We come to you again from Nottingham, and this week we’ve even got a picture of the hospital, to sort of prove that we were there.

A game if Who On Earth forms the bulk of this week’s bitesized chunk of Blueprintery, and fans of monasteries, monks and roofing will be delighted to hear that all three are involved!

Here's the hospital where we hung out for episodes 78 and 79. It's in Nottingham.

We shall return. In the meantime, why not follow us on Twitter?

We found ourselves a friendly pub where we were well looked-after by staff and customers alike. Chris beat the landlord at darts, while Dave did card tricks and played guitar. It was a great night out, and it took us most of the next day to be ready to record podcasts.

Here’s Chris, feet well and truly under the table at the pub in Nottingham:

Chris pours a pint in Nottingham

That aside, in this episode we discuss the crazy thing that is a goat, and give advice to people in prison, or hardware shops, or something. I can’t remember.

We’re also joined by Jason Jones and Toby Teatime, daytime TV astrologers.

Here’s a picture of a goat’s eye to save you the bother of looking them up when prompted.

A goat's eye yesterday

We’ll be back next week with more chat and laughter.

Swine flu is big in the news this week, with infections turning up all over the place, and media hysteria already at pandemic stage, which must make the virus itself feel a bit put out.

Luckily, The Blueprint Podcast have a new feature in the form of Doctor’s Orders, and this week we deal with how to recognise the tell-tale signs that you are dead.

Saturday Swine Fever. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.

We’ll be back next week, when we’ll be coming to you from Nottingham. Because that’s what this podcast’s all about – shock.

Dave talks us through how France narrowly avoided becoming a far-right-wing nation, but it soon descends into bum jokes.

Chris has conducted an experiment by reading a load of propaganda to find out what it might have been like to be a Nazi. Happily he managed to avoid becoming one. Phew. We discuss the Nazis in a manner which avoids the use of any facts whatsoever.

All in all, though, we’re happy, chuckling dudes. Quite early on, Chris mentions Gil Gerard, who played Buck Rogers in the late 1970s-early 1980s version of the franchise. However, as a kid, Chris had a massive crush on Erin Gray, who played Wilma Deering, so we’ll have a picture of her instead.

Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering - yes please.

Having reloaded their special foot-shooting gun some years after taking down Napster and causing file-sharing to become the many-headed monster that it is today, the people who themselves live in order to make huge sums of money from the work of creative people who are paid far less have done it again.

Pirate Bay is still there, and even if it wasn’t, Mininova is, and so is Piraboogle and all the rest of them.

Spotify, which is pretty much the same thing that Napster suggested ten years ago, has now occupied a position whereby everything is legal, the music industry make money out of it, and the consumer gets instant access to free tunes. Perfect, if wholly ridiculous that they didn’t just let Napster provide the same service back in the day.

They could do the same thing with movies and TV shows if they felt like it. In fact, I can legally watch On Demand television through my Virgin Media connection, but if I miss, say Lost one day and wanted to catch up with it the next, it would be illegal for me to download the episode using bittorrent using the same connection. Mental.

The Napster case just fragmented the issue and made it unmanageable for years. The Pirate Bay issue will do the same thing again, and here’s the kicker – it was fragmented already, because bittorrent doesn’t rely on one website’s existence to work. It relies on bittorrent clients which are available for free download. Even those are plentiful.

The lawyers can play Whack-A-Mole until they retire, and it’s they who are really sucking the money out of the music and DVD industries. They’re the ones who have somehow got people convinced that chasing website owners is better than actually trying to do something positive about the way that copyrighted content is delivered in the 21st Century.

Spotify works, so create the exact same service for movies and TV shows, you absolute bunch of idiots.

Rant over. We also give you a scat singing masterclass during this episode, but not before a thrilling game of Dog Bingo.

We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. This week’s photo is of some file sharing.

File sharing - Always use clean files

And for good measure, here’s a picture of Reveen as well, since we talk about him this week.

Reveen. He wants you to relax with him

We’re coming to you from Barnsley once again, and although we are still a bit hungover, we’re a using sentences a bit more than we were last week.

Please sponsor Chris’s continuing charity moustache, then join us next week for the next thrilling installment of The Blueprint Podcast.

Ruth Madoc in Hi-De-Hi. Chris met her at the Billingham Forum when he was about 18, fact fans. She was very nice.

PS – while looking for Hi-De-Hi related stuff, I’ve just discovered that actress Dianne Holland, who played Yvonne Stewart-Hargreaves in the show, died this February aged 78.  Apparently she was a good laugh in real life.

Charity moustache - day 17

I’d be tremendously grateful to you if you’d be so kind as to sponsor this thing on my face. Many thanks for the incredible generousity of those people who have already donated, and whose kindness will help terminally ill people and their loved ones to experience a better quality of life.

http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

Please sponsor this moustache at http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash.

Charity moustache day 15

We pick our way through the previous evening, and along the way find time for the noble signwriting profession and how it would fit into life in the distant future.

We have to say a very special hello and thanks to John and Patrick, whose 40th birthday party we found ourselves attending in Barnsley. Thanks to you guys, and to your friends and family for making us feel so very welcome, and for letting us have loads of goes on the karaoke and buffet.

Here’s the hospital we recorded this podcast at.

Greetings from Barnsley, one friendly town.

We’ll be back with another Barnsley-based episode next week, join us then at www.blueprintpodcast.com.

Charity moustache, day 8

Please sponsor this tash, because it’s a charitable endeavour. You can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

Nerds are on my mind again. Possibly I think of nerds because I am one. Possibly because I worry about them and how upset they get about things like the new Star Trek film.

It’s for this reason that I regale you with the story ofhow myself, Dave and some other old pals all went to watch Highlander II together, and the way we felt about that.

Oh no! I'm in Highlander bloody two!!!

Next week we’ll be welcoming Dave back to the podcast, so come back then and hear what he’sbeen up to.

Please sponsor Chris’s charity moustache at http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

Moustache day 5

Please sponsor this now annoying moustache for charity by going to http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

Bit of a technical issue that we won’t bore you with, but hopefully it won’t ruin your Friday evening too much.

Day 4, and Joshua's moustache is better than Chris's

You can do your bit to help terminally ill people and their loved ones enjoy better quality of life at the most difficult time of thei rlives by sponsoring this tash at http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash.

With help from my eldest son Joshua, here’s the situation on the morning of day three.

You can sponsor this charity moustach at http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

Moustache Day Three

Many thanks to those who have so far donated or pledged donations by email, hope that you, reader, will sponsor my charity moustache too, and help terminally ill people and their loved ones to enjoy better quality of life.

www.justgiving.com-chris-tash

Moustache day 1 - not much to see yet!

We bring you the lastest from The Blueprint Podcast News Roundup, which this week focuses on the worlds of Law, Twitter, celebrities, The Cure, The Ting Tings, and quasi-computer-illiterate office workers.

Then, it’s a journey into the World of Men via their facial hair. If you think about it for long enough, any hair is a bit weird, and the way we style it and cut it and so on is even weirder. Facial hair seems doubly so.

Some moustaches yesterday - which one should I go for?

This train of thought comes about because Chris is about to embark on a most male trial, that of the growing of a charity moustache. If you’d like to sponsor Chris to grow a moustache and help terminally-ill people and their loved ones to enjoy a better quality of life, please go to http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash and give as much or as little as you feel comfortable with.

Episode 72 will be steaming your way in but a week from now.

There’s a News Roundup this week, with stories from the worlds of speaking, the economic downturn and housing market, bears, anti-smoking hypocrisy, Facebook,  and wheelie bin collections.

Other than that, it’s just Chris and a bit of a rant about relationships and how most people in the world don’t actually seem to like each other very much.

Please sponsor Chris to grow a moustache throughout the month of April. You can leave a donation, however large or small, by going to http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash.

Here’s a couple who are reaching relationship Armageddon.

Buster Keaton and the timeless custard pie

The Blueprint Podcast will return next week with episode 71, see you then.

We’ve also got another game of Who On Earth with which to perplex and entertain you as you go about your daily lives.

We’ll be back with epsiode 70 next week, see you then.

Yield

And ALSO…

Hi everyone.

I, Chris, am growing a charity moustache during the month of April 09. It’s in aid of the Hartlepool and District Hospice, which provides terminally ill people and their loved ones with a better quality of life.

I’ll be posting photos of my tash progress here and on Twitter so that sponsors can see their investment flourish as well as give to a very good cause.

We’ve never asked you for a penny for 69 episodes of Blueprint fun, so please give a few quid to charity – you can donate online by going to…

http://www.justgiving.com/chris-tash

I’ll also thank everyone who donates on the Blueprint Podcast (unless you ask not to be mentioned), thus making you part of Blueprint Podcast history.

Tom Selleck - moustache owner

Apart from that, we get into a trick to pysche out other people in an exam situation, which may not work in world politics, and consider the possibility of a Dadcast, involving our dads.

As ever, it’s all happening. We’ll be back with episode 69 in but a week’s time. Until then, please enjoy this picture of beautiful Scotland, which is a very very good place, and the people there are great, and forgiving.

Scotland - great.

Twitter is a fun little thing. It’s a bit like an unholy union between the status updates of Facebook and the chat rooms of the Internet’s earlier days. The best thing about it is that many famous people are there, and you can pretend that you’re friends with them, even if they largely ignore your sicophantic overtures.

So far, I have been ignored by Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Richard Herring. Oh, and Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, as well. Not a bad list of ignorers, I trust you’ll agree. I aim to be ignored by royalty and a talking animal by the end of this year.

You can come and see what’s going on behind the scenes if you go to http://twitter.com/BlueprintPod

Finally we’re putting that right, can’t believe it took us until episode 67 to do that.On the upside, though, it gives Chris a chance to tell a story with no ending about a day out in London he had about a decade ago.

I feel a bit like James Bond at the moment, because I’m typing this using my electronic laptop computer, and what’s more I’m doing so in a hotel in Cairo. Get me.

The Blueprint Podcast will return from North Africa to good old freezing cold northern Europe in time for next week’s episode, so join us then, or as they say here in Egypt, “Pyramid”

Tequila, a drink celebrated musically, but Gloomy Sunday is probably more appropriate the day after your big tequila-fuelled party.

It’s easy to forget and hard to imagine that only a few years ago, all of this was still the domain of science fiction, or that only techno-wizards or super nerds had access to the Internet, and only top business tycoons has mobile phones.

We touch on this in a typically flippant manner this week, basing our observations on TV shows of the past which used to present the emergence of the Internet as some sort of kooky passing fancy. Now you can watch clips of those same shows on YouTube.

We’ve also got a game of Who On Earth and those who like ot keep up with fictional current events will be eager to hear this week’s News Roundup.

The ancient Internet, represented here by what a 1980s Google might have looked like.

We’ll be back next week with more Blueprinterrific fun and frolics.

You’ll notice that this week’s episode is shorter than you’re used to. We value your comments about this and we hope you’ll let us know, either by email or at Twitter, what your views are. Is this too short, or do you prefer us to spend more time putting together amusing segments and less time on the general chatter?

Let us know and we’ll act on what you say. After all, this is only worth doing if people are enjoying it out there.

I mentioned Twitter just then. Many thanks to online_mum who finally persuaded us to start up a Twitter account so that Chris can try to kid himself that he’s now mates with Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross. If you’d like to follow us on Twitter, it’s at www.twitter.com/BlueprintPod.

Harold Lloyd, in a picture which sort of has something to do with time in that he's hanging from a clock in his famous film "Harold Lloyd Hangs Off A Clock"

It snowed a bit.

Literally millions of flakes of snow smashed into London’s gold-paved streets, causing the distant memory of the Word War II Blitz to spring back into glorious Technicolor as plucky Londoners stayed at home or got taxis instead of buses.

London’s famous buses were absent from the city all day, as the presence of wintry weather meant that any attempt to drive a bus in the city would have meant famous landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament, Nelson’s Column and the London Eye would have been destroyed in an orgy of runaway buses skidding violently into the historic structures.

National television obviously responded, allowing the rest of the United Kingdom to sympathise with the capital. The BBC provided vital help for stranded Brits by showing news pieces [this next bit is absolutely true] in which a man from the Automobile Association demonstrated how to scrape snow off a car.

Meanwhile in countries like Norway, Finland, Greenland, Canada, Switzerland, Russia and Iceland, time stood still as eyes turned toward London filled with fear and wondering how the city would possibly cope with it being a bit snowy. Sadly, at no point in time have eyes from London ever turned back towards those countries to see how they do it.

Today, the clearup continues as national news continues to bring reports that the snow has gone slushy or icy.

We kick things off pretty quickly with a game of Who on Earth? for which Dave had prepared a sort of audio B movie, and then get into some pseudo-gritty reportage with mention for Heathrow Airport and its new runway. It’s one of those local news stories with international ripples. The international part would be the idea that a new runway would increase traffic in and out of the English capital. The local part would be that if you live in London it will be noisier.

An Australian naval commander is cornered by a men’s magazine called Ralph into making a mildly sexist remark, and when it’s taken out of context and passed around the media, he ends up being demonised. No fair, say the Blueprint.

Regular listeners will be surprised to hear that we’ve managed to negotiate ourselves another audience with our French counterpart, Xavier Laurent, and this time we’ve got working translation equipment, so will things go a bit more smoothly now?

We’ve also got our News Roundup, and Dave goes in a mood for your entertainment.

More Blueprint podcast fun with the UK’s top podcast with no famous people in it next week. If you’re not reading this there already, you can find us at www.blueprintpodcast.com

Like David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, we will only be signing things related to our current project

WIth the benefit of hindsight and Google, I’ve been able to find out that there are loads of them, albeit obscure ones or ones which may not count. The best one is “Nakers”, which is/are a sort of drum(s), but just might be pronounced “knackers” which would be fantastic.

The Vikings, starring Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas. Made in 1958 and still as fresh as a daisy, by Odin's beard.

We’ll be back again in but a week, so join us then for more Blueprintastic podcasting fun from the United Kingdom.

You could be forgiven for thinking that we’ve got halfway through January before noticing that it was a new year at all. That’s because new years are a bit silly, and we talk about the arbitrary nature of the calendar. It just don’t make no sense!

We’ve also got a new game to play, and we play it well.

William Shatner is predicted by Dave to be on the brink of an amazing year in 2009.

We will be back in one week’s time, and we hope you’ll join us then. Don’t forget that you can email us by clicking the “email chris” link at the top of the page at www.blueprintpodcast.com

In this episode, Dave visits a farty shop, which brings us to discussion of why farts are funny, and why egg sandwiches smell of farts when they aren’t made of poo.

The hamster portion of the episode relates to the extraordinary behaviour of Chris’s son’s hamster recently, and does not concern Richard Hammond on this occasion, although both had experiences with certain superficial similarities.

Here’s another example of a hamster doing the same thing from the BBC News website, as mentioned in the podcast.

In the wild, a healthy female Bigtrak will lay up to five eggs every twenty years or so. This female in captivity at Bristol Zoo has laid just two. Sadly neither are likely to survive to hatching.

We shall return in but a week’s time. If you like our little podcast, please tell your pals about it, because it’s always encouraging to see a lot of people listening.

In the words of Doctor Who, we’re sorry, we’re so sorry.

The reason, much as I wish it was more exciting, was a simple broken Internet connection, and it was more time-consuming than usual to get it fixed because of the presence of Christmas.

But we’re here now, and we’ve got a good episode to usher in 2009. In epiosde 60, we play a new game of Who’s The Greatest, in which Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolfman and Frankenstein’s Monster are tested against various odd benchmarks.

We also try to ascertain what Marconi plays in the Starship song We Built This City. Chris thinks it says “La Bamba”, Dave thinks “the bongos”, and the Internet reckons it’s “the Mamba”.

Following the recording of this episode, we had a further delve into the world of knowledge, and here’s what Wikipedia says a “mamba” can be:

Mamba, a genus of snakes
Mamba, a 1930 film
Armstrong Siddeley Mamba, an aircraft engine
Mamba (roller coaster), a hypercoaster
Mamba Armoured Personnel Carrier
Mamba (candy)
Mamba, the nickname of NBA player Kobe Bryant
Mamba, Tibet

We’re also aware that it’s a type of Adidas trainer. So, which of those things could Marconi be playing? I suppose it’s possible that Marconi could be playing Kobe Bryant at basketball, but it seems somehow incongruous, and being British we know little of this “basket ball” of which you speak.

Your answers would be massively appreciated, especially if you’re Bernie Taupin, Martin Page, Dennis Lambert, and Peter Wolf (they wrote the song), or a member of Starship (they sang it).

Marconi plays the Mamba, or the bongos, or La Bamba. YOU decide.

All silliness aside, both Chris and Dave wish you and the people who matter to you a very happy 2009.

If 2008 has been great, then here’s to more of the same. If 2008 has been soul destroying, then here’s hoping that ’09 is so different as to be unrecognisable as a year at all.

We’ll be back in a week, keep it sleek.

Dave’s encyclopedia knowledge of old James Whale horror films and less old but still pretty old mentalists comes into play this week. He also fights to get back into the Quotations game with the score at the start of this episode at 1-0 to Chris.

Received Pronounciation is what brings us onto the subjects of Frankenstein and mentalism, because of actor Ernest Thesiger’s thorough use of the letters in words, and Polish mind reader Chan Canasta’s unique way of speaking in a second language.

We’re also possibly contacted by aliens, in the latest of a longish line of slightly odd things that people have either emailed to us, or said to us about our podcast.

Dr Praetorius and Chan Canasta both like Blake's 7.

It’s business as usual for The Blueprint Podcast over Christmas, and we’ll be back with our next episode at 5pm (UK Time) on Boxing Day (December 26th), so you can have a listen to us with your new Christmas mp3 players and computers.

Chris says “literally” a bit too much, and Superman somehow gets involved again. We’re always talking about Superman, us.

This takes us onto serial killers, and we hang around there for a while. Both Chris and Dave have ideas for a serial killer movie. Let us know which one you would rather go to see at your local cinema, or movie theater if you live in America, as many of you do.

Not many comedy podcasts will tackle serial killers for you, but we will. The more we listen to our movie ideas, the more we wish that we had easy access to rich movie producers. If YOU are a rich movie executive with decision-making powers, get in touch with us and we might let you make The Pizza Wheel Murders or I’ve Got Legs.

The Emperor Ming from Flash Gordon gets a long overdue telling-off for his misdeeds and general flaws in character. Other movie villains are also admonished for their low-quality execution of executions.

The Pizza Wheel Murders - if youre not dead in 30 minutes, he'll kill you for free.

We’ll be back in but a week, make sure you’ve got us – click here to subscribe to The Blueprint Podcast using iTunes. IF you don’t have iTunes installed on your computer, don’t worry, it’s a free download, and you can immerse yourself in the modern world of podcasts and stuff.

Please take the time to complete our Listener Survey, so that we know what sort of demographic is listening to us, and can tailor the podcast accordingly. For example, the last surveys we got all said “more talk about having a poo in space needed”, so we obliged!

Jet fighters chasing a B2 Bomber in the belief that it's a UFO. The pilots of the bomber also believe that they're aliens. Frankly it's an accident waiting to happen.

We’ll be back next week, get in.

We’ve also got a brand new game to play on the subject of quotations, which those of you who are fond of guessing things will adore.

We also chat about Indiana Jones’ CV (that’s his résumé if you’re in the US), and some talk of hydrotherapy leads to an idea for criminal swimmers.

I was nearly late today, because there was a jam on the motorway! Ho ho!

We’d also like to take this opportunity to point you in the direction of some other great podcasts which are floating around the interwaves.

Collins and Herring’s podcast is two famous guys enjoying a bit of chat and banter, and there are plenty of laughs in it, as well as lots of swearing. They’re nice and long, at over an hour each, so if you’re at the gym or on a long journey, make sure you take these two with you, as well as The Blueprint, of course.

Stephen Fry, possibly one of the world’s busiest and most widely-talented living creatures, has some podcast episodes, or Podgrams as he prefers to call them. They are often incisive and incredibly interesting, whilst the belly laughs, when they come, are superb.

In this episode, we have another go at contacting our French friend, Xavier, using some cutting edge technology. It goes reasonably well, we think.

The big news this week is another exciting new feature called Real Or Phoney, in which we throw truth and lies around like confetti at the marriage of Mr Veracity to Miss Duplicity.

We hope you’re enjoying the show, please drop us a line if you’ve got anything to say, ask, or complain to us about.

This lady is either demonstrating a sneeze for us, or this photo has something to do with one of Dave's other topics about the speed of bodily functions.

Join us for more Blueprint fun and laughter next week.

Ever keen to embrace the wider world, we make attempts to contact a French podcaster (do you think he likes us?) and we hope to speak to him again soon.

To illustrate the success level of our French escapade, here’s the metaphorical street that we ended up in:

Rue De Merde

We’ll be back next week with more such talk, and more “Who’s The Greatest” fun and frolics.

This week, after some parenting advice from Chris regarding Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’re keen to settle once and for all the question of who’s the greatest – Batman, Spiderman or Superman? As laymen in the superhero knowledge world, we don’t use the usual set of criteria for judging such things, though. We’ve got our own ideas.

For example, with which of the three would you feel most uncomfortable if you were trapped with them, naked in a lift (elevator, American listeners). Which would make the best rabbi? You get the picture.

This week’s visual aid constitutes proof of the result of the first “Who’s The Greatest” contest.

Please take the time to fill in our Listener Survey – it only takes a minute or two, and it helps us to find out, broadly speaking, what sort of people we’ve got listening to the podcast. That in turn helps us to improve what we do.

More of Dave’s pet hates are explored as we delve deeper into his inner fury, and find out why the letter “H” makes his blood boil.

In other stories, we’ve got it all sorted out for Professor Stephen Hawking, after Dave meets a party guest with some alarming views on the secret of the scientist’s success.

What’s more, if you’re listening in America, Dave’s got some kind words for you about your country, so that should make you feel good, whichever way you’re planning to vote in your upcoming election.

Speaking of popularity contests, make sure that you join us next week on Friday, November 7th, when we’ll be putting a few things into their proper places.

Stephen Hawking. He can fly.

This week, we get to the heart of the Dave Russell phenomenon by discovering a couple of things that really grind his gears.

We warm up first with some talk of spherical stimulating toys for babies, and an astonishing Chris Fact is revealed, closely followed by a Chris Lie.

Astrology is described by Wikipedia as “a group of systems, traditions, and beliefs in which knowledge of the apparent relative positions of celestial bodies and related details is held to be useful in understanding, interpreting, and organizing information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters”. It’s described by Dave as “nonsense”, and he pulls no punches with a scathing attack on the whole idea.

If you’re a firm believer in newspaper horoscopes, please have a quiet word with yourself.

Binoculars, or more specifically their misrepresentation in the cinema, are Dave’s second target, although Chris disagrees, and hilarity ensues.

It’s all happening.

This week’s image is the visual representation of Dave’s hate.

We’ll be back with Episode 52 at 5pm (UK Time) on Friday, 31st October. See you then.

This episode sees the podcasting debut of Dave Russell, an old friend of mine from Sixth Form College. Dave lives in France most of the time, so we’re lucky to have him on board for a while while he’s spending some time in the UK.

In this episode, we reboot with a brief history of The Blueprint, which leads us, of course, onto some allegedly topless blondes who robbed a teenager in the street recently. As with so many quirky stories, though, the briefest of investigations shows that not all is as it seems. Honestly, it’s like they start with the headline and then look for a story to sort of fit in with it, sometimes.

Then it’s a brief guided tour of the Amsterdam Sex Museum which, as you may expect, is a truly bizarre place, and one where visitors adopt those facial expressions. You know the ones – “I’m an enlightened modern person, this isn’t funny or crude, it’s simply the expression of our basic primal de… …look, there’s some breasts!”

Ensuring that Dave gets a proper baptism of fire (pun intended), we then get into religion and The Bible by way of a sulky priest who refuses to speak during services.

So, back with a vengeance, then. Please let us know what you think of the show, which you can do by emailing (link at the top of the page at www.blueprintpodcast.com) . If you have time (and you do, otherwise why are you reading this?) please take a minute to complete our Listener survey, which helps us to keep track of the general shape of our listenership.

Episode 51 will be right here at 5pm (UK Time) on Friday, October 24th.

Here’s an aerial photo of Amsterdam, where you can combine elegance with coarseness within two or three strides, and be almost run over by a tram or cyclist whenever you like.

I’ve noticed that there have been a lot of people checking back on the website for new content, and I want to apologise for the lack of it for the last few weeks.

To keep you in the loop, sadly Greg has left The Blueprint Podcast due to constraints on his time. Fair play to the guy, he’s recently started a new job that keeps him very busy, and that’s got to be his priority.

Now to the good news. An old friend of mine by the name of Dave is going to come along and record some new episodes, so you’ll have brand new Blueprint to look forward to very very soon.

I hope that there are no Pete Best riots in the streets. I’m sure you’ll like Dave, he’s a funny guy and has a lot of interesting stuff to say. Watch this space for episode 50 in the very near future.

PS – Episode 50 will be here at www.blueprintpodcast.com (as well as iTunes etc.) on Friday, October 17th at 5pm (UK Time).

Stories that didn’t make the “top stories” slot include “North Korea builds new missile site“.

That a new look for Facebook (for “new look” read that the sidebar is now on the right instead of on the left) gets top story status on the BBC’s news website might be saddening, but it isn’t that surprising. It seems that whilst not everyone on Facebook works in the media, everyone who works in the media is on Facebook.

Consider a world without Facebook. It would be okay. It’s not like considering a world without mobile phones or cars. Facebook can be addictive, though, and perhaps that is why it was considered so newsworthy when it changed slightly today.

As a non-addict (although I do have a Facebook account), I don’t see the big deal about the new look for Facebook. You might as well post a top story headline to say that Coke or Pepsi have changed their packaging design slightly.

Strangely, though, I see the big deal about North Korea building a new missile site, even though I’m not Korean.

So, it’s a bit like scientific stock car racing, then. The scientists certainly seemed pretty geared up about it, and I wondered if they were placing bets on their favourite particles. When they switched it on there was a bit of a cheer and some applause. The BBC’s commentator for the event almost missed it whilst interviewing a scientist about it. After that, not much happened for a bit, and then they apparently did the old “switch it off and back on again” trick familiar to all computer users in order to go for the next stage.  Stage two was similar to stage one, only with a bit more technical talk, and then everyone applauded again as what was described as a “flash” appeared on a computer monitor in the control room. This, we were told, was the activation now one eighth of the way to being sorted. This isn’t what we want from science, is it? We want explosions! We want terrifying nuclear weapons exploding in deserts! Gigantic Saturn 5 rockets launching astronauts to the Moon! I was at least hoping that moments after the LHC was switched on, a green-skinned alien with pointed ears would appear in the control room and announce that The Council Of Clever Aliens now deemed us “ready”.  These days, though, science doesn’t seem to happen with explosions, or at least not the ones visible from miles around. Science now is happening in tiny physical realms.  In 2000, we had The British Prime Minister and US President jointly announcing that the Human Genome Project was pretty much finished, but only in a sort of “rough draft” way. Then everyone sort of shuffled off and told us to wait for a few years, when the really good stuff would happen.  If this had happened in a Hollywood movie, the announcement would have been made by clones of the two leaders, and their real versions would step out, grinning to the cameras that were beaming the breakthrough to a brave new world. The LHC has a similar problem, in that it has the potential to solve many of the universe’s greatest mysteries, but it isn’t going to do it today, tomorrow, or even next week. A couple of years, they’re saying, and we might have some excellent stuff to tell you. Science journals are doubtless going to be watching with excited, and expert, eyes. The rest of us are going to have to learn a lot about physics if we want to get along for the ride.  I’m going to try, therefore, to boil down what the LHC does in layman’s terms. I’m no physicist, and last sat an exam in the subject at age 16, which was more than half my life ago. Here goes, anyway… 

The LHC is a particle accelerator. We’ve heard of those, right? They do what they say they do. They accelerate particles. They shoot particles of one sort or another, so that they are going very, very fast indeed. They are also called “atom smashers”, because a popular purpose for accelerating the particles seems to be to get them to crash into each other in a controlled environment, and to see what happens when they do. 

They do other things, but I’m not even going to try to get into every possible use here, because I don’t have time to do a degree or PhD this morning. Out of interest, though, it turns out that the older CRT type of television is a sort of particle accelerator, too.  So, this LHC thing, then. It’s going to look at what happens to particles when they hit each other by sending them hurtling round in a huge circle (17 miles, or 27km, in circumference), and then watching them smash into one another, with all manner of exciting effects happening at a sub-atomic level. They do this by sending two bunches of particles around the LHC in opposite directions (there are two tubes), and then getting the two to crash at an intersection. When the crashes happen, various detectors at the intersection points will be watching very closely for whatever it is that they are designed to look for. Each of them is looking for slightly different things, but here’s where the excitement comes in. They might find evidence that time travel is possible. They might find out exactly what “dark matter” (the stuff that theoretically makes up the vast majority of the mass of the universe) is. They might, in fact, find out that today’s most accepted theories are completely wrong.

This, according to Professor Stephen Hawking, would be even more exciting, since it would mean that everyone has to go away and find new theories instead.  Hawking has even bet US$100 (about £50) that they won’t find the elusive “Higgs Boson“, or “God” particle, which would prove The Standard Model to be at least a stab in the right direction.Either way, we’re not going to know very much for a while. But if they are going find a way to travel through time, presumably they would have come back to tell us about it by now?

Quirkies this week include a convicted murderer in the US, who pulls an unusual series of mindflips by agreeing to be turned into fish food for a piece of art after his execution, but also frantically appealing against his death sentence. Now in this life, you either want to be fish food or you don’t. Nobody likes a ditherer. Or a murderer, for that matter.

As well as the usual quirky stories, we’ve also got some great music in this week’s Blueprint, from Bluesman Tom Malafarina, Oriskany Strings, and Blue Valentine, all of whom are from America.

This weeks’ pictorial side dish is of some fish food.

Still not smoking, for those who have been following the story!

We get into a few topics, chiefly our recent weekend at The Green Man Festival in South Wales, and the fact that both of us have given up smoking. Expect flashing tempers in coming episodes.

 Please join us next week for episode 49, and fill in the Blueprint Podcast Survey (link at the top of the page) so that we can read your very thoughts.

This week, here’s a panoramic view across the Green Man mainstage area. A seriously niiiice music festival.

Television animals get us started this week, before we move into cartoons, particularly the Hanna Barbera-style ones in which some sort of unusual beast accompanies a teenage gang as they travel the United States in search of mysteries to solve. Sadly, this brings about the startling realisation that  many of our favourite animated heroes were actually the tragic victims of their so-called friends.

We celebrate the wisdom of Bill Cosby for a while, beofre bemoaning the existence of the cartoon spin-off Fonz And the Happy Days Gang, which, was ridiculous on every level.

The cartoon chat culminates in a nostalgic mood with The Incredible New Shmoo, a sort of white shapeshifting abomination capable of assisting his teenage pals in the unravelling of mysterious events.

Then it’s quirky story time, and UFOs are definitively sorted out, along with the slightly odd notion of a special police bra, before Chris and Greg compare their childhood Action Man (that’s GI Joe if you’re in the USA) collections.

We’ll be back, friends. Back. It’ll happen On Friday, 22nd August at 5pm (UK time). Join us then, we’ll put the kettle on.

Here’s the Shmoo. The Incredible New Shmoo.