilahti's web site - this chap plays for Crystal Palace and has
some interesting observations.
Art
William Hogarth painted
some really great stuff which operates on so many different levels, and
provides a fantastic social commentary on 18th century Britain. Visit
Haley
and Steele's Hogarth page to find out more. Mondriaan
painted some great stuff. I don't get his modern stuff at all, but some
of his early stuff was bang on - have a swizz at Bomen aan het gein on
Henk
van Dorp's website. Canadian painter Lawren Harris also painted
some bang on stuff - have a look here
and here.
Filling my face
Peckish and not sure what
to have for your tea? Seeking some inspiration at the stove? There's some
great
recipes here
on the BBC site. And here
are some great soup recipes.
British Counties
Not sure what county you really
live in? Well it's part of your heritage so you should know. Shame on you.
The Association
of British Counties will put you right.
Darts
Darts is a cracking sport.
Click here
to find out the goings on in the world of darts.
Boxing
Here's a even better sport.
Here's some good sites: British boxing magazine
Boxing
Monthly, secondsout.com,
fightnews.com,
britishboxing.net,
the
BBC and Compubox,
boxing articles at the
International Boxing Hall of Fame, American
TV channel HBO, records
of boxers and loads of other stuff at Boxrec, boxing
in Las Vegas and boxing in Japan and the Orient from Joe
Koizumi. Looking to buy some boxing memorabilia? Visit Lion
Street Books - they might well have what you're looking for!
The Simpsons and other TV programmes
I like
TV's great. I watch too much
of it. Here's some links to stuff about programmes I'm into:
Doh!! The Simpsons:
This
site will tell you everything you want to know about The Simpsons.
Good point not interested,
Futurama's cool as well: you can find episode guides to Futurama here
and here.
Get your trousers on you're
nicked! The Sweeney's like the police in the UK used to be. Apparently:
here
and
here
is stuff about The Sweeney.
I hated Friends when it
was popular. Seems quite funny now: Here's
an episode guide.
Earthquakes
I was in an earthquake in
July 2002 - I felt earth tremours epicentered close to the southeastern
Netherlands one morning. By northwestern European standards it was quite
a big 'quake too! Anyway, I felt a shaking sensation, not unlike what you
might feel you were sat in a room by a road and a massive truck drove past
or if someone was in bed next to you and turned over rather suddenly and
energetically. Find out about earthquakes in Britain here
at the British Geological Survey.
Stuff about the Netherlands
The Netherlands is the best
country in the world. I used to live there. In Soest.
The Dutch, like the English, use lots of idioms and sayings when speaking.
Of course this can render some sentences an absolute mystery if you don't
know the expressions being used. So, find some translations of Dutch and
English sayings here.
Here
for some Dutch slang.
Links to lots of things Dutch
at the
Netherlands and Dutch Page, Lowlands-Land
the
Holland ring.
Dear
Henry Letters' written by Brian Branson are a very amusing view of
life in the Netherlands! If you've lived in the Netherlands for a while
you'll sympathize with some of these letters!!!
Links to sites which I used to make
this site
In order to build my web site
I had to learn something about HTML, Java and all that jazz. I consulted
a number of sources and the most useful was the book The Complete Idiot's
Guide to Creating a Web Page by Paul McFedries. Have a look his
website. There's lots of other sites that'll help you build a web site.
Here's the ones that I looked at and used bits of: Sharky's
Frames Tutorial and John
Gilson's site for an intro to some HTML stuff. The Idiot's book
was more useful though! You can do some nice stuff with javascript - find
out more at javascript.com
and Paul
McFedries javascript page. Mediabuilder.com,
3Dtextmaker.com,
clipart
warehouse and stuff.uk
have lots of stuff you can put on your website and State
of Entropy helps you use Paint Shop Pro, a programme I use for graphics.
Dan Suri, 11 April 2006