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Metcheck Blog
Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of Metcheck?
The Metcheck Blog shows all the latest news and thoughts of everyone working here.
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Andrew Bond
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Heylo my amazing followers...
Hey! Guess what? My Lithops is still alive! Yay!
I haven't watered it, spoke to it or even put it in direct sunshine... I've got a feeling this lil puppy is going to outlive me :-)
Bit of a rant... my laptop has gone all funny. Was checking emails on Saturday and all of sudden the screen went pink. My first instinct was "ooh! That's Pretty!". Then I realised it was a little more serious as the Metcheck logo could well be passed as an emblem on a flag at the London Pride Festival hehe!
Needless to say I'll need to wait for the IT gurus to work their magic on Monday morning and will probably result in the usual "Oooh, that looks expensive" look they give. I've kinda got used to it now, so I might throw them by mentioning that "It looks expensive!" before they get a chance to suck air through their teeth.
Had a sick weekend. On Friday, me and Goof hit the local pool club before moving on to the Lion and asking whether it was possible to hook up our projector to the x-box and beam Halo 3 across the street onto the white building opposite.
Check out the video :-)
http://www.youtube.com/metcheck
Saturday was pretty chilled and I ended up going to a Shakespeare workshop here in St Ives and practiced the role of Bottom whilst learning to breathe properly... funny, I've managed to do that since I was born perfectly well.
Sunday started with all good intentions... and a hangover as we all ended up in the Isobar last night. I thought I was on watch at Cape Cornwall today, however it turned out I wasn't, so the long trip (Goof drove) ended up with me, him, Jon and Yammy all crashing out on Sennen Harbour in our Metcheck T-Shirts and doing nothing all afternoon except soaking up the rays and discussing the purpose of basking sharks and how the woman 20 feet from us who was fishing would react if she caught a dolphin.
Oh, I gotta say a shout out to Jon who is in the Royal Navy. Not just that, but he has size 14 shoes and is a damn fine bloke and had a wicked weekend. Apparently, the Royal Navy check out Metcheck for their civvy forecasts... how cool is that?
I'm not sure if he was blagging but I gave him a t-shirt anyway. The reason for the possible blagging is that his attempt to pull a local lass in St Ives on Saturday night ended in tears... the ol' "Wanna board my vessel" trick obviously didn't work.
Bit of a quiet week this week. Will be doing a lil bit of work on the site and also doing something in preparation for next weekend. This is a total secret and I soooo wanna tell you, but I can't even tell Ben, so all will be revealed next Saturday ok?
That's it I think.... So, from a very pink Metcheck HQ, have an amazing week and no doubt I'll touch base to let you know what other naughty stuff I've been up to.
Luv y'all
A x
15 June 2008 : 23:34 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Aloha again!
Back from the Royal Cornwall Show. Wow! Gotta say I was so impressed with the whole thing, so I thought I'd write a little bit about it.
Started off with a look at all the strange pigeons and rabbits which dwell this earth. Some of them interesting, some boring and a few which makes you wonder what actually bred with the rabbit to create that? After being in the rabbit tent for about 20 minutes, I started to feel hungry (animal lover, I'm not!), so had a lovely bacon butty and wandered over to the pig tent.
We saw bulls the size of caravans and pigs which seemed to magically fall over when you rubbed them on their snout, most amusing.
The falcon display was awesome as were all the horses which did a relay thing where they need to carry a baton around the course.
The parachute jumpers were called the falling rocks, not surprising after a couple of them landing pretty damn hard, but true English spirit saw them limp across to the pavilion to collect their medals.
Later in the afternoon we went to the flower tent. I myself don't have green fingers. Give me a plant and I can kill it quite quickly as many relatives have found out during the summer when I'm asked to "flower-sit". Don't ask me how. I follow the tender, loving instructions like only water between 4 and 5 and no more than 42.52ml, but they seem to lose the will to live when I offer my services.
So, Ben ended up buying a bonsai and I ended up getting a lithops. If you've never seen one of these, they are basically stones. No leaves, only water once every 2 weeks (if you remember) and from October to March it'll quite happily do nothing and not even require being talked to. I think I've found my perfect plant :-)
Me and Goof ended up at the pool club yesterday after a hard day working, outside on the balcony we bumped into Matt who was cradling a 6 pack (beer of course) and was heading to a beach party. Needless to say, this is where the night started and the memory ended as we rushed over to co-op to grab some beers and ended up with everyone else playing frisbee on Porthmeor and drinking beer listening to Pirate FM till the sun set.
That's what I love about St Ives, you just never know how your day will unfold as there is always something going on.
That's your lot! Hugs n kisses from everyone here (I say everyone, but they all seem to be down the beach at the moment).
A x
11 June 2008 : 11:05 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Heylo me amigos!
Thought I'd write an update with regards to the beer festival. All went swimmingly until me, Ben , Matt and Goof decided to indulge in the local Ginger Beer.
To be honest it was a little strange. My heart was remembering the taste as a 7 year old drinking ginger beer with my parents in the garden on a warm summers day. My head was reeling with the fact it was ginger beer at 7% volume and making my stomach burn!
The result was an impressive night and we ended up in isobar trying to figure out what else could be done with the ginger beer... I recomended spraying St Ives with it to strip off the seagull poo.... happy days!
Got man flu at the moment.. and before you ask, it's not a "normal" cold as my arms ache and everything! Decided the best way to deal with this was to sit on the beach reading my Derren Brown book and seeing if I could hypnotise anyone... Sadly I didn't and simply ended up sunburnt.
Royal Cornwall Show on Friday. We're all off to watch horses and find the funniest looking chicken, should be a jawl and can't wait.
Yesterday, much to the surprise of my fellow Metcheck bunnies, I managed to do a whole days work. I can hear the gasps from around the country, however we've recently started working closely with Google in Ireland to monitor and boost our revenue from the ads on the site.
Whilst they are a necessary bloodline for the site, it's important that we don't shove them in your face, and premium members don't even see them anyway.
A few interesting emails come through. We're looking into developing a new email alert system and also make it easier to get information for other locations without going through the whole selecting a new location process.
I'm off now to the dungeon where we keep the coders (if anyone from Health and Safety is reading this then then don't worry, it does have a window) and then pop to the Tate to see a new exhibition all about the old St Ives.
After that who knows, but it's Thursday so a trip via the Sloop can be expected.
Hugs and kisses and don't forget to brush your teeth tonight!
A x
05 June 2008 : 11:20 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Thought I'd add a few bits about what's been happening down here in Sunny Cornwall.
Been half term week.... nice for the tourists, but not for the locals. Nowhere to park, constant noise and litter all over the place... sometimes I just wish the tourists would treat this place like their own house.. perhaps they do?
I'm fully aware that Cornwall needs tourism, however it's the local councils down here who fail to realise that for the lucky few of us who actually live here, the sudden influx just can't be coped with and they have to look at the way ski resorts operate to realise that things like park n ride should be compulsory.
One emmet decided he'd bring his caravan through town to try and get to the Island car park. The result? a blocked caravan holding up the entire town... needless to say he didn't get any ice cream or a pasty and was sent packing.
OK, that's my rant over as next week we return to a bit of normality.
Went surfing yesterday as we had 6ft clean waves in Porthmeor (or Meor as we call it). Me and Goof decided to head out about 6pm, surfed till sunset around half nine then crashed out in the pool club with a beer... totally awesome day. It was made better when about 8pm a seal turned up and decided to swim around us while we were surfing.... a totally surreal experience, can't wait till July when the dolphins turn up too!
St Ives Beer festival this weekend. Am off to Falmouth coastguard tonight as they've kindly invited the Coastwatch peeps along to find out what goes on behind the scenes.... watching ships I should imagine?!
The beer festi is tomorrow and we'd like you to know that here at Metcheck Towers we look after you guys. That's why we've agreed (reluctantly) to try out all 50 ales on sale to ensure the publics health has the utmost faith in our ales.
Sunday is recovery day, but I'm gonna try to get a volunteer job at the beer festival for Sunday afternoon... will try and blag it on Saturday night, however me Ben and Goof will dress up in sandals and a big bushy beard, so they may not want the likes of me around :-)
Right, am gonna do a bit of work on the site, then head out for a bit of a surf. Thanks for all the peeps who corrected my knowledge with the fact it was Dorothy and the Tin Man and that Alice apparently got it together with a walrus?! surely, that was a John Lennon song?
Anyway, be good and stay happy :-)
Hugs n Kisses
A x
30 May 2008 : 12:40 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Finally, all 500 t-shirts have now left Metcheck Towers and are happily trotting off to their new owners around the UK (we could say world, but Dublin was the furthest place).
Bit nice to have our play-room back as you wouldn't believe how much space 500 t-shirts actually takes up. So, the sofa's back and Pippin (the cockatiel we're still looking after) can see the outside world again.
St Ives is starting to pick up nicely in time for Summer. The tourists are certainly back and was quite amusing today to see a rather elderly lady strolling down Fore Street with a back-pack complete with a water tube... I mean, we do have running water down here and I haven't caught diptheria yet.
We noticed a couple of t-shirt buyers in Hayle which is next to St Ives, so in order to save on shipping costs do our moral duty and hand deliver them, we thought we'd be nice like that.
Fun weekend coming up. Doing my voluntary stint at the watch in Cape Cornwall tomorrow, then it's the World renowned St Ives Pub Crawl which kicks off at 8. Sunday a relaxing one, but hopefully the waves will pick up a bit, can't remember my board every drying out let alone needed some new wax.
Oh and another thing, don't let me near your computer. I managed to completely render a router useless and reset Ben's computer in the office last week. I thought I'd be clever upgrading the firmware in the router only for it to seize up and me having to go buy a new one.
Right, the weekend is here. Have a great one and see y'all next week.
A x
16 May 2008 : 15:45 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Why do I feel we're heading into BlogLand... you know, the one people warned us about ages ago? It was a fad and then people just forgot.
Well, not us. Thanks to Hilary we found out that this page wasn't actually working so we're back.
At present the news from Metcheck Towers is that we're working on t-shirts... and blummin' hard at that. Over 50 now sitting in Metcheck's play room which need to be sent out first thing tomorrow morning!
Sifting through the Metcheck mail bag and we've had a few strange ones. One guy who seems intent on thinking we're the spawn of the devil and that even the BBC can forecast better than us (shudder!!) but we've found out who he is and even a picture of him (thank you Google) so we'll sleep soundly tonight.
I think my friends are starting to hate me... :(
Earlier on today I was speaking to a couple on MSN explaining that the weather down here was blue skies and sunshine, as a result I told everyone to leave the office and head to the beach... to me, this is a fire drill Cornish way, but my mates in London saw me as being lucky and hoped I really did have a fire.
Any of you who have phoned Metcheck HQ will hear an incessant screeching in the background, this isn't due to the fire alarm, but we're looking after Ben's cockatiel at the moment (called Pippin) and he's on his way to getting his P45 if we can get that past the lawyers.
Me and Goof have joined the local pool and snooker club (really should have been the gym but Goof bottled out!) so we've been down there recently in our Metcheck t-shirts trying to impress the local... without much success.
So much other stuff, so really will promise to update this a bit more often as Cornish life is making me a little more forgetful for some reason. T-shirts are however being done and we're picking them up and posting them every day at the moment, so if you're one of the lucky 500 then it'll be with you by the end of this week we hope.
Hugs and kisses from not just me but Matt, Ben, Ash and Goof who are all still wearing our t-shirts and still waiting for some half decent waves to come in to Porthmeor.
Love ya all!
A xxx
12 May 2008 : 23:46 BST |
Andrew Bond
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Hey Peeeeeeeeeeople!
Well, it's been so long since I've blogged that people have emailed me asking if I've died... nice eh?
So what's my excuse this time? Busy? Nah! Couldn't access the site? Nah! Spending too much time doing silly things like surfing and seeing which bourbon can make me go cross eyed? Something like that...
Actually, I've been pretty good recently. I'm currently in training with the local CoastWatch to become a volunteer coastguard. Yep, I get the uniform and look the part, but it's just my way of giving back something to Cornwall which has provided me with so much recently.
A good deal of my time in the evenings is dedicated to keeping a roaring log fire going in the living room. I didn't realise just how much effort was needed for something like this, but I'd make a crap pyromaniac if the situation ever arose. There are some people who have an uncanny ability to make plants die, cars dirty and put fires out... I'm one of them.
Haven't managed to surf so far this year. Mainly down to lack of time, but also down to the fact the cobbled stones here in St Ives are much colder than they are during the summer.. ok, so I did kinda expect that, but I guess my temperature sensors for my body are somewhere in my big toe.
Metcheck has been as busy as anything. The huge transition from GRIB1 to GRIB2 was a total pain in the butt, but we managed to do it before the deadline of January 28th when GRIB1 would be no more.
It felt more like re-inventing the wheel than anything, but these things have to be done, just to keep people like me busy I guess.
New Years was awesome here in St Ives. Spent the Chrimbo with the family. Usual useless presents and WW3 broke out when I tried to add garlic to the roast potatoes.... not like it's vodka or something, but I got my come-uppance on Boxing Day when my sister managed to create roast potatoes you'd have to hand in during a weapons amnesty... thank you Delia ;-)
Oh.. New Years? Me and Ben held a Mexican Party here in St Ives. We even managed to get hold of one of those paper donkey things which you smash to the ground. Not quite sure what happened to it to be honest, too much tequila and a punch that doubles as elephant tranquiliser meant that I still have no idea what happened on January 1st this year.
I have some fuzzy memory of throwing it out of the window to a bunch of Mexicans who shouted something like "Arriiiibaa... weeee take theeese to the king!". Not sure if they did it, or whether I dreamt it, but I'm sure the king will never eat liquorice allsorts again if he did get it.
We managed to wander the streets of St Ives around mid night. If you've never been here before, then basically EVERYONE dresses up in fancy dress. If you don't then you're likely to be hit with a water pistol. I'm still proud of the time I managed to drench the entire balcony of Ocean Grill with startled onlookers who thought they could escape the gun slinging talent of El Bondi! Arrrribaaa!
Managed to buy some new software for the site. The new charts and maps do really give a polished look and we're adding new stuff to the site as I speak.
The opportunity to sell the site has come up again. I do think about it sometimes, but I guess it's a heart and head thing. My heart says no but my head is usually too busy thinking about paper donkeys to actually do it.
Perhaps there will come a time, but the time isn't now.
Thank you for all the kind emails about the new weather icons. Some like them, some hate them, but the balance as a whole was very impressive for a site now doing 400,000 visits a day.
Anyways, time to dash... love y'all loads and look out for a new Metcheck shop coming soon... more on this next week.
Luv y'all and keep misbehavin' ;-)
A xxx
21 January 2008 : 20:37 BST |
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Well ive remembered to do this blog this week, thats a good start but i bet i have forgotten to do something else!
Just read Matt's Blog below, sad to read he is leaving as i believe he is a great asset to Metcheck.com and has brought some fantastic forecasting to the site over the past 2 years and has always got things spot on especially with the weather warnings.
I wish him the best of luck for the future whatever he does and that he can develop his meteoroglical career as I wish to develop mine over the next few years. Please check out the forum everyone for a leaving thread devoted to Matt and please leave your message
http://metcheck.com/V40/UK/INTERACTIVE/forum_thread.asp?threadID=6365
Anyway ill be next week, if i remember :p to update you with my latest blog
02 November 2007 : 13:56 BST |
Metcheck Admin
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Hello to all viewers of Metcheck...there goes another week and here comes another weekend!...
The big news to tell is that I am leaving Metcheck in November. I have been offered a full time weather forecasting position elsewhere which I just can't turn down!.
I've spent 2 great years forecasting for Metcheck and providing weather forecasts for many of you reading this. It has been a great experience and I would like to say a big thanks to Andrew for giving me the opportunity to forecast on a more professional level after I finished all my education and studying 2 years ago.
I'm sure Metcheck will go from strength to strength and hopefully another budding young weatherman will arrive in the coming months to provide some weather forecasts to you all. I'll be carrying on forecasting until the 10th of November when I will be leaving.
It's onwards and upwards for me from now on in my meteorological career.
Best regards to you all. Matthew Hugo.
26 October 2007 : 13:27 BST |
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Well ive not done one of these for a while so here goes,
Ive finally got a job now at Iceland inside the local shopping mall in Maidstone, im cramming in every hour under the sun but it is worth on Firdays, which is pay day, coninsidently which is today!!!. I shant tell you how much ive earnt!
Now Halloween is just around the corner but everything seems to be going mad for Christmas, boot already has its Chirstmas Decs and the lights are going up around the town, come on i mean its still October and theres this one house on the 85 bus route with its lights up already, mad!
Well all the winter kits out on Metcheck now youve got Snowrisk, Snowcharts and Frostrisk and the Bonfire Night and White Christmas Forecasts are coming next week i believe, so whether your ready or not christmas is coming!
Rob
26 October 2007 : 11:43 BST |
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