New blog!

This blog has now moved to www.drmatthewsmith.com. Come on over and join the fun!

Up, up and away*

We finally made it into the skies with Virgin Balloons! Rachel had originally bought this as a present for Valentine's Day in 2008, and this was our fifth attempt. We were to due to take off yesterday evening but, despite it being a glorious afternoon, the winds were still a little on the strong side and so the decision was made to reschedule for early this morning. The weather held and we met at 7am to unpack the balloon.

Of course, a beautiful clear morning at this time of year is likely to be preceded by a very cold night. Something we discovered during our overnight stay in the tent we had brought with us! But it was worth it to finally experience drifitng above the treetops at sunrise. It was an amazing experience.

Thank you for a wonderful present Rachie! Happy Valentine's Day! x

*Oh come on, it's a blog post about a balloon ride. What else was I going to call it?

Fifth time lucky?

The last time we tried for a trip in a hot air balloon, it didn't happen. That was our fourth attempt. It didn't matter too much as we had a great weekend anyway, but it would be nice to finally see what it feels like to drift over the countryside in a big red balloon.

Today will be our fifth attempt. At least the weather's looking good.

Know thyself

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates (469-399 BC)

The Pursuit of Happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness was on TV tonight. A very inspiring film based on the memoirs of self-made millionaire Chris Gardner. The movie follows the story of Gardner during a period of homelessness with his young son. A key scene in the film is when Gardner impresses a guy from the stockbroker firm at which he's hoping to get an internship by solving the Rubik's Cube during a cab ride:



As a fan of the ol' Rubik's Cube, I'd love that scene to be based on true events. On a separate note, watching that film reminds me that my old friend and PhD supervisor Richard Wiseman took part in an advert for Volvo with Chris Gardner some years ago as part of their 'Life on Board' project. Turns out an extended version of the film is on Vimeo:


VOLVO V70 from Lance Bangs on Vimeo.

It's a mystery...

Rachel and I have signed up to become 'mystery' shoppers! You know, those people whose job it is to go into shops, restaurants, banks, and so on and assess the level of customer service. Rachel likes to think of it as being paid to shop. The company who we have signed up with asks all their applicants to complete a short test before they take you on. Seems fair enough. There are twenty multiple-choice questions about various aspects of the role of the mystery shopper. As you have to get all twenty questions correct to pass, it is just as well that they are all fairly easy.

Apart from one. One of them is tricky. Or at least I found it rather tricky. It was the first question in a section testing language abilities. This is because "being able to provide comments using correct English is vital...". Again, fair enough. The question is: 

Please select the incorrect sentence:

a. We'll see you on Wednesday.

b. I speak Spanish very badly.

c. I like the weather here in Winter.

d. Paul is an excellent golfer.

 

Which answer would you go for?

The best music video

Saw this on Richard Wiseman's blog this morning. It is so good I just had to re-post it here. It looks like it is all done in one take, but even if it isn't it is the result of a lot of hard work and creative genius. Sit back and enjoy:

Million Dollar Psychic on Facebook!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't really 'get' Facebook. Well, I'm going to have to change that to the past tense. I'm starting to 'get' it. I can clearly see it has its uses. Which is why I have just set up a Facebook page for the Million Dollar Psychic project. In fact, it's something I should have probably set up a few months ago!

If you would like to follow how the project develops (and, of course, you are a Facebook user), please visit the page and click on 'like'. The idea is that this page will be a place to discuss psychic stuff in general and psychic development in particular whether you be a 'skeptic', a 'believer', or a 'I just don't know-er'!

You can also follow on twitter at twitter.com/skeptic2psychic.