Twitter is like the facebook ‘Paul is…’ part but without all the other crap that does with it!

They describe it better so here is a quick youtube video:

If you want to check out what I’m doing, take a look at @paulbain on twitter.

Kung Fu Panda was simply awesome! It was entertaining all the way through and not due to innuendo found in films like Shrek, but because it was genuinely amusing!

The animated Jack Black aka Panda was a brilliant character. The film also had an underlying ‘feel good’ plot which was combined with a moral and socially relevant scenario as Panda was quite obviously an orphan as his father was a duck!

Well worth the watch!

The apartment has slowly emptied of my stuff over the past couple of weeks and my bedroom in particular is starting to look very bare! I’m planning to move the rest of my stuff back to Coventry on Friday which means I only have four days to get everything done at work! Fingers crossed!

I have started to realise recently how much I will miss Manchester, especially having a nice flat, lots of brilliant places to eat and drink and of course some great friends, however I can’t wait to get back to Coventry.

The main reason to move back to Coventry was to be closer to most of the family and the majority of my best friends are still in Coventry or are back frequently which will be great. It has been quite lonely in Manchester recently, but that is probably more of a reflection of how much effort I have been putting into life in Manchester; next to none!

On a blog related note, I hope to be keeping this a bit more up-to-date, so check back soon!

So I was in the centre of Coventry just after 6.30am and it was dead. I struggled to find an open car park and when I did, I was the only person there. I assumed Starbucks would be open as I’m sure the ones in Manchester open at 6.30 ish but it didn’t open until 7am.

It was quite nice walking around the centre while it was deserted. It seemed a little like ‘I am Legend’ just without the zombies. However I was a bit of a poor reflection that the only place open at that time of the morning was McDonalds.

On a different note, my new Macbook arrived today! I wasn’t so sad as most people appear to be on YouTube and record the unboxing, but I’m very pleased with it.

It has been a difficult decision to make, moving away from Manchester and leaving a brilliant job at CAP, however I think it should have an extremely positive outcome.

I have a new job lined up at a great open source software development company in Coventry where I will be the project manager. I’m really looking to getting stuck into this role!

Also it will be great to be closer to most of the family as at the moment it takes a two hour journey just to visit. Of course it will be extremely sad moving away from Manchester where I have lived for the past four years, leaving some great friends behind but I feel it is time to do something different!

There was so much to do in Prague and we only managed to see a small part of what it has to offer, however here is a summary of the last few days we spent there.

On Tuesday we explored New Town which seemed more like traditional city centre shopping area lined with mostly ‘fasion’ shops like Hugo Boss. The price of food and drink in this area of Prague is extremely high, and is where we found our most expensive pint priced at nearly £4 (we didn’t buy one). However, if you look hard enough you can find more reasonable prices. We ate at Café Jungmann which is just off Wenceslav Square, where we had a two course meal for about £3.

Tuesday afternoon we walked all the way up to the observation tower which overlooks Prague. The tower looks a little like a much smaller version of the Eiffel Tower or the Blackpool Tower an gives a great view over the city centre. It cost about £2, however it was probably worth it. The parks around the observation tower are beautiful, and we managed to find a café on the way down which meant we could enjoy the park and beer simultaneously.

Wednesday was a very chilled out day mostly spent pottering around around, enjoying parks, drinking coffee and beer while reading. It was a very relaxing day and wes very refreshing spend time doing very little in such beautiful surroundings.

We also visited Prague Cathedral on Wednesday which was an amazing bulding. Climing the tower seemed to take forever and we saw some people turning back only half way up. The Cathedral is a must see sight in Prague!

The best restaurant we visited during our time in Prague was probably Restaurace Stoleti which is on Karolíny Svetlé. I had leg of rabbit which was brilliant. The food in Prague all seems to be like more traditional British food such as stews with dumplings and you will very rarely find strong flavours. I enjoyed evey meal I had while there which is a good sign!

Prague is probably the most beautiful city I have ever visited. It is such a colourful and vibrant city covered in so much history. So far we have only managed to visit the Little Quarter, the castle area and some parts of the Old Quarter.

We have some amazing photos, however we aren’t allowed to upload them in the internet cafe so you will have to wait until we return.

Yesterday evening was really good fun. We managed to get cheep tickets to an excellent concert at the Academy of Music, which we followed with a traditional dinner. The restaurant was by river side and was reccomended to us by someone who visits Prague regularly and it didn’t fail to deliver. Roo and I both had a traditional plate of beef, dumplings, cranberries and cream sauce, yum!

One think I have noticed is that there is huge difference in the price depending on where you go to eat or drink. We made the mistake yesterday of sitting down and ordering a coffee without viewing the price list first, and got a surprise when the bill was nearly 6 pounds. Also, on the night we arrived we went to a local bar and I was shocked to find beer was about 2 pounds for a quarter litre of beer. At first I assumed beer was expensive and only served in halves like other parts of Europe, however when we went to a ‘locals’ bar the same night, we were getting half litres of beer for just over a pound.

So far, we have managed to:

- get from the airport to our hostel
- wake up our very messy Chinese room mates
- find the most expensive bar in Prague with very questionable material on the T.V. (ask Roo)
- find the cheapest bar in Prague (so far) which sells a half litre of beer for just over a pound

Unfortunately, they computer I am using is Czech so I am finding it very difficult to find basic keys such as the forward slash and pound symbol. If someone could send us a uk computer by tomorrow, that would be great! (Send to Paul Bain, Prague)

Here is what I know about this holiday:

1. I’m going to Prague
2. Prague is in the Czech Republic
3. I’m going today and returning on thursday

Here is what I don’t know about this holiday:

1. Where exactly we are staying
2. When and were I am flying from
3. What there is to do in Prague
4. Everything else!

Fortunately, my ever efficient house mate Roo has everything under control so I will just follow him around until we find the first bar and I’ll probably just stay there!

Robert Downey Jr was definitely the right man for the role of Stark and it was nice to see Gwyneth Paltrow back in film!

In summary, go see it!

So what is this idea I hear you say, well the basic idea is a fictional story told from several different characters perspective written by different authors. I know this isn’t particularly groundbreaking, however where this idea differs it that everything will be written on a series of blogs.

Each blog will be a window into the private diary of one of the characters, and all the diaries will be aggregated together to create one big story! There will be global plots which run through all the diaries, however the individual authors will have the freedom to go wild with their own characters.

Hopefully I will get things going in the next month, so watch this space.

Many years ago I was in a band with some friends from Coventry. It wasn’t anything serious at all, but we definitely had a good laugh.

I was messing around with my guitar the other evening and remembered one of our old song. The song wasn’t particularly well received, probably due to the first verse having some lyrics which could be misinterpreted! The chorus was originally written to be a Christian song but as it is fairly generic, was incorperated into another song. Anyway, I really liked the chorus so I decided to test out GarageBand on my laptop and came up with a little recording.

Download: No More Pain 2008 © DITO 2008

Also, on the way home today I spotted a dog at a pedestrian crossing which started to cross the road. I stopped, the person driving the other way stopped and the dog crossed the road very slowly while yawning. We set back off as if nothing had happened! Very random.

I was surprised by how well the recipe actually turned out with such a relatively small amount of effort. Preparation of the ingredients we perhaps the most time consuming part of the recipe, even so that was probably due to my lack of skill with a knife rather then the number of ingredients.

I’m not sure how healthy the pie was, however I was happy to knowing exactly what went into it so at least I there were no flavourings, chemicals or battery eggs used.

If your feeling adventurous, I’d definitely recommend trying it out! You can find the recipe here.