Yearly Archives: 2006

Sunday Roast – it’s always a good day when you see Daniel Craig’s naked bum

Before I start with the ‘Roast, I have a tip for you – if your daily bowl contains citrus fruit of any kind, brush your teeth after eating your breakfast. If, like me this morning, you just have to get rid of that morning-mouth before you can face a cup of tea let alone healthy food, wait a decent interval between brushing and munching. An hour later I was still going 😛 😛 to try and get rid of the fluoride/citrus conflict.

Boing Boing: Head-tripping four-eyes image. I’m not sure why, but I honestly can’t look at this image for more than a milli-second before my brain tries to turn itself insideout and my eyeballs explode.

hanzo:web. A kind of mutant love-child of del.icio.us and Internet Archive (or so it seems). I bring it to you because this kind of thing might work for you. I’ve signed up for an account so I will have a play and let you know more. At the moment though, I am not sure it does what it claims to do well enough to make me want to switch…

Adobe Labs – Project: Lightroom. Adobe have released a beta version of a new piece of photo software that has me going all goosepimply. Download the beta version free (requires a registration process) so you can have a play. You can rest assured I will be playing and let you know what I think. There is also a good introduction to be found here.
NB – The beta version expires when the program is commercially released, so if you are afraid you might fall in love with the program, and then not be able to afford the price tag (I saw a figure of around $400), then it might be an idea to steer clear! Also, beta version is currently Mac OS X only.

BBC NEWS – Ikea targeting British expansion. I must admit I am a fan of Ikea. The sofabed I got four years ago has done me Stirling service – for two years as a divinely comfortable bed, and since then as a great sofa. So when the time came to furnish Meadow Towers on a small budget, Ikea seemed like the obvious choice, barring the fact neither Moose nor myself have a car and that the nearest Ikea is 2 hours drive away (at least). So the thought of home delivery… Exciting! (At the same time, I do agree that it might not be a great thing that Ikea is taking over the world…)

MacBook Pro. My PowerBook is slowly starting to show it’s age. Things aren’t quite so zippy as they once were. It’s got a couple of scratches and bruises from a couple of years of dedicated service. I do love my 12″ G4. Nicknamed the ‘pocket calculator’, it has engendered much envy among coursemates over the years. I keep looking at it and can’t believe a working computer can exist in such a small, sleek, slab of titanium. I wouldn’t want to trade it (it is silly how invested you can get in a laptop!), but the new MacBook’s are certainly starting to call to me. Even if I had near £2000 to spend on a new computer, I’d still wait 6 months, following the law with ALL Apple products that you wait till the second gen of anything unless you want to be fighting bugs and recalls the rest of your life. Then again, same money, get top of the range desktop Mac and keep the Pocket Calculator for travel… (Ah, the dilemma. I do love spending money I don’t have, especially money I won’t have for several years unless another beloved relative pops their clogs, which is how I got the Pocket Calculator).

New Intel Macs Can Run Windows – a dual boot system? Oh, I am getting goose-pimply because all of a sudden the world of decent GIS is available on the Mac.

This animated drawing lets you watch the invisible artist draw a figure from the skeleton up. Fascinating to watch, and remarkably envy-inspiring as well.

Official Google Blog: Google Earth in a Mac world (PC too). I have one word for this – finally.

Lego knitting machine movie. Hypnotic and ever so slightly threatening…

Well, this article tells me more about the upcoming film “Bubble” than the trailer did. I also agree with Paul’s take on what the whole cinema going experience has become… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against paying to see a movie, I just hate getting shafted for the priviledge

Fifty Writing Tools. We could all do with a little help in this respect.

Quick Online Tips: Absolutely Del.icio.us – Complete Tool Collection. A list of all the del.icio.us tools you could possible want to maximise your bookmarking experience.

As Moose said when she emailed me this link. Some people have far too much time on their hands. They’re Taking The Hobbits To Isengard

And to end on a lighter note, Ben Hammersley has the best blonde joke ever. All I can say is: I’m sorry, but it appealed to my sense of humour…

(And there are some del.icio.us leftovers for those of you with big appetites).

ACK!!!

Ack!
If you subscribe to the feed, please, please, please ignore a post that might appear entitled “Blog Basics – how to code accessible links”. It wasn’t ready for public consumption, I was just checking formatting, but hit ‘publish’ instead of ‘save as draft’ by mistake. Bugger! Yes, one of my blonder moments, but it is 2330 and I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. Anyway, ignore the post please 🙂

People want the weirdest things

I’ve highlighted before a few of the odd phrases by which people have stumbled across Bright Meadow – Chayanne in his underpants still being a personal favourite. (And yes, I posted that link just so we’d all have an excuse to look at that picture of Chayanne again) – and I figured it was time to have a quick look at some more, because it leads into what I want to talk about.

My new favourite, mainly because someone actually took the time to craft this phrase and type it into Google, is “A 1957 novel written by a british author were all the women are impregnated on the same night“. (They also get brownie points for using the word ‘impregnate’). Now the book you are looking for is John Wyndham’s “The Midwich Cuckoos”, which you can find reviewed in a round-about way here. Currently such a search on google returns me as the second link, so I feel I should perhaps go back and re-write that review so that people get more information.

It also serves to reassure me on whether Google is indexing me or not.

Clearly as the previous paragraph shows, they must be, because you can get to me through searches, but tools such as Talk Digger and the Link Popularity Check return me with no presence on Google. Even Liz’s handy tip makes it look like Google hates me. Google Sitemaps isn’t exactly being helpful either and tells me that no one links to my site. This is a lie. I know of at least three places that do, and a couple of those have a decent PageRanks all of their own…

But I am getting high listings through some searches, so clearly Google don’t hate me completely. For example, rather reassuringly, a search for “cas sunday roast” returns me as the top link.

I’m confused. I used to think I understood search engine behaviour, now it has been made stunningly clear to me I have about as much comprehension of what goes on it Google’s mind as I do about what goes on in my own (None).

I may be confused, but I don’t care that there is some odd behaviour going on. At least I keep telling myself I don’t care. Yahoo! seems to like me ok, as does MSN search. Even Technorati has started to give me some love again (albeit a little haphazardly). It’s just Google. So what if one search engine has taken an irrational dislike to my shiny new site? People are evidently stumbling across Bright Meadow on a semi-regular basis, and my faithful Blog Minions still know where to find me, so what more do I need?

Love, affection, and PageRank, that’s what I need. I know shouldn’t, but I do. No matter what I might say, and how much I know it’s not a real measure of ‘success’, I do still harbour, in the back of my mind, irrational dreams such as being in the Technorati Top 100 Blogs. I’d like to be nominated for a Bloggie. Winning one is just too silly to even contemplate, but a nomination…?

Where’s this post going? No where. It just serves to mark my 🙁 at the current state of affairs. I actually don’t know what I’d do with a readership into double digits, let alone the triple and more you need for true blogging “fame”. PageRank can’t keep you warm at night like the love of a good Blog Minion can.

Still, who said I don’t deserve both…? 😉

google, yahoo, msn, technorati, bloggies, pagerank, blog minion, talk digger, link popularity check, google sitemaps

I look like Rita Hayworth!

Cas' Rita Hayworth match on Flickr Browsing the wilds of the Internet this morning, looking for something to blog about as I am wont to do, I stumbled across MyHeritage thanks to Profgrrrrl. A deep and meaningful tool, to be sure, but one corrupted mercilessly by me to see what celebrities me and mine look like, and I have to say, turns out I’ve got some pretty good looking Blog Minions.

Me: As well as Rita Hayworth, I get Avalance Face herself (Katie Holmes), Hilary Duff, and Drew Barrymore, depending on the photo used. I also got Elton John at one point, but I blame that on the glasses 😐

Moose: Sofia Coppola. Rather appropriate given her love for film.

Spooky: George Clooney. Yes girls, I had a George Clooney lookalike on the course. And I end up dating…

… the CC: who looks like Linus Pauling (whoever that is). Though on a second run through I did get a 45% Brad Pitt match, so the program must know something after all 😉

Brainy Snail: A bit Paris Hilton, but don’t hold that against her. I only had one face-on shot that the system would recognise and I don’t think it is fair to blame the Snail for that misfortune.

Bimbostar: Got a bit of a Sophia Loren thing going on.

Who do you look like? Comment on the post, and even better, get yourself a free Flickr account upload a screenshot, and tag it “myheritage“. That way we can all share 🙂

My Heritage, myheritage, flickr, rita hayworth, katie holmes, hilary duff, drew barrymore, sofia coppola, george clooney, linus pauling, brad pitt, paris hilton, sophia loren

Sunday Roast – Jesus didn’t go home for the weekend!

For your clicking pleasure, I bring you the second Sunday Roast of 2006. If you fancy a snack afters, there are always the leftovers

Good Film, Shame About the Helvetica – New York Times. Clearly, a slow news day in the NYT Movies office.

The Cute Factor – New York Times. I’m really not sure if this article makes me more resigned to being classed “cute” or less. Laps and cuddles are more fun than pedestals though…

BBC NEWS – Mental health overhaul demanded. I’ve been fortunate this time around that I am at a University with a competent counselling service to pick up the slack. Last time when I had to go through my NHS practice, it was much harder. What care you get for mental health issues in this country really is too hit and miss, so I applaud this report.

The WEB 2.0 Quiz. Shocking, especially considering I side with the people who say that Web 2.0 as a term should be put out of its misery, but I couldn’t resist. 6 out of 10. Eeek. I have much to learn, Obi Wan!

EchoEcho.Com – Complete Web tutorials . One more tip garnered from Liz at Successful Blog. It’s amazing what you forget after a year of blogger and wordpress lets you get lazy.

The Best Gaming Mouse Pad You’ll Ever Make at PaulStamatiou.com – You laugh, and then you think on it a bit, and realise that this is actually rather a clever little idea. Only to be recommended if you own your furniture (or think your landlord won’t mind sticky marks left on his desk).

Firdamatic: the Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers. I’m currently playing round with a design for part two of the Grand Master Plan for Bright Meadow, and I stumbled across this shiny little tool. As Firda says, “you’re not lazy, you’re just uninspired”.

BBC NEWS – Sony Reader targets book lovers and the Gizmodo take on the same thing. I’ve always maintained that the only thing keeping me from my (legally, I stress) downloaded e-Books is the reading format. The laptop just isn’t working for me in that respect. Whilst this Sony product looks like a great leap forward, I am going to be dubious about this sort of tech till it passes the Cas-Test – namely, can I read it in the bath without fear of (1) destroying an expensive piece of equipment and (2) death from electrocution.

And finally, this week we learned that traditionally, the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent does not include Sundays. This incensed Moose’s sensibilities. As she quite rightly points out, Lent is supposed to echo the time Jesus spent in the desert being tempted. He didn’t pop home for a Sunday lunch with Joseph and Mary each week now, did he? (At least, I can’t remember being told that he did in Sunday school). As a Christian I am so lapsed that I am starting to approach it from the other side, so I am (of course) not up to date on the latest theological thinking, but until I am told otherwise, I am just going to add this to my growing list of bits of religious thinking that make me blink in sheer incomprehension.

RSS Icons

One of my pet peeves about RSS is that there has been no standard icon to represent the feed. For a while, it looked like the ugly orange ‘xml’ box would win, and Apple tried for a while with their nice blue RSS in a box, but consensus on the web seems to be settling on the concentric arcs familiar to Firefox users if nothing else.

I’ve bitten the bullet and now Bright Meadow is all standardised with its RSS icons. Just because Microsoft is doing something doesn’t necessarily make it right, but there’s starting to be enough impetus behind this move now to make me think ok, why not?

So, in the ‘Meta’ section, the little ‘rss’ buttons (that I was quite fond of) have now been replaced with the blue rss icon graphic. I just couldn’t quite face the orange, so I photoshopped them to better fit the colour scheme.

See more about the standardisation on Improbulus’ post, “Feeds: new standard feed icon at last “.

And if you need a set in a colour scheme to match your blog but can’t face photoshop yourself, contact me and I’ll be happy to help 🙂

feed, feeds, RSS, feed icons, standardisation, blogs, photoshop, Improbulus, Microsoft, Apple, Firefox, Feedburner

Day Two – and I am doing this because?

ingredients for smoothie - click to see bigger on Flickr Today, so far (it’s lunch time), has been remarkably healthy. The day started at the ungodly hour of 8.30 with a cup of tea and a banana, before Moose and myself dragged each other up to the gym. We even walked there and back! I dusted off the exercise plan that I got back at the end of August, hopped on the machines, and decided to teach my body who’s boss.

For my records, and your curiosity

  • Weight: 82 kg, which is 10 kilos more than I was last time I went to the gym. Damn it! I put on more than I’d thought.
  • Bike: Alpine pass; level 2; 15 minutes; 3.76 miles
  • Rowing machine: 2500 m; level 6; 15.07.3 minutes

Next aerobic time it is the X-Trainer (and we all know how much I hate them), on Trail blazer, level 1, for 15 minutes, and the Rowing machine again.

I actually feel quite good right now – tired, but all exercised. Tomorrow, I am going to be in serious pain, I can tell. Well, next time I go to the gym, it’s all resistance, and predominantly on the arms, so my legs can have a rest. Ug. This whole health kick really is hard work!

If you care to look at this comment from JB, you will see a suggestion for a smoothie. Seeing no reason why not to, I tried it today on return from the gym, though with two bananas not three, and plain yoghurt. Verdict? Not bad, not bad at all. It needed… something… possibly another fruit alongside the banana, or a different yoghurt, and I’m not totally sold on the idea of drinking my breakfast (I like to get my teeth into something), but it’s early days yet. Experimenting is half the fun 🙂

Right, I’m now off to undergo the unique torture that is trying to find a swimsuit. Fun :S