The online home of Guy Laister, containing news of past, current and future activities as well as photo’s of trips far and wide. I was born in South Africa with the benefit of Her Majesty’s passport, and I am currently living in Surrey with my wife. I am a civil/environmental engineer and a founding director of an engineering consultancy in London.
All you Microsoft people out there be warned. Don’t turn to Vista, it is SH!T. Fight the urge, don’t take any notice of the shiny new colours, and pretty intereface, because beneath lies a temperamental beast that is unbelievably slow and cumbersome. If you’re really lucky Vista will also crash your machine like it did my work PC and then you will have to reinstall ANOTHER copy of Vista.
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**Excerpts from a Dog’s Diary**8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm - Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!
**Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary**
Day 983 of my captivity.
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I arefed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.
In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a “good little hunter” I am.Bastards!
There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of “allergies.” I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.
Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow — but at the top of the stairs.
I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.
The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicate with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now…
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Photo’s from last Saturday’s prologue in London have been uploaded here, there are some beauts as the guys came steaming down the inside. If anyone would like an original copy, let me know.
I have a few short vids of some of the riders, and you can check out one here. I tried to get a video of George Hincapie, but unfortunately I had been ‘forced’ to drink a lot of Magners by teh time big George went off……
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We watched Die Hard 4.0 on the weekend, and it confirmed John McClane as one of the toughest men on the planet. This man is indestructible. Without going into too much detail, not only does McClane beat the living sh1t out of everyone, he even kills a helicopter with a car AND fends off a F35 fighter jet whilst hanging out of the cab of an articulated lorry perched on the edge of a collapsing raised multi-lane highway. I know, you won’t believe me until you go see it.
Just as exciting though, was watching the trailer for the third ‘Bourne’ movie - the Bourne Ultimatum. Respect. Jason Bourne is back to kick the cr@p out of anyone McClane has left behind. Some of the movie was shot in London, and the official release in the UK is August 3rd.
It got me thinking about who would win in a ‘no holds barred’ contest between John McClane and Jason Bourne??? My initial feeling is that Jason Bourne would go the distance and kick a$$, but having watching Die Hard 4.0, McClane is seemingly indestructible. Tough one this. Perhaps we could schedule a fight night and we could put James Bond 007 against Ethan Hunt in the curtain raiser?
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Its July, so you know what that means? No, not the horse race, no not summer, no not Tri Nations, no not…. etc… Well all are correct, but not the right answer. Its ‘Le Tour’ of course!!! The greatest physical sporting test known to man, the Tour de France cycle race this year takes in 3500km in 3 weeks, and it all started on Saturday in London! They reckon Le Tour is the third biggest sporting event on the planet, and watched by 2 billion people over the course of the race. Despite living across the channel, I haven’t been organised to watch any of the stages in France, so we took full advantage of the tour start in London and stakes out Constitution Hill for nearly 12 hours to get the best of the prologue time trial. I have some absolutely phenomenal photo’s and footage of the racers as they came screaming past us at 1 minute intervals initially up Constitution Hill on the way out to Hyde Park and then on the way home on the 7.9km course. The top riders must have been doing 70km/hr on the way back, and the winner of the stage, world time trial champion Fabio Cancellara won the stage averaging over 50km/hr. On the flat. For 9 minutes. 9 minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but at over 50km/hr without an engine? Amazing.
Yesterday, Robbie McEwen staged a remarkable fightback from crashing a few km’s out to win the sprint into Canterbury. I see that today, the sprinters raced into Gent, with big Tom Boonen being tipped by his own team mate to stage victory. Robbie Hunter is riding for the ‘British’ Barloworld team, and finished 4th today after ruining his own chances of victory yesterday by setting out in the sprint too early.
You can follow all this years action on the website, and daily highlights in the UK on ITV4. Although ITV4 have kindly put the highlight at around midnight - nice of them.
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A quick ‘big up’ to Skype. In this day and age of rapid technological advancements, Skype is now ‘old school’, but more often than not ‘old school’ is great. Take the movie for instance, it always cracks me up….. ‘Frank The Tank’….. ‘Frank The Tank’ ……. legend.
Anyway, so my highly valuable ‘Chateautoby’ domain was under its annual threat of poachers and in need of renewal. As it is an annual thing, I can’t remember my username, password, favourite colour, last transaction and every other code you need to access your accounts these days. A quick email to get my account reset didn’t work, so I hopped on skype, rung the states from my laptop, for free and problem sorted in 44 seconds. Love it.
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