Jasper!

Last night son of One Moment Caller arrived up in the Naki and his name is Jasper.

Jasper is apparently the Dutch/German version of Casper and the first one was one of the kings that gave Christ gifts at his birth - he gave gold (quietly showing up the other lot - I wonder what that Mary and Joseph did with the gold?).

So anyway, I thought I would mark the occasion by finding other Jasper's!

Like Jasper Engines and Transmissions!


Or Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada - It has a glacier! Plus there's a town.


Then there is the University of Victoria's JasPer Project - an open-source initiative to provide a free software-based reference implementation of the codec specified in the JPEG-2000 Part-1 standard (i.e., ISO/IEC 15444-1). Of course it is. Doesn't really lend itself to a pic unfortunately.

Jasper, Texas looks like a gas...


... and Jasper, Indiana, claims to be one of the 25 best small towns in the US! Meanwhile, Jasper, Alabama's Special Olympic swim team is called the Aquanauts! The mayor has a great name too - Sonny Posey. You will also find US Jasper's in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Sunday brunch at Jasper's Restaurants "in the spirit of fun!" looks like something out of the Naki too!


Jasper (on the right below) was also the name of one of Cruella de Vil's henchmen in 101 Dalmatians.


It also turns out that "Jasperware" is a type of pottery, and you can find this fine example at the V&A in London.


There have also been quite a few other famous people named Jasper.

But my favourite one has to be Jasper Vinall - the first recorded Cricket fatality in 1624. He was fielding and was about to catch the ball, but the batsmen tried to hit the ball a second time (away from Vinall) but instead smacked his head in! Stranger still - it happened again in 1647!

So there you have it - at the very least he has quite a road trip of US towns ahead of him!

Bain of our lives

Was anyone else surprised how normal David Bain looked following his release on bail yesterday? Where was the knitwear??

As shallow as it sounds, you have to wonder why his defence team didnt allow him to appear at any of his previous hearings. I think he would have actually gained a lot of public sympathy if people thought of someone normal - rather than a funny looking 22 year old with weird jerseys and a paper round when thinking of 'David Bain'. I kind of hope now the crown let it go and dont pursue another trial.

But now we all like Bain, we shouldn't just let May 15 go by in future - somehow I think we should annually mark the day David Bain was freed. David Bain Day if you will. Next year on May 15 I urge everyone to pull out there most 'Bainest' piece of knitwear and wear it with pride!

Also another idea, why doesn't Te Kauwhata follow the great kiwi tradition of building big stupid "icons" - and build a huge David Bain jersey now its going to be his new home?? You could even make it a community event, get all the locals to each knit a square metre patch to make up the jersey! (You would have to ensure everyone did different - unmatching patterns though).

NB. The Second picture is an artists impression of what Angus or"Cosby" may look like on David Bain Day 2008.

May the 4th

May the 4th is of course International Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you - geddit? Oh forget it.... you people...)

Anyway make sure you make time to acknowledge the holy trilogy at some point today! Break out A New Hope, Empire, or Jedi - theyre always worth revisiting!

May the force be with you.

On this day - "free at last"

Just watching Campbell Live, they did their "on this day" thing - and I thought todays was worth acknowledging - in 1968, on this day Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee. So to mark the day - here's some words from his most famous speech in August 1963.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

"This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

This is history

Today is the tenth anniversary of Oasis' landmark Knebworth gigs. The gigs were frankly huge and the zenith of the Britpop phenomenon. 125 000 people attended each night (10th and 11th of August), and to give an idea of how big this was the support acts on the first night were The Prodigy, Manic Street Preachers and Ocean Colour Scene followed by The Charlatans, Kula Shaker and The Chemical Brothers on the second. 1996 was the year that Britpop - and Oasis dominated and the Knebworth gigs became the stuff of legend. They were Cool Britiania.

The next year all the great acts faded - Oasis included, Blur disappeared, Sleeper produced their weakest work, Pulp took nearly three years to produce This is Hardcore and all of the bands listed above never scaled the heights of 1996 again. Knebworth was nirvana.

Also while marking this occasion, Top of the Pops after 40 years has been canned (hence the video) - to be fair I dont think it will really be missed! The world has moved on a bit. You should have noticed something strange with the video - Oasis upset the BBC in mid 1995 with this performance of Roll With It. After being forced to lip synch the lads spiced things up by having Noel act as lead vocalist (with no guitar) and Liam "play" lead guitar - making it obvious that they are lip synching. Great stuff