Al Bear

Al "Bear" Galpin is a 30-something geek from Southampton, UK. He’s the host of the Dead Piett Society Podcast, organiser of the Southampton SuperPod, founder of Redbridge Raiders Softball Club, a fan of Southampton FC and the Boston Red Sox and is interested in comics, movies, burgers, games and TV. And he was a Pointless finalist!

[albie79]

50 for 50

50 for 50: After being inspired by a friend, I'm working on a list of 50 things to achieve by the time I'm 50.

Recently I’ve seen a friend mention on Facebook a list of 40 things they were aiming to achieve before their 40th birthday, which is next month. I’ve seen how he’s ticked off quite a few things recently, some of them pretty impressive, and I’ve been inspired to do something similar.

However seeing as I’ve not started already and my 40th is just over a year away, I’ve decided to give myself a bit…

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[albie79]

Last time we’d just finished putting in the new floor and painting the walls and ceiling, meaning it was just the cupboards & shelves to go in. That makes it sound like we were really close to being finished, but sadly that wasn’t the case.

The carpenter we had hired to do our cupboards was someone Kitty found in the street… quite literally, she approached him as he was finishing a job just up the road. He’d given us a price and said that the job would take two days, which was ideal as when I work a weekend I get two days in the week off so we ended up timing things to coincide with my days off.

When he arrives he instantly begins talking about being here three days, maybe even into a fourth depending on his progress. Straight away timescales start to slip, and a day’s holiday had to be cancelled so I could re-book it and be there for the third day.

The plan was to put two cupboards in the alcoves, with three shelves above on the right alcove and two on the left, with the TV being up on the wall on the left side.

Three and a half days later that’s exactly what we ended up with.

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The work is exactly what we wanted, and we’re very happy with it, even though it took much longer than expected. It also left us with a bit more touching up than expected too; although we knew we’d have to do some cover up painting, we probably underestimated just how much.

The wood at the back of the left alcove is a fake wall, to hide the cables behind with the newly wall-mounted TV. That in itself was a bit of a palaver, because I attempted to do it myself and the damn bracket started coming out of the wall when I started to hang the TV on it. Fortunately dear old dad popped round one day while I was at work and did it properly for us!

Next steps, paint the cupboard doors, shelves, fake wall, skirting and window surround. But what colour? That was a pretty big decision; it took us a while to make our mind up.

Our choices (limited to Farrow & Ball colours because Kitty loves them) were to paint the cupboards and shelves the same colour as the walls (Stiffkey Blue), the ceiling (Wimborne White) or something a little different. We thought that there would be too much white if we went for that, and then began to consider Railings, which is a very dark grey. The problem is then what colour to do the skirting… because we wanted a dark colour on the shelves and cupboards to help them blend into the wall and not make things feel too small, but then doing the skirting under the cupboards white could undo that and make the walls feel closer in.

So we decided to do all the cupboards, shelves, mantle shelf, door frame and skirting in Railings. The window surround, windowsill and skirting under the window is Wimborne White to make a feature of the bay window.

With all the painting done and the cupboards and shelves in, it’s time to fill them! I’ve ended up putting a real mix of new things and old favourites, like our new globe and lamp as well as our Mexican skull and Pointless trophy. However Kitty keeps telling me that, despite her tweaking things already, the shelves are not finished yet because she’s not settled on final arrangements!

But the most fun thing we now have in our living room are (for me anyway) the Lego minifigures!

I’ve been collecting superhero Lego figures for a couple of years now, having been selling them online for a while too, and they’ve never been on display. They’ve all been tucked away in tubs waiting for their chance to shine. And then Kitty suggested a printer’s tray to stand some in. I think she was hoping for something a little smaller, but I’ve managed to get away with a pretty big one that I found on eBay, which now houses over a hundred different Marvel and DC characters.

The room is finished off with a new rug from Cox & Cox. We only wish we could switch out our older arm chair and blinds for something a bit better, but there are more pressing things to do in the house and so they’ll have to go onto the wish list.

The next fun thing we need to do is our gallery wall, which is also subject to much debate. Both of us have different ideas of what we want to include. For me; I wanted something comic book-y and something Star Wars related. While Kitty was adamant we include one of our wedding photos and something typographic.

In the end I’m sure we’ll end up with something we’re both very happy with. We’re planning to use different styles and sizes of frames to house things such as our Rappers Delight print and an Arizona print that Kitty got me.

There are still a couple of tiny bits to finish off, like adding in the last bits of scotia trim in front of the cupboards and filling the gap under one side of the hearth. But we are essentially finished (at last) and have a brand new fantastic living room to enjoy. And just in time for Christmas too!

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    Living Room Refurb: Part 3 Last time we'd just finished putting in the new floor and painting the walls and ceiling, meaning it was just the cupboards & shelves to go in.

[albie79]

Do you ever come up with half an idea? Like the outline to a story without really knowing how to start/end it? Do you then put it to one side and come up with another half-idea?

I seem to have a collection of half-ideas, destined never to be completed. I figured I’d get some of them out there to an audience, to see if any of you can spark some imagination in me to complete these particular stories.

The first is one I’ve mentioned before, Hindsight Boy. So, yes, something similar was done by South Park (and previously Marvel), but the idea has stayed with me for years. Here’s the gist…

Young lad living in a Sea City apartment with his aunt and her abusive boyfriend. He is often locked in his barren bedroom, hearing his aunt being verbally and physically assaulted. He's never been brave enough to call the police or strong enough to interject, fearing for his own safety. He finds an escape in climbing out of the window and onto the roof of the building, where he can see the city. He follows sirens as they fly past, running from rooftop to rooftop with his self-taught free running skills as he heads to the scene of the crime/accident/fire. Years of doing this has given him an uncanny knack of knowing what the emergency services do, and what they should have done when things go awry. One particular night he is spotted by a fireman after they have failed to save a family in a burning building, he tells him what he should have done, to which the fireman responds "what are you, hindsight boy?" He starts to try and get to incidents quicker, telling the emergency services what they should do, but they ignore him. But some start to realise that he's right and they take him under their wing. One day he runs right to a domestic violence case, which reminds him of his aunt's situation. And that's where things take a turn...

So that’s the set-up, and I know how I want it to end too, I’ve just not got the middle bit sorted. I have the first chapter written, in prose, but I’m not sure if that’s the best format for the story, I’ve started to picture it more as a one off graphic novel more recently. I’ve never got past writing more than that first chapter though.

Part of the idea behind Hindsight Boy was “what if Uncle Ben was a dick to Aunt May?” or “What if Thomas Wayne was the criminal and not the victim?” The superhero stories so often have a character that helps mould them and gives them their moral guidance. But what happens when that person is a grade A arsehole?

I guess that aspect has become interesting to me again more recently, with me becoming a father in the near future and becoming more and more aware of just how much our kids learn from us; whether we intend them to or not.

The one thing I’m up for changing though… the name. Too similar to South Park’s Captain Hindsight or Marvel’s Hindsight Lad (who is often included on lists of the worst superheroes of all time).

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Hindsight Lad

Captain Hindsight

After putting Hindsight Boy on the back burner I came up with a character called Han and the crew of idiots he works with. The Secret Life of Han was born.

Han is a health insurance claims assessor for Avenue Health just outside Sea City. He works with a bunch of morons, lives on his own and hates most things in existence. So he's your bog standard single British guy in his 30's. Except he wears a wrestling mask and cape to work and people are starting to think he's a former superhero. "The 6" were a British Superhero group who disappeared ten years ago after a massive brawl between them ended with them sinking the Isle of Wight. Some think they all died in the incident, others believe they are being held in some secret super-prison at the bottom of the English Channel and some believe they were mind-wiped by the government and put back into society.

Avenue Health was to be my version of Aviva, based on my time working there. The characters were amalgamations of the people I worked with, I picked character traits from a few different people to create each character… with the exception of Zack. Zack would just be Zack, a carbon copy. For those unfamiliar with Zack, check out @ZackRandom on twitter to see some of his best quotes.

For this idea I imagined a comic book, and I have the first issue scripted and the next 11 issues outlined very briefly. But I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to happen and I just stopped writing it.

Part of me wanted to never see superheroes in the story, so the “is he/isn’t he” mystery would never truly be solved and would instead the whole thing would be some kind of Office Space/Scott Pilgrim inspired weirdness.

Secret Life of Han is kind of saying “we don’t need heroes to save us, we just need to not be so fucking stupid and self-obsessed”.

My original design for Han

Fast forward to this year and another idea struck me. This one I call OAP: Old and Powerful.

Follows an ageing superhero who has retired from active duty, enjoying some peace on the South Coast, in Pier City. His body may be too weak to fight crime, but his powers are still enough for him to fly around the retirement home - a handy ability for someone whose joints are riddled with arthritis and who finds it hard to stand unaided. New heroes haven't appeared since his generation began to age. Some old heroes, like him, are retired. Some continued to fight too long and passed away, heart attacks and strokes being common amongst the hero community. But the villains, they never seem to go away, and when one begins causing problems for our hero, he has to take some unusual steps to save his retirement home.

This one’s a bit more basic, but then I did only think of it recently! But it’s another story that’s on the fringes of superhero stories, just with a little twist. I think this one is inspired more than a little by Bubba Ho-Tep, and definitely needs a lot more work.

Elvis & JFK get ready to battle evil in Bubba Ho-Tep

So, what do you think of my ideas? Got any suggestions or critiques? I’d be interested to hear what you think, especially if you’re up for fleshing the stories out some more as a co-writer. 😛

New Blog Post: Half Ideas (AKA my unfinished #comicbook stories) Do you ever come up with half an idea? Like the outline to a story without really knowing how to start/end it?

[albie79]

It’s been a productive time since I last posted about our living room makeover, we are starting to get somewhere. In fact, we’re almost done!

We had someone come to quote for the floor repairs, but since they didn’t actually send us a quote we went back to looking for someone else. But that ended up with a VERY big quote, which actually made buying and fitting a whole new floor cheaper. So that’s what we’ve done.

We also had a quote for someone to come and build our cupboards, so that’s all booked in for the end of the month.

Before we could get to that stage we still had to get the walls and ceiling done, so we started by clearing the last remnants of the window seat and stripping the three layers of wallpaper that was hidden behind it.

Those of you who read part one of this will remember the random can of varnish in the floor, so you know that whoever built the window seat was a bit weird. Well once the wallpaper was stripped we also discovered that they’ve managed to leave a gap in the plaster boards, they do not line up at all!

While Kitty was sat going at the wallpaper I was busy using dad’s sander that he lent us. Must admit, much quicker and easier than doing it all by hand, but it does leave your hands feeling really weird after a few hours.

The sanding was a pretty big job, the wood around the window seems to go on forever, and after the first two days I’d not even got to the skirting board, door frame or windowsill. The job was slowed by the fact that the previous paint job wasn’t done properly (quel surprise) and instead of sanding nicely the gloss paint was just peeling off and sticking to the sandpaper.

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Wallpaper removal

Getting ready to sand

With the sanding done it was time to move onto washing the walls and then we could finally begin painting.

We both had a week booked off work to get things finished, as well as attend a friends wedding and get a few other bits of adulting done. By the end of our first weekend the ceiling was painted and the walls were primed. By Friday the walls were painted and the old floor ripped up and sent to the tip, with help from my dad. Just an hour after that left the new floor was delivered.

Kitty’s step-dad Jon came down on the Saturday and fitted the new floor for us, being paid with meat and beer for his labour (courtesy of a trip to Red Dog Saloon). Jon certainly did a better job than had been done before, we now actually have underlay under the floor instead of just a sheet of folded up plastic that only went half way across the room.

I think you’ll agree that the room looks so much better now, even with a few areas that need touching up and finishing off.

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By the Sunday our sofa was out of the dining room, the armchair was moved out of the kitchen, the TV could be moved back out of the bedroom and we had a useable living room again. It felt so nice to sit in there and relax on Sunday night, finally done with a week of hard work and cramped living conditions.

Next big step is to get the cupboards in, paint them and then paint the skirting boards, windowsill and window surround. But before that I have to put up the TV wall bracket. Wish me luck!

I’ll be back with one final post, looking at all our finishing touches.

Living Room Refurb: Part 2 It's been a productive time since I last posted about our living room makeover, we are starting to get somewhere.

[albie79]

Before we found out that Kitty was expecting we had started redecorating our living room, before promptly stopping when the car broke down and our funds were diverted elsewhere.

I say we had started redecorating… what had actually happened is that we had paid someone to come and remove our fireplace, re-plaster the wall, lay a new hearth and leave a nice gap for a new log burner. But with the car needing work we couldn’t afford the log burner any more… plus the £2,800 quote for fitting it was a lot higher than expected! So for a long time the room sat with a bare plaster wall and empty hole.

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We did continue to think about what we wanted to do with the room, we’d picked out paint colours and decided that we wanted cupboards put in the alcoves, the TV mounted on the wall, the window seat ripped out and had come up with ideas for decoration.

But between the car and now a new baby to start preparing for funds had become tight. We started buying small things here and there, like a light fitting, the TV bracket, paint, the new mantle shelf and a few ornaments.

We’d built up most of the provisions we needed for making a start, but we just didn’t have the time, or energy, to crack on and do it. But eventually we just had to pull our fingers out and get started.

Step 1: Remove the Window Seat & Prep Stuff

The window seat is a nice idea, it’s good for storage and provides extra seating when guests are over. But this particular one is not brilliantly made. In fact once we started to remove it we realised that there was a tin of varnish wedged into the floor! Yes, an actual tin of varnish, with the floor cut to fit around it. If anyone has any ideas why they did this, let me know in the comments.

The other problem is that the flooring doesn’t go to the end of the room! Fortunately with the cupboards we plan to put in the alcoves, we might be able to use the flooring from there to fill the gaps, or get a close match.

Now we have to sand down the wood around the windows and the skirting boards to get ready for the next step…

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Why? Just, why?

The ex window seat

Step 2: Paint the ceiling & prime the walls

This one’s easy, just time consuming with all the stuff to move out of the way (oh, the wires behind the TV stand). We’re going with Farrow & Ball’s Stiffkey Blue for the walls, with the ceiling/skirting in their Wimborne White. Once this is done we’re going to make a decision on the detailing around the window, which we kind of want to do in Railings, a dark grey that I’m hoping will make the window appear further away (and thus make the room feel bigger) while also making the wooden details stand out more than the gloss white. The only possible issue is making the room feel dark and cutting out a natural light reflection point.

This is Stiffkey Blue

Step 3: Get a man in

We want cupboards in the alcoves, with shelves above. The shelves are simple for us to do ourselves, but the cupboards are less so. Mainly because our house is far from straight.

During World War II a bomb that exploded nearby did some damage to the foundations and the house sank a little in one corner. It’s all sturdy now and not likely to move again, but it’s left our living room and bedroom on a slight slope. At first glance you may not notice it, but take a look at the hearth and you can see how much the floor slopes. This was further highlighted to me the day I dropped a bag of Maltesers and watched in horror as they all rolled away from me, disappearing under the TV cabinet.

So we’re getting quotes to see if we can get someone to come in and make us something that will house all our electrical gumpf on one side and DVD’s, games etc on the other. On the TV side we’re going to have a fake wall to hide the cabling behind, with a shelf above the TV for displaying some more bits and bobs. On the other side the shelves will house our globe, a lamp, books and a display case that I’m allowed to put my Lego figures in! (more on that in a later post I’m sure)

The kind of thing we’re going for…

Step 4: Finishing Touches

With the bigger jobs out of the way it’ll be down to hanging some pictures, choosing which Lego figures to display, which books Kitty wants to show off, all that kind of stuff.

But that’s all way off still…

    Living Room Refurb: Part 1 Before we found out that Kitty was expecting we had started redecorating our living room, before promptly stopping when the car broke down and our funds were diverted elsewhere.

[albie79]

Player 3...

I’m going to be a dad!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or are friends on Facebook probably knew this already, as I announced it a couple of weeks ago like so:

Yes, I totally stole this idea from Tom off of McFly.

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[albie79]

A bit of a wrestling kick...

#Blog A bit of a wrestling kick...

It’s no secret that I seem to go through phases of being really into something and then loosing track or drifting away; often through just not having the time to stay up to date with whatever that thing is.

Lately I’ve been rediscovering my love of wrestling, and expanding my viewing habits into new areas. And I think that’s probably down to Fire Pro Wrestling World being released.

Fire Pro…

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[albie79]

The things I do for Fire Pro Wrestling

blog post: The things I do for Fire Pro Wrestling! #blog #firepro

There was a time when I would spend many an hour playing Fire Pro Wrestling Returns on the PlayStation 2, creating a raft of my own wrestlers, designing logos to go on the rings and “simming” matches… which is to say that I watched the computer play against itself.

Now you might say that sounds incredibly geeky, and I’d say you’re right but I am a geek, so what do you expect from me?

But it was…

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[albie79]

Love What You Do

New blog post: Love What You Do #blog #AdultingIsHard

It’s time for another look at something that makes me realise that life is tough, the second in my series “Adulting is Hard”.  This time I’m concentrating on the workplace.

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

– Steve Jobs

When we’re young we have dreams about what we want to do when we grow up, be a footballer, pop…

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[albie79]

Coming soon to Southampton, a 36 hour live charity podcasting event! Broadcasting to the world through Mixlr & TuneIn, join over a dozen podcasts from the UK and beyond for a weekend of fun!

[albie79]

#BeerMatTrick #BeerMat #SlowMotion #SlowMo

[albie79]

Episode VIII: Kids need a parrot scooter - Dead Piett Society Podcast

This week Al, Ed & Kitty discuss the Star Wars “Anthology” films, The Vanilla Ice Project and the Euthanasia Coaster. Plus Ed challenges everyone to beat his Crossy Road score!

[albie79]

A podcast taking an irreverent look at the oddest news stories from the past week, as well as letting our hosts talk about the best and/or worst thing they've seen/read/heard/played that week. Join the discussion on twitter, @DeadPiettSoc, or call the studio and leave a message: 02380 971 030.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been podcasting, along with my wife, Kitty, and my hetro life mate, Ed.

You can listen via the website, linked above, or find us on iTunes, Stitcher or whatever Podcatcher you use.

From next week we’re adding a new regular feature, where we’ll discuss the best and/or worst things we’ve seen/read/heard/played that week. If you have any suggestions for things we should watch/read/play/listen to then get in touch and let us know, or give us your own best/worst for that week. Get involved!

[albie79]

Bit of evening reading, ready to review for @ForTheGeekUK.

[albie79]

When I got home last night...

Me: Hey, what's going on?

Wife: Oh, Snow White's turned into a bitch so Jiminy Cricket's staging an intervention with the dwarves.

Me: Riiiiight.

[albie79]

Who the crap is paying £60.99 for this? #Baaaaagain

[albie79]

Our Wedding of the Year winners piece in this months "Your Hampshire & Dorset Wedding Magazine" is out today!