A Welsh View

Video: Man Fills Up Car At Petrol Station Naked

Monthly Competition: Win Free Paintball Passes

A Welsh View and Ministry of Paintball have teamed up to offer all UK readers the chance to win 16 VIP Paintball Entry Passes valued at £400 (1st prize, 5 to be won) and 8 VIP Paintball Entry Passes valued at £200 (2nd prize, 20 to be won) each month for 4 months.

The competition will be drawn on the 28th of each month starting February 28th and ending May 28th and I will be posting a reminder each month.

Ministry of Paintball is regarded as the world’s largest paintball company and renowned as the industry leader. With over 100 great paintball sites nationwide Ministry of Paintball will offer you an action-packed day out.

   

What is included in the VIP paintball entry passes?

• Free equipment hire.
• Free latest semi-auto paintball gun.
• Free access to 100+ paintball sites nationwide.
• Bonus free lunch at 80% of the paintball sites.
• Reward points at ministryofpaintball.com
• Free mopVIP membership valued at £100.

For your chance to win simply go to www.ministryofpaintball.com/paintball-abatkg and register your details.

Competition is open to UK citizen only.

Not from the UK? Ministry of Paintball has paintball sites in USA, Australia and other countries. Why not check out www.ministryofpaintball.com for a paintball site near you.

Closing date is 28-02-2009. For more information on Ministry of Paintball please go to www.ministryofpaintball.com.

Please note: paintballs are not included and must be purchased!

Good luck all!

An Interview With Issei Sagawa, Cannibal

Viceland has an interview with Issey Sagawa, the Japanese cannibal 'who got away with it'. Here's an excerpt:-

The first thing I did was cut into her buttock. No matter how deep I cut, all I saw was the fat beneath the skin. It looked like corn, and it took awhile to actually reach the red meat. The moment I saw the meat, I tore a chunk off with my fingers and threw it into my mouth. It was truly a historical moment for me. That said, it wasn’t like I was lusting over the fact that I was cutting up her dead body, so it’s difficult for me to revisit the incident and talk about it, even now...

Video Store Owner Turns Tables On Robbers

Donald Duck's Family Tree

Donald Duck's rather large family tree. [via]

Video: Whale Takes A Bite Out Of Fisherman's Catch

Superbowl XLIII Ads

A preview of some of this year's Superbowl ads. At around $3 million per 30-second slot, some of the ads running this year (e.g. Dreamwork's Monsters vs. Aliens) could cost around $9 million! [via]

Google Maps Car Hits A Deer

A Google Maps car has recorded itself knocking over a baby deer, New York state. The deer runs out in front of the car in one photo and then is seen on the floor in the next photo. The data then ends for that road.

When you visit the road on Google Maps there is a notice saying that Street View is unavailable due to high traffic but moving back and forth along the road and the message changes to "image no longer available". [via]

Combination Lock for USB Drives

Can't be bothered to encrypt your USB drive? Slap an old school combination lock on it. It's only three digits so it won't be the most secure. [via]

Video: How Not To Escape From The Police

Motorist Escapes Cliff Plunge

A motorist had a miraculous escape when his van was left hanging off a cliff edge after it careered off a mountain road.

Daniel Lyons, 34, was left hanging in mid-air after his vehicle plunged down the rock face in Colorado and dangled on a precipice 170 ft from the ground.

Rescuers managed to manoeuvre him from the van and up the cliff face before he was airlifted to hospital where he received treatment for minor injuries. [via]

Video: Insane Skydiving Stunt

Show off!

Video: The Top 50 Best Movie Deaths

A collection (with videos) of the top 50 best movie deaths. Obviously lots of spoilers.

Video: Lighthouses vs Waves

If you're wondering whether any of these lighthouse are manned, take a look at this photo and this one.

Warning: Zombies Ahead

A road sign in Austin, Texas have altered to warn drivers of zombies up ahead. It is thought that the sign was changed in-situ as many aren't locked and the default password isn't changed. I wonder if anyone took the sign seriously. Link [Thanks Fish]

Create Your Own Jackson Pollock

To honour the birthday of the artist Jackson Pollock, why not create your own?

How To Complain In Style

A traveller who was unhappy with his in-flight meal on Virgin sends Richard Branson a very funny complaint.

Video: Wood Chopper From Hell

Video: Bungling Arsonist Sets Himself and His Car On Fire

He got four years for the crime and the severe burns left his tattoos hanging off.

The Evolution of Apple Design Between 1977-2008

This collection of Apple products has to be one of the most complete. The article shows the evolution of its computers laptops, desktop, iPods and even mice and keyboards.

Related: Wired - Jan. 22, 1984: Dawn of the Mac

Crossing A Wooden Bridge In China

Would you be brave enough to cross this bridge? Apparently it's somewhere in China.

Parrot Banned From Football Ground

A bright green parrot has been banned from a football ground because he kept distracting players by imitating the referree's whistle.

The bird had turned heads before kick-off in Hertfordshire when a woman brought it to the match in a cage.

It behaved itself for the first-half of the quarter-final cup tie between the two non-league teams, watching play swing from end to end.

But 10 minutes into the second-half it began mimicking the referee's whistle, causing confusion on and off the pitch.

The match was halted and the woman and her parrot were told to leave the pitch-side.

[via]

Confessions Of... A Hotel Housekeeper

‘Instead of vacuuming, I picked up some crumbs’. [via]

400 Inauguration Front Pages

400 different front pages featuring Obama. [via]

Famous Art, Simpsonised

7 famous works of art given the Simpsons treatment.

Obama's New Robots.txt File

It may be insignificant in the giant scheme of things but the robots.txt file for the White House website has changed from a huge 2,400 line file yesterday to this today.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

For the less tech-savvy, the robots.txt file instructs search engines on what to include and not include in their indexes. [via]

Video: Marble Madness In Less Than 3 Minutes

This guy spends 2m35s completing Marble Madness but you just know that he spent years on that machine. [via]

Video: Japanese Sushi Documentary

(It would probably be wise not to follow what is described in this documentary)

British Pubs: Oldest, Smallest, Biggest, Highest...

Records for pubs is quite a difficult subject to research as there are so many different pubs and determining what is a pub can itself be difficult. Is a beer festival a pub? If so, the largest pub would probably be the Great British Beer Festival. Also, a beer festival is likely to hold the title of longest bar.

Determining the oldest pub is also a very difficult process and one that will probably be never proven.

That aside, here are some pubs that can be classed as 'one of' the oldest, biggest, smallest, etc.

Oldest Pub

meheal badem

The title for oldest pub is a hotly contended title and one that is quite difficult to prove. Guinness World Records lists the Ye Olde Fighting Cocks which is a 11th Century structure built on an 8th Century site.

meheal badem

Many old pubs in Britain have been rebuilt once or twice and the Ye Olde Fighting Cocks is no exception. The pub was rebuilt in 1485 but according to Guinness World Records the pub was not moved to another location. The Man and Scythe disputes this and such claims it is the oldest pub dating to 1251. But, that pub was rebuilt in 1636.

Another contender is The Ferry Boat in St Ives, Cambridgeshire claims to date from 560AD but has only been proved as far back as 1100. I could go but instead you can visit this site which has more info on old pubs.

Incidentally, the oldest pub in Wales is the Skirrid Inn located in Abergavenny which can be traced back to 1110. As well as being a pub, it was also used as a courthouse where people were hanged inside the pub. Unlike the other pubs I've mentioned, the Skirrid Inn has stood for nine centuries.

Video: Insane Strength

Is that last move even possible?

Update: Here's a video of a guy doing the 'human flag' for 39 seconds!

The United Statements of America

Strange Maps has posted a map of the United States showing the motto of each State. They've also gone into detail for most of the mottos describing the history and meaning of it. [via]

The Price of Piercing

A graphic from the Washington Post showing the length of healing time for all those piercings you may have.

Photos of Unsold Cars

Business isn't great a the moment for car manufacturers but the thousands of unsold cars make for some great photography.

World's Largest Hanging Basket

A boutique hotel in London has installed what may be the world's largest hanging basket (photos).

The 20ft by 10ft and took a 8 hours to winch into position and contains over 100 different varieties of plants and flowers including orchids, roses, ivy, daisies, gerberas, ferns, conifers and moss.

The basket is on display outside the Hotel Indigo in Paddington and is the chain's first outside North America.

I'm visiting London on the weekend so will have to take some photos of my own. [via]

9000 USB Flash Drives Left At Dry Cleaners

Pointless statistic of the day. Over the past year, 9,000 USB drives have been left at dry cleaners.

Credant Technologies surveyed 500 dry cleaners that said on average they found two USB sticks during the course of a year. Taking this figure and multiplying it by the number of dry cleaners in the UK - 4500 - got the 9000 figure.

[via]

Video: Killer Whale Wants To Play With Dog

According to the description on YouTube, the killer whales is called Luna and died in 2006. You can read more about the whale here.

Measuring Gravity In The Super Mario Bros

Analysis of gravity in Super Mario Bros. When Mario falls off an 8.6m ledge in Super Mario 2, he experiences a g-force of 11. That's enough to cause someone blackout. [via]

Video: Bird Strike Causes Emergency Landing

A bird strikes the engine of a Boeing 757 on takeoff causing it to make an emergency landing.

Video: Touch Screen Coke Vending Machine

A new Coke vending machine that is expected to be launched in the US this year and the UK in 2010.

Topless Protesters At Heathrow Airport

What better way to protest a third runway at Heathrow Airport than getting topless? (SFW)

Humpback Whale Photos

More photos of whale watchers getting the ultimate shot - 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. [via]

Video: Family Films Killer Whale Coming Ashore

Virtual Tour of Air Force One

Take a look inside Air Force One with this virtual tour from the National Geographic.

Photos of the Hudson River Crash

Photos on Flickr of the plane that crashed in the Hudson River in New York. Luckily everyone on board survived the crash which may have been caused when the plane collided with a flock of birds.

Super Mario Bros In JavaScript

Super Mario Bros Level 1 and 2 (+ map editor) made in JavaScript. I was never a huge fan of this game and didn't play beyond a few minutes.

Video: Flat Bed Truck Drives Through River

That water must be freezing!

Windows 7 Tips and Themes

Have you tried out the beta of Windows 7? I've only used it as a virtual machine but it seems fairly stable, boot quickly and isn't as annoying as Vista. If you have, here are 10 tips and tricks including a few must-knows (be careful with MP3s)

Related: Lifehacker has some information on how to get more themes for Windows 7. It's nice to see one featuring a village in Wales.

Video: Repainting A Boeing 747

A time-lapse video of a Northwest Airlines Boeing 747 being repainted for Delta Airlines. [via]

The Hamburger Bed

This hamburger bed is flexible enough to allow you to sleep on top of the bun or snuggle up with the burger and lettuce. Geekologie has more photos and here's the burger bed's Facebook page.

The 2008 International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest

Would you believe there's actually a contest for aquariums. They do look impressive though. [via]