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February 2009 Blog Archive
19th February 2010 The stats you've all been waiting for: Rapport's Rubbish Report
Always an exciting time for us here at Rapport, this week we received our annual Recycling Credentials
We recycle...
- 270.2kg of Paper. This is equivalent to the weight in grain needed to feed a new-born Karakachan lamb.
- 102.2kg of cardboard. This is equivalent to the weight of the largest rock fragment found on the beach on Macquarie Island, Australia after waves during a storm drastically eroded the bedrock.
- 7.6kg of plastic bottles and steel and aluminium cans. This is the weight of a Pearl Marching Snare drum complete with a maple/mahogany shell.
Read it and weep Al gore!
Today Rapport launched its new internal initiative "Whats New?". From now on we will be holding bi-monthly meetings in which we all present ideas on new thinking, innovations, technologies, crazy stunts; anything really which catches our eye as something we could apply to any aspect of life at Rapport.
As if the anticipation of the gems which could soon to be discovered wasn't enough, Chris upped the ante by throwing the excitement of competition into the mix. Our ical invite promised a 'prize' for the most thought provoking presentation - as you can imagine office rumor was rife as to what this might be, a car? a round the world trip? Well no-one could hide their disappointment when it transpired this morning that Chris hadn't thought of the prize yet and was proposing that the winner would be given his old Magic Eight Ball to display ("with pride") on their desk until the next 'Whats New' winner was announced.
Despite this minor set-back we put on brave faces an decided its not the winning its the taking part. Watch this space for our ideas being put into action very soon...
12th February 2010 Full of Bright Ideas
I am an avid fan of Come Dine With Me and can even boast to have watched it back my student days when it was merely a filler in the daytime TV schedule; long before the dizzy heights of prime time...
I'm sure everyone has had dreams of appearing on the programme, thinking they could do better and how they would graciously receive the cash prize. Many a drunken conversation has taken place between my friends for our very own version, very cleverly named "Come Dine with Us". If your intrigued to have a go at our version yourself the basic idea was, that we would split into pairs (hence changing the "Me" to 'Us") and, as a pair cook dinner for 4 other 'pairs', taking it in turns once a week for 5 weeks. After each meal (and slightly intoxicated) we would privately video record our scores and on the last night would watch the recordings (to hilarious results, we imagined). At the beginning each pair would put in £20 (big spenders!), so the winning pair would win £100. Anyway it turned out that its quite hard to find a day every week that 10 people are free and upon looking into the cost of cooking for 10 people, with wine, all our diaries suddenly seemed a lot busier!
Knowing my friends the chances that 'Come Dine with Us' will ever materialise are pretty slim so I was interested to read that The Drum have come up with a less complex idea which we could all do; 'Drum Dine With Us' (it seems the puns you can create from that title are endless). On Friday 19th Feb each person at The Drum HQ will be bringing in a lunch item, which they prepared the evening before, to be shared with everyone else in the office. Everyone will pay a fee to enter and all proceeds are going to Haiti.
Read more about it here.
Talking of bright ideas, I'd love to know which bright spark came up with this one. The memory is sketchy to say the least but at some point in the early hours of last weekend I had a 'heated' discussion with someone (you know who you are, hopefully!) regarding whether the massive sweeping brush which appears to clean the windows at work is controlled by a man stood on the ground, manoeuvring your bog-standard sweeping brush with a ridiculously long handle or whether, (granted the handle is quite long) the man is actually stood on a platform raised from ground level (I was arguing the first one). Well as luck would have it the sweeping bush appeared at our window on Thursday morning, so heres your proof...
It is actually just a sweeping brush with a really, really, really long handle! The wonders of modern technology.
5th February 2010 Dress to Kill
A hot topic this week has been going to the shops in PJ's, I don't have too much of a problem with it, and am reliably informed that in Liverpool its standard Sunday dress (although girls in Liverpool also walk around with rollers in their hair). At uni I had the pleasure of escorting my friend around the local co-op in her dressing gown (she had just been discharged from hospital but still a bold move). While hanging around the reduced section in Tesco's on Market Street this week a man next to me was giving off an odour which I found much more offensive then seeing someone in tracksuit bottoms ever would. I am a firm advocator of leisure wear and will very rarely be found at home in anything but my comfy clothes and beloved dressing gown - as far as I'm concerned if you don't smell you don't offend me!
Elaine Carmody at the Tesco in her pyjamas
Well it wouldn't be Friday without you all having to put up with me venting my frustration for the things that are primarily annoying me this week (that’s not to say there aren't more but I do like to finish the week on a relatively positive note!).
Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2
As everyone who has the misfortune of working within an audible distance of me on a week-day afternoon will know, I have a major problem with the BBC Radio 2 feature 'Factoids'. For any of you lucky enough not to have had to endure it, the background is; it is a 10 minute feature in which three members of the Radio 2 afternoon team take it in turns to tell each other 'amazing' facts. Sounds quite good you may think, however don't be fooled, there are many levels to which I hate this feature:
- The name - an infinitely rubbish play on the word 'fact'
- The 'jingle' - basically just the word 'Factoid' said in a computer generated robot voice
- The DJ's involved - for reasons only known to the 'Steve Wright show' producer for this one slot they acquire a random woman who is never introduced or named and disappears after the feature is over.
- The facts - As my regular blog readers will know I am a fact-fan so it only goes to displease me more when the facts which are churned out are of the lowest quality that its insulting to those listening. The majority are either 1) ones everyone already knows 2) not even facts 3) boring and useless
Anyway if there is one thing I love more than a fact, its a fact which disclaims a fact that everyone thinks is true (an 'anti fact'), I was lucky enough to 'Stumble Upon' one such article this week... PS. these are the sort of 'factoids' you might find in Steve Wrights section...
- Fact(oid) 1 - a study showed that on the typical peanut found on a bar 100 difference types of urine were found.
Anti-fact - no such study has ever been conducted. This 'fact' has actually meant that you rarely come across peanuts in bars anyone, a travesty if you ask me. - Fact(oid) 2 - If the lift cable snaps and the lift plummets to the bottom of the shaft you die
Anti Fact - the chances of this happening are tiny; your average lift has four extremely heavy duty cables holding it, so all four would have to snap to start with. If this was to happen the lift itself has an internal braking system which kicks in if it travels over a certain speed. If this was to fail also, the lift shaft has an emergency stopping device which would then kick in. However there has been one reported case of all these things failing and the unfortunate woman in the lift plummeted 75 floors and survived. - Fact(oid) 3 - The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be seen from space
Anti-fact - Actually you cannot see this, or any other man-made structure from what is officially classified as Space.
By the way, did you know that only 23% of facts are actually true?