Monthly Archives: September 2008

The circle is almost complete

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I’ve bought (another) domain name and will be migrating this blog to a self-hosted WordPress install over the next day or so. Because I can (before you ask). Like people build their own kit cars, because they can.

Here’s a quick FAQ for my millions of readers,

1q. Will you be providing re-directs from the blogger site?
1a. No

2q. Why?
2a. Because there’s like 3 of you who read this blog, update your bookmarks already.

3q. But you’ll lose your hundreds of external links to your post on thumb tendonitis?
3a. Yes, stop following me around already with the thumb thing.

More news later when I get the domain sorted. The only sad thing is that I’ll need to either become my own OpenID provider or stop using OpenID to haunt other people’s blog comments sections.

The smell of bacon

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All around me this morning is the smell of bacon cobs. Alluring, delicious, warm and comforting on a cold and damp September morning.

I am assailed on all sides by the elicit odour of that which I crave.

So far, I have remained strong, through a combination of not wanting to move because I have a stinking headache, and the last shreds of my willpower that I really would like to lose some weight sometime before the end of this year.

It remains to be seen how long those two factors protect me for the rest of the morning.

Black to White!

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Found this handy little bookmarklet on a website, if you click it, or bookmark it and use it, it turns the web page you’re looking at to black text on a white background. Obviously, any images or heavily CSSed elements may still render in the original colours and vanish, but it’s handy if you truly can’t stand the colours a site has.

Transmogrify Website Colours
(Right click and choose Bookmark, works in Firefox, can’t promise it’ll work in other browsers, you can then either use it from your bookmarks menu, or whack it onto a button bar or something).

Envelope much?

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I got a new SIM card for my phone today (the work one), you know SIM cards? They’re small. They usually come attached to a credit card sized piece of plastic to keep them safe.

This is the envelope in which it arrived. Sorry about the shaky picture, low blood sugar at the time, the Sky+ remote is artfully placed so you get a sense of scale, and the SIM card is on top of the envelope.

Feel free to click the picture for a (large) version.

Good writing advice

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This is clearly good advice, which I ignore (obviously), written by Margaret H. Bonham.

Following up on loads of questions asked by folks here, one question lt260 asked was: Do you have a 12-step program for gaining good writing habits?

You know, with the amount of writing I do, you’d figure that I wouldn’t need this so-called 12 step program, but the reality is sometimes even the best authors don’t write as much as they should. But, of course, I don’t follow many rules, so these are my 15 step program for gaining good writing habits. So, here are my recommendations for gaining good writing habits.

1. Apply butt to chair; fingers to keyboard (or pen to paper). Seriously, most writers don’t write because they fail to just sit down and write. Sitting down and putting yourself if the position to write will at least get you to the medium you intend to write on. After that, the rest is up to you.

read the rest ….

Autumn so soon?

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Fun fun weather here in the UK (obviously, it’s just quaint weather, nothing on the scale of the rest of the world). Our summer ran out in June and July, August was pretty much a complete wash out and then September is having a surprise revival with a few days of sun so far.

But the trees can’t be fooled, and there’s an increasing amount of yellow and orange on the journey in to work. Summer is turning, as it invariably does, into Autumn which is my favourite time of year. I don’t really enjoy the heat (useful in the UK), and I don’t mind the cold. Autumn is always my favourite time of year.

My favourite type of day is a bright, dry, crisp and cool Autumn day where you can just see a hint of your own breath glowing in the sun.

We made spaghetti bolognaise over the weekend, and I intended to bring some to work for lunch today but I really didn’t fancy it, so I’m staring at a sandwich that I know is bad for me (in a general sense), and it’s only 11:30. At weekends I almost forget to eat until after 1pm, but something about being in work makes me crave lunch from around 11:30 onwards.

Half a second wind

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Made it into the lounge and woke up a little bit (need to digest some of this food before actually going to bed).

So anyway, to continue the theme of banging on about the Wii Fit. Did some gardening today. The Wii Fit didn’t make us do it, but knowing we could record the effort spent gardening in the tool certainly added a tiny amount of encouragement. You could do the same by running a spreadsheet and tracking it yourself, but the Wii FitPiggy is cuter.

Edit: Man that was a lame blog entry. I started strong, then got sidetracked by registering our Wii and getting Wii stars and then I got tired again. So anyway, Wii Fit = good, gardening = hard work, frogs = plentiful, ivy = mostly removed, huge hole in the ground between the fence and the path = mostly filled, had a second shower today because I was creeped out by the spiders and other bugs, snails = *huge*, cats = very excited by anything that moved. Grete weeded the border and sorted out the grass along the edge (big job, took about two hours).

I finally got some little things done like moving the remains of the wardrobe we broke up when we moved in (like 5 years ago), and moving some broken paving stones (used them to fill The Hole). Also, spread the last bag of wood chip we bought about 2 years ago to sort the border. I assumed plastic bags would be water proof but obviously not, the wood chip was soaked, stuck together and clumpy. Hopefully it’ll look more like wood when it dries out (sometime in 2011 it looks like).

I’m always torn when it comes to gardens. I love the idea of a garden providing somewhere for wildlife to thrive (frogs, snails, newts, dragonflies, everything) but I also appreciate that kind of garden can look a mess to the neighbours and eventually can risk things like fences and sheds.

I did finally work out why I don’t like gardening, or the main reason. I don’t like being in a war you can’t win. And basically, you can not win against nature, you can just slow her down – life has a way of getting under the path and into the house no matter how hard you try.