Once again, I’m the girl with a million things to say, but with a chronic case of laryngitis preventing her from saying it. Writers-laryngitis that is. More traditionally, I’d say writers block, but Liz would probably come after me with pointy sticks (in a nice way of course) if I did that. She has a point – getting the words down on the page is always the hard bit, even when it is enjoyable. I’m just being remarkably lazy right now. Ashamed though I am to admit it, vegging out in front of Desparate Housewives or some Farscape is vastly more appealing after a day’s work and session at the gym than sitting in front of another computer typing.

But, I have made a commitment to this blog and to my readers. That, and I’ve been getting some really lovely comments lately about my kick-ass content (I paraphrase, but the sentiment remains the same), which gives me the warm fuzzies, and I want to keep getting the warm fuzzies 😀

All of which means, it’s about time I got off my fat arse and wrote something.

Hmmmmm. Ok.

I was reading this article in the NYT and it put me in mind of something I wrote a few years back. Tweaked, edited, and update, I bring you:

HOW TO SURVIVE A SCI FI FILM:
aka – things to make you suspicious and that should MAKE YOU RUN AWAY NOW!!!!!!!!!

I love sci-fi and fantasy, and have read and watched far too much over the years (according to friends and family that is. As far as I am concerned, bring it on!) All this has left me with a slightly skew-if outlook on life, and more trivia than is good for me. One thing that I have noticed, is the number of cliches that abound in these genres. Whilst watching Alien for the n^th time with my brother, he yelled at the screen “don’t you realise, you never go back for the ships cat!” That stuck, and the idea transmogrified into what you see below. Kind of a beginners guide for the first-time heroine (or hero, I’m not picky. All the gender specific nouns I’ve used are interchangeable). Some of them are inspired by the “classics”, others from weirder places. But I hope all strike a cord, and you find at least a few funny. Do let me know, both what you think of these, and if you can think of more.

Disclaimer – I mean no disrespect! Correction, any disrespect is loving, and irreverent, and based on my deep love of the genre. My intention is that you find this amusing, not insulting. Hope you enjoy…

Continue reading →

I hadn’t noticed the screwy way that comments were displaying in Internet Explorer until recently. I apologise for leaving it so long. I’m looking into it at the moment – just waiting on a response from the K2 forums, though I have the feeling the answer will be “upgrade, pray, live with it”. Whatever the outcome, I am looking into it, I promise!

Seems like it’s that time again. Another few people have inveigled their ways into my affections lately, and have done nice things for/around Bright Meadow.

Firstly it’s the turn of Dewayne. The man has an insanely long blogroll, but Bright Meadow got on there somehow a ways back, and Dewayne’s been a steady commenter ever since. What sterling service has propelled him into the ranks of Minionhood? Well, taking the time to track down an explanation of Morris Dancing is the latest that springs to mind.

Congratulations Dewayne. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke 🙂

The next minions are a slight departure for me. I’ve hummed and haa-ed over whether they qualify or not, but I finally plumped down on the side of “why the frell not? It’s my blog and I want to”.

Now, normally Minions are individuals who have participated over a period of time and have become part of the furniture. In a nice way of course. However, in my own mind there are also the people who, whilst they may not be regular visitors to the blog, take the time to help when they can. A case in point is the good people from coComment who have been stopping by over the last couple of days to help out with the whole “blog integration” thing. Logically you would expect a company dedicated to making conversation on the web better to have their people out and about, helping where they can, but it is still a bit of a surprise when they descend in the middle of your own blog.

Trust me on this.
Surprise.

So for all those times they have turned up, said nice things, and helped to rescue the kitten from the tree (and for fixing some very odd behavior regarding permalinks), I would like to name the entire coComment team honorary Blog Minions, with a special shout-out to nicolas and Chris.

Thank you guys – you’ve given the Internet a tool I think is genuinely exciting, and more importantly made me smile. Keep up the good work 😀

Everyone, have a button. What you do with them is totally up to you. (This is a revamped design I came up with late on a Friday evening after a hard week’s work and a workout at the gym. Feel free to use the older style button, design your own button, or just not take one away with you at all. I promise not to be upset 😉 )

For more on what it means to be a Minion, read read this page here, and feel free to interrogate those made Minion before you.

cocomment, conversation, blog minions, blog minion

Regular readers will probably be fed up to the back teeth with me talking about coComment. Sorry. You’re gonna have to listen to just a bit more…

One of the drawbacks of coCo (for me at least) has always been that it only tracks comments made by cocommenters. On Bright Meadow, this is about… three of us. Sometimes a few more, but you never get the full picture of the vibrant comments that can happen around here if you are just looking at the coCo page.

With the newest version of coComment, however, they have tinkered and are able to mysteriously track all the comments made on a blog, regardless of whether they are made by a coco-peep or not.

Please take a moment to picture Cas looking very, very excited.

Got that mental image?
There should probably be bouncing and/or some hand clapping involved.
Ok.

Now, the implementation of this frankly made my brain hurt. I could work it out, I have the technology, and I do have a brain lurking somewhere beneath my chestnut locks, but life is just too short.

So, what is a girl to do? Find an appropriate plugin of course. Now, I think I have it all set up properly, but the only way I can be sure is if lots of people leave comments to be tracked.

So… Go forth and comment! That is your challenge, and I sure hope you accept it 😀

p.s.
If you haven’t signed up for coComment yet, do so. It really is rather fun.
Ok. I’ll stop now.
cocomment, comments, conversation, tracking, wordpress, plugin, catch all comments

Happy May Day everyone.

The Crazy Canalman came for a visit this weekend and decided that today, instead of being spent as bank holidays should be lazing around the house, he was going to get me out of bed at 7am and drag me to the Isle of Wight to look at a steam railway he had heard about.

I’ve uploaded a few of the pictures to Flickr – you can have a look at them here, as they are all tagged with “IOW”. Do go look, enjoy the notes, and comment 🙂
As an aside, I’ve run out of groups I can make, and have now exceeded the 200 viewable pictures in my photostream. Is it time I upgraded to the paid account?

Anyway, perhaps one of the best bits of the day was the Morris Dancers. No, I can’t explain them. I heard one couple trying to explain them to their American guests and failing dismally, and I don’t think I’d fair any better. Basically, I’m not sure what purpose they serve myself, but they amused me, so I’m just going to leave you with the things grown men get up to on their days off:

JB and Co have a shiny new blog, Sushimatic about all things Japanese. Go check it out. You owe it to a fellow minion 😉

I was watching this video about sushi and how to eat it, and a thought struck me: with all the bowing that goes on in Japan, do people ever bang heads?

I know, not the most pc ponder I have ever had, but I genuinely thought that. There’s this bit near the end of the video where the two chaps are thanking the sushi-chef, and all three of them bow into the middle… Seriously, they look about a millimetre from bashing skulls.

And what would be the polite thing to do if you did clonk someone on the forehead?

Lord alone knows how I came to be on this chappies link-roll, but I did a quick check of Technorati today and it turns out a new blog is linking to me – Xenoarchaeology.

Now, because I was bored and am, like most bloggers, obsessed with who is linking to me, I went to check it out.

It’s… different. A blog dedicated to xenoarchaeology, which is hardly surprising considering the name of the place. Anyway, I’m intrigued to see how far he get with it. My gut instinct is that there’s only so much that can be written about a subject that doesn’t actually exist, but I would love to be proved wrong.